Mercy

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

One Sunday, not so long ago and in a church probably not much different from the one we are in, after a time of prayer, praise, hearing a well crafted sermon on the power of God’s Love, and receiving the gracious gift of pardon and renewal, a parishioner told the priest, “you should preach more on sin” The priest replied, “OK, tell me your sin and I’ll try to preach on it.” The parishioner, a bit flustered, said, “no, I mean, I want you to preach on …” the parishioner leaned in and whispered the rest of the sentence. The priest, thinking an impromptu confession had just occurred, asked softly “is that your sin?” The parishioner stepped back and hastily blurted, “no!” looking and sounding quite indignant. Confused, the priest looked the parishioner in the eye and asked, “why would you want to hear a sermon on someone else’s sin?”*

Why, indeed? Most of us would much rather focus on other people’s need for forgiveness than our own. If we focus on what everyone else gets wrong, we don’t have to do the hard work of changing ourselves. It seems we’d rather attempt the impossible task of changing others rather than the difficult – but possible – task of improving our own character.

In our gospel story today, Jesus speaks of forgiveness in a parable about mercy – a real life illustration of the psalm we read today and the words of the prayer Jesus taught us. Peter’s question that begins our reading comes in response to Jesus’ words about how to strengthen our relationships through conflict resolution that is life-giving; about living in a way that fulfills God’s law rather than using it as a weapon against others.

When Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times, he isn’t instructing him to keep a tally but offering a non-transactional understanding of forgiveness. Jesus’ use of the number 77 is, most obviously, a reference to the Old Testament character named Lamech, Cain’s great-great-great grandson. Early in the book of Genesis we have the story of Lamech boasting about killing a man for wounding Lamech and justifying it by saying if Cain is avenged sevenfold than I am avenged seventy-seven fold. Lamech has confused avenge with revenge. God’s promise to Cain is that God will impart vengeance on anyone who may kill Cain. Lamech took revenge for himself. In using the same number, Jesus is redeeming the mindset of vengeance to forgiveness.

In Hebrew numerology, if you take the letters assigned to the numbers seventy and seven you get the word ‘oz’ (oze) which means ‘strength’. Forgiveness isn’t about giving in or being weak or even letting someone out of the consequences of their behavior but having the strength to love beyond the wrongs committed.

You’ve probably heard the definitions of grace and mercy: Grace is getting what we don’t deserve and mercy is not getting what we do deserve. But even these definitions put it in human perspective, not divine perspective. God doesn’t see us through a lens of what we may or may not deserve. Life in God’s Kingdom isn’t about earning. It is about the generous abundance of life lived in the way of love. We are God’s beloved children. If we humans don’t consider whether or not our children deserve our love, and give it freely, imagine the power and strength of God’s freely given love. This parable is meant to turn our transactional way of thinking into a relational way of living.

Peter asks his question the wrong way around. Forgiveness isn’t about quantity but about the quality of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Forgiveness is holding both justice and mercy as the standard, with mercy always having the final word, loving as God loves, living as Jesus shows us in flesh and blood.

Forgiveness is about healing first ourselves and then stepping into the possibility of reconciling with the other person. Forgiveness is letting go of the hurt and choosing to see the other through the lens of God’s Kingdom.

Forgiveness, as Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to forgive, is not about judging or condemning the other or forcing the other to change, it isn’t about getting even or getting revenge or about requiring the repentance of the other. Jesus doesn’t teach us to forgive in order to “fix” another person but to let ourselves be shaped and formed by God’s merciful love in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God’s forgiveness isn’t about how good or bad we are but about the Goodness of God. God’s forgiveness is a given. It is the gift of being FOR us not against us, staying with us regardless. We don’t earn it or deserve it. God offers it to us freely and generously and we choose to receive it or not. When we don’t feel forgiven, I assure you that it is because we haven’t forgiven ourselves or that we have chosen not to be forgiving toward others, not because God hasn’t forgiven us. When we say that we or anyone else isn’t worthy of forgiveness, we’ve misunderstood what forgiveness truly is, what love is.

Love looks for and sees the good in others. Love is about being for and with, not against. “[L]ike a loving parent, God continually calls us to be our best selves, and at the same time generously forgives us when we fall short. And this generosity itself is also a call for us to do the same with one another … When we withhold forgiveness**” from ourselves or others we go against who and whose we are.

In settling issues with each other, forgiveness is our most valuable commodity. Our purpose, as Followers of Jesus, is to reveal God to others, not so that they can become just like us but so that they, too, can be shaped and formed by God’s love to be whose and who they are. This is the freedom Jesus speaks about. Mercy and forgiveness are the keys to setting ourselves free from the bindings of anger and guilt and hate and shame in this world.

So, you won’t hear me preach much on sin, mine, yours, or anyone else’s. I know this may disappoint some of you. I prefer to focus on how we should live, not how we shouldn’t. In the few golf lessons I took years ago, my instructor told me to keep my eyes on the pin, not the sand traps and hazards, because what I look at is where my ball will go. (He had much greater faith in my golf ability than was realistic.) But his words rang true. What we aim for, what the eyes of our heart are set on is what determines our trajectory.

Accepting God’s unconditional love for ourselves and all others is the antidote to all that is harmful in this world. When we keep our eyes on Jesus we will walk in love so that forgiving isn’t something we do, it is part of who we are as God’s children, receivers and givers of mercy, living on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

*parable crafted from a social media post by Brian Zahnd
** https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/9/7/beyond-measure-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-fifteenth-week-after-pentecost

Who’s Lost?

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost are here (track 2).

I remember the first time I ever had to preach on the first part of this particular passage – it was a children’s sermon. Imagine my trepidation as I figured out how to get from the bit about the biological functions of the body to the idea that the words we speak can either build up or tear down another person. I had to choose my words very carefully so as not to let loose a bunch of 4 to 10 year olds with what goes into the sewer before moving them along to the main point. Our words matter. How we speak about others shows the intent of our hearts. It is our words and actions toward others that either build up God’s Kingdom on earth or our own.

When Jesus calls the crowds to him, he is responding to an accusation by the Pharisees that he doesn’t wash properly before he eats and Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are the ones who have disobeyed God’s laws by creating legal loopholes which give the appearance of keeping God’s law while harming others.

Jesus then turns to the crowds to ensure they are aware that just because a rule or law comes from a religious leader doesn’t mean it’s from God. Jesus call the crowd and says, “listen and understand.” Learn for yourselves what God says. And before Jesus can continue, the disciples interrupt him, wondering if he realizes he’s offended the Pharisees. True to form, Jesus doesn’t offer a simplified answer to their query but parables that require them to think it through.

