Sermons @ Community Christian Church

Monday, April 4, 2011

Telling the Story of Jesus: the Shaping of Jesus - 3/27/11

Telling the Story of Jesus: The Shaping of Jesus

Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

March 27, 2011

Today we continue with our Lenten sermon series, “Telling the Story of Jesus.” The first Sunday of Lent, we began with considering the primary ways that Jesus is viewed in our culture. Then last week we explored the value of seeing the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John through a historical-metaphorical lens. If we understand the gospels not as the divine, infallible Word of God, but rather as memory and testimony of Jesus’ followers in the decades after his life then it impacts how we understand and tell Jesus’ story. We begin to recognize the difference between a pre-Easter Jesus and a post-Easter Jesus. By pre-Easter Jesus, I mean Jesus before his death; by post-Easter Jesus, what Jesus became after his death.

Think about it like this: Jesus’ followers, his closest friends, knew him in a different way after his death than they did before his death. Before his death, they knew him as a finite, mortal, flesh and blood human being. Specifically, he was a Galilean Jew. If his body was typical for that time he might have stood just over five feet tall and weighed 110 pounds. (This would be small by today’s standards, but is considered to be representative of a first century male.) Jesus, 110 pounds soaking wet, had to eat and sleep like any other human being. He was born and he died.

This flesh-and-blood Jesus is no longer living. He is a figure of the past, dead and gone, nowhere to be found. (Don’t worry. I’m not denying Easter, but simply recognizing that Easter does not mean that the flesh-and-blood Jesus who weighed 110 pounds is walking around somewhere.)

After his death, his followers came to know Jesus in a different way. Paul experienced him on the road to Damascus as a brilliant light and a voice. In 2 Cor. Paul says, “Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now” (2 Cor. 5:16). In the gospel stories of Easter, it is clear that Jesus after Easter is different from what he was like before his death. He passes through walls and mysteriously enters locked rooms (John 20). He is mistaken for a gardener near the tomb. Two of his followers walk with him for some time and have an in-depth conversation without recognizing him (Luke 24). He appears and then vanishes. Though we’re not quite sure what this post-Easter Jesus is, the gospel accounts indicate that he was significantly different after his death than the flesh-and-blood person they had come to know before his death.

And so this distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus is nothing new. In Matthew 26:11, Jesus before his death says to his followers, “You will not always have me with you.” Two chapters later, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus turns around and says exactly the opposite. Instead of “I will not always be with you,” he says “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth (28:20). For Matthew, both statements are true. Jesus in the form they had known him before Easter was no longer with them, but Jesus after Easter was with them in a new way, a way that is more lasting, more significant, more-than-literal; the way in which Jesus is with us. The pre-Easter Jesus was finite and mortal. The post-Easter Jesus is a divine reality.

In my opinion, consistent with the views of many scholars and theologians, the pre-Easter Jesus, the finite, mortal Jesus, likely did not consider himself as the Messiah, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Divine Savior of the World. Jesus didn’t talk about himself in this way. He likely did not think that a primary purpose of his life was to die on the cross for the sins of humanity. Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, Christianity. Jesus was a Jew, whose teaching might well have simply led to a reformation within Judaism. In other words, I’m asking you to consider the possibility that Jesus, in a manner of speaking, is not responsible for Christianity. It was all those who came after Jesus, those who knew him quite well or those who had merely encountered him but whose lives were forever changed by him who are the impetus for the development of what we know as Christianity. Most significantly, it was the apostle Paul, who almost certainly did not meet Jesus, outside of Paul’s dramatic, mystical conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

The Jesus we meet on the surface level of the gospels and the New Testament as a whole, however, is the post-Easter Jesus of the developing tradition. In other words, the gospels reflect a later understanding of Jesus and so the stories are told with this emphasis. Jesus didn’t think of himself as the Messiah, but his story is told in the decades after his death, through the lens of those who had come to consider Jesus the Messiah.

