Keep Awake!

Advent 1B, 11/30/14
Mark 13:24-37; Isaiah 64:1-9

Prepare us for the day of your coming, O God. When your people must drink tears, strengthen and restore and save us. Make us blameless in your sight and bring us into fellowship with you and with all the faithful. Amen.

There is some serious disconnect going on in our world this time of the year.

Last Thursday we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, a celebration of gratitude for all the blessings in our lives… but at the same time we were inundated with marketing messages telling us how important it was to go shopping that very day to buy more stuff, because what we already have is not enough.

Today is the first day of the season of Advent, when we prepare for the coming of Christmas. It’s a time that most of us associate with a baby and family and presents and joy – but the Bible readings we heard in worship today paint a picture of the end of the world.

The season that promotes peace on earth and goodwill toward all people begins this year in the shadow of protests and violence in the aftermath of last week’s decision of the grand jury in the case of the shooting of Michael Brown.  

All of this disconnect is enough to drive a person crazy – or at least enough to drive a person towards an extra glass of the adults-only eggnog at the next holiday party.

How do we deal with all the conflicting messages that are coming at us from society, from our culture, and even from the church?

The answer Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Mark is this: Keep awake.

Be on your guard.

Jesus doesn’t mean we should sit around doing nothing, staring sleeplessly at the ceiling wishing for the night to end.

Keep awake here means to be attentive, to get ready, to prepare yourself for what is going to come.

About a week ago, I had one of those sleepless nights.

You know what those are like, right?

Even though I didn’t feel sleepy, I went to bed at the usual time, and I lay there trying to convince myself that I was tired, and so eventually I finally fell asleep… but 3 hours later I woke up to use the bathroom. After that, there was no hope of going back to sleep.

So I got up. In the middle of the night, I decided it was time to do some housework. Mike and I were expecting overnight guests in a few days, so I made up the bed in the guest room. I changed the towels in the bathroom.

Even though our guests were my college roommate and her husband, and they’ve seen my home when it was a mess… and vice versa… for some reason I felt the need to make the house look good for them. So I organized some of my things in the third bedroom of our house, which we are working on setting up as an office. I started to do the laundry. I watered the plants that were starting to look a little droopy.

Keep watch, for you do not know when something might change!

Unexpected things are right around the corner.

Keep awake.

Be attentive.

Get ready.

At first glance, this Gospel lesson seems to point us toward the future.

         Pay attention and be aware, because change is on the horizon!

But this passage is also an encouragement to live in the present.

Keep awake! Don’t worry about being tired tomorrow… stay up now and do those things that will help you live in the moment!

When I had that sleepless night a while back, I was looking forward to the future. But I was also enjoying myself in the moment. It felt good to organize the office and change the towels and finally water that drooping plant.

It made me happy to put the Star Wars sheets on the guest bed, because I knew that my friend’s husband would be inordinately excited about sleeping on them.

During the season of Advent, we are asked to anticipate something that’s coming in the future, while still being excited about living in the present.

We are asked to look forward to being told a story that we’ve heard many times before and could probably recite from memory.

We are expected to honor centuries-old traditions as a way to celebrate God’s arrival in our lives anew.

There’s a theological concept that can be described as already and not yet.

That’s what Advent is all about.

We are already living in the presence of God in our daily lives – Jesus was born over 2000 years ago… but we have not yet experienced the complete presence of God, because we believe in the promise that Jesus will come into our world again, at the end of time.

Jesus founded the kingdom of God during his earthly ministry. Sometimes in our lives, we see what the kingdom of God can be like – when a child demonstrates their innocent, unconditional love – or when a stranger helps you get out of a tough situation – or when a person who was wrongly imprisoned is exonerated.

We get glimpses of the kingdom of God in our world, because it is already here to some degree – we know how the kingdom of God is supposed to be.

But we also know that the kingdom of God is not completely realized because powerful men still use their influence to take advantage of women. We know that the kingdom of God has not yet arrived because children still go hungry and live in poverty and die from preventable diseases. We know that the world we live in is not perfect, so we aren’t yet living in the eternal presence of God.

         The kingdom of God is already present… but it’s also not yet present.

During the season of Advent, we know that Jesus has already come. He was born over 2000 years ago. Some of us love this season precisely because of its familiarity, because of the beloved traditions and the memories they evoke.

