Most mornings while I eat breakfast I read in the One Year Bible. Recently I was reading in the Old Testament about Job. I’m usually at a loss about Job. He was doing just fine until God let the devil test his faith. That test, which he passed, costs him everything. Bad news is followed by more bad news which is followed by really bad news. I wish somehow Job could have been spared from his pain. It seems to me he had done nothing to deserve the devil!
Still feeling for Job I read Matthew’s gospel for this morning’s sermon. I wish someone would have warned me. Now the bad news is for Jesus. It begins when he says he must go to Jerusalem where he will undergo great suffering and be killed. Then, more bad news, Peter gets into trouble when he tries to intervene. He innocently tries to help so his friend won’t have to suffer and die. But his attempt backfires. Then the really bad news. We learn that to be a disciple of Jesus we must deny ourselves and take up our cross.
It’s not good news about Jesus. And Peter, well he’s been in trouble before. But deny ourselves! Take up our cross! Surely we have done nothing to deserve the devil! We’ve worked hard, we’ve been true and faithful. Are we to now consider our success and wealth come at the cost of our soul! Is the news so bad this Sunday we are to become like Job and lose our lives to the devil? Where is the good news, we scream!
When bad news overwhelms us we respond in different ways. Sometimes we become angry, sometimes we look for someone to blame, sometimes we cry, and sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves. One thing we all have in common is our desire that somehow bad news will just go away, that someone will protect us and make life right. Sometimes we discover we are to be that someone.
There are certain times when we feel a duty to protect those we love. Good parents especially seem to feel this way and that is a very good thing. Our caring parents worked really hard at keeping us safe and out of harm’s way.
Others protect us too, those in law enforcement, fire protection, medical care, people like that. Truth is, we all have a roll to play in protecting those we love. We keep a lookout for potentially dangerous situations and we help one another. That is what people who love one another do. We help. Especially when we see that someone may be taking a risk we feel they need not take.
I wonder if Peters response to Jesus’ shockingly bad news was a response rooted in a deep love for him, a cry to not take a risk he doesn’t have to take and the desire on his part to shield Jesus from what awaited him in Jerusalem - great suffering and death.
While this may have been Peters intention, Jesus did not take it that way, he did not turn to him and say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about me friend, I’ll be alright. God is watching after me.’ No, Jesus reacts quite unexpectedly. “Get behind me Satan,” he says. Then he tells all his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Or did Jesus think Peters’ response was rooted in his own fear? Fear of loosing the person he loved more than anyone, fear of being left to do God’s work alone, or fear of being abandoned forever. We don’t know.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with Peter and everything to do with Jesus. Jesus’ response seems harsh. It is as if he tells Peter, ‘Don’ tell me what to do you Satan.’ Doesn’t Jesus know Peters response could save his life?
Ah, perhaps that is exactly the point. For those who want to save their life will lose it. Jesus has drawn his life to the core focus of his being and his reason for living. To save his life and ours he will offer his all. He will lose his life so we may realize ours. Jerusalem is the necessary way.
First of all Jesus wasn’t ASKING about Jerusalem, he was TELLING about Jerusalem. He was telling his disciples “I must go.” Jesus makes it clear, he is not being forced to go. He realizes Jerusalem is the path he must take to be the person Peter has declared him to be, Messiah. He realizes to suffer and die on the cross is his destiny, for he must be what he really was meant to be.
He has been a great moral teacher, a great prophet, and he has healed many people. But there is something greater ahead. Who do you say that I am? And Peter said, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And because of who you are, there must be another way other than the road to Jerusalem. Jesus tells him, no, there is no other way and then the most painful truth, you are a stumbling block to me my friend!
As shocking as it is to Peter and to us, for Jesus to be Messiah ‘he must go’ to Jerusalem, suffer, and die. To find another way would radically change who he was.
It is also shocking to us that if we are to be Jesus’ disciple we too must go and take up our cross to follow him. For to find another way would radically change who we have been called to be. Beloved, there is no place for a limited and partial disciple in God’s kingdom. It is all or nothing for us.
All or nothing demands a high price. Jesus paid his and now we learn we must pay ours too. There is a road that awaits us. A road and a shadow. Suffering and a cross. Hard truths. We don’t save ourselves by holding on to ourselves. We don’t save ourselves at all.
When we give our life away we are living as a Christian disciple. We are living as Christ because to live only for comfort and safety is not living Jesus’ way. To be shielded from this way of denial and cross is to decide in favor of perceived comfort and safety and to decide against being who we are meant to be.
Living as we do in the near desert of central Texas we have discovered all too painfully this summer water is a valuable commodity. Life cannot be shut up and saved in comfort and safety any more than our waters from rain or rivers can be put in a mason jar to be kept in a kitchen cupboard only to be looked at. Water is not meant to be locked and stored away. It is to be drunk so that we may live, it is to water our earth so we will have food to eat, it is to enjoy in recreation and sport to give us quality in our life. It is to be poured out, to be moving, living water, rushing downstream to share its wealth without ever looking back.
Peter wanted to prevent Jesus’ life from being spilled and wasted, he wanted to save it, to preserve it, to find a safer, more comfortable way for Jesus to be Lord. What he did not see was that Jesus’ supply of life was never-ending.
In the midst of his angst Peter missed the good news. Jesus told him “…on the third day (he would) be raised.” Surely Peter missed that. Who Jesus was to be is woven into this first telling of what we call his passion prediction. Jesus was born to be God’s promised ‘anointed one’ who fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy. He was to be the anticipated king and deliverer who brings salvation to the world. You see, Jesus must go to Jerusalem and endure all the humiliation, suffering and death on that cross to be who WE need him to be. It is the only way we become who God needs us to be.
The disciples now know what Jesus had not told them before. They now know what he must do before he can truly be Messiah. And it must have scared the wits out of them. It must have scared them because this suffering and death was going to happen to one whom they dearly loved, one whom they had left everything for. One whom they desired to live like, loving their enemies, feeding the poor and the widow, forgiving sins, healing and curing the sick.
They had not bargained for the full deal. They had not realized the full cost of discipleship. Jesus was saying that where he goes, we must also go. Surely it cannot be that this is the cost disciples must pay. What kind of Messiah is this? The true Messiah wouldn’t let himself suffer and die such a humiliating death. And he certainly wouldn’t expect his followers to take the same path. Jesus cannot mean we are to take up our cross and follow him into death. Surely he must mean something else.
The minute we try to limit Jesus to something less than what he is meant to be we limit ourselves. For we are called to be full-time, all or nothing disciples. Not just when we are being like him as we teach and heal and make disciples. Not just when we are in our ‘Let’s fix the world’ mode. But even when we are called to pick up our cross and follow him to Calvary.
While Jesus’ cross was evident, ours are less so. We don’t take up a literal cross. We take up life and life is hard to pick up some days. We will suffer, evil lurks, we die and we are in the core of that storm. Yet, when we center our lives in Jesus’, when he becomes the core of our being, we have taken up the cross of life and we can only follow him for he is the light in our storm. True, living this way we lose our way. But living this way we are found by Jesus for whose sake our lives are found.
The stark reality of Jesus’ revealing his destiny to us in this mornings Gospel is that Jesus was about something bigger than the miracles he had performed, he was about something bigger than the fine moral life he was living as an example for us to follow. What Jesus was about was a love so deep he died that our sins would be forgiven and that we would realize God’s promise of eternal salvation for those who accept the invitation, “Come and follow me.”
Our challenge this morning is to follow that kind of savior. One who will not compromise on who he is called to be and who will not compromise on who he expects his disciples to be. Jesus was chosen by God to take up his cross and Jesus expects the same from us. This is the life to which we are called. This is the life that matters for Christ’ sake, not our own.
This just may be where we silence ourselves and slip into the shadows to go on to live a life that matter’s to us. Living Jesus’s way takes us beyond comfort and safety. We cannot deny the fear, it is real, but we need not let our fear stop us. It did not stop Jesus.
To become who God has called us to be means going beyond the limits we place on our lives with false securities. It means receiving our lives as gifts instead of guarding them as our own possessions. It means sharing the gifts we have been given instead of bottling them for our own consumption. It means giving up the notion that we can find another way to be a disciple of Christ that avoids giving our life, body and soul, to our Lord and Savior on his terms.
To be Jesus, our Christ took the road less traveled. His entire life was directed to that road and he took it. He took it and confronted the powers of evil. He was nailed to the cross, knew death first hand, breathed and bleed his last.
