“Make the Most of the Time”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 15, August 16, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
Listen to the sermon:
Listen to the entire worship service:
Last Sunday we had the beginning of this passage, with Jesus saying “I am the Bread of Life” and my sermon explored what the Bread of Life might mean. I won’t say a lot more just on that, so I offer if you weren’t here, the sermons are on our church website, facebook page, on my blog (and here is a link to that sermon), on my soundcloud, and they are also printed out and available on the table in the entryway. If you weren’t here, or if you want to revisit it, I suggest that you do so. Partly because in the middle of the sermon I asked from you who were here for some of your images of bread. Things that you think of when you hear the word “bread”. So feel free to revisit that sermon.
But I do want to talk a bit more about Jesus as the Bread of Life. Partly because today’s Gospel reading is, well, there is something creepy and uncomfortable about “eat my body” and “eat me” and “drink my blood”. Eat my flesh. It’s a very uncomfortable passage to hear. At least it is for me. I don’t know if you reacted that way, but I get a kind of icky feeling reading it.
But as I mentioned last week, Jesus isn’t saying that he is literally a loaf of bread. Nor is Jesus asking us to cannibalize his body. This is all metaphor. It’s all symbolic. Kind of bloody metaphors, maybe not the ones we would use today, but he is using bread as something that everyone would understand and know. Bread as the source of life. And so Jesus is saying he is the course of life, and that the Bread of Life here is also The Way of Jesus. The Bread of Life is a way of life. To eat the bread of life is to participate in Jesus’ Way. To say that I am eating the body of Jesus, or eating the Bread of Jesus, is to say that I am following in his ways, and doing what Jesus would like us to do. It is to follow his path, which is living in love and compassion. It is the way that says that the hungry deserve to be fed, so let us feed them. It is the Way that says the sick deserve to be visited and to have access to healthcare. So let’s make sure that no one goes without access to healthcare. It is a Way that says workers deserve a living wage. That we all need forgiveness. That we all need to forgive. It is the Way that says all people deserve dignity, and deserve to have their dignity recognized. It is the Way that hangs out with the wrong people and goes to the wrong places, because that’s where God’s people are. It is to go wherever God’s people are, to connect with God’s people and thus to God. To connect with all of God’s realm, and not just the part of the world that is comfortable or familiar to us.
Following Jesus is to partake of the Bread of Life. And to partake in the Bread of Life is to follow Jesus, which is the Way to eternal life. But note that eternal life is not something that God dangles in front of us like a carrot in front of a mule, with promise of some reward at the very end. That’s an abusive kind of god. Eternal life is the journey itself. It is the following itself. To follow Jesus is the eternal life. The fullness of life. To live fully as Jesus would have us live. To be aligned with Jesus, to be aligned with God, is to live in the eternal now, already. It is to accept the eternal life that we already have.
There is the bread that we eat in Communion, that is an actual loaf of bread that we eat and consume symbolically reminding us that we are the Body of Christ, reminding us of our connection to God, reminding us that it is God who feeds us and who provides. I’ve mentioned before, that in all our technological cleverness, humanity cannot make anything grow. We can help the conditions, but we can’t make anything grow.
THere is also the symbolic Bread of Life that is Jesus’ Way. It is the sum total of Jesus’ teachings, his examples of living, his commands -- and there are only two of them: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The Bread of Life is the sum total of all of Jesus’ teachings, his path of love and mercy, his Way of connecting with people, especially the outcast and the marginalized.
We are talking this summer about connection, as part of our discipleship plan that we’re talking about over the next year of Connect → Grow → Love. We are in the period of talking about connection. The BRead of Life is the path of relation with other people. To connect with other of God’s people. Not just to invite them to church, though that is a good thing to do, but really inviting people to understand and know their own right to dignity. To invite them into forgiveness. To invite them into grace. To invite them into the eternal life they already have, but which they maybe don’t know they have. That’s the connection we’re trying to make with people. The message we are trying to spread in our neighborhood, and in Eau Claire, and which the church spreads around the whole world, is to invite them into the eternal life they already have but maybe don’t know that they have. Maybe have not heard about yet, or just aren’t sure. We could also say, taking the words from Ephesians, to make the most of their time.
I like that first sentence in Ephesians that we read: “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” Making the most of the time.
I think Jesus would say that the way to make the most of the time is to follow the Way he showed us. That is the way of eternal life. Making the most of the time. Another way that this letter could have been phrased is to say, “Because there is so much evil, only do good.” Let your good be the prophetic message against the evil in the world. Because evil does a good enough job on its own. It doesn’t need our help. It seems to do just fine. Imagine doing good. Don’t be tempted by evil’s agenda of immediate gains, or power, or wealth, or whatever sparkly thing that evil is putting in front of you that we all find so tempting, but make the most of the time by eating only from the Bread of Life.
Maybe another way to say that is to ask the question, “What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?” What kind of effect do you want to have in the world? How do you want to be remembered?
The other side of the coin of eternal life is how you live on in others’ memories. We always live on with God, but how do we live on in other people’s memories? What kind of relationships did you have? How did you connect with other people? Did you make a positive difference in the world? Go out and make the world a more loving world. Let that be the use of your time: to make the world a more loving world. Connect with people. Build relationships. Live the Way of the Bread of Life making the most of the time.
Last week at the end of the sermon I challenged you all to connect with someone new, and I hope that you all did. I suggested to go meet a neighbor you haven’t met yet. Or go find out someone new that is around you. Make some kind of connection with someone during the week. And I hope that you did.
I offered that challenge, and I’ve offered a few others this year, not because I enjoy giving commands or because I like hearing my own voice telling people what to do. I offer them because these are practices and exercises to build your faith. These are exercises and practices that will make you a better disciple. That will make us all better disciples, better followers of Jesus, to do some of these things. So I hope that you connected with someone this last week that you have not met before. I did.
I’ve told you many times before that I will not ask you to do something that I am not willing to do. So I connected with some new people. Doing that is important. So I challenge you to connect with someone new this week. I challenge you to do it again. As I mentioned earlier in today’s service, we’ll be going out to hang door hanger invitations after worship to the homes in our neighborhood. That’s one way to connect, because you might meet or encounter someone outside. But it is also a way to extend an invitation. Invite someone to the songs and s’mores on Wednesday night. That’s a good way for all of us to connect with new people: if everyone who is planning to come that also brings someone new with you, there will be a bunch of people around the circle that we don’t know. That will give you all a chance to connect with someone new, to hear their story, to talk with them, to build some relationships.
It is a good thing to connect with others. It is the vocation of the church, to spread the Good News, and inviting people in to God’s fellowship. To invite them in to feed and be nourished on the Bread of Life.
Make the most of the time connecting with the people around you.
Let us pray: Life-giving God, Bread of Life, as we are in process of connecting with others, of expanding our community, of being the Bread of Life for others and making the most of the time, give us your Spirit of hope and love to keep moving forward, to keep growing in faith, and growing in our discipleship. Give us your Spirit of courage to be invitational. To connect with the stranger. Give us your Spirit of care to what to enlarge this fellowship of friendship and love that is Plymouth UCC, so that more and more people will know your love and know your grace. Amen.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
More hinky balderdash from WI capitol regarding education
For those who thought nothing could be worse than defunding public schools to send our tax money to for-profit, private, and religious schools... or than cutting the UW system by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past five years... or the demonization of teachers and professors that we have had the last five years (though apparently every teacher in those voucher schools is of an entirely different class, one of virtue and excellent pedagogy and selfless devotion to the education of our children, and holds none of the characteristics of the public school teacher/demon class)...
now the Republicans in the state legislature have formed a committee in secret, that at this time plans to meet in secret, to discuss the merger of the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System and the UW two-year college system. And it is being done not only without inviting any Democrats to the discussion, but not even informing or inviting the Democrats who are on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. Defund, Destabalize, Demoralize, Demonize, and Destroy, a five-pronged attack on education that is being entirely too effective, from K-12 through our universities and colleges.
Rep. Dana Wachs (D-91st District) is the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, and has sent this letter and press release showing his dismay that he and his colleagues were neither informed nor invited, and his dismay that this group wants to meet behind closed doors to discuss something so monumental as a potential merger.
