2-1-21 - They Also Serve

You can listen to this reflection here.

We have been looking at “call stories,” the ways in which Jesus invited his disciples to become his followers, to leave their nets and books and ledgers and follow him. Most left not only their livelihoods, but whole networks of family and community who relied upon them. We get a glimpse into the extended family of four of Jesus’ closest disciples in this week’s passage:

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

Andrew, Simon (Peter), James and John are the four fishermen whom Jesus called from their nets to follow him. The two sets of brothers lived and worked together, and obviously Simon and Andrew lived with their extended family in the same household. And quite clearly Simon Peter was married. We don’t know about the others, but they likely had wives and children as well.

So the call to follow Jesus required sacrifice from others, not only the disciples who traveled with him. One of the most poignant reminders of this came for me in an excellent but short-lived TV series, Nothing Sacred, about a Roman Catholic priest. In one episode, we keep coming back to a statue of a woman waving, and we don’t know what it means until the end, when we learn it is a statue of Peter’s wife, waving goodbye. (I couldn't recall which episode it was, but someone has put the series up online, if you can’t stream it somewhere…)

I know many a person who has been part of a church community in which their spouse does not participate. They exist in a special tension between living out their faith with the fullness they’d like, and not taking too much time and attention from their families and partners. This can have an emotional and spiritual component as well; I’ve watched people hold back on going deeper spiritually because they don’t want to get too far “out in front” of a less believing partner.

If you know someone who is on her own in her faith journey, in terms of her family system, remember to pray for her, and find ways to “be family” for her at times. And if you are in that situation, pray that the grace and strength that you feel in your connection with God will come through you into the household, whether or not the other members of your family name its source. God’s peace is God’s peace, and it works its wondrous way whether or not we name it. Then maybe it doesn’t have to be a tug-of-war, but a way to blend without imposing. And maybe in that space, your family might find room to move toward God.

And remember to thank your family for the ways they make it possible for you to live out your faith more fully and freely. I’ve known many non-attending spouses to be generous to the church with their time and resources, and enjoy church social times.

There are passages in the New Testament in which Jesus or one of the apostles clearly states where the priority between faith and family should be. And there are others, like this one, where we see the healing power of Jesus move into a whole household and bring transformation to a whole family.

Or maybe he was just hungry and wanted Peter’s mother-in-law to get up and make her famous meatloaf.

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1-29-21 - Famous

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Fame has a powerful effect on people, those who become famous and those who pay them inordinate amounts of attention. It can undermine our priorities and cause us to do and say things that don’t reflect our best selves. Who among us, if given the chance to hang out with a celebrity we admired, wouldn’t clear our schedule and get ourselves to wherever the meeting was to take place? I would drop at lot to meet a celebrity I thought was cool – and I’d be pretty sure everyone knew about it! Being connected to famous people can make us feel more important.

People who are famous say it feels odd to receive such attention from total strangers simply because you have a talent or skill or position that gives you exposure. It can be hard to be the object of projection from a public that doesn’t actually know you, but thinks they do. For the very famous, celebrity constricts movement, home life, spontaneity, even families and friends.

So how did Jesus handle it: 

At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Without a doubt, Jesus’ fame helped him spread the Good News more widely. It was a factor in attracting followers, who helped spread the Good News more widely still. Yet we also know from the gospels that more than once the crowds kept him from something he was going to do, and he spent long hours teaching and healing all who came to him.

And, of course, fame has an underbelly. The famous can suddenly be deemed – or become – infamous, notorious, the criticism directed toward them all the fiercer because it is distorted adulation. It was the fame generated by Jesus’ raising of Lazarus that sealed his fate with the temple authorities, and we all know how the crowds shouting “Hosanna” as he rode into Jerusalem became mobs crying, “Crucify him” within the space of a few days. We love our heroes – and we love to watch them fall.

Should Christians seek fame? Some star athletes and artists use their celebrity to proclaim their faith, sometimes with mixed results. And we know of pastors who’ve gotten very famous on the Gospel losing their way morally and legally. We might conclude that fame is something not to be sought, but if it comes to you unbidden, it should be managed with all the humility we can muster. As a boss of mine once said, “Don’t put too much stock in your own press releases.”

