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6. “Doing the Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way” — June 27, 2010. Luke 9:51-62
5. "Jesus’ Mission … and Ours" —, January 24, 2010. It’s based on Luke 4:14-21.
4. "A Dinner Party to Remember" Sunday, June 13, 2010 Scripture: Luke 7:36-50
3. "Peace", May 9, 2010, Scripture: John 14:25-31 and Numbers 6:22-27
2. "What's That Smell?" March 21 2010 (John 12:1-8)
1. "When the Bottom Falls Out, What Then?" — April 18, 2010 Scripture: John 21:1-19 and Psalm 130
When the bottom falls out, what then? One of the most difficult things that can happen is to have the bottom fall out from under you. The solid ground you thought was supporting you turns out to be quicksand. What then?
It can happen in a lot of ways. Something you thought was true turns out to be false. That is one way the bottom can fall out.
But sometimes the bottom falls out because of our own failures, and that’s even worse. In the bottom of the ninth, the ball is hit to you. You don't know how it happens, but you drop it. So you can be crushed not only by circumstances, but by your own shortcomings.
What do you do when the bottom falls out from under you? What do you do when the solid ground you’ve built on turns out to be sand? What do you do?
The bottom had fallen out of Simon Peter's life. The Lord, whom he had followed, and loved, and pledged himself to serve, had been put to death. The Kingdom Peter had hoped for had not appeared. And at the moment Jesus needed him the most, Simon Peter denied him. "Jesus? Never heard of him!" For Peter, it’s a total defeat. And after Peter’s defeat, we find him in a deep depression.
Now you’ll notice that this is after Jesus has risen from the dead, after Jesus has appeared to the apostles, after Jesus has restored Thomas. What’s wrong with Simon Peter? Why isn't he out preaching the good news? Why is he depressed in Galilee?
If you have ever shared Simon Peter’s experience, if you have ever felt the
foundations of your life crumble, if you have ever had a serious moral failure at the most important moment, you know that it takes time for the pieces to come back together. It takes time to resolve the terrible depression that comes from a moral failure such as Peter’s denial of Jesus. Peter has seen the risen Lord. But, in the words of Earl Palmer, "The victory Christ has won is in Peter’s mind still overshadowed by his own personal failure. … Peter has observed Christ’s victory, but he cannot get out of his mind his own overwhelming failure. Jesus may have won, but Peter lost. He lost in the midst of Jesus’ winning. It was on the very eve of our Lord’s trial and then crucifixion that Peter denied with oaths and swearing that he ever even knew Jesus" (Sermon of Sept. 7, 1975).
So what do you do when the bottom falls out? What can you do? Peter says, "I’m going fishing." It seems like a strange thing to do when the bottom has fallen out. But think about it. Fishing is one thing that Peter is good at. It’s familiar. One of the best things we can do when we’re far down is to find something familiar, something we’re good at, and do that. It can at least give us a foothold.
For Peter, who at this point despises himself because of what he has done, fishing is one thing he can still do well. It’s not a bad idea when the bottom falls out to find something familiar. When you’ve suffered a great loss, it can help to keep doing something you know well.
There were others with Peter. When he announced his plan to go fishing, they replied, "we will go with you." This is so mundane that you might skip over this part of the story. But think about it. Peter was down, and his friends stuck with him. He probably wasn’t very good company, but they went along anyway. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just to be with a person. When the bottom falls out from under our feet, we can be helped by people who just stick with us.
A woman in Cincinnati lost her husband after a long and happy marriage. Soon after his death, she went into a deep depression. For several months she walked through a deep valley. Most of that time, she could not see how her life could ever be worth living. After a while the clouds lifted, and people said that she seemed like her old self again. She gave God the credit for her healing, but she said that her friends from church made a difference. These friends helped her, not by any advice they gave, but by their presence. They stuck with her at the very depths, and that made a difference.
So Peter’s friends were wise to stick with him. "We’ll go fishing with you."
When the bottom falls out, there are things we can do, such as finding something familiar and letting our friends love us. But the real healing isn’t something we can manage by ourselves. It is the Lord Jesus himself who heals.
In this story, the One who actually restores Peter is not one of the disciples or even Peter himself. It is Jesus who meets Peter. It’s all so quiet and ordinary. A stranger on the shore apparently can see where the fish are. He tells them to try the other side of the boat. And sure enough, one hundred fifty-three big ones are hauled in.
The man on the shore has built a fire and is cooking. Nothing unusual about that. Then, prompted by John the beloved disciple, Peter looks more closely and sees who the stranger really is — it’s Jesus.
