Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
12.07.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture: Mark 1:1-8
A while back, I had the great pleasure of presiding over the wedding of a friend. I’d known her since high school, when she and my wife were part of a circle BFFs before the word BFF even existed. It was a complete joy officiating over her union with her husband, but as I prepared for the service, I got a little bit concerned about the location.
Her parents had left the Washington metro area years back, and now lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It’s an absolutely gorgeous place, smack out in the middle of the desert in the Rio Grande Valley and surrounded by mountains. The plan for the wedding ceremony was to have it in a park at the base of the mountains, at an amphitheater that had towering and glorious peaks as a backdrop. When the couple showed me pictures of where they wanted to have the event, I had to agree. It was a perfect place, just radiant with the glory of God’s creation.
That didn’t make me any less nervous. I tend to be a total wuss when it comes to outdoor weddings, because as complicated and challenging as organizing a service can be, adding the randomness of weather into the mix is just more than I can stand. What if it rains? What if one of those sudden storms pop up, and the wedding party has to flee from driving winds and torrential rain?
When I arrived to check out the site the day before and to do the wedding rehearsal prep, I realized that my worry about rain was totally off. This was really and truly desert. The sun was brilliant and intense, and the light pressed down like a physical presence. But the heat you felt was totally different. It was the complete opposite of the Washington August heat, which is like getting into a jacuzzi while wearing a sleeping bag. This heat was totally dry, and the strong winds that blew off of the desert and up the sides of the mountains had not a single molecule of H2O in them. As I stared into that wind, I felt it greedily pull the moisture from my mouth and throat. After five minutes, my tongue felt like sandstone, and my eyes were like sand-crusted marbles. It’s a good thing I wasn’t going to have to do any public speaking there. Oh. Wait. I was.
The only option was water. I had to drink, and drink both regularly and constantly. Without that, my vocal cords would have dried out like parchment in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, the wedding party had provided this aplenty.
They knew, as anyone with a lick of sense knows, that there is nothing more precious in the desert than water. We kinda sorta know how important water is, but it’s easy to forget it as we trundle about our day to day lives, our Big Gulps in hand. Water is everywhere. But in the intense scarcity of the desert, our appreciation of the humble liquid that makes up around 70% of our physical forms is heightened. We need it more, and we become aware of how deeply we need it.
The desert and those wilderness places in the world have always been central to the lives of those who wanted to get down to the most essential, the most necessary, the most vital parts of their faith. Throughout the history of the people of Israel, desert places had always been the ones that had provided refuge from the distractions of the world. It was into the wilderness that monks had fled seeking escape, and it was from the wilderness that prophets came with proclamations of truths that were beyond the grasp of those who had forgotten what was truly necessary in the world.
As Mark’s Gospel begins, we heard today of a prophet who came from the wilderness, of John the Baptist. Mark’s book of the story of Christ begins by first declaring itself good news, and then gets right into a reference from the prophet Isaiah. That prophet’s poetic cry of the arrival of a messenger in the wilderness is declared a reference to John the Baptist. What John did was not too uncommon among the Hebrew people. Rituals of cleansing in water were part of the way in which Jews in the first century reclaimed themselves and recommitted themselves to their faith. In order to be ritually pure for worship in the temple, the Torah requires ritual bathing. While the process of being baptized was not quite the same, it had the same spiritual foundation.
But while there were similarities between what John did by the banks of the Jordan and what others had done before, there were some real and significant differences. What was striking about John was how intensely he pointed beyond the act that he was engaged in. While he was engaging in a ritual that had deep symbolic roots, the one who was to follow on afterwards, and who John himself was to baptize...that one would engage in an act far more potent and transforming than the ritual and symbolic cleansing of baptism by water.
The baptism by the Holy Spirit described by involves a far deeper transformation, a changing of the will through the presence of the grace of God. That sense of the presence of God, and the awareness that in some strange way God is working through you to change you...that’s the very heart and essence of the Gospel message that Jesus proclaimed.
But, you may ask, how does this work for us, today? To get a sense of the powerful presence of God’s Spirit, the prophets wandered out into the wildernesses of Judea. To know the working of God’s grace in themselves, the monks of the early Christian church isolated themselves in the deserts of North Africa. How can we get that same sense of God’s presence?