His press release.
His letter to Rep. Terry Katsma.
For more of a sense of what is happening within the two-year colleges (and this applies as well to the entire system), here is a good read from Kelly Wilz, a professor at UW-Marshfield, about the struggles of being a professor in the current climate and the damage being done.
It is insane. Seriously, contact your legislators, and ask them to stop this nonsense.
now the Republicans in the state legislature have formed a committee in secret, that at this time plans to meet in secret, to discuss the merger of the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System and the UW two-year college system. And it is being done not only without inviting any Democrats to the discussion, but not even informing or inviting the Democrats who are on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. Defund, Destabalize, Demoralize, Demonize, and Destroy, a five-pronged attack on education that is being entirely too effective, from K-12 through our universities and colleges.
Rep. Dana Wachs (D-91st District) is the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, and has sent this letter and press release showing his dismay that he and his colleagues were neither informed nor invited, and his dismay that this group wants to meet behind closed doors to discuss something so monumental as a potential merger.
His press release.
His letter to Rep. Terry Katsma.
For more of a sense of what is happening within the two-year colleges (and this applies as well to the entire system), here is a good read from Kelly Wilz, a professor at UW-Marshfield, about the struggles of being a professor in the current climate and the damage being done.
It is insane. Seriously, contact your legislators, and ask them to stop this nonsense.
Friday, August 14, 2015
"Jesus is the Bread of Life, In Many Varieties" sermon for 8/9/2015
“Jesus is the Bread of Life, In Many Varieties”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 14, August 9, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: John 6:35, 41-51
“I am the bread of life.”
Well, that’s not confusing, right?
I mean, we’re hip. We know what’s going on. We understand all things that Jesus says. So we can just let that pass and move on to something a little more digestible, like, worrying about What is the minimum skirt length that Jesus approves of? or, What kind of people does Jesus want us to make wedding cakes for? or ask the question asked here, How can he say that he came down from heaven?
But, no, Jesus is rarely specific.
He likes to toss out these teaser phrases like, “I am the bread of life.”
I can imagine the crowd around Jesus, and I’m sure this included his disciples as well, sitting there listening to him, that when he says “I am the bread of life” they are probably greeting him with vacant non-comprehending stares and maybe motioning like, “we’re gonna need a little more than that, Jesus.”
“That doesn’t really help us, sir. Say a little bit more.”
And so he says a little bit more. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”
And if the people were me, I’d still be sitting there, going, “Okay, um... go on….little bit more…”
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Well, that clears it up. Yeah.
Not specific, not very clear. He’s working in metaphors here. He is not saying that he is literally a loaf of bread. But there is a beauty in Jesus’ teaching in that so much is open-ended. He uses these metaphors. Phrases and symbols that people would recognize and would understand. Everyone is eating bread. We all have experience with eating bread.
And I think he knows that people would prefer specifics: a list of rules, a list of dos and don’ts, or a flowchart, something to spell out exactly what he wants from us and what he means. But because Jesus knows that’s what we want, he intentionally refuses to give it to us. Because it would make it too easy. He is not offering an easier path of faith, but looking for an incarnational embodied life of faith. A lived faith from people.
So he doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how to do things. He offers a lot of “in general” kinds of things: “What I want from you is to live with justice,” but he doesn’t say specifically what that has to be. He leaves it up to us. “What I want from you is for you to love your neighbor; what I want from you is to take care of one another, especially the poor and powerless, and those who are hurting and suffering. But how you do that, well, that’s going to be up to you. I can’t tell you how to do that,” -- and here I can envision saying this -- “I don’t want to tell you exactly how to do these things because then you’ll just do the minimum and say that’s enough. You’ll have a checklist, you’ll mark your things off, and then think you’re good to go.” But Jesus wants us to be always more compassionate, more loving, more merciful. What he is saying is, “What I want is for you to follow me. Do what I’m doing. I want you to follow me, and I can’t tell you how to do that. I can show you how to do that, model it for you.”
He says, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
He is the Bread of Life, and now he is talking about flesh. Getting a little creepy, but he’s on a symbolic move about his body. His body. The body that he later allowed others to betray, and then crucify, and then to the shock and surprise of many, the body then which he will raise from the dead and lift up. That’s the act of a loving God, to say, “Here is my body.”
“I am the bread of life. The Bread of Life is incarnate in my body.”
Now, earlier in John’s Gospel, two chapters before this one, Jesus meets a woman at a well in Samaria and tells her that he is the living water.
He says elsewhere in John’s Gospel, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He says, “I am the Light of the World. I am the true vine. I am the Good Shepherd.”
Logically, of course, he cannot be bread, water, a vine, and light, all at the same time. So be not too literal about this. He’s talking symbolically.
“I am the Bread of Life. I am the source of life. I am that which is more necessary for life. I am the one who gives life. I am the Bread of Life.”
Before we went into our Centering Song, I asked you to think of whatever images come to you when you think of bread. I give you a chance to participate. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, but if you’d like to, just say it out loud, What comes to you when you think of bread?
[Some of the things that came out: Communion. Sandwiches. Special meals. Bread found in most cultures around the world, and some very different forms of bread, like pita and flatbreads, big fluffy breads, dense breads… Sharing at home when company came and one didn’t have much to share, one usually had bread and butter to give them. Comfort food. Is there any better smell than a loaf of bread coming out of the oven?]
I thought of a few: food. nourishment. something to share with others. something essential for life. sandwiches. A way to take things that grow out of the earth and put them in a new form that we can digest and eat to give us energy or life. Family suppers. Toast. Sopping up gravy. Trenchers. Hard work. My Aunt Doris, who is an amazing bread baker, and I think of her with her gnarled and arthritic fingers, kneading that bread dough over and over, even in the pain, to make bread for the family. My mom’s cinnamon rolls, that she made from some bread recipe that was only in her head. No one can make cinnamon rolls like she did out of that bread recipe. So bread is all of that.
See how loaded that image is? That’s the Bread of Life! It contains all those images and more about being fed, about feeding others. The varieties of bread. Maybe we all even picture Jesus differently, just as we have different kinds of breads that are part of our families or our culture.
I think Jesus is not saying he’s a loaf of bread, but saying that just as food is necessary to keep our bodies alive, Jesus is the source of life necessary to keep our spirits and souls going. Jesus provides for that part of our life that connects us with God.
Lynn hinted at this when she responded with her words about having bread on hand for company, I’ve been thinking about hospitality. I think especially in the midwest, and when I lived in Hawaii I saw this (though not so much when I lived in New York), what is one of the first things you ask when people come into your home? You ask, “Did you eat?” Or “djeet?” or “djeetyet?” Did you eat yet? In some Asian countries, the question is, “Have you had rice today?” It’s that hospitality that bread is so important. “Can I get you something to eat?” Whether it is just a piece of bread and butter, or sandwich, pie, cake, or even a meal. I think of my Aunt Tootie, and other relatives, if I’d show up unexpectedly there was also the apology of, “Oh, I don’t have a whole lot in my fridge” and then half an hour later you have a banquet that could feed six or seven people, and I’m like, “It’s just me, Aunt Tootie, you didn’t need to cook all that.” But that’s the bread of life.
The Bread of Life is that which nourishes us, connects us, that brings us together. So Jesus is saying, “I am the Bread of Life. I am what matters. I am the source of all being, the source of all life. I contain all life.”
That’s a pretty big statement to say all that. He is also saying, then, “So don’t seek the food that is not from God. I am the food that is good for you. Don’t seek the food that is not good for you, even if it looks a lot more attractive or sparkles more. It’s not from God.”
He doesn’t say, “I am come to be the arbiter of rules, but I am come to be the source of life. The container of life.”
He is the one who holds our life in his hands.
