Symbols

Lent 1B, 2/22/15
Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15

God, you have established your covenant with us, your people. As your kingdom draws near, help us repent and believe the good news.

Have you ever noticed that the church seems to have its own dialect of words and symbols? I like to call it “church-ese.”

When we use words like “sacrament” or “consecration” or “epiphany” or “parament,” we make it hard for newcomers to understand what in the world we are talking about. We sometimes assume that everyone knows how to “share a sign of God’s peace” or that purple is the color of Lent.

In today’s children’s sermon we learned about the paraments and how (and why) they change color for the different seasons of the church year.

So, as you can tell, I plan to spend at least a little  time teaching our children some of the churchy words that they might encounter here.

But I also think it’s important that all of us learn why we have these symbols, and what these words really mean... and at some point it’s important to consider whether we should keep using these words and symbols or not.  

If we know why we follow a particular tradition, then we can prayerfully consider whether we still actually want to do it.

And if we understand the meaning of the churchy words, then we can define them for newcomers who might be confused by our lingo.

So. Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent.

There’s the first churchy word to define.

         Contrary to popular belief, Lent isn’t defined by giving things up.

Lent is a 40-day period of repentance – of refocusing on our relationship with God. Lent helps us prepare for Jesus’ death and resurrection, which we honor every year during Holy Week and Easter worship services.

During the season of Lent, we will encounter many symbols. For those of you who were here for worship on Wednesday, we saw the first symbol of Lent then. On Ash Wednesday, we received the sign of the cross in ashes on our foreheads.

Those ashes remind us that we were made from the dust of the earth – and when our lives are over, we will return to the dust from which we were formed.

The ashes in the sign of a cross remind us that we are children of God, tied to God’s family through our baptism.

The cross is another symbol.

We were marked with a cross of oil or water at our baptism.

On Ash Wednesday that sign gets retraced.

At the beginning of Lent we remember that we are only human – we are not God, but we are God’s – we belong to the family of God and the body of Christ.

Towards the end of Lent we will be inundated with more signs in worship. Palm branches will remind us of Jesus’ kingship when he enters Jerusalem.

The Passover meal shared by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper carries all kinds of symbolism. Some of our children will learn about this at the Communion class today. Each item of food, the words that are spoken, and the very fact of the celebration of a Passover meal all connect the Jewish people with the defining moment of their identity, when God rescued them from slavery in Egypt.

The symbols continue through Holy Week. On Good Friday Jesus will carry a cross – a sign of torture and death – while wearing a crown of thorns – a sign of royalty turned into a painful tool of punishment.

Religious symbolism was nothing new in Jesus’ time, however.

Today’s first reading describes one of the earliest stories in our tradition.

The book of Genesis, chapter nine, has some very important and lasting symbolism.

Today’s passage covers the end of the Noah story. I’m guessing you remember the beginning. God was unhappy with the people because they were constantly being evil and sinful and basically not following the lifestyle that God wanted them to live. Out of desperation, God decides to start over.

It’s like the world is an electronic device that God can’t get to work right – so God turns it off then turns it back on again.

God chooses Noah’s family as the best of the bad people in the world, and tells them how they can save themselves from the destruction that is about to come.

Noah and his family and a pair of each kind of animal enter the huge ship that Noah built, and from there they weather out the flood that God sends to the earth. All other living creatures are destroyed. 

I'm not sure why we use this story with kids - it's really not a nice story.

Finally, after all the destruction, the waters start to recede and the ark comes to rest on dry ground.

Now enter our Bible lesson from today.

God makes a promise to Noah and to Noah’s descendants and to all living creatures. God’s promise is that the world will never again be destroyed by a flood. In other words, God rebooted the creation with Noah’s family, but if people start making God mad again, God will find other ways to deal with our sinfulness. Complete and utter destruction of the world is out. It’s been done once, and it won’t happen again.

And then God hangs up his bow. You know, a bow as in a bow and arrow. Can you see the resemblance in shape between an archery bow and a rainbow?

God’s bow hangs in the sky as a symbol that God is not at war with humanity. God will not destroy us again.

Whenever the rainbow appears in the sky, it is a sign of God’s promise to Noah, and to us.

Now, of course, it is also true that rainbows are what happens when light shines through water, and the various wavelengths of light are separated, dispersing the colors into the full spectrum of a rainbow.

But just because there’s an explanation for something doesn’t mean that it isn’t a sign from God.

Just because we can explain how a baby is made and comes into the world, doesn’t mean that a birth isn’t a miracle.