We are far closer to the desert than we might think. Not a desert as defined by the absence of water, but a desert as defined by the absence of the Spirit. Just as water brings green life and blooms and fruit, the fruits that come from the presence of the Spirit are grace and comfort and forgiveness. All of us experience areas in our lives in which those things are as hard to find as an orange tree in Death Valley.
Those broken and barren places may be a friendship that has soured. It might be a relationship where once there was love and now there is only hurt. It might be a place that should bring direction and hope, but brings only anger and confusion. It might be a season that should bring comfort and joy, but instead yields only stress and greed. Our lives do not lack for deserts, and they test us as truly as the burning sun tested the prophets. How we respond to those times and places is the measure of our faith.
We all have our deserts. And just like we need to take every opportunity to drink in the desert to keep it from drying us out like a stone, we need to take every opportunity to both seek and express the fruits of the Spirit in those desert places in our lives. There is no moment or place in your life where that cannot be expressed, where the Spirit cannot work change. It comes when you offer a word of grace instead of a cutting remark. It comes when you choose to reach out to someone who is different, or who seems to stand in opposition to you. It comes when you choose to help someone grow, instead of ignoring them or allowing them to continue to fail.
That Spirit is always there, always present, always waiting to rain down upon the dead places and to bring life to them again.
Know that truth, and drink deep.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
12 Months To Live
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.16.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 25:14-30
It’s a scenario that has launched a thousand Hallmark Movies of the Week. The main character has been feeling a bit under the weather. They finally get themselves around to going to the doctor, who administers some tests. The tests come back...well...they come back indicating that they need to do more tests. So off our protagonist goes to a specialist, who administers the additional tests.
There’s much sitting around in an examination room. As time goes by, the character starts feeling more and more annoyed. What could possibly be taking so long? They’ve got other things to do that day. There’s the laundry that needs doing, and then there’s that new client they need to call and set up a meeting with. And today was the day that you’d scheduled in time to research a new data plan for your cellphone. I mean, c’mon! What’s taking so long! There’s important stuff that needs to get done!
It is at this moment that the doctor comes through the door, and they’ve got a grim look on their face. They look right at the Hallmark Movie of the Week main character, and, swallowing, say, “We’ve gotten back the test results. I’m afraid you have asymmetric uvular fargulomitis. It’s very rare...but it means you only have twelve months to live. I’m so sorry.”
Now, if you’ve seen one of these movies before, you know what happens. At first, there is stunned silence. This is followed by much screaming and weeping. That is followed by disbelief. “Die! I can’t die! Who will take care of little Timmy?” That is followed by anger, usually expressed by shouting up at the heavens while a camera pans away. “How can this happen to me? Noooooooo!!!!!” I’ve heard that shouting it loudly enough will invariably get you an Emmy. Then...well...then what?
Does the hero of the story just curl up into a whimpering fetal ball in a dark corner of their attic for eleven months, three weeks, and two days, waiting for the clock to run out?
Well, they probably do the fetal ball thing for at least a week. Then suddenly they realize: “Hey...I need to do all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t have much time.” Getting that reminder that you are, in fact, mortal is something that has a tendency to focus the mind. So before asymmetric uvular fargulomitis takes it’s terrible toll, there’s a whole bunch of life to be lived. You have unfinished business, and you need to get busy with it. Every moment becomes utterly precious.
Have you always wanted to travel to India and see the Taj Mahal? Then now is the time to do it. Is there that one great idea for a novel that’s been pinging about in your head for years? Well, you’d better start writing it. Always wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle? Hey...no time like the present, and I know just the pastor who could teach you. Have you always wanted to run down one of those long smooth slopes near Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina, until the hang glider you’re running with bites into the breeze and the ground falls away and you rise up like an eagle? You have...let’s see...eleven months, three weeks, one day, twenty three hours and...um..54 minutes to get that done. So get on the stick.
Because there’s going to come a moment when the clock runs down to zero, and you’ve got no more time. The things you’ve left undone will remain undone.
Today’s parable from the Gospel of Matthew is all about things not getting done. It is a bit of a harsh one. In it, a rich man goes on a journey, and entrusts his property to three of his slaves. Upon his return, he discovers that the one who’d received the most had invested it in business ventures, and doubled it. The one who’d received half that amount had invested it in business ventures, and doubled it. The last one...well...he’d hidden it away from the world, making absolutely sure that there was no chance that any of it was lost.