I think also of something I posted about on Facebook last Saturday (*see below for the post I made). Floyd died Saturday morning, and I’d been with him Friday afternoon and night. Then Saturday morning got the call from Pat and talked to her about it. Then I left to go see a play in the Twin Cities called “Stage Kiss.” Very funny. Go see it. But it is also a beautiful meditation on love. Looking at the real love between two people versus the artificial love that is created just because you work with someone, that infatuation kind of love that is not a solid. A beautiful meditation on love and life. When I got home that night, since it was the first day of the month, I was looking ahead to the rest of August and thinking of what I am doing this month, and I realized that this month I will experience all of the life cycles that we celebrate or commemorate in our life. FLoyd had died, so there was going to be a funeral. That’s the end of life. At the end of August, Michael Green and his wife will be here to have their new baby baptized. I had a wedding yesterday, so I was looking forward to that milestone of life, the joining of two people who are in love. And there was an encounter with someone whose marriage is falling apart. So that’s the other side of that coin: two coming together, and two that are growing apart. And I was thinking of those in our homeless congregation who have their own struggles, their own joys.
With all of this, I was thinking about how Jesus is present and involved in all of this. Jesus is present in all of life. Not just the good times. Jesus is present in all of life. Jesus is the holder of all of life. God coming to us in flesh to say, “I know that your life is hard. I know that it’s messy. Even as it has times of happiness and joy, I know and I understand that life is hard and difficult and painful.”
And God says, “So I am here with you. I come here to be with you because I know that life is hard and messy, and I’m sharing this experience with you.”
That’s a God that loves us. To come to us, to be present with us, to say, “I’m sharing this experience with you, and I am sustaining you with the Bread of Life, which is my body given for you, so that when you are in need it is there, and also so that when your neighbors are in need you can be my presence for them. You can be the Bread of Life for them.”
That is part of our church growth strategy as well. To invite people in to experience this Bread of Life. To experience this fellowship of love. In a harsh and sometimes unforgiving world, it’s the invitation -- the Christian invitation -- into the Body of Christ and into the Bread of Life that can be so healing. It can be the antidote to all the blehhhh that is out there. All that stuff we hear on the news and see on TV. The invitation into the Bread of Life is the antidote to that.
We are talking about Connection as part of the series Connect → Grow → Love that we’re doing over the next year. To connect with folks. To be the Bread of Life for other people. To invite them in. I’ve been out connecting with people, sharing the Bread of Life, being the church to them and building relationships. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s really all about, is to build relationships with people. To connect with God’s people.
So I challenge you this week to connect with someone new. Connect with someone new. Connect with someone you don’t know. Maybe a neighbor has moved in, or a neighbor that you’ve lived by for years but never met. Go out and connect with someone. Meet someone new and build community. You don’t even have to invite them to church, but you can. It’s always nice. Especially to invite them to something safe like singing around the campfire on August 19 at 6:30 pm. Connect with someone new.
I’ve been meeting a bunch of new people over the last couple weeks, and have extended invitations to 5 or 6 of them. Invited them into various things, whether church or a coffee to talk some more. I’ve been building relationships. The couple that I married yesterday and their family, as well, I connected with them. Built that relationship and I’ve invited them to join us. And next Sunday after worship, as I mentioned earlier, we’ll be distributing the door hangers that we made for the Songs and S’mores night. That’s another way to extend an invitation. So I invite you all to meet someone new this week, and if you can help do door hangers after worship, join us to spread the Bread of Life by sharing these invitations to our neighborhood to say “Please come and be with us.” Be the Bread of Life by being invitational.
I hope that isn’t too much of a challenge for one week, but I think connecting with one person ought not to be too difficult. Meet someone new, and let them know who you are, find out who they are. Share stories with them. And the more that we get to know each other, the more our community comes together as well. We can come together around the Bread of Life who is Jesus.
Let us pray: Holy Jesus, you are the Bread of Life for all the world. We pray that you continue to be the Bread for us, to sustain and nourish us, so we may be bread for our neighbors, connecting them to us and through us connecting them to you, the source of all life. Amen.
* here is the post to Facebook I mentioned. Unfortunately, facebook appears to have no way to link to a specific post, which lack of ability I find annoying, but circumvent by copying the thing here:
I posted earlier today when I was at the Guthrie theater about "a chance to enrich the soul with some good theater." I'm feeling very enriched. The play ("Stage Kiss") was really funny. The first act was basically a farce, and the second act was a surprising twist of the farce that turned into a beautiful message about the power of love. And as I sit here late at night, after a long week of the ups and downs of life, I'm looking to the rest of August and feeling the immensity of God's love and presence. I received a spirit-lifting meditation on love in the play today, and I look toward a month with a funeral, a wedding, and a baptism, and then the next month I get to be reunited with the love of my life. This month will see three of the major events of life, in all of which God is present - in death, the love that heals and comforts, from God and from a wife's dedication to her sick and dying spouse, and the reminder that not even death can separate us from God's love; the love of a couple to turn that love into the covenant of marriage; and the baptismal ritual that remembers and affirms God's love for all his/her/its sons and daughters. I also had the privilege tonight of being at the rehearsal of two incredibly talented young adults who are doing a recital tomorrow - God present in artistic expression. I'll spend time with some of our homeless and hurting brothers and sisters, and have opportunity to join the struggle of those who simply want a living wage and a path to the dignity of the exodus out of financial anxiety. Being a minister is a unique privilege of being allowed to be present and to be a witness to the fullness of human experience: the joys and sorrow, the hopes and the dashed hopes, the pains and the celebrations. For whatever it's worth, that is where my heart is tonight, and it feels good.
Sermon, Year B, Proper 14, August 9, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: John 6:35, 41-51
“I am the bread of life.”
Well, that’s not confusing, right?
I mean, we’re hip. We know what’s going on. We understand all things that Jesus says. So we can just let that pass and move on to something a little more digestible, like, worrying about What is the minimum skirt length that Jesus approves of? or, What kind of people does Jesus want us to make wedding cakes for? or ask the question asked here, How can he say that he came down from heaven?
But, no, Jesus is rarely specific.
He likes to toss out these teaser phrases like, “I am the bread of life.”
I can imagine the crowd around Jesus, and I’m sure this included his disciples as well, sitting there listening to him, that when he says “I am the bread of life” they are probably greeting him with vacant non-comprehending stares and maybe motioning like, “we’re gonna need a little more than that, Jesus.”
“That doesn’t really help us, sir. Say a little bit more.”
And so he says a little bit more. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”
And if the people were me, I’d still be sitting there, going, “Okay, um... go on….little bit more…”
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Well, that clears it up. Yeah.
Not specific, not very clear. He’s working in metaphors here. He is not saying that he is literally a loaf of bread. But there is a beauty in Jesus’ teaching in that so much is open-ended. He uses these metaphors. Phrases and symbols that people would recognize and would understand. Everyone is eating bread. We all have experience with eating bread.
And I think he knows that people would prefer specifics: a list of rules, a list of dos and don’ts, or a flowchart, something to spell out exactly what he wants from us and what he means. But because Jesus knows that’s what we want, he intentionally refuses to give it to us. Because it would make it too easy. He is not offering an easier path of faith, but looking for an incarnational embodied life of faith. A lived faith from people.
So he doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how to do things. He offers a lot of “in general” kinds of things: “What I want from you is to live with justice,” but he doesn’t say specifically what that has to be. He leaves it up to us. “What I want from you is for you to love your neighbor; what I want from you is to take care of one another, especially the poor and powerless, and those who are hurting and suffering. But how you do that, well, that’s going to be up to you. I can’t tell you how to do that,” -- and here I can envision saying this -- “I don’t want to tell you exactly how to do these things because then you’ll just do the minimum and say that’s enough. You’ll have a checklist, you’ll mark your things off, and then think you’re good to go.” But Jesus wants us to be always more compassionate, more loving, more merciful. What he is saying is, “What I want is for you to follow me. Do what I’m doing. I want you to follow me, and I can’t tell you how to do that. I can show you how to do that, model it for you.”
He says, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
He is the Bread of Life, and now he is talking about flesh. Getting a little creepy, but he’s on a symbolic move about his body. His body. The body that he later allowed others to betray, and then crucify, and then to the shock and surprise of many, the body then which he will raise from the dead and lift up. That’s the act of a loving God, to say, “Here is my body.”
“I am the bread of life. The Bread of Life is incarnate in my body.”
