Working Out Our Salvation

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Philippians 2:1-13

I’ve told this story a few times before, but there is no hurt in redundancy.  It makes things stick.  There was an Old Order Mennonite man standing at a subway stop in New York City.  While he waited, a long-haired “Jesus freak” or one of the Jesus People came to him and asked, “Are you saved?”  Well, the Elderly Mennonite stood there a minute pondering the question and finally answered, “I suppose you should ask my neighbours.”  In the past I have explained this story from the perspective of individual eternal salvation because that is immediately where Christians in the evangelical world would go with it.  We assume that what the Jesus People fellow meant was had the Mennonite gentleman accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour so that he may go to heaven when he died.  Being more aware of the community aspect of the Christian faith, the Mennonite gentleman’s answer indicated that our eternal salvation, if valid, would be evidenced by our conduct towards our neighbours.  Faith cannot be separated from works.  As James writes, “Faith without works is dead” (Jm. 2:26).

Well, I would like to monkey about with that story a bit in an effort to explain what Paul means in Philippians 2:12-13, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  I hope that maybe we will gain an expanded definition of what salvation is and a greater awareness that God is working in us as the catalyst to salvation.

First, I want to tell you about the Jesus People movement.  My first exposure to them was from that old ‘70’s trucking song “Convoy”.  The Rubber Duck gets a convoy of trucks together to go speed across the USA thinking that the police can’t stop a massive line of tractor-trailers for speeding.  The convoy gets going and finally the police call out the National Guard to block the road and C.W. McCall sings: “There's armoured cars and tanks and jeeps, and rigs of every size.  Yeah, them chicken coops was full of bears and choppers filled the skies.  Well, we shot the line.  We went for broke with a thousand screamin' trucks and eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a Chartreuse microbus.”  

When I thought of those those long-haired friends of Jesus what I pictured was simply hippies on a drug induced Jesus-trip.  In reality, though the Jesus People were hippies, they were quite something more than strung out at Woodstock and all that.  The Jesus People were actually looking for an alternative lifestyle to that Hippie drug culture that was looking for an alternative to the Vietnam War and living the American Dream.  The Jesus People rather wanted to be like the early church.  So, they lived in communes and shared their possessions.  Healings and miracles were known to happen among them.  Though they looked like hippies, the Jesus People truly resembled the small, household churches of the early church.  They sprang up and became a movement that lasted only about ten years, but their legacy includes contemporary worship and contemporary Christian music.  

With Jesus People’s way of life in mind, maybe what that long-haired friend of Jesus gentleman meant when he asked the elder Mennonite, “Are you saved?” wasn’t “Are you going to go to Heaven when you die”, but rather “Do you know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour of all Creation and he has delivered you from all things in this world that oppress you and keep you from knowing and worshipping the true God.  Come with me and meet my friends for the Kingdom of God is here and you can truly live in it.”  Come with me and meet my friends and live in the Kingdom of God is a far cry from “Are you going to Heaven when you die?  Salvation as this friend of Jesus had experienced it in the Jesus People communities was a “this world” thing as much as it was a “coming world” thing.  Salvation could be lived out right now rather than something elusive to be waited for after death.  We really do the salvation that God wrought in, through, and as Jesus a disservice when we limit it to being simply about what happens after death. 

In the early church, salvation had as much if not more to do with present situations than with one’s eternal state.  The Jews who became the first church were waiting expectantly in great hope for God to act in their lives by sending his Messiah, the Anointed One, who would deliver his people from the evil oppression of the Romans, from their own corrupt monarchy, and from their crooked priesthood.  They also expected that God’s Messiah would then establish the reign of God, the Kingdom of God on Earth and that the Holy Spirit would be poured upon God’s people and that all nations would flock to the Messiah to be healed.  Throw in there also an open can of whoop on all evil spiritual powers as well.  The early Christians were not so much concerned about their after-life which to them was the expectation of being with Jesus when they died while they waited for the resurrection of the dead as much as they were that their hope for salvation to come about in their lives right now.  They wanted God to put things right in the world right now.  That was Salvation (capital S).

