The Currency of the Kingdom

Posted on by

Matthew 6.12

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Matthew 18.21-22

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/6ujBfwQuoszssG53ZLfVEG

Lord, teach us to pray.

Okay, when you pray, pray this way:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. 

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

We begin this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, with talk of God and heaven and holiness. We get partisan with politics, calling for the Lord’s will to be done, and for God’s kingdom to come.

Next, we get all down and dirty with a plea for our daily bread.

And then this already strange prayer becomes even stranger: Forgive us Lord, as we forgive others.

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon claim this line is the most difficult part of the prayer to pray, and I think most of us would agree. It’s all good and fine to talk about hallowing God’s name, it’s not even all that hard to ask for God’s will to be done, and who wouldn’t mind having some daily bread? But then, all of the sudden, the prayer takes a turn and we, ourselves, are caught up in it. 

It’s the place where Jesus asks us not just to pray by saying something, but by actually doing something. And the something we are asked to do might be the hardest thing any of us ever do. 

Forgiveness is absolutely and completely outrageous. It runs counter to everything the world ever teaches us. You can’t just forgive someone. That’s lets them get away. It means you’re soft on sin. Forgiveness doesn’t work.

There’s something in us, some of us, I won’t speak for all of us, but there is something, this idea, that people should get what they deserve. And whenever we read stories in scripture like the parable of the prodigal, the parable of the publican and the pharisee, they sound offensive because they deal with the strange thing we call forgiveness, in which many of us don’t believe even though we pray for it.

Subscribed

Why is forgiveness so hard? Have you ever tried to forgive someone who did something unspeakable to you? Have you ever wronged someone so bad that you cut them out of your life completely rather than ask for their forgiveness?

Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things we can ever do. It comes at a cost, a steep cost. It’s foolish and difficult and painful. Forgiveness hurts.

It also happens to be the currency of God’s kingdom.

In other words: without forgiveness, none of this makes any sense. 

a scrabble type block spelling out the word forgiveness
Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

Notice: Before there is any consideration for our forgiving others, we are compelled to ask for forgiveness ourselves. This prayer we pray assumes that we all have need for forgiveness. That all of us have trespassed, sinned, or indebted ourselves to God.

Perhaps you noticed that, as the scriptures were read, Jesus taught us to pray “forgive us our debts” whereas, we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses.” There is a difference, of course, between those words. I don’t know anyone who has taken out a loan from the divine bank, and yet all of us are living on the gracious gift offered to us by God. Similarly, we’ve been handed the keys to this created world, and what do we have to show for it?

Have you watched the news recently?

As the old prayer book says, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.”

When it comes to our relationship with God, we’re all in the red. So much so that no amount of pious prayers, or righteous good works, or anything else really, can tip the scales back. In fact, the only thing we can do, is ask for the Lord to forgive us.

However, asking for forgiveness takes control away from us. And if there’s anything we hate, it’s losing control. We don’t like admitting that we have done things, or failed to do things, for which we need to ask forgiveness. We don’t want anyone, not even God, to have power over us. But being out of control is at the heart of discipleship.

Remember, we pray: let thy will be done.

Prayer, therefore, and in particular this prayer, is the essential habit and practice that God has given us to help us rediscover the joy of being creatures, or being out of control, of relying on someone else. Namely, God.

That is what is meant by being graced. Even in our sin, even in our worst choices and decisions, God refuses to abandon us. And not only that, God keeps seeking after us no matter what we do or how far we fall.

“You are forgiven.” It is not easy to receive those words because we all know we don’t deserve it, and those words make it sounds like it’s too easy.

But, again, forgiveness is anything but easy.

Consider, for a moment, what happens when someone unexpectedly gives you a gift. Chances are your first inclination is, oddly, not to enjoy the gift, but to begin scheming how to repay the person for the unexpected gift. We don’t like feeling indebted to someone so we grin and say our thanks but our thoughts move to tipping the scales back and returning the favor.

And when it comes to God, we can’t do it.

The only person who can right the relationship between us and the Lord, is the Lord. But that’s exactly why we call the Gospel, the Gospel, it’s good news.

Have you ever noticed how often Jesus forgives people, even when they don’t ask for it?

Some friends catch word that Jesus is in town, they’ve got a paralyzed friend and they drag him all the way to Jesus. Can’t get close, the crowd has grown too large, they hoist their friend on the roof, dig through the ceiling, and lower him to Jesus.

And what does Jesus say to the paralytic? By their faith your sins are forgiven.

Who said anything about sins? This guy needs to walk! What does forgiveness have to do with anything?

Forgiveness isn’t just anything, it’s everything.

The man does walk eventually, but only after being forgiven.

It’s God’s nature to forgive, and not just through Christ. The whole canon of scripture is ripe with stories of God’s unrelenting forgiveness. Again and again we, the people of God, turn away from God, and God remains steadfast no matter what. 

person raising arms
Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash

We know that we can pray to the Lord to forgive because that’s what God does even up to the cross! “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

It’s a joy to know we can pray these words. Truly. And, I think most of us would be happier with the Lord’s prayer if, at this moment, we jumped ahead to “and lead us not into temptation.”

But no. Jesus says pray like this: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

It was like any other afternoon with the Lord when Peter raised his hand in the middle of a lesson. 

“Yes Pete.”

“Well, you’ve been using the F word a lot and I think we would all do well to have some clarity on the matter. Exactly how many times are we supposed to forgive someone?”

“How’s your math Pete? I’d say 70×7 times, but for the sake of clarity, let’s just say there’s no limit.”

“But, if that’s the case, then we’ll go to our graves forgiving!”

“Indeed Pete, you will.”

That’s when the other disciples chime in: “Increase our faith! What your asking it more than we can do!”

Remember – Jesus wasn’t talking about going the extra mile, or turning the other cheek, or feeding the hungry. No, he was talking about forgiveness.

Thankfully, after the “increase our faith” episode, Jesus gave the disciples a story to help bring it all home. 

There was a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. One by one they were called before the throne and the great ledger-keeper read off their debts. Some owed a little, while others owed much more. And there was one slave in particular who owed the king ten thousand talents.

For what it’s worth, one talent equated to 6,000 denarii, a day laborers were paid one denarii per day. So, for those of you keeping score, it would take the slave 60,000,000 days of work to pay back the king. 

Immediately the story screams scandal. I mean, what kind of kingdom was this king running? No leader would ever let a slave run up that kind of debt. 

“Please,” the slave begs, “I promise I’ll pay it all back.”

