Life and Death

Sermon from Sunday March 25,2012

John 12:20-33

There is the story of a young boy walking on the beach saving baby turtles by putting them in the water… when a man walks by saying,

“Why are you doing this? You can’t possibly make a difference, there are too many, you can’t save them all.”

The boy responds, “It makes a difference to this one!”

And then there was this young boy who ran up to his grandpa on the beach, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore. There a sea gull lay dead in the sand.

"Grandpa, what happened to him?" the little boy asked.
"He died and went to heaven," the grandfather replied.

The boy thought for a moment, and then said, "And God threw him back down?"

Prayer

Our Lenten journey continues as Jesus continues to walk towards Jerusalem and the Cross. Along the way, Jesus is trying to prepare his friends for his departure. It’s a departure they are unaware of… one that they have failed to comprehend and fully understand. On their journeys Jesus has told them at various times, places, and ways that he was going to die, then be raised to new life. And as the Passover approaches, again Jesus talks about his life and death.

Jesus says, “If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up, you will be given life.”

I can imagine Jesus’ friends and others who heard this being just as confused as many of us are. Of course… we have 2000+ years of hindsight. “Love your life & Lose or Give it up & Win”

Frankly…. This is one of those difficult stories to preach on because…. Well… Life & Death is… well FINITE!!

-       We live with a certain amount of time and then die… its kind-of over isn’t it!!

Given the difficulty of this story I checked some commentaries and they tended to Over-Theologize about the meaning of Jesus’ statement and what it says to us. For the theologian this is a story about Jesus’ atonement for our sins. Have any of you heard of this term… Atonement? Not many… it’s a theological term for as their comments were; this is about Jesus’ atonement for our sins… Jesus is seen as a sacrifice, or as a ransom, or some morel behavior to warrant God’s love. While this is minor as theological terms go, but often big theology arguments tend to leave the average person scratching their heads.

So without over-theologizing, I asked myself a simple question; “What is God saying to me?”

Maybe this will resonate with you.

God is saying to me…. Life = Relationship

Last week we heard the story about Nicedemous and Jesus… and where Nic couldn’t understand rationally how one could be “Born Again.”  Jesus says in John 3:8… “Only God’s Spirit gives life.” This is still difficult to grasp…

Jesus says again in John 5:24… “Whoever hears my message and has faith in the one who sent me has life.” Now this makes a bit more sense. Having faith in God can give me a different perspective on life. The point here is that our life can only be life when we begin a relationship with God. God… who breathed life into us desires us to draw close to him… to believe… to have faith. God says, “If you want life, have a relationship with me.”

God is saying to me… Life = Loss

Our culture would want us to believe the cliché “Eat, Drink, and Be Happy” or “The Pursuit of Happiness begins with having it All.” Of course, many of us sitting here today know thru experience these clichés don’t bring happiness and if we are to be honest with ourselves, may be harbingers to loss. Most of us realize and know the world can’t sustain our lives in the long term… unlike what some Politian’s want us to believe… sorry for that! For the most part, we understand winning doesn’t always bring happiness… in fact, losing can mean winning.

My grandson played middle-school football last year and on the last game they played a cross-town rival. By this time in the season they all had big heads because they were undefeated to this point. They were pretty confident as this team hadn’t had the best of seasons. I said to the grandfather sitting next to me, “It would be good if they lost to this team and lost big.” He echoed this sentiment. Our grandsons team lost and big. In fact, the other team ran up the score… in my mind losing was winning.

God is saying to me… Life = Death = Life

This may sound strange to us… but Jesus uses an agriculture metaphor to illustrate what I believe God wants us to hear. Vs 24… I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat.

In order for a grain of wheat to be planted… it first was alive as a plant… a seed is produced… it dies, then produces more seed, and life continues. We are given life by our creator God… God desires that we choose to have a relationship with Him… we die… The cross looms large… though we die our relationship with God paves the way for new life through Jesus.

And we don’t have to die a physical death to experience and enjoy the fruit of a new life. You’ve experienced this… you’ve experienced loss and thought you couldn’t go forward in life… you couldn’t do without _____________ Yet you have survived and in many cases thrived. The same is true with this church… there have been times when you thought this might be the end, but your faith and relationship to God continues to give life.

The over-arching and the So What question of this story for you, me and this faith community is… Where is God in relationship to your life?

I will leave you with a prayer from Frances of Assisi…

Our Father, each day is a little life, each night a tiny death; help us to live with faith and hope and love. Lift our duty above drudgery; let not our strength fail, or the vision fade, in the heat and burden of the day.