And so it is with us or should be.  Salvation is here in our present reality.  God is at work in us causing us, enabling us to will and work for his good pleasure.  Paul said, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  That little word “for” there is a powerful little word.  It structures the sentence to mean that God is here working in us, prompting us and making us able to work out our salvation.  

At the beginning of chapter 2 Paul tells us how to work out our salvation.  He writes: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,…”.  Even though Paul uses the word “if” at the beginning and makes the whole thing sound iffy, according to the rules of Greek grammar Paul isn’t being iffy.  He’s actually stating what is true among the Philippians.  They did have encouragement among themselves, comfort in love, affection and sympathy.  They have all this because of their relationship with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit who dwells in and among them.  Therefore, they could share the same love in Christ.  They could be harmonious and single-minded in their pursuit of living a lifestyle worthy of the Gospel of Christ.  They had all this communion in love because of the free gift of God’s working in them…and so do we.  

Since this is the case, the way we are to work out our salvation is by not doing things from selfish motives.  But rather, do all things in humility.  This is a difficult task for it means before we do or say or not do or say anything, we should do an inventory of our motives.  Is it for selfish motives that I do this or is it according to humility?  We must look after the interests of each other as if those interests were our own.  We must regard even those who are the most obnoxious among us as being more significant than ourselves.  God has enabled us to be this way – humble – by giving us the Holy Spirit – the mind or mindedness that Jesus has – and we must do our best to follow through on it because this life-changing, deep love expressed in serving each other is what salvation is and looks like.  It is what God looks like.  So, let us live from the mindedness of Christ that is in us, not trying to be gods.  Rather, let us in love be each other’s servant.  Amen.

The Common Wage

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Matthew 20:1-16

Many years ago I was an assistant manager in a steakhouse.  I have very fond memories of that job even though I have to admit that handling employee matters was often very trying.  Having to manage the often blatant differences between employee performance and employee compensation was, needless to say, an ongoing trial.  I used to hate it when somebody found out how much somebody else was getting paid and went on a tirade about it.  

But, hey, I did my share of complaining about what others got paid too.  I wasn’t the only assistant manager there.  There were two others.  I was there first and would have been the only one had I not started attending university.  We all got paid the same hourly wage which was a wise move on the part of the manager to keep us from in-fighting.  But there was some tension among us.  I’ll just say they weren’t as diligent in the duties of the job as I was.  Even the manager would sometimes complain to me about how lazy they were.  I used to get so mad.  I would drop in at dinnertime during the rush to check my schedule and find the other two assistants sitting at a table smoking while the floors were a mess, tables needed busing, and the waitresses were swamped.  The assistant managers should always pitch in with the floor duties when things were behind otherwise the restaurant doesn’t look clean and the employees seem more stressed than they are friendly.  It’s bad business.  Those two just didn’t seem to care and yet the three of us all got paid the same.  

Well, that’s the way it is in the working world.  I think when somebody gets paid for something they aren’t doing, somebody needs to take notice and set things straight.  That’s good business, right?  You don’t throw money away on labour.  Generosity kills bottom line profit and that will put you out of business.  Well, according to Jesus that’s just not so in the Kingdom of Heaven and he’s meaning that’s the way it is among his followers and our common relationship to him.  We all get the same pay no matter how long we’ve been on the job or how well we’ve done the job.  We all get him – his presence with us and his ministry to us.  Because Jesus lives, we are his Body filled and joined together by the Holy Spirit and therefore the kingdom of heaven is in our midst.  To use the words of the parable here, his ministry particularly in the context of this fellowship is the vineyard to which Jesus calls us to come and serve.  In fact, the wage that we all receive is the Holy Spirit who gives us new life, heals us, guides us, comforts us, and empowers us to do the work that is living testimony to God and his presence in our midst.  