And there’s no way he can ever do it. The slave knows it. The king knows it. The whole kingdom knows it. And yet, the king, moved by pity, releases the slaves of his debt, and lets him walk away scot free.

He dances around town, light as a feather, having just experienced the impossible. And then he comes upon a friend, one he had loaned some money to recently, probably the king’s money for what it’s worth. But he just tasted grace, so he says to the friend, “Remember that money you owe me. Don’t worry about it!”

That would be a great story, but it wouldn’t be a parable, and certainly not one from Jesus. No, in the story Jesus tells the recently forgiven slave lords it over his fellow friend for a measly loan.

Of course, everyone in the kingdom catches word, including the king, and he calls the unforgiving servant back to the throne, accosts him in front of everyone for being such a nincompoop, places the previously forgiven debt back on his shoulders, and hands him over to be tortured forever and ever. The end. 

It’s one thing to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses,” and another thing entirely to add, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Forgiveness always comes at a cost – it’s not cheap and it isn’t easy. The hurt we experience is consequential. Therefore, when Jesus teaches us to pray this way, he’s not implying that we should shrug things off as if they don’t mean anything. It’s just that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, refuses to let sin be the first and last word in our story.

Instead, the first word is forgiveness.

If you have ever been forgiven by someone you know how it feels like an indescribable freedom, a gift you don’t deserve. Similarly, if you have ever forgiven someone who wronged you greatly, you know the steep cost but also how it breaks a chain that is wrapped around your life.

But forgiveness isn’t natural. We have to be taught to forgive. We share stories of forgiveness such that others might know it is actually possible. A life of discipleship requires training and a community to support us in our willingness to forgive and receive forgiveness. That, after all, is why we pray for it. We need God’s help in this forgiveness business. We can’t do it on our own.

So hear the Good News: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that proves God’s love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.

And because you are forgiven, you can forgive others.

It won’t be easy, but nothing important ever is. Amen. 

We Are What We Eat

Posted on by

Matthew 6.11

Give us this day our daily bread.

Mark 6.34-42

As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled. https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/1FSNOJcSP0WDsXCcFoILod

Lord, teach us how to pray.

Okay, when you pray, pray like this:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

It’s such a peculiar prayer – The Lord’s Prayer. 

And, because we’ve prayed it so many times in so many places with so many people, we often no longer think about what we say when we pray.

We begin with talk of heaven and holiness. Then things get all political with calls for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done. And then this already strange prayer gets even stranger – give us this day our daily bread.

–

What is Christianity? Why are we here doing all of this?

Worthy questions for our consideration. And, frankly, questions we rarely consider at all. We simply do what we do because that’s what we do. Which is actually good, at times. We are habituated by our habits. You do something long enough it becomes part of who you are.

But Christianity, whatever it may be, is not something relegated to creeds and doctrines. It’s not some otherworldly ephemera floating our there some where that one day we will encounter.

Christianity is materialistic. 

It is something we can touch and see and hear and smell and taste. If, on the other hand, Christianity is a retreat from the material world, then it’s not a very good retreat. We’re still stuck in a building, in somewhat comfortable pews, listening to old (and sometimes new) music, with the smells of carpet, perfume, and (if we’re lucky) casseroles from the social hall wafting around, and the taste of grape juice and day old bread sticking to the roof of our mouths.

Christianity, therefore, is not about getting away from all of this. Instead, Christianity is all about how God transfigures this.

Give us this day our daily bread. 

Why is this what Jesus teaches us to pray for? Perhaps, the act of asking for our bread is a regular reminder that our lives, like our food, are gifts that come to us from God, gifts without which we would perish.

And, thankfully, we worship the Lord who loves to feed.

Subscribed

Have you ever noticed how much food there is in the strange new world of the Bible? It’s all over the place! At the very beginning our first parents eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Abraham entertains strange guests with curds and milk and a roasted calf, the Israelites prepare lamb as their meal for the Passover, on and on.

Here’s a sampling of the foods in scripture: apples, almonds, dates, figs, grapes, melons, cucumbers, leeks, lentils, onions, barley, corn, millet, wheat, fish, quail, goats, lambs, sheep, butter, cheese, honey, coriander, cinnamon, dill, garlic, mint, mustard, salt, and, of course, bread.

Through this prayer, and this petition in particular, it’s as if God is reminding us about the fragility of life, that we are dependent on creation, and that we are caught up in all of it together. 

In other words, the essentials to life are part of the essentials of our faith. 

Listen – Jesus is doing his Jesus thing, and it garners a crowd. He looks on them with compassion because they are like sheep without a shepherd, so he speaks to them about the kingdom of God. And yet, the sermon goes a little long, and the crowds grow hungry.

“Hey Jesus,” Peter starts, “You might want to wrap it up. It’s getting late. Give them a final ‘Amen’ so they can all swing by Chic Fil A on their way home.”

But Jesus says, “Nah. You should give them something to eat.”

“Lord, we’re done have that kind of cash! Have you seen the size of the crowd today? Not even the Golden Corral could satisfy their hunger!”

“Well,” Jesus says, “What’ve we got to work with? A couple loaves of bread? Some fish? Let’s see what I can do.”  

Jesus takes the bread and the fish, blesses it, and starts sharing it without everyone. 

And no one leaves hungry.

It’s an amazing story, the feeding of the multitudes. Jesus is the one who has compassion for the hungry, the savior for whom hunger runs counter to the kingdom, the Lord who, oddly enough, experiences hunger and thirst.

It’s important that the God we worship knows what it means to be hungry and thirsty. 

The incarnation is the declaration that Jesus is fully God and fully human. There is nothing in the human experience that God is unaware of, which is why the prayer for daily bread is all the more compelling. 

Yes, we hallow God’s name, and we pray for the in-breaking of the kingdom, but when it comes to us, we begin by praying for bread.

Bread is old.

God gave plants for cultivation that we might bring forth bread to strengthen our bodies. In scripture, Melchizedek the king offers bread to Abraham, the Israelites bake unleavened bread for their exodus out of Egypt, Jesus feeds the multitudes with bread, calls himself the bread of life, and is notably born in Bethlehem which means town of bread. 

And, in one of the most wild, and often overlooked, parables, Jesus compares the God to a female baker who puts the yeast of her kingdom into the dough of creation and makes bread of the world. 

Bread is everywhere, and without bread we’re dead.

And yet, the bread at either end of our sandwiches, the bread left haphazardly on our restaurant tables, even the bread many of us learned to bake during the pandemic is different than the bread of the Eucharist.

