The Waking Dreamer: Change

Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts

Saturday, August 08, 2026

Let It Begin With Me

Matthew 14:13-21[1]

Another slogan from the Twelve Step movement is “Let It Begin With Me.” In fact, it comes from what is known as the “Al-Anon Declaration”: “Let it begin with me. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, let the hand of Al-Anon and Al-Ateen always be there, and let it begin with me.” Many Al-Anon and Al-Ateen meetings either open or close with this declaration. It’s a constant reminder that Al-Anon and Al-Ateen exist to help the families and friends of people who misuse alcohol and other substances. Their sole purpose is to provide a helping hand to those who suffer because a friend or a loved one is an alcoholic. I can tell you from personal experience that many people come to their first meeting and spend the whole hour sobbing because they are hurting so badly, their lives feel completely out of control, and they are terrified of what tomorrow will bring.

“Let it begin with me” is a call to action. It’s a reminder that we each bear responsibility for our choices and actions. If we want to see changes, we have to be the ones to make changes in our lives. That doesn’t guarantee we’ll get the outcomes we want. Most people come to Al-Anon hoping that the changes they make will change their friend or loved one so that they no longer misuse alcohol or drugs. Sometimes that happens, but mostly it doesn’t. What taking responsibility for our own choices and actions does guarantee is that we’ll learn to face life in a healthier way. This mindset applies not only to families and friends of alcoholics and those who struggle with other addictions. We all share in the brokenness of the human family. And when we find ourselves at the point of feeling overwhelmed, perhaps feeling like our lives are completely out of control and fearing what tomorrow will bring, we are right in the middle of the brokenness that everyone in this world shares.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t respond to being in that place very positively. Our first instinct is to blame someone else. If I’m hurting, someone else must be at fault. That approach might be characterized by the slogan, “it has to begin with you.” We look at our pain, we find someone to blame for it, and we put the responsibility for our happiness in their hands. If we’re going to get better, they have to change. Of course, that places all the power for our wellbeing in the hands of someone else. “Let it begin with me” takes the opposite approach. If I’m hurting, it’s my pain. I’m responsible for my feelings and what I do about them. I’m the only one who holds the key to my happiness in life. Nobody can “make” me happy by what they do or don’t do. If I want things to change in my life, I’m the one who has to make the changes.

I think there’s a part of our Gospel lesson for today that relates to this line of thinking. I didn’t really plan these sermons on the Al-Anon slogans. As I read the Scriptures each week, it just developed that way. And that applies to our Gospel lesson for this week. When it comes to our Christian lives, we’re wise to recognize that there’s much about this world that is bigger than we can control. Only God can handle those things. But we can control our choices. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus has been teaching a huge crowd: 5000 men, not counting women and children. And at the end of the day, when it was time to eat, they were all a long way from any place where they could find food. The disciples’ suggestion that Jesus dismiss the crowd so they could find food in the surrounding towns and villages wasn’t very practical. It’s doubtful there was enough food in the surrounding area to feed such a crowd. They were just trying to “pass the buck” and get rid of the problem!

Jesus ignores their suggestion. Instead, he tells them, “You give them something to eat” (Matt. 14:16)! The disciples responded as you might think: they asked how they could possibly feed such a huge crowd with the little food they had with them. But I think Jesus may have been trying to teach them something. They had seen him work miracles that amazed them. But in one sense they’d become spectators, watching what Jesus was going to do instead of taking an active role in God’s Kingdom, as he called them to. I think Jesus used this setting to challenge them to step out of their spectator role and to take a more active stance with their commitment to follow him.

The story that follows is intriguing, because although it’s the only miracle of Jesus recounted by all four Gospels, there’s no mention how Jesus was able to feed such a massive crowd with five loaves and two fish! Some have suggested that the example of generosity inspired those in the crowd to share their food with others. We don’t know that. Popular movies have depicted it as an instantaneous miracle—Jesus lifts the food in a basket to bless it, and when he brings it down the basket is overflowing with loaves and fishes. But we don’t know that either. We really don’t know and may never be able to explain how Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish. At the end of the day, all that we really know about this miracle is that Jesus gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and everyone had enough to eat and more!

It leaves me wondering if it could be that it was in the act of the disciples being willing to step out of the relative comfort of a spectator role and taking a more active role in the work of the Kingdom that the miracle occurred. We still don’t know that for sure, but it does seem significant that Jesus instructed the disciples who wanted to send everybody away to serve their food to the hungry crowds. And perhaps the miracle happened somehow in the giving. By moving from spectators to taking an active role, the disciples became channels for God to do his miraculous work. Perhaps one of the lessons is that true miracles happen in ways we may never be able to explain.

We’ll probably never know for sure exactly what happened that day by the Sea of Galilee. But I think we can know that when we stay comfortably on the sidelines, adopting the role of a spectator, not much is ever going to happen. When we get stuck in our fears that there’s not enough or perhaps what we have to give isn’t good enough, all there will ever be is a bunch of hungry people. We have to take an active role in serving others if we want to follow Jesus. I think this is where the wisdom of the Twelve-Step slogan, “Let It Begin With Me,” can help us. Instead of looking at all that’s wrong in the world and trying to find whom we can blame, when we “let it begin with me,” we step up and do what we can do. As the Scriptures illustrate, when do so, even the little that we have to give can become more than enough. There is much about God’s work in this world that’s bigger than us. But there are things we can all do right where we are. I think that’s part of what Jesus wants us to learn from this miracle: when we step up and do what we can do, God takes what we have to offer and uses it to do more than we can imagine!

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Faith in Community

1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35[1]

I think many of us are discovering how important community is in this strange time. It’s wonderful to be able to stay connected through technology. But it’s not the same as gathering together with families and friends. And this is true as well for families of faith. We miss seeing faces, shaking hands, giving and receiving hugs. And it is stressful to us all when we have to do without those person-to-person contacts that we were so used to.

