12-19-2010 Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

I BELIEVE

   Christmas is less than one week away.  We’ve all been painfully aware that Christmas was on its way.  Advertisers have been hawking their Christmas wares since the end of October.    The Christmas commercials that astound me most are the ones where a husband gives his wife, or a wife gives her husband, a brand new automobile for Christmas.  Do people really do that?  I’d love for my wife to give me a new car for Christmas.  What I wouldn’t love is the years of monthly payments that would follow.

     Speaking of monthly payments, I recently encountered a poem of sorts that pretty much sums up what Christmas in America has become.  It’s entitled, “The Day after Christmas.”  The author is unknown.  Listen closely to the words, just the same.  I think you’ll find them to be eerily prophetic.

 

‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house,

Every creature was hurting – even the mouse.

            The toys were all broken, their batteries dead;

            Santa passed out, with ice on his head.

Wrapping and ribbons just covered the floor,

While upstairs the family continued to snore.

            And I in my T-shirt, new Reeboks and jeans,

            Went into the kitchen, and started to clean.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the sink to see what was the matter.

            Away to the window I flew like a flash,

            Tore open the curtains, and threw up the sash.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a little white truck, with an oversized mirror.

            The driver was smiling, so lively and grand;

            The patch on his jacket said, “U.S. Postman.”

With a handful of bills, he grinned like a fox.

Then quickly he stuffed them into our mailbox.

            Bill after bill after bill, they still came.

            Whistling and shouting he called them by name:

“Now Dillard’s, now Broadway’s, now Penney’s and Sears,

Here’s Levitz and Target and Mervyn’s – all here!

            To the tip of your limit, every store, every mall,

            Now charge-away, charge-away, charge-away all!”

He whooped and he whistled as he finished his work.

He filled up the box, and then turned with a jerk.

            He sprang to his truck and he drove down the road,

            Driving much faster with just half a load.

Then I heard him exclaim with great holiday cheer,

“Enjoy what you got!  You’ll be paying all year!”

 

     Is that what Christmas in America has become?  Is it a time to rack up incredible bills in the spirit of giving, or is there something more?  Christmas is meant to be a time when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We call it the Incarnation, which means, “God in the flesh.”  We proclaim the word Emmanuel, which means, “God with us.”  Tied to the holiday itself is a particular feeling.  And frankly, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  How could it be a bad thing when perfect strangers are kinder and more loving, and they smile at one another and say, “Merry Christmas?”  While many of us resent the commercialization of Christmas, I think most of us still appreciate the sentimentality. 

     Why, then, is Christmas under fire?  In England, a group called the National Secular Society actually ran television ads during the Christmas season denigrating the Christian faith.  I’ve talked about them in sermons before.  They’re the ones who offer certificates of “debaptism” for those who want to symbolically undo their baptism.  And there are things going on in this country as well, aimed at denouncing – or at least deemphasizing – the Christian faith.

    Students in Plano, Texas, for example, were recently banned from wearing the colors red and green during Winter Break parties.  Why?  Because red and green are Christmas colors and they    might offend some of their peers.  In South Orange, New Jersey, carols were banned during the Christmas season, including those that mention the name of Santa Claus.  Carols were banned in Glendale, Wisconsin schools as well.  They said, “Music programs close to religious holidays should not use the religious aspect of those holidays as an underlying theme or motive.”           

   I think the most astounding case of all is what recently happened in New York City schools.   In a dispute over the display of holiday symbols, New York City schools are allowing Jewish menorahs and Islamic crescents to be displayed.  Yet they ban Christian nativity scenes from being displayed, claiming that the depiction of the birth of Christ does not represent historical fact.  The Jewish and Islamic symbols are allowed because they have what they call a secular dimension.  Christian symbols, however, are what they call “purely religious.”  Thus, they are banned.

   What strikes me here is the fact that they’re claiming that the birth of Jesus Christ is not historical fact.  Perhaps what they really should say is that the way we depict the birth of Jesus Christ is not historical fact.  And you know what?  I can live with that.  I can live with the claim that the way we depict the birth of Jesus Christ is not historical fact.  Because maybe, just maybe, the birth of Jesus Christ is not something that is meant to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Maybe instead, the birth of Jesus Christ is something that is meant to be believed.

     Consider the passage we read from the gospel according to Matthew.  There are a handful of passages in Scripture – and this is definitely one of them – that trouble a lot of scholars regarding the relationship between the gospels and history.  Perhaps it’s the issue of the virgin birth.  Or, perhaps it’s the way Joseph comes to put so much stock in a dream.  In any case, this is a passage that seems to trouble quite a few Christians.  The historicity of it all just seems a bit sketchy.  We simply cannot prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

     And maybe that’s all right.  As Luther Seminary preaching professor David Lose puts it, “Matthew is not writing history.  Or, to be more accurate, Matthew is writing history the way   all first-century historians operated: he is telling a story in order to persuade.” 

     Did you catch that?  Matthew’s purpose in writing was not to record history.  Matthew’s purpose in writing was to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God.   He is not writing history the way we understand it today.  His goal was not to offer a neutral, unbiased, objective account according to the rational standards of our sophisticated twenty-    first century world.  His goal was to say that the baby born of Mary was really the Son of God. 

   Now don’t get me wrong.  Matthew is definitely telling a story he believes is true, and I firmly believe that he wants us to believe it as well.  Yet it’s not the “facts” that Matthew presses upon us, but rather, it’s a larger truth that he can only confess.  And by taking great pains to prove the historicity of the passage Matthew writes, perhaps we miss the treasure Matthew offers.  Matthew offers a confession of faith that in the person of Jesus Christ, God is working to keep the promise he made through Old Testament prophets to bring about the salvation of the world.   

     Matthew begins by laying out an impossible situation.  A girl named Mary – likely just a teenager – is engaged to a man named Joseph.  She turns up pregnant.  Joseph knows the child   is not his.  Being a just man and not wanting to put her to shame, he resolves to divorce her quietly.  Then an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream and tells him that the child Mary carries is of the Holy Spirit.  The child Mary carries is to become the Messiah Israel has long awaited.  What man among us would believe such a story?  The life of Christ begins amid an impossible situation.

     Borrowing from Luke’s gospel, the story becomes even more impossible.  Mary is great with child and they are forced to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem – a distance of 80 miles – to take part in a Roman census.  It’s a trip we could do in just over an hour on the interstate, but on foot with a pregnant woman, the trip might have taken five or six days.  Then Jesus was born in a stable, as there was no room for them at the inn.  This child of humble origins rose to become  the most influential man in human history.  God takes the impossible and makes it incredible.  We might even say that God is at his best when we are at our worst.   

   Matthew isn’t trying to give us a history lesson.  Matthew is giving us his confession of faith.  He tells us of how God takes the impossible and makes it incredible.  He tells us that God is at his best when we are at our worst.  He tells us that in this child of humble origins lies the secret

to our salvation.  The question is, do you believe it?

     I’ve thought a lot about the human condition.  Life certainly has its beauty.  There are moments in life we wish could savor and keep forever.  But life is fraught with trials and tribulations as well.  There are times when we suffer unspeakable pain.  There are days we encounter tremendous heartache.  There are moments we find ourselves wrapped in hopelessness.  One thing I’ve decided is that life is impossible without help from above.  Salvation is impossible without help from above. 