At the Lord’s Supper we are consumed by that which we consume – we are what we eat.

We are made participants in God’s body so that the story of the Gospel might be made manifest in the ways we live and move and have our being.

The bread and cup at God’s table incorporate us into the adventure of God’s salvation of the world.

I’ve been saying this the last few weeks, in fact I said it just a few minutes ago, we’ve said the Lord’s Prayer so many times in so many places with so many people that we often no longer think about what we say when we pray. And I think a similar sentiment is true of the Lord’s Supper. How many times have we come forward with our hands outstretched? How many times have we received the grace of God through food and drink? 

Enough that we know what we’re doing when we do so?

The truth of the matter is that we do not know what we are doing. Not even the most theologically sophisticated among us knows what we’re doing. And that’s actually fine. The disciples surely had no idea what they were getting into, and what was getting into them, when Jesus said this is my body and this is my blood.

photo of brown church
Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

In the Eucharist we are confronted with a reality that confounds our speech. These things are more real than real. They cannot be contained by our words because they are the grace of God.

Which is another way of saying, our most important business as a church happens at this table. 

If someone were to ask you what you believe about God, or what it means to be a Christian, you need not point anywhere except to this group of strangers called church who eat together at a table that transcends everything.

Bread is a familiar thing, common even. Go to Kroger after church and you have more choices of bread than you can handle. The table is also familiar and common. We eat at our tables daily – alone, or with family, or with friends. 

But the Lord delights in taking our ordinary things and making them extraordinary. The Lord loves to intrude upon the familiar, claiming it and reimagining it. The Lord rejoices in the everyday occurrences that point to the ways in which time is unleashed in the person of Jesus.

You see, when we are beckoned to God’s table, we feast not only with those in our midst, but we are united and even reunited with those from the past, those in the present, and those who will be here when we no longer are. This table cuts through the fabric of time and becomes something more sacred than we can speak. 

As Christians, if we want to meet God, we don’t have to hike to the top of Mill Mountain. We don’t have to fast for forty days in the wilderness. We don’t have to become hermits living in isolated cabins. If we want to meet God, all we have to do is get together and break bread in Jesus’ name.

And, notably, we are commanded to pray for our daily bread. It would’ve been a very different prayer if the Lord called us to pray for my bread. But instead, it’s our bread.

It might not seem like much of a distinction, but words matter. Our words matter. Particularly in a time in which depending on anyone or anything else is considered a failure.

The truth of the matter is that we are all dependent on one another, we either just don’t want to admit it or acknowledge it. 

No bread comes to our table without the work, the sacrifice, and the gift of strangers whom we do not know, and cannot properly thank. And that’s true for more than just bread. To be totally and completely self-sufficient is nearly impossible. We, all of us, are products of other people who, in ways big and small, make our lives possible. 

Just as we are products of the Lord who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 

None of us ever really know what we’re getting into when the Lord shows up in our lives, and we certainly don’t know what will happen when we pray this prayer. And yet, we do know that the Lord calls us to share this meal, this bread, together.

In a time when sharing is all but gone, it’s all the more important for us to be gathered in, the lost and forsaken, that we might awaken to the truth in bread and cup. For, in eating and feasting with Jesus, we are offered this strange and wondrous community we call church.

Jesus is the bread of life, born in the town of bread, who calls us to pray for our daily bread. Which, of course, means whenever we pray, we are also praying for our daily dose of the Lord.

On Easter, a pair of disciples were making their way toward a town called Emmaus…

What Is Jesus Doing In Your Life?

Posted on by

Romans 5.1-2

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 

turned on headlight bulb
Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash

“How is it with your soul?”

That’s a Wesleyan question that we Methodists still throw around occasionally. It comes from John Wesley himself and was the central question for historic Methodist class meetings, these small and intimate gatherings of Christians who were concerned with what it actually meant to be Christian. The question confronts us in our faith such that we must reckon with what God’s grace is doing to us.

And yet, we don’t ask that question, or questions like it, anymore. Sure, in the context of a Bible study or a small group ostensibly gathering in the name of Christ, you might hear a question like it but in our day to day discipleship, it’s nowhere to be found.

The relativization of the faith to the private sphere has resulted in a form of discipleship that is largely divorced from Christ’s call to take up our cross and follow. Put another way, if our faith is merely something we do on Sundays then it doesn’t really have anything to do with the One who makes our faith intelligible.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he confronts the embodied nature of the faith with physical language about “standing in grace” and “boasting in our hope.” Something has been done to us and, as such, we have an assurance that we can live differently because of it. And that something has a name: Jesus.

Frederick Buechner, author/pastor/theologian once said:

“Nice people don’t talk about religion. Or so the thinking goes. That’s why, when I taught at Wheaton College, it was so refreshing. There were people there who talked about it ALL THE TIME. It was almost too much and hard to take. It was as if they had Jesus in their hip pocket, and all they had to do was take him out and he would tell them where to find a parking space. But, on the other hand, they were able to ask, “What is Jesus doing in your life this week?” Marvelous! I believe God is doing something in everyone’s life every moment! But the idea of asking that question in certain places with certain people, it’s like the sky would fall in, the house would catch fire, and I would never be asked out again. In other words, people don’t ask about our experiences of grace, but perhaps they should.”

I wonder, therefore, how differently the church would look were we willing to ask that all too important question, “What is Jesus doing in your life this week?” If the faith we proclaim on Sundays is indeed the faith revealed to us in the person of Christ, then there are manifold implications for how Christ is guiding, shaping, and moving in our midst. Particularly since worship isn’t as much about what we do, but more about what we do in response to all that God has done, is doing, and will do.

Basically, it comes down to a matter of agency: Do we believe that God is active in our lives, or do we consider ourselves the primary movers and shakers?

Perhaps asking the question is the way in which we can open our eyes and ears to Christ’s actions in our lives. And maybe, being able to ask the question at all is what makes faith, faith.

And so, what is Jesus doing in your life this week?

Leaning Into The Future

Posted on by

Matthew 6.10

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Matthew 22.2-10

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0witHZzJ5Te8lxO7mV8mEs

Don’t mix politics and religion.

That’s the etiquette maxim for church, dinner parties, and just about every other part of our lives. We’re told, again and again, to keep these seemingly incompatible things as far away from one another as possible. Whatever political proclivities we hold and whatever it is we believe, they are meant to remain in the private sphere and no one has any right to interfere with either.

