One important aspect of the life of Jesus is that for every miracle performed in the Old Testament, Jesus does the same thing in his life only bigger or better. Elijah feeds the widow for eight days, Jesus feeds 5,000. Moses parts the Red Sea, Jesus walks on the sea. It is just like that line from the old musical, “Anything he can do I can do better.” Or “Anything Moses does Jesus does better.” Here we see again that Moses goes up to Mount Sinai where the appearance of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain. Moses would stay there 40 days, and he would return to his people transfigured.

As perfectly modern people, we can lean on science to help us debunk the miracles of the Bible. Walk on water? Nonsense. Raised from the dead? Preposterous! Feed 4,000 in the desert? Are you out of your mind? Turn dazzling white and talk to two guys who have been dead more than a 1,000 years? What have you been smokin’?

Thomas Jefferson felt exactly this way. His response was to take the Bible and cut out what he considered the “authentic words and teachings of Jesus.” The Jesus of the Jefferson Bible is nothing more than a “mild humanitarian moralizer” who was executed as a criminal by the Romans. The Jesus of rational thought is about as close to the real thing as the life sized cardboard cutouts of celebrities where we stand next to them and have our photographs taken.

Going back to the story, the elements of magic pile on so much here that it is impossible for a modern reader to take them seriously: the dazzling white robes, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, Jesus talking to them, the glowing cloud on the mountaintop, the voice of God from the cloud… Who could actually believe that all this happened?

Atheist writers these days are making quite a bit of money claiming that this whole Bible and religion thing is all just fiction that is too bizarre to take seriously. A recent book title says it all for this side: Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up.

Some writers in the ancient world held an equal disdain. In his Life of Nero, late first century author Suetonius described Christians as “a set of men adhering to a novel and mischievous superstition.” About the same period, the writer Tacitus took jabs at Christian belief as “pernicious superstitions.” Finally a second century governor in what is now Turkey complained to the Emperor Trajan about his efforts to prosecute Christians. “I judged it so much the more necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two female slaves serving as deaconesses, but I could discover nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition.”

(A little aside here: One large denomination maintains that only males can be ordained yet here is a letter from a non Christian in the second century talking about female deacons. Hmmm…)

So here is my confession: I have been a scientist for more years than I have been a priest. Over the years I have tried to whittle down the mysteries and miracles. I have blended creative use of science with the literary devices of myth and metaphor. I find it breathtaking to consider the transfiguration might have happened just the way it is described.

C. S. Lewis noted that we should acknowledge those aspects of Christianity that we find obscure, difficult, or repulsive. When we own those things, we are less likely to “skip, slur, or ignore what we find disagreeable.” Even Harvey Cox, in his book When Jesus Comes to Harvard, warns us against whittling down the sweeping vision of Christian belief into something manageable and lackluster.

Consider the writers of the Gospel. In a time when being Christian was dicey at best and often life-threatening, why would the Gospel writers falsify a story that could easily be refuted? Why would they risk their cause knowing that outrageous claims would cause them harm financially, socially, politically, and even physically? No matter how bizarre the transfiguration may seem to us, would Peter, James, and John all have denied or downplayed the experience they had?

I can tell you that one of the humbling aspects of modern science is that for all of its accomplishments, physics and mathematics only have credible theories to account for about 1% of the known universe. You don’t hear much about this from the popular atheist writers. It might weaken their case and diminish their income. So in the 99% of the universe that we know nothing about, might there be room for realities we do not yet understand?

The important point here is not science versus religion. It is whether we can accept the breathtaking truth of these accounts. Can we allow the unsettling nature of the transfiguration to work on us? What if it really is all true? Can we accept a Jesus walking across the lake to us? Can we go up the mountain with him and meet long dead prophets? Can we begin to believe in the power of this Jesus so much that we can do similar things?

When we grow in faith to accept these things the way Peter, James, and John did, then we too will become like that burning bush Moses encountered. Scripture says it was on fire but it was not consumed by the fire. May this Gospel set you on fire, too.

For at least the first 800 years of the church, adults were baptized at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. They spent three years before their baptism in constant classes and in programs doing works of charity for the poor and needy. They were seated in a special area in church and were dismissed after the sermon to attend their classes or “catechism.” They were not allowed to take communion until after baptism.

The interrogatory portion of the baptismal liturgy where the celebrant asks questions of the candidates or their sponsors, and the candidates and sponsors respond, is an ancient part of our liturgy dating back to the earliest days of the church.