Jesus became famous out of all proportion to his humble beginnings – his humble human beginnings, that is. From the perspective of his divine origins, his long reign at the “top of the charts” is understandable. But he never acted like a famous person, never claimed prerogatives or favors, never let fame draw him off-mission. He went to the cross like the lowest of criminals – and emerged from the grave the Lord of heaven and earth, whose fame will never diminish, until we all gather in that Land where no one is more valued than anyone else.

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1-28-21 - Amazed?

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Amazement followed Jesus wherever he went. The healing of the possessed man in the synagogue, combined with his style of teaching, won him rave reviews:
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

It’s hard to avoid the subject of evangelism with this week’s passage. We see us how powerfully people reacted to Jesus when he first came on the scene. Looking back on those events from a 2,000-year distance, we’re bound to lose some definition and immediacy. When did we last say, “Wow! What is this teaching? Who is this guy?”

A domesticated Christianity is like lukewarm dish water. It allows us to go through the motions, but doesn’t really get the dishes clean. How can we reinvigorate our faith, our excitement at what God did in Jesus, and what God is doing now through the Holy Spirit working in us? The remedy lies less in talking aboutJesus than talking to Jesus; less observing from the sidelines and more direct experience of the Spirit’s power. We need to put ourselves in the way of experiencing God directly, and then do everything we can to help others into that place.

This Jesus may not be new news to many of us, but we live in a culture in which many people have only dimly heard of him – and their associations with the people bear his name might well be negative. We have a huge opportunity to introduce this guy to people who don’t know much of anything about him.

And what should we tell them? How we experience Jesus. Why we call ourselves Christ followers. What were the moments when he became real for us. Those are incredible stories! If we tell them, they'll plant seeds in the people who hear them. If I heard a story about someone being rescued from despair, or empowered to work for justice, or healed, I’d want to know more about that person.

All we need to do is catalyze a curiosity – and be there when questions are asked. The only two people whose conversion I know I had something to do with saw me center my life around Jesus and his church, and asked a ton of questions. God must have given me good answers (and in one case, amazing healing when I prayed…) The only answers we need to give are our own stories of our own experience. We don’t need to say why God allows suffering – we can say, “I don’t know why – and here’s a time when I felt suffering was answered by God with love,” or “Here’s a time when God worked through me to alleviate someone else's suffering.”

A good start would be to make an inventory of our “God-stories” and dust them off (creating a spiritual timelinecan prime our memory.) I’m not great at this – my sermons are too often declarations of belief instead of stories of transformation. So I will hold myself to this discipline too. Our experiences with God are our richest resource in God’s mission.

When were you last amazed by Jesus? Remember – and tell someone that story. You're just making an introduction - the next move is up to God.

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1-27-21 - For Freedom

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

If you’ve attended church in an urban area, you may well have experienced someone who comes in and doesn’t know how to “do it.” Clearly on some medication, or in desperate need of it, they mumble and shamble and can’t sit still; maybe they talk or shout during the sermon or the prayers. We know we need to welcome them as we do the “well-put-together,” but they can be disruptive, manipulative, even nasty when challenged.

Not that different in the synagogue in Jesus’ day: Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.

What did the people around Jesus think? “Oh God, don’t talk to him! Don’t engage...” Did they think Jesus was harsh with his rebuke, “Be silent!” Jesus knew the man was not the problem. As clearly as the demons could recognize his presence, he could recognize theirs. He knew this was not a case of mental illness or substance abuse or social disorder – he knew this man was captive to a spirit not his own, a spirit of evil which sought to hold him in disease and undermine every effort toward freedom.

This is only the first of many times in the gospels when we see Jesus communicate directly with evil spirits, commanding them to loose their hold on an afflicted person. I have heard of such things in our times too – even some psychologists believe there is a category of evil beyond the diagnosable pathologies we’ve become so adept at naming and mapping. Jesus never confused the person oppressed by the demonic with the forces oppressing him. He spoke right to the demons, casting them out in the language of command. Jesus knew he had power greater than they did, and they feared him.