After they ate, Jesus did something unusual. He asked Peter the same question three times in a row: "Do you love me?" "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you," Peter answered. The third time, something in Peter snapped. He was deeply grieved, and blurted out, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." The Lord knows "everything." He knows that it was three times that Peter denied him. Now, in the presence of the other disciples, Jesus asks him to declare his love three times. Three times, to match the threefold denial. That is what got Peter.
What is Jesus doing with Peter? He’s restoring him. And restoration can be extremely painful. Sometimes therapists do what Jesus is doing here. They take people back over painful memories. Some painful events have to be faced directly before there can be healing.
Jesus also gives Peter a task to perform. Three times he says, "feed my sheep." Peter, now that he’s been restored before the other disciples, is able to lead them. He can’t be an effective leader until he is restored by Jesus. Jesus takes him through his terrible failure, but this time Peter gets it right. He says, "you know that I love you." And he means it.
Jesus is both tough and tender with Peter. Tough enough to ask him the same painful question three times. Tender enough to meet Peter in the depths of his despair and to restore his soul. With Peter, Jesus shows himself to be a good shepherd, One who leads and restores.
What about us? When the bottom falls out, what about us who don’t have personal appearances of the risen Lord? We don’t have personal appearances, but according to Jesus, we have something even better. Jesus promised that after his departure, he would send another Advocate to be with us forever. This Advocate is the Holy Spirit who dwells with us and in us. Jesus calls the Spirit another Advocate because he’s continuing the work of Jesus in our lives. By the Spirit, the same Lord Jesus Christ who restored Simon Peter is now present to us.
Jesus Christ is still the good shepherd who restores our souls. His desire is to restore our souls, however they were wounded. He wants to mend the broken pieces of our lives. Today the risen Lord still meets the needs of his people. When the bottom falls out, when we have fallen flat on our faces at the crucial moment, he meets us. He meets us right where we are, not where we are supposed to be, but right where we really are. This is where he comes to restore our souls.
Whatever our condition, whether unable to believe or depressed or stinging from a sense of personal failure, the risen and living Jesus Christ seeks us out.
The Holy Spirit continues Jesus’ restoring work in our lives today. Is there any way we can cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit? Psalm 130, which we have read together, gives us some direction. The Psalm shows us three actions that will open the way for the good work of the Holy Spirit.
"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord." This is the first thing: we cry to the Lord. We bring our real selves to the Lord. We stay in touch with God. We speak honestly about how it is with us. If you don’t know what to say in your prayers, it’s always good to start with "Help!" The first thing we can do, then, is to cry out to the Lord.
Here is a second thing the Psalm suggests. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits … my soul waits for the Lord." Waiting is not easy. In the Scriptures, waiting is not passive but active. It isn’t wasting your time in a long line at the grocery store. Biblical waiting is actively longing with your whole heart for the Lord to act. Waiting is expectancy.
There is a third thing for us to do. "Hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem." Hope is the most valuable commodity there is when the bottom has fallen out from under us. The Psalm is telling us that hope makes sense because of the Lord’s steadfast love and great power.
If we cry to the Lord, wait for the Lord, and hope in the Lord, we will be opening the door for the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, Jesus continues to do for us what he did for Peter. What good news it is that when the bottom falls out from under us, the risen Lord Jesus Christ comes alongside of us as a good shepherd, and restores our souls.
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"What’s That Smell?" — March 21, 2010 (Scripture — John 12:1-8).
"What’s that smell?" I walked into a house with my realtor, and that’s what we asked each other. What’s that smell? It was the smell of freshly baked bread. The sellers knew what they were doing. Bread was baking when we arrived, and the smell of it filled the house. Immediately, my realtor and I were both in a good mood, ready to make an offer on the spot.
"What’s that smell?" If that same house were, say, filled with the smell of mildew because of various leaks, we would have asked each other the same question. What’s that smell? But in this case, we would not have felt like making an offer. No, we would have exited that house quickly and gone to look at another.
"What’s that smell?" In that house in Bethany, the home of Jesus’ good friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, that’s what everyone was asking, because, we’re told, "the house was filled with the fragrance."
This bit of information stands out to me because I can’t think of very many smells in the Bible. But in this case, there sure is. On this occasion, the smell filled the house. It could not be ignored by anyone who was there.