The rich man gets seriously annoyed. How dare the slave fail to invest? He takes back the money, gives it to the first slave, and fires the guy with a flourish worthy of Donald Trump, casting him into the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth that comes when you fail to make it in reality tv.
it’s a difficult story to hear. It tends to strike us as a little unfair. Hey...didn’t the slave just do what they were supposed to do? It isn’t like they went to Atlantic City and lost it. It tends to strike us as perhaps a little unrealistic. What if that first slave had gone out and invested the ten talents in a nice solid business with a historic trend of solid return on investment...you know, like Lehman Brothers? How happy would the boss have been then?
That is, of course, not the point that Jesus was trying to make. This story comes to us in a section of Matthew that is dedicated to preparedness and setting ourselves right with God. This section begins back in Matthew 24:3, as the disciples gather on the Mount of Olives to listen to Jesus teach them in private. These teachings run through the end of chapter 25, and it’s the last sustained message from Jesus before the story of his betrayal and death begins. For that reason, the teachings have a consistent urgency and intensity about them, reminding us again and again of the importance of our actions in the now.
What we hear strongly in this morning’s parable builds upon the passage that Pastor Mike read to us last week. While the five bridesmaids managed not to get done what needed to get done, it isn’t just being unprepared that is the danger. It is the way in which we are unprepared. You certainly can’t say that this third servant wasn’t preparing for his master’s return. He knew what was coming...but chose to be passive and fearful in his response to that coming reality. His form of preparation for the inevitable was to refuse to take any risk, to retreat into the comfort of what was known. He hunkered down and sheltered in place.
But in our lives of faith, that approach doesn’t recognize a central part of what it means to live as a faithful Christian, that thing that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the fierce urgency of the now.” It is that “fierce urgency” that speaks to our need to act, and not simply remain passive and inert in our faith lives.
Every moment of our lives calls for that depth of commitment, because this life is far shorter than we’d like to admit. Every moment is infinitely precious, and we need to look to our unfinished business..and get busy.
11.16.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 25:14-30
It’s a scenario that has launched a thousand Hallmark Movies of the Week. The main character has been feeling a bit under the weather. They finally get themselves around to going to the doctor, who administers some tests. The tests come back...well...they come back indicating that they need to do more tests. So off our protagonist goes to a specialist, who administers the additional tests.
There’s much sitting around in an examination room. As time goes by, the character starts feeling more and more annoyed. What could possibly be taking so long? They’ve got other things to do that day. There’s the laundry that needs doing, and then there’s that new client they need to call and set up a meeting with. And today was the day that you’d scheduled in time to research a new data plan for your cellphone. I mean, c’mon! What’s taking so long! There’s important stuff that needs to get done!
It is at this moment that the doctor comes through the door, and they’ve got a grim look on their face. They look right at the Hallmark Movie of the Week main character, and, swallowing, say, “We’ve gotten back the test results. I’m afraid you have asymmetric uvular fargulomitis. It’s very rare...but it means you only have twelve months to live. I’m so sorry.”
Now, if you’ve seen one of these movies before, you know what happens. At first, there is stunned silence. This is followed by much screaming and weeping. That is followed by disbelief. “Die! I can’t die! Who will take care of little Timmy?” That is followed by anger, usually expressed by shouting up at the heavens while a camera pans away. “How can this happen to me? Noooooooo!!!!!” I’ve heard that shouting it loudly enough will invariably get you an Emmy. Then...well...then what?
Does the hero of the story just curl up into a whimpering fetal ball in a dark corner of their attic for eleven months, three weeks, and two days, waiting for the clock to run out?
Well, they probably do the fetal ball thing for at least a week. Then suddenly they realize: “Hey...I need to do all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t have much time.” Getting that reminder that you are, in fact, mortal is something that has a tendency to focus the mind. So before asymmetric uvular fargulomitis takes it’s terrible toll, there’s a whole bunch of life to be lived. You have unfinished business, and you need to get busy with it. Every moment becomes utterly precious.
