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.
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The One Law
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
10.26.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 22:34-46
There’s a reason there are so many lawyers in America. No, it has very little to do with the fact that many parents view it as the only acceptable alternative after you don’t manage to make it into medical school.
There are so many lawyers because there are just so many laws.
Let’s take the United States Code as an example. I can’t claim to fully understand it, but here’s what little I managed to pluck off the internet this last week. Every law passed by Congress gets plugged into one of 50 “Titles,” which logically sort American laws into different categories. Those titles are divided into subtitles, which are divided into chapters, which are divided into subchapters, which are divided into parts, which are divided into sections.
As a Presbyterian, I find that all strangely exciting.
For example, Title 26 has to do with revenue and taxation, so if you had this deep and burning desire to know when you have to file a special return, you could look to Title 26, Subtitle F, Chapter 61, Subchapter A, Part I, Section 6001, which tells you everything you need to know. Or is that Section 6002? I always muddle those two.
How many laws are there? Well, Title 26...which is one of the 50 Titles...is about 7,500 pages long. Fortunately, it’s a page turner. When you get to Title 26, Subtitle V, Chapter 37, Subchapter B, Part I, Sec. 7042, you’re just not going to believe the plot twist it serves up. Man. I was shaking my head after that one. Never saw it coming. It seriously sets you up for the sequel in Title 27. Don’t worry. I won’t ruin the ending.
The sheer volume of American law is truly dizzying. Hundreds of thousands of pages of code are simply more than any one human being...or even a roomful of human beings...can come to terms with.
I know they say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but you couldn’t be aware of the fullness of the laws that govern our country if you spent your entire lifetime studying them and every single neuron in your brain was dedicated to learning them, including the neurons that you currently use to figure out how to eat, breathe, and use most universal remotes. When regulations and requirements reach that level of complexity, it becomes harder and harder for us to know how we relate to them. It becomes harder for us to know how to apply them to our lives.
For the ancient Hebrews, the law was also a big deal, although it was considerably less complex. As the scholars of Torah figured it, there were 613 total laws. 248 of them were things you had to do, and 365 of them were things you were supposed to not do. Compared to the United States Code, this was a cakewalk.
Still, though, the complexities of Torah were such that they consumed the thoughts of those who took it seriously. In the time of Jesus, those folks were called the Pharisees, and today we hear about how one of them asks him a question. It’s a lawyer, but by “lawyer,” we need to understand that Matthew means someone who would be more like a bible scholar ...challenges Jesus to make a judgement call about the law. It’s an interesting question: “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
Jesus, of course, knows his stuff. He responds with a quotation from Deuteronomy 6:5...”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.” It’s a good answer, as that verse is the second part of the Shema, the holiest prayer of the Jewish people. So...that’s the commandment, right?
Jesus doesn’t stop there, though. Sure, he’s given the guy his “greatest commandment.” But he’s not finished with his response. While this is the first and greatest commandment in his book, he feels compelled to take it a step further. He makes sure to add in a second commandment, which he pulls from another book of the Torah...the book of Leviticus. From Leviticus 19:18, he says: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Having presented his questioner with this reply, he makes it clear...both of these commandments seem to be part of one single law. When he declares that the two laws are similar, he’s not really setting one up as above the other. They are to be understood as somehow part of the same single unitary thing. It is on the combination of both of these that the entire law...meaning the law given to the Jewish people by God...finds its foundation.
Our lives are not simple things. We have to figure out how to make moral choices in countless different situations. How do we act in the workplace? How do we respond to those around us in school? How do we deal with our families, and our friends? How do we deal with that annoying neighbor who cranks his music up at 3 in the morning when we’ve got important things to do the next day?
If you’re living your life in accordance with the faith that Christ brought to us, the answer to that question does not lie in having memorized a whole slew of different laws, each one designed to deal with every single specialized circumstance. You don’t need to dig down to find exactly which chapter and subchapter and part and section speaks directly to where you find yourself at that very moment.
Those things are very useful for organizing a society, and for trying to make sure things go more-or-less smoothly as we human beings bump and jostle against one another in the world. But faith governs us very differently. Faith is not about nattering over each tiny detail. Faith is about purpose. Faith is about direction. Faith is the thing that gives life depth and meaning.
For that reason, followers of Jesus Christ have a single law that gives just that sense of purpose. It is a remarkably simple thing. It is a thing that most of us can grasp without having to spend our entire lives studying some highly complicated ethics. Yet if we look hard at how most Christians seem to live their lives, it is something that we seem to struggle to come to terms with. We’d almost rather lose ourselves in studying and legalistic dickering over tiny little details. We’d almost rather throw up our arms and declare that it’s just all too much for us to possibly understand.
When there are laws enough to fill a thousand books, it’s hard to grasp them all. But when there is just one law, it is harder for us still. How can we find a way to apply that law to everything we do? How is it even possible?
Christ wants all of us to spend the rest of our lives finding that out.
10.26.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 22:34-46
There’s a reason there are so many lawyers in America. No, it has very little to do with the fact that many parents view it as the only acceptable alternative after you don’t manage to make it into medical school.
There are so many lawyers because there are just so many laws.
Let’s take the United States Code as an example. I can’t claim to fully understand it, but here’s what little I managed to pluck off the internet this last week. Every law passed by Congress gets plugged into one of 50 “Titles,” which logically sort American laws into different categories. Those titles are divided into subtitles, which are divided into chapters, which are divided into subchapters, which are divided into parts, which are divided into sections.
As a Presbyterian, I find that all strangely exciting.
For example, Title 26 has to do with revenue and taxation, so if you had this deep and burning desire to know when you have to file a special return, you could look to Title 26, Subtitle F, Chapter 61, Subchapter A, Part I, Section 6001, which tells you everything you need to know. Or is that Section 6002? I always muddle those two.
How many laws are there? Well, Title 26...which is one of the 50 Titles...is about 7,500 pages long. Fortunately, it’s a page turner. When you get to Title 26, Subtitle V, Chapter 37, Subchapter B, Part I, Sec. 7042, you’re just not going to believe the plot twist it serves up. Man. I was shaking my head after that one. Never saw it coming. It seriously sets you up for the sequel in Title 27. Don’t worry. I won’t ruin the ending.
The sheer volume of American law is truly dizzying. Hundreds of thousands of pages of code are simply more than any one human being...or even a roomful of human beings...can come to terms with.
I know they say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but you couldn’t be aware of the fullness of the laws that govern our country if you spent your entire lifetime studying them and every single neuron in your brain was dedicated to learning them, including the neurons that you currently use to figure out how to eat, breathe, and use most universal remotes. When regulations and requirements reach that level of complexity, it becomes harder and harder for us to know how we relate to them. It becomes harder for us to know how to apply them to our lives.
For the ancient Hebrews, the law was also a big deal, although it was considerably less complex. As the scholars of Torah figured it, there were 613 total laws. 248 of them were things you had to do, and 365 of them were things you were supposed to not do. Compared to the United States Code, this was a cakewalk.
Still, though, the complexities of Torah were such that they consumed the thoughts of those who took it seriously. In the time of Jesus, those folks were called the Pharisees, and today we hear about how one of them asks him a question. It’s a lawyer, but by “lawyer,” we need to understand that Matthew means someone who would be more like a bible scholar ...challenges Jesus to make a judgement call about the law. It’s an interesting question: “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
Jesus, of course, knows his stuff. He responds with a quotation from Deuteronomy 6:5...”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.” It’s a good answer, as that verse is the second part of the Shema, the holiest prayer of the Jewish people. So...that’s the commandment, right?
Jesus doesn’t stop there, though. Sure, he’s given the guy his “greatest commandment.” But he’s not finished with his response. While this is the first and greatest commandment in his book, he feels compelled to take it a step further. He makes sure to add in a second commandment, which he pulls from another book of the Torah...the book of Leviticus. From Leviticus 19:18, he says: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Having presented his questioner with this reply, he makes it clear...both of these commandments seem to be part of one single law. When he declares that the two laws are similar, he’s not really setting one up as above the other. They are to be understood as somehow part of the same single unitary thing. It is on the combination of both of these that the entire law...meaning the law given to the Jewish people by God...finds its foundation.
Our lives are not simple things. We have to figure out how to make moral choices in countless different situations. How do we act in the workplace? How do we respond to those around us in school? How do we deal with our families, and our friends? How do we deal with that annoying neighbor who cranks his music up at 3 in the morning when we’ve got important things to do the next day?
If you’re living your life in accordance with the faith that Christ brought to us, the answer to that question does not lie in having memorized a whole slew of different laws, each one designed to deal with every single specialized circumstance. You don’t need to dig down to find exactly which chapter and subchapter and part and section speaks directly to where you find yourself at that very moment.
Those things are very useful for organizing a society, and for trying to make sure things go more-or-less smoothly as we human beings bump and jostle against one another in the world. But faith governs us very differently. Faith is not about nattering over each tiny detail. Faith is about purpose. Faith is about direction. Faith is the thing that gives life depth and meaning.
For that reason, followers of Jesus Christ have a single law that gives just that sense of purpose. It is a remarkably simple thing. It is a thing that most of us can grasp without having to spend our entire lives studying some highly complicated ethics. Yet if we look hard at how most Christians seem to live their lives, it is something that we seem to struggle to come to terms with. We’d almost rather lose ourselves in studying and legalistic dickering over tiny little details. We’d almost rather throw up our arms and declare that it’s just all too much for us to possibly understand.
