Thursday, March 28, 2013

A Different Reality

I pray that you are well and that this has been a fruitful Lent and Holy Week in your life with God. Like me, you may not notice a greater presence of God at work in your life. Because the spiritual life follows the physical life, we can expect that God will use our desire for a deeper life with him, to draw us closer.

This Sunday, Easter Sunday, is the day of days for Christians. All the hoopla around Christmas and Jesus’ birth and all the teachings and healings and miracles in His earthly ministry, find their power in this singular turning point in the history of the world. Because Jesus is resurrected from the dead, His birth has meaning for us. Because Jesus is resurrected from the dead, His teachings and power can continue to work in our lives today. Because Jesus is risen from the dead, we live in a different reality and know a love in our lives that has no end.

You see, there are two realities at work in our lives as followers of Jesus. One reality is the world we all live in. It is a world that is both filled with wonder and heartache. We know the wonder of human love and the magnificence of the creation around us. We also know heartache, difficulties and endings, many of our own making, that leave us wanting.

When Jesus is resurrected from the dead, God opens us up to a different reality. Yes, the gift of human love and the magnificence of creation continue to bless our lives. But the heartache of broken relationships, failed ventures, and death itself begin to be restored by the presence of the Risen One in our lives. For just as Jesus offered a living relationship with God, forgiveness, healing, and restoration in His earthly ministry, we believe and know that He offers them to us now, when we follow Him. It is a different reality and a reality that offers us the fullness of life now and the promise of life for all time.

So, as we draw closer to Easter, I encourage you take hold of this different reality. Allow God’s forgiveness, love, hope to work in your lives and live without fear, for Jesus is risen.

Grace and Peace,
WFA



Monday, March 4, 2013

Running Your Own Race with God

Introduction: The Best Messages Don’t Always Touch Us, We Think

Someone once said that the definition of a good sermon is that it’s not only short, but also it’s a sermon that goes over our heads or a message that goes past us, and hits our neighbor squarely in the heart. Think about it, how many times when we read the ten commandments in Lent, or listen to the scripture readings and the sermon and how it seems to apply less to your life and your situation and would be better heard and applied to one of your neighbors. Or to the preacher himself?

For instance, when we say the ten commandments together; and we get to the commandment about not coveting, does it make you squirm a little over the times you’ve wanted what someone else has, or do your tell yourself that that applies to everyone but me. Or when the readings and the sermon and the announcements are about stewardship and the preacher is talking about God’s call for us to tithe, to give away ten percent; does that make you tense up a little, or do you assume he’s talking to someone else because you’ve already written your check for today to put into the plate, and college tuitions and retirement plans are expensive? Or a lesson and sermon about loving your neighbor and
you check that box and zone out a little because just last week you moved your neighbor’s trash can out of the road and into their yard. Or the challenge comes to use your gifts on behalf of God’s kingdom, the call to use your time and talents more for St. David’s, more for God, and you let the call pass because you once taught Sunday School two years ago and you brought a can of soup for St. Mary’s in Chester just last month.

I learned this concept of a good sermon passing you by when I was in 8th grade. I was president of the middle school youth group and felt like I was doing a good job. Even though I had a tendency to disrupt things a little and make jokes at inappropriate times (something I now have under full control.) We went away on retreat in the fall and on Saturday afternoon, before we returned home. The priest in charge gave a sermon during the closing communion service that was pretty harsh about our behavior in general. He promised that some of us had better straighten up, or we’d be out of the youth group. I listened and thought about how some of my friends didn’t take this seriously enough,
and how the youth group would be better if a couple of them weren’t there, because they
often caused trouble and disrupted our meetings.

As we piled into cars to go home, Father Swann invited me to drive home with him; and as we were driving he asked what I thought about the sermon. I told him I thought it was a good sermon and that there were some kids who needed to straighten up or that they should leave. He pulled over to the side of the road we were traveling together, looked me in the eye and explained that he was talking specifically about me, and that if I didn’t use my gifts and leadership for good going forward he’d have to ask me to leave the group. That was a long drive back home.