   God’s standards are incredibly high.  All of us fall woefully short of perfection.  We let others suffer or we ignore their pain because we’re incredibly self-centered.  We simply can’t help it.  We’re conditioned to think first of ourselves.  And then when we get involved in the Christian faith, one of two things occurs.  We either begin to think we’re better than everyone else, or we begin to think that we’re so far from perfection that there’s no use even trying.  But the further we delve into spiritual matters, the more we come to realize that life is a test we cannot ace the first time we try.  We get better as time goes on.  We do better each time we take the test.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, we never achieve a score of 100%.  We need help.  We need help from above.  If we are ever to achieve salvation, we will need the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

     And that’s the purpose of this child whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day.  He comes to teach us right from wrong.  He comes to show us the ways of God.  He comes to give his life as a ransom for many.  That’s what Matthew wants to tell us.  He wants to tell us HIS confession of faith, and he wants us to believe it as well.

   So let the New York City schools ban the use of nativity scenes because it cannot be proved that the way we depict the birth of Christ is historical fact.  It is not a story that is meant to be proved.  It is a story that is meant to be believed.  Now I don’t know about you, but I believe.  I believe…with all my heart.  Do you?  Amen.                     

 

12-12-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

IF YOU SAW A BURNING BUSH

   Mary Doria Russell is the author of a novel called, The Sparrow.  You’ll find the book in the science fiction section of the library, but perhaps it’s really an examination of faith and what it means to question – or even to lose – one’s faith.  Anne Edwards is a character in The Sparrow.  At one point in the book she comments on out how few people seem to notice God when they encounter him.  Listen closely to her words.

God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf.      God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed him up and then went back to  work.  Faced with the divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question.  That question is this: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) recognize God, or (c) get the hot dogs?  Anne had decided years before that a vanishingly small number of people would recognize God.

    At issue is the failure to recognize God in the day-to-day activities of life.  What would we do if we saw a burning bush?  Would we recognize the divine?  Or would we – like countless others before us – simply take refuge in the banal?  In other words, would we break out the hot dogs?

    John the Baptist was faced with a similar situation in the passage we read from the gospel according to Matthew.  Only John had not come face-to-face with a burning bush.  John had come face-to-face with none other than Jesus of Nazareth.  Matthew’s portrayal of John the Baptist’s doubts about whether Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah are poignant.  He wanted     a definitive answer.  Was Jesus the Christ or not?

   John had been a fiery prophet who proclaimed the Messiah’s coming.  John had been a fearless messianic herald who drew crowds and rebuked religious leaders.  John had been an eschatological visionary who scoured the banks of the River Jordan with a passionate plea for repentance.  Only now John was more like a caged animal – pacing a small cell – wondering if his fire and brimstone had all been for naught.  Thus, perhaps desperate for validation of his ministry, of his suffering and of his efforts, John sends a messenger to Jesus to ask him a momentous question: “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 

     Jesus doesn’t give John’s disciples a definitive yes or no answer.  Instead, Jesus recounts the deeds he has done.  He says to John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed are those who take no offense at me.”

     I can’t help but wonder how John took Jesus’ answer.  Jesus outlines an impressive resume, to say the least.  Yet it almost assumes that John didn’t know that Jesus was doing those things.  What if it was precisely that John did know what Jesus had been up to and it was that which was causing his doubts?  Given our knowledge of John the Baptist, we might guess that he was looking for something a little more spectacular.  Could it be that the restoration of sight and health and the raising of a few nondescript people from the dead seemed a little too mundane to John?  Could it be that he was somehow looking for more? 

     Well if that’s the case, then Jesus’ response to John’s disciples sounds more like a rebuke than an answer to a question.  And then there’s that last part about not taking offense.  Could John fail to wonder if that comment was directed at him and his doubts?  Taken together, I’d wager that Jesus is telling John that he needs to reconsider his sense of who and what the Messiah really is.  John’s problem, judging from Jesus’ response, is that he has not yet recognized Jesus’ actions as messianic because he has not been trained to see these things as indicators of God’s presence.  Perhaps John, according to Jesus, needs to stretch his imagination as to what the presence of God really looks like.

     The question now is, are we any different?  Or, to put it another way, what limitations have been placed on our imagination and expectations?  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the Christian tradition seems to be withering in our society.  We fail to see God in the ordinary arenas of life.

     Every week, for example, people come to church.  They hear the Scripture read, they hear a sermon preached, they sing the hymns and they say the prayers.  And, on occasion, they feel as   if they have actually encountered God.  But do they carry that experience with them out of the church and into their everyday lives?  Do they look for God in the ordinary arenas of home and work, economics and politics?  Can they imagine that God is using them in their various roles as employee, as parent, as spouse, as friend, as citizen, and as volunteer…to extend God’s love and blessing to all creation?  In short, can they see God at work outside of the church?

    Listen to this.  In January of 2007, The Washington Post videotaped the reaction of commuters to the music of a violin player at a D.C. Metro subway stop.  The overwhelming majority of the commuters were far too busy to pay him any attention.  A few stopped briefly, and some of them even threw some change into the violin case of the performer.  It was no big deal.  It was just an ordinary day on the D.C. Metro.  Except, it wasn’t just an ordinary day.          

     The violin player wasn’t just an ordinary street performer.  The violin player was Joshua Bell, one of the world’s finest concert violinists.  And Joshua Bell was playing his multi-million dollar Stradivarius violin.  Three days earlier he had filled Boston’s Symphony Hall with people paying a hundred dollars or more a seat to hear him play the very same pieces.  The question The Washington Post reporter asked is simple.  “Have we been trained to recognize beauty outside of the contexts we expect to encounter beauty?”  Or, to put it more simply, “Can we recognize world-class music anywhere outside a concert hall?” 

     Perhaps the same is true of us.  Can we detect God only when God is surrounded by stained-glass windows, pristine pulpits and organ music?  Or have we learned to detect God in the day-to-day events of our lives as well?  I’m not so sure we have.  Truth be told, ministers may have contributed to this state of affairs.  How often do the clergy point to the everyday lives, occupations and opportunities of members of the congregation as examples of God at work?  Truth be told, most of our examples of God at work in the world center around the church.

     David Miller is the author of a book entitled, God at Work.  At the beginning of the book he shares an exercise he regularly uses with groups of congregational leaders.  He asks the question, “By a show of hands, how many of you install Sunday school teachers at the beginning of a new program year?”  Almost every hand in the place goes up.  Then he asks, “And how many of you call the youth group and their leaders forward for prayer during worship before they leave on a mission trip?”  Again, almost every hand in the place goes up.  Then he asks, “And how many of you, early in April, have all the Certified Public Accountants stand up for prayer during the busiest time of their year?”  Typically, not a single hand goes up.  Miller’s point is that through this and a thousand other ways we unintentionally signal that the primary place our people can expect to encounter God is at church…and often, only at church.

     So here’s the million dollar question.  If Sunday after Sunday the sermon has next to nothing to do with life on Monday through Friday – and if week after week we fail to use the hour of worship to help people see God alive and active in the other 167 hours of the week – how long can we expect people to keep giving us that hour when they can find countless other ways to spend it?  The answer, I think, is given each week as one more family doesn’t show up to worship.