“Every plant that God hasn’t planted will be uprooted” & “If the blind lead the blind, all will be in danger.” The human constructed regulations designed to control and coerce for the benefit of human power will be disrupted by the law of God’s Love. We aren’t commanded to follow blindly but to work out what it is to follow God, to follow Jesus, in light of all that God commands and Jesus teaches. We aren’t to check our brains at the Kingdom Gates but to employ our whole selves – heart, soul, mind, and strength – in building up God’s Kingdom. And the proof of this ‘working out’ is the way we live God’s law – how we love in all that we think, say, and do.

We cannot hide the intent of our hearts with outward appearances. It doesn’t matter how good we look on the outside if we treat others with disdain, if we think ourselves better than others, if we do not seek justice for all people, even those we disagree with or don’t like. We can have the cleanest of clean hands but if we malign others with our words, if we ignore the needs of this world because we are too busy doing ‘church’ things, we are not clean at all.

With this lesson ringing in their ears, Jesus heads out for the cities of Tyre and Sidon – prosperous port cities, outside the center of Jewish activity, places full of ‘those people’ – Romans and Canaanites and all sorts of non-Jews and Jesus has an incredible encounter with a woman there. To put this in modern terminology, imagine a leader of one political party speaking in a city dominated by the other political party and one of the people in the audience speaks up: “have mercy on me.” What would happen in our day and time?

How we read the remainder of this story, depends on the lens we use. Do we see this passage through the lens of “sinners in the hands of an angry god” or “sinners in the hands of the loving God”? Do we believe that God loves us more than others or do we understand that God’s love is the same for all people? Are we looking to intensify division so we can be the group at the top of the proverbial food chain or do we want to be part of the greatest love story of all time? Are we more concerned with defending our ideologies and proving we are right than we are with showing others dignity, respect, and even just basic kindness?

When you read this passage how do you hear the tone of Jesus’ voice? How does the shape of your heart shape the words “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Isreal” and “it isn’t fair to give the children’s food to the dogs”? Is Jesus mocking the woman or encouraging her to stand for what is just and right?

And just who are these lost sheep and dogs anyway?

From the earliest of our identity stories in scriptures, from the very beginning of Genesis, people have been separated from the core group of characters. And even in these separations God protected them and worked through them.

Adam and Eve chose to decide for themselves what was right and what was wrong and God expelled them from the Garden. But God didn’t abandon them. When Cain was banished because he murdered his brother, God protected him. When Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, God provided for them and had big plans for Ishmael. Even when the entire people group of the Israelites was exiled into Babylon, God was with them.

When we see the world through the identity stories we have in scriptures, we see the big picture that all people are God’s. It is our own human choices that take us away from God. God doesn’t exile or excommunicate, we do.

God’s plan to reveal Kingdom life through particular individuals was never meant to exclude but to provide role models for all people. And no matter how badly we humans have messed up, God has continued with the plan to work with us in building up the Kingdom.

God’s plan for all of us isn’t about some day in the undefined future but to give us purpose for every moment of every day. Our purpose is to bring glory to God, to share the good news of God’s love, to maintain the justice of God’s Kingdom and do what is right. Our life’s purpose is to love well.

The lost sheep of Isreal are all the people we’ve decided don’t belong in God’s Kingdom or those who’ve decided for themselves they don’t want to belong. The labels we put on people to determine who’s in and who’s out are our words, not God’s Word. God’s word for all people is Love, unconditional, always faithful, live-giving, liberating love.

The Canaanite woman understood the equity of God’s Kingdom – all are welcome to be nourished by God’s word of love. She understood that at God’s table, all are equal. And there is absolutely nothing any one of us can do to make God love us or anyone else any more or any less.

I see and hear this exchange between Jesus and – I’d like to give her the dignity of a name: Donatiya is an ancient Canaanite name, I’ll call her Dona – I see and hear this exchange between Jesus and Dona not through lens of a God wanting to exclude but through the eyes of the God of Love. I imagine Jesus looking her in the eyes, urging her to boldly receive what she came asking for. He doesn’t dismiss her as the disciples try to do, he engages her in a conversation that reveals her unconditional, fierce love for her own child. She had more faith in God’s love than many Israelites. She is one of the lost sheep of Isreal and understands that God’s love is for all. She didn’t come with an entitled attitude but one of grace and gratitude. She came to receive, not to demand the invitation that had been offered by God to all the nations from the very beginning.

Dona knows the equity of God’s Kingdom, that we are all beloved children. This is the heart of God toward each of us; this is the Good News: “at our worst … at our furthest remove from God …, God’s [view] of us is always one of unwavering love.”* Amen.

*Taken from quotes by Brian Zahnd from “Sinners in the hands of a Loving God.”

The Big Reveal

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the Feast of the Transfiguration are here.

Most of you know that Jim and I met going on a medical mission trip to Guatemala and that our first impressions of each other weren’t exactly favorable – he thought I was bossy and I thought he was curmudgeonly. My view of him began to change as I watched the tenderness with which he approached the patients. He was so gentle and compassionate with them. He’d often be gruff with the members of the team – his expectations of the care we gave the people who came to the clinic was very high, and rightfully so – but in the evenings when the team would be debriefing our day, Jim was always ready with compassionate and encouraging words. Who Jim was didn’t change but the way I saw him changed. His smile was brighter to me, his eyes more sparkly.

Today is officially known in the church calendar as the Feast of the Transfiguration and we read the story of the time Jesus and three of his disciples went up a mountain to pray and while they were praying, we are told, the appearance of Jesus’ face changed. By definition, the word transfiguration means “a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state” and would indicate that Jesus changed into something he wasn’t before. But we also believe that God is changeless and that Jesus is fully God and fully human. So, at the risk of speaking against hundreds of years of biblical tradition, perhaps a better description of this event is “the big reveal” since using ‘revelation’ might confuse some with the Revelation of John. He may look different, face all glowing and clothes beyond bright, but Jesus isn’t changed.

Jesus is the same since before creation, included in the plural pronoun when God says ‘let us make humans in our own image.” Who Jesus is is a constant, even as he was born and grew into an adult. Even after his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into the Kingdom, he IS. He was and is and always will be. What is changed in this miraculous moment is the way Peter, James, and John are able to see him. What is revealed in the sight of the disciples is the clarity and truth of who Jesus is! He doesn’t become someone new but for the first time they can see the radiance and glory of God in the person of Jesus.