O God, make us patient and pitiful, one with another in the fret and jar of life, remembering that each fights a hard fight and walks a lonely way.

Forgive us, Lord, if we hurt our fellow souls; teach us a gentler tone, a sweeter charity of words, and a more healing touch. Sustain us, O God, when we must face sorrow; give us courage for the day and hope for tomorrow. Day unto day may we lay hold of your hand and look up into your face, whatever befall us, until our work is finished and the day is done. Amen.--Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226.

"Can Love Win?"

Sunday Mar. 18, 2012 Sermon                                                                                               

John 3:13-21

Prayer:

Pr. Dick Wills of Christ’s Church, Ft Lauderdale, Fl tells a Winnie the Pooh story, “Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.”Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you." "I will not drag you along; I will not leave you alone; I will stand by you and have my hand there for you to hold when you need to." Wills continues by saying, Love is never more significant until you need it.
With thanks to Dick Wills, dwills@christchurchum.org, May 2, 1998, personal e-mail.

This should be a message that is a no-brainer, but it’s also a message that asks a question… “Can Love Win?” You may think this is an easy question to ask, but it depends on whom you ask. Some… maybe many may say, “NO” Love can’t possibly win. They say, “Look around and see all the hurt, pain, suffering, abuse, and injustice in the world… where do you see love winning. If there is a God of Love where do you see love winning… there simply is too much hurt in the world.

For others… Yes!!! Love is winning and making a difference. For them, life has been a loving experience… loving parents, friends, God… love came when it was needed. You can look all around you and see love winning.

I’ve often wondered can love really win. Rob Bell in his most recent book, “Love Wins” attempts to answer the question.

He states, “Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite torment for things they did in the few finite years of life? This is a disturbing question about God. Is God a God of love or a God of Judgment? If so… why for some? Why you? Why me? Why not him or her or them? Are there only a select few who go to heaven? How does a person end up being one of the few? By chance? Luck? Random selection? Being born in the right place, family, or country? What kind of faith is that? Or more important; what kind of God is that?”

In deed there are many questions and one can only wonder where it will take you. In our gospel story from John today the context of the story is most familiar.

The story of Jesus and Nicedemus in where Jesus challenges this quite religious Pharisee into thinking out of the box of his religious experience. Jesus says, “You must be born again” or as we may like to say it, “Born Anew” all of which blows Nic’s mind wondering how this is possible. Then Jesus says something we all acknowledge as good and true, but find difficult to grab hold of many times. Often times we totally miss this when Jesus says, “For God so loved the world he gave his son for whoever believes will have eternal life.” Or as I like to say…“God loved you and me so much he sent Jesus to make that love known.”

But, there’s a dichotomy here as there often is when Jesus speaks. Vs 18… Jesus says, “Everyone who doesn’t believe in him is condemned.” Jesus often says things one way, and then says the complete opposite. It is confusing to say the least and often puts us in the position of wondering what to believe. I find this difficult to understand… didn’t we just hear Jesus say that God loved the whole world? How can we reconcile these seemingly opposite statements?

You may find this strange when I say, “I don’t know” OK…You’re thinking… a pastor with all kinds of education about the bible and theology and you tell us you don’t know!! What kind of pastor are you? What I will say, as I found myself preparing for this I must try to convince you of God’s love. Come up with three points that would make you believe… that God loves you… it’s the basis of our theological Christian belief… right! Every time I looked for those convincing passages in the bible, the context of those passages were stories of Jesus where of loving and of judging or condemning, much like our story today. Of course, you could just believe what I said was true… after-all I’m the pastor. But you know… someone like Bob would go and look the passages up, then come back to me and say, “Pastor something doesn’t make sense…. So… convincing you of God’s love seemed futile.

But… what I will say, in my experience, I believe God loves me mo matter what or where I’ve been or done. Why do I believe this? Because when I experienced the depths of despair, when I was at the bottom of life, when things seemed to be going all wrong, I looked up and experienced Jesus extending his hand grabbing hold of me and inviting me to the table of forgiveness and grace.

You see… I can’t tell you of God’s Love. I can’t convince you that God loves you… You must experience God’s love for yourself. You must experience God’s grabbing hand and invitation to forgiveness and grace. No one can tell you that… you must experience it. Then… and only then… whether or not you believe, and only then maybe you will pay attention.

In the end…I believe God loves you and me so much that he sent Jesus to make that love known…and then you can experience “Love Winning.”

