Where everyone is welcome!

 

A Man Had Two Sons, But This is Not About Them

                                                 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

 

            One of the computer message boards I used to subscribe to provided a quick and easy way to keep up with people and issues all related to common interests.  This particular one was based in the Church and provided both joy and frustration all the time I was part of it.  Some of the joys came from hearing ideas and opinions from people I knew and about whom I cared.  Some of the frustrations came from the same source.  Most of us have experienced some of the things that come over people when they get behind a keyboard.  Even the people with whom we share common beliefs and opinions tend to get on our nerves when they have an opportunity to comment about every issue before us.  That was where a good friend, one with whom I agreed on most things, found himself for a long time.  Every time you logged on and saw his name in your inbox, you knew you were in for a long discourse.  The most frustrating thing was that he couldn’t stay on the topic being discussed.  He always had an opinion-you could count on that—but before he got to it, he would have to type on and one about something else going on in his life or in his church.  The group may have been all abuzz about allocation of denominational money or about ordination standards, or about any of the other issues groups like that tend to discuss, but my friend would log on and begin talking about some issue specific to the congregation he attended.  He would go into minute detail describing some issue or program at his church, and then somewhere along the line, he’d remember what we were supposed to be talking about, and he’d say, “But this is not about that.”  And then he would launch off into his take on whatever the issue was the rest of us were discussing.  That usually went on for a while, and it was usually worth reading and thinking about.  But I suspect many who read that list did what I started doing when I saw his name pop up—either hit delete or just scroll down and read what somebody else had to say. 

            Most of us who have spent any time at all in the Church know the story we read this morning from Luke’s Gospel this morning.  Most of us were probably taught it as The Prodigal Son when we were children in Sunday School.  As moral instruction, they don’t come much better than this one.  Generations of Sunday School children have been warned about the perils that accompany the kind of disrespectful and selfish thinking that the younger brother displayed toward his father, his community, and the whole system of values in which he lived.  He’s a spoiled brat, and most of us were warned from the Primary class about what happens to people like him. 

            But, you know, when you get right down to it, this story is not about him.  Even though our Sunday School books called this lesson The Prodigal Son.  Even though the Bibles we carried when we were younger called this story The Prodigal Son.  Even though most of us learned the definition of the word prodigal from this story—this is really not about him.

            This story comes from a time and a place that are so much different from ours that we really shouldn’t draw direct parallels between it and our own experience, but we all do.  Who hasn’t thought ahead to what we’d do if we came into a large inheritance, whether there is one to wish for or not?  Apparently, in the time of this story, what we would call family law allowed for eventual heirs to claim their part of an estate early.  That’s what younger brother did.  And we heard again this morning about how he mismanaged and ran through what he claimed.  What small town or large one doesn’t have a story about a son who ran his father’s car dealership in the ground or a daughter who lost the family business?   I had a church member come to me once to ask if I wouldn’t talk some sense into his mother.  She had been widowed some years earlier and sold her home and moved to the family’s smaller place on the lake.  Her son oversaw her finances and had to approve major expenses.  It seemed that Mom’s roof needed repair and she had called her son about going to the bank with her to arrange for the transfer of funds.  That’s what they wanted me to talk with her about—she probably wouldn’t live long enough to get the benefit of a new twenty-year roof on the house, and the expense would cut into the inheritance.  I declined to talk with her.  The kind of thinking that reduces people to what they’re worth or what they can give us hasn’t changed much since the time of that other family, I guess.   But this is not really about that, either, is it?

The story begins with the statement that a man had two sons.  Somewhere in the history of our interpretation of this story, we left our obsession with the wayward, willful one and started paying attention to the older brother.  He’s not a real attractive character, either.  Selfish and self-absorbed, he says things to his dad that he probably didn’t mean to say.  His younger brother had been gone long enough that they had all adjusted to life without him.  Probably didn’t think much about him anymore.  Let him sleep in the bed he made.  Older Brother stayed there at home as Older Brothers were supposed to do.  When he came home that afternoon and saw preparations for what looked to be a huge celebration, he was curious.  When he got home and found out what the celebration was all about, he was furious.  His dutiful, willing service in his father’s house all those years all of a sudden became working like a slave.  No one ever gave him even a goat to barbecue for a tail gate party with his friends.  He had work to do.  He was the good son.  His brother, with whom he had shared life and home before he left, now becomes “this son of yours.”  And he would not even go in the house to voice his concerns.  He stood outside, daring his father to come out and confront him with his foolishness. 

Barbara Brown Taylor does the best job I have ever heard any preacher do of explaining all the expectations of fathers and sons in that culture.  Some of us studied this story as she tells it last summer.  Fathers didn’t run out to meet their wayward sons. But Brown Taylor says that this Father not only ran, he ran like a girl, grabbing his robes up like a girl’s skirt to keep from tripping.   And Fathers darned sure didn’t leave their place at the head of the table to come and deal with a petulant child who didn’t get his way.  But this one did.  And he pleaded with him to come and join the party.  The story ends before we find out what the pouty older brother does, but any of us who have ever nursed a resentment know.  He’d sooner starve than eat any of that roasted veal he could smell from across the yard.  All this attention on the older brother makes us pretty uncomfortable.  Mostly because he speaks for big parts of us.  Most of us could easily sit across a table from him and develop a policy and procedure for what to do with that younger brother.  Come up with all kinds of ways for him to earn his way back into the family, all kinds of ways for him to repent of the sin he committed against all of us.  We don’t much like to acknowledge our kinship with Older Brother.  And, it turns out, that’s OK.  Because this story really isn’t about him, either.

What this story really is about is the Father.  So much so that some newer Sunday School books and Bibles have begun to label this story not the Prodigal Son, but the Parable of the Forgiving Father.  And the truth of the matter is that the money, the fatted calf, the family jewels,  his own affection, his standing in the community, all those things and whatever else we can want like the selfish younger brother or resent like the selfish older one were his.  And because they were his, he got to decide what to do with them.  And he decided that he would love both his sons—the one who had wronged him in obvious ways and the one whose wrongs had been less obvious, but just as real.