In this revelation story we are given a glimpse into the Kingdom that Jesus teaches us to pray for and to live in as if it were already here. We are created to be God’s people of God’s Kingdom. And when we see with clarity and truth who Jesus is, the radiance and glory of God shines through us as a beacon to everyone that God’s way of love is The Way we are created for.

This revelation is how we are delivered, as we prayed for earlier, from the disquietude of this world. We live in disquietude when we try to live any way other than as God’s beloved children. The revelation of who Jesus is and who and Whose we are makes us free to be who we truly are at the core of our being: beloved children created in love, for love, to love, living from the image of the loving God shining in each of us.

As we come to see ourselves and each other as we truly are – for most of us this is a lifelong journey as we follow Jesus – we are freed from the unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others, freed from having to fix the world, freed from having to fix ourselves or anyone else. We are free to see the image of God in everyone because we aren’t blinded or distracted by the world’s labels of beauty or power. But even with being direct witnesses of this miraculous moment, Peter, James, and John still had moments of doubt and confusion about who they were and what it is Jesus came to do. None of us are going to get it right all the time and so we must remember that God doesn’t judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves and each other. We must be compassionate with ourselves and each other as we walk this journey with God’s help, trusting that God loves us unconditionally.

When Moses went up the mountain to speak with God, God revealed his presence in a great cloud shrouding the mountain. The people thought that to be in God’s presence meant death. But, that was not at all God’s intention – God walked freely with Adam and Eve in the Garden. But once they chose to decide for themselves what was good and what was evil, God’s presence became difficult – the conflict between God and their will caused them too much shame. To be in God’s presence means we must let go of the masks we create in order to please or impress this world. Being in God’s presence means we are free to claim who and Whose we are – beloved children of God. Being in God’s presence means the death of our ideas of who God should be as well as the idea that we can be anyone but who God created us to be. God knows us without the masks, the veils, the world insists we wear.

Life without our self-created masks can make us nervous, anxious, and vulnerable; we’ve spent a life-time creating them to protect us from harm in this world. And we often project these fears onto God instead of giving them to God to take from us. Deepening our awareness of God in and around us and others doesn’t put us in danger, it frees us.

The more time we spend being intentionally aware of God’s presence with us in our every day, not-on-a-spiritual-mountain-top, typical, regular, even mundane and boring days, the more we are transfigured – the fashion of our countenance changes as our soul, the beautiful reflection of God in each of us, is revealed to those around us.

Following Jesus isn’t about preserving a moment in time, as Peter wanted to do, but a life long journey of continuously being formed as beloved children through our prayers, our worship, our study, and our fellowship. Following Jesus is about doing life together on earth as in heaven and even when we think we know someone looking for the light of God’s image in others. When we see Jesus for who he is and our view of ourselves and all of those around us will change.

Together we do the work of growing in relationship with God, each other, and ourselves. Together we listen as God says “you are my beloved.” Together in love we reveal the light of God to those who don’t yet know who and Whose they are. When you see God’s light shining in others, tell them. Be willing to let God’s light shine from your true self. Amen.

Choosing Wisdom

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Do y’all remember the parable from last week’s reading that Fr. David preached on? For those who weren’t here, Jesus tells the story of someone scattering seeds willy-nilly and the type of soil the seeds land on determines what happens to the seed – whether it can germinate and grow into a fruit bearing plant or not. Fr. David started with the reason Jesus teaches using parables is to make us think. So often, though, Jesus’ parables seem so far removed from our 21st century western world culture that figuring out what to think about them can be a challenge.

Jesus speaks in parables crafted in the culture of first century, Roman Occupied, Jewish culture of Palestine. These mini stories aren’t supposed to teach us to literally do as the parable describes, their purpose is to offer a piece of timeless wisdom for living life in our day and time. Parables train our eyes and ears to see and hear God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Jesus’ parables, when told to an agriculturally oriented culture, make much more literal sense than they do for us today. In the bit that we skipped over in today’s reading, before Jesus explains the parable to the disciples, he tells two more related stories: one about a mustard seed and one about putting yeast in dough. The tiny mustard seed grows, in the proper soil, into a large beneficial plant. And just the right amount of yeast grows in dough and produces a delicious, nourishing bread. The point of all of these parables, taken together isn’t to make sure we can can grow a bush or win a cooking contest but that we hear the wisdom: we shouldn’t let our own biases or way of thinking limit the possibilities of what God can and does do with what we may think is insignificant. We need to be aware of what we are letting nourish the soil or dough, if you will, of our souls because the condition of our souls affects how we see others.

For most of us, the yummy slices of bread we spread peanut butter and strawberry jam on are so far removed from an actual wheat field, how the wheat grew doesn’t even cross our minds. Even modern-day wheat farmers, although they understand the process of a grain of wheat becoming a stalk ready for harvest, doesn’t have to worry about weeds getting mixed in with the grain they plant and harvest.

The particular weed in the parable is thought to be something called darnel. It looks just like wheat until the heads of grain start to mature. Wheat grains are golden and darnel grains are black. Knowing how difficult it was to distinguish the two was just a part of growing wheat back then – wheat and darnel grew together and were separated at harvest. Some folks would intentionally mix a small amount of darnel into their wheat before grinding it into flour bread or using it to make beer. You see, darnel is known to have mind altering properties. But, in large doses it can kill so the separation at harvest was important.

But, again, the point isn’t to make us master gardeners. The lesson of the parable is that trying to rid this world of who we judge as weeds damages our roots as well. Jesus’ phrase of eyes to see and ears to hear, is our clue to think beyond the literal to find the wisdom in the story.

What is wisdom? Albert Einstein said, “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” True wisdom means knowing that you truly never know everything and there’s always more to learn about living life well.

My new favorite, still alive theologian, Nijay Gupta, in his book 15 New Testament Words of Life, says “As Christians, we come to experience new life by knowing our place in this world and recognizing the gifts God has given us, then using them to work and serve as a part of society to better the lives of others.”

Another of my favorite, still alive theologians, Richard Foster, in his book Learning Humility, quotes a friend who says, “to become holy and full of wisdom … requires years of slow, painful unselfing. Desires must be dealt with. Passions must be tamed. The mind must be trained.”

The life that Jesus shows us, the life we are created for, is knowing that we are created for each other and for God. To live life working against this wisdom is the burden Jesus wants to free us from. Anything I do to elevate or lower myself is going against the grain (see what I did there).