In the Gospels, wherever Jesus he manifested, made real, made present  the kingdom of heaven by the things he said and did in front of everybody.  Since he is in our midst, we should be able to say the same for when we are gathered.  People should be able to walk in here and say something more than “what a pretty building” or “there’s a bunch of nice people there.”  People should be able to walk in here and sense Jesus' presence and say, “He’s here.”  The evidence of his presence is not in the way we do worship or the way we do the things we think churches are supposed to do.  It is simply that he’s here in our midst and we all in one way or another have encountered him and have in some sort of way been healed, given a new life, or felt the peace, the assurance.  If not, we wouldn’t be doing this church thing anymore.  For some reason, we keep coming back.  Jesus who lived, died, was raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven is alive and living in and among us ministering to all.  He’s here.

I’ll be honest with you and speaking personally, if Christianity were simply about living good, reading the Bible, and participating in the life of a congregation because that’s what God expects of us, I would not be a Christian.  For me, there had to be, has to be more.  I needed and still do need God to be real.  I was for the most part raised in and around the church, baptized as a baby and confirmed at age eleven.  But life for me just had too many hurts for me to simply fall back on simple beliefs.  I needed God to be real.  As a teen I left the church but I came back on my own at age 19 needing God to be real.  I needed God.  I didn’t need a religion.  I didn’t need a bearded old man enthroned upon ought’s and should’s.  I needed God to be real.  I, like many young people today, saw no real reason to look forward to life.  I had no hope.  

I remember well how God showed up and hope came to me nestled in faith.  It was actually in a Nazarene church.  I had a girlfriend had talked me into going to her church instead of the little Presbyterian church where my best friend’s mom went and I had recently started going looking for God.  She said “We’re spiritually alive.  Presbyterians are dead.”  Well, I’ve since found and adamantly stand on the reality that Presbyterians are very alive and we’re smart too.  We like an educated minister and allow questions.  I went to her church.  They were a charismatic fellowship that met in an elementary school cafeteria.  As soon as I walked in there, I felt him.  It was like a light that could be felt but not seen, a weightless weightiness that felt good like what Peter was talking about up on the mountain during the Transfiguration when Jesus was changed to dazzling white in front of them.  He said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”  Good.  Jesus was there in their midst.  I can’t explain it.  I just knew he was there.  It was good.  It was that way week after week.  It didn’t matter what they sang or said or even how they loved me.  What kept me going back to that fellowship was Jesus was there.  The fact that he was real, living, present sparked faith in me and hope.  I had something to cling to.  God really was real. God could be trusted and I could look forward to life.  I got into it and here I am 36 years later still at it because I know Jesus lives.  God is real.  Part of the wage we get as Jesus followers is faith, the living relationship with God, and hope.

When we come into the vineyard to work there is one thing that the landowner especially wants us to do and that is to love each other generously and that is because God is love and God is generous and indeed wasteful with it.  If we approach church like it is some institution in the world for doing good rather than as the living and loving body of Christ built among the relationships that we have with one another, then we’re working in somebody else’s vineyard.  The kingdom of heaven will manifest itself in us and through us concretely by the way God leads us to love one another, by the way we are patient, kind, generous, in control of ourselves, and compassionate.    

The wage referred to in this parable is the gift of God’s presence with us, given to us through Christ Jesus and made real in us by the Holy Spirit living in us.  It is the same no matter how much work we put in around and this is because our Lord chooses to be exceedingly generous with us because he simply loves us.  He wants us to have what we need to live on in this life…Himself.

Finally, the church is built on the foundation of God’s loving presence and its healing, life-changing effect on us.  The church grows with how God’s loving presence leads us to love each other and those around us.  I think this parable really calls us as the church to remember that our unity in love far outweighs what little we actually do of what we think churches ought to do.  The way we love each other is the manifestation of the faith and hope we’ve been graciously given because we have encountered the living, risen Jesus and now have to daily struggle with knowing that God is real.  If God is real, well, then that changes everything.  Amen.

When We Don"t Forgive...

