Why Do You Want To Do Things Like the World? Pentecost 3-B

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Why do you want to do things like the world ?

Pentecost 3B,  June 10, 2018                                       Mark 3: 20-35 & 1 Samuel 8:4-20 

After I graduated seminary, accepted my first call and was ordained, I finally got into the real pastoring, and figuring out what was authentic for me in terms of my inner calling, what was seminary-speak, and how to live in my small towns.  All of us do this, pastors or not – there’s always this inner struggle to be authentic about our growing faith and what it asks of us, while still living and working and interacting and relating.  And without people thinking we’re crazy! Samuel tried to talk the Hebrew people out of following the world in having kings instead of just letting God lead.  Jesus’ own family and religious group worried he was crazy, with the things he was doing and saying for God. The apostle Paul wrestled with this as he tried to guide the early Christians in how to both live their faith and not get thrown in jail by the Romans.  So our struggle to live our faith is not a new one.  

In the little town where my first church was, the local clergy group invited me in (which some clergywomen have not found to be the case everywhere).  There was one youngish pastor in town from a more fundamentalist church, who, when he was introduced to me, felt the need to put me in my place by saying, “Oh, I was raised Presbyterian, but I found God in college and was saved, and became Baptist.”  You know how sometimes you don’t get a good comeback line until you get home?  This time I got it right away…. I answered, “Huh – I was raised Baptist, but found God’s grace and joined the Presbyterians.”  He looked disconcerted.  Good – I meant him to be, thinking he had the right to tell me Presbyterians didn’t know God!

See, I was raised fundamentalist, and I remember the feeling that we were the only ones who got the gospel right; and that it was our Christian duty, therefore, to point out people’s mistakes.  After all, we had the highest motivation – we had to make them see they needed to repent, so they wouldn’t go to Hell.  Evil had to be confronted and confronted boldly, even if we were quaking inside.  It was for their good, so if we had to be abrupt or short with them, so be it.  If they rejected us, they were really rejecting God.  We were suffering for our faith, like the saints and martyrs. Later I realized most people just thought us arrogant and opinionated, and didn’t listen anyway. 

Although I disagree with a) our often offensive method, b) the literalism we chose to defend, and c) that we were the only ones right; I do see some strength in the fact that we sought to live following what we believed, were willing to be different, and take the consequences.  Yes, its pretty arrogant to assume we knew the only truth of God, and there’s some kind of glee in defending our belligerence & telling others that they’re wrong.  Its kind of a power trip, too.  

However, what this posture DID give me was a strong backbone, will power, or ego strength - I followed what I believed even against the popular ideas and peer pressure.  We read those verses in Scripture like, “Regard it all joy…when people revile you and persecute you in my name,” and we were proud that people said negative things about us – we were suffering for Jesus.  Its so tempting – and so justifying – to think we’re up there with the holy ones.  Instead of being jerks….

Too bad we didn’t learn better relational skills, and too bad our suffering was not for Jesus’ higher teachings. We took certain precepts and pounded them as the be all and end all of Christianity, like many of the right-wing believers are doing so visibly today.  I understand that mindset – I used to share it.  Now I see the things they’re fighting about as a mere shell of the deep teachings of Jesus; and it reduces Jesus and Christianity to a set of simple rules that don’t reflect of the depth love of Jesus, nor his criticism of a dominant culture. 

So theirs answer to the question posed by our texts today – how do we live our faith in Jesus and get along in the world at the same time– with a rigid, confrontational style.  Actually, Jesus’ style was pretty confrontational, and counter-cultural.   Jesus continually shows how he disregards the conventions of his day as unworthy of God, even against God, and promotes a view of human community that doesn’t work well with imperialism, and maybe even capitalism.  Jesus’ realm of God is radially egalitarian and welcomes all people with no distinctions; Jesus’ realm asks us to give up our own comfort and ease so others can simply live; it asks a lifestyle of community and honor of one another; and it demands that loyalty to God must supersede any other loyalty – to nation, to king, to success, to wealth, to whatever.  Jesus’ realm, in the most part, requires a 180 degree turn from the way things usually are.   That’s what “repent” means, by the way, to do a 180, turn around and head another direction.

Jill Duffy, editor of the Outlook, who you know I often quote, wrote in her comments on this passage, “Jesus is offensive. He comes to make clear that our loyalty to God trumps all other loyalties, including those we've long held sacred. Jesus is offensive. He tells the nice, respected, revered religious leaders they are not only misguided, they are instruments of evil. Jesus is offensive. He comes like a thief in the night to upend the rule of those long in power. Jesus is offensive. He gets close to crowds, calls tax collectors, touches the unclean and eats with sinners. Jesus is offensive. He speaks the truth to those in power, to us, to all. Jesus is offensive because he refuses to go along to get along, to bow down to long-accepted norms, to allow cultural or familial expectations to thwart his mission of binding up the broken hearted and liberating those long held captive.”

This is the gospel of Mark’s picture of Jesus –he is the strong man coming as a thief to take back the world for God’s realm.  He overturns the ways to thinking that have taken the whole message of liberation, justice, family, religion, civility, established order, home, church, country and economy and turned it into something tame that benefits the themselves, the elite. People hear the criticism inherent in his actions.  They are so challenged that they say he’s crazy – or worse, he’s working for the devil.  His family hears the murmurs and worries, and goes to restrain him.  And that’s why the larger population and its leaders conspire to get him killed. 

