Great story this week from John’s Gospel on the Woman at the Well (John 4).  It’s such a great passage and offers up so many angles as to how to approach it.  And the irony of John is getting thicker (reaching a high point next week when we hear about the man born blind).  So here it is, my sermon from yesterday.

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Lent 3A—John 4:5-42

There’s a cartoon of two people dragging themselves across the sands of a desert.  It’s a man and a women, their clothes in tatters.  You can see that they have been at this for days, they’re dying of thirst and there is no end in sight.  As they slither like snakes, the woman looks at the man and says something to him.  The caption deadpans, “Then again, if it did rain, my hair would get all frizzy.”

We didn’t hear the beginning of this story from John’s Gospel this morning, so let me give you the context.  We’re told that word had gotten to the Pharisees about Jesus and his ministry, and so he decides to head back north to Galilee from Jerusalem.  And, John writes, he had to go through Samaria.  Except what we’re not told is that most times Jews would head the other way; rather than going west and traveling through Samaria, they’d head east to avoid the area all together.  They did this even though it meant traveling for a longer period of time; going through Samaria was more direct.  But Jews hated Samaritans, and the feeling was mutual.

But something is up.  Jesus had to go through Samaria, John writes.  And as he journeys north, one day it gets hot, and it’s about lunch time.  So the disciples head into town to rustle up some food, and Jesus takes a seat by the well which sits outside the town.  As he catches his breath, a Samaritan woman comes up to draw some water.  He’s thirsty, so he asks her for a drink.

We aren’t told much about this woman by John.  We aren’t given her name.  We suspect that she’s an outcast; women normally come in the morning and evening to get water, avoiding the hot part of the day.  There had to be a reason she came at noon when the sun was blistering.  She’s a Samaritan, a half Jew.  She is, for all intents and purposes, a nobody.

But she gets it, this nameless woman.  “Why is it that you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”  In her head she must be also asking, why is he talking to me?  Doesn’t he know that I’m an outcast?

But Jesus doesn’t care.  He’s thirsty.  He asks her for a drink.  Which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.  Jesus is asking for a drink.  I cannot help but think of his words in Matthew’s gospel about the sheep and the goats.  He tells the sheep that they can enter into the Kingdom because of the things they did for him.  “When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink,” he says.  They ask him when they did this, and he replies, “Whenever you did it it to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”  So here is Jesus, sitting by this well, asking for a drink.  He’s giving her a chance to see the one ignored—in this case a nameless Jewish man—and offer a cup of cold water.  Before he teaches her about living water, he creates an opportunity for her to do kingdom work.

Instead, she starts putting up road blocks.  She starts with that whole, “I’m a Samaritan, you’re a Jew, you know we can’t get along” speech.  Jesus tells her that if she knew who he was, she’d be dying to ask him for a drink.  She can’t believe it, since Jesus doesn’t have a bucket and the water was a long way down.  “You’re not greater than Jacob, are you?” she asks, expecting Jesus to say no, and pulling out the family heritage.

Instead of talking genealogies, Jesus talks about spiritual water, and how the water that he offers would gush in them offering eternal life and they would never be thirsty again.  She doesn’t understand that he’s not talking about the same kind of water she is, and says she wants this water so she doesn’t have to come back day after day with her bucket.

He then tells her to go get her husband and then come back to him.  She answers, “I’m not married.”  Jesus tells her that she’s right, but that she’s been married five other times, and that the guy she’s with now isn’t technically her husband.  And with that, the cat is out of the bag.  I suspect she feels dejected, and thinking that the whole reason she came to the well at mid-day was to avoid these kinds of conversations.

“Sir, I can see that you’re a prophet,” she says to Jesus.  And then she puts up another wall, bringing up the topic of religion and where the proper place to worship is, either on the mountain where they were at or back in Jerusalem.  She thinks she knows where this conversation is going, with Jesus—as a Jewish man—telling her that she needed to worship in Jerusalem.  But he surprises her.  “The time will come—and now is—when it doesn’t matter where you worship.  It’s how you worship, the way you live.”  She doesn’t get it, so she says one more thing; one more intended dialogue to block Jesus’ offer of water.  “I’m not sure about that, but when the Messiah comes, he’ll tell us what we need to know.”  “I am he,” Jesus tells her.  I’m the one, the Messiah.

