John 13:31-35

31 When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him,[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The Final Countdown

April 28, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, Colorado

There’s a great legend about Ernest Hemingway, who wrote such incredible pieces of fiction as The Old Man and the Sea, A Clean, Well-lighted Place, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms. The legend goes that a literary agent once challenged the author – who is well known for his pithy, direct writing style – to tell a story in only six words. Hemingway rose to the challenge with the following sentence:

For sale: baby shoes; never worn.

Since that time, the movement of the six word story has come in waves – everything from literary magazines to youtube campaigns – to see just how much meaning we can convey in a very few words. It’s not particularly easy to do.

Recently, author David Heims researched a smattering of contemporary theologians for an article in the magazine The Christian Century, asking them to summarize their faith in Christ and understanding of the Gospel in seven words or less.

Lutheran scholar Martin E. Marty wrote “God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow”. Theologian and ethicist Donald W. Shriver writes “Divinely persistent, God really loves us”. The poet Mary Karr offers, “We are the Church of Infinite Chances”. Professor Ellen Charry writes “the wall of hostility has come down”.

Author and theologian Walter Brueggemann’s gospel, expectedly, is complex and densely packed — “Israel’s God’s bodied love continues world-making”. Brueggemann says he only used six words, and rested on the seventh. M. Craig Barnes, the newly minted President of Princeton Theological Seminary, gets it down to four words: “We live by grace.”

The reality is that preachers, philosophers, professors, and theologians have been attempting to synthesize, analyze, and convey Scripture to others for centuries now, and most of us use quite a lot of words to do it. We take a verse or chapter at a time and try to weave in complex theological ideas, contemporary references, context, translations, and so forth, all in the mostly vain hope that we can make these stories make sense – if not to others, then at least to our own minds.

In the never-ending attempt to speak about Scripture, millions more words have been written and spoken. The eminent theologian Karl Barth’s masterwork, Church Dogmatics, took nearly thirty five years to write. It is thirteen volumes of systematic theology on topics like Revelation, Creation, and Atonement. It contains more than six million words.

The Bible is a big, daunting collection of Words all on its own. There are seven hundred seventy three thousand, six hundred and ninety two words in the King James Bible – five hundred ninety two thousand four hundred and thirty nine in the old testament, and a comparatively brief one hundred and eighty one thousand two hundred and fifty three in the New Testament.

The Bible sometimes gets a bad reputation for being too verbose – all those stories with confusing names and lineage of intolerable length – but it’s got some great moments of distilled clarity. The Great Commission, for example, in Matthew 28 clocks in at a mere four verses, and is the summary of the great command of what the followers of Christ were and are meant to do.

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Not bad on the brevity scale. But Scripture encapsulates another major command in even less space – the eleven little words of the golden rule of Luke 6: 31-  Do to others as you would have them do to you.

But what if a challenge similar to the one presented to Hemingway came to us – to tell the story of our faith in six words or less.

How about the beginning of the Gospel of John – in which we learn about the everlasting nature of The Word in six short words “The light shines in the darkness”. No matter what bleakness the world presents or how cruel humanity can be, nothing will ever put out that everlasting, glorious light. That, for many of us, is the heart and soul of the Gospel.

Or, perhaps instead, we could try the five words in Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God. The verse is repeated in Micah and again the gospels, and is followed up with the way in which we should love God – with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength – but the simplicity of the command stands on it’s own two feet – or five words, as it were.

That kind of love can seem a bit too passive for some, though. Instead, perhaps, the contrast of joy and suffering in Scripture and in our lives comes to the forefront. Coming out of the unthinkable life of slavery under Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron convey the wishes of the Lord, God Almighty in Exodus 5:1 – “Let my people go.” Across time and geography, men and women have held firm to this four-worded promise from God – that we belong to the Creator, the God who is I am, and that our freedom from slavery, persecution, and suffering matters. That we might all be God’s people, and we might all be set free at God’s command, tells the story of our faith.

But for others, Scripture is about upholding promises. In Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, we receive the fulfillment of the prophecies of ancient days. John 19:30 sees the completion of Christ’s journey unto death in three simple and unimaginable words , breathed by a savior on a cross – “It is finished”.

Others still will see the promise of Christ’s incarnation in his shared experiences of humanity. John 11:35 gives us Christ’s response to the death of his friend Lazarus. Jesus knows Lazarus will rise again – and he’ll be the one to do it. He’s there ready and willing to reassure the grieving sisters – Mary and Martha – “your brother will rise again”. Yet as he approaches the tomb where Lazarus has been laid to rest, Christ expresses a deeply human emotion – grief. Verse thirty five simply reads “Jesus wept.” Two words that summarize an entirely human experience.

So the entire story of the Christian faith wrapped up in two words – not bad at all. But I think maybe the whole of this magnificent faith can be summed up in just one word – a word which appears throughout the gospel, more than 600 times. Maybe it is The Word.

Love. Love your enemies. Love your mother and father. Love strangers. Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself. You are my Son, whom I love, and with You, I am well-pleased. For God so Loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples”

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

So maybe that is our answer – the Gospel in a single word, a single promise and a single command – just this: Love.