“In or Out of the Box”

Sermon from Sunday Mar.11, 2012

 John 2: 13-22

Evangelist Greg Laurie says, “Jesus did not command the world to go to church; Jesus commanded the church to go to the world. What a person does with this depends on if you’re “In or Out of the Box.”

Prayer:

Our gospel story today seems rather obvious. Jesus appears to be upsetting the apple-cart of church commerce. Indeed, Jesus is not happy about what he sees as the Temple priests profiting from the Passover Festival. And of course, we have taken a page from this story and interpreted it to mean the church shouldn’t be doing fund-raising either. I too have misgivings about church fund-raising efforts and how our culture seems to promote its use. And you need not look far to see it in action throughout our culture… ask any parent on how many times their kids come home from school with something to sell. Then the church does the same thing wanting to do something or go somewhere. Then… we get this story to guilt us…. But is this what’s going on here? Or is this nothing more than a huge fund-raising enterprise concocted by the Temple Priests to profit from?

Let’s look at a couple points I believe Jesus is doing here.

First… Jesus observed 3 Jewish festivals in addition to the weekly Sabbath observance.

-       Passover… Observed in Mar/Apr… remembering the Exodus.

-      Tabernacles… Observed Sept/Oct… celebrating the Harvest.

-       Dedication… Observed Nov/Dec… remembering the dedication of the Ark of the Covenant.

Passover is the basis of our story today. People would have come from all over to Jerusalem… it would have been in all likelihood a once or maybe a couple of times in a life-time pilgrimage for most people, and they would have not brought the necessary offering with them, thus the need to buy them, and the Temple Priests an opportunity to provide at a cost. The Romans also saw this as an opportunity to get their share as well by taxing the transactions.

Secondly and in addition, John’s version of the story is interesting as well. John places this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Matt- Mark- Luke have this story at the end of Jesus’ ministry. Also different, and this may just be semantics, but John quotes Jesus saying, “Don’t make my father’s house a market-place.” Matt- Mark – Luke say, “This is a house of Prayer” or perhaps Worship. In all the gospel cases, Jesus is very angry and uses his anger in a very human reaction against the priests.

Jesus is challenging the power structures of the Temple and the very religious institutions practices of which he is very familiar with. This…I believe is the reason the other gospels place this story near the end of Jesus’ ministry as to point the reasons for Jesus’ arrest and death. Jesus challenges the religious system because of its embedded rules and practices that took away from God’s mercy and grace. God was in the process of eliminating all the ritual and sacrificial action necessary for forgiveness… Though no one at the time knew nor would have understood it would be Jesus doing this. Jesus says, “Destroy this Temple and in Three days I will build it again.” I believe Jesus here is really saying that Temple worship may not be all that necessary… if fact doing this is a specified building isn’t what God intended… and John, who writes his gospel much latter than the others, is observing similar behavior in his community.

Oh no… you heard the pastor say, “You don’t need to go to church” to be religious. This is true… but the rules and rituals are what Jesus is challenging here… not being in church. Perhaps, as some theologians have postulated, this story may be at the beginning to point out that John’s community is putting Jesus in a box… thus the connection for us.

So the question for us is… are we “In or Out of the Box?” Have we wrapped our box of institutional systems and practices around our faith in Jesus? Have we like the Temple priests of Jesus’ day so ordered our Christian faith around a Temple church building or programs or other activities that we miss the opportunity to be the face of Jesus to a hurting world? Has the box this church building become most important?

Closing:

Where do you see God?

This might be a fun exercise… to share stories of where we see God. I would like to suggest that you write down your stories and post them on a bulletin board or even on the web site for people to see where you’ve seen God today. Perhaps, someone could prepare a bulletin board for you to post your stories on. It would be interesting to see us expand our gaze to what God is up to in this community.

Of course, it all depends if you’re “In or Out of the Box” and looking for what God is doing!!!

See You Out On The Road

Week Two

Well... I'm in week two of my call/job as an interim pastor. My wife doesn't like that I name my call as a interim pastor a job. She thinks that God has called me to this place at this time for a purpose. While I agree with her to some extent this position still seems like a job. Perhaps a holy job, but a job nonetheless. I think I'm calling it a job because it helps me to be engaged yet disengaged. If I think of it as a job, then I can keep an arms length distance away from having any kind of relationship with the people. I apologize if this makes you nervous... it makes me nervous too. But it helps my head.  

