A Midnight Friend...Luke 11: 1-13

I called my mom confused and bewildered. I was 19 or 20, and in college and was facing a difficult challenge. I was living with some friends in a house close to school, and being on your own is not always easy. My roommates and I were trying to save money by preparing our own meals instead of always going to the school dining hall, which was pretty pricey, and there I was, staring at a 10 pound bag of potatoes, wondering what on earth you do with these things. Now don’t get me wrong – I was not raised by clueless parents, and I was not totally helpless to feed and care for myself. I knew how to cook and do all the basic things that a person needs to know how to do – but for the life of me I could not remember in that moment how it was that my mama made mashed potatoes. So I got on the phone, a little confused, a little perplexed, looking for something really basic from my mama. I said “Mom – how do you make mashed potatoes?” She laughed a little, and then she walked me through the process of washing the potatoes, peeling and cutting them up, and boiling them and mashing them with good stuff like milk and butter. Then the next time I came home, before I left, she handed me a book – a Better Homes cookbook that covers all the basic things you need to know about cooking, including how to make mashed potatoes. She said: “after that phone call, I knew that it was time. You needed to have this book.” My mama, and my dad, my wonderful and patient parents, have helped me over and over to navigate through the sometimes turbulent waters of living life. Sometimes it was through simple words, sometimes it was through thoughtful gifts like a cookbook, sometimes it was just a home cooked meal, complete with a cooking lesson, that helped me find what I needed at that moment.

In our reading for today, the disciples ask Jesus for something that they felt they needed. They asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Maybe they were a little perplexed, maybe they were confused or even bewildered at the subject – it is easy to get bogged down when you pray, feeling either that your words aren’t fancy enough, or that you aren’t saying the right things in the right way, or that somehow your just aren’t getting your message across in the proper way to the Almighty Creator of the Universe by whose very will and pleasure you even exist. I mean, it can be deeply intimidating if you stop and think about it – how is it that we even dare to approach God, a holy and sovereign God whose ways are mysterious and different than our ways, as the Scriptures tell us. So the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Not why to pray – that part is obvious to most of us. We are powerless, and God is powerful, and we need God’s help to get through big things and little things in life. What the disciples ask is how to pray – which maybe you could think of as a question of form or technique (like what words do I say when) but I think they are really asking a question of attitude of approach. “Lord,” they ask “how is it that we should approach God in prayer? What should our attitude be? Should we come with guilt and shame, beating our chests and wailing about our sinfulness? Should we give God a laundry list of all of our wants and desires that we feel like God should work on for us? How does this work, Jesus?” They had seen him praying often, and they knew that he understood how it worked. They knew he knew the recipe for deep, rich, meaningful prayer.

And what an answer Jesus gives the disciples. He did not give them complicated guidelines for their prayers: “When you pray, face east by southeast, and you must bow three times touching the ground with your forehead, and then you must chant the following phrase for precisely ten minutes, and then, and only then can you begin your prayer…” No, the instructions that Jesus gives are remarkable mostly for their simplicity! He says: “Pray like this: “Father. Hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Give us everyday our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us. And don’t bring us to the time of trial.” That’s it. That’s the prayer that Jesus teaches the disciples –at least according to Luke. The version we say most Sundays in our worship service comes from the gospel of Matthew, and adds a few phrases here and there, but the gist is the same, and what comes across is simplicity. Jesus tells those first disciples, and the disciples struggling through life today, that prayer doesn’t need to be a complicated thing. Christ tells us that prayer is a matter of first recognizing the holiness and power of God – that is the starting point for every prayer. If God wasn’t powerful, wasn’t “mighty to save” then what would be the point in praying to begin with? Then, we ask for God’s kingdom to come – which is a way of focusing our energies and attention on God’s desires and dreams for the world. In prayer, we are tuning our hearts to be in harmony with God’s heart. We want God’s Kingdom to arrive and flourish in all of its glory, and not to elevate our own little kingdoms. And then, once we are focused on God’s holiness and God’s desires for the world, we ask for what we most deeply and desperately need. Food, enough to keep the body going for that day. Forgiveness, to free the soul and to empower us to live in peace with our fellow human beings. And deliverance from trials, shelter from the storms in life that set us back and send us spiraling into despair. And all of this is addressed to “Father” – really, the word Jesus uses is “Abba,” which means “Daddy” in Aramaic, a term of endearment and love. Prayer doesn’t have to be complicated, with rigid forms like a magic spell or something like that – Jesus’ recipe for prayer has God’s children asking a loving Father for what they most need in life, without flourish or pretense.

And then Jesus tells a story that goes sort of like this. Suppose a man has a guest arrive in the middle of the night. He is out of bread, the most basic food, and if he is out of bread, you better believe he is out of everything else, too. He really needs to make his guest feel welcome, and with all of the stores closed at that late hour, the only option he has is to go to his friend, who lives across the street and to beg for bread in the middle of the night. Now what do you think the friend will do? Do you think he would say: “Go away! I’m in bed here with my wife and kids and we are all tucked in and I’m not getting up to give you any bread or anything else for that matter!” No – if not out of friendship, then at the very least because there is banging on the door and he wants his neighbor to go away – the man would get the bread that he needs from his neighbor.” And then Jesus drives his point about prayer home: “So ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Just like the man who was knocking on the door got the bread that he needed from his grumpy neighbor by knocking on the door, don’t you think that God will oh so more willingly give you what you need. Jesus continues: “If your children ask you for things that they need, and even you who are broken and imperfect and sinful will give your kids what they need, then how much more will God, who is holy and merciful and loving and generous give you what you need.

In giving the disciples a recipe for authentic prayer, and telling them a story to help explain how it all works, a picture emerges of God and how we, as his children, offer prayers. God is not like the neighbor in the middle of the night – reluctant, sleepy, begrudgingly throwing us just enough to get by. No! God is the opposite – when we ask for what we need, we will receive it. When we search for what we must have to get through the day, we find it. When we knock on God’s door, it is opened to us willingly and with love. And this is not only for the pure, only for the sanctified, only for the select few who have climbed to the top of the mountain and spent hours in meditation – no, Jesus says that everyone who asks, receives; everyone who searches, finds; everyone who knocks on the door to God’s heart finds the door opening wide to receive them.

Now some of you may be thinking: so I don’t have everything that I’ve ever asked of God. I’ve prayed for some things for years and I didn’t receive it. I think it is important that we distinguish between what we want and what we need. We might sometimes pray Janis Joplin prayers: “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…” We might end up praying to God asking for all kinds of things that we want – as though God were a genie bound to our service. But that is not what Jesus is teaching us – no, God is a loving parent, a Father generous and willing to give his children what they need to find freedom and full humanity, not a Heavenly ATM machine giving us everything that we want. We might want fast cars and HD tvs, but we need bread from God’s hands to survive, we need forgiveness to thrive, we need God’s power and strength to get us through life’s trials. To quote the Rolling Stones: “you can’t always get what you want, but when you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.” We may be asking for things that we want, thing to fill our bellies with empty calories, or the latest or the flashiest trendy thing that we feel will help us seem whole to our neighbors. But what we need is bread, real, whole, true bread from heaven; and forgiveness for our sin that spills out from us to affect all of our relationships. Those things are things worth praying for, and our honest, heartfelt prayers for what we most need are heard by a loving, merciful God, who sends us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and heal us, to comfort and to guide us, to sustain us for the journey of life.

It may be that it is midnight for you. It may be that you have been recently awakened from your normal pattern of life to find that you are in need, in need of bread, in need of a receptive and generous ear, in need of a friend who will open the door to help you with what you need. You may be facing trials, literal or symbolic, you may be hungry for bread, spiritual or physical; you may be burdened with your past and the ways you have hurt yourself and those around you with your choices. Well here it is, a way out, a way to get what you need – prayer. What a friend we have in Jesus Christ, a true and close friend who will give us what we need if we ask, if we search for him, if we knock on his door. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer, a loving Father who answers everyone who asks, and searches, and knocks, even in the midst of the darkest night. So don’t be ashamed – if you need it, ask God. If you are looking for answers, search out God. If you are knocking on doors, only to find them slammed in your face, call on Jesus. He is waiting, full of love and mercy, eager to open the door for you, a door to a new life.