When there are laws enough to fill a thousand books, it’s hard to grasp them all. But when there is just one law, it is harder for us still. How can we find a way to apply that law to everything we do? How is it even possible?
Christ wants all of us to spend the rest of our lives finding that out.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Perspective
Trinity Presbyterian Church of
08.31.08; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lessons: Psalm 90; Romans 12: 9-21
How long did this summer seem to you?
It seems like only yesterday that school was getting out.
Kids were feeling happy.
Kids were finally free!
No school!
Yay!
Parents were trying to figure out how to juggle them and work.
Parents were trying to get kids to summer programs and into camps.
No school!
Boo!
And now another summer is over.
When you’re an adult, those few months of summer are gone like the blink of an eye.
For that, we are truly grateful.
But when you’re young, a summer can seem like forever.
Those few months stretch out to the far horizon.
The distance between June and August is unimaginably large.
But when you’re young, your sense of time is very different.
Even a single afternoon can seem like an eternity.
Especially if you don’t have cable.
It is a matter of perspective.
As you become older, every day represents a slightly smaller fraction of your life.
Because of this, they seem to pass more quickly.
When you’ve seen more of life, time itself seems to grow smaller.
It’s a bit like looking down at this church.
It seems like a big place when you’re standing on the roof clearing the gutters.
It’s less so when you’re at 10,000 feet.
It so tiny as not to be visible at all when you’re in orbit.
It’s a matter of perspective.
Today’s reading from the 90th Psalm is all about perspective
It’s an interesting Psalm for many reasons.
The Book of Psalms is a collection of 150 individual praise songs.
Those 150 songs are divided up into five separate collections.
Some scholars believe this is to match the five books of the Torah.
Psalm 90 begins the fourth collection of Psalms.
Of all of the Psalms, the 90th is the only one to be attributed to Moses.
It describes human life, but not from our viewpoint.
This song, this prayer, is about how God sees us and all we do.
For God, a thousand years are as “yesterday when it is past.”
“Yesterday when it is past” is another way of saying no time at all.
Even the rise and fall of great nations, of whole civilizations, are less than a blinking of an eye to God.
The Psalmist tells us.
This will give us wisdom.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Boys Against The Girls
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
08.17.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 15:10-28
With the arrival of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games this last week, I’ve watched far more sports than I can recall watching for years. Not only is the volume different, but it’s stuff that I can’t remember ever feeling motivated to watch in non-Olympic moments. How often do you gather your friends together with a big bowl of nachos and a fridge full of cold beverages to hoot and holler at synchronized diving? Or water polo? Or beach volleyball? When was the last time you tuned in to beach volleyball?
It seems like there are all manner of games that just aren’t run of the mill stuff. The Olympics is full of unusual events, yet even in the face of this broad assemblage of every game and sport-like event the world has yet known, it struck me this week that there was at least one missing.
It’s one of the oldest games in the book, one older than chess or Go or any of the classic board games. I can recall playing it as a kid out on the playground in elementary school with my fellow first graders. It’s also one of the simplest games around. Someone would yell, “Boys Against the Girls!” Then boys would chase girls around, or girls would chase boys around, or some combination of the two. You didn’t need to even worry about dividing up teams. That selection had already been made on a genetic level. You just ran around screaming and hollering.
When I was a kid, that game could also morph into all sorts of other games. It had soccer variants, and basketball variants. You just made sure that one team was all XY chromosomed kids, and another team was XX chromosomed kids. There was something about those games that always got kids fired up, as you shouted across the defining line of sex and talked gender smack, crowing about the basic stupidity of everyone on the other half of the human equation. And even though as a kid I knew that many girls were pretty cool and were also in significant ways far more entertaining to spend time around than my male brethren, I still enjoyed those games. They seemed so elemental. So basic. After all, it was just a game. It was just for fun.
The problem, as the children of the world grow up, is that after a while it stops being a game, and it gets to be much less fun. Should I give out a booyah big man smackdown shout that on average, women who work full-time in the United States make around 25% less than their male counterparts? Am I to be filled with the thrill of victory that comes with the knowledge that over two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are women, most of whom are kept that way because their cultures have decided that they’re not worth educating?
Boys rock. Woohoo.
That “game” becomes something very...unpleasant...when it becomes a way to keep essentially half of the human race eternally subordinated to the other. Unfortunately, in much of Christianity, the leaders...all men...take a few prooftexts from the later writings of Paul’s disciples and decide that all women are eternally and forever subordinate to men. No Christian woman is to give instruction to a Christian man. No Christian man is to take instruction or learn from a Christian woman. Oddly enough, the cultures that insist that that’s just exactly what Jesus wants are all cultures that traditionally place women in subordinate or submissive roles, no matter who they are or what gifts God has given them to contribute.
Very few of the Christian leaders from those cultures spend much time studying today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a strange passage about a woman who just wouldn’t back down, a woman who was not just subordinate because she was a woman, but also because she was a Canaanite, a Syrophoenician, to be exact. She was as other as other could be, and was treated as such by both the disciples and by Jesus himself.
First, she is ignored, as she cries out in faith for the healing of her daughter. She’s not an Israelite. But she won’t stop, and the disciples finally get so sick of her persistence that they ask Jesus to send her packing. As the woman comes and kneels at Christ’s side, Jesus drops a surprisingly cutting metaphor. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He’s the food, the children are Israel, and the dogs...well...she and her daughter are the dogs.
But her faith and her wit drives her to come back with an even better line, and Jesus...impressed by both her faith and her grace...backs down, and changes his mind. His resistance to her falls away, and she is given what she has so persistently sought. Her daughter is healed.
Now...if Jesus is willing to hear a woman out, and to learn from her faith...remind me again why a significant portion of the church that claims to follow Him is unwilling to do the same?
08.17.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 15:10-28
With the arrival of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games this last week, I’ve watched far more sports than I can recall watching for years. Not only is the volume different, but it’s stuff that I can’t remember ever feeling motivated to watch in non-Olympic moments. How often do you gather your friends together with a big bowl of nachos and a fridge full of cold beverages to hoot and holler at synchronized diving? Or water polo? Or beach volleyball? When was the last time you tuned in to beach volleyball?
It seems like there are all manner of games that just aren’t run of the mill stuff. The Olympics is full of unusual events, yet even in the face of this broad assemblage of every game and sport-like event the world has yet known, it struck me this week that there was at least one missing.
It’s one of the oldest games in the book, one older than chess or Go or any of the classic board games. I can recall playing it as a kid out on the playground in elementary school with my fellow first graders. It’s also one of the simplest games around. Someone would yell, “Boys Against the Girls!” Then boys would chase girls around, or girls would chase boys around, or some combination of the two. You didn’t need to even worry about dividing up teams. That selection had already been made on a genetic level. You just ran around screaming and hollering.
When I was a kid, that game could also morph into all sorts of other games. It had soccer variants, and basketball variants. You just made sure that one team was all XY chromosomed kids, and another team was XX chromosomed kids. There was something about those games that always got kids fired up, as you shouted across the defining line of sex and talked gender smack, crowing about the basic stupidity of everyone on the other half of the human equation. And even though as a kid I knew that many girls were pretty cool and were also in significant ways far more entertaining to spend time around than my male brethren, I still enjoyed those games. They seemed so elemental. So basic. After all, it was just a game. It was just for fun.
The problem, as the children of the world grow up, is that after a while it stops being a game, and it gets to be much less fun. Should I give out a booyah big man smackdown shout that on average, women who work full-time in the United States make around 25% less than their male counterparts? Am I to be filled with the thrill of victory that comes with the knowledge that over two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are women, most of whom are kept that way because their cultures have decided that they’re not worth educating?
Boys rock. Woohoo.
That “game” becomes something very...unpleasant...when it becomes a way to keep essentially half of the human race eternally subordinated to the other. Unfortunately, in much of Christianity, the leaders...all men...take a few prooftexts from the later writings of Paul’s disciples and decide that all women are eternally and forever subordinate to men. No Christian woman is to give instruction to a Christian man. No Christian man is to take instruction or learn from a Christian woman. Oddly enough, the cultures that insist that that’s just exactly what Jesus wants are all cultures that traditionally place women in subordinate or submissive roles, no matter who they are or what gifts God has given them to contribute.
Very few of the Christian leaders from those cultures spend much time studying today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a strange passage about a woman who just wouldn’t back down, a woman who was not just subordinate because she was a woman, but also because she was a Canaanite, a Syrophoenician, to be exact. She was as other as other could be, and was treated as such by both the disciples and by Jesus himself.
First, she is ignored, as she cries out in faith for the healing of her daughter. She’s not an Israelite. But she won’t stop, and the disciples finally get so sick of her persistence that they ask Jesus to send her packing. As the woman comes and kneels at Christ’s side, Jesus drops a surprisingly cutting metaphor. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He’s the food, the children are Israel, and the dogs...well...she and her daughter are the dogs.
But her faith and her wit drives her to come back with an even better line, and Jesus...impressed by both her faith and her grace...backs down, and changes his mind. His resistance to her falls away, and she is given what she has so persistently sought. Her daughter is healed.
Now...if Jesus is willing to hear a woman out, and to learn from her faith...remind me again why a significant portion of the church that claims to follow Him is unwilling to do the same?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Sight Unseen
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.20.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Romans 8:12-25
Nobody in their right mind buys anything important without taking a good hard look at it first.