So I have to give the fundamentalists a little credit for being willing to be different, although I take issue with what they consider the important values of our faith.  Most of us would rather be kinda innocuous, not embroiled in controversy, keeping our heads down, go along to get along, be seen as nice people and not weird ones.  It can get to the point that we believers are not all that different from the main in what we value and strive for, and what we accept as, well, that’s the way it is. That’s business as usual. That’s the way things go.  I like to say, “There’s a line somewhere,” like between being seen as crazy jerks and giving away our Christian identity.  Does our following of Christ make any difference in our behavior, our values, our living?

In the letters that the apostle Paul writes to those first churches, he is thinking through how the Christian community ought to live those precepts that got Jesus killed, but in a way that won’t get us all killed.  How much can we be different in following Jesus’ teachings and how much can we still be Roman citizens? Or a typical American citizen? It’s a real struggle, it takes a real discernment before we compromise the very gospel Jesus taught.  

Someone used as a book title, How Shall We Then Live? – a good title, and one we all have to wrestle with.  We Presbyterians have certain ways we do things, but that’s organizational and mechanical.  Actually, we Presbyterians have some deep insights about the living of faith that is expected of believers.  Being Presbyterians, we’ll probably debate most ideas, but …. Its worth the effort and clarify what will identify Christians as Christians.  I’ve been wanting to do this for myself, too, so I’ll share a couple things that are forming in my thoughts and feelings. They’re not in any order yet…. Today I’ll talk about Christians knowing our sacred texts and our relationship with God in prayer.

Believers in God need to learn our sacred literature, the stories of our faith forbears.  If we learn them as kids, that’s good – we have the outlines and some details in our minds, and hopefully some good verses memorized.  BUT!!!! Our knowledge of these stories can’t stay at the 5^th grade level, which they will, if the adult believers don’t illustrate how to interpret, discern and listen to the deeper truths in them.  I say 5^th grade, because that’s when my oldest got bored with Sunday School because, as he said, “All they ever did was color pictures of animals going on the ark and everyone knows that wasn’t true anyway.”  I shared this story with a Rabbi friend, and he grinned and said, “Don’t you love it when they get to that point?”  Uh, yeah, I was kind of taken aback…but my rabbi friend is right.  See, in school my son was studying old civilizations and Greek or Roman mythology, which he knew was not literally true.  And he linked Christianity to it.  His brain was ready for a deeper level of truth, the truths of God’s preservation of a people to carry the story, the importance of the symbol of the ark throughout time, the truth that many civilizations have flood stories and there just might have been an actual big flood of some kind.  He was ready to go beyond the literal, and no one was showing him anything but rote memorization and blind acceptance.  Hmmmm…

So many adults are like a teacher I enjoyed who taught the science of the Big Bang – he was able to see the mystery and wonder of that level of science; he even was able to see the symbolic beauty and meaning in creation stories of other cultures, like some Native American stories of creation.  But when he got to Christianity’s Adam and Eve in the garden, all he could see was the literal level he’d had to memorize as a child, and now rejected as too simplistic.  Too simplistic????? Our creation stories are wonderful and deep stories of our connection to God and creation, worthy of reflection and meditation as to just what is taught about who we are and who God is, and the universe God has set us in.  But this man was stuck, and couldn’t move into an adult relationship with this story, although he could with others.  We’ve emphasized the wrong things in our faith development & kept faith at a level of either believing literally or believing nothing.

In my experience, Scripture can be read at any age and any level and still have meaning.  Scripture can be read 200 times and still reveal more truth to us – because God’s Spirit works in them and in me through those words.  I can read Scripture now in my 60s, knowing more about what life throws at us, and hear more levels than I did in my 20s – it still speaks, God still uses it to examine my heart.

Knowing the Scripture, while important, is not the whole picture, though – our faith is in God, and our own personal relationship with God needs to be cultivated in prayer and meditation, worship, community, and private time. Our parents’ deep faith needs to be wrestled with personally, and become your own deep faith.  A writer (John Westerhoff,,I believe), on faith development, said that “Faith is more caught than taught.” And he used the word “osmosis” to ponder how a person learns to practice faith through being around other people of faith, through absorbing the feeling, the culture, the practices of thought and devotion.  We can learn facts and details in our head, yet it comes to be our own practice through engagement with other believers.   Community is so important -  gathering, worshipping, praying, working. Its just as vital to just show up and be here as it is to wrestle in prayer by ourselves. 

I used to come to my prayer time trying to say things piously and hiding behind my more noble inclinations.  I was really just fooling myself, because God knew my thought and my heart desires anyway.  Its not wrong to desire a holy outlook on things – but its important to know when we don’t have it, and why.  We have views that we aspire to, that challenge us – and we also have to know where we actually are.  We don’t need to fear that God will be shocked, or that God will go away if we’re angry.  God has heard it all before, and God can stand it and stay with us.  God isn’t someone we need to fear to be honest with.   

God is concerned in every detail of our lives, too – not just holy-sounding things, but who we’re angry with, for example, or our concerns about our bodies, or what we do with our money, or how we wish we were more attractive, or how we are doing in school.  However, God isn’t a Divine vending machine, where we put in our dollar prayer and get a pony.  Prayer is simple, but not simplistic.  At this stage of my life, I go ahead and tell God what I’d like to see happen, because God knows anyway…. And sometimes I’m challenged as to whether it’s a worthy ask, and sometimes I need to  further define what I truly seek.  Then I go back in prayer later if things go a different way, and talk about how I feel about what did happen.  This is exploring WITH God.