It’s so easy to assume that these commandments we say together and that the message in Sunday’s readings and Sunday’s sermons have little to do with you and me and much more to do with those other people, especially those who don’t happen to be with us today. But that assumption can keep you and me from entering into a deeper life with God, and hearing the truth about our lives and the life God is calling us to live. The race each of us has been called to run. You see, we are all running our own race as Christians in the world, as followers of Jesus, but until we listen up and turn to God’s commands and God’s calling we are running a race that is very unlikely to speed us to a deeper life with God and a life that’s really life.

Jesus and the Gospel

And that’s what Jesus is emphasizing in today’s Gospel—the call for us to repent, the call for us, to turn our lives toward God and God’s purposes and to stop paying attention to whether other people are following rightly and to pay attention to the race we’re running because that’s the only race we’re responsible for.

In Jesus’ time, there was a common understanding that when bad things happened to people or someone was blind or ill, that there was some kind of correlation or connection to the kind of life they were living. A person who was a living a good life, a Godly life, received good things, and a person or persons who weren’t living such a good life or Godly life received judgment in the form of sickness or disease or even early death. So, when people come to Jesus asking about the Galileans who were executed, and had their blood mixed with the blood of the Roman sacrifices, they were asking Jesus about whether these people deserved what they got. Were they such bad people that they
deserved to be killed off? And by asking the question, they were trying to justify the lives they were living, because they weren’t among the ones who were killed.

Jesus preaches a very brief and very directed sermon to them challenging them about their own lives, basically telling them to run their own race don’t pay attention to their status with God. But unless you repent, unless you turn your life more toward God, you would perish as well. To make sure that they understood that that short sermon was meant for them, Jesus goes on to emphasize the point about running your own race by reminding them of the tower of Siloam that fell by accident and killed eighteen people. How, unless they repented, unless they turned their lives toward God they would perish as well.

It must be part of the human condition to compare ourselves to others and the races they are running, rather than to pay close attention to our own race, to our own following after God (which I’ve noticed is a pretty full time job.) But the ten commandments we’ve been reading in Lent as the decalogue, the scriptures and Sunday sermons, the messages from Jesus in the Gospels are not for others. They’re for you and for me; so that we will not only turn our lives more toward God but also run and live our lives in such a way that we turn and respond.

You see, this God who forgives us for everything. So that we can start over each day with a clean slate to try again. This God who came and lived among us and suffered for us on a cross, and rose again that first Easter revealing for all time that God loves us and wants us and forgives us, is also the God who wants us to run our race in a certain way, a certain direction.

Following Jesus is not a life where anything goes, but a life with boundaries. A course for
racing that has a starting line, a set course, and a finish line that is both directed by God
and connected to God at every step we take. And following the commandments and
allowing the Sunday Scriptures and sermons to speak to your life is often the best starting
line for a race that will keep you connected to God and for allowing room for God to
direct you on your way.

Running Your Race So That You May Know a Life That’s Really Life

There are so many races to be run in the Christian life, as many races as there are people
in this room. But all of them are directed by the word of God, by listening in prayer, and
sometimes, even by the sermon. When we were starting the capital campaign for this Chapel ten years ago, a twelve year old in the congregation heard the call to share what she had, so she broke her piggy bank and brought $42.86 for the campaign. It was one of the most important gifts we received; because she gave all she had at that time for God. Last year a senior in high school from this church, hearing the call to love his neighbor as himself, broke up three boys who were bullying a ninth grader, and he befriended that ninth grader for the rest of the year. Many of the men of the church heard the call to use their gifts for God and have dedicated thousands of hours along with thousands of dollars to rebuild the rectory at the Church of the Crucifixion, and that church has been encouraged and is coming alive because of their commitment. An elderly member of our congregation, who couldn’t come to church for years before she entered into glory last fall; used the gift of her time and her ability to knit to make chemo caps and prayer shawls that we have blessed and shared with children and persons recovering from illness.

So listen up in church and in your daily prayers because it’s meant not just for the person
sitting behind you, it’s meant for you. Then, run your race whatever it may be, following
the commandments of God and allowing God the primary place in your life, so that you
can hear God’s voice and follow in His ways to run the race that is set before you with
the power and presence of God working in you every step of the way. This is the way of
life and the path that will allow you and me and the person over there to enter more fully
into a life that is really life—the life that is lived with and lived for God.

Amen.