And then the light goes on.  She gets it.

The disciples come bumbling back at this point, asking all the same questions from before—why is Jesus talking to this woman and all that.  The woman is overwhelmed by it all, and leaves her still empty bucket and runs back to town.  “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did,” she tells them.  What she doesn’t add, but must be thinking is this, “and he still cared about me as a human being.”  “Is this the Messiah?” she asks.

They come out in droves.  Granted, they knew all about the things she did, but they stopped talking to her.  They gave her those looks.  They made it so uncomfortable that she had to get water at noon by herself.  But they go out to see what all the fuss was about.  And many of them come to believe that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

But this story raises one vital question for me.  Why do we—even if we are dying of thirst—avoid taking a drink?  This woman is given a number of opportunities to drink the water Jesus offers, and she keeps changing the subject.  In her own way she seems to be saying, “Then again, if it did rain, my hair would get frizzy.”  Thank you very much for the offer, but even though I’m dying of thirst, I’ll keep things the same, if you please.

We do too, sometimes.  We live in fear of taking a drink of the living water that Jesus offers.  Either we don’t believe him, or we’re afraid of the unintended consequences—we worry about frizzy hair too.  We are prone to self-sabotaging our spiritual lives: not making time for prayer, or finding excuses why we can’t help out at local charities.  We leave the Bible on the shelf or the bedside table saying we’ll get to it tomorrow.  We avoid the conversation with a friend about our spiritual lives even though it feels like the discussion is going in that direction.  We refuse to take the first step in reconciliation.  We put up so many walls that we can’t see the water Jesus offers us even though we are in desperate need for a drink.

He’s here.  The one who knows all the intimate details of our lives and loves us anyway.  He doesn’t see all the labels others cast on us, or the ones we place on ourselves.  He always sees somebodies and never nobodies.  And he offers us a drink.  Will we take it?  Will we approach this altar and say to the Messiah, the Christ, please, give me the living water?  He’s holding out that cup for us and waiting.  Will today be the day we take that long drink?  Will this be the day that eternal water gushes in us so that we will never be thirsty again?  He tells us that we are all welcome, that even when we think we don’t deserve the living water, he offers us a cup so we can have our thirst quenched.  He’s holding out that cup.  The rest is up to us.

My sermon from yesterday, which was based on Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus in John 3.

Lent 2A—March 20, 2011

Every so often you see him on TV.  The man with the prime seat, a number of rows up from the sideline, strategically placed so he can hold up his sign when one of the team’s goes for a field goal or the extra point.  It’s there, dead center between the goal posts as you watch the ball float up toward its destination.  A large placard with “John 3:16” on it.  It’s really free advertisement for Jesus.

We heard that verse this morning.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  We get some further descriptions about “the world” throughout John’s gospel: like how the world didn’t know the light because the people loved darkness more.  And that the world hated God.  And that Jesus was not of this world.  And yet God really, really, really, really loved the God-hating world.  Enough to send his Son.  God loved so much that God sent Jesus, who was not of this world, to save the world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s start at the beginning of this story.  Where Nicodemus, this leader and Pharisee, seeks out Jesus.  Covertly.  In the darkness.  Because people love darkness more than light.  He comes to Jesus when he can hide, when people won’t notice, so in case he is seen, someone might ask if it was just a shadow, if it was someone how looked liked Nicodemus, but, nah, it couldn’t be him.  Why would he be following this teacher?  It must have been someone very like Nick, but not him.  He’s a member of the ruling council.  It wouldn’t be him.

“Rabbi,” he begins, “we know you are sent from God because of the signs you are doing.”  The first of which, we’re told by John, was turning the water into wine at that wedding in Cana.  And then a number of other signs that Jesus performed during the Passover, which led to many believing in him, presumably sparking this secret mission of Nicodemus to learn more.