But what sort of smell was it? Freshly baked bread or mildew? Delightful or disgusting? It was an expensive sort of smell, if that makes sense to you. At the car wash, you can select a scent to put in your car that will, I assure you, fill your car with the fragrance. One fragrance you can choose is called "new car." Even if your car is barely running, you can give it an expensive sort of smell. That house in Bethany was filled with a fragrance that signaled great expense. It was the scent of something that had to be imported all the way from north India, a perfume made out of a plant that grew there. When you smelled it, you knew for sure that someone had shelled out a lot of money.
So is this a good sort of smell, like fresh bread, only better? Not necessarily. There was at least one person there who said "what’s that smell?" with real disgust. Not because the smell of nard was bad in itself. But because a whole pound of the stuff had to cost a small fortune, the equivalent of thousands of dollars. And once you’ve poured it out, that’s it. The bottle itself is no good after you’ve broken its neck. The scent fills the whole house, but it will soon fade, and what do you have then? Nothing!
This is the way that one of them sized up the situation. What’s that smell? It’s the smell of outrageous waste. Had they put it up for a vote, I wonder how many of them would have agreed with this assessment. It was Judas, the keeper of the money box, a man who knew the price of things, who was saying, "what a waste!"
Judas has a point, don’t you think? Isn’t it just a little bit "over-the-top" to spend your life savings on one great dramatic act? Don’t we say, "Waste not, want not"? And Judas was right. Mary’s action was a waste. The larger question, though, is what kind of a waste it was. Paul Tillich’s sermon on the anointing is called "Holy Waste." Is this a holy waste? Or is it just a waste?
Judas is good at math. He knows what this pound of nard would sell for, and he knows how far that money would go toward something more practical. You can’t fault Judas on his math. Though John who tells this story doesn’t trust Judas a bit. Judas sounds like he would like more money to go toward the poor, but John thinks that he just wanted more cookies in the cookie jar, for himself.
Judas is good at math. He calculates things out in his head. How about Mary? You get the sense that she doesn’t bother with the math. It appears that hers is an uncalculating act of love for Jesus. Her brother Lazarus was alive and at the table because Jesus had just lately raised him up. And now that Jesus’ enemies are determined to do him in, the atmosphere is more serious and ominous. In such a time, Mary does something extravagant. She brings out her prized possession, breaks it open, and pours it all out on Jesus’ feet.
Judas doesn’t like it. To him, it smelled of waste. How would you describe the smell? The smell of waste? Or is it the smell of spontaneous love? How did Jesus himself respond to this anointing, this fragrance that filled the house?
Here is where the story takes a serious turn. To Jesus, it was the smell of death, his death. No doubt, it was already on his mind. He knew of the plot against him. He knew that the time of his death was fast approaching. When Mary cracked open that bottle, and poured out the entire contents on his feet, he took it as a different kind of anointing, the anointing of a body, his body, for burial.
Is this what Mary had in mind? How much did she really understand? I think that Mary’s act was an act of love. It was costly love. It was an extravagant act of devotion. But I think that Jesus saw in it more than Mary herself had in mind. He’s complementing her. He’s likening her to the prophets who sometimes did things that spoke the truth of God. In this case, Mary’s action is a prophetic act pointing to Jesus’ death. It’s as if it’s already happened.
This little story, then, packs a punch. It is filled with hints of death. It takes place at the home of Lazarus, who has just recently been a dead man himself. And the key action, Mary anointing Jesus feet with a pound of pure nard, is declaring that Jesus himself will soon be a dead man.
Mary’s is an act of love, a costly act. But it’s more than that. This anointing has an impact on Jesus it treats him as if he’s already dead. What’s that smell? It’s the fragrance of pure nard that filled the house. It’s the smell of a great expense, whether you take is as a pointless waste or a holy waste. What we have in the story is the smell of death, the stench of death, though enclosed in the scent of precious nard. This is an act of loving devotion, yes, but more than that. It’s a prophetic act, whether deliberate or unintended we can’t be certain. Mary is anointing Jesus’ body for burial ahead of time, and Jesus knows it.
Mary is acting as a prophet, and, I suspect, doesn’t even know it. Her act of love points ahead to another act of love, Jesus’ own act of love on the cross. Paul Tillich makes this connection. What Mary did was "a holy waste, a waste growing out of the abundance of the heart." But "Jesus connects this anointing of his body with his death … The Cross … is the most complete and the most holy waste" ("Holy Waste," The New Being, 46-9). As Mary’s action grew out of the abundance of her heart, so Jesus’ self-giving flowed from the abundance of the heart of God. As Paul puts it, "God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
Jesus’ death on the cross is extravagant, not because it’s wasteful, but because its effect is vast enough to reach out to include all of us. And vast enough to reach into the very depths of our lives, bringing us forgiveness and new life. Thanks be to God!