One Thing Only - Luke 10:38-42

A guest arrives, and the whole operation in put into motion. Y’all know how this works – there is a meal to be planned and prepared, there are beds to make, drinks to keep topped off, and after the meal, there are dishes to be done. And can you imagine if the guest was someone really important – maybe your boss just popped by for dinner, an influential neighbor stopped in for a cup of coffee, or the governor arrived for lunch - you’d go above and beyond to make sure that everything was done well, done perfectly, to make a positive impression and make your guest feel at home.

So you can imagine how Martha must have felt when Jesus accepted her invitation to her home. This miracle working rabbi – a great prophet, some said – was in her living room, and Martha’s reputation as a host was at stake. She was probably pretty nervous about having him there, anxious that she might burn the bread or that he wouldn’t like the vegetables that she was cooking, or that he wouldn’t find the cushion he was sitting on comfortable enough. Sure, she had heard how gracious and kind he was, but you never know how these rabbi types act when they are relaxing after hours. Martha was getting pretty anxious about getting all of the jobs and tasks completed, and doing them well, and Mary wasn’t helping any. She literally wasn’t helping at all, she was just sitting there on the floor at Jesus’ feet, listening to him talk about something or other – and Martha was getting more and more anxious, more and more frantic, and more and more frustrated that Mary wasn’t helping her make their very important guest feel at home.

Finally, Martha couldn’t stand it anymore and her anger and her frustration boil over and she interrupts the conversation that Jesus and Mary and the disciples were having in the living room. She points a finger not only at Mary, but at Jesus, too and says: “Lord! Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work myself? Tell her to help me!” There was a lot of work to do to serve Jesus, to make him feel welcome and at home, and Martha was feeling overwhelmed, and Mary wasn’t helping. And Jesus wasn’t helping, because he was allowing Mary to sit there just listening, instead of demanding that she get back into the kitchen to help her sister.

But instead of joining into her tornado of anxiety, Jesus oh so gently calls Martha back to earth, back to the room, back to where she was and what she was really trying to do. “Martha, Martha,” he says, “you are worried and distracted by many things. But there is only one thing that you need. Mary has chosen the better part, the best part of life, and I’m not going to take it away from her.” Martha wanted Jesus to lend her a hand by ordering Mary to come help her, but Jesus responds by offering words that would really help her, if she took them to heart. You see, Martha had become so focused on the little jobs, so fixed on the tasks of cooking and cleaning and preparing and serving that she had lost focus on who it was that she was serving to begin with, Jesus the Christ, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. Mary, sitting at his feet, sitting in the posture of a disciple before a master, had remained focused on Jesus alone since he walked in the door, and Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that Mary was choosing the best part of life, choosing to be connected to the Source of Life, choosing to focus on Jesus and what he was doing.

For years, preachers have preached sermons pitting the two sisters against each other, Mary versus Martha, Martha versus Mary, as though they each represented two extremes of human life. The line of argument usually looks something like this: Martha represents a life of action and work, and Mary represents a life of contemplation and study. If we are like Martha, we spend our whole lives working away and miss out on the best part of life, on study and contemplation at the feet of Jesus. If we are like Mary, we choose the best part, the part of an interior life, and leave behind the working part to someone else to do. This line of thinking has fueled a kind of split in the world, a divide between those who work and those who think, between those who do and those who are content to just be, between works and faith. But splitting life up in this way doesn’t really make much sense, and it is definitely not what Jesus is getting at in this living room lesson.

The truth of the matter is that to make a life work, including a life of faith, including a life of a community, of a church – in order to make it really function, you’ve got to have both sides: the Martha side of work, of completing tasks both complex and simple; and the Mary side of prayer and focused attention on Christ. If life was all about being just like Mary, always engaged in an interior life, withdrawing from the world to pray and study scripture without being dirtied by the world, then how would anything get done? How would we eat? Who would grow our food or cook meals? If the lights went out, who would fix them? How would we ever touch a broken world to heal it? You see, if we lift up Mary as one who follows an interior path, there is a danger of falling into a place where faith is only a matter of navel-gazing, of staring at our bellybuttons looking for the meaning of life. Too often the church has fallen into this trap, walling itself off from the real world, spending all of its time on fancy prayers and mulling over the historical meaning of Biblical texts without ever putting them into action.

But if Mary isn’t the one to follow, is Martha really that much better? Martha, the worker, the one who is busy in the kitchen, can seemingly offer us a model that gets our attention out of our belly buttons, out of our minds and heads and into our hands and feet. And this can feel like an antidote to the inertia of the interior life. At last, if we follow the path of Martha, we can get our hands dirty, and get off our duffs and do something! But this path also presents a danger, a trap that is more akin to a never ending hamster wheel. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in all of the tasks, all of the jobs to do in the church that our life of faith can end up being a never ending cycle. And while it may seem that we are working hard on the outside, we are just spinning around in circles, never moving forward. Too often the church has fallen into this trap, spending all of our energy on potluck dishes or flowers for the altar or meetings that don’t seem to have much purpose or point.

Either path, the Mary or the Martha path, can lead to a stuck place of faith. Either stuck in an interior belly-button gazing place or stuck spinning round and round never going anywhere. But into this argument, into these extremes of life, Jesus interrupts. “You are distracted by many things,” he says, “you have need of one thing only.” You are distracted both by interior things and exterior things, and it’s true, we are. We are so easily distracted by a life of study and learning, never going beyond our classes and books; and we are so easily distracted by our little jobs, our work to keep things up and running, never going beyond the things that we’ve always done to what might lie beyond. The cure for being distracted by one extreme is not to throw off everything and run to the other extreme – that only has us swinging like a pendulum, or running from one side of the deck of a sinking ship to the other. No – the cure for distraction is focus. A clear, laser beam focus on one thing is all that you need to find your way out of the traps, out of the stuck places, out of the distractions. And the thing, the person to focus on is Jesus Christ. You see, Mary doesn’t represent a life of contemplation and study, she is just a devoted disciple, never leaving the feet of her Master, always focused on his face, listening intently to his words. And Martha could have still done all the work she was doing and kept her eyes upon Jesus, kept her heart focused on why she was cutting the carrots and mopping the floor, and that would have served the same purpose as sitting on the floor with Mary. It is not the actions that you are taking in your life of faith, it is your focus that matters – a focus on the Source of Life himself.

There is a pastor named Mike Slaughter, that some of you may have heard of, who was sent in the late 1970s to serve a congregation in Ohio called Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church. They had about 70 members on the books at the time, and about 30 people or less came to worship on a given Sunday. Like a good pastor, Mike listened at meetings and in conversations to get a sense of who the people of the church were and the issues that the congregation were facing. It seemed as though the church had stagnated, stuck in an endless round of covered dish suppers and dull and boring committee meetings. Meanwhile, several folks let him know about the air conditioning system – it badly was in need of replacing, but they just couldn’t get the money together to replace it. They had tried and they had tried, but they just couldn’t do it. Mike quickly recognized that the congregation had become distracted by many things, stuck in a rut of the tasks of being a church. So he did two things: first, he began a bible study in the church, and began to preach sermons pointing always to Jesus, helping the congregation to refocus on their Lord and Savior. And second, he said: we are going to do this one thing. We are going to work as a team, all of us, to reach one common goal of purchasing a new air conditioner. That is going to be the focus of what we do as a church until we can get it done. So with their renewed spiritual energy and a newly found focus on a goal, they quickly raised the funds within a few months. But they didn’t stop there. They came together and picked another “one thing” to work on next – this time to build a playground at the church. They quickly reached their goal and had a new playground for their church and community. Through focusing on Jesus Christ and on one project that was attainable, but still a challenge, the church came together as a community of faith. They recognized that they needed the gifts of all of the Marthas out there to work and to get the jobs done to reach the goal, and they needed the gifts of the Marys in their church to keep them focused on Jesus even as they worked. And here is the thing – the church hasn’t stopped yet. They have kept setting goals and meeting them for the last thirty years, and they invited other people to join them along the way, and are now one of the largest churches in our denomination, with over 12,000 members. One of their most recent “one things” was this: they declared that within a 15 block radius of their church, no man, woman, or child, would go without food, medical care, or school supplies, and they would work to find them jobs if they were in need. They have made a commitment to their community, to love and to serve in a radical way because they have kept their eyes upon Jesus, and their ears upon his words, and their hearts upon his love. And with that kind of focus, look at what the Body of Christ in this world can do.