While we all have probably heard someone say “I can worship God better on my own than at church,” the fact of the matter is that our faith thrives in community, because we thrive in community. We experience the wholeness of the new life through our community of faith. Something about the way we’re put together as human beings makes it so that we just cannot grasp the high and holy truths of our faith unless someone is there to show us the grace and mercy and love of God in action. We need our community to enable faith to truly live in our hearts.

Unfortunately, I think our present crisis has exposed to us how “futile” our way of life has become. We have closed in ourselves as a society, isolating ourselves by engaging in a reality that is “virtual” as we stare at one kind of screen or another. While the “futile ways” that Peter mentions in our lesson for today were very different from ours, I think the message applies to us as well. We have given ourselves over to a way of life that is draining, hopeless, and empty. And yet, the good news of Easter is that we have the freedom to change, the freedom not to stay stuck in the same old ruts, the freedom to find new life in our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.

Part of the reason for this is, as Peter says, we have been “ransomed” from those “futile ways.” Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, we are now free to make the change from a way of life that essentially drains the life out us to a way of living that is whole and truly alive. We have been set free from everything that would keep us stuck in a rut that leaves us feeling drained and empty instead of fulfilled, joyful and whole. This transformation happens best in a community.

The simple truth is that faith has always been a community endeavor. From the very beginning, we find Christians gathering together to share with each other the experiences they have had with the risen Christ. As our Gospel lesson illustrates, when the disciples discovered that Jesus was alive they immediately went back to the rest of the group to tell them what had happened. It’s one thing for them to race from Golgotha to the upper room in Jerusalem. It’s another thing altogether for the disciples on the road to Emmaus to run 7 miles back to share the good news with the others! The cumulative effect is that in the sharing they were supporting and encouraging and strengthening each other’s faith! As one contemporary prophet puts it, “The resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared.”[2]

I think this is true for all of us. Faith simply does not flourish in a context where we think we can be spiritual “lone rangers.” Faith flourishes in a community. I like the way Henri Nouwen puts it:

“Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us … . That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other.”[3]

It takes a community for us to make the journey of faith if for no other reason than we need human flesh and blood, skin and bones to translate the truths of our faith into new life. We need the experience of living out our faith in a community where we “love one another deeply from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22) if we’re going to thrive. Especially in this challenging time, we need a community to hold on to the faith that God is working to bring grace and peace and mercy and love and life to every life in the midst of all the suffering and heartbreak that are going on right now. That doesn’t happen well when we try to go it alone. Faith is something that thrives and grows when we share it with a community.

[2] Walter Wink, “Resonating With God’s Song,” The Christian Century (March 23, 1994).

[3] Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home, 105.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

New Things

Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9[1]

There’s something special about new things. In these weeks after Christmas many of us are enjoying new things. We may be sporting new coats or jackets. That’s a fun thing when the weather turns cold. Some of us may be wearing new outfits. It’s nice to have a new outfit to wear. Others of us may be playing with new “toys,” whether our toys are video games, or electronics, or sporting gear, or crafting supplies, or even perhaps new books! There is something undeniably special about new things. The feel, the smell, just the notion of something new can be uplifting. But, of course, as with all things, that “new” feel will fade eventually. The new things we’re enjoying today will become “old” things tomorrow.

Newness can take on different forms than just the “things” we use. We may have plans to do something we’ve never done before this year, to make that trip that’s always been on our “bucket list.” We may be embarking on a new venture in our lives. New directions can be frightening and exciting at the same time. We get used to familiar routines, and getting out of our “comfort zones” can be a challenge. But once we take the step, we may find entirely new ways to thrive that we may never have even been able to imagine before we took that new step. I think one of the truly rewarding aspects of the Christian life is that, if we stay open to the future, God is always doing something new.

Our Scripture lessons for today addressed two communities among whom God was doing something new. In our lesson from Isaiah, the prophet was addressing people who desperately needed something new in their lives. They had been ripped away from their home by the conquering Babylonians. Everything familiar had been taken from them. They were stuck in a place that was strange and seemed very far away from God. Their greatest challenge was maintaining their faith in that difficult situation. One of the Psalmists sums up their dilemma well: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4). In their minds, the past was where their lives lay, and the past was gone for good.

In a situation where they all felt like refugees, the Lord spoke through the prophet to change their focus. The people of Israel had been worrying about the seemingly impossible task of restoring what they had in the past. But through the Servant, the Lord God commissioned them to something new, something much bigger than they had imagined. He said that simply rebuilding the fallen house of Israel was “too small a thing.” Instead, God was sending them to be “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). They had been worried about how to rebuild their former lives, and the Lord was calling them to build a living sanctuary for him among the all the “foreigners” of the world! I’m quite sure they had more than a few doubts about this “new thing” the Lord promised through the prophet that he would do among them. Perhaps that’s one reason why Isaiah reminded them constantly that the Lord ruled over all things, and that he would accomplish this seemingly impossible task through them.

I think the people St. Paul addressed in Corinth had some similar doubts. The Apostle had started the church in Corinth, but after he moved on they became confused about how they were supposed to live their lives together in Christian community. They were divided, and the factions were pulling the congregation in very different directions. Ironically, the situation at Corinth came about from the fact that the mission of shining a light to the nations was well underway, and it was causing some big problems! One of their challenges was how Christians with many differences could live together in one community of faith. I would imagine they saw that task as next to impossible.

But the Apostle began his instructions to them with the assurance that they already had everything they needed. He reminded them that all they did was built on “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:4). He told them that they had already been fully equipped by the Spirit to carry out their work: “in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind ... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:5, 7). And just in case they had any lingering doubts, Paul encouraged them that God who is always faithful would strengthen them to the end (1 Cor. 1:8).

