You are the Bread of Life

A prayer based on Luke 7: 1-10

Lord Jesus Christ,
you are the Bread of Life.
You are the one true Vine.
You promise that you are
the end of our hunger,
the end of our thirsting.

Yet, other promises have been made to us:
promises that,
if we work hard enough,
we shall get the life we want;
if we buy the right things,
we shall find love and acceptance;
if we are good enough,
we shall find the power and admiration
that our souls crave.

We know it isn’t true,
but we are seduced anyway.

We wander far from your grace
that welcomes us,
that heals our brokenness,
that gives us hope.

Speak your Word, Jesus,
and we shall be healed.
Speak the Word that
brings life where we see only death;
speak the Word that gathers up the pieces
and makes us your new creation;
speak the Word that sets us firmly in the grip of
your steadfast love and faithfulness.

Then, send us out in your holy name.
Give us to the world you love
that our whole lives might be
an offering to you.

Amen.

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Who is Jesus?

A sermon based on Luke 3: 51-22 for Baptism of our Lord Sunday

If someone were to ask you, “Who is Jesus?”, what would you say?

Is he an interesting human being or is he the Son of God?

Is he a great spiritual leader among the world’s other spiritual leaders or is he Lord of lords and King of kings, Very God of Very God?

Is he the person in the picture on a wall from your childhood or is he your Lord and Master and saviour?

Is he someone you have bet your life on?

When we try to say who Jesus is, we tend to use titles, names, and ideas. When the gospels try to tell us who Jesus is, they tell us stories. In those stories, it is never completely obvious who Jesus is. Different interpretations are always possible. Who he is is always open to debate.

We think we have trouble knowing who Jesus is because we know so much. Modern science tells us how the world works — what is possible and what is not possible. It teaches us to be sceptical about the claims that Jesus healed a leper or fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish. Besides, we are in contact with people from other faiths who worship other gods. What do you do with someone who claims, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through me.”

We think we have trouble with Jesus because we know so much more than the people of Jesus’ time. “No,” say the gospels, “Jesus’ identity has always been contested. It has always been uncertain.” A few people believed that he was the Saviour of the world. Most thought he was crazy and wanted him dead.

A few people said, “This is God in the flesh, living among us full of grace and truth.” Most people thought he was an arrogant trouble-maker who ought to be silenced.

Even those who followed him — his friends and companions — were not always sure what to make of him. Mostly, they just caught glimpses that left them awestruck and wanting more.

The gospel writers do not just give us titles for Jesus. They do not give us definitions or explanations. They tell us stories. Stories, it seems are a much better vehicle for telling the truth about who this Jew from Nazareth is. Stories are deeper and more complex than definitions, just like Jesus is.

One story all four gospels tell is the story of John the Baptist. They all tell that story at the very beginning of Jesus’ adult ministry. If you want to know who Jesus is, you have to get past John first.

John is always out in the wilderness, in the desert. The wilderness is a place where survival is at risk. There are not a lot of resources easily available for you to live. When the gospels tell you that John is in the wilderness, they are not speaking about geography as much as they are doing theology. They are saying that you probably won’t really figure out who Jesus is until life takes you to a wilderness place. There is something about Jesus that is simply not compelling to people who are comfortable with the way things are. People who are at ease in the world do not seem to find him of much interest.

You don’t really start getting to know who Jesus is until you get news from the doctor that shatters your comfortably settled world and you find your life turned upside down.

You don’t really start wrestling with this Saviour until you realize that there is a dark and dangerous wilderness in the middle of a quiet city where innocent people can be kidnapped and killed.

You don’t work too hard at figuring out who Jesus is until your church is two thirds empty Sunday after Sunday and all the programmes and solutions you try don’t work to turn things around and you start wondering whether or not your church is going to survive.

That’s when you really start having to have an answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?”

The gospels take you deeper into your wilderness and introduce you to Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer. John the Baptizer was a wild, eccentric character. He was preaching out in the wilderness, saying out loud what everybody knows: “Things aren’t working anymore, folks. The economy isn’t working and there is no easy fix. We’ve messed up creation with our greed and carelessness and now floods and storms and earthquakes are shaking up our world. Relationships are broken — between individuals and between communities and between nations. If we keep heading in the direction we are heading, we shall just encounter more troubles. It is time to turn around. It is time to head into a different direction.”

The crowds loved it. They go worked up and started thinking, “Maybe he is the one. Maybe he will be able to lead us out of the mess we are in. Maybe he will be able to fix what is wrong.”

John says, “Not me. I am not your Saviour. I am just here to point you to the one who is your Saviour. He is mightier than I am. His power is so great that I am not worthy even to be his slave. When he shows up, then things will really change. He will tell truth so scorching that every feeble excuse you make, every lie you have been telling yourself, will burn up and blow away. The words he speaks will expose your idolatries. He will shake your world and disrupt all the complacent defences you are putting up against God. That’s who Jesus is.”

Then there comes the best line in the whole story: “So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.” Does John’s speech sound like ‘good news’ to you?

Not everybody wants a Jesus as powerful as what John describes. Herod didn’t want as much truth as even John told and Herod put him in prison. Within three years, he would do the same and worse to Jesus.

It is a curious way to introduce us to Jesus, don’t you think? If I were going to introduce you to Jesus I would tell you that Jesus is a steady anchor when everything else in your life is in chaos and turmoil.

I would tell you that Jesus, the living Christ, can be your sure and steadfast friend when life takes you to the depths of loneliness.