If we are to be his friends, his loved ones, and his disciples, where he goes we must go too. This is the way to the truth and the life. This is the way to the good news this world cannot give. There is no other way. If we doubt it we need only remember Job and then Jesus’ promise, “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done…”
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
Additional helps:
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Seeds of Heaven.”
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Sunday, August 28, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
21 August 2011 “God’s Rock” Matthew 16:13-20
Several years ago, a woman walked out of her church after a particularly rousing Sunday service and bumped into a thin, sort of lost-looking man who was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cross on top of the church steeple. She excused herself and started to walk away, but the man called her back. “Tell me,” he said, pointing through the front door into the church she had belonged to most of her life, “What is it that you believe in there?”
She started to answer him, and then realized that she did not know the answer, or did not know how to put it into words, and as she stood there trying to compose something the man said, “Never mind. I’m sorry if I bothered you,” and walked away. She shared the story with her pastor and confessed he did bother her.
Bothered or not, I wonder how we would answer such a question if asked as we leave worship today. What is it that we believe in here? What would we say about our faith, about our church, about our God? And more importantly, what difference might our answer have for the person pointing at our faith. Is there a real possibility their response to our feeble answer might be, “Never mind.” Or, if we dare say what we believe clearly would the follow-up question be more difficult, “Seriously, you really believe THAT in there?”
Imagine for a moment you are the woman. You have been in worship. You feel your soul has awakened within you and that you have felt God’s spirit in your heart as the word of God is read and proclaimed, as you prayed and sang and offered anew your life to our Savior.
Imagine for a moment the young man on the sidewalk though unknown to us is Jesus and he is asking us, “What did you just do in that place?” “Why, worship” we say”. Then he asks what we believe in there when we worship? Will there be a hesitation, a hushed and tentative answer or a bold clear proclamation?
In our gospel reading this morning Jesus and his disciples have just come into the district of Caesarea Philippi leaving a trail of miracles behind them. Thousands were fed, the sea was calmed and walked upon, and demons were cast out of a little girl. Always the teacher, Jesus had been asking his disciples questions about what they believed about him and it was time for questions again.
The road to Jerusalem and the cross lay ahead. Jesus knew he was running out of time. He needed to make sure he could leave his disciples and they would understand he was the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had come to save the world from sin and eternal damnation. So far, the disciples had not passed his tests. They were failing miserably.
So Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am.?” Admittedly, this should be easy. They don’t have to think for ourselves or search their brains for a clue. They simply say what others are saying, John the Baptist, Elijah, or even Jeremiah.
“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. Now they cannot wiggle out of an answer, it is too personal, if they hesitate they risk Jesus saying, “Never mind, I’m sorry if I bothered you’ and he may walk away.
Fearing this, I can see them looking to the one person who always has an opinion about things, the one person who isn’t bashful about asking Jesus to explain things, the one person bold enough to even ask Jesus for miracles, Peter. I can just see all their eyes moving to Peter for help. And Peter delivers like he has never delivered before. He nails the answer! Seldom right, but never in doubt, this time Peter saves the day, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he says.
Peter does not take the easy way out; he doesn’t guess or admit he doesn’t know who Jesus is because this time he knows. You are the Messiah Jesus, that is who you are! Jesus must have been hoping for this answer because in one fell swoop he declares ‘Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah,’ and then Jesus gives him a new name, He says, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.’
He also declares he will give to Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Words that tell us, Peter is given the knowledge he needs to interpret Jesus teaching. But be on the look out, we know enough about Peter to know he seldom leaves things alone. One minute Jesus says to Peter, “Oh you of little faith,” and then he is being blessed. I have a feeling Peters on again off again favor is the true picture of his life with Jesus. And he just may be the perfect model for how ours is too.
It is interesting and important to note, once Peter declares Jesus to be Messiah, Jesus pulls the plug and tells him his answer is not his own. We should be reminded too that when we profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, while our answer is right, it is not really our answer. Jesus explains, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
The truth is we have not reasoned to the conclusion that Jesus is our Messiah, no, that truth doesn’t come from us. God has revealed it to us and without God’s help we too would find ourselves guessing Jesus to be John the Baptist or someone like that.
We should also wonder, if it was not Peters’ answer why did Jesus rewarded him. If our “finding” Jesus is not our discovery, I wonder why we are rewarded too.
Honestly, that’s what our Messiah does. Our savior loves people like Peter. People who are bold enough to declare him to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Jesus gives love and favor to those who have faith in him even though we stumble and forget from time to time.
We are so like Peter when we think we deserve a reward for our correct answer or our correct lifestyle. Like we have earned something, a blessing perhaps, that we are different from the rest who don’t get it. And then, like Peter, we stumble and make a mess out of things, we doubt, we declare we are faithful and promise to live our lives as if Christ were a part of our very soul, and then our actions don’t match our words.
Peter, fresh from his blessing, will in just a few verses in this same chapter, be rebuked by Jesus for arguing with him when Jesus tells his disciples what is going to happen in Jerusalem. He tells them he will be killed and on the third day be raised. Peter argues with Jesus and declares that this must never happen. And Jesus commands him, “Get behind me, Satan!” It is as if Jesus says, Peter you are a stumbling block in my path, and I have just stubbed my toe on the very one who is to be a building block in my church.
Do you see how Peter mirror’s our lives when we go from being blessed and the corner stone of the church to being a stumbling block in Christ’s way? This is the reality in our lives that shows us how desperately we need Jesus to give us the right answer to his questions. Our answers are not right. Without Jesus, we are truly a lost and forgotten rubble.
But Peter is also a positive model for us. He never hesitates to live his life, to be an active participant in the progression of time and space into which he has been thrown. To live, to love, to endure, to find in joy and bliss and pain and suffering hope. To risk grabbing hold of the one sure life-line with an eternal promise, a life with Christ, who is the Messiah!
There is an important distinction to note about Jesus’ renaming Simon Peter and then his speaking of the rock upon which his church is to be built. Petros, the Greek name Jesus gives Peter, means a stone or pebble, a small piece of a large rock, while petra, the Greek word used for rock, means a boulder, a great big rock. The importance of this difference affects how we interpret this story. Jesus is saying of Peter, you are a small piece of a larger rock, a chip off that rock perhaps. He is also saying he will build his church on a boulder, a great rock large enough and solid enough to be a foundation for a church.
Revisit the story in Matthew for just a moment, Jesus asks, ‘But who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter says, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus blesses him and says he is a chip off the old block, a small piece of a greater rock. That greater rock of course is Jesus Christ. That is who God’s church will be built upon, for God has revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Rock of Ages and we join in being those pebbles under foot that God uses for walls and supports and roofs for his kingdom on earth, his church. Like Peter, our proper place is as a building stone filling in those chinks in the church.
Dear ones, our gift this morning is that we are blessed because our answer to life’s question is God’s answer and we are the bed rock of the church where the Kingdom of God is built. We are chosen not because the right answer has occurred to us, oh no, the right answer occurs to us because we are chosen, because Jesus chose you and me to build his church upon.
We find our hope in a person like Peter and Jesus’ obvious love for him. He did not always say or do the right thing, yet he is the rock used to build God’s church. In that truth, there is hope for us because like Peter, we will remain a chosen rock whether we live as a corner stone or a stumbling block.
Being chosen is more about our willingness to try and answer what it is we believe than knowing the right answer. The right answer after all doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. Being willing to take risks and say what we believe, speaking in faith, from our heart, that is what God wants to hear from us.
It is a comfort knowing someone like us, Peter, is the one in charge of heaven’s gates. When we show up we will be recognized by one of our own. One who, like us, is not afraid to declare Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
That matters a great deal, our willingness to boldly declare to the sort of lost looking man who is standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cross on the top of the church steeple wanting to know if his teaching has worked on us. Don a ’t be bothered like the woman who had just come out of worship, be like Paul, who takes a risk to answer the most important faith question we can be asked.
What is it that you believe in there, when you worship, the lost looking man asked. Truly, I cannot answer for you, he is saying. But the important thing for each of us is to try – not only to say what we believe but also to live what we believe.
Like Peter, we too will rise and fall, give the right answer some days and the wrong a few chapters later, yet we too are chips off the old block, pieces of the one true rock upon which even the powers of death shall not prevail.
And praise God, this is the truth we believe in here, this is the truth we will declare to all who ask. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of the living God!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Additional helps:
“The Seeds of Heaven”, Barbara B. Taylor, p. 74.
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She started to answer him, and then realized that she did not know the answer, or did not know how to put it into words, and as she stood there trying to compose something the man said, “Never mind. I’m sorry if I bothered you,” and walked away. She shared the story with her pastor and confessed he did bother her.