I believe this can and does occur – people can be very vulnerable to an influx of dark spirits, especially if they have been victims of sexual violence, trauma or abuse that can so thoroughly undermine a sense of self. People who have been involved in or subject to occult activities can also be at risk. But even those who don’t believe this reality exists can affirm the movement toward freedom which Jesus consistently fosters. He was – and is – in the business of setting people free from all kinds of bondage. He wasn’t about to forget the spiritual as he attended to medical, emotional, political, economic, judicial, and social brokenness.

Paul reminds us in Galatians, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We are invited to constantly seek freedom from anything that hinders our growth into the fullness of who God made us to be. And we are called to invest in the freedom of others, across every kind of category of person, condition and “-ism,” seeking to free the person beneath the oppression and offering our strength for their spiritual growth. Who do you know who needs to be set free? (What about those threatening political violence in our time?) How is God calling you to help? And what freedoms are you seeking? Who might be your agent of deliverance?

Something wonderful can happen when we acknowledge the person hiding behind that “difficult” behavior. Often it is those “less presentable” people, when they are invited to speak, who articulate most clearly their experience of the love of God. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Indeed!

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1-26-21 - "I Know Who You Are"

You can listen to this reflection here.

I watch a lot of British detective shows, so I automatically impute a menacing tone to the words, “I know who you are.” Though that phrase can convey a happy recognition – of a movie star, say, or an old friend – it suggests a hidden knowledge about someone’s past or true identity.

One of the ongoing themes in the synoptic gospels is that the only ones who seem consistently to understand Jesus’ true identity as Messiah are the demons. That makes some sense – as spiritual beings, they would recognize the spiritual authority of the Son of God. They are always afraid of him, as we see in this week’s gospel story:

Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

These dark forces recognize that part of Jesus’ mission is to destroy them. After all, there is no point in announcing that God’s life has come among us with power to heal and transform the universe if you’re not also going to deal with the other side of the equation, what our baptismal rite refers to as “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance, and that means he also came to break the power of evil over humankind, whether that manifests as demonic oppression, economic and political injustice, disease and disability, or personal sin. One of our great claims as Christians is that Christ did break the power of evil and gave us the means to combat it, through the power of his name.

Do we know who Jesus is? The divine Son of the Living God, the savior and redeemer of the world, the One before whom the forces of evil cower? When we reduce Jesus to a nice guy, a good teacher, a moral model, an important world leader who only wants us to love one another, we leave out the power he possessed and demonstrated, power even his followers could wield in his name, power to heal and forgive and bring peace and justice that his followers can still wield in his name.

He has given us authority over the forces of evil, however we encounter them. We make his power and presence known simply by invoking his name: Jesus, the Christ, the name which awakens faith, the name by which Peter and John healed a lame man.

This week, whenever you encounter darkness, whether in the depression of a friend or in a headline, stop and invoke the name of Jesus, inviting his power to transform that situation. It can be scary to pray that, because it’s only one factor among many in any given situation – but if we believe it is the most significant factor, we dare to take that step of faith and make that prayer.

Whenever we do that, we are saying to Jesus, “I know who you are. And I'm with you.”

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1-25-21 - Never Heard That Before

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Whenever I go to a talk or a conference, I long to hear something I haven’t heard before, something that resonates with my mind and spirit and causes me to see in a new way. How rare it is to hear familiar ideas put together in a new way! So often we just spin endless variations on the same old themes; perhaps a new understanding emerges with each iteration, but we stay within the same paradigm. Well, Jesus broke the paradigm.

When I first heard the phrase “paradigm shift.” I thought, “If someone can tell me what a paradigm is, I’m happy to learn how to shift it.” It’s still not a word that makes intuitive sense to me, but a paradigm is a prevailing system, model, way of understanding something. A new paradigm offers an alternative way of seeing or doing the same old thing, a vision that reveals to us new possibilities, new connections, new vistas. Moving from thinking of ministry as being engaged in the Church’s mission to being engaged in God’s mission is a paradigm shift. Management systems based on collaboration rather than hierarchy represent paradigm shifts.

Jesus proclaimed a new paradigm – and people could tell. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority!”