Now, earlier in John’s Gospel, two chapters before this one, Jesus meets a woman at a well in Samaria and tells her that he is the living water.
He says elsewhere in John’s Gospel, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He says, “I am the Light of the World. I am the true vine. I am the Good Shepherd.”
Logically, of course, he cannot be bread, water, a vine, and light, all at the same time. So be not too literal about this. He’s talking symbolically.
“I am the Bread of Life. I am the source of life. I am that which is more necessary for life. I am the one who gives life. I am the Bread of Life.”
Before we went into our Centering Song, I asked you to think of whatever images come to you when you think of bread. I give you a chance to participate. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, but if you’d like to, just say it out loud, What comes to you when you think of bread?
[Some of the things that came out: Communion. Sandwiches. Special meals. Bread found in most cultures around the world, and some very different forms of bread, like pita and flatbreads, big fluffy breads, dense breads… Sharing at home when company came and one didn’t have much to share, one usually had bread and butter to give them. Comfort food. Is there any better smell than a loaf of bread coming out of the oven?]
I thought of a few: food. nourishment. something to share with others. something essential for life. sandwiches. A way to take things that grow out of the earth and put them in a new form that we can digest and eat to give us energy or life. Family suppers. Toast. Sopping up gravy. Trenchers. Hard work. My Aunt Doris, who is an amazing bread baker, and I think of her with her gnarled and arthritic fingers, kneading that bread dough over and over, even in the pain, to make bread for the family. My mom’s cinnamon rolls, that she made from some bread recipe that was only in her head. No one can make cinnamon rolls like she did out of that bread recipe. So bread is all of that.
See how loaded that image is? That’s the Bread of Life! It contains all those images and more about being fed, about feeding others. The varieties of bread. Maybe we all even picture Jesus differently, just as we have different kinds of breads that are part of our families or our culture.
I think Jesus is not saying he’s a loaf of bread, but saying that just as food is necessary to keep our bodies alive, Jesus is the source of life necessary to keep our spirits and souls going. Jesus provides for that part of our life that connects us with God.
Lynn hinted at this when she responded with her words about having bread on hand for company, I’ve been thinking about hospitality. I think especially in the midwest, and when I lived in Hawaii I saw this (though not so much when I lived in New York), what is one of the first things you ask when people come into your home? You ask, “Did you eat?” Or “djeet?” or “djeetyet?” Did you eat yet? In some Asian countries, the question is, “Have you had rice today?” It’s that hospitality that bread is so important. “Can I get you something to eat?” Whether it is just a piece of bread and butter, or sandwich, pie, cake, or even a meal. I think of my Aunt Tootie, and other relatives, if I’d show up unexpectedly there was also the apology of, “Oh, I don’t have a whole lot in my fridge” and then half an hour later you have a banquet that could feed six or seven people, and I’m like, “It’s just me, Aunt Tootie, you didn’t need to cook all that.” But that’s the bread of life.
The Bread of Life is that which nourishes us, connects us, that brings us together. So Jesus is saying, “I am the Bread of Life. I am what matters. I am the source of all being, the source of all life. I contain all life.”
That’s a pretty big statement to say all that. He is also saying, then, “So don’t seek the food that is not from God. I am the food that is good for you. Don’t seek the food that is not good for you, even if it looks a lot more attractive or sparkles more. It’s not from God.”
He doesn’t say, “I am come to be the arbiter of rules, but I am come to be the source of life. The container of life.”
He is the one who holds our life in his hands.
I think also of something I posted about on Facebook last Saturday (*see below for the post I made). Floyd died Saturday morning, and I’d been with him Friday afternoon and night. Then Saturday morning got the call from Pat and talked to her about it. Then I left to go see a play in the Twin Cities called “Stage Kiss.” Very funny. Go see it. But it is also a beautiful meditation on love. Looking at the real love between two people versus the artificial love that is created just because you work with someone, that infatuation kind of love that is not a solid. A beautiful meditation on love and life. When I got home that night, since it was the first day of the month, I was looking ahead to the rest of August and thinking of what I am doing this month, and I realized that this month I will experience all of the life cycles that we celebrate or commemorate in our life. FLoyd had died, so there was going to be a funeral. That’s the end of life. At the end of August, Michael Green and his wife will be here to have their new baby baptized. I had a wedding yesterday, so I was looking forward to that milestone of life, the joining of two people who are in love. And there was an encounter with someone whose marriage is falling apart. So that’s the other side of that coin: two coming together, and two that are growing apart. And I was thinking of those in our homeless congregation who have their own struggles, their own joys.
With all of this, I was thinking about how Jesus is present and involved in all of this. Jesus is present in all of life. Not just the good times. Jesus is present in all of life. Jesus is the holder of all of life. God coming to us in flesh to say, “I know that your life is hard. I know that it’s messy. Even as it has times of happiness and joy, I know and I understand that life is hard and difficult and painful.”
And God says, “So I am here with you. I come here to be with you because I know that life is hard and messy, and I’m sharing this experience with you.”
That’s a God that loves us. To come to us, to be present with us, to say, “I’m sharing this experience with you, and I am sustaining you with the Bread of Life, which is my body given for you, so that when you are in need it is there, and also so that when your neighbors are in need you can be my presence for them. You can be the Bread of Life for them.”
That is part of our church growth strategy as well. To invite people in to experience this Bread of Life. To experience this fellowship of love. In a harsh and sometimes unforgiving world, it’s the invitation -- the Christian invitation -- into the Body of Christ and into the Bread of Life that can be so healing. It can be the antidote to all the blehhhh that is out there. All that stuff we hear on the news and see on TV. The invitation into the Bread of Life is the antidote to that.
We are talking about Connection as part of the series Connect → Grow → Love that we’re doing over the next year. To connect with folks. To be the Bread of Life for other people. To invite them in. I’ve been out connecting with people, sharing the Bread of Life, being the church to them and building relationships. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s really all about, is to build relationships with people. To connect with God’s people.
So I challenge you this week to connect with someone new. Connect with someone new. Connect with someone you don’t know. Maybe a neighbor has moved in, or a neighbor that you’ve lived by for years but never met. Go out and connect with someone. Meet someone new and build community. You don’t even have to invite them to church, but you can. It’s always nice. Especially to invite them to something safe like singing around the campfire on August 19 at 6:30 pm. Connect with someone new.
I’ve been meeting a bunch of new people over the last couple weeks, and have extended invitations to 5 or 6 of them. Invited them into various things, whether church or a coffee to talk some more. I’ve been building relationships. The couple that I married yesterday and their family, as well, I connected with them. Built that relationship and I’ve invited them to join us. And next Sunday after worship, as I mentioned earlier, we’ll be distributing the door hangers that we made for the Songs and S’mores night. That’s another way to extend an invitation. So I invite you all to meet someone new this week, and if you can help do door hangers after worship, join us to spread the Bread of Life by sharing these invitations to our neighborhood to say “Please come and be with us.” Be the Bread of Life by being invitational.
I hope that isn’t too much of a challenge for one week, but I think connecting with one person ought not to be too difficult. Meet someone new, and let them know who you are, find out who they are. Share stories with them. And the more that we get to know each other, the more our community comes together as well. We can come together around the Bread of Life who is Jesus.
Let us pray: Holy Jesus, you are the Bread of Life for all the world. We pray that you continue to be the Bread for us, to sustain and nourish us, so we may be bread for our neighbors, connecting them to us and through us connecting them to you, the source of all life. Amen.
