Blog Archives

FREEDOM!

6/30/2013

Galatians 5:1, 13-18 / The Message

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.....

There is slavery and there is slavery ... and this scripture, I believe, addresses every kind. There is the obvious shackles-and-chains kind, yes, but other forms of slavery are more insidious – and often a lot harder to recognize. Traditional translations of the Bible generally use word like: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, envy, and drunkenness, to describe these. I fully understand the meaning of these words and their applications in our modern world -- but they are not words common to our language today. It seems to me they too easily fall into some category which could be labeled "bible words" and then ignored as being irrelevant to us today.

Instead, I really like the words used by The Message to describe the kinds of choices that can enslave us just as surely as a slave master with a whip: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an inability to love or be loved; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. These are concepts that we can find on our TV's or in our on-line discussions any day. They resonate with with the world we live in now.

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Our freedom is never just about ourselves – no gift God gives us is ever just for ourselves. And if the price of our freedom is another’s enslavement, then neither of us is truly free. My freedom to live in comfort cannot be bought at the cost of the destruction of someone else’s quality of life. We are not set free by Christ in order that we can force another person into our understanding of that gift.

We are free to live as one who lives in the Reign of God – and we know that in God’s kingdom, the rules are simple and clear: love one another as I have loved you. In love, God has given us life and love and hope. To love as God loves us is to offer others life and love and hope. This is the freedom Christ offers.

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

“Choose to be led by the Spirit.” Now, there, is true freedom. Freedom from having to rely on my own fallible human understanding. Free from uncertainty. Free from fear that I might get it wrong. When we choose to live our lives “led by the Spirit” we are free indeed. Earlier here I read a list of things that can enslave us. Our reading from Galatians goes on to list the freedoms that are part and parcel of a life lived led by the Spirit -- the counterpoints to all those things which can so easily enslave us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” None of these will ever put us in chains. These things are indeed what freedom looks and feels like.

Praise God!

0 Comments

Judging vs. Judgment

6/23/2013

0 Comments

Luke 7:36-50

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet.

Now, this woman is apparently a notorious person in town – a “fallen” woman, Hester Prynne herself, wearing her scarlet “A” prominently displayed. Everyone – except Jesus – is horrified that she would even come near “decent people.”

Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”

You see, Simon already has the woman categorized – he doesn’t even have to give her a thought. He appears to have absolutely no interest in why she might be weeping, or why she has dared to show herself here in his house. Really, he’s too busy right now judging Jesus. Jesus is barely even in the door and already Simon is judging him and dropping him into his little box. We do this all the time – mostly unconsciously. It’‘s the easy way for us because once we have someone slotted into the proper box we can pretty well not think about them anymore at all.

Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Oh? Tell me.”

Now, if Jesus were sitting here today and he looked up and said to me, “Cherie, I have something to say to you,” I’m pretty sure I’d be thinking, “oh, boy - caught - where have I messed up this time?” But not Simon. Simon is a Pharisee. Simon is an important man. Simon is always right. Simon is the one who identifies others as sinners. No one would think of suggesting Simon might be one himself. And so, Simon is clueless. “Teacher,” he says, “speak.”

[And Jesus tells a story:] “Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”

Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”

I love the way Jesus handles this. He doesn’t just jump right in with the bigger issues, like loving your neighbor or taking that plank out of your own eye. No, he gently but firmly points out to Simon that he has been rude. He has arrogantly ignored one of the basic rules of common hospitality – presumably because he doesn’t really think that Jesus is important enough for him to bother with the social niceties.

The Jewish people lived in a dry land and had generations of making-do in semi-arid and desert land. One of the absolutely most important parts of their rules of hospitality was to wash the dusty feet of any visitor. Another was to offer them a kiss of peace when they came into one’s home. These “rules” evolved out of survival necessity from the days when they were still nomads in the desert. If you wanted others to offer you welcome and mercy when you were caught without shelter or food or water, then you had to offer them to others, as well. This was more deeply ingrained in the people than even many of their religious laws.

Simon, as a Pharisee, was a man who lived by “the rules.” Jesus here points out that Simon – the “rules-guy” just stomped all over several important rules. He is so ready to hold the woman responsible for her rule-breaking and to get Jesus slotted into the proper ‘box’ that he blissfully ignores any possibility that he is breaking a few important rules himself.

To get back to our story:

Then Jesus spoke to the woman: “I forgive your sins.” That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”

He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

Now, here I Jesus does the thing that we recognize as surely intended to set the rules-oriented people howling. He tells the woman her faith has saved her. Her sins are forgiven and she is saved. For us, it is the heart of the story – the part that gives us hope. But not for Simon and his other guests. For them, this was heresy – Jesus abrogating to himself that which only belongs to God – the ability to forgive sins.