So my sisters and brothers, all you Marys and Marthas out there, keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, trusting that in his love he will lead us and guide us. God has plans for us yet, plans for good and not for harm, and the Holy Spirit is already stirring among us to action and to focus. We may feel that we are distracted by many things – God knows I feel that way sometimes – but even as we go about our day doing the little things that need to be done, we can’t forget the one thing that we truly need, the love and mercy of our Lord. Because listening to his words and following him takes us in directions we hadn’t even thought possible before, and focusing on what he wants from us, what he needs from us, we just might be able to make an impact in a dark and broken world. Focusing on Jesus, we just might be able to do the things he did, we might just reach out and touch a few lost lives, we might just heal some sin-sick souls. Focusing on Jesus, we might just feed the folks by the thousands, we might just care for the damaged children in our community. Focusing on Jesus, we may just be able to be the church, the Body of Christ, and we may just be able to do what he is calling us to do – to transform the world. It isn’t hard – all we need is one thing. One person. One Lord. Jesus Christ.

"Who's My Neighbor?!" Luke 10:25-37

The story of the Good Samaritan is a familiar one, a beloved parable, a parable that many folks would point to and say: “this story is what being a Christian is all about.” And they would be right. But because it is so beloved, and so familiar, sometimes we start feeling a little comfortable with the story. We begin to feel as though we have the story all figured out. Jesus is telling us this parable, this clever little story, to remind us that being a Christian is about being nice, about helping people with broken down cars on the side of the road, right? Isn’t that was Jesus is telling us?

This story is told as a part of a conversation, an encounter between Jesus and the lawyer, the scholar of the law of Moses. The lawyer stands up to test Jesus – a great beginning to their relationship – and asks: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, answers the man’s question with another question: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” In other words: “You have studied the Bible – what do you learn there?” And the man, a scholar who has studied the Scriptures for years, knows the right answer from Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says: “You have given the right answer – now go and do these things, go actually love God and love your neighbor and you will find the true life you are looking for.”

But the lawyer, the scholar of the law just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Maybe he felt approved by Jesus, justified by giving the right answer – so he asks one more question: “And who is my neighbor?” You see, this lawyer was trained in the law of Moses, the law given on Mt. Sinai that gives some pretty clear rules about who is in and who is out of the community of God’s Chosen People. The lawyer knew that the command was to love God and to love neighbor, but he figured he could find a loophole in this most important commandment – if he could get Jesus to say: “well of course your neighbor is the person just like you – Jewish, male, educated, and rich” then he could be very smug about his dislike and his distaste for all the other folks out there – all the folks who were different from him – the Gentiles, the women, the working class folks, the poor.

And in response to the question: “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus tells this story, this familiar, beloved, well-worn story about a man beaten and robbed, and some good religious folks – maybe like the lawyer himself – who just kept on walking, leaving the man bleeding in the dirt. And the one who stops, the one who has compassion, the one who goes way above and beyond in his merciful response, even to the point of laying down his own money to see the injured man whole again – is a Samaritan. If Jesus were to tell us this story today, here in this community, I imagine it might go something like this:

It was late, and the man knew that he needed to get home quickly. The road from Aragon to Taylorsville was scenic during the day to be sure, but at night all sorts of rough types hid out in all the nooks and crannies in the hills, and the man knew that it wasn’t the safest road to be on at that hour. His car was not in the best shape, and was prone to just giving out on him without much notice. And as if on cue, his car began to sputter and the engine died, forcing him to coast to the side of the road. He waited there a moment – of all the nights to forget a cell phone! – and crossed his fingers, hoping that someone would come along in just a moment to help him out or maybe give him a ride. It was just about at that moment that the four men stepped out of the trees and without saying a whole lot began to viciously punch and kick the man, leaving him wallet-less, coatless, and breathless on the ground. He was left bleeding in the drainage ditch on the side of the road, barely able to move, barely clinging to life.

And that is where the man lay, all night long, coming in and out of consciousness through the seemingly endless night, with no other cars coming down the road. And in the morning, traffic began to pick up again on the road from Aragon to Taylorsville, and a car pulled into sight of the man. In the car was a United Methodist pastor, hurrying on his way to a meeting in Atlanta. The pastor saw the man, saw his broken down car, saw the blood, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe it was just easier to keep driving and pretend that he hadn’t seen what he had just seen. A second car came the other way, this time driven by a deacon of the Baptist church, on his way to his weekly prayer breakfast. The deacon saw the man, saw the bruises, saw the ditch he was lying in, saw him there without a coat, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe the whole thing was just too messy, too much – and maybe it was some sort of trick or a trap, some kind of a con. So he kept driving.

The third car that came down the road from Aragon to Taylorsville that morning was driven by Omar, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan. He was driving to a business meeting in Cartersville, to see about opening a gas station there, but as he drove down the road, he saw the broken down car and the broken and bleeding man in the ditch, and was deeply moved with compassion. Without hesitation, he pulled his car over. He ran to the side of the injured man, and with a first-aid kit from his trunk, he began to clean the man’s wounds and to bandage him up as best as he could. He then gently picked up the man, placed him in the back seat of his car, and drove him to the Cartersville Medical Center. After carrying the man into the hospital, he gave the nurse his MasterCard and said: “whatever it costs to make him well, just put it on my card. No matter how much – his medical care is on me.”

And the question that Jesus asks is this: “Which of these three, of the Methodist, the Baptist, or the Muslim, was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?” Now you may be asking yourself: “What is this preacher talking about? I thought this story was about priests and Levites and Samaritans!” Well, Samaritans were the religious and cultural enemies of the Jews, who lived in the region between Jerusalem and the Galilee. So when Jesus tells us that a Samaritan is the one who is really compassionate, the one who shows us what it is like to be a neighbor – you can almost hear the lawyer (and probably the rest of the crowd) steaming, fuming, angry at even the suggestion that the cruel, evil, sub-human Samaritans could even be capable of such a thing. When Jesus asks the lawyer: “Which of these was a neighbor to the beaten man?” the answer is obvious, but the lawyer can’t even say the word “Samaritan” – he’s that mad. He says instead: “The one who showed him mercy.” The lawyer had been looking for Jesus to draw a line and say: “Your love can stop here. To have eternal life, you only have to love these people, but you are fine hating those people.” But Jesus real words are these: “There are no lines, no boundaries, for love. Who is your neighbor? Every single human being on the face of this earth. Especially the ones you hate. Those are the ones that you are commanded by the Living God of Heaven and Earth to love, even as you love your own self.”

This story is far from an easy lesson on being nice to those stranded on the roadside. It is a deep, hard, difficult challenge to our hearts, to our practice of love and mercy. One writer suggests this: “Think of yourself as the person in the ditch, and then ask ‘Is there anyone, from any group, about whom we would rather die than acknowledge “She offered help” or “He showed compassion?” More, is there any group whose members might rather die that help us?’” Then with that picture in your mind, you get a taste of what Jesus is asking – love that one. Show extravagant mercy and care for that one. This is what Jesus is asking of us, we who are seeking to love God and love our neighbor.

And this is the best part – after Jesus totally throws us through a loop, telling us to love the one that it is hardest for us to love, to make that our work and our job – after we are left with our jaw on the floor – Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise.” “Get out there and do it! Don’t just sit there, don’t just think about at night when you are reading your Bible – go out and do it!” Love God! Love your neighbor! You are free to do so! Jesus lays out an incredibly difficult path and says: “Alright! Get out there and love! Get out there and show complete strangers – the ones you don’t know and the ones you know you don’t like – show them the radical love of God.” You see, for the lawyer, the law was his gospel, his guiding rule, his path to follow. But for us, in Jesus Christ, the gospel is our law – we are commanded to love everyone, everyone – no ifs, ands, or buts – commanded to love everyone. And this is the law that we follow. The law of love. And we don’t follow it out of duty or obligation – we follow the gospel, the good news of God’s deep love for every human being – we follow the gospel as our law out of our love for God. Because when we love God with all that we are, and when we love our neighbor with all that we have to give, we enter into a new way of living, a love way, a kingdom way, and we become more and more human through the power of God’s love working in us and through us.

