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HELPERS: CHRIST THE KING

11/26/2017

Matthew 25:31-40
“When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

The week before last I attended our quarterly Regional Ministries Council meeting as one of the representatives for our affinity group, Church Off the Center. As I hope you know by now, this group represents small churches – often isolated in off the center places – doing church in their own way because the “traditional ways” no longer work for our situations. In my report to the council I spoke of this church and our response to the fires in this area, by way of Week of Compassion – about how even small churches can make a big difference if they care enough. LaTaunya encouraged me to write a piece about it for the Regional Newsletter – so I’ve had that conversation running in the back of my mind for the past week.

Add to that, this has, of course, been Thanksgiving week, so gratitude has been on my mind, as well.

And then Hilary began talking about an article he had just read about Mr. Rogers and I recalled that I had read the same article when it first came out earlier this year, and so Mr. Rogers and his “helpers” joined into the mix.

And then, to cap it all off, I checked to see what the lectionary reading for today is, and it turned out, of course, to be “I was hungry and you fed me.” I’m thinking there is a theme building here.

The Mr. Rogers article was written around a famous quote of his, describing being frightened of larger events around him when he was a child. “When I was a boy,” he said, “and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’

”When I gave my report at the Ministries Council meeting, I spoke of this church and how we had accepted that we can’t possibly save the world on our own, but had discovered that, small as we are, we can always help in some way, however small.When we think about people for whom we are grateful, it is almost always people who help others.And that is exactly what Jesus is talking about here in our reading from Matthew – the helpers of this world. I have always viewed this as one of the BIG gospel stories because it is such a big idea – are we, or are we not, truly following Jesus? But if we read Jesus’ words as they are written here – without reading our own expectations into them – we realize that nothing Jesus lists here is about changing the direction of a country or a city or even a neighborhood. Not one of them requires a vote or a planning commission or a board or even an ad hoc committee.

What he asks of us is a few simple acts – ones that we can do alone even if no one joins us.I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes ... Each of these is a singular action performed by an individual for an individual. I and you. I needed and you responded. I was in need and you helped me. This reading is about the wholeness of the singular human heart.This is what we do on bag lunch day. At the end of the day there are still hungry people all over the world – we haven’t changed that -- but we have taken care of the handful who are in our care that day – those we can reach are fed that day.

This is what Jesus expects of us – not fancy liturgies or billboards along the highways or people shouting “Praise Jesus!” every five minutes. Jesus simply expects us to feed people who are hungry.

Sometimes we work collectively because collective buying usually goes further than individual donations – as when we give our money to Plowshares or the Food Bank or any of the others local groups we support. We are still individuals who choose to give collectively to make our giving go further.

During our horrible firestorm there were those who were in a time and place to act individually – to run and pull someone out of harm’s way, to take a stranger into their home when they had nowhere else to go, to stand and fight the fires – and there were hundreds more who weren’t in a place to do those big dramatic things who still gave food and money and clothing to total strangers for no other reason than that they were in need – individuals who did what they could do – gave what they had to give. People who helped.

This is what it is about – feeding hungry people, clothing cold and underdressed people. Helping people. After the immediate need is taken care of we can then turn our attention to dismantling the systems that allow – or even encourage, hunger. But first, we feed the hungry.

This all Jesus is asking us to do. God will take care of saving the world, if only we will take care of each other.

‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

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IN ALL THIS, WHO WAS PAUL?

11/19/2017

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2 Corinthians 11:21b-28
Whatever anyone dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.

We’ve come to the end of Paul -- for this season, at least. Next week we will discuss our reasons for giving thanks, then the following Sunday we will enter into Advent Season and our preparations for Christmas.

I thought we’d finish up with Paul today, as we began this series, by looking at the man himself rather than what he wrote. The reading we just started with comes from 2nd Corinthians. It is basically Paul-on-Paul – the life of Paul in one paragraph – in his own words.

Through the various Letters and the Book of Acts, we can learn a fair amount about Paul himself. He was a near-contemporary of Jesus, maybe ten years younger. As nearly as we can tell, they never met. He was born in Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey, a large, cosmopolitan city in it’s time. Paul’s missionary work would always take place in established cities – he was not a rural person.