We are living through a time of sweeping changes: changes in culture, in family structures, in our economy, and also in the church. Many of us may feel like the people of Israel: we may feel like refugees living in a strange land! All that may have been familiar to us was in the past, and we may find ourselves grieving that the past is gone. Others of us may see ourselves more like the people at Corinth. We may be eager for the future to come, so eager that we’re not willing to practice patience and understanding toward sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers who may seem to be “dragging their feet.” We may be thinking that it’s impossible to forge a true community from people who have so many differences in the way they look at life.

I think in both cases, the challenge of our Scriptures for today is to re-direct our focus toward the “new things” God is doing among us. Instead of wringing our hands about the way church “used to be,” I would say that we must always be open to the possibility that our God is calling us on to something new, something bigger than we can imagine. That means having the courage to let go of the past and letting God lead us into the future he has planned for us. At the same time, instead of getting stuck in frustration that things aren’t changing fast enough, I think it’s important to remember that the Spirit has fully equipped us with everything we need to carry out our mission. As we do so, Scripture reminds us that our faithful God will complete the “new things” he is doing among us.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Seeing the Vision

Acts 16:6-15[1]

Many of us find as we take our journey through life that we have “growing points” at various stages. At times it may be job-related; at other times it may involve our personal lives. The way life changes and challenges us means that very few of us will manage the journey without facing some kind of “growing points.” For me, it was learning to live by myself. I had never really done it. I went from living at home, to living with a roommate at college, to being married. When I found myself single again 7 years ago, I had to learn to become comfortable living by myself. It wasn’t particularly easy. Some of you may have faced a similar experience. I would say most of us have had to deal with some kind of “growing point” at some time.

One of the real challenges with this kind of experience is that it typically takes us outside of our “comfort zones.” Sometimes way outside! We may have to re-evaluate some or all of what we have held onto in order to define our identity. We may have to learn completely new ways of finding meaning and joy in life. We may have to re-define the “dream” that inspires us. We may have to see anew the “vision” that guides us. “Growing points” aren’t particularly welcome. But if we are willing to learn from them, we can emerge from the experience healthier, stronger, and perhaps even happier with our lives.

I think that our scripture lesson from the book of Acts for today may contain a “growing point” for the Apostle Paul. It’s not obvious, especially because we are used to thinking of Paul as the “Apostle to the Gentiles.” So when we hear of Paul’s vision of a “man of Macedonia,” a part of what we would have called Greece, it makes perfect sense that they were “convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them” (Acts 16:10). After all, in describing his initial encounter with the risen Christ, Paul himself said that it took place “so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles” (Gal. 1:16). So it would seem that this was a perfectly natural “next step” in Paul’s journey as an Apostle and preacher of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

But if you pay attention to the story of Paul’s career in the book of Acts, you find an interesting detail: whenever Paul and his companions entered a new city, they started their ministry in the Jewish synagogue. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say was their primary “mission strategy.” When they came to a new city, they went straight to the synagogue. In fact the book of Acts says it was his “custom” to attend the local synagogue on the Sabbath day wherever he went (Acts 17:2). It was a logical place where Paul could find people who might have an interest in the Gospel. Perhaps it was also “familiar territory.”

But when Paul first “crossed over” into what was essentially new territory, and came to the city of Philippi, apparently there was no Jewish synagogue there. The Scripture lesson says that at first “they remained in the city for some days” (Acts 16:12). Then on the Sabbath day they went outside the city by the river “where we supposed there was a place of prayer” (Acts 16:13). And indeed, there they met a group of women gathered for prayer and shared the gospel with them. They planted a church in the house of a wealthy businesswoman named Lydia. And the church at Philippi flourished.

For Paul and his companions, this was a different strategy. They were in new territory, since they had “crossed over” from the Middle East into Greek lands. I wonder what they were doing “for some days” in Philippi. I wonder if they were dealing with culture shock. I wonder whether they were unsure as to how to proceed, since there wasn’t a Jewish synagogue where they could begin their work of preaching the gospel. I get the feeling they were “improvising” a bit. But what they had was a vision and a conviction: Paul’s vision of “helping” the Greeks, and the conviction that God had called them to proclaim the gospel to people who worshiped pagan gods and lived very differently. So they found a way to carry out their conviction in the midst of uncertainty and they improvised!

I’ve had this experience myself living overseas. It was my family’s custom to find a church home wherever we lived. When we lived in Germany, we initially planned on going to the local German language church. But then culture shock got the best of us. My wife didn’t really know German, and we had a toddler and a newborn. So instead, we wound up at MacDonald’s. We didn’t much like MacDonald’s, but it felt like home. While we were there we ran into another American family who told us about an English-speaking church not far away. That became the church we attended while we lived in Germany. We followed our conviction to find a church home and so we were able to deal with the uncertainty of an unfamiliar situation.

I’ve said many times that our church is in “unfamiliar territory.” I think that’s true for almost all churches in our culture these days. Just about every church is trying new and different strategies for reaching people. Some of them have decided to jettison their traditions regarding worship and even what they believe in order to get more people in the pews. I would prefer to do as Paul and his friends did: holding fast to our vision and our conviction. But in order to do that, we have to know what our vision for ministry is. We say that our vision is to serve. But what do we hope to accomplish through that service? I think we also have to have an idea what we’re “convinced” God has called us to do. I think we might start by exploring the idea of following Christ in order to lead others to follow him. That’s a vision that can lead us to find new ways of serving others in this changing and challenging time. It’s a vision that can help us to improvise and innovate, while still holding firmly to our convictions.