So I’ve talked about two biggies – there’s more I want to ponder together.  I would really enjoy talking more about our practice and development of faith with you if you’re interested or intrigued, so let me know.  I think church is so much more than just budgets and policies, although we need those things to structure our being together.  Our faith in God and how we live here on earth actually the point.  AMEN.

Seeing Resurrection Through Tears Easter-B 4/1/18

Seeing Resurrection Through Tears

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Easter -B   4/1/18     John 20:1-18

Christ is risen!

Answer: Christ is risen indeed!

I looked up children’s books about Easter on Amazon to send to my granddaughter – there are lots of them out there.  There’s a cute one done according to the Berenstain Bears, Pete the cat, a cute mouse, Little Critter, Pinkalicious (!)  and more.

This morning we’re going to look at the Easter story according to Mary of Magdala, the first person who comes to the tomb, and the first person to see the risen Jesus – and actually, the first one to tell people about it. 

I love Mary of Magdala  – she’s gotten a bad rap from sometime early in Christianity when someone decided she was the woman aught in adultery, although that woman is not named, and anyway, she was forgiven.  Magdalene does not mean adulterer or any worse word – it’s a CITY, the city where she was from.  Evidently she’s one of those women that traveled with the disciples and, as last week’s text said, provided for them.  I mean, we have this picture of Jesus and the 12 men traveling through the desert from town to town as a male band.  Actually, women traveled with Jesus, too, using their money to feed and clothe everyone, cooking and sewing and all, and listening to Jesus as well.  Maybe some of the disciples had wives, it never says.  Certainly, Jesus’ message appealed to everyone.  More than likely, Mary was a woman of means who turned to Jesus.   I mean, Jesus fed a crowd with fishes and loaves, but that’s just one day – he ministered for 3 years!

We all know that Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb gifted to him by a follower, right before the Sabbath started, so all the burial rituals could not be completed.  That’s why Mary comes early on the day after the Sabbath, ie Sunday (which is why Christians now worship on Sunday, the first day of the week).  She brings the traditional herbs and all, a final gift to Jesus of laying him out properly. We can imagine, having had to do difficult things ourselves, that she is still incredibly sad and confused, and yet finding some solace in the thought of this last ceremony. 

People all used to do this for their loved ones, and at their homes.  The traditions and ceremonies around death and important to the grieving process, and eventually help us head towards healing.  Nowadays we relegate that kind of humble work to undertakers and have other traditions.  When I was a kid, I was scared of dead bodies, and the knowledge that this is our common human end.  Now that I’m older and have been with people while they mysteriously move from a warm, breathing human, and into death, there’s nothing scary about bodies anymore, especially the body of those we have loved. 

So Mary comes to the tomb, the place of death, and perhaps we can imagine she is not also sad, but also wondering what will happen to his followers.  You may remember that it was a scary time to be a follower of Jesus – Peter had been scared to admit he knew Jesus, and the disciples gathered behind a closed door.   Mary sees the rock that sealed the tomb now rolled to the side, and the tomb empty.  We can imagine that she is totally freaked, and thinks his body has been moved or stolen – and perhaps even something gross done to it…. Our imagination can take us terrible places.  But even our imaginations can’t take us to RESURRECTION – that just isn’t something that happens on the human plane. 

So she runs and gets some other folks, and stands there crying while they look inside the tomb.  We might imagine this empty tomb is yet another shock – her friend Jesus was arrested,  condemned,  killed – and now his body has disappeared!  I know I’d be crying….I’d be numb.

Mary just can’t leave the tomb, even though the others go.  She can’t leave yet, she’s still weeping and confused.  And just in this terrible moment, someone says something to her – she thinks he’s a gardener. They’re in a garden, that’s logical.  Of course she doesn’t expect to see Jesus…  would we? 

Yet it is at this place of loss, in the pain and confusion of human grief and incomprehension - it is through her helpless tears that Mary recognizes the new Jesus, the risen Christ.  And they talk.  Can you imagine her absolute amazement and confusion?  Finally, she returns to the others with the totally weird testimony, “I have seen the Lord!”

It seems to be uniquely true for all of us, that it is at our most dire times, our deepest crises, our losses and failures, our time of grief and weeping, that as we wrestle with where God is in the midst of this chaos --- we somehow see God anew, we see new aspects of God, we find an expanded vision of God’s self.  I started to write that this is not my favorite way for my faith and vision to grow.  It certainly isn’t the easiest or the most pleasant.  But on the other hand, isn’t it important that God is there in our very worst times???? 

I’ve named many of my awful times as ‘times of disillusionment’ ----  things weren’t like I’d thought or expected – or even believed.  God, as I knew God up to that point, didn’t seem to be there.  One day it hit me that in order to be disillusioned, I must have been living in an illusion to start with!  It hurts to be disillusioned, to shed those illusions – yet they ARE illusions and actually need to go.  God IS there – it was my expectation that fell short, it was my understanding that was incomplete.  Suddenly I see God in a new way; I learn; my faith grows.  It seems that I learn more of God’s reality in my soul, at times of weeping. 