     Matthew doesn’t tell us how John reacted to Jesus’ answer to his question.  But we do know that Jesus wasn’t finished speaking.  After giving his response to John’s messenger, he went on to say that John was the greatest of the prophets.  Why?  Because at one point he had recognized and heralded Jesus as the Messiah.  And then Jesus goes even further, saying that the least in the kingdom of heaven – that is, every Christian disciple – is greater than John.  Why?  Because we have perceived in Jesus’ “ordinary” actions the very presence of God.

     God is still present in the ordinary, day-to-day events of our lives.  Once there was a woman who locked her keys in her car at a mall.  Her two-month-old baby was inside.  Not having the funds or the time to call a locksmith, she prayed for God to help her.  Just then a rough looking man approached her and asked if she needed help.  She told him that her keys were locked the car and her baby was in the back seat.  In no time the man found an old coat hanger and picked the lock.  The woman thanked him and said that he was an answer to prayer.  “You’re an angel,” she added.  The man replied, “Oh, I’m no angel ma’am.  I just got out of prison.”  The woman looked to the heavens and cried, “Oh, Lord, you are so wise and good!  You sent me an expert!”

     Seriously though, we do encounter God in the mundane, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day events of our lives.  I see God when a woman volunteers to help a pregnant teenager find a place to live.  I see God when a man writes a check for me to give to someone who might not otherwise have a Thanksgiving dinner.  I see God when a woman organizes an entire church to fill a food pantry.  I see God when a man uses his expertise in tax matters to alleviate an elderly woman’s burden.  Do you see God in things like this?  They happen every day.

     Anne Edwards asked, “If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) recognize God, or (c) get the hot dogs?”  There are burning bushes all around us.  We just have to open our eyes …and really see.  Amen.

    

     

 

11-28-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

TIME TO REPENT

   Does anyone remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In?  It was a T.V. comedy show that ran from January of 1968 until May of 1973.  Thinking back on it, my parents probably shouldn’t have let me watch it.  I’m not sure I was quite old enough for that kind of humor.  In any case, there was one particular sketch where people would pop open doors on a great big wall to recite their comedic lines.  I’ve never forgotten one of those lines.  It must have been in December of 1969.  A woman opened up her door and said, “If the 1970’s are anything like the 1960’s, we may not be around for the 1980’s!”

   Perhaps we could say the same thing today.  If the two thousand tens are anything like the two thousands, we may not be around for the two thousand twenties!  Could anyone have predicted – or even imagined – the tremendous tumult our nation has endured over the last ten years?  The Bible talks about how in the end times there will be wars and rumors of wars.  There have been wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – and now there are rumors of wars in North Korea as well. 

     Our collective sense of security was upended after the events of nine-eleven.  Small towns   all across the country are seeing their populations decline and a tremendous gap being formed between the so-called “haves” and “have-nots.”  Why it’s almost as if there is no middle class any more.  And who could have predicted the economic collapse of 2008?  People lost as much as a third of their assets.  That’s a pretty sizeable chunk of change when you’re dependent upon investment income for your retirement years, isn’t it?  And all the while, we push God farther and farther to the margins of our existence. Church attendance all across the nation is plummeting, particularly in what we call the old mainline denominations.  People will stampede a Buffalo Target store at 4:00 in the morning to get a jump on Black Friday sales, but they seem to worship God only when they’ve nothing better to do.  Ah, yes, if the two thousand tens are anything like the two thousands, we may not be around for the two thousand twenties.

   It was a similarly depressing scenario for the people of Isaiah’s day.  Let me set the scene for you.  The time was likely somewhere around the year 700 B.C.  The Jewish state had become a divided monarchy.  Israel and its capital city of Samaria were to the north, and Judah and its capital city of Jerusalem were to the south.  The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians in the year 721 B.C.  The southern kingdom of Judah was little more than a vassal state by this time.  They may have maintained their status as an independent nation, but they were forced to grant Assyria certain “concessions” in order to maintain their existence.  Suffice it to say that it would not have been a pleasant way to live: in constant fear for one’s life, replete with anxiety about the future.  And all the while they managed to push God farther and farther to the margins of their existence as well.  How so?

    The nation of Judah had become a sin-infested society.  Isaiah himself describes the state of their affairs throughout the book of Isaiah.  There was a basic ignorance of God.  There was rebellion among people who were upset with Assyrian rule. The worship of God had become insincere. There was infidelity, injustice, murder, dishonesty, bribery, and oppression among the people.  Isaiah lamented their idolatry and their pride.  He noted the greediness of their rulers.  There was irresponsible luxury, drunkenness and carousing, the rejection of God’s law, the confusion of evil with good, and a distinct lack of faith in God.  Why, it almost sounds like 21^st century America, does it not?

     It was to this southern kingdom of Judah that Isaiah was called to be a prophet.  What did Isaiah say to the sin-infested society of his day?  He said, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.  In other words, it’s time to change the way you are living.  It’s time to have a change of heart.  It’s time…to repent.

     Many years ago, a minister friend of mine came to talk to me about his son.  The minister’s

son was in trouble – real trouble.  The young man was accused of being in possession of child pornography and was facing an extended period of time in jail.  All judgments regarding the son aside, as you might suspect, my minister friend and his wife were utterly devastated.  Sometimes parents suffer even more than their children when they get into trouble, don’t they?

     During the course of one of our conversations, my minister friend showed me a picture of himself and his son that was taken in his church sanctuary during the season of Advent.  There in the picture was the minister on one side and his son on the other.  In between them – just over their heads – was a sign on the wall of the church.  That sign read, “Time to Repent.”  It sent an eerie chill up my spine when I saw it.  It was like a sign from God…literally.

     That young man should have heeded that sign when he first saw the picture.  He should have repented of his evil ways right then and there.  To fail to repent is to continue to live in sin and to suffer the consequences of one’s actions.  We do indeed reap what we sow, and that young man eventually did.  He went to jail for a long, long time.  To repent is to have a change of heart and to begin life anew.  When one repents, one confesses one’s sin, but to repent of one’s sin is more than to merely say, “I’m sorry.”  To truly repent, one must also vow to live a better life in days to

come.

      That, in essence, is what Isaiah was saying to the people of Jerusalem.  It’s time to repent.

 It’s time to have a change of heart and to begin life anew.  It’s time to put aside the self-centered, godless ways of the past and begin a new kind of life…one that has God at the center.    For if you do, your life will be much better than it has been in the past.

   Right before Isaiah calls upon the people to repent, he tells them what God will do for them if they but turn to him.  “In days to come,” Isaiah says, “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills.  All the nations shall stream to it.  Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples.  They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”  In other words, as I like to say, God    wins in the end.  God always wins in the end.

     The world to come God promises is a world of justice.  The world to come God promises is     a world of peace.  The world to come God promises is a world of harmony.  But in order to get there, you have to repent.  In order to get there, you have to have a change of heart.  In order to get there, you have to believe that God indeed holds the secret to a better society, and that God can really do what he says he can do.

