The Gift of Love

From December 24, 2018
By Rev. Shawn Coons

Most people are familiar with “the Christmas story.”  The virgin Mary miraculously pregnant, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem, staying in a manger to give birth to Jesus, angels, shepherds, wise men.

But there is a second story told alongside the Christmas story in the Bible.  And this is not a story of humble beginnings or unimportant people. It is Caesar’s story, and though it often quietly goes unnoticed by Christians at this time of year, for the Jewish people of Israel 2000 years ago the story of Caesar was loud and ever present.

Paul Bellan-Boyer writes about it this way:

“there is this little bitty baby...

If it were up to Caesar, you would never hear his story. Nothing in it is exalted. The poor travelers have no family, connections, or money to give them a place. They carry only a swollen belly of questionable paternity. The newborn’s cradle is gilded with leftover hay and livestock spittle. The witnesses to this glory are the least reputable characters around, shepherds who, filled with angel visions, abandon their flocks.

If it were up to Caesar, you would not dare to: think of responsibilities to any Lord other than Caesar; glorify any Lord other than Caesar; even hint at challenging Caesar’s authority.

If it were up to Caesar, the tables of the powerful would never be overturned. When Caesar hears a story like this, he knows only to crush it, to crucify it. Yet in the starlight of those Palestinian hills and in the candlelight of a midnight Mass, we can glimpse a new reality: where peace comes not from armies, but from justice; where sin withers in the face of truth; where mercy rules the arena of human society; and where love conquers fear.”

Where love conquers fear.  The story of Christmas is a story of love. The story of Caesar is a story of fear.  All Caesars rule by fear. Fear of danger, fear of people of different races or religions, fear of losing your privilege.  But as we heard Mark read a moment ago, love casts out fear.  And love came to us powerfully 2000 years ago to cast out fear once and for all.

For this morning’s gospel lesson, we are going to pick up the Christmas story right after the birth of Jesus.  When a host of angels visits a ragtag bunch of shepherds.  Pay attention to the first words the angels speak to the shepherds.

Luke 2:8-16

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.

Layton Williams writes:

“Don’t be afraid.” That is always the first thing that comes out of an angel’s mouth. Don’t be afraid. Be ye not afraid. Do not fear. Fear not. However you translate it, angel voices always issue the holy invitation to lean into courage rather than to give into fear.

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” the angel Gabriel promised that young, engaged yet unmarried, peasant girl named Mary…In the Gospel of Matthew, the angel delivered that “do not be afraid” message to Joseph, as he dreamt…

The shepherds heard those words as well. There they were, minding their own business, watching their sheep, just doing their jobs when suddenly, brightness broke out all around them and angels appeared.

Don’t be afraid, an angel called. And then the angel told the shepherds of the birth. A birth that was to be good news of great joy for all the people. And the shepherds, like Mary, like Joseph, decided to lean into courage rather than to give into fear. They immediately took off to see what they would find. But again, the first words from holy mouths: Don’t be afraid.

It’s sometimes assumed that the angels are saying “don’t be afraid” because the presence of an angel, a divine and powerful messenger from God, is fear inducing.  That may or may not be the case, but I would suggest that Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds all had reason to be fearful before the angels ever came to them.

As Jewish people living in Israel in the first century, Mary, Joseph and the shepherds were all living under Roman occupation. They were living under the rule of Caesar. And Caesar ruled by power and fear. And this Christmas story is set in the shadow of Caesar, from the start, the author of Luke sets up two narratives, with two saviors.

In the first verse of chapter 2 we heard about a census declared by Emperor Augustus, when Quirinius was governor.  Caesar Augustus was the winner of the Roman civil war.  He was Octavian, the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar.  Octavian formed an alliance with Mark Antony to rise to power.

Octavian and his ally, Mark Antony, had their inevitable falling out, and went to war against each other.  Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and ended the Roman Civil War.  Octavian--now Caesar Augustus--was given credit for ending thirteen years of chaos.  Many called him "the savior of the world." 

So when the angel’s came to the shepherds to announce that a savior is born, this is the author of Luke’s way of saying “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.”  And it is in this moment, when the angels come to the shepherds, that Jesus’ kingdom is being defined in contrast to Caesar’s.

The first people that are told of the birth of Jesus are not the important people mentioned in verse 1. No Emperors, or governors here.  Just shepherds.  And shepherds are kind of sketchy people in that day and age.  One commentator writes:

While shepherds could be romanticized (as was King David), they were usually ranked with ass drivers, tanners, sailors, butchers, camel drivers, and other despised occupations. Being away from home at night they were unable to protect their women, hence considered dishonorable. In addition, they often were considered thieves because they grazed their flocks on other people's property.

But they are the first recipients of the good news that a savior has come. A true savior.

Maybe they were chosen to receive the good news because they would be the most receptive?  Maybe it is those who are lowest and most despised who need a savior the most?  And maybe they are also the ones who need to hear “Don’t be afraid” the most as well.  Living on the margins of society, living in a vulnerable position, one day or loss away from losing it all. That puts a person in a constant state of stress and fear.  Never knowing if today is the day that what little you have gets taken from you.

But the shepherds respond in the best way possible.  They go with haste and joy to see the newborn Jesus, but notice what they do before they go. The Bible records them discussing what’s taken place with one another.  They decide as a group.  The first signs of the new kingdom show us that this is not a top-down system ruled by a Caesar, but a kingdom where all voices are heard and valued, and no one should be afraid.

Fear was a reality 2000 years ago, and it’s a reality for us today.  So much of what goes on around us seems to be driven by fear.  A quick check of today’s headlines gives us plenty to fear.  Powerful corporations taking away our choices, nuclear war, refugees and immigrants, other races, other religions, stagnant wages, crime on the streets, politicians run amok, global warming.

Even our own Christian faith is not a stranger to lifting up fear.  Leonard Sweet has said that too often religion spreads fear so that it can sell hope.  Have you ever seen a Christian street preacher?  The ones I have most often seen are the ones yelling loudly about sin, hell, and what happens to you if you don’t believe in Jesus.  They sometimes have signs with horrible things written on them in big blocky capital letters.  God hates this kind of person, or You will burn in hell.

That’s faith by fear.  Believe in God or else.  That’s a threat.

But that’s not what the Christmas story is about. Caesar’s story is about fear. Fear is the tool of those that oppose God.  Unfortunately, it works too often. It’s much easier to appeal to someone’s worst fears then their best aspirations.  But easier is not better.  And we believe in a God that chooses the best way and not the easy way.

The Christmas story is about love. The kind of love that casts out fear.   

So friends, despite whatever else we hear out there, as followers of Jesus, we are invited, called, challenged to be not afraid. To fear not. For we have seen the face of our God and know the incomprehensible depth of God’s love. May we all go from this time of worship, from this Christmas Eve, deciding to lean into courage rather than to give into fear, trusting that God is still at work in this world and even at work in and through us.

Just imagine what could happen in our lives and in this world if we all decided to heed the angels’ voices and to not be afraid anymore.

The Gift of Peace - How to Conquer Your Enemies

From December 10, 2017
by Rev. Shawn Coons

In just a few moments I’ll be reading part of the Christmas story from the book of Luke. We are familiar with the Christmas story and the various characters in it. We know the ensemble gathered around the nativity.  Of course, there’s Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.  The shepherds and the wise men.  An angel or two, as well as a couple sheep, a donkey or a cow.  I’m guessing you all have nativity sets at home with all of these present.

But there are other characters in the Christmas story that we often don’t remember, or that we leave behind by the time we get to the candlelight of Christmas Eve.  And I’m not talking about the extra characters you see in some nativity sets. For example, we have an advent calendar at home that has a different Christmas character for each day of December up until Christmas Eve.  24 different ones.  There are the ones mentioned above, but then they add a few more.  There’s one who is a bringing a pizza.  And then there’s also a bag piper.  So much for your silent night.

The passage that I am reading from Luke has none of the people (or animals) listed above.  Instead the only person speaking or acting in the passage is Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, and husband of Elizabeth.  John the Baptist is an important person in the Gospels. He is the one who comes before Jesus to prepare the way of the Lord.  Elizabeth is familiar from the passage before this one, where her relative Mary comes to her after receiving word of her miraculous pregnancy.  And when Mary and Elizabeth greet each other, it is recorded in poetic verse with memorable lines such as “Blessed are you among women!” and “My soul magnifies the Lord!”

But Zechariah doesn’t have as big of a role to play in the typical Christmas story, nonetheless if we skipped over his story and how the Spirit works through him, it is only to our loss.  In some ways, the story of Zechariah and Elisabeth seems more at home in the Old Testament.  When we are introduced to them we meet an older couple, their lives and ancestry rooted in the Jewish tradition and the Jewish priesthood.  And we hear this familiar theme, “ they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.”

Immediately, this will remind many of the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, who were well beyond child-bearing years with no children, until God came to them to being them the good news that Sarah was pregnant and would bear a son.  Elisabeth and Zechariah also received this news.  In both cases it was met with skepticism, and in Zechariah’s case his disbelief caused God’s messenger to strike Zechariah mute until his son was born and named.

The passage we will be reading this morning, Luke 1, beginning with verse 67, are the first words he says after regaining his speech. And it is a poetic verse on par with Mary and Elisabeth’s earlier verses.  First recounting the promises of God, and then naming God’s plans for his newborn son, John.

67Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy: 68“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, 70as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. 72Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us74that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

76And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. 78By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, 79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

“To guide our feet into the way of peace.”  Today is the second Sunday of Advent, and on this Sunday we focus on the Advent theme of peace.  In first century Israel, especially at the time of Jesus birth, the Jewish people were longing for peace.  They weren’t currently at war. The people of Israel wasn’t battling any other country at the time. But that’s because they had lost the war.

Israel was an occupied country. The Romans had long ago conquered Israel and their rule was law.  So when Zechariah speaks about God raising up a savior who would save Israel from their enemies. He meant the Romans. When he says that God will bring light and guide our feet into the way of peace. He is expecting a messiah he will bring about peace by fighting the Romans and throwing them out of Israel.  Zechariah, would have been a typical Jew of his time and recall the stories of Hebrew scripture where God was often on the battlefield with the armies of Israel. God led them in battle to defeat and conquer their enemies of old. Peace in Israel was brought about by the mighty hand of God against their enemies.

But we begin to see a clue that this isn’t what God has planned for Israel. Mary is not carrying in her womb a military messiah who will bring peace through might, but one who with the dawn from on high will bring about the tender mercy of God.  In Zechariah’s poetic passage he uses imagery and words from Isaiah chapter 42.  In this passage, there is a servant of God described. One who will be “a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind.”

A light to the nations.  Not the general of one nation. But a light to all nations.

For the people of Israel, and for us today, there is a monumental shift in how peace is achieved that becomes reality through the incarnation, through Jesus taking human form.  During this time of Advent, you may remember that we look to and prepare for Jesus’ coming, not just 2000 years ago in Bethlehem, but to when Jesus comes again, at the end of time to fully realize the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes when looking forward to the Second Coming of Jesus we talk about the apocalypse, which is often described at times in the Bible with striking and almost violent imagery. Dark skies, the sun and moon turning red as blood, turmoil across the earth.  For many Christians, the apocalypse has come to serve as code for a cosmic and spiritual war to end all wars. It will be a battle where God will strike down and conquer any enemy of God and Christians throughout the world.

But does this sound like how Jesus would bring about peace?  Through violence, through war, through conquering? Does this sound like the Prince of Peace?  James Alison in his book Raising Abel suggests a different way of looking at the end of time when Jesus comes again.  He asks us to look at the second coming not as apocalyptic but as eschatological.  Eschato-whu? 

Eschatology is a fancy word for a how Christians talk about the end of time.  Not the end as in the finish, but the end as in the completion, the goal, the fulfillment.  When we talk about eschatology, it’s not about how the world will end, how the world as we know it will be destroyed.  We talk about how the world should end up, how the world should be when all is right and God’s purposes are achieved for all creation.

James Alison compares Apocalyptic vs. Eschatological:

Apocalypse is about a violent ending to the creation, a retribution by God against the tyrants, and the vindication of God's people. Behind this understanding of the completion of all things is a God who is a super version of ourselves. He will redeem and cleanse the world from its violence and evil, by using even more violence.

In apocalyptic thinking the hope is in God’s ultimate sacred violence [whereas in] eschatological thinking… the nonviolent God is rescuing us human beings from our own violence.

A key part of apocalyptic thinking is a dualistic us and them, good and evil mindset.  The sheep will be separated from the goats, and we inevitably think we can perceive the lines of that separation, despite long experience that we get it wrong.

When Zechariah spoke his words of prophecy about the coming savior who would rescue Israel from its enemies, he didn’t know what he was saying. Yes, Jesus would come to get rid of our enemies. But not by fighting them, but by loving them. Ghandi once said, “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”  And Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying, “the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

But long before any of those were said, Jesus taught people to “love their enemies” and to “turn the other cheek.”  Jesus knew that true peace wasn’t achieved by destroying those opposed to you, but by loving them until they were no longer your enemy.  This was a powerful and strange message to those in Israel who were looking for God to take care of their enemies and give them what they had coming to them.

It’s a powerful and strange message to us today as well.  We live in a time and place, where too many people are looking to strike out against their enemies, where too many people are looking for enemies where there are none.  Some of our leaders have discovered that the quickest way to power is not to unite people, but to divide, to label this group or that group as the enemy. To look for those who are of a different faith or a different skin color, and turn their followers in anger against them.

Some leaders even claim to do this in the name of God and Christian faith.  But a true leader from God doesn’t look to make enemies out of neighbors, or create enemies for personal or political gain. A true leader from God seeks to create neighbors out of enemies, and to lead and live in such a way that enemies are not vanquished or conquered but loved until they are enemies no more.

It’s so easy to find an enemy and pray for that they get what’s coming to them, but that is not what we are called to, Christians.  In Matthew 25, we have a somewhat apocalyptic passage where Jesus comes back at the end of time to judge the nations based on how they treated those who were poor and in need.  And it can be easy to read it as a passage where God takes our enemies and gives them the punishment they deserve.  Jesus separates them like sheep and goats, the sheep, the good ones on one side going to eternal reward, and the goats on the other side, headed for eternal punishment.

But I want to read to you a continuation of this story, written by Andrew Prior. It’s not from the Bible, but it rings of truth to me, and maybe to you as well.

A great silence settled over the stockyards. Many among the sheep had expected to go to the other place. They had, after all, not lived well. But some small mercy on their part had them standing here kingdom bound. A few shifted uneasily. Some of that charity had only been to shut up and get rid of beggars on the street.

n the other yard, people who had worked long and hard, and sacrificed much for God gazed dully at the ground. It was so obvious now− how could they have not seen that doing the right thing while leaving someone unloved was an absolute contradiction of the kingdom?

A small lamb squeezed its way between the fence rails and limped into the middle of the goats. The king rumbled, "You! Lamb! What are you doing there?" The lamb quavered before the roar of the king."

You said you would draw all people to yourself." (John 12:32) The Great King said nothing. The lamb paled. "Blessed Paul said, 'One man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.'" (Romans 5:18) Still the King was silent. "He said, 'For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.' (Romans 11:32) And he said, 'all will be made alive in Christ.' (1 Corinthians 15:22) And he said− "

"Enough!" said the King. "What do you propose to do, little lamb?"

"I… I think I will stay with the goats, sir. They need someone to care for them."

And the King laughed a laugh of great joy. "Someone has understood! Someone has really loved! They have seen. The only judgement is love." And the King was gone, and all that remained was a Lamb standing among the people, goats and all.

Zechariah’s words call through the ages to us today, on the Sunday of Peace, in a world where peace seems far and enemies seem near: The dawn from on high will break upon us, 79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And so we pray for peace, we pray for an end to our enemies, not to their end, but to the end where we are enemies no longer.

Getting Christmas Right

From December 3, 2017
by Rev. Shawn Coons

Everybody talks about New Year’s resolutions. But how many of you have ever heard of Christmas resolutions? Maybe you haven’t heard of them, but I’m willing to but you’ve made a Christmas resolution.

The video we just saw talked about “getting Christmas right” and Christmas resolutions are all about getting Christmas right. These resolutions aren’t made on Christmas necessarily, although they can be, they are usually made in the stressful moments of this season.

·         Next year – I’m getting all my shopping done in November!

·         Next year – we’re not going overboard with the presents.

·         I’m tired of sending Christmas cards out in January, I’m starting them in July next year!

·         We’re doing Christmas simpler next time.

·         Next year we’re putting our tree up before Christmas Eve.

·         Next year we’re taking our tree down before Easter.

Any of this sounding familiar?

I have my own personal resolutions each year regarding our Christmas lights outside. I really enjoy Christmas lights, both seeing them and having them on our hoe and in our yard. Over the years, I’ve bought white lights, blue lights, multi-colored lights, icicle lights, warm lights, cool lights, C5s, C9s. I’ve put them on the roof, on our trees, along the walk.

And each year, I wish I would have done something different. A different color, style, placement. I’m never quite satisfied.  Last year, I don’t think I put up any at all because I couldn’t figure out what would look best. I wanted the get it right.

There can be so much pressure to do Christmas right.  To meet the expectations of family, kids, parents, in-laws, distant family. To meet our own expectations of making Christmas meaningful and reflective.

How do we get Christmas right?

I’ve got good news for you this morning. I have the answer to that question. And it’s a pretty simple answer. We don’t have to get Christmas right. That’s not our job.  Our hope - and this is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Hope - our hope is in the fact that we don’t have to get Christmas right, because God already has.

Advent and Christmas are not about what we do, but about what God has done and God will do. The simple fact is we aren’t going to get Christmas right. We are fallible human beings, living in a more than fallible world. At times our Christmases are going to be less than perfect. At times our lives are going to be less than perfect. At times our world is going to be less than perfect.

And Jesus didn’t come 2000 years ago to help us make the world better. Jesus came to make the world better, because we hadn’t done such a good job with that up until that point.

Our gospel lesson today is a prime example of that.  We are going to read form the 13th chapter of Mark. This section is sometimes called “the little apocalypse.”  Scholars believe the gospel of Mark was written in the latter part of the first century. When Roman persecution of Judaism was rampant and the Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Roman government.