Psalm 148 and Genesis 6-7

 

It’s Not Easy Being Green

April 21, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter (with thanks to Kermit the Frog)

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

 

This is a story all about how

The whole of creation got turned upside down,

It’ll take a few minutes but it’s worth the wait,

To learn how Noah met his fate.

 

Please don’t mistake these rhymes as a joke,

These were terrible words that our Creator spoke,

Dark days and dark times and a difficult chapter,

But it’s a mistake to think the Bible’s all “happy ever after”

 

So let content and form reveal and entwine

As we try to sort out the intent of the divine.

 

Noah was old, yet surprisingly spry,

A mere 600 years old when God’s patience ran dry.

God was generally pleased with Noah and so anointed,

but with the rest of the planet, God was most disappointed.

 

“I regret this Creation,” God fumed and stormed,

“There’s violence in them from the moment they’re formed!

What was I thinking? I’m God! I can’t make

Something so awful, such a mistake!”

 

Now Noah and his family were righteous and such,

Blameless and upright… The others? Not so much.

The rest of the planet was just misbehavin’

God was distressed – how’d you all get so craven?!

 

I’ve tried to be patient but Noah, we’re through,

I’m going to drown everyone but you.

I know it sounds grim and a little extreme,

but the floodwaters are coming, if you know what I mean.

 

 

People will tell stories of animals two by two,

But pan-ethnic genocide is part of it too.

It’s not just about a rainbow and a boat,

It’s about our humanity… Or God’s mutability… or both?

 

Whatever the meaning, allegorical or fact,

God’s not one to make empty threats and not act,

So Noah took seriously this righteous command,

And considered quite carefully the task now at hand.

 

Here comes the lightning, the thunder, the oncoming rain

The torrents and deluge – God’s anger unchained,

So build it quick, little Noah, though the neighbors will snark,

Your only option is building one heck of an ark.

 

One pair of each animal, to repopulate,

When God decides it’s time to re-create,

Seems unicorns missed the boat – what a shame, what a loss,

And can you imagine how rough waves must toss

 

A boat full of creatures, big and small,

And hardly sufficient room for them all,

The monsoon did pummel the lands and the sea,

Forty days and nights… all are lost… how can this be?

 

The flood waters stayed for days – one hundred and fifty,

By that point I’m sure the animals got shifty,

 

The ark came to rest on a mount, high above,

And Noah awaited the return of the dove,

An olive branch and a promise made new,

No matter how mad I get, I will never leave you.

 

A rainbow then becomes the promise and reminder,

Of a moment when God’s words got kinder,

And may give us time to consider and pause,

Did God’s mind change? Did we give God just cause?

 

 

 

Or is this simply our new set of instructions,

The story of creation – still under construction.

 

Be fruitful and multiply, go fix up the earth,

Consider this covenant a sort of new birth!

That’s nice, in a story, from long far away,

But what does that mean for us here today?

 

How does God’s covenant make manifest,

In our busy schedules? Where is the rest?

Sure a creation redeemed makes a good story,

But what do we do with it? Get it together, Laurie.

 

Well of course of the Divine one can never be sure,

But I think God’s promise to all creatures endures

Because, at least in part, I suppose,

We’re meant to love deeply this creation that grows.

 

It’s not easy being green,

Or of the earth conscientious,

But we’re all called to be stewards,

Not just the proud or pretentious,

 

Not just the wealthy or powerful or few,

But earth-care is a call for me and for you.

 

All creatures should go for broke and sing and dance,

This re-creation is our second chance,

So stewardship of the earth is a sacred call,

Not a selfish act, but a gift left for all.

 

It’s not just reducing, reusing, recycling,

Forgoing our cars in favor of bicycling,

Those things do matter and our waste is intense,

But it’s about a new creation -in love so immense,

 

That a covenant was made – a promise so kept,

A gift and a call to which all creation leapt.

 

 

It’s about seeing and naming the things which are toxic,

And carrying on even when things feel Quixotic,

Like we’re tilting at windmills – or solar panels, as it were,

This life and this place are a gift, to be sure.

 

It’s about waking daily and continuing to alter,

Even just one small choice, that the odds might falter,

That in God’s covenant, alive in you,

The fruition of love might find it’s due.

 

So use it well, and live up to your relationship half,

With a merciful God’s new creation – on your behalf,

And leave this place better than when you were found,

By protecting God’s love – in the sky, sea, and ground.

 

 

John 21:1-19

 

Breaking the Fast

An Adaptation of the Oxfam America Hunger Banquet

Third Sunday of Easter

April 14, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

This day, right now, more than 2.5 billion people live in poverty. According to the research of Oxfam, an international organization which addresses issues of systemic poverty, over 925 million people suffer from chronic hunger world-wide. Simon, son of John, do you love me? A child dies from hunger or preventable disease every four seconds. That’s 22,000 children a day. We like to think that hunger is about too many people and too little food, but scientists prove again and again that our bountiful planet produces enough food to feed every woman, man, and child on earth.

Hunger is about power. Its roots lie in inequalities in access to resources. The results are illiteracy, poverty, war, and the inability of families to grow or buy food. Hunger affects everyone, in countries rich and poor. But some of us face greater challenges than others.

