GENESIS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Monday, June 17, 2013

16 June 2013 “Stepping Out Of Place” Luke 7:36-8:3

   Last Sunday we learned of Jesus’ intention that we have life. He was coming into the city when a man who had died was being carried out. This man was his widowed mother’s only son. When Jesus saw her he was moved with compassion and love for the woman.
  What we may have missed is no one asked Jesus to intervene. No one asked Jesus to perform another miracle for this grieving widow. Instead, Jesus acts on his own.

 With a desire in his heart that this life lost be now restored, Jesus acts. He stops the procession, touches the bier and says to the dead son, “Young man, I say to you rise.” And he does. His life is restored. The young man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
  Without being asked, Jesus acted.

  In this morning’s Gospel a woman wanders in off the street where Jesus is dining with one of the Pharisees. She comes into the dining room, uninvited, speaks to no one, and without being asked, she acts too.
  She learned Jesus was eating there and she walked right in to do one thing. She came that she might serve Jesus. She showed him compassion and she brought her tears. She brought her kisses and the one thing of value in her life, a fancy jar of costly ointment.

 Instead of asking for something from Jesus, she was determined to do something for Jesus to show her love. She stepped out of her place in her community and for her efforts she was roundly criticized.

 You may remember a story I have told of Anne Marbury. She was born in England in 1591. Anne was the daughter of an Anglican minister. She was surrounded at home, at school, and at church by scriptural teachings and theological thinking. At the age of 21, Anne married a neighbor, William Hutchinson.

  Eventually Anne left the Anglican Church and with her husband became a Puritan. She was not a casual church goer. Anne studied scripture and nurtured a vibrant inner spiritual life.

  The Puritans were soon harassed and persecuted for their faith during this period of history in England. The Anglican Church dominated life during that time.

 So at age 43, William and Anne and their children sailed for New England in search of religious freedom. They settled in the Puritan Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Anne began holding a weekly Bible study for women in their home. Soon another meeting was added that included men.
 The leaders of the colony became afraid of Anne’s influence with the people. They accused her of heresy. One leader said this of Anne, “She is a woman of ready wit and bold spirit who brought over with her two dangerous errors.”

 The first error the leader described was her notion that the Holy Spirit resides within us. Her second error was the notion that we are justified by faith and not by works.

  As heirs of the Protestant Reformation we believe with Anne that we are justified, not by works, but by grace through faith for Christ’s sake. We also believe that the Holy Spirit does live within us. To the leaders of the Puritan Colony these ideas from Anne were blasphemy and a heresy. She was eventually excommunicated from the church.   The charge that led to Anne’s excommunication from the Puritans reads in part, “You have stepped out of your place...”

 Anne stepped out of her place! She stepped out of her place because of her convictions. For many years historians described her as an American Jezebel. In the modern word Anne would be the patron saint of those with the bumper sticker that reads, “Well behaved woman seldom make history!”

 It is clear that she was not a jezebel of any sort. Anne was a woman passionate about her religious convictions. But in the eyes of the status quo, she had stepped out of her place.

 Our woman of the city, the one who attends to Jesus while he is dining, is a story of another woman stepping out of her usual place.

 Luke gives us the details. Jesus is dining with this fellow whose name is Simon. When our woman of the city steps out of her appointed place, Simon loses it. He challenges Jesus wondering how he can allow this woman to behave this way. He begins to doubt that Jesus is a prophet. His thinking is that Jesus should have known what sort of woman this was and stopped her from washing and anointing his feet. Simon cannot imagine what Jesus must have been thinking.

 Or perhaps Simon understood all too well. Perhaps he wanted to prove all along when he invited Jesus to dine with him Jesus was no prophet. Perhaps this was unfolding exactly as Simon hoped so he could discredit what people were saying about Jesus.

 For his part, Jesus knows what Simon is up to. He knows what is in Simon’s heart. His action proves who he has become. Simon is out of touch, a non-believer, and obviously not in love with Jesus. He need not tell Jesus who this woman is. Jesus knows this woman and he knows the true Simon for what he is. Jesus knows what is in their hearts.

  He then fully exposes Simon’s weakness in a parable about a creditor who has two folks who owe him money. One owed the creditor a large sum of money and the other much less. Neither could repay their debt. The creditor, filled with compassion, forgave the debt for both men.

  Jesus asks Simon, which of these two men will have the greatest love for the creditor? Simon answers correctly, “I suppose the one for whom he forgave the greater debt.” Jesus agrees.

