Sermon - The Beginning of the End before the Beginning - Palm Sunday B

 

Year B ‑‑ Palm Sunday – March 28, 2021                                   Panzer Liturgical Service

Mark 11:1‑11

Today, we started our service outside, palm fronds in hand, hearing the gospel reading of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. It’s the start of Holy Week. It the beginning before the end. It’s what came before the after…

We know what that feels like. There’s a moment when everything changes. One minute you’re two single people, deciding to build a life together. And then it happens. With a few words, you are tied together in a covenant relationship. With those two little words, “I do,” everything changes. I remind the couple that I do premarital counseling with that there is nothing in the wedding ceremony that asks people if they are in love. Instead, the question is, “Will you love this person… no matter what… for better – for worse…?”

Or the moment your family grows with children. One moment you are looking out for your own best needs, and suddenly, there’s a child – that never comes with an instruction manual. And if the second one comes, the manual you wrote with the first one often won’t work… you have to start over again.

Or think about a day of momentous change. FDR called December 7, 1941, a day that would live in infamy. Many of us remember our own unforgettable day… September 11, 2001 was a beautiful Fall day… until it wasn’t. And the world never looked the same again.

That’s what Palm Sunday ushers in. This is the week when everything will change. For three years, Jesus has been roaming the Palestinian countryside, preaching a new message of God’s love and grace. But on this day, Jesus comes home. Not to Nazareth where he grew up, or Bethlehem where he was born, but to the city dedicated to God, a city of power and majesty even when occupied by foreign intruders – Jesus comes home to Jerusalem.

It was from here that Herod sent the magi to find the infant king so that he could "worship" him, too. Fortunately, the wise men figured out that Herod's kind of worship was not going to do anybody any good and went home another way. Yes, Jesus is coming home ‑‑ like a king or local hero with a big "welcome home" parade. But Jesus isn't the kind of king we expect, and pretty soon, Jerusalem will be spinning on its ear.

The traditional idea of a Jewish messiah was a man who would restore Israel to power. He would reign over his people, giving back all that they had taken from oppressive dictators. His people had lived under foreign rule for too long. They thought they needed a mighty warrior, who would ride into town with majesty and power and command his people with a sword. He would be the one to restore the glory and honor of the Hebrew people. He would give the oppressors their due.

But Jesus doesn't ride into town on a white horse. No, he comes into town on a borrowed colt, maybe even a donkey, much like his mother rode on her defining journey. But Jesus is no ordinary king. He is different, the son of God, and he will redefine what kingship is all about.

Already this "triumphant entry" is a contradiction in terms. And yet the people poured out of their homes and businesses to join in a parade they did not even understand. "Who is this?" the people asked. And the ones who knew of him replied in the words of Psalm 118, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" Did they really understand what they are saying?

And even as they were led by God to know Jesus, even as they called him Savior, Messiah, and Lord, their assurance in him was short-lived,-- for in few days they were among the ones calling for his death. Palm Sunday is the calm before the storm. For the crowd gets stirred up and they call for the death of the one they had hailed as Lord a few days earlier. And we can hardly believe it when God, who loved and created them and called them to this place, let them go on with their insane and contemptible behavior.

How can we look at the Palm Sunday scripture without remembering the rest of the story? Betrayal, arrest, torture, death, then resurrection. We often lose sight of how that story is continually replayed in our lives. Holy Week helps us to keep all the parts of the story together. Coupled with the joyous entry into Jerusalem comes the betrayal and denial of the disciples. Likewise, we cannot separate the broken body that died on the cross from the sacrificial nature of the gift. Resurrection seemed improbable and unbelievable but was the ultimate and inevitable outcome.

We call this week "Holy Week," and see before us the final events of Jesus' life. We look at the big picture, see the evidence of God's promise of redemption as it played out in Jesus' life. But Holy Week also helps us to see how those events impact our own lives as we deal with the problems of daily living. After all, when was the last time you needed the message of resurrection in your life?

In 1994, on a muggy Sunday morning, a small Alabama community was changed forever. One minute it was calm, maybe too calm. The congregation was preparing for a Palm Sunday celebration, a musical and dramatic replay of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. The children and choir arrived early to practice. The service begins. And in a matter of seconds, that congregation was literally turned upside down. A tornado struck the building, leaving only a shell of the building they all knew.

Amidst the rubble, congregation members lay dying, people were crying, and a young pastor looked frantically for her daughter. Kelly Clem recalled the terror of that day. "When it was over, I looked up and saw the sky ‑‑ clear, with a patch of blue. Everything was hushed, calm. No rain, no wind, no thunder, no voices." Her five-year-old daughter lay trapped in the rubble, and as the rescue workers found Hannah and took her to the hospital, Kelly said that she could not imagine ever worshipping God again.

But looking down, she saw that she still wore the white and purple vestments of the day, and at that moment was reminded of who she was and what she had to do. And as she walked and climbed around what was left of the church, talking to members, praying, and crying with them, she felt the presence of God with her.