I suspect there may have been another “sin” that Jesus committed in their eyes with these actions and words: He rejects here their assumption of superiority. He rejects their right to define what is a sin and what isn’t– who is a sinner and who isn’t. This may have been the bigger sin. It’s interesting that scripture doesn’t tell us what happened after that. Do they go on with dinner? Did they throw him out? Did they try to have him arrested? The story doesn’t say. The next we know is that he is continuing to travel around the countryside, teaching and healing. We don’t know if Simon ever “got it” or not. We don’t know if he was aware of the grace that was offered and received, by the woman at least. We don’t know if he understood his own hard-hearted sinfulness, so we don’t know if he ever understood his own deep need for forgiveness and redemption.

We have a tendency to identify with the woman – we are happy that she recognized and received Jesus’ mercy. We may even feel a little sanctimonious, thinking that we are so much wiser than Simon. But are we? Do we truly not judge people by whether or not they fit our ideas of how they should be? Do we never set ourselves up as judges of who is worthy of God’s grace and who is not?

There is a lot of conversation in church circles today about why young people no longer come to church. It isn’t that they don’t love God. It is quite often, just like Jesus and the Pharisees, that they don’t accept our right to draw lines in the sand and say,”you can come across if you meet our standards.” Who are you,they say, to draw those lines? Isn’t that Jesus’ job? Not yours?

I was shlepping around the web the other day and found an article written by a young person, titled “Why I no Longer Go to Church.” Theyoung woman wrote of the judging she saw happening in the churches she had attended. This is how she ended:

I think if Jesus were to come down from Heaven this moment, He’d stand outside some of these churches, wipe his brow in exhaustion, and say with embarrassment, “Geez, look people, I appreciate it, really I do, but I think you completely missed My point … LOVE each other. That was what I said. Stop hating each other. Stop judging each other. Be kind and forgiving to each other because that’s what I’ve done for you, and that’s the greatest thing I taught you.”

And that’s why I stopped going to church every week. I can’t tolerate being around judgmental people. I can no longer make myself stand behind one line and chastise the people standing on the other side of the line. I’ve read the Bible many times, my mind is (almost) in constant prayer every moment of every day, I’ve been baptized, confirmed, AND saved, and I continue to speak to God daily. He has never told me to judge others. Yet the people who claim to be closest to God are all too often the most judgmental people I’ve ever met.
Leesah Marie, Divine Caroline

... And, yes, this writer is herself being judgmental when she judges everyone else as judgmental (!), but this just illustrates how tricky this whole discussion can be. We are NOT called to judge each other. We ARE called to exercise good judgment in our own life choices. It is easy to confuse the two. We have to work at it. We have to pay attention to our own business and we have to be aware of our responses to others. We have to notice how we living our lives.

May God give us wisdom and discernment -- and a caring heart above all.

0 Comments

Just Because You're Little Doesn't Mean You Don't Count

6/16/2013

0 Comments

Luke 19:1-10 / The Message
“Zacchaeus”

Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name, Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.

When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”

Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”

Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”

0 Comments

2nd Sunday after Pentecost: Psalm 23 -- I WILL NOT FEAR

6/8/2013

0 Comments

Psalm 23 / English Standard Version Anglicised

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
for ever.

Psalm 23 / The Message

God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.
You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.
Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

Psalm 23 / The Voice

The Eternal is my shepherd, He cares for me always.
He provides me rest in rich, green fields
beside streams of refreshing water.
He soothes my fears;
He makes me whole again,
steering me off worn, hard paths
to roads where truth and righteousness echo His name.
Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness,
I am not overcome by fear.
Because You are with me in those dark moments,
near with Your protection and guidance,
I am comforted.
You spread out a table before me,
provisions in the midst of attack from my enemies;
You care for all my needs, anointing my head with soothing, fragrant oil,
filling my cup again and again with Your grace.
Certainly Your faithful protection and loving provision will pursue me
where I go, always, everywhere.
I will always be with the Eternal,
in Your house forever.

[Today was another discussion sermon] The word is that even in the midst of our confusion this is no need to fear. We may not know where we are going right now -- but God, our Shepherd -- does know -- and that is the main thing we need to remember.

I've included three different translations of Psalm 23 today. The first is closest to the King James version that many of us may have first learned as children. The second and third are from more modern translations. While they say basically the same things -- they sometimes allow us to see from a different angle -- and give new life to older concepts that have lost some of their impact through sheer repetition. True to your word, you let me catch my breath somehow puts a new slant on "he restores my soul." You care for all my needs ..... filling my cup again and again with Your grace is a wonderfully rich way of saying "my cup overflows."

I don't know about you all, but I am feeling a little stressed by the questions and decisions we are facing. Spending time hearing these ancient promises of care and guidance -- in whatever language -- brings me to a sense of peace with their reminder that we are not in this alone. It is God who calls us to a new thing. Therefore, God will guide us through it. I don't have to know our ultimate destination -- I just have to recognize and follow my shepherd.

0 Comments

FREEDOM!

Judging vs. Judgment

Just Because You're Little Doesn't Mean You Don't Count

2nd Sunday after Pentecost: Psalm 23 -- I WILL NOT FEAR

Rev. Cherie Marckx

Archives