Wisdom is hearing this parable of the wheat and weeds and seeing ourselves not at the sower or the harvesters but as the ones who are growing in the field of God’s Kingdom, our wellbeing integrally connected with the wellbeing of all people. This is where the metaphor breaks down – we get to choose if we want to be wheat or weeds. We get to choose what we let condition the soil of our soul. Do we choose hate or love, fear or compassion, scarcity or abundance, anger or empathy?

Wisdom is understanding that living life judging others damages our own souls as well as those we judge, and the souls of those who witness us judging. It’s like when we post a piece of scripture or prayer one minute and then a mocking caricature of those we disagree with politically the next. We cannot claim to love God with one breath and dehumanize others with the next breath and expect our proclamation of love to have any legitimacy.

Wisdom knows, like our Psalmist, that seeing our enemies shamed isn’t a sign of God’s favor and it isn’t what brings us comfort. We are created to be most ‘at home,’ most comfortable when we trust that God will set all things right in God’s time and God’s way. That doesn’t mean we don’t seek justice in this world; it means we know that true justice is everyone having the same opportunities and obstacles. Wisdom knows that privilege isn’t what we have but the absence of obstacles to getting life’s necessities. Real love, love as Jesus shows us how to love, means wanting the same abundant life for the person we might label as our enemy as we do for ourselves.

Wisdom doesn’t deny the presence of evil in this world, wisdom understands that most anything intended to be good can also harm. Our intentions may not always be as pure as we try to convince ourselves they are. Wisdom continuously asks the question ‘do my actions elevate or lower either myself or the other person?’

The final judgement of who is in and out of God’s kingdom isn’t ours to make. Jesus tells us to keep inviting others to the feast, to make more room at the table, to believe that there will always be enough love and compassion for everyone. The wisdom of Jesus’ parables teaches us that we are to treat everyone as the beloved children of God they are, even if they haven’t discovered their true identity yet.

What we let be the yeast of our soul impacts our ability to grow spiritual seeds and the fruit we bear – how’s that for mixing all of Jesus parables together!? We are responsible for tending the soil of our soul. We choose to be wheat or weeds. Whatever we allow to grow in us bears fruit, either good or dangerous fruit. What we see and what we hear grow in us like yeast. Jesus shows us how to use our eyes to look for God’s Image in everyone and use our ears to hear the injustices of this world so that we can spread the fruit of God’s love and compassion. Amen.

Threads

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Have you seen in the news that the company that produces Facebook has launched a new social media platform that is like Twitter called Threads? My first thought was, “oh sure, social media has been so good for our culture, let’s make more.” But since there isn’t a sarcasm font, I didn’t post this thought on any platform, just spoke it out loud to Jim in my kitchen.

Do you have the same love/hate relationship with social media that I do? Do you embrace it fully? Or stay away from it all together? Being able to display our every thought or meal publicly may be new but what seems to be the predominate attitude on social media has been around for millennia.

When Jesus asks the question “to what shall I compare this generation” he is talking through history right to us. We express publicly our way of moving through this world and then get our feelings hurt when others don’t respond to us just exactly how we want them to. Just like the characters in Jesus’ comparison, we can get upset when we are happy and others don’t dance to our tune, or when we are sad and others aren’t. We want others to think and behave just like we do.

But that isn’t in line with the reality of how God created us. Yes, we are all created in God’s image but we are also each created to move through this world differently, uniquely. Jesus invited 12 different personalities and never told them to stop being who they are but to continuously grow as the people God created them to be. God’s Kingdom isn’t some cosmic version of The Stepford Wives.

Jesus didn’t meet the messianic expectations of most people. And most folks refused to shift their expectations, dug in their heals, and refused to see the good he was doing. They were more concerned about being right than they are about growing in righteousness. This is another attitude that has continued through the generations from the marketplace of first century Palestine to our current culture.

The purpose of following Jesus isn’t to be in the right but to be witnesses of God’s righteousness and to learn from Jesus how to live our life loving God and our neighbor with our whole being – heart, mind, and strength so that others want to join us on the journey. Jesus makes loving our neighbor as central to who we are as loving God is. And when Jesus tells us to both pray for and love our enemies it is so that we learn to see them as our neighbor.

Being inclusive isn’t “come be just like us.” Welcoming others into the Kingdom is about journeying together to be who God created each of us to be, all necessary and needed in the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Our prayer today says it so beautifully – we pray that by the grace of the Holy Spirit that we will be devoted to God with our whole heart and united to one another with pure affection. This is what we are created for, whose and who we are – God’s beloved children commissioned to reveal the loving God of creation to the world; to shine the light of God’s love for us into the darkness that seeks to overcome our hearts, our minds, and our strength.

Following Jesus isn’t about a set of knowings or even knowing about God. Our faith is about living in relationship with God and trusting in the Way that Jesus teaches us to live even when it means letting go of what we think we know about how the world works. Even when it means resetting our expectations of what life should look like and accepting the reality of God’s Kingdom on earth.

Jesus says “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The expectations we carry in life are heavy, they weigh us down. When we live life expecting others to be just like us, we are burdened with the fear of those who are not. When we live life with the need to always be right, we are burdened with resentment. When we see others as a means to our own ends rather than fellow companions, we are laden with loneliness and emptiness because we lost sight of the image of God in others and ourselves.

As we follow Jesus we are freed from these burdens as we walk in love, curious about others, wanting to know who someone really is and not just what they can do for us. The gentle and humble burden of following Jesus is to learn to love better, seeing others with a holy curiosity so that we see the image of God in them and erase the line between our predefined “them” and “us”.

God created us social beings, not to post threads with some technology but to be the threads in the tapestry of the Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven, woven together in pure affection by the grace and power of the Spirit. Amen.

The Level Path

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation? Our Sunday readings can be like that sometimes – skipping over some parts so that we don’t have all the information we need to keep our train of thought and understanding on course. Or perhaps it’s more like starting a movie partway through or picking up the fifth novel in a series you’ve been reading and realizing you skipped the fourth one and you have no idea how Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children survived the collapse of the Library of Souls and ended up in a restored Devil’s Acre? I told y’all I was going to work at reading more fiction this year, didn’t I? But, back to our lessons for today … we’ve been stepping in and out of the story that Matthew tells of Jesus and the disciples. To help us get a better handle on what’s going on in the bit we read today, we need to fill in a few gaps with the optional part of last week’s reading.

I’ll summarize as best I can: Jesus is preparing the disciples for their journey into the world and telling them how to live ‘on earth as in heaven.’ You may be familiar with bits and pieces of what Jesus says here – this is the part where Jesus tells them to pack light and to not make a scene if folks don’t welcome them but to shrug it off and move on, leaving the judgement to God. He warns to be attentive to what is happening around them, to be both wise and gentle. And he says that as we participate in building up God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven we will be like sheep walking through a pack of wolves. The world will be against what we do, and not just strangers but people we know and love.