So it should be no surprise to hear Jesus, in the gospel of Mark, speaking about turbulent times and how to get by in a less than perfect world.  Mark 13:24-37

24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light, 
25 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
   and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 
26Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he* is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

32 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert;* for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’ 

This is the Word of the Lord.

When we read apocalyptic passages like this one, it can be helpful to think of them as what one scholar calls, “crisis literature.”  There was something going on at the historical moments the passage was written, and the author and/or the author’s community had questions about the power and righteousness of God.

These words came at a time when the Christian and Jewish foundations were shattered, and their world was coming down around them.  The destruction of the Temple represented a catastrophe of divine presence and a violent break with the continuity with the past. The Temple was a center of religious life, but also political and economic life, too.

And it was destroyed.

It was to this community that Jesus’ words were addressed:

the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken

Now this may sound scary to us, but remember this would sound familiar to the 1st century Christians.  Jesus wasn’t describing something that might happen, he was describing what was happening.  This passage isn’t predicting turmoil in the world, it is acknowledging it. Not only, acknowledging it but then Jesus goes on to say, don’t worry because when your world is shaken that may be the moment when God comes back.

In the 21st century we think of apocalypse as a bad thing. apocalypse to us means the world as we know it coming to an end through nuclear war, zombies, aliens, or some other larger than life, Hollywood blockbuster scenario.  But to those first century Christians the apocalypse meant that God was right around the corner, ready to come on stage and save the day.

The scary apocalyptic events were already happening to them, so their hope was in looking for signs that God had not left the building. So when Jesus speaks of signs to come, and portents in the sky, the early Christians looked eagerly for those signs.  Because they were the announcement that God was coming.

If you are familiar with Batman, those signs were kind of like the Bat signal. If you saw it then you knew that Batman was probably not far behind.  This is why we don’t have to worry about making Christmas right.  Christmas is about God making the world right, making the world whole, making us whole.

Advent literally means coming, and it is the time when we not only look forward to Jesus coming to Bethlehem, but we look forward to Jesus coming again to make things whole and right.  So if this Christmas, things don’t go according to plan. It’s OK. If right now in your life, things aren’t going according to plan it’s OK. Right now, if your world is falling apart around you. It’s OK.

God is coming to make things right. God comes to make things whole.

There is a wonderful story about Russian composer Ignace Yan Paderewski. It seems one evening he was scheduled to perform at a great concert hall.  In the audience of black tuxedos and long evening gowns was a mother with her fidgety nine-year old son.  His mother brought him in hopes her boy would be encouraged to practice the piano if he could just hear the immortal Paderewski.  So, against his own wishes, he had come.

As she turned to talk with her friends, the boy slipped from her side, and without much notice from the sophisticated audience, the boy sat down at the stool, staring wide-eyed at the black and white keys, he put his small fingers upon the keyboard.  He began to play "Chopsticks."  The roar of the crowd was hushed by hundreds of frowning faces turned in his direction.  An angered audience began jeering at the boy, booing and hissing for him to be taken from the stage.

Backstage, the Paderewski overheard the sounds out front and quickly put together what was happening.  Hurriedly, he grabbed his coat and rushed toward the stage.  Without one word of announcement, he stooped over the boy, reached around both sides and began to improvise a counter melody to harmonize and enhance the tune.  As the two of them played together, Paderewski kept whispering in the boy's ear:  "Keep going.  Don't quit son.  Keep on playing.  Don't quit. I'm right here...don't quit!"

Advent is the time when we hear Jesus right behind us, whispering in our ear, “Keep going.  Don't quit. Keep on going.  I'm right here."

How Will You Measure Your Life? Week 1

From October 22, 2017
by Rev. Shawn Coons

We’re going to begin this morning with a reading from Philippians 3:1-11. This is a letter believed to be authentically from the Apostle Paul to the church in Philippi. 

In this passage, Paul is addressing the ongoing conflict between some Jewish Christians and some Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians. The argument is about whether Gentiles should be follow Jewish law and traditions, including circumcision. What should be the measure of one’s Christian faith. Is it, as some propose, how closely one follows Jewish law? Paul squarely confronts this issue of measuring faith by contrasting the measurements who used in his own life in the past vs. how he measures his faith now. Listen and see if you can pick out his old standard of measuring vs. his new.

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.2Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! 3For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh—

4even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

[9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.]

Did you hear it? Paul’s old unit of measurement vs. his new one? He recites his credentials as a, in his words, “a Hebrew born of Hebrews.”

circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

That’s the old standard of faith: his Jewish credentials by birth and by practice. Then he says he considers all of that “rubbish.” The Greek word used here is stronger than rubbish. Trash, excrement, filth. And what is his new standard of measurement? The surpassing value of knowing Christ.

Paul addresses this conflict in the church by telling them that how they measure their faith matters. It matters what the standard of measurement is.

Ok, let’s put Paul aside for the moment. And I’m going to give you a pop quiz: what is pictured here? What is the metallic object inside these bell jars?

This is a kilogram. And I don’t mean it weighs a kilogram, although it does. I mean it’s literally a kilogram. It is one of a small number of official kilograms made over the last century and a half.  All of these officials kilograms are copies. Copies of what is affectionately known as “The Big K,” or officially known as the IPK, the International Prototype Kilogram.  The IPK is stored in the outskirts of Paris, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. It is kept in a safe, in a lower vault, in a basement at this international headquarters.

A kilogram is 1000 grams, and on April 7, 1795, the gram was officially defined as, “the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the meter at the temperature of melting ice.” A little unwieldy, eh?  By 1889, others thought so too. So the IPK was manufactured and the official definition of the kilogram was changed. “A kilogram is equal to the mass of an object known as the International Prototype Kilogram.”

There are copies of the IPK in various parts of the world to be used in calibrating tools and scales and other kilogram measurements. But on close scientific examination we’ve found that these kilograms all have slightly different weights!  Due to environmental conditions, various minute amounts of other materials have gathered on these copies, changing their weights ever so slightly.

In other words, the kilogram used by this part of the world may not weigh the same as the one in another part of the world, and so people are using different standards to measure by.  And if the difference is big enough, that can be disastrous.  Take the example of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999.

This was a 700 pound robotic satellite sent by Nasa to orbit around Mars.  Unfortunately, after years of planning, tens of thousands of work hours, and hundreds of millions of dollars it made it to Mars but was apparently destroyed in Mars’ atmosphere when it arrived.  It ended up descending too far into the atmosphere because one of the software programs was using U.S. standard measurements while another piece of software was expecting metric measurements.

Because one team in this project used the wrong standard of measurement, the whole mission ended in disaster. The standards we use to measure, matter. And I believe this carries over into our lives as well. If we use the wrong standards to measure our life, the results could be disastrous.

This is what we are going to be talk about over the next three weeks in this series, “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

This is the question asked in a book Clayton Christensen, entitled, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Christensen is a Harvard Business School Professor and in one particular course he teaches his students about theories they can use in business. These theories offer explanations for why things happen in certain ways, and seek to help predict what the outcomes of various business practices and strategies will be. He instills in them the idea that specific outcomes in business are the result of specific decisions and actions.

But on the last day of the class each semester he asks them to apply this concept beyond the business world, and he asks, “How will you measure your life?” What results do you hope to achieve with the decisions and actions you make.  Christensen feels this is an important question to ask based on his observations of his own life over the years, and also his observations of his classmates.

Christensen went to Harvard and Oxford for his education. He was a smart, hard-working, motivated and accomplished young man with lots of potential after he graduated.  And the men and women he graduated were likewise filled with talent, intelligence and potential.  The schools he attended, Harvard and Oxford, both do a remarkable job of reuniting alumni and classmates, so over the years Christensen often got to see his classmates and friends and learn about their lives and accomplishments.

Early on, there was much for people to be proud of. High paying positions in Fortune 500 companies. New marriages and families. Book deals, big houses, semi-annual trips to Europe.  But as the years went on, Christensen noticed that some of his classmates didn’t seem to be happy with their lives. Other classmates were struggling in their marriages, had gone through multiple divorces, or felt distanced from their children. Some of his colleagues had even ended up in jail for business fraud or embezzling.

Christensen began to wonder how this had happened to so many of these bright, talented and driven people. They had so much potential but so many of them, sometimes including himself, had ended up in places they never intended.

So he began to think in terms of his education in business theory. A business theory seeks to make sense of how certain actions and decisions are translated into specific results. It says that if A and B happen, then the natural results will be C and D, but if E and F happen, then expect G and H to happen.  And what he saw is that many of his classmates had a sound theory for their businesses, but they didn’t apply a sound theory to their life.

They put great thought and effort into a strategy for business, but not into a strategy for life. In his words:

“I know for sure that none of these people graduated with a deliberate strategy to get divorced or lose touch with their children—much less to end up in jail. Yet this is the exact strategy that too many ended up implementing.”

So how did they do this? How do we do this? How do we have the best of intentions? Want the best for our life? But end up choosing a strategy, making decisions, that lead us to different results?

Let’s go back to Paul, and let’s go back to our question for the day, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” A few moments ago I said, if you use the wrong standards to measure your life it would end up being disastrous. Too often we have the best of intentions. To live a generous life, to have a thriving marriage, to be close to our children, to go to bed happy and fulfilled each day. We have the best of intentions, but we choose poor standards of measurement.

