What are you passionate about?

As I've been preparing a sermon for Palm Sunday I've been thinking about the passion displayed by that ancient Jerusalem crowd.  On Sunday they were chanting, "Hosanna!"  By Friday they were chanting, "Crucify him!"  If they had had access to facebook and twitter, perhaps the turnaround would have been even more swift.

Yet there is no denying the passion of that ancient Middle Eastern crowd.  2011 has been a year for passionate crowds in the present-day Middle East.  The passion of the crowds toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and that passion has spilled over into Libya, and even into Jordan, Syria, and Yemen.  Passionate crowds are bringing about swift political change.

Do our Sunday morning crowds display anything like that degree of passion?  Not too long ago I saw a report which indicated that the churches that were growing tended to be either conservative churches that were passionate about their mission and vision OR liberal, progressive churches that were passionate about their mission and vision.

What does that say about moderate, middle-of-the-road Presbyterian churches that try to be all things to all people?  I actually remember a seminary professor who told us--perhaps only partly in jest--that our role as future Presbyterian ministers would be to exhort moderate congregations to be even more moderate!

Last year Methodist minister and youth ministry professor Kenda Creasy Dean published a book entitled Almost Christian which argued that many, mainline churches are failing to keep their youth because they are failing to give them anything that is worth being passionate about.  A community whose basic vision does not seem to be much deeper than "be nice to people" is a nice enough place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there permanently, so many youth who grew up in the church end up moving on.

I believe strongly--dare I say, passionately--that our churches can be welcoming communities to people of diverse views and backgrounds AND still be passionate about telling and living the Jesus story---the story about the Jesus who loved us enough to suffer for it and who inspires us to love others and God with that same kind of passionate love.

What do you think?  Where have our churches exemplified that kind of passion?  Where have they failed?  How can they maintain or rekindle that kind of passion?  What are you most passionate about?

How should we celebrate Easter this year?

As I was busying myself with Holy Week and Easter preparations, I came across a posting from Bruce Reyes-Chow, the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  Bruce makes the suggestion that maybe the church should not do anything extra special for Easter this year.  He argues that our big Easter productions may actually reinforce the idea that there are special Sundays that are worth one's while to attend and then there are all those other Sundays that are nothing special.  What if every Sunday service were a celebration of resurrection and new life, and then we could say to visitors in all honesty that that is what they can expect to experience every Sunday?

What do you think?  How should the church celebrate Easter this year?

The link to Bruce's post is below:

http://www.reyes-chow.com/2011/04/why-easter-worship-service-should-be-nothing-special.html?utm_sourc

Two Journeys: A Baptismal Meditation on John 9

            Swede Land is a character in Leif Enger’s novel Peace Like a River.  In the novel she offers this observation about miracles.  She says that people fear miracles because they fear being changed, though ignoring them will change you also.  She goes on to say that every miracle has to have a witness, someone to say, “This is what I saw.  This is how it went.  Make it of it what you will.”[i]

            In essence, that’s what happens in today’s story.  The healing takes about two verses to describe, but the controversy surrounding the healing takes over thirty verses.  People are trying to make sense of the miracle.  And true to Swede’s observation, how they respond to the miracle seems to have a lot to do with how they cope with their fear of change.  The man who had been born blind embraces the change in his life.  His journey is one of moving from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight.  The other characters in the story were changed by ignoring the miracle, and their journey is one of moving from spiritual sight to spiritual blindness.

            The man who had been born blind did not come to Jesus asking to be healed.  He didn’t even know who Jesus was.  Jesus came to him, made mud, put it on his eyes, told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam, and then the formerly blind man suddenly received his sight.  His restoration of physical sight is immediate; his gain of spiritual sight grows steadily in the course of this story.  At first he recognizes Jesus as the man who healed him.  Then he decides that Jesus must be a prophet, and later he confessed that Jesus is Lord.

            The early church found in this story a symbol of Christian baptism and the new life that it brings.  In the frescoes in the Roman catacombs this story was used to illustrate the meaning of baptism.[ii]  He is healed, after all, as he washes in water, and then after his washing his understanding of who Jesus is steadily grows.  When we baptized Luke and Molly a few moments ago, they were told that it was for them that Jesus Christ came into the world and showed God’s love, though they do not know it yet.  And so we pray that as they grow up their understanding will grow, and that one day they will embrace the faith that they have been taught as their own.