He was an educated Jew – a Pharisee – trained to use his words as teaching tools, or, in his earlier years, as weapons. He was passionate about everything he did. When he attacked the Jesus-followers, believing them to be spreading heresy, he did so passionately. When he “met” Jesus and converted to the other side, he did that equally passionately for the rest of his life.

There is a new work available, which I would love to get my hands on. It’s a DVD series by John Dominic Crossan, titled “The Challenge of Paul.” Crossan is one of the best of our current New Testament scholars, a sometimes co-writer with Marcus Borg, whose work gave us the study for this summer’s series, and, like Borg, a member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars, formed in the eighties, who worked together for years to take Jesus out of the realm of biblical mythology and shape some cohesive idea of an historical Jesus. Celebrated by liberal Christians and most often vilified by conservatives, these scholars, and especially Dom Crossan, have been – and still are -- hugely important in my own theological understanding.

I haven’t seen the DVD and it’s not out in book form (yet) but I found some snippets from an interview done for CNN.* Here is a small tidbit of Crossan’s thoughts on Paul:

The primary misconception of Paul is that he was the founder or inventor of Christianity. That is a thought that would horrify Paul, as if all his emphasis on Christ was something like a cover-up for what he was actually doing.

What happened historically is that Messianic Judaism (because that’s what Christianity was at the time of its inception) started in the small hamlets of Galilee. Had it stayed there, it would have been destroyed completely in the Roman war of 66 to 74. By then, however, it had long broken out from Galilee, going first to Jerusalem.

When Paul arrived on the scene, he went to Jerusalem. As a pilgrimage city, Jerusalem would allow this new form of Messianic Judaism to begin to move outward along the pilgrim networks.

The crucial decision facing Messianic Judaism concerned whether Gentile converts could become full members of the Messianic community without undergoing circumcision. Paul was part of that decision, but so were Peter and James, as we know from Galatians 1. That process would have happened if Paul had never existed.

That is an important statement. Because, of course, it's true. It was Peter, after all, who had the vision of the sheet being lowered and offering all manner.of good things, all tossed together and proclaimed good. It was Peter who announced to the gathered leaders that he had changed his thinking and was now convinced the message was for everyone.

Just because Paul wrote about his battles with the traditionalists does not mean that Paul was the only evangelist in that battle. We tend to forget that. But, back to Crossan:

What Paul added to it was his decision to focus on the major capitals of the eastern Roman provinces and then, after twenty years, to try and move westward to Spain. Paul’s project was to get Messianic Jewish cells going in the capitals, from whence they could expand to the other cities and eventually the countryside. The other major achievement of Paul was to write and to leave behind him letters that slowly but surely formed the theology of Messianic Judaism.

I really want to view/read this series ...

But, back to Paul. In the late 50’s Paul traveled to Jerusalem, where he was arrested by temple authorities and handed over to the Romans, who found him not guilty of anything, but still did not release him. He would remain in confinement for the rest of his life. He eventually invoked his right as a Roman citizen to have his case heard by the emperor himself, and so, began his long final trip to Rome. This was a long process in itself – from the time of his arrest, Paul spent several years imprisoned.

The trip to Rome involved ship wreaks and long layovers and, once in Rome, he spent at least an additional two years under house arrest. Tradition, which in this case appears to be historically accurate, puts his death in the year 64.

Like Jesus, Paul was eventually killed by the world’s powers, for no crime, but simply because he was an inconvenient man.

* http://religiondispatches.org/paul-for-the-people-john-dominic-crossan-imagines-a-letter-to-the-americans-in-his-new-video-series/

Peter Laarman is a United Church of Christ minister and activist who recently retired as executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles.

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JESUS DIED ... JESUS LIVES

11/12/2017

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Romans 5:6-11
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

“Jesus Died for Your Sins.” This past summer on our road trip up to Washington state I was, probably naively, surprised at the number of billboards along the highway with this message and others like it. “Jesus Died for Your Sins.” The further north we went, the more signs there were. I know such sights are common in the southern states and in the Bible Belt but I just hadn’t seen any like them on the west coast for quite a while.