When you’re buying a *cough* pre-owned car, you don’t just order it and have it show up at your door. You want to inspect the paint for blemishes. You want to check the wheels for dings and damage and check the tires for wear. You pop open the hood and stare at the engine, stroke your chin, and make a few comments so that you’ll seem like you actually know a thing about engines. Hmmm. Is that dipstick carbon fibre?
Then you have drive it, to get a sense of how comfortable it is and how well it actually runs. How smoothly does it shift? You turn down the stereo and concentrate on it. How well does it brake? You find a spot and hit the brakes hard. How does it perform in a sudden evasive maneuver? You make a hard sudden lane change to find out. How long can you balance it on two wheels? That last one isn’t really necessary, but the salespeople always enjoy it. If it passes all of those tests, after you’re sure you know the car inside and out, then and only then would you consider buying it.
When you’re buying a house, you don’t just show up and write a check. You hire a home inspector. You have professionals pore over the house at every level. You check the foundation for cracks. You check the insulation and the quality of the windows and the water flow around the house. And it’s not just the house you examine. You check out the neighborhood around the house, and the quality of the schools and the resale values over time. It matters. You want to know every last possible detail you can before you hand your soul over to the bank at six-and-a-quarter percent for the next thirty years.
When we can’t physically see the thing, like when we’re buying online, we check double extra carefully. What’s the seller’s reputation? You check that they’re trusted, that they have all the right reviews of their service. What’s the product’s reputation? You check out consumer reviews and industry magazines and listen to the voices of level-headed friends who’ve owned the product.
We want to have a full and complete grasp of the things we buy before we buy them, because we know if we don’t, we’ll be disappointed. We need to have a complete grasp of every last thing we’re going to possess, because trust just isn’t ever a factor when it comes to our lives as consumers. If we have to have a motto, it is caveat emptor, which means “buyer beware.” And so we are wary, always careful and on our guard.
But today, we heard the Apostle Paul tell us a little bit about what it will mean when the promise of Christ is fulfilled. You’ve been hearing a whole bunch of preaching on the Book of Romans these last few weeks, and today, I’m sure you’ll be excited to hear, will be no exception.
As we reach the middle of chapter eight of this highly complex letter, Paul has just finished giving us an explanation the role of the law and the role of faith in our salvation. It’s an argument that he begins in chapter one, and that ends at the end of this chapter. It ain’t an easy read.
When the Apostle Paul starts describing the end results of faith, the results of our struggle to embrace and serve God in this life, what’s interesting is the degree to which he managed to couch the end result of that struggle in terms that aren’t matter of fact. His writing here isn’t about the specifics. The struggle is deeply there, the groaning and the effort of faith, but the reward...well...Paul there gets a little coy.
He speaks about life governed by the Holy Spirit, but that’s in the now and not in the fulfillment of God’s time. He speaks about a glory to be revealed, but then he doesn’t actually reveal it. Paul speaks instead in soaring and rhythmic cadences, but when it gets right down to the nitty gritty of what awaits us in glory...we don’t hear details. What we get instead is Paul telling us about hope.
This bugs us. We don’t want hope. We want to see the end product, or at least a highly informational brochure. We want to have evidence of everything that God has intended for us, right there in front of us. We want to see our rightness with the Big Guy played out across everything we do. We want evidence of our successful career, we want to drop three inches from our waistline, we want the Lord to miraculously improve the mileage we’re getting. Having those things right in front of us would be tremendously confidence building. We’d know exactly what we were getting in for.
Unfortunately for us, that’s not how God works. Instead of that absolute, you-can-touch-it-you-can-feel-it certainty, we approach God and the fulfillment of God’s promise with hope. And as the Apostle Paul puts it so bluntly, hope is not certainty. I do not hope that which I know. Hope is about trust, and that means that hope includes an element of doubt, at least some small sprinkle of not-knowing. To have hope is about a yearning for a future reality that you don’t quite yet grasp.
Hope is, in fact, something viewed as essential to the Christian journey. In verse 24 of today’s reading, the New Revised Standard Version translation says that “in hope we were saved.” The NIV says “in this hope we were saved.” The King James says “by hope we were saved.” Somehow, our willingness to accept the unknowability of what God has intended for us...to accept it’s goodness but know that some things will have to be anticipated...that abiding hopefulness is an important part of our salvation.
Hope surfaces at other places in Romans, and it is woven up deeply with the fulfillment of the faithful life.
It’s that hope that we’ve got to embrace whenever we turn ourselves towards the future. For all of our planning and careful mapping out of every possible option before us, the future isn’t something that we can hold in our hands. We can try to take that good, hard look at our futures...but the reality of what lies before us is not known to us and can’t be known to us...until we get there.
That’s doubly true about what God has in store for us. Yes, we can’t touch it. Yes, we can’t feel it. But it’s not a product. It’s not a commodity. It’s not something we go out and buy. We can’t think of it that way, because that way of thinking has nothing to do with God.
Think of it, instead, as a present, a gift given to us by someone who loves us. Nothing ruins the joy of getting a gift like knowing exactly what it is beforehand.
So have hope. Don’t try to spoil the surprise.
07.20.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Romans 8:12-25
Nobody in their right mind buys anything important without taking a good hard look at it first.
When you’re buying a *cough* pre-owned car, you don’t just order it and have it show up at your door. You want to inspect the paint for blemishes. You want to check the wheels for dings and damage and check the tires for wear. You pop open the hood and stare at the engine, stroke your chin, and make a few comments so that you’ll seem like you actually know a thing about engines. Hmmm. Is that dipstick carbon fibre?
Then you have drive it, to get a sense of how comfortable it is and how well it actually runs. How smoothly does it shift? You turn down the stereo and concentrate on it. How well does it brake? You find a spot and hit the brakes hard. How does it perform in a sudden evasive maneuver? You make a hard sudden lane change to find out. How long can you balance it on two wheels? That last one isn’t really necessary, but the salespeople always enjoy it. If it passes all of those tests, after you’re sure you know the car inside and out, then and only then would you consider buying it.
When you’re buying a house, you don’t just show up and write a check. You hire a home inspector. You have professionals pore over the house at every level. You check the foundation for cracks. You check the insulation and the quality of the windows and the water flow around the house. And it’s not just the house you examine. You check out the neighborhood around the house, and the quality of the schools and the resale values over time. It matters. You want to know every last possible detail you can before you hand your soul over to the bank at six-and-a-quarter percent for the next thirty years.
When we can’t physically see the thing, like when we’re buying online, we check double extra carefully. What’s the seller’s reputation? You check that they’re trusted, that they have all the right reviews of their service. What’s the product’s reputation? You check out consumer reviews and industry magazines and listen to the voices of level-headed friends who’ve owned the product.
We want to have a full and complete grasp of the things we buy before we buy them, because we know if we don’t, we’ll be disappointed. We need to have a complete grasp of every last thing we’re going to possess, because trust just isn’t ever a factor when it comes to our lives as consumers. If we have to have a motto, it is caveat emptor, which means “buyer beware.” And so we are wary, always careful and on our guard.
But today, we heard the Apostle Paul tell us a little bit about what it will mean when the promise of Christ is fulfilled. You’ve been hearing a whole bunch of preaching on the Book of Romans these last few weeks, and today, I’m sure you’ll be excited to hear, will be no exception.
As we reach the middle of chapter eight of this highly complex letter, Paul has just finished giving us an explanation the role of the law and the role of faith in our salvation. It’s an argument that he begins in chapter one, and that ends at the end of this chapter. It ain’t an easy read.
When the Apostle Paul starts describing the end results of faith, the results of our struggle to embrace and serve God in this life, what’s interesting is the degree to which he managed to couch the end result of that struggle in terms that aren’t matter of fact. His writing here isn’t about the specifics. The struggle is deeply there, the groaning and the effort of faith, but the reward...well...Paul there gets a little coy.
He speaks about life governed by the Holy Spirit, but that’s in the now and not in the fulfillment of God’s time. He speaks about a glory to be revealed, but then he doesn’t actually reveal it. Paul speaks instead in soaring and rhythmic cadences, but when it gets right down to the nitty gritty of what awaits us in glory...we don’t hear details. What we get instead is Paul telling us about hope.
This bugs us. We don’t want hope. We want to see the end product, or at least a highly informational brochure. We want to have evidence of everything that God has intended for us, right there in front of us. We want to see our rightness with the Big Guy played out across everything we do. We want evidence of our successful career, we want to drop three inches from our waistline, we want the Lord to miraculously improve the mileage we’re getting. Having those things right in front of us would be tremendously confidence building. We’d know exactly what we were getting in for.
Unfortunately for us, that’s not how God works. Instead of that absolute, you-can-touch-it-you-can-feel-it certainty, we approach God and the fulfillment of God’s promise with hope. And as the Apostle Paul puts it so bluntly, hope is not certainty. I do not hope that which I know. Hope is about trust, and that means that hope includes an element of doubt, at least some small sprinkle of not-knowing. To have hope is about a yearning for a future reality that you don’t quite yet grasp.
Hope is, in fact, something viewed as essential to the Christian journey. In verse 24 of today’s reading, the New Revised Standard Version translation says that “in hope we were saved.” The NIV says “in this hope we were saved.” The King James says “by hope we were saved.” Somehow, our willingness to accept the unknowability of what God has intended for us...to accept it’s goodness but know that some things will have to be anticipated...that abiding hopefulness is an important part of our salvation.