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"Peace", May 9, 2010, Scripture: John 14:25-31 and Numbers 6:22-27
"Farewell." This is what Jesus is saying to his friends. Farewell. Good-bye. Auf Wiedersehen. So long. Bon voyage. Adios. He tells them, "I am going away," and "I will no longer talk much with you."
Can you sense the mood? If you’re about to be left behind, if you’re going to be forced to cope without the one person you’ve been counting on, that’s a case of high anxiety. There’s some fear mixed in, perhaps with that dreaded sense of abandonment. As the song goes, "sometimes I feel like a motherless child." I can imagine Jesus’ disciples joining in.
Another pastor likened the situation to young children whose mother is about to take off on a long trip without them. Those children have one pressing question: who will take care of us? Jesus’ departure is a crisis for his disciples. Jesus is going to be leaving them. They will most likely be anxious.
All they’ll have will be the world’s promises of peace. And that’s not much help because the world is no friend of theirs. The world has opposed Jesus, and it will oppose them too. As a result, when Jesus departs, their hearts will be troubled, and they will be afraid.
Troubled and afraid. Put these two together, and what do you have? Anxiety. Would you agree that there is a lot of anxiety around today?
I think of the news stories I’ve been following this past week. Close to home, there is a good bit of anxiety over groups, nineteen of them so far, canceling their reservations with Arizona hotels. Our mayor warns us of the resulting "economic ruin." In another part of the country, there is high anxiety over the daring and unprecedented effort to cap the flow of oil one mile below the surface of the Gulf. One reporter wondered aloud what happens if it doesn’t work. It seems that, in this case, there is no viable "plan B." Cross the ocean to Europe, and what do you find? Anxiety over collapsing economies and costly bailouts. The German leader is anxious because their country’s part in keeping the Greek economy from total disaster is going to have a huge political cost.
For most of us, though, our greatest sources of anxiety are very personal. You have that medical test, and now you wait for the results. You’ve paid all your bills this time, but what about next month?
In anxious times, whatever the source of the anxiety, what we want most of all is peace. Someone said that, if you take a survey of what people want more than anything else, the answer will be peace. It seems, then, that help is on the way because we hear promises of peace, lots of them, every day.
One radio ad suggests you can have peace if you invest in gold because precious metals are a safe investment, the only surefire one there is. Infomercials tout dietary supplements or newfangled exercise equipment that will surely revolutionize your health. And, as one exercise enthusiast told me, if you have your health, you have everything. Health equals peace.
Our world tells us if you have your financial house in order, you’re sure to have peace. But we’ve all heard of people who have plenty of money and are still filled with anxiety. Money doesn’t seems to guarantee lasting peace.
What about health? Health is a great thing. But even if you have the body of Jack LaLanne, you won’t necessarily have true peace. Good health, as we all know if we stop to think about it, doesn’t last. Sooner or later, these bodies of ours give out. We’re all mortal. If we’re counting on health as our source of peace, we’re going to be disappointed.
So we live in a time when we’re promised peace. But it doesn’t seem to be working out very well. It’s common today to run into people who are, in Jesus’ words, both troubled and afraid.
Jesus knows that his disciples are already anxious and that it will probably get worse after his departure. He knows that they are both troubled and afraid. So he makes an amazing promise to them. Here is my parting gift for you — peace. I gift you my own peace. I heard one teacher say that it’s as though Jesus is telling them, I have so much peace, overflowing, that I can spare some for you, so here, have some of my peace.
He says that his peace is different from anything else on the market. How so? His peace is wrapped up in the coming of the Holy Spirit. In giving them the Spirit, the Advocate, Jesus is giving them his peace. This means that Jesus’ peace is personal. It’s not a something he is giving them, it’s Someone. They’ll have the personal companionship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. That is the source of their peace. This is the reason that their peace won’t come and go. It will always remain in force.
Jesus says that the peace he’s giving them is his peace. It’s different from what the world gives. When Jesus talks about peace, he is speaking out of the long-standing Jewish notion of peace. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, is used some 237 times. It means much more than the absence of war. It includes health, prosperity, and contentment. It’s a comprehensive sense of well-being for individuals, families, and the nation. It’s both objective and subjective (Brown, Driver, Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1022-3).