My dad, when he was giving the eulogy for his mother, my Grammy, said that he always imagined her as a sort of “angel on the loose. A person just looking for a way to help, a way to do some good, a way to love.” And she did – through work with Al-Anon, folks with mental illness, and her church, my Grammy was always looking for a way to help a neighbor of any stripe that was in need. And that’s who we are, isn’t it – who we are as the church? A team of angels on the loose, actively looking, watching with our eyes open for a neighbor in need, eager to respond with the radical love of God in Jesus Christ. We know that we have been shown amazing grace, been given life-changing love even when we were far off from God, and so we are charged and challenged with loving the world in return. So get out there, y’all. Go and do it! Love God with all that you are! Love your neighbor as you love yourself – no lines. No boundaries. No loopholes. Just love. Amen.

"Fruits of Freedom" Galatians 5:1-25

On those rare occasions when my mom and my brothers and I would leave town for a vacation with friends, my dad would find himself free. Free from the obligations of being a spouse for a weekend, free from a “honey-do” list, free from someone else having to tell him what to fix for dinner – or at least free from having to negotiate with a the tastes and preferences of a house full of people. So when he found himself alone in the house, my father would fix one of his favorite things to eat: liver and onions. Now, truth be told, I have never tasted liver and onions, and more than that, I have never even smelled them being cooked – because according to my mom, even the smell of this dish being cooked was so nauseating, that my father was not permitted to even think of cooking it even for himself when the rest of the family was around. So I honestly couldn’t tell you what they smell like – because my dad never cooked it with the family at home. But in those rare moments of freedom, he would do a little dance, fire up the stove and fix himself some forbidden fruit, his beloved liver and onions.

It is good to be free, isn’t it? Often, when we think about freedom, we think about freedom from something – freedom from having to worry, freedom from want, freedom from responsibility for the weekend, freedom from tyranny from distant kings – something appropriate to reflect on as we mark Independence Day today in the United States. As a person who cherishes time relaxing on a couch, I appreciate a sense of freedom from having to be doing something at a particular time. But Paul teaches us something about the deeper nature of freedom – freedom is not just about freedom from this or that; freedom instead comes from Christ, who sets us free for a purpose. “For freedom, Christ has set us free,” Paul writes in his letter to the church in Galatia, “stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You see, in Galatia, like in other places, the church had a growing problem, one that Paul was trying to help correct. Paul understood that because Jesus Christ had come among us, lived, taught, suffered, died, and rose again, that the old way, the way of the law of Moses, had changed. The good news of Jesus Christ, of his life, his death, and his resurrection was good news for everybody, not just for the Jews, and people of every nation and tribe of the earth began to embrace faith in Christ. There were some in the church that said that to be Christian, believers had to be Jewish first – that every person of faith needed to follow the law of Moses to a “t” and then follow Jesus on top of that. They wanted Gentile Christians to be circumcised as a symbol of their dedication to the law. Now Paul understood that Jesus Christ was the Way, the Truth, the Life, and that everything had changed, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit gave people a new resource, a new strength, a new power to live a new life in a new way – and the old ways, and the strict adherence to the old laws were no longer needed. Christ was alive! The Holy Spirit was moving in people! God was doing a new thing! And Paul wanted people in every church to know that Christ had set every person free to be in true relationship to God, Christ had bled and died once and for all, so animal sacrifices were no longer necessary, and we were all now free to live life as free people, as God had intended. The law, with its guidelines as to what people could eat, what they could wear, who they could associate with, the 613 laws found between Exodus and Deuteronomy – was not needed in the same way anymore, because the Holy Spirit now dwelled in the hearts of the faithful, and guided and taught them how they should behave. Christians were free in Christ! Free from the law, free from all of the old rigid rules, free from the old customs – which, as it turns out, no one was able to follow perfectly, anyway.

But – and this is a big but - some folks were taking their new found freedom in Christ way too far. They heard that they were free, but then forgot about the being led by the Spirit part and went a little crazy. The used their freedom as an excuse for self-indulgence and some even went so far as to turn the sacrament of Holy Communion into a kind of drinking contest, turning a holy meal into an opportunity to get drunk. Others heard “love your neighbor” and took it a little too literally, if you get my drift, carousing and hooking up in risky ways. Others heard the word “freedom” and took it to mean that they were their own boss, and that no one was going to tell them what to do, so they got in fights over petty things and stayed mad at their new “enemies.” The list goes on and on – people heard that they were free and understood that to mean that they were free from the law, free from any ties or connections to other people, free from any rules whatsoever.

That might sound a little familiar to us here in this country. We are blessed to live in a country that is founded upon the ideals of freedom – we have freedom embedded into our national DNA through the Bill of Rights – freedom to say what we want to say, freedom to write what we want to write, freedom to gather when we want to gather, freedom to worship how we want to worship. But sometimes we hear the word “freedom” and we take it to mean that we can do anything we want all the time without any consequences. We hear “freedom” and feel like we don’t have to be connected to anything – not to our neighbor, maybe not even to God. We take our freedom – a hard earned and blessed thing – and we squander it in self-centeredness. We would rather watch tv than chat with a neighbor; we would rather sleep in than get up to help a person in need or attend church; some of us would rather take instead of give. We are free – but we take our freedom and throw it away by chaining ourselves to things that feel good or to our pride or to our vanity or to dangerous things like alcohol or drugs. We are free from the law of Moses, but then we submit again to a yoke of slavery to our own sinful selves – we bind ourselves up with the fruits of our own broken self-centeredness.

And Paul reminds us: “For freedom Christ has set us free!” In Christ we are freed from the law of Moses, yes, but also set free from our sinful selfish desires – we are free to love. This is what real freedom looks like, says Paul – not that you get to do anything you want – but that you are free to love your neighbor as yourself. Now at first glance, this may not seem to make much sense. We are used to freedom meaning freedom from something. But freedom is really about being connected to God, and connected in love to other people. Who is more truly free: the confirmed bachelor who stays out late in the bars looking for a love du jour, or the husband and father who discovers the depth of love and emotion and rewards of his family relationships? Who is more truly free: the person who is easily angered over any small thing, or the person who listens and responds with peace and calm? Who is more free, the person who is very careful about appearances and who she speaks to in WalMart, or the person who is not afraid to love anyone and everyone they meet? This is true freedom – not that you are blown around by your own desires, or that you assert your power over other people, or that you get to do whatever you want – true freedom is living a fully human life for God! You are free to be led by the Holy Spirit of Christ, free to reach out to a broken world with compassion and mercy, free to be connected to every kind of person, to eat and drink with them at a holy table. You are free to be you – exactly who God made you to be. You are free to live life in deep relationship with God – because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!

And when we live a life filled with the Presence of the Holy Spirit of God, when we grow and flower into our true human freedom with God, you wouldn’t believe the fruit that appears. Love, joy, peace; patience, kindness, generosity; faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – all blessings of the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus. I love the way The Message version of the Bible puts these verses: “He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” When we turn away from the self-centered desires and self-indulgent habits of our old broken life, and embrace the true freedom we have in loving God and loving our neighbor, see what wonderful fruit emerges. And because we have been set free by Christ, we are free to pursue these fruit, these kingdom fruit, these fruits of freedom.

On this day when we celebrate the freedom we have in this country, take a moment and reflect on your life, how you live out your freedom. Now none of us are perfect – we are all in a process of growth and learning – but do you see any signs of the fruits of freedom in your life? Maybe they aren’t fully ripe yet, but you see the beginnings of a little more love in your life because of God, maybe you can just see the start of real generosity because of Christ working on your heart, maybe you are recognizing just a little more self-control that you used to have because of the Spirit. Maybe you are realizing that your life is still filled with anger or restlessness or impatience or hate. It becomes time to ask yourself – am I bearing the fruit of freedom? Or the fruit of a broken, self-centered life? This day of freedom is a great opportunity to begin anew a practice of true, real, deep freedom. Love God. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Invite the Holy Spirit to lead you and to guide you. Ask the presence of Jesus Christ to sustain you and connect you to other believers in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Ask God to show you what real freedom looks like. And I guarantee you that he will – because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And look at what beautiful fruit true freedom brings. Amen.