Hope surfaces at other places in Romans, and it is woven up deeply with the fulfillment of the faithful life.
It’s that hope that we’ve got to embrace whenever we turn ourselves towards the future. For all of our planning and careful mapping out of every possible option before us, the future isn’t something that we can hold in our hands. We can try to take that good, hard look at our futures...but the reality of what lies before us is not known to us and can’t be known to us...until we get there.
That’s doubly true about what God has in store for us. Yes, we can’t touch it. Yes, we can’t feel it. But it’s not a product. It’s not a commodity. It’s not something we go out and buy. We can’t think of it that way, because that way of thinking has nothing to do with God.
Think of it, instead, as a present, a gift given to us by someone who loves us. Nothing ruins the joy of getting a gift like knowing exactly what it is beforehand.
So have hope. Don’t try to spoil the surprise.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Deeds of Power
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
06.01.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:21-29
How do you know you have power? There are powerful people out there, but how do you know they’re powerful?
Here’s how I think most of us determine the answer to that. We look for things that are easy to see. How much influence does the person have? Is this someone who can get things done? Then they’re powerful. How do we human beings get things done? Well, everything we do in our lives as human beings can sorta kinda be split out into two categories of power. There’s social and political power, and then there’s economic power.
Social and political power has to do with how we relate to one another. In a little group, it’s who has the most influence, and who has the least influence. Hey! Go get me a cup of coffee! Hey! Clean up! Hey! My car needs polishing! If you’ve got influence for whatever reason, be it force of personality or seniority or “hott-ness” or an unusually stylish haircut, folks will respond.
If you don’t have influence...well...you may as well just be talking to yourself. In a big group, the politics seem more complicated, but they’re much the same. The networks of social influence all revolve around who you know, and how much pull you have with them, and how useful you are to them. In that way, we’re not that far off from bands of chimpanzees. So that guy can get you a great job with benefits? How, in the infinite vastness of God’s creation, is that much different from the alpha female who teaches you how to fish tasty termites out of a hole with a stick?
Economic power is another way human beings relate to one another. Unlike lower forms of life, we use money to get things, and money is just a way of representing our power to get what we want. It would mean, in chimp terms, that instead of having to spend an hour a day picking bugs from the back of the mistress of termite stick fishing and grooming her hair, you can just give her a pretty rock. For human beings, that means that you can give that guy cash for fixing your roof, or for a car, or to groom your hair. Wealth means influence.
Influence means being able to get done what you want done. And being able to get done what you want done is power.
That is the baseline standard...of worldly power. In Matthew’s Gospel today, we hear how Jesus wrapped up the Sermon on the Mount, which stands as the highest and most significant of all of Christ’s teachings. Throughout the sermon, he makes a point of consistently challenging the way his listeners thought about the world. Throughout his teaching, he constantly told all who heard him that what mattered most was how we responded to the knowledge that God’s kingdom was at hand. He reminded his disciples and the crowds that gathered to listen that what mattered was that perfect fusion of faith and action. That means going above and beyond the demands of the law, and living a life loving ones enemies, being humble, and refusing to be hypocritical or judgmental.
Here at the end of the sermon, though, Jesus looks beyond the moment during which he speaks, looks past the dust and the throng and the smell of that sun-baked Judean hillside. He sees the future of what will rise up in response to His Gospel, and he lays out a warning.
There will be people, Jesus says, who will come in my name. They will use my name as they shout out their own judgments about the future. They will do some things that will amaze you. They will do great deeds of power. But none of that will matter. None of that means a thing to God. He then tells a little story, a familiar parable, about two men who build. One builds on a rock, rooting his actions in the Gospel. A storm comes, and what he has built endures. Another builds...on something else. But that other thing is not a sure foundation, and his work is torn apart in the storm.
Jesus is here warning all of us about our tendency to confuse worldly power with the Gospel message. It’s easy for us to look at social power, or look at the power that comes with a six-figure credit limit, and imagine that this is somehow reflective of the kind of power that God shows us in Jesus.
There’s a movement in Christianity now that presents just such a message. It’s called the Word Faith movement. It’s an offshoot of the Pentecostal church, it’s growing like wildfire in America, and it’s got it’s own very special way of looking at the Gospel. Some folks call it the Prosperity Gospel, mostly because Word Faith churches talk endlessly about getting money. Their members tend to think that pastors should fly around in corporate jets and live in 10,000 square foot mansions. You’ve heard me preach on that part of the movement before, usually right around the time y’all have to start thinking about my salary for the next year. Ahem.
But underneath Word Faith’s teaching about making sure your pastor’s 2009 Audi R8 has the new optional $5,000 full LED headlights, there’s something more troubling about Word Faith. There’s this basic idea, you see, that if you have real faith, God will do whatever you want. Just ask, and ye shall receive, they say. God in heaven gives gifts to those who ask him, so if you’re really faithful, you’ll get whatever you want. You want to prosper? Just ask. You want to get a better job? Just have faith. You want to get ahead in the world? Seek, and ye shall find.
Word Faith basically claims that the Bible teaches that God has to obey the faithful. If you ask, God will give. If you are truly faithful, if you truly believe, then God must do whatever you ask. Having faith becomes sorta like owning the lamp with the genie inside, although Word Faith makes no mention of whether or not God is voiced by Robin Williams.
Of all the many problems with thinking that way, the greatest comes when you actually get past all your daydreams about God finally getting you all the wealth you’re sure will make you happy. Because if having faith means having your dreams all come true, then if you suffer...it must be because you just don’t have enough faith.
If you pray and you pray and you pray over someone you love...and they die anyway...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you pray and hope over someone who just can’t seem to get their lives together...and they never do...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you try your hardest to do what’s right, and that relationship just comes apart anyway, it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. If you put in long hours at work, and do your best, and don’t get ahead...it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. Just believe a little harder, they say. Just pull yourself up by your Jesus bootstraps, they say.
But faith doesn’t work like that. It’s not measured in the same way as worldly power. It’s not social. It’s not economic. It’s not a question of being able to do whatever you want, and impressing people with your power. That kind of power is a house built on sand. No matter how much of it you have...it will fail when the storm comes.
Seek other things.
06.01.08; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:21-29
How do you know you have power? There are powerful people out there, but how do you know they’re powerful?
Here’s how I think most of us determine the answer to that. We look for things that are easy to see. How much influence does the person have? Is this someone who can get things done? Then they’re powerful. How do we human beings get things done? Well, everything we do in our lives as human beings can sorta kinda be split out into two categories of power. There’s social and political power, and then there’s economic power.
Social and political power has to do with how we relate to one another. In a little group, it’s who has the most influence, and who has the least influence. Hey! Go get me a cup of coffee! Hey! Clean up! Hey! My car needs polishing! If you’ve got influence for whatever reason, be it force of personality or seniority or “hott-ness” or an unusually stylish haircut, folks will respond.
If you don’t have influence...well...you may as well just be talking to yourself. In a big group, the politics seem more complicated, but they’re much the same. The networks of social influence all revolve around who you know, and how much pull you have with them, and how useful you are to them. In that way, we’re not that far off from bands of chimpanzees. So that guy can get you a great job with benefits? How, in the infinite vastness of God’s creation, is that much different from the alpha female who teaches you how to fish tasty termites out of a hole with a stick?
Economic power is another way human beings relate to one another. Unlike lower forms of life, we use money to get things, and money is just a way of representing our power to get what we want. It would mean, in chimp terms, that instead of having to spend an hour a day picking bugs from the back of the mistress of termite stick fishing and grooming her hair, you can just give her a pretty rock. For human beings, that means that you can give that guy cash for fixing your roof, or for a car, or to groom your hair. Wealth means influence.
Influence means being able to get done what you want done. And being able to get done what you want done is power.
That is the baseline standard...of worldly power. In Matthew’s Gospel today, we hear how Jesus wrapped up the Sermon on the Mount, which stands as the highest and most significant of all of Christ’s teachings. Throughout the sermon, he makes a point of consistently challenging the way his listeners thought about the world. Throughout his teaching, he constantly told all who heard him that what mattered most was how we responded to the knowledge that God’s kingdom was at hand. He reminded his disciples and the crowds that gathered to listen that what mattered was that perfect fusion of faith and action. That means going above and beyond the demands of the law, and living a life loving ones enemies, being humble, and refusing to be hypocritical or judgmental.
Here at the end of the sermon, though, Jesus looks beyond the moment during which he speaks, looks past the dust and the throng and the smell of that sun-baked Judean hillside. He sees the future of what will rise up in response to His Gospel, and he lays out a warning.
There will be people, Jesus says, who will come in my name. They will use my name as they shout out their own judgments about the future. They will do some things that will amaze you. They will do great deeds of power. But none of that will matter. None of that means a thing to God. He then tells a little story, a familiar parable, about two men who build. One builds on a rock, rooting his actions in the Gospel. A storm comes, and what he has built endures. Another builds...on something else. But that other thing is not a sure foundation, and his work is torn apart in the storm.
Jesus is here warning all of us about our tendency to confuse worldly power with the Gospel message. It’s easy for us to look at social power, or look at the power that comes with a six-figure credit limit, and imagine that this is somehow reflective of the kind of power that God shows us in Jesus.