For some, it is actually a more powerful claim that this recognition of Jesus as Messiah came as a testimony of all those who knew him rather than his own self-proclamation. Anyone can come along and say, “I am the king of kings!” Indeed many have. What makes Jesus different is the enduring witness of those who knew him. In the gospels we have a record based on the memories of those who knew him and who said, “We have found in this person, Jesus, spiritual food that feeds our hunger, light that banishes our darkness, hope that overcomes our despair, water that quenches our thirst.”

This gets a little confusing. If we can’t count on the gospels to give us an accurate picture of how Jesus understood himself when he walked the earth; if we must rely on gospel accounts that project later understandings on the stories about Jesus they remember, what can we possibly really know about Jesus? If all we have are post-Easter understandings, how can we know what the pre-Easter Jesus was like?

There are some concrete ways to describe Jesus and his message that can be drawn from the gospels with integrity. We can talk about various factors that shaped who he was starting with world in which he lived. I’ll conclude today’s sermon by briefly considering the culture into which Jesus was born and lived. Then next week we’ll continue with some defining characteristics of Jesus that significantly shaped his message. First, let’s talk about Jesus’ context, his culture.

When we consider a person’s culture, we’re talking about things like political and economic systems, codes of behavior and convention, understandings of how to live, religious traditions and practices, language, technology and more. Culture is what makes a time and place that time and that place. It is what distinguishes life in Rochester from life in Istanbul, life in Zimbabwe from life in the United States and so forth. It is impossible to understand an individual without first understanding his or her context, culture.

Jesus grew up in a Jewish peasant village in the Roman Empire. It was politically oppressive which meant it was ruled by a few. The ruling elites were perhaps 1-2% of the population. The ruling elites all lived in the cities, commonly called the urban elites. There was no middle class. Of the remaining 98% of the population, the ordinary people, were peasants. Some of them lived in the cities, but mostly they lived in rural areas, in the country. What’s more, they had absolutely no voice in the shaping of the society.

Not only did ordinary people have no voice, they were economically exploited by the ruling elite to a shocking degree. The wealthy and powerful few acquired a high percentage of the society’s annual production of wealth. So typically from half to two-thirds of an entire society’s production was held by 1% of the ruling elite. And this tremendous imbalance was defended as being the way God wanted it. The social order was thought to reflect the will of God. “We didn’t set things up like this, God did.” (Are you beginning to get an idea of why Jesus’ parables and teachings that spoke of radical equality

were so challenging to the powerful few? And so empowering to the peasant majority? The idea that God was on the side of the poor and humble was not well-received by the ruling elite. It was a challenge to their power.)

Lastly, Roman societies were marked by intense armed conflict, by organized violence. The ruling elite could increase their wealth and power in a couple of ways. They could increase the agricultural production of all the people under them, all of those peasant farmers, or they could take over land and agricultural production from a neighboring society. And so armies became necessary, whether to increase their own holdings or to defend their holdings against others. It was an extremely violent society. Wars were common. They were not fought for nationalistic purposes, as sometimes happens in the modern world. In Jesus’ day, wars were ruthless battles, where ordinary people were completely expendable; initiated by the ruling elite for the sake of gaining more wealth.

This is the world that Jesus was born into. This is the world that shaped Jesus. It was to the poor people of this world, the peasants, like himself, to whom he told parables like the laborers in the vineyard and the rich master who went on a journey and entrusted his money to his slaves.

In the coming weeks we’ll dig deeper into the man, Jesus, who emerged from a small Galilean village in the Roman Empire and further examine other conditions that shaped him.

I am indebted to Marcus Borg for his lectures at the Canandaigua UCC church I attended last September, as well as Borg’s book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) as a resource for this Lenten sermon series, Telling the Story of Jesus.

Telling the Story of Jesus: An Historical and Metaphorical Lens - 3/16/11

Telling the Story of Jesus: a Historical-Metaphorical Lens

Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

March 20, 2011

Text: Matthew 14:28-30

Last week we began the Lenten sermon series, Telling the Story of Jesus. We acknowledged that how we tell the story of Jesus matters greatly. We explored the primary ways that the story of Jesus is told in our culture. Today we continue by considering the value of using a historical metaphorical lens through which to understand the story of Jesus. I’m going to break those two (boring-sounding) words down to make clear what I mean. Let’s start with “historical.”