So where’s the good news in all of that?! Jesus is not blind to the irony that proclaiming the love and justice of God’s Kingdom will stir up hate towards us. He experienced it first hand. The good news, he both shows and tells us, is that life in God’s kingdom is about companionship, not competition. We don’t have to broker our way in, earn God’s love, be the strongest or fastest or the one with the most money, we can’t manipulate our way into the kingdom or even sneak in. We simply have to answer the invitation to live relationally rather than transactionally, with God, our neighbors, and ourselves. This is true freedom, the life we are all created to live – the life that Paul describes in his letter to the Romans as living TO God.

When Jesus sends the disciples out to do what he is preparing them for, he is teaching them – he is teaching us – the relationship wisdom of interdependence. When we answer the invitation, we are all in this together, all equal, all on a level path that keeps us walking together in the kingdom mission of love and justice.

Jesus says a disciple is not above the teacher, that it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher. This upends both sides of the relationship – it doesn’t just elevate the student but brings the teacher to the same level as the student. When Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first, he isn’t reversing the line, he’s eliminating it. True justice isn’t reversing which group is the dominate group, it is eliminating dominance altogether.

It is enough for everyone to be equal. We don’t like the word ‘enough’ – in our supersize-it-consumeristic world, enough isn’t enough. But in God’s Kingdom ‘enough’ is sufficient for us to all live abundantly. And when we truly take this wisdom to heart, we work together to ensure everyone has enough.
Jesus shows us how to be hospitable – to feed and heal and bring comfort to others and he tells us to let others offer their own gifts of hospitality because this is what levels the path. We can’t always be the one who gives, we have to be willing to let others give to us. If we only give and never receive, if we only serve and never let others serve us, if we only help or only lead and don’t let others help or lead us, we are operating our life as a soup kitchen and not a potluck supper table.

At a soup kitchen, there are two distinct sides – I have something you need and you have nothing for me. At a potluck, we bring our best, our favorite, and share, both giving and receiving, sitting together in fellowship. One of my favorites parts of a typical week around here is being at the table during Deck Time. Whether we are outside or in, as more and more folks arrive, we widen our circle and bring in more chairs and as folks get settled we pass around the food we’ve brought and receive some of what’s just arrived. It is a beautiful, real-life scene in God’s Kingdom, just as sacred and holy as when we circle this table.

Jesus doesn’t sugar coat the good news – he tells us plainly that the journey of building up God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven isn’t any easy one. There will be trouble and there will be conflict because we will be upending the ways some work to get the upper hand, to elevate themselves above others. The true peace of God’s Kingdom will cause great conflict in this world because we will greatly disturb the status quo of many. True peace isn’t the absence of conflict but the faith and trust that God’s Way of Love is what God created us for and that all conflict in this world is the consequence of us trying to live any other way.

The sword Jesus brings is better understood as a sharp knife, much like a surgeon’s scalpel, used to remove that which is harmful to our souls – obvious things like anger and resentment but also complacency and apathy. Jesus’ sword is to be used on us, to transform us, not to slaughter our perceived enemies.

Sometimes our well meaning families can be our greatest challenge in staying on the Kingdom path. Even Jesus’ own family tried to silence him because people were questioning his mental state. Those who care about us don’t want to see us in conflict any more than we want to see those we care about in trouble. But silencing the Good News of God’s Kingdom isn’t the answer or solution. Following Jesus is. Silencing the Good News isn’t the path to peace, living and proclaiming the Good News is. And sometimes true peace can only be had by facing the challenge in front of us.

In the sixth novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children – I did finally get the order sorted out – Miss P tells the peculiars as they were facing danger, “Now, I won’t ask you not to worry…. But I insist you not surrender to fear. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you this will be easy, but no good thing ever was.”

To be God’s people, to be fully the people God created us to be means leaving behind how the world tells us relationships should work, that we should only give when we know what we can get, that we should love only those who have something to offer. To be God’s people is to understand that we don’t make ourselves worthy, God does. God’s love for all makes us, everyone, invaluable. Who you are is priceless to God. Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to live a life worthy of God’s love.

In the economy of God’s kingdom, we all have something to bring to the table – we all have that which is of greatest value in the Kingdom – ourselves. And regardless of when you arrive at the table, there is room, room for you and all that you bring; there is abundance of all that you need because there is always enough love, grace, forgiveness, and compassion for everyone at God’s potluck banquet. Amen.

An Ordinary Day

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the second Sunday after Pentecost are here.

So, what did you do yesterday? If, while you were doing whatever you were doing on a typical early summer day for you, someone whom you didn’t know walked by and said “Follow me,” what would you have done?

Be honest – would you have dropped everything you were doing to see what he wanted you to see? Or would you have told Jesus you were too busy and fuss about the interruption of the important things you had to do?

Being busy is a status symbol in our society. The more we do the more successful we look, the more worthy we feel, the important we think we are. Now, I’m not trying to be PolyAnna-ish here – we all have real and necessary tasks to accomplish every day. And there is no denying that Jesus did a lot! But being busy, even with what we call church work, does not always mean we are doing the right thing or building up God’s Kingdom. Simply being busy isn’t the purpose of following Jesus.

Instead of talking about how busy we are, the important question we need to ask ourselves, the very question Jesus would ask us is why do we do what we do? What is the purpose of our “busy”? Are we trying to build our own kingdom or bring about God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven? Is our purpose for our every day, ordinary tasks to walk in love with God, our neighbor, and ourselves?

All four Gospel books give us story after story of all that Jesus did. In our reading today, Jesus is very busy, moving from one task to another and being interrupted from one thing to take care of another. Jesus is walking through town and invites Matthew to follow him, then they all sit down for a meal and the law keepers get their nose out of joint, because Jesus hangs out with people they don’t like, and so Jesus makes the time to explain to them why he does what he does and gives them a homework assignment: go and learn what this means – “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

A bit of what comes next is left out of our reading today – the disciples of his cousin John stop by unannounced and Jesus makes time to listen to them and offer some wisdom on fasting. He speaks of the dangers of patching clothes with unshrunk cloth and putting new wine and old wine skins. In other words, Jesus is saying, the invitation to follow him isn’t about fitting Jesus into our busy lives if we have a spare moment or to try and cover up the bad parts. Jesus’ invitation is about living a new life, following him in everything we do, letting his teaching shape our heart so that with our daily activities and tasks we are offering others glimpses of God’s kingdom.