I would tell you that the resurrected Christ is God’s promise that even our dead ends won’t stop God’s good and loving purposes.

But, I am not the one telling the story here. The gospel writers are. They are people who bet their lives on this Jesus and they begin by telling you that Jesus will tell you the truth about your life so powerfully that he will knock your socks off. It is a curious way to introduce us to Jesus, unless this Jesus really is God’s beloved Son, with whom God is well-pleased. It is a curious way to introduce us to Jesus unless Jesus really is the one upon whom the Holy Spirit rests and the truth he tells is the truth that will give you life in all its fullness. The truth he tells is truth that heals your brokenness and sets you free from the fears that bind you. The truth he tells gives us God’s glory and power and love.

If that is the truth, perhaps then, the real question is not “Who is Jesus?” Perhaps the real question is, “Will you let him near?”

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Encountering Christ

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett 

Scripture: Luke 24: 13-38

 

Let me tell you a story. It is a story from the most ancient traditions of our faith. It is a story that tells us the kind of people we are meant to be. It is a story about our ancestors in the faith. Their names were Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham and Sarah were nomads who lived in the region between Israel and Egypt. God had promised them that God would bless them with many children. “Look toward the heaven and count the stars if you can . . . That ‘s how many descendants you shall have.” (Genesis 15:5, 22:17, 26:4)

Abraham and Sarah believed the promise. They tried to live their lives trusting the Promise Maker, although they did not always succeed in doing that. The years went by, but not children were born to them. Now they were both old and it seemed too late.

Then, one day, in the heat of the day, Abraham was sitting at the entrance to his tent. He looked up and three men, stranger whom he did not know, were standing near him. He got up and ran to meet them. He greeted them with a deep bow. He offered the strangers generous and gracious hospitality. “Wash the dust from their feet,” he told some servants. “Come, rest under this tree,” he said to the strangers. “Stay for a meal.” Abraham offered them a generous meal of bread and cheese and meat.

Before the strangers left, they gave Abraham a promise. “Within the year, your wife will give birth to a son.” Sarah laughed when she overheard it. Given her age, the promise seemed impossible. But, the impossible happened. Within the year, Isaac was born. Abraham and Sarah, as good as dead, welcomed the future that God had made possible. (Genesis 17.23-18.6)

Isaac was the father of Jacob who had twelve sone, whose children become the twelve tribes of Israel. One of the children of one of those twelve tribes was Jesus of Nazareth. He became part of a family with as many members as the stars in the sky, if you were able to count them.

Ever since Abraham and Sarah, we have been a people for whom offering hospitality to strangers has been a central practice. You never know what promise those strangers might bring. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” says our scripture, “for by doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)

Easter tells you, “The stranger you meet might even be something more than an angel. The stranger might be the risen Christ drawing near to you. This is what two disciples in today’s gospel story discovered.

It happened three days after Jesus had been crucified. They had lost all their hopes, all their dreams. It happened less than twelve hours after the first reports were coming in that Jesus had been raised from the dead — the first indications that the world they thought they knew was gone. Some new reality was taking its place.

They were confused and frightened and disoriented. So, they were leaving Jerusalem and all its uncertainty. They were heading home to Emmaus. Emmaus is the place you go to try to escape the changes you cannot control. It is the familiar place to which you retreat when you are trying to get your world back the way it was. It was on the road to Emmaus that a stranger joined these two disciples.

He asked questions. They poured out their anger and doubt and despair. He talked and told them the stories of their faith. He helped them find their place in the stories of God’s powerful new beginnings in the midst of impossibilities and hard endings.

They got to Emmaus around supper time. In keeping with their tradition, they offered the stranger the hospitality of a meal. When the stranger took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, they realized that he was not a stranger at all. He was Jesus: risen from the dead; present with them; showing up unexpectedly and unrecognized.

It happens again and again in the Easter stories: Mary at the tomb, thinking Jesus was the gardener; the disciples fishing in Galilee when a stranger prepares breakfast on the beach.”

These stories of Jesus’ unexpected, surprising appearance are training you to see Jesus in your life. “Pay attention,” they say. “A risen Saviour is on the loose in your world. You never know when he will show up or how — but it will be in places you do not expect him. He won’t look anything like what you think a saviour should look like. Stay alert.”

 

A young advertising executive with a bright, promising career, volunteered every Tuesday evening at his church’s foot clinic for homeless people. People who lived on the streets would come to the church’s building. This man, along with other volunteers, would care for their feet. He would sit in front of a guest, take his or her feet in his hands, put them in a basin of warm water, and wash them. He would take a towel and dry them. He would take some ointment and apply it to the sores. The ritual ended with each guest receiving the gift of a clean white pair of socks. Then, he would move to the next guest. One evening, the advertising executive’s minister watched him and asked, “Why do you come here each week?” The man replied, “I figure I have a better chance of running into Jesus here than most places.”
The minister watched him week after week. At some point, she realized she was developing what she called ‘double vision’. “I was seeing Christ in the strangers that he served. I was also seeing Christ in that young man as he was finding deep meaning in his life through serving others.”  (Joanna Adams, Day 1, 2005)

 

Where do you go to develop ‘double vision’? Where are you training yourself to see Christ when he shows up in expected places, among unexpected people? The risen Christ is loose in your world. He can and does show up anywhere. Do you see him? do you recognize that it is the Lord?”