And I don’t believe we do this because we are dumb, or because we are short-sighted. Rev. Adam Hamilton, in preaching on this same subject, suggests that the reason we choose the wrong standard of measurement is because some things are easier to measure than others. 

Think about it. If I’m building something with lumber, and I need to cut a piece of wood to a certain length, I’m going to use a tape measure and measure in inches.  If I’m trying to lose weight, I’m going to use a scale and measure in pounds. If I’m cooking at home, I’ll use a measuring spoon and measure in teaspoons.

But what do we use if we are measuring more intangible things?  Can we use a scale or a yardstick to measure how happy someone is? What tool should we use to measure the enjoyment that comes from reading a good book or coming home to your dog?  So when it comes to measuring our life we tend towards measurements that are easier that we can understand, even if they are the wrong measurements.

So what is easy to measure?  How much money you make. Your job title. A promotion. How many hours you work. How big your house is. The clothes you wear. The degrees you hold.

What’s not so easy to measure? How close you are with your spouse. Your presence in the life of your children. Care and compassion for others.

See the difference?  I certainly fall prey to this.  I’m a pastor, and there are multiple standards I could use to measure how our church is doing. But do you know what’s easiest? Nickels and noses. How much money is in the offering plate and how many people are here on Sunday. Do you know what’s a harder standard to measure? If someone came in this morning feeling low, and somehow had their spirits raised enough to get through another day. It’s hard to measure the amount of times one of you is inspired by a song, a sermon, a prayer, a bible study, and shares a word of care or an act of hope with someone you meet. 

But there are times when we can see clearly what is important to measure in life.  For me, one of those times is when someone dies.  I’ve done many funerals over the years, and one of the privileges I have in this role is to meet with the family of the person who died to hear about their lives and who they were.

And without fail, as I sit down with the family, do you know what they tell me first about their loved one?  It’s not how much money they made. It’s not their job title. It’s not what they acquired in life or the degrees they held. It’s statements like:

She loved her family so much.
He was always there for me.
He was so proud of his children.
She was so generous and caring.
He always had time for me.

It is always some form of how much the person loved others and how much the person was loved by others. How we love. Who we love. Those are how you measure a life.  Are you familiar with the song from RENT, “525,600 Minutes?”  The lyrics are:

525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life? How about love? Measure in love.

We measure in love. Chet read from 1 Corinthians 13 a little bit ago. A familiar passage to many, but it speaks to this exact question: “How Do You Measure Your Life?” Allow me to paraphrase:

If I measure my life by being able to speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not measure my life by love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I measure my life by my prophetic powers, and my understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I measure my life by having faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not measure my life by love, I am nothing. 3If I measure my life by giving away all my possessions, but do not measure my life by love, I gain nothing.

So here is your homework for today. Ask yourself “How do I measure my life?” And be honest with your answer.  I would encourage you to make this a conversation with others. Parents, ask your children to answer this question for you. How are you showing them what measurements are important in life. Ask this question of each other at coffee hour after the service, on the way home in the car, at lunch or at dinner. Ask your friends, classmates, co-workers, neighbors.

And if you are unsure of the answer, or unhappy with the answers you get or arrive at. Then you won’t want to miss the next two weeks. Because we will be going deeper into what exactly it looks like to measure your life in love.

“How will you measure your life?”

Joint Anti-Racism Statement from Neighborhood Congregations

To the residents and friends of the Butler Tarkington Neighborhood:

As people of faith representing the congregations of our neighborhood, we feel that it is our duty to respond to the racism, hatred, and discrimination that exists and continues to resurface in different ways within our nation and even here at home. We were profoundly troubled to learn of racist comments and an act of racial intimidation in our Butler Tarkington neighborhood.

Collectively we are speaking out against any action, group, or ideology that demeans the unique dignity of every person that lives, travels through, or even visits our neighborhood and beyond. We condemn acts of racial intimidation in any form.

We recognize the systemic injustices that exist against the African American community and have a collective desire to act. We condemn groups like the Ku Klux Klan, all white supremacist groups, and all others that adopt their beliefs, recognizing that their roots are not found in any of our faith traditions. Every faith tradition values every life.

It is our common hope that our faith and goodwill will encourage everyone to seek understanding, peace, and reconciliation among all people. We are committing not only our congregations, but asking all people to join us in praying, if that is your tradition, and certainly acting in love toward others. We look forward to future engagements with the clergy, congregations, and neighborhood and future partnerships with the Butler Tarkington Neighborhood Association. We invite you into this journey of conversation, listening, acting, and supporting one another during this time.

Signed:

Rev. Ronnie Bell, North United Methodist Church
Rev. Jeff Bower, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Rev. Shawn Coons, Fairview Presbyterian Church
Rev. Steve Conger, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Rev. Sarah Ginolfi, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Fr. Michael Hoyt, St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church
Dr. Philip Karl James, Pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church
Rev. Matt Landry, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Pastor Jim Matthies, Common Ground Church
Pastor Jeff Reichanadter, Common Ground Church
Jamie Hinson-Rieger, Worship Leader, Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis
Bethany Scott, Director of Family and Neighborhood Ministries, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Rev. Darren Cushman-Wood, North United Methodist Church

Neighboring - We Are Each Other's Air

From October 8, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

Indulge me in a little geekiness this morning.  How many of you have heard of an internet service called Napster?  How about BitTorrent?  Ok, not many.  How many of you have heard of BitCoin?  Napster first came to fame a number of years ago as a file-sharing program. What this means is that you would download the Napster program to your computer and then you could share specific files on your computer with another Napster user, and they could do so with you.  And one of the first major uses was to share mp3s, digital versions of songs.

So if you wanted the latest Britney Spears song, you just needed to find another Napster user who had it on their computer, and download it directly from them.  BitTorrent is a similar program, that makes many different types of files shareable directly between users.

It’s kind of like borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor instead of going to the grocery to buy it directly from the store. It’s a little bit more sketchy, because many people have used these programs to share copyrighted material illegally. BitCoin is a little bit different, it is a currency system. You can buy BitCoins and then use them to make purchases. But the records BitCoins and their transactions aren’t stored at a bank or with a specific company. The records are distributed and shared among BitCoin users.

All of these are what are called “peer-to-peer” services. They are decentralized, distributed, there isn’t one source which everything flows out of, instead each user contributes, gives and takes as required. Which means that users of the services are dependent on other users to make the service work.

Great, Shawn. What in the world does this have to do with church? And what does it have to do with our current series on loving your neighbor? Well, this series is called Neighboring, God’s plan for taking care of each other, and I want to suggest to you that God’s plan for taking care of each other is “peer to peer.”  There are dozens of examples in the gospels of Jesus taking care of people, showing love to specific individuals.  Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, healing the centurion’s daughter, and casting out demons from the Gerasane man.

But that wasn’t the limit of acts of love and care that we find recorded in the gospels. We can read about thousands of people shown care in the gospels, not by Jesus, but by Jesus’ followers. Where ever Jesus went, once people began to follow him, once they received his care, he turned them into caregivers for others. Care was given “peer to peer,” person to person, not just from Jesus to person.

This continued throughout the rest of the Bible, as the early church spread.  This morning we are going to read about one church where this model of care was practiced.  Modern day Turkey is the site of the city of Ephesus, who’s residents were known as Ephesians in scripture.  As Jesus’ message and movement spread, it got farther and farther away from Israel and the large Jewish population there. So by the time the church spreads through Asia Minor and reaches a city like Ephesus, it is going to places with a large Gentile (non-Jewish) population.

Ephesus was already ancient in the time of the New Testament.  It was a major urban area, with a large (for that time) population of fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand people, with all the diversity of population, trade, religious groups, and social classes that was typical of a Greco-Roman city. Ephesus in particular held an important place as the location of the great temple of Artemis, and the place where great Asian games were held.

We’re going to be reading from Ephesians 2:11-22, a letter to the church in Ephesus, often attributed to Paul, but scholars believe it is more likely a student or follower of Paul based on the textual clues. Listen for the calls for “peer to peer” care among this diverse church of Jews and Gentiles.

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

There’s a rift in this church, and it seems to be between those who were born Jewish and followed Jesus, and those who came to follow Jesus without being a Jew. There is a conflict here between the Jews and the Gentiles of the church.   Now there really shouldn’t be, this has all been decided. In Acts 15 we read about a council of church leaders that were wrestling with this very issue.

Shortly after the time of Jesus’ resurrection the early church was still solidly connected to Jewish tradition and Jewish law. And it was thought by many that any Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus would be required to follow Jewish laws and customs. But there were some church leaders, Paul and Barnabas among them, who argued against this. They brought this matter to the apostles and Peter declared that except for a few simple laws, Gentiles did not have to practice Jewish traditions.

So the word has come from the top-down that Gentiles should be welcome to follow Jesus alongside Jews. But the problem was that it was top-down still and not peer to peer.  This had not been embraced by individual members, both Jewish and Gentile, within churches. And it’s peer to peer that matters, because that’s how God intends it.

Notice the imagery that the author of Ephesians uses in the passage.