Hannah's death came as a great blow to Kelly and her husband Dale. As the days passed and funerals were held in the community for those who had died, Kelly wondered how she could go on. She could not envision a future, not even a few days away. As far as she was concerned, Goshen UMC didn’t exist anymore. Everything she thought she knew about her congregation was now in question. It wasn’t just a question of where they would worship. The real question was, “where would they get the strength to go on?”

But then the telephone began to ring. And one after another, the people expressed their need to hold the next week's Easter service at the site of their destroyed church. These were the people who had lost loved ones ‑‑ many of them were injured themselves. But instead of focusing inward on their own pain and loss, they were thinking about what happened to Jesus on the cross and understood – maybe for the first time what the disciples endured, and because of it, they longed for Easter to come. They needed to know without a doubt that Jesus' words were true when he said to his disciples, "You are not alone for I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

In today’s epistle lesson, we hear Paul reminding the Philippians about the depth of Jesus’ sacrifice – the sacrifice that we each might face in our lifetimes.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5-8)

Jesus didn’t just come down to earth to have our common experience. He came to model behaviors, yes, but more importantly, an ethos – which we are called to take up for ourselves. For each of us, that looks different. More and more, I am reminded that it’s our response to God’s love for us that actively defines who we are. We love because Jesus first loved us.

As she prepared to bury the congregation’s dead and worked with her congregation to decide on what to do about Easter Sunday, Kelly Clem heard Paul's words from the 8th chapter of Romans often recited in the funeral liturgy: "Nothing can separate us from the love of God..." And she realized - these were the words of Easter. So with broken hearts and battered hope, the congregation and many supporters joined on Easter morning with the battered remains of their church building in the background reminded of the miracle that took place 2000 years before, and in their lives that week.

The storm often comes when we least expect it. It comes out of the calm of our lives when we were ready to celebrate ‑‑ or to rest ‑‑ or do something else besides pick up the pieces. Illness, financial worries, career crisis, death, global pandemic ... there are so many things that upset the balance of our lives and make us wonder, maybe just for a split second, if we have the strength or courage to go on.

And yet, like the people of Goshen UMC and survivors of all descriptions, our faith is stirred to remember that Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem only seemed to end in death. The real ending is being written out every day as we remember the power of Easter morning and experience the resurrected Christ in our lives as we live and serve those we love and those we do not know.

It’s been almost 30 years since that tragic Palm Sunday tornado, but the church community has not only survived but thrived. By the next Easter, the congregation had broken ground for a new sanctuary, this time designed in the shape of a butterfly, a universal symbol of resurrection. And as the people carried cups and shovels full of dirt from the church site to the new one, mixing the old and new dirt together, Kelly was reminded of something her husband Dale said in the aftermath of their great tragedy, "You don't need faith for the things you understand, but for the things you don't."

That’s an excellent reminder as we begin our Holy Week journey together.

Amen.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2021

Dear Lord, you have led us on this Lenten journey. Along the way, you have told us some things that we had difficulty hearing. You have spoken words to us that we never thought we would hear you say. Much of what you have said to us, we have failed to understand. When we are honest, and now’s a good time, to be honest, we wonder if we would have dared to follow you if we had known at the beginning where this journey ends.

And yet, you have called us, even in our weaknesses and inadequacies, to be your disciples, to follow you even to the cross. Strengthen us, Lord, that we may be faithful disciples when the world turns against you and judges you. Forgive us, we pray, for our cowardice and disobedience, old ways that we betray you, and our failure to follow you.

Keep walking with us, Lord, that we might be able to keep walking with you in this the holiest of weeks. Amen. (Will Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Volume 49, No 1, 2021.)

"Kelly Clem remembers..."
https://www.al.com/living-press-register/2011/05/the_rev_kelly_clem_remembers_l.html

Sermon - Going His Way - Lent 5B

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; Hebrews 5:(1-4)5-10; John 12:20-33

Panzer Liturgical Service - March 21, 2021

There’s a thin thread holding all of our passages together today regarding the questions that arise when we make the decision to follow Jesus. How much do the old rules apply? This Lent, we have seen God establish covenants with his people. Noah, Abraham, and Moses each received signs that God had not only chosen them but given them some rules to live by – and still remembered and followed by the Hebrew people.

But we have also seen  evidence that those chosen people were often confused about the promises given to them. They chose the path of literal interpretation as the way forward. Ten commandments, Lord – that’s all well and good, but we want more – more rules, more regulations – tell us exactly what to do – give us a written guarantee. And as we journey through the Hebrew Bible, we realize over and over, that this was not what God had in mind.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke to a people in exile. Everything they thought they knew about their relationship with God came into question when their land was taken from them and they were captured and carted away. In the process, the remnant artifacts that they had to worship were lost. How do we follow those commandments when the very evidence that they were given to us is gone? Jeremiah says, God will make a new covenant with you, but this time he will write it on your hearts.  No longer will we have to convince people to love and follow God – it will become the essence of who they are.

Today’s gospel lesson from John actually occurs in the hours following Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, which we will celebrate at the beginning of worship next week. This marks a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. It is no longer about gathering disciples or performing miracles. Now Jesus is intent on preparing people for the time when he is no longer around. Not only has a woman anointed Jesus’ feet with the kind of perfume used to prepare bodies for burial, but people have gathered because they have heard that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Is this prophet the One who will change the boundaries between life and death for all of us? It’s a question that seems to make the disciples want to keep Jesus hid for a little while longer.

