A Family Album

Family Albums are not the same as they used to be.  Photographs in vast collections put into plastic pages sat on a bookshelf ready to be pulled down and studied again and again.  We look and laugh at the out of date cloths and hair-styles of previous decades. The filters and the embellishments that we try to paint our past with are all ripped down as photographic evidence is preserved for all to see.

Some of you may still print all your pictures and put them into books but it seems that Facebook has become our new default family album.  We see pictures in almost real time from all over the world where ever our friends and family are and are posting pictures. It’s nice but it doesn’t fulfill the same purpose as a family photo album.  When you look at a photo album you remember.  You remember the person you were, the person you wanted to become and the person you have always been. You see pictures of loved ones that have left this world and with loving pain you say goodbye again and again when we look at a family photo album.  It helps us to remember.

Family photo albums are a good crash course on family history for new members of the family.  When a new spouse joins a family a mandatory trip through the old pictures gives them some context as to what they are getting themselves into.  It is the story of your family. For many families the story starts here [holds up the bible]. The story starts here and is a streaming thread of God’s grace all the way to you and beyond. Many families can trace their family story back to this story.  The good news today is that you don’t have to be a direct biological descendant of anyone in this book to make this a part of your family history.

This is the first addition family album of the family of God. The family of God is all those whom God loves and has invited God in. The family of God is all those whom God loves and has invited God in.  The first part is already taken care of. God loves everybody. The only thing left is for us to invite God into our lives. We know God because God has come to us and revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ who has freed us and rescued us by his life and his sacrifice. Even if you woke up tomorrow dazed and confused not remembering who our earthly family is. This remains your family album. Your name is written in the book of life as one who belongs to God. You will always be remembered, and you will always live on when you are in God’s family.

With that said some are blessed with an earthly family of those related by genetics. Some are blessed with an earthly family related by their common adoption by God as sons and daughters. I didn’t really recognize the blessing of my brothers and sisters in Christ as a kid. There were my parents, my siblings and my cousins and aunts and uncles. That was my family. I appreciated my family most when I was unable to see them. The first significant time I spent away from my family was in Basic training from around Memorial Day to the end of July 1990.I was very aware of the date and how much longer we had until we got to go home. I could not leave I had limited communication with my family. Those 10 weeks were not easy. I did not have the choice to leave.  I volunteered but I was bound by the law to stay and obey. I was in bondage and I missed my freedom. Those 10 weeks passed very slowly.  The same period of time now passes like a whisper. Here and gone without adequately noticing it. Which form of bondage as worse?  The kind I could see or the daily distractions that keep me from fully appreciating what I have?

Moses’ argument with God. – The passage we explored from Exodus (33:12-33) is indicative of this we strain and struggle but God is constant.  God will not conform to us. God will not be controlled by us. Moses goes through this monologue of almost complaint that God has led him into something that he is not ready for.  Moses says “if you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

The Lord replied, “My Presence will go without, and I will give you rest.”

That was true even before all of Moses’ worry. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bring our worries to God, because that is how we get through them and past them.  When we speak our worries to God and God proves to be constant and steadfast we begin to find our freedom from worry. We have many invisible chains that keep us restricted.  We have the ability to grow in Christ to break those invisible chains because we are free from the more obvious chains that hold people back.  We speak the predominant language in the land we live. There is no imminent threat of war coming to our homes. Our daughters are not being sold into slavery.  Adults have the universal right to vote. This is not true everywhere. What would Jesus have us, his followers do about that?

Jesus intent was to set people free (Ref. Luke 4:18) "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free”. When you understand this, the Gospel lesson for today becomes clear. He wanted freedom for everyone even those who were trying to trap him.

Let’s look at intent. It says in v. 15, “Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.” That was the goal. But why?  Just before this passage Jesus two parables that strongly suggest that those who thought they were the favored ones of God have been getting it wrong. The parable of the tenants which we talked about a couple weeks ago and the parable of the wedding banquet where the people came with their own agenda. The Pharisees knew Jesus meant them. Rather than hearing and growing, they decided to lay plans. Why wouldn’t they want to listen to Jesus and change? Because then they would be giving authority and deference to Jesus and that is not the order of things.  They are the ones that people defer to, not some itinerant rabbi.

So they have been hurt and offended and their power is threatened and now their plans are not to go to him and discuss with him but rather they sent their disciples and some political activists to Jesus. They started with complimenting Jesus because though the compliments may be true they serve as a distraction from discovering their true intent.  “We know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.” The truth, in this case is the truth as they understand it from their teachers perspective which has been corrupted by the desire for power and control. They continue, “You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.” This seems to be a back handed compliment. The Pharisees spend a lot of time paying attention to who people are and make decisions about just who is and is not acceptable to associate with.