When a new religion enters a region of the world, it does not just appear instantly and wipe out all the earlier religious belief. There is a very common process we call “syncretism”, where pre-existing religious beliefs are incorporated into the new religion. In the early days of the church in the Greco-Roman world, people believed that different directions on the compass had different spiritual meanings. Native Americans hold similar beliefs here. The east, the direction most church altars face, is the direction of the rising sun and is considered the direction of spiritual enlightenment by many world religions. In contrast, the west, the direction of the setting sun, is considered evil.

In the early church there were no pews for people to sit during the 2.5 hour services. When the priest asked the candidates if they rejected the devil and all the spiritual forces of evil that reject God, the baptismal candidates would turn around, face west, and spit, indicating their rejection of the devil.

Temptation is such a natural part of life. Many of you may remember the old Bill Cosby line where the child tells her mother that “The devil made me do it.” Even as adults our motivation for doing something tempting or not doing it connects directly to our image of God and our understanding of Jesus.

Some of us have difficulty getting the idea of God as judge and punisher out of our heads and hearts. Many people like this will endure week after week of “You are bad and going to hell if you don’t shape up” preaching. In this perspective, there is almost no room for Jesus, the cross, or forgiveness. Punishment is almost all self-inflicted.

Others of us have slow conversion experiences. We tend to look upon altar calls, televangelists, and stories of instant conversion with suspicion. We know that God in Jesus Christ loves us and forgives us. It can take months or years or even a lifetime before the knowledge in our heads works its way into our hearts; just like Nicodemus.

We are going to merge the wonderfully scripted Gospel you experienced of Jesus’ temptation with the story for this Sunday of Nicodemus.

Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, is intrigued by the reports he has heard about Jesus. “Could this Jesus be the one? He wondered. So Nicodemus arranges a time to see Jesus at night. He does not want to be seen by his fellow Jews as this might cast doubts on his leadership. But nighttime in the Gospel according to John is also a time of unbelief, ignorance, and temptation.

In their first encounter, Nicodemus interprets Jesus literally and he completely misses the idea how one can be born again or from above (the word translated “born again” is ambiguous and could equally be “born from above”). In his first attempt to get to know this enigmatic Jesus, Nicodemus fails and he disappears from the scene for a while.

In chapter 7, Nicodemus reappears and makes a somewhat hesitant defense of Jesus. He seems to have moved from doubt to possibility. At the end of the Gospel when Jesus is buried, Nicodemus accompanies Joseph of Arimathea with an exorbitant and very expensive quantity of spices for burial. Through this Gospel Nicodemus in three appearances moves from complete doubt to possibility to the position of a generous believer.

Is not the journey of Nicodemus the journey all of us make? We have baptized little Andrew but does that instantly guarantee that he will become a generous believer? What kind of upbringing does it take to make someone a generous believer and what difference does it make in the world anyway?

It takes not just a village to raise a child, it takes a whole community of generous believers; people who believe so strongly in the outrageous claims of the Bible that they willingly give money and give of themselves to other people they don’t even know. Why do they give this way? Because Jesus gave himself for us.

What difference does it make in a world with earthquakes, tsunamis and burning nuclear power plants? Because whether we live in Fukushima Japan or Muskogee Oklahoma, every one of us will one day sooner or later face the dark abyss with the sign posted next to it that says “No hope.” That dark place may be loss of a loved one, disease, accident, or just the process of getting older. In that place we may encounter other generous givers who will be helping us. In that dark place we will also encounter Jesus who will take our place.

Andrew’s Christian life will likely be more like Nicodemus, the slow awakening journey. The Gospel is our guide in this journey. It boils down to the title of a popular movie a few years ago. “Pay it forward.”

Today we line up two stories from John’s Gospel. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews comes to Jesus by night. The unnamed Samaritan woman at the well comes to Jesus in broad daylight. The contrasts continue. Nicodemus is a Jew and a leader. The Samaritan woman is of a tribe that had unfriendly, even hostile relations with the Jews. The Jews considered Samaritans to be half Jewish because they intermarried with Assyrian tribes for six hundred years. Talk about holding a grudge.

We are told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a righteous leader of the Jews. The Samaritan woman has had five husbands in a life that was likely more tragic than scandalous. She comes to the well at noon in the heat of the day to avoid contact with other women of the village. She is outcast and lonely. Her ancestors on the Assyrian side of the family tree worshiped idols. The Jews of Jerusalem haven’t forgotten it.

While both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman completely miss important things that Jesus says to them, look at who recognizes the true identity of Jesus. As we discussed last week, Nicodemus takes the entire three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry before he slowly warms up and believes who Jesus really is. The Samaritan woman is the first person in the Bible to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah. Echoing God’s name to Moses, Jesus tells the woman, “I am he.”