[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/26/2019 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Monday, February 11, 2019

Changed for Good

Changed For Good

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11[1]

Many talk about the Christian faith as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. That kind of approach may lie behind the fact that we “Christians” don’t look very different from anybody else. From how we spend our money to what we do with our free time to whether or not we stay married. The statistics don’t really show much difference between those of us who identify as Christians and those who don’t. Part of the problem is that most of us are afraid of real change, change that makes a difference in the way we live. In order to make that kind of change, we have to be willing to take a hard look at ourselves. If don’t like what we see when we look that closely, we don’t look and we don’t change.

Part of the problem is that changing the way we live can be incredibly difficult.[2] We’ve all been programmed with the way we’re supposed to live our lives. We’re supposed to do well in school. And afterwards we’re supposed to get a good job. And get married, settle down, and have children. And raise our children. And be successful enough that by the time our children are having their children, we’re ready to enjoy retirement. But as most of you know, that “script” for the way life is supposed to go doesn’t always work out. And yet, it’s incredibly difficult to change the mindset that our lives are supposed to follow one of these “scripts.” And so it’s incredibly difficult to change the way we live.

I’m not excluding myself from this challenge. Here I am—I’m up here doing my best to relate the teachings of the Bible week after week. Sometimes I have an insight into my own life that makes me think that all these years I’ve been preaching and teaching I’ve just plain missed it myself. It’s very humbling when we see our own shortcomings. Many of us don’t much like to feel humbled. We don’t like the discomfort of feeling like we’ve missed the point. It can be unpleasant to really expose our lives to the light of God’s truth. When we do, we see the flaws and weaknesses that remain inside.

Our scripture lessons for today are about two people who encountered God, and that encounter left them changed for good. Both Isaiah and Peter encountered God in a way that left them feeling exposed. And they responded to that encounter in the way that people typically respond to an encounter with God in the Bible: with fear! When Isaiah experienced the glory of the LORD’s presence while serving in the temple, he cried out, “Woe is me! I am lost!” (Isa. 6:5). When Simon Peter realizes that in Jesus he has encountered the presence of God, he responds in his typically blunt way: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Lk. 5:8). We find this pattern reflected throughout the Scriptures—whenever anyone experiences the presence of God, their first response is one of fear!

I think what these encounters from Scripture shows us about ourselves is that we’re not really very comfortable getting that close to God. One contemporary prophet says that we’re comfortable fishing with Jesus of Nazareth who teaches us wisdom about life, and even occasionally points out our social injustices. But when the Risen Lord rocks our “dead and dying world” with yet another demonstration of God’s saving power, we’d rather not be around for that.[3] And yet, whenever and wherever we truly experience the presence of God, we must expect the foundations of our lives to be shaken!

The truth about us all is that we prefer to keep God at arm’s length. We like our religion good and shallow. We’re very happy with God as long as we don’t really have to undergo any real change. We want to do all the “religious” things we’re supposed to do, as long as it doesn’t really affect the way we live our lives. We want a God who is “domesticated” enough that we can stand before his presence without having to endure any kind of “fear and trembling.” But that is not the God we encounter in the Bible.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the point of Epiphany is about celebrating the good news that in Jesus the promise of Christmas has been fulfilled that “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5). What that means is that in Jesus we encounter God’s presence, God’s power, God’s redeeming grace and love in such a way that it transforms us completely. The glory of God is finally revealed “over all the earth” not in some religious setting but with God’s being present with us so as to enable us all to experience God’s grace and mercy and love.

The glory of God that fills the whole earth with grace and mercy and love is a glory that will not leave us where we are, but instead radically changes us all. It convicts us where we need convicting; it cleanses us, and it commissions us all, just as it did the prophet Isaiah and Simon Peter the fisherman. Yes, we celebrate the glory of God in the process of filling the whole earth with God’s grace and love even as we speak. But we must also remember when we come face-to-face with this kind of experience of God, it will leave us trembling as we are being changed for good.

[2] Cf. Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 6: “What the ego hates more than anything else in the world is change ... . Instead, we do more and more of what does not work ...”

[3] Will Willimon, “Get Out Of Here,” The Christian Century (January 27, 2004): 21.

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

Changed from Within

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:32[1]

When I was in High School in the 1970’s, we still had a fairly strict dress code. Girls couldn’t wear skirts or shorts that didn’t reach as long as their fingertips. Guys had restrictions on the length of their hair, and they definitely couldn’t wear any facial hair. And there was no way that anyone could show up to school with clothes that had holes in them! I realize that hasn’t changed much in some places. But then as now, when Summer comes, most students wear whatever they want. I grew my hair out as long as my parents would let me get away with. The school rules really don’t affect how students dress when they are away from school. But then the fact of the matter is that those kinds of external rules have very little impact on what a person chooses to do on their own.

That’s why it’s so important to teach your children values in a way that they internalize them. It takes more than a “do as I say, not as I do” approach. Most of us who have much gray on our heads know that children are going to do what they see. And it’s essential not only to model the behaviors you want to encourage in your children, but also to give them boundaries that make sense. The values tend to stick when we help them understand why those behaviors are important. When they find the motivation within themselves to follow a certain code of behavior, they’re much more likely to actually practice that way of life.

That was one of the problems that the people of Israel had always faced. They had been given God’s torah, God’s instructions about how to live. But it would seem that they never really embraced the principles they had been taught. And so the prophets of the day declared that they were going to be sent into exile in Babylon. Now, it’s easy to think that this was just the “Old Testament” God being angry and vengeful and punishing. But the truth is that even in the Hebrew Bible, the judgments that came upon the people of Israel were intended to bring them back to God. They were “tough love” in action, and as a number of prophets indicated, it broke God’s heart when that happened.