Except, we confuse them all the time!

We blur the line between church and state with such reckless abandon that we don’t even notice that we’re doing it. We view (and judge) one another through the names on our bumper stickers rather than the name that is above all names, we act as if what happens on a certain Tuesday in November is more important and more determinative than what happen in church every Sunday, and we tend to get all worked up over who sits behind the desk in the oval office rather than rejoicing over the one who rules from the arms of the cross.

Oddly, the so-called Separation of Church and State actually looks more like an extremely tumultuous marriage in which neither partner knows why they are still together.

And, honestly, it’s not even our fault.

We get to blame this on Jesus.

“Listen,” Jesus says, “when you pray, pray like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

That’s good and fine and tame. No one is going to squirm around in their pews or lose sleep over words like those. But then listen to what Jesus prays next:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Woah, woah, woah. Politics have crept into the Lord’s Prayer!

Here we are, minding our own business, talking about God and heaven and holiness and then boom – we arrive in the middle of a political argument about a kingdom, transferred from one place to another, that calls into question all the things we think rule the world.

That’s the great wonder, and the great challenge, of the Lord’s Prayer – we’ve said it so many times in so many places with so many people that we no longer think about what it is we are praying for when we pray.

Let your kingdom come Lord, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Notice: we don’t pray, “Lord, let my political party finally be in charge for a little bit.” “Lord, watch over this nice little church so that we can knock out the competition across and down the street.” “Lord, please bless this country so that everyone else in the world will start acting like us.”

No, we pray, “Lord, let your kingdom come! Let your will be done!”

brown wooden cross against wall
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

We live in a time in which there is a growing industry for all things spiritual. You can book a spiritual retreat at a spa for the weekend, you can download an app on your phone to connect you with the spiritual realm, you can hire a spiritual guru to guide you in the practices of meditation and transcendence. And all of that’s fine, some of it might even be Christian. 

But, this prayer is a ringing reminder that Christianity is inherently materialistic.

In other words, physical and tactile things matter. Jesus will shortly tell us to pray for bread, not spiritual bliss. 

Following the Lord, taking up our crosses, is not simply adhering to a sets of ideas or doctrines. Discipleship is as much about our bellies and our hearts and our politics as it is about our brains. Being Christian is a concrete reality, we might call it an adventure, that has implications for the way we live our lives from what we eat to who we eat with.

But we can save more of the bread talk for next week.

Suffice it to say, this petition in the Lord’s Prayer is what the whole prayer hinges on. Or, as Hauerwas and Willimon put it, calling for God’s kingdom is the reminder that this prayer is not for getting what we want but rather for bending our wants toward what God wants.

It’s about praying for God’s kingdom, rather than our own.

But what does this kingdom we pray for look like? What, exactly, are we praying for?

Jesus, thankfully, talks a lot about the kingdom of God, in fact he talks about it more than anything else. And when he does, he does so with hints and hidden glimpses, parables and puzzles, rather than with definitions and exposition. 

Jesus proclaims the kingdom instead of explaining it.

Subscribed

The Kingdom of God is like… a mustard seed, a fig tree in need of manure, a field of wheat and weeds.

The Kingdom of God is like a wealthy man who gives away all his wealth to his slaves and then abruptly leaves town.

The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who starts throwing seed every which way without caring, at all, whether it lands on soil, among the thorns, or even on the sidewalk.

The Kingdom of God is like a Vacation Bible School volunteer who, when responsible for 15 kids, lost 1 and left behind the 14 in order to go find the one who was lost.

But the Kingdom of God is also more than the stories Jesus told, the kingdom is visible in him and the way he lived. Jesus is forever reaching out to the last, least, lost, little, and dead, bringing hope to the hopeless, offering mercy to the wretched, and grace to those in disgrace.

Photo by drmakete lab on Unsplash

We know about the kingdom we pray for because we know Jesus Christ.

And, of course, Jesus’ kingdom looks nothing like the kingdoms of the world.

For, the kingdoms of the world are run by power and fear, constantly deciding who is in and who is out, and they crumble with the arrival of every new kingdom. 

But God’s kingdom obliterates all of the world’s means of deciding who is in and who is out. When we say something like, the kingdom of God is for all, we mean it. We mean it because the kingdom is the most inclusive thing in the cosmos. It is inclusive because Christ draws all into himself when he mounts the hard wood of the cross, it is inclusive because Christ comes not to condemn the world but to save the world, it is inclusive because Christ brings the Good News to those who need it: namely, everyone.

All the divisions in life that cause us grief – rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, UVA and VA Tech, those divisions are overcome in the kingdom of God. That’s not to say that those distinctions don’t have meaning, they merely lose their power over us in the reckless inclusivity of the Kingdom.

To pray “Your kingdom come” is to be willing to become part of a rather weird gathering of motley, mediocre, and messy people who were once considered outsiders but who have discovered their insiderness in Jesus.

And yet, we pray for God’s kingdom to come because it is not yet here in its fullness. It’s the whole “already but not yet” thing. To be Christian is to be unsatisfied with the status quo, with how things are. 

We are unsatisfied because our faith is eschatological. That is, we are a people who insist on leaning into God’s future.

However, that’s doesn’t mean we’re just standing around on our tiptops hoping to catch a glimpse of the ever arriving day after tomorrow – to pray this prayer means we are already participating in that strange and wondrous future.

We Christians are a people who live outside of time. We gather together to read words from the past that give us an assurance of a future that allows us to live differently now.

We know how the story ends which means we are clued in to how God’s future, what we call the kingdom, is already in-breaking with the present.

That’s why we do such wild and wondrous things like loving our enemies, and befriending the friendless, and feeding the hungry. We live that way because each of those things are foretastes of the kingdom made possible and manifest in Jesus. And, at the same time, we can do the wild and wondrous thing we are doing right now: worship.

Do you see? In a world as broken and backward as ours, we can take the time to have a party, a party we call worship. Part of our faith is the gift of grace to let loose and celebrate each Sunday.

Listen – The Kingdom of God is like a king who gave a banquet for his son. He sent his slaves out to go collect the invited guests with descriptions of all the lavish preparations for the party. But each of the invitees had an excuse for missing out on the party, they were either too busy, too indifferent, or too agitated to take the time to let loose and have fun. 

But this king was no ordinary king. Nothing could stop his party. So he sent his slaves back out again, and this time he ordered them to drag in people off the street, the nobodies and the lowly, bring them all in, the good and the bad, so long as the place was packed to the brim.