If you love me, feed my sheep.

As we consider some of these facts in light of today’s Scripture, I’d like to invite all those who are able to please join me in a little experiment. Those of you with pink high income cards please rise as you are able, and come on down here to the front.

Those of you with green middle income cards, please come over to this section here.

And those of you with orange or purple will have to figure out how to squish together over here. Get cozy. (time for congregational re-seating)

This is a variation on the Oxfam Hunger Banquet, an event where we divide our resources and space based on the way food sources are divided in the real world. Oxfam works in more than 90 countries. They are committed to community-based work, and also call our attention to the larger barriers that keep people from thriving.

Every human being has the same basic needs; it is only our circum- stances—where we live and the culture into which we are born—that differ. Some of us are born into relative prosperity and security, while millions—through no choice of our own— are born into poverty.

Those of you up front – If you are sitting over here, you represent the 15 percent of the world’s population with a per capita income of $12,000 or more per year. You are fortunate enough to be able to afford a nutritious daily diet. Since many of you exceed your daily requirement of calories, you are likely to face health problems at the opposite end of the spectrum from starvation – diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

But most of you have access to the best medical care in the world. It’s a given that your children will attend school; the only uncertainty is how many years they will study after high school. Access to credit? You turn down more offers than you can count. You and your family live in a comfortable and secure home. You probably own at least one car and two televisions. When you take your annual vacation, you don’t worry about your job disappearing in your absence. You have access to virtually everything you need and the security to enjoy it.

The risen savior asks – do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

Those of you in the middle group – If you are sitting here, you represent roughly 35 percent of the world’s population. You earn between $987 and $11,999 a year. The levels of access and security you enjoy vary greatly. You live on the edge. For many, it would take losing only one harvest to drought or a serious illness to throw you into poverty.

You probably own no land and may work as a day laborer, a job that pays a paltry amount—but it’s better than nothing. Your small income allows for some use of electricity and a few years of schooling for your children—especially if they are boys. Alternatively, you may have left your family to go work in the city. You hope that the money you earn from your less-than-minimum-wage job as domestic help or sweatshop worker will eventually allow you to move back home and make a better life for your family.

From the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-40 ³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Or, put another way, feed my sheep.

The rest of you – the ones sitting in this group – with the most people and the least space, you represent the majority of the world’s population—roughly 50 percent. Your average income is less than $986 a year—about $2.70 a day—although many of you earn much less. Every day is a struggle to meet your family’s basic needs. Finding food, water, and shelter can consume your entire day. For many of you women, it would not be uncommon to have to walk five to 10 miles every day to get water, spend several more hours working in the fields, and of course, take care of the children.

Many of you are frequently hungry. It is quite likely that you don’t get the minimum number of calories your hardworking life requires. Many of you are homeless or living in structures so flimsy that a hard rain or strong wind could cause a major catastrophe.

Even though education is the single most powerful weapon against poverty, school is a luxury few of your children will ever experience. Most girls will receive no education. Adequate health care is out of the question. For most of you, early death is all too familiar, with many mothers expecting to lose one or two children before they turn 5.

If you are lucky enough to work, you are probably a tenant farmer who must give your landowner 75 percent of your harvest. Or you may get occasional work as a day laborer at a large plantation growing bananas, sugar, or coffee for export. You reap few benefits from these crops; you’d prefer to grow food your children could eat.

The prophet Isaiah tells us, in the 58th chapter, in verse number 10 “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

Starting at sundown last night, some of you have been joining me in a 24-hour, water-only fast. Fasting is never something we should enter into lightly, for it is a powerful practice and has the potential to be enormously dangerous if misused. While fasting can’t begin to mimic the fear, long-term health implications, or danger of true hunger, it can serve as a mindful spiritual practice which allows us a mere glimpse at understanding what many of our brothers and sisters experience as a way of life. Just as the practice of giving up something we enjoy during Lent can serve to remind us of sacrifice, so too can fasting help us to think about our relationship with food – what we eat, and why.

I love the generous sharing of treats during our weekly post-worship fellow time. I love the way we come together as a community over food – both the feast of the table during communion and the feast of our shared bounty over conversation after worship. But, just this once, I want to ask that we mindfully forgo snacking during our time of connection and sharing as a church family. I want us to thoughtfully give up something very small to remember a very large truth – that many of our brothers and sisters go without — all the time.

Fasting is, historically, a rich part of religious expression or spiritual formation in cultures all over the world, and dates back to before Christ. It’s part of the Baha’i practice during the month of Ala, the Muslim month of Ramadan. Moses fasts in Deuteronomy 9 – twice, back to back, for forty days and forty nights. King David fasts when his son grows ill in second Samuel 12, and again to humble his soul in Psalm 35:13. The people of Nineveh fast in response to the prophecy of Jonah in Jonah 3:7, and the Jews of Persia fast with Mordechai when Haman declares genocide on them in Esther 4. Jesus fasts for forty days and nights in the desert while being tempted by Satan in Matthew and Luke 4, and Christ teaches us to fast inwardly rather than for outward show in Matthew 6. Paul fasts for three days after his Damascus road conversion in Acts 9, and the early church leaders fasted and prayed abundantly while making decisions about Elders.