So I ask you, does God have a sense of humor or what? Jesus first reveals that he is the Messiah not to Caesar, not to Pilate, not to the disciples, but to an unnamed, lonely, outcast Samaritan woman in the dusty outback of Samaria. And we read this Gospel story of the woman with five husbands the same week that Elizabeth Taylor with her seven husbands (or was it eight?) is called to her rest!

Today I want to introduce you to a topic you probably never knew existed. It is called the history of interpretation. For example during the period of slave trading in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for clergy to preach sermons to slaves citing passages from Paul that encouraged them to submit to their masters. Hopefully today we would never interpret scripture along those lines nor preach sermons like that. When it comes to the subject of the treatment of women by preachers and the public, sadly we often find ourselves stuck in the same kinds of interpretations we heard about slaves two centuries ago.

You can line up nearly two thousand years of preaching about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and how Eve ate the apple of knowledge and wisdom after being tempted by the serpent. Right down to the present day you will hear sermons that say “Eve was tempted. She ate the apple. She committed the original sin.” But if you go back to the text you will find that it literally says “Adam was standing right beside her.”

NOW if you ask whether Adam as master of the household exercised good manly leadership in this situation you find that instead of grabbing Eve by the hand and saying “Let’s get out of here, this serpent is a nut cake” he stands there complicit in his silence. He must be thinking “OK, this seems a little shaky, so Eve, you eat the apple and let’s see what happens.”

NOW that we examine the text a bit closer the issue of who committed the original sin is not so clear. Any reasonable interpretation would have to say, BOTH were guilty. Yet the tired old interpretation that Eve was guilty and therefore women are somehow spiritually or morally inferior is an interpretation that benefits one party (men) at the expense of another (women).

In the same way, if you look at interpretations of this story of the Samaritan woman at the well, you find two thousand years of preaching casting her in the role of a harlot, a sinful woman of loose morals, and even the village prostitute. Yet a closer examination of this text reveals no information that would lead us to these conclusions.

Notice that Jesus does not mention repentance to her, so how can we conclude that her sin is an issue here? The woman could very well have been widowed, abandoned, or divorced multiple times. Her present “husband” could be an arrangement of financial dependence, sanctioned by Old Testament law where a childless woman must marry her deceased husband’s brother. There are all kinds of situations that would render this woman’s life tragic rather than scandalous.

When the woman says “I see you are a prophet”, she is making a confession of faith. Jesus in turn sees her for her dependence and loneliness. Jesus sees her not as a hated Samaritan, not as a woman, not as a person with a tragic past, but as a child of God – with value, significance, and dignity in God’s eyes. Given this reading of the text, why do so many churches perpetuate misogyny in our world today? Why do churches marginalize half of society?

The sad truth is that by interpreting, preaching, and insisting that women are somehow inferior to men, entire churches have historically benefitted. From Genesis to Revelation the projection of masculine fear of the feminine into preaching and the very framework of churches themselves has led to more human misery and suffering than all the wars in history.

What we hear in church and the framework for how our churches are organized matters to society. If the subtext of the sermon week after week contains a message about the inferiority of women, then you will find some families where violence towards women seems to be somehow condoned. If you see male clergy sticking to the tired old line that the disciples were all male, therefore only men can be ordained (I might add the disciples were all Jewish too), you will find businesses clinging to compensation and hiring policies favoring men over women.

If we can only rid ourselves of bias and judgment; if we can only rise above petty moralistic interpretations, these stories have powerful transforming messages for us. This story about the woman at the well is not at all about morality or her sinfulness. This story is about the identity of Jesus, the Messiah who offers us dignity and new life in a relationship with God.

After all, she is the first person in the Gospels to seek out others and tell them about Jesus. “Come and see” she says to her neighbors. Jesus is still at that well today. He looks you in the eyes and offers living water, new life, so that you may live abundantly. Like the woman at the well, can you accept his offer? Will you run to your neighbors to tell them about the Jesus you met at the well?

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” – Deuteronomy 6:5

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, our Lord and redeemer. Amen

For twenty five years I lived in a house with three women. In that environment Valentine’s Day is the “Day of Mandatory Chocolate.” Overlooked anniversaries and birthdays could be forgiven (well, eventually) but failure to provide dark chocolate hearts was an unforgivable sin. Looking at this teaching from Jesus about anger, adultery, taking oaths, and the careless destruction of marriage, I wonder if Jesus is really asking us to take a look. What’s in your heart?