Some of us grew up hearing Lesley Gore sing, “It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry if I Want To.”  The story behind that song and the story of this family aren’t exactly parallel, and Lesley Gore wasn’t around way back then, but I wish the Father could have sung it or had the DJ play it when he went back in the house after being chewed out by his Older Son and looked down the table and saw the younger one with that hang dog look on his face, wondering if he was going to be thrown out on his ear. 

            There was a man who had two sons, two sorry, ungrateful sons it turns out.  But the story is not about those boys.  One way or another, they’re just like all the rest of us.  The story is about the Father who loves them because they’re his.  Not because they always do what he taught them to do, but because they’re his.  Not because the attitude with which they approach their work and their relationship is the one he instilled in them when they were younger, but because they’re his.  Not because, when they go astray, they are sufficiently penitent and remorseful in ways that display his paternal authority, but because they’re his.  The story is about him and his forgiving love.

This story, like most of the stories Jesus tells, is also about something else, something bigger, something much more important.  There is this other Father—one who loves his children in ways that just don’t make good sense.  He has a lot more than two sons.  He has a world full of children—all of whom he made and called into a covenant relationship with him that has many of the marks and appearances of a family.  There have been countless family meetings to go over the rules and expectations.  There have been untold nights when that Father wondered if those children would come home or keep wandering.  There have even been times when that Father wished they’d all just go away and do the best they could on their own.  But some of those children always come home.  Dirty, wounded, scarred and scared, wondering what they’ve got coming.  There are other children who never left, who stayed and slaved for one branch of that family or another—the Presbyterians or the Catholics or the Church of the Apostolic Light that Shines on All in Darkness—they slaved so long and so hard that they want the Father to pay attention to what they do and reward them in some way befitting their service.  Some in that bunch don’t much like it when some of their wayward kinfolk want to come back and start again.  The Rules of Discipline section of the Family’s Book of Order doesn’t make very pleasant bedtime reading, but it is the product of people who have spent more time planning for how to deal with prodigals when they return than seeking them.

The father this story is really about is, of course, God.  And the party he throws every time one of his kids comes home from wherever he has been and whatever she has been doing is called grace.  The Good News—for all of us—is that Grace is God’s to give, and that God stubbornly insists on giving it, regardless of what we think.  And giving it again if necessary.  And again. 

The wise ones among us get over ourselves and join the party.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

MYOB

                                              Luke 13:1-9

             Flannery O’Connor was a Georgia author who lived just up the road from us in Milledgeville.  She’s been dead since 1964, but one of the reasons we continue to read her stories is her ability to let characters say what we wish we could, but usually don’t.  One of those characters is a woman named Ruby Turpin in a story called “Revelation.”  We meet Ruby in a place that levels the playing field like few others—in the doctor’s waiting room.  Ruby has brought her husband, Claud, in to see the doctor.  If you’ve ever waited at the doctor’s office, you know most of the other people who are there.  There’s a little boy who’s taking up way too much room on the couch for Ruby to have a place to sit.  He ought to know better, but when Ruby sees his mom, she pretty quickly figures out that his lack of respect for his elders is not his fault.  He hasn’t had what some call raising.  There was a roomful of other people there, and Ruby sized them all up pretty quickly.  Ruby is what most of her neighbors would call a good, Christian woman.  She talks about Jesus a lot.  She knows most of the gospel songs that play on the radio in the doctor’s office.  At one point in her conversation with the other women in the waiting room, she says she thanks Jesus every day for making things just like they, which is another way to say that she’s pretty sure God made her a sight better than most of the other people there.  Ruby and her husband, Claud, raise, among other things on their farm, pigs.  But she is quick to point out that their pigs don’t stink like most do.  It turns out that all the  time Ruby has spent listening to preaching and doing the Lord’s work hasn’t had much to improve her perception of God’s other children.  Some of the terms she uses to size them up in her mind are not only politically incorrect, they’re downright offensive, so I’ll commend the story to those who are curious.  We meet one other person in that waiting room.  Her name is Mary Grace, and she’s there with her mom. That little brat with no raising is her brother.  Mary Grace is a college student at some school up north, home for the summer, and she’s reading one of her textbooks while she waits for the doctor to call her little brother back.  She is trying not to pay too much attention to Ruby’s comments about everything and everyone in that room.  Ruby’s pigs don’t stink.  Mary Grace lets that one pass.  Everybody ought to be thankful for who they are and what they have.  The poor ought to be especially grateful.  She’ll let that one slide too.  Ruby seems to have suggestions for improving life for everybody except herself.  Mary Grace has known people like Ruby all her young life.  And she really does try to just get through the afternoon.  But when Ruby starts that business of thanking Jesus—out loud—for making everything just exactly like it is, she had had enough.  And in one of those scenes that Flannery O’Connor writes so well, young Mary Grace lets her book fly across the room, striking Ruby just above the left eye.    And she sent some words that probably aren’t appropriate to this setting after it.  Mary Grace threw herself across the room and grabbed Miss Ruby around the throat.  That ought to shut her up!

            Ruby was not seriously injured.  She didn’t press charges against Mary Grace.  She decided that behavior was not to be unexpected from a lunatic.  Fortunately the whole thing happened in a doctor’s office, so the doctor was able to come quickly and give Ruby a shot-something for her nerves—and send her home.  Shaken, but predictably reaffirmed in her assessment of most of the other people God had made. 

            Most of us hopefully don’t like to compare ourselves to Ruby.  We do have some perceptions of other people, some we know and some we just know about.  Most of us are not quite as confident that other people want to hear what we think about them, but it is human nature, I guess, to size up the people we encounter in the various places our life takes us.  People from the North have ideas about people from the South, and Southerners have their own perceptions of Yankees.  Most communities of any age have church cultures that everybody learns pretty quickly.  It’s the Episcopalians in one town, the Presbyterians in another, and the good sisters and brothers from First Baptist in lots of others who are the real religious leaders and arbiters of good taste and sound theology.  There are lots of other church types in all those places too, of course, but they’ll never rise to the level of whoever really runs things there.  None of that is written down anywhere, of course, but you won’t live in any of those places for very long without knowing. 