Jesus almost seems to interrupt him.  “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Or born anew, the Greek is ambiguous with both meanings, but Nicodemus gets only the “again” part and so he asks how anyone can be born once more when they are old, thinking of the absurdity of the situation.

In other words, he doesn’t get it.  He’s in the dark.  He comes to Jesus, the light of the world, because he’s either seen some of Jesus’ signs or heard about them, and he knows that Jesus must be sent by God, but he can’t wrap his mind around who Jesus really is or what is his mission in the world.  John writes in his prologue, that the light “was in the world and though the world was made by him, the world didn’t recognize him.”

Jesus tries to unwrap it more, explaining that being born of the Spirit is like the wind.  You can hear it but you can’t see where it’s coming from or where it’s going.  But you know it’s there.  And it’s a mystery.  In the Greek there is ambiguity again, since spirit and wind are the same word “nooma,” and so while Jesus tries to open it up, Nicodemus is stumped.

“How can these things be?” he asks.

He’s incredulous and in the shadows and can’t see, although he’s trying.  He wants to see, to understand, but it’s all getting lost in translation.

I’m not sure who first recommended that I go in and visit with Steve, it may have been one of the nurses at the nursing station or maybe it was just by chance that I walked in to see him as I did rounds on the floor at the hospital I worked at one summer during seminary in Charlotte, NC.  Whatever the reason, I went in to his room one afternoon, introduced myself, and asked him if he wanted to talk for a little bit.  He was lying in his bed, watching a rerun of some sit-com with the volume turned down low.  There was a hi-tech wheel chair in the room off to one side, and a few pictures of a baby girl on the shelf by the TV.  He looked at me with a smile and invited me in.

I reached out my hand for his, and immediately I saw that Steve didn’t have the full range of use in his arms, although he grabbed my hand as well as he could.  Steve was a couple of years older than me, and I had seen in his chart that he had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks already.  Steve turned off the TV, and looked intently at me, and we started the beginning of what turned out to be a month-long conversation.  I learned that Steve was paralyzed from the waist down due to a diving accident when he was a teenager—he and some buddies had been out drinking one summer night, and he didn’t pull up fast enough when he dove into a lake from a steep incline.  He told me he didn’t get mad at anyone—how could he, he reasoned—since he was the one who had been drinking and he was the one who dove in.  He talked about how supportive his friends and family were during that time in his life.

We didn’t spend all our time that day talking about his accident.  He told me how much he liked baseball, and how he moved to Charlotte from the Mid-West.  We talked about his family, and especially about his new daughter, whom, along with his wife, he missed very much.  He told me about his job, and he asked me about my studies at seminary.  After an hour of talking, I prayed for him and promised I would come to visit again.

During the month Steve was in the hospital waiting for an infection in his leg to heal, we saw each other often and had many conversations.  In the course of those conversations, I learned that Steve attended a Roman Catholic church with his wife, and that what he wanted more than anything else was to be baptized there at that church so he could take communion.  He hated telling the ushers he didn’t want to receive communion when they asked him if the priest should come down from the chancel to offer him the sacrament.  He wanted to receive it, but he felt that he should be baptized first at that church, and so he waited.   And then he became sick and ended up at the hospital, waiting some more.

Shortly after that conversation—and after we had been meeting regularly for a few weeks—he asked me if there was anything in particular that he needed to say when he prayed to God, if there were any specific words that he should say.  I told him how praying was just talking to God like you would talk to anyone else, and that, while there was no specific formula to use, that some people like to read prayers already written to express what they were feeling.  Steve thanked me, and told me he wish he had a book like that to help him pray.    The next time I saw him, I brought a paperback collection of prayers that I had found in the hospital gift shop, hidden between the romance novels and the crossword puzzles.  He flipped through it as best he could and told me that it was exactly what he was looking for.

Steve’s illness was going away, and he was transferred to a rehab center shortly after that time. I wished him well one sunny afternoon with high hopes for his full recovery.  Unfortunately, however, after three weeks, the infection got worse and spread to his bone, and so he came back to the hospital for an amputation near the end of my time there.  The last time I saw Steve—two days after his surgery—he was pretty restless.  It seemed like he was really distracted and almost uncomfortable having me there.  We still talked for a while, and I told him that I would be leaving my job as a chaplain soon.  When I took his hand to pray that last time, Steve just wasn’t himself.  He kept moving around, and it seemed as if he didn’t want me to be praying.  Feeling discouraged, I finished my prayer and gave his hand a squeeze.