Just because we can explain how certain species came to be through evolution doesn’t mean that God didn’t intend them to be that way.

And just because we can explain how a rainbow is made, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a symbol of God’s promise.

That’s a lot of negatives.

Basically, something can still be a miracle even if we know how it happens.

You know, it is easy to be jealous of the characters in today’s Bible stories.

         Noah gets to talk with God and sees a sign of God’s promise to all humanity.

Jesus sees the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and is waited on by angels in the wilderness.

         Where are these signs when we are looking for them?

Many of us have doubts about our faith.

Why can’t God give us a sign like Noah and Jesus got, to help us when we don’t know what – or whether – we believe?

Here’s the thing.

We do still get the signs.

Every time a rainbow appears in the sky, it can still be a reminder of God’s promise that the weapon has been hung up and there is no war between God and people any more.

Seeing a rainbow may not always feel novel to us, but the rainbow does still carry that meaning.

Likewise with the sign of the cross, and ashes, and the crown of thorns.

The symbols of Christianity exist to help remind us of God’s presence and God’s promises throughout history.

The reason we’ve held on to all these insider symbols in our tradition is that someone, or probably lots of someones, found it to be meaningful.

Believe it or not, having purple paraments for the season of Lent has helped some people with their spiritual growth.

Obviously, though, the color of the tablecloth is not the most important symbol in Christianity.

There are many other signs of our faith that we encounter on a regular basis.

         Take Communion, for example.

Every week, when we share the bread and wine together in worship, we are reminded of God’s grace and forgiveness, and our own membership in Christ’s body.

As the students will be learning today in Communion class, sharing this meal isn’t something that we do just because we’ve always done it. Communion is something we celebrate because it brings us closer to God.

Communion is another symbol that has multiple layers of meaning.

Is it bread and wine or flesh and blood?

It’s both.

Is it a sign of God’s promise or the actual body of Jesus?

It’s both.

Why do we keep such a confusing tradition alive?

Whether you’re talking about Communion or another religious symbol – the reason we keep them is because they provide ways for us to meet God up close and personal.

For Noah, the rainbow brought him closer to God.

That is always the intention of our Christian symbols, and even of our complicated church-ese language.

When our words or our symbols start separating people from one another and from God, that is when they must be scrutinized.

That is when we might decide that it’s time to change our tradition.

So here is my hope for us during this season of Lent. I hope that we are able to open our eyes and our hearts and our minds to see God in new ways.

When we encounter church traditions, we can experience them deeply, and when we see symbols and signs around us, we can meet God through them.

I also hope that we are able to be attentive to the need of the outsider or newcomer among us. The language of church is not intuitive, so maybe you and I can serve as translators for people who are still learning the language.

Most importantly, I hope that we will experience God’s grace and forgiveness somehow during these next 40 days, whether through a traditional ritual or a brand-new experience.

God does continue to work in our lives, a little at a time, drawing us in and helping us grow in faith. That is today’s good news and that is my encouragement to you this Lent. I hope that we all will be able to see the new and old and exciting ways in which God works in our world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Piety

Ash Wednesday, 2/18/15
Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21

Create clean hearts within us, O God. Give us new and right spirits. Forgive our sins and have compassion on us, and help us remember that you are God and we are not. Amen.

Beware of practicing your piety before others!

Sometimes this instruction seems too easy.

Sometimes we interpret this Gospel passage the wrong way.

We hear Jesus say, “do your faithful actions in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” We focus on the part where it says “in secret.”

This works with our lives. It’s uncomfortable for most of us to talk to other people about our faith. It can be scary to think about discussing deep and important matters – like God – with other people.

When we hear this Gospel passage that way, we hear it wrong.

Jesus is not saying that we should keep our faith to ourselves and never share it with others.

Jesus is saying, instead, that we should refrain from using our faith as a status symbol to try to get ourselves ahead in life.

Faith is good, but not as a tool for self-advancement.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus was talking to people who liked to show off in front of others. They liked to pray long prayers and brag about their generosity, and they took pride in their pious actions. Showing off their faithfulness was a way for them to gain respect, and that was really the only reason they did it.

They didn’t pray in order to talk to God, they prayed to show off for one another.

That’s not the right way to pray.

It’s as if the people Jesus was talking to thought that if they could just be holy enough, they would earn God’s favor.

We know that’s not the way it works.

There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s grace.

God’s favor is something we are granted despite our own unworthiness.

So that’s where this teaching comes from.   But in my experience, the problem that the early Christians had is not the same as the problem that we face.