 Then he exposes Simon and makes his point. The woman who had entered Simon’s house had shown Jesus greater love than Simon. Simon gave Jesus no water for his feet, no kiss, and he did not anoint his head with oil.  “Therefore, I tell you,” Jesus says, “her sins, which are many, have been forgiven; she has shown great love.”  

 This woman’s faith comes from her trust in Jesus and she lived that faith when she stepped out of her place by committing herself and everything she has entirely to Jesus.

 The lesson Simon missed is that those of us who invite Jesus into our lives should also be prepared to step out of our usual place and to give to Jesus from our heart, from our love, everything we have. When we invite Jesus into our lives we should be prepared to step out and show compassion and love to all people, in all circumstances, in the entire world. We should be prepared to live and love as Jesus did.

 Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham Alabama has said, “Love is the one thing we can experience in time that will remain in eternity.”

 What then is Christ calling us to do? To be forgiving, yes. To be loving, yes. To be faithful and step out of our comfort to follow Jesus, again we must say, yes.

 Who then is Christ calling us to be? Why, disciples, disciples whose love will remain in eternity. Like this woman, out of love and compassion, our call is to step out of our usual place and to self-initiate a life of love.
 Often, it seems, we recognize an opportunity to self-initiate, to step out of our usual place, only in retrospect. Time passes and our mind does that “mess with us” thing. We hear ourselves thinking, I could have been friendlier to that person who seems dirty and disheveled and unworthy. I could have shared my money with those in greater need. I could have spoken up for my friend. I could have reminded my friend, my spouse, my partner, my child, my parent, that we are all children of God, and that God loves us and is present to us no matter what.

 Perhaps the real test is to discover beforehand what we love, who we love, and what our life reveals about what is in our heart. Are we more like Simon or that brave woman?

I know many of you have already stepped out and away from the usual. It is obvious you help others and one another. You work to promote justice for all people. You perform acts of kindness. You share the love of this gospel. You love as God loved you, filled with the Holy Spirit, offering to God with compassion your lives before you ask for anything in return.
  Have you therefore stepped so far from the face of the earth and our worldly ways that you have fallen right into the Kingdom of God? Have you stepped out with Jesus to that same rare air of devotion to the greater good, to commitment to faithful service, to a love in which your faith in Jesus Christ saves both us and the world?

  In so many ways we have. We have stepped out because God’s love calls us to do the right thing, even when it may cost us personally. We are called, not to sainthood, but to step out for the sake of love, knowing that God steps out with us, guarding, guiding, protecting, encouraging us every step of the way...and forgiving us when we fail.

  Dearest sisters and brother’s in Christ accept again this morning God’s invitation. Come again to God’s banquet. Step out of your place. Bring all that you have. Give all that you have. Show greater love.

  For when we do, when we step out with God’s love in our hearts, Jesus says of us: “Daughter, son, your sins are forgiven, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
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Monday, June 10, 2013

09 June 2013 “God Looks Favorably” Luke 7:11-17

Today is the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost. It is also the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time. We took a big break from ordinary time on the church calendar during the Easter Cycle which began, as you know, with Lent. This second period of Ordinary Time began following Pentecost and continues until Advent.

 When we left off before the Easter Cycle the gospel reading was Luke 5 and Jesus had just called the first disciples. We were asked in that passage to pay close attention to the response of those first men; Simon, James, and John. They had fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus had begun to use their boat as a place from which he could teach the crowds. Out of the blue, Jesus tells them to put out into deep waters and “Let down your nets for a catch.”

 Their response gives us a sense of what we might correctly call, the “nature of (an) authentic response,” that Jesus expects from each of us when he calls. Their authentic response was to obey Jesus. Simon tells him they had fished all night and caught nothing, but, “if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

  The result is staggering. Their nets are overfilled with fish. They are flooded with feelings of amazement at the miracle and fearful at the same time. From where had all these fish come? Who has the power to make this sort of thing happen?

  Realizing the potential danger their life would be in if they continued to follow someone with such power, Simon asks Jesus to leave him alone, to go away. Jesus replies, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

 These frightened men left their former lives to follow Jesus. Their authentic response was immediate and it completely and totally changing them forever. They left it all to follow Jesus.

  Here we realize the cost of an authentic response to God’s call. How it can be both fearful and amazing at the same time. Why, following Jesus may even take us all the way to Livingston, Alabama.

 We return this morning to Luke 7. Jesus is teaching in the northern Galilee area beginning in Capernaum and ending up in Nain. In verses 1-10 Jesus heals a centurion’s servant.

 In that healing we learn again of the power of Jesus’ ministry and we are given another lesson in what our authentic response to Jesus’ presence in our life should be. By telling Jesus he need not go to the place where his slave lay ill, that he need only speak his healing words, the centurion is repeating the lesson of having faith and trusting in our Lord.