Yes, we know that our faith benefits and grows from mountaintop experiences like good conferences, meaningful retreats, or hearing great preachers that challenge and fill our spirit.  The year I attended our General Assembly and saw this whole hall of displays of the missions we Presbyterians do when we work together – that was both humbling and exhilarating at the same time.  And the large worship services, hearing hundreds of people singing together, taking communion in a convention hall packed with Christ-followers – my spirit overflowed with joy.  God was there.

Isn’t it also good to trust that God is there is our lowest points, too?  And isn’t it good to trust that God is the God of new and unexpected life? Weeping might be the best response to some of the things life throws at us, when we find ourselves standing by the place of loss like Mary.  Yet our God, who created all that is around us as well our very human selves, also is a God who can create things out of our imagining. 

Theologically speaking, God is Life and Being.  God’s mysterious name given in the Scripture is variously translated as, “I am that I am,” or, “I will be what I will be.”  Its some form of the verb “to be,” anyway, so God’s name encompasses being itself; the creative power or energy of life.  Hildegard of Bingen spoke of God as the greenness; my teacher Matthew Fox referred to God as “isness.”  Others have tried to express God philosophically as the Ground of Being, the Logos or Word.  All of these ideas, in the 60s expression, ‘blow our minds.” 

The truth is, where God is, life is.  God creates anew.  God is the power in creation, and God’s spirit in us is always moving us towards healing – healing of our souls, healing of past hurts, healing from addictions and other things that damage us.  The power of new life springing up is God.  Of COURSE God will do a new thing, and Jesus will be raised in a new kind of life, a kind of life that we all who follow Jesus will share.  Death is never the last word where God is concerned.   Life is always pushing out, pushing forward, despite setbacks and hardships ….. and even despite mortality.  That makes my mind swirl – God made all the mysteries & complexities we humans are still discovering…So it makes sense, doesn’t it? - that God could create even stuff beyond this.  God is alive in ways we can’t understand, and God is almost out of the realm that our brains can comprehend…  

However, we can comprehend this:  God holds the power of Life and New Life.  Death does not defeat the Life of God, nor the Love of God.  Life wins.  God wins. Sometimes we have to affirm that through our tears, like Mary at the tomb.  And then we are privileged to see the power of the God of life burst any bonds. 

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen indeed. 

We Wish to See Jesus! 3/18/18 Lent 5B

We Wish to See Jesus

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L Kiser

3/18/18       Lent 5B    John 12:20-33

I’m drawn to the agricultural metaphor in this text about the grain of wheat….its fitting, somehow, here in the fields near Hemingway.  We’re farmers and gardeners – we’ve planted the seeds, and watched as those same seed split open, and sent up a spout of a new thing.  It reminds me of the Kindergarten bean in a pot, where the new spout comes up with the old bean seed split on the first new leaf.  Seeds go into the ground - buried, as it were - laid in the dark and covered over.  There in the dark, it dies to its form as a seed, and the energy in that seed feeds the new life pushing out and up toward the light.  The seed is gone; what comes up as new life doesn’t look like the seed – its not the same anymore.  The seed contains the potential, and its burial releases that new thing.  The seed is the last stage of the plant’s life-cycle ---the plant grows, it flowers and fruits, and sets seed– lots of seeds, actually; and for certain things like a butter bean or okra seed, or an apple seed or a squash seed, it gives lots of food from that one seed.

In this last Sunday of Lent (as next week is Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, as its now called), we continue to approach  the cross with Jesus and again he tells of his coming death – and the concept of resurrection.  Our particular text this morning holds references to several of our earlier Lenten readings – there’s an echo of being lifted up, like from last week with the bronze serpent; there’s the word play about saving your life to lose it, and losing your life to save it; there’s something close to take up your cross and follow me.  There’s even an echo back to Jesus’ baptism, when the voice from heaven thundered and people couldn’t make it out.

Jesus is, of course, using this seed metaphor to illustrate his own approaching death and burial.  From his own falling into the earth in death, the miracle of all kinds of new life will emerge.  God will use this death to do a mighty new work, new works, new growth, new life.

Jesus could have used any number of metaphors, because this resurrection from death, this transformation through death, is seen and told all over the place in God’s creation of our universe.  This death and new life theme is all over the natural world.  As a matter of fact, our whole universe was created from the death of stars, stars that compressed down and then exploded, forming new elements in the crucible of their heat, and throwing those new elements out into space where they combined with other elements and formed our planets, including our Earth.  Star stuff – everything we see is made of star stuff; including our own bodies. 

 We could go on to remember the massive forests of green stuff that died and compressed into coal, and then diamonds.   Many use the illustration of butterflies and other insects, who start out as an egg, then a larvae, and then they build a cocoon, where the little wormy thing develops wings, antennae and body, emerging from a casket-like thing as a colorful butterfly. 

Trees die and fall over – then bugs and fungus begins to work on it, and breaks it down, transforms it, into the dust of the earth, where it nourishes new life.  Composting - when I started my first community garden, we had a huge composting pile – we were really into composting, making a nutritious substance from the cast–off plants, orange peels, egg shells, coffee grounds, cucumber peels, and so on. One of the guys made weekly runs with Rubbermaid tubs to gather used coffee grounds from local Starbucks, and then hit the whole foods place that squeezed juice from carrots and wheat grass.  We all added our raked leaves, and even stole bags of leaves from our neighbors.  We had a large pile, and took its temperature during the winter to make sure it was working – if you put your hand in it, it was HOT in there!  Steam rose!  We turned it and cared for it, and in the spring we had good stuff, full of nutrients for our new plantings.  The dead stuff broke down into a valuable material for new life. 