            People who lived in places pretty much like that were some of the ones who came to Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.  The story they tell is not told anywhere else in the Scripture, and we can’t substantiate it from any secular source from the day, but because Jesus responded to it, we can assume that he and others knew about it.  It seems that some people from Galilee had been murdered by Pilate’s forces while they were offering their sacrifice in the Temple.  The description is a graphic one, telling of mingling the blood of the murdered worshipers with the blood of their sacrifice.  Just the kind of gory story everybody would have heard.  Just the kind of story that would generate all kinds of supposition about what kinds of people those must have been to have met such a fate.   Any of us who have ever found ourselves under the spell of a revivalist preacher who convinces people that their public repentance must match the sins which made it necessary know the kinds of speculation that surrounded this discussion.  Jesus will have none of it.  He even tops their story with another one, another story we can’t verify, but a story about some people on whom a tower fell.  And in both cases, he tries to correct the errant thinking of those who have come to him.  Trying to draw connections between the ends these people met and the lives they lived that must have caused them is not only snooty and self-righteous; it’s downright wrong! 

            Repentance is usually a lot easier to talk about when we’re expecting someone else to do it.  The Law driven religion and culture which produced the people who came to Jesus that day pretty much formed them to believe that there was a direct cause and effect relationship in most people’s lives.  Like Job’s friends, most people believed that if wrong happened to you, it was, whether you were willing to admit it or not, because of something you had done or left undone.  We, of course, are much more sophisticated in our thinking and in our relationships with one another. 

            That’s why it only took two days for some to defend God by saying that the hurricane in Haiti was because of their bad politics.  I haven’t been told yet what the Chileans or the Taiwanese did to cause their earthquakes, but I’m sure someone will post that on the web any day now. 

            Jesus was quick to answer the thinking of those who came to him.  “Do you think,” he asked them, “that because these poor people suffered that they were worse sinners than others, maybe especially worse than yourselves?”  “No,” he persisted.  “No, unless you look to your own repentance, you’ll meet an end just like theirs.”

            That Jesus.  He always has a way of cutting right to it, doesn’t he?  It seems that, in his mind, things are just not always the way we think they are.  But then another part of the Scripture calls us to strive for the same mind in us that was in Jesus.  And we’ve spent all these years trying to make him think like we do. 

            Just in case those who came to him that day, and we who come to him today, missed the point, Jesus tells one more story.  There was this fig tree.  Its owner had waited for three years for it to bear figs, but it hadn’t.  I don’t know if he was growing figs for profit, or if he just liked fig preserves on his biscuit, but either way, he was a pragmatic sort.  “Cut that thing down,” he told his gardener.  “It’s a waste of good soil.” 

            But the gardener was of a different sort.  “Just give me one more year with it,” he pleaded.  “Just one more year.  I’ll aerate and fertilize and tend it, and maybe one more chance is what it needs.  If it hasn’t borne you some figs by next season, then we’ll cut it down and plant another.  But not yet.  Not quite yet.”

            Second chances.  How many have you had?  How many have you earned?  How many have you extended to others? 

            Remember Ruby from the doctor’s office in O’Connor’s story?  She went home a shaken woman, like most of us would if we’d been assaulted just for making conversation.  She told some of her hired help what had happened to her and what that wretched girl had called her, and they, who had likely said the same or worse a hundred times, assured her that that girl had just gotten uppity up North—no, Ruby was nothing like what she said about her.  But an event like that one just doesn’t leave your mind all at once.  You have to think about it.  Mull it over.  Try to figure out what it means. 

            While Ruby stands and gazes off into the distance pondering what in the world that poor girl could have been thinking to do such a thing, the fields and road way off in the distance became another scene altogether.  In her mind’s eye, Ruby wasn’t looking across her back field anymore.  Instead, she was watching countless numbers of people stream into the Kingdom of Heaven to be greeted by the faithful and the reward that awaited them there.  But there was something wrong with this picture.  The people nearest the first in line were the same kinds of people she had encountered in that waiting room—not good church-going people like her.  But people for whom she had had unflattering names all her life, people who had no idea how to sufficiently repent of their sin.  And there they were, white-robed, marching into the Kingdom.  Hordes of them.  Ruby scoured the whole crowd, looking for something that made sense to her.  And after a while the line moved forward enough so that she began to see people like her.  They were in that number, too, but they weren’t the first in line.  Ruby stood and watched that procession until she couldn’t be sure whether it was the sound of crickets she was hearing or the sound of people shouting Hallelujah on some distant shore.

            I’d love to be able to tell you that what she saw was a life-changing thing for Ruby. But the last thing we hear her say is how much better, how much more on tune the singing is near the back of the line. 

            Fortunately for Ruby, and for all of us who don’t like to think about the Ruby’s within us, God doesn’t think like we do.  As long as there is breath, there is hope for a new beginning.  As long as there is life, there are second chances. For that list of people we all have who need them.  And for us, who are probably on some lists,  too.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

We’re Listening: And We Want to Believe What We Hear

                                              Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

 

            Most of us look at the main characters we encounter in Scripture and decide there is no way we’ll ever live up to the standard they’ve set when it comes to faithfulness and trust in God.   Abraham.  The name itself evokes images of trust and confidence.  Abraham trusted God.  God said, “Go to a land I will show you!” and Abraham didn’t even ask what it looked like of if it was near the beach!  God told Abraham he would have a child in his old age, and Abraham believed it.  Sarah had her own opinions about the whole business, but Abraham believed!  Abraham has set the bar so high that most of us decide pretty quickly that we’re not going to measure up to the standard he set.

            What that decision means, for most of us, is that we gave up before we read Abraham’s whole story.  Abraham and faithfulness are all but synonymous.  But faithfulness hasn’t changed a lot since Abraham’s day.  Being faithful doesn’t necessarily mean never having a day when we wonder what’s going on.  Being faithful doesn’t mean never doubting.  Being faithful means trusting God, and that takes all kinds of forms in all kinds of circumstances.