And while he was saying these new life/new way things, a leader of the synagogue comes in and tells Jesus that his daughter has died and could he please come. And so Jesus and the disciples go with him. On their way, a woman who has been sick and banned from public places because of her illness sneaks up and touches Jesus. He makes time to speak with her and assure her she is healed in body and spirit and continues on to the synagogue leader’s house where he takes the girls hand and lifts her up.

Jesus restores both the woman and the young girl to health and community. Life together is the life Jesus teaches us to walk in love through, here and now, where we are, in all that we do.

One of the most valuable pieces of advise I was given when I was newly ordained was to have an open door attitude. Whatever it is I may be doing in my office, when folks come by the church office, my first mentor told me, make the time to say ‘hi’ even if what they need is best taken care of by someone else. This mentor told me ‘the supposed interruptions aren’t interruptions, they are your day.” I’m reminded of this every time someone says to me, “I know you’re so busy, thank you for making time for me.” I always try to respond with “spending time with you is what my day is for.”

And this isn’t just about me being a priest, but a lesson in walking in love, following Jesus as we grow in the wisdom that the purpose of our life is the relationships we are in. All that Jesus said and did was to teach us to be other-focused. Not that we are to deny our own individual needs but that we work together as a community to take care of everyone’s needs.

One of the folks I visit with regularly – I didn’t ask permission to tell this so I won’t give away who – is long retired but in our conversations he shares stories of his career and we speak of my work and the culture, and theory, and theology of work. This very wise man says that regardless of what our title or assigned role may be, everyone’s job is to take care of the customer. Whether you are the CEO, accountant, front office, maintenance, retail, whatever, the purpose of a successful business is the customer – not the widgets that a company produces or the bottom line of the financial spreadsheet, but the people – taking care of those we do business with. I think this is a business model Jesus would agree with and one we can use with whatever we are doing. When we frame our day with the people we encounter and not the tasks we must complete, we are walking in love as Jesus shows us.

Matthew and the other disciples followed Jesus into the ordinary days for Jesus – dinner with sinners, healing, teaching, raising the dead – you know, just a typical day. Do we follow Jesus in our ordinary/typical/even mundane days? Do we let what we do in here on Sundays flow into our Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays? Our Fridays and Saturdays?

What does an ordinary day look like for you? To the world, does it look like you are following Jesus? God wants a relationship with us, each and everyone of us. God gave us the Ten Commandments to teach us how to live in loving relationship with him and each other. Jesus speaks about and shows us in flesh and blood what it looks like to walk in love with God and our neighbor. Our life with God isn’t about earning our way into God’s presence but about recognizing that God is with us always. Our life with God is about showing others who God is and Whose we our in the ordinary events of our every day.

When Jesus offers the invitation “follow me” he’s asking us to order our lives with his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Following Jesus isn’t about going through the motions – making the appointed sacrifices but not walking in love. We honor God by the way we treat our neighbors and ourselves. We show our love for God by letting the Good News that God loves us shape all that we do, think, and say.

We respond to Jesus’ invitation by the way we let what happens in these walls shape how we live outside these walls, by letting Jesus shape and order our lives.

What are your plans for this afternoon? Tomorrow? The day after that? In all that you have planned, follow Jesus in the way of Love and let others experience a bit of heaven on earth through you. Amen.

It’s Our Birthday!

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The readings for the Day of Pentecost are here.

Happy Birthday! No, I’m not moving the birthday blessing portion of our time to the beginning of the sermon, but wishing all of us – the Church – Happy Birthday as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.

John and Luke tell the coming of the Holy Spirit differently. John says that the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples as they were locked in the upper room on the day of the Resurrection – “when it was evening on that day.” And if John’s telling sounds recently familiar, we read this same passage the Sunday after Easter. John describes the Holy Spirit as the very breath of Jesus. Just as at Creation God’s breath brought order to the chaotic waters and gave life to human beings, John tells us that Jesus breathes on them and tells the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, a new beginning for God’s people.

Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us a much more dramatic version and is what we commonly refer to as the Pentecost story. Fifty days, Pentecost simply means the 50th day, 50 days after the Resurrection, the disciples were all together in one place when a great noise like a rushing wind fills the house. Luke says it came ‘from heaven’ but he wouldn’t have meant “that place we go when we die” as is our common 21st century understanding of the word but from the sky, the visible place where clouds and stars are and where storms come from.

And bits of fire rested on them but didn’t cause them harm, much like the fire Moses saw in the bush. This wind and fire enables each of them to speak in another language that they couldn’t before so that all who were gathering in Jerusalem for Shavuot, or Festival of Weeks, a Jewish festival celebrated 50 days after Passover, everyone could hear the Good News.

The disciples were given the ability to proclaim the Good News of God’s Love so that everyone could hear it. With Luke’s telling of this dramatic story of wind and fire and languages, all the peoples of the earth are brought back together. Luke’s version is the redemption of the story of the Tower of Babel – that story in which we humans decided we could build our way to God to make a name for ourselves and God caused confusion with multiple human languages to save us from trying to save ourselves.

The language and the words we use matter. God spoke the world into being. God has given human languages first to separate us and save us from ourselves and then to unite us as one diverse people. We can try to use language to build our own tower to God, in other words, to make ourselves appear more holy than others and exclude others, or we can use God’s language to tell the Good News of God’s Love and make room at the table for everyone.

Luke and John give us different versions of the same thing – the people of God receiving the gift to proclaim and welcome all people to follow Jesus together. Just as we share our family stories with different emphasis and details, this doesn’t mean Uncle Fred’s version is right and Aunt Mary’s is wrong because the point of the stories is to tell us where we’ve come from and and who we are. The stories we have in our holy scriptures are our identity stories as the Church. We tell them over and over again to help us remember what God has done, to keep us connected to our faith ancestors, and to remind us that we are still, here and now, a part of God’s Story. We are God’s beloved children.

These stories show us Whose and who we are as God’s people, the Body of Christ, and followers of Jesus. The Pentecost story, especially, reminds us that Humans have never had to figure out how to get to God, God has always been with us, in the garden, in Egypt, in the wilderness, in Jerusalem, in exile, God comes to us because God’s greatest desire is to be in relationship with us, each of us and all of us. Our Loving Creator doesn’t make us earn love or forgiveness. God gives to us freely so that we can share this Good News with all the world. This is our mission as God’s people, the Church.