You see what a vast thing peace really is in the benediction found in Numbers 6. It’s a sort of prayer, trusting that the Lord will do all the things that are spelled out here. The benediction begins with bless and it ends with peace. Both of these are all-encompassing. Everything that the Lord does for us is included in bless and in peace.
Speaking out of this Jewish background, then, Jesus is saying that peace, this vast sense of well-being, is his parting gift to his disciples. It’s not just a little dose of peace that, once you use it, it’s gone. This peace that he promises to give them is an inexhaustible source of blessing. These disciples are going to have some huge challenges. Jesus is going to depart. The world will oppose them, just as it opposed him. They’ll be hip-deep in trouble. Nevertheless, he says, I’m leaving you this gift, peace, my peace. It continues through any and all circumstances, regardless of money or health or anything else.
I want to shift now to the present, to our need for peace in an anxious world. I want you to see that Jesus gives peace. This seems like a small thing, but notice that he says, my peace I give to you. Peace is a gift. This is really good news. If you’re stuck with all sorts of anxiety, drowning in it, your only hope is someone else throwing you a lifeline. That’s what Jesus does when he says, here, have some peace, my peace. I’m giving it to you. Peace isn’t an achievement, it’s a gift.
This peace, then, is not something we manufacture. We don’t grit our teeth really hard and spit out peace. It’s a gift that comes from the Lord himself. Now like a lot of gifts, it sure helps if you receive it. We’re not lifeless blobs. We have something to do. Jesus does give us something to do. He says, do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
When we first hear words like these, we’re extremely skeptical. If you’re flat on your back awaiting major surgery, when someone comes along and tells you to look on the bright side, you just might tell them to get out of your room. Ordinarily, it doesn’t do much good to tell someone not to feel something that they’ll feeling very strongly already.
What, then, is Jesus getting at here? I wonder if he’s telling us that if we receive his gift of peace, we need not be troubled and afraid. That is, because he is the giver of peace, he has the right to call us away from our chronic anxiety. Leon Morris says, "Because he gives men such a peace Jesus can enjoin them not to be troubled in heart nor cowardly."
It’s actually good news when we hear Jesus telling us, do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. It’s good news because it indicates that we have some freedom in the matter. We are free to receive the Lord’s gift of peace, right in the midst of a messy life.
Let’s be realistic. We don’t merely throw a switch. We can’t always turn anxiety completely off and turn on peace instead. It’s sometimes a matter of degree as we becomes less anxious and more peaceful. In the midst of life, we have a lot of wiggle room. Marguerite Shuster gives this counsel: We cannot keep ourselves from experiencing anxieties and tumultuous desires and sorrows, but we can avoid nurturing and entertaining these feelings. That is, we can choose to have more of the Lord’s peace.
We may be surrounded by anxious people who would love for us to share their misery. We may be enticed by countless offers of peace in all the wrong places. Even so, because the Lord has delivered on his promise to send the Holy Spirit, we can choose peace. Whatever is going on, we can receive his peace today and live in it today.
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"A Dinner Party to Remember" Sunday, June 13, 2010
Scripture: Luke 7:36-50
Have you ever been part of some social gathering that just didn’t work out? Have you ever been present when someone spoke or acted inappropriately? Have you ever tried to do damage control when something went terribly wrong?
Here in the Gospel of Luke is the story of a disastrous dinner party. Or so it seems. It starts out well enough. A traveling rabbi who is drawing a lot of attention to himself is invited to the home of a prominent leader, and the invitation is accepted. So far so good. But then things fall apart. An uninvited guest arrives, and she spoils the whole atmosphere. She makes a scene. She’s sobbing her eyes out for some reason. Then she approaches the guest of honor and pours a whole jar full of ointment on his feet. No way can anyone ignore what is going on. The wrong sort of person has shown up and disrupted a quiet evening of conversation.
It gets worse. The host is disappointed and enraged. Not only with the gatecrasher, who is a notorious local sinner. But also with his honored guest. This man can’t be a true prophet, Simon tells himself. Prophets know who’s who, and they distance themselves from the wrong sort of people. Yet here is Jesus, allowing this woman to carry on so dramatically. In Simon’s mind, Jesus either doesn’t understand the situation, or worse, he understands the situation and does nothing about it. Either way, Simon is mightily disappointed with his guest.
Then things get really testy with the guest turns on his host. Jesus tells Simon that he hasn’t been much of a host. All the rules for the way you treat an honored guest have been violated. Here is a huge surprise. The respected community leader has insulted his guest. No kiss of greeting. No water for washing up. No oil for anointing. Simon has fallen far short of what is expected of a host.