Conscientious forgoing of food is often used as a form of political protest, in the form of hunger strikes. In the early 20th century, British and American suffragettes like Marion Dunlap and Emily Pankhurst took up hunger strikes while imprisoned for protesting for their right to vote.

In April, 1972, Pedros Luis Boitel, an imprisoned poet and dissident in Havana, Cuba, declared himself on hunger strike to protest the oppressive regime of his government. After 53 days on hunger strike, receiving only liquids, he died of starvation on May 25, 1972.

Civil Rights leader, Mohandas Gandhi was imprisoned in 1922, 1930, 1933 and 1942. Because of Gandhi’s stature around the world, it was difficult for British colonial authorities to ignore his efforts. Gandhi engaged in several famous hunger strikes to protest the British rule over the people of India. Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating the message and sometimes helped to dramatize the original reason for the protest. Along with several others, the efforts of Gandhi led to a change in political power for an entire nation.

When we fast today, we don’t do it with the expectation of moving political mountains or raising broad awareness. We are skipping a meal or two. We do it to raise the level of consciousness within, in the hopes that we might be more aware of our brothers and sisters in need than we were before. The way this manifest for each of us will be different. Perhaps we will resonate more deeply with the hungry. Perhaps we will think about how often we throw away food, or how we might best help serve the hungry. Perhaps we will just be a bit cranky til dinner. That’s between you and God.

In the third chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the eleventh verse…”And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”

There is an undeniable power of three in Christianity – the three persons of the trinity, the three crosses at Golgotha, Christ’s resurrection on the third day. It creates a triangle, a tryptic, a waltz.

Peter denies denies denies, ⁶⁹ Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.

⁷⁰ But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. ⁷¹ Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.” ⁷² He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”

⁷³ After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.” ⁷⁴ Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!” One, two, three.

But the waltz goes on – Christ redeems, redeems, redeems.

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

¹⁶ Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

¹⁷ The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

Three times denied, three times redeemed. One, two, three, one, two, three. It seems like such a simple, straightforward story arc. Beginning, middle, end.

It seems like there’s a lot expected of Christians these days. Gone are the days when we can check in around 9:35 and check out by 10:30 and call it a day. There’s hunger, human trafficking, child soldiers, civil wars, genocide, nuclear proliferation, state-sponsored torture, illiteracy, gun control, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, maternal mortality rates, homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, animal abuse, environmental stewardship and on and on and on.

We are bombarded with issues and committees, opportunities to serve, philanthropies to chair, and checks to write. There is so much worthy of attention, time, and energy, and often we feel cornered into picking a few choice, defining issues and leaving the rest where it lies. Because it’s too much. We’re too diffuse. We can’t live up to it all. There’s too much being asked of us. There are too many issues, and there is insufficient humanity.

Except, I don’t think following Christ is about choosing an issue. It’s about letting God break in to your whole-life, like sunlight shining through a wall so cracked that pretty soon, the wall itself is eclipsed by the brightness. They will know we’re Christians by our love. Not by our causes. By our love. Christ breaks the fast of loss, loneliness, need, and emptiness by incarnating God’s love. It’s up to us to keep carrying that forward.

People of First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland Colorado… you can return to your regularly scheduled pews and worship services in

just a moment, but as you do please join me in considering the ultimate question…do we love Him? Then let us make sure the world knows us by that love. Let us feed His sheep.

 

Exodus 14:10-31

Psalm 98

Luke 24:1-12

Law and Order, Will and Grace

Rev. Laurie Lyter

Easter Sunday – March 31, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland Colorado

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed. We gather here to celebrate a sacred and unbelievable thing – the morning when Jesus comes out of his cave and if He sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter… I wish I could take credit, but that’s very much a borrowed joke. Anyhow, that’s not right at all. Today is the day when the Jesus Bunny comes and leaves eggs and candy for all of us. Right?

One does have a somewhat difficult time in drawing the connections between the story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the practices we use to celebrate Easter today. Our celebratory traditions actually are historical – just not particularly Christian. Many of our Easter traditions arose from Pagan symbols – including the very name “Easter” which comes from the ancient Pagan goddess known as “Oestra”, a Saxon goddess of dawn and spring, whose name means “shining light arising in the East”. She was a goddess of fertility and new life, and the sacred animal most often associated with her was – you guessed it – the rabbit. So an Easter rabbit and Easter eggs (also a symbol of new life) were used in celebrations that took place around the time of the vernal equinox, symbolizing the arrival of new life in spring.

It was with an awareness of all of these traditions that early Christians began celebrating their sense of new life in Christ’s resurrection promises that these practices were borrowed. The eggs came to symbolize more than new life alone – but are a reminder of the stone of a tomb, or of a bird hatching as a reminder of Christ rising from the grave.

Personally, I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with borrowed or shared symbols, or things like Easter eggs and candy. Especially not the candy part. Celebrations and silliness are an important part of faith and I don’t think Jesus would mind one bit. However, receiving candy and gifts is only the beginning of why this day matters.