            The story of Abraham is a pretty simple one.  God came to Abraham and said, “Go to a land that I will show you.  I will make you the father of a great nation.”  God said that two things would happen so that Abraham would know God’s promise was real.  First,  Abraham and Sarah, who were old by anybody’s standard, would have a child of their own.  That child would be the first in a long line of descendants who would serve God and call others to do the same.  Then God would give them a land on which to live and provide for this growing family.  Convincing Sarah to leave her home and family was probably Abraham’s first hurdle.  The business about having a baby must have been a close second.  But they went.  They had several experiences along the way, but one of them was not the birth of a baby.  Eventually they settled down for a while, and while they were there, a conflict among local powers was going on.  Abraham tried to stay out of it, but when he heard that Lot, who was Abraham’s nephew, had been taken hostage in that conflict, he had to go and rescue him.  Along with Lot, Abraham was able to recover a lot of property that belonged to one of the local rulers.  As you might imagine, that ruler was pretty grateful to Abraham, and he wanted to reward him.  Abraham declined his offer, though, saying that he had promised to serve God and would not take a reward. 

            There he goes again.  Abraham is already a wealthy man for his time.  He possessed all the things like livestock, silver, and gold that made people rich in those days.  And now, here’s a king wanting to load him up with more stuff.  And Abraham turns him down.  Most of us come to a story like that one and decide we’re not going to make it if Abraham is the model for our faithfulness.  Keep listening.

            Shortly after that encounter, God spoke to Abraham again.  Remember what happened the last time God spoke to Abraham—Abraham and Sarah left their home, began a journey toward a new one without a map, and there’s still that business about a baby.  Sarah keeps thinking he must have misunderstood that part.  And now Abraham hears God speak again.  “Don’t be afraid, Abraham,” God said.  “I haven’t forgotten the promise I made to you.  Your reward will still be great.”

            This is the point where we discover that Abraham, for all we have made of him, is one of us.  Abraham.  Father Abraham.  The one we’ve been intimidated by all our lives says to God:  “OK, God when do we see something here?  When do we see some sign of this promise?  Where’s the land?  Where’s that baby?  What will you give me?  That King back there was ready to give me things even you wouldn’t believe.  So what will you give me?”

            How’s that for bringing Abraham down off that pedestal?  Bringing him down here among us mere mortals so we can discover that being faithful has never been as easy as some tell us it is? 

            Abraham was on a roll.  If you’ve never yet gotten to the point that you can rail against God when things are not going your way, when you can be honest with God about how you feel and what you think instead of praying prayers that sound a lot like ones you’ve heard in church, if you’ve never gotten to that point, then there is a whole dimension to living in relationship with God that you don’t yet know.  One you need to know. 

            Abraham didn’t let God off easily.  “OK, God, if you’re still insisting that this promise is secure, then where’s this child?  Or do you plan to whip out some Plan B that you didn’t tell me about.  You said we’d have a child.  So where is he?”

            Don’t start dodging lightning bolts or running for cover.  People like Abraham, people who are faithful, know that being honest with God is a part of that relationship.  So God doesn’t smite Abraham, to use a biblical word.  God doesn’t really do a lot of smiting in the Bible.  Far more often, as God did with Abraham, God takes whatever steps are necessary to help people experience the wonder and grace that lead to faithful responses.  So God takes Abraham outside and shows him the sky. 

            We need to rest a minute with that picture.  If you know anything about the part of the world that was Abraham’s world, the places we now call Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, then you know about the desert.  I’ve never been there, but I’d like to think that looking at the sky on a dark, clear night in the desert is a lot like looking at a dark clear sky out over the ocean here near us.  No street lights or billboard lights or parking lot lights to hinder our seeing what’s up there.  Just us and the sky.  And all those stars. 

            That’s what God showed Abraham.  “Count the stars, if you can,” God told Abraham.  “Your descendants will be more than the number you come up with.”

            Remember trying to count the stars when we were kids?  That’s when we began to understand how big a bazillion is.  Whatever comes after bazillions is still not enough.  And God said that more than any of that was the number of descendants Abraham would have. 

            And even though there was still no baby at the end of that star-gazing night, there was something about the way God spoke to Abraham, something about the relationship Abraham discovered he was living in, that caused him to believe again.  And God took that belief, not some specific thing Abraham did, not even some apology or some other act of penitence. God took the simple fact that Abraham believed, and said that was enough to get past his smart mouth and his uppity attitude and to make things right between them again so they could continue this journey they had set out on together.  The baby?  He’ll come in time.  His name will be Isaac, and he will have children who will have children, and there will be stories about them for generations.  Some of them will be a little easier for us to relate to.  They’ll lie and cheat and scheme and connive.  But God will never leave them.  The promise that God made to Abraham will come through all of them, whether they’re good enough or not.

            Abraham will question God again, this time about the land.  And in response, God will participate with Abraham in what we might call a ritual, something he can come back to in his mind to remember God’s promise.  It’s a strange ritual, to our way of thinking.  Cutting animals in two and then seeing a fire pass between them.  A covenant, God called it.  A sign that Abraham could come back to and remember whenever he felt the urge to spout off again about how slow God seemed to be in getting things done until that baby came and Abraham had a sign of God’s faithfulness running underfoot every day. 

            Covenant continues to be one of the primary ways that Reformed Christians like us understand how we live with God and with one another.  Thankfully, we don’t have to split livestock and watch for smoke pots to show up.  Most of us would not welcome news of an unexpected childbirth in our families.  The signs of the covenant have changed.  But the covenant itself has not. 

            Have you ever tried to explain what we call Sacraments to people who do not share our faith?  Even some Christians don’t understand these signs of God’s Covenant with us the same way we do.  How we can take a little baby, as we did Madeline not long ago, and say some words and sprinkle a little water on her and somehow feel God’s promises renewed, not just for her, but for all of us.  Try to explain that some someone who doesn’t know it.  Or all this talking we do about a great feast once a month.  A visitor may well look around and wonder what the heck we’re talking about when all they see is some bread and a cup of juice.  Some feast.  But for those of us who file up to this Table and eat that bread and taste that juice, it is a reminder that God is with us, and that God’s promises still hold. 

            Taking Abraham, or Moses, or David, or any of those other super-faithful characters from Scripture down off their pedestal is not just smart-mouthed thing to do to see if we can make God mad.  Taking them down from that pedestal and getting to know them as people just like us changes our whole understanding of what it means to be faithful ourselves.  Most of us are a lot like Abraham.  We believe. We really do trust God.  But sometimes we’d like for God to get on with it.  To give us some sign that what we believe is the truth. 