In Jesus’ community, thinking and talking about God were done by question and argument, not declaration. Rabbis didn’t teach, “This is how it is.” Rather, they asked questions about a text in Scripture, suggested interpretations, argued against other interpretations, suggested new variations on the interpretations, and looked for truth in the searching. No one interpretation was necessarily more “authoritative” than another, though some views drew more adherents than others.

That day in the synagogue, Jesus did not open the text and say, “What if….?” He opened the scroll and said, “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He made declarative statements: “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Believe in the good news!” In modern language it might sound like, “Listen! God is on the move. God is doing a new thing. The realm of God has come near you, among you, even within you. Come and be a part of what God is up to!”

We have a challenge. For us this “new teaching” is over 2,000 years old, and has accrued the dust of hundreds of thousands of books in a thousand libraries and churches and stained glass windows. It seems irrelevant in a time when people increasingly draw authority from their own experience or favorite media outlet. For many of us, the Good News has become old, stale, two-dimensional – unless we hear it again with authority.

Friends, we need to hear it again from Jesus, the Jesus we meet in the Gospels, the Jesus we encounter in our prayers and our ministries. We don’t need to read it in a book. We need to read it on the face of someone who wonders if anyone will ever love him, or feel it in a rush of connection as we pray, or hear it from each other as we tell our stories of spiritual encounter.

And we need to hear ourselves tell it! Many people around us are not burdened by the age of this “Good News” – because they have never heard it, and may never if we don’t tell it in our own ways. Jesus’ teaching is still new. Let’s continue to renew our ways of hearing, and telling, that “old, old story.”

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1-22-21 - Fishing

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel is here.

I’m not much of a fisherman. Don’t have the skill, the patience or the stillness to do it well – that, and I feel too sorry for the fish. But I do believe it’s a skill Jesus would like me to learn, at least so far as the “fishing for people” part goes.

I tend to assume that in this story we’re the brothers being recruited along that seashore. But a great gift of gospel stories is that we can put ourselves into any of the characters and find deeper meaning. So we should try on the Jesus role as well. Because sooner or later, if a movement is to grow, the recruited must become recruiters. The time came when Peter and Andrew, James and John found themselves inviting other people into this band of Jesus followers.

What can we learn from Jesus’ technique as we seek to invite people into the life of faith? First of all, he showed up in their environments, at their place of work no less. He didn’t send a message from afar – he drew near, close enough to smell the fish, touch the nets, see real lives. He knew what he was asking them to walk away from. We need to know people "where they live" before we invite them to consider Jesus as Lord.

Secondly, he gave them a clear invitation: “Follow me.” So often we are muddy in our invitations. “Join us at church sometime” is not a specific, “I’d love for you to join me at church this Sunday – we have a visiting choir/preacher/are doing a great series on…..” Or invite someone to join you at a ministry of giving you’re involved in. And let's go beyond invitations to church “stuff” and get closer to the heart of the matter: “Would you like to take a walk and talk about spiritual things sometime? It’s such a big part of my life, and I have no idea about your spirituality.” Or, "Tell me one of your God stories." Who knows where that conversation might lead?

Third, Jesus made them a promise with his invitation: “I will show you how to fish for people.” He honored who they were and what they did, and offered continuity between their old lives and the unknown he was asking them to walk into with him. People are often excited about learning new things, and feel affirmed that you think they are worthy of being taught. That’s how leaders are made.

What did Jesus not do? He did not wheedle, cajole, arm-twist or try to manipulate them. He asked. They answered. They moved on together. Presumably he would have moved on if they’d said no too.

Jesus wasn’t always thrilled with the way these recruits followed orders or comprehended his teachings. But having chosen them, he was committed to them, and never gave up on them. It took a long time before they really demonstrated the leadership with which Jesus entrusted them. Look at Peter – he had to succeed and fail, step out in faith and sink in doubt, get who Jesus truly was and then miss the next cue, even deny his Lord three times and then repent – but in the end, he became that fisher of men still honored by the church over 2000 years later.

With a record like that, we shouldn’t feel too inadequate, right? Jesus is still inviting you and me, “Come, follow me. We have a world to heal.” You coming?

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