New Life: What's up your sleeve? Acts 9:36-43

I think we all know a Tabitha. Not the one who wrinkles her nose and tricks Darren on Bewitched, no – I think we all know a woman like Tabitha in Acts. She was the pillar of the church in the little city of Joppa, along the Mediterranean coast, and was beloved by all as a true saintly woman. And when I say all, I really mean all – everybody knew her in Joppa – the Jews and the Greeks, everybody knew her kindness and her generosity and her patience and her loving words. Everybody knew her, people on both sides of the tracks, so to speak, so when people called her by her name, they did it in their own language, and so this beautiful disciple had two names, an Aramaic Jewish name, Tabitha, and a Greek one, Dorcas. You get the sense that Tabitha was one of those folks who held the church together with her love, speaking to each person as they came to worship, and visiting folks throughout the day to pray with them and to see if they needed anything. Tabitha was one of those disciples that if you didn’t know her, you would soon, because she was one of the first to greet new believers and help them find a place in the community of faith. I think we all know a Tabitha. I can think of a few men and women like her in my mind, and I can think of a few right here with us this morning. I think we all know a Tabitha.

So when Tabitha gets sick and dies, it hurts. It is a painful shock not just to her family, but to her church, who had known her love and who loved her so deeply. They want to honor her, so they do the customary thing and wash her body and lay her in an upper room, so that friends and members of the community can come and say goodbye. They also send for the apostle Peter, who is in the neighboring town of Lydda, urging him to “come without delay.” It is a little unclear what the folks in Joppa are looking for from Peter, but it is not an unusual thing to invite community leaders to a funeral, maybe so they can pay their respects, or maybe even say a few words.

When Peter arrives, they usher him to the upstairs room where Tabitha’s body is lying. The widows of the church, the women who had been sustained by the prayers and attention of Tabitha, were there, too, weeping and showing tunics and other clothes that Tabitha (who they called Dorcas) had made while she was with them. “Oh, Julia – do you see this blue one? It is just like the blue one she made you last year – and now who will make such beautiful clothes? Who will help us find clothing when we can’t afford it? What will we do now?” And they begin to weep again, as Peter is standing there. “There, there,” he says, speaking a few words of comfort, as he gently escorts the grieving widows outside. Peter needs a moment or two with Tabitha, to say a few words of his own.

Peter kneels down beside Tabitha’s lifeless body and begins to pray. Can you imagine what that time of prayer was like? Here is Peter, simple fisherman of Galilee turned powerful apostle, a man impulsive enough to try to walk on water to reach his Lord, but fearful enough to deny even knowing Jesus when he was questioned. Here is a man who had left his old life behind on that lakeshore, with his nets and his boats, and had followed Jesus wherever he would lead. Here is a man who found himself holding the keys to the kingdom, with a promise from Jesus Christ that whatever he would bind on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven. Now that is authority, but Peter also made some promises to Jesus, too. Jesus asked him: “Do you love me, Peter?” And Peter replied “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” “Then feed my sheep, Peter. Tend my lambs.” I imagine that all of this swirled around in his mind and in his heart as he prayed there beside Tabitha’s body. “What would you have me do, Lord? He asked? What is your will? What does your heart, desire, God? What can I do in this dark, sad place?”

And Peter realized, sensed, knew, that he wasn’t alone in that room with Tabitha. He was, in that moment of prayer, surrounded and filled by the Holy Spirit of Christ, and the Presence of the Living One was with him and Tabitha. And in that moment, he knew in his heart that God’s desire was Life! New life for Tabitha, new life for Peter, new life for the whole world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ – God’s desire was Life, and that abundant, and full, and filled with love. And with the loving Presence of Christ so close, closer to him than even his own breath, and filled with the conviction that God’s desire was Life for Tabitha, Peter in that instant knew, despite himself, despite his fears and his doubts, that he was being called upon to speak a few words.

Peter turns to Tabitha’s body and says: “Tabitha, get up!” His prayer of discernment, his prayer of asking for God’s guidance, becomes a prophetic command, the words of Christ speaking through Peter’s mouth. And at once, it is not just Tabitha’s body, but it is Tabitha who is there again, and her eyes open and she sits up. Tabitha is Alive, raised from death! From Peter’s mouth come just a few words, but those few words are enough. God works a miraculous thing; opening the eyes of Tabitha again, restoring within her life; opening the eyes of Peter to what can be possible with prayer and a few words, what can be possible with God.

I think we all know a Peter. I think we all know a person who is just a regular guy or gal, just a simple fisherman, just an accountant, just a sanitation worker, just a homemaker, just a student, just a regular person, who opens up their mouth and out comes the Word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit. I bet you could think of a few folks like Peter, and I can think of a few right here with us this morning. I think the truth of the matter is is that we all have the capacity to be used by God, to have our mouths opened to speak God’s words. When our heart is connected to God’s heart, when we love what God loves, when our hearts are broken by the things that break God’s heart, we can’t help but say a few words. Like Peter, it might be words like: “Get up,” calling a lost and broken person to new life. We might be led to speak words like “No more,” calling for justice or mercy in a harsh world. We might be called to say words like “I forgive” or “Welcome home” beginning a new phase in a healed relationship. The words that we speak can curse and harm, the words that speak can bless and restore life. God is asking for our words, not demanding great long speeches, but just a few – because just a few words from ordinary folks can change the world.

In just a few moments, we will be blessed to welcome into the membership of this congregation , mom who has recently moved to Rockmart. When she joins this congregation, we will ask her if she pledges to support the ministries of this church by her prayers, her presence, her gifts, her service, and her witness – that last phrase is new in our denomination since 2008, so you won’t read it in the hymnal. Likewise, you will have the opportunity to renew your vows as a church to support the ministries of this congregation and Christ’s Church universal with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness. When you become a member of the church, you aren’t just pledging your tithe or that you will show up to church – you are also pledging your words to be used by God, pledging that you will use your words to speak the truth of God that you have witnessed and seen, promising that you will speak if the Spirit calls you to speak. You don’t have to promise to give grand sermons or long speeches on Christian doctrine – you just have to promise to speak a few words when the time is right, words like “Get up,” words like “Forgive me,” words like “I believe.” Because a few words can go a long way, and God can use your words to work amazing miracles. God is asking for our words, my words, your words, because just a few words from ordinary folks can indeed change the world. And thanks be to God for that.

New Life: What Can You See? Acts 9:1-20

The wooden ship was heavy with its cargo. The waves and the wind tossed the English trading vessel, the Greyhound, to and fro on the waves, and below decks, the great bundles of wool and crates of beeswax for candles slid back and forth in the hold. Waves began to crash over the deck of the ship, and it began to take on water, a dangerous thing for trading vessels in the 1700s. John Newton, an English trader, cried out to God, pleading with the Master of the Waves for relief from the storm, for salvation from the danger of death for himself and his fellow crewmates. Newton made it through the storm, by God’s grace, and later, looking back, he would point to that moment in the middle of that raging storm as the beginning of his change, the beginning of his conversion, the beginning of his new sight, his new way of seeing the world through God’s eyes.

The world seemed almost on fire. There was a light shining out of every leaf on every tree, a light not from the sun, but from within. The sky was so bright, the songs of the birds seemed so beautiful, even the grass seemed holy, and for the young man sitting there on a bench by a lake, it seemed like for the first time that God was real, a powerful and radiant Presence in his heart, and with new eyes he glimpsed how God sees the world: full of life, full of beauty, full of promise, full of possibilities.

Louise was the pillar of her church. She taught Sunday School, made the best quilts for the church bazaar, and never failed to read her Bible daily. She knew God’s Word, knew right from wrong, and knew sin when she saw it. But she wasn’t sure what she saw when the man walked in her church that Sunday morning. He was dressed in leather and in chains, his big black boots making lots of noise as he entered the sanctuary. “Oh, Lord” she prayed, “what is a man like this doing in my church? Does he mean us harm?” As she watched, the man went to the altar, knelt down and first began to pray, then began to weep. Louise felt compelled to get up and place a hand on his big shoulder, and in that moment, she saw this big, frightening, rough man as a fellow human being, hurting, in need of love and acceptance, a person in need of God’s care and her kindness.