Most of us like our comfortable lives.

We may tell other people about our church, but how often do we really tell them about our faith? Do we ever talk about how God gave us the strength to get through that difficult chapter in our lives? Do we share how we felt compelled to act in a certain way because God was leading us to it? Do we discuss what forgiveness means, or redemption, or salvation?

For most of us, the answer is no, or at least, not often.

For most of us, we may occasionally talk about faith with our family or with our Bible study group, but we don’t tend to share these beliefs with neighbors or coworkers or folks in line at the grocery store.

Most Christians in 21^st-century America are in absolutely no danger of practicing our piety before others.

So Jesus’ warning in this Gospel lesson doesn’t really apply to us.

But there is a different part of the Gospel lesson that is relevant to our lives.

“Don’t be like the hypocrites.”

Whenever you pray, or give, or engage in spiritual practices, do not be like the hypocrites.

The hypocrites are those who say one thing and do another.

They are the people who are totally consumed with image, not with faithfulness.

Hypocrites give to the poor, but only because doing so makes them look good in front of other people.

But you – when you give to the poor – do it because God has given you compassion for your fellow human beings. Give to the poor because Jesus wants you to. Give to the poor because you can’t bear to see a sister or brother suffering.

Don’t give to the poor because someone asked you to, but because you legitimately want to do so.

Hypocrites pray, but only because they think they’re going to get something for themselves in return.

But you – when you pray – do it because it’s the only way to communicate with God – and you have a burning desire to commune with the Holy.

Spend time in prayer listening as well as asking.

Pray to give thanks for what you have received, not just to get something that you want.

Hypocrites fast, and follow other spiritual practices, but only because the people around them expect them to, and their reputation suffers if they don’t.

But you – when you start a spiritual practice – let it change your life. Let it influence your behaviors. Let it deepen your faith.

Don’t let your spiritual practices be a badge of honor to show off in front of the world. Practice spiritual disciplines because you actually enjoy and get something out of them.

My grandmother was one of the most faithful people I have ever known. She had a deep relationship with God and was active in her congregation.

She saw needs in the world and met them – she helped people in nursing homes, assisted the less fortunate, and just generally showed love to everyone she met.

I am sure that my grandmother had a deep personal piety. But believe it or not, I don’t know much about that. I didn’t have those kinds of conversations with Grandma. Mostly, I know how my grandmother influenced the people around her, including her children and her friends.

Someone once asked my grandma why she didn’t wear Christian symbols – jewelry or t-shirts or other things that would proclaim her faith to the world.

Grandma had a wonderful answer.

People should be able to tell that I’m Christian from my actions.

If my actions aren’t communicating my faith to others, then I have no business wearing other Christian symbols to advertise my religion.

Matthew tells us today, “Beware of practicing your piety before others.”

But do be sure you practice it.

         Faithful actions are good for Christians to do.

And then, once you have developed spiritual practices, let them influence the way you live your everyday life.

Don’t brag about your faithfulness – but go ahead and let it be known. Let your actions reflect your faith. Tell people that you believe.

Just don’t be like the hypocrites.

Hypocrites are a primary cause for people to leave the church, or to never join to begin with.

Did you know that? 85% of people who have chosen to stay away from church believe that Christians are hypocritical.

And they’re right. We are.

We pray, but only for our friends – not our enemies, as Jesus told us to do.

We volunteer, but only when we have something to gain.

We visit the sick and the imprisoned, but only when they’re related to us.

Or worse yet, we don’t do any of these things.

We don’t pray at all. We don’t read our Bibles. We don’t give to the poor and we don’t visit people who are lonely.

Or, what seems to be more likely for a crowd who shows up for Ash Wednesday worship… we go to church on a regular basis and we think that is enough.

We pray, but don’t follow our prayers up with actions.

We volunteer to do something at the church, or we toss a couple of dollars in the offering plate, but our faith never really ends up influencing our lives.

Have you ever found yourself in that situation? Do you know what it’s like to claim to be leading a life of faith, but still have that feeling that you could be doing so much more?

Karl Rahner was a brilliant theologian of the 20^th century. Here’s what he has to say about the matter.

“The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles   is what an unbelieving world   finds simply unbelievable.”

Don’t be like the hypocrites. Do live out your spiritual disciplines.

There are a lot of “do’s” and “don’ts” in this Gospel passage.

So where’s the good news today?

On Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, we begin an intentional time of spiritual growth in preparation for the most meaningful celebrations of the church year during Holy Week.