There is always a sense of mystery to that encounter. It is not something you control. It is not something you manage. There is no magic formula. There are no ‘five guaranteed steps to an encounter with the risen Christ”. However, you can practise hosting the mystery. You can offer hospitality to strangers. You can let yourself be open to people who are not like you.

It is not easy to do. Our culture trains us to be wary of strangers. They might be a threat to you. It is not easy to welcome strangers. if you let them get near you — if you offer them hospitality in your heart — you will be changed. You will see the world in new ways — ways that might not be comfortable.

Followers of Jesus who are on the look-out for the risen Christ, need some counter-cultural training. We need practice at welcoming the one who is different, alien. Thank God, Jesus invites us to the table. Here, we encounter strangers who are also brothers and sisters in Christ. Here, we encounter the risen Christ who is so different from what we are looking for that we will not recognize him at first. Here, he takes, blesses, breaks and give. Then, we realize God is present, inviting us to enter into God’s resurrection reality. Here, our impossibilities become God’s new future. Here, you will be changed.

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The power of your suffering love

A prayer for Reign of Christ Sunday based on Luke 23: 33-43.

Creative, life-giving God,

you speak,

you say, ‘Let there be . . .’

and the forces of life

move with transforming power.

You love,

you love with a costly love,

surrendering self for others,

and evil and death

lose their power.

You forgive

you forgive our ignorance

our blindness

our willfulness

our selfishness,

opening space for your Spirit’s creative work.

Jesus,

remember us.

By your mercy,

heal the wounds we inflict on each other.

Bring us into your presence

and teach us to love with a love like unto your own.

We weep and cry to you –

you whose power for life moves through suffering,

stronger than the power of death:

we pray for the people of the Philippines,

for those who are without homes, clean water, food.

We pray for our own country,

scandalized by the misuse of power

by those who were entrusted with leading us.

We pray for this congregation,

for those who weep within it,

for those who seek to lead it,

for those who look for your Holy Spirit’s hope.

Let your love and power and forgiveness

shape our love, our power, our life together.

Lord Jesus,

Lord of compassion and mercy and grace,

remember those for whom we have special concern this day.

Come among us,

crucified and risen Lord:

let your will be done,

your Spirit move among us;

let your costly, life-giving love reign

and bring us into your glory with you.

Amen.

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Have mercy on us

A prayer of confession for Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13, 2013, based on Luke 17: 11-19. With thanks to Kayla McClurg and her reflections on that scripture.

At the heart of the universe,

at the heart of our lives

are your mercy and your grace, O God of unfailing love.

You work without ceasing to reconcile all things.

You work without ceasing to make all things new.

 

We confess that too often

we miss seeing and hearing the signs of your presence.

We do not recognize your transforming power.

Your Spirit heals our brokenness,

Your Spirit brings new life,

Your Spirit works a new creation

but we continue on our way,

unaware,

uncomprehending,

ungrateful.

Turn us around, Lord,

Turn us toward you, Jesus,

as you turn toward us in mercy.

 

Heal our blindness;

overcome the fear that binds our hearts;

raise us to your new life

here and now.

 

Then, let your Spirit carry our thanks

to your throne of grace.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Amen.

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“Faith For the Journey”

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett at Central United Church, Sarnia, Ontario on August 11, 2013.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 , Luke 12: 32 -40

The letter to the Hebrews is written to a church community that is in trouble. To be fair, most of the New Testament is made up of letters to churches that are in trouble; churches that are barely holding on.

There are no perfect churches. There are no churches that ‘have it all together’, where there are no problems. There are only groups of ordinary people who have been gathered together by the Holy Spirit. They find themselves on a journey with Jesus and most of the time they are not sure where they are going. Much of the time they are pretty sure that this journey is going to take a lot of faith — more faith than they can muster on their own.

“Faith,” says the letter to the Hebrews, ‘Is the assurance of things hoped for; faith is the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) In case that’s too vague, it goes on to say that faith is Noah building a boat to save his family from a flood even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky and all he has to go on is a word from God telling him he needed to do so.

Faith is Abraham at 70 years of age hearing God tell him to pack up his belongings and head out on a journey even though he didn’t know where he was going.

Faith, says Jesus, is being dressed, ready for God to show up at any time, surprising you with what he wants you to do. Faith is being open to receive God’s creativity into your life even when it comes in unexpected ways (Luke 12: 35 – 36).

People often talk about faith as if it were something they were trying to wrap their mind around: “I gave up faith when I studied science at university. Now I can’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection from the dead on Jesus walking on water.”  They think people who still have faith are like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. “One can’t believe impossible things,” said Alice. The Queen replies, “I dare say you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast.” (Through the Looking Glass, chapter 5, Lewis Carroll)

Some people pit faith against doubt and thing that they have to wrestle their doubts to the ground before they can have faith. That’s not what the Bible does. In the Bible, the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is fear. The opposite of faith is being afraid of what life might bring you; being afraid of what God might ask of you.

The really critical question of your life is not, “Can you believe?” The really critical question is, “Will you trust? Will you trust God with your life?”

Have you noticed how often the Bible says, “Don’t be afraid?”

“Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” say the angels to the shepherds as they announce Jesus’ birth (Luke 2: 10 ).

“Don’t be afraid”, says Jesus, ‘It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  (Luke 12:32)
“Don’t be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows.  (Luke 12:7)

“Don’t be afraid,” say the angel to the women at the empty tomb. “the one whom the world crucified has been raised by the power of God.” (Matthew 28:5)
“Don’t be afraid,” says the risen Christ to the his disciples before he sends them out to be in witnesses in the world.