How do we know what we think we know about Jesus? Where does our information come from? A primary source (and some would say virtually the only source outside of an obscure reference to Jesus by a Jewish historian) is through the gospels included in our Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are called canonical gospels because they are a part of the Christian canon, the Bible. Additional gospels exist, such as the Gospel of Thomas, that are not a part of the Bible. Some draw information from these gospels , but I won’t include them right now, merely because there is not universal agreement between Christians about the extra-canonical gospels. I will also mention that some people are informed about Jesus by what they consider to be direct, mystical experiences with Jesus. I certainly don’t rule out that possibility, but since the information gained is so subjective, I won’t spend much time there either. So, for mainstream Christians, the primary source of information about Jesus comes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It’s important to consider what the gospels really are. Are they historical documents? Are they written by divine hand? Are they factual? Let me sum it up with a statement by Marcus Borg to clarify what it means to say we tell the story of Jesus through a historical lens: The gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are understood as representing a developing tradition of early Christian communities, written in the last third of the first century. Remember Jesus’ crucifixion is set around the year 33 and there is wide agreement that the gospels are all dated between 70 and 100.

To say that the gospels are products of early Christian communities in the last third of the first century has some implications that I’ll start with specifying. First, if you use a historical lens to consider Jesus that means that the gospels are not a direct divine product. Rather, they are documents written within early Christian communities. They reflect the developing Christian traditions from which they sprung. They tell us how our spiritual ancestors in these communities saw Jesus and his significance.

During the decades between Jesus’ historical life and the writing of the gospels, the traditions about Jesus developed. They changed. They evolved. This is not a supposition, but can be clearly demonstrated from the gospels themselves. (In past sermons I have shown how a story that is included in several gospels revealed an evolution of how Jesus is viewed and what is most important to those communities. If you want to know more about the specifics, come see me.) For now I’ll just state: the gospels do not provide historical accounts of Jesus’ life. They tell us how his followers told the story of Jesus several decades after his death.

The gospels were the product of Christian communities but they were not written by individual authors, as we understand an author writing a book today. Today, we think of an author writing a book, most often for people they don’t know. (Kathryn Shay has never met most of the readers of her books.) Authors hope to see a billion copies sold on Amazon. Each gospel, in contrast, was written by an individual, yes, however the gospel author wrote in order to preserve in writing the tradition of his community. This was his motivation. And so, each gospel proclaimed the significance Jesus had come to have in each community as the 1^st century came to an end.

If you consider the gospels to represent the evolving beliefs and practices of their developing traditions about Jesus in the years after his death, then you read and interpret them differently. The stories are not eye-witness accounts of Jesus, told for the purpose of providing factually accurate reports of his life and message. The gospel authors are not crack reporters depending on scrupulous research or the guidance of the Spirit for that matter to produce a text of unvarnished history. That is not their perspective. Rather, the gospels are not primarily concerned with historical reporting. They combine memory and testimony. They are attempts to proclaim the story of Jesus in and for their time and place. They built on the memories of Jesus, even as they went further to include fuller understandings that had developed in the decades since Jesus’ death. They take these familiar stories of Jesus and they tell them in such a way as to be pertinent to their community. IN short, it’s sort of like we do today. That is what I mean by considering Jesus’ story through a historical lens.

And so we come to the second word I’m using to describe the lens through which we can tell Jesus’ story. The first is historical and the second, metaphorical. As the gospels are snapshots that describe a particular communities evolving understand of Jesus and as they seek to appropriate the memory of Jesus to a new time and reality, much of the language of the gospels is metaphorical. Metaphor refers to the more-than-literal, more-than-factual meaning of language. I describe it as more-than-literal because of the bias in our culture that metaphor is inferior to factuality. Metaphor opens up a much wider message than a literal story, limited to one time and place long ago. I’m talking about the surplus of meaning that language can carry. Indeed, that’s likely why gospel stories survived because Jesus’ followers understood them as more than literal.