And here is what really hurts: the gatecrasher, the woman who wasn’t invited and whose presence was an embarrassment, is the one who shows true hospitality. She anoints. She kisses. She goes above and beyond the social norms. Unlike Simon, whom Jesus accuses of gross disrespect.
That’s some party, isn’t it? The Gospel of Luke gives us the story of the worst dinner party ever. But there is more. Within this story is another story. This story within the story is told by Jesus for his host. The story within the story is his way of explaining what is really happening in that very room. One writer I consulted compares it to Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, because there you have a play within the play. And in that case, the play within the play is designed to trap someone who did something very wrong. What about Jesus’ story within the story? What is he up to?
It’s a pretty simple story. One creditor. Two debtors. The two debtors have a lot in common: they’re both debtors, they both owe money to the same person, and neither of them can pay the debt. Yet there is one difference between them, the amount of the debt, which differs by a factor of ten. One owes five hundred. The other owes fifty. The little story has a happy ending: the creditor forgives them both. Then Jesus draws Simon into it by asking him a question. After all is said and done, which of the two will love the creditor more? Simon can’t help himself. He has to say, the one who was forgiven the larger amount.
Simon doesn’t know it, but he’s just fallen into a trap! You see, Jesus’ little story packs a punch. It’s really an enactment of what is happening just then in this dinner party from hell. Here are two people, a notorious local sinner and a civic leader, who seem so different. Yet, like the two debtors in the story, they are both in a world of hurt. One owes a small amount, the other a large amount, but they’re both in debt and they’re both unable to pay it off. Here is the problem: one knows her true condition and the other doesn’t. The woman knows that she is a sinner and that her only hope is forgiveness. Simon, an upright citizen with a strict moral code, doesn’t get it.
Thus the different ways in which the woman and the Pharisee treat Jesus. The one who knows that she’s been forgiven is overflowing with gratitude and love. She is extreme in her behavior because she has received an extreme form of grace. Then there’s Simon. He treats Jesus with disrespect, ignoring the customary courtesies extended toward guests because he has no idea of his true condition. He shows little love because he doesn’t realize that he has a debt he can never repay.
It didn’t have to be like this. When Jesus asks Simon, which of these two forgiven debtors will love the creditor more, he could have said something different. He could have said, "a debt is a debt, no matter how large or small." That is, he could have recognized that his condition, though outwardly quite different from the woman’s, is still one of utter need before God. He doesn’t see it, though. We find something strange going on here. The notorious sinner has an "advantage," since she can’t pretend that she has no need for grace. Respectable sinners can get to thinking that they’re different, that they have no debt before God. "Decent" people like Simon the Pharisee don’t always recognize their true condition. The woman’s tears, which may be both tears of sorrow and tears of gratitude, demonstrate that she gets it.
Was this dinner party a total disaster? It was such a disaster that it gave the townspeople something to talk about for a long time to come. But did something good come out of it? It didn’t seem to work out very well for the host. I imagine that Simon was left muttering something to himself about being insulted by this itinerant preacher who took the side of a notorious gatecrasher. Not a good night for Simon.
But with Jesus and with the uninvited guest, it’s a different story altogether. She gave Jesus a very costly gift, the jar of ointment itself, but even more costly is her extreme devotion. This, however, is not the only costly gift in the story. Jesus gave her a very costly gift. After he’s done dealing with Simon, he turns his attention to her. Two times he speaks directly to her. He blesses her, announcing the gift of forgiveness, salvation, and peace!
And here is where the story reaches out beyond itself toward us. Jesus’ story within the story is a sort of trap that reaches out and grabs Simon. But when Luke’s story reaches out to grab us, it isn’t a trap but an offer. The same blessing — forgiveness, salvation, and peace — is offered to us.
In the woman’s case, it was a costly gift. It cost Jesus something to make that offer. He had to step up and publicly rebuke Simon the upstanding local leader in order to affirm and bless her. Consider, however, the costly gift that has been offered to us. How is it that we are offered forgiveness, salvation, and peace? Situated between this story and our lives is the cross. We are offered the costliest gift of all. When we hear this story in the Gospel of Luke, we are first taken with the costly gift that the woman brings to Jesus. But when we’re done, we’re left marveling at the costly gift that Jesus gives her, and the still costlier gift that he has offered to us. As the hymn puts it, "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."
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"Jesus’ Mission … and Ours" —, January 24, 2010. It’s based on Luke 4:14-21.