Jesus’ teachings today extend his blessings and woes from the Sermon on the Mount. We are also told before this that our righteousness in following the Law of Moses must exceed that of the Pharisees. That’s a tall order. Sometimes Jesus gives us a teaching where the metaphor is stretched beyond achievability, such as a camel going through the eye of a needle. The exaggeration is intended to wake us up and make a point. But in this case, Jesus is not stretching things to make a point. He is completely serious. Our righteousness flows from the attitude of our hearts AND our courage (a word whose root means “heart”) in carrying things out.

Why should our outward actions exceed the actions of people deemed to be the most studious followers of the law? Put in a more modern context, why should our behavior towards our brothers and sisters be BETTER than the behavior we observe with bishops, clergy and seminary ethics professors? Because outward behavior is just the first step of peeling the onion. Jesus is really focusing on what is in our hearts. Even righteous action is not foolproof because it is possible to do the right things and still have your heart in the wrong place. For example there are some people who give but inwardly they give grudgingly. Scripture commends a “cheerful giver”, not a grudging giver.

Developing good moral behavior and good communities is kind of like going to the gym to work out. Sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we are too tired or distracted to go. We can make all kinds of excuses. But we know the right thing to do is to eat healthy, go to the gym, and get those muscles pumping. In the same way, as individuals AND as a community we need to build our moral muscles. When a community of faith such as Grace Church fails to go to the moral fitness center, we become overweight, lazy, and complacent. After a while we begin to look not like a community of faith, but instead we begin to look just like the community around us.

Let’s get something straight about Jesus and moral behavior. Moral behavior is NOT primarily about sex or sexuality. It is about the attitude of our heart. Our Gospel today contains teachings about anger, adultery, divorce, and the taking of oaths. Let’s focus on anger since it is the root of all the others.

This is one of those uncomfortable subjects. We are all prone to some kind of anger. Perhaps we would prefer a nice academic sermon about the other three issues Jesus raises? The Greek language has two different terms for the English concept of anger. One is the kind of anger that flares up and goes away quickly. I am thinking here about my thoughts lately when I observed other people’s driving abilities in the snow.

The other term for anger implies a smoldering, long term, just beneath the surface kind of anger. Healthcare experts will tell you that this kind of anger is what leads many people to heart attacks, ulcers, and possibly autoimmune diseases. In some respect we literally eat ourselves up from the inside. Jesus takes aim directly at this kind of anger and tells us (my translation):

“But I tell you, that everyone who smolders with simmering anger towards his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever shall say to his brother, “You moron!’ shall be in danger of judgment by the Sanhedrin; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fire of Gehenna.”

(Gehenna, or “hell” in some translations, was the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem.)

There is a helpful qualification in this that needs to be pointed out – “without a cause.” (See the KJV) Jesus assumes that if you are angry because your brother or sister has actually done something to harm you, then you need to seek recourse through the courts or even through the councils of the church. What he is talking about here is the unjustified expression of anger towards others – the calling of names, swearing at others, malicious gossip, and other harmful behaviors. Psychologists sometimes call this “gunnysack behavior”, because the angry person takes all the offenses, hurts and transgressions he or she has received from others over a long period of time, and stuffs all that into a gunny sack. Later when the slightest provocation comes along, such as a two wheel drive car fishtailing in the snow, a disappointment, a misinterpreted motive, a missed appointment, and so forth, the provocation is met with the emptying of the gunnysack by the angry person. The confrontation is often shocking and ugly.

While there may indeed by some provoking, annoying, disappointing or untoward behavior by one party, the response of the angry person far outweighs the stimulus of the offending person. After nearly a year together we begin to get real for one another. I have seen this process unfolding inside of families, between individuals in our parish, and between parishioners and members of the wider community. I have seen people dump their gunnysacks at others by electronic communication.

We all have our gunnysacks because in some ways we are all victims of someone else’s hurtful behavior. The world out there is full of people venting themselves on others without real cause. Business schools call it the “Law of the Jungle.” But Jesus wants Christian believers and Christian communities to distinguish ourselves from the world out there. What are we to do?

He gives us some very concrete advice about the process. The passing of the peace in our liturgy is the formal expression and reminder that we are ALL to engage in this process because we all have a brother or sister who has something against us. We have all been on both sides of the coin as victims and oppressors.

If you believe in Jesus; if you want to follow his teachings; if you want to become a better person, then YOU need to take the initiative. Chances are you have offended or hurt someone else. Chances are that someone else has offended or hurt you. That’s what happens inside of marriages and families and communities. It is unavoidable.