Then they asked him about taxes and if it is acceptable according to religious law.  You see they don’t even care about the issue they are asking about.  Their intent was born out of fear. They are in an invisible prison of their own making. They are far more concerned about maintaining power and control then they are about matters of paying taxes.

Jesus is not fooled. He sees their intent. He also sees their bondage. Remember Jesus came to set people free.

Give to Caesar what is Caesars and give to God what is God’s.  You choose what you think your loyalties are.  You retain what you think is yours and you give to God what you think belongs to God. Jesus gives us that freedom. It is the things that keep us in bondage that fools us into believing that we have anything outside of God.

So, how is it with you today? What are the invisible chains that keep you in bondage?

Is your work produced by faith? Is you labor prompted by love? Do you endure the difficulties of life because of the hope we have in our Lord Jesus Christ? These are the benefits of being part of the family of God. 

Glen and Gladys Brown 

Making Room

I was out for lunch with my son Julian who is 11. I asked him the classic question you ask kids. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I failed to respond appropriately to his answer. I believe that God has placed in each one of us a desire to be the person that God has designed us to be. We spend our whole lives trying to do just that. But we constantly have to battle the distractions of this world to find what that really is.

So when I asked him what he wanted to be, he said he wanted to be a superhero. As a fearful parent my red flags went up. I asked him what he meant.  He said he wanted to put on a suit and beat up bad guys. As the law abiding citizen that I am I felt duty-bound to tell him that he would indeed be arrested if he went around beating up people and in-fact no one is going to pay him to do that sort of thing.

Do you see the failure?

God has written on his heart to defend the powerless; to lend others his strength; to take action for what is right. It’s just that the world has taught him that to do those things means being a superhero like Captain America (his current favorite).

To make room for god we have to live the story that he has written on our hearts.

Let’s get right into the Gospel lesson for today. We started in verse 32 but if you look a little further back we learn that this happened on the Sabbath, which explains why people waited until it was evening, after sunset, that the people brought the sick and demon possessed to Jesus.  It was contrary to the law to do work on the Sabbath. Carrying someone would be considered work and must not be done on the Sabbath. This was their understanding of the law. But again, if you look a little further back in the passage Jesus was with James and John and Simon and went to Simon and Andrews house because Simon’s mother-in-law was sick and had a fever. Jesus healed her. The fever was gone.

Tell me you who are familiar with the New Testament. Does Jesus ever get in trouble for healing on the Sabbath?  Yes, indeed he does.

So Jesus is breaking the traditional understanding of Sabbath law to heal. Can you see where Jesus is placing his priority? He is saying with his actions that healing this individual is far more important than a regulation concerning rest on the Sabbath.

The town hears about this healing and wants their loved ones healed as well but they don’t dare break the law so they wait until the sun goes down and the Sabbath has come to an end.  They knew that Jesus healed on the Sabbath.  They knew that he broke the law. They also knew that they wanted their loved ones to be healed as well. The law said one thing and their hearts said another.

To make room for God, we have to live the story that he has written on our hearts.

What does scripture say has been written in our hearts?  The law.

Hebrews 10 says that because of the sacrifice that Jesus made, we are made holy. Because of that the Holy Spirit makes the connection and the claim of the prophet Jeremiah (31:33) “I will put my laws on their hearts and I will inscribe them on their minds, their sins and their lawless deeds will remember no longer.

Through Jesus the laws are on our heart and inscribed on our minds. The Law. We don’t want to break the law. It’s written on our hearts but that’s not the only thing written on our hearts.  Every wound, every experience, every temptation contributes to the story written on our hearts and it isn’t all good. Does the writer of Hebrews and the prophet Jeremiah mean that every regulation that is written in scripture will be memorized by God’s people? Of course not.  Is it more likely that God’s spirit will dwell with ours and give us wisdom and insight if we seek it? I think so.

God’s law is written on our hearts we just have to make room, so that we can find it.

Julian has a strong sense of justice written on his heart.  He fights for it. And that gets him in lots of trouble because some very important people in his life failed him early on. He gets confused about what to fight for and how far to go.  Well-meaning people like me forget to listen for the story written on the heart when he says he wants to be a super hero. I responded in fear because I don’t want him to get in trouble and I don’t want him to be unemployed as an adult. My experiences both negative and positive are written on my heart as well.