But Jesus’ message stays consistent with his ministry. The decision to follow him will have lasting consequences. Nothing magic here, just a different way of understanding how life really works. Ironically, Jesus would begin today’s lesson talking about planting just as we are looking forward to getting our gardens ready for Spring. On our kitchen counters, or maybe on our window sills, we can see the truth of Jesus’ statement. The seeds that look dead are planted in the ground, and with the right combination of sun and water, die to self so that new life can begin. And then he tells them that this must happen for them, too.

When Jesus says that we must hate our lives, it’s not about hating ourselves. But it is about putting those lives behind us so that Christ’s new life can take root in us. What does it mean to hate your life?  How do we live that out? 

If we define the word “disciple,” we get a picture
of people who follow Christ.  Disciples were the 12 men traveling with Jesus in Middle East towns and villages… they were the women who stayed by his side, those people sent out in his name, and those who risked their lives for the church to be born and survive.  Disciples are also people who have journeyed after Christ through the last 2000 years.  Billions of people have followed Christ, not necessarily down Middle Eastern roads, but following Jesus’ teachings about love and service. This road we call discipleship – it is a road that leads us to places we never even knew we wanted to go.

Sometimes hating our lives is hard – it’s hard to give up the comfort of our own dreams and expectations. The good news is that when we give up the old stuff, we gain so much more. Through Christ, we gain identity and forgiveness. Through Christ, we begin to see the possibilities for our lives and for the world.  All we have to do is trust Jesus’ word: Jesus’ promise of eternal life is not about going to heaven – it’s about being in Jesus’ presence even if he is no longer here in person. God will never abandon us. 

The disciples, all of them, left particular lives for the one which Jesus offered them, lives which had many unexpected and precarious outcomes. The same is true for us. Today, a family came and recommitted their lives to Christ. And in the process, they claimed Jesus’ promise for their children, Phoebe and Kai. Today is an important step in their faith journeys. They won’t be able to remember what happened here, but we will remember, and the claim that Christ makes on their lives in baptism will follow them as they figure out what it means to lose their lives for him. =

When we witness a baptism, we are offered an opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenants. And every time we do that – every time we leave a little of our own expectations behind and take up the life that Christ calls us to follow, we are losing the things that hold us back – dying to our old lives so that we can take up our new lives in Christ.

Will Willimon once shared a story about a Duke sophomore who we’ll call Mark.  A life-long Presbyterian, he felt called to work in inner-city ministry after hearing Dr. Tony Campolo, a famous evangelical preacher, speak at Duke Chapel on Palm Sunday.  After a rigorous interview process, Mark was asked to join a summer mission team in Philadelphia and later described his first-day experience to Will.

In mid-June, Mark met about a hundred other youth in a Baptist church in Philadelphia.  They sang for about an hour before Dr. Campolo arrived, and when he did, the youth were all worked up and ready to go.  Dr. Campolo preached to them for about an hour, and people were shouting and clapping and standing in the pews.  Then Tony said, “OK gang, are you ready to go out and tell them about Jesus?”  “Yeah,” the kids replied, “let’s go.”

So, he loaded them up on buses, singing and clapping.  But as they began to enter the poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia, the kids gradually stopped singing, and the bus Mark was on got very quiet.  When they pulled up to one of the worst housing projects in the country, Tony stood up, opened the bus door, and said, “OK gang, get out there and tell them about Jesus… I’ll pick you up at five.”

The young people slowly made their way off the bus, and they stood in little groups as the bus drove away.  Mark walked down the sidewalk, faced a run-down tenement building, said a prayer under his breath, and walked inside.  There was a terrible odor.  Windows were out.  There were no lights in the hall.  Babies were crying behind thin, scrawled walls.  He walked up one flight of stairs and knocked on the first door he came to.

“Who is it?” a voice called out.  The door cracked open, and he could see a woman holding a naked baby.  He told her he wanted to tell her about Jesus.  With that she slammed the door, cursing him all the way down the stairs and out into the street. 

“What made me think I could do this,” he thought.  “What kind of Christian am I?”  He sat down on the curb and cried.  When he looked up, he noticed a store on the corner and remembered the naked baby in the lady’s arms.  So, he went in and bought a package of diapers and a pack of cigarettes, and went back and knocked on the lady’s door again. 

“Who is it?” the same voice called again.  When she opened the door, Mark slid the diapers and cigarettes into her arm.  She looked at them and motioned him in.  He put a diaper on the baby, his first, and smoked a cigarette, his first and last, and sat there talking to the lady and playing with the baby all afternoon.  About four o’clock, the woman looked at him and said, “Let me ask you something.  What’s a nice college boy like you doing in a place like this?”  So, he told her all he knew about Jesus.  It took about five minutes.  And she replied, “Pray for me and my baby that we can make it out of this place alive.”  And he so prayed.