Let me offer an illustration from the gospel of Matthew. I won’t read the entire passage so let me review the story. The disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. It is night, there is a storm, their boat is “battered by the waves,” and they are “far from land.” They are in danger and they are afraid. In the darkness, Jesus comes toward them, walking on the sea. Terrified, they think he’s a ghost and they cry out in fear. But Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27)

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” -Matthew 14:28-30

Let’s contrast a literal reading with a factual reading of this text. A literal reading emphasizes that this event really happened. Jesus really walked on the sea, and so did Peter, until he became afraid, and then he sank. Read literally, what does this story mean? Is it simply a report of a remarkable and unrepeatable incident that happened a long time ago? Or does it also mean that we can literally walk on water if only we’re not afraid and have enough faith in Jesus? Is this the point of the story? That we can walk on water?

Let’s turn to this story as metaphor. This is a story about fear and faith. When Peter became afraid, he sank, and his fear is named by Jesus as “little faith.” And so it is. With little faith, we flounder around, we sink. But with faith, we stay afloat, even in the midst of darkness, storm, and peril. Which reading adds more depth to your spiritual walk? Yes! I can walk on water like Peter! or Faith helps me stay afloat when I am afraid. Which truth means more to you?

I want to add that hearing the metaphorical meaning of these stories does not preclude the possibility of their factuality. You may choose to believe that Jesus really did walk on water and that Peter did too. Believe whatever you want about whether the gospel stories happened the way they did or not. I’m suggesting the more fruitful conversation will come from the question, “What do these stories about Jesus mean?” and that the power of the message, indeed the truth of the message does not depend on the factuality of the stories.

When you begin to understand the story of Jesus in this way; when you consider the value of a historical metaphorical way of telling his story, then you begin to see an important distinction that emerges between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. These are terms Borg and others use to describe the distinction between who Jesus was before his death (rather how Jesus was understood before his death) and the significance that Jesus took on after his death. Next week, we continue with telling the story of Jesus by examining this distinction.

Telling the Story of Jesus - 3/13/11

Telling the Story of Jesus

Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

March 13, 2011

Join me if you know this:

I love to tell the story of unseen things above;

Of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love;….

(“I Love to Tell the Story,” text by Katherine Hankey)

Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear,

Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here;

Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,

Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.

(“Tell Me the Stories of Jesus,” text by William H. Parker)

I have always loved singing these hymns and the many like them that spoke of Jesus. And I was raised on hymns like this and have sung them my whole life. In fact, if you come to our home while I am doing laundry, you are likely to hear me singing them still! Singing hymns about Jesus as a child, I developed a picture of Jesus that continues to inform me today. (Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes not!) Like most people, what I sang over and over again is what I came to believe.

As I’ve grown older and studied Bible, served as a minister, devoted myself to theological matters, and had countless conversations with people hearing their stories of Jesus, something has become increasingly apparent to me: how we tell the story of Jesus matters. There are many ways of telling the story of Jesus, and how we tell it makes a crucial difference. The way we tell the story can make Jesus either persuasive and compelling or difficult to believe; inspiring and comforting or chock full of fear and shame.

This is of course because of the central role that Jesus plays in Christianity. Maybe it goes without saying, but let’s say it anyway: for Christians, Jesus is the decisive revelation of God. (By the way, claiming Christ as the decisive revelation of God does not preclude affirming other faith traditions and the decisive revelations of God they claim. Indeed progressive Christians honor, respect, and affirm other faith traditions. But for Christians, Jesus is the central figure.

There are many, many ways of telling Jesus’ story within that umbrella definition. There are as many Jesus-es as there are disciples of this remarkable first-century figure. No two people understand or relate to Jesus in exactly the same way. Was Jesus a mystical faith healer? An apocalyptic prophet? A profound teacher? A political insurrectionist?

Walk into the narthex of any number of Protestant churches and you’re likely to find the sentimental blue-eyed, pink-skinned Jesus of artist Warner Sallman gazing beatifically upon your comings and goings. (This is the image that was the object of our reflection during Visio Divina today.) Or, enter the neighboring Catholic church and you’re likely to find an image of a beaten, bleeding, emaciated man suffering on a cross. Different ways of telling the story.