* here is the post to Facebook I mentioned. Unfortunately, facebook appears to have no way to link to a specific post, which lack of ability I find annoying, but circumvent by copying the thing here:
I posted earlier today when I was at the Guthrie theater about "a chance to enrich the soul with some good theater." I'm feeling very enriched. The play ("Stage Kiss") was really funny. The first act was basically a farce, and the second act was a surprising twist of the farce that turned into a beautiful message about the power of love. And as I sit here late at night, after a long week of the ups and downs of life, I'm looking to the rest of August and feeling the immensity of God's love and presence. I received a spirit-lifting meditation on love in the play today, and I look toward a month with a funeral, a wedding, and a baptism, and then the next month I get to be reunited with the love of my life. This month will see three of the major events of life, in all of which God is present - in death, the love that heals and comforts, from God and from a wife's dedication to her sick and dying spouse, and the reminder that not even death can separate us from God's love; the love of a couple to turn that love into the covenant of marriage; and the baptismal ritual that remembers and affirms God's love for all his/her/its sons and daughters. I also had the privilege tonight of being at the rehearsal of two incredibly talented young adults who are doing a recital tomorrow - God present in artistic expression. I'll spend time with some of our homeless and hurting brothers and sisters, and have opportunity to join the struggle of those who simply want a living wage and a path to the dignity of the exodus out of financial anxiety. Being a minister is a unique privilege of being allowed to be present and to be a witness to the fullness of human experience: the joys and sorrow, the hopes and the dashed hopes, the pains and the celebrations. For whatever it's worth, that is where my heart is tonight, and it feels good.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Choices, Part 2 - 8/2/2015 a play in place of the sermon
A play on the story of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan that we began on July 26.
No text on this one, though eventually I will publish the play elsewhere.
No text on this one, though eventually I will publish the play elsewhere.
Written by Carole Spenser and Rev. David Huber (that's me!) and performed by Carole, Brenda Lochter, and me.
Choices - sermon 7/26/2015 David and Bathsheba
“Choices”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 12, July 26, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and John 6:1-21
So we go from a soap opera story, David and Bathsheba and Uriah…. a story very much like a soap opera to the story of Jesus, that is, like, totally the opposite. Two very different kind of story.
David is selfish, thinking only of himself, and like pulling on a loose thread on a sweater, David begins a process of unravelling that leaves a wake of personal destruction behind him. People’s lives twisted and deformed, so much spent yarn left in a useless pile on the floor.
Everything was fine, David! And here I’m talking about King David, though I have said that line to myself on occasion… everything was fine, David, but you had to go and think only of yourself and your wants, and as the king, you have the authority to really overstretch your boundaries before suffering any consequences. Your power, King David, protects you from the harm that you cause.
What a jerk. And that isn’t even a strong enough word. He caused the death of someone, which goes way beyond being a jerk. It’s not like he stole a Twinkie. This is a deplorable act.
And yet David is also considered the greatest of all the Israelite kings. Regarded as such through history, and within the scriptural texts. More pages of the Old Testament are devoted to telling his story than anyone else’s, other than perhaps Moses. David is considered so great of a king, that all the later prophecies and hopes of a coming messiah demanded that the messiah be born from David’s lineage. The messiah must be a descendant of David.
But his life was so messed up. He made a lot of bad decisions in his life. He also made some good ones, which is why he’s celebrated as a good king. But he just couldn’t get it together. The Bible is not shy about pointing out David’s many failures, either. A very unusual kind of history that is written in the Bible. Often we like to gloss over the foibles, but in the Bible it is the mistakes and foibles that get talked about. The Bible is not shy about pointing out what he did wrong. As a king, for the most part, he did ok. But as a person, he didn’t do so well.
And maybe that’s why I like being named David, because I resonate with this guy. I don’t have it together, not by a long shot. I screw things up. I mess things up. I’m not perfect, not by any means. Now, I will say, in case you are wondering,. I’ve never used my power to commit adultery with a woman and get her pregnant and then have her husband killed in battle… that I’ve never done. But, that’s just a matter of semantics. Sin is sin, and there are worse ways to hurt people than to kill them. Worse ways to hurt people than to have them killed. I’ve never ordered the death of anyone, and as far as I know I was not the cause even accidentally of anyone’s death, but I’ve certainly hurt people in my lifetime. I try not to, but it happens. I fail people. I’ve hurt people. Failed to show up, failed to treat them with dignity, been dismissive, failed to see them as a fellow human being, failed their expectations, broken promises. I’ll leave you a moment to think of your own moments that you made decisions you are not proud of.
I never chosen to hurt anyone, except in a few instances when someone hurt me first and I thought I would hurt them back. Or when in anger I’ve chosen to lash out at people... but even if we don’t choose to hurt, the hurt can still come because of choices we make, even when we don’t mean to.
David is selfish. That seems to be a failure of many of us. I think a lot of Jesus’ ministry was teaching us how to be generous, and how to get out of the mode of wanting to be selfish thinking only of ourselves, our family, or our tribe, but to think about the entire community. Selfishness is a failure of many. I think it’s a failure of all of us. David’s selfishness is boosted by the power of being king. His selfishness can lead to worse effects. But, we ALL have some power! But as king, he has a bit more.
Notice that Jesus, in the Gospel text, they wanted to make him king but he refused it. Kings abuse their power.
In fact, you may remember if you have read the books of Samuel, that the Jewish people, after the Exodus, spent a few hundred years without a king. They had men and women called “Judges”, which weren’t judges in the legal sense, but wise people and authorities who would lead and settle disputes and help the people along, maybe lead them in battle. But they weren’t a nation, they didn’t have a king. After about 200 years, though, the people started demanding that they have a king so that they could be like the other nations around them. The prophet Samuel, after whom the book are written, warns them repeatedly with a long litany of why having a king is a poor idea. God is your king, Samuel said. You already have a king, he said, and it’s God. Lot of truth in that one. The early Christians picked up on that, and they refused to recognize Caesar, the Roman Emperor, as Lord. Only God is Lord, they said. Samuel warned them that a king will take your land, take the produce of your land, take your money, send your children into war, steal your women, let you live in poverty so that he can build chariots and fancy homes… good words for today, yes?
Basically, Samuel is warning them and warning us, that people tend to be selfish and make choices based on what is best for them, not what is best for the community. And the more power we have, the more selfish we can become, or if not more selfish, the damage we can do more damage with our selfish inclinations.
That’s why it is a good thing to keep people in power in check. But it isn’t just about people in power, because we all have power. We are all people with some power. The power to hurt or the power to heal. That’s the choice that we’re often faced with. Even if it is just as subtle as us being the customer against the store clerk or the waiter, or our encounters with strangers, our relationship with those we work with. We all have some level of power.
We are not kings, but our choices can still do damage or can be used to heal.
Jesus chose that path of healing, to do the things that offer healing.
David’s story reads like a soap opera, because it’s full of bad decisions. That’s the genius of the soap opera genre. It’s a bunch of people who are very selfish and they just make bad decisions. And that makes for good TV or movies or story telling. Much of the great literature of the ages is people making bad decisions that lead to conflict that needs to be overcome. If you want drama in your life, then be selfish and worry about meeting only your own wants.
But if you want a healthy life free of such anxiety, be outward looking. Jesus’ story reads as the opposite of a soap opera because he looks outward. He’d worried about the needs of others first. Thinking beyond himself.
How do we make decisions? How do we make choices in life?
Next Sunday, we continue to look at David’s story and will dramatically explore this question about how we make decisions.
But we can do some exploring now, as well.
David looked out from the rooftop of his palace, he is on his high place looking down at all around him and thinking, “How can I use these things and these people? What benefit can I derive from them, and what is the minimum that they need? How can they serve me?”
Jesus is in the midst of the people, he also is on a high place. He’s on a mountain. He’s looking around at them, and thinking, “What do they need? How can I help? How can I serve them?”
David looks out, surveys his kingdom, says “I want that woman, bring her to me.” Even after being told she’s married. She gets pregnant, he tries to cover it up by sending for her husband to come home. “Go to your home and wash your feet”, David says, using one of many biblical euphemisms that have nothing to do with feet or washing. But Uriah doesn’t. Uriah chooses to be loyal to the people he is serving with. “Shall I go to my home and sleep in a bed while my men are still out on the battlefield? No. I won’t do that.” Good for Uriah, very inconvenient for David. Uriah’s presence is now too inconvenient, and the truth simply won’t do. David is in too deep. At any point he could have stopped it by telling the truth and repenting, but instead he keeps trying to cover up his failure with more failure, and it just doesn’t work. So David has him killed. Get rid of the inconvenient person.
Instead of David understanding that he, David, is making his own life inconvenient and a mess, easier to just blame it on Uriah and have him eliminated.