You are…members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 

Jesus and the apostles are the foundation of the household of God, Jesus is the cornerstone, but if you think of the rest of us as bricks or stones in the household.  They don’t all touch the cornerstone or the foundation, but each brick is connected to another brick, multiple bricks. We aren’t all directly connected to the cornerstone or the foundation, but we are directly connected to each other, each of us, side by side with others. We are each meant to support the others around us.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it?  Jesus wouldn’t have been able to directly care and nurture every one of his followers, once the church grew the apostles wouldn’t be able to either. Paul, who was instrumental in developing churches, nurturing the faith of many Christians throughout the New Testament. He wouldn’t have been able to provide nurture and care for everyone he introduced to the faith.

This makes for a stronger church. When we are all tasked with providing care and love for one another, than our support network is stronger.  Go with me on a mental journey.  Let’s travel up to the International Space Station. First, imagine you are an astronaut going on a spacewalk, you have to get in your spacesuit and go outside of the station on a mission. How do you breathe?  Well, the suit has oxygen tanks in it. Your air comes from one place – your suit. If something goes wrong with that one source of oxygen, you are in trouble.

Now imagine that you are done with your spacewalk and you are back inside the space station. Or better yet, imagine you are done and back on earth. Now where is your oxygen coming from?  It’s all around you, it surrounds you. You aren’t dependent on just one source for the air you breathe.

Friends, we are oxygen for one another. The love and care we provide for someone is their life support, and so the more sources of that life the better.  If you look around this room, these people should be your life support. You should be able to find multiple sources of love and care and support, and likewise you should be ready to provide love, and care and support for multiple people here.

Now, nobody is expecting you personally to provide direct and personal care for all 150+ members of our Fairview family, that’s not realistic. But each one of us is expected to care about and for as many people as we can, and to make sure that our circle of care is inclusive. Not just of people we know, but we should especially pay attention to the people that we may not know.  We don’t have to know everybody intimately, but we should be aware of people who may not be known, may not be connected to others.

We have many groups of care and support here at Fairvew. There are the formal groups: the chancel choir, the bell choir, weekday Bible studies, Sunday School classes, the Wednesday night pitch-in crowd.  There are relationships and bonds that form within these groups as we get to know each other more personally by meeting week after week together. But there are also more informal groups here at Fairview.  We group ourselves by generations, by how long we’ve been at the church, by where we live or where we used to live, sometimes by political leanings or by how old our children are.

There’s nothing wrong with these groups, but we can’t let our care and support and love be limited to these comfortable groups.  If we only tend to our circle of friends, then we are kind of in the same boat as the church in Ephesus. We may not have a division between Jews and Gentiles here, but if we aren’t careful we can end up with different isolated groups within the church. 

You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God

We are no longer strangers.

The Jews and Gentiles in Ephesus weren’t united by Gentiles becoming like Jews, or Jews becoming like Gentiles, they were united by both becoming like Jesus. Likewise, our unity is not based on how old we are, whether we have children, what we want for the church, who we voted for. Our unity, our love and care for each other, our life support, our love for neighbor is dependent on the God who has called us all here.

So I encourage you, to take this call to unity seriously. Take your part seriously. In the next month or two we will be welcoming a number of new members into the church.  Every time we welcome a new member, and every time we baptize a child, as a congregation we make promises to be there for that person, to be there life support, to be a source of love and care.

Continue to take that promise to heart. Renew that promise today.  Look for someone you don’t know, or someone you know who may need you to be their life support today.  And if you feel your oxygen running low around you, reach out to someone here and let them be your support and comfort.  If we do this, if we continue to live into the people and the church God is calling us to be, then with Christ as our cornerstone, we will indeed “grow into a holy temple in the Lord…built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

Neighboring - Go!

From October 1, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

This morning we are continuing with our series on neighboring, which is God’s plan for taking care of each other.  We’ve heard about God’s call to love our neighbors as ourselves, last week we talked about loving our actual neighbors, the people next door to us, by getting to know them by name and by their stories.  Next week, we will talk about what this looks like within our congregation- how we can all be responsible for loving and taking care of our neighbors in this room.

But first, this week, we will be talking about what it looks like for us as Fairview Presbyterian, for us as a congregation, to love our neighbors.  How can our church be a good neighbor?  How can we live this out so much, that when people pass our church they say, “That’s the church that loves their neighbors and shows that love all the time?”

The first step in being a church that loves its neighbors is an easy one.  It’s simply realizing how many neighbors we have. In the passage we are going to read in just a moment, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  This is Jesus’ way of saying, there are a lot of people out there who need what we have.

The same is true for Fairview. This church does a great job at offering God’s love, hope, good news, challenge, care, healing, transformation to all who come here.  But here’s a little not-so-secret. The majority of Indianapolis doesn’t go to Fairview. Shocking. I know.  Well, OK but other churches offer God’s love and hope too. Absolutely, they do. But here’s another not so secret, a lot of people don’t go to church.

So, if we are going to define a neighbor, like Jesus did in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that Bill read a moment ago. That is, we define our neighbor by someone in need of help, in need of God’s love and God’s care. Than we need to realize we have thousands of neighbors.

The harvest is plentiful but the laborer’s are few.  So what’s the plan then. For bringing the love of God that we experience here at Fairview to the thousands of our neighbors who need that same love.

Let’s see how Jesus goes about this in Luke 10:1-11:

10After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” 10But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11“Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.”

What has Jesus’ ministry looked like up to this point.  Jesus and his followers were curing the sick, offering healing to people.  They were casting out demons and feeding the hungry.  They were sharing good news, bringing hope to the oppressed and downtrodden.  And Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful. There are so many more people who are sick, struggling with oppression or their own demons. So many more who need hope and healing.”

And Jesus comes up with a plan. I’m not going to share that plan with you this morning. I’m going to let Rev. Katie Hays of Galileo Church in Texas, share that plan by video. We’re going to hear from Rev. Hays a couple times this morning. Back in September, Elder Stephanie Bode and I had the chance to hear her speak on this morning’s passage at a conference we were attending. And Rev. Hays brought some powerful words about this passage. And rather than try to sum them up I will let her speak for herself.

So Jesus realizes the vast number of people in need of good news and God’s love and he has to come up with a plan. Here is one option that he could have chosen:

Hays Video #1 7:47-8:52

Jesus could have set up shop. Could have planted himself and his ministry in one place and said let everybody know I’m here and let them come to me. But he didn’t. Instead he realized that he and his followers needed to go to the people. They needed to spread out all over the area and find those who need healing where they were. They needed to reach those struggling with their own demons, wherever they were. The burden of travel should not be on those who needed help but on those who had already received God’s blessings.

So Jesus gathers seventy of his followers, and he gives them some two things. First, he gives them some specific instructions. Don’t take anything with you, and rely on the hospitality of those who will welcome you. Don’t take a bag to carry stuff in. Don’t take stuff. Don’t even wear shoes!

Why is this? Is Jesus being harsh? Cruel? No, I don’t think so.  What’s happening here is Jesus wants them to know that when they go out, they aren’t to rely on their own abilities, on their own power.  They are to rely on the second thing he gives them: power and authority.  Jesus tells them that wherever they go they are to cure the sick and let them know the Kingdom of God has come near.  They don’t have traveling provisions, but they don’t need them because they have the power and authority given to them by God.

And to make that clear, Jesus says that the seventy need to simply move on if they are rejected, because in reality, the people aren’t rejecting Jesus’ followers, they are rejecting God.

I think we, you and I, often miss this blessing.  Too often, we are intimidated when we think of going out offering God’s blessings, healings, message of love, to other people. We worry about how we will come across, what will people think of us, what if we offering a bit of our faith or a kind act out of God’s loves and it is rejected?  Or we worry that we don’t know how to talk about our faith or offer a compassionate act to someone in need of God’s blessing.

But Jesus promises the seventy, and Jesus promises us, that we don’t need to have exactly the right words, or know exactly what someone needs, we don’t need to rely on ourselves and our own ability. If we just go to the people, then God will do the rest.

Our biggest challenge, is not knowing what to do when we get in the midst of the harvest, but going out to join in the harvest in the first place. The biggest challenge we face is truly believing not in God, but that God is calling us to love and care for our neighbors as much as we care of ourselves.  If we truly believe that our thousands of neighbors out there, need God as much as we do, need God’s love, and healing, and wholeness, as much as we do, then like the seventy we must go find them.  Let’s here from Katie Hays again:

Katie Hays Video #2 17:37-19:25

Loving our neighbors as ourselves, means leaving our beautiful church building. Not expecting the man left for dead by robbers on the side of the road to pick himself up and come to us, but for us to be like that Samaritan and go to him in his need.  Loving our neighbors as a church means hearing the urgency in Jesus’ voice. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Jesus is saying, “Don’t wait until you feel full ready. Don’t wait to pack your bag. Don’t wait until you have a place to stay. Go! Now!” Jesus was always moving forward, always looking for the next person who needed God in their life.

Jesus is saying to us, “You did a great job of taking care of the person in your midst who had cancer, so keep it up, keep going. There’s ten people with cancer who need that care, your care, my care, ten people within blocks of you right now!”

We’ve talked as a congregation about “Finding Our Why” discovering and articulating God’s call for us, the reason behind everything we should be doing. For Jesus, his Why was to go to as many people as he could, heal them, love them, give them good news.  As Christians, that’s our why too: get to as many people as we can, bring them God’s love, healing, and good news.