From the Gospels to illustrated Bible storybooks to portrayals in film, to non-fictio and fiction books alike, Jesus has been the subject of considerable spin over the ages. Each tradition and each individual puts their own emphasis on his memory. For many middle-class Americans, the ideal Jesus is the gentle, upstanding, right-thinking suburbanite that you’d love your daughter to date. The notion that Jesus was probably short, dark, a Middle-Eastern peasant rabble-rouser is so far from many people’s capacity to comprehend, that all reason is rejected in favor of our blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, meek and mild.

Today begins a Lenten sermon series about how contemporary Christians understand and tell the story fo Jesus. Let me summarize the primary ways that the story of Jesus has been told, at least in our culture:

I. Jesus as the dying savior, a substitutionary sacrifice for sin. In this view, Jesus paid for our sins by dying in our place. This is the Jesus that many of us grew up with and that we still hear a lot about. Since most of us are familiar with this view, I’ll not spend a lot of time right now developing it. In short, this is Mel Gibson’s Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.

II. Jesus as judge at the 2^nd coming. This is the contemporary manifestation of the Left Behind novels. I’ll read an excerpt from the series to better illustrate telling the story of Jesus as judge. This scene is excerpted from the final novel of the series and takes place at the final judgment.

Men and women, soldiers and horses, seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin…Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor, and as those around them turned to run, they too were slain, their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of the glory of Christ.

(Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, Glorious Appearing, Wheaton, p 225-6)

I included this excerpt because if you haven’t read the Left Behind novels, you might not realize how the image of Jesus as divine judge plays out. It is a definite way that the story of Jesus is being told in our culture. And judging from the books sales of the Left Behind series, many are hearing it.

III. Jesus as divine-human and thus super-human. This is another popular understanding of Jesus and there’s a lot of overlap in these categories. This view emphasizes that Jesus was divine, unlike the rest of us and that even during his earthly life he had divine power and divine knowledge. Though he looked like us and seemed to be one of us, he was really God in human form (and thus not really one of us.)

In the early church, this view was considered to be one of the earliest Christian heresies. It was known as Docetism, from the Greek word meaning “to seem” or “to appear.” Jesus appeared to be human but he really wasn’t, he was really God. We don’t realize that this was once considered heresy, because many of us assume Jesus had divine knowledge in a way that we do not. He could speak for God. He seemed to know the future. He appeared to have divine power (he walked on water, healed the sick, changed water into wine, raised the dead, etc.) (Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, the Teachings, and Relevence of a Religions Revolutionary, 2006).

Robert Capon, a contemporary Christian writer begins his description of this Jesus by quoting the well-known words that opened each episode of the Superman:

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.

In his book, Hunting the Divine Fox, Robert Capon continues:

If that isn’t popular Christology, I’ll eat my hat. Jesus-gentle, meek and mild, but with secret, souped-up, more-than-human insides – lives for 33 years, nearly gets himself done in for good by the Kryptonite Kross, but at the last minute struggles into the phone booth of the Empty Tomb, changes into his Easter suit and with a single bound, leaps back up to the planet Heaven. It’s got it all – including, just so you shouldn’t miss the lesson, Kiddies: He never once touches Lois Lane.

Of course, this view (presented tongue-in-cheek) presents a problem. If Jesus had superhuman power and knowledge, then he cannot truly be a model for human behavior. Yet the New Testament often speaks of Jesus as such. The gospels speak of following Jesus. Paul speaks of imitating Christ. If Jesus had powers that we do not or cannot have, then it’s not a level playing field.

IV. A fourth way of telling the story of Jesus is to focus on his teaching role. All Christians agree that Jesus was a great teacher. Often this view is held by people who don’t quite know what to do with some theological claims about Jesus. Was he really the divinely begotten and only Son of God? Is he the only way of salvation? Are the miracles attributed to him really possible? Skeptics of these claims sometimes lean toward affirming the importance of Jesus in his moral teaching. I don’t know what to think about all that other stuff, but he was a great teacher!