That evening, when they all got back on the bus, Tony asked, “Well, gang, did any of you get to tell them about Jesus?”  And Mark said, “I not only got to tell them about Jesus, but I also met Jesus.  I went out to save somebody and ended up getting saved myself.  Today, I became a disciple.” [1]

This morning’s Gospel opens with some Greeks wanting to see Jesus. They see Jesus giving his last teaching on his way to his death on a cross. And maybe that’s the way the truth of Jesus’s crucifixion and death ought to be rendered. Maybe this is not something that we are meant to explain or rationally understand. Rather we are to look upon it, to see this mysterious drama unfolding before us. We are to see Jesus, rather than attempt to understand or explain him. What we see is the mystery of glory coming from an ignominious death. We see the one who is lifted up on a cross being exalted as the savior of the world; we see the innocent victim somehow forgiving and dealing with our sin; we see the God whom we rejected and pushed away from us drawing us near.

Look upon the cross. Don’t try to understand it; gaze upon it and know that somehow God is transforming the cross—an image of our horrible inhumanity to one another and our rebellion against God—into the mysterious, wonderful sign of our salvation.[2]

Thanks be to God.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2021

Let us pray:

O God, who makes all things new, new stars, new dust, new life; take my heart, every hardened edge and measured beat, and create something new in me. I need your newness, God, the rough parts of me made smooth; the stagnant, stirred; the stuck, freed; the unkind, forgiven. And then, by the power of your Spirit, I need to be turned toward Love again. Amen.

~ by Pamela C. Hawkins, in The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2009), 30. Posted on Prayer and Creeds, https://prayersandcreeds.wordpress.com/

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[1] Will Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Volume 24, No. 1, pp. 12-13.

[2] Will Willimon – Pulpit Resource, Vol 49, No 1 Year B. 

Sermon - Next step - Discipleship (Lent 4B)

 Lent 4B – March 14, 2021                                                  Panzer Liturgical Service

Number 21:4-9 & John 3:14-21

When was the last time you heard a good sermon from Numbers? Any sermon at all? OK, not today either, but it is important to hear a little something because Jesus prefaces this section of his conversation with Nicodemus.

Last week we talked about the 10 Commandments – about how we mistakenly read it for a moral code rather than a relationship code. And while the Israelites profess their understanding, it doesn’t take long to realize they just didn’t get it. Keep reading thru the Pentateuch and it becomes abundantly clear… those chosen children of Israel were complainers. Can you imagine the conversations floating around the camp? “Moses has been gone too long. These commandments are not specific enough. Eating this manna every day is so boring… did God lose his password to Pinterest? Blah, blah, blah…” And so, as we read this story in Numbers, it becomes clear - they needed an attitude readjustment.

Now I’m not a big believer in God making bad things happen to people to teach important lessons. Enough bad things occur on any given day to more than making the point that we are not always in control of our lives. And yes, we want God to be a comforting presence when we are going through bad things. But God is also a convicting presence, helping us to see the need to change our points of view. Here, the people believed God sent the snakes to punish them, and like all of us afraid of snakes and punishment, we want to know how to make it stop.

The good news: the people recognize their sin. The bad news: their solution – taking the snakes away – was not God’s solution. Instead, God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a staff (tall stick). And if they got bit by a snake, they were to look at that snake on the staff and be healed. Their freedom from the snakes was being healed from their bites, not in destroying the snakes. Same result – different journey.[i]

Most of us don’t remember this story from Numbers, but the Jews of Jesus’ day would have. Telling this story sets up a foundation for Jesus to build on. Think about the action of looking at the bronze snake. For those who had been bitten, it meant looking up from their pain and fear to a symbol that represented the healing and wholeness of God. When Jesus says, “the Son of Man must be lifted up,” he is foretelling a time when he will not be standing in front of them but lifted up to a different place than they could ever imagine him, giving healing we will never understand.

In John’s gospel, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark of night to find out more about the man everyone was talking about. Nicodemus slips in from the shadows to engage Jesus in conversation. “You talk about new life, Jesus… what must I do to have it?” Give me the equation, the formula, the step-by-step process for achieving what seems impossible.

Jesus’ response is not formulaic, but relational. Life in Christ is not painting by numbers or like putting together a cabinet from IKEA with premeasured boards and a little bag of nuts, bolts, and Allen wrenches. Instead, Jesus is the bridge between the two sides of life: Spirit and world, darkness and light, life and death, truth and wickedness, belief and unbelief.[ii] To have new life, he says, come into the light.

From the very first story, we see humanity struggling with questions of life. Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden because they thought that wisdom had more power than relationship with God. Moses and his merry crew wandered through the wilderness for 40 years because they couldn’t – no, wouldn’t – participate fully in the relationship that God offered them, trusting in their desires and wisdom more than the promises of God.

The cross of Jesus Christ changes everything about the way God relates to us. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are not just a model of sacrifice but are also about re-tuning our lives to God’s frequency, forcing us to experience God in a new way. These stories ask us to trust God’s promises and believe in the life God calls us to live, often by faith alone.