We are long past the time when we can expect that most people who need God will come to us.  And many of them have good reason. Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic, a church in Los Angeles, says, "people have given up on the truth of God because they don't believe anyone can be trusted. The world is full of people who have been hurt by those who were supposed to love them-people they should have been able to trust. Before churches will be heard, they must reestablish trust. To establish trust, they must first show their ability to love.”

The harvest is plentiful. Let me turn one last time to Rev. Katie Hays, and a story she has about her church’s work in the harvest.

Katie Hays Video #3 21:55-24:14

How do we make Fairview a church for non-churchy people too? Nothing against churchy people, I’m one of the churchiest people you will find. But most of our neighbors in need are not churchy people. They aren’t going to come to us, but they have needs and struggles like we do, but they don’t have the faith, the community of care that we do. How do we bring it to them if they aren’t going to come to us?

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

How many of us are here this morning?  1..2…3…maybe somewhere around 70? God says, “I am sending you. Go. Don’t worry about what you will bring with you, you don’t need it. All you need is me. Bring peace to those you meet. And if they reject you, they are really rejecting me. Go! Cure the sick, bring wholeness in my name. Let people know that the Kingdom of God is near!”

Later in in Luke chapter 10, the seventy return, amazed and what happened at what God enabled them to do.  I have no doubt, that if we go, trusting God, our results will be amazing too.

Neighboring

From September 24, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

We’re going to get to our second reading in a moment, but first I want to visit briefly a passage from the gospel of John, not even a passage, just one verse, and not even one verse, but just a part of a verse. It’s the first part of John 1:14 and if you were to open your pew Bible it would read: And the Word became flesh and lived among us.  If you don’t know much about what’s going on in the first chapter of John that’s OK. Let me just tell you that it’s a poetic and symbolic summary of how and why Jesus comes into the world.

In this chapter, the author refers to Jesus as “the Word.”  The first verse of the chapter is: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God. But right now I’m more interested in: And the Word became flesh and lived among us. And even more than being interested in that verse, I’m interested in how John 1:14 is translated in a translation/paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. Here’s how it reads: Jesus moved into the neighborhood.

Now, technically, that’s not really a good translation of this verse.  But, I want to suggest to you it may be a good interpretation of this verse. Jesus moved into the neighborhood. And even more than a good interpretation of this verse, I think it is a good theological summary of much of Jesus’ ministry and who he was.

Jesus moved into the neighborhood.

Right now, at Fairview, we are in the middle of a Sunday morning series on “Neighboring: God’s Plan for Taking Care of Each Other.”  We’re learning about God’s call to love God by loving our neighbor, we’re taking specific steps to practice loving our neighbors. And this falls right in the beginning of a larger journey we are on as a church of learning about our neighbors, learning about our community, listening to God and seeing how God is busy in our neighborhood and figuring out how God is calling us to be part of that work.

All of this hinges on getting to know our neighbors. And that’s what I want to focus on today. And not figuratively. We’re going to explore getting to know our neighbors, my neighbors, your neighbors, the churches neighbors. The people that are near us. The people that we interact with and see day to day.

Before we go further, I want you to do an exercise with me.  This is something you can write down or you can just do mentally.  I want you to name your neighbors.  Take the houses around you, next door, across the street, on the other side of your back yard. And write the names down of the people who live there. Parents, children. Extra credit for pets.

In the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, we don’t have any record of where Jesus lived and who his literal neighbors might have been, but we have plenty of examples of Jesus encountering people in their homes, where they work, where the live. In their neighborhoods.  Ruby read the story of the calling of Levi (who we know as Matthew). Levi was a tax collector, Jesus met him at work and called him to follow, and then the next scene takes place at Levi’s home where he is having Jesus and other guest over for a big dinner.

We have a similar story in Luke 19:1-10. Another tax collector, another meeting in a neighborhood, and another invitation to dinner at home.

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 

So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

This passage starts in Jericho.  Jericho was a nice city. It was on a major trade route. It exported a lot of crops and goods. There was one point in earlier history where Mark Anthony was supposed to have presented Jericho as a gift to Cleopatra. Zacchaeus appears to be the chief tax collector for the Romans in Jericho, and that’s a pretty good job, in some respects.  With all this trade, with all this wealth, there were plenty of taxes to be collected.

Taxes worked a bit differently in the Roman world. It was kind of a franchise deal. Each city or area would have a tax collector, and Rome would tell that tax collector how much taxes he was to collect from the city.  This was how much money the collector owed Rome on the area’s behalf.  But Rome didn’t say that the tax collector only had to collect that much.  He was free to collect more in taxes from the people, and then keep the extra for himself. 

The more taxes a collector collects, the more money he pockets.

That’s Zacchaeus’s job.  So he is hitting people up for their fair share of taxes, and then some.  Add onto this that he was a Jew helping the Roman occupiers.  It is safe to say that Zacchaeus was probably not a popular man in the Jewish town of Jericho.

But then one day, Jesus is “passing through” Jericho. He’s walking through the city, walking through the neighborhoods. And he’s kind of like a rock star, all these people want to see Jesus, including Zacchaeus. And so the crowds start forming. The Bible says that Zacchaeus is not a tall man, so he climbs up a tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus.  And then something happens. And this is where we get our first lesson from Jesus about getting to know our neighbors.

What happens is that Jesus sees Zacchaeus. Jesus looks up into that sycamore tree and sees Zacchaeus, who is trying to see Jesus.  I wonder, how often do we see our neighbors?  How often do we see the people we live near? Literally, how often do you see your neighbors?  Earlier I asked you to name your neighbors, now take that list or mental list and think of the last time you saw them. Maybe in the yard, walking the dog, driving to work.  When was the last time you saw your neighbors?

Back to Jesus and Zacchaeus.  Jesus sees Zacchaeus, and then, he speaks to him. He tells Zacchaeus to get down from that tree and hurry home because Jesus is coming over for dinner.

When was the last time you spoke to your neighbors?  Take a moment to think of the last time that you had a conversation with them.

Now as you are doing this, I’ll confess that I was a little ashamed as I did this exercise myself.  I’d love to tell you that I could name every one of my neighbors in the eight houses closest to us. I couldn’t. I could name at least one person in each house, but maybe not their spouse or all their kids.  We had a neighborhood block party this past weekend, so I did a little bit better in the last time I talked to them.  But I still wasn’t pleased with how little I’ve had conversation with some of my neighbors.

Marie who lives on one side of us, we see and talk to her with some frequency. She loves to work in her yard, and it’s common to say hi or have a conversation with her.  On the day of the eclipse a month ago, Carrie and I had a fun time of 20-30 minutes passing around our one pair of eclipse glasses with her and her son-in-law. But our neighbor, JoAnn, on the other side works in her lawn a fair amount, and I haven’t talked with her as much. Our neighbors across the street we don’t hardly see at all.

But Jesus speaks with Zacchaeus, and as we read, he does more than that. Jesus isn’t satisfied with a passing greeting in the street. He wants to sit down with Zacchaeus, to break bread with him, get to know him. Even though it causes quite a stir with those “religious folks” who can’t believe that Jesus would spend time with a tax collector.

But, look what happens!  Even before they leave the scene, even before they get to Zacchaeus’s house, Zacchaeus makes a promise to Jesus that he will stop his crooked ways, he will repay fourfold those he has cheated, and he will use his wealth to help those in need.  I guarantee you that people were surprised and shocked when they heard Zacchaeus say this.  But it’s even more interesting than that. The tense of the Greek verb here suggests that this may not be a new promise, that this is a present action that Zacchaeus is doing and he is promising to continue it.

If this was the case, I wonder if any of Zacchaeus’s neighbors knew this about him.  Had anyone taken the time to get to know Zacchaeus, to learn that he might be more than just a despised tax collector? Did anyone know why he was so eager to see Jesus?

When we take the time to get to know our neighbors, we are bound to be surprised at what we learn about them. There’s a church in Colorado, that decided they wanted to make loving their neighbors an important part of each person’s walk as a Christian, and that began with knowing their neighbors. So they challenged each person at the church to begin to know their neighbors, their names, what’s going on in their lives, their hopes, their challenges. I want us to watch a brief video where one couple tells of their experience.

I’d like to invite you to love your neighbors by knowing your neighbors. Maybe for some of you, you really do know your neighbors well, but I’m guessing for many of us, it’s something we could work on.

Before I end, I’d also like to give you another resource to help you love your neighbors and get to know your neighborhood.  In your bulletin, you should have a sheet that describes what a neighborhood prayer walk is.

Neighborhood prayer walking is just what it sounds like. Praying and walking in your neighborhood.  It is an activity that allows you to not just enjoy the outdoors and a nice walk, but to be mindful and aware of where you are, who is there, what is special about your neighborhood, what is unique. It also allows you to see with a new lens, so to speak. To look for things you may not have noticed before, to have God guide you to see new things, or to pray in specific ways.

I invite you to take this home and try prayer walking your own neighborhood this week. I’d also like to invite you to come next Sunday at 10:00 a.m. and we will be sent out to prayer walk the neighborhood around Fairview. Then we will gather briefly to share what we experienced on our individual walks.

Love God. Love Neighbor. Jesus said that that sums it up.

I’m game! How about you?