But the whole premise of the season is to await the birth of Jesus, and then to celebrate it.       

Jesus came already.

But Jesus isn’t here yet.

It’s a disconnect – to use the favorite word of my seminary professor, it’s a juxtaposition of what is already here and what is yet to come.

Advent is a disconnect.

But this is how we live our lives.

Advent represents how we can enjoy living in the present, while we still hope for something better to come.

We get mixed messages from the church and the world this time of the year.

But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Christianity is not supposed to be easy. Our faith is supposed to push us outside of our comfort zones.

So we live with the tension.

When we turn on the radio on November second and find three all-Christmas music stations, we live with the tension of hearing Sleigh Ride before we’ve had our first accumulation of snow.

We figure out how to live with the tension of a holiday that was intended to be a day to celebrate our blessings becoming commercialized and focused on consumerism.

We deal with our neighbors who have had their Christmas trees up for a month, and those who haven’t yet taken down their Halloween decorations.

We live with more serious juxtapositions in our world.

We try to understand how a man who has sworn to serve and protect the people of his city can shoot and kill a young unarmed resident… and we try to understand why that same man feels the need to resign from the police force because he was getting raked across the coals for doing his duty.

Christians live with the tension.

There are no simple, black-and-white answers to the problems in our world.

There are no simple, good-and-evil answers to our questions of faith.

Jesus has already come.

But the kingdom of God is not yet here.

And so, during the darkest time of the year, we get ready for the light of the world to come to us.

We stay awake through long nights as we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Messiah.

The savior of the world will arrive as a baby to an unmarried teenage mother.

The greatest leader we can imagine will come out of a small town in the country.

The king of kings will reign over no earthly kingdom in his life, and he will be part of a people who only ever had three kings of their own before succumbing to division and sinfulness.  

Keep awake, Jesus says!

You don’t know what’s coming or when, but you do know that the world around you is not the best it can possibly be.

So get ready. Prepare yourself to welcome the kingdom of God when it finally does arrive.

As we live in the tension of Advent, we offer our prayers with Isaiah: tear open the heavens, Lord God, and come down. (Isaiah 64:1)

Form us as a potter forms clay, into the people you created us to be.

Amen.

Care for One Another

Christ the King Sunday, 11/23/14
Matthew 25:31-46

Thank you, God, for seeking us when we are lost. Rescue us, feed us, shepherd us, and strengthen us, and help us learn how to follow you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

We are going to start this morning by brainstorming together.

How do we show our love to God?

Go ahead, shout out your responses, and I’ll write as many as possible on the whiteboard. 

Prayer, coming to worship, singing, volunteering, financial giving, caring for others, following the commandments, being who God created you to be, reading the Bible, being welcoming…

OK, now what are some ways in which we show our love to other people?

Family, friends, strangers, whoever. Shout out your answers again so I can write them on the other side of the whiteboard. 

Forgiveness, listening, visiting the sick & lonely, praying, hugs & kisses, spending time together, money/gifts/food, patience & tolerance, random acts of kindness... 

Today’s Gospel reading basically says, everything on this side of the whiteboard – all the ways in which we can love others – are ways in which we can also show our love to God.

“I was hungry and you gave me food,” Jesus says, “thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:35-36 NRSV)

The faithful are confused because they don’t remember ever seeing Jesus hungry – after all, he’s the one who can feed 5000 people with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish! But Jesus tells them, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (verse 40)

Whenever we do something generous or welcoming or compassionate for another person, we are also serving Christ.

It turns out that this Sunday’s Gospel lesson was also the focus of the Confirmation lesson this past Wednesday night.

The curriculum that we’re using in Confirmation these days includes a couple of main points each week.

First, obviously, it names the Bible reading that’s the focus of the lesson.

Then it lists some key terms – words that the students will have to know if they’re going to understand the point of the lesson.

Then there’s a “lesson focus” – a main take-away point – and a “big question” – a way for students apply the passage to their everyday lives.

For Matthew chapter 25, verses 31-46, here was the Lesson Focus:

         Jesus expects us to care for one another.

And here was the Big Question:

         Am I too young to be able to help?