Have you always wanted to travel to India and see the Taj Mahal? Then now is the time to do it. Is there that one great idea for a novel that’s been pinging about in your head for years? Well, you’d better start writing it. Always wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle? Hey...no time like the present, and I know just the pastor who could teach you. Have you always wanted to run down one of those long smooth slopes near Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina, until the hang glider you’re running with bites into the breeze and the ground falls away and you rise up like an eagle? You have...let’s see...eleven months, three weeks, one day, twenty three hours and...um..54 minutes to get that done. So get on the stick.
Because there’s going to come a moment when the clock runs down to zero, and you’ve got no more time. The things you’ve left undone will remain undone.
Today’s parable from the Gospel of Matthew is all about things not getting done. It is a bit of a harsh one. In it, a rich man goes on a journey, and entrusts his property to three of his slaves. Upon his return, he discovers that the one who’d received the most had invested it in business ventures, and doubled it. The one who’d received half that amount had invested it in business ventures, and doubled it. The last one...well...he’d hidden it away from the world, making absolutely sure that there was no chance that any of it was lost.
The rich man gets seriously annoyed. How dare the slave fail to invest? He takes back the money, gives it to the first slave, and fires the guy with a flourish worthy of Donald Trump, casting him into the outer darkness of weeping and gnashing of teeth that comes when you fail to make it in reality tv.
it’s a difficult story to hear. It tends to strike us as a little unfair. Hey...didn’t the slave just do what they were supposed to do? It isn’t like they went to Atlantic City and lost it. It tends to strike us as perhaps a little unrealistic. What if that first slave had gone out and invested the ten talents in a nice solid business with a historic trend of solid return on investment...you know, like Lehman Brothers? How happy would the boss have been then?
That is, of course, not the point that Jesus was trying to make. This story comes to us in a section of Matthew that is dedicated to preparedness and setting ourselves right with God. This section begins back in Matthew 24:3, as the disciples gather on the Mount of Olives to listen to Jesus teach them in private. These teachings run through the end of chapter 25, and it’s the last sustained message from Jesus before the story of his betrayal and death begins. For that reason, the teachings have a consistent urgency and intensity about them, reminding us again and again of the importance of our actions in the now.
What we hear strongly in this morning’s parable builds upon the passage that Pastor Mike read to us last week. While the five bridesmaids managed not to get done what needed to get done, it isn’t just being unprepared that is the danger. It is the way in which we are unprepared. You certainly can’t say that this third servant wasn’t preparing for his master’s return. He knew what was coming...but chose to be passive and fearful in his response to that coming reality. His form of preparation for the inevitable was to refuse to take any risk, to retreat into the comfort of what was known. He hunkered down and sheltered in place.
But in our lives of faith, that approach doesn’t recognize a central part of what it means to live as a faithful Christian, that thing that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the fierce urgency of the now.” It is that “fierce urgency” that speaks to our need to act, and not simply remain passive and inert in our faith lives.
Every moment of our lives calls for that depth of commitment, because this life is far shorter than we’d like to admit. Every moment is infinitely precious, and we need to look to our unfinished business..and get busy.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Decay and Transformation
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
08.24.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Romans 12:1-8
There are just so many things to love about going to the beach. There are the waves that pound youth pastors and there’s the sand that makes amazing castles and the cleanness of air that has swept thousands of miles across open water. There are those great buckets of salty greasy fries as big as your head, each bucket containing enough empty carbohydrate calories to add at least a full half-inch to the diameter of your midsection.
But of all of the reasons that I enjoy going to the beach every year, one of the most significant has very little to do with the beach at all. It’s time to read. Yeah, I can read just about anytime during the year, and I do. When the family gets down to the beach, though, suddenly there’s the time to just disappear into a book. I can lay down hour after hour of nonconstructive downtime to travel deep down that wormhole of a good novel, only resurfacing to go get a big bucket of fries.
Every year at the beach, I read pretty much at random, and this year, I picked out a nice little bit of beach fluff written by a woman named Mary Roach. The book was entitled Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The entire focus of this strange little nonfiction piece was a journalistic exploration of all of the interesting things that happen to our bodies after we die. It was a celebration of all the many ways corpses spend their time, from the process of decaying underground to how cremation works to organ transplantation and medical experimentation and practice surgeries and crash testing. There was also, as I recall, a lovely chapter on the history of cannibalism. Though my family often will read books together in the evenings for story time, for some reason I kept this book to myself.