Conversion. Turning from an old way to a new way, changing the way we see the world. The history of the church, the history of faith, maybe even your history is filled with stories of people who are converted – who see with new eyes and change the direction of their life. The thing about these stories is that they aren’t all the same – they are as different and diverse as the people who tell them. The reading for this morning is probably a familiar one – and if your Bible is like mine, it has the heading: The Conversion of Saul. This is a story of one the great apostles, one of the most influential Christian thinkers, the author of most of the New Testament – and how he came to faith in Jesus Christ. Saul was a Pharisee, a Jewish scholar who was filled with passion and zeal for his belief in God. He was so zealous, in fact, that he set out to destroy the early church. While his teacher Gamaliel, who we learned about last week, urged that the young movement of Christ-followers be left alone, Saul took a different approach. These Believers in the Way, as they were called, these Christians, were dangerous, challenging the authority of the Temple and teaching twisted things about their master, Jesus. Saul felt that his faith in God and his trust in God’s laws demanded that he fight back against this wayward group – and when Stephen, the first believer to die for his faith is stoned to death, it is Saul who holds the coats of the folks throwing the rocks. But beyond just being on the sidelines, Saul becomes an energetic pursuer of Christians, hunting them down, men and women alike, and hauling them off to jail, where they might face the same fate as Stephen. Saul isn’t content to crack down on the church in Jerusalem, and sets his sights 30 miles up the road to Damascus, where more disciples of Jesus had begun to set up shop. He is full of passion and energy to put a stop to this dangerous group, and the writer of Acts tells us he was “breathing threats and murder” when he receives letters from the high priest in Jerusalem authorizing him to arrest and bind any Christians he finds in Damascus and haul them back to the council for trial. For the church, Saul is dangerous, but he is not evil. Saul is not a thief, not a swindler, not a criminal – he felt that he was doing God’s work, defending the faith, preserving the traditions of God’s people.

But as he goes up the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, something happens. A light surrounds him, and he falls to the ground and a voice calls to him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul asks: “Who are you?” And the voice replies: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Saul is blinded by this experience, and even though his eyes are open, he can’t even see to continue walking down the road, and instead of striding triumphantly into Damascus, ready to arrest the disciples of Jesus, he needs the help of his companions to even find his way into the city. Saul, a zealous man, find himself travelling down a new path because of the intervention of Jesus. Saul is converted from his old ways and becomes a new person in Christ.

But the story doesn’t end here. While Saul is being led into Damascus, the Lord is still at work, affecting another sort of conversion. A faithful disciple named Ananias receives a vision, in which Jesus tells him to go to a certain house on Straight Street and to lay his hands on a man named Saul of Tarsus. Ananias is not so sure this is a good idea: “Lord,” he says, “I have heard about this man, and about how he has done awful things to your saints. The reason he is even here is to arrest all of us!” But Jesus persists: “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.” So Ananias goes and does what the Lord asks of him, placing his hands on Saul, and immediately something like scales fall from his eyes, and he is able to see. He gets up, and is baptized, and begins to eat again and regain his strength.

When we think about the conversion of Saul, we remember the blinding light and the voice of Jesus calling to him. And we remember the great deeds of faith that he does as Paul, a new person completely changed from his old ways of breathing threats and murder against the church. But his conversion, his life change, his ability to see, both physically and spiritually, is tied up in the conversion of Ananias. Jesus interrupted Saul’s plans by shining the light of God, but it is Ananias who needs to be convinced that this Saul is really going to change. Ananias could have remained distant and fearful, could have been too caught up in Saul’s past to see what God would do with his future. Ananias had to be willing to see Saul the way God saw him – as a powerful instrument, a gifted person whose skills and talents would be used to share the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Ananias is a believer, a disciple of Jesus, and his conversion is not about coming to faith in Christ for the first time. His conversion involves seeing past his fear and the things that Saul has done, and opening his eyes to the possibility of change, the possibility that God can do a new thing for the world by doing a new thing for a person.

And because Ananias is willing, because he listens to the voice of Christ, because he acts to lay his hands on this perpetrator of great harm against the church, the full conversion of Saul becomes possible. The story of Saul is the story of a person whose plans are halted on a roadside, but also the story of a man who is forgiven, blessed, and shown another chance in a house on a street called Straight. Without Ananias, Saul would just have been stopped from persecuting the church, blinded by the light, but would not have become the great apostle Paul, the great planter of churches and explainer of the gospel.

Conversion – there are as many stories of how God changes lives as there are changed lives. Each person has a different story to tell – some of us have dramatic stories of blinding lights and visions. Others of us have stories that are much quieter, of how we came gradually to understand the truth of God’s love for even us, of how our eyes were opened slowly over time to the way God sees the world. Some of us find new sight in a flash and some have our vision deepened over time. But the important thing to remember in all of these stories is that God is able to meet us where we are, is able to find us and to use us, no matter what our past. God is able to reach us, with a bright flash or a quiet whisper and to give us new eyes to see the world the way God sees it – worth working to save, filled with beauty and potential even when it seems darkest and most hopeless. And this is the common thread to all stories of conversion – not necessarily that a person had a dramatic experience, but that they saw the world through God’s eyes and were willing to live life in a new way because of what they saw. Saul goes from breathing threats and murder to being a completely devoted disciple of Jesus Christ, sharing the gospel passionately and creatively throughout the ancient world. Ananias goes from being mistrustful of an enemy to laying his hands and blessing his enemy so that he might receive sight and become an brother in Christ.

And God is still at work, calling to you and to me, working with us and in spite of us to help us see the world as God sees it. Just as Louise felt an urge from the Holy Spirit to go and reach out her hand to the man so different from her, just as the young man on that bench saw the beauty of God’s creation even in the tiniest thing, even as John Newton felt a need to change his life, God is still at work in our lives, calling us to see even more fully the potential in each person, the value of each created thing, the love God has for all of us. Because Louise stretched out her hand, the biker found a new home and a loving community of faith, and invited his friends to join him. Because that young man had his eyes opened to the brilliance of God’s light, he decided to dedicate his life to sharing the message of God’s love as through a lifetime of service. Because John Newton felt the movement of God’s hand even as his boat was tossed on that storm, he rejected his life trading goods like wool and wax for human slaves in Africa, became an Anglican priest, and began to write hymns. You may not know all of them, but just about everyone knows his most famous hymn: Amazing Grace. Because John Newton felt the presence of God, his life was changed, and he in turn penned a hymn beloved by billions of people the world over. As we sing these beloved and familiar words, listen to them in a new way. Give thanks to God for the way God is able to use all of us, even when we are lost – and to give us new direction and new purpose. It is never too late to open your eyes and your heart and your mind to the light of God. If you feel you are in special need this day to come and pray, to come to the altar and have a special moment with God, you are invited and welcome to come as we sing this rich song of praise. God’s grace is indeed amazing, and whether you are an enemy of the church, or just lost in the world, God wants to show you what can be possible in the future. And thanks be to God for that.

The tomb in church...

The kids at church put on a Passion drama, and made a huge paper mache tomb. The parents who made it asked if we should take it down, but we decided to keep it around, like the elephant in the room for Palm Sunday and Holy Week. We follow Christ wherever he will lead, even to the cross, even to the tomb. Sometimes the tomb shows up in church: a witness to the cost of discipleship.

Two Parades...Luke 19: 28-40

At the risk of sounding like the Sesame Street character Bert, I love a parade. From a parade through the canyon-esque streets of a big city to the amazingly creative parades that small towns put on, the energy and excitement of a parade is attractive for just about anybody. One of the towns close to where Anjie and I lived in Virginia had a Christmas parade every year that featured all of the fox hunt clubs in town, complete with riders in red hunting coats and packs of hunting dogs. One year, they invited one of the farms that raised alpacas to bring a few of the long-necked pack animals to participate in the parade – a nice idea, except for the fact that alpacas are stubborn and ended up stopping in the middle of the road, bringing the whole parade to a halt for about a half hour! I know for a number of years AUMC has participated in the Rockmart and Cedartown Christmas parades with creative floats, and Anjie and I had a great time with the kids and adults this past Christmas as we participated in the parade through town. Parades bring people together, make people excited about a cause, and help a community celebrate the things that are important for it.

Well, most parades do this. To be completely honest, there are other kinds of parades, too. These are the parades that are designed to flex the muscles of power, to show who is in charge and who is holding the sword or the gun. The images that pop into my mind of these kind of parades are the parades of Nazi Germany or of Soviet Russia that featured a solitary leader at a balcony with thousands of troops marching past, and tank battalions, or missile launchers. These are a violent sort of parade, designed to keep folks in line and to show anyone who is paying attention that this country or that leader has a great deal of power at his disposal and isn’t afraid to use it.