Regardless of whether you are the victim or the oppressor YOU need to take the initiative and go to that person. Screw up your courage. Build up your heart. Go to them. It is not about groveling. It is about love. Jesus is calling you to love even the people that cause you pain. This is the high calling of Christian faith. In this process of sharing the peace that passes all understanding, your gunnysack will slowly empty. You will probably live longer. You will certainly live better. Your life will be a greater blessing to you, your spouse, your family, and your community. This is the life that Jesus calls “eternal life.”

People out there in the world think Christians are wimpy because of this process. They laugh at this love and think it is just an excuse for weakness. They prefer to live in the law of the jungle – “Take advantage of others before they do that to you.” Jesus calls you to a love that is stronger that the world out there. They will know we are different. They will know we are Christians by our love. Some of the people in the world out there will be powerfully attracted to that love.

As an alternative to hard work of taking the initiative, Jesus gives us an image of the world out there: Gehenna. It was a steep ravine filled up with human and animal waste and all the organic matter from a thousand years of settlement. It was an enormous compost pile. Occasionally in the desert heat, large bubbles of methane or natural gas would well up from the compost and ignite spontaneously. The burst of flame must have been spectacular. The world out there? It’s hot, unpredictable, and not a pleasant place to be. I’ll take my chances with Jesus.

We are going to start this sermon from the tail end of the Gospel. “Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect.” What kind of teaching is that? Everyone here who is perfect, please raise your hand. OK, we know we’re not perfect, but what is Jesus talking about?

Once again translation is not our friend. The sense of the word translated as “be perfect” is more about becoming what God intended, or to “be the person God created you to be.” God created us in God’s image. Therefore, being who God created us to be means that we are to live so that our behavior reflects the very nature of God to others. In a modern translation of the Bible, Eugene Peterson gets much closer to the original meaning when his version titled “The Message” says “You’re kingdom subjects. [Christians] Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”

But many of us spend our lives living behind barriers we erect to prevent us from living out who God created us to be. Let’s name a few of these.

Anger – A newlywed couple looked forward to having children. They were poster kids for healthy living. Good diet, no alcohol, never smoked, no drugs, in good physical shape. They took their first pregnancy very seriously, doing everything the natural childbirth coach said to do. When the blessed event arrived, the child was a beautiful baby girl with Down ’s syndrome and serious cardiac problems. The mother looked at me between her tears and anger saying “Crack-addicted mothers give birth to normal babies. We did everything right. Why did God do this to us?”

Denial – Jim was a radiologist I knew very well. He was the assistant chairman of one of the major academic hospitals in the United States. He lived well, partied hard, and was well liked by many people. Even when he was personally dealing with a rare disease of the optic nerves that eventually led to his total blindness, he persisted in trying to read X-rays and diagnose other people’s diseases. After some spectacular missed diagnoses, the medical director asked him to step down. He knew the course of the disease that was claiming his vision, yet in complete denial he continued to use his eyes far beyond the point at which he should have stepped down. He died angry and bitter about his loss to the very end.

Guilt – Mary was the wife of a golf pro who died in an airplane crash. Her only problem was that they had an argument the day before he left on his private jet for a tournament. She was supposed to go with him. In her guilt over their marital problems and his untimely death, she first became addicted to prescription pain medications and eventually moved to heroin. Her friends deserted her. She has enough money to live independently but she never leaves the house. She has her drugs to ease the pain. She lives a lonely, terrible life.

Like Mary, we can even manage to live well behind our own barriers, but it is a lonely disconnected life. Living behind a barrier that prevents us from dealing with reality and becoming who God created us to be is not life at all. It is hell. Those in pain who have erected barriers to keep the world away see themselves as victims of a tragedy. Often we find those living behind the biggest barriers are the biggest deniers not just of God but of the church.

It is commonly said that there are “no atheists in a foxhole.” When the enemy is firing rounds over your head, even the most hardened atheist may appeal to a higher power in such moments. So it is not unusual to find those living behind their walls agreeing to all kinds of academic concepts of God. It is just when God gets too close in the form of a Christian community that we find the walls going up all over again.

What does the church have to offer people in existential pain?

To name a few: Love, connection, acceptance, forgiveness, community, a mirror, models of sainthood, presence, reflection, encouragement – these are all characteristics of God. When we live into them, that life is “eternal life.” To live as a reflection of God’s love is much more than being a good Boy Scout however.

When a community of believers goes beyond their personal hurts and pains and they reach out to others, the victim thinking melts away. When you peel everything back, there is only one victim, Jesus Christ, who suffered everything for us. Those of us who hide behind barriers need to experience the overwhelming love and sacrifice of Christ. That is the role of the community of faith.