Neighboring

From September 10, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

In the beginning of Matthew, chapter 21, Jesus enters triumphantly into Jerusalem.  The crowds adore him and praise him. This is what we celebrate on Palm Sunday. The day that Jesus had a rock star entrance into Jerusalem.  And then Jesus gets down to business. He goes to the temple, the heart of first century Judaism and he overturns the table of the money changes and vendors there.  He takes on the religious authorities of his own Jewish faith with this bold and defiant act.

This action begins a series of confrontations and arguments with the Jewish authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees, that take place over the next few chapters of Matthew. After coming into Jerusalem like a king, cleansing the temple, and having his authority challenged by the chief priests, Jesus goes on to tell those leaders that tax collectors and prostitutes will make it into God’s Kingdom before they will. He tells a story of a landlord and some wicked murderous tenants, and tells the Scribes and Pharisees that they are like those evil tenants. Then tells another story of a wedding banquet where those originally invited were judged not worthy to come, and makes it clear that it’s the Jewish authorities who God is uninviting to God’s banquet.

In short, Jesus comes into Jerusalem ready to confront and condemn the Scribes and Pharisees. Ready to take on the powers that be. And in just a few days, Jesus makes so much trouble, so many enemies, that he is arrested, tried, tortured and executed as a criminal.

I wanted to set the stage of these penultimate chapters in Matthew, because it’s where we find a passage of Scripture that many of us are familiar with.  It’s a passage about love, and we often think of love as a beautiful, soft, warm, fuzzy, tingly feeling or emotion. Love makes our hearts swoon. Love lifts us up where we belong. Love is a many splendored thing.

But as we read this passage about love, I want us to remember that this was part of what got Jesus killed.  So as we listen to this passage that you may have heard before, listen for what’s dangerous in what Jesus said. Listen for its subversive nature. Listen and try to figure out what is so offensive about what Jesus says.

Matthew 22:34-40

34When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”37He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

As I said a moment ago, in this part of Matthew the religious leaders are trying hard to get at Jesus. He and his movement are becoming a threat to the order of the day, to the powers that be, and they want him stopped. So, they are trying to catch him doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing.  They bring out all these religious experts and all sorts of legal experts, and they try time and time again to get him to convict himself by doing or saying the wrong thing.

Then this lawyer comes to Jesus. Not this is not a lawyer as we think of it, but a person studied and Jewish law and scripture. And he asks Jesus, which is the greatest commandment?  The lawyer knew that there were over 600 different laws in Jewish scripture. And he’s hoping Jesus will pick one, so that the lawyer can accuse Jesus of ignoring the others. Or if Jesus says they are all important, then the lawyer can get on Jesus for the times he broke certain laws like working on the sabbath or hanging out with the wrong kind of people.

Jesus could have avoided answering. He’s done it before. Jesus could have answered the question with another question, putting the lawyer on the spot. But instead he answers straightforwardly. He quotes Deuteronomy 6 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.” And it’s kind of hard to argue with that. This is the command that God told the Israelites to remember, to teach to their children, to literally wear it on their bodies and post it in their homes.

But Jesus isn’t done. He then goes on to add a second greatest commandment.  The lawyer asked for one commandment, but Jesus goes for extra credit. He quotes Leviticus 19:17-18: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Then he adds one more thing for good measure. On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets. So, Jesus answered the trick question by highlighting two commandments that encompassed all 600+ commandments. 

In one answer, Jesus essentially says to this group of religious leaders, who feel they know it all that love of God and love of neighbor aren’t parallel endeavors. They are mutually interdependent. You can’t have one without the other.  If you love God you will love your neighbor. When you love your neighbor, you are loving God.

And I find it very telling that Jesus lays down this profound rule of love in the midst of his confrontations with the authorities. Jesus is confrontational, he is disruptive, he is in your face. Why? Because he likes to make trouble? No. Because he has a chip on his shoulder? No. Jesus is making waves because he is following the greatest commandment. To love God and love neighbor.

Lance Pape, Homiletics professor at Brite Divinity School, writes:

Our definition of “love” is often suspiciously easy on and for us. But this is not the definition of love that Jesus is working with in Matthew. The Jesus we see in these stories thinks that to love God with the whole self, with “all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind” (verse 37) is demanding and risky. Following the path of love leads him to jump into debates and conflicts with his whole self. Love leads Jesus into all kinds of situations that are not just uncomfortable, but dangerous.

The same love that inspired Jesus to eat with the outcast, reach out to the untouchable, and embrace the powerless, also drove him to confront the demonic, outmaneuver the manipulative, and correct the clueless. 

So let’s pause for a moment. This week we are beginning a series on Neighboring: God’s Plan for Taking Care of One Another.  And maybe it seems a bit odd, to talk about loving your neighbor by saying that Jesus’ confrontations and condemnation of the religious authorities are how Jesus showed love.

Am I saying that I want you to love your neighbor by confronting them with hypocrisy or wrongdoing? I can just see it now, some of you are getting some idea. You’re thinking of that neighbor who doesn’t mow their lawn often enough, or who plays loud music late at night, parks in front of your yard.  You’ll be knocking on their door this afternoon, and saying, “I love you neighbor, and my pastor said that I could show it by pointing out what an insensitive jerk you are!”

That’s not quite what I had in mind, and it’s not quite what scripture has in mind.  The point of putting Jesus saying, ‘love God love your neighbor’ in the midst of his religious confrontations is to demonstrate what love is and isn’t.

So often today, we think of love primarily as a feeling. It’s warm and fuzzy, it’s overwhelming. Love makes you do silly and romantic things. Love is cheery and pleasant.  But what we read in scripture about love, specifically the kind of love God practices and calls us to practice, is that love isn’t a feeling. Love is a commitment to act. Love isn’t something we get caught up in, but it’s something we choose to do.

To love our neighbor, is not to have warm feelings for them, it is to act lovingly towards them. To make a conscious choice to put their needs on the same level as our own.  Think about it. Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus calls us to love our enemies. This doesn’t mean, this can’t mean, feel lovingly towards them. That’s not realistic. What it does mean that even if we don’t feel love for someone, especially when we don’t feel love for someone, we have to consciously choose actions of love towards them.

Alyce MacKenzie writes:

Biblical love is not passive. It is not something that occurs to us without our control or will. Biblical love is something we do. It is loving-kindness, merciful action that is both generous and continuous. Herein is the good news for Christian people. To love neighbor as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you. We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.

God never commands us to feel love, but to do love.

To love the neighbor (including our enemies) does not mean to feel affection for them, but to imitate God in taking their needs seriously.

So, no matter how you feel towards your neighbor, and by neighbor God means your literal neighbor, your family member, your co-worker, your boss, your enemy, a stranger that you see on the road, anyone. No matter how you feel towards your neighbor, if we love ourselves more than our neighbor, then we are not acting as a Christian. We are failing at the greatest commandment.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be talking about what it looks like to love your neighbor, not what it feels like. I will be asking you to do specific things to love your neighbor, get to know your neighbor, to think about what does it look like to love my neighbor as much as I love myself. But we won’t just be talking about loving God through loving your neighbor. We will be choosing to act.

Next week we will be having the Day of Caring. We will be joining Presbyterian churches all over the Indianapolis area in loving acts of service to our neighbors.  We will meet here at 10:00 a.m. Have a very brief service of prayer and then disperse to different places to serve.

On September 24th we will be back for our regular worship service and the sermon will be focused on our literal neighbors, the people that we live next to, and how can we get to know them better so that we can love them better.  You will get some resources to take home with you that day that will help you get to know your neighbors, and get to know your neighborhood. You will take home with you that day a guide for prayer walking. A guide to help you walk through your neighborhood while praying for those who live there, and keeping your eyes and ears open to see what God moves you to see there.

On October 1, at 10:00 a.m. we will gather to do the same sort of prayer walking in Fairview’s neighborhood. The church is called to be a good neighbor, and since you are the church you are an integral part of loving Fairview’s literal neighbors. After we are done walking, we will come back for our regular worship service and hear more in worship about Fairview’s call to love our neighbors, and what that might look like at a congregational level.

Let me close by reminding you of Alyce MacKenzie’s words I read earlier:

Biblical love is not passive. It is not something that occurs to us without our control or will. Biblical love is something we do. It is loving-kindness, merciful action that is both generous and continuous.

Our faith is not a romantic comedy or a good love story. We can’t just sit around waiting to feel love for our neighbor. It’s something that we choose, whether we feel it or not.  With that in mind, I want to give you some homework. As you go from here today, as you go about your week. As you are at school, or at work, or at home, or with friends, I want you to consciously observe every chance you have to choose to love your neighbor.

Take note of the times when you could have chosen to say something or do something that would have expressed God’s love for someone. A kind word, a helping hand, a listening ear, a needed gift, anything that someone needed that you could have provided. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, so ask yourself throughout the day: If I was that person what would I need right now? What would make me feel loved?

Choose to love your neighbor throughout the week, and be mindful of the opportunities to choose that present themselves to you.

’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Simple Questions. Simple Answers? Can God Forgive Me for Anything?

From August 27, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

Can God forgive me for anything?  This is the final question in our short series, “Simple Questions. Simple Answers?” Our first two questions, “is science the enemy of faith?” and “can God save non-Christians?” dealt directly with misperceptions about Christian faith held by many people outside of the church.  Today’s question does as well.