Bothered or not, I wonder how we would answer such a question if asked as we leave worship today. What is it that we believe in here? What would we say about our faith, about our church, about our God? And more importantly, what difference might our answer have for the person pointing at our faith. Is there a real possibility their response to our feeble answer might be, “Never mind.” Or, if we dare say what we believe clearly would the follow-up question be more difficult, “Seriously, you really believe THAT in there?”
Imagine for a moment you are the woman. You have been in worship. You feel your soul has awakened within you and that you have felt God’s spirit in your heart as the word of God is read and proclaimed, as you prayed and sang and offered anew your life to our Savior.
Imagine for a moment the young man on the sidewalk though unknown to us is Jesus and he is asking us, “What did you just do in that place?” “Why, worship” we say”. Then he asks what we believe in there when we worship? Will there be a hesitation, a hushed and tentative answer or a bold clear proclamation?
In our gospel reading this morning Jesus and his disciples have just come into the district of Caesarea Philippi leaving a trail of miracles behind them. Thousands were fed, the sea was calmed and walked upon, and demons were cast out of a little girl. Always the teacher, Jesus had been asking his disciples questions about what they believed about him and it was time for questions again.
The road to Jerusalem and the cross lay ahead. Jesus knew he was running out of time. He needed to make sure he could leave his disciples and they would understand he was the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had come to save the world from sin and eternal damnation. So far, the disciples had not passed his tests. They were failing miserably.
So Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am.?” Admittedly, this should be easy. They don’t have to think for ourselves or search their brains for a clue. They simply say what others are saying, John the Baptist, Elijah, or even Jeremiah.
“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. Now they cannot wiggle out of an answer, it is too personal, if they hesitate they risk Jesus saying, “Never mind, I’m sorry if I bothered you’ and he may walk away.
Fearing this, I can see them looking to the one person who always has an opinion about things, the one person who isn’t bashful about asking Jesus to explain things, the one person bold enough to even ask Jesus for miracles, Peter. I can just see all their eyes moving to Peter for help. And Peter delivers like he has never delivered before. He nails the answer! Seldom right, but never in doubt, this time Peter saves the day, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he says.
Peter does not take the easy way out; he doesn’t guess or admit he doesn’t know who Jesus is because this time he knows. You are the Messiah Jesus, that is who you are! Jesus must have been hoping for this answer because in one fell swoop he declares ‘Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah,’ and then Jesus gives him a new name, He says, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.’
He also declares he will give to Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Words that tell us, Peter is given the knowledge he needs to interpret Jesus teaching. But be on the look out, we know enough about Peter to know he seldom leaves things alone. One minute Jesus says to Peter, “Oh you of little faith,” and then he is being blessed. I have a feeling Peters on again off again favor is the true picture of his life with Jesus. And he just may be the perfect model for how ours is too.
It is interesting and important to note, once Peter declares Jesus to be Messiah, Jesus pulls the plug and tells him his answer is not his own. We should be reminded too that when we profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, while our answer is right, it is not really our answer. Jesus explains, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
The truth is we have not reasoned to the conclusion that Jesus is our Messiah, no, that truth doesn’t come from us. God has revealed it to us and without God’s help we too would find ourselves guessing Jesus to be John the Baptist or someone like that.
We should also wonder, if it was not Peters’ answer why did Jesus rewarded him. If our “finding” Jesus is not our discovery, I wonder why we are rewarded too.
Honestly, that’s what our Messiah does. Our savior loves people like Peter. People who are bold enough to declare him to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Jesus gives love and favor to those who have faith in him even though we stumble and forget from time to time.
We are so like Peter when we think we deserve a reward for our correct answer or our correct lifestyle. Like we have earned something, a blessing perhaps, that we are different from the rest who don’t get it. And then, like Peter, we stumble and make a mess out of things, we doubt, we declare we are faithful and promise to live our lives as if Christ were a part of our very soul, and then our actions don’t match our words.
Peter, fresh from his blessing, will in just a few verses in this same chapter, be rebuked by Jesus for arguing with him when Jesus tells his disciples what is going to happen in Jerusalem. He tells them he will be killed and on the third day be raised. Peter argues with Jesus and declares that this must never happen. And Jesus commands him, “Get behind me, Satan!” It is as if Jesus says, Peter you are a stumbling block in my path, and I have just stubbed my toe on the very one who is to be a building block in my church.
Do you see how Peter mirror’s our lives when we go from being blessed and the corner stone of the church to being a stumbling block in Christ’s way? This is the reality in our lives that shows us how desperately we need Jesus to give us the right answer to his questions. Our answers are not right. Without Jesus, we are truly a lost and forgotten rubble.
But Peter is also a positive model for us. He never hesitates to live his life, to be an active participant in the progression of time and space into which he has been thrown. To live, to love, to endure, to find in joy and bliss and pain and suffering hope. To risk grabbing hold of the one sure life-line with an eternal promise, a life with Christ, who is the Messiah!
There is an important distinction to note about Jesus’ renaming Simon Peter and then his speaking of the rock upon which his church is to be built. Petros, the Greek name Jesus gives Peter, means a stone or pebble, a small piece of a large rock, while petra, the Greek word used for rock, means a boulder, a great big rock. The importance of this difference affects how we interpret this story. Jesus is saying of Peter, you are a small piece of a larger rock, a chip off that rock perhaps. He is also saying he will build his church on a boulder, a great rock large enough and solid enough to be a foundation for a church.
Revisit the story in Matthew for just a moment, Jesus asks, ‘But who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter says, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus blesses him and says he is a chip off the old block, a small piece of a greater rock. That greater rock of course is Jesus Christ. That is who God’s church will be built upon, for God has revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Rock of Ages and we join in being those pebbles under foot that God uses for walls and supports and roofs for his kingdom on earth, his church. Like Peter, our proper place is as a building stone filling in those chinks in the church.
Dear ones, our gift this morning is that we are blessed because our answer to life’s question is God’s answer and we are the bed rock of the church where the Kingdom of God is built. We are chosen not because the right answer has occurred to us, oh no, the right answer occurs to us because we are chosen, because Jesus chose you and me to build his church upon.
We find our hope in a person like Peter and Jesus’ obvious love for him. He did not always say or do the right thing, yet he is the rock used to build God’s church. In that truth, there is hope for us because like Peter, we will remain a chosen rock whether we live as a corner stone or a stumbling block.
Being chosen is more about our willingness to try and answer what it is we believe than knowing the right answer. The right answer after all doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. Being willing to take risks and say what we believe, speaking in faith, from our heart, that is what God wants to hear from us.
It is a comfort knowing someone like us, Peter, is the one in charge of heaven’s gates. When we show up we will be recognized by one of our own. One who, like us, is not afraid to declare Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
That matters a great deal, our willingness to boldly declare to the sort of lost looking man who is standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cross on the top of the church steeple wanting to know if his teaching has worked on us. Don a ’t be bothered like the woman who had just come out of worship, be like Paul, who takes a risk to answer the most important faith question we can be asked.
What is it that you believe in there, when you worship, the lost looking man asked. Truly, I cannot answer for you, he is saying. But the important thing for each of us is to try – not only to say what we believe but also to live what we believe.
Like Peter, we too will rise and fall, give the right answer some days and the wrong a few chapters later, yet we too are chips off the old block, pieces of the one true rock upon which even the powers of death shall not prevail.
And praise God, this is the truth we believe in here, this is the truth we will declare to all who ask. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of the living God!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Additional helps:
“The Seeds of Heaven”, Barbara B. Taylor, p. 74.
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Monday, August 15, 2011
14 August 2011 ‘Even the Dogs Eat’ Matthew 15:21-21
To begin to understand this story about the Canaanite woman it is important we remember last Sunday’s story of Jesus walking on water. Now, while walking on water is very cool, we should not forget it was the disciple’s doubt that brought Jesus to his feet. Their faith had taken a big hit that night, especially Peters.
The disciples were in their boat in the middle of the lake when a big storm comes up. Next thing they know, Jesus came walking towards them through the rough waves and howling winds and they thought he was a ghost. Jesus shouts out, “Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid.” Peter said to Jesus what they all must have been thinking, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
And Jesus does, saying “Come.” Peter comes bounding out of the boat onto the water only to become frightened. Revealing his true doubting nature he began to sink. He cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus did not hesitate, he saved Peter and then admonished him saying, ‘Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?’