And then Steve started to pray.  He prayed that God would continue to guide my life.  He thanked God for the friendship I had provided to him over the summer.  This man who didn’t know even how to pray a month before, was praying to God for me.  He was showing me the way life could be.

I think I am as blind as the next person in seeing wholeness here in this life, but I was sure of it that day.   I think the shimmering images and visions we get of a transformed life are gifts given to us by God to remind us of the way things could be.  They remind us of our need for new life.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

What Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, what he says to all of us who lurk in the shadows, is that there is so much more to life.  We have our expectations about the way things work, about the way life is to be lived, but there is so much more.  Jesus invites us to have our lives transformed—to be born anew, born from above—so that we can experience life in a new way.  So we can move out of the darkness into the light.

While that guy at the football stadium might seem like a nut job, in a sense who can blame him for forking over the cash for that seat and making that giant poster?  He’s seen what many in this God-hating world never do.  Transformation.  And he wants that to get as much air-time as possible.  Because God loves.  And God wants us to experience that love and the gift of salvation.  God wants us to see, and to step out of the darkness and into the light.  Oh, may it be so for us.  And may it be for this world of ours that is so deeply loved by the Holy One.  Amen.

It was the Last Sunday after the Epiphany yesterday, in nearly the longest season after the Epiphany as possible.  And it was Annual Meeting Sunday.  The lectionary text on the Last Sunday is always the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain top—it’s known as T-Fig to the cool kids in seminary.  It’s always the big high experience before we descend back down the mountain and into the valley of Lent and Ash Wednesday.

So when combined with my 1st Annual Meeting at St. Mark’s it gave me an opportunity to speak about mission and the year ahead.  I won’t repreach my sermon here—you can read it below—but it was a new take on the T-Fig for me.  And it was a great meeting to boot, because we spent time discussing the questions at the end of my sermon.  I hope those conversations continue, and invite you to keep them going on this blog post.

And, FYI, I’m getting closer to finding a sermon-recording solution.  Stay tuned!

Last Epiphany — Matthew 17:1-9

It’s six days after some pretty heady stuff in our gospel lesson this morning.  Jesus was with his disciples after Peter had just declared Jesus as the Christ, and he began telling them that he was headed to Jerusalem, which would lead to his execution and then he would be raised on the third day.   Peter took Jesus aside and told him that this wouldn’t be so.   What follows is that well-known rebuke from Jesus to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan,” and then a moment of teaching.  Jesus tells that motley group this: “If any want to become my followers, they need to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”

It’s six days after that, Matthew tells us.  And Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain by themselves.  I suspect at least Peter, if not the two brothers, are still mulling over this need to deny themselves.  They want to be Jesus’ followers, but all this talk about losing their life and whatnot has to be troubling.

And then suddenly Jesus is transformed right in front of them, and light is radiating from his face, and his clothes turned dazzling white.  Those disciples have no idea what is happening, and then they see two prophets—Moses and Elijah—speaking with Jesus.  Peter wants to say something, so he pipes up with, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here; let me make three dwellings for the three of you.”  And while he is saying this, the cloud comes down from heaven, and God speaks.  “This is my son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased—listen to him!”

The disciples then fall to the ground in fear.  Jesus comes to them, tells them not to be afraid, and the entire episode ends.  They come back to their senses and back down the mountain and Jesus tells them not to speak about this until after he’s been raised.

Peter’s desire to stay up there on the mountain—Lord, it’s good for us to be here—is so typical.  Whenever things are good, or things are deeply spiritual, we want to stay in those places, many times calling them “mountain-top experiences.”  When we have a connection with God, we don’t want it to end.  We babble like Peter, “You know, it’d be really great to stay here and never go back to the real world!”  We want to set up monuments just like Peter as well to remember the time.  We want to dwell there in those moments.