To deny the church is to deny the community of faith and to retreat behind the barricades. But God has a different plan for every one of us. We are called to get beyond the barriers and concerns that hold us back from becoming the whole person that God created us to be. I encourage you to write down on the paper you are being given the thing or things that hold you back from being the person God created you to be. Fold the paper and put it in the collection plate with your offering. Offer those things that hold you back up to God.

The community of faith is called to a life of generous giving. What we do is to give back what we have received already from God. In the early 400s, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, would break the bread at the Eucharist, look out at his congregation, and say, “Receive who you are. Become what you have received.”

As many of you know February is Black History Month, and since the Edwards are headed to the islands next month, I want to get everyone into that island spirit, break out your drinks with little umbrellas in them, and share with you a popular song that perfectly summarizes today’s gospel

 (play 30 seconds of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”).

We could have fun in adult education talking about the four antecedents of Fletcher’s situational ethics, explaining how the end point of this song’s philosophy is in fact tragedy, but Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. and two millennia of philosophers, poets, priests, and prophets have insisted that an intermediate step is required for happiness. That step is the polar opposite of worry and it is in short supply today: It is JUSTICE.

Martin Luther King, Jr. in his address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967 brought together the themes from Christian teaching in all of their harmonies and tensions. Talking about power, justice, and love, King said:

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive,
and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Yesterday your new vestry and I spent the day in a spiritual retreat addressing what God is calling us to do at Grace Church this year. We are fortunate. We have a great deal of clarity in the tasks before us. Your vestry has a great deal of energy and enthusiasm to accomplish these goals. We have three major goals for the year. They are:

Renew these buildings
Renew the community of Grace Episcopal Church
Renew the connection between Grace Church and the Muskogee community

Now it is time to talk about WHY we are doing these things. When we have completed these tasks, will we make a difference for anybody? For whom? Why not just go play golf instead? Why not just let the big churches with their new buildings do all the work? Does anything we do as a community of faith matter? What is our purpose in doing what we do?

Before we dive into that question, let me weave a few more threads into this tapestry: Declining church attendance, the search for meaning, and why people love Jesus but hate the church. These things are related to our purpose as a church and to King’s teachings about power, justice and love. Let’s see –

Somewhere along the line between the end of the 19th century and let’s say the year 2000 (some would call this the “modern era”), the church, from Roman Catholicism to the little bitty evangelical churches that crop up like dandelions in an April yard; this “Church” lost its bearings. We reversed the incentives for church leaders so that building humongous buildings, having your own network TV channel, and hobnobbing with world leaders became the ultimate quest for church leaders. The Episcopal Church fell into this same trap along with everybody else. At the parish level this meant that clergy sought after bigger churches, bigger paychecks, and bigger retirements. Political squabbles over hot button issues split the churches and provided entertainment for the media.

It would be unfair to say that all churches local and national fell into this. A few were doing the work of the Gospel, but I think as Jesus surveyed his church during these years, he must have wept.

Yes, we are called to be a community of love. But to paraphrase King, “Love without … justice is sentimental and anemic.” We cannot be a true community of love. We cannot be a Christian community WITHOUT also being a community of justice.

If you interviewed the people out there who do not attend church, you would find that many believe in Jesus. They admire him. They see him as a man whose compassion compelled him to teach us to do works of mercy and justice. But if you asked them about the church, they would say things about organized religion that I cannot quote in here. In essence, they would say that organized religion has abandoned the justice and mercy of Jesus – and to a large extent they are correct.

Church attendance declines when the public sees the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the actions of the local church. Church attendance increases when the public sees a local congregation vigorously engaged in works of justice and mercy. The two keys are that:

The local church must be engaged in reaching out to the local community

The local church must be visible and seen by the community in doing such things (this requires a lot of organized promotion)

We will renew these buildings. We will have more fun and build a stronger community of faith. We will plug into a lot of Muskogee activities and events. But we do these things because Jesus calls us to serve others as a community of justice and mercy.

We have two active meals ministries. What would happen if we tripled the size of those? What if we addressed the needs of the Muskogee community in terms of housing, education, nutrition, the families of prisoners, victims of violence, and adult education? We could start a community garden across the street from this church; we own the property. We could resurrect the GED program that we ran for 29 years. We could start an ESL program. The opportunities are unlimited right here on this corner.

It starts with each person making a choice. We bow our heads in prayer and supplication. We ask Jesus, “Yes Lord, I want to have your compassionate heart. I want to help other people.” When you travel down that road, your worries will ALL be about other people. And then you will be happy.

On the 100th birthday of the city of Pasadena California, All Saints Episcopal Church gave the city a gift, which was a lengthy, detailed document identifying the needs of the city. All Saints is a parish with several thousand members. It is wealthy and politically powerful. To create this document the church fielded a team of social workers who interviewed every agency, school, and social service in the city for a year. From that work between the church and the city, a number of large and very successful social programs were launched. Some have delivered services to the community for over three decades since then.