            If the first journey in this story is one from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight, then the second journey is made by those who move in the opposite direction.  Many of the townspeople who ought to have recognized the man who had been healed did not.  Some of the townspeople did recognize him, but others kept saying that the new man in town must be someone like him.  It reminds me of the story about the real Charlie Chaplin entering a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.  He came in third!

            The townspeople who failed to recognize the man fell into the trap that many of us fall into when we encounter people with different abilities than our own.  If all that certain townspeople ever saw was a blind beggar, then it is no wonder that they failed to recognize him once he was no longer blind.  But those who had seen him as a whole person before were still able to recognize him after.

            The Pharisees also embark on a journey from spiritual sight to spiritual blindness.  Near the beginning of the story, some of the Pharisees seem to be more open-minded.  Some of them were saying that no one who dishonored the Sabbath could be from God, while others were saying that surely no one who was a sinner could perform such signs.  We wonder if Nicodemus was there.  Remember Nicodemus?  The one who came secretly to Jesus at night, back in chapter three.  Is he still a secret believer?  Is he on the verge of faith?  Or, is he still hedging his bets?  Was he the one who interjected, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” before apparently growing silent as the debate got heated.  We don’t know.  But what we do know is that the Pharisees seem absolutely entrenched in their view that anyone who performed any kind of work on the Sabbath could not be from God.

            The Pharisees had many good reasons for being strict about Sabbath observance.  When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they were forced to make mud bricks for Pharaoh.  But now that they were free, they could observe the Sabbath and refrain from mixing mud together.  It wasn’t a bad rule.  It provided for rest from labor, and it served as a reminder of how God had rescued them from slavery and the constant drudgery of making mud bricks.[iii] 

            But the Pharisees focus so narrowly on the rule against mixing mud on the Sabbath that they cannot make an allowance for Jesus to mix just a small amount of mud to make a healing salve.  It’s what happens whenever a rule or a custom or a tradition that had once been a life-giving practice is wrongly applied to a new situation in such a way that it is no longer life-giving.  At the very end of the story the Pharisees ask, “Are you saying that we are now blind also?”

            It’s a good question for the church as well.  It’s even a loving question.  How is our own spiritual sight?  Which of our traditions, habits, and practices are still truly life-giving, and which ones have we wrongly applied? 

            The season of Lent is an apt time for such examination.  How are we bringing life to each other?  How are we bringing life to our neighbors who desperately want to experience life?  Are we seeing Jesus for who he is and where he wants us to follow?    

           

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End Notes:

[i] Lief Enger, Peace Like a River (New York:  Grove Press, 2001), 3.

[ii] Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus:  Studies in the Gospel of John (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 80.

[iii] Frances Taylor Gench, 73-74.

Confessions of an Infrequent Blogger

As you know, a few months ago I began a blog entitled, "Pray All the Time."  Unfortunately, I have not been writing all the time.  It has been many, many weeks now since I've posted anything at all.  However, as a Lenten discipline, I would now like to begin updating the blog each Wednesday.  I am hoping that the blog can be a vehicle for pastor and congregation and neighbors to discuss questions that are important to all of us, including issues and questions that may go beyond the usual parameters of the Sunday sermon or Church School.  So please start checking as of this coming Wednesday, April 6th.  And please offer comments so that we can get the conversation started!

Sermon from the Second Sunday of Advent

"The Promise of a New Beginning Long After the People Had Already Given Up"

Isaiah 11:1-10 (Eugene Peterson’s The Message):

A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,

            from his roots a budding Branch.

The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,

            the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,

The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,

            the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.

Fear-of-God

            will be all his joy and delight.

He won’t judge by appearances,

            won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.

He’ll judge the needy by what is right,

            render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.

His words will bring everyone to awed attention.

            A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.

Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,

            and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.

The wolf will romp with the lamb,

            the leopard sleep with the kid.

Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,

            and a little child will tend them.

Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,

            their calves and cubs grow up together,

            and the lion eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,

            the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.

Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill

            on my holy mountain.

The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,

            a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.

On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples.  The nations will all come to him.  His headquarters will be glorious.