Our passage this morning is a direct response by Jesus to his disappointment in his disciples and their repeated lack of faith. Jesus must have felt discouraged that the ones he personally chose to follow him still had little faith in who he was. He must have wondered what it would take to get through to them; I am their Lord and Master. Yet, they still don’t understand. They keep acting so predictably human. Saying they believe, yet acting otherwise.
So Jesus tries again with a story about a woman of unwavering faith. Jesus’ disciples, men specifically chosen, were at best shaky in their sure and certain knowledge. Yet here is a woman, a Canaanite, who is not from Jesus’ neighborhood, who is sure and certain and rock solid about where her faith is grounded.
Why then, we may wonder, does Jesus seem to reject her plea and try to push her away? If she is to be the true example of a faithful disciple why does he get into a debate with her when she continues to ask him for help?
‘Why’ questions can be the hardest to answer. It reminds me of all those times our children asked ‘why’ when we told them they had to eat their green peas. Our answers about healthy diets and nutritional value and a balance against all those sweets they had eaten fell on deaf ears. The kids had no clue about nutritional worth, they just knew they did not like peas and their question ‘why’ was not an attempt on their part to understand. It was their way of saying no to green peas. Children are practical folk, when they see no good reason whatsoever to eat green peas they won’t! Babies are the best example of this. When we put food in their mouths they don’t like they do the reasonable thing. They spit it out!
Our question ‘why’ just may be our refusal to accept the fact that Jesus really is out of character in this story. He appears to be pushing the woman aside, saying she’s one of those people and is not worthy of his help. This is so unlike the Jesus who cures the sick, helps the lame walk, and even restores life.
Or we may think Jesus was right. How dare she, a foreign woman think Jesus has been put on earth to help the likes of her. Indeed.
But something isn’t right with that option. Typically Jesus has been the liberator of the oppressed and especially of women who, in first century times, were the most oppressed. Scholars have viewed Jesus as a man who approaches women with compassion, friendship, even equality. This encounter seems to be an exception.
We have learned over and over again in scripture that Jesus was sent to save all people. We have been taught to love our neighbor, forgive even our enemy and certainly not talk about other people unkindly. We have been taught to not judge or be prejudiced to other people, be their man or woman, friend or foe, local or foreign.
Certainly Jesus was an enemy of such prejudice. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He treated women and children with unusual regard. He touched and healed people who were considered unclean. Yet with this woman Jesus appears to not be Jesus. What could he be up to?
Here’s what we know. This woman is a Canaanite from Tyre and Sidon. She comes from the very people displaced by Israel’s occupation. It would be like a Palestinian woman of today asking for a favor from an Israeli leader. Despite their long history of antagonism and her foreign identity, this woman seeks Jesus’ merciful help for her demon-possessed daughter. In today’s Holy Land, it just wouldn’t happen.
Initially, Jesus ignores her and claims his mission is only to Israel, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, he says. But she was not to be deterred, calling out to him again, ‘Lord, help me.’
Jesus’ response is in the form of a ‘No’ and he tells her why. ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
No, he is saying, I was sent only to the lost sheep, the children of God to bring them nourishment, to share with them the feast of the table of the Lord, to bring them food for salvation. It is not fair to take my calling to those people for that reason and throw it to the dogs. The gentile, the foreign dogs, we defeated to have their land, the land we were promised.
Can you believe this is Jesus speaking? Not only does he call the woman a dog he cuts her off completely from the promise of eternal salvation. Apparently she is not among those chosen as a child of God to be fed the gift of life.
And Jesus even places his argument against helping her in the context of fairness. I wonder what fairness has to do with anything. Life is not exactly intended to be fair is it?
For her part, the woman does not flinch; she comes back with a strong counter argument of her own. She does not argue with Jesus, she does not offer proof to nullify his argument, she does not offer evidence to the contrary. She doesn’t even attack the unsupportable claim of fairness. Instead, she uses her deep faith and Jesus own logic to show the complete story.
First she humbles herself. Then accepting her identity of even being called a dog she exposes the part of the story Jesus left out, she said, “yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table”.
Jesus must have smiled deep down inside; this woman gets it! Finally, someone with their wits about them to see the entire picture, to recognize when someone speaks of fairness in a limited context, to claim right and wrong in a self-serving way, that someone worships self before God. Finally, someone who realizes that faith is humbling, that a faithful person is one who must empty himself or herself of conceit and self-confidence and wholly depend on God’s unmerited favor.
I read once, faith in God requires us to admit to ourselves that we are not worthy of anything because of who we are, it is only because of whose we are that we can gain the favor we seek.
Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith!’ Great is her faith though she be a defeated enemy, a dog, she eats the crumbs that nourish life from the table of her master, the giver of eternal life. This woman recognized Jesus to be the source of the bread of life and that even a crumb from the table of her master was accessible to her. This is what is fair. Her life is bound to her unwavering faith in being able to receive life giving sustenance from her one Lord who was available to her only in the person of Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
Here we encounter Jesus being Jesus. He is playing this wildly out of character antagonist role to make an illusive point and to test his disciples and the woman herself. He is teaching us that in life we will have our doubts about God and Jesus and we will encounter faithless acts of prejudice over and over again. But we will never be alone. God will never leave us to face our doubt alone.
Time and time again his disciples have not acted as if they really believed him to be the Messiah. They have been unfaithful or at the least, ones of little faith. So Jesus was going to role-play with this woman to help show them the kind of response he expects from those who claim to believe in him, to model the depth of faith he expects even from the most unlikely of followers.
Yet that is not all. There were false claims in his initial argument with the woman. Did we miss them? The disciples certainly did. Jesus’ being sent only to the lost sheep is a false teaching. Jesus’ claim of unfairness for taking the Israelites’ salvation and throwing it to the gentiles is also a false teaching. Jesus used them as a test, as a truth statement sort of test in his argument with the woman and his disciples said nothing. They were so totally set up for the real truth message to follow.
The correct teaching comes from the woman, she does not exclude the Israelites from their salvation, and actually, she does not exclude anyone. Yes, Lord, the Israelites, and even the gentiles, all lost sheep eat the gift of salvation that falls from their saviors’ table. The gentile woman gets it. The apostles were silent in the face of the false teaching. She is shouting the truth. They ask that Jesus ‘send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ Jesus recognized the truth when he heard it and would not silence it! Salvation is for all.
What is the other message for the faithful: Prayers will be answered.
Jesus said, “Let it be done for you as you wish”. From our faithfulness, from our prayer for help, mercy is given and received. From our prayer we receive help from the Lord, and we will be healed.
Dear ones. We are to take what little faith we have, no matter how slight the ember that burns and know with conviction, Jesus includes all of us, even the dogs who gather here at his table, when he promises eternal salvation. Our job is to fully believe in him. Fully being for all of us a slippery slope at times. But never for Jesus. Jesus is grounded. Grounded in his love for us shown there on the cross where we need not argue for his help, his hope, or his grace.
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
081405.uvd
The disciples were in their boat in the middle of the lake when a big storm comes up. Next thing they know, Jesus came walking towards them through the rough waves and howling winds and they thought he was a ghost. Jesus shouts out, “Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid.” Peter said to Jesus what they all must have been thinking, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
And Jesus does, saying “Come.” Peter comes bounding out of the boat onto the water only to become frightened. Revealing his true doubting nature he began to sink. He cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus did not hesitate, he saved Peter and then admonished him saying, ‘Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?’
Our passage this morning is a direct response by Jesus to his disappointment in his disciples and their repeated lack of faith. Jesus must have felt discouraged that the ones he personally chose to follow him still had little faith in who he was. He must have wondered what it would take to get through to them; I am their Lord and Master. Yet, they still don’t understand. They keep acting so predictably human. Saying they believe, yet acting otherwise.
So Jesus tries again with a story about a woman of unwavering faith. Jesus’ disciples, men specifically chosen, were at best shaky in their sure and certain knowledge. Yet here is a woman, a Canaanite, who is not from Jesus’ neighborhood, who is sure and certain and rock solid about where her faith is grounded.
Why then, we may wonder, does Jesus seem to reject her plea and try to push her away? If she is to be the true example of a faithful disciple why does he get into a debate with her when she continues to ask him for help?
‘Why’ questions can be the hardest to answer. It reminds me of all those times our children asked ‘why’ when we told them they had to eat their green peas. Our answers about healthy diets and nutritional value and a balance against all those sweets they had eaten fell on deaf ears. The kids had no clue about nutritional worth, they just knew they did not like peas and their question ‘why’ was not an attempt on their part to understand. It was their way of saying no to green peas. Children are practical folk, when they see no good reason whatsoever to eat green peas they won’t! Babies are the best example of this. When we put food in their mouths they don’t like they do the reasonable thing. They spit it out!