As commendable and helpful as these programs are, I wonder if individuals and churches are called to be in the business of meeting social needs? Even more, I wonder if in the process of meeting needs – even when doing a fantastic job like All Saints – can that activity get in the way of our ability to respond to our true calling? I wonder.

John has been living by the Jordan River baptizing people for repentance of their sins for quite some time. He has been waiting for the one who is to come. Jesus gets in line with everyone else waiting to be baptized. John sees Jesus and gasps, “I need to be baptized by you.” Jesus answers him, “No, you will baptize me. It is part of God’s plan that you do not see right now. We must do all that the Father asks us to do.”

The word “obey” comes from two words ab-audio. It literally means to go towards the hearing. Jesus is certainly obedient towards his Father’s Word. I wonder if this enigmatic phrase “to fulfill all righteousness” might mean something like “to obey God” or “to do everything that God calls us to do.”

John could have insisted that Jesus baptize him. That would have been the easy thing to do. John obviously recognized Jesus’ status. John’s needs would have been met and Jesus would have received the proper social recognition of being the superior to John. If that had happened, do you think the heavens would have opened up and the Spirit descended with God’s voice saying, “This is the one with whom I am well pleased”? Did Jesus need the human social thing where the baptizer is superior to the baptized? Of course not.

Jesus heard God guiding him to stand in line like everyone else and he obeys. What is about to happen will demonstrate once and for all that Jesus is BOTH human and of God. He is human because he stands in line and is baptized just like anyone else. But when he comes up out of the water God will convert this ordinary scene to demonstrate that this is God’s son. The next time we hear about the heavens opening up is at the crucifixion when the temple curtains are torn and the heavens open up. For God to act, Jesus must do the unusual, the unexpected, and the unnatural thing. That is true for individuals and for churches as well.

I am not here to downplay meeting social needs or the church’s role in ministering to “the least of these” in our community. But sometimes we can confuse means and ends. Meeting the needs of the poor and the vulnerable in our community are a means for us to understand the nature of God’s compassion. Sometimes we can become so comfortable with our programs that we think that programs and meeting needs is all God wants us to do. Sometimes with the best of intentions while we do good work in our community, we simply quit listening to God.

Sometimes we need to look closely at what Jesus does and try to follow his lead. Sometimes we need to do the unusual, the unexpected, and the unnatural thing – just like Jesus. Sometimes what we think is the right or righteous thing to do may not be what God wants at all. Obedience to God requires that, first of all, we are able to hear God against the noisy background and distractions of our lives. Let’s consider hearing God and discerning God’s plan for a minute.

God does NOT tell us what we want to hear. God is not in the business of granting wishes and fulfilling personal agendas. For example, in our capital campaign we hoped to raise $2M for the renovation of this facility. It now looks like with some borrowing and a general appeal to the congregation, we can get to about $1.7M. You should know that my constant prayer through all this is for the funds we raise and for the buildings we renovate to be blessings for GOD’S PLAN and not for our plans. If we follow God’s plans for Grace Church, then there is no such thing as “failure” or “coming up short.” We must listen constantly. We must pray without ceasing. And we must be ready to do unusual, unexpected, and unnatural things.

As individuals and as a church we must seek out those times when we can be quiet and listen. If we are constantly distracted and constantly busy, we will very likely miss the still small voice that we need to hear.

Finally, we must try new things – and trying new things demands a willingness to look silly sometimes or even to fail. The outcome of our new ventures is part of our discernment process and guides how we go forward. Our new service Thursday night is an example of trying something new. I want to thank everyone for their help in making our first new service a tremendous success.

Individuals sometimes hear God telling them impossible things. For example, when Abraham and Sarah were very old, God told them they would have a son. Sarah laughed at the news. Of course they did have a son and named him Isaac, which means “He will laugh.”

The next time you experience this strange mixture of a new challenge coupled with a sense that it is crazy or beyond your capabilities, you need to pay close attention. It could change your life.

There is an old cartoon where the neophyte seeking wisdom approaches the old guru with a single word question, “Whither”, (or “Where should I go to be enlightened?”). To which the guru points in a direction and says “Thither.” The neophyte travels in that direction and encounters a terrible commotion. The cartoon depicts this graphically along with the word “splat!” He returns and repeats his question. The guru points in the same direction again saying “Thither.” The neophyte travels the same way and encounters another terrible commotion followed by“splat!” This process repeats several times. Finally the neophyte returns to the feet of the guru. He is beat up, worn out, and perplexed at the difficulties he has encountered trying to seek enlightenment. Gasping, he asks why when he tries to go where he is directed that he gets beat up every time. The guru responds saying “You must go through Splat to get where you want to go.”