This reading in Luke is, I think, the perfect one for us to hear today on the occasion of our church’s annual meeting. It’s the story of Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue where, all his life, he had joined with the rest of the community in worship. Now he’s given the privilege of selecting a passage of Scripture to read aloud, and then saying something about it.
Of all the passages of Scripture that Jesus could have chosen to read aloud on this occasion, this section of the book of Isaiah is the one he zeroed in on. I wonder why. Did he resonate with it in some unusual way? Did he read it, and have the response, "that sounds like what I’m all about"?
Companies have mission statements to guide them in their work. Employees have job descriptions to keep them doing the most important things. Is this passage Jesus’ mission statement? If it is, does it fit?
If this is something like a mission statement for Jesus, then he’s telling everybody that he has come to do something for people who are in trouble. There are four groups of people who are named, or maybe four different ways of describing the same people. They are the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. That’s quite a list, isn’t it? Within each of these four, there are many variations. For instance, the blind. There is more than one kind of blindness. There is the literal kind and then there is another kind that you could call moral blindness.
Jesus has come to change things. He cares about human life as it’s actually lived. You see this in his mission statement, and you see it also in his words and deeds. He changes things for a lot of hurting people. In the words of that passage that he read from the book of Isaiah, with him it’s "the year of the Lord’s favor."
That was then. What is happening now? Is this still Jesus’ mission? If it is, how does he carry it out? If he isn’t walking around as he did in those days in Galilee, how is Jesus able to bring good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind? Short answer: he does it through us!
Here is my key move today: I think that we can take these words that Jesus found in the book of Isaiah as a picture of what he is about, and also as a picture of what we’re about.
Here is my logic: this is what Jesus is all about, this is his mission statement; we are his disciples, enlisted to follow him; therefore, this is our mission too, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
Let’s think some more about this. What do you think are some of the ways in which people today are:
• Poor?
• Captive?
• Blind?
• Oppressed?
How can a church, any church, bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and let the oppressed go free? When you start to unpack each group that Jesus’ reading identifies — the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed — you can’t help but be overwhelmed. Just consider all the people who are in captivity to substances like alcohol or crystal meth. How on earth can a church do anything about something so vast? It seems to be impossible!
Unless, that is, it’s still Jesus on a mission. He says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled," then he starts doing all sorts of things. He brings good news. He lets the oppressed go free. Has he stopped doing these things? Does he just let life go on its own way? Or has he merely changed strategies, now utilizing people like us to get the job done? His strategy today is the church. His mission is unchanged. His method is now to work through people like us.
But, we say, we’re not worthy! We’re too weak, we’re too few in number, we’re too poor, we’re too tired. This mission is … well, it’s "mission impossible"! Where does our adequacy come from? We’re inadequate in ourselves. We are adequate in Jesus, because he has called us to join him on his mission. That’s the reason that Westminster Presbyterian Church is here. We’re here to join Jesus in his mission, to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
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“Doing the Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way” — June 27, 2010.
Luke 9:51-62
“As long as you’re doing the right thing, it doesn’t matter how you do it.” “Just get the job done, whatever it takes.” That’s pretty common advice. Probably the way you’ve heard it most often is “the end justifies the means.” We’ve had an intense national debate on this very matter. In the war on terror, what is permissible? Can you use any and all methods to extract information from prisoners? In this case, does the end justify any means whatsoever?
My topic this morning is not this particular national debate, but Christian life. How important is it to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way? Does God even care about such a mundane thing as our methods? I’ve been intrigued with the way that this question of the way we act comes up in the journey of Jesus and his disciples. I also think that how we do things is really important, and this is what my sermon is about.
There is an major turning point in the Gospel of Luke. It comes when Jesus makes a deliberate turn in the direction of Jerusalem. The days are drawing near for Jesus to be taken up, that is, taken up in glory after first laying down his life. Somehow, Jesus knows that the time is fast approaching when he must lay down his life. From this point in the story onward, Jesus’ impending death is in view. He begins a journey that will take him to Jerusalem. Along the way, there is a lot of conversation and a lot of ministry. In this part of the Gospel of Luke, this “travel narrative,” we find many of Jesus’ most memorable parables.
As they get started on the path toward Jerusalem, they move into Samaritan territory. Jesus sends a couple of people ahead of the group, in order to arrange for food and lodging. The village they enter is most unwelcoming. Perhaps it’s because the group is made up of Jews. Jews and Samaritans had a long history of mutual hostility. It also seems that part of the reason that they’re uncooperative is that the travelers are on their way to Jerusalem, a place that the Samaritans despise. When the two messengers rejoin Jesus and the rest of the group, they report that there will be no welcome for them in this particular village.