Inconvenient people. There are a lot of them, it seems. Personally, I don’t believe that anyone is an inconvenient person. We are all God’
s sons and daughters. But a lot of people get treated as convenient. The homeless, whose presence shows us our own failures and our poor choices as a society. The sick and suffering. Immigrants. Our LGBT brothers and sisters. The poor. The underpaid workers who are asking for a living wage. People whose religion we don’t like or trust, or who speak other languages, or have different customs. The mentally ill. The obese. The veterans who return home with injuries of body, or especially with spiritual and psychic injuries.
The children and young adults who simply want an education, but can’t afford it or graduate with incredible debt loads at very high interest rates.
And in our own personal lives, there are inconvenient people. The rude guy at the restaurant or the store or on the road. The waiter who needs tips to survive. The prisoners asking for justice and dignity. The food stamp receivers. The elderly who are making monthly decisions between food or medicine. The people who aren’t dressed “right”, or don’t look the way you think they should look, or act the way you think they should act. All these inconvenient people who … I don’t know, who are the inconvenient people in your life?
Now Jesus, like David, is on a high place where he can look down and see the people. He is looking downwards, but he isn’t looking down on them. He sees a people with a need. They’re getting hungry. The disciples are like, “Let them fend for themselves. It’s not our problem.” But Jesus sees the world, Jesus sees people, differently. They are our problem. They need to be fed.
A young boy is there and he sees the world similarly as well. He doesn’t actually speak in the text, but I imagine he says something like, “I have food.” And by having food, he has some power. “It’s not much. But I choose to use my power on the behalf of these people, so please, have my food to share with them.” He could have said and would have been justified to say, “Hey, I worked for this food! I have a right to it.” He could have said, “Why should I care if they’re hungry? They should have thought to bring a lunch of that before they came. It’s their fault.” He could have said, “Why should I be inconvenienced because they didn’t plan ahead?”
But he doesn’t. He goes for generosity. And through his generosity, a miracle is worked.
If you want drama, be selfish. If you want a life of goodness for yourself and the people around you and your community, be generous.
This is the vocation of the church, and of us who follow Jesus.
Generosity, love, compassion.
There is a phrase that’s been around for a long time that offers help when faced with a decision, to ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” I think that’s a perfectly fine question. What would be do? Follow in his example. Although I have an issue with that because Jesus does have a lot more power than we do. He can do things that we can’t do. So maybe the answer to “What would Jesus do?” would be “Jesus would walk on water.” Well, I can’t walk on water. But I can still try to follow Jesus.
So maybe a better question is to ask not “What would Jesus do?” because that’s a really high bar, but ask, “What is the loving thing to do?”
Or maybe, if you want to put this question in terms of an example of a person, ask “How can I be like the boy who had the loaves and the fish?”
I leave you with that. Amen.
[the next Sunday was the rest of the David and Bathsheba story, and a drama set in modern times using some of the subject matter of this story - listen here:
Sermon, Year B, Proper 12, July 26, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and John 6:1-21
So we go from a soap opera story, David and Bathsheba and Uriah…. a story very much like a soap opera to the story of Jesus, that is, like, totally the opposite. Two very different kind of story.
David is selfish, thinking only of himself, and like pulling on a loose thread on a sweater, David begins a process of unravelling that leaves a wake of personal destruction behind him. People’s lives twisted and deformed, so much spent yarn left in a useless pile on the floor.
Everything was fine, David! And here I’m talking about King David, though I have said that line to myself on occasion… everything was fine, David, but you had to go and think only of yourself and your wants, and as the king, you have the authority to really overstretch your boundaries before suffering any consequences. Your power, King David, protects you from the harm that you cause.
What a jerk. And that isn’t even a strong enough word. He caused the death of someone, which goes way beyond being a jerk. It’s not like he stole a Twinkie. This is a deplorable act.
And yet David is also considered the greatest of all the Israelite kings. Regarded as such through history, and within the scriptural texts. More pages of the Old Testament are devoted to telling his story than anyone else’s, other than perhaps Moses. David is considered so great of a king, that all the later prophecies and hopes of a coming messiah demanded that the messiah be born from David’s lineage. The messiah must be a descendant of David.
But his life was so messed up. He made a lot of bad decisions in his life. He also made some good ones, which is why he’s celebrated as a good king. But he just couldn’t get it together. The Bible is not shy about pointing out David’s many failures, either. A very unusual kind of history that is written in the Bible. Often we like to gloss over the foibles, but in the Bible it is the mistakes and foibles that get talked about. The Bible is not shy about pointing out what he did wrong. As a king, for the most part, he did ok. But as a person, he didn’t do so well.
And maybe that’s why I like being named David, because I resonate with this guy. I don’t have it together, not by a long shot. I screw things up. I mess things up. I’m not perfect, not by any means. Now, I will say, in case you are wondering,. I’ve never used my power to commit adultery with a woman and get her pregnant and then have her husband killed in battle… that I’ve never done. But, that’s just a matter of semantics. Sin is sin, and there are worse ways to hurt people than to kill them. Worse ways to hurt people than to have them killed. I’ve never ordered the death of anyone, and as far as I know I was not the cause even accidentally of anyone’s death, but I’ve certainly hurt people in my lifetime. I try not to, but it happens. I fail people. I’ve hurt people. Failed to show up, failed to treat them with dignity, been dismissive, failed to see them as a fellow human being, failed their expectations, broken promises. I’ll leave you a moment to think of your own moments that you made decisions you are not proud of.
I never chosen to hurt anyone, except in a few instances when someone hurt me first and I thought I would hurt them back. Or when in anger I’ve chosen to lash out at people... but even if we don’t choose to hurt, the hurt can still come because of choices we make, even when we don’t mean to.
David is selfish. That seems to be a failure of many of us. I think a lot of Jesus’ ministry was teaching us how to be generous, and how to get out of the mode of wanting to be selfish thinking only of ourselves, our family, or our tribe, but to think about the entire community. Selfishness is a failure of many. I think it’s a failure of all of us. David’s selfishness is boosted by the power of being king. His selfishness can lead to worse effects. But, we ALL have some power! But as king, he has a bit more.
Notice that Jesus, in the Gospel text, they wanted to make him king but he refused it. Kings abuse their power.
In fact, you may remember if you have read the books of Samuel, that the Jewish people, after the Exodus, spent a few hundred years without a king. They had men and women called “Judges”, which weren’t judges in the legal sense, but wise people and authorities who would lead and settle disputes and help the people along, maybe lead them in battle. But they weren’t a nation, they didn’t have a king. After about 200 years, though, the people started demanding that they have a king so that they could be like the other nations around them. The prophet Samuel, after whom the book are written, warns them repeatedly with a long litany of why having a king is a poor idea. God is your king, Samuel said. You already have a king, he said, and it’s God. Lot of truth in that one. The early Christians picked up on that, and they refused to recognize Caesar, the Roman Emperor, as Lord. Only God is Lord, they said. Samuel warned them that a king will take your land, take the produce of your land, take your money, send your children into war, steal your women, let you live in poverty so that he can build chariots and fancy homes… good words for today, yes?
Basically, Samuel is warning them and warning us, that people tend to be selfish and make choices based on what is best for them, not what is best for the community. And the more power we have, the more selfish we can become, or if not more selfish, the damage we can do more damage with our selfish inclinations.
That’s why it is a good thing to keep people in power in check. But it isn’t just about people in power, because we all have power. We are all people with some power. The power to hurt or the power to heal. That’s the choice that we’re often faced with. Even if it is just as subtle as us being the customer against the store clerk or the waiter, or our encounters with strangers, our relationship with those we work with. We all have some level of power.
We are not kings, but our choices can still do damage or can be used to heal.
Jesus chose that path of healing, to do the things that offer healing.
David’s story reads like a soap opera, because it’s full of bad decisions. That’s the genius of the soap opera genre. It’s a bunch of people who are very selfish and they just make bad decisions. And that makes for good TV or movies or story telling. Much of the great literature of the ages is people making bad decisions that lead to conflict that needs to be overcome. If you want drama in your life, then be selfish and worry about meeting only your own wants.