The past two weeks have gone well. The people have been great. Worship has been enjoyable. After Easter the interim process will begin, and then there might be changes in how things are going. So far anyway, people here seem to be ready for something new to happen. There is an excitement about moving towards the unknown future.... and for me... this is a good thing.

See You Out on the Road

New Call Part 3

Yesterday was my first worship experience at my new interim call/job. The congregation has two worship experiences... the early one changes every week from Folk/ Chicago Folk/ Blues Gospel/ Holden Folk. The late worship is Contemporary Praise, which I like and is the largest attended. The morning went well as I begin to learn the rhythm's of the congregation, and while the worship experiences seemed a bit disjointed to me, as I get use to them things should get smoother.

On my last post I said I would reflect on the challenges of being an Interim Pastor. 

The first challenge interim's face is that of bringing change. While the congregation I'm serving in seems to embrace change, at least on the surface, I will be changing things. Not so much as changing programs or for that matter how things are done, but by just being me is a shock to the current congregational system. The former pastor was there for 25 years and people knew and understood his quirks and how he went about doing things. Now I come in, with my quirks and ways of doing things... and walla... change happens just by showing up.

The challenge in this is trying to honor the congregation's traditions and ways of doing, while knowing that I have to be me and be the person God has created me to be. So, while nuts and bolts admin and organization stuff will continue for the most part unabated and without much change... being me with my passions and giftedness will in all likelihood cause some friction. It is to be expected and for the most part everyone knows and understands this, but it will cause some heart-ache. I mentioned this in my opening message to them. While the pastor they had  a great guy... he is still retired. And while I have great admiration and respect for him... he is still retired. I am not Pr. B and your new pastor is not going to be Pr. B either. Things at ### Lutheran are going to be different from now on. But God will provide and you will make it through this process.

The other challenge and the one that brings it's greatest difficulty is one of relationships. During the interim process the interim is suppose to engage with the congregation and yet be disengaged. To be IN, yet OUT. To love and care, yet..... well I'm not sure.

Many pastors are pastor's because they are relational human beings and quite naturally build relationships with people they are pastoring. The difficult part; is building relationships that naturally happen, then become friendships. This happens just by being you... your persona... your personality. It just happens. Why you might ask is this difficult? Because I will be leaving. I have a set end date, and I can't take them with me. 

Friendships for interims in congregations they serve often have difficult endings for both the friend and the interim pastor. While many in the congregation may believe the interim is the best pastor for the congregation and even the interim may believe he or she is a match, many times these arrangements seldom work out.

And there is the challenge... to love the people yet not be connected. I hope and pray I can meet this challenge. I hope...

I will keep posting my reflections about this interim journey as I experience them.


See You Out On The Road

New Call Part 2

As mentioned in my previous post, I started a new call/ job this week. This new position is called an "Intentional Interim" meaning that I will be helping a congregation transition towards calling a new perminate pastor leader. So... my time in this position is limited... probably about 18 months. That... for me is of concern.

For me, I dreamed of being a perminate full-time pastoral leader in a very open-minded, missionally focused, and creative congregation. I hoped my skills and passions would help grow a congregation in God's kingdom. Well... this hasn't happened and it has made me ever more cynical and critical of the church as a whole. While I'm grateful and thankful for the opportunity I've been given it feels different. I'm not sure why because the churches I've served have turned out to be short term calls... similar to that of an "Interim Pastor." So... it's really not much different when you think about.

Kathy, my wife, and I were talking the other day about this transitional call. She hopes I would have something more perminate as do I, but for different reasons. Me... I'm comfortable with change and excited about doing new things in new places. She related she really desires stability and sameness. She said, "my mom and dad lived in the same house all their married lives. Dad worked in the same job for the same employer. They never worried about having enough money. They never worried about having enough for retirement. I've been raised in that kind of environment and that's where I'm at." Well... life for us hasn't been like that for nearly 37 years and she has had to endure that anxiety in her life all because of me. And if you think about... our society is ever-changing at what seems alarming rates. This anxiety perhaps has contributed in part to some of her medical issues that she faces. 

This is why I hoped my ministry would have been different. I hoped we would have had longer term calls as to give her some of the stability she so eagerly desired. 

Next time I'll reflect on the challenges of being an interim pastor.

See You Out on the Road

New Call Part 2

As mentioned in the previous post I started a new call/ job. It is what's called an "Intentional Interim" call where I will help a congregation transition to a new perminate pastor.

While I'm grateful and thankful for this opportunity to serve, It's not the type of call I hoped I would be in. I, like many of my pastor friends and colleagues desire