 This morning, Luke’s story is of Jesus raising a widow’s son from the grip of death. From the first disciples obedience to Jesus’ call to follow him, to the deep and abiding faith and trust in Jesus’ presence to heal the sick, Jesus now takes us where no one has ever gone before, raising the dead.
 This new story in Luke is filled with bad news. It is that dreaded call in the middle of the night. Someone has died. Once we are shaken awake we realize it is the death of a young man. To heap more bad news onto bad, he was the only son of his poor mother. Just when we thought that was enough, we learn this woman was also a widow.

 Towards this woman Jesus shows the compassion of someone in love. In love with the vulnerability of human life, in love with all of God’s creation, in love with the love that God has for each and every person in each and every generation in each and every circumstance.

 For love is at the core of the essential nature of God, Christ Jesus and our Holy Spirit. Jesus’ human side as well as Jesus’ divine side are driven by his holy love. Love, especially when bad things happen, and they do happen to us all.

 Especially then do we feel God’s true nature. It is a nature in favor of life. It is a nature that protects and sustains and nourishes all life.
 I was reminded of the depth of God’s love for us when I thought of a story I have told many times of the Reverend William Sloan Coffin’s son who was killed in a tragic auto accident. If you can imagine it, the next Sunday the Reverend Coffin preached to his church about his grief and God’s grief.
  Here is some of what he said: “The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that.  My consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car God’s was the first of all our hearts to break.”  God’s was the first of all our hearts to break.

When we learn about tragic events like this our first response may be to scream, No! God can do all things! Why did God not intervene, call 911 or do that God thing that saves folks. God knows how much Alex was loved. Why did God not do something?

 Our only authentic answer must be, we do not know. As people of faith, we know there are times when we just do not know why God does what God does. God is God after all and we are not.  But that does not lesson the pain. Saying we do not know does not give us comfort and rest. It may actually add to our anguish.

 But there are truths about God we do know. Our God is a God of the resurrection, resurrection to restoration, restoration to all eternity.  Our God has the power to resurrect life, to restore life and our God always will.
 Jesus’ words to the young man who had died, “I say to you, rise” reverberate with our Gospel hope in the presence of death.

 The angel at Jesus’ tomb was the first to pronounce such hope as Jesus himself had risen. The disciples later announced, “This Jesus, God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.”

 Paul will connect Jesus’ resurrection with our own hope for life beyond death. He proclaimed, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who died.”

 The resurrection of Jesus, the one who had compassion on a widow in her grief, provides the basis for the apostle’s confident vision of the end.  “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable.”
 The hope of being raised imperishable, therefore, is not grounded in the fact that the widow’s son came back to life but in the fact that the one who had the compassion in the first place has himself triumphed over death.
  God’s covenant power of restoration to eternal life, that also raised the widow’s son from death, is even available for each of us. It is the same power that will also raise those whom we love, those who are no longer with us. Yet, it is even more than this.

 The truth of the power of God’s restoration to eternal life fills us with an eternal hope. For the widow’s son, for Jesus, and for our loved ones, and ourselves, we have unbridled hope.

 We who know the power of God’s love have a lasting hope that will comfort us in our sorrow. We who know Jesus’ love live with a hope that is with us day and night as we struggle with our own grief and despair.
 It is the power of God’s restoration to life eternal that helps those of us who are left behind to pick up the pieces of our broken lives and feel God’s loving arms wrapping us up to help us rise to the new life ahead. It is the power of God’s restoration love that keeps us alive in the midst of death.
 Running through these thoughts, we see most clearly in Luke’s gospel that Jesus is living the example for us. He speaks of his own life. He shows us the faithful way through his destiny with the cross, his triumphant restoration to life, and his glorious ascension to heaven.

 Our hope is mirrored in our understanding of our own future with death and the miracle of our own restoration to eternal life, our own ascension to be with God in heaven.

 About that time, Jesus says, we are to rise.

 But there is more, our hope lives for something more. We are to rise from what seems like death even today, though we are alive. We are to rise from our feelings of death when we find our lives dry, lost, and without faith.  Be it from work, or addiction, or recklessness, or the sheer weight of life’s unfolding, we will be reunited again and again to Christ Jesus, because of his love.

 To be risen in Christ is to be risen to life itself. Void of worldly trappings and shackles, we are called to be risen to God’s Kingdom that has come. Isn’t this what we pray for. “Thy Kingdom come.”  We do not have to wait for heaven. Jesus has answered our call. The Kingdom of God is with us now, in our place, right next to us, all around us.