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Matthew 18:21-35

I don’t know about you folks, but this parable, The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, really troubles me.  The lesson is quite obvious.  We, the disciples of Jesus, are to forgive as God has forgiven us.  That seems only proper, right, and obvious.  The logic follows that as God is forgiving and we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit as the Body of Christ, we too are to be forgiving.  It’s that image of God in us thing.  The people of God will reflect God.  That doesn’t trouble me.  What goads me is there at the end of the parable when the King in a fit of wrath turns the unmerciful servant over to be tortured until every last penny of the debt is paid and how do you pay off a debt from in prison where you can’t earn a wage.  Then Jesus says, “So my heavenly Father will also do to each one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from the heart.”

Jesus is indeed saying God is going to get us if we choose not to forgive.  That there troubles me.  For one, it says there is a wrathful side of God.  I like a God who is full of patience and healing mercy and love and all that, not a wrathful God.  This wrathful image of God plays too easily into the hands of evil people who use it to perpetuate fear and provoke acts of hatred against those who are different from themselves.  We have to be careful when we tread the precarious ground of God’s wrathful side.

Another thing, Jesus says that God the Father will be wrathful towards us, the disciples of Jesus – his beloved children in Christ whom he has laced with his very self by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  If we don’t take the path of forgiving one another from the heart, God will hand us over to be tormented.  Moreover, this forgiving that Jesus speaks of isn’t just the lip service, legal transaction kind of forgiving we cop out on where the offender says “Sorry” and the offended says “Forgiven” and we either go on pretending nothing happened or never speak to each other again while claiming all is forgiven.  The forgiveness Jesus is after is a deeper kind of forgiving, forgiving from the heart – you know, the place where our motives and drives come from.  I’ll get to that momentarily.  

We’ve also got to wonder what Jesus means by torment.  If the penalty for that servant being unforgiving was prison and torment, what’s that mean for us when we’re unforgiving.  What does Jesus mean by torment?  Well, let me lighten the moment and go Greek for a minute.  The Greek word for torment originates in the world of commerce as the word for a coin tester, the person who bites coins to test their authenticity.  The coin-biter torments the coin and the coin owner if it’s fake.  The concept’s scope of meaning grows to include testing the character of a person by torment.  Ultimately, it can be the obvious evil of torment for the sake of torment.  In this parable it is clearly the latter – torment for the sake of torment – but, I wonder if Jesus might be wanting us to think more along the lines that when we are unforgiving we can expect that God will let the unfolding of the consequences of our unforgiveness which may seem like torture be for us a test of our character to show our authenticity.  Does Jesus le us suffer the consequences of being unforgiving until we have had enough and decide to mature and been working to forgive.  Chew on that.

This concept of torment occurs in Matthew’s Gospel more than anywhere else in the Bible.  It means afflicted with disease (4:24) and suffering to the point of psychosomatic paralysis (8:26).  Jesus healed people suffering from these torments.  The demons who possessed the two “Gerasene demoniacs”, when they recognized Jesus as the Son of God shouted out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God.  Have you come to torment us before the time?” (8:29).  Jesus delivered the men by casting them out into a huge herd of pigs who then did a mass drowning.  Then immediately after that, Jesus fed the 5,000+ and sent the twelve disciples out on the Sea of Galilee in a boat by themselves where a perilous windstorm erupted.  The boat was tormented (or battered) by the waves.  Jesus came to them by walking on the water and after Peter’s failed attempt at walking on water, Jesus got into the boat and calmed the storm.  

In all these cases Jesus ended the torment and healed its effects on people.  But for the demons, he turned the torment back on them.  But in this parable of the Unmerciful Servant – and take a minute to scratch your head – Jesus goes the opposite direction.  According to this parable, if we take the route of unforgiveness, we choose to revert back to a “prior-to-meeting” Jesus state of torment and Jesus will let us wallow in it.  