We hear the families words: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” and we can be lured into thinking that belief is the key that unlocks the door to faith… that there are theological requirements and caveats that define what it means to be in or out of the Kingdom.[iii]

But what if that’s not right? What if citizenship in the Kingdom is not an intellectual process at all, but instead is defined by living a particular, often peculiar, kind of life? We read John 3:16 and we hear past tense… for God so loved the world. But the reality is that God’s time is equally past, present, and future, always the same. Yes, Jesus did come into the world in our past, but he is also coming into the world today and in the future, through his people, the Church. We profess something like this in the Eucharistic prayer each week as we profess the mystery of faith: Christ has died – Christ is risen – Christ will come again.

Dallas Willard wrote some amazing things about discipleship. He was a scholar of Christian discipleship and he practiced what he preached. In his book, The Great Omission (which is a play on words for the great commission), he reminds us that at his ascension, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples,” not “Go and make believers.” Our great omission is not seeing the difference between the two.

Dr. Willard said this: “There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus or his early followers taught that suggests that you can decide to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus’ expense and have nothing more to do with him.” (The Great Omission, pg 13). We lessen the value of our faith journeys if we make belief the pivot point on which everything else is balanced. A faith journey is just that – a journey – with many stops and starts along the way.

Like me, your lives have taken a circuitous route. There have been faith highs and lows all along the way… with many starts and stops, and even some detours. I was looking at pictures the other day – one of me as a newly baptized infant, 3 months old – I don’t even recognize my face in that photo – and photos of my wedding – 26 years ago this week. While I may look close to the same, I am a very different person on the inside.  

Since then, I have been to so many places, seen so many faces, had so many opportunities to love and serve God. Some of them I have taken… some of them I have not. Even so, with the help of my fellow disciples, I keep pressing toward the light and away from the darkness. I keep preaching and teaching and being a friend because those are the gifts that God gave me to grow my faith and encourage others in theirs.

This journey of life and faith has brought me so far. It has brought you far, too, maybe further than you think. And I think that’s what Jesus wants. One of the reasons that I think Shawn and I have made it to 26 mostly happy years is our willingness to grow and change, sometimes kicking and screaming, both individually and as a family. And while I must admit that constantly moving and making new friends are part of the equation, I wonder if successfully intenerating through military and ministerial life isn’t more a byproduct of, rather than a reason for living a disciple’s life.

The wedding vows we all know so well ask something particular and peculiar from us. They do not ask, “Do you love each other?” They ask, “Will you love each other?... to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…” We make those promises not knowing what’s going to come next. And they are hard, so hard that some days we wonder why we ever thought this was a good idea.

But if you keep working at it together, you grow past the difficult times and into a new life, with new habits and new dreams and visions together. And you keep repeating the process because no week or month or day of marriage or life is perfect. And because of that promise, you keep pressing on, even though some days it seems for every bit of progress you make, you slip back a little, too.

During the Lenten season, we have explored our multi-dimensional relationship with God. There are obligations and blessings: repentance, and renewal, sacrifice and salvation, discipleship and deliverance. This week we see it all in the context of God’s never-ending love for us in Jesus Christ. And while it seems that our progress is only inching along, God put everything he had into the game.[iv] That realization is what the Lenten season is all about. Incorporating that into our journeys is called discipleship… let us live and love and work together in the Light. “For God did not bring his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that it might be saved through him…. “

Amen and Amen.

Let us Pray:

Christ, you are Light shining forth into our world. You have been sent to us that we might know the truth of who God is and what God’s intentions are for God’s world. In you we have seen God’s love reaching out to us, embracing us, drawing us ever more closely to the heart of God. Though we fully deserve your condemnation for our rebellion, you came not to condemn us but to reach out to us, to embrace us, and to bring us toward yourself.

As we walk through the season of Lent, as we try to be honest about ourselves and all the ways we betray your love by the thoughts we have and the ways we lead our lives, enable us to keep ever before us that you tell the truth to us in love, that you speak honestly, lovingly to us.

That you come to us not to condemn us we give thanks. Amen. (Will Willimon – Pulpit Resource – March 14, 2021)

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2021

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[i] Cameron B.R.Howard, Preach This Week, Commentary on Numbers 21:4-9, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3606

[ii] Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler, Lent 4B, Pulpit Fiction, https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent4b

[iii] Samuel Cruz, Commentary on John 3:14-21, Preach This Week, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3579

[iv] David Sellery, “A Game of Inches,” This Week’s Focus, Lent 4B, https://mailchi.mp/davidsellery/game-of-inches

Sermon - Bridges or Walls (Lent 3B)

3rd Sunday in Lent -- Year B -- March 7, 2021, Panzer Liturgical Chapel
Exodus 20:1-17     I Corinthians 1:18-25      John 2:13-22

Watch the news, read the paper, talk to your friends… it’s not a surprise to any of us that the world is in a particular state of disarray. Instinct tells us to build walls between ourselves and the people who are different than us… religion, political affiliation, race, even our schools of choice would have us associate only with people who are just like us.