Like many of you, I was raised with this drummed into my head – Jesus died, and it was all my fault. The Catholic church of my childhood may have phrased it a bit more gently than the local Assembly of God, for instance, but Jesus’ suffering was my fault, nonetheless. I grew up with the knowledge that I was to blame.

In the Judaism of the Old Testament, relief from guilt was a commodity to be sold and purchased. If you sinned, you went to the Temple, put out your money for the appropriate animal and the poor creature was slaughtered on the altar in your place. God’s honor had been satisfied by a death and you were home free. This wasn’t just common among the Jewish people, but in most forms of religion in the Mediterranean world of that era. It was the perfectly normal way to think, back then.

When Jesus was crucified by the Roman state in order to silence him and any thought of rebellion that might have grown from his radical teachings, it became entirely obvious to the young faith growing around him that his death was a perfect example of this payment-for-sin-to-satisfy-God’s-honor theology. Coming from the world they lived in, it made sense to everyone in that era.

It makes less sense to many of us today. In fact, many of us reject it outright. For myself, I see any god who would insist on the death of their own child just to settle a score, as a monster – certainly no one to be worshiped. I've heard others refer to it as “divine child abuse.”

On the other hand, equally many believers would never dream of arguing with church authority over their long-standing understanding of atonement theology, and they somehow manage to convince themselves that it all is completely reasonable.

There have been some fascinating essays and studies popping up in the past few years dealing with the concepts of liberal vs. conservative. We think of those words now almost exclusively in terms of politics, but they existed long before our current political situation. They actually are psychological/sociological terms that describe differences in how we see and interact with the world around us.

To give you the sixty second cheap-seats explanation, conservatives are authoritarians. They believe in and trust their authority figures, whether in the area of religion or politics or the military. These are the people who trust their leaders, even when those leaders are demonstrably wrong. Conservatives are simply wired that way. If the Bible says it, then it is so. Period.

Liberals, on the other hand, derive their authority from things like empirical evidence, scientific study and their own direct observation. Edicts issued by an authority figure who is provably mistaken are simply wrong and therefore, hold no authority. The Bible, in this view, is a tool to be used in digging out our own truths.

The Christian belief spectrum runs from the uber-liberal “whatever” at one end to the “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe as I do” of the uber-conservatives. Most of us float somewhere in the middle, leaning on the history and traditions of our faith while adding in our own experience to the mix.

Much of this muddle, as is often the case, is a gift from Paul and his writings. And specifically, much of it comes from Romans.

Paul, in all this talk of justification and faith in this letter makes what is perhaps his most important point in this discussion of life and death and new life – but, being Paul, he uses a boatload of words to do so and it is all those words that lead us into confusion.

When Paul writes of Jesus dying as an offering for our sins, is he using those words literally, in the sense of a blood offering - a meaning that probably would have made sense in that time and place? Or is he using them metaphorically, to convey a whole new reality? The answer is probably, “Yes.”

It is important for us to keep in mind that Paul was a somewhat cosmopolitan first century Jew. He was not remotely a twenty-first century Christian. He did not necessarily use words the way we use them today. He did not write out of anything like our experience of the world. We simply cannot equate our worldly lives with Paul’s and hope to make sense of them.

We can, however, listen to Paul describing and explaining his spiritual life and experience and compare it with our own. Paul experienced a new life after he met Jesus – and we could talk all day about just what that phrase “he met Jesus” truly means. Whatever happened, Paul recognized that this change that hit him was equivalent to dying and being reborn as a new, transformed person. Paul knew that nothing would ever be the same again for him.

And this is the Jesus Paul writes of with all those laden, easily misunderstood words. This is the Jesus Paul loves so much he simply has to travel the world to tell others about.

So, “Yes.” It’s an answer that most likely won’t completely satisfy either end of that belief spectrum. For myself, since I do not – will not – believe in that vengeful god who demands a sacrifice, I am left to read this truth-claim metaphorically. That Jesus died, and somehow continues to live within us, and in that living carries us along with him into a new life, a transformed, re-born life – different from the life we lived before we experienced this spiritual rebirth.

And that works for me. Thanks be to God.