When Jesus comes into our lives, he sets us free from our inclination towards unforgiveness and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart that desires to forgive and to be at peace with God, with ourselves, with those who have hurt us and also with those whom we have hurt.  If this parable does one thing, it points us to the fact that reconciliation, which means working the process of forgiveness, is our primary relationship task as Jesus’ disciples.  Being faithful people means being forgiving people.  In this world of sin-broken relationships, the restored image of God in us who are the disciples of Jesus looks like people working towards all-encompassing forgiveness.  I think the appropriate word for that is reconciliation; reconciliation among ourselves and in all of society.  When we choose to be unforgiving it is nothing short of a renunciation of Jesus and his healing work in us.  We can’t expect that to go well when we do that.

In the last few decades there have been a number of studies done on the effects of unforgiveness on our health and relationships that add some depth to our discussion.  An article by the Mayo Clinic entitledForgiveness: Letting Go of Grudges and Bitterness lists the relational effects of harbouring unforgiveness which is what is known as bearing a grudge.  It can cause us to: 1) bring anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience; 2) become so wrapped up in that past wrong that we can't enjoy the present; 3) become depressed or anxious; 4) feel that our life lacks meaning or purpose, even make us feel at odds with our spiritual beliefs; 5) cause us to lose or not form valuable and enriching connectedness with others. 

Looking more at the realm of physical health, unforgiveness increases the levels of stress hormones in our bodies.  This in turn leads to increased blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, weaker immune systems, and anxiety and depression.  All of which put us at a greater risk of stroke, heart disease, cancer, and chronic pain.  Unforgiveness has a huge health cost.

 My summation of all this is that being unforgiving leads us into a life of lonely, bitter isolation and sickness and the costs are deadly.  As I see it, the path of unforgiveness follows the same destructive course that addictions do on our health and relationships.  Harbouring unforgiveness will quench any sort of connectedness we have with others, leave us isolated and bitter, and make us sick.

In the course of my ministry, I have known a Christian who chose the path of unforgiveness and, sadly, I had the displeasure of watching that person stay that course against repeated attempts to get her to forgive.  She routinely and for no reason emotionally attacked members of her church as if she were possessed by a demon.  She lived alone and was lonely and bitter when she could have been so loved and supported.  To their credit, the people of her church did and still do a remarkable job of maintaining her in their midst despite her attacks, even looking after her health needs and well-being when she doesn’t deserve it.

Unforgiveness is a choice, so therefore is forgiveness.  It is remarkable that Jesus uses the imagery of debt to define unforgiveness.  Unforgiveness is pridefully holding on to a feeling that we are owed something by someone who has or whom we believe has wronged us.  Unforgiveness will cause us to become the hate-filled person that we believe the person who wronged us to be.  There’s a saying: “Be careful who you hate because you will become just like them.  

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is letting go of this pride-filled demand for retribution and need for the restitution of honour.  An eye for an eye only works as a deterrent.  It does not bring healing the way that forgiveness does.  Forgiveness is striving to be in a reconciled relationship with those who have wronged us working to restore trust and even more so wanting one another to know the peace and love we have in Jesus. 

Forgiveness is a process, a spiritual practice that we must work at.  This will be the first and probably only time I will agree with Joyce Meyer, who is a populist Christian writer and speaker.  She gives some helpful practical advice on how to forgive in an article entitled The Poison of Unforgiveness.  First, decide to forgive.  Decide to make amends.  We won’t do it if we wait until we feel like it.  Decide to forgive, desire to forgive, and start working on it and God will in time heal our emotions.  Second, we are powerless over unforgiveness so we must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit to help us forgive.  Third, do what the Bible tells us to do: pray for our enemies and do good to them and bless them rather than curse them. 

I add to her advice that we should also follow Jesus’ direction in Matthew 18:15-18.  As a matter of first course go to the person and address the situation.  If that doesn’t work, take two others.  If that doesn’t work, announce it to the church.  If that doesn’t work, then you’re done with them.  Let God deal them, but still keep praying and hoping.

To be faithful disciples of Jesus is to forgive.  There’s no way around it.  There's a cost when we don't forgive.  Amen.