At first glance, it seems like walls would make us safer… our worldview is affirmed and we can stay protected in cocoons of our own making. Unfortunately, our self-imposed walls tend to make us lonely and unchallenged. What if there was another choice? Of course, there is. Bridges are built to connect things, to bring us closer to places once considered unreachable, and to open up the possibilities that surround us.

The scriptures for today beg the question: Bridges or Walls? Are there more things in our lives that separate us from people than draw us to them? And where do we start if we want to tear down the walls between us and build more bridges instead?

I remember a story in Guidepost magazine about a family that retired to a friendly WV community, maybe a little too friendly. The shortest walking route to town went right through the middle of Fred Nicholas’ backyard. At all hours of the day, his family was greeted by young people riding their bikes up the driveway and through the grass as a shortcut to town. Many nights they found strangers waving at them through their kitchen window as they were sitting down for supper.

I guess you could call Fred irritated. No one ever asked – they just assumed it would be OK. And the more worn the yard became, the more irritated he got until finally one day he could take no more. He put up a sign -- “No Trespassing.” When that didn’t seem to make an impression, he began to speak to people as they passed through.

 “Please don’t walk on my grass.” All he got in return were giggles, salutes, and blank looks. And they kept on walking. “Enough is enough,” he said. “I’m going to keep these people out, one way or another.” His solution? Erect a wall. Well, it was a fence... a barbed-wire fence. And you know what? It did the trick. People learned pretty quickly that “Nicholas Pass” was no longer the best way to town.

Walls do a good job of blocking out the things that we don’t like or don’t want to know about. Walls enforce the status quo. But if we build them high enough, walls also keep us from seeing what’s on the other side. They keep us from experiencing life in new ways. And in the end, it often turns out that the walls built to protect us do more to chain us than they do to free us.

Bridges, on the other hand, connect things. Yes, they are sometimes scary… if you’ve ever been on a long bridge on a windy day, your hands stay tight on the wheel until you make it safely to the other side. But bridges open up the world in ways we never imagined. Think about all the new friends, new foods, new places, and experiences that came to you when you took advantage of a bridge.

So, what does this have to do with our lessons?

Today’s Old Testament lesson was taken from the book of Exodus. We think of the 10 commandments as an ethical code. But that was not their primary purpose. Verse 1 sets up everything that comes after: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” As a whole, they don’t just tell us how to live. They tell us in whom we must live -- The LORD our God.

If we don’t understand that, then we use 10 Commandments as a wall… to keep ourselves in line, to judge others, to stay safe from the unknown, and easily identified as members of the “family”.

But what would happen if we use these commandments as they were intended, as a bridge between God and us, to establish common ground among people whom God created and called?

Throughout time, the Hebrew people and their descendants have been interpreting God’s law as a law of exclusion rather than a law of inclusion. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are filled with rules and regulations for how God’s people will behave. But Jesus was able to boil all of those laws down to two: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). This is what the commandments are about.

No wonder Jesus was so upset when he entered the temple that day. “Get out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” Jesus was railing against a people who were more concerned with the purity of their sacrificial doves and cattle than they were their own hearts. With this act of holy anger, Jesus says, “You cannot worship the God of money nor the God of purity and be faithful in my Kingdom.”  He wasn’t just mad about people’s bad behavior – at that moment he witnessed the Law being used as a wedge or wall between the people and God, especially the poor. 

The Hebrew Bible story is filled with evidence that God’s people don’t learn from their mistakes. Over and over, walls were built, when finally, God gave them the ultimate bridge. It became clear to God that the laws and the warnings of the prophets were not enough to convince the people to change their ways for very long. What else could he do to convince them of his love? What bridge could be strong and long and high enough to carry the people away from certain death and bring them to the God of grace and mercy?

Jesus is the answer to all of those questions, but not in the way that anyone imagined. The Messiah was supposed to bring back their former glory, not get crucified for his trouble. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians says it well: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Only a bridge as radical as the cross could get our attention, for it is not what we expect. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

I think this is the hardest part of us, for Christians of almost every generation. Power is so alluring. It is so hard to remember that we are the ones called to speak truth to power, not to conform to the conventional wisdom of the day. Our real challenge as Christians is to be brave enough to stand up to the injustices of the world. We are called to put Jesus’ and his call to love God first in all the ways we live.

Only bridges allow us to go from place to place. Sometimes they are scary. Sometimes they go into unknown places, but ultimately they help us to reach out to the world, taking God’s peace, and the knowledge of our forgiveness with us. God’s best bridge, the cross of Jesus Christ, sends us out to proclaim the love of Christ to all the world.

Through the cross, we are all redeemed. Through the cross, we understand the real meaning of sacrifice. Through the cross, we hear Jesus calls us to challenge the way things have always been and build a bridge that connects us more fully to God. What was once an instrument of death became a symbol for an abundant, new life.

God’s love cannot be bound by walls, no matter how tall or thick we build them. God’s love can’t be diverted by church politics or racism or sexism or financial difficulties or discrimination of any kind. God’s love cannot be diluted by laws and regulations which serve to keep people out of the family instead of welcoming them to God’s loving, forgiving arms. When we place our trust in Jesus, that’s when we can build the bridges needed to spread God’s love – to speak God’s truth.

