Category Archives: Weekly Message

Dear friends,

When I was serving a congregation full time I never particularly liked the years that Thanksgiving showed up just four days before the First Sunday in Advent. Not only did parishioners wear themselves out with holiday feasting, large numbers left town for the whole weekend. Those who remained often got caught up in Black Friday shopping excursions and few had much energy left for worship on Sunday. Attendance would plummet!

Now I’ve not been around Esperanza much at this time of year, but I suspect that something of that sort may happen this week. I won’t be surprised if I end up just preaching to the choir! Though, come to think of it, many of them are likely to be gone too! And that’s okay! I’ve been around long enough to know that we need our holiday rest–and if it means a long weekend without worship, that’s not all bad!

But it would mean that you would miss my commentary on Matthew 24. It’s a rich passage, one that contains a prooftext for the rapture and some words from Jesus about how to prepare for the Last Days. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t recommend a flurry of frenzied buying! While I’m not sure at this point the direction the sermon will take, (it isn’t likely to be an endorsement of rapture theology), I am leaning away from trying to scare folks into thinking the last times are near! The phrase, “surprised by joy,” has been bouncing around in my head in reaction to Jesus’ words, and I like the accompanying insights that have been popping in and out. It could be a fun Sunday!

Advent is one of my favorite seasons–maybe because blue is my favorite color–and it invites us to spend long moments in meditation and reflection on the coming Christ. We light candles on wreaths, hang symbols on Jesse trees, and think about what Jesus means for our daily lives and for our futures. I’ve written devotionals for the season for many years now and I love exploring its themes. If you’re interested in what I’m writing this December, you can check the daily devotional at www.desertmeditations.com.

Dear Friends,

It was reported that last Sunday former president, Jimmy Carter, after a lengthy absence following a fall, returned to his church in Plains, Georgia to deliver his regular Sunday School lesson. His topic was the book of Job and he shared his feelings about suffering, death, and life after death. He reported that after 95 years of life he has absolutely no fear of death.

It may be a coincidence but this week’s first lesson at Esperanza is also from the book of Job and will include the well-known verse, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” As we look at this verse and consider Jesus’ comments about resurrection from Luke 20, there’ll be plenty of opportunity to think about some of the questions we have about the life to come. From our childhood on we’ve confessed our faith in the resurrection from the dead, but most of us have little certainty about what that might mean. Some of us, heavily influenced by scientific evidence and rationalism, may even have begun to doubt that there is such a thing. For such persons, the arguments of the Sadducees, who said there is no resurrection from the dead, are more reasonable than what Jesus believed and taught.

I can’t promise that I’ll be able to give you satisfactory answers for all of your questions about the afterlife. (Frankly, I’m suspicious of any who would claim to give definitive answers about that which is unknown.) But lack of answers should never prevent conversation…sometimes it is as we wrestle with those big questions that insights come. I do think that it’s possible to come to the point where we have a sense of peace about the future…and if that can happen for us on Sunday, I will be full of joy!

Thank you for the expressions of love I’ve felt from you as I’ve begun these two months of service…I am blessed by your thoughtfulness.

Steve

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

Genesis 32:22-31

Psalm 121

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

I was in a conversation last week and the topic shifted to “what was the first concert you ever went to?” I assumed that the question related to popular music – I had been to a couple of symphonic performances – so my answer was Peter Paul and Mary. What I did not realize at the time of the concert, which was probably in 1965 or 66, was that PP&M were introducing me to the work of Bob Dylan. They had two big hits back then that were both Dylan tunes: “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times, They Are a Changin’.”

The first hit had a gentle, mournful tone, the second one more of an edge. They both fit into their time and I think have transcended the boundary of time. When I first heard “The Times, They Are a Changin'” I thought began to think of myself and the coming change and others as the ones standing in the doorways and blocking up the halls. Today I hear, “don’t criticize what you can’t understand, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command” in a very different way.

What I would like to think about myself is that I will get out of the old road and maybe even lend a hand, but sometimes it is a struggle. Doing justice always has been. The parable in Luke’s gospel this week has more than one title. Some call it the parable of the unjust judge and some call it the parable of the persistent woman. Depending on your focus, either one works. The characters need each other for the story to happen.

On the one hand, the judge is described as a man that “neither feared God not respected people.” That isn’t exactly a great endorsement. The woman on the other hand is a widow which might have meant that unless she had family to take her in, she had nothing and no standing of any kind.

When I read this parable, I think about Rosa Parks and my Uncle Carl. Parks of course was a Civil Rights activist who was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat in the whites only section of a public bus in Montgomery Alabama. My Uncle Carl was a telephone lineman in Philadelphia riding the bus home from work. He was tired and the only seat available was in the blacks only section at the back of the bus and he sat there. He was not an activist, just a tired man on a hot day. The driver stopped the bus and demanded that Carl come to the front of the bus. Carl explained that he didn’t care about what part of the bus he was in, he just wanted to sit. He didn’t get arrested, but he refused to give up his seat and eventually the angry driver continued the route.

Unless ordinary people without power or position persistently demand justice, even when there is a cost for doing so, then justice will remain a dream. The woman kept demanding that the judge do justice even though he neither feared God or respected people. He was a man who knew no race, and yet, if only to get rid of her, the judges ruled in her favor.