But if you want a healthy life free of such anxiety, be outward looking. Jesus’ story reads as the opposite of a soap opera because he looks outward. He’d worried about the needs of others first. Thinking beyond himself.
How do we make decisions? How do we make choices in life?
Next Sunday, we continue to look at David’s story and will dramatically explore this question about how we make decisions.
But we can do some exploring now, as well.
David looked out from the rooftop of his palace, he is on his high place looking down at all around him and thinking, “How can I use these things and these people? What benefit can I derive from them, and what is the minimum that they need? How can they serve me?”
Jesus is in the midst of the people, he also is on a high place. He’s on a mountain. He’s looking around at them, and thinking, “What do they need? How can I help? How can I serve them?”
David looks out, surveys his kingdom, says “I want that woman, bring her to me.” Even after being told she’s married. She gets pregnant, he tries to cover it up by sending for her husband to come home. “Go to your home and wash your feet”, David says, using one of many biblical euphemisms that have nothing to do with feet or washing. But Uriah doesn’t. Uriah chooses to be loyal to the people he is serving with. “Shall I go to my home and sleep in a bed while my men are still out on the battlefield? No. I won’t do that.” Good for Uriah, very inconvenient for David. Uriah’s presence is now too inconvenient, and the truth simply won’t do. David is in too deep. At any point he could have stopped it by telling the truth and repenting, but instead he keeps trying to cover up his failure with more failure, and it just doesn’t work. So David has him killed. Get rid of the inconvenient person.
Instead of David understanding that he, David, is making his own life inconvenient and a mess, easier to just blame it on Uriah and have him eliminated.
Inconvenient people. There are a lot of them, it seems. Personally, I don’t believe that anyone is an inconvenient person. We are all God’
s sons and daughters. But a lot of people get treated as convenient. The homeless, whose presence shows us our own failures and our poor choices as a society. The sick and suffering. Immigrants. Our LGBT brothers and sisters. The poor. The underpaid workers who are asking for a living wage. People whose religion we don’t like or trust, or who speak other languages, or have different customs. The mentally ill. The obese. The veterans who return home with injuries of body, or especially with spiritual and psychic injuries.
The children and young adults who simply want an education, but can’t afford it or graduate with incredible debt loads at very high interest rates.
And in our own personal lives, there are inconvenient people. The rude guy at the restaurant or the store or on the road. The waiter who needs tips to survive. The prisoners asking for justice and dignity. The food stamp receivers. The elderly who are making monthly decisions between food or medicine. The people who aren’t dressed “right”, or don’t look the way you think they should look, or act the way you think they should act. All these inconvenient people who … I don’t know, who are the inconvenient people in your life?
Now Jesus, like David, is on a high place where he can look down and see the people. He is looking downwards, but he isn’t looking down on them. He sees a people with a need. They’re getting hungry. The disciples are like, “Let them fend for themselves. It’s not our problem.” But Jesus sees the world, Jesus sees people, differently. They are our problem. They need to be fed.
A young boy is there and he sees the world similarly as well. He doesn’t actually speak in the text, but I imagine he says something like, “I have food.” And by having food, he has some power. “It’s not much. But I choose to use my power on the behalf of these people, so please, have my food to share with them.” He could have said and would have been justified to say, “Hey, I worked for this food! I have a right to it.” He could have said, “Why should I care if they’re hungry? They should have thought to bring a lunch of that before they came. It’s their fault.” He could have said, “Why should I be inconvenienced because they didn’t plan ahead?”
But he doesn’t. He goes for generosity. And through his generosity, a miracle is worked.
If you want drama, be selfish. If you want a life of goodness for yourself and the people around you and your community, be generous.
This is the vocation of the church, and of us who follow Jesus.
Generosity, love, compassion.
There is a phrase that’s been around for a long time that offers help when faced with a decision, to ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” I think that’s a perfectly fine question. What would be do? Follow in his example. Although I have an issue with that because Jesus does have a lot more power than we do. He can do things that we can’t do. So maybe the answer to “What would Jesus do?” would be “Jesus would walk on water.” Well, I can’t walk on water. But I can still try to follow Jesus.
So maybe a better question is to ask not “What would Jesus do?” because that’s a really high bar, but ask, “What is the loving thing to do?”
Or maybe, if you want to put this question in terms of an example of a person, ask “How can I be like the boy who had the loaves and the fish?”
I leave you with that. Amen.
[the next Sunday was the rest of the David and Bathsheba story, and a drama set in modern times using some of the subject matter of this story - listen here:
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Feeling God's love, and feeling the privilege of being a minister tonight.
I posted earlier today when I was at the Guthrie theater about "a chance to enrich the soul with some good theater." I'm feeling very enriched. The play ("Stage Kiss") was really funny. The first act was basically a farce, and the second act was a surprising twist of the farce that turned into a beautiful message about the power of love. And as I sit here late at night, after a long week of the ups and downs of life, I'm looking to the rest of August and feeling the immensity of God's love and presence. I received a spirit-lifting meditation on love in the play today, and I look toward a month with a funeral, a wedding, and a baptism, and then the next month I get to be reunited with the love of my life. This month will see three of the major events of life, in all of which God is present - in death, the love that heals and comforts, from God and from a wife's dedication to her sick and dying spouse, and the reminder that not even death can separate us from God's love; the love of a couple to turn that love into the covenant of marriage; and the baptismal ritual that remembers and affirms God's love for all his/her/its sons and daughters. I also had the privilege tonight of being at the rehearsal of two incredibly talented young adults who are doing a recital tomorrow - God present in artistic expression. I'll spend time with some of our homeless and hurting brothers and sisters, and have opportunity to join the struggle of those who simply want a living wage and a path to the dignity of the exodus out of financial anxiety. Being a minister is a unique privilege of being allowed to be present and to be a witness to the fullness of human experience: the joys and sorrow, the hopes and the dashed hopes, the pains and the celebrations. For whatever it's worth, that is where my heart is tonight, and it feels good.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
“We, Too, are Shepherds” - sermon July 19, 2015
“We, Too, are Shepherds”
Sermon, Year B, Proper 11, July 19, 2015
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Eau Claire, WI
©2015 Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture: Psalm 23 and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
The 23rd Psalm begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” And then includes other lines about my cup runs over. He sets a table for me in the presence of my enemies. And other statements that begin with I and me.
But I don’t see it as a narcissistic psalm. Not pointing to the one who wrote it. The statements that the writer is making are more like faith claims… at least, at some level. Saying, “These things have happened to me, and I believe (or I trust, or I have faith, use whatever term makes sense to you) that they happened to me because God made them happen, or God was a part of making them happen… These blessings came upon me and they are from God, because God is gracious and God is loving.”
There is a calmness to this Psalm that makes it not an arrogant Psalm or poetry saying “Look how good I am that God blesses me”. It’s not about “I” or “me”, it’s about God. The subject here is God. Or, the Lord. In the Hebrew the Psalm is written in, the writer is not even using the words for God or Lord, but is addressing God by name: Yahweh. Where you see The LORD (in all capital letters) in scripture, that’s where God’s name was used. The writer calls God by name a couple times in this Psalm. There is an intimacy, even a humility, in using God’s name, instead of just “God” with a capital G.
This Psalm is filled with humility. It is about God’s grace and God’s loving kindness. Not so much about the person who wrote it. We can look at what it is not saying, what it is implying in the statements.
God leads me to still waters (because I can’t seem to find the still waters on my own; and when I do manage to find them on my own, all I do is agitate it and make it turbulent).
God makes my cup run over (because when left my own clever devices, I don’t seem to be able to even fill it, or find the right things to put in it).
God sets a table before me in the presence of my enemies (I’m so busy pissing people off and making enemies, I don’t have anywhere left to eat except in their midst).
I shall not want (that’s a reminder to myself: stop wanting. Just, stop. My problem is that what I want is not what I need, and often it is not good for me, and I want waaaaaay too much. Maybe if I focused my desire on what I needed instead of what I wanted, God wouldn’t have to spend so much time bailing me out. But thank God that God is there to bail me out when it comes up. If I could learn to be content with enough, I’d realize how much I have to share with others).
