Seek First the Kingdom

A sermon for the eighth Sunday of Epiphany, February 27, 2011.

Isaiah 49:8-16a

Psalm 131

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Matthew 6:24-34

O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore. (Psalm 131:3)

Undoubtedly, the texts for this week suggest one theme over and above all others:

God will take care of his people.

We have the beautiful promise of God to his people:

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. (Isaiah 49:15-16a)

And then the acknowledgement of this care by the Psalmist:

I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. (Psalm 131:2)

And finally -- the consummation of this theological truth in Jesus’ teaching to consider the lilies and the birds and learn the simplicity of God’s care for the world

therefore be not anxious!

We can now go home. It’s easy. Remember that God will take care of us. Don’t worry, be happy.

Man. That was an easy sermon. I wish.

As a preface to what follows, I want to confess how I’ve struggled in preparing this sermon. It is a difficult subject, but it is what I think we all need to hear. Please note the use of the word “we” in what follows -- I am speaking just as much to myself as to anyone. What follows is what I feel that I need to come to grips with if I am to manifest an authentic and truthful witness as a Christian in 21st century America. I am speaking to myself, you can listen in if you like. So here goes.

There is great disconnect between what we know and hear about God and how we feel and act in the everyday.

We can leave church having heard a sermon about how God will provide all our needs, that we can have eternal security in God’s grace abundantly given through Christ.

But then our car will die and suddenly needs a new engine.

We immediately forget God’s providing care and jump back into our habit of thinking that we’ve gained as citizens of this world, namely:

I am the maker and sustainer of my own life and must therefore figure this out, fix this, make it better. The answer to my problems lies in what I can obtain by my own efforts with the help of some cash.

Whereas we may think in our best moments about all of the comforting notions of God’s care and we may remind others in their distress of God’s care, our autopilot thinking is fundamentally that we are makers of our own reality -- we are the authors of our successes and the redeemers of our misfortunes.
Moreover, our autopilot reminds us, the answer to our problems, the cure to our distress, lies in our best efforts supported by our finances.

Why do we worry so much if God is in control and will take care of us? How can we be so confident on Sunday that our lives are in God’s care and providence and yet Monday through Friday live in shadow of anxiety? Where is the respite from this affliction?

The problem is not that we forget during the week all about God’s care, that if we just thought more about God’s providence we would be less anxious. That’s probably true, but there’s more to our problem than just theological amnesia.

It’s not about thoughts, it’s about loves. What we love determines who we are. As Jesus put it, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6:21)

Our problem is that our love is divided. We want to be a good person, but we also want material success. We want to love our neighbor, but not when it’s inconvenient. We want to serve God, but we also want to be comfortable. We want to do what’s right, but we also want to be prosperous. We want to trust God, but we stand in reverent fear of the Market. Therefore we stand as people who love the idea of serving God with our whole heart and resting in his care but at the same time desire the comfort, peace, and security offered to us by the products and programs of the market.

“You cannot serve two masters,” we hear, “for you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and material possessions.”

We believe the lies distributed wholesale in the media that we are fundamentally consumers in need of products to make us happy, cool, successful, sexy, confident, powerful. We believe them and we put our trust in their objects -- the pantheon of products that offer the illusion of peace and prosperity.

Throughout the working week we find ourselves engaged in the various liturgies of consumption and entertainment, giving the majority of our attention and time to the demands of material comfort and prosperity -- serving not God, but material possessions.

But what unstable gods material possessions are! Just look at the history of the market -- it can all come crashing down. Products breed the need for more products, entertainment fosters a insatiable appetite for novelty.

The gods of products, programs, and property consume our attention and enslave us in a system where we must keep consuming more and more in order to maintain satisfaction in life.

Worse! They lead us more and more to believe that we are the authors of our own success and the redeemers of our misfortunes. And by believing that, we become increasingly obsessed with our own abilities and disabilities -- our own power and weakness -- we become self-absorbed.

And we then wonder where our anxiety comes from? We are serving two gods, and one of them is impossible to please.

We’ll get no mercy from the market, no peace from products. Only a tyrannical demand for new! more! better!

Let’s contrast now this materialism so deeply entrenched in our world with the discipleship that Jesus invites us into.

do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Those whose treasure is in material possessions will be always striving to secure food, drink, and clothing and seek to find peace and security in the fortress of possessions they build around themselves.