We Christians are much more inclined to use the calendar of our beliefs as a compass, finding our way by the north star of our faith – the repeated and remembered cycle of Lent and Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter. These are the cosmic bookends of our faith. As we celebrate the full cycle of birth, life, death and resurrection, the sun that rose on that darkest day rising once again in the East, we must know that this resurrection day is our true north – the true joy of joys, the most sacred moment of all.

Up and down, East and West, backwards and forwards, our faith is a compass in an often directionless life, anchoring us with the resurrection promises of Christ. But it doesn’t always seem that way at the time.

The Israelites look back – the Egyptians are coming. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” These men and women are recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness, yet they find themselves in the middle of violence, regret, scapegoating, and fear. Looking backward, there is slavery and unimaginable suffering, but it is suffering that is known to them and the known is always less terrifying than the unknown.

The Israelites look to their right and their left – a wall of water on either side. Impossible to know that this is real and a pathway forward, rather than a trap of death set before them.

The Israelites look forward – a pillar of cloud, first going before them with the angel of the Lord, then behind them – as if to give them a needed push. Before them is the treacherous beast of escape, and then only wandering. Death in a desert over death by the hands of slave owners or soldiers. Death seems everywhere. Looking towards the heavens, they cry out – “Why did we come here? What have I done and why have I done it?” Moses tries to reassure them but must not have been too sure, because he takes the concerns to God. Who tells them simply to keep moving in faith. That it is a Good Friday world, but the jubilation of Sunday is coming.

The disciples look backward – was everything they’ve done for nothing? They’ve been witnesses to and recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness.

Running away from the table of Christ….deserted before dessert. It had been such an incredible time together, and that last meal felt like it could go on for eternity. But night fell and the guards came and the men scattered. This community of brothers and sisters has always been a little dicey before the law but they were following Him, and trusted that that would be okay. But now He is gone.

The disciples look forward – who among them betrayed and denied? Who is next in the bloodlust warpath of the state officials and the angry mobs? Where do we go after the tomb? What happens next? Sure he promised to rise again, but you should’ve seen him suffer on that cross. No one could come back from that. The disciples move through a cloud, disoriented, lost, without their compass.

The women look backwards – a lifetime of serving, child-bearing and child-rearing, washing feet with their hair. Listening from the fringes of the group, absorbing His teachings even when others thought they were unworthy and unclean. Recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness. There had never been such a time and teacher as this. Now he was gone.

They turned right and left, turned towards one another as they gazed upon the crucifixion scene. The agony of watching your own son brutally murdered. They couldn’t look. But they couldn’t look away either, and they couldn’t leave him.

The women look forward and the future remains unclear. Where will they go? What will life look like? There can’t be any returning to “normal” after all they have seen and learned. Do they just go back to their husbands and fathers and villages? Does this whole experience get tucked away – a memory, a dream that ends in nightmare? Who are they now, these women who followed Christ?

The crucified Lord looks left, looks right, and sees the criminals crucified alongside him. These bandits, thieves who had knowingly broken the law. Below his feet – jeering crowds, soldiers gambling for his clothing as he struggles for breath against the sinking weight of his own, broken body. Above, the sky with scavenger birds circling and the sun, blocked out by mid-day, and beyond, a mysterious source, into which he commands his spirit and breathes his last. Backwards – a lifetime of risking, leading, teaching, preaching, challenging, and above all, loving the unlovable. The present moment – an innocent man sent to death, feeling left, knowing what it is to perceive abandonment by Creator God. To the future… God’s will be done.

People across all spaces and times stop on that difficult Friday, asking ourselves….why did this happen… Was it really for us? Is it in the at-one-ment, the atonement of God and us, that the curtain of division was torn in the temple and through Christ we might know love over death every time? The undeserved gift, and unearned grace. He brought us peace, but we draw the sword to strike in His name and seek the highest places for ourselves. He offered us body and blood, but we scatter and deny and abandon, and we have prepared a cross for our savior.

We, the people of God, turn to Moses, angry. Why did you lead us into this place? We would have been better off living where we were! It was a known misery, and Pharaoh was a tyrant we knew. Why this instead – this dying in the desert places, watching our children so parched with thirst that they can’t even cry out? Is this pain really the better plan?

We turn to God, angry. This life – so pockmarked with loss and suffering – is this really the best plan you could come up with? Is this call to selfless love and radical gentleness and miraculous generosity really your command in a world so hallmarked by greed and cruelty?

We turn to Christ, lost, furious. A great pillar of cloud blocks our view on all sides. Where is He? What happens to us now?

Sure, Love is patient and kind, but how patient and how kind and for how long? How kind in the face of such violence and cruelty. Crucifixions are happening all over the world, in the form of little children sold into slavery and bloody wars fought for decades. Bodies of our brothers and sisters, broken, for no good reason.

We turn to one another, in communal confession and confusion. Where do we go from here?

We close our eyes – looking away, hiding our eyes from the unseeable ways of the world, the social and political violence enacted again and again. We disappear inside a faith of introspection, asking the questions of Walt Whitman, exclaiming, “O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

When suddenly and yet predictably we are snapped back to life, called to remember the moment that the curtain was torn, and then, the tomb opened to reveal the glorious truth. Our eyes are open wide by the shock to see a new life and new world in Christ Jesus. In every direction, we see the broken made whole.