Yet isn’t it fascinating that the voice of God says, “This is my beloved Son—listen to him!”  Listen to him.  Follow his teaching.  Teachings like the one he gave just six days prior, “If you want to become my followers, take up your cross and follow me.”  Those teaching are tough because we want to build permanent memorials and see if God can do that whole transfiguration thing over again.

I hate to say it, but it’s nearly universally true: most churches want to live in the past.  They desire to go back to the time when they were in the groove, when everything was firing on all cylinders.  When there were more people at services, and Sunday School classes were overflowing and the choir stalls were packed with excellent voices and events were well attended and there was that magical buzz.  They want to find their way back to the mountaintop experiences of their collective church life, whenever they happened.

In other words, they want to get back to the mountain even if Jesus is headed to the cross.

And the reality is that most clergy try to accommodate this notion.  We create more and more programs, we do new things, we try to get the buzz going—and many times it happens for a season—and then the numbers stagnate and the energy goes down and the parish begins to wonder if they’ll ever get back to the way things used to be.

The good news is that I haven’t heard a great deal of that language from St. Mark’s through the search process and since my arrival.  And I also want to say that there isn’t anything inherently wrong with offering programs or trying new things.  The problem lies in when we want to set up camp in a particular place or time, when we want to stay on the mountain top of the golden era.  It’s a problem because God asks us to listen to Jesus, to follow Jesus, and Jesus always comes back down the mountain.

To me that means this: Jesus comes back down to the people.  By following Jesus we recognize that Jesus lives in and among the people, not off in some far distant place, removed from it all.  Jesus is here, in the day to day experiences of our lives and not just reserved for momentous spiritual highs.

And that is good news.

When I began the process with you all I said in my cover letter that while I am concerned about what happens with Sunday morning worship gatherings, I am even more concerned with what happens after parishioners leave the church building, what takes place the rest of the week.  If Sunday morning isn’t anything more than an hour of sitting and standing and singing and whatnot—if it doesn’t do something or stir up something deep within us—then why bother?  Sunday worship and the ministries of the church should lead us to so much more.  It should invite us to be active in Jesus’ transformative work in our world.

It should invite us to be Jesus’ followers.  To be his disciples.

And that’s the work I feel called to do during my tenure as your rector.  I want to be about discipleship, and inviting you to join with me in that journey as we follow Christ, not for some spiritual high or exciting moment—although I hope and trust they will happen from time to time—but so we can transform the world and help establish the kingdom of God here and now.

What would it look like for St. Mark’s to become more and more a community of authentic followers of Jesus?  What would that mean about our regular worship and faith exploration?  How would we engage in sacrificial living, or deepening this community or in service to the world?  I think all of this begins with an invitation into a deeper spiritual life.  We can only expect to be light to the world if we ourselves are regularly connecting with the source of that light.

If we as a community become singularly focused on the mission of God in the world—rather than be solely concerned about what we supposedly want from a church—we would change the world.  I say this quite certainly because when we focus on what we want, we aren’t concerned with following Jesus as much as being focused on our hope to experience something we experienced before, or we hope to be able to continue on in our lives without having things complicated by the call of God on us.

“If you want to be my followers, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.”

In my prayers and longings, I see St. Mark’s becoming a parish known for its deep spiritual connection to the Triune God.  I envision us as the church who gives generously to our local community, to places in our nation, and to those around the world.   We do this because we believe we are both called to do it and because we recognize that working alongside our neighbors changes us through the gifts we receive from them.  I trust that we will engage in faith formation, knowing that none of us has learned all we can about this life in Christ, and that as we learn from one another and explore our faith we all will be transformed.  Finally, it is my sincerest desire that we become a welcoming place, where we genuinely care for one another and invite others to share in the life of our community.

What about you?  What do you sense God calling us to in the year ahead as a parish?  And what about you as an individual?  What longings do you feel deep within you about your spiritual life as a disciple of Christ?