Yet another layer of this death and life theme is in our own personal losses - when for example a relationship dies, a friend or a significant other, a spouse…. We have to grieve it, yes - then let it go, not hang on.  No new relationship can grow until we let the old one die.  There come times when a job ends, when we come to the end of what we’re doing - and we have to let it go, let it die, in order to move forward. 

There are times in our lives that we have to choose what activities we deem important enough to keep in, and what we either let go or simply never choose.  There’s no room for new things in our lives until we let go of what needs to go.  Angers – gotta let them go, and let that tied up energy free, to be used for something more productive.  Prejudices – gotta let them die and move into welcomes of new people, new challenges.  Bad habits – or just habits that have become hide-bound – gotta let them die, and create new and better habits.  Knees or shoulders get bad and make for lots of pain, and fortunately, our doctors know how to implant new ones for our use!  

In Jesus, when the time was come, God personalized this mystery in Jesus, who died, was buried…. and who God raised into new life, a new creation, a resurrection.  Jesus embodies the deep truth that God is a God who turns death into something altogether new.  God is a God of Life; God is alive.  This is good news – our God holds the mystery of new life, and is always bringing new life out of death.

The hard part of this is that new life comes after a death - there can’t be an Easter without a Good Friday.  There can’t be a transformation without first there being a death.  There can’t be new growth without the death, the loss, of what was before.  This is true on so many levels, and it’s a difficult truth.  It hurts.  We feel the loss, the death; we grieve it; but death has to come before new life. 

The first task of an Interim Minister, or now called a Transitional Minister, is to help a congregation grieve what used to be under the former pastor, or in the old system of behaviors.  We’ve learned that in order to better receive what’s coming (and who’s coming!) , a congregation has to let go of the former pastor, however beloved or despised.  One place where I served kept trying to turn me into their former pastor, telling me things like, “Pastor Jack always ended his sermons with it, ‘the good news is…..’, and we want you to do it, too.”  “Pastor Jack didn’t preach from a manuscript, and we want you to do that, too.” They were used to Pastor Jack, and I wasn’t him.  Another place, where the pastor retired after 17 good years, had the same problem:– his sermons were full of quotes and poems he discovered in the local college library. So not only did I not look like a retired white male, and not only was my voice different, my sermons were different!  The weekend I did a continuing education event, I got a retired man to fill the pulpit, and they said it felt back to normal…..they really needed grief work, and letting go, but unfortunately they couldn’t do it.

So churches also need to let go of their past, after celebrating it, of course – and look at what the scoop is NOW - who are the members NOW, what is the community like NOW.  The neighborhood may have changed, a different economic level may have moved in, or a different race, members may have moved some miles away.

My home church, when its neighborhood changed, bought property further out from DC where the white folks were moving, and built a new building for themselves there.  They couldn’t make the changes needed to minister to the people around their location, when the people were another color.  As a child, I thought that since we said we valued being a neighborhood church, we ought to reach out to our neighborhood; and didn’t comprehend what the adults found difficult about that.  What a message of radical Christian welcome and acceptance that could have been, or could have modeled for the racial tensions in the area.  Instead we did what everyone else was doing, Christian or not. 

I know another Interim Pastor, some years back, who was glad to be invited to some parties by the leading elders and decision makers, took his whole family and kids.  Suddenly he realized that these parties were actually swinging parties – spouse-swapping.  Now there was a custom that had to die!   Some churches have such a  dysfunctional  culture that they get a reputation as clergy-killers.  If those churches are going to minister and serve, some behaviors are going to have to be confronted and die. 

Next to those rather extreme examples, most churches look pretty okay!  There’s always some history, though, that can interfere with moving ahead in service and love.  Any change can be difficult. 

Resurrection only comes after a death.  A plant only comes from a seed that falls into the ground and dies.  We have to let go of one trapeze to catch the next one – can’t keep both or we get stuck in mid-air.  We have to step off the boat onto the pier – can’t do both, or we fall in!   (Been there, done that!) We gotta let go, let it go, let it die – and step into the future with both feet. 

If we at Indiantown want to revitalize, redevelop, grow in service, there will be new things.  A new pastor will feel different and do things differently.  New members bring new ideas and new ways – they won’t know ours. How we welcome and embrace the changes will be significant, whether we grasp onto the old, or are able to move with the new.  When we find ourselves feeling the pinch, as it were, remember what God has built into creation and showed forth in Jesus the Christ – that Easter only comes after Good Friday – that resurrection only comes after a death.  AMEN.        

Mercy & Grace & Belief 3/11/18 Lent 4B

Mercy & Grace & Belief

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Mar 11, 2018            Lent 4B          Jn 3:14-21

I wonder if the verses John 3:16-17 were as well-known as they are, before the Rev. Billy Graham featured them in his evangelism?  (Rev. Graham’s death was recent.)  It could be - they are wonderful summaries of God’s love and God’s desire for us.  Yet when I think of these verses, and especially just Jn 3:16,  I hear it in Billy Graham’s voice: “For God so loved the world, so LOVED the world, that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.”  Of course Billy Graham said ‘only begotten son’ because he always quoted the King James….