The table is emptied. Emptied of expectations and exclusion, assigned seats and preferential treatment. The table is set anew for you.

The tomb is emptied. Robbed of death, disarmed of its power by one who simply got up and walked away. Such miraculous grace and radical gentleness.

For this is our Savior, who proclaims solidarity with – not pity for – the poor, and the most vulnerable around us. He lived with compassion – literally, to suffer with, even unto death.

In this moment, he absorbs us. He hears and knows all of our questions and worries and fears. What does all of it mean? He grounds us with a simple answer. You are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. So pick up your mat and follow. Leave slavery behind. Step into the divided sea. Stand at the empty table, the foot of the cross, the entryway to the tomb.

Let Christ become your north, your south, your east, your west, and know the shocking truth – that in the empty table and the empty tomb and the empty cross, we get closest to the fullness of the risen Christ. And we come to that with our eyes and hearts wide open.

 

March 24 – Will – Palm Sunday

Philippians 3:4-14

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Luke 10:25-37

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Law and Order, Will and Grace

Rev. Laurie Lyter

(with lots of ideas from Philip Gourevitch, Kenda Dean, John Calvin, Rob Bell, etc.)

March 24, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland

The Good Samaritan story is such a nice, familiar text. We know the right answer to this one, no problem. What does God want us to do? Not walk past people bleeding in the streets! For all of His propensities towards enigmatic parable weaving, it sure is nice when Jesus just gives us a “gimmie” like this one. Do we or do we not walk past someone who’s been robbed and beaten, leaving them for dead? No, we do not!

Not that we often find ourselves in that kind of situation. So how do we live this one out? How do we exercise our free will in such a way that we get this one “right”?

Love God – check. We’re in church, aren’t we? Full God points awarded on that one then.

Love your neighbor – sure. The people sitting next to me in the pews or in the classroom or the office – I can love them. Sometimes love looks polite and distant, and maybe it isn’t quite the same emotional intimacy that Christ meant, but I’ll hold the door open for someone with an armload of groceries and doesn’t that make me nice?

Except… what if being the hands and feet of God in the world isn’t really supposed to be about me being nice – both because it isn’t about me, and it isn’t about being “nice”? Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor with whom I had the privilege to study in seminary, writes about something called moralistic therapeutic deism, which is, at its core, the belief that God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, that the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself, that God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem, and that good people go to heaven when they die.

None of which might sound particularly bad to us. Isn’t that all in keeping with the parable of the Good Samaritan anyway? When I pick up a piece of litter off the sidewalk or toss some spare change to a homeless person, I’m choosing to follow the behavior of the Good Samaritan, which will make God happy with me, and which let’s me feel good about myself for being nice, and then everyone get’s to go home happy. So what’s so bad about that?

Dr. Dean suggests that the real problem with all of this is that it reduces Christian ethics to being nice, butJesus never talks about being nice …What the gospel talks about is kindness, compassion, justice, forgiveness, loving your enemies–which are a lot harder than being nice. Most people equate being “nice” with friendliness and not offending people, but being Christlike goes much deeper than that – it means that we acknowledge the unique nature of the other person and unconditionally extend God’s love towards them as they and we truly are.

In the Presbyterian Church, our statements of faith on the concepts of sin and salvation are largely based on Romans 3:23 “that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Our “Brief Statement of Faith” says: “We rebel against God; we hide from our Creator. Ignoring God’s commandments, we violate the image of God in others and ourselves, accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care …Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.

Loving us still, God makes us heirs with Christ of the covenant. Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home,God is faithful still…. God is willing to forgive our sins if we but confess them and ask for forgiveness in the name of Christ.

Of course, that’s all well and good in the abstract, but in any discussion on the nature of free will, it is imperative that we think about the nature of evil – in the world and in ourselves, and I think the parable of the Good Samaritan clarifies that our choices in life really do matter to Christ a great deal.

In Philip Gourevitch’s National Book award winning piece of non-fiction “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” there are clear, lucid stories of a time of madness, the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Just a couple short decades ago, in the space of a few months time, one group of people utterly slaughtered another. The individuals of the so-called Hutu Power decimated the Tutsi people. Gourevitch points out that actually, decimate isn’t the right word – for to decimate is to diminish by one tenth and, in this case, far more than one-tenth of the population was killed. Through a national campaign, neighbor turned against neighbor. Teachers slaughtered their students, ministers murdered their congregations, once-friends became vicious enemies. The international community largely turned a blind eye, claiming that this was tribalism doing what it does, that these were “acts of genocide” rather than pure genocide and therefore no intervention was mandated by the Genocide Convention Act of 1948. The memories of the Holocaust only a few decades before should have prepared us to, as the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC suggests – always remember and never allow such an atrocity happen again. And yet it happens again and again, and not with the organized war machinery that hallmarked the third reich. Here it was with machetes and fists that corpses choked the rivers of Rwanda.

We’d like to think that such things would never happen here. Or that if we were in the places where such things happened, we’d do something about it. Ours is a faith which mandates action, right?