Today is Palm Sunday, the Sunday where we remember the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem in a kind of parade – we usually call it a procession, which means about the same thing. This is a day where we wave palm branches and sing or shout “Hosanna!” which is Hebrew for “Save us, we pray!” According to Luke, this parade was not made up of just anybody, just bystanders in town for the Passover festival – no, the way Luke tells it, it is the disciples of Jesus, the crowd of his followers, those who have seen and witnessed the great deeds of power performed by Jesus that accompany his arrival in the Holy City with shouts of praise and acclimation. They say “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” This is a parade made up of Jesus, riding on a donkey, and those who have seen the power of God in his words and deeds telling anyone who would listen of the goodness and glory of God.

If you are paying close attention, though, you begin to see that this parade of disciples, this parade of the Christ, is not the only parade in town that day in Jerusalem. Just as Jesus arrived with his disciples for the celebration of the Passover festival, so did just about every other observant Jew from the region, filling the city with thousands of people from all over the world. Now Passover is the celebration of God liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt – you remember the story, don’t you – Moses and Aaron, with God’s guiding, bring down 10 plagues on Pharaoh, the last being the most devastating, the death of every first born male in Egypt. But because the Israelites had been warned by God to place the blood of a lamb over their doors, the angel of death passed over them, thus the name, “Pass-over.” Moses then led the people out of slavery into freedom. So just imagine – thousands of people are in one place to celebrate the victory of God over an oppressive king, and the liberation of God’s people from slavery. It had gotten so that this was the season of the year not just for ritual meals and prayers, but also for riots and revolt against the Romans, who were by all accounts pretty nasty overlords. Jerusalem at the Passover festival was a powder keg of religious and political energy, and every year at this time, Pontius Pilate would process from his comfortable seaside palace in the Roman city of Caesarea Maritima up to Jerusalem with a full contingent of Roman soldiers, with all of the symbols of imperial power, including trumpeters, flags, standards, and banners, and Pilate always rode into Jerusalem on a huge, powerful warhorse. Riding up from the west, up from the coast, Pilate and the Romans had come to Jerusalem to assert their power and control, to let anyone watching know that the Romans were in charge and they were going to stay that way, Passover or no Passover.

But riding up from the east, cresting over the Mount of Olives like the rising sun, is Jesus, riding on a donkey, arriving the way the prophet Zechariah said the Messiah would: “Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” Note that the disciples are shouting: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” – they are proclaiming that this Jesus, humbly riding on a borrowed donkey, is a king, and not just another brutal king, but a king who comes with divine authority and power, a king who comes in the name of the Lord. This parade of palms and shouts of “hosanna!” is not just another spectacle, but a challenge to the power and might of the Romans, of Herod, of all principalities of the world as we know it. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, he is riding in not just as a teacher or a prophet, but as King, but a different kind of king that any other – the King of Glory, the King of the Kingdom of God. This king does not come with armies or with warhorses, or with signs of power and strength – no he comes with humility, surrounded by regular, ordinary folks, healed lepers and forgiven sinners, heralded by children, and those in his parade are not proclaiming violence, but instead peace. “Peace in heaven,” they cry, echoing the songs of the angels over Bethlehem all those years before, “Peace on earth.” “Peace” they cry, “peace to all of God’s children, God has come to reign. Peace in heaven, because God’s chosen is on the throne.”

Despite all of the cries of peace, despite the evidence that here, after centuries of waiting, is the Promised One, the Messiah, the King, riding to Jerusalem, all of this does not bring immediate acceptance. Instead, some Pharisees approach Jesus as he enters the city and plead with him to silence his disciples: “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” They are afraid, afraid of a clash between the two processions, afraid that the arrival of the King of Heaven will provoke the wrath of the Romans, bringing down death and destruction not just on the people, but on the Temple as well. They desire peace as well, not peace from God, but peace from the status quo, peace from avoiding conflict, even the conflict that comes when good challenges evil. These Pharisees, and so many others after them, are content with the way things are, and are afraid when God’s peace comes to challenge their comfortable lives.

But Jesus will not order his disciples to be quiet. He replies: “I tell you, if they were to be silent, even these stones would shout out.” There is so much more at stake here than making too much noise, so much more happening than a man riding a donkey, and Jesus declares that all creation, even the stones would cry out in celebration of the arrival of God’s Messiah if the disciples did not. It has always been the disciple’s joy and delight to proclaim the Kingdom of God and the power of Christ to reign. Because for those who follow Christ, for those in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, for those today, we recognize a different kind of king. Our king is not like other kings, brutal and petty, violent and oppressive – our king is a Lord of love, a king of mercy, a prince of peace. We have seen him at work, and know of his goodness and grace, and can’t keep quiet about all the things he has done! The old gospel song “Ain’t no rock” captures this attitude perfectly: “Ain’t no rock gonna cry in my place, as long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His holy name.”

We are the people who have experienced Life and Love in Jesus Christ and who join the long and noisy parade of people singing praises to our King as we go through life. But this doesn’t mean that our path goes unchallenged, that our voices don’t “disturb the peace” of the world. Quite the opposite - if we are being faithful, our parade does present something of a problem for the powers of the world, because when Christ is our king, we live life differently, under the rules of a different kingdom. Christians since the very beginning have lived in a different way, a way in which Christ is Lord, and this has both brought them praise and persecution.

In the Epistle to Diognetus (written around 130 AD), the writer tells how Christians of that day occupied a strange in-between place in their society:
"For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity... As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners… They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring… They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all people, and are persecuted by all… When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life…"

When we join into this Christ parade, when we raise our voices wherever we are to bless the name of Jesus and declare God’s peace to the world, we will also face resistance and persecution. But our strength and grace and patience comes from God, and we have chosen to follow God and to live a new way, even if we are challenged. We remember the story of what happened to Jesus in the last week of his life, of how quickly the joyful shouts of “Hosanna” turned into murderous cries of “Crucify him!” Jesus, at the head of this Kingdom parade, rides on despite the challenges, and we follow him to difficult, trying places, but also beyond them, to mercy, to love, to life everlasting.

One of the best small town parades I can remember was in the town of Oxford, GA. I went to school there, but so did my parents, and one year we went over to Oxford for a Fourth of July parade they were having. It was the kind of parade that had Shriners on go-karts, homemade floats, clowns on the back of trucks, that sort of thing. And then as the parade finished, people stopped just watching the parade, and began to join in it, walking behind the floats and trucks and go-karts, becoming a part of the parade themselves. The Kingdom parade led by Jesus Christ is this kind of parade – an inviting parade, that reaches out to draw in all of those who are paying attention, welcoming all who will come to join into the celebration of the goodness of God and the power of Christ. This parade was not stopped by those Pharisees long ago, and will not be stopped by even the horror of the cross, Christ keeps going, and so do we. This parade is still moving, still processing out into the world, proclaiming Christ as Lord and King of Heaven. The parade is drawing close, my brothers and sisters, can you hear the shouts of “Hosanna!” Listen, it is inviting you, me, all of us: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace, Peace, Peace, in heaven, peace on earth.” You are invited, my friends, to join into this holy praise parade, invited to raise your voice in praise of Christ not matter what, because Christ loved us no matter what. Won’t you join in the parade?

A generous response...John 12: 1-8

Some of the most enjoyable moments in life are spent with friends. Now I don’t know about you, but I love a good dinner party, and if it were up to me, I would spend every evening surrounded by good friends, cooking a great meal together, sitting around chatting, telling stories. One Christian artist, Sara Groves, has a wonderful song called “Every Moment” that has this verse:

“I wish all the people I love the most

could gather in one place

And know each other and love each other well.

I wish we could all go camping

and lay beneath the stars

With nothing to do and stories to tell”

Being able to have the people you love in one place together sounds positively heavenly to me, and the sharing of good food and time together and watching your loved ones interact with each other brings so much delight and joy that it can strengthen you to face the next time your life isn’t so blissful – the next day at work or the next big challenge in your life. Having your friends and loved ones around you is such a blessing, a blessing from God, and it is a blessing that can empower you to take on whatever the world throws at you.

John tells us that six days before the Passover, that is, six days before Christ is nailed to a cross, six days before the Son of Man is lifted up for the salvation of all people everywhere, his friends throw him a dinner party. Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus give a supper for Jesus in their home in Bethany. Martha, ever the worker, served the meal, and Lazarus sits with Jesus at the table. The disciples are there, too – can’t you just see Jesus accepting the dinner invitation: “I’d love to come, y’all – is it ok if I bring these 12 guys with me? They follow me wherever I go these days.” So around the table are all these folks, presumably carrying on a lively conversation.