  This is God’s authentic response to our human condition. God’s kingdom is present this moment, for God is ultimately not interested in death. God is interested in bringing life, and new life to God’s people. Giving life is the first, mort important work that God does. It is, as Martin Luther put it, God’s “proper work.” Our God brings life.

 Still searching for an authentic response to the obvious in life?
 As ironic as it may sound, praise death. Praise the death of our old unworkable ways, praise the death of unrepentant numbness, praise the death of unforgiving pain and lost hope.

 For with death comes God’s grace and Christ’s call, restoring us to an eternal life to come.  “I say to you, rise.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.                                                  
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Monday, June 3, 2013

02 June 2013 “Such Faith” Luke 7:1-10

We who have faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior should never take our faith for granted.

 It was during a particularly challenging discussion in a longer than usual session meeting we first heard the truth. Some of us were tired of hearing about “perceptions.”  We were discussing, yet again, what sounded like the same problems, the same complaints.

 In the midst of it all Session was doing a really good job of being faithful. They had long ago embraced the notion that God has called us to serve those whom God sends our way. We have embraced the vision that we are to take those who knock and ask for a crumb of bread and give them a safe place. We are to let them be here with us for comfort and nurture.

It is the desire of this Session to be faithful. It is the desire of this Session to take what God sends us and tend to it. Be it our poor, aging facilities infrastructure or these whom God has sent us who have these “perceptions” we do not understand. No matter. We trust God knows what God is doing.

 In the midst of it all we were complaining, just a little, about how hard being faithful can be. We do try to glorify God as we tend to the challenges God brings but why must this be so hard? Must every air conditioner on our campus break? What will leak next? Who is to blame? Is it the ubiquitous “they.”

 In exasperation Janette spoke for us all when she said, with a hint of playfulness, “God is the problem.”  God is the problem. Of course! She was right. God is the problem.  If God would just give us what we want and stop giving us these troubles things would be so much better.

 Indeed, dear ones, Janette hit on something.  God expects too much from us and we are weary.  God wants too much from us and we struggle to be faithful.  God demands too much from us and we are just one person.  How on earth can we do what God is asking us to do?

 Some days.  Some days we scream at God and throw in the towel. We want to be left alone.  God. You are our problem.

 It began God when we realized you were not finished with us after all.  Your churches, Trinity, Wilshire, and now Genesis.  We found ourselves on the brink and you grabbed hold of us and pulled us back, dusted us off, and set us on a new path.

 Community bound.  A worship center.  Serving those you have brought to our campus even as we have on occasion disagreed in the strongest of terms.  Yet,  here we are.  Still facing difficult questions.  Still gathering to worship and pray and overcome ourselves to at least the point where we can move forward.  Where we can gather the energy and faith we have to silence our resistance enough to humbly and patiently realize the joy that has returned, the bounty we have as we have sought to honor you by our acceptance and our giving away.

 Our acceptance of those whom you have brought us.   With their demands and their challenges and perspectives.  Our acceptance of what we are to give away.  Yes, our sacred spaces.  Yes, our privacy too.  And perhaps the greatest of all, a little bit of our selves.

 When I taught stress management I would first state the obvious.
We all have stress.   How we manage our stress is what makes the difference for our health and well-being.  We can choose health or unhealthy ways to do this.  Unhealthy ways are the easiest to follow.  We simply do what we enjoy in excess to drown out the pain.  Healthy ways on the other hand require work, change, and a life-long commitment.
 I also reminded folks that in a relationship,  be it family or work, we must adopt a position of selflessness.  To be as healthy as we best can be we must adopt a position of giving to the others in our lives all that we have. And it is best to remember,  we give to others on their terms.  We ask those others what their needs are, what their passions are, what their sacred spaces are.
 The hardest  part in this dynamic,   we cannot expect anything in return for our effort.  To do so puts us in the unhealthy position of expecting a payoff. We then feel we are owed something in return for our labor.

 To love, to have faith, to serve is to chip away at that self that holds us back from modeling Jesus’ life.   God gave us his son freely.  God did not set up an if/then relationship.  No, God’s gift is freely ours without our earning it.

 But God has told us what God wants from us. God’s expects us to follow Jesus’ model.  Jesus gave his all and God expects our all.
 See how problematic God is.  We have this great desire for God.  We love God.  We even try making our life in God’s image.  We try to live in a way that pleases God,  that glorifies God.  It just seems that God resists our efforts.  God does not cooperate with our desires.  God places more on our plate than we can carry.
 Yet, we cannot abandon God.  We yell it to ourselves more often than we admit.  God is the problem in our lives but God’s resistance attracts us. God’s demands attract us.  God’s resistance to our best efforts,  our sincere desires,  our careful planning attracts us even more to desire God.
 This seems counter to everything logical in our lives doesn’t it?
 