            Trouble is, we get the fundamental things God calls us to believe all mixed up with our politics and our family and our career, and, sooner or later, we decide that there are only certain signs from God that we’ll accept.  Our candidate has to win.  Our family has to have all the outward signs of success, which means, of course, that somebody else’s won’t.  And we’re right there with our brother, Abraham, telling God how things need to be done.

            God took Abraham out under the night sky and said, “I did that.  I put all those stars there.  Count them, if you can.”

            God has met us at Font and Table and in dark night and bright sunshine over and over again and said to us, “I did that.  I made things right between us.  You can trust me.  Will you?”

            Most, if not all, of us here have heard God’s call.  And we really do want to believe what we hear.  Can we?  Will we?   Amen.

What Kind of Son Will He Be?

                                             Luke 4:1-13

 

            All of us who are parents know what it is to wonder what kind of people our offspring will turn out to be.  They didn’t come into the world with little tags attached to them like the plants we buy at the nursery.  Those tags tell us how wide and how tall the plants will be, what kind of bloom or fruit to expect from them, what kind of care and attention they need.  But our kids don’t come with those tags attached.  Even with people trying to genetically engineer their children these days, there is no guarantee that we can look at them in the crib and predict whether they’ll be an NBA point guard, a concert violinist, or third grade teacher.  We might be able to predict something about eventual height, but even those estimates are not guaranteed to be right.  Those of us who are parents of more than one child know at another level about wondering what this one or that one will turn out to be. 

            Our boys are six years apart.  They both belong to both of us, but how two kids could come from the same gene pool and turn out as differently as they have remains a mystery.  Their respective size, appearance, temperament, and ways of dealing with issues and people would never lead you to pick them out of a crowd as brothers.  If it weren’t for Alabama football and Kentucky basketball, they would have very little in common.  As the boys grew up, there was just enough time between them that we forgot about how particular events and stages went.  The terrible two’s lasted for twenty years with Blake.  By the time Kyle got there, we couldn’t help but wonder what kind of a two year old he would be.  By middle school, we had pretty much given up on the National Merit Scholarship we had hoped Blake might get.  Then there was just enough time to forget about those confusing years and get him started at college when all of a sudden Kyle’s in middle school, and we’re wondering if we had the energy to do those years again. Girlfriends, grades, jobs, dealing with hurt and achievement—every stage of life has brought another opportunity to wonder what kinds of sons they’ll be. 

            Turning our kids loose to make their way in the world is one of the hardest parts of family life.  Hopefully, we lay the best foundation we can for them, helping them know who and whose they are.  But sooner or later, they’re out there on their own, and both they and we discover who they turn out to be. 

            When Jesus went into the wilderness after his baptism, it is the first time we see him on his own.  Luke tells us that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and that he was there for more than an overnight retreat.  Forty days is both a literal number and a literary device in Scripture, so Jesus may have been in the desert for forty actual days and nights, or he may have been there for a long time.  Either way, this time of trial was a significant event in his life.  After whatever period of time it was that he confronted the fundamental issues of life, we’re told that the devil came to him. 

            It really doesn’t matter whether you believe in a literal devil as some do or whether you believe in some other manifestation of evil that makes itself known to us, for the sake of understanding this story and what it has to say to us, let’s use the same devil language that Luke does.  If you’re familiar with the story, or if you’re hearing it for the first time, you know by now it’s pretty straightforward.  The devil comes at Jesus from three different angles:  physical need, the desire for power and authority, and finally, the opportunity to test the faithfulness of God.  Those three temptations, if we can call them that, are not unique to Jesus.  We have all confronted them and will continue to confront them.  And we have all had varying degrees of success in dealing with them.  As important at those three things are, there is an even more basic and fundamental level on which the devil speaks to Jesus to get this whole business of trial and self-examination started. 

            “If you are the Son of God,” he begins.  

            For most of us there is no question that that’s exactly who Jesus is, even though understanding what that means takes us most of our lives to figure out.  From the time we were angels or shepherds in the church Christmas play, we’ve heard that Jesus is God’s Son.  Even before we understood anything about how sons come into the world, we knew there was something special that happened to Mary when that angel came to her and that the child she had in that stable was not like any other.  The haloes always set him apart in our Sunday School and children’s Bible pictures, but he didn’t wear one of those when he walked among people in his day.  He didn’t whip out a halo to quiet the devil in the wilderness, as if to say, “See, I am, too the Son of God!  Now go away and leave me alone.”  At the wedding in Cana when even his own mother thought it was high time for him to use some of his super-human powers to do something on behalf of his friends.   Even that afternoon he spent on the cross outside Jerusalem they argued about what the name plate over his head ought to say and other people stood by and taunted, “If you are who you say you are, then come down from there and save yourself and us!” 

There was never a time when Jesus didn’t know who he was.  Even as a child in the Temple when Mary and Joseph found him after they thought he was lost, he said, “Didn’t you think to look for me here?  Didn’t you know I’d be here in my Father’s house?” 

            But even those of us who are secure in our understanding of who we are can see that security waver, if not completely abandon us, if it’s challenged long enough.  I once counseled a young colleague in ministry who found himself in conflict with the first congregation he served out of seminary.  As most of you know, conflict in the church was not something this young man invented or discovered.  But when I asked him about the source and the nature of the conflict, he didn’t bat an eye when he told me that the people in his small, rural congregation didn’t have sufficient respect for his position among them as chief resident theologian.  He was not particularly impressed with my vast store of pastoral wisdom when I told him that maybe they were not impressed with him as chief resident theologian because they thought he was their pastor.  Who he thought he was and who they thought he was didn’t match very well, and their relationship didn’t last very long.  Any of us who have ever had our authority challenged or our integrity questioned know what it is to stop and ask ourselves over and over who we are and who people perceive us to be. 

            The devil knew who Jesus was. He wasn’t asking him about his identity out of ignorance.  When he asked “if you are…” he was really asking, “what kind of son of God will you turn out to be?” 