There’s a movement in Christianity now that presents just such a message. It’s called the Word Faith movement. It’s an offshoot of the Pentecostal church, it’s growing like wildfire in America, and it’s got it’s own very special way of looking at the Gospel. Some folks call it the Prosperity Gospel, mostly because Word Faith churches talk endlessly about getting money. Their members tend to think that pastors should fly around in corporate jets and live in 10,000 square foot mansions. You’ve heard me preach on that part of the movement before, usually right around the time y’all have to start thinking about my salary for the next year. Ahem.
But underneath Word Faith’s teaching about making sure your pastor’s 2009 Audi R8 has the new optional $5,000 full LED headlights, there’s something more troubling about Word Faith. There’s this basic idea, you see, that if you have real faith, God will do whatever you want. Just ask, and ye shall receive, they say. God in heaven gives gifts to those who ask him, so if you’re really faithful, you’ll get whatever you want. You want to prosper? Just ask. You want to get a better job? Just have faith. You want to get ahead in the world? Seek, and ye shall find.
Word Faith basically claims that the Bible teaches that God has to obey the faithful. If you ask, God will give. If you are truly faithful, if you truly believe, then God must do whatever you ask. Having faith becomes sorta like owning the lamp with the genie inside, although Word Faith makes no mention of whether or not God is voiced by Robin Williams.
Of all the many problems with thinking that way, the greatest comes when you actually get past all your daydreams about God finally getting you all the wealth you’re sure will make you happy. Because if having faith means having your dreams all come true, then if you suffer...it must be because you just don’t have enough faith.
If you pray and you pray and you pray over someone you love...and they die anyway...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you pray and hope over someone who just can’t seem to get their lives together...and they never do...it must mean you don’t have enough faith. If you try your hardest to do what’s right, and that relationship just comes apart anyway, it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. If you put in long hours at work, and do your best, and don’t get ahead...it must mean you didn’t have enough faith. Just believe a little harder, they say. Just pull yourself up by your Jesus bootstraps, they say.
But faith doesn’t work like that. It’s not measured in the same way as worldly power. It’s not social. It’s not economic. It’s not a question of being able to do whatever you want, and impressing people with your power. That kind of power is a house built on sand. No matter how much of it you have...it will fail when the storm comes.
Seek other things.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
After the Wilderness
United Korean Presbyterian Church/Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
11.18.07; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams
11.18.07; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams
Delivered in English and Korean; Watch it here: Part 1; Part 2
Did you listen to the beginning of that passage from John’s Gospel?
Is it our own glory that causes us to celebrate
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Really Living
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
09.30.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
The world is filled with people telling you what not to do. Pretty much every single day, there’s some new study or some new research sternly warning all of us that something we eat, drink, or wear is no longer permitted. How often does the desperately concerned anchor on News Center 5 at Seven look straight at the camera and say, “A new study reveals that a product you may have in your kitchen now might pose a significant danger to you and your family. We’ll tell you what that product is right after these messages.”
These warnings and alerts come at us from all angles. We get home after a long day and all we want to do is collapse on the sofa with a bag of pretzels and a cold frosty one. But when we turn on the mindsucker, we’re at CNN, and the anchor shouts: This evening it’s official: America is suffering under an epidemic of obesity! So you drag yourself up to go jogging, but getting out means exposure to the sun--and the anchor whispers that The American Institute of Dermatology today announced that exposure to ultraviolet radiation could increase your risk of several forms of skin cancer! So we’ll stay in to play calorie-burning games on our Wii. Nintendo has been forced to respond to concerns that the Wii controller can cause property damage or serious injury! OK..so.. we go to get into our SUV to drive to the gym. NASA satellites reveal more startling evidence that human carbon emissions are bringing about global warming! Alright, already...can I just wear a hat and long sleeves and walk there? A recent alert from the Department of Transportation warns that new traffic levels are causing an increased level of pedestrian fatalities..walk at your own risk!
So perhaps I should just stay home and have dinner. Can I have a hamburger? Johns Hopkins researchers released a new study this week showing the link between red meat consumption and colon cancer! How about a nice healthy salad? FDA investigators yesterday revealed that pre-made salads are possibly infected with salmonella! Maybe...a glass of milk? The effects of bovine growth hormone on human beings are worrying, scientists say! Can I please have just a little glass of water? Washington area officials today reported serious concerns with the local waste treatment facility. Maybe...maybe I’ll just lie down quietly on the floor and curl into a fetal ball. Have you recently tested the air in your home for radon? Radon, the silent killer returns...more after this.
How much preaching have you heard that seems designed to make you feel the same way, full of fear? Hopefully, not too much of MY preaching...I mean, sure, sometimes some of you look a little glazed out there, but I’m assuming that’s not because you’re paralyzed with fear.
There’s that horrific tendency of preachers to focus relentlessly on telling you what you shouldn’t do, on what you should avoid, on the horrors and terrors that await your soul the very moment you step outside of the sainted halls of their sanctuary and stop clinging to every word they say. Every action or failure to act could mean the difference between an eternity of euphoric delight and spending your infinity getting slowly and painfully pickled in a jar buried in Satan’s backyard. The life lived in faith can become a life lived on the defensive, constantly terrified that somehow, some way, you’re going to inadvertently do something wrong.
There are plenty of folks who carefully cultivate such fears. They warn their children that Halloween is Satan’s night. There’s nothing more terrifying and clearly evil in the sight of the Lord than a little cluster of first graders dressed up like ninjas. They tell them that Santa is a demonic tool to turn people from the love of Jesus. They stand up in front of their congregations and proclaim that allowing your children to play with Pokemon cards will turn them away from the true faith. “The Bible sez that Saitan fell from heaven like a flash of lightning...and Pikachu has lighting for a tail...cain’t you see the connexshun???!!!”
If you’ve been around Jesus people long enough, you’ll have heard every one of these assertions, spoken with absolute sincerity and a glint of fear in a trembling eye. According to some folks, if you set foot outside of the church, if you read something not written by a Christian, or hear a song that’s not Christian, for even one moment, you may as well just resign yourself to being a tasty side dish for Beelzebub’s dinner guests.
That’s like the madness that’s afflicted some corners of Christianity around the Harry Potter books. Here you have books written by a Christian. Those books praise the highest virtues of Christian faith, and in many ways intentionally mirror the stories of the Gospels. J.K. Rowling even sneaks in quotes of scripture. But for those for whom faith means fear, they must be evil...have to be evil!
That fear can paralyze Christians, and it can also make them clumsy witnesses in the world around them. If we spend too much time lamenting evil and too little time doing and speaking the good, then those around us will see and hear only evil. And who wants to be around that?
That, in large part, is what the author of 1 Timothy is warning against. Scholars are divided about who actually wrote this book. Some read it and are convinced that this letter is one of the later letters of Paul. Others…and I tend to agree with this second group…feel that it is a pseudonymous letter, written by a faithful disciple of Paul’s and in his name. In the ancient world, that wasn’t considered lying or plagiarism. To write a work under the name of your teacher or spiritual master was a way of honoring their name, and it also insured that the message of your teacher continued to be spread.
Whichever way you slice it, 1 Timothy is one of three letters...the other two are 2 Timothy and Titus...which are called the Pastoral Letters, because they’re most interested in telling the new church two things. First, they’re there to guide the church in running it’s own affairs. It talks about what elders and deacons do, for example. Second, and just as important, it tells the church that it needs to live in such a way that the outside world will clearly recognize it as something good. Yes, there are warnings about what not to do, but they are leavened with encouragement about what Christians should do.
This morning’s passage is no exception. With every spiritual danger that is highlighted...like the love of wealth and pursuing desires that crush the contentment from us...there are corresponding notes of grace and hope. He doesn’t just warn us, but gives an indication as to ways we can act that will both bring us more contentment and be a beacon of grace to the world around us.
When the letter warns of the spiritual danger of wealth, for instance, he doesn’t rant and rave about how very evil every one is who makes more money than he does. Instead, he points out the danger, but also makes it clear that there are ways to prevent the wealth you have received from dominating your life.
Do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous. Make sure that whether you are rich or poor, everything that you do in this life serves to build a solid foundation for your eternity. Don’t spend all of your time quaking or being guided by your fears or your anger against the world. Instead, take a hold of the life that really is life, because if those around you see that you are really living the full and joyous life to which God has called you.
09.30.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
The world is filled with people telling you what not to do. Pretty much every single day, there’s some new study or some new research sternly warning all of us that something we eat, drink, or wear is no longer permitted. How often does the desperately concerned anchor on News Center 5 at Seven look straight at the camera and say, “A new study reveals that a product you may have in your kitchen now might pose a significant danger to you and your family. We’ll tell you what that product is right after these messages.”
These warnings and alerts come at us from all angles. We get home after a long day and all we want to do is collapse on the sofa with a bag of pretzels and a cold frosty one. But when we turn on the mindsucker, we’re at CNN, and the anchor shouts: This evening it’s official: America is suffering under an epidemic of obesity! So you drag yourself up to go jogging, but getting out means exposure to the sun--and the anchor whispers that The American Institute of Dermatology today announced that exposure to ultraviolet radiation could increase your risk of several forms of skin cancer! So we’ll stay in to play calorie-burning games on our Wii. Nintendo has been forced to respond to concerns that the Wii controller can cause property damage or serious injury! OK..so.. we go to get into our SUV to drive to the gym. NASA satellites reveal more startling evidence that human carbon emissions are bringing about global warming! Alright, already...can I just wear a hat and long sleeves and walk there? A recent alert from the Department of Transportation warns that new traffic levels are causing an increased level of pedestrian fatalities..walk at your own risk!