Remember, our confirmation students are middle schoolers, in 6th-8th grade. And I gotta hand it to them – they had no trouble with the big question. They really understand how they can help other people. I don’t think a single one of them believe that they were too young to help.

One of the simplest examples they gave was if you see someone who’s lonely, say hi to them, smile, because you never know when that might make a difference in their day.

Clearly the confirmation curriculum was written by adults who underestimated the generosity of children.

In my experience, children don’t need to be told to help others, they do it naturally, and they automatically assume that they can make a difference in the world.

That doesn’t mean that children always share – but when they see someone truly in need, children tend to want to help out.

It is as we age, as we gain more possessions and build a reputation and feel like we have something to lose… As we mature and we believe we have more things of value in life, that’s when it becomes harder for us to imagine giving those things away.

So, we’re going to spend some time thinking about the lesson focus.

Jesus expects us to care for one another.

Will you to imagine something with me?

Imagine that there has been a terrible fire, and your house burned down.

Everyone is fine, but all that you have left in the world are the clothes on your back.

For some of you, this doesn’t take a whole lot of imagining – I know that there are people here today who have experienced tragic loss.

If it’s easier for you not to relive your own tragedy, you can just imagine that it’s my house that burned down.

OK? These are the only clothes I have left in the world… I guess because I store my robe at the church, that was safe!

Now, we know that there are some great organizations around that respond to situations like this – we support some of them – so let’s say one of those places shows up and gives a survival kit to everyone who lost their homes.

         Here’s what we get: toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, soap, socks, shirt.

That’s a little better, at least. But this is obviously not going to keep us going forever. What are some of the other things we will need? More clothes, bed, food, shelter, laundry detergent, money, phone…

         And where do you think I can go to get all these things?

-        can’t go to the store, no credit card or cash

-        could ask a friend or relative for shelter, but for how long?

-        could ask someone for food, but that’s embarrassing

How would you feel if you were in this situation? If you were totally dependent on others for your food, shelter, and clothing, it could make you feel embarrassed, humiliated, sad, worthless, depressed…

If my house burned down and I was left with nothing, I could go to my sister and ask her for food, and she’d probably say yes, but it would feel awkward. What would be better would be if she offered before I asked. If she said, hey, we're making lasagna for dinner tonight and we know that’s one of your favorite meals – do you want to come over and join us?

The way to keep someone from feeling self-conscious about their needs is to anticipate those needs and to respond to them before someone has to ask for help.

Better yet, find a way for the person in need to be involved in meeting their own needs. My sister could invite me over to teach her how to make one of my signature recipes. Then not only am I getting the food I need, but I’m sharing my knowledge and made to feel worthwhile.

This is what Jesus wants us to do. Provide for the needs of others even before they ask. When you see someone hungry, don’t wait for them to beg for food – offer it without question, and find ways to make them feel good about it.

That’s why we support organizations like Lutheran World Relief and ELCA World Hunger and the Refugee Resettlement program – these places put together resources so that when disaster does strike, there will be help immediately available to anyone in need.

Quilts, school kits, bedding baskets, personal care kits – these are items that we’ve assembled as a congregation, that help us meet the needs of others as Jesus asks us to.

Lately, in our community, there has been a lot of discussion regarding the future of our ministry as a congregation.

          How are we going to keep our doors open?

Will we have enough kids for a Sunday School or Confirmation program?

How can we find the money to cover the costs of running a church?

Can we afford to continue paying a full-time pastor?

These are legitimate questions for those of us who are deeply invested in our church community. We’ve been here a while, we’ve got some skin in the game, and we feel like we’ll be losing something if this congregation drastically changes or even ceases to exist.

These questions are important to many of us.

But these are not the questions that Jesus asks.

To Jesus, one thing matters: are the needs of others being met?

If so, you have church!

If the hungry are being fed, if the homeless have shelter, if those who are imprisoned are treated humanely – then ministry is happening whether or not it’s inside of a church building. Even if there’s no Sunday worship, no confirmation, no Fall Festival, no baptisms – even if there is no pastor, if you are meeting the needs of the world, then you are meeting Jesus.

If not – if you’ve got the world’s greatest music program and the biggest confirmation class and the best preaching, but the needs of others are not being met – well, then, you are not meeting Jesus.

And today’s Gospel lesson warns us that bad things happen to people who don’t find Jesus in the people around them.