But Christ calls us to seek a greater treasure:

do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Christ is calling us to remember our identity as Christians. We are not fundamentally consumers in need of products, patrons in need of services, audiences in need of entertainment -- we are those who have come to know the light of the truth of God, the truth of the forgiveness that God gives, and the forgiveness which frees us from ourselves to love God and our neighbor and find our fulfillment in God’s story and not our own.

Seek first not food, drink, or clothing, but the kingdom of God. It is through our participation in God’s kingdom that we will find respite from our anxieties. Because when we seek first God’s kingdom we are participating in God’s healing of the world, God’s deliverance of humanity from the tyranny of our own selfish desires into the freedom of loving and serving the other, from the anxiety of making money to the blessedness of giving rather than receiving, we are brought to our true place in the world as children of a God who came to serve not be served.

When our hearts are glued to material possessions, we become more and more selfishly oriented, our focus is our own needs and desires and how they might be fulfilled. Even things as simple as food, drink, and clothing become means to increase the attention we give to our own wishes.

But when our hearts have been disentangled from things and refocused on the beauty of God’s new reality, the healing of the world through Christ, we become more and more excited about the fulfillment of others, the manifestation of justice and peace in the world, the proclamation of truth to a world that has been enslaved by lies. We no longer serve two masters, but the one master in whom there is true life and true joy and true health.

Seek first the kingdom and all those other things will be taken care of. Let us encourage each other as much as we can, let us join together in this common pursuit of God’s kingdom. Let this call of our Lord’s not fall on individuals but on the community that there might be strength in our numbers as together we resist the empty promises of the market and follow Christ. Let us seek God’s grace together to rise above the struggle for material possessions, temporal peace and prosperity -- to the higher calling of love for a world in need of people who don’t seek first their own power and advancement, but God’s kingdom and his justice. Amen.

The Maturity of Nonresistance

A sermon for the seventh Sunday of Epiphany, February 20, 2011, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

Psalm 119:33-40

1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23

Matthew 5:38-48

In Leviticus 19:2 we read God telling Moses: “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”
There is a parallel to this in today’s gospel reading when Jesus tells his disciples: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

When I think of perfect, I think of cleanliness, tidiness, a sort of obsessive compulsive attention to details. I find this drive to perfection in myself and try to tell myself to get over it. It causes anxiety, guilt, frustration, and -- sometimes -- a sort of despair.

I think this is what a lot of us hear when we hear someone say “perfection”.

This is not the perfection that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:48.

The word Jesus uses here is the Greek word τέλειός (teleios -- pronounced tell--ay--oss).

This word is translated perfect probably out of tradition. But it does not mean some saintly ethical ideal of perfection. It should be heard as:

Be ye therefore complete, even as your Father which is in heaven is complete.

Be ye therefore mature, even as your Father which is in heaven is mature.

Be ye therefore whole, even as your Father which is in heaven is whole.

The root of our English word holy is the concept of wholeness, completion, and health.

And so we can see that Jesus is not saying anything new, but what was said to the people of Israel by God in Leviticus 19: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

To become τέλειός, to become whole, to become mature is to become by the grace of God, all that we’ve been designed and called to be.

When Jesus says this to his disciples, it is concluding his teaching on how to deal with people who are violent toward us -- verbally, emotionally, physically

Violence is in many ways the opposite of wholeness. One unifies and harmonizes different things the other tears them apart.
One seeks to build and the other to destroy.
One seeks to mend and the other to break.

And so we can see a connection between Jesus’ injunction to be τέλειός and not to return violence for violence.

He begins:

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'

People in all times and all places have known what this phrase means. This is retribution. This is justice. This is fairness. This is the world’s normal.

But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.

The world’s normal is turned upside down.

We shouldn’t see Jesus as rejecting justice here. He is not promoting abuse or exploitation. That would be to encourage greater violence -- further division to the point that wholeness would be forgotten altogether.

Rather, Jesus is giving us a greater way to handle violence than justice. Beyond mere containment or retribution.

But what’s greater than Justice?

Mercy. Forgiveness. Love.

The world’s normal is to give a due punishment for the wrong and to balance the scales once again. The wrongdoer who is taken to court will be given a punishment that depending on the offense will land him in jail for a number of years. But jail cannot change a man’s heart. Jail will not expel the violence from inside of him. Jail will deliver justice and justice is good. But justice alone cannot restore a soul that has become violent.