Gourevitch provides interviews with an extraordinary man named Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, where he sheltered thousands of refugees from the roving bands of murderous mobs. He bribed with liquor, made endless and desperate international phone calls, and stood firm in the face of insanity. He refused to sacrifice the lives of others even while he was at risk himself, even while moral and religious leaders around him were actively participating in the massacre.

The intrepid reporter asks the question on every reader’s mind – “I wanted to know what had made Paul strong – and he couldn’t tell me. “I wasn’t really strong,” he said. “I wasn’t…” Only later “when people were talking about that time” – did it occur to him that he had been exceptional. “During the genocide, I didn’t know,” he told me. I thought so many people did as I did, because I know that if they’d wanted they could have done so.” “Paul believed in free will. He understood his actions during the genocide in the same way that he understood those of others, as choices. He didn’t seem to think that he could be called righteous, except when measured against the criminality of others, and he rejected that scale. Paul had devoted all his diverse energies to avoiding death – his own and others’ – but what he feared even more than a violent end was living or dying as what he called “a fool”. Regarded in this light, the option of kill or be killed translated into the questions: kill for what? be killed as a what? – and posed no great challenge.

Gourevitch points out “The West’s post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”

One of the all time most poignant descriptions of evil is, “the things that men do” or, to be properly inclusive, “the things that we, people, do”. Blaming the Devil is the easy way out. Evil isn’t some sneaky entity that’s utterly beyond us, forcing us to behave in certain ways. No, if we are creations of the Loving God who allows us the gift of choice, then evil is the creation of our own hearts. It is a choice we make. The idea of free will is one of the most confounding components of faith – and we ought to consider what it says about us and what it says about God.

Today is traditionally known as Palm Sunday, the presumptively unstoppable march to Jerusalem, the unwatchable unfolding of the events of the week to come. In Luke 19, we learn that, as Christ approached the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

Here again we have the ultimate complication of the idea of free will – that the people of Jerusalem are choosing to praise, and will choose to crucify, and Christ knows both of these are true, yet experiences sorrow. He wants them to know the truth and choose otherwise, but he knows they will not. How might they have lived if they had known the peace that could come through Christ?

How might we live if we really knew? We take to the story of the Good Samaritan and make it into cosmic kudos and accolades for participating in easy, unobtrusive ways of helping others. We are confident that, faced with something like genocide, or witnessing a violent crime, or the crucifixion of an innocent man, we would behave with courageous, faith-filled action. We would do the difficult thing.

Yet we avoid the difficult thing – because we can, because of where we live and where we happened to be born and the color of our skin and the nature of the corner of the world we inhabit. We walk by suffering that we know happens around the world because it is too hard, too scary, too much to try to do anything about it. And isn’t that just as much an exercise of our free will as anything else? Does inaction sometimes speak even louder than action?

In preacher Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, the author posits a theory of wild grace, one which concedes that the idea of hell has Biblical traction but disavows the idea that any loving God could send anyone to it. Basically, Bell suggests that hell is empty and God can and does forgive anything. While Bell received an absurd amount of flack for this idea, and it does complicate a world in which we behave well because we expect a particular reward for it or punishment if we don’t, it’s actually a very freeing notion. How much more becomes possible when we exist within the option of free will in the immediate of life? What if we took Christ’s parable as instructive for right here and right now?

Personally, I am not laying claim to any particular dogma regarding the eternal consequences of the choices we make. I think we’ve got plenty to concern ourselves with here and now and passing judgment over what happens next and to whom and for how long is above any of our pay grade.

I think we do get to come together knowing that we are completely fallible and completely lovable all at once. We have space to fail, screw up, try again, make new choices every day and with every opportunity. What if this wasn’t a faith of self-centeredness, nor a faith of blind submission to outside control? What if, perhaps, we made our choices out of Christ’s truth? Not, then, a faith of guilt, but a faith of both free will and unthinkable, active grace freely given to us, and to one another, and that, here and now, was the inheritance of eternal life.

1. Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

New International Version (NIV)

1. The Parable of the Lost Sheep

15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”3 Then Jesus told them this parable:

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again;he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Law and Order, Will and Grace

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland

March 17, 2013

Well that’s not how THAT was supposed to work. Little brother can run off to the 1^st century equivalent of Vegas, blow his entire inheritance on wine, women, and song, and come home to an even bigger celebration? Dad isn’t going to make him feel guilty for at least a little while?! On behalf of every sibling everywhere who had to live by a slightly different set of rules than their sibling, I claim not fair. Whether it’s the number of required mouthfuls of veggies before dessert is allowed, or when the bell of the appointed hour tolls bedtime, disparity in expectations is a recipe for sibling squabbles.

Because … seriously? One brother gets to run like a fool while the other works their tail off in the fields, and it doesn’t change a thing? Well, if he doesn’t have to, why do I?!

This story starts and ends with things being completely out of order. Even before the story begins, Jesus isn’t just sitting with the pitiable – the poor or the vulnerable. He’s sitting with the sinners and tax-collectors. He’s sitting with the despised. The unlovable. The wretched who don’t even have the decency to know how wretched they are. And the story only gets weirder from there.

We don’t know for sure how the father reacts to the son’s request, but it certainly goes beyond cheeky to go to your very much living parent and ask for what’s destined for you when they die. It’s selfish, short-sighted, and, well, improper. That’s not the order things are meant to follow.