Therefore, the kingdom we pray for every time we pray as Jesus taught us, it is both political and it is a party. It has ramifications for how we live and move and have our being. But it’s also fun. 

Last weekend our church was decked out for Winter Vacation Bible School where we were out to solve the mysteries of the kingdom. We had Rec in Memorial Hall, Science upstairs along with Crafts, we had Music with Mr. D, and story time with the Reverend Detective here in the sanctuary. The kids would saunter in with their little magnifying glasses and we would always start with finding a story in the altar bible but, of course, the Bible was missing every time they walked in so the kids would have to run around the sanctuary in search of the scriptures.

After doing it three different times, one of our Preschool age kids said, “Pastor Taylor, you have got to be more careful with that Bible!”

It was a great and riotous weekend with the kids running all over this building. But for me, above all the stations and even the scripture stories, my favorite moment came when, on Saturday, it was all said and done, a set of parents came in to pick up their kids and they asked, “How was it?” And their son shouted, “I HAD SO MUCH FUN!”

That’s the kingdom of God that we pray for. 

And it’s not out there somewhere else waiting for the right moment to finally show up. That raucous kingdom is already here, in ways seen and unseen, and it is worth our celebration.

Or, as Robert Capon so wonderfully put it…

“God is not our mother-in-law, come to see whether her wedding-present china has been chipped. God is a funny Old Uncle who shows up, unannounced, and uninvited, with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other.”

The Lord comes to start the party we call the Supper of the Lamb, the party we catch glimpses of every week, the party to which we are invited even though we don’t deserve it. 

And so, every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, every time we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper with Jesus, we live into the reality of Jesus’ kingdom we pray for. 

God’s kingdom is a bunch of people like us, good and bad and everything in between, eating and drinking and having fun with Jesus. 

That’s the future we lean into whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Amen. 

An Example

Posted on by

I preached the following sermon on 8/7/16 at St. John’s UMC in Staunton. I was struck that week by the lack of faithful Christian examples and felt moved to talk about Wilford Kirby who, in so many ways, talked the talked AND walked the walk of discipleship. Wilford died this week and I am reposting this in his honor – my life is better for having had him in it. Well done, good and faithful servant.

–

Luke 12.32-34

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Meanwhile, when the crowds gathered by the thousands to hear him talk, so many in fact that they began to trample on one another, Jesus rose to speak. He warned his disciples against hypocrisy – live honest lives. He instructed them to confess fearlessly – all who earnestly repent will be forgiven. He shared the parable of the rich fool – you can’t take your money to heaven. And then he gave them some final instructions:

“Do not be afraid little sheep! For it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give away your money, use your gifts to bless others here and now. For where your treasure it, there your heart will be also.”

Sometimes Christians drive me crazy. You know, the super pious ones who are forever wearing their faith on their sleeves; the ones who stand on the street corners of life blasting off about some passage or another; the ones who come knocking on your door and try to sell you on the gift of eternal life instead of the fires of hell.

Have you ever met or encountered a Christian like that? I can’t help but feel like they are the kinds of Christians that are giving the rest of us Christians a bad name. Jesus never instructed his disciples to act like the people from Westboro Baptist church who are forever picketing the funerals of people whom they believe did not live up to Christ’s expectations. Jesus never called his disciples to be racist or bigoted toward peoples of different nationalities, or race, or creed, or sexual orientation. Jesus never implored the disciples to use fear mongering to convince people to come to church or otherwise be threatened with the fires of eternal punishment. Yet, if you turn on the news, or get online, those are the kinds of Christians we hear about the most; the ones who give the rest of us Christians a bad name. 

Just once I would like a good Christian to be featured for all to see; someone who has absorbed the Word throughout his or her life and has lived accordingly; someone who believes the good news is so good, that is worth sharing not to fill the pews, but to fill hearts; someone who could stand like an earthly example for the rest of us to catch a glimpse of the ways Jesus calls us to behave.

I was asked this winter to be a guest preacher at Augusta Street UMC in Staunton. We had a midweek and midday service and I decided to preach about how good it is when we dwell together in unity. The service was well received and we gathered in the social hall after worship for a light lunch. I walked around for a couple minutes until I found an empty chair next to a man named Wilford Kirby who was deeply engrossed in a conversation with someone else. 

Wilford was “one of mine.”

Elsewhere in the room, United Methodists from all of the churches in our town were sitting with their friends from their churches. Like cliques in a high school, the Central folk were at one table, the Cherryvale folk at another, and so on. But Wilford refused to be subject to this paradigm. He was sitting with the preacher from Augusta Street, though I don’t think he knew that he was the preacher. Because I eavesdropped on the end of their conversation, and the last thing Wilford said to the preacher was: “You should come try out our church on Sundays.”

Anyway, I sat with Wilford and he was quick to make a couple comments about their church facility in comparison with ours, offered a few critiques on how my sermon could have been better, and continued to eat his soup and sandwiches. I had other things to get done that afternoon, so after I finished eating I excused myself and told Wilford that I’d see him in church on Sunday and left.

Not fifteen minutes later was my phone ringing. When I answered all I heard was: “Wilford fell, broke some ribs, on his way to the hospital.”

I immediately turned my car toward the direction of Augusta Health and beat the ambulance to the Emergency Department. But because they needed to do some x-rays and have him checked out I wasn’t able to get back, and he didn’t want me to anyway.

The next day I showed up at his house and banged on his door until he slowly made his way to the front of the house and let me in. I should have been a little more compassionate and patient regarding the fact that he was walking around with a few broken ribs, but I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to make sure he was okay. I wanted to pray for him.

And as we sat down in his basement, before I could even open my mouth, he asked me how I was doing, and then went through the list of everyone he had been praying for and wanted updates since he had been out of the loop for a whole day.

Wilford Kirby is the kind of Christian that makes the rest of us Christians look better.

Wilford Kirby is an example to us all about what it means to follow Christ in this life.

Luke, in this passage about our treasures and our hearts, calls for us to put first things first. The things of the Lord are to be the most urgent and pressing priority in every Christian’s life. We are not to be afraid nor are we to succumb to the worldly distractions of wealth that constantly distract us from God’s love and care. There are no wallets, or stock portfolios, or bonds that will not wear out in time. God promises not to fill us with earthly wealth and material possessions, but instead surprises us with the gift of the kingdom. 

Receiving this gift, the kingdom, makes us rich beyond our ability to comprehend. But being rich toward God is not about putting sizable sums in the offering plate during worship. What Jesus rejoices in, is our reorientation toward the whole of life as an abundant gift from a generous God – a gift that can be given away with abandon.