So perhaps I should just stay home and have dinner. Can I have a hamburger? Johns Hopkins researchers released a new study this week showing the link between red meat consumption and colon cancer! How about a nice healthy salad? FDA investigators yesterday revealed that pre-made salads are possibly infected with salmonella! Maybe...a glass of milk? The effects of bovine growth hormone on human beings are worrying, scientists say! Can I please have just a little glass of water? Washington area officials today reported serious concerns with the local waste treatment facility. Maybe...maybe I’ll just lie down quietly on the floor and curl into a fetal ball. Have you recently tested the air in your home for radon? Radon, the silent killer returns...more after this.
How much preaching have you heard that seems designed to make you feel the same way, full of fear? Hopefully, not too much of MY preaching...I mean, sure, sometimes some of you look a little glazed out there, but I’m assuming that’s not because you’re paralyzed with fear.
There’s that horrific tendency of preachers to focus relentlessly on telling you what you shouldn’t do, on what you should avoid, on the horrors and terrors that await your soul the very moment you step outside of the sainted halls of their sanctuary and stop clinging to every word they say. Every action or failure to act could mean the difference between an eternity of euphoric delight and spending your infinity getting slowly and painfully pickled in a jar buried in Satan’s backyard. The life lived in faith can become a life lived on the defensive, constantly terrified that somehow, some way, you’re going to inadvertently do something wrong.
There are plenty of folks who carefully cultivate such fears. They warn their children that Halloween is Satan’s night. There’s nothing more terrifying and clearly evil in the sight of the Lord than a little cluster of first graders dressed up like ninjas. They tell them that Santa is a demonic tool to turn people from the love of Jesus. They stand up in front of their congregations and proclaim that allowing your children to play with Pokemon cards will turn them away from the true faith. “The Bible sez that Saitan fell from heaven like a flash of lightning...and Pikachu has lighting for a tail...cain’t you see the connexshun???!!!”
If you’ve been around Jesus people long enough, you’ll have heard every one of these assertions, spoken with absolute sincerity and a glint of fear in a trembling eye. According to some folks, if you set foot outside of the church, if you read something not written by a Christian, or hear a song that’s not Christian, for even one moment, you may as well just resign yourself to being a tasty side dish for Beelzebub’s dinner guests.
That’s like the madness that’s afflicted some corners of Christianity around the Harry Potter books. Here you have books written by a Christian. Those books praise the highest virtues of Christian faith, and in many ways intentionally mirror the stories of the Gospels. J.K. Rowling even sneaks in quotes of scripture. But for those for whom faith means fear, they must be evil...have to be evil!
That fear can paralyze Christians, and it can also make them clumsy witnesses in the world around them. If we spend too much time lamenting evil and too little time doing and speaking the good, then those around us will see and hear only evil. And who wants to be around that?
That, in large part, is what the author of 1 Timothy is warning against. Scholars are divided about who actually wrote this book. Some read it and are convinced that this letter is one of the later letters of Paul. Others…and I tend to agree with this second group…feel that it is a pseudonymous letter, written by a faithful disciple of Paul’s and in his name. In the ancient world, that wasn’t considered lying or plagiarism. To write a work under the name of your teacher or spiritual master was a way of honoring their name, and it also insured that the message of your teacher continued to be spread.
Whichever way you slice it, 1 Timothy is one of three letters...the other two are 2 Timothy and Titus...which are called the Pastoral Letters, because they’re most interested in telling the new church two things. First, they’re there to guide the church in running it’s own affairs. It talks about what elders and deacons do, for example. Second, and just as important, it tells the church that it needs to live in such a way that the outside world will clearly recognize it as something good. Yes, there are warnings about what not to do, but they are leavened with encouragement about what Christians should do.
This morning’s passage is no exception. With every spiritual danger that is highlighted...like the love of wealth and pursuing desires that crush the contentment from us...there are corresponding notes of grace and hope. He doesn’t just warn us, but gives an indication as to ways we can act that will both bring us more contentment and be a beacon of grace to the world around us.
When the letter warns of the spiritual danger of wealth, for instance, he doesn’t rant and rave about how very evil every one is who makes more money than he does. Instead, he points out the danger, but also makes it clear that there are ways to prevent the wealth you have received from dominating your life.
Do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous. Make sure that whether you are rich or poor, everything that you do in this life serves to build a solid foundation for your eternity. Don’t spend all of your time quaking or being guided by your fears or your anger against the world. Instead, take a hold of the life that really is life, because if those around you see that you are really living the full and joyous life to which God has called you.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Protestant Work Ethic
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
08.05.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lessons: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21
Americans just can’t seem to stop working.
Every few years, there’s another spasm of interest in this characteristic of the American economy. Unlike pretty much every other nation in the world, the American work week just keeps getting longer and longer. In major metropolitan areas like this one, the number of hours you put in each week is almost a badge of pride, yet another way in which you can prove yourself superior to those around you.
Downtown, little clusters of young associates regale each other with tales of epic hours worked, 50 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours in a week. Among some junior executives at area contracting firms, where racking up billable hours is next to Godliness, there’s a rumor going around that if you pound back 25 triple espressos in a row it actually rips a hole in the space-time continuum…allowing you to put in that perfect 200 hour week. Either that or your head implodes, and honestly, after 25 espressos it’s a little hard to tell the difference.
Americans work more than most of the rest of the industrialized world, with the average worker in the United States putting in 1,804 hours a year. That’s now almost a full workweek more per year than the average Japanese worker, three hundred and fifty hours a year more than the average Dutch worker, and 1,800 hours more than the average Frenchman. For all of our seeming busyness, we’re still nowhere near matching the country that holds the record for the most hours spent working, which,…surprise surprise…is Korea, at 2,400 hours annually. Amazingly, though, that’s after the average Korean work year dropped by nearly two hundred and fifty hours--six week a year--- in the last decade, the single largest reduction in hours worked in any nation. Most economists who’ve studied the dynamics of the Korean workforce ascribe this immense drop to either an increase in leisure time that’s the inevitable result of a maturing world economy. Others suggest it might be a result of what is known as the “World of Warcraft Effect.”
What’s strange about this whole phenomenon is that it’s exactly the opposite of what people used to think 2007 would look like. Back in America in the 1950s, everyone was absolutely convinced that fifty five years in the future, we’d all be working 15 hours a week. They also thought we’d be commuting via jet pack, and I don’t know which one is more disappointing. Strangely, though, studies have shown that when you take into account all the increases in technology and productivity, it should only take a modern worker 11 hours to do the work that took 40 hours to do in 1950. If we were willing to accept the same standard of living as 1950s Americans, an 11 hour workweek might even be possible.
But we don’t want to live in little 1950s houses. We want to live in huge houses. We don’t want to own just one car. We want three cars, which we’ll put in a garage that’s bigger than that little 1950s house. We don’t want just one nine inch television. We want a 108” LCD HDTV…and oh yes, they do make one…so we can see the oil glistening in the pores on Jack Bauer’s nose. We want our cable and we want our TiVo and we want our high speed internet and we want our cell phones. We NEED these things if we’re going to be happy. Because we are so much more happy now than we were half a century ago. Aren’t we?
Both Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Luke aren’t so sure. Of all of the books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes isn’t exactly the kind of book that you flip to when you’re needing a few words of gentle comfort. It’s a striking book, an unforgiving book, one that is on the one hand part of the great tradition of Hebrew Wisdom and on the other hand opposes one of the core teachings of that tradition.
That core teaching of Hebrew Wisdom, to be found throughout the Book of Proverbs, is called retributive justice. You may ask, what the Helen of Troy is retributive justice? Retributive justice is the idea that acting wisely will cause you to prosper, and acting like Kevin Federline is your life coach will cause you to fail. If you are prudent and hardworking and invest your time and your energy carefully, then you will be rewarded with worldly riches and goodness.
The author of Ecclesiastes has issue with that whole idea. It’s not that he’s resentful because he hasn’t done well. He’s done just fine. He’s gathered in great wealth and power, but none of it satisfies him, because he’s wise enough to see that all of his work and all of his material gain ultimately means absolutely nothing.
For as hard as he will have labored for them, they will ultimately fail him. He’s worked impossibly hard, and has watched others as they’ve lost sleep, letting their successful striving for wealth consume them. But that wealth will be completely meaningless to him..and to them.. when they’re gone.
That’s the same point that Jesus is making in the Gospel of Luke. The passage from chapter 12 of that book comes to us from one of the long teachings that Luke records. Jesus is standing before a crowd that has gathered to hear him share stories and riddles about the nature of the Kingdom of God. He’s showing them what’s important and telling them what they should value in their lives. He’s just told them to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them in what they have to say when someone from the audience pipes up.
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” What he was hoping was to get Jesus to act as most rabbis would have acted, which is to go into a long discussion of the laws of inheritance and to come up with a legal ruling for him... for a small percentage of the inheritance, of course. Perhaps he should have waited on the Spirit just a little longer. Jesus turns him down with surprising gentleness, and instead uses his question to launch into a story about a man who had so much stuff that he was having to think about building a new five car garage with a finished attic for storage. This is someone who has succeeded by every single standard of classical wisdom. He has invested wisely, he’s planted the right crops, and he is doing absolutely everything right. The wealthy man smiles to himself, sure that he’s going to have a chance to kick back and enjoy the bounty he’s gotten. I’m going to Disney World, baby!