Now in and amongst all of this celebration of the basic joys of life, this lively dinner party, there is a kind of elephant in the room. Just a few weeks before, Jesus’ friend Lazarus had been dead. Yes, really dead. He had been sick, horribly ill, and had died before Jesus had been able to get to his side to heal him. Lazarus was dead, wrapped up in linen and anointed with fragrant oils and spices, and placed in a tomb like his ancestors before him. He lay there for four days, and the good smells of the perfumes wore off, and the natural stench of death and decay began to take hold. When at last Jesus arrives on the scene, he is cornered by Martha, Lazarus’ sister, who with tears in her eyes tells him: “If you had been here, Lord, he wouldn’t have died.” Jesus looks at her and says: “Your brother will rise again.” Caught up in her grief, Martha gives that stock Sunday School answer: “Yeah, yeah. I know her will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Martha is responding with a stock answer: “Yes, I know that we will all rise again to meet God on the judgment day – but that isn’t much help to me right now, is it?” And Jesus looks her in the eye and says earthshaking words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus says to Martha – “What I am talking about is a right now kind of thing: I am the resurrection and the life, and through trust in me, belief in me, relationship with me, Lazarus and everyone else will experience a new and living way now and a new life after death. Do you believe this, Martha?” Jesus asks. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God. I believe!”

And Jesus proceeds to the tomb, offers a prayer to God, and says: “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus, dead for four days, comes out of the tomb still wrapped up in the linen strips. Lazarus becomes the evidence of the power of God in Christ Jesus to bring life where there is death, to bring a way where there seems like no way.

And it is this same Lazarus, who just a short time before had been dead and buried, covered in a shroud, that now sits next to Jesus, sharing delicious food and lively conversation, very much alive. It is Jesus who has brought him back to life, and here they all sit together: he who is resurrected; He who is The Resurrection and the life; and the witnesses to all of these events, having dinner.

I want you to think for a moment with me: if it was your brother, or spouse, or child, who had been raised from the dead by Jesus, if it were you who had been given new life, how would you say thank you? How would you express your gratitude to Jesus? Would it be with simple words of thanks and praise? Would it be with great shouts, telling the whole world of the power of God in Jesus Christ? I suspect that Martha, ever the hard-working servant, is expressing her thanks by throwing this dinner party for Jesus, offering her best service, her talents for hospitality to Jesus and her family and friends. But Mary, passionate, devoted Mary, knows that words by themselves will not do to express her gratitude. She arises and takes a container of nard, an incredibly expensive kind of perfume imported from the Himalayan mountains in India, and in the middle of the dinner party, she takes an entire pound of this incredibly fragrant oil and anoints Jesus’ feet, wiping his blessed feet with her hair. Her way of thanking Jesus, of responding to the presence right there in front of her of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life, is to offer him everything she has to give – a touching and personal gift of her most valuable material gift, yes, but also her love and her devotion, and indeed, her worship. She knows that words alone would never be able to express her gratitude to Jesus for bringing her brother back from the dead – and so she responds with a gift that goes far beyond words, she responds with an overwhelming and extravagantly generous gift.

And her gift is so much more that simply making Jesus smell nice – it is also a deeply meaningful act, particularly in that she is anointing Jesus’ feet with nard. If she had poured it on his head, this would be something that would indicate the kingship of Jesus. The prophet Samuel, back in the Old Testament, poured oil, or anointed, first Saul and then David to indicate that they were God’s chosen king. The very word “Messiah,” which in Greek is translated “Christ” means “anointed one” – the chosen and anointed king. In some Gospel accounts, this fragrant oil is poured on Jesus’ head, indicating that Jesus is the Christ, the one anointed by God for kingship. But here, in John, the story is slightly different. Mary pours the oil on Jesus’ feet – an act that was performed for kings in preparation for their burial. She literally pours out everything she has to give on the feet of Jesus, and her act of devotion and worship points to the time that draws closer and closer when Jesus would die, suffering on the cross to save a broken and lost human race. She gives her all to Jesus, marks him as the Christ, and also is showing the disciples and anyone else within range of that fragrant perfume that Jesus would soon die. Her gift is a thank-you gift, but it is also a good-bye gift, and she pours out everything because she knows that Jesus’ time with them is short, and grows shorter by the minute.

The lavish and extravagant generosity of Mary is not immediately appreciated by everyone in the room, most notably Judas, the disciple who would betray Jesus and who often would steal from the disciple’s joint checking account. As everyone is watching this beautiful, tender, worshipful and holy moment between Mary and her Lord, Judas gets a little huffy. “What is she doing?” he begins. “Why was she holding out on us? This perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii – almost a year’s salary – and that money could have been given to the poor. What a waste!” Judas sees the nard, the costly perfume being literally poured out on Jesus’ feet, poured out on the floor, and he doesn’t see what is really happening – all he sees is the silver coins that he could be holding in his hand slipping away. Judas wants to put a price on Mary’s gift, and thinks he knows a better use for the money – in theory, helping the poor. Judas sees the world as a place with a finite amount of resources -money, materials, what have you – and what is given to Jesus in devotion and worship can’t be used for the poor. What a waste, Judas says, what a waste to anoint the feet of Jesus with this expensive stuff. What a waste to spend our time and money and efforts in worship and praise of Christ, when those energies could do some good to help people!

But Jesus puts a stop to that line of thinking. “Leave her alone. She is doing this in preparation for my burial. You will always have some among you in need, you can help them anytime you like, but you will not always have me.” Jesus knows that Mary’s gift is a personal and extravagant gift that points to his impending death. It is not a waste, it is a blessing, and honor and gives expression to the deepest feelings and thoughts of gratitude and praise. My friends, think on this: how would you respond if Jesus were right in front of you? How could you begin to express your thanks for the life that is in you because of him and his death, because of his Resurrection and Life? We are people looking to follow him, looking to serve him with our whole lives, we are people who have experienced the new life that Jesus Christ offers to us if we will just believe and trust in his goodness and love. We are the ones, my friends, who regularly gather at the table of the Lord to break the Bread of life and to share in a holy meal with Christ and each other. We are the ones who have tasted and seen the goodness of God, who know Christ to be the Resurrection and the Life, who have experienced the power and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit. How do you say thank you to a God who has created us and who has redeemed us and who sustains us? How can mere words begin to express the depth of our gratitude? We must respond to the extravagant goodness and love in Christ Jesus with extravagant generosity – with the gifts of our whole lives, with the gifts of our prayers, our presence, our times, our treasure; with everything we are and have. Like Mary, we spend our lives living in grateful response to the Life in Christ, living in a new way with him and through him.

And there still may be a few Judas’ out there who don’t quite get it. They see money and time as an either/ or thing – either I give my time and treasure to Jesus, or I give it in service to the poor. We can’t do both, can we? We can’t lavish our generosity on Christ and transform the world on behalf of the last, the lost, and the least, can we? Christ is no longer among us in the flesh, my friends, so we don’t have the opportunity to pour out everything we have at the physical feet of Jesus the way that Mary did – at least not until he comes again or we see him in the next life. But the good news is that he did leave us a way to continue to honor him and show our care and devotion to him in this world. As Matthew tells us in chapter 25 of his gospel: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” And we will ask: Lord, when was it that you were hungry, or sick, or in need and we helped you? And Jesus will reply: “just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.” The good news is that we have the opportunity to respond to the extravagant love and amazing Resurrection life that we experience in Jesus Christ by responding with extravagant generosity to the mission and ministry of the church, to respond to the needs in our community and our world with everything we have, our time, our treasure, our service, our lives. Because while Jesus isn’t with us in the flesh, the poor and those in need are, and whatsoever we do to the least of these, we do to Jesus.

So my friends, we are given an opportunity, each and every day, to respond to goodness and mercy we have experienced in Christ. How will you respond? With indignation, with stern words, like Judas, thinking that there is only so much to go around? Or will we respond to God’s generosity with generosity of our own, laying all we have at the feet of Christ, and in so doing, reaching out to the needs of the world, reaching out to the last, the least, and the lost? With God, in Jesus Christ, there is the powerful mystery of the Resurrection, and an amazing new life, and that abundant and overflowing. When we give to the needy, when we work to change the world, we do this to Christ and in his name. There is abundance, not scarcity in God. My brothers and sisters, it is right and a good and joyful thing to respond to God with all we have, to lay it all down at the feet of Christ.