Our question ‘why’ just may be our refusal to accept the fact that Jesus really is out of character in this story. He appears to be pushing the woman aside, saying she’s one of those people and is not worthy of his help. This is so unlike the Jesus who cures the sick, helps the lame walk, and even restores life.
Or we may think Jesus was right. How dare she, a foreign woman think Jesus has been put on earth to help the likes of her. Indeed.
But something isn’t right with that option. Typically Jesus has been the liberator of the oppressed and especially of women who, in first century times, were the most oppressed. Scholars have viewed Jesus as a man who approaches women with compassion, friendship, even equality. This encounter seems to be an exception.
We have learned over and over again in scripture that Jesus was sent to save all people. We have been taught to love our neighbor, forgive even our enemy and certainly not talk about other people unkindly. We have been taught to not judge or be prejudiced to other people, be their man or woman, friend or foe, local or foreign.
Certainly Jesus was an enemy of such prejudice. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He treated women and children with unusual regard. He touched and healed people who were considered unclean. Yet with this woman Jesus appears to not be Jesus. What could he be up to?
Here’s what we know. This woman is a Canaanite from Tyre and Sidon. She comes from the very people displaced by Israel’s occupation. It would be like a Palestinian woman of today asking for a favor from an Israeli leader. Despite their long history of antagonism and her foreign identity, this woman seeks Jesus’ merciful help for her demon-possessed daughter. In today’s Holy Land, it just wouldn’t happen.
Initially, Jesus ignores her and claims his mission is only to Israel, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, he says. But she was not to be deterred, calling out to him again, ‘Lord, help me.’
Jesus’ response is in the form of a ‘No’ and he tells her why. ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
No, he is saying, I was sent only to the lost sheep, the children of God to bring them nourishment, to share with them the feast of the table of the Lord, to bring them food for salvation. It is not fair to take my calling to those people for that reason and throw it to the dogs. The gentile, the foreign dogs, we defeated to have their land, the land we were promised.
Can you believe this is Jesus speaking? Not only does he call the woman a dog he cuts her off completely from the promise of eternal salvation. Apparently she is not among those chosen as a child of God to be fed the gift of life.
And Jesus even places his argument against helping her in the context of fairness. I wonder what fairness has to do with anything. Life is not exactly intended to be fair is it?
For her part, the woman does not flinch; she comes back with a strong counter argument of her own. She does not argue with Jesus, she does not offer proof to nullify his argument, she does not offer evidence to the contrary. She doesn’t even attack the unsupportable claim of fairness. Instead, she uses her deep faith and Jesus own logic to show the complete story.
First she humbles herself. Then accepting her identity of even being called a dog she exposes the part of the story Jesus left out, she said, “yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table”.
Jesus must have smiled deep down inside; this woman gets it! Finally, someone with their wits about them to see the entire picture, to recognize when someone speaks of fairness in a limited context, to claim right and wrong in a self-serving way, that someone worships self before God. Finally, someone who realizes that faith is humbling, that a faithful person is one who must empty himself or herself of conceit and self-confidence and wholly depend on God’s unmerited favor.
I read once, faith in God requires us to admit to ourselves that we are not worthy of anything because of who we are, it is only because of whose we are that we can gain the favor we seek.
Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith!’ Great is her faith though she be a defeated enemy, a dog, she eats the crumbs that nourish life from the table of her master, the giver of eternal life. This woman recognized Jesus to be the source of the bread of life and that even a crumb from the table of her master was accessible to her. This is what is fair. Her life is bound to her unwavering faith in being able to receive life giving sustenance from her one Lord who was available to her only in the person of Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
Here we encounter Jesus being Jesus. He is playing this wildly out of character antagonist role to make an illusive point and to test his disciples and the woman herself. He is teaching us that in life we will have our doubts about God and Jesus and we will encounter faithless acts of prejudice over and over again. But we will never be alone. God will never leave us to face our doubt alone.
Time and time again his disciples have not acted as if they really believed him to be the Messiah. They have been unfaithful or at the least, ones of little faith. So Jesus was going to role-play with this woman to help show them the kind of response he expects from those who claim to believe in him, to model the depth of faith he expects even from the most unlikely of followers.
Yet that is not all. There were false claims in his initial argument with the woman. Did we miss them? The disciples certainly did. Jesus’ being sent only to the lost sheep is a false teaching. Jesus’ claim of unfairness for taking the Israelites’ salvation and throwing it to the gentiles is also a false teaching. Jesus used them as a test, as a truth statement sort of test in his argument with the woman and his disciples said nothing. They were so totally set up for the real truth message to follow.
The correct teaching comes from the woman, she does not exclude the Israelites from their salvation, and actually, she does not exclude anyone. Yes, Lord, the Israelites, and even the gentiles, all lost sheep eat the gift of salvation that falls from their saviors’ table. The gentile woman gets it. The apostles were silent in the face of the false teaching. She is shouting the truth. They ask that Jesus ‘send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ Jesus recognized the truth when he heard it and would not silence it! Salvation is for all.
What is the other message for the faithful: Prayers will be answered.
Jesus said, “Let it be done for you as you wish”. From our faithfulness, from our prayer for help, mercy is given and received. From our prayer we receive help from the Lord, and we will be healed.
Dear ones. We are to take what little faith we have, no matter how slight the ember that burns and know with conviction, Jesus includes all of us, even the dogs who gather here at his table, when he promises eternal salvation. Our job is to fully believe in him. Fully being for all of us a slippery slope at times. But never for Jesus. Jesus is grounded. Grounded in his love for us shown there on the cross where we need not argue for his help, his hope, or his grace.
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
081405.uvd
10 August 2008 Just Like Jesus Matthew 14:22-33
The writer, Terry Tempest Williams, was being interviewed by Image magazine about her work in Wyoming for conversations with rural communities. It seems the state of Wyoming has tremendous growing pains right now, with an oil and gas boom and the removal of the wolf and grizzly from the endangered species list, and the increasing pressures of housing and retail development.
Williams’ said, “We are in a real place with real people who are struggling with some of the most critical issues of our time.” How, she wondered, might these stories go beyond rhetoric and pierce the hardest of hearts? In today’s gospel, as in all gospel stories, Matthew goes beyond mere story telling to touch our hearts and teach Gods lesson.
But, we begin with a story. It is one of Jesus calling us to do impossible things, to struggle with critical issues, and make real and lasting sacrifices.
I wonder how might we move beyond the surface level telling of our life stories and allow them instead to pierce our rough places, the calluses of protection and short termed security that protect our heart and soul.
How do we follow our own life stories to our hearts, the core of our intimacy with Christ Jesus, where the impossible becomes possible? Where struggle becomes a blessing, where our sacrifices glorify God.
Following last Sundays story about feeding the 5000, Jesus is on the move. He has the disciples get into a boat and travel to the other side of the Sea of Galilee while he goes up the mountain to pray. The boat the disciples are in gets caught in a storm and battered by the waves, it is far from the land, and they begin to fear for their lives.
Early in the morning, Jesus comes walking towards them. Out there, in the midst of the swells, with the wind against them, the disciples saw someone walking on the lake; they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
Crying out in fear can be a good thing. Especially when there is a good reason. But we know this is Jesus Christ who has come to save his disciples. He has given them new life, a new reason to love and Jesus doesn’t abandon those whom God has created. For God will not waist the gifts God has given us. God will not waist the call God has for our lives. God would not have chosen or called us if God did not believe we can do the impossible things God commands.
We on the other hand think, surely God could have found someone brighter, sharper, and more gifted than me to be in God’s boat. And to be God’s church, and to carry on God’s ministry.
We know all to well that to be a part of bringing about the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven is no easy task. And all too often, mired in our doubt about our own worthiness we do occasionally need rescue.
We too get caught in life’s storm. We too need Jesus to walk on water for us. We pray Jesus will single us out, rescue a sinking you and a sinking me and we pray Jesus will still our storm. And Jesus does still the storminess of life, and he rescues us from ourselves in the process.
Perhaps Peter’s example is good for us. Despite his brave impression of fearlessness, he does become frightened and with his doubt about Jesus, he began to sink, yet he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus reaches out to Peter, just as he reaches out to every one of us. Every one of us desperate to live that is. Every one of us willing to cry out, “Lord, save me!”