Then usually what happens is that Jesus’ teaching is summarized by some sentimental, general moral precepts that you might want to embroidered on a pillow or something. Things like, love one another. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These statements are all good advice, of course, but telling the story of Jesus as a great teacher is inadequate. If this is all Jesus was about, he wouldn’t have been killed. Jesus’ teaching was edgier than this. He upset people with the things he said. The worst thing that happens to teachers is that they don’t get tenure. They’re not executed by the state. Jesus was. The problem with Jesus as teacher is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s shallow.

These are a few of the ways people today tell the story of Jesus. This is not a comprehensive list, of course, and these categories are not mutually exclusive. In the coming weeks we’ll continue telling the story of Jesus and consider the factors that inform us as we 21^st century Christians seek to understand and follow him.

Being and Doing - 3/6/11

Doing and Being

The Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

March 6, 2011

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ²And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. -Matthew 17:1-8

Since we read our scripture for today at the very beginning of worship, I’d like to ask you to turn back in your bulletins to the call to worship and just re-read to yourself Matthew 17:1-8 so it will be fresh on your mind.

Had we continued reading in Matthew 17 the next verse wraps up this story of Jesus’ transfiguration. It says, “As they were coming down the mountain Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about this vision until after the Son of Man is raised from the dead.’” In other words, maybe Jesus’ appearance didn’t literally change before their very eyes. Something equally mysterious may have happened. They might have together experienced a vision, a glimpse of a deeper reality. People throughout the ages have seen visions and they still do today. Maybe some of you have. Teresa of Avila famously reported that Jesus came and stood before her in bodily form on many occasions over two years. I know many people who have had mystical experiences of deep connection with the divine or communication with loved ones who have died, a flash of spiritual awakening. These are not crazy people, mind you. They are people who have had experiences that they cannot explain but that are very real and very meaningful to them. Maybe Peter, James, and John saw something like this.

But think about it, we’ve all had the experience of seeing people change seemingly before our very eyes. None of us like it when someone we love suddenly turns into a different person, and it happens all the time. Everything’s going along just fine. We’re in our routine, we know what to expect, and then all at once the little boy is a man. His voice has changed. He’s shaving. He’s leaving for college. Everything’s going along just fine and all at once our elderly mother breaks her hip or starts to lose her memory, and we have to stop and figure out who this new person is.

It’s hard to get a handle on exactly what happened in this story even though we have three versions of it. An account of the transfiguration is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I always have to chuckle when I read the part about how excited Peter gets. He’s like a big puppy dog, Gee, this is great! How about if I build three little houses for you guys! In the presence of all this mystery, Peter responds with a call to action. Don’t just stand there – do something! Overwhelmed and awed by such magnificence, Peter acts like many of us do when faced with a poignant, powerful moment, carpe diem! C’mon, let’s make it a Kodak moment! Preserve it for all posterity! Let’s build some dwellings! Grab a hammer and some nails and those boards over there! James, John, don’t just stand there with your mouths hanging open. Get busy! Do something!

That’s how many of us think, isn’t it? Busy! Busy! Do this! Do that! Gotta get to work! Produce! Achieve! It’s not really our fault. Our culture values doing on such a fundamental level. It’s even built into our religion – we’ve all heard about the Protestant work ethic. What we do is who we are. And yet, it’s one of the most common laments I hear from people, parishioners and clergy alike. We’re doing too much. We’re tired. We’ve bought into the myth that our identity is based on what we accomplish and if we don’t accomplish anything, then we don’t know who we are.

Actually, we don’t know who anyone is without an idea of what they do. Get on any airplane and after exchanging names and where you’re from, the next question will most likely be, “What do you do?” (Sometimes I actually prefer this to happen early on in the conversation because if I’ve been talking with someone for a while before they find out I’m a minister, I always see that same look of horror flash across their faces as they quickly think back on what they’ve said to me, hoping they didn’t use any bad words. Of course, once they get to know me a little better, they realize they didn’t need to worry about that.)