What did you come out here to see? A reed swaying in the wind? People wearing luxurious purple robes? We heard these lines from Jesus a few weeks ago at another passage about John’s baptismal practice at the Jordan. These lines sound strange to us, but they are direct references to Herod, who had coins in circulation at that time with the image of a cluster of reeds on them. In addition, only kings and royalty wore soft purple robes. In effect, Jesus was saying, “Did you come all the way out here in the wilderness to see the power and luxury of the Roman Empire? Or did you come, perhaps strangely attracted, to see something you do not understand?”

The wilderness in those days had a reputation for being the place where political insurrections took root. Political firebrands would go out into the wilderness and whip up a peasant following. Sometimes they carried their uprisings into the cities against Rome. For five hundred years these wilderness uprisings were always crushed with overwhelming force. The 900 Essene Jews living on top of the natural mountain fortress of Masada watched the Romans build a land bridge for three years to reach them. Legend has it that this rebellious group of Jews waited until the Romans almost reached them when they all committed suicide. Some scholars today believe that Jesus might have been a member of this Essene sect.

Did you come out to the wilderness to see John? Did you risk being labeled a possible threat to the Empire? Are you willing to be followed and labeled a radical just because something attracted you here? When John baptized you did you feel the weight of all your bad decisions leave you when you came out of the water? Did this primitive dip in the Jordan do a lot more for you than the annual scapegoat ritual at the Temple? Maybe all that business about sacrificing animals, Temple priests wearing luxurious robes, rituals in a language you don’t understand, and grand buildings just doesn’t make you feel that God really cares for you. Maybe John’s baptism was just a preliminary thing to wash all that old religious stuff away so you could get to the real thing.

What did you come out to see? What do you seek? Jesus directs this question to John’s disciples who now are following Jesus because John sees Jesus in the crowd again and says “Look HERE is the Lamb of God.” Their question to Jesus, “Where are you staying”, is not about where he spends the night, but is addressing the Spirit of God that they see in Jesus. The question is more like “Where can we find God’s spirit dwelling in you? How can we get it?”

Religions of all kinds go through cycles. At some point the rituals and structure of a given religion become too trite, too rote, and lose substance. They fail to convey God’s spirit to the next generation. John and Jesus came on the scene in the first century to address that very situation. Judaism had become too focused on the Temple, too caught up in the work of the priests, too bound up with the politics of the Empire, and on top of that the common people did not understand the language of the Jewish rituals at the time. Hebrew at the time of Jesus was known only to the Temple priests. Hebrew at the time of Jesus was equivalent to Latin before Vatican II. The language Jesus and everyday people spoke in Palestine was Aramaic.

Some scholars say that Christianity today is in a similar position as Judaism was at the time of Jesus. Nearly all Christian denominations have undergone major upheavals in worship and theology since the 1960s. Roman Catholicism grows not so much because they are reaching those who do not believe but because birth rates are still high in countries that are primarily Roman Catholic. Mainline Protestant churches are mostly in decline. Some of the non-denominational churches are growing, but the dirty secret about many of the large new churches we see is that their average member remains active for about five years.

What are you seeking? Grace Church reflects the body of Christ as well or better than any church I have seen. In my response to your call I was like John’s disciples asking Jesus “Where is the Spirit of God so that I may take part in it?” I found it in you and I was attracted to it. I am here because of who you are and the face of Christ that I see in you.

What are you seeking? The people of a church are a big part, but not the only part, of the package we call “church.” There are the rituals, the music, the system of beliefs, and the good works in the community. God’s Spirit MUST be present in all of these things. If people don’t get the Spirit, they just don’t come.

What are THEY seeking? How about a place that accepts everyone without any conditions or reservations? Check. We do that well. How about a place where the ritual is more engaging and experiential? Hmmm. How about a place where the music is more like what they hear on the radio? Music they can sing along with easily. How about a place where they can come wearing blue jeans or pajamas; where they can laugh or cry or just sit and be quiet? How about a place where their desire to make a difference in the local community gets put to work right away? How about a place where their hearts are touched, where the Spirit moves and is clearly present?

These will be our goals for ALL of our worship and community life at Grace. Moving Grace Church to the place where people are attracted to the Spirit will mean that a lot of us will have to go through Splat to get there. Whatever inconvenience we may experience, whatever cherished beliefs we may have to give up, whatever challenges may come our way, just remember that Jesus did a lot more for us already.