            This is not the first time this question has come to children of God.  Remember that God created Adam and Eve and set them in the Garden, a place fully equipped to meet all their needs and most of their wants. But when the Serpent came to Eve, his question was, “You don’t really believe you’ll die if you eat from that tree, do you?  Look at it.  You know you want it.  You don’t really think God doesn’t want you to have the best, do you?  What kind of a child would you be if you can’t have everything?”  And we all know how that came out.

            Generation after generation, the same question, in one form or another, keeps coming up.  The Hebrews wandered in the same wilderness where Jesus encountered life and death issues, and time after time, they grumbled about their plight.  More than once, they considered giving up and going back to Egypt where at least there were cucumbers and not just manna.  God watched their willfulness, their disobedience, and wondered, what kind of children will these turn out to be.  The Golden Calf and the wilderness groaning answer the question for them.  On Wednesday night, we saw what kind of a child of God David turned out to be.  One who would need all the forgiveness, all the mercy and compassion God could shower on him in order to be whole again after falling so short of what God called him to be.  The Good News was that there turned out to be more than enough forgiveness, mercy, and compassion in God to meet his need.

            And now we come to Jesus, Son of God, facing the same question—what kind of a son will you turn out to be?  Do you really believe the things God has promised?  God knows you’re going to have to if you go forward with this thing you insist God is calling you to do.  Do you have any idea how hard this is going to be?  Have you stopped long enough to think about how this is all going to go down?  Those three trials the devil posed to Jesus—feed yourself, leave it all behind and let me know you some real power and authority, or at least, make God show you something spectacular so you know you’ll be safe—those all pale in comparison to what Jesus was thinking about during those long days and night in the wilderness.

            All those sorry, disobedient, unfaithful people we’ve seen and heard so much about, the ones from the very beginning who just couldn’t or wouldn’t trust God and do right?  Those are the very ones Jesus is supposed to show a new and better way.  Those are the very ones Jesus is supposed to die for. 

            So, Jesus, what kind of a son will you be?  Like all those others who decided to hedge their bets and hope God had an alternate plan? 

            It turns out this is a different kind of Son of God than we’ve ever seen.  This one is faithful.  This one believes that God is who God is.  And that God does what God says.  So much so that this Son even quotes God’s Word as a sign of his intention to do anything but waver.  So much so that he returns from this encounter and sets out on a mission and a journey that changed the world and our lives forever. 

            That would be a wonderful story if that’s where it ended.  But you know better.  You know that the devil continues to prowl and ask the same question.  He doesn’t wait for us to go to the wilderness.  In those dark nights when whatever it is keeps us from sleeping and finding the restoration and peace God intends it to bring, in those nights, we hear it, “You don’t really believe that line about God loving and providing for you, do you?”  “Surely you know it’s all up to you and if you don’t make it, it’ll be because you just weren’t good enough.”  Or maybe in the middle of your day, while you’re juggling all the things that identify who you are, you hear the same question another way, “You don’t really believe God could love you, do you?”  “You don’t really believe they believe it, either, do you?”  “What if they knew about…?”  “What if you slip up?” 

            So the real question for us this day as we set out together on that journey that will lead us to the cross again is, “What kind of a child of God will we be?”  It’s not a question of if we’ll be God’s or not.  That’s our only hope.  And most of us figured that out long ago.  But what kind of a child will we be?  Will we continue to let those questions nag us until they destroy us?  Or will we believe that what God says is what God means.  What God has said is, “I love you.  Not who you will be someday, but you.  And I love you enough to surround you with signs and evidences that that’s the truth.  Maybe not all the ones you want, but with the ones I’ve provided.  And I love you enough to place people in your life to help you believe and to lead you to opportunities to help others believe too.  I’ve done my part,” God says. 

            So now.  What kind of a child of mine will you be?   Amen.

The Cleaning Business

                                                Psalm 51

 

            Leon Bowman was a member of a church we served in Kentucky several years ago.  He added a clear, tenor voice to the church choir there.  I wish he would retire to Florida and sing with us so Pearl and Bob could have a real tenor partner and I could go back to being a baritone!  I remember one of the first Sundays after we arrived at that church.  People were still coming around helping us learn who they were.  There were some people who wanted to be sure I knew from the outset what they did and how they did it.  Leon and his wife, Lorraine, were very humble, unassuming people.  The choir room was across the hall from my office there.  That morning after he had hung up his robe, and I had put mine back in its place behind the door, Leon sidled up to me and said, “We don’t do much that matters around here, I guess.  But we’re in the cleaning business.  We do whatever dry cleaning the church needs, and we’ll do yours for free, too.  It’s not much.  But we’re in the cleaning business.”

            I can wield a pretty mean iron, but my shirts have never looked as good as they did the three years we lived there.  Our communion cloths, paraments, and vestments even made the Episcopalians look tacky.  Knowing someone in the cleaning business turned out to be a good thing.

            It’s hard to read the fifty-first Psalm and not think about becoming clean.  Listen to the verbs in the Psalm:  wash, cleanse, wipe, purge, blot out.  Tradition tells us that David wrote this Psalm during his time of repentance following the incident with Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah.  Most of us know that story:  David was the King.  Uriah was an officer in the King’s army, away waging war for the King.  Bathsheba was Uriah’s wife, and she was beautiful.  One day David saw Bathsheba bathing on her roof and decided he would have her for herself.  The story twists and turns, but in the end Uriah is dead as a result of the King’s deceit, and Bathsheba is David’s.  David’s plan to have what he wanted at any cost—he is, after all, the King—goes awry when Nathan, a trusted advisor to the King discovers David’s sin and confronts him with it.  Nathan tells David a pitiful story about a selfish, ruthless man who steals a precious lamb from a man who loved it and had little else the world valued.  David was so incensed at the story that he demanded justice for the man wronged and penalty for the rascal who had wronged him.  “You are the man!” is Nathan’s telling response.  And David is exposed, as we all hope never to be.

            The penitence David expresses in the fifty-first Psalm is of a nature we can all understand.  In the privacy of our own reflection, we all know what it is to know our transgressions and to have our sin ever before us.  When we are sure no one will know, we might even be brave enough to talk with God about what’s not right with us, to plead with God to make us clean, to make us whole again. 