“Don’t be afraid”.

God promises joy and peace and steadfast love and faithfulness.
God promises to lead you home and to a place of rest and to a city where love rules and life flows to all people and you shall see God face to face.
God promises that nothing in all creation will be able to separate you from his love.
God promises that God will never leave you or forsake you.

However, the truth is that, for much of the journey, we travel by faith and not by sight. We hold only promises that are about things that are not clearly evident. Partly that is because we are dealing with great mysteries — large realities that cannot be seen and touched and measured. Partly it is because God’s ways are not our ways and some of God’s ways confront us with difficult and painful truths. They disrupt the plans we had for our lives.

Jesus said, “God can be like a thief in the night. (Luke 12: 39 -40) It is not a particularly flattering picture of God, but that is what faith can feel like sometimes. In order to follow Jesus, you have to leave somethings behind. Sometimes, what you have to leave behind is the safety of the careful plans you had made for yourself.

Some people find faith hard because, at some level, they know it is risky. They have been wounded in the past, or they are afraid of being wounded. They decide it is safer not to trust anyone, not even God, especially a God they cannot control; especially a God who often works in hidden ways; especially a God who might take you on a journey and you will have no idea where you are going. They choose not to venture any further into faith.

You can do it: you can life you life operating more out of fear than out of faith. But know this: fear will make your life small. Fear can take over and paralyze you. It will keep you from opening your heart to others. it will keep you from opening your life to God’s grace. Invite it into you heart and it will threaten your soul and control what you do. Fear steals the kingdom from you — the reign of blessing and love that God wants to give to you.

Somebody said, “Faith does not mean that you have no fear. Faith gives you the courage to walk through the fear.” (Joanna Adams,   “Faith and Fear”, Journal for Preachers 19 no 4 Pentecost 1996, p. 25-29)

Faith is trusting God to walk with you through your fear and to get you home.

There was an evening when Jesus gathered his disciples together in the upper room of a friend’s house. He knew that they were about to head into an unknown future full of danger and fear. He said to them, “Don’t be afraid. In my Father’s house there are many rooms and I am going to prepare a place for you. You know the way to where I am going. “ One of his disciples said, “We don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”   Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.”  (John 14: 1-6)

Stanley Jones was, for many years, a missionary in Africa. He loved to tell the story of the time he got lost in the jungle. He wandered around for a while and did not see any familiar landmarks. At last he came upon a small settlement of huts. He asked if someone could show him the way home. “Follow me,” one of the villagers said and set off. As he hacked their way through the jungle, Jones became worried. They didn’t seem to be on any path. “Are you sure this is the way?” he asked. “Where is the path?”  The man turned around and said, “Bwana, in this place there is no path. I am the path.”  (“Proclaiming the Gospel on Mars Hill,” Michael Rogness, Word and World, June 1, 2007, p. 275)

There are no perfect churches. There are only communities of people who have been gathered together by the Holy Spirit who find themselves on a journey with Jesus toward God’s reign of love. Most of the time, you are not sure where you are going. Much of the time you are pretty sure the journey is going to take a lot more faith than you have on your own.

“Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus. “I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. I will lead you home.”

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The Most Important Choice

A reflection on Galatians 5: 1, 13 -25 and Luke 9:51-62

 

“For freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand firm, then, and do not submit yourselves again to the yoke of slavery.”  Galatians 5:1

Many people lead very busy lives. How often do you feel driven by a sense of having too many things to do and having too little time to do them in? Do you feel pulled between what you have to do and what you should do and what you want to do? Faced with unlimited options, do you feel tangled in a web of duties, obligations, commitments and desires?

If finding some balance were simply a matter of choosing the important things and leaving some unimportant things undone, most of us could manage that. However, life is often not that clearcut. So often the choices are not between the important and the trivial; between something that must be attended to and something that can be left for another time. You get caught between too many important duties and obligations and commitments, all of which have merit and legitimate claims upon your attention.

In Pastor, William Willimon tells of leading Bible study on temptation. He was trying to relate the topic to the lives of those who were participating. One man burst out, “I’ll tell you what temptation is. Temptation is when your boss calls you in, as mine did just yesterday and say, “I’m going to give you a real opportunity. I’m going to give you a bigger sales territory. We believe that you are going places young man.”
“But I don’t want a bigger sales territory,” I told him. I’m already away from home four nights a week. It wouldn’t be fair to my wife and daughter.”
“Look, we’re asking you to do this for your wife and daughter. Don’t you want to be a good father? It takes money to support a family these days. Sure, your little girl doesn’t take much money now, but think of the future. I’m only asking you to do this for them.”

Whether you believe the boss or not when s/he says, “We’re only asking you to do this for them,” you can get caught between wanting to do what’s best for your family and wanting to do well in your job and doing your part in serving the community and supporting your faith community. How do you live in such a way that doesn’t leave your soul withered, your strength depleted, your mind spinning? What does it take to ‘hold firm’ to the freedom and  joy which Christ has won for us?

In today’s gospel story, Jesus invites people to follow him and they respond with a litany of other commitments and important obligations: “Let me bury my father first.” “I need to say good-bye to my family first.”   Jesus doesn’t flinch: “Let the dead bury the dead. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent. Announce God’s Kingdom.” “No procrastinating, no backward looks. You can’t put off the Kingdom till tomorrow. Seize the day!” (Luke 9: 60, 62, The Message)

These were not trivial excuses that these people were making. They were not asking for leave to go to one last party before they gave up ‘the good life’ and started taking religion seriously.  They were responsible people, trying to juggle family, job, and Jesus’ call. Yet, even to them, Jesus is unyielding: even of them Jesus demands that they put him as the priority over every other claim in their lives. Why? Why should he be so adamant and firm? He is adamant and firm because what is at stake is freedom, joy, and peace. Those can be found only when you live out of God’s choices for your life, not out of your own. And, you can only know what God’s choice, God’s agenda is, when you spend time with God.