Remember the lesson focus from the Confirmation lesson: Jesus expects us to care for one another. That’s the basic goal of following Jesus.

Don't try to get out of it by listing excuses. Just like the confirmation students are not too young to help, none of our excuses hold water either. We are not too busy, or too tired, or too stressed out. Our church is not too small or too old or too poor.

God doesn’t want our excuses. God wants our faithful action. Jesus promises to meet us when we go out of our way to help people in need. This is the most important thing that we could do as individuals and as a church community.

Jesus expects us to care for one another.

And all of us are able to make a difference.

Amen.

Where Is God?

Pentecost 23A, 11/16/14
Matthew 25:14-30

Lord God, prepare us for the day of your coming. Protect us against destruction, and help us to live as children of the light. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Elie Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who has become a notable writer, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Wiesel’s most well-known book is a little novel called “Night,” based on the time he spent in Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a boy.

But that one’s not my favorite. My favorite work by Elie Wiesel, the one I keep coming back to, the one I have reread almost every year since I first discovered it in college, is a play called The Trial of God.

This play is clearly a commentary on anti-Semitism as the author had experienced it during the Holocaust and afterwards, yet Wiesel sets this play in the fictional small village of Shamgorod, in Eastern Europe in 1649.

In The Trial of God, the main characters are an innkeeper and his daughter and their servant, and a group of traveling entertainers who are hoping for a meal and warm bed in exchange for their services.

What the travelers don’t realize is that the innkeeper and his daughter are the only surviving Jews in the village since a pogrom two years ago, when the rest of the villagers killed all of the Jews.

As the travelers figure out where they are and what tragedy these people have endured, the characters engage in deep discussion.

Throughout the play, one question continually recurs, as the Jewish characters consider their fragile place in a world filled with hate.

Where is God in all this?

When it seems like all hope is lost… where is God?

When the chosen people are persecuted… where is God?

When righteous people lose their lives, or when children lose their innocence because of cruelty done to them… where is God?

It’s a question that people have been asking for thousands of years.

How does a loving, caring, just God permit the suffering of the people?

One traveler asks, “Where is God in all this, innkeeper?”

And the innkeeper responds, “Don’t you think He can handle his own affairs? Do you think He needs you to represent Him?” (page 13-14)

Where is God when things go wrong?

Or as the innkeeper might argue, why should we even bother looking for God’s presence anymore in our broken world? With all that’s going wrong with the world, isn’t it clear that God has abandoned us?

The innkeeper is upset that all his peers were killed off – and can you blame him? So when the travelers encourage him to celebrate the festival of Purim with them – a festival that is marked by laughter and revelry – he refuses. Instead, he asks the travelers to provide a different type of entertainment for him: in exchange for their food and shelter, the travelers must stage    a trial of God.

After a fair bit of convincing, the entertainers grudgingly agree to put God on trial for the entertainment of the innkeeper, and for a roof over their heads.

The three travelers are the panel of judges.

And, of course, the innkeeper volunteers to be the prosecutor.

But who will be bold enough to serve as God’s defense attorney? No one who has seen as much tragedy as these people wants to be the one to defend God in a court of law, even if it’s an imaginary court.

“Misery of miseries…” says one of the entertainers, “In the whole wide world, from east to west, from south to north, is there no one to plead on behalf of the Almighty? No one to speak for Him?” (page 109)

When things go wrong and we can’t make sense of the suffering in the world, it’s hard for any of us to have the courage to stand up for God.

Each of us has seen tragedy in our lives.

A child contracts a terminal illness.

A relationship goes down in flames with one person mistreating the other.

A young adult dies in a violent accident.

A community has to grapple with extreme crime, or poverty, or natural disaster, or other hardships.

Where is God in all this?

We’ve heard the platitudes: everything happens for a reason… God needed another angel… it’s all part of God’s plan… God will never give you more than you can handle… you shouldn’t question God.

Really?

You know, it is OK to question God.

God can handle it.

The tragedy in our life is real, and if we’re mad at God, it’s OK to say so.

When we’re in the midst of despair, all the explanations that people try to offer us usually don’t help at all. Sometimes we just feel abandoned by God, and there are no words of comfort that can bring us back until the circumstances around us change – until our loved one is either healed or passes away, until the tragedy around us is somehow resolved.