James and John are two of Jesus’ closest associates. They, along with Simon Peter, get to be with Jesus when the others are not. James and John are brothers, sons of Zebedee. Jesus gave them a nickname, “sons of thunder.” Who gets a nickname like that? People with a short fuse. True to form, when the bad news comes back that there is no suitable place to stay, they immediately ask Jesus for permission to do something that will put those Samaritans in their place. Their faith is commendable. They believe that, if they command fire to come on that village, it will indeed come. All they lack is Jesus’ go-ahead.
Jesus, however, does not endorse their plan. He rebukes them. No air strike against that Samaritan village will be forthcoming. Instead, Jesus and company will simply find another village and continue on their journey.
James and John are disciples of Jesus. They are among his closest associates. They have embraced Jesus’ message that the kingdom of God is at hand. They are literally on the road with him, heading toward a dramatic climax in Jerusalem. They want everyone to recognize who Jesus is, and respond accordingly. You might say that they share Jesus’ goals.
But when it comes to methods, it’s a different story. They’re still sons of thunder. They reason that the quickest way to deal with Samaritan attitude is with a decisive act of violence. After one village is destroyed, others will think twice before refusing to welcome Jesus and his followers. The Lord’s work is so important that you must do whatever it takes. Any method you need is legitimate in the service of a great cause. So they think.
Jesus, however, seems to have a whole different approach. He doesn’t want them to call down fire from heaven. That’s not the way he does things. We know that Jesus is not afraid of confrontation. We know that he’s willing to challenge people whose thinking is out of line. But his way is not the way of violence. What we see in his journey toward Jerusalem is that his strategy is not to inflict violence on Samaritan villages, but to absorb it. I found a nice quotation on just this point. David Hubbard says, “Leaders don’t inflict pain; they bear pain” (in Max DePree, Leadership Is An Art, 11). In this story, James and John plan to inflict pain. Jesus bears it.
What we find, then, in this story, is that methods are important. Jesus is determined not only to complete his mission but to do it in the right way. He brings in a reign of peace by being peaceable. His method is nonviolent. The end does not justify the means. The Lord’s work is done in the Lord’s way.
So Jesus and company proceed on their trip. Along the way, there are several would-be disciples. One of them, it seems, is interested in Jesus, but he expects to stay in the finest hotels. Jesus tells him bluntly that he has no place to call his own. And, we might add, sometimes a village won’t receive him at all. Then there are others who aren’t quite ready to make the decisive break that Jesus demands.
What we find in these three encounters is that Jesus continues to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. Not only is he nonviolent. He is also clear about the realities of discipleship. He doesn’t make promises of cushy accommodations. He doesn’t tell people, “you can have the best of both worlds.” He doesn’t tell them what they want to hear in order to make a “quick sale.”
I think, then, that you can see the importance of methods in both parts of this passage from the Gospel of Luke. In the first part, Jesus refuses to use force to bring in the kingdom of God. In the second part, he refuses to be dishonest in telling people what it means to be his disciple.
The Christian church has always had to wrestle with the question of methods. Does the end justify the means? Can you do the Lord’s work with the devil’s methods? Sometimes you hear people talk about terrible things that were done many centuries ago in the name of God. And we congratulate ourselves because we don’t do those sorts of things anymore.
But I wonder if we don’t have more subtle ways of lining up with those hotheaded Zebedee brothers. I think that we can fall into the devil’s methods without being so brazen as calling in an air strike on uncooperative people. I wonder if we can be violent even in the way we speak. We can be rude and disrespectful through our words. I also wonder about the danger of being less than completely honest. When Jesus encountered people who wanted to be disciples on their own terms, he didn’t let them get away with it. He didn’t practice any kind of “bait and switch” strategy.
Eugene Peterson makes the connection between the Zebedee brothers and ourselves: “It was no part of their task as disciples to destroy the opposition. Christ followers don’t bash the people who are not on our side, either physically or verbally” (Tell It Slant, 30). Faithful disciples of Jesus follow in his way by embracing his methods. That is, we serve him faithfully by also being nonviolent, sacrificial, demanding, and honest, as he is.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. At this point in the story, disciples such as James and John don’t seem to understand what is going on. They know that something big, some kind of saving action, is up ahead. But they don’t yet grasp that Jesus’ way of saving us is also important. He will save us, not by inflicting harm, but by enduring it. His method is to go to the cross. For him, and for us, the Lord’s work is done in the Lord’s way.
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