The prophet Jeremiah was called to declare the word of the Lord to a people undergoing judgment, living in exile. They had lost everything, and may have felt that God had given up on them. But Jeremiah’s message was something they may not have expected. He promised them in the name of the Lord that God was going to make some changes that may have been hard for them to imagine. Instead of an arrangement that depended on whether the people followed “external” rules, Jeremiah said to them in the name of the Lord that God would make a whole new covenant with them. And that new covenant would depend solely upon God’s unfailing love and unshakeable faithfulness.

But perhaps, equally as important was the fact that this relationship would be one in which God would change the people themselves from within. Jeremiah says in the name of the Lord, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts … . No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD” (Jer. 31:33-34). God would transform them into people who were so changed from within that they would want nothing more than to love God with all their hearts and to love their neighbors as themselves. In a very real sense, it would give a whole new meaning to the promise that “I will be their God and they will be my people” (Jer. 31:33).

I believe our Gospel lesson for today also relates to this promise. It’s a very different setting, with Jesus responding to certain Greeks seeking him out, and seeing that as the sign that his time was at hand. And what was going to come to pass was going to change everything. As Jesus puts it, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn. 12:32). Now, on the surface of things, that might not sound so earth-shaking. The next verse seems to almost downplay what Jesus said by interpreting it as indicating the kind of death he was going to undergo—death on a cross. But I would say there’s much more than that going on in this statement. I think Jesus was indicating not only the kind of death he faced, but also the far-reaching effects of that death.

As a result of his death on the cross, Jesus says that he will “draw all people” to himself. If you think about it, how do you “draw” another person to yourself? Somehow you have to do something that changes the way they feel about you so that they want to be near you. In Jesus’ case, I think he’s talking about how his death on the cross would change all things and all people. In the context of John’s Gospel, this reflects the power of God’s love poured out in Jesus Christ. It seems to me that only God’s love is powerful enough to change us all from within.

Real change is incredibly difficult for most of us. We have to be willing to take a hard look at ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us don’t like what we see when we look that closely, so we don’t look and we don’t change. But the promise of change that our Scripture lessons present is more than a self-help project. They promise that God is determined to change us all from within. They promise that God will take the initiative, working to bring his grace and mercy and love into all our lives. And the end result is that we will want to live our lives in a relationship in which he is our God and we are his people. We will want to love God with all our hearts and love those around us truly and sincerely. And we will do so because God is changing us from within.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The God of Peace

Philippians 4:1-9[1]

The world in which we live is definitely not one that could be described as “peaceful.” Uncertainty seems to be the watchword of our time—from the economy to family life, from politics to technology. It seems like everything is in a constant state of flux. Just when you figure out how to actually use your “smartphone” or your iPad, you get a software update that sends us all scrambling to figure out how to work the thing! It can be incredibly frustrating. More than that, the pace of change creates a sense of anxiety in us all that perhaps there really isn’t anything out there you can rely on any more.

The truth of the matter is that change has been one of the “constants” that have defined the human experience from the beginning. No doubt, the changes in our world have accelerated to the point where it can make your head spin. But the human family has always had to adapt to change. In fact, some anthropologists would say that it is our ability to adapt so well to changing circumstances that enabled us to achieve a position of predominance over the created order. It’s hard to reconcile yourself with the pace of change in our day and time, but the strength of our species has always been our adaptability.

In the midst of all this, however, I think we need some kind of anchor, some kind of foundation that steadies us when we are facing such uncertainty. I believe St. Paul understood that very well. He knew that the people he was writing to in the church at Philippi faced a great deal of uncertainty because of their faith in Christ. Some of them had been thrown out of their families. Others had lost their livelihood, because they would no longer sacrifice to the Greek gods that were patron deities of their trade unions. Many found themselves at times at the mercy of mob violence—beaten and humiliated, and at times they lost their lives. These were people who knew uncertainty intimately.

Beyond that, St. Paul himself knew the kind of hardships they were undergoing. In his letters he recounts the life he had experienced as a Christian Apostle. It was definitely not a storybook life. In another place, Paul lists all that he had been through for the sake of Christ and the churches he served: flogged to the brink of death five times, pelted with stones and left for dead, shipwrecked three times, spending a night and a day adrift on the open sea, not to mention spending many a sleepless night in prison, hungry, and cold (2 Cor. 11:23-27). His life was one that was far from safe: he says he experienced “danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters” (2 Cor. 11:26).

When you realize what the first Christians had to go through because of their faith, it makes you wonder how they were able to endure it all. In part, St. Paul answers that question with his call not to give in to anxiety, but to turn to God in prayer. And the promise he makes is a familiar one: “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). I find that an incredibly practical statement. That’s where the battle with uncertainty and anxiety is won or lost—in our hearts and our minds. We need to feel safe in our hearts and we need to be able to think of our lives as secure in God’s hands.

But more than that, St. Paul assures the believers of his day and every day that “the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9). I think that’s a loaded statement. Speaking about the God of peace can be a description of God’s character: He is the God who embodies peace. It can also say something about the end result of God’s work in our world: He is the God who is working toward peace. But, perhaps most importantly for this context, it can describe how God relates to us: He is the God who gives us peace. And St. Paul says that it is this God who is constantly with us, providing us with an anchor for our souls and a foundation upon which to stand when everything around us feels like it’s falling apart.

I think it’s easy for us to look back on times past and think that it was much more peaceful then. The pace of life was slower and its course was more predictable. For most of us, those “golden days” were the days of our childhood. I grew up in the 1960’s in a small town in Texas. It certainly seemed a lot more peaceful to a young boy. But of course, it was a time of great upheaval in our country. I think the same can be said for any decade going back to the founding of this church. It has been a time of constant turmoil and uncertainty.

I don’t believe we find our stability, our foundation, or our anchor in a particular time frame. Nor do we find it in a particular version of our culture. Those things are always in motion, flowing like the current in a great river that wanders seemingly at will. We need something more stable than that to help us face the uncertainty of our times. As one observer puts it, we really do face the choice to “trust God or to trust nothing.”^{^[2]} Trusting nothing leaves us at the mercy of whatever comes our way. The only real solution is to trust the “God of peace” who is with us through all the uncertainty we face.