Today also marks in the church calendar the beginning of this long stretch we call Ordinary time. The Church calendar year is split between a long season of High Holy Days – Advent leading to the Christmas season leading to Epiphany leading to Lent leading to Holy Week and the Easter Season which culminates at Pentecost, and then the long six month stretch of Ordinary time. Not ordinary meaning common or boring, but Ordinary meaning ordered and arranged. We are created to live in the Order of Creation – the rhythm of years and seasons and weeks and days. Ordinary time is about our every day life in rhythm with the Holy Spirit of God.

Pentecost is the pivot point between the festival celebrations in which we find our identity as God’s people and the ongoing work of our mission in this world as we participate with God in the restoring of all people, including those different from us and those we don’t really want to include, to unity with God and each other in Jesus the Christ.

Pentecost reminds us that we are all image bearers of the Loving God of Creation and it is in our diversity that we look the most like God. I cannot be fully who God created me to be without you and your uniqueness and you can’t be fully who God created you to be without my uniqueness. Our mission as The big ‘C’ Church is to reveal God to everyone by speaking God’s invitational Love language. It is a lifelong journey and mission, ordered by the seasons of the church calendar and by our weekly gathering together and daily going out to do what it ours to do – using the talents and skills that God has gifted us with to share the Good News of God’s Love with everyone.

In our current cultural atmosphere of division and polarization and fear, the Pentecost message of unity and inclusion has never been more urgent. As we come together in this place week to week, we are reminded that we are not only united together as the good folks of St. Francis by the Lake but that we are also part of larger wholes – our diocese, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, the Body of Christ of all who follow Jesus, AND all the peoples of the earth who even if they don’t know it yet are beloved children of God.

William Temple, an early 20th century theologian and the Archbishop of Canterbury said, “The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it.” As Paul says in the letter to the church in Corinth, we are given the Holy Spirit for the common good, not for our own private benefit. We celebrate our collective birthday today so that we remember Whose and who we are; we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we can share it with everyone outside this place in all of the ordinary moments of our days.

In two weeks, our small group Bible studies will begin the book What if Jesus was Serious about the Church. Even if you haven’t been participating with us yet, come and join us for this one; if you started and didn’t finish the others; come and join us for this one; if you can only make one or two or three of the weeks come and join us; if you can’t make it to any of the small group times, get it and read it and talk about it during deck time, before or after practical exercise, crafternoon, ECW & DOK meetings, FEASTs, or whenever we gather together, or start your own small group time.

We are the Church. We’ve been given the most valuable gift of our life – life as God created us to live it, in relationship with God and with each other. Feel the breath of God in you, hear the rush of God’s spirit among us, shine the light of God’s fire to our community. Live the Good News our hurting world so desperately needs.

Happy Birthday!

Keep my Command

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the sixth Sunday of Easter are here.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus spoke these words on the night of his arrest, at his last meal with the ones closest to him. It is part of the same conversation that we read a bit of way back when on Maundy Thursday and last week when Duane Miller was our guest. When we read it broken up into bits, as Duane pointed out, we miss out on the golden thread of the whole conversation.

We have to flip back a page or two to remember just what Jesus’ commandment is. But those in the room that night some 2000+ years ago would have just heard him say “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know you are my disciples, when you love each other.” (John 13:34-5)

And to make sure this point isn’t missed, as Jesus continues speaking with his disciples at this final meal, as we turn the page forward, Jesus reiterates “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12).

The fruit of our love for Jesus is love. Just like a peach tree can only grow peaches, only love can produce love. Anger, mockery, manipulation, control, nor coercion can grow love, these cannot grow love fruit. Loving as Jesus loves means that we always want the best for another and a piece of wisdom in all that Jesus teaches us about how to love well is that we are only in control of our own behaviors. When Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit he lists self-control, not other-control. No amount of coercion or manipulation or condemnation will force another to love Jesus. Any and every amount of compassion and kindness shines the light of God’s love on others. Just as Jesus shows us in flesh and blood what it is to love as God loves, we model the character we want others to emulate. Others will choose to join us on this journey because they know they are loved, not because we attempt to control them or are mean to them.

Remember that in the midst of all that Jesus is saying that Judas left the room to betray him and in a few short hours Peter would deny knowing him. And Jesus washed their feet and ate with them. Another piece of wisdom that Jesus shows us about how to love well is knowing some will hurt us and some will walk away completely and yet we always make room at the table for everyone who wants a seat and then together in love we grow, with intention and discipline, to be more like Jesus.

Jesus proclaims love as the way to peace and freedom not so we are free to do whatever we want, but so that we are freed by love from the harm caused by both condemning and being condemned; the harm caused by both oppressing and being oppressed; the harm caused by both hating and being hated.

The people Jesus confronted the most severely were those who condemned others. His harshest words were for those in authority over others who used their power to oppress rather than build up, to control rather than relate, and to conquer rather than companion.

If we sit here on Sunday proclaiming our love for Jesus and then, outside of these walls, mock or belittle or condemn those we disagree with or who aren’t like us, we are not bearing love fruit. If in God, “we live and move and have our being” as Paul so beautifully puts it, our whole self, our whole life, is shaped by who God is. Not that we are made instantaneously perfect when we choose to follow Jesus – we remain human, with faults and failings – but that we let ourselves be discipled by the Way of Jesus so that we become more like him.

The more intentional we are in following Jesus, the more like Jesus we become. It is a lifelong journey, never too soon or too late to begin. We are in control of what we let shape us, disciple us. Our TVs and smart phones all have off buttons. With the plethora of media available to us, we can choose what we do watch and read and listen to, with the wisdom that whatever we give our time to shapes us. We can choose to let ourselves be shaped by the world or by God’s love for the world.

This is the Good News. The salvation that Jesus offers us by his life, death, and resurrection is that God loves. Period. Full Stop. We cannot earn God’s love or coerce it. God loves, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to cause God to love us any more or any less than he does at this very moment. This Loving God who created the universe and beyond came to dwell among us as Jesus and comes to dwell in us as the Holy Spirit. God isn’t some remote observer of our life but the One who wants to be in communion with us; as close and intimate as the breath we breathe.

With God’s help, we can choose compassion over anger or hate. We can choose kindness over judgement, companionship over coercion; we can control our desire to be in control of others.

When we make the choice to follow Jesus, we are, as Peter puts it, appealing to God for a good conscience – to live a life shaped by God’s Way. Together as Followers of Jesus in community, as the big “C” Church, we work out what it looks like in flesh and blood to love as Jesus loves in our place and time. It takes intentionality and discipline to be disciples, listening to the voice of our shepherd, obeying his command to love as he loves so that we can bear the fruit of God’s Kingdom in Canyon Lake, Texas in 2023. This is what each of us is called to do and to be as we choose to be a part of St. Francis by the Lake, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Body of Christ made up of all Followers of Jesus.