So, whatever happened to Fred Nicholas and his fence? Eventually, someone came and asked him why he built the fence. “What are you figuring on keeping in there -- cows or sheep?”

“Neither,” Fred answered testily. “It’s to there to keep out, trespassers.”

“Trespassers, huh? We ain’t figured anybody in the community as a trespasser before. We’ve always felt like neighbors.” And when his granddaughter wrote him about a grumpy, old man in her neighborhood who yelled at people for walking on his grass, saying “I’m glad you’re not like that, Granddad…” Needless to say, the fence came down. (Guidepost 1994)

The law is not the wall to keep people out of The Kingdom of God... it's the mirror we use to measure how well we are inviting people in. Paul wrote about this in many of his letters to the congregations of the early church. Following the law is not about checking off items as done or undone, but to help us understand the nature of our relationships with other people. If we can get into the practice of putting God and neighbor before self, or at the very least on par with the love of self, then we understand the best of what it means to be God’s children.

My father and brother were scouts. My husband was a scout. And I am fortunate to have spent almost 30 years working with scouts and other young people on religious emblems and merit and activity badges that promote the development of the self and the building of community. One of the things I love about scouting is the emphasis on service before self. Scouting absolutely teaches skills for self-growth, but it also helps young people understand their connectedness to the world around them and teaches them the skills to bring about real change, good change, necessary change, in the world. Studying everything from financial preparedness to ecology, youth are reminded that is always more to learn and always more ways to make the world a better place. 

Scouting teaches young people and their leaders that the things that draw us together are more important than the things that make us different. The older we get, the easier it is to fall back on the practice of building walls – we mistakenly think that will keep change from coming. Scouting challenges that perspective. I feel like one of the best skills that young people bring away from the scouting experience is the importance of and practice in building bridges as a life-long practice.

Robert Fulghum wrote a book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. We’d all be well advised to remember these lessons - When you get to the nitty-gritty, this is what bridge-building is all about:

Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life - Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day - some. Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, Hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. (Fulghum, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, 1986)

Now those are some great rules to live by. Let’s be bridgebuilders together. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon - Follow Me (Lent 2B)

 SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR B    February 28, 2021

Genesis 17:1-7; 15-16; Mark 8:31-38

Follow Me

In today's Gospel, Jesus clearly issues a challenge and call to discipleship.  When he called His disciples, He said, "Come, follow me" and they obeyed.  No questions of how much they would get paid, how much time would be involved, of how they would live and where.  Today, those are the questions that we have been conditioned to ask.  We want to know about salary, vacation time, and a complete job description.  We don’t know if Jesus asked others and was turned down.  All we know is that He issued an invitation to those whose names are recorded and by His compelling presence, there was no hesitancy to obey.  They left their nets; left behind jobs, families, and homes, and traveled the land with Jesus.

The dictionary defines denial in this way: "to abstain from indulging oneself."  It feels like today's world doesn't take kindly to this idea. Every day we are bombarded with temptations to indulge ourselves from all directions. Our wants become our needs, then we lose interest once they are ours.  We make a plan to acquire the newest and the best, and a month later, when something "new and improved" comes along, we want that, too.

And even if we are willing to deny ourselves something, taking up a cross of any kind – well that’s a step that’s really hard to imagine.  Inconvenience is something to be avoided, not taken on. The season of Lent offers us a chance to make a small stab at the idea of sacrifice if we decided to give up something as a spiritual discipline. But how often are we willing to think about what our lives would look like if we took on Christ’s challenge as the pattern for life every day – for a lifetime?

We often lift up the lives of people who have done extraordinary things and think that they are the template which we will never live up to. But the best role models for faithful living didn’t set out to be the faith gold standard. They lived authentic love, one day at a time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. preached the sermon and wrote the letter that people needed to hear, rather than the thing that would keep them safe. Mother Theresa worked diligently in the slums of India, with the hope that she could make a difference in the lives of the children under her care. Global care ministries like Charity Water and Habitat for Humanity started because one person, then one group, and then a lot of people, wanted to offer clean water and safe housing to communities of people in need. Attributed to many people, we are offered this reminder of how to approach this formidable task of taking up our cross: “Holiness doesn’t mean doing extraordinary things… it means doing ordinary things with extraordinary love.”

The call to discipleship is a gift to each and every Christian.  What does being a disciple mean in today's world?  Again, the dictionary defines disciple in this way..."One of the companions of Christ."  The roots of the word in Latin are discipulus, meaning “pupil” and discere, meaning "to learn."  The persons invited by Jesus were those he taught daily, both by word and action.  He gave them tasks to do in His name.  He invited them to be His most intimate friends.  He warned them so they might be prepared for his death.  Suffering from frustration and dismay when the disciples just "didn't get it," Jesus never gave up on them.  In spite of all their weaknesses, and because of their strength after Jesus' death and resurrection, you and I sit here today, hearing again Christ’s story, participating in His birth, life, death, and resurrection.  Like the disciples, we are charged with the responsibility to spread the good news.