Unfortunately, there are many people who believe that Christianity teaches about a punishing God. I God who is eternally vigilant in waiting for us to mess up so that God can quickly deliver punishment, or write it down on our divine scorecard to be used against us at a later date.  It is also unfortunate that it is mostly Christians who have perpetuated the myth of God who is based on punishment.

To be fair, there are definitely scripture passages that illustrate that there are punishing consequences for sin.  If you remember Jesus story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. Lazarus was a poor man who suffered in his lifetime, while the rich man lived a life of luxury. After they both died, their fates were reversed and Lazarus was taken care of at Abraham’s side, and the rich man was in the torment of Hades.  Then there’s Exodus, were God punishes the Pharaoh and the Egyptians for keeping the Hebrew people as slaves.

But what Christians have done with passages like this is fixated on them and elevated them above the larger witness of Scripture which shows God is a loving, forgiving God.  And so we have works like Dante’s Inferno, which is a book detailing the various circles of Hell and the punishment God has in store for each type of sinner. 

A more recent example that I witnessed, was when a group of us from Fairview marched in the Indy Pride Parade.  We were there to let our LGBT neighbors know that they are loved by Fairview and by God, but at one point we marched by a group of Christians with signs condemning people who are gay and detailing the punishment that God had in store for them.

It’s no wonder people think God is judgmental and punishing. It’s no wonder people think Christians are judgmental and punishing.  God’s message of love, mercy, forgiveness and grace speaks louder throughout scripture than punishment and condemnation, but that doesn’t always come across, does it?  So it’s important for us, as Christians and as Fairview Presbyterian Church, to be loud in proclaiming God’s love so that our faith is represented accurately. This is one reason we are addressing the question, “Can God Forgive Me for Anything?”

But I think there’s a more important reason, today, and that is for us. And maybe more specifically for some of us.

Can God Forgive Me for Anything? Simple Question, and the Simple Answer is yes. An absolute,  unqualified yes. This is the fundamental bedrock of our faith. But the problem is, there may be someone here this morning who cannot believe this, you think it sounds too good to be true. Especially for you. Maybe there is something that you have done, something you think is so bad, something that hurt someone deeply, and you can’t imagine every being forgiven for it.

You are unable to forgive yourself, and so you can’t imagine a loving and holy God being willing to forgive you.

There was a movie in 1986 called The Mission. It was set in the 1700s and follows a Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel, as he works with a remote tribe in the jungles of Argentina.  In this movie Robert DeNiro plays a slaver, Rodrigo Mendoza, who in the past has kidnapped members of this tribe to sell into slavery.  He later repents of his actions and goes with Father Gabriel to work with the tribe he once enslaved.

But he carries the guilt of his sins with him. Literally. As they are going up through the mountains into the jungle, as penance, Mendoza bundles his heavy armor and weapons together and ties them to his back to pull up the mountain.  He cannot imagine forgiveness for his sins of slavery and so he punishes himself as he feels God must be punishing him.  Let’s watch a short clip of this:

Mission Video #1

I wonder if that seems familiar to any of you. Are you carrying a burden that weighs you down? A burden of something you’ve done in the past that you can’t let go, that you can’t forgive yourself for, and certainly can’t imagine God ever forgiving you for?

If so, I want to state again. Can God Forgive You for Anything? Yes. 100% yes.

But don’t believe me. Believe Jesus, as he speaks with a woman accused of sin and facing the punishment for that sin. A reading from John chapter 8:

 2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 

7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.* 9When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ 11She said, ‘No one, sir.’* And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’]]* 

If you are someone who is holding on to something you think is unforgivable, then maybe you can relate to the woman in this story.  Here she is, her sins exposed for all to bear witness to.  Imagine the emotions she is feeling at this moment. Fear. Shame. Remorse. Imagine how she feels about herself. She feels like a sinner, unworthy. She knows what she has done. How can Jesus forgive her? These scribes and Pharisees have made clear to her what they think God has in store for her.  She’s guilty. She knows it. She feels it.

Now at this time, there’s really no historical evidence to suggest that stoning took place in situations like this.  But certainly there would public judgment and punishment of some sort.  And these scribes and Pharisees are looking to Jesus to condemn and punish.  And they are appealing to Jewish scripture, our Old Testament, as the basis for their (and God’s) condemnation.

But what they are conveniently overlooking, is the rich Old Testament and Jewish tradition of a forgiving God, of a God who from the very beginning acknowledges that we are sinners and makes plans and paths for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Lauren read a moment ago from Psalm 103:

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
   slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 
9 He will not always accuse,
   nor will he keep his anger for ever. 
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
   nor repay us according to our iniquities. 

The Bible shows us that forgiveness and mercy is fundamental to who God is.  Let’s go way back to Genesis. Within the first four chapters, there are two egregious sins committed, and if any sin was unforgivable it might be these two.  In Genesis chapter 2, the second creation story we find in the Bible, God creates Adam and Eve, God creates the Garden of Eden, God gives them everything they need and gives them free reign, except for one thing, right? God says, see that tree there, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Don’t eat from that. See all the other trees? Have at them! That tree, no. Everything else, all yours. God says, don’t do that thing, so what do they do?  They do that thing?

Immediately, they rebel against God. And according to Genesis, God punishes them. There are consequences for their actions, but God also provides for them. Moves them from the garden, makes sure they can’t get back to it, but provides for them by still giving them animals for food, the ground to work, and clothes to wear. God could have said, “Well, that didn’t work,” and decided to get rid of Adam and Eve and start again. But God essentially, said, “You screwed up, but I’m not giving up on you. There’s a way forward and a way back to me.”

In the next chapter, Genesis chapter 4, we have the story of Cain and Abel.  Cain murders his brother out of jealousy, and God punishes him with exile, but when Cain is fearful for his like God protects him with the “mark of Cain” so that all will know the he is under God’s care. Even in this sin, even when God has a right to be most angry, God is keeping the door open, saying “I am not ready to give up on you.”

Then fairly quickly in Genesis and later more fully developed in Exodus and Leviticus, we have an ordained system of sacrifices as a way to repent for sin. A way to reconcile with God and be forgiven for sin.  From the very beginning there is a strong message from God that says our relationship with God is not based on us being perfect, but forgiven.  Our relationship with God is not based on whether or not we sin, because guess what, we will sin.  We don’t have to be perfect, we aren’t perfect, just forgiven.

That’s hard to admit for some of us. Marjory Bankson, author of The Call to the Soul, recalls a conversation with her mother, a recovering alcoholic, in which her mother wondered why she could be more honest about sin at her Alcoholics Anonymous meeting than she could be at church.  The only answer she could come up with is “because they know it’s a matter of life and death at AA and they don’t at church.”

We could learn a thing or two from Alcoholics Anonymous.  What if I came up here and said, “Hi, my name is Shawn, and I’m a sinner,” and then shared with you my struggles with sin.  And after me, someone from over here came forward and did the same thing.  Just take a moment to imagine how you would feel as you walked forward with everyone’s eyes on you, stepped up to the microphone with a lump in your throat, and then looked out at everyone gathered here today and admitted to us that you were a sinner.  I know I would find it a little scary and pretty intimidating.  How about you?

But, you know what?  It shouldn’t be embarrassing.  There’s no reason that anyone of us should be afraid or ashamed to admit our sinfulness to one another, because we are all sinners.  Each and every one of us! 

This is why it is so important to answer the question, “Can God Forgive Me for Anything?”  Because some of us know all to well that we are sinners, and the problem isn’t being honest about your sin, the problem is not being honest enough about the forgiveness God will grant.

Oswald Chambers, in his devotional book My Utmost for His Highest, says that “Forgiveness is accepted, not earned.”  Forgiveness is accepted, not earned.

Let’s go back to John chapter 8. At the end of this passage, Jesus forgives this woman by pointing out that there is no one there to condemn her, including himself. She doesn’t ask for his forgiveness. She doesn’t repent. She doesn’t do anything but accept the forgiveness offered by God.  Now I could certainly make an argument, that accepting God’s forgiveness can’t truly happen without some sort of remorse or repentance. But the forgiveness and mercy of God is there before we can truly grasp our need of it.

Remember where we left slaver Rodrigo Mendoza literally carrying his burden of sin behind him?  Let’s watch another clip that begins when he and his party meet the tribe that he had formally enslaved. Let’s watch what happens when they recognize him and the burden he is carrying.

Mission Video #2

Let me close with a story from Norman Neaves:

A young father and his daughter were on a cruise, a "get-away" cruise because his wife/her mother had just died. Turning to one another to help relieve the pain, they huddled together on board ship. And on the deck of that ship the little girl asked her father: "Daddy, does God love us as much as Mommy did?"

At first, the father didn't know what to say. But he knew he couldn't side-step the question. Pointing out across the water to the most distant horizon, he said, "Honey, God's love reaches farther than you can see in that direction." Turning around he said, "And God's love reaches farther than you can see in that direction, too." And then the father looked up at the sky and said, "And God's love is higher than the sky, too." Finally he pointed down at the ocean and said, "And it's deeper than the ocean as well."

Then the little girl said "Oh, just think, Daddy. We're right here in the middle of it all!"

We are right in the middle of God’s love, wider, higher and deeper than we can ever imagine. Know that you are forgiven, for anything, and be at peace.