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FAITH, GRACE, JUSTIFICATION

11/5/2017

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Romans 3:21b-24 (The Message)
What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

As usual, our Summer Sermon Series has stretched out well beyond the limits of summer – but today we start our look into the seventh, and last- written of the letters largely considered to be authentically written by Paul himself - Paul’s letter to the Romans.

There are a lot of interesting things about this letter even before we get into its content. It’s the longest of the letters. It’s the only letter in our study that was written to people Paul did not already know. The other letters are written to communities that Paul himself had founded, but he had never traveled as far as Rome. This letter was written to introduce himself to the Roman Christians in preparation for a trip he was planning to take there (which, of course, he never managed to accomplish).

Paul was in Corinth when he wrote to the Romans – probably around the year 58 – just prior to his final trip to Jerusalem. If you recall from last week, he was in Greece to collect donations from the Macedonians to help the communities in Jerusalem that were suffering. In Jerusalem he would be arrested and begin the last long journey to Rome and his eventual execution.

In most of his other letters Paul is responding to issues within the addressed community: mentioning specific people; fighting back against those who dogged his steps attempting to undo all his teaching; encouraging the communities who faced difficulties; praising those doing good work and chastising them when they had drifted into unacceptable behaviors.

This letter – having none of that personal history – is generally known as Pau’s most “theological” writing. Last week was Reformation Sunday. This discussion was originally intended for last Sunday – but as we pointed out last week, schedules are made to be messed up. The reason I hoped to do this one last week is because this letter – Romans – is widely seen as the theological centerpiece of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther’s language of justification, grace, and faith generally originates right here, in this letter.

Here Paul gives us his “theology.” This letter is where he talks about, not just the actions, but the significance of Jesus and what Jesus actually means to our way of thinking about God. As our reading states: What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us.

What is discussed in much of this letter is the ever on-going push-and-pull between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. While this conversation occurred in most European-area Christian communities, it had been exacerbated in Rome by the emperor Claudius in the year 48, when he issued an edict ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Rome. This would have included Jewish Christians. For the next five or six years, therefore, the Roman Christian communities would have consisted of only Gentile Christians.

In AD 54 that edict was rescinded, and Jews could openly return to Rome. We can imagine the conflicts arising if Jewish Christians returned and tried to re-assume leadership of the local communities. It is quite possible that there was a struggle for dominance between the two communities similar to the one that occurred in Old Testament times when the exiles returned from Babylon and contested with those who had been left behind in Jerusalem as to which group were the “real” Jews” – those who stayed strong even in exile or those who had held the faith at home in an occupied land.

Paul makes it clear that in his opinion the Jews come first – but that the Gentiles are equal. The Jews’ dependence on their Law and works is responsible for much of the conflict in the world. The Gentiles are also at fault through the loose living that characterizes much of their world. Therefore, both sides are equally guilty – but both sides are equally saved by God’s grace given us all through and by the life of Jesus.
Many Christians today preach that we are saved by faith in Jesus. We must believe in Jesus to be saved. This includes believing a laundry list of things about Jesus. This is the only way to heaven in their view.

The thing is, this is a fairly recent idea in western Christianity. For many today, their “faith” is all about getting to heaven, but “heaven” was not central to the early Christians – actually, until as recently as the last three centuries, “getting to heaven” was not at the central core of Christian belief. In fact, some early believers probably didn’t even believe in an afterlife, as such.

For them, salvation – as Marc Borg puts it - was all about being transformed on this side of death. Justification by grace through faith – Paul’s and the Reformation’s great phrase, is about being transformed here and now and then about transforming the world – through the faith of Jesus. We do not have to believe a list of things about Jesus. Jesus is the faith by which we are justified – by which we are transformed. Jesus, after all, never told his followers to worship him. Instead, he consistently pointed our attention toward the one he called Father. Modern-day Christians who worship Jesus are missing his message entirely.

There’s a lot more to learn from Romans – it may take one more week, maybe two – we’ll see. We will be finished with Paul's letters in time for Advent.

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HELPERS: CHRIST THE KING

IN ALL THIS, WHO WAS PAUL?

JESUS DIED ... JESUS LIVES

FAITH, GRACE, JUSTIFICATION

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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