My hope is that we share these dreams with one another.  That we listen to one another and see where there is connection and confluence, since that will ultimately be the direction the Spirit is leading us as a parish.  I am truly excited for this year ahead, and I know that if we follow Christ both up the mountain and back down among the people, and if we listen to his teachings, we too will be beloved of God.  Amen.

My sermon from this 8th Sunday after the Epiphany.  You can read this selection from the Sermon on the Mount here:  Matthew 6:24-35.  It was a snowy day here in Southborough with light attendance at St. Mark’s due to the weather.  And it is a sad day for dear friends in Colorado.  A pillar of the church I served there is being taken off medical supports today, and he will be tremendously missed.  I cannot help but think of George in the context of this sermon as well.  May light perpetual shine upon him and all the saints.

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I’ve heard a lot of awful sermons in my life—an occupational hazard I guess since I spend a lot of time in worship services—but there’s nothing worse than a well-delivered sermon that utterly misuses scripture.  More often than not, these sermons are based on a single verse from the Bible that can be molded almost into anything that the preacher wants to say.  One of the verses we heard just a moment ago is a favorite for this style of preaching.

“Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

These preachers will then say without batting an eye that if we seek God, then we will be prosperous—Jesus mentions material things in this context, after all—and if we have enough faith nothing difficult will happen in our lives.  God wants what is best for us and the means health and financial success and sun shiny days.  And we can get all this if we seek God first.

The conclusion of these sermons is usually something like this:  If you are in financial difficulty or your battling a terminal illness or your child is rebelling, it’s because you aren’t seeking after God enough—it’s because you don’t have enough faith.  If you did have that faith and were genuinely seeking God, God would be blessing you.

I have a simple response: Bull-pucky.

These preachers forget to mention that many of the original listeners to the Sermon on the Mount would soon be persecuted for their faith, that they would endure beatings and imprisonments and some would ultimately be martyred.  It also slips their mind, of course, that Jesus himself was homeless[1], would be abandoned by all of his followers, be wrongly accused and feel utterly deserted by God as he died a shameful death.

Jesus tell us not to worry about our lives—whether we’ll have enough food or clothing to wear or a place to stay—because God cares for us.  We’re worth more to God than the blue jay or the sunflowers, and since God takes care of them, God will take care of us even more.  God will be with us.

I can’t naively believe in a so-called prosperity or “health and wealth” gospel because I’ve seen faithful followers of Christ who have experienced dark situations in their lives—never mind the darkness I’ve encountered in my own life.  Should we assume that we aren’t truly seeking God, that they don’t have enough faith?  Or is there something else going on?

Presbyterian minister and author Frederick Buechner recounts a dark time in his life in his writings.  His daughter was suffering from anorexia and his entire life was slipping away from him.  He writes, “My anorexic daughter was in danger of starving to death, and, without knowing it, so was I.  I wasn’t living my own life anymore because I was so caught up in hers. … [S]he knew what she was doing to herself, I knew nothing at all about what I was doing to myself.  She had given up food.  I had virtually given up doing anything in the way of feeding myself humanly….  Of on one particular day she took it in her head to have a slice of toast with her diatetic supper, I was in seventh heaven.  If on some other day she decided to have no supper at all, I was in hell.  I choose the term hell with some care.  Hell is where there is no light but only darkness, and I was so caught up in my fear for her life, which had become in a way my life too, that none of the usually sources of light worked anymore and light was what I was starving for.”[2]

It was at one of the darkest moments during this time that Buechner sat in his car on the side of the road overcome by depression.  Soon a car passed him with the single word in the English language that he needed to see most.  The license plate read “TRUST.”[3] Trust God, trust life, he thought.  Some time much later, there was a knock at the door, and his daughter answered and an unknown man handed her the license plate.  He was a trust officer at a bank and had heard about Buechner’s story.  Rusted and battered, the plate become a holy relic for him.[4]

Five years ago my mother was in the beginning throes of what turned out to be a short battle with cancer.  Melissa and I had recently learned we were expecting our second child, and we prayed that Mom would be able to meet this new little one.  We affectionately called this one “Baby Sunshine” since the due date was in August and since we didn’t learn the baby’s gender, though we felt nearly certain we would have another boy.  In late May mom began hospice and two weeks later I stood by her bed, holding her hand and administering last rites.  She would never meet our little Sunshine.