I think we have to remember that Jesus desires wholeness in the world in people.
This is why he brought healing to those afflicted by disease.
This is why he brought truth to those enslaved by the lie.
Jesus desires for people to be made whole like they were designed to be.

But this wholeness cannot come by the methods that humanity has devised. It cannot come through some effort of the will to be a better person, from some self-help plan that helps us to think better of ourselves, or through striving after material success -- wealth and power and the American dream.

Wholeness comes through forgiveness and forgiveness comes from God.

When Jesus tells us to love our enemies he is telling us to imitate the mercy of God who faithfully reaches out with grace to those who have for so many years and generations and ages have rejected him.

Our ability to forgive, our ability to love the enemy, our ability to not resist the one who is evil is directly related to our recognition of our own state as forgiven before God.

God has been merciful, therefore be merciful. God has forgiven, therefore forgive.

Once we recognizes and accept God’s forgiveness, we can begin to become whole. We begin to be restored to our proper place in this world as created to Creator and as children to our heavenly Father.

We realize that the way God has made for humanity to be healed from its violent nature is the way of forgiveness.

It’s then that Jesus’ commands begin to make a lot of sense.

All throughout this Sermon, Jesus has been telling his disciples to not just take the commandments of God that they’ve always heard at face value but to go to the root of their meaning and significance and interpret them in light of the character of God as just, merciful, and humble.

You have heard it said... But I tell you...

Jesus is getting at the root of the law -- the spirit behind the letter, the attitude behind the action.

And at the core is love.

Love which desires to make the other whole not just to bring them to justice.

Love turns the other cheek. Again this is not convenient. Love does not seek personal convenience or pragmatic efficiency. Love seeks health for the one loved.

So we can in some ways interpret Jesus’ command to love our enemy as a command to see our enemy for who he really is. Someone who is broken, consumed with violence, in need of the mercy of God by which we are restored, by which we are healed from our violent, selfish ways.

This is the light that overcomes the darkness. And we are to be lights to the world.

But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.

Non-resistance refuses to play the game that a violent individual invites it to. It hears the invitation to a heroic struggle for greatness -- a challenge to not be seen as weak -- and it turns it down.

Why? Because more than greatness, more than power, more than the appearance of strength the Christian loves mercy!

The Christian is the one who hungers and thirsts for wholeness in themselves, in the creation and in their neighbor.

The Christian recognizes that the violent one has not known the forgiveness of God, the generosity of God’s love and still lives in the porcupine defense of their accumulated earthly wounds -- rather than health, they’ve sought to nurse the wounds of insult and hatred and violence and consumed by their own hurt, in anger they pass it on to others.

The Christian has been given the clarity of vision to see that the violent do not need violence, the violent need love.

This is the maturity that Christ has called us to. This is the τέλειός that Christ has called us to. This is the heart of God for humanity.

Let us consider our calling, let us consider our name. We are Christians. Named after the one who, in the midst of suffering evil from the ones he came to save, yelled “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Let us not “be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

Amen.

God Gives the Growth

A sermon for the sixth Sunday of Epiphany, February 13, 2011, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Psalm 119:1-8

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Matthew 5:21-37

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 40 verses 3 through 5, we read:

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low

In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church chapter 3 verses 26 to 28 he reminds them of their new identity as a community in Christ.

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

All the power distinctions of the culture in which the Galatian church existed are being denied their reality. Through baptism they have become part of a new political structure that does not recognize their status as citizens of the world.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low

This is the nature of rebirth into Christian life.

All things are new in Christ. We are no longer employer and employee, landlord and tenant, customer and salesperson...

We are new, equal, and one in Christ.

And this new identity is characterized by service.

We are all now children of God and servants to one another.

Mark 9:35 says:

If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.

Christ showed us this new existence when he stooped down with basin and towel and washed his disciples feet.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low

It is in light of this new identity in Christ, that Paul addresses and rebukes the self-understanding of the Corinthian church in today’s epistle reading.

The people have a wrong understanding of their relationship to one another and a wrong understanding of their relationship to their leaders.