  

The Pragmatic Symphony

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Matthew 18:15-22

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them (Mt.18:20).”  There is no doubt that this is one of the most quoted passages in the Bible particularly when we start talking about what the church is.  Jesus is in our midst when we gather together as his disciples.  That’s our foundational given.  Yet, it is a given that begs some questions, questions like, “How do we know he is here?” or more simply, “What does he look like?”

How do we know Jesus is here?  What does he look like?  Let me give you an image.  I once knew a man back in my university days who was a musical genius.  He was a one-man band/orchestra on the synthesizer/keyboard, which was a relatively new piece of technology in the world of music back in the late ‘80’s.  We got into a discussion one day about recording because I was doing a little bit of that (on a little four-track recorder that used a cassette tape.  How ‘80’s is that?) and so he had me over one afternoon to demonstrate how he put music together using just his synthesizer/keyboard. 

I sat in the corner of his basement studio and he set to work.  Keep in mind, he’s not using any sheet music.  He was simply making up a song there on the spot.  He started out making the keys of the keyboard be different kinds of drums and by tapping out a beat on those keys he programed in some drums.  Then he switched it to piano and added a basic chord progression and recorded it over top of the drums.  Then he changed the keyboard to the sound of an upright bass, then some guitars, and strings and horns.  He had it all sequenced over each other, the basic sound track of a song.  Then, he added in saxophone solos, trumpet solos, keyboard and guitar solos – all from this keyboard.  Then, he tweaked it with different accents of percussion instruments.  I was gobsmacked…and all just off the top of his head.

This man is what I would call a symphonizer.  He heard the music in his head and he had the ability to make the music happen.  He understood music in all its intricacies and how everything worked together, what needed to happen where for it to sound better.  He made sounds, silence, and time come into the state of agreement we call the harmonies that make up what we call symphony – sounds working harmoniously together.

Well, to talk about what Jesus looks like in our midst is to talk about symphony or rather symphonizing among the troubled relationships of human community; doing with human relationship what this man was doing with his keyboard.  Jesus is the Great Symphonizer.  He is in our midst working out human relational symphony that looks, acts, feels like him.  

Symphonizing is what Jesus points us to in verse 19 when he says: “Again, truly, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven (NIV).”  Unfortunately, that is a Severely (capital S) botched translation that’s easily misunderstood to say such ridiculous things as if two of you agree in prayer that your minister should be wealthy and drive a Cadillac, God the Father will make it happen.  What this verse really says is “Whenever two of you prayerfully symphonize in any matter of Christian community on earth, God the Father will do it for them from heaven.”  Now let me give my case for why it should be translated this way.

The word we translate as “agree” in the New Testament Greek is the verb form of the word from which we get our word “symphony”.  It is “symphoneo” or symphonize.  It is a word rooted in musical imagery in Greek just as it is in English.  The image Jesus is giving us is that we are to prayerfully go about the work of making our Christian fellowship look like musical harmony, particularly when we are broken and there are conflicts.

The word “anything” is not there in the Greek text.  Jesus is not telling us to pray for anything and agree about it and God will do it.  Jesus says “all pragma”.  Pragma is the word we get “pragmatic” from.  As most of you are farmers you know pragmatic means sticking to the simplest things that work in order to get it done.  There’s the philosophy of Pragmatism – “If it works, it’s true.”  In Greek, pragma are the things we do – our practical deeds, our actions.”  Prayerfully working to come to agreement, symphonising, in the things we do as Jesus’ disciples is the direction Jesus is pointing us in.  “Whenever two or more of you prayerfully work to come together in what you do, pragma, as Christian community, there I am in your midst Symphonizing”.  I think that’s what Jesus is saying here.  

So, what are the pragma we are to symphonize?  Well, Jesus begins verse 19 by saying “Again.” ”Again, I say to you…”  This means he is referring to things he has just said.  What are those things?  This passage comes near the end of a lesson session Jesus has been giving his disciples about the nature of community in his kingdom.  What the relationship among them is to be like.