Wilford Kirby has given his life to the kingdom, because the kingdom was first given to him. 

He has easily attended more worship services than anyone in this church over the last three years, including me (and I’m the pastor!). On Sunday mornings Wilford is the first layperson to enter the sanctuary making sure our heat is pumping in the winter, and the AC is on during the summer. He checks the lights for optimum worship participation, and he checks through the bulletins to make sure everything will go smoothly.

Every winter he sits out in his truck for hours on end waiting for people to come take a peek at our Christmas trees and offer them his assistance. Even though we have a giant sign advertising the times the lot will be open, Wilford believes in being present for the kind of people who ignore signs like those. 

He is here an hour before our special services throughout the year like Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday, and Christmas Eve just in case anyone arrives extra early. 

He is almost always the first person to show up in my office to find out how someone from our church is doing and how he can be praying for him or her. 

For years he has mowed the lawn of our church and cared for the property as a volunteer. He never complained; he never sought recognition; he never wanted praise. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been sitting in the comfort of my air-conditioned office day-dreaming about God when I’d see Wilford come flying past my window on the lawn mower with a smile hidden underneath his dust-mask. 

Wilford has been here for every funeral since I arrived. Even for people he never knew. Yet he always stands in the back greeting people as they walk in, not because he was asked to, not because he was told to, be because he believes it’s the right thing to do. 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

The greatest treasure that Wilford Kirby has offered this church has been his very life, and he has given it with abandon. 

But why? Wilford could be spending his precious time working with other civic organizations trying to make the world better. He could be spending his afternoons on the golf course or relaxing in the comfort of his home. He could use his life to do any number of things, but instead he has given it to this church.

My suspicion is that Wilford has given his life to the church because he knows and has experienced how the kingdom was given to him, and he wants to share that gift with others. He trusts that the Lord will provide. He humbly obeys the commands to love even the unlovable. He has seen first-hand how the kingdom of God can become manifest in other peoples’ lives. He put his treasure in this place because his heart has always been here. He wants other people to be blessed in the ways that he has been blessed. So he shows up. He prays. He cares. He loves. And he is an example to us all.

But that’s not to say that Wilford is perfect; he’s not. There are plenty of Sunday mornings when I finish a service and walk down the center aisle only to see Wilford standing in the back with his arm outstretched and his finger pulling me in as if to say, “Let me offer a suggestion.” Or there have been plenty of times that I’ve heard his footsteps walking down the hallway and I know from the texture of his tempo that he’s coming not to congratulate me on something but to complain about something that has happened in the church. But the thing is, even when Wilford is frustrated or upset it is because he believes our church can be better. He believes that we are part of the kingdom and we can’t be just like any other church. He expects excellence precisely because that’s what God expects from all of us. 

Being rich toward God involves a generosity of spirit that opens our perceptions toward God’s generosity. Wilford knows how blessed he is, for the kind of life that he has had, and therefore he knows no other way to live than the way that he does.

Theses words from Jesus first meant for the crowd, and now meant for us, decisively interrupt our lives in this place and on this day calling us to focus not on the demands of the overly scheduled life, but on the Lord who comes in surprising ways to offer comfort, assurance, and love. Through these words we hear Jesus telling us that the time is now to start living a new life, not dictated by the past, but defined by God’s belief in our future. God uses people like us, people like Wilford, to make the kingdom manifest so that lasting joy will come to God’s little flock we call the church. 

At this table, where Wilford has come time and time again, we receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In this profound moment we are offered the kingdom again even though we do not deserve it. We come forward with hands outstretched remembering this incredible gift that has been given without cost. And by receiving this gift, we cannot help ourselves but live transformed lives. 

So come and see that the Lord is good. Feast at this table where heaven and earth are bound together. Join together with Wilford Kirby as he walks to the front to receive the gift of the kingdom once again. And let it change your life like it has changed his. Amen. 

The Law Brings Wrath

Posted on by

Romans 4.13-17

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

brown wooden stand with black background
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

We think the “law” can save and fix our messed up and broken lives.

From infancy we’re spoon-fed a narrative of righteous self-determination, that if we do all the right things, and go to the right school, and marry the right partner, then everything will be as it should be.

Until it isn’t.

And then the “law” refuses to let us go.

So we adopt new habits: we buy a Peloton, we go on a new diet, we stay up late into the evening looking at Zillow for the next perfect house, we “Marie Kondo” our lives in order to get things under control.

And, even if some things change, perhaps we get that nice dopamine hit from imagining ourselves in a new place or we can fit into clothes we haven’t worn since college, we can’t actually fix ourselves with the “law.”

At some point the new house becomes the hold house, a few weeks away from the gym brings our waistline back, and on and on.

The law kills, or as Paul put it: the law brings wrath.

Subscribed

But Jesus came to bring us something better than another law, something better than another set of things we must do in order to get God to do something for us. Sure, we’re called to love God and neighbor, turn the other cheek, pray for our enemies, but those are never prerequisites for the Kingdom.

Remember: The Kingdom is already among us. Our sins were nailed to the cross and left there forever. 

The Law (from scripture and from life) is good, but it kills us. It exists to accuse us and it shows us, over and over again, who we really are. For, to borrow another expression from Paul, no one is righteous, no, not one.

Even our subtle exercises in self-denial during Lent help to remind us of the condition of our condition: Lent isn’t about participating in spiritual olympics in which we compete with one another to see who can be the most holy – instead it’s about confronting the fact that our desires will always get the better of us.

But the Law, and its ability to deaden us, is Good News and exactly what we need. It’s only in death (read: Baptism) that we begin to know the One who came to give us grace.

Contrary to how we often water down the Gospel, we worship a rather odd God. Our God who, among other things, speaks from a burning bush, promises offspring to a wandering octogenarian, and saves the cosmos through death on a cross.

And for Christians, we know who this odd God is because we know Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, Jesus is not some new Moses who offers a set of guidelines to save ourselves and the world. Instead Jesus comes to be our salvation in himself.

Here’s the Good News: On any given Sunday the people of God called church gather together to hear the most important words we will ever hear: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that proves God’s love toward us – In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.

Notice – Christ died for us while we were sinners, not before and not after. Christ chooses to die for us right in the midst of the worst mistake we’ve ever made or will ever make. 

In the end, that’s what it’s all about. 

We don’t follow Law in order to get God to save us. 