The twentieth century Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said that as we seek a God who is radically “Other,”  our training in the exercise of longing and loss prepares us for accepting the “desired” as something we never fully realize.  Yet, in the process, our attraction is only deepened.

 Desire for what he calls the “Most-High” is keenly aroused by the joining of beauty with absence,  by that which is inherently most desirable and yet at the same time most elusive.  “Desire nourishes itself,  one might say with its hunger,” says Levinas.  He insists that the desire for the “Other” is necessarily “a desire without satisfaction.”

Yet our desire is not diminished by such insight.  Our desire and our delight in knowing God leads to a delight in God’s own matchless beauty and to the covenant responsibility of safeguarding God’s reflected beauty in all of life and in all of God’s created world.

 A reformed and thoroughly Calvinist aesthetic or beauty remains restless in us until it expresses itself in moral action,  In how we do church,  In how we serve others,  In how we love.

Yet desire will always be the starting point.  We desire God.  We desire God’s attention and God’s love.  We are attracted to God and all that God has created.  Our enchantment with God and the world is prerequisite to the task of faithful discipleship.  To a life served restoring and protecting all of life.   As evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has argued, “We will not fight to save what we do not love.”

So we hear ourselves saying at session, “God is the problem.”  We realize at session we are fighting to save what we love.  Our relationship with God and our desire to restore and protect our life on this campus as God’s church.  Even on God’s terms.

John Calvin gives us a unique perspective of how we might love and fight for what we desire.  He speaks first of the importance of respecting all the creatures involved in the drama of the world as a theater of God’s glory.  He then goes on to see the simple act of giving praise, of worship, as generating the life it celebrates.

 As we struggle with desire being unfulfilled this gives us hope.  By giving praise to God solely for the reason of giving praise and seeking nothing else in return, we will come closer to generating the very object of our affection.  We will come closer to God.

 Giving praise, for Calvin, requires performance.  It springs from an inner disposition of intense desire, influenced by its longing for the object of its love.  Hence, the act of praise has a double effect:  It subjectively stirs desire in the one who celebrates and objectively makes present and real that which is celebrated.

 There is a subjective aspect of our faithful living that relates to what the person absorbed in praise is experiencing – what happens over time in the process of  “becoming”  what one desires.  Subjectively, Calvin sees the worshipper as being stirred to desire through the act of prayer.
 The most important reason for praying, he says, is “that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love, and serve God.”
 But there is also an objective aspect of religious devotion, located in its projection of a final reality onto the object toward which it is directed.  To God.

Faithful living,  as worship,  for Calvin is a celebration to the extent that its chief end is the praise of God’s glory.  Yet, Calvin’s conception of worship is also, as he has said, magical to the extent that the act of praise also contributes to the maintenance of our real life world.

  In the objective dimension of worship, Calvin declared that our reverence generates a powerful transaction of honor.  Our facing again and again the mundane,  repeated ups and downs of life honor God.  Praise is able to authenticate and sustain that toward which it is directed:  God.

In the act of praise,  the liturgy, our tending to the brokenness in our life, our living faithfully for God alone,  changes the very world it calls into being.  
As theologian Jürgen Moltmann says, “It opens creation for its true future. It is for this that human beings are created – for the feast of creation, which praises the eternal, inexhaustible God . . . This song of praise was sung before the appearance of human beings, is sung outside the sphere of human beings,  and will be sung even after human beings have –perhaps-disappeared from this planet .”

 We, dear ones, are created to create.  In our desire to faithfully serve others on this campus we praise God and we bring God here to be with us.
  As Belden Lane says, “Day after day, God brings the world to its feet in ecstatic applause as the curtain falls once again on God’s dramatic performance of desire.  Smitten by longing,  we stand alongside the others in speechless awe,  clapping our hands in hope of another encore, determined-if we can help it-that the performance  never ends.

We cannot imagine a God as eager to perform as we are to enjoy.  Held in strange and awesome embrace,  in the joyous meeting of God’s desire and our own,  we and the whole world with us are sustained by praise.”

This God, who is our problem, we praise.  Our God, who is so eager to perform, celebrates us.  God celebrates Genesis Church for we desire God be known in our midst.  We desire God’s encore.  That God’s love never end.

 God, dear ones, is more than the problem. God is also the answer.


 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen                                 060213.Gpc