As I actually memorized the King James translation myself as a youngster, I learned the next verse in these words:  “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

Jesus’ message is GOOD news - GOOD news!    

These verses emphasize God’s love, and God’s desire to save; they remind us that God DIDN’T send Jesus to condemn us but to save us - -

The world is condemned already, John says - and no one needs to tell us the evil that’s in the world.  We hear about it every day - another school shooting, another murder, another person resigns because their bad behavior is caught.  Yes, there are good people in the world - people who care for one another when they are sick or needy; people who don’t lie, and who try to do right by one another, people who pay their bills, people who live by the 10 commandments (as the guy in the airplane said); there are employers that realize their employees are actually people and treat them as such.  It seems, though, that the stealing and the murder and the coveting and the greed and the cheating and the sexual messing around - these come out in people’s lives as well.  And the further up the ladder they are, and the more power they have, the more people seem to think they can get away with it, or that the expected standards of behavior don’t apply.  And as corporations and businesses get national and international, their CEOs and CFOs get further and further from the people who work for them or people who need their product, and they get more and more focused on the needs of the corporation or business, or lining their own pockets, and its Buyer Beware.  We get further and further away from our souls, from the earth where we live, from the parts of humanity that hurt, from our common good.

It was my Boomer generation that hid under our desks, pretending we might be protected from nuclear fallout; and we grew up recognizing that nuclear shelter symbol - as if we could get to one with 15 min warning.  There are people so evil that they would push that button and send our world into oblivion.  My generation, and the generations since then, live with an awareness of the possible annihilation of humanity, just below the level of our daily functioning, but always there.  Evil is real, and doesn’t take any special new condemnation from Jesus.

So I don’t like the way Jesus’ message of salvation has been turned into such a negative, as if Jesus dooms people who don’t follow exactly the way that specific group dictates.  And I don’t like the way Jesus’ message is turned into a salvation that happens after we die, ie that Hell is the result of not choosing Jesus.

Jesus’ message is that things can be changed, and changed now.  Jesus’ message is that God still loves us more than anything, and the world can be spared, or, in the scriptural language, be saved.  I wish that those good words ‘saved’, and ‘salvation’, weren’t so co-opted into the trite usage that we equate with TV evangelists.  Yes, as individuals, we can begin to follow Christ in our lives, and become his disciples, living in this way of life Jesus showed us - a way of honoring God, honoring all creation including the earth and each other; treating one another with justice and kindness, seeking peace, curbing those inclinations that still linger and try to throw us back into the ways of death.  God’s love and grace are freely given!  We just have to accept.

As individuals, we can form into groups for mutual support and encouragement, we can work together to keep announcing this good news, we can teach each other and our children to live in this way of capital-L  Life.

Yet there’s another level of the world being ‘saved.’  Jesus says that, living in God’s way faithfully, we can be a preservative, for example like salt, but for the world  ---- so it is not destroyed.  The values of Christianity can keep the world from destroying itself and all in it. 

In this way, SALVATION is LITERAL - we spread the good news of God’s love and mercy not just so that individuals can go to heaven when they die, whatever that means; we spread the news of God’s mercy and love so that evil won’t blow up the world; so that an evil greed for dollars won’t so foul our nest that its unlivable; so that people can learn to live together peacefully.  The gospel of Jesus is about the survival of humanity- humanity that God created and loves.  The world, and its peoples, are God’s creation - which is basically good except for the evil that infected it.  God loves it all - God loves us all - God loves all creatures.  God is LIFE, God made and undergirds everything; its ALL the work of God, the expression of God.   All of this (wave hands) is the work of God - God doesn’t want to see it destroyed. 

And we, my friends, are the ambassadors sent from God about it all!  Our choices, our lives, our words, our actions, our relationships, our orientation to the words of God - we follow Christ as the bringers of this good news, or as my fingers seem to type is, this god news. 

I like the correlation the apostle John makes between the old story of Moses lifting up the snake on a stick and Jesus lifted up on the cross, or metaphorically lifted up in terms of being made known.  Moses’ folks could just crawl out of their tents to look on that thing that bit them, that afflicted them, that was killing them - and be healed of it.  Maybe friends dragged them out of the tents, but still they had to lift their own eyes and look.  The snake on the stick wasn’t to condemn them, because they were already bit and infected - Moses made that model snake and lifted it up in order to bring healing - to save their lives. 

We don’t have to reject Jesus to suffer and die from being bit by humanity’s worst instincts…. we’ve already been bit.  We DO, however, have to look to Jesus to be healed and our lives saved - - and potentially our species saved and our planet saved.  God will show us, teach us this new way of living, this new worldview, when we humbly admit we’re bitten, and look to Jesus.  Looking on the bronze serpent took a sense that this would work, that God would heal.  In a sense, that’s basic belief.  When we look to Jesus, its not to emote about the cross and ‘believe in’ it somehow.  Looking to Jesus is assuming God to be right about ways of death AND ways of life; assuming God means it all, including the promise of new life and eternal life (whatever that is); and assuming we need to learn all that Jesus taught and live by it.