You keep free, says Paul to the Galatians, when you let your life be grasped by God. You hold onto Christ’s freedom not by knowing which choices to make but by knowing yourself chosen by God. There is a story about Mother Teresa speaking with a young man who had joined her order. He had been complaining that his superior was insisting that he spend more time in prayer. It was keeping him from the lepers whom he had been called to serve. She told him, “Your call is not to serve lepers. Your call is to belong to Jesus”.

The most important choice in your life has already been made. God has chosen you. God is active in your life. God longs to have love and joy and freedom permeate your living. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control are fruit of the Spirit — the outgrowth of letting God’s Spirit dwell more and more deeply in your heart and mind and life. In the midst of all your important obligations and valuable commitments, take time to be known by God, to belong to Jesus. Let God lead you into the wide open spaces of salvation. Let Jesus teach you the ‘unforced rhythms of grace‘.  ‘For freedom, Christ has set you free’.

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“An Opportunity to Meet Jesus”

“An Opportunity to Meet Jesus”

 A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett at Central United Church, Sarnia, on January 31, 2010.

Scriptures: Luke 4: 21-30

A minister asked the people in a study group that she was leading, “Who has been like Jesus in your life?” The members of the group each gave their answers in turn, telling stories of people who had helped them grow in faith. At the end, there was one woman who had not yet spoken. The leader asked her, “What’s the problem?” The woman answered, “I am just trying to think of someone who has told me a truth that is so difficult to hear that I wanted to kill them for it.”   (Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Perfect Mirror”)

Today’s gospel story is the second half of Jesus’ first recorded sermon in Luke. Jesus had quoted Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, to preach the message of good news to the poor, to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, and to announce, ‘This is the year of the Lord’s favour’. Then, said Jesus, “This saying has come true in your hearing.

The congregation loved this part of their story. The ‘year of the Lord’s favour” was the promise that there would be time when God would right what was wrong with the world. People would be set free from unjust burdens. Every brokenness would be restored. They loved this promise. They hold onto it in hope. Here was Jesus saying, “This is the time. God is going to act here and now.”

If Jesus had finished his sermon right then and there, everything would have been all right. The people would have left worship, shaken his hand, and said, “Very nice sermon, Jesus.” But, he didn’t stop there. Today’s gospel reading is the rest of the story.

Jesus reminded them of two stories in their own heritage. He reminded them about Elijah, a great prophet during the time of King Ahab. There had been a drought for 3 1/2 years in Israel. Not a drop of rain. Everyone was suffering. Yet, God sent Elijah to a widow in Zarephath — outside of Israel. God miraculously provided food and drink for this foreigner every day until the end of a drought. To her! Not to any of God’s chosen people! To an outsider!

Then, Jesus told the story about Naaman. Naaman was not only a foreigner; he was also a general in the occupying army. When Naaman contracted leprosy, he went to Elisha. Even though there were plenty of lepers in Israel who needed to be healed, it was only to Naaman, the foreigner, the occupier, to whom Elisha offered the healing power of God.

These were not the congregation’s favourite Bible stories. The people got so angry that they drove Jesus out of the synagogue and tried to throw him off a cliff. This is a far more dramatic ending to a worship service than any I have ever attended. Let news of that kind of service get out and a congregation would have a hard time getting a guest preacher the next time it needed one.

Still, we can understand the congregation’s reaction. We are all immigrants to this county. All our ancestors came from somewhere else. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, this country adopted ‘multi-culturalism’ as our way of dealing with ethnic diversity. We did not want to be a melting pot. We wanted to celebrate our differences, our unique cultures. Together, those differences create a Canadian identity that is richer because it contains multiple cultures.

However, it is one thing to think that multiculturalism is a good idea when you are part of the majority culture. It is a different story when people who are very different from you start to gain more power and influence than you have in your society. It is easy to feel threatened. It is easy to start banning burkhas and minnarets; to start defining tighter boundaries; to start talking about “our kind of people” and “those kind of people”.

It was in a similar context that Jesus reminded the worshipping community that the God we worship is big; that God’s love is expansive; that God is always reaching beyond the boundaries we put up between people. Our God is on mission to heal and reconcile the whole world to Godself. God very often accomplishes that mission by forcing us out of our comfort zones. The Spirit drives us out of places that feel safe and familiar and sets us into relationships with people who are different from us.

The promise of the gospel is that, in relationship with those who are different from us, we shall be met by Jesus and his reconciling power.

I heard once of a church that had decided to open its doors to the people in the neighbourhood around it. The neighbours were poor and homeless. Some were mentally ill. The church started programmes to feed their neighbours, to clothe them, to suppor them. Some problems and difficulties emerged. Finally, one prominent member of the congregation came to the minister and said, “This mission business is all right as far as it goes. Maybe it has gone far enough. It is time to pull back a bit.” The minister replied, ‘I understand your concerns, but I just think it is important to give everyone an opportunity to meet Jesus.” The man said, “Yes, I understand that those kind of people need Jesus too, but . . .” The minister interrupted and said, “I wasn’t talking about them. I was talking about us. I think it is important that we have an opportunity to meet Jesus.”  (I do not at this point know the source of this story)

Do you remember what Mother Teresa used to say about her work among the poorest of the poor?  “I get to meet Jesus when he comes to us in his most distressing disguise.”