    On Thanksgiving Day I watched an old movie called Miracle on 34^th Street.  The plot of the story is that a woman has hired the real Santa Claus to play Santa Claus at Macy’s department store during the Christmas season.  Santa’s sanity was ultimately questioned in court.  But there was a line in the movie that really struck me.  That line was this: “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.”  Again, “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.”

     Do we believe that God can deliver a world of justice, peace and harmony?  Common sense seems to tell us that our world is hopeless.  Faith, on the other hand, tells us that it is not.  So I say to you today: It’s time to repent.  It’s time to have a change of heart.  It’s time to turn back  to God and trust that he can make our world a better place for everyone.  Amen. 

 

11-7-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

IT’S TIME FOR A RUMMAGE SALE

   I don’t think anyone can argue with the observation that churches in America are changing.  A recent poll called the American Religious Identification Survey indicates that in 1962, the number of people who called themselves “secular Americans” represented a mere 2% of the population.   By 1990 that number had increased to 8%.  In the year 2008, the number of Americans who referred to themselves as secular had increased to 15% of the population.

     Worship attendance is on the decline as well.  In 1990, 20.4% of the population in our country claimed to be in worship on any given Sunday.  By the year 2010, that number had decreased to 17.1%.  Worship attendance in the year 2050 is projected to decrease to 11.7% of the population.

     A number of theories have been postulated as to what is causing this decline.  A man named Bradford Wilcox writes a column in The Wall Street Journal.  He wrote a recent article entitled, “God Will Provide – Unless the Government Gets There First.”  How’s that for a snappy title?   Wilcox theorizes in his article that as the American “welfare state” expands, the church recedes as a source of charity and social services.  The expansion of the state, in his mind, thus becomes a driving force behind the secularization of society.

     That may be, but I have another theory in mind.  Consider our own church.  Our attendance and membership are on the decline as well.  Here’s what I think is happening.  I have conducted 84 funerals since my arrival in Meadville almost exactly 7 years ago.  That doesn’t count the funerals Dave Fugate, Travis Webster and Kate Irish Filer have done.  Count those and the number easily surpasses one hundred.  Many of those individuals were active and vital members of this church who were here on a weekly basis.  Others are retiring and now have the luxury of travel.  People who once were here four times a month are now here more like one or two times a month.  Kids who grew up in this church go away to college and many of them do not return.  Then there are soccer games and hockey practice and jobs that take place on Sunday mornings, not to mention the fact that the mall is open as well.  And typically, young families are not joining the First Presbyterian Church in droves.  From what I understand, they’re not joining any church in this community in droves.  These factors combine to form what we might call the perfect storm.  In light of these factors and the decline they produce, we look around our church and ask: “Where will we be in ten years?  Where will we be in twenty years?”  I suppose the next question then is this: “What can we do about it?”

   The church is changing and it is changing in dramatic fashion.  Phyllis Tickle, author of the book The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, offers some real insight.  Early in the book, she quotes an Anglican bishop by the name of Mark Dyer.  He said, in essence, “The only way to understand what is currently happening to us as twenty-first century Christians in North America…is first to understand that about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.”

     What does he mean when he says, “…about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale?”  What he means is that about every five hundred years the Christian Church undergoes a seismic, earth-shattering change that shakes it to its very core.  Think about it.  What happened five hundred years ago?  Five hundred years ago the Church encountered what we call the Great Reformation.  Many say that the Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31^st, 1517.  Of course, the rumblings of reform had actually begun many years before that.  The year 1517 was just when the issue really came to a head.

   What happened five hundred years before the Great Reformation?  In the year 1054 the Church encountered what we call the Great Schism.  There was division between the east and the west over issues pertaining to the Holy Spirit, among other things.  They were issues that we might define as splitting theological hairs, but they were issues of vital importance to them.  In the end, the Church split into the Eastern Orthodox Church, centered in Constantinople, and the Roman Catholic Church, centered – of course – in Rome.  Again, the rumblings actually started many years before, but in 1054 the issue really came to a head.

   Five hundred years ago the Great Reformation occurred.  Five hundred years before that, the Great Schism occurred.  What happened 500 years before that?  We come to the sixth century, often referred to as “The Fall of the Roman Empire” or “The Coming of the Dark Ages.”  The Church had done some major fighting over the nature of Jesus Christ.  One of the documents that arose from that time that might be familiar to all of us is the Nicene Creed.  Gregory the Great was Pope in the latter part of the sixth century.  He came to be referred to as great not because of what he did to lead a revolution, rather,  he came to be referred to as great because of what   he did to clean one up.

     The world had become illiterate in worship and there was lawlessness in the streets.  After all, the order established by Rome was no longer around.  Chaos abounded.  Gregory the Great was able to save five centuries of Christian relics, artifacts and writings in Europe’s convents and monasteries.  Perhaps we could go so far as to say that Gregory the Great saved Christianity from extinction.

     What happened five hundred years before Gregory the Great?  Five hundred years before Gregory the Great, God took the form of a human being in the person of Jesus Christ.  One could convincingly argue that Jesus Christ brought a bit of upheaval to the Jewish faith at the time, as well.

     Every five hundred years the Church holds a giant rummage sale.  Five hundred years ago, it was the Great Reformation.  Five hundred years before that, it was the Great Schism.  Five hundred years before that, it was Gregory the Great.  And five hundred years before that, it was none other than Jesus Christ himself. 

   It has been five hundred years since the Great Reformation.  Perhaps it’s time for a rummage sale.  The present change in the church today is now being called The Great Emergence.  What does The Great Emergence look like and what might it mean to us?  Let me try to explain.

     Let us begin by saying that The Great Emergence, like all the great changes in the Church, hinges first and foremost on authority issues.  For example, what was the authority issue in the Great Reformation?  Martin Luther felt that the Roman Catholic Church had overstepped its bounds.  He called the Church back to the Bible.  Sola scriptura, scriptura sola was the clarion call.  It meant, “Only Scripture and Scripture only.”  The Great Reformation brought the Church back to the Bible many thought it had abandoned – or had at least neglected. 

     We have authority issues in the Church today as well.  What is the source from which we draw our inspiration and guidance?  We may want to say the Bible, but society has challenged the authority of the Bible.  Some say the erosion began during the Civil War.  Thousands and thousands of godly, devout Christians in the South fought for the practice of slavery as being biblically permitted and accepted.  Thousands and thousands of others to the north took the opposite stance.  Let us not be naïve enough to presume that the Civil War did not have economic factors involved as well, but for our purposes here, consider how this issue rattled the cage of authority.  The Bible could not be counted on as the arbiter of justice in this particular circumstance.  After all, both sides felt like the Bible was on their side.

     The next battle to be fought was not over race, but over gender equality.  At the beginning of the twentieth century American women were demanding equal rights in American life and politics.  Many would have seen this as an upending of biblical mores.  While we might argue that the Genesis story does not make woman subject to man, the Apostle Paul certainly seemed to think that way.  Equality for women rattled the cage of biblical authority as well.  Now lest anyone misunderstand me, I am not saying this was wrong.  I am merely stating a fact.