(Its interesting that the snake on a stick is the medical symbol for healing, although the story usually equated with the Staff of Asclepius is from the ancient Greek – and from about the same time of the Hebrew story.  Trouble is, folks have trouble explaining what the snake stands for in the Greek story… our story explains it well… hmmmm…..)

Friends, we who are alive right now are at a significant transition point in how we have envisioned “church” and how we have envisioned being Christ-followers.  Our world is at a significant transition point as the traditional church has lost its importance and its impact on society – so much so that many current writers are calling our age “Post-Christian.”  Many traditional churches have shrunk to the point of not being able to financially support what we used to think of as “church” – ie a building, a pastor, and a credible mission outreach.  In fact, aging and shrinking local churches are closing and selling their buildings all over our country, and sending their remaining members to other congregations that are still going.  My training time in Portland this past week offered a special hour about the ministry of closing churches that are at the end of their lifespan.  And we were charged that just because some local churches reach that place, to remember that the Capital-C Church of God will continue.  The landscape of our communities and their churches is changing, transitioning; and the way we do our communities of faith, if we still call them churches, has to transition as well.  For those of us raised in the traditional way of being church, this is very difficult - a deep grief, a deep loss. And I don’t yet have a vision of the new way of being church that is coming.

What I DO see is that we all need to be rethinking the way we live as Christ-followers – our prayer lives, our authenticity, our way of living in a changing community; we need to revision our outreach with God’s message of grace, and not hide behind our walls and our former ways. 

Transition is hard.  I believe our call is to be a bridge to whatever God is bringing – and not to be stoppers, not to keep stubbornly holding onto the old ways harder and harder.  Indiantown has been a beacon here in our county for a long, long time, and seen many changes.  And our leadership has chosen to call a new person and see what’s down the new road. We have to be ready for changes; we have to be open to where the Spirit of God can take us.  We need to be in prayer and seeking to grow our own spiritual lives, so our spiritual ears are ready.  Its not a time to sit back and criticize, or to undermine, or wait for some outside answer to come.  Our new minister won’t have the answers or the ideas that will work here – that’s up to us.  We know the area, we know the people – its our divine imaginations that need to fire up.  Jesus’ message about love and grace and righteous living in 2018 and beyond is needed, and we are the believers that are here to spread it.  AMEN.

Where is My Passion for God Leading? 3/4/18 Lent 3B

Where is My Passion for God Leading?

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

March 4, 2018        Lent 3B         John 2: 13-22

The sermon today is going to be rather participatory – I haven’t done one like this in a long time, and I hope y’all are up for experimenting along with me.  In these Lenten sermons, I’ve been following the lectionary texts for the season of Lent, and finding that I can also impart some models of pursuing our own personal journeys with Christ at home.  This morning’s brief and unusual glimpse of Jesus finds him in the main Jerusalem Temple in an astounding physical act – he radically confronts the usual order.  This story works well for an interesting practice of what some of my teachers called the “Ignatian” method of prayer, named after St. Ignatius. 

In background, we need to know that worshippers paid their Temple tax with certain kinds of coins that differed from the one used in the Roman market – so they often had to exchange one kind for the right kind.  This evidently created an opportunity for some unscrupulous exchange rates.  And different animals were required for different kinds of offerings and sacrifices, as laid down in the books of the Law.  Often folks had to purchase their doves, for example, when they arrived at Temple.  This evidently created an opportunity for some price gouging. 

Jesus, in his zeal for the Temple, which in Judaism houses the very presence of God in the holy of holies, takes great offence at these unjust practices, and physically makes a whip - and then makes a mess, overturning tables and all.  Jesus isn’t usually like this – yes, his teachings are pretty volatile, but his actions are usually more peaceful as he travels around to preach and heal.  In this story, Jesus shows civil disobedience and visible civic action.

I don’t see this as inconsistent with the rest of the stories about Jesus – he was obviously passionate about the things of God, and a very thoughtful and insightful person; he is willing to speak truth to power, as we call it nowadays; he told almost subversive stories very publically, and engaged in question and answer tests with religious leaders.  You’ll see in my following dialogue that Jesus isn’t just acting off the cuff, either, but has considered and planned what he’s doing.

In this Ignatian way of study and prayer, we start with them assurance that God’s Spirit speaks the Word we need to hear through the texts. Then put ourselves into the story with all our senses, and using our active imagination, become one of the participants, one of those who sees this happen.  No, we don’t write new scripture – it’s a way of engaging our inner self, our unconscious.  I find that my own needs and questions get hooked, and sometimes I get some insights that haven’t been in the front of my mind.  I’ve found it can go some interesting ways, and not always then same, even with the same passages.  As in all forms of study and prayer, the end is prayer and /or conviction, offered to God.  I’ll describe my experience and my dialogue with Jesus as an example -  and then what I feel I’ve heard for my journey.

So - - get comfortable, friends, and even close your eyes if that helps your visualization.  Imagine yourself in the 1^st century, in the large city of Jerusalem, surrounded by kinsfolk, Jews from all over, who have come for the celebration of Passover.  Smell the smells - of people who have traveled, and their animals; of the pungent smoke from sacrifices being made on the altar.  Look around at the colors, the various clothing from different districts; recognize the great stone columns and walls of the Temple. Hear how noisy it is! People all around, animals pushing in different directions, people calling out to one another.  Over to the right, some tables are set up where we can exchange our money for Temple coins, and purchase our offering animals.  From past experience, we know that they have us over a barrel and it will cost us - we sigh in resignation – we need the Temple coinage, so they can get away with an exorbitant exchange rate…..and we’ve traveled too far to bring our own animals.  Too bad, that’s just the way it always is.  We push towards the tables like many others.