The first pragma is that of conducting oneself according to childlike humility. Chapter 18 begins with the disciples coming to Jesus and asking, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Jesus answered by pulling a child to himself and saying, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”.  Humility!  Humility is one of the basic musical sounds in the symphony of the way we relate to each as followers of Jesus.

Next, Jesus tells the disciples to be careful in their conduct.  They must not by the things they do put temptations before others or cause others to fall away.  I may not consider something I do to be a “sin”, but if it causes another to judge me or fall away from Christian fellowship, then I best not do it.  It’s not worth it.  The word for this is maybe circumspect or being considerate.  Try not to give another person reason to judge us on our conduct.  Rather, give them reason to appreciate us.

Next, if we do cause someone to fall away from our fellowship, like a shepherd seeking one single lost sheep we must seek that person out to bring them back.  Our typical reaction when someone leaves the church is to consign their leaving to being either their problem or regard it as a matter of their private faith in which we shouldn’t meddle.  And so, we don’t do anything.  In Christian community we seek out those who walk away from our fellowship and very pragmatically try to fix what went wrong.

Similarly, Jesus teaches that when someone in the church wrongs another one of us, in the majority of cases the one wronged should discreetly approach the one who wronged them.  This means that as a matter of first course we don’t react violently, or hold a grudge, or malign the character of the one who wronged us.  We go to them and try to work it out as quickly and pragmatically as possible even though they wronged us.  If at first they don’t listen, then we bring others into it remembering that reconciliation rather than retribution  (making them pay) is the goal.

This teaching session ends with Peter asking Jesus how many times he must forgive his brother who repeatedly sinned against him.  Jesus answered, “Seventy times seven”.  That’s a phrase that means “always”.  Because God has forgiven us and stays in a relationship with us even though we never seem to cease sinning against him, so are we to patiently and humbly bear with one another continually pointing each other to Jesus where there is healing.

The pragma, the practical matter, of healing relationships is the symphony that Jesus is orchestrating among us.  Whenever we prayerfully come to agreement in any “pragmatic” matter of Christian community on earth, God the Father will do it for us from heaven.  Jesus is the great symphonizer.  We are like that keyboard synthesizer that my friend had.  It had many different instruments that my friend used to conjure up “symphony”.  We are the many different instruments and sounds through which Jesus makes the symphony of human community in his image arise.  When we prayerfully enter into this work with him, the Father will make it here on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

 

Turning Aside

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Exodus 3:1-12

When I was young. I had a best friend.  His name was Ronnie.  We met the summer before we started first grade and were best friends up until we graduated high school and life took us our separate ways.  As in any friendship there is a certain amount of give and take that must occur for two people to tolerate one another.  Although Ronnie and I were closer than brothers, there was one thing about him that I just had to tolerate.  He had this habit of whenever he saw something that fascinated him, he would turn aside and study it.  

This gift of his interfered with just about everything we did together.  For example, we lived not far from a Rose’s department store which later became a K-mart which later became something else and so on over the years.  When we came into some cash we would often go there to buy something to do.  The trip should have only taken maybe half an hour to walk through the field, cross the railroad tracks, through the parking lot to the store, go make the purchase and come back.  Ronnie’s gift of turning aside would often make this little trip take a couple of hours. 

There was no limitation to the things that fascinated him.  Walking through the field he would have to study bugs.  If there happened to be a dead animal on the way, look out because he was really fascinated with skeletons.  We would have to walk up and down the railroad tracks to see what was there.  Then in the parking lot, we would have to go to the dumpster to see what Rose’s had thrown away.  If there happened to be florescent light tubes, well Jedi warriors armed with exploding light sabers we became.  In the store, we would have to wander through the toy section so he could pick up stuff and study it.  The sales associates would often follow us around thinking we were shoplifters.  Then on the way home he’d have to do it all over again.  I never understood this simple fascination he had with the oddest things and why he had to turn aside and study them, I just learned to live with it.