     By the middle of the twentieth century the issue of divorce began to rise.  Divorce was seen by many as antithetical to biblical values.  As divorce became more popular and accepted, the Church seemed to be accepting what it had clearly stood against for centuries.  As Phyllis Tickle put it in her book, “…before century’s end, the Church would be accepting divorced clergy as not only professionally able, but also morally uncompromised.”  Again, I am not offering a theological commentary, I am merely stating a fact.  In any case, call it another blow to biblical authority.

   Of course, the great issue today has to do with homosexuality.  Making biblical claims about that issue has lost some of the luster in our society it might once have had.  The question for us today is: “What is the source of our authority?”  It has become the clarion call of The Great Emergence.

     The Christian Church in America is sorely divided.  We call that division “denominations.”  For the sake of simplicity, we have what some call Liturgical Christians in one corner.  That might include Catholics, Episcopalians and the like. We have Social Justice Christians in another corner.  That might include Presbyterians, Methodists and the like.  In another corner we have Renewalist Christians.  That would be the Pentecostals.  And in another corner we have Conservative Christians.  That might include anyone who falls under the category of Fundamentalist. 

   All these different kinds of Christians encounter one another at work.  They talk to each other.  They talk to each other over the water cooler.  Experts refer to these discussions as water cooler theology.  Thus, what people really believe becomes an amalgamation of many different notions of faith.  Spinning in the center of all these corners of faith is what we call The Great Emergence.  It’s a combination of many different versions of faith.  Theological tradition is thereby put aside and authority seems to rest more with the individual than with a book we claim to be inspired by God.  I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m merely telling you what is happening. 

   A Medieval mystic by the name of Joachim of Fiore would have seen this development as prophetic fulfillment.  Many in his day saw history as being divided into bi-millennial units.  For them, the time of Abraham to the birth of Christ was 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Father.  The time of Christ to the year 2000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Son.  The year 2000 to the year 4000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Holy Spirit.  To complete the biblical scheme of seven millennia, the era from 4000 to 5000 will be the consummate union of all three parts of the Godhead.  The point is, The Great Emergence rests authority in the individual.  It equates the movement of the Spirit within us with ultimate authority.

   There are churches out there that are a major part of The Great Emergence.  The good news for us as Presbyterians is that the Great Reformation did not put an end to Roman Catholicism.  It just had to drop back and reconfigure.  Each time a Church rummage sale occurs, in other words, whatever held pride of place before simply gets broken down into smaller pieces.  Then it picks itself back up and goes through a kind of renewal.

   Look at it this way.  Suppose you inherit a massive Victorian home in a state of disrepair from your grandparents, and you want to move into it.  You can leave it as it is – that is, falling down all around you.  Or you can restore it – you know, repair the things that are broken, put on a fresh coat of paint, replace the carpeting.  Or you can completely gut it.  You can tear everything apart, knock down a few walls and completely remake it.  Or you can hold a rummage sale and sell off all your grandparents’ things.  Then you can tear the house down and build a new one to replace it.

     The church is a lot like that old Victorian home.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a house that’s falling down around me.  And I don’t want to gut the thing and destroy its historical integrity.  Nor do I want to tear the thing down and start all over again.  I want to restore the house.  I want to fix what’s broken and live in that rich, old Victorian home.

    Ladies and gentlemen, that is exactly what our Church Revitalization Task Force has been attempting to do.  We’re trying to engage our own church in a kind of renewal.  We began by asking everyone to pray for our church.  Then we tried to create a stronger sense of community.  That’s why we have our monthly congregational luncheons and we’ve been asking people to wear name tags…with marginal success, I might add.  That’s why they asked the session and the deacons and the trustees to call on people we haven’t seen in a while.  We’re trying to keep people from falling through the cracks.  We’re doing everything we can to become more vital and active and alive.  I truly believe we’re doing everything right.  At least we are trying to do everything right.

     At this point I’ve got to say that what I have presented so far probably sounds a lot more like a seminary lecture than it does a sermon.  Let me try to “sermon it up” a bit.  The passage I read from the book of Haggai came at a very critical time in Israel’s history.  Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians and the people had been dispersed across the Babylonian empire.  But now the king of Persia had defeated the Babylonians.  Jews from all across the land were allowed to return to Jerusalem to reestablish their lives and to rebuild their temple.  Yet the people had become more interested in their own building pursuits and agricultural interests than they were in rebuilding the temple.

     Enter the prophet Haggai.  Speaking on behalf of God, Haggai promises the people that the latter splendor of the temple of Israel will be greater than the former.  “I am with you,” God says.  “I will help you.”  We call these words the oracle of salvation.  To those who are faithful, God promises to be with them, and God promises to help them.

 

   The future of the Christian church in America may look bleak at times as well, but if just a remnant remains faithful to God, God will be with them to help them.  As someone from this particular church recently said, “We may no longer be a church of 1000 members.  But maybe we can be a church of 600 members that truly makes a difference.”  That’s the stuff we’re looking for.  Maybe we can have our own little rummage sale.  Maybe we can get rid of some of the things that no longer work and focus on the things that do.  In the process, we will maintain our structural and theological integrity.  And with a little help from God, maybe we will find that the future is brighter than we think.  Amen.                                            

 

10-24-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE PERIL OF PRESUMPTUOUS PRAYER

     Kate Irish Filer told a wonderful little story in our adult education class last Sunday that works quite well as an introduction to where we’re headed today.  Once upon a time, a poor widow with three young daughters moved to a town near a Methodist church.  The minister went over to visit them and even invited them to worship on Sunday morning.  The widow said, “We would love to come to church, but we don’t have any Sunday clothes.” 

   The minister went back to his church and talked to a few of the women.  Those women then went out and bought and delivered beautiful Sunday outfits for the woman and her daughters.  The next Sunday morning, the whole congregation watched for the woman and her daughters, but for some strange reason, they never showed.  Sorely disappointed, the minister went back to the widow’s house to see what had happened.  “Well,” woman replied, “we got all dressed up in our brand new clothes, and we looked so nice that we decided to go to the Presbyterian church instead!”   

     Ah, we’re forever making distinctions, are we not?  One woman decided that she and her daughters looked too good to go to the Methodist church, so they went to the Presbyterian church instead.  We make distinctions like that all the time.  We make distinctions about a person’s worth based upon the color of that person’s skin.  We make distinctions about a person’s value based upon what that person does for a living.  We make distinctions about a person’s intelligence based upon where that person got their education.  We make distinctions about a person’s substance based upon whether we deem that person to be liberal or conservative.  We make distinctions about a person’s appeal based upon nothing more than their looks.  We make distinctions about a person’s relevance based upon the location of that person’s house.  We make distinctions about a person’s usefulness based upon that person’s net worth.  We are forever making distinctions about people based upon our perceptions rather than upon seeing them for who and for what they really are.  How often we fail to see that person as a precious child of God.

     A similar thing was occurring in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  There Jesus tells a story about two men who went up to the Temple to pray.  One of the men was a Pharisee, while the other man was a tax collector.  The Pharisees, of course, were an exclusive sect of the Jewish faith 2000 years ago.  This particular Pharisee was a very righteous man; he worshipped God in the Temple, he gave God ten percent of his income and he obeyed Jewish law.  Thus, the people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the hero.  The tax collector, on the other hand, was not a righteous man.  The people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the villain. 

   Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were actually thought to be traitors.  They were ordinary citizens who had the good fortune – or the bad fortune, depending on how you look at it – to have been appointed by the Roman government to assess and collect taxes.  They were notorious for their dishonesty.  They frequently overcharged the Jewish citizenry, obtaining great wealth for themselves and earning the disdain of the general populace.  Because the Pharisees hated the tax collectors, they thought Jesus should hate them, too.  Thus, in the parable Jesus tells, we have a clear cut case of good versus evil – the good and faithful Pharisee versus the evil and traitorous tax collector.

     John Dominic Crossan is a former Catholic priest and one of the cofounders of the Jesus Seminar.  To give us a better feel for how the people of Jesus’ day might have felt about this parable, he offers the following analogy.  Modernizing the parable a bit he says, “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray.”  How’s that for a graphic illustration?  Do you see how Jesus’ audience might have understood his parable now?

   In any case, as the story goes, the Pharisee was quick to make distinctions.  He actually said in his prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”  The Pharisee sees the tax collector as less than human.  In making his distinction between himself and the tax collector, he is thankful to God that he is not like him.       

    We might take offense at the Pharisee’s prayer, but prayers like that were often said in Jesus’ day.  They were common fare and were not considered self-righteous boasting.  The Talmud, a record of rabbinic discussions about Jewish law, actually records a prayer just like the one that we just heard.  It was said by rabbis whenever they entered what they called the house of study.  The prayer goes like this:

I give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, that Thou has set my portion with those who sit in the house of study, and Thou has not set my portion with those who sit on street corners.  For I rise early and they rise early, but I rise early for words of Torah and they rise early for frivolous talk.  I labor and they labor, but I labor and receive a reward and they labor and do not receive a reward.  I run and they run, but I run to the life of the future world, while they run to the pit of destruction.

     Perhaps we could actually say that self-righteousness was a part of their culture.  It was certainly a part of their prayer book.  So the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable said a prayer to God, thanking God that he was not like the tax collector.  It was a prayer Jesus’ audience would have understood well because many of them would have said a similar prayer themselves.

    The tax collector was in the Temple to pray as well, however.  His prayer was a little bit different than the prayer of the Pharisee.  He stood far off – he could not even bring himself to look toward heaven – he beat his breast and he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

     Now remember, this is a parable.  A parable of Jesus always has a twist and a central truth.  The twist of the parable is this.  Jesus says, “I tell you, this tax collector went down to his home justified, rather than the other.”  The tax collector was justified in the eyes of God, while the Pharisee was not?  Jesus audience would have been shocked.  They would have reacted much as we might react to John Dominic Crossan’s analogy.  Remember?  “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray?”  How would we react if the ending were this: “The pimp came out justified in the eyes of God, while the Pope did not.”  It’s not exactly the ending we might expect either, is it?

     The question we’ve got to ask ourselves now is this: “Why?”  Why was the tax collector justified in the eyes of God while the Pharisee was not?  I believe Jesus gives us the answer to this question at the end of the parable.  He says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

    Well what, exactly, is humility?  Does it have to do with keeping your eyes to the ground and seeing yourself as a nobody?  Does it have to do with self-deprecation?  I don’t think it does.  One can have a healthy sense of self-esteem and still be a humble person.  I think C.S. Lewis describes humility well in his book, Mere Christianity.  He writes:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays.  He will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.  Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.  If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily.  He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.   

     In other words, a humble person is a person who thinks of someone besides themselves.  A humble person is a person who puts you ahead of him or herself.  A humble person places others above himself because he has learned to see others as precious children of God as well.  This is the kind of person who will be “exalted” as Jesus says, because this is the kind of person who comes nearest to the heart of God.  Think of the truly humble people you have known in your lifetime.  They do seem strangely “Godly,” do they not? 

     Last week we examined Jesus’ parable about the widow and the unjust judge.  The judge neither feared God nor respected man.  Yet the widow continued to badger him until he gave in to her demands.  Today we examined Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which immediately follows the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke’s gospel.  Dr. Peter Rhea Jones, a professor at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, believes these two parables are meant to stand together.  He calls the first parable, “The Promise of Persistent Prayer.”  He calls the second parable, “The Peril of Presumptuous Prayer.”

     The peril of presumptuous prayer is that presumptuous prayer just might go unanswered.  Justification in the eyes of God is a gift to those who seek it, not an entitlement to those who think they deserve it.  It comes to us freely, not as a result of our labors.  It comes to us when we humbly ask for it, not when we arrogantly assume we’ve earned it.  The tax collector begged God for mercy.  He knew himself for who and for what he really was.  The Pharisee did not know himself.  He could only point a finger at others.  He made clear distinctions between himself and others, and in the process he encountered the peril of presumptuous prayer.  Perhaps the lesson here is this.  We have no right to make distinctions between people.  We have no grounds to condemn the sin of others.  I mean, if we’re honest with ourselves, we come to realize that we have enough of a need for forgiveness ourselves.

   What we’re talking about here is what we call the doctrine of reconciliation.  The doctrine of reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God.  Recall how the tax collector went home justified, while the Pharisee did not.  To go home justified is what we mean by reconciliation.  But there are actually two parts to the doctrine of reconciliation.  There is what we call vertical reconciliation and there is what we call horizontal reconciliation. 

     Vertical reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God, up above.  That’s what the tax collector found.  Horizontal reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationships with others, all around us.  That’s what the Pharisee failed to understand.  You see, the two go hand in hand.  When we are reconciled to God, we necessarily seek to be reconciled to one another.  One can never be reconciled to God when one fails to be reconciled to one’s fellow human beings.  One can never be reconciled to God when one makes distinctions among human beings.  You know how the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all made one in Christ Jesus our Lord?”  This is exactly what he was talking about.  In the eyes of God, all are created equal.  All are precious children of God.  It is not up to us to make distinctions.

     Jonathan Swift was an Irish essayist, poet and clergyman who lived between 1667 and 1745.  He is perhaps best known to us as the author of Gulliver’s Travels.  Perhaps he summed up our problem when he once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Again, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

  Our religion – our faith – cries out to us to love one another.  It pleads with us to think of someone besides ourselves.  It urges us to see everyone as a precious child of God.  That’s where the Pharisee came up short and that’s where the tax collector came up a winner.  The peril of presumptuous prayer is that it cannot reconcile us with God.  Learn to see yourself as a person in need of the grace of God.  Learn to see others as persons who are loved by God as well.  That journey begins when we pray for them, not prey upon them.  If we can do that, we just might find our own relationship with God growing closer by the day.  Amen.         

 

10-17-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

DO YOU DREAM IN COLOR?

   Do you dream in color?  Recent research reveals that people can dream in color and, although there is no absolute proof, most people do report seeing color in their dreams.  Thus, the answer to our question is probably as varying as the number of people who are asked.  Still, dreaming in color makes one’s dreams seem more vivid and real and alive.  Do you dream in color?  I believe I do.