In Lent we have the opportunity to change ourselves.

We have been hypocritical.

But we know better.

God has promised to forgive us for those times when we’ve been self-centered or hypocritical. That’s the good news. So let’s respond to that by turning our lives to God and trying to do better in the future.

Here is my challenge to you this Lent: Let’s get better about sharing our faith.

Let’s practice our piety in secret and practice our faith in public.

And our heavenly Father, who sees in secret and in public, will reward us.

Amen. 

Mentors

Transfiguration B, 2/8/15
2 Kings 2:1-15, Mark 9:2-9

Jesus, Rabbi, open the minds of believers and unbelievers. Help us to see your glory and the light of your Gospel, and teach us to share that light with others. Amen.

I went to seminary in New Haven, Connecticut. As one of my friends puts it, that city is neither new, nor a haven.

The largest landowner in New Haven, by far, is Yale University. This means that the largest landowner in the city is exempt from paying property taxes, so the city budget is never sufficient to pay for all the public services that are needed.

Over the years, the university has donated money and has helped with city renewal – but it’s not nearly enough to make up for the poverty of New Haven.

Due to zoning restrictions over the years, New Haven has become a very divided city, with several ghetto areas – neighborhoods that are physically separated and isolated from the surrounding areas.

For example…

I lived on a street a couple of blocks from the Divinity School. At the end of my block there was a vacant ammunition factory that took up an entire block – the name of one of the adjacent streets was Winchester Avenue, but Winchester Arms had closed that factory years before.

Kiddie-corner to the deserted ammo factory was a large community garden. You’d think that a community garden would be a nice addition to a neighborhood, but in this case it served to divide the nicer student housing from the depressed neighborhood nearby.

At the end of the community garden was the city’s largest cemetery, completely walled in. Once you got around the cemetery, you were on university property, which created its own barriers from the adjacent neighborhood.

You get the picture. Along one whole side of this neighborhood was a wide divided highway, completely isolating the area from the rest of the city.

A no-man’s-land had been established, to keep the poor neighborhood totally separate from the rest of the city.

There are several neighborhoods in New Haven with borders like this.

One of the isolated poor neighborhoods is called The Hill.

That’s where I went to church while I was in seminary.

Resurrection Lutheran Church is located in the Upper Hill neighborhood of New Haven. 

The pastor there, Ruth Drews, was a graduate of Luther College and Yale Divinity School, just like me. I figured I should check out her church when I got into town, and once I did, I loved it, and Ruth and I got along well and worked together over the next few years. She gave me a church key, so I must have been an important member of the community!

A few years ago, the city decided to take control of three blocks of property right behind Resurrection Lutheran Church.

This was entirely residential property, and the city claimed eminent domain over it so that they could put an elementary school in that location.

Now, at first glance, putting a new school in a depressed neighborhood seems like a good way to renew the area.

But building this school required demolishing over 100 homes, most of which were worth very little money, but many of which had already been paid off by their residents.

So, these folks had lived there a long time, and they couldn’t really afford to move anywhere else.

Even if the city were to give them a fair price for their homes, they wouldn’t be able to buy anything in any other neighborhood. New Haven has a shortage of affordable housing.

So, these people might have benefited from a neighborhood renewal plan, but they had nothing to gain by selling their homes to the city and trying to find somewhere else to live.

Additionally, these three blocks were at the edge of the neighborhood.

Yale-New Haven Hospital was close by, which in itself served to create a barrier between The Hill and the rest of the city. Building a school in this particular part of the neighborhood would lengthen that barrier, and increase the no-man’s-land that isolated The Hill.

Now, if there was overcrowding in the schools that affected the children in The Hill neighborhood, you might think that replacing homes with a new school was a good idea. But the new building was going to be a magnet school.

For the most part, students would be bused in from elsewhere.

This wouldn’t be a neighborhood school.

Why should a city be allowed to demolish the homes of 90-plus families in order to build a school that wouldn’t even serve the children of the immediate neighborhood?

Pastor Ruth Drews didn’t think it should be allowed.

She saw this as an unhealthy way to deal with poor people in a poor part of town. She didn’t want to see the church’s neighbors be forcibly relocated. So she, along with several other community organizers, contacted the residents and listened to their concerns, and eventually helped to facilitate the filing of a lawsuit against the City of New Haven and the School Board.

Pastor Ruth has a passion for social justice.

This was not the first time that she got involved in a community cause because she felt compelled to do so based on her faith.