[2] Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God, 71, where quotes John Donne.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

When the Time is Right

When The Time is Right

Matthew 13:1-9[1]

There are times in our lives when we need to make changes, and there are other times when we need to stay the course. That’s as true for churches as it is for anybody else. These days, everybody seems to be talking about the changes that need to be made for the church in this culture to thrive. And I would agree that we always need to be evaluating what we do, asking ourselves why we’re doing it, and looking for new ways of serving the Kingdom of God that might be more effective. But I don’t hear a lot these days about what the church needs to keep on doing. I think that’s at least as important as what we may need to change.

I think one reason why it’s more attractive to talk about change is because the Christian life can be incredibly discouraging. Most of us embrace the faith in some sense or another out of a feeling of “ought-ness” or a vision to make a difference in the way the world works. And you identify with a congregation and a denomination and find your way onto the session, only to find out that the leaders may spend more time fighting about décor and money than attempting any kind of mission to save the world. It can be incredibly discouraging. But you find your niche in mission and you stay the course month after month and year after year, until you wake up one day so incredibly discouraged from a lack of results that you wonder if God has forgotten you!

To some extent, the parable of the sower addresses this aspect of the Christian faith. When we seek to go out and make a difference in the world, we’re very much like the sower, planting seeds as we go. Now, planting seeds these days is quite different from planting seeds in Jesus’ day. These days we have it down to a science when and how and what kind of seeds to plant. In Jesus’ day, planting seeds was much more like life. You scatter seeds all over the place, hoping some of them will take root and grow and bear fruit. In spite of that difference, most farmers still know what Jesus was talking about—the quality of the soil makes all the difference in the quantity of the harvest. These days we can even get crops to grow on bad soil; In Jesus’ day, you had to just make do with what you got.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t really talking about agriculture. Among other things, he was trying to warn those who followed him out of a sense of personal commitment to the vision of a world of justice and peace and freedom that he inspired in them that not all the seeds they planted would bear fruit. There are lots of times when sowing does not lead to reaping.^{^[2]} Instead of rejoicing while “bringing in the sheaves,” we find ourselves just sowing and weeping and sowing some more. Despite some of the lofty sounding promises in the Bible, you just can’t always count on results, no matter how hard you try. Obedience doesn’t always mean rewards. Faithfulness doesn’t guarantee results. Sometimes we find ourselves sowing and not reaping.

We like to think that if we do what we’re supposed to, if we live like we’re supposed to, then we should see some results. But this kind of thinking often leads to discouragement and even bitterness. As Henri Nouwen put it, the very expectation that our faithful sowing of seeds ought to lead to reaping a harvest can lead to the resentment of bitterness when the results fail to appear.^{^[3]} That’s why he said that we must sow our seeds in the hope that can enable us to look past our results or lack of results to the ultimate fulfillment of God’s purpose.^{^[4]} That means that, even though we find ourselves sowing without reaping, we keep right on sowing gospel seeds, seeds of mercy and kindness, seeds of love and justice, seeds of peace and freedom. We do it because one day some of those seeds are going to bear fruit.

There is a time for change, and there is a time for staying the course. In a very real sense, I think the church is always in both at the same time. Our world is changing so fast around us that we always have to be thinking about how we can do things differently. But while we’re doing that, I think we’re called to stay the course when it comes to the fundamentals: prayer, scripture, worship, service, compassion. These facets of our life together as Christian brothers and sisters have always been essential to the vitality of the church. While we’re changing the way we do things, we must stay the course laid out for us by Jesus and the Apostles. As the Apostle Paul says it, when we do so, “At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up” (Gal. 6:9, The Message).

[2] M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible VIII:306.

[3] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 76. He says that laboring on the basis of “expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of solid rock.”

[4] Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76: “Hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death.”

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

New Clothes

Colossians 3:12-17[1]

For those of you who may keep up with the latest styles, it’s pretty obvious that I’m no fashion guru. I do try to look my best, mind you, especially in professional situations. But I’m aware that my wardrobe wouldn’t make the cover of GQ magazine. I wear clothes that are functional more than trendy. Some of my clothes are 15 years old, which means they are long out of style. And I tend to go with a certain look and stay with it. It makes it easier that way. I don’t have to make too many decisions about what to wear. I like to keep things simple and functional when it comes to my wardrobe.

But then some of you may have also noticed that I’ve made a wardrobe change recently. This Fall, I’ve started wearing bow ties on special occasions. Now, I know that bow ties are the trademark of the Presbyterian pastor down the road. I must say I sort of fell into this trend by accident. My son and his fiancée are getting married this week, and the theme of their ceremony is art deco. So all the men in the wedding party are wearing bow ties—the real thing, not pre-tied clip-on’s. So I figured I’d buy a couple of bow ties and learn how to tie them before I get to the wedding. Well, I have to say, I had so much fun with it, that I decided to incorporate it into my wardrobe. I don’t know that it makes me look any more trendy or stylish, but I like my “new look.”

As I mentioned on Christmas Eve, this year’s Gospel readings during advent are all about the changes that Jesus’ birth brought to our lives. They change the very ground on which we build our lives. Jesus made it clear that what he had come to do was to make it possible for “the last to be first,” which also means that the “first shall be last.” It turns everything upside down. Or, maybe, as one contemporary prophet puts it, the world is flying upside down and Jesus comes along to turn things right-side-up.[2]

One of the metaphors for this kind of radical change of life in the New Testament has to do with clothes. St. Paul is particularly fond of talking about “taking off” behaviors that diminish and harm ourselves and others and “putting on” the qualities that defined Jesus’ life.[3] And so in our lesson for today, he calls us to change our wardrobe, so to speak. Paul goes through the closet of our lives and pulls out what is no longer beneficial, and sets us to the task of filling our wardrobe with a whole different set of clothes.