Alright, let’s do a learning exercise together before we wrap this up. Everyone take the Book of Common Prayer from the pew rack in front of you and turn to page 855. Starting at the very top of the page:
Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.
Q. Through whom does the Church carry out its mission?
A. The Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.
Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?
A. The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.
Q. What is the ministry of the laity?
A. The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.

As you ponder this in this week to come, I encourage you to read this whole section of John – chapters 13 through 16. It won’t take long, maybe 5 or 6 minutes. Turn off whatever else you are letting shape you this week for just a few minutes each day and read these words of Jesus. And let me know if it makes a difference in the other 23 hours and 54 minutes of your day.

It is our – each of us together – to be witnesses of God’s love in this hurting and broken world. If we love Jesus, we will keep his command to love as he loves. Others will know we are Followers of Jesus by our love. Amen.

The Shepherd’s Voice

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter are here.

What do you know about sheep?
Sheep are smart, kind, curious and are excellent mothers and friends. They form deep and lasting bonds with each other, they stick up for one another in fights, in their pastures they congregate with their favorite friends, they don’t compete to be the alpha in the group, and they grieve when they lose a friend. They can remember approximately 50 individuals (sheep and human!) for years at a time. They prefer being in a group and express stress and anxiety when alone. Their unique vision allows them to see almost 360 degrees peripherally and their sense of smell allows them to smell a predator long before they can see it. Sheep follow not because they are passive clones but because they know the benefit of mutual support and, yes, they know the voice and face of their shepherd!

In our day and culture, if someone calls us ‘sheep’ we tend to take great offense. We somehow got it in our heads that sheep are dumb and will mindlessly follow anyone. Not true!

When Jesus uses sheep and shepherd metaphors he isn’t looking to insult anyone or to imply that we are to give up thinking to follow him. Some who heard his words in first century Palestine would have understood these metaphors to speak of deep relational bonds and mutual care. Jesus is describing the kind of relationship God desires to have with all of us. He is describing the kind of relationship disciples have with their rabbi.

Discipleship is more than learning, it is whole life formation. Disciples in Jesus’ day didn’t just study books or scripture with their rabbi, they lived with them to shape their life like their rabbi. We can’t claim to be a disciple if we aren’t open to the Way of Jesus shaping our whole life – work, play, family, friends, finances, politics, all of it.

Whether or not we claim to be disciples of Jesus, we are disciples of something. What we spend our time doing shapes us. Who we listen to shapes us. This is what discipleship is – the shaping of our core identity and whatever that core identity is will bear fruit in the way we live, all that we think and do.

So how do we know if we are disciples of Jesus or our culture? How do we know The Shepherd’s voice? We do have to watch out for wolves in sheep’s clothing, after all (see Matthew 5:17). The idea of the big bad wolf pretending to be Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma wasn’t invented by the Grimm Brothers.

If who or what we are following, who or what we are letting disciple us, regularly tells us what we are to be afraid of or who we are to hate or exclude, rest assured this person or group isn’t following Jesus, even if they say they are.

If who our what we are following says the fruit of God’s love for us will be big houses, fancy cars, and lots of money, they aren’t following Jesus.

If who or what we are following says we must defend god, their god is pretty small and not the god of scripture. When we assume a defensive posture we are looking to keep others out, not invite them in. If the god they profess hates all the same people they do, or if their god has told them they are to dominate other groups of people, rest assured they’ve created a god in their own image.

To know our shepherd, we must spend time getting to know our shepherd. We can’t just pop in once a week and call it enough. Following Jesus is a lifelong journey of learning and being transformed to be more like Jesus every day and it doesn’t matter at what age we step into this journey, only that we do. It takes intentionality and commitment and community. And, here’s a real kicker – it isn’t always easy. Sometimes folks won’t like us because of how following Jesus shapes us. There were a lot of powerful folks who didn’t like what Jesus said and did and yet he was never a jerk and he forgave them even as he was dying by their hand.

But the good news is that the life Jesus offers us – life free from the fear and stress and anxiety of having to prove ourselves worthy to anyone, free from the caustic internal effects of our own hate and anger, is a life of grace and forgiveness in which we are free to love and be loved, it is the life in which we hear God say “you are my beloved”. The disciple life is living in the trust that God is with us always, shaping us into who we are created to be – kingdom people participating with God in the goodness of this world.

Want to know something else about sheep? Sheep only try to be sheep. Humans are the only part of God’s creation that try to be something we aren’t created to be. As Eugene Peterson says, “we make the shift from tending the garden to trying to run it.” We try to be super-human, we think we need to compete for God’s favor. Or, on the flip side, we deny the goodness in us with the thought that the world doesn’t need our gifts or talents or us. But God created us to flourish and thrive in companionship with each other not in competition. God created us to be complete with each other, everyone necessary and needed in the bringing about of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Now, I’m not saying to ignore the evils of this world. We cannot follow Jesus and pretend evil isn’t there. But, as we listen to Jesus, take his words to heart, take them seriously, we come to know that love as God loves is the most powerful force in this world.
As we follow Jesus we learn that hate does not conquer hate, anger does not defeat anger, and revenge and retaliation do not bring about justice.
Only love can reshape our hate into compassion – the proverbial turning of swords into plowshares. Only love can soothe the anger in us. Only love can save us from the destruction of revenge and teach us to seek justice for all.

Jesus wants us to learn to know and recognize his voice so that we are protected from the predators of this world who want to lead us through fear and anger. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor and to pray for our enemy so that we begin to see our perceived enemies as our neighbors. He tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves so that we don’t treat ourselves as the enemy. God wants to free us from our tendency to see anyone as an enemy and the grave harm that does to our souls.

Jesus says that others will know we are his disciples by the way we love and he showed us in flesh and blood what Love looks like. We let the love shine through by breaking bread together, walking through life together, worshipping and praying together, sticking with each other in the challenging times, celebrating in the joyful times, and sharing what we have so that everyone has what they need.

Jesus invites us to follow him in the Way of Love. Love always seeks good for another. Love as Jesus loves meets others where they are and says ‘let’s work at being who God created us to be together.’ This is the life we are created for, the life in which we truly flourish as the people of God’s Kingdom. Learn to be like sheep: to know the voice of our Shepherd and follow him. Amen.