For some reason, God has decided that we won’t often meet Jesus when we sit comfortably in familiar surroundings with people of the same socio-economic status as ourselves. When we are in relationship only with people who are like us, our vision of God begins to narrow down. It gets small, tight, closed up. Only when things get shaken up, rattled, broken open is there room for the Holy Spirit to move, to breathe fresh air into our lives and into our congregations.

Some time ago, when we were planning a mission trip to Alabama, I received an email from someone asking, “Why are you going to Alabama? Why are you not taking in one of the mission opportunities here in Ontario? Why are you not participating in a programme sponsored by the United Church of Canada?” I replied, “I have found that an important part of learning to follow Jesus is getting out of the setting that is familiar to us. We need to go some place that is different enough from what we are used to that our assumptions and our usual pre-conceived notions get questioned. We become open to being met by Jesus in a new way. The west end of Birmingham, Alabama is a start.”

It has been my experience that people like us often go on mission trips thinking that we are going to help people who have not been as fortunate as we have been. We are aware that we live enormously privileged lives. We have been blessed with prosperity beyond what most of the rest of the world will ever know. We go on mission to give back: to share our selves and our gifts. We always discover that we are the ones who have been helped. We live and work among people who do not have anywhere near the material goods that we have; yet, they have a depth of faith that is humbling. We experience among them a level of joy that surprises us. We are met by Jesus in the midst of people we thought we were going to help. God breaks down barriers we had put up between us and those who are different from us. We realize that God is far bigger than we had known before. We come back changed.

Going to the west end of Birmingham, Alabama is one way to experience that. However, God can work transformation in us even here in Sarnia. I keep saying to you, “Go out to a public place. Sit there for half an hour and pray, ‘God, what do you want me to see?’” I can understand if you have been reluctant to do that. If you let God open your eyes and your heart, you will see God at work in the most unexpected places, among people you may have written off as not worth noticing. You will be changed. So, the question is, “Are you willing to let Jesus change you without wanting to kill him for it?”

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“What Do You Do With A Story Like That?”

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett at Central United Church, Sarnia, Ontario on August 26 2012.

Scriptures: Luke 18: 11-27

After you read the scripture passage, ask, “What feelings or questions does this story raise for you?”  Anger? Shock? “This is a harsh story”?

It’s stories like these that give the Bible a bad reputation. “A nobleman goes to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. . . . a delegation of his own citizens declares, ‘We don’t want this man to rule over us.’. . .  Nevertheless, he becomes king and, when he returns to his country, he says, “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.”

The worst of it is that this is a story told by Jesus. Sometimes people will say, “The Old Testament depicts God as violent and vengeful, destroying enemies by slaughtering them. In the Old Testament, God’s people go to war, believing that they are acting in God’s name. But, all that changes in the New Testament. Jesus is not like the God of the Old Testament. Jesus is all about love and kindness and peace.”

Well, except for this story. Jesus has been telling parables, stories, on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. Nine parables about God seeking the lost; about forgiving and praying and  sharing what you have with others. Then he tells this one.

You could just leave this one out. Just ignore it; forget that it’s in the New Testament. That’s what the lectionary does. The lectionary is a three-year cycle of scripture readings. This year, it takes us through Luke’s gospel. Right up until this story. It leaves this one out. It goes back to Luke 6. Then, the next Sunday it picks up the gospel readings after this parable.

If you’ve been in the church for a while, then you’re probably more familiar with Matthew’s version of this story. It gets used more often. It’s more gentle. Certainly no slaughtering. There’s the bit about being cast into ‘outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth’, but if you leave that part out, Matthew’s version can be read as a nice little story with a moral about using your talents to the best of your abilities. In fact, it becomes the kind of story you don’t need to get up on Sunday morning and come to worship to hear. You could sit at home and watch the Olympics if you want to hear that kind of advice: take your natural abilities and gifts, work hard, believe in yourself, and you can achieve your goals.

Turn this parable into a little moral story and there is no need for the inconvenience of worshipping on a Sunday morning or for dealing with Jesus Christ and his awkward demands or for dealing with the peculiar company Jesus keeps.

What do you do? Do you throw out some stories because they’re embarrassing? Do you just forget about stories like this morning’s gospel reading because it seems to advocate slaughtering those who disagree with you?

What about the parts of the Bible where you have trouble seeing how they connect with your life? What do you do with a Saviour who walks on water? or feeds 4000 people with five loaves of bread and two small fish? or heals a man who has been blind from birth using just a little bit of spit and a command to be healed? We live in a world where the only water you walk on is the kind you find in the lake in the middle of February. The way you feed a multitude is to grow crops with a higher yield and distribute the available food more equitably. You heal blindness with cataract surgery and corneal transplant and modern medications.

What do you do with the Bible when it has been used artlessly by people who want to impose a narrow set of moral standards on others?

You can stop reading the Bible. You can dismiss those sections that you cannot wrap your mind around. You can forget about them. Just wrap them up in a cloth and put them away.

And yet. . . And yet, we are part of a tradition that has said of these words that they are ‘sweeter than honey straight from a honeycomb’. They give life and wisdom and truth that guides one’s life in good paths. They intend to form communities that give life and justice to all people. They connect us with the living God. More accurately, they are one of the primary ways that the living God has chosen to connect with us.