The people waited until after dark as to not break the law.  Jesus was healing on the Sabbath. Jesus is the bringer of the new covenant, the new agreement between God and people. Jesus is the example.  Jesus shows us that the law is one of compassion and love. The law is not intended to be a burden or a barrier.

I wonder how Jesus felt that day.  He intentionally healed on the Sabbath so show preference for the love of people as the lens through which we follow Gods law. And the people didn’t see it they just saw the healing. The lesson was lost.

Fear is a huge distraction from being able to read what is written by God on our hearts, both our fear and the fear that others place on us, like I did to Julian.

In Matthew 4:1-11 there is the story of the temptation of Jesus. He was out in the wilderness for a good long time and he saw the dangers. He experienced the world’s temptations; he was given every reason to fear and was given every opportunity to seek earthly solutions for those fears. But he didn’t give in to those fears. It is here that I see that I have a lot of growing to do to become more like him. What did Jesus do after this temptation?  He preached. He did what was written in him to do.

The walk with Nkemba and Mbwizu

A walk to the state park with Nkemba and Mbwizu. It was a lovely
autumn day in Michigan. 

There was never any question that Jesus would be able to resist the Adversary. When you have seen something better, there is nothing that can make you forget it and make you stop striving for it. Jesus knew where he was from and knew his mission.

I have always had a picture in my mind of what life should look like. It didn’t make a lot of sense but it was the picture of the ideal for me.  In this ideal life it is fall. The leaves have changed and have not yet fallen and I am living on a horse farm.  That part never made sense to me because I don’t particularly like horses. I don’t mind them but I am certainly not drawn to them. This is just the image that comes to mind when I think about living the ideal life.

One day as I was going through the posts on face book I saw a picture of my family. I was just a baby. In the picture I was sitting on my mom’s lap and my older sister was sitting on my late father’s lap.  It’s a nice picture. It was taken at my grandparents’ house. But then I noticed that behind us on the wall was a painting of a horse farm in the fall. I had forgotten about that paining but it is the exact image that is in my mind of the idyllic life. At my grandparents’ house I experienced unconditional love, generosity, security. It’s no wonder that I associated an image in their home with the life that I wanted.  

After all the healing that Jesus did he went to a place to pray. He retreated for a time. Perhaps he went to remember his mission. Perhaps he needed to refocus after the people failed to understand his priorities.

You can only seek what you have seen.  God gives us glimpses of the kingdom of heaven so that we strive for it. Think of the happiest times.  Think of the times when you spirit is at peace. These are glimpses of the kingdom. We go out of our way to celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas. We exert great effort to make those experiences.  They are good because we recognize in them the story that is written on our heart, the story that God has placed there.

I understand that it is earthly. That’s okay. We have an incarnational faith. Everything on earth can mediate an experience of God. Last week we talked about the bread and the juice and how we could find God in those particular things. We can also find God in all things.

Jesus retreated after healing. But he didn’t stay away. He resolved to go to another town to do what he came to do.

What we have to do is to slow down. We have to retreat. We have to look at our thoughts and assumptions.  We have to look inside and discover where our motivations are coming from.  Are we motivated from a desire to create God’s kingdom on earth or are we reacting in fear.  We had a moment of silence a little earlier.  We are going to have another.  In the silence I invite you ask God to reveal the story that is written on your heart.  We all have the same basic story but what part has God given to you specifically?

This is a lifelong process of discovering your place in the Greater Story. We need to set aside regular times of quiet and solitude so that we can quiet the distractions of those who would impose their fears on us; to see past the immediate and to embrace where God is leading you.

There is great wisdom in this room.  There are many people that can guide you along the path. But you have to discover first, that there is within yourself a story that God has written on your heart.

We retreat not to stay away but to refocus on what God would have us do. 