Ruth firmly believes that God is with poor people, that God turns our power structures upside down, and that Christianity isn’t just a creed, it’s a way of life.

         Ruth was a role model for me when I was in seminary.

         I didn’t want to be her when I grew up.

But wow – what I wouldn’t give for a double portion of her spirit!

Ruth is so passionate about advocacy, it’s really impossible to separate her call to be a pastor from her call to serve the poor.

Now, if you want to know all the details about what happened to those houses in The Hill neighborhood, there’s actually a TV special that was released last week, and it chronicles the whole saga. It has been shown on PBS, but not on our local channel, as far as I can tell. You can watch the entire thing online, though. It’s called The Hill, and is available on worldchannel.org.

http://worldchannel.org/programs/episode/arf-s3-e307-the-hill/

I will tell you this much more about the story – it didn’t have the outcome that Ruth or I would have wanted, unfortunately.

One of the criticisms made of Ruth and the other activists in the video is that they don’t live in The Hill, so how can they speak for the people there?

What they don’t mention is that Ruth and her husband and son used to live there. Ruth believed strongly in the importance of living among the people she served, when she first started at Resurrection Lutheran.

And then her young son got lead poisoning.

And she couldn’t get all the lead paint removed from the house.

And then she and her husband couldn’t sell the house, either.

Finally, after a lot of drama that I don’t think I have permission to share publically, they were able to leave the neighborhood and move to a better part of town, but with a lot more baggage than they ever would have expected.

         Ruth knows intimately what life is like for people in The Hill.

That is what makes her such an effective advocate.

Man, I wish I could be like her some days.

Where does she get her energy – her spirit?

I’m telling you this story partly because it’s an inspiring account of a Christian living out her faith in tangible ways – but I’m also sharing it because I hope it reminds you of people who you have looked up to in your lives.

         Who has been your role model?

         Who has mentored you in your professional or personal life?

For Elisha, it was Elijah.

I know, it’s confusing because they have names that sound similar.

These guys were two of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament. And even though Elisha did go on to perform miracles even more impressive than those of his mentor, the one whose impact we remember is the teacher, Elijah.

Elijah is the one who was taken up into heaven, and who provided a comparison for John the Baptist, and who showed up on the mountaintop with Jesus.

Elisha did inherit a double portion of his role model’s spirit – God did grant him that – and he did pick up Elijah’s mantle and carry on his ministry. Heck, we saw both Elijah and Elisha part the waters in today’s story, kinda like Moses!

But the one who really made a difference was the one who was the original inspiration, the one who encouraged the young prophet to begin with. Elisha would have done nothing if not for the inspiration and training of Elijah.

So who are your role models? Who are your mentors?

Most of us probably have more than one.

For the most part, we don’t want to be exactly like someone else – we may admire them professionally but be really glad that we don’t have their personal life, or vice versa.

Still, many of us would have done nothing at all in life, or at least nothing in one of the areas of our life, if it hadn’t been for the influence of our mentors.

We may end up going on to do bigger and better things than they did – like Elisha compared to Elijah – but we owe our beginnings to them.

So who has passed on their mantle to you?

Who would you like to emulate?

Who has shown you how to live a faithful life, using your God-given gifts and abilities?

For the disciples, it was Jesus.

They wanted to be like him.

And they did go on to preach and perform miracles in his name. The ministry of the disciples actually lasted much longer than Jesus’ own public ministry did. He was executed after just three years, but some of the disciples went on for decades – and their students and their followers have continued teaching and praying and sharing the ministry of Jesus to this day.

So the disciples did great things.

But that was only because of their role model, Jesus.

Jesus made the disciples excited about going out into the world and risking their lives for the sake of the Gospel.

         Elijah inspired Elisha to great prophetic ministry.

Ruth’s example makes me excited to be a pastor and to find ways to tangibly live out my faith and my calling in everyday life.

I hope that you have someone like that in your life – someone who challenges you, and who also inspires you.

Having mentors and role models is critical to our ability to live out our potential in life.

I also hope that you are able to me a mentor and a role model to someone else.

Whether it’s your children or grandchildren, a neighbor, a colleague, or someone you know only superficially, you never can tell when you will be making a difference in someone’s life and influencing the person he or she may become.

So let’s pray together now for the mentors that each of us have known, and that each of us may be.

God of Elijah and Elisha, thank you for the example of a great relationship of mentoring among your people. Help us to follow the examples of leaders in the faith. Help us to be that example for others. We pray for your Spirit to move among us, to encourage us to be your presence in this world. In Jesus’ name, Amen.