We are already saved which then frees us to follow the Law – we do the things Christ calls us to do not because they earn us anything, but simply because they set us on the adventure we call faith. 

How Odd Of God To Save This Way

Posted on by

This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Jason Micheli, Teer Hardy, and Stanley Hauerwas about the readings for the Second Sunday in Lent [A] (Genesis 12.1-4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4.1-5, 13-17, John 3.1-17). Our conversation covers a range of topics including righteousness, So I Married An Axe Murderer, Nicodemus, tribal identities, young theologians, agency, lettuce sermons, control, salvation, recapitulation, the crucified Christ, David Bentley Hart, and eschatological tension. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: How Odd Of God To Save This Way

A Peculiar Prayer

Posted on by

What makes a sermon, a sermon?

I’ve long held that the mere writing of a sermon, words on a page, don’t actually make it much of anything. A sermon is only a sermon when it is proclaimed among and for God’s people within the context of worship. The prayers, music, and even presence of individuals make the sermon what it is because the Holy Spirit delights in making the words proclaimed from the pulpit God’s words for us.

And so, I have a sermon that is not really a sermon. I prayed over these words and put them together for the first Sunday of Lent, but became sick prior to Sunday morning and asked Eric Anderson, the Director of Next Gen Ministries at Raleigh Court UMC to preach it on my behalf. I am thankful to serve a church that is willing to pivot when necessary and to work alongside Eric who, admittedly, probably did a better job preaching “my” sermon than I would have had I been well enough to do it.

Here’s the sermon I wrote and that he preached…

–

Matthew 6.9

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.

John 15.13-17

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

people inside room
Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

When we pray, if we pray at all, we usually do so because circumstances have convinced us that we are completely and totally alone, and that we have to navigate and figure out our circumstances alone.

This is my fault and I have to fix it.

No one knows what this feels likes, which is why no one else will understand it.

If I just pretend this isn’t happening, maybe it will all go away.

And all of those lies begin to unravel with the words, “Our Father.”

Jesus is in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount. It begins with blessings, and talk of salt and light and law. Jesus warns his disciples about practicing their piety publicly. And then, without much warning, he teaches them (and us) how to pray.

When you are praying, Jesus says (notice, Jesus assumes they/we are already a praying people. What’s important is not that we ought to pray, but that we ought to pray a certain way). 

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

In other words, don’t puff your prayers up with all sorts of adjectives and adverbs. You don’t need to sprinkle all that fancy stuff on top because, Jesus says, your Father already knows what you need before you ask.

And yet, when you pray, pray this way:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, and we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trail, but rescue us from the evil one.

What a peculiar prayer.

Subscribed

Notably, this isn’t the only prayer in the Bible. The psalms are filled with prayers. Any speech toward God is a prayer, so when Peter is encountered by Jesus and says, “Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man,” he is praying. Jesus tells stories about prayer, and rebukes others for the way they pray. And, in Luke’s telling of the Gospel, Jesus teaches this prayer, though the words are a little different, not in the middle of a sermon, but because the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Among the many things that might describe what it means to be Christian, to be disciples of Jesus Christ, at the very least we are people who pray. We understand prayer to be important, whether we can articulate it or not. We speak to God and we listen to God. 

Contrary to how we might imagine it, living a life of faith isn’t about adhering to a certain set of beliefs as much as it is learning how to pray. 

Karl Barth once wrote, “To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing; it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life.”

And yet, among all the prayers in scripture, both the Old and the New Testaments, and among all the prayers we might discover in something like The Book of Common Prayer, even our own extemporaneous prayers, this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is what makes prayer possible. 

It is, admittedly, a bit strange to pray to God as Father. For, even since the beginning of the church, Christians have understood that God is beyond our human understandings of gender. God is neither male nor female. God is God.

And yet, for as strange as it is to refer to God as Father, it is far stranger that we begin the Lord’s prayer with the word, “Our.”

brown wooden cross on brown wooden wall
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

Our, of course, is often understood as a plural possessive pronoun, but when we say, “Our Father,” we are not communicating that God belongs to us. Rather, the our in the Our Father is a bewildering claim that God, the author of the cosmos, the One in whom we live and move and have our being, has determined to become our God. That is, God doesn’t belong to us, but we belong to God, together.

In other words, long before any of us reached out to God, God reached toward us, claimed us, and promised to make us God’s people. 

It is never because of what we do or have done, but because of what God in Christ has done that we are able to pray, “Our Father.”

And it’s not just that we are able to pray those words, we are bold to pray them. 

Does it feel bold to you to pray the Lord’s Prayer? I’ll be the first to confess that, as a liturgical moment in our worship every week, it can feel a little boring rather than bold, just another thing we have to do.

Hence this sermon series.

But there is a boldness to this peculiar prayer. We do well to not pray it lightly, or treat it as one more thing we have to do. It takes guts to pray this prayer.

It takes courage to address the great I AM who can make the impossible possible. As Buechner put it, “We can do nothing without God and without God we are nothing.”

And yet, we can boldly pray this prayer because we belong to God. God has intruded into our lives in spectacularly weird and peculiar ways in the person of Jesus… who teaches us this prayer. And the us is important. 

Being Christian isn’t something that comes naturally, and its not something we can figure out on our own. Being Christian is a result of being initiated (through baptism) into a group of people called church who are shaped by this prayer. 

Therefore, the our in the Our Father is admission that we are not alone. Even if we pray this prayer away from other people, the “our” is a stark declaration that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian.

We are bound to one another, and we are bound to God.

Can you imagine how different the faith would be if Jesus taught us to pray, My Father who art in heaven, give me my daily bread?

Our faith is a communal one where we cannot know what we are doing unless there is a we. 

In other words, The Beatles were right, We get by with a little help from our friends!

Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic thinker from the 13th century, is famous for quipping that we are created for no greater purpose than friendship with God. The our in the Our Father reminds us that we cannot pray without friends. This is why you can tell if someone is a Christian by who their friends are.

And, oddly enough, Jesus chooses us to be his friends. 

It would be one thing if Jesus called us his servants, serving the Lord is a worthy task. But, instead, Jesus befriends the disciples and all of us.

And what is the surest sign of a deep friendship? Listening.

Do you have someone in your life who is a good listener? I hope so. I wouldn’t be where I am were it not for those who have been willing to listen.

And that’s exactly what Jesus does for us. But not just that, Jesus listens to our prayers, and Jesus responds to them.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name.