Our doing is who we are. And so it’s not surprising that Peter wanted to do something! But God, apparently is having none of it because as Peter is babbling along, the “voice from the cloud” interrupts to say, hush! This is my Son. Pay attention to him! Did you get that, Peter? Quit talking and doing, and for once in your life, simply pay attention. Listen!

Of course, the Christian life appropriately includes a lot of doing. Following Christ, on the one hand, means we serve, we love, we give. But sometimes we get so wrapped up in all the doing, even the doing of good and honorable things that we lose the ability simply to be. What’s the most popular hardback book ever sold in America (other than the Bible)? The Purpose-Driven Life. We want to know above all else what we’re supposed to do. And surely there’s a time and place for that. But we get so action-oriented that we often fail, like Peter, to be contemplative, spiritual, grounded and centered in the essential reality of God’s presence in our lives. We neglect the importance of simply standing before and in awe of the mystery of God so that we can be people whose doing has meaning; so that we do what we do with purpose; so that we can sustain all the things we do.

The trick, as with most things, is balance. Knowing when to do and when and just to be. Learning to take our work seriously, but not too seriously. To let go of our need to control, to listen for the voice of God so that we’re not just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Instead, our holy doing can flow from a being that is formed in awe and wonder of God.

Lent, which begins this coming Wednesday, calls us to rediscover our spirituality, to be, to quit our frantic babbling, and to pay attention. At our Ash Wednesday service in a few days, the ashes that will be placed on our forehead are a reminder of our mortality. We will all die and when we understand that, we may be awakened to a deeper reality that we are more than our physical bodies. We are the very children of God, forgiven, loved, and held. And from that identity we are gifted, called, sent to do God’s work in the world. If we don’t get the being part, then the doing will only be chaotic, frustrated attempts at self-justification or our doing will be grounded in fear and devoid of any joy. If all your doing seems madness and pointless, learn again to behold the mystery, to enter a quiet place of awe.

There will be more than ample opportunity for living out our call to action. But in order to be able to do that, at least for now, at least during Lent, turn things around. Instead of “Don’t just sit there, go out and do something,” say to yourself, “Don’t just go out and do something. Sit there!”

Amen.

Considering Lillies - 2/27/11

Considering Lillies

Rev. Lee Ann Bryce

Community Christian Church

February 27, 2011

Today we return to the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel. Jesus continues to talk about the lifestyle of those who claim to belong to God’s kingdom on earth. Today’s text deals primarily with how God’s people are to relate to money; to material things.

Before I begin reading the scripture, I want to ask you a question. What do you worry about? Are you someone who wakes up in the middle of the night with niggling thoughts running through your brain that you struggle to control? Or do you drift off in daydreams about the things you’re afraid of? You know, those old, familiar thoughts: will I get laid off from my job? Will I find a job? How can I afford to make that pricey repair on my house? What if my child continues to struggle? What if that medical test comes back indicating a major health issue? What if I don’t have enough funds to live on when I retire?

Many of us have these kinds of worries. Sometimes they even follow the same pattern. How we choose to relate to the things that leave us anxious makes a difference in the quality of our lives. As Christians, we seek to live to some extent as Jesus did. Our worries can greatly impact our ability to live lives centered in the peace of Christ.

The good news is that in this passage, Jesus speaks precisely to this issue that almost everyone can identify with. Matthew 6:-24-34: (Text read while images are shown.)

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

These words of Jesus may well have originally been directed specifically toward his disciples. Remember, they had left homes and families to become, like Jesus, traveling teachers. As those who had given up worldly possessions they may have been wavering in their faith. Could they really meet the demands of the job to which Jesus had called them?

These words, though originally addressed the disciples, are equally pertinent to us. We should not understand this passage literally and legalistically. To the disciples and to us, however, these verses represent a radical call to move away from our cultural values and toward a life of trust.

Of course, trusting in God’s provision doesn’t mean that we give up on working or owning property. Rather, we are to see that our life is not based on these things. We are not called to carelessness or irresponsibility. We’re not to become birds or lilies, but to consider God’s providence for all of creation – birds, wildflowers, human beings. We are warned against a slavish, anxious, worried preoccupation with wealth as though money were one’s owner or master.