In early August, I stood by another hospital bed holding Melissa’s hand.  After the tough final pushes, we heard the first few cries and the doctor saying, “It’s a girl!”  In that moment we were washed over with a tremendous sense of healing and were certain of God’s presence. Mom told us before she died how much she loved the name Olivia, so we named her that.   And we gave her a middle name to express exactly what we were feeling at that moment: Hope.

I cannot promise you that you won’t experience pain or that there won’t be times in your life when the darkness almost engulfs you.  I’d be a fraud if I did.  But I can promise you that even in the darkest days God is with you.  In fact, Matthew wants you to know this without a shadow of a doubt.  In the opening scene of his gospel, we are told that Jesus would be called Emmanuel, God with us.  And Jesus’ very last words in Matthew are these: “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“Don’t worry about your life,” Jesus says.  “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life?  Strive first for God’s kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”  God will be with you.

There will be times in this life when the darkness will be unbearable and you will doubt that God cares for you. God may not miraculously “fix” your problems—like letting you win the lottery during times of financial distress—but God will be present.  My prayer is that during those times you will see a license plate or hear a baby’s cry or experience something else that will remind you that Jesus is present and fill you with trust and hope.  In those moments—in those epiphanies—may the light of Christ break in to your life and take you back to the realization that no matter how dark it seems, Jesus is with you.  Always.  And that God cares immensely for you, more than you will ever know. Amen.

We’re hearing some texts that we don’t normally hear due to the long season after Epiphany.  The passage today was a great one about how to live in the kingdom of God.  And especially the need to have love.  This call is challenging, to be sure, yet I know that it is only when we move toward the way of God by showing that love that we can truly grow in our faith.

Moving Towards Maturity—Matthew 5:38-48

Type A personality individuals are, according to our good friends at wikipedia, “ambitious, aggressive, business-like, controlling, highly competitive, impatient, preoccupied with their status, time-conscious and tightly wound.  People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving workaholics who multi-task push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence.”[1] Dictionary.com adds to this by stating: pertaining to a pattern of behavior characterized by competitiveness, a sense of urgency, perfectionism and assertiveness, and possibly associated with an increased risk of heart disease.”[2]

For those of us for whom this sounds familiar—don’t worry I won’t ask for a show of hands simply because I don’t want to raise my own—we’re in luck.  If ever there was a saying of Jesus seemingly directed toward those of us more tightly-wound in life, it’s this one.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We Type A’s relish in the desire to be perfect, heading toward that place when all will be handled and the inbox will be empty and the weight will be off and the house be utterly all we dreamed and the job, by God, the job will pay handsomely and be even more than what we imagined.

We’re off to Nirvana.  Or la-la land.  Or Oz.  Take your pick.

Wherever it is, it isn’t real, of course.  While we imagine the places of perfection in this life, we all know that they don’t exist.  Those images are retouched and enhanced and made on some set in Southern California where they work for hours at creating the ideal image.  If you don’t believe me, go to my blog and check out the ad created by Dove about showing the evolution a model goes through in a photo shoot.

Maybe Jesus’ words don’t make you relish them as much as say, “Holy Expectations, Batman, do I really need another thing to juggle?”  Be perfect as God is perfect?  You’re kidding, right?  Maybe this is just one of those texts that remind us how much we need God and that we will never live up to some ridiculous expectations so why even bother.

And when we look back over the teaching Jesus is giving, why wouldn’t we say something like this?  “Do not resist an evildoer.  If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.  If anyone wants to sue you, give them more than they are asking for.  Give to every panhandler you pass, and love those people that annoy you.”  Is this even possible?  Should we even bother trying to live in this seemingly unrealistic way?

In his book, Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith, Robert Gelinas writes about this very idea.  “If I told you you were going with me tonight to hear someone who has practiced the trumpet for thirty years, what would you expect?  Your hopes would be high, and you would anticipate hearing someone whose skills were highly developed.  Perfection wouldn’t be the standard, but surely it would be reasonable to look forward to an enjoyable performance.  What if I told you that I have practiced Christianity for thirty years?  What should you expect of me?”