Through them, God shapes a community of faith that has the courage and energy and perseverance to confront injustice and the forces of evil in the world. God’s Way is a peculiar way, granted. The world confronts injustice by passing laws or by engaging in economic boycotts or by sending in armies. Jesus combats evil with stories! What good are stories, mere words, against tanks and corrupt politicians?

And yet, his words have power — power that changes people and forms imagination. Those changed, imaginative people change the world in creative, imaginative ways. If we neglect or dismiss those stories, those words, we cut ourselves loose from the source of our life.

We are on a journey into God’s new future. One of the first things we need to do is to re-engage those stories. Take this gift that we have been given seriously. Throw at those stories your most penetrating questions. Wrestle them to the ground with your deepest doubts. Push back at them with your best arguments. Do all that. At the very least, engage them. “Do business with them.”

I want to invite you to listen again to today’s gospel story. Keep in mind that it is a parable. This is not a literal account of something that happened. This is not an historical report. It is a parable. You are meant to come to this story with your imagination set on ‘high’. Its images and metaphors make it complex and rich. It is not a simple moral tale like one of Aesop’s fables. It is a parable — the subversive way God brings in God’s kingdom.

Try this:

When you hear about a nobleman who went to a distant country, think of Jesus, who left the glories of heaven to come to earth in order to seek those who have gotten lost in their search for God. When you hear that the nobleman went to get royal power, remember that Jesus has a peculiar notion of both royalty and power. For him, the poor are royalty. For him, what looks like weakness to us is the way God exercises God’s power. What looks like foolishness to us is God’s wisdom.

When you hear about a delegation of citizens who say, “We don’t want this man to rule over us”, consider that this may not literally be referring to particular human beings. It may be referring to the forces of power and privilege that felt threatened by Jesus’ way. Those forces eventually crucified Jesus, trying to stop his ruling over them.

When the nobleman hands out 10 pounds to 10 slaves, perhaps he is not literally handing out money to each slave. Perhaps the 10 pounds are meant to call to your mind the 10 stories Jesus has been telling his disciples on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. The community of faith has been on a journey through territory where the residents of that neighbourhood do not share the faith communities stories and traditions about the way the world runs. In a culture where Jesus’ followers feel like strangers, Jesus has been teaching them about the way God rules. He has been immersing them in the peculiar ways of God’s grace. And then he says, “Here — do business with these while I am gone.  Play with them creatively. Work with them imaginatively. They are stories about living as a community of faith in a strange land — forgiving, praying, offering hospitality to strangers. See what you can make of them while I am gone.”

When the third slave says, “I was afraid of you because you are a harsh man”, consider that he may be wrong in his judgement of God. God may not be a harsh man, taking what God did not first give, reaping what God did not sow. The God who meets us in the scriptures creates a world full of bountiful gifts and lavishes it upon us to bless us. God brings life where we can see only death. When the Bible sums up everything it knows about God’s revelation, it says simply, “All is grace.” Everything we receive from God is infused and transformed by God’s grace and mercy and love.

When the king says, “As for the enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slaughter them in my presence”, consider that the enemies which the victorious Christ destroys are not human beings but the ‘powers and principalities’ — the spiritual forces that destroy and distort human life. Through his sacrificial death and descent into hell, Jesus does battle with them and defeats them. The resurrected Christ has destroyed the power of death and destruction and evil finally to determine our lives. The resurrection on the third day is Christ’s victory dance.

Go back to the story again. Come to it with your imagination engaged. Do you hear it differently?

We have been entrusted with life-giving goods news. We can wrap it up in a cloth and neglect it. Or we can do business with it. We can get to know the stories well enough to deal with them imaginatively, creatively. When we do that, we shall have something life-giving and  liberating and hopeful to share with those who are searching for good news.

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“You cannot get here from there”

“You can’t get there from here”

A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett at Central United Church on September 26, 2010.

Scriptures: Luke 16: 19-31

There is a story about a preacher and a taxi driver who died and went to heaven on the same day. As they arrive at the pearly gates, the preacher is feeling pretty sure of himself. Here he is in the place he had been talking about ad nauseum all his life. When he arrives, he is assigned to a small house with a wooden bed and a black and white television set. He is given a bicycle to ride around heaven. However, he notices that the taxi driver has settled into a mansion with many beds and a home theatre style television.
Day by day, the preacher gets more annoyed at the discrepancy. Finally, he approaches the Almighty God, Ruler of the Cosmos, and says, “Excuse me, but I think there has been some mistake.” The preacher explains the differences in the standard of living accorded to him and to the taxi driver. “I am a minister and I am living like this! He is but a lowly taxi driver and he is living like that! You must have made an error.”
The Lord God Almighty replies, “Oh, no, Reverend. To the contrary. While you were preaching, people were sleeping. While he was driving, the people in his cab were praying and doing so with all their might.”

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells a ‘pearly gates’ kind of story.

(Read Luke 16: 19-31)
One of the greatest challenges that the early church faced was trying to convince people that Jesus was the saviour that they had been waiting for. Here was a man who had suffered a horrible death as a common criminal. He had been executed by the powerful Roman Empire while onlookers mocked him. This was the saviour of the world?