In our Hebrew Bible lesson, we see the third occasion of Abraham receiving God’s covenant. In the first encounter, Abram lost his home. In the second, he lost his security. And here in the third, he lost his name. Of course, that is not how we usually interpret this encounter. We usually focus on what he gained.

But in truly appreciating the promise, we have to also acknowledge the sacrifice in order to interpret the call of God in its fullness. Abram was called to leave the familiar and to venture out, with a promise for the near and distant future, but no concrete directions on how to make it happen. In order to accept his part of the covenant, Abraham had to put his trust – and the trust of his whole family – in God He was called to believe he had a home, a place of safety despite being surrounded by enemies.

And now he is called to take on a new identity and to live that identity with his whole life. That kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight. We can sit down and read the whole Genesis story in one afternoon. But those events took place over a long period of time. We first encounter Abram when he is 75 years old and in today’s part of the story, he is pushing 100. Abram is living proof that, while the promises of God take time to unfold, when we follow, God is faithful.[i]

As Paul writes to the Christian churches outside the influence of Jerusalem, he is also growing his own understanding of how Jesus calls us to serve. In Romans 4, he ponders on the notion that Abraham believed in God’s promises, even though he had no evidence that God would or could follow through. Time and again they were tested, but kept going forward. Eventually, God’s promises were fulfilled, and for their faithfulness, not only were Abraham and Sarah blessed, but that blessing passed on to their descendants – that would be us.

For Paul, faith is what leads to life, even amid death, as shown in verse 17. This kind of trust is not easy or straightforward. For Abraham, the paragon of faithfulness, faith was a struggle—it required a “hope against hope.” While doubt might be the enemy of hope in our everyday lives, faith remains the anchor which holds us fast to the promises of God. Faith and hope together give us the strength to get through the things we think we cannot survive. Our trust in God and the unfailing love of Christ are sometimes all we have.

In addition, the act of taking up our crosses and following Jesus cannot be done by our own merit or strength. We are called to live out our faith with trust, obedience, sacrifice and belief in the living God – we cannot never do it alone.

Like Peter, we can get caught up in the radical nature of God’s call to service and sacrifice and want to put on the brakes, or at least ask questions. Peter’s rebuke of Jesus earns one right back. “Stop focusing on the ordinary and start paying attention to the divine,” Jesus says. Stop expecting comfort. Expect challenges that will feel like loss. Jesus sees a bigger picture and calls us to follow him into that future, unafraid.

Even in his doubt, Peter understands that Jesus is asking him – and us – to do something radical. If we take up that cross and follow him, our futures, our identities, will be forever linked to Jesus. The question is always whether or not we will embrace Jesus’ definition of his own mission – which is the only definition that matters – and how that affects the choices we make.[ii] 

The way forward is not without its doubts, roadblocks, and failures. Like the disciples, we will often abandon our mission at the most important times. Fortunately for all of us, Jesus’ story doesn’t end at the cross, but continues to the resurrection – that is Jesus’ defining moment, and our moment, too. And as we witness in the days after his death and his rising, he continues to gather a community of faith to believe, love, and serve in his name.

Where do we get the courage and the sustenance to go forward? In the sustaining experience of prayer, the power of the worship and table fellowship, in the love and acceptance of community, and our willingness to follow Him, sometimes kicking and screaming along the way. Those are the places where we can leave the darkness behind and enter into the pure light day. Yes, we pick up our crosses and follow Jesus to a dark place, but we do so, knowing that that is path to true and eternal life in him.

I close with this short poem.

Invitation to Follow
 
Abandon the illusion you're a self-contained individual.
Be a part of this wounded world,
and find yourself with Christ.
 
Set aside your own desires,
give yourself fully for others;
be the hands and heart of Jesus.
 
Renounce self-protection,
accept your brokenness,
and reach out for love.
 
Let go of your own plans.
Join in the healing of the world.
You will not be alone.
 
Follow your soul, not your ego.
Follow it right into people's suffering.
Follow it right into the heart of God.
 
Pour yourself out;
let the world pour in;
then you are one with the Beloved.

~ written by Steve Garnaas-Holmes and posted on Unfolding Light. https://www.unfoldinglight.net/  

Thanks be to God.

Peace, Deb 

(c) Deb Luther Teagan February 2021

 

Let us pray.

Jesus, as we journey with you toward your cross, your way becomes narrower and more difficult for us to follow. Most of us, when we began this journey with you, did not know that it would be so demanding. We fear that we are falling behind. We wonder if we can make it. It’s one thing for you, Son of God, to go to the cross. It’s altogether another thing for people like us to go with you.

If we are going to make it to the end of this journey, you will need to help us. Teach us, we pray. Correct us when we are wrong. Strengthen us when we are weak. Keep encouraging and re-assuring us that we, even in our many weaknesses and limitations, are up to the journey with you.

Keep walking with us, Lord, so that we can keep walking with you. Amen.[iii]

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[i] https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/rend-your-hearts-claiming-the-promise/second-sunday-in-lent-year-b-lectionary-planning-notes/second-sunday-in-lent-year-b-preaching-notes

[ii] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-mark-831-38-5

[iii] https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/10604/february-28-2021-walking-a-way-nobody-wants-to-go