Where is God in all this?

Where is God in our lives?

Where is God in this parable that we heard from the Gospel of Matthew today?

Seriously, sometimes it can be really hard to find where God shows up in some particular Bible passages, and how these stories are supposed to be meaningful to us.

Where is God in this reading?

Normally in a parable, we look for God to be found in the forgiving father or the benevolent master. These are the images that describe God to us – the creator of heaven and earth, who sent his only son to die for our sins so that we might spend eternity in heaven.

That’s the God that we believe in – that’s the God that Christianity is built around.

But there is no such character in today’s story. There is no forgiving father or benevolent master. There is only a man who encourages the growth of an unjust economic system.

This parable has a master who is a harsh man, reaping where he did not sow and harvesting where he did not scatter seed.

This master encourages his servants to break the law – loaning money at interest was clearly against religious law, and yet the master chastises the last slave for not earning interest on the money, even though it would have required breaking the law.

The third slave returns to the master what rightfully belonged to the master, but he gets punished for it.

This does not sound like the creating, loving, redeeming God that we know through Jesus. This master is not the kind of man who would sacrifice anything on behalf of anyone else.

The master in this story is not someone we would want in the place of God.

He is nothing like the God we know from elsewhere in the Bible and from our own experiences.

Where is God in the parable?

In the ancient world, prior to the existence of the stock market, it was basically impossible to double any amount of money without taking advantage of someone else somewhere along the line – and this isn’t just any amount of money. One talent was equivalent to about 20 years’ wages for the average worker. There was no way to amass the sort of fortunes that the first two slaves gained through any kind of honest work.

According to all the other people in society, including the people who heard this parable, the first two slaves would be seen as unethical.

And yet the master rewards them for their unscrupulousness?

Where is God in all this?

When the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, when unethical leaders are rewarded for their unbiblical financial practices, when an honest person can’t find a way to get ahead in the world – where is God in all this?

Today’s parable isn’t a simple allegory where humankind is represented by one character and God is represented by another.

Today’s parable is much more complex.

Some scholars believe that this is a parable about the current state of the world, not about the kingdom of God, like the parable we heard last week.

Matthew chapters 24 and 25 are a series of parables and explanations from Jesus in response to the question from his disciples, “What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?” (24:3)

So Jesus isn’t talking about what heaven will be like, he’s describing the end of the world.

How can this ungracious master have the authority to reward two of the servants while punishing the other?

And what did that third servant do wrong, anyway? All he did was follow the law of God and return to the master what has originally belonged to him. What’s so bad about that?

It may be that we’ll never know. When things start to happen like what we hear about in this parable, Jesus tells us, the end of the world is at hand. We’re getting close to the second coming of the Son of Man, and to the destruction of everything familiar in our lives.

Where is God in all of this?

I think this is the critical question for us to be asking, as we read this parable from the Gospels, and as we look at the world around us.

Where is God in war?

Where is God in the deaths of our loved ones?

Where is God when the dishonest people get to be in control of the world?

I don’t know.

In the book I was telling you about, The Trial of God, they did finally find a prosecutor.

The only person willing to defend God was the only one who truly knew God’s power… because he was constantly working against it.

That’s right.

The devil showed up in the little village of Shamgorod to defend God when the faithful people put God on trial – because the devil was the one who was most closely acquainted with the depth of God’s power.

The evil power that can work against God, who can make our lives miserable, might also be the power that can help us understand when nothing is going right in the world – because that is the only explanation for everything that’s going wrong.

What if we took the traditional interpretation of this parable and turned it upside down?

Instead of the master of the slaves being a God figure, what if he represents the opposite?

Instead of the first two slaves being faithful, what if they’re actually working against the kingdom of God?

Instead of the third slave being a worthless lazy fool who doesn’t produce anything, what if he’s actually the most faithful person in the parable, because he actually acts with prudence and follows the law of God?

Finding God in the ups and downs of our world can be difficult, and sometimes the stories in the Bible do more to confuse us than clear things up. But I can promise you this: God IS in all this, somehow, somewhere.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Quotations are from The Trial of God, by Elie Wiesel, published by Shocken Books, New York, copyright 1979. http://www.randomhouse.com/book/190356/the-trial-of-god-by-elie-wiesel/