But as Christ tells the story, that’s not what happens. It’s at that moment that God appears to the man and berates him. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” In an echo of Ecclesiastes, we hear: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
This is the point in countless sermons where your friendly neighborhood preacher man would start talking about not storing up treasures for yourself but being rich towards God...something you should definitely keep in mind when you see the offering plate that’ll be coming ‘round later. But that totally misses the point of what Jesus is talking about.
Within the story, what is being demanded of the rich man isn’t his barns or his crops or his goods. What’s being claimed is his life...all of his days, all of his actions, all of the choices he has made. God couldn’t care less about possessions. It is life that God demands.
That’s the primary challenge facing us in our modern culture of work. A deep personal commitment to excellence in all that you do in the working world was viewed by the Protestant reformers as a sign of spiritual maturity. God has given us all certain gifts, and called each of us to a particular task in life, and our willingness to embrace that task and pursue it joyously is a sign of blessing. But we’re not called on to pursue work for the sake of profit alone. We’re called to work because what work is a joyous and honorable thing. We’re each given a vocation as a part of contributing to the broader good of God’s creation.
What work should not be, though, is all consuming. If it devours time for friendships and fellowship, and takes away those moments that should be given over to prayer and worship, then it has grown beyond its rightful bounds.
It is our lives that will be demanded of us. When the time comes to settle that account, what will we have to offer?
08.05.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lessons: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21
Americans just can’t seem to stop working.
Every few years, there’s another spasm of interest in this characteristic of the American economy. Unlike pretty much every other nation in the world, the American work week just keeps getting longer and longer. In major metropolitan areas like this one, the number of hours you put in each week is almost a badge of pride, yet another way in which you can prove yourself superior to those around you.
Downtown, little clusters of young associates regale each other with tales of epic hours worked, 50 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours in a week. Among some junior executives at area contracting firms, where racking up billable hours is next to Godliness, there’s a rumor going around that if you pound back 25 triple espressos in a row it actually rips a hole in the space-time continuum…allowing you to put in that perfect 200 hour week. Either that or your head implodes, and honestly, after 25 espressos it’s a little hard to tell the difference.
Americans work more than most of the rest of the industrialized world, with the average worker in the United States putting in 1,804 hours a year. That’s now almost a full workweek more per year than the average Japanese worker, three hundred and fifty hours a year more than the average Dutch worker, and 1,800 hours more than the average Frenchman. For all of our seeming busyness, we’re still nowhere near matching the country that holds the record for the most hours spent working, which,…surprise surprise…is Korea, at 2,400 hours annually. Amazingly, though, that’s after the average Korean work year dropped by nearly two hundred and fifty hours--six week a year--- in the last decade, the single largest reduction in hours worked in any nation. Most economists who’ve studied the dynamics of the Korean workforce ascribe this immense drop to either an increase in leisure time that’s the inevitable result of a maturing world economy. Others suggest it might be a result of what is known as the “World of Warcraft Effect.”
What’s strange about this whole phenomenon is that it’s exactly the opposite of what people used to think 2007 would look like. Back in America in the 1950s, everyone was absolutely convinced that fifty five years in the future, we’d all be working 15 hours a week. They also thought we’d be commuting via jet pack, and I don’t know which one is more disappointing. Strangely, though, studies have shown that when you take into account all the increases in technology and productivity, it should only take a modern worker 11 hours to do the work that took 40 hours to do in 1950. If we were willing to accept the same standard of living as 1950s Americans, an 11 hour workweek might even be possible.
But we don’t want to live in little 1950s houses. We want to live in huge houses. We don’t want to own just one car. We want three cars, which we’ll put in a garage that’s bigger than that little 1950s house. We don’t want just one nine inch television. We want a 108” LCD HDTV…and oh yes, they do make one…so we can see the oil glistening in the pores on Jack Bauer’s nose. We want our cable and we want our TiVo and we want our high speed internet and we want our cell phones. We NEED these things if we’re going to be happy. Because we are so much more happy now than we were half a century ago. Aren’t we?
Both Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Luke aren’t so sure. Of all of the books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes isn’t exactly the kind of book that you flip to when you’re needing a few words of gentle comfort. It’s a striking book, an unforgiving book, one that is on the one hand part of the great tradition of Hebrew Wisdom and on the other hand opposes one of the core teachings of that tradition.
That core teaching of Hebrew Wisdom, to be found throughout the Book of Proverbs, is called retributive justice. You may ask, what the Helen of Troy is retributive justice? Retributive justice is the idea that acting wisely will cause you to prosper, and acting like Kevin Federline is your life coach will cause you to fail. If you are prudent and hardworking and invest your time and your energy carefully, then you will be rewarded with worldly riches and goodness.
The author of Ecclesiastes has issue with that whole idea. It’s not that he’s resentful because he hasn’t done well. He’s done just fine. He’s gathered in great wealth and power, but none of it satisfies him, because he’s wise enough to see that all of his work and all of his material gain ultimately means absolutely nothing.
For as hard as he will have labored for them, they will ultimately fail him. He’s worked impossibly hard, and has watched others as they’ve lost sleep, letting their successful striving for wealth consume them. But that wealth will be completely meaningless to him..and to them.. when they’re gone.
That’s the same point that Jesus is making in the Gospel of Luke. The passage from chapter 12 of that book comes to us from one of the long teachings that Luke records. Jesus is standing before a crowd that has gathered to hear him share stories and riddles about the nature of the Kingdom of God. He’s showing them what’s important and telling them what they should value in their lives. He’s just told them to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them in what they have to say when someone from the audience pipes up.
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” What he was hoping was to get Jesus to act as most rabbis would have acted, which is to go into a long discussion of the laws of inheritance and to come up with a legal ruling for him... for a small percentage of the inheritance, of course. Perhaps he should have waited on the Spirit just a little longer. Jesus turns him down with surprising gentleness, and instead uses his question to launch into a story about a man who had so much stuff that he was having to think about building a new five car garage with a finished attic for storage. This is someone who has succeeded by every single standard of classical wisdom. He has invested wisely, he’s planted the right crops, and he is doing absolutely everything right. The wealthy man smiles to himself, sure that he’s going to have a chance to kick back and enjoy the bounty he’s gotten. I’m going to Disney World, baby!
But as Christ tells the story, that’s not what happens. It’s at that moment that God appears to the man and berates him. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” In an echo of Ecclesiastes, we hear: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
This is the point in countless sermons where your friendly neighborhood preacher man would start talking about not storing up treasures for yourself but being rich towards God...something you should definitely keep in mind when you see the offering plate that’ll be coming ‘round later. But that totally misses the point of what Jesus is talking about.
Within the story, what is being demanded of the rich man isn’t his barns or his crops or his goods. What’s being claimed is his life...all of his days, all of his actions, all of the choices he has made. God couldn’t care less about possessions. It is life that God demands.
That’s the primary challenge facing us in our modern culture of work. A deep personal commitment to excellence in all that you do in the working world was viewed by the Protestant reformers as a sign of spiritual maturity. God has given us all certain gifts, and called each of us to a particular task in life, and our willingness to embrace that task and pursue it joyously is a sign of blessing. But we’re not called on to pursue work for the sake of profit alone. We’re called to work because what work is a joyous and honorable thing. We’re each given a vocation as a part of contributing to the broader good of God’s creation.
What work should not be, though, is all consuming. If it devours time for friendships and fellowship, and takes away those moments that should be given over to prayer and worship, then it has grown beyond its rightful bounds.
It is our lives that will be demanded of us. When the time comes to settle that account, what will we have to offer?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Packing List
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.08.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Passage: Luke 10:1-11; 16-20
Summer time is travel time, as all of America gets itself loaded up and noodles across state after state of superslab. It’s the season of the roadtrip, but those trips just aren’t what they used to be a decade or so ago. Yeah, the roads are more or less the same. But getting ready for a trip when you’re a dad is nothing like getting ready for a trip as a twenty year old.
Back when I was a younger man, my idea of packing was considerably more streamlined than it is now. I can recall getting off my shift as a dishwasher at U.VA’s academic dining facility, rushing back to my room, and preparing myself for a trip to Williamsburg to visit my new girlfriend Rachel.
I had a very manageable checklist. Item one was to take a quick shower, because the frenetic pace of the dishroom tended to result in me heavily crusted with condiments and little chunks of broccoli. I learned pretty early on that most women don’t really appreciate that look. Item two was to pack everything I needed for a weekend away. That involved, in total, two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. Total packing and preparation time: ten minutes, seven and half if I was feeling particularly motivated. And after a week or two of being away from her, I was usually feeling pretty darn motivated. Then I’d start up my Honda 750 with a dozen hard stomps on the kickstarter...not that I needed to, but pressing the button on the electric start didn’t have that Marlon Brando feel...and off I’d ride, lickety split, with my mostly empty backpack flapping in the wind behind me. For some reason, my wife to be found my approach to packing strange.
But now we fast-forward eighteen years, and I’m no longer relying on my motorcycle for family trips. Preparing for a journey...even a three-day trip...takes a bit longer than seven and a half minutes. Two days before the trip, there’s a twenty minute list preparation meeting, as we carefully go over every conceivable thing that we might need. At least one point seven five complete outfits is selected for every member of the family for each day of the trip, and several different pairs of footwear, each selected for function. Then there’s the food, which is packed as if we were planning an expedition into a vast and trackless wilderness where the only other option would be to forage in the underbrush. Though the roots and berries in Western Maryland are quite tasty, we’ve found taking the WalMart option just a bit easier.