To paraphrase Paul’s reading this morning, when we cry out, Jesus saves us, and the Lord of all is generous to all and makes no distinction between Jew and Greek. Even those who do not call Jesus’ name, even those who do not know Jesus, even when our lives have become desperate, Jesus immerses himself in the depths of our lives.
What we discover from this mornings gospel is what Peter discovered. Jesus calls us to do the impossible, to come and walk with him and perhaps most importantly, Jesus follows us where ever that walk takes us. Even when we are falling below the stormy waters, sinking in above our heads, Jesus falls and sinks with us.
“Take heart, he says, it is I; do not be afraid,” I am here struggling with you. Let your real and critically important life issues be mine too. “Do not be afraid.”
Jesus stays with us no matter how deeply our despair because he is God. Jesus will not save himself at our expense; actually, he gave his own life for our benefit, so that we might live. “The same man who walked on water finds himself immersed in the deep with each of us.”
“Our call this morning is to do impossible things with our lives, like walk on water. Jesus calls us to be his disciples, to know what he knows, to do what he does, to be just like him. He would not have chosen or called us if he did not believe we can do the impossible things he commands.”
Jesus, throughout our lives, has told us to turn the other cheek if somebody walks up to us and slaps our face. Impossible?
He has told us to walk two miles if anybody asks us to walk one. A struggle?
He has told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. To big a sacrifice?
He has told us to be perfect, just like our Father in heaven is perfect.
He has told us to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.
Impossible, critical, sacrificial discipleship.
He has told us to follow him wherever he goes – even to the cross.
And he has told each of us to be faithful to the gifts he has given us so that we may do his work here on earth.
Anna Carter Florence says, it is not up to us to walk on water, it is up to us to hear the call, and then to believe that it is not a ghost, not the tempter, not our imaginations playing tricks on us, but really and truly Jesus, our Messiah, our Savior, our Christ.
There is a scene in the middle of C. S. Lewis’ second chronicle of Narnia, when the four children return to Narnia. In their attempt to find their bearings in such an altered landscape, the children become hopelessly lost in a wild forest until Lucy, the youngest, spots the great lion, Aslan. Lucy tries to persuade the others that he is with them and providing them direction. However, since none of the others can see him, they ignore her and continue traveling in the wrong direction. Aslan comes to Lucy again and challenges her to follow him by herself even if the others will not believe her. The others grudgingly follow her and one by one are able to see Aslan for themselves. In speaking to the older sister, Susan, Aslan says, “You have listened to fears, child. Come; let me breathe on you…
How does this all happen? It happens by our faith. Going beyond mere rhetoric our heart is pierced by our faith, even the hardest of hearts.
If we will but grudgingly follow Jesus, we will one by one be able to see God, not only in this story but in our stories too.
We are in a real place and we are real people. Our call from Jesus is to go beyond story telling, to open our hearts and souls to his presence and to come and follow him.
Together. Always together with him. Christ Jesus will never ever lead us astray or leave us alone.
Come, let us breathe his breath of faith, and come let us worship him saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. Amen
080711.gpc
Williams’ said, “We are in a real place with real people who are struggling with some of the most critical issues of our time.” How, she wondered, might these stories go beyond rhetoric and pierce the hardest of hearts? In today’s gospel, as in all gospel stories, Matthew goes beyond mere story telling to touch our hearts and teach Gods lesson.
But, we begin with a story. It is one of Jesus calling us to do impossible things, to struggle with critical issues, and make real and lasting sacrifices.
I wonder how might we move beyond the surface level telling of our life stories and allow them instead to pierce our rough places, the calluses of protection and short termed security that protect our heart and soul.
How do we follow our own life stories to our hearts, the core of our intimacy with Christ Jesus, where the impossible becomes possible? Where struggle becomes a blessing, where our sacrifices glorify God.
Following last Sundays story about feeding the 5000, Jesus is on the move. He has the disciples get into a boat and travel to the other side of the Sea of Galilee while he goes up the mountain to pray. The boat the disciples are in gets caught in a storm and battered by the waves, it is far from the land, and they begin to fear for their lives.
Early in the morning, Jesus comes walking towards them. Out there, in the midst of the swells, with the wind against them, the disciples saw someone walking on the lake; they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
Crying out in fear can be a good thing. Especially when there is a good reason. But we know this is Jesus Christ who has come to save his disciples. He has given them new life, a new reason to love and Jesus doesn’t abandon those whom God has created. For God will not waist the gifts God has given us. God will not waist the call God has for our lives. God would not have chosen or called us if God did not believe we can do the impossible things God commands.
We on the other hand think, surely God could have found someone brighter, sharper, and more gifted than me to be in God’s boat. And to be God’s church, and to carry on God’s ministry.
We know all to well that to be a part of bringing about the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven is no easy task. And all too often, mired in our doubt about our own worthiness we do occasionally need rescue.
We too get caught in life’s storm. We too need Jesus to walk on water for us. We pray Jesus will single us out, rescue a sinking you and a sinking me and we pray Jesus will still our storm. And Jesus does still the storminess of life, and he rescues us from ourselves in the process.
Perhaps Peter’s example is good for us. Despite his brave impression of fearlessness, he does become frightened and with his doubt about Jesus, he began to sink, yet he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And Jesus reaches out to Peter, just as he reaches out to every one of us. Every one of us desperate to live that is. Every one of us willing to cry out, “Lord, save me!”
To paraphrase Paul’s reading this morning, when we cry out, Jesus saves us, and the Lord of all is generous to all and makes no distinction between Jew and Greek. Even those who do not call Jesus’ name, even those who do not know Jesus, even when our lives have become desperate, Jesus immerses himself in the depths of our lives.
What we discover from this mornings gospel is what Peter discovered. Jesus calls us to do the impossible, to come and walk with him and perhaps most importantly, Jesus follows us where ever that walk takes us. Even when we are falling below the stormy waters, sinking in above our heads, Jesus falls and sinks with us.
“Take heart, he says, it is I; do not be afraid,” I am here struggling with you. Let your real and critically important life issues be mine too. “Do not be afraid.”
Jesus stays with us no matter how deeply our despair because he is God. Jesus will not save himself at our expense; actually, he gave his own life for our benefit, so that we might live. “The same man who walked on water finds himself immersed in the deep with each of us.”
“Our call this morning is to do impossible things with our lives, like walk on water. Jesus calls us to be his disciples, to know what he knows, to do what he does, to be just like him. He would not have chosen or called us if he did not believe we can do the impossible things he commands.”
Jesus, throughout our lives, has told us to turn the other cheek if somebody walks up to us and slaps our face. Impossible?
He has told us to walk two miles if anybody asks us to walk one. A struggle?
He has told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. To big a sacrifice?
He has told us to be perfect, just like our Father in heaven is perfect.
He has told us to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.
Impossible, critical, sacrificial discipleship.
He has told us to follow him wherever he goes – even to the cross.
And he has told each of us to be faithful to the gifts he has given us so that we may do his work here on earth.
Anna Carter Florence says, it is not up to us to walk on water, it is up to us to hear the call, and then to believe that it is not a ghost, not the tempter, not our imaginations playing tricks on us, but really and truly Jesus, our Messiah, our Savior, our Christ.
There is a scene in the middle of C. S. Lewis’ second chronicle of Narnia, when the four children return to Narnia. In their attempt to find their bearings in such an altered landscape, the children become hopelessly lost in a wild forest until Lucy, the youngest, spots the great lion, Aslan. Lucy tries to persuade the others that he is with them and providing them direction. However, since none of the others can see him, they ignore her and continue traveling in the wrong direction. Aslan comes to Lucy again and challenges her to follow him by herself even if the others will not believe her. The others grudgingly follow her and one by one are able to see Aslan for themselves. In speaking to the older sister, Susan, Aslan says, “You have listened to fears, child. Come; let me breathe on you…
How does this all happen? It happens by our faith. Going beyond mere rhetoric our heart is pierced by our faith, even the hardest of hearts.
If we will but grudgingly follow Jesus, we will one by one be able to see God, not only in this story but in our stories too.
We are in a real place and we are real people. Our call from Jesus is to go beyond story telling, to open our hearts and souls to his presence and to come and follow him.
Together. Always together with him. Christ Jesus will never ever lead us astray or leave us alone.
Come, let us breathe his breath of faith, and come let us worship him saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. Amen
080711.gpc
31 July 2011 Bring Them Here to Me Matthew 14:13-21
These past few weeks we have been studying various parables. Jesus has used those parables, stories of obvious and everyday occurrences, to teach us deeper meanings. Last week, for example, we learned discovering treasure brings great joy. Not for the treasure found but to the Christian joy that lasts forever. Joy in finding God. Joy in the assurance we are loved by God and joy in the sure and certain knowledge that through God’s love we will live eternally with God.