Dinner Invitation

Matthew 21:33-46
Dinner invitation
We tend to complicate things.  But this is a complex world.  We have words to communicate but words are imperfect. To be able to deeply understand each other requires deep trust and intimacy but that just isn’t possible all the time. Even those to whom we are closest can misinterpret and misunderstand us.
Only God knows your heart. Only God knows you motivation. Only God knows exactly what you need and sometimes we let God use others to be the blessing he intends for us.
A long time ago in another season of life I experienced a radical act of hospitality. It was a simple invitation to dinner. I was throwing darts at a local place where I was introduced to a friend of a friend. I don’t remember his name but I remember he was from the Bahamas. He, like me, was a student at Ferris State University. I never met anyone like him before. He spoke with a thick accent. He was from another place. He didn’t look like me or any of my friends, yet he seemed friendly.
He invited my friend and me to his apartment for dinner.  He lived in married housing on campus. It seemed odd that this older man would want my friend and me to come to his apartment for dinner. If this were a movie we would be screaming at the screen to not go.
We went. He made chicken Souse. Not Chicken “sauce” but Souse. A simple meal of chicken wings boiled with potatoes and carrots and other simple ingredients. It was delicious. We chatted and went back to our dorm.   He didn’t ask anything from us. He offered and provided a meal for which I was inadequately grateful.
I didn’t see his act for the generous one that it was. That is one of those places in life that I could have a “re-do.” I actually have lots of those.
His Chicken Souse wasn’t what I expected. I don’t know what I expected going in to that situation but it wasn’t a simple recipe prepared in generosity.
Today we are going to have a meal that is very simple indeed. Bread and Juice. There is some disagreement about the nature of this meal between groups of Christians –about how God is involved. But let’s talk about what’s in this meal.
[The sun and rain that watered the grain of wheat, the grass and alfalfa that fed the cow that produced the milk that made the butter, the salt from the earth and the sugar from the beat grown in the earth and the human hands that were in the entire process right down to the hands that combined the ingredients and carried them to church today] Psalm 139:7-9
In the scripture Jesus told a parable about a vineyard and tenant farmers. The land owner put a fence around the vineyard. The land owner set aside this piece of land and specified it as a place for the vineyard. The land all around may be no different but this piece of land has now been given a special purpose. This can be compared to God setting aside the Hebrew people to be his people. The parable goes on to say that the landowner sent servants to collect rent and they were all put out or killed including the son of the landowner.
It can be said that this refers to the prophets of God and finally to Jesus prediction of his own death.
Jesus asks the question, “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenant farmers?”
Those listening to Jesus respond in a way that we would expect and in a way that we may respond, “41 They said, “He will totally destroy those wicked farmers and rent the vineyard to other tenant farmers who will give him the fruit when it’s ready.”
And if we don’t read carefully we may think that this is the right answer. We may be so conditioned to the earthly response that we may miss what Jesus actually says. He does not say “You are right.”
He says, “Haven’t you ever read in the scriptures, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes?[a] 43  Therefore, I tell you that God’s kingdom will be taken away from you and will be given to a people who produce its fruit.” Not that he will destroy anybody but that what they have been entrusted with will be given to those who will produce fruit.
I believe that the responsibility for the Kingdom of God on earth has been given to the Christian church. That we are the ones who are expected to produce fruit.
The thing is, in the parable the owner of the vineyard built a fence around it. When Jesus empowered his disciples to go into the world, baptizing all nations, he removed that fence. In effect the vineyard is to cover the whole earth to produce fruit not only in a particular place as in the parable but where ever one finds oneself. He has not called one people to be his. He has called all peoples to be his adopted children.
There is no longer us and them.  The divisions that we understood before are no longer valid. The fence is down and the vineyard is growing!
We can narrowly look at the parable and see that the original tenants are the Israelites and the new tenants are Christians. Or we can widen our view and see that we are both the wicked tenants and the ones who will produce fruit.  How many of us have perfectly incorporated Jesus into our lives and produce the fruit that Jesus expects? None of us.
Not one of us has been perfected in this life.  The good news is that when God looks at us he only sees his beloved Son living in us. And can’t help but love us unconditionally.
So Jesus has invited us to dinner. On the menu are only two things: Bread and juice, common earthly, universal foods. We are going to pray that these common foods will be for us the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We know that God’s glory fills the whole earth. We know that God is everywhere. This is the presence of Christ in everything.  Richard Rohr writes in his daily meditation, “If we deny that the spiritual can enter the material world, then we are in trouble, since we hope to be just that -spiritual and fully material human beings.”
We are invited to this very simple meal with the most radical gift of love and hospitality ever offered in all of human history. God is everywhere but for a few moments we are going to try to recognize God in this meal.
If we can gather, time and again, and recognize God in this meal then we can bring that knowledge out and recognize God in the world.  When the lines dissolve between “God’s here,” and “God’s not here,” we become more Christ like. Because Jesus saw God in places where others did not: in sinners, in outsiders and in enemies.
So, how is it with you today?  Can you see God even in those other things? Fortunately God is patient.  God is forgiving. And God invites us to have a simple meal of bread and juice with him so that we can have a glimpse and a foretaste of the banquet that we will have in the kingdom of God.