He continues, “In a [jazz] ensemble community it is assumed that you know your instrument, have memorized the basic songs (called standards) and have practiced.  Can you imagine how these three assumptions could change what you expected of others and what was expected of you at church?  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could assume that fellow Christians were proficient and experienced when it comes to the essentials of the faith?  Wouldn’t it be nice if other believers could assume that we know not only basic doctrine but live it as well?  Shouldn’t other Christians be able to assume I love my enemies and turn the other cheek?  Mastery is not necessarily expected, nor is flawlessness, but a basic understanding of the essential grooves and riffs is not only needed but expected.”  “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to assume of any Christian that they are ‘practicing’—that they have a basic understanding of the essential groove of God and that, while perfection isn’t expected, you can at least jam together?”[3]

I think what Jesus is teaching us in this reading is that essential groove of God.  God is at the very core love.  And Jesus is inviting us to live the same way.  We’re not going to reach perfection, but we can go in the direction that God is laying out in front of us, we can, with practice, enter the song and feel the rhythm and get in the groove.

What Jesus tells us to do in these verses is the complete opposite of what we might do on our own out in the world.  If someone slaps us, we want to strike back.  But Jesus says to do the opposite, much to the surprise of both his disciples and those who get this type of response (like the British who were met by Ghandi’s non-violent methods, and those who encountered Martin Luther King, Jr).  We know empirically that Jesus’ method might be better in the long run, but we know as well that when we are hurt the easiest response is to make the other person pay for it.  And it’s hard to believe when someone doesn’t want to do this.

But Jesus is giving us a clue to what life in the kingdom of God will look like.  This “community is filled with people who think of others first.  Every decision and action is carried out for the common good.  Each person is sister or brother to the other and acts out of love,” as one minister put it.[4] In this realm, if each person is our sister, our brother, going an extra mile wouldn’t be too difficult.  Which of us wouldn’t do this for someone we loved, especially if we knew that it would help them immensely or change their life for the better?  What Jesus does, essentially, is tells us that we need to recalibrate our instincts.  Yes, we love those who love us, but who doesn’t?  It’s much harder to love those who could care less about us.  If we’re willing to go the mile for a loved one, what about the kid down the street, or the woman the next town over?

We hear those stories, sometimes, don’t we, about someone giving up a kidney for another person.  Usually it’s because the donor knows someone who might need a transplant, so they offer to have the test done to see if they’re a match.  When they aren’t, sometimes they come up as a match for a complete stranger.  I know I stand in awe of the man who does this for an utter unknown.

Jesus tells us to love those who hate us so that we may be children of the Father in heaven.  So that we too may be perfect.

The Greek word translated “perfect” in this verse is telios, and it connotes reaching maturity or completion.  It is translated that way in the epistle written by James: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”  That maturity is what we are striving for not the idea of perfection that implies no flaws.  Rather we want to draw so close to God—to practice so much in the ways of God—that we can jam with God.  That we can find our groove in God.

Maybe you’ve never considered what it might look like to practice in the ways of God.  Or maybe you’re thinking that you’ve been a Christian for a long time but might not be able to hold your own in a conversation on faith if someone asked you.  Perhaps you’re thinking there would no way that you would turn the other cheek or even consider loving those who might be your enemies.

I’m here to tell you that it is never too late.  Whether you’re a young person still in high school or someone nearing the final chapters of your life.  You may feel that you have squandered some of the opportunities, but God is full of grace and mercy, and the way of Jesus can always be followed.  In the days and weeks ahead I’ll be posting some ways online for you to take up some of the ancient spiritual practices, beginning with regular prayer, or the daily office.  These practices shouldn’t feel onerous or one more thing added to your check list, but rather should be an invitation in to a new type of life, a new way to understand the world.

May this life of yours be lived in seeking out the way of Christ, so that you may ultimately reach a time when God’s work in you is complete and you enter into the kingdom as a child of the living God, and you take part in that everlasting jam session.  Amen.