Today’s reading in Matthew is different. It is the story about the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Actually, there were many more than just five thousand. Verse 21 says, “…and those who ate that day were around 5,000 men, besides women and children.” With women and children there could have been ten to fifteen thousand who were fed that day!
Through those earlier parables it became clear Jesus has the ability to care for our deepest spiritual needs. In this story we find Jesus has the ability to provide for our natural needs too. When the people were sick, Jesus healed them; when they were sad, Jesus blessed them; and when they were hungry, Jesus fed them.
Early Christians likely told this story again and again. They told the story when they gathered around the table for worship. It reminded them of the last supper when Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and said; “…take, eat, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me.”
It reminded them also of stories in the Old Testament about how manna fell from the sky to feed the children of Israel in the wilderness and of the prophet Elisha feeding a hundred hungry men with twenty barley loaves.
Bread miracles are not new in scripture and today’s is one of the many impressive miracle stories. We find ourselves drawn to these stories. Like the magic trick that seems impossible we cannot wait until someone tells us the secret. How did he do that?
Did the bread and fish multiply all at once or as they were being passed around? Or was it more like an Easter egg hunt? There, look right there, it’s a hidden loaf of bread, there under that bush and my, oh my, I picked it up and look; here is this piece of fish! It was hiding under the bread. No, sorry, we really don’t know and Matthew doesn’t tell us.
Matthew does tell us the miracle happened in a lonely place where Jesus had gone. He was sad. He had heard his friend, John the Baptist, was dead. Jesus wanted to be alone for a while. But the crowds heard where he was and followed him. They followed him because they too needed personal time, personal time and attention to be with Jesus. They were sick, they were sad, and they were hungry. Jesus had compassion for them and he took the time to be with them, to lay his hands on them, to comfort them, and to cure those who were sick.
When it became evening his disciples recognized there were so many people out in that lonely place, in the middle of nowhere. If there was any hope of their having an evening meal they would have to be sent to the surrounding villages to buy food for themselves.
But Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” The disciples replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Jesus replied, “Bring them here to me.”
Taking the bread and the fish, he looked up to heaven, “and after giving thanks to God,” he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “take, eat.” And all ate and were filled.
The people had great needs, they followed Jesus to be comforted, to be healed and to be fed, not only with bread and fish, but with Jesus’ presence. They sought Jesus to be with him, to be seen breaking bread together at the common table of humanity where they would receive lasting comfort and healing.
The push back from the apostles was a common sense response. A simple inventory of the food on hand told them what to do. Send them away. That was the common sense thing to do. To everyone but Jesus that is. You see Jesus defies common sense. Jesus operates from a different set of assumptions about what is possible in his kingdom.
All too often we are like the disciples, our common sense recognizes when we don’t have an abundance, when there is a scarcity. Not enough bread or fish, not enough people, not enough money, not enough time, not enough patience, not enough knowledge, not strong enough, too timid, too shy, not skilled enough. It is the same mind set the disciples had when they said, “We have nothing here…” to offer.
Jesus clearly sees things differently. Jesus is telling us straight up in this story, there is plenty, plenty of time, plenty of food, plenty of possibilities with the resources at hand. Yet, we are skeptical.
We are seasoned folk, we know how things work. When we look at the needs of the world we know it’s best to send the crowds away. Their need is too great and we have a scarcity of resources. Common sense tells us we cannot heal the world of AIDS, we cannot feed the masses who are starving, we cannot stop war and injustice, not with the resources at hand. Just do the math!
Jesus doesn’t buy it in our gospel story and Jesus doesn’t but it today that we are without the resources. Jesus knew the key, he knew where the needed abundance comes from. Wherever there is plenty of God there will be plenty of everything else. Wherever there is plenty of God, there will be plenty of everything else! Abundance and possibilities beyond what common sense may suggest.
Miracles actually do us an injustice, they tend to let us off the hook. They lead us to say, let God do it! God can cure AIDS, feed the millions who are hungry, stop war and injustice. It is a convenient excuse for us to avoid being called by God. Just let God do it!
Jesus said to the disciples and Jesus says to us, “they need not go away; you give them something…”
But, how can we hang on to our own little piece of bread, sit in the crowd with despair all around us, and be responsible for the world? “God is in charge” works just fine for us. But it doesn’t excuse us from sharing what we have does it?
No, it does not excuse us, not then and not now. Jesus said, “they need not go away; you give them something…” Jesus is clear, we are to stop looking for someone else to solve the problem, to stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead. We create a miracle by bringing what we have. Jesus began with what he had, five loaves and two fish.
George MacDonald, the Scottish poet, pastor, and storyteller who inspired C. S Lewis, said, “The same God who is in us…also is all about us—inside, the spirit; outside, the Word, and the two are ever trying to meet in us.”
Jesus expects the something we have to give is really not something, it is someone. God, trying to meet in us, is the something we are being called to give, the someone who Jesus is asking us for. They need not go away, we can give the world all it needs if we will only help our God.
But we act so often like the disciples and think we have nothing or no one to share. So, in response to our doubt, Jesus said, “Bring them here to me…” the hungry, yes, and ourselves too, our resources, our scarcity and our plenty, our talents, our gifts, and our passion. These are the things we start with, whatever we have. We bring them and ourselves to Jesus and he offers to bring us to God. He blesses us and breaks us and we are fed by the grace of God that we may then be one with God sent out into the world to feed the unfed.
It is a curious thing, this giving of ourselves. Wendell Berry, in a poem titled “Amish Economy” offers these lines;
“It falls strangely on Amish ears,
This talk of how to find yourself.
We Amish, after all, don’t try
To find ourselves. We try to lose
Ourselves – and thus are lost within
The found world of sunlight and rain
Where fields are green and then are ripe…
And the people eat together by
The charity of God, who is kind
Even to those who give no thanks.”
Our trying to lose ourselves can be the most sincere, honest, hardworking giving imaginable. We dedicate ourselves to our work, to our family, to our community, even to our church. We take on a career, we provide a needed service, and we do our best to change people’s lives, to make life more comfortable. It is a curious thing. This call from God to give to those in need. Asking nothing in return “You give them something…”, he says.
Yet, I wonder. Are we perhaps short changing the one to whom we should be giving the most. God almighty. We are really busy with life. Our puritan work ethic is a strong and driving force in our lives. There are these fascinating tapes we play over and over in our head. We have to be busy doing something, we tell ourselves. To get things done, we have to be busy, it’s just good common sense.
Yet, Jesus is throwing us a great big curve this morning. There is something we can give that defies common sense. That we cannot work hard enough for. It is our humbled selves. It is what we find in ourselves that makes us human and Christian. Our compassion, our love for one another, our love for Christ and our passion to live the good news.
Have we been too busy with other things? How much does our busy life teach us about the food for our soul that only comes from the Lord’s table? How much does our busy life teach us about the food Jesus is telling us to give to the hungry crowd in this desert place where the hour is all too late. Not much I would say.
Yet we only have something to give them if we have first received it and we may truly miss receiving it if we are too busy doing other things. The hardest thing for us to agree with this morning may not be this clear message that we have what it takes, that there is within our heart and soul God given knowledge, skill, abilities, and passion which God intends us to use.
No, it just may be the hardest thing for us to agree with this morning is we think we have nothing to give because we are too busy to notice. Too busy and unable to spend more time alone with Jesus. The truth is Jesus expects us to live our entire life where his spirit and his word meet in us, in our heart and soul and mind. But do we?
Begin today. Is this hour in church on Sunday the only time you spend with Jesus? And when you are here are you on autopilot? Do you let the liturgist and the worship leader speak to God for you? When was the last time you took time to be alone with God, just you and God? Think you have nothing to offer, think again. When we spend time alone with God, God is very likely to show up. Just remember, God expects that we bring what we have, nothing more, and nothing less, for that is where we will begin with God. However little we have, that is the something Jesus is asking us to give in service to him. That is enough to begin with, that is enough to begin with to get a miracle started.
We really don’t know how the miracle with the bread and the fish happened, how that small amount of bread and those few fish could feed so many. But what Jesus has been saying to his followers forever he is saying to us today; They need not go away, you give them something to eat.” Our giving takes us to bring them and ourselves to Jesus where we come together as family, where all are fed the bread of life and the cup of salvation and all are filled. Filled with the miracle of the oneness in Jesus Christ.