Of all of the entertaining facts about the recently deceased that were described in the book, one of the things that struck me as most interesting was a chapter in which the author tagged along with a forensic scientist whose entire job was determining time of death by the degree to which a body had begun to decay. The author witnesses the human form in all stages of maggoty rot and collapse, and while I’d love to describe all the various oozings and outgassings and other narstyness from the book, they seem..well...not very churchy. Maybe for my sermon at Halloween...
What was striking, though, is this: After life has left us, all of those things that keep us from just becoming part of the world around us shut down. We no longer excrete. We no longer digest. We no longer breathe. Our body ceases to defend itself against the bazillion teeny little critters that live in our guts. At death, the world around a body rushes in and reclaims it. In fact, that’s not a bad way to understand death...it’s that point at which a body stops trying to define itself as something separate from the world, and instead yields to everything else.
It’s been said that life is change and death is not. But that isn’t true. A dead body is not inert. It doesn’t just become stiff and unchanging like a rock or another inanimate object. The reality is that dead bodies change a great deal. That change is driven not by the drives of the life within, but by everything outside. Having lost it’s life, it’s purpose, it’s self, a cadaver just gives in to the world around it. It’s change is driven by devouring bacteria and chomping larvae, by heat and sun and water. Or it yields passively to the dissecting blades of surgeons as they learn their art, separating the bones and organs from the top round and tenderloin, opened up layer by layer, until there’s nothing left but a meticulously disassembled mess of human being bits.
Whichever way, the body is consumed by the world. It doesn’t care. It has no purpose of it’s own.
This is exactly the opposite sort of of transformation the Apostle Paul was describing as he wrote his letter to the Church at Rome. As we roll in to the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul is talking about bodies, and he’s talking about change. When Paul refers to bodies, he’s talking about two things.
First, as we get to Romans 12:4-8, talking about the body as a deep metaphor for the nature of how we participate in Christ, with each of us contributing our gifts towards the good of the church. Our purpose as Christians is to serve the broader good, just as every part of the body serves the good of the whole. Some lead, some praise, some give, some show mercy and kindness. But all Christians have as their purpose the business of contributing to the joy of all, each part of the other, each serving in their own way as agents of God’s love. This is an important image for Paul, because he presents exactly the same image of the church as the body of Christ at for two whole chapters of another letter, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13.
But before we reach Romans 12:4-8, the Apostle makes another statement about the body. He suggests that we need to present ourselves as “living sacrifices,” giving ourselves over to the reason for which God created us. Our minds are to be transformed, and the purpose given to our lives is not one that comes from the pattern of this world, but from the pattern of the love that is the Holy Spirit of the living God.
Throughout the letter to the Romans, this is a important distinction. Paul makes constant reference to the battle within us between the Spirit of God and our desire to conform ourselves to the world around us. All of Romans chapter eight is dedicated to this battle between the Spirit and the flesh.
But how does that struggle play out in our day to day lives? What are the patterns of this world that try to turn us from our purpose? Those patterns are many, but they’re all the same. Most familiar to us is the pattern of consumption, where we allow ourselves to look at everything outside of us as an object to be devoured. Our lives revolve around the pursuit of fast cars and cute shoes, as we are overtaken with a hunger for things that can never be satisfied, a hunger that consumes us as we consume. That desire to consume is also a desire for power, as we seek to control or possess. It defines our relationships with other children of God, who become objects to be used or means to an end.
When we let our lives be ruled by that desire for power or consumption, we might think we’re livin’ large and in charge. But Paul would argue that in the eyes of God, we are no longer living at all. We are little more a maggot-filled corpse or a decaying cadaver. Unlike a living being, we no longer live according to our God-given purpose. We no longer are defined by the gifts God has given us. We are, instead, consumed by the world that we seek to consume. We may move and our lives may seem to change. But for all intents and purposes, we are already dead.
So look at the thing that you call life. Every day of that life brings something new. Every day of your life brings change. What each of us has to ask ourselves is what kind of change it is. Are you transforming, growing and changing, every day made new and alive for the purpose for which you were made? Or are you already decaying away, devoured by the very world you seek to devour?
Live as the living, not as the dead. Don’t decay. Be transformed.
08.24.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Romans 12:1-8
There are just so many things to love about going to the beach. There are the waves that pound youth pastors and there’s the sand that makes amazing castles and the cleanness of air that has swept thousands of miles across open water. There are those great buckets of salty greasy fries as big as your head, each bucket containing enough empty carbohydrate calories to add at least a full half-inch to the diameter of your midsection.