     Actually, I’ve been having some really bizarre dreams since I went on this medication for a recent heart rhythm issue.  For example, several weeks ago, I dreamed that I was pregnant.  I was huge!  You see, not only was I pregnant, I was actually pregnant with twins.  The time came for their delivery and our own Dr. David Kirkpatrick was my obstetrician.  And Dr. Kirkpatrick was absolutely wonderful to me.  He had a terrific bedside manner.  I dreamed he told me that the delivery would be a whole lot less painful if I just went to sleep.  Then I dreamed that I went to sleep, and when I woke up – still in the dream – I had a beautiful set of twins in my arms.  My dream was vivid and real and alive…and in living color.

     I did a little research on what a dream about being pregnant means.  Do you know what I found?  People who dream about being pregnant generally are pregnant…or at least they are about to be.  Am I a freak of nature, or am I losing my mind?  Or, can we simply chalk it up to the medication?  I’ll let you decide.

     What are dreams?  Dreams are essentially the involuntary conjuring up of images, sounds, ideas and feelings during sleep.  We have no control over them, but they can seem to us to be frighteningly real at times, can they not?  What’s going on in our minds when we dream?  An Irish research psychologist by the name of Joe Griffin postulates what he calls the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming.  According to the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming, there are three basic principles of dreaming.  They are:

1.      Dreams are metaphorical interpretations of waking expectations.

2.      Expectations that produce emotional responses during the day that are not acted upon become dreams when we sleep.

3.      Dreaming is a way of dealing with emotional arousal by completing the expectations in our dreams that we did not complete when we were awake thereby freeing our brains to respond afresh to each new day.

    Perhaps we could say that dreams are a coping mechanism designed to represent frustrated or unfulfilled expectations.  The things that upset us during the day that we failed to deal with, or the things we hope for or long for most, tend to rear their ugly heads when we sleep.  They come back to haunt us in our dreams.  That, in a nutshell, is the expectation fulfillment theory   of dreaming.

     We all have frustrations, and we all have hopes and dreams, do we not?  Where do you turn when you’re utterly frustrated with the way life is going?  And what is that for which you hope and dream the most?  In the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells a parable about a woman who was utterly frustrated with the way life was going.  Her most fervent hope was for justice.  Let me explain.

     Jesus begins his parable by saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking would have known immediately that this judge was not a Jew.  All ordinary Jewish disputes were taken before the elders of the synagogue, not to the public courts.  If, however, under Jewish law a matter was taken to arbitration, one judge could not constitute a court.  There were always three judges: one chosen by the plaintiff, one chosen by the defendant, and one appointed by the elders.  Thus, the people listening to Jesus’ story knew the judge was not a Jew.  This simply was not the way legal disputes were handled in the Jewish faith.   

     There were judges in those days, however.  The judge of whom Jesus spoke would have been a paid magistrate appointed either by King Herod or by the Roman government. These appointed judges were notoriously unscrupulous.  I mean, if a plaintiff did not have the requisite influence or money to bribe his way to a verdict, he had precious little hope of ever getting his case settled.  These judges were so unscrupulous that the people of the day actually made a pun out of their titles.  Officially, these judges were called Dayyaneh Gezeroth, which meant “judges of punishments.”  The people, however, called them Dayyaneh Gezeloth, which meant, “robber judges.”  Of course, if you wanted justice in their courtrooms, you might not want to say that to their faces.

     Are you with me so far?  “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”  This judge was one unscrupulous man.  Jesus then adds, “In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’”  We understand what the judge was like.  Now let’s take a look at the widow.

    It is actually quite difficult for us in the year 2010 to comprehend what it was like to be a widow in Jesus’ time.  This was not a society in which everyone was entitled to their day in court.  The irony of Jesus’ parable in the first place is that a widow would have had no rights,   and she certainly would not have had access to a judge in a formal procedure of law.  So her crying out for justice would have been seen by Jesus’ audience as a bit of a parody.  An article entitled, “The Status of Women in the Hebrew Scriptures” describes what her situation might have been like.  It says:

Women’s behavior was extremely limited in ancient times, much as the women of Afghanistan were during the recent Taliban oppression.  In Jesus day, for example:

·         Unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.

·         Married women were not allowed to leave the home of their husband.

·         They were normally restricted to roles of little or no authority.

·         They could not testify in court.

·         They could not appear in public venues.

·         They were not allowed to talk to strangers.

·         And they had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.

   Sounds like the men who made those rules had some issues with jealousy, doesn’t it?  In any case, do you see the widow’s problem?  She had absolutely no status in society.  Yet someone had wronged her in some kind of way – we do not know exactly how – and she is in search of justice from an unscrupulous judge.  A woman who wasn’t really allowed to go to court is asking for help from a judge who could care less about justice.  It’s quite a quandary, is it not?

     The judge refused to hear her case for quite some time.  Finally he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”  Incidentally, the words translated, “wear me out by continually coming,” can be translated another way.  They can also mean, “lest she give me a black eye.”  The judge may have been exasperated by the widow’s persistence, but he may have also been afraid of being the victim of violence.

    Jesus uses this story to prove a point about God.  If even an unjust judge finally acquiesced to a widow’s persistent badgering, how much more will God grant justice to his chosen ones whom he loves?  The lesson on the surface here is clear, I think.  The lesson is, persistence pays.  All of us have deep desires in our hearts, and all of us long to have them fulfilled. Often we turn to God to have them fulfilled, do we not?  We turn to God in prayer.  The lesson Jesus seems to teach here is that if we badger God about something long and hard enough, God will ultimately acquiesce as well, because he loves us.  And there’s nothing wrong with that lesson.  I know I’ve built a sermon on that theme in the past myself.  So if you came here today looking for something you could take to heart, there it is.  Persistence pays.  Perhaps we could even say, “Persistence in prayer pays.”

    It seems to me, however, that there is a deeper meaning to this story.  Let’s look at it contextually.  At the end of the 17^th chapter of Luke, in the passage immediately preceding the passage we read earlier, Jesus is talking about what we call the Parousia, known also as the Second Coming, or the Eschaton, or the end of days.  Jesus talks about what that will be like.  Then our pas-sage in chapter 18 begins by saying, “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and to not lose heart.”  Then Jesus tells the parable about the widow and the unjust judge.  And he concludes our passage with these words: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

    Ladies and gentlemen, this passage isn’t only about persistence in prayer.  Jesus seems to be aware of what we call the delayed Parousia.  In other words, the end of time is coming, but it is not coming immediately.  Jesus will return, but his return may be delayed.  Jesus is encouraging his disciples to keep heart and to pray always in the midst of this delay.  And he seems to have    a charge for us here as well.  When Jesus finally does return, will he find faith on earth?  Will  we still be faithful to God in spite of the fact that Christ has not yet returned?  Will we still be striving to make the kingdom of God on earth a reality, or will we have given up hope in pure frustration?

     That’s what the parable of the widow and the unjust judge is really meant to illustrate.  Can we remain tenacious for justice – can we still pine for the kingdom of God – in spite of the fact that it seems so far away?  This is a pertinent message in our day and age.  We live in a time of instant gratification.  We don’t want to save up to put a down payment on a house, we want to  be able to buy it now.  We don’t want to wait until we’re married to live together, we want to live together now.  We don’t want to work for years upon end in order to achieve success, we want to have it now. 