And verse 34 comes across loud and clear: So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. In other words, address each day’s problems as they come, confident that your life is in the hands of God who somehow holds the whole world in holy hands.

So, Jesus tells us not to worry, so let’s just not worry ok? Can that just be the end of the sermon? I wish that would be how it worked, don’t you? If your mind is like mine, it’s just not that easy to shut it off once those little niggling thoughts get going. Before you know it, you’re looking at the clock as the hours tick away, dreading the early alarm that starts another day, on a night’s sleep brought short by worry.

Why do we worry so much? What is wrong with us? Rarely do the things we worry about happen. Is there anything we can do to stop the destructive habit of worrying?

I think Jesus gets us started in a positive direction in dealing with worry with the very valid point he makes in v. 27: Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? It’s a good question. Has worry ever, in the history of humankind, every done anyone any good? No, of course not. Worrying provides zero benefit whatsoever. In fact, not only is it a waste of time, a completely ineffective strategy for dealing with life, it actually makes things worse. By worrying, our problems seem worse than they really are. Our energy is drained, and our capacity to deal with life effectively is crippled.

The good news is that we have more control over the tendency to worry than we might imagine. We can break the habit of worry and therefore free ourselves of its destructiveness. And I will offer some specific ideas on how to get started, but first I just want to make a clarification. Being concerned and worried are two very different things. Being concerned about something means that there may or may not be a potential problem. From a concerned mindset, we can assess the situation intelligently, and decide on how best to handle it; we have control over how the situation is affecting us. Being worried about something, on the other hand, puts all the power into the problem or situation. The issue usually becomes much worse in our minds than it actually is. Our thinking becomes sluggish, and a sense of panic or foreboding sets in. We become almost paralyzed, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Whether you worry all the time or only occasionally, we can all benefit from some specifics to help us end worry when it sneaks in. First, try writing your worries down. When these thoughts constantly float around in your brain, worries can seem much bigger than they actually are. Writing them down may well give you more control over them. Write exactly what is going through your head. You might return to it later to find what you’ve written seems completely crazy. Or if you don’t dismiss it as crazy, you can begin formulating possible solutions for the problems you face. In one study, people wrote down their worries for 14 days. When they reviewed their lists after that period, they found that 85% of their worries never came to pass.

Another idea - play the time warp. Pretend you are in the future. Look back on the problems you are worrying about today. Do they look as difficult or scary as they do today? Frequently you’ll find that this perspective helps you to see your current difficulties in a different light.

Something else that helps? Resolve to live in the present moment. And that means being present to your life just as it is, without judgment. Spending time feeling guilt about the past or taking on tomorrow’s troubles keeps us from being present today. Psychologist Richard Carlson said, “As you focus on becoming more peaceful with where you are, rather than focusing on where you’d rather be, you begin to find peace right now, in the present.”

It also helps if you cut yourself a little slack. Self-criticism feeds worry. Though some think constant self-assessment and criticism spurs them toward their goals, in reality it usually does just the opposite.

You also might try something proactive. Invest yourself in a daily practice of meditation. This helps to boost your ability to live in the present moment. Start with a modest program of daily meditation – 5 minutes a day. Anyone can manage 5 minutes a day just to sit and breath. (And if you don’t know how to start, we have coming up the perfect opportunity to learn. Sign –up for the Pre-Lenten Mindful Meditation Morning that Lisa and I are facilitating on this Saturday, March 6.) I honestly believe a daily meditation practice will change your life for the better in more ways than you could imagine.

One last suggestion, be grateful. Gratitude can have a profound effect on calming fears, reducing envy, cooling anger. When you look at the rest of the world, where hundreds of millions of people struggle every day to find enough food to eat and clean water to drink, most of us in North America have much to be grateful for. Another study revealed that people who kept a gratitude journal were significantly happier than those who did not. Gratitude creates a healthier perspective and a more hopeful outlook on life.

³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Worry does not empty tomorrow of its troubles – it empties today of its strength. Instead, strive first for the kingdom of God and its righteousness.