That’s a big part of what this season of Lent is all about.  Some of us Protestants have come lately to the Lenten tradition.  Most of us grew up understanding Lent to be something the Catholics did, probably something we were thankful we didn’t have to do.  They already went to church more often than we did.  Already they didn’t eat meat on Fridays, and then this time of year, they started talking about giving up other things.  We stalwart Presbyterians thought for years that we were penitential enough already.  It is hard to imagine a bunch that talks about sin much more than we do.  But over the years, we have discovered that there is more to Lent than not eating chocolate and that there is value in a special time to focus on discipleship and spiritual growth, even for people who claim those things as pillars of our ministry all year long. 

As most of us who take our spiritual lives seriously discover, a first step toward growing in faith comes when we admit that we have things we need to work on.  Hopefully, our sins are not as grievous or as hurtful to ourselves or others as David’s, but when we settle in and get serious about examining the quality of our lives and our discipleship, we generally discover things that need attention.  Resentments we need to cast aside.  Attitudes that need adjusting.  Wrongs we need to confess.  Hurts we need to get over. 

In short, we all need to go to the cleaners’ once in while. 

I don’t know how it works at your house, but at ours, laundry is a pretty regular chore.  There’s always something that needs to be washed.  Even though we’ve learned that adults can wear some garments more than once before they’re really dirty, there are other things that go right in the hamper, and every time we turn around, that hamper is full again.  But those things that have to go to the dry cleaners--  I guess you can chalk it up to our frugal Presbyterian nature, but since Leon’s not doing our cleaning anymore, and we have to pay to get things clean, then maybe we can wear them another time or two before they’re really dirty. 

The things we discover about ourselves are like that, too.  If I can feel OK about praying the prayer of confession every week and being assured that God is still in the forgiving business, then most of the time I do OK.  But then comes Lent, with its call to do more than read words and hope they work, its call to take a serious look at the quality of my life and to do what I can to set it back in line with God’s intention for it.  That requires a good bit more effort than just reading a prayer.  And I have to wonder whether I’m willing to make that kind of investment in my spiritual life.   

If I do, of course, there are benefits.  There is not much better than that initial feeling of being clean.  Advertisers are currently having a field day with men’s hygiene products—encouraging us to smell like a man, man.  Whether it’s soap and water or something more fragrant, there’s not much better feeling than that just washed, clean feeling we get after a shower or a bath.  Clean sheets, fresh linens.  They’re all part of the same plan—to experience clean, to start again.  As good as that feeling is, it’s tempting for most of us to just revel in it, enjoy the experience. 

My friend Leon knew there was more to the cleaning business than just enjoying being clean.  That fresh start, that new beginning was something he knew needed to be shared, so, even though it was his livelihood, he was generous in sharing his gifts with others.  David had the same experience.  After all the painful, laborious language of confession and contrition that is so much of this Psalm comes a promise—“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  Then I will teach transgressors your way, and sinners will return to you.  Deliver me, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.”

It turns out that being in the cleaning business is not just about us.  Once we, like David, have experienced the joy of being clean, we hear God’s call to help others experience it, too.  David isn’t bargaining with God here—you do this for me and I’ll do a little something for you.  David’s promise is an expression of thanks for forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve and can’t earn.  But because God has been gracious and generous with him, he pledges to help others experience grace, too.

Friends, we who comprise God’s Church in this community are in the cleaning business.  We have gathered here this night to indicate our awareness of our own need to be made clean and to start again to be the people God calls us to be.  It’s a good feeling.  Even as we confront our mortality and leave here marked with the sign of the cross, we find confidence that even in death, we belong to God.  That relationship defines who we are.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, but it means we are forgiven—as many times as it takes. 

It also means that we want our lives to reflect those gifts, so that friends and others with whom we have opportunity to share can discover that they can be clean and new, too.  And that together we can continue to share God’s call to forgiveness and new life.

We’re in the cleaning business here.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Things We’ve Never Seen Before

                                                         Luke 9:28-36

 

            Several times in the past few weeks, we’ve talked about coming to Scripture that is so familiar that we’re all but sure we know what its message is, but finding something in it that we had never thought about before.  Today is the day the Church remembers a strange and mystical experience in Jesus’ life, the time a few of his disciples saw him transfigured on a mountain top.  This is probably a story many of us have heard over and over again for most of our lives.  Jesus took Peter and James and John and slipped away to a quiet place to pray.  While they were there, some things happened that sound and feel strange even to us who have come to expect special effects and computer generated graphics to dazzle us every day. 

            I will confess, as I already have to some of you, that this text is not one of my favorites to preach.  A year ago today, I was away preaching and lecturing at a friend’s church in the Nashville area.  When I told him that I didn’t much appreciate his dumping the Transfiguration on me together with the lectures, he smiled and said, “This weekend when we have a visiting preacher always falls on Transfiguration, so I never plan on preaching it again!.  This morning, they have a female Jewish theologian from Vanderbilt.  I’ll be anxious to hear what she does with this text.

Most of the time, as you’ve experienced, I try to find ways to make the stories of Scripture accessible, connected to our lives.  The part of my task as preacher I work hardest on and usually enjoy most is trying to find connections between things that happened thousands of years ago in times and places much different than the ones in which we live and our lives and experiences.  It’s not always easy or sometimes even possible to pick up a text from long ago and far away and just set it down in the midst of us and expect it to make sense.  But, we know that Jesus was able to take common, everyday things and experiences from the life he shared with people in his time and say, “The Kingdom of God is like a sower who went out plant.”  Or, as we’ll see in a few weeks, “The Kingdom of God is like a father who had two sons….”  And people were helped to understand that they could know the mind and heart of God. 

            In a similar way, those of us who preach try to find things from our common experience that help us connect in some way with the biblical text.  Thinking about weddings we’ve attended helped us to get into Jesus’ experiences at a wedding in Cana.  Thinking about our own experiences with God’s call helped us to hear God’s call to a group of fishermen.  And thinking about our own understanding of what it means to catch and be caught helped us think a little more about setting out to fish for people.