We read Paul’s diagnosis of the Corinthian problem in verse 3

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

The Corinthians have forgotten or ignored their new identity as Christians -- they have forgotten that as a new community in Christ they are one with another -- neither more nor less important than one another --

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low

Christ has levelled the playing field -- neither jealousy nor strife, neither factions, denominations, nor party loyalties have any reality in the Church that Christ has made. These are human divisions that are only real because we perceive them to be real.

The true reality is Christ’s reality.

All have been made one.

All has been made new.

The former things have ended, a new community has been created; a community where striving against one another, competition with one another, must now cease.

For in Corinth, there were some who waved their Paul flag in the faces of others who waved their Apollos flag -- emphasizing the superiority of their respective differences.

Seeking to be in the right they put themselves in the wrong -- because following factions they lost the true spirit of the new life they had been called to -- the spirit of Christ who became servant of all.

They neglected to see that the only status a leader can claim is the status of servant.

What then is Apollos?

What is Paul?

Servants through whom you believed,

as the Lord assigned to each.

Paul and Apollos were not leaders seeking a following, but were merely servants of the kingdom of God --making known the new reality that has entered the world in Christ.

Paul and Apollos were the means by which the church believed -- but God was the power through them who caused the growth, who caused the belief.

In a later letter written to the same church, Paul speaks of ministers as clay pots

2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

The role of any leader in the church is to serve -- not to be served, to draw attention to Christ -- to remind people of their new identity as Christians -- not gain fame or power.

But the Corinthian church in their refrains: “I follow Paul, I follow Apollos” were forgetting that leaders are servants not celebrities --

God is the one who works -- Paul and Apollos were merely Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each -- fulfilling an assignment given by God and carried out by God -- using Paul and Apollos like we use pots and pans to make dinner -- the important thing is the meal not the cookware.

And in verses 6-9 we get the heart of Paul’s message:

recognizing that neither Paul nor Apollos are anything but servants of the message, he likens this service to gardenwork (which I’m sure we can all appreciate).

I planted,
Apollos watered,

but God gave the growth.

So neither he who plants

nor he who waters

is anything,

but only God

who gives the growth.

When you plant a garden you can rarely take credit for the results.
Sometimes the greatest growth takes place with the littlest attention from the gardener
and sometimes the garden will yield nothing despite our greatest attention.

The earth is beyond our control -- we merely work it and trust God to give rain and sun with the right proportions to yield pleasant edible produce.

Paul uses the gardening metaphor to point to the unimportance of the servant in the efficacy of the growth of God’s kingdom.

Paul may have planted, Apollos may have attentively watered -- but the only reason anything grew was because of the Spirit of God.

So neither he who plants

nor he who waters

is anything,

but only God

who gives the growth.

Let’s remember that God is the one who builds his church.
God is the one who grows a congregation.
He uses people -- but the power is God’s not ours.

He who plants

and he who waters

are one,

and each will receive

his wages

according to his labor.

Those who carried Paul flags were no doubt criticizing Apollos and those who carried Apollos flags, closely identifying themselves with the man were no doubt criticizing Paul.

“Paul didn’t have my kind of theology...
Apollos didn’t do enough --”

But Paul stresses that it is not for the people of God to be critics or judges of the ministers.
That is God’s job alone.

All gardeners are part of the same mission and will be judged by God and him alone -- for he is the only one who knows the hearts of the ministers and what they truly accomplished despite all appearances.

For we are God’s fellow workers.

You are God’s field,

God’s building.

The minister is not autonomous -- the minister is not powerful -- the minister is neither effective nor ineffective.

The minister is God’s fellow worker -- performing the tasks given to him by God -- serving the field that God has planted through other ministers by the power of the Spirit not by human power.

And God’s building will stay strong and his field will be fruitful by the power of the Holy Spirit not by any confidence, efficiency, charisma, energy, or brilliance in any of his workers.

And God’s field will be bountiful and his building maintained by His grace alone and will not be destroyed by any weakness, inefficiency, insecurity, exhaustion, or simpleness in any of his workers.

Let us remember our new identity in Christ.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low

We are no longer to think of ourselves as belonging to factions, classes, denominations primarily
but as belonging to Christ and his church.
It is here that we find God’s Spirit working through all of us as we serve one another to build up this building and bring fruit from this field.
Let us not trust human power, personality, procedure, or plan or disdain any for their shortcomings.

Let us rather trust God and remember:

neither he who plants

nor he who waters

is anything,

but only God

who gives the growth.

Amen.