            This week I posted a video on my Facebook page.  It’s something I found on a friend’s page.  In this video a woman is seen approaching a lion cage.  She taps the bars of the cage with both hands.  And then the lion rears up on his hind legs.  For a brief moment, it’s quite frightening because you don’t know if the lion is going to bite her or somehow grab her head and pull her head into the cage because the bars almost seem wide enough for that to happen.  But what actually happens is that the lion gives the woman a kiss and a hug.  He literally hugs her, wrapping his giant paws around her shoulders and allowing her to bury her face in his hairy mane.  It’s a very touching scene.

            I did a little bit of research on the back story, and it turns out that this lion, whose name is Jupiter, was part of a traveling circus in Colombia, South America, where he was maltreated and malnourished.  The woman rescued him and took him to an animal sanctuary that she runs.  When he got older, she sent him to a zoo.  The video clip that’s been working its way around the internet shows what happened when Jupiter saw her again for the first time after going to the zoo.  You’ve heard of bear hugs.  Well, this was a great, big lion hug.

            We’ve seen other scenes like this.  I recently saw an internet video of a mother cat adopting a baby squirrel and allowing it to nurse alongside her own litter of kittens.  Perhaps you saw the video of someone’s pet rat riding around on the back of the family cat.  And I imagine that we’ve all seen many photos of cats snuggling up to very big dogs.

            Those kinds of scenes don’t surprise us so much.  We’ve seen images like that.  But the imagery that Isaiah gives us in the 11^th chapter is beyond that.  It’s beyond the unusual.  It’s downright impossible.  Predators and prey simply cannot live alongside each other that long without reverting back to their usual roles.

            One preacher tells the story of what happened when all the animals in the forest decided that now was the time to establish the peaceable kingdom once and for all.  They issued a proclamation that all the animals in the forest would henceforth live in peace.  Shortly after the proclamation was issued, a lamb saw a sleeping lion and nuzzled up to the lion, using the lion’s mane as a pillow.  Then the lion woke up and ate the lamb.  The moral of the story is that there’s always going to be someone who didn’t hear the announcement.[1]

            Isaiah’s vision of all the animals living in peace doesn’t seem very realistic.  It’s beautiful poetry, but it simply isn’t possible.  Except by the Spirit of God.[2] 

            The people who first heard Isaiah’s message were devastated.  What was happening a little more than 700 years before the birth of Christ was that the Assyrian armies were on the march, destroying everything in their path.  Some people have referred to this as the first Jewish Holocaust.  The holy city of Jerusalem itself was threatened with destruction.  And just when the people’s hope for rescue seemed cut off--their fortunes looking no better than a dead stump--the prophet Isaiah comes along and says that there will be a green shoot.

            The sprouting of the new shoot isn’t possible except by the Spirit of God . . .  and the fact that from time to time we’ve seen glimpses of it ourselves, haven’t we?  We’ve seen something like a green shoot coming out of a stump.  We might think of a father who hasn’t spoken to his daughter in 20 years.  No hope whatsoever for reconciliation.  The relationship seems permanently cut off, like a stump.  And then something happens and reconciliation is possible.

            Or a couple tries and tries to have a child for many years with no luck.  Then they try for many years to adopt with no luck.  And then suddenly out of the blue a baby from overseas is available and then, a couple of years later, another baby is available.[3]  A green shoot sprouting out of a dead stump. 

            Or someone grows up in church and someone says something and because of that the person leaves the church for a very long time.  And then, many years later, the person suddenly comes back, determined to make a new start as a disciple of Christ and a member of Christ’s church.  A green shoot sprouting out of a dead stump.

            Where, in your lives, have you felt cut off?  Has there been a time when a job you loved was taken away from you?  And you had to figure out something else to do and learn a new skill.  Are there relationships in your life that seem completely cut off and beyond hope of reconciliation?

            I’m not trying to say that reconciliation is ever easy or automatic.  If Isaiah’s vision were easy to achieve, we would have already done it.  But isn’t Isaiah’s vision just enough to give us hope.  Isn’t it just enough to help us realize that a new beginning is possible, even after we’ve already given up?