The God we worship, the God we pray to, our God, rules from heaven. That we pray to God in heaven is important. For, it is the reminder that God is placed, located, and active. Our God is somewhere and that somewhere is different than where we are. But it’s only because of God’s location, that God is able to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine. From the throne of the cosmos God acts and it made known to us in ways seen and unseen. 

Therefore, we pray not because it’s good for us, though it may be. Prayer is not self-help. Rather, prayer is the recognition that we need help from outside of ourselves. For, if it were all up to us, things would remain the same. We need others to enter and act in our lives just as we need the acting and enacting Lord of heaven and earth to make a way where there is no way. 

We hallow God’s name, we call it holy, out of recognition that God is God and we are not. We pray to the Holy One because only the Holy One can make us holy. Otherwise, prayer is just empty words offered to no one but ourselves.

But the Gospel is a stark reminder that we are not alone. Our Father will not let us remain isolated and abandoned. Whenever we lift these words up, words straight from the lips of Jesus, the connections between us, one another, and the Lord are reconstituted and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Our Father reigns from heaven, God’s name is holy, and because of such, we can pray the rest of the prayer. Ultimately, we learn how to pray by following Jesus, who is God’s prayer for us. Amen.

Cut To The Heart

Posted on by

Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Where does this day come from?

Well, it’s a bit of a mystery. We can point to these definitive moments in church history when certain leaders in the church decided we needed certain days on the liturgical calendar, but the habit of Ash Wednesday, and Lent for that matter, is a little more complicated.

As best as we can tell there was a one to two day fast leading up to Easter in the early church. Fasting, of course, is about preparing one’s body and focusing on the Lord. And, at some point, this extended backward to a week’s worth of fasting and was marked as Holy Week – Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Eventually one week grew to three, and then forty days. 

We do know that once the church adopted this forty day season leading up to Easter, it was primary about preparing baptismal candidates to be received into the church on Easter.

Now, the forty days has all sorts of biblical connections – the 40 days and nights with Noah on the ark, the 40 years of wandering through the wilderness with Moses, and Jesus’ 40 days of temptation.

Today, the season of Lent exists for three main reasons – it is still a time of preparation for baptism, it is a time for reconciliation for those estranged from the church, and it is a time of repentance for the whole church as we renew out commitment to following Jesus.

No matter how it started, and no matter how it transitioned into what it is today, Lent is a season of introspection. Looking inwardly. And it begins in the most introspective way of all, by confronting our mortality and sinfulness.

In other words, Ash Wednesday is not for the faint of heart. It requires a community to hold us up at a time like this when we are told the deepest truth that we otherwise avoid at all costs. No one makes it out of this life alive.

black powder on white surface
Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

And yet, there’s this strange temptation to receive such a difficult truth but then we wear it proudly and piously when we leave church. It’s a bit odd that the ashes on our foreheads have become a marker of faithfulness. 

I remember a few years ago, after presiding over a service just like this one, I got on my phone and saw all these people posting selfies with ashes smeared across their foreheads. Only they didn’t call them selfies, they call them #ashies.

Nothing could be further from the text we read today.

Jesus’ rebuke against those who go around piously comes in the midst of his Sermon on the Mount and is admittedly a bit ironic. At the beginning of the sermon he lists off blessings and then he commands his followers to be salty and shine their light so that others might know the light of Christ.

And then, just a few paragraphs later, he tells his followers to pray in secret away from others, and he warns them against practicing their piety in public.

Public piety is but another form of self-justification – it’s the Pharisee in the Jesus’ parable who does all the right things so well that he’s wrong. “Well, at least I’m not like that person,” is a projection of our righteousness over and against others.

Ash Wednesday refuses to let us have any of that. 

Lent is a season of accusation, and ever ringing reminder that we are not as we ought to be. We can’t even practice our piety publicly because we do so not because of our commitment to God, but because we want to be seen by others.

Ash Wednesday, the irony of making our foreheads notwithstanding, has nothing to do with our goodness or our piety, it has nothing to do with how many bad habits we’re going to try to drop, or how many good ones we try to adopt. 

Ash Wednesday, oddly enough, is about grace.

Subscribed

The ashes in the sanctuary point us toward the strange and devious links between sin, death, and even rebellion. The words I say, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” come from Genesis when Adam and Eve receive punishment for their sin. Judgment, Peter reminds us, comes first for the household of God. The ashes remind us of our fragility and finitude. 

But more important than the ashes themselves is the fact that we receive them in the form and shape of the cross.

Therefore, the ashes are both a reminder of our failure, and Christ’s victory, all at once. 

This is the day that we are bold to confess our truth, we are sinners, we are failures, we are not righteous.

We have not loved God with our whole hearts, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves, we have failed to be an obedient church, all of that. 

And yet, Christ dies for us while we are yet sinners, and that proves God’s love toward us.

Which means, despite how hard the words are for me to say, or even for you to receive, the crosses on our foreheads are the great declaration of God that there is nothing we can do or leave undone that will ever separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.

Lent, contrary to how we might imagine it, is not about how angry God is with us for our sins. Even though God has every right to be angry with us. Lent is actually all about how God, in Christ, intervenes on our behalf to make a way where there is no way. We, therefore, don’t practice our piety publicly or privately in order to appease God. We instead receive these ashes as a sign of the great gift of grace that comes to us no matter what.

Jesus’ rebuke against practicing our piety publicly, particularly as we enter the season of Lent, they cut straight to the heart. But sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Our hard-heartedness often renders us convinced that we have to earn our ticket to heaven whereas the crosses on our foreheads reminds us that heaven has already come to us. 

In the end, we are not called to be good, or virtuous, or even pious. We are called to be disciples. And discipleship is often nothing more than following Jesus toward the cross.

The cross reminds us that we can’t fix ourselves. In any other place and any other institution that is unmitigated bad news. But here, in the church, it’s the Gospel. It’s good news because nobody, not the devil, not the world, not even ourselves can take us away from the love that refuses to let us go. 

Or, as Paul put it, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Amen. 

The Inexhaustibility of Scripture

Posted on by

This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Jason Micheli, Teer Hardy, and Stanley Hauerwas about the readings for the First Sunday in Lent [A] (Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7, Psalm 32, Romans 5.12-19, Matthew 4.1-11). Our conversation covers a range of topics including Christological readings, the case for the Revised Common Lectionary, lenten practices, congregational reactions, timely habits, Karl Barth, sinful manipulation, legalism, Jesus’ temptations, and the first sin. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: The Inexhaustibility of Scripture