God leads me through the darkest valley (and thank God for it, because every time I do manage to get myself on God’s path, it seems like I don’t stay there very long. The temptation to go off the path and into the darkest valley becomes too strong. And then God says, “Oh, you did it again, you went into the dark valley. Follow me, I’ll take you back out. I’ll lead you out, and this time try to stay on the path a little bit longer.”)
This Psalm is about what God does because God is gracious and God is kind.
The Psalm has also got connected to funerals because there is a sense of comfort within these words. Words that are saying that even in the midst of the bad stuff, in the midst of my messy life, I am remembering that God has my back. God is my shepherd, and will leave me to my own devices or leave me alone.
God has my back.
What I also see in this Psalm is the voice of someone with profound gratitude. To say the words that are in this Psalm comes from a place of gratitude. Even though it seems that this person’s life isn’t going so great, maybe isn’t as good as he would like it to be, the voice of gratitude comes out. It is not a celebration of self, not a “look at how Good God is to me!” but saying, “Look at how good God is.” This is who God is. It is a celebration of God in the face of a self that is not always particularly wonderful or on top of things. Very much like us. Someone who is very much like us, even though written maybe 3000 or so years ago. It is written by someone who has a messy life, like us.
Our lives are messy, sloppy, painful. We mess things up, hurt our friends, annoy our family. We step off the path of faithfulness to God and faithfulness to others. We get angry, moody, sad. Maybe we question whether God is on our side or question whether God even exists. We wonder if the universe has it in for us. And even our best intentions don’t always work the way we had hoped they would. Our friends, our parents, get sick. Our loved ones die. We stand by helplessly as a sister, an uncle, or someone we love continues to make bad decisions for their lives and for their future.
But the Lord is our shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd. Not because our lives are perfect, but because they aren’t. Not because we deserve it, but because we need it. Because God knows that we need God. And God has our back.
Some of that God having our back is fulfilled in Jesus. We saw it in the Gospel lesson today. All these people with messy lives, their own needs and wants, and Jesus has compassion for them. Jesus has compassion for them. Jesus and his disciples were out teaching and healing. Jesus was building a community around himself with his disciples: they are doing his work, which is to be doing God’s work. The work of compassion and love. The work of kindness and grace.
And that is now what the Church is: the gathering of God’s people. we are the community of Jesus’ disciples. We are the community charged to fulfill the mission. The community of people who show our gratitude for God’s presence in our lives by inviting others in to share it. To share it with us so that it is not just for us, but to let the whole world know and invite others into it.
That’s what we’re doing when we invite others into the church. Not inviting them into the institution, or inviting them into a particular kind of membership or structure, but it is to invite them into a community. To invite them into a community that when it is at its best is living the grace and kindness of God, and living it out of gratitude.
It is an invitation into that kind of community. An invitation to be loved and to know God’s love.
When I think of this Psalm, this Psalm 23, I think of the times in my life when I have felt that I could have written words similar to these. The times in my life when I have felt led to green pastures, or to still waters, or felt that my cup runs over, or that I have been led out of the dark valleys. When I think of those times in my life that feels like those things have happened to me, I also realize that it hasn’t been God per se doing it. There was no angelic vision out of the sky, or angelic presence that came down and physically lifted me up or said anything to me. It wasn’t like. It was God working through the people who are in the church. Not God leading me, but God working through Anne, and George, and Carol, some of my Sunday School teachers and mentors. Not God comforting me, but a hug from Roberta. This Psalm being lived out by the people around us. Or I think of Tiff’s pastoral presence when my Dad died, a hug from friend Marcia, the support of friends Todd and Scott at the deaths of my parents. That is God leading out of the dark valleys, by working through the people in our lives.
The church ladies preparing a meal before us after the funerals. You have cooked here a lot of funeral meals; have you ever thought of that as a fulfillment of the 23rd Psalm? This is the table being set before you in the midst of the messiness of life. Even when we have a potluck, or a pie and ice cream social, or set the Communion table, those are other ways of saying, “This is the table set before you in the midst of messy lives, in the midst of enemies; here, eat, be fed. This is what Jesus is about.”
So when you invite someone to the church, you are inviting them not to be alone. You are inviting them into a community of compassion, which this congregation does so well. A community to be fed and nourished, and in which to learn how to then feed and nourish others. Jesus taught his disciples how to do this, they taught their disciples, and so on and so on for 2000 years, passing this tradition down to us, and now we have become the disciples. Or are becoming the disciples. I like to think that we are becoming disciples. We are a work in progress as we become more and more connected to God and learn more and more.
For the coming year, we will be talking about discipleship here. Now, in a sense, whenever the church gathers it is talking about discipleship: how to be better followers of Jesus. That’s what we’re always doing when we come together as the church. But we are going to be more intentional about in the coming months.
We will be talking about what it means to be a disciple, and how do we live our discipleship -- or “followership” -- of Jesus. We’ve divided it into three stages with three phases. They are somewhat arbitrary, but we came up with Connect → Grow → Love. Connect people to the church, grow as disciples, and then show God’s love to the world through our discipleship.
So we CONNECT: How do we connect people with the church? How do we shepherd people into the church? Well, the big thing is invitation. I’ve been harping on that for a year, and will continue to do so. That may be your most important job. To invite people.
It also means having something for people to connect to, such as the baseball game we went to this past week. Or as I mentioned, we will have a drama on August 2 in worship. That is something to invite people to. Inviting people to worship can feel to them intimidating and weird, unless they have some experience with a church. But to invite someone to a specific kind of worship happening, such as this one with the drama. The topic will be about How do we make decisions? How do we live in the tension between what’s best of us and what’s best for others? How do we make decisions about how we interact with other people?
Or if not the drama, invite them to the lunch we’re having after worship. Invite them to come and be fed. Let us set the table before them.
Our drama is a serious topic, but it will be done with humor and by people who are skilled and experienced actors.
We have the campfire with songs and s’mores on August 19. That’s an easy and non-intimidating thing to invite people to and build a relationship. Sit around a campfire, singing songs and eating s’mores? Hard to say “no” to that.
Other ways to connect are to just get together in a small group. Get together with one or two other church members, and invite a couple of your friends to something. A baseball game, a movie, a tea at someone’s house, Thursday night cigars on your patio, knitting… doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it is something that one can sit and talk and learn about one another and build relationships. We call these elbow activities, a chance for someone to come in on your elbow. To connect with someone and bring them in We’ll talk more about that later.
And then GROW. We have invited people in, so now how do we help them grow, or help ourselves grow, into deeper relationships with one another and with God? How do we shepherd once they’re here. Book and Bible studies, mission activities, being in the drama group or a liturgist or on the prayer team, a chance to learn more about who God made us to be. In October we will do a Spiritual Gifts inventory. It’s a chance to learn about yourself, “Who did God make me to be? What are spiritual gifts did God give me, and how do I use them in the church?”
And then LOVE: How we do we love the world? How do we go out be and shepherd for others? We do that in our street ministry, in our giving to St. Francis Food Pantry, serving at Community Table, and a group that this congregation that has had for many decades: our quilters! Loving God’s people with quilts. The Gospel lesson today said that the people were desperate, even just to touch Jesus’ cloak, to find healing. Making quilts is a way to make that kind of healing a reality. That is bringing healing to someone. That is an act of love.
I like to say that here at Plymouth we are making the world a more loving world. I think that is a good mission statement for any follower of Jesus. Making the world a more loving world.
Connect → Grow → Love.
To shepherd in, to shepherd, and then to shepherd others. Connect, grow, and love.
To help people find healing, to shepherd them out of the dark valleys to bring them into God’s community to experience God’s love. To experience God’s grace. To know that we are not alone. That we don’t have to go it alone in this world, but that there are communities of love that people can tap into and tie into. So that maybe we all could say, as the Psalmist did, “Even in the midst of my messy life, in the midst of my imperfections, I have a God who loves me and who takes care of me, and who does so by inspiring the people around me.” And those people are us. Inspiring us to be loving and caring people. Nurturing and shepherding one another.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)