            Cory Booker is the forty-one year-old mayor of Newark, New Jersey.  He’s a Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Yale Law School, and during most of his time as mayor he has lived in public housing projects because he wants to see first hand the challenges that many people in his city are facing.  In an interview  a few years ago with NPR, Cory told a story from his time as a young tenements rights lawyer, when he was walking around the neighborhood trying to offer his services.  One day he knocked on the door of one Mrs. Virginia Jones.  Virginia walked out of her tenement building and asked Cory to follow her.  She said to him, “Tell me what you see?”

            And Cory said, “I see crack houses and run-down buildings and gang graffiti.”

            Virginia replied, “Then, you can’t help me.”  And she walked off.

            Cory went chasing after her and said, “Wait, you have to tell me more.  Why are you walking away?”

            She said, “Young man, you need to learn something.  If all you see is hopelessness and despair, then it’s a reflection of what’s inside you and you can’t help me.  But, if you see signs of hope, new life, even the face of God, then we can get started.”

            What do you see?  Do you see the stump—the evidence of heartache and tragedy?  Or do you see the green shoot?  The smile on a face that hasn’t smiled for years.  The unmistakable walk of the prodigal making his way home.

            All glory and praise be to our God.  Amen.

The Rev. Jack Cabaness, Pastor

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Westminster, Colorado

---

[1] Story told by Presbyterian minister Rick Spaulding.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), p. 104.

[3] Personal story told by Presbyterian minister Stephen Montgomery in a sermon preached on the Day One Radio Program, December 5, 2010.

Peace Is More Than a Christmas Wish, a Communion Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5 (New Revised Standard Version):  The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.  In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.  Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

            There is a famous Steve Martin comedy routine in which he shares his wishes for the holiday season.  He begins by saying that if he could have but one wish this Christmas season it would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace. 

            Then he says that if he could have but two Christmas wishes this season the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace, and the second wish would be for thirty million dollars a month tax free deposited to him in a Swiss bank account.

            Then he says that if he could have only three wishes this Christmas season the first would be the stuff about the kids, the second would be for the thirty million dollars a month, and the third would be for absolute power over every human being on the earth.  Then he suddenly begins to question the logistics of actually getting all the children of the world together, and by the end of the routine he decides that his first wish would be for revenge against all his enemies, and his final wish—the one least likely to be carried out—is for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in a spirit of harmony and peace.

            It’s a comedy routine, but doesn’t it illustrate what we usually think concerning the prospects for peace?  “Peace on Earth” almost becomes a holiday cliché, but we don’t really expect it.

            We are used to a world in which peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians are constantly breaking down.  We’ve become accustomed to escalating drug violence along the U.S. - Mexico border.  And nearly sixty years after an armistice was signed, the recent saber rattling between North and South Korea hardly surprises us.  We’ve come to think of all this as normal.

            The Prophet Isaiah had a different idea about what constitutes normal.  What is normal for Isaiah is for all the nations of the world to stream to the mountain of the Lord and receive direct instruction from God.  What is normal is for the nations to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  To us Isaiah’s vision seems like nothing short of fantasy, but to Isaiah it is the normal status quo—the way that things are supposed to be.

            Peace is more than a Christmas wish.  It is what God intends for the whole creation.  It is what is supposed to be normal.

            A few years ago a delegation of U. S. pastors traveled to South Korea so that they could meet with a group of South Korean pastors.  The Korean pastors started talking about ministry opportunities that would start to open up once the two Koreas were reunited.  This puzzled the American pastors.  They had not heard of any recent developments in the news concerning the prospects for reunion.  So they asked their South Korean counterparts if there had been any significant thaw or breakthrough in relations between the North and the South, and their hosts acknowledged that there had not been.  Then why, the American pastors asked, are you talking about reunion as though it were an imminent possibility?  Because, the Koreans responded, we’ve been praying about it for over fifty years. 

            How do you explain such persistence in prayer?  I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the South Koreans have a different understanding of what’s normal.

            All glory and praise be to our God.  Amen.

The Rev. Jack Cabaness, Pastor

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Westminster, Colorado

A Sermon About Resurrection and the Sadducees' Trick Question

Sermon preached at Westminster (Colorado) Presbyterian Church, November 7, 2010

Text:  Luke 20:27-38

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKG848H_QOA