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Christian Church in Corinth, “We proclaim Christ God’s saviour, crucified”, he acknowledged that such a claim was a stumbling block to Jews who had expected the Messiah to rescue them from Roman rule. It was foolishness to the Greeks whose mythic heroes were always strong, powerful, victorious. Those are the kind of people who save the world, not someone who suffers and dies. Even so, says Paul, to those who believe, Jesus of Nazareth is the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1: 22-24)

One of the greatest challenges we face as we try to follow Jesus is that God’s salvation often doesn’t look like the salvation we are wanting. It does not come in the form we were expecting. In the section of Luke’s gospel that we have been working through over the past few months, we have heard Jesus tell parable after parable about the unexpected ways God saves us:
God is like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep, even though shepherds were probably the least religious people they could meet.
God is like a woman, tearing the house apart looking for a lost coin, even though nobody would have thought of casting God as a woman.
God is like a father who humiliates himself in the community out of love for two sons, each lost in his own way. (Luke 15)

In today’s gospel story, Jesus says, “There was a rich man.” Jesus does not give him a name, but Luke has set the story up in such a way that we are to think that the rich man might represent the Pharisees. “Everyone knows they are lovers of money,” he reminds his listeners (Luke 16:14).
“And there was a poor man.” The poor man’s name is Lazarus, which means “God helps.” The name is somewhat ironic since God does not seem to help Lazarus in any way we might expect God to help. Lazarus is poor. Lazarus is so poor that he begs at the rich man’s gate every day. Lazarus is covered with sores. He is so sore-ridden that dogs would come and lick his sores.
When both men die, the rich man finds himself in a situation much like the preacher in the joke that opened this sermon. His accommodations are much below the standards to which he was accustomed. They are not at all what he had expected for his reward in heaven.
What was really irksome to him was that poor Lazarus was resting in the ‘bosom of Abraham’. Abraham – the father of those who live by faith in Yahweh. Abraham — the one with whom God had entered into covenant. God had promised Abraham, “I will bless you and I will make you a blessing to others.”
There was Abraham with the poor person who had suffered all his life. The rich man is suffering by himself, with only his agony to keep him company.
The rich man does what he knows how to do. He tries to solve his problem and fix the situation. He begins by giving orders to Abraham: “Send Lazarus with some water. I am in agony.” Then, he moves to negotiations and developing a strategic plan, “Send Lazarus to warn my brothers so this situation will not be repeated.”
Abraham will have none of it. “You can’t get here from there,” he says. “It can’t be done.” It is not that Abraham is hard-hearted and cruel. It is not that Abraham is happy to see the tables finally turned. Abraham will not negotiate with the rich man because the rich man’s problem is not something that the rich man can fix with his usual way of operating in the world. Abraham is the father of those who live by faith in Yahweh. You can’t demand or negotiate your way into God’s presence. God’s presence can only be received as a gift.

Throughout the stories of the scriptures, we learn that ours is a faith that is based on on the promises of God:
When Abraham was without children and without a future, God promised him he would be a father; that he would bless and be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12: 2);
When Jeremiah was a prophet of Yahweh at a time when the centre of life was crumbling, God promised: “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11);
Isaiah spoke God’s promise to a people who were growing weary and discouraged, promising, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall rise up on wings, as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40: 31).

Those promises found their fulfillment in Jesus who said, “I have come that you might have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10). He promised, “I will never leave you or forsake you. . . In the world you will have trouble, but do not be afraid. I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

When we are in agony or when we are suffering, the promised blessings can seem very far away. They can seem out of reach. A great chasm separates us from the future that God promises. In such times it can be difficult to hold onto faith — to keep trusting the promises. Then it is that we are faced with one of the hardest lessons to learn. At least, we seem to have to learn it over and over again: hope does not come from what we know or what we can do, as clever or as powerful as we might be. Hope does not come from a ‘what’. Hope comes from whom you trust.

The one we trust is Jesus who spent much of his time with people who suffered or who lived on the margins of society. Jesus our saviour suffered himself and died. The surprising truth of our faith is that God and God’s salvation comes to us in the midst of our suffering. We do not find our way out of suffering as much as Christ leads us through it. He leads us into a life that is shaped by God’s resurrection power.

Times of suffering often take us beyond our usual ways of coping with the world. Mostly that is because those ways no longer work. When that happens we get frightened, discouraged, weary. Somewhere in that weariness we find God inviting us to let go of our attempts to save ourselves. We experience God’s invitation to receive God’s grace, even though it comes to us in a strange, unexpected form.

Said St. Augustine, “God gives where God can find empty hands.” The gift of our weariness and frustration is that they drive us into the arms of God who alone can save us. In that empty space where we are alone with God, God unmasks us. God exposes the idols to which we have given our lives but which cannot satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. God exposes the false securities to which we have been clinging even though they do not make us more secure. God exposes the illusions we carefully guard but which keep us from dealing with the world as it really is. Those illusions keep us from telling the truth; yet, truth-telling is the only way we can move into hope.

That work which God does in our souls is painful work. We resist it. We avoid it as long as possible. Still, God does not abandon us in our resistance. Did you notice? Even the rich man in the parable gets a name, an identity. Part way through the parable, Abraham calls him, “Child”. He is a child of Abraham, of faith. That is who he really is — not just a rich man, defined by something as fleeting as his wealth.

That is who we really are. Our true identity is not that we are rich or successful. Our true identity is not that we are poor or failures. Our true identity — the one that shapes everything else — is that we are children of the living God who knows the plans God has for us, plans for a future with hope.

In your weariness, allow yourself to be held by that God. In your emptiness receive grace from Christ our crucified Saviour. It is the invitation of the One who is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Our hope.

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