            That’s one of my problems with this text.  How do we set out to connect with an experience none of us have ever had and most of us would just as soon not?  The people who taught me most of what I know about Scripture and preaching taught me that the answers to our questions about Scripture are always in Scripture and that we ought not to run to other sources before we are sure we have read and understood all we can of the text itself.  So, remembering those wise words, I dug into this text I don’t much like again, trying to see in its strange, mystical, shining images something that connects with our gray and dreary winter that won’t seem to end.  As usual, when I dig hard and deep enough, I think I found something.

            For as long as I can remember, the story of Transfiguration has been about shining things.  We always read about the time that Moses had to put a veil over his face because he had been in the presence of God and people couldn’t bear to see his shining face.  When we come to the mountaintop with Jesus and the disciples, our minds do that trick they often do and cause us to read things that aren’t there.  As many times as I’ve read and preached and taught this story, I think I’ve missed the fact that it was Jesus clothing that dazzled, not his face.  I didn’t embarrass myself by going back through the files to see how many times I had misused the text, but I’m sure I did.  What the text says is that while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed. 

            That set me to thinking about what that might mean.  A little later in the story, Luke writes that Peter and James and John were tired and sleepy while they were on the mountain with Jesus.  Apparently the prayer meeting they had there was not a decent and in order Presbyterian-type prayer service with a bulletin and printed prayers for them to pray together and then be gone.  This time of prayer on the mountaintop must have been a passionate, emotionally draining time.  They were tired by the time today’s text begins.  These disciples had been with Jesus for a while by this time.  They had just come out of that strange conversation we’ll deal with on another Sunday when Jesus asked them what people were saying about him and what they thought about him, and when Peter thought he had the right answer and told him “You are the Christ” Jesus told them to keep a lid on it and then tried to help them understand what lay ahead for him and for them.  They had seen and heard so many things from Jesus that they didn’t understand, but they thought they knew him.  They were with him all the time.  Even when he started in on those strange things they didn’t quite grasp, they comforted themselves with the knowledge that this was Jesus and it would all be OK somehow.

            Luke writes that because Peter and the others didn’t give in to their need for sleep, but stayed awake and paid attention, they saw something they had never seen before—they caught a glimpse of the glory of who Jesus was when they saw him there with Moses and Elijah.  In the midst of something and someone they thought they had at least mostly figured out, they saw something they had not seen before. 

            And that set me to thinking about times when the same kind of thing happens to us.  “Just another day in Paradise” is a common phrase in these parts, even when the skies have been gray and gloomy and the temperatures just won’t warm up, we hear from our friends and family in the frozen north who worry about whether or not their roof will support the snow piled on it while we complain because it won’t get above 54.  I’ve only been to the beach a couple of times since Christmas because I’ve convinced myself it’s too cold to go.  But every time I do go, I find myself in awe of the grandeur and majesty of what God has made.  The relentless crash of the tide, wave after wave.  The immense span of the ocean before us.  All reminding us of the order and wonder God has made.  But I have found much more time this winter to complain about the cold than to marvel at God’s goodness.  I don’t want to create more traffic problems on A-1A, but if you haven’t driven across the Shave Bridge near sunset in a while, it’s even worth coming off the Island to catch a glimpse of what God does every day.  If we don’t allow ourselves to give in to our need to complain about what we don’t like, but stay awake and pay attention, there are things all around us that we’ve never seen before, or that we haven’t seen in so long that we need to see them again.

            The grandeur of nature is just the beginning.  Think of the people we encounter every day—the ones with whom we share our lives and the ones we pass without much thought.  Many of you know who Joshua Bell, the concert violinist, is.  Some of you know the story of an experiment in which he participated in a Washington, DC train station a few years ago.  Street musicians are much more common in a place like DC than we’re accustomed to here.  There is often someone with an instrument or a voice providing entertainment for those who pass.  Some of them draw a crowd.  Some of them make a living doing it.  Some of them are just there.  Even if you’ve thrown a dollar or two in their instrument case, I’d wager that you probably didn’t pay much attention to them.  Someone suggested that if real, quality musicians were there, it would make a difference.  So Joshua Bell, who has played Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and the Times Union Center in Jacksonville, agreed to play in the train station to see if anyone noticed.  No one did.  Some threw him a dollar or two.  But no one noticed that the same guy people had paid $100 a seat to hear the night before was playing in the train station.  Not one.

            I wonder how many times we miss opportunities for God to speak to us through one another because we think, “O that’s just my spouse or my kids, that’s just someone who serves me in some way, that’s just an old person or a young one, that’s just someone—surely there’s nothing they can help me experience that I don’t already know!”  And I wonder how much more God might speak to us if we got past our assumptions and began to look for the image of God in one another and in everyone we meet. 

            So much that God wants to say to us and show us is going on all around us all the time, but we are so wrapped up in what we’re doing or not doing that we don’t pay attention.  I’m thankful that Peter and James and John were able to slough off their sleep and not miss this wonderful, fleeting glimpse of glory.  I hope we are wise enough not to miss some along our way.

            But I can’t report much success for Peter and the others.  Luke’s story goes on to say that when they came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, the very next day they met a man who complained because they had been unable to help his son, a young boy possessed by a terrible ailment.  Just the day before, Peter had thought it might be nice if they just built three little houses and invited Moses and Elijah back and the six of them just enjoy a prolonged retreat up there on that mountain.  But Jesus led them back down the mountain where he knew there was need, where he knew suffering awaited.  And when the man begged for help, Jesus took his son and healed him. 

            All across the Church this morning, there are people huddled comfortably together in little and grand houses they have built so they will have a place to meet up with Jesus and Peter and maybe even Moses or Elijah if they decide to drop by.  And all around those little and grand houses there are faces no one ever sees.  Mostly because the people in those houses aren’t paying attention.  If they haven’t been lulled to sleep by what’s going on in the houses they’ve built, they will be by the ways they entertain themselves when they leave them.  And all those people who hope that something that goes on in those houses might have something to do with them stand and wait for us to see them—to see them not just as servers or neighbors or even as friends, but to see them as people just like us, people who need to see the face of Christ, even if to catch just a glimpse of it, so they and we can find hope.  So they and we can be who God calls us to be. 

            We need not spend our lives waiting for God to show us things we have never seen so that we can believe.  We need only stay awake and pay attention.  God is showing us those things all the time if we will see them.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.