Now, 50 years later, I have changed my mind about Ronnie’s giftedness.  Life is so busy, busy enough that even a walk to the store is most times inconvenient and out of the question.  If I’m bored, I can just pull out the phone and start surfing martial arts videos on YouTube or Facebook.  In the midst of all this, I have found it important and necessary to take the time to turn aside and take notice of little things, like watching squirrels and birds, or listening to the wind blow and then there’s my all-time favorite thing to do and that is stare at the trees.  Do you ever sit in front of a tree and just take it in.  It’s way more impressive than a Where’s Waldo book.  No two trees are the same.  The details in the bark manifest caricatures in the same way clouds do.  

This awareness of things is what they call mindfulness these days.  But, you know, I’ve learned that mindfulness isn’t enough especially when life is unfair, unjust.  Mindfulness needs to become prayerfulness.  I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a conversation that undergirds all of reality.  In and amongst God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a conversation that shapes everything, a conversation in which we are included and we do have a say.  But be warned, this conversation will teach you humility, patience, unconditional love, endurance.  

These days I like to take Nellie for walks and at least once a week we get out into the woods where I can let her run.  There’s a place where I like to go where I have discovered three stumps situated together not far off the beaten trail.  Those stumps are like three chairs or thrones to me – one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit.  It takes two kilometers to get there.  During that walk I try to just pray the Lord’s Prayer over and over again.  That’s a good way to enter into the conversation that’s undergirding everything.  When I get to the stumps, I like to sit in their midst, in the midst of these Three whom I can’t see but who are One, and pray what’s on my heart.  Since I give them space on the stumps, I don’t feel so much like I’m spouting prayers off into the open air like milkweed and dandelion seeds blowing away.  It’s a good way to practice awareness of God’s presence.  Quite often I get a sense that God hears, God sees, and God knows and understands what’s going on with me.

This is apparently what happened to Moses when he turned aside to explore a burning bush in the middle of the Sinai Wilderness. There was Moses out a little further in the desert wilderness of Sinai than he needed to be shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep.  One can only conjecture that Moses may not have been too proud of himself at the time.  He, the adopted grandson of Pharaoh was forced to flee his home, left behind everything, simply because he had heard the cry of one of his own enslaved Hebrew people and as a result murdered an Egyptian taskmaster.  He fled out into the desert to the home of Jethro, the Midianite priest and married one of his daughters.  He had nothing of his own to offer his wife and instead his father-in-law had to take him in and support him.  There’s being an adult and having to live with your parents, then there’s having to live with your in-laws because you are unable to provide for their daughter.  I suspect that was as low as you could go, back then.

Moses went from being a prince in the house of Pharaoh to being a shepherd in his father-in-law’s house.  During this “low point” in his life out in the desert wilderness he see’s a burning bush. He turns aside to study it.  He meets God in a personal, “I know your name” kind of way.  This is the God of his ancestors speaking to him.  God tells Moses that he does indeed hear the cries of his people.  He does indeed see how they are being made to suffer.  He knows, he is quite aware of, he understands what they are going through.  So, God tells Moses he is now going to do something about it…and it’s going to involve Moses.  Moses is going to have to repurpose his shepherding skills from herding sheep to leading God’s people out of Egypt.  This little incident of turning aside to study something fascinating completely turned Moses’ life around.

Encountering God changes things.  When we are at our lowest, God will get our attention.  Yet, we will have to make the effort to turn aside and enter that conversation that God is having, the conversation that shapes everything, the conversation that, yes, we are included in.  Give God time and space in our lives.  We need to take the time to turn aside and talk to God.  Like the Israelites we need to cry out.  Like I said, we are included in the conversation.  And while doing so, we need to give God the opportunity to speak to us.  It helps in so many ways to read Scripture daily…so many ways.  When we take the time to turn aside and talk to God we will discover exactly what Moses discovered – God hears our crying out.  God sees what we’re going through.  God knows, God understands what we’re going through.  God will in his time act and that’s why being part of the conversation requires humility and patience on our part.  In the meantime, God will be with us and lead us through the wilderness.  Take some time for turning aside to enter the conversation.  You just might be found by who you’re looking for.  Amen.