But of all of the reasons that I enjoy going to the beach every year, one of the most significant has very little to do with the beach at all. It’s time to read. Yeah, I can read just about anytime during the year, and I do. When the family gets down to the beach, though, suddenly there’s the time to just disappear into a book. I can lay down hour after hour of nonconstructive downtime to travel deep down that wormhole of a good novel, only resurfacing to go get a big bucket of fries.
Every year at the beach, I read pretty much at random, and this year, I picked out a nice little bit of beach fluff written by a woman named Mary Roach. The book was entitled Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The entire focus of this strange little nonfiction piece was a journalistic exploration of all of the interesting things that happen to our bodies after we die. It was a celebration of all the many ways corpses spend their time, from the process of decaying underground to how cremation works to organ transplantation and medical experimentation and practice surgeries and crash testing. There was also, as I recall, a lovely chapter on the history of cannibalism. Though my family often will read books together in the evenings for story time, for some reason I kept this book to myself.
Of all of the entertaining facts about the recently deceased that were described in the book, one of the things that struck me as most interesting was a chapter in which the author tagged along with a forensic scientist whose entire job was determining time of death by the degree to which a body had begun to decay. The author witnesses the human form in all stages of maggoty rot and collapse, and while I’d love to describe all the various oozings and outgassings and other narstyness from the book, they seem..well...not very churchy. Maybe for my sermon at Halloween...
What was striking, though, is this: After life has left us, all of those things that keep us from just becoming part of the world around us shut down. We no longer excrete. We no longer digest. We no longer breathe. Our body ceases to defend itself against the bazillion teeny little critters that live in our guts. At death, the world around a body rushes in and reclaims it. In fact, that’s not a bad way to understand death...it’s that point at which a body stops trying to define itself as something separate from the world, and instead yields to everything else.
It’s been said that life is change and death is not. But that isn’t true. A dead body is not inert. It doesn’t just become stiff and unchanging like a rock or another inanimate object. The reality is that dead bodies change a great deal. That change is driven not by the drives of the life within, but by everything outside. Having lost it’s life, it’s purpose, it’s self, a cadaver just gives in to the world around it. It’s change is driven by devouring bacteria and chomping larvae, by heat and sun and water. Or it yields passively to the dissecting blades of surgeons as they learn their art, separating the bones and organs from the top round and tenderloin, opened up layer by layer, until there’s nothing left but a meticulously disassembled mess of human being bits.
Whichever way, the body is consumed by the world. It doesn’t care. It has no purpose of it’s own.
This is exactly the opposite sort of of transformation the Apostle Paul was describing as he wrote his letter to the Church at Rome. As we roll in to the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul is talking about bodies, and he’s talking about change. When Paul refers to bodies, he’s talking about two things.
First, as we get to Romans 12:4-8, talking about the body as a deep metaphor for the nature of how we participate in Christ, with each of us contributing our gifts towards the good of the church. Our purpose as Christians is to serve the broader good, just as every part of the body serves the good of the whole. Some lead, some praise, some give, some show mercy and kindness. But all Christians have as their purpose the business of contributing to the joy of all, each part of the other, each serving in their own way as agents of God’s love. This is an important image for Paul, because he presents exactly the same image of the church as the body of Christ at for two whole chapters of another letter, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13.
But before we reach Romans 12:4-8, the Apostle makes another statement about the body. He suggests that we need to present ourselves as “living sacrifices,” giving ourselves over to the reason for which God created us. Our minds are to be transformed, and the purpose given to our lives is not one that comes from the pattern of this world, but from the pattern of the love that is the Holy Spirit of the living God.
Throughout the letter to the Romans, this is a important distinction. Paul makes constant reference to the battle within us between the Spirit of God and our desire to conform ourselves to the world around us. All of Romans chapter eight is dedicated to this battle between the Spirit and the flesh.
But how does that struggle play out in our day to day lives? What are the patterns of this world that try to turn us from our purpose? Those patterns are many, but they’re all the same. Most familiar to us is the pattern of consumption, where we allow ourselves to look at everything outside of us as an object to be devoured. Our lives revolve around the pursuit of fast cars and cute shoes, as we are overtaken with a hunger for things that can never be satisfied, a hunger that consumes us as we consume. That desire to consume is also a desire for power, as we seek to control or possess. It defines our relationships with other children of God, who become objects to be used or means to an end.