To the list are added books and DVDs and games and toys for the kids, so that they might not have to spend an unoccupied moment. For the grownups, laptops and cell phones and Blackberries and organizers need to be corralled, so that we can’t be away from our electronic leashes for even one moment. This is followed by a long matching game in which you make sure that you’ve got a charger that matches every one of your devices. Then the packing begins. It’s a three stage process. First, the suitcases are packed and canvas bags are filled up. Then, they’re moved to a staging area near the carport, where they wait until the next morning, when the coolers full of food join them. After the staging area is reviewed to confirm compliance with the established list, they’re moved one by one into the gaping maw of the minivan. I understand that George Mason University now offers vacation logistics coursework as part of it’s executive MBA program.
But that level of preparation seems utterly lacking from the instructions given to the disciples by Jesus in our passage from Luke this morning. This segment of Luke comes as a follow-on to a passage that comes at the beginning of chapter nine, in which Jesus commissions the twelve disciples and sends them out after giving them a set of packing instructions. Back in that chapter, we hear Jesus sending the 12 disciples out with a similar list of what to do and what to bring. Here, we have a mirror of Christ’s demands, and they’re no less challenging when they’re issued to seventy disciples instead of twelve.
Jesus begins his instructions to the seventy with an exhortation, calling them to go out into the world like laborers to a harvest. But then, his instructions get a little challenging. His followers are to “carry no bag, no sandals; and greet no-one on the road.” Here they are, intended to travel through the countryside of Judea, and they can’t even take a bag? What sort of preparation is that? It sounds...even by the standards of the college boy road trip...like a pretty half-baked journey.
Scholarly commentaries on Luke give us several options for how to interpret this peculiar demand that followers not actually go on their journeys in a prepared way. First, because it was structured like a history of the time, and because the structure and language of the Greek used in Luke is very sophisticated, most Bible scholars feel that the Gospel of Luke was written for an audience of well-educated Greek-speaking Christians. Luke’s double emphasis on this act of sending reinforces it, and it may have been kept as part of Luke’s tradition because it was just so hard for his sophisticated audience to hear.
How can you go off unprepared? No money? No way to carry things? No...shoes? Well...you can do it if you are intending to be utterly dependent on both your message and the response of those who will receive you. It’s an act of trust.
That makes sense, but what are we to make of the latter portion of verse four? In it, Jesus counsels “not to greet anyone on the road.” Here the seventy are being told to get out there and spread the Gospel message, and they can’t even talk to the people that they encounter on the way? How does that help? Aren’t they supposed to be sharing information about the Gospel?
What may be being conveyed here is the ferocious urgency of that moment. Through both a seemingly nonexistent packing list and the instruction not to dawdle in conversation on the way, what may be being conveyed here is the intense need for action in the now. The seventy followers of Christ are being told...in no uncertain terms...that they need to get out there and engage the world with Christ’s message of hope and reconciliation. There wasn’t room for fiddling around or worrying over what you brought or didn’t bring. The moment’s pressing, it’s intense, and the need to act upon it is such that you just can’t dawdle.
In that, what Christ may be telling us is that the journey of faith is not like the vacation of a modern American family, in which our immense vehicles are filled with 5 cubic yards of supplies to meed every potential eventuality. The journey of Christian faith may not be like the carefully planned business trip, in which we make sure that we schedule every last moment full of meetings so that we can justify the every penny of the journey to the folks down in accounting.
Instead, our journey of faith and our spreading of the Good News is more like the headlong rush of someone desperately eager to see someone they love. For all of our desire to organize, to be structured and reasonable and decent and orderly, it’s important that we not lose that vital yearning in our own journeys. We’ve got to walk that path with eager intensity, because it is better walked when it that journey is more filled with passion, more filled with urgency, more filled with the desire to share in that presence once again.
07.08.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Passage: Luke 10:1-11; 16-20
Summer time is travel time, as all of America gets itself loaded up and noodles across state after state of superslab. It’s the season of the roadtrip, but those trips just aren’t what they used to be a decade or so ago. Yeah, the roads are more or less the same. But getting ready for a trip when you’re a dad is nothing like getting ready for a trip as a twenty year old.
Back when I was a younger man, my idea of packing was considerably more streamlined than it is now. I can recall getting off my shift as a dishwasher at U.VA’s academic dining facility, rushing back to my room, and preparing myself for a trip to Williamsburg to visit my new girlfriend Rachel.
I had a very manageable checklist. Item one was to take a quick shower, because the frenetic pace of the dishroom tended to result in me heavily crusted with condiments and little chunks of broccoli. I learned pretty early on that most women don’t really appreciate that look. Item two was to pack everything I needed for a weekend away. That involved, in total, two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. Total packing and preparation time: ten minutes, seven and half if I was feeling particularly motivated. And after a week or two of being away from her, I was usually feeling pretty darn motivated. Then I’d start up my Honda 750 with a dozen hard stomps on the kickstarter...not that I needed to, but pressing the button on the electric start didn’t have that Marlon Brando feel...and off I’d ride, lickety split, with my mostly empty backpack flapping in the wind behind me. For some reason, my wife to be found my approach to packing strange.
But now we fast-forward eighteen years, and I’m no longer relying on my motorcycle for family trips. Preparing for a journey...even a three-day trip...takes a bit longer than seven and a half minutes. Two days before the trip, there’s a twenty minute list preparation meeting, as we carefully go over every conceivable thing that we might need. At least one point seven five complete outfits is selected for every member of the family for each day of the trip, and several different pairs of footwear, each selected for function. Then there’s the food, which is packed as if we were planning an expedition into a vast and trackless wilderness where the only other option would be to forage in the underbrush. Though the roots and berries in Western Maryland are quite tasty, we’ve found taking the WalMart option just a bit easier.
To the list are added books and DVDs and games and toys for the kids, so that they might not have to spend an unoccupied moment. For the grownups, laptops and cell phones and Blackberries and organizers need to be corralled, so that we can’t be away from our electronic leashes for even one moment. This is followed by a long matching game in which you make sure that you’ve got a charger that matches every one of your devices. Then the packing begins. It’s a three stage process. First, the suitcases are packed and canvas bags are filled up. Then, they’re moved to a staging area near the carport, where they wait until the next morning, when the coolers full of food join them. After the staging area is reviewed to confirm compliance with the established list, they’re moved one by one into the gaping maw of the minivan. I understand that George Mason University now offers vacation logistics coursework as part of it’s executive MBA program.
But that level of preparation seems utterly lacking from the instructions given to the disciples by Jesus in our passage from Luke this morning. This segment of Luke comes as a follow-on to a passage that comes at the beginning of chapter nine, in which Jesus commissions the twelve disciples and sends them out after giving them a set of packing instructions. Back in that chapter, we hear Jesus sending the 12 disciples out with a similar list of what to do and what to bring. Here, we have a mirror of Christ’s demands, and they’re no less challenging when they’re issued to seventy disciples instead of twelve.
Jesus begins his instructions to the seventy with an exhortation, calling them to go out into the world like laborers to a harvest. But then, his instructions get a little challenging. His followers are to “carry no bag, no sandals; and greet no-one on the road.” Here they are, intended to travel through the countryside of Judea, and they can’t even take a bag? What sort of preparation is that? It sounds...even by the standards of the college boy road trip...like a pretty half-baked journey.
Scholarly commentaries on Luke give us several options for how to interpret this peculiar demand that followers not actually go on their journeys in a prepared way. First, because it was structured like a history of the time, and because the structure and language of the Greek used in Luke is very sophisticated, most Bible scholars feel that the Gospel of Luke was written for an audience of well-educated Greek-speaking Christians. Luke’s double emphasis on this act of sending reinforces it, and it may have been kept as part of Luke’s tradition because it was just so hard for his sophisticated audience to hear.
How can you go off unprepared? No money? No way to carry things? No...shoes? Well...you can do it if you are intending to be utterly dependent on both your message and the response of those who will receive you. It’s an act of trust.
That makes sense, but what are we to make of the latter portion of verse four? In it, Jesus counsels “not to greet anyone on the road.” Here the seventy are being told to get out there and spread the Gospel message, and they can’t even talk to the people that they encounter on the way? How does that help? Aren’t they supposed to be sharing information about the Gospel?
What may be being conveyed here is the ferocious urgency of that moment. Through both a seemingly nonexistent packing list and the instruction not to dawdle in conversation on the way, what may be being conveyed here is the intense need for action in the now. The seventy followers of Christ are being told...in no uncertain terms...that they need to get out there and engage the world with Christ’s message of hope and reconciliation. There wasn’t room for fiddling around or worrying over what you brought or didn’t bring. The moment’s pressing, it’s intense, and the need to act upon it is such that you just can’t dawdle.
In that, what Christ may be telling us is that the journey of faith is not like the vacation of a modern American family, in which our immense vehicles are filled with 5 cubic yards of supplies to meed every potential eventuality. The journey of Christian faith may not be like the carefully planned business trip, in which we make sure that we schedule every last moment full of meetings so that we can justify the every penny of the journey to the folks down in accounting.
Instead, our journey of faith and our spreading of the Good News is more like the headlong rush of someone desperately eager to see someone they love. For all of our desire to organize, to be structured and reasonable and decent and orderly, it’s important that we not lose that vital yearning in our own journeys. We’ve got to walk that path with eager intensity, because it is better walked when it that journey is more filled with passion, more filled with urgency, more filled with the desire to share in that presence once again.
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