The prophet Habakkuk proclaimed, “The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and it will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it.”

Here is the last verse of Bob Dylan’s still-relevant song:

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last.

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c

Psalm 111

2 Timothy 23:8-15

The events of the past few weeks have taken me back to the early 70’s when the suffix “gate” started to be added to every kind of scandal imaginable. I was in college when Watergate became a household word and the student body reflected the nation in its division regarding the President’s role.

I was in a class on English Augustan Poetry and before the professor arrived a conversation/argument began on current events. When my professor arrived, instead of beginning his lecture, he began to tell a shocking story. He spoke of growing up in Germany. That alone was a surprise to us, he spoke without a trace of an accent. He cautioned about the dangers of hero worship. He was a boy in the 1930’s and recalled how the new chancellor was restoring a sense of German pride to a people struggling for a sense of identity after World War I. He talked about finding a sense of belonging in the Hitler youth with smart uniforms, patriotic songs and complete belief in “the leader” and the notion that the German people were superior.

Of course, it all came crashing down. The war was lost, survival became challenging and then the truth of genocide and crimes against humanity, especially those already on the margins and deemed expendable, was revealed. The uniform in which he once took pride was now a symbol of shame.

The room that had been loud with voices fell silent as he spoke in confessional tones, still filled with the horror from thirty years ago. He then spoke of his time as a refugee and the welcome he was given, first in England and then in the United States. He spoke of what the experience taught him about caring for those who had no one to care for them and then quoted Psalm 146: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal man who cannot save.”

Immediately after the apostles asked Jesus to “Increase our faith!” they enter a village where there are 10 lepers who cry, “Have mercy on us!” Luke shifts the subject of the story from the 12 who formed his inner circle to 10 who were not just on the margins, but completely cast out. The conventional wisdom of the time was that diseases of the body were a manifestation of a disease of the spirit. Those with leprosy not only had to endure being ostracized from society but were also required to shout, “unclean, unclean” when others approached.

This is often interpreted to be a story about gratitude – the only leper who returns to offer thanks is the Samaritan – and it is that. But it is also a story about inclusion. Not only did Jesus restore all ten of the lepers, he also did so without asking them for anything. They did not have to repent of their sins, they did not have to profess their faith, they did not even have to accept Jesus. He simply told them to go show themselves to the priest and as they went, they were made clean. Jesus did not expect any reciprocity.

What about the Samaritan? He had two strikes against him: he was a leper and a Samaritan; someone who was by definition inferior. When you think about it, why would he go to the priest, why would he show himself to a leader of those who excluded him? It was probably because he was an outsider that he understood who Jesus was more than the other nine. Because of that, he was not just made clean, he was made well.

Here is verse three of Scotsman John Bell’s hymn, “The Summons.”

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

 

2 Timothy 1:1-14

I have been a serious Anglophile since holding a season tickets to a small theater’s Shakespeare series when I was in high school. Pretty much anything on television with a British accent gets my attention. Naturally, when “Downton Abbey” premiered on PBS a few years ago, I was in. Just in case you somehow missed it, “Downton Abbey” was a series about an aristocratic English family in the early 20th century. After turning their estate house into a hospital during the first world war, the family must navigate changes in the social and economic fabric that threaten the long-standing estate system.

The series was wildly successful, and a feature film opened last month. I had mixed feelings. The production was lavish and well done, but I frankly I had a hard time feeling any sympathy for the characters – that is, the characters who weren’t servants. I guess I have a hard time feeling too sorry for someone who has inherited multiple generations of wealth who is just exhausted because they have had to change clothes four times in a day.

This week’s gospel was a little hard to swallow. There is something about Jesus’ comments about slaves and masters that really rubs me the wrong way. Particularly irritating is his suggestion that you do not thank a slave for following orders and that they should reply, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” Am I supposed to declare myself worthless? I am reminded that Martin Luther referred to himself as a “poor stinking bag of maggots.”

Wrestling with the slave and master metaphor, I return to the demand of the disciples that touched off the whole thing: “Increase our faith!” At first it seems like a reasonable request, but the more I think about it, the more I understand why Jesus seemed so irritated. First, what makes them think faith is quantifiable? Come to think of it, an awful lot of us seem to think the same thing. Second, if faith is quantifiable, does that mean there is a faith economy in which a few have more, and many have less?

Maybe Jesus is irritated because the disciples want a faith economy and they want to be the faith aristocrats. It is easy to imagine that they would, the faith they have known was structured in just such a way with religious elites ruling over the religious serfs. For some, Jesus represented an inversion of the order; they could become the ones in charge; the ones living lavishly. No, it is not hard to imagine, in fact it is still happening among today’s preachers of what has been called the “prosperity gospel.”

This is the Jesus who said, “I come not to be served but to serve.” Worthless slaves? By the world’s reckoning, yes. But then, this is also the Jesus who said that it is by holding on to life that we lose it, and by giving it away that we gain life eternal.

October 4th is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi who died in October of 1226. Here is a quote:

“God could not have chosen anyone less qualified, or more of a sinner, than myself. And so, for this wonderful work He intends to perform through us, He selected me-for God always chooses the weak and the absurd, and those who count for nothing.”