    I think the perfect illustration of this is revealed in our hour-long television dramas.  Think of the shows that are on T.V. these days.  There’s Bones, there’s N.C.I.S., there’s The Closer, there’s Law and Order S.V.U.  I’ve always been partial to Magnum, P.I. and The Rockford Files, but I guess I’m dating myself.  In any case, all of these shows are able to solve incredibly complex crimes in the course of an hour.  Talk about instant gratification!  Now I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I hate more than to be engrossed in a show for 60 minutes, to wonder how they’re going to resolve the problem, and then see the words, “To be continued,” flash across the screen.  We want the issue resolved and we want it resolved right now!

   The quick-fix, romantic obsession of our culture will always be tempted to expect our relation-ship with God to be fulfilling, to be successful, and to always have a positive outcome.  We’re not good at patience.  We’re not good at persistence.  We’re not good when things don’t seem to go our way.  We are called to be tenacious, like the widow was before the unjust judge.  We are called to be unrelenting, and not just about our own creature comforts.  We are called to be persistent about justice and peace and harmony.  We are called to be diligent about the things of God.

     In short, I think we need to dream.  I dream of a world where the color of a person’s skin is no longer an issue, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where no one is exploited for reasons of sexuality, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where parents stay together to raise their children, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where children and adults respect their elders – and one another – for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people love God and neighbor, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people greet one another with a smile, for that is what the kingdom of God looks like.  I dream of a world where people are there for one another when the chips are down, for that is what the kingdom   of God looks like.  We need to dream big, and pray hard, and trust God to guide us in order to make those dreams become a reality.  To join in the work of the kingdom of God on earth be-cause you know in your heart that that’s what God is calling you to do is a major part of what it means to be a Christian.        

     It’s like the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming we spoke of earlier.  We long for something so badly that – until it comes to pass – it starts to haunt our very dreams.  That’s    how badly the widow longed for justice from the unjust judge.  And that’s how badly Christ wants us to desire the kingdom of God on earth.  We want it so badly that it fills our minds during the day and our dreams at night.  We want it so badly that we even dream in color.   

   Jesus asked a question at the end of his parable in Luke.  He asked, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  As long as people who are immersed in dark nights of suffering and frustration dream – rather than despair – I think he will.  So I ask you again, “Do you dream in color?”  Amen.

 

10-10-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MEISTER ECKHART

 

     Twenty years ago on a Saturday night I was just about to head upstairs to get ready for bed when I heard the rumbling of a car with a bad exhaust system pulling up in my driveway.  The man who came to the door was passing through town, but he and his family were exhausted.    He wanted to know if I could put him up in a motel for the night.  I had a fund at my disposal with which I could do such things, so I called the motel and booked him a room.  Then he told me that his family was hungry.  Since there was nothing open at that time of night, I gave him    a loaf of bread, a block of cheese and some sandwich meat.  About the only thing I couldn’t   give him was a gallon of milk, since our son, Rob, would need that in his bottle in the morning.  The man thanked me and went on his way.  Several months later, he showed up at my church.  The Boy Scouts were meeting there that night and he found them first, so the scoutmaster led him to my office.  Again he needed food and gasoline, so I wrote him a voucher and sent him   on his way.  Later, the scoutmaster came to my office and asked, “What did that guy want?”  I said, “Oh, I’ve seen him before.  He just wanted a little food and gasoline.”  Then the scoutmaster asked, “Did you see what he was driving?”  I said, “No.”  The scoutmaster said, “He was driving a brand new Lincoln Town Car with the dealer’s tag still in the window!”  Ah,   some people have a profound sense of entitlement, do they not?

    Twenty years ago, people used to ask for 20 or 25 dollars.  Five or six years ago, they started asking for 100 to 150 dollars.  Now people ask for four or five hundred dollars without even batting an eye.  Not long ago a woman came into my office and said she needed help to pay off a delinquent gas bill so National Fuel would turn her gas back on for the winter.  I said, “How much money do you need?”  She said, “$2407.00.”  I helped her a little, but I did not pay for    all of it.  Some people have a profound sense of entitlement.  And most of us wouldn’t mind helping if people would at least show a little gratitude.

   About 10 years ago, I led a senior high school mission trip to rural Tennessee.  We did Habitat for Humanity-type work on a trailer home.  We put a railing on a large front porch that had been built by another group.  We crawled under the trailer and shored up the floorboards from underneath.  Some of the kids climbed on the roof and spread tar to keep it from leaking.  We put in a new kitchen floor.  Then we built a small back porch, but we ran out of time before we could build the steps.  I went into the trailer to tell the woman we were leaving because it was time for us to head back home and she said to me, “What’s the matter?  You can’t build steps?”  I said, “You know what?  I’m a minister, not a carpenter.  No, I can’t build steps.”  When the kids heard about it, they were incensed.  When we bend over backwards to do something for someone else, we just want them to show us a little gratitude.

     A similar thing happened to Jesus in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  Jesus was approached by 10 lepers who cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priest.  While they were on the way, they discovered that they had been healed.  One of them, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus, fell on his face, and thanked him.  Jesus said, “Is there no one to give thanks to God except this foreigner?  Go your way.  Your faith has made you well.”  Jesus appreciated the gratitude.  We can presume that the other nine were still healed, in spite of their ingratitude.  The lesson here is clear.  We, too, are still called to help the needy whether they are grateful for it or not.  We do what we feel called to do as Christians, even if they’re not being completely honest with us.  I figure we do what we feel called to do and if they’re pulling the wool over our eyes, they’ll have to answer for that some day.  But the question I have for you now is this.  Which of the lepers are we most like?  God is the source of all that we have and all that we are.  Are we grateful to God for all that we have, or are we constantly in search of more?

     Gratitude is the hinge upon which the Christian faith turns.  The Christian church has always taught that God first loved us.  God sent his only Son that we might have the hope of salvation.  We are not faithful in order to gain salvation; rather, we are faithful because we have already received salvation.  And that’s why we take part in the life of the church.  We join the church and we worship God because we believe we can do more for the kingdom of God as a congregation than we can as individuals.  I guess the question here is this.  Is there really such a thing as spiritual but not religious?  Can we truly express our gratitude to God when we are not a part of the institutional church?

     Listen to this.  Many years ago, there was a man who just quit going to church.  After month or two, the minister decided to go and pay that man a visit.  The man welcomed the minister into his home, and the two of them sat in front of a large fire.  They didn’t say a word for the longest time.  They just watched the flames.  Then the minister took a pair of tongs and removed a glowing ember.  He set it on the side of the hearth.  The ember flickered brightly, then it just glowed, and then it died.  The man smiled, nodded his head and said, “Reverend, thanks for the powerful sermon.  I’ll be back in church next Sunday.” 

   Ladies and gentlemen, are we willing to be a part of the community of believers, or do we think we can make it on our own?  Are we willing to express our gratitude to God, or are we constantly in search of more?  Meister Eckhart was a 13^th century spiritual writer.  He once   said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

     A local minister recently said to his congregation at the end of a worship service, “Go home and write down something you want God to do for you.  Then just wait and see what happens.”  I would reverse his charge.  I would say, “Go home and write down everything God has already done for you.”  If you do that, I suspect you will find yourselves moved to express your gratitude.  And you’ll be well on your way to becoming the kind of Christian Jesus had in mind all along.  Amen.