In particular, he calls us to “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Col. 3:12).[4] That in and of itself is a tall order, if you really think about what it means to make those qualities the defining marks of your life. To some extent, I think he summarizes all of the qualities that he wants to see in our lives when he tells us to “clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14).[5] In fact, he tells us to do this “above all.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise to us, since the whole Bible teaches us that what God wants from us is to love our brothers and sisters—all our brothers and sisters.

Now, we’re familiar with the fact that the Bible presents this kind of challenge to us—we are to leave behind the ways that belong to life apart from Christ, and we’re to put on our “new clothes” instead. But I’m not sure we get the motivation for all that. It’s not just that you’re supposed to be a good and kind and nice person. There’s much more behind it. One aspect is that since Christ died for us, we’re also called to die to all that characterizes a life that is motivated by selfish desires and is essentially harmful to others (Col. 3:5-9).

But there’s more: because Christ has been raised to new life, we too have a new life within us.[6] And the Scriptures call upon us to let the qualities of that new life be our new wardrobe. Because we have been “raised with Christ” (Col. 3:1), and “Christ is our life” (3:4), we are to let the life of the risen Christ shine through our character and actions. St. Paul depicts this in terms of a “renewal” that God has brought into our lives. But it goes beyond that—this renewal that is underway is changing everything for everyone, whether they know it or not. It is a transformation that means that “Christ is all in all” (Col. 3:11). That might not say it clearly enough: I like Gene Peterson’s translation of this phrase in The Message: “From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.” Since we are all caught up in God’s work of making all things new through Jesus Christ, we are to let that newness shine in us and through us.

In a very real sense, I would say that our Scripture lesson for today is a call for us all to take a close look at the wardrobe that defines the way we live our lives. All that is selfish and harmful to others, all that diminishes us and others, has become like clothing that is out of date. And just as we sometimes have to go through our closets and clean out clothing that we no longer wear, so we’re to take all those ways of being and acting that are no longer useful or beneficial, and clear them out of the closet of our lives. And in the place of those old behaviors and actions we’re to fill our closet with a whole new set of clothes: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. In a word, whatever constitutes authentic, sincere, and truly loving ways of being and acting. After all, that’s the kind of life that Jesus embodied. What St. Paul is really asking us to do is to clothe ourselves with Jesus.[7] His way of life, his love, his character, and all that goes with it, are to be the “new clothes” in our wardrobe.

[2] Cf. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 88-89. He defines “flying upside-down” by saying (p. 10), “What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound.”

[3] Many scholars speak of this as the tension in Paul’s letters between the “indicative,” or the newness that becomes real in a person’s life when they are transformed by Christ, and the “imperative,” or the practical realization that this transformation does not take place overnight, but must be intentionally cultivated. Cf. Andrew T. Lincoln, “The Letter To The Colossians,” New Interpreters Bible XI:647: “although they have already put on the new person, they still need to clothe themselves with specific virtues.” Cf. also P. T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, 213.

[4] Cf. E. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon: A commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 147: “All of the five terms that describe the new man’s conduct are used in other passages to designate acts of God or of Christ.” (compassion: Rom 12:1; 2 Cor 1:3; kindness: Rom 2:4; 11:22; Eph 2:7; Tit 3:4; humility: Phil 2:8; 2 Cor 10:1; patience: Rom 2:4; 9:22).

[5] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:784: “love is the sum of all the mercy, goodness, humility, long-suffering and mutual forbearance and forgiveness that those who are chosen and sanctified and loved by God are to ‘put on’ as a garment which is prepared for them and suits them.”

[6] Cf. Michael Barram, “Colossians 3:1-17,” Interpretation, 59 (April 2005): 190, where he says that “the living Christ provides the basis for all Christian conduct”; and further, these behaviors become “the norm for believers because Christ is alive and reigning with God.”

[7] Of course, this is a process. The church is always made up of people who are simul justus et peccator (“at the same time both justified and a sinner”). Or as Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 353, says it, “God sanctifies his church by calling the godless through Christ, by justifying sinners, and by accepting the lost. The communion or community of the saints—or the holy or sanctified—is therefore always at the same time the community of sinners; and the sanctified church is always at the same time the sinful church. Through its continual prayer ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ it recognizes itself as being in sin and at the same time as being holy in the divine forgiveness of sins. … In the confession of sin and faith in justification the church is simultaneously communio peccatorum and communio sanctorum.”

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Soft Hearts

Psalm 95[1]

We live in a world where it can be risky to have a soft heart. People with soft hearts often get their hearts broken, or trampled on, or pierced with betrayal. Most of us learn to harden our hearts early on, even in grade school. If you don’t, it’s too easy for your feelings to get hurt by the taunts of your schoolmates. And as adults, we assume that we can’t open up and really be honest about what we think and feel. If we do, somebody’s sure to come along and shoot us down. So we keep our mouths shut and we close off our hearts. It seems the only way to survive this world is to harden your heart against the slings and barbs that it throws at you.

But hard hearts tend to fossilize over time. They get harder and harder, until it seems impossible for anyone or anything to get through. Hard hearts will have nothing to do with the sweeping changes the Spirit wants to bring in order to give us new life. When our hearts are hard, we close off to protect ourselves from having to admit that we may be in the wrong, or we may need to change.[2] Hard hearts are hearts that are defensive and defended, closed to those around us, closed even to the life-giving presence of God.