For “…the people eat together by the charity of God, who is kind even to those who give no thanks.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever . Amen
073111.gpc
Today’s reading in Matthew is different. It is the story about the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Actually, there were many more than just five thousand. Verse 21 says, “…and those who ate that day were around 5,000 men, besides women and children.” With women and children there could have been ten to fifteen thousand who were fed that day!
Through those earlier parables it became clear Jesus has the ability to care for our deepest spiritual needs. In this story we find Jesus has the ability to provide for our natural needs too. When the people were sick, Jesus healed them; when they were sad, Jesus blessed them; and when they were hungry, Jesus fed them.
Early Christians likely told this story again and again. They told the story when they gathered around the table for worship. It reminded them of the last supper when Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and said; “…take, eat, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me.”
It reminded them also of stories in the Old Testament about how manna fell from the sky to feed the children of Israel in the wilderness and of the prophet Elisha feeding a hundred hungry men with twenty barley loaves.
Bread miracles are not new in scripture and today’s is one of the many impressive miracle stories. We find ourselves drawn to these stories. Like the magic trick that seems impossible we cannot wait until someone tells us the secret. How did he do that?
Did the bread and fish multiply all at once or as they were being passed around? Or was it more like an Easter egg hunt? There, look right there, it’s a hidden loaf of bread, there under that bush and my, oh my, I picked it up and look; here is this piece of fish! It was hiding under the bread. No, sorry, we really don’t know and Matthew doesn’t tell us.
Matthew does tell us the miracle happened in a lonely place where Jesus had gone. He was sad. He had heard his friend, John the Baptist, was dead. Jesus wanted to be alone for a while. But the crowds heard where he was and followed him. They followed him because they too needed personal time, personal time and attention to be with Jesus. They were sick, they were sad, and they were hungry. Jesus had compassion for them and he took the time to be with them, to lay his hands on them, to comfort them, and to cure those who were sick.
When it became evening his disciples recognized there were so many people out in that lonely place, in the middle of nowhere. If there was any hope of their having an evening meal they would have to be sent to the surrounding villages to buy food for themselves.
But Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” The disciples replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Jesus replied, “Bring them here to me.”
Taking the bread and the fish, he looked up to heaven, “and after giving thanks to God,” he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, “take, eat.” And all ate and were filled.
The people had great needs, they followed Jesus to be comforted, to be healed and to be fed, not only with bread and fish, but with Jesus’ presence. They sought Jesus to be with him, to be seen breaking bread together at the common table of humanity where they would receive lasting comfort and healing.
The push back from the apostles was a common sense response. A simple inventory of the food on hand told them what to do. Send them away. That was the common sense thing to do. To everyone but Jesus that is. You see Jesus defies common sense. Jesus operates from a different set of assumptions about what is possible in his kingdom.
All too often we are like the disciples, our common sense recognizes when we don’t have an abundance, when there is a scarcity. Not enough bread or fish, not enough people, not enough money, not enough time, not enough patience, not enough knowledge, not strong enough, too timid, too shy, not skilled enough. It is the same mind set the disciples had when they said, “We have nothing here…” to offer.
Jesus clearly sees things differently. Jesus is telling us straight up in this story, there is plenty, plenty of time, plenty of food, plenty of possibilities with the resources at hand. Yet, we are skeptical.
We are seasoned folk, we know how things work. When we look at the needs of the world we know it’s best to send the crowds away. Their need is too great and we have a scarcity of resources. Common sense tells us we cannot heal the world of AIDS, we cannot feed the masses who are starving, we cannot stop war and injustice, not with the resources at hand. Just do the math!
Jesus doesn’t buy it in our gospel story and Jesus doesn’t but it today that we are without the resources. Jesus knew the key, he knew where the needed abundance comes from. Wherever there is plenty of God there will be plenty of everything else. Wherever there is plenty of God, there will be plenty of everything else! Abundance and possibilities beyond what common sense may suggest.
Miracles actually do us an injustice, they tend to let us off the hook. They lead us to say, let God do it! God can cure AIDS, feed the millions who are hungry, stop war and injustice. It is a convenient excuse for us to avoid being called by God. Just let God do it!
Jesus said to the disciples and Jesus says to us, “they need not go away; you give them something…”
But, how can we hang on to our own little piece of bread, sit in the crowd with despair all around us, and be responsible for the world? “God is in charge” works just fine for us. But it doesn’t excuse us from sharing what we have does it?
No, it does not excuse us, not then and not now. Jesus said, “they need not go away; you give them something…” Jesus is clear, we are to stop looking for someone else to solve the problem, to stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead. We create a miracle by bringing what we have. Jesus began with what he had, five loaves and two fish.
George MacDonald, the Scottish poet, pastor, and storyteller who inspired C. S Lewis, said, “The same God who is in us…also is all about us—inside, the spirit; outside, the Word, and the two are ever trying to meet in us.”
Jesus expects the something we have to give is really not something, it is someone. God, trying to meet in us, is the something we are being called to give, the someone who Jesus is asking us for. They need not go away, we can give the world all it needs if we will only help our God.
But we act so often like the disciples and think we have nothing or no one to share. So, in response to our doubt, Jesus said, “Bring them here to me…” the hungry, yes, and ourselves too, our resources, our scarcity and our plenty, our talents, our gifts, and our passion. These are the things we start with, whatever we have. We bring them and ourselves to Jesus and he offers to bring us to God. He blesses us and breaks us and we are fed by the grace of God that we may then be one with God sent out into the world to feed the unfed.
It is a curious thing, this giving of ourselves. Wendell Berry, in a poem titled “Amish Economy” offers these lines;
“It falls strangely on Amish ears,
This talk of how to find yourself.
We Amish, after all, don’t try
To find ourselves. We try to lose
Ourselves – and thus are lost within
The found world of sunlight and rain
Where fields are green and then are ripe…
And the people eat together by
The charity of God, who is kind
Even to those who give no thanks.”
Our trying to lose ourselves can be the most sincere, honest, hardworking giving imaginable. We dedicate ourselves to our work, to our family, to our community, even to our church. We take on a career, we provide a needed service, and we do our best to change people’s lives, to make life more comfortable. It is a curious thing. This call from God to give to those in need. Asking nothing in return “You give them something…”, he says.
Yet, I wonder. Are we perhaps short changing the one to whom we should be giving the most. God almighty. We are really busy with life. Our puritan work ethic is a strong and driving force in our lives. There are these fascinating tapes we play over and over in our head. We have to be busy doing something, we tell ourselves. To get things done, we have to be busy, it’s just good common sense.
Yet, Jesus is throwing us a great big curve this morning. There is something we can give that defies common sense. That we cannot work hard enough for. It is our humbled selves. It is what we find in ourselves that makes us human and Christian. Our compassion, our love for one another, our love for Christ and our passion to live the good news.
Have we been too busy with other things? How much does our busy life teach us about the food for our soul that only comes from the Lord’s table? How much does our busy life teach us about the food Jesus is telling us to give to the hungry crowd in this desert place where the hour is all too late. Not much I would say.
Yet we only have something to give them if we have first received it and we may truly miss receiving it if we are too busy doing other things. The hardest thing for us to agree with this morning may not be this clear message that we have what it takes, that there is within our heart and soul God given knowledge, skill, abilities, and passion which God intends us to use.
No, it just may be the hardest thing for us to agree with this morning is we think we have nothing to give because we are too busy to notice. Too busy and unable to spend more time alone with Jesus. The truth is Jesus expects us to live our entire life where his spirit and his word meet in us, in our heart and soul and mind. But do we?
Begin today. Is this hour in church on Sunday the only time you spend with Jesus? And when you are here are you on autopilot? Do you let the liturgist and the worship leader speak to God for you? When was the last time you took time to be alone with God, just you and God? Think you have nothing to offer, think again. When we spend time alone with God, God is very likely to show up. Just remember, God expects that we bring what we have, nothing more, and nothing less, for that is where we will begin with God. However little we have, that is the something Jesus is asking us to give in service to him. That is enough to begin with, that is enough to begin with to get a miracle started.
We really don’t know how the miracle with the bread and the fish happened, how that small amount of bread and those few fish could feed so many. But what Jesus has been saying to his followers forever he is saying to us today; They need not go away, you give them something to eat.” Our giving takes us to bring them and ourselves to Jesus where we come together as family, where all are fed the bread of life and the cup of salvation and all are filled. Filled with the miracle of the oneness in Jesus Christ.
For “…the people eat together by the charity of God, who is kind even to those who give no thanks.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever . Amen
073111.gpc
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