Suddenly we realize that something different is happening – we crane our heads to see - we hear the clank of coins hitting the stone floor, and tables cracking as they fall over, and animal cries as they fall or work free.  Everyone is crying out and pushing! Just then the head of the person in front of us moves, and we see a man with a bunch of cords tied together whipping and flipping through the tables, chasing the vendors off, and crying loudly about them making his father’s house into a den of thieves.  People near us are saying, “That’s Jesus! The one that’s been healing people, and feeding crowds somehow!”  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, we hear sibilants of his name all around us. 

I grow afraid that soldiers will come, and afraid that I’ll be crushed by the crowds, so I push for the doorways like others are doing.  I’ve heard of Jesus of Nazareth of course – everyone’s been talking about what he’s done when aunt so-and-so went to see him at some event or another.  No one mentioned anything like this, though!  He’s going to get the authorities riled up with this; I’m suddenly afraid of what the results will be….for him and for us.

I get a chance to talk to Jesus as he’s slipping away:

Me:      Jesus, this is so not like you – not that I’ve not wished someone would do something about these gougers.

Jesus:   It was time for a provocative act.

Me:      That scares me for you! And for myself, if I’m honest, for liking it – its gonna get a reaction, Jesus.

Jesus: Yeah, I know. Yet God’s house is not a place for human greed and injustice to God’s worshippers.

Me:      They’re gonna get you for messing with the status quo here…

Jesus:   Yeah -I know.

Me:      Jesus, I sometimes feel like doing something similar.  I get so angry at the crassness of some of your followers, the judgmentalism, the racism, the closed doors, the lack of passion for you….and the hatred they say is in your name!  And I get angry at others of your followers for largely ignoring you while just saying the words.  People are being driven away from your message because of the actions of some of your followers, Jesus.  It all weighs on my heart.  However, if I pulled a stunt like this, I’d just get maligned and judged, and the waves of complacency would close over my head again.    I just don’t know how to make things better.

Jesus:   3 things you already know, Becky – Anger isn’t the way to go.  And you just engender more resistance when you push.  And finally, you know, the church is actually God’s job, with you being faithful yourself, of course.

Me:      But YOU did it!!

Jesus:   Did you see me as angry?  I’m actually deeply grieved, and pained.  It was hard to make myself do this; I know the risks.  This is all leading where it needs to go for my work.

Me:      I feel passion about your church, too, Jesus.  Although I realize that I don’t – and can’t  - understand all the things that have to work together.  I just feel like I’m doing nothing, and watching your churches collapse.  I want to DO something, make a difference, help bring in your realm.  Doesn’t God want me to DO something? 

Jesus:   Thank you, Becky – I love you, too. 

Me:      I know I get all reactive and want to rail, or wail, or just quit.

Jesus:   Yeah, I know.

Me:      You’re not giving me any answers or directions.

Jesus:   Nope, I’m not.  There’s a lot already in the Scriptures, Bec – keep working on that, keep listening, keep watching where God’s working. Be willing, be honest with yourself. Try out the ideas that ‘come to you’ –could be that’s my Spirit!   Be faithful, and trust God. 

Me:      Yeah, yeah,….. that’s all so frustrating - I hate waiting. I want something to happen.

Jesus:   Yeah, I know.  (He smiles, rubs my head and messes up my hair, then walks on.)

God has never really given me clear and precise directions, which frustrates me.  I’ve told God before that if I could just hear a directive call, I’d give all my energy to accomplish it.  But God seems to know how much I want to depend on external authority, and keeps making me work on hearing that inner voice that’s authentic to me.  And God knows there’s so much more to work on in following Christ that I already know to do anyway. 

So – what is the outcome of this particular study and prayer encounter?  I think it’s a good insight that Jesus was grieved and pained rather than reactively angry.  And I heard a purposefulness in his choosing of this act – which is out of true zeal for God - to move closer towards his death, which he knows and keeps telling the disciples is coming.  I’ll sit with those concepts and ponder what it must have been like for Jesus, as we move towards Holy Week. 

On a personal level, its actually comforting to me that Jesus seems to like me okay, despite my angers and reactivity.  Jesus knows my heart, my love, my passion, my own zeal. 

If we do think of prayer as conversational, as bringing our very self to God and talking things, this Ignatian method of entering the stories already in Scripture can go pretty deep.  Know that the Spirit of God is using our own subconscious, that this is active imagination, and these are things we already know at some level that God is simply bringing up. Its not “hearing voices” or receiving directives from God to do weird things.  If it seems to take you in ways that run counter to what we know from Scripture, or seems to lead to something counter to faith, you might want to talk to someone about it.  If it goes somewhere scary, just tell God its too scary and although you love God, this is enough for now.  You’re in control. 

Well, I’ve let you in on some of my issues and some of how I talk with God.  If this intrigues you, try it out.  If it seems weird, don’t.  Not every way that people have studied Scripture and prayed work for every believer.  The important thing is for us each to be pursing our faith journey and seeking to grow.  I hope this has been helpful to your journeys.  AMEN.