One of the themes that gets repeated over and over in the story of Israel’s history is that their hearts were hard. The prophets continually rebuked the people for being hard-hearted in their willful disobedience to God and in their continually going their own way.[3] The prophets repeatedly called the people to open their hearts to God and return to him.[4] It seems to me that in order to do that, you have to admit that you’re going the wrong way and soften your heart to what God is trying to do in your life.

The Psalmist was reflecting on this aspect of Israel’s experience in our lesson for today. He was particularly talking about the wilderness wanderings, when the people complained seemingly incessantly about Moses and about God. They didn’t like being in the wilderness, and they made it clear every chance they got! They weren’t happy with the way things were going in their lives, and they rarely missed a chance to blame God, or Moses, or both. Unfortunately, it would seem that it never even occurred to them that the root of their bitterness was within themselves, not in someone else. They simply quarreled with Moses and “tested” God (Exod. 17:2, 3). The question at the center of their quarrel was significant: “Is the Lord among us or not? (Exod. 17:7).[5]

I would offer the suggestion that they were not the first, and certainly not the last, to “test” God. The Psalmist defines it as demanding that God prove himself to be trustworthy (Ps. 95:9).[6] Ironically, there are numerous stories where individuals asked God for a sign or for an answer using various “tests.” But it would seem that there’s a difference between trying to discern our direction and demanding that God give us assurances that we will get out of life whatever it is that we want. One of the problems with that approach to faith is that you can never get enough proof. You always need one more test to be sure you can “really” trust God.

The Psalmist says that the people responded to God in this way because they had “hardened” their hearts (Ps. 95:8). They had closed themselves off in such a way that faith was essentially impossible. And so the Psalmist, speaking to later generations, warns them (and us) to avoid hardened hearts. How then do we follow this warning? Well, it seems to me that it starts where the Psalmist does. He calls to all those who would hear, saying “ O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. 95:6-7). It seems to me that the place where we begin to soften our hearts so that we may “listen to his voice” (Ps. 95:7) is when we’re able to humble ourselves enough to kneel before our Maker.[7]

That kind of humility doesn’t come easily for those of us who have been schooled in a dog-eat-dog world. And yet, over and over again, the Scriptures call us to soften our hearts so that we can open them to the life-giving presence of God. And over and over again, the way the Scriptures instruct us to begin is by humbling ourselves.[8] We have to humble ourselves to recognize with St. Paul that we were “weak” and “ungodly” when Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6).[9] It took humility for the woman at the well to admit to Jesus that “I have no husband,” (Jn. 4:17)![10] And it takes humility for us to open our hearts to God.

That kind of humility is difficult for most of us. But it truly is the first step toward softening our hearts. When we can let down some of our defenses, and soften our hearts, then maybe we can open ourselves enough to listen, really listen to God’s voice.[11] That’s what it takes for us to experience the kind of change Jesus was talking about with Nicodemus. That’s what it takes for us to experience the new life of the Spirit that God wants to give us. The call to faith is a call to humility, a call to soften our hearts and open them up enough to receive the grace and the love that God wants to pour into our hearts in such quantity that it becomes like “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14).

[2] Cf. Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: The Spirituality of the Twelve Steps, xix: “Grace is always a humiliation for the ego, it seems.”

[3] Cf. Isaiah 46:12; Jeremiah 5:23; 9:26; Ezekiel 3:7.

[4] Cf. Jeremiah 24:7; 29:13; 32:39; Ezekiel 11:19; 18:31; 36:26; Joel 2:12.

[5] Cf. J. I. Durham, Exodus, 231: “the dissatisfied people put Yahweh (and Moses) to the test by their complaining, a complaining which posed the unbelievable question, ‘Is Yahweh present with us, or not?’ The scandal of this question of course is that their release and their freedom, their rescue at the sea, their guidance through and sustenance in the wilderness, and their very presence at Rephidim all answered such an inquiry in pointed and unmistakable events.”

[6] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 307: “Putting God to the test is a self-centered demand for signs and wonders ..., as though the signs and wonders of God’s creation and salvation were not enough reason to trust him, and him alone.”

[7] Cf. J. Clinton McCann, “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:1063, where he emphasizes that the Psalm is about the proclamation of God’s reign, In that context, “God does not coerce obedience; God invites obedience.” He continues, “The proclamation of God’s reign calls for a decision” and that decision is made in the context of worship: “In worship, we profess who is sovereign, and we actualize today the reality of God’s claim upon us. ... Worship really is a ‘service’ in the sense that we act out our servanthood, our submission to the God whom we profess rules the world and our lives.”

[8] Cf. Exodus 10:3; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Psalm 25:9; Isaiah 57:15; 66:2; Matthew 18:4; 23:12; James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, 127-130, where he contrasts kneeling in prayer as a subservient position with the position of standing with arms held up, hands open, and heads held high as an expression of the freedom believers receive in the Spirit.

[9] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:771-772. He says (p. 772), “If [God] loves [man] because he is sinful, being moved to compassion by the fact that He finds him in this weakness, godlessness and hostility, this carries with it the fact that He wills to free him from the necessity of being a sinner.” He continues, “The sin of the one loved by [God] is a stain which cannot stand against the fact that God loves him and gives Himself for him, but must yield and perish. It is the work of the love of God to cause this stain to yield. This is why we call it the purifying love of God.”

[10] I think this is true because she may have been saying that five different men had married her and then rejected her. Among NT commentators, it is common to point out that the woman’s five marriages was evidence of her immorality. Only Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New Interpreters Bible IX:567, challenges this. She points out (p. 571-72) that the woman is not portrayed as a sinner in this passage, but as a witness! She suggests it’s possible that the woman had been “trapped in the custom of levirate marriage ... and the last male in the family line has refused to marry her.” Either way, it would take humility on her part to say, “I have no husband”!

[11] Cf. Rohr, Breathing Under Water, 12: “I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or a heart for others.”

The Waking Dreamer