When we let our lives be ruled by that desire for power or consumption, we might think we’re livin’ large and in charge. But Paul would argue that in the eyes of God, we are no longer living at all. We are little more a maggot-filled corpse or a decaying cadaver. Unlike a living being, we no longer live according to our God-given purpose. We no longer are defined by the gifts God has given us. We are, instead, consumed by the world that we seek to consume. We may move and our lives may seem to change. But for all intents and purposes, we are already dead.
So look at the thing that you call life. Every day of that life brings something new. Every day of your life brings change. What each of us has to ask ourselves is what kind of change it is. Are you transforming, growing and changing, every day made new and alive for the purpose for which you were made? Or are you already decaying away, devoured by the very world you seek to devour?
Live as the living, not as the dead. Don’t decay. Be transformed.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Fear Not!
Trinity Presbyterian Church of
Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008
Rev. John An; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 28:1-10
Many wise souls throughout history have talked about fear.
President Franklin Roosevelt said
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks said:
“Knowing what must be done does away with fear.”
Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
“Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you.
All of these great souls had one thing in common:
None of them had anything invested in today’s stock market.
If you have anything invested in the markets, you’ve probably seen it.
Watching the reactions of investors over these past few weeks
As the market surges and retreats like waves at a high tide
Makes many of us feel like a child that first time on a diving board.
Maybe you’ve seen that moment.
They’ve never jumped before.
It’s totally new and frightening.
They go out to the end of the board.
They look waaay down at the water.
And then they freeze.
They’re too scared to move.
“Jump!” shout their friends from the side of the pool.
But it looks so far!
“Climb off the board!” shout the people behind them.
But then they’d be embarrassed.
So they just stand there,
Just listening to the yelling.
What to do?
Many of us feel that way whenever we’re confronted with change.
There’s the terrifying possibility we might lose.
We might lose money.
We might lose face.
We might lose ourselves.
In the face of something we do not know,
We do not act.
From the Gospel of Matthew today we hear such a story.
It’s the story of the first ones to learn of Christ’s resurrection.
We hear that Mary Madgalene and the other Mary are on their way to the tomb.
They go to mourn the friend and the rabbi that they loved.
But people are already there.
It’s a detachment of guards, sent from Pilate to insure no mischief takes place.
Something unlike anything any of them had known before.
The stone rolled back
But the bright presence remained.
Every single person there felt afraid.
Of course they did.
But how did they express their fear?
Those guards “were like dead men.”
Fear overcame them.
Fear consumed them.
They could not move.
They were frozen and trembling.
The women felt that fear, too.
But they also had faith.
That faith meant that their fear did not control them.
What was happening was terrifying, but it was also good.
They saw the joy of that first Easter moment.
They felt fear and uncertainty in their hearts at this new thing.
But it did not consume them.
Even though they felt that fear, they were able to respond.
They heard that message, and left with “fear and great joy.”
Though fear was still in their hearts, they weren’t frozen.
They moved.
They acted.
And from faith, they left the empty tomb.
They didn’t leave slowly, either.
Hearing that message became the starting point of a new journey of faith.
It was, at first, a mixed and disorganized thing.
They still struggled.
They still felt uncertainty and fear.
But as they rushed down that path
Driven by equal parts terror and elation
They encountered Christ
And he drove their fears away.
All living faith is like that encounter.
All Easter faith is like that encounter.
It begins with the hearing.
But then comes the response.
Sure, there can be uncertainty.
Sure, there can be fears.
But despite those fears, you must be moving.
Despite those fears, you must be acting.
You can’t let yourself be paralyzed by doubt.
You can’t let yourself be frozen by overanalysis.
In that Easter moment, great and pure joy is offered up by God for your life.
Anything and everything can become new again.
Just set yourself down that path.
Let the joy begin to overcome your fears.
Trust that as you act and as you move
You’ll reach that point on the journey when your fears will be cast aside.
You’ll hear that welcome voice.
You’ll hear that welcome greeting.
“Do not be afraid.
Go, and tell what you’ve seen.”
He is risen.
He is risen indeed.
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