But the father simply gives. And the child simply takes. And leaves.

He blazes through his inheritance in decadent living while his brother stays home, working the fields, listening to his father, respectfully keeping his distance from his inheritance. He doesn’t complain about it. He just does it because he believes it is what is expected of him.

Until his brother comes home, that is. The right order of things means that little brother gets nothing now. He had his opportunity and he wasted it frivolously. There should be punishment here… a lesson to be learned… some justice delivered.

And yet the story concludes with a parent’s loving response that doesn’t have anything to do with being earned or justified. What a complete mess.

See our concept of the way the world works – our sense of cause and effect, order and justice – this is what allows us to cope with a seemingly chaotic universe. Patterns and predictability are everywhere – gravity assures me that I can step out of bed in the morning and won’t fly up to the ceiling, pushing the brake pedal of my car consistently means I’ll stop, and lightning will precede a clap of thunder. It’s just how the world works. Predictable patterns help us feel secure because it means we know what’s going to happen next. If I do this, then that will happen. Up is up and down is down. That’s the order of things.

So it is most unsettling indeed when Jesus shows up and says actually, what if up is down, down is up, and the only reliable thing is a love that boggles the senses?

The Prodigal Son story is just one small window into the unpredictability of God’s grace. While we all bristle with the older brother’s sense of injustice in this situation, we’re also all a bit grateful that, as the children who wander, God’s laying out a feast for us. We can see ourselves in all of this.

But what about when we have to feast beside people we don’t like? Or people who have done something truly wrong? In January, Colorado Public Radio shared the story of Vietnam veterans returning to the site and source of shared traumatic experiences. Several of the veterans spoke of a conflict rife with language to, quote, “kill anything that moves”, and their experience that the dehumanization of the enemy was a method of survival. So it goes in any war, I suppose. The person on the other side of the enemy lines is not a person – not a son or a brother or a father or a husband. They are simply the enemy. Yet these men went with Veterans Affairs services back to the place of origin and met with men who fought against them – former North Vietnamese troops. Over shared meals and recollections, a form of reconciliation and recognition began – a bridge could be built. These men sat down beside their enemies and dined together. It didn’t undo all the horrors exchanged, but it was the start of new growth out of the ashes.

If God can really forgive absolutely anything, then it just might be possible that people who do the unforgivable in our world can still meet with redemption in God’s.

Here, I think Christ is using storytelling to give name and shape to a fairly incomprehensible idea. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again;he was lost and is found.

Because in so many ways there has been an unspeakability – to this faith of ours. In the grips of pain and sorrow or joy and possibility, we cannot name this thing we are. This feast – immovable yet in constant flux. How do we name that? The great I am that comes straight to your living room and is calling you to the other side of the world? A world in which young men are indoctrinated into the brotherhood of gangs because there is no family no community, no church life that opens their doors to him, and so they fulfill the need for kinship with the brotherhood of blood-letting?

A world in which a young girl’s worth is defined by her body’s ability to withstand and therefore provide for the greed of others – a world we want to imagine only exists in the communities of other cultures, other lives, other skins, and deny it’s persistence in our own backyards.

A world in which we can look at other people’s children and say they are not our sons and daughters.

A time and place when we read with shock that our savior was sold out for 30 pieces of silver yet we sell out our children for the price of a few dollars and a lifetime of nightmares, tucked away and written off as not. my. Problem.

This story tells us that all of those people – the victim and the vicious alike – are not merely sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, or abused to create the great feast of the unfathomable I am, as if God were as vindictive as we can be.

No, this is a story of a love so deep, and yet we use it to crucify one another, to exclude and persecute and create an order that gives us space to be right at all costs, righteous at the expense of community.

Yet the feast remains, ever replenished. Unvowed, unbowed, unbroken, unbelievable. Not merely the pitiable victim and the penitent man, those quickly earmarked as the “lesser-thans” who build us up by their mere presence, but also the defiant and distressing and the strangers who put a strain on our capacity for politeness.

This feast is a faith in which Christ shows up and claims us all. You are my son, the beloved. You are my daughter, the beloved. A feast has been arranged – for you, for you, for you.

In Christ, we see revealed – a veil that can’t just be lifted or gently removed, but will be torn asunder like the curtain in the temple, that might mean life can never be quite so simple and straightforward, so hopeless or self-indulgent ever again. It is instead self-annihilating for the sake of insatiable love.

So today I ask you to consider – what is holding you back from the feast? Nanette Sawyer, a fellow Presbyterian pastor from Chicago, speaks of the difficult question of this passage of Scripture… when will we ever feel complete enough to live our lives generously? When will we trust the feast sufficiently, knowing it will not evaporate, that we live might courageously?

Lent is a time to reconsider who and why we are. Carry on my wayward sons and daughters, there’ll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest and don’t you cry know more. Surely heaven waits for you.

Today we aren’t celebrating communion, we’re celebrating Agape. An Agape feast was a tradition of the early Christians in which a meal was shared to celebrate the love of the community, and that’s just what Agape means – it’s the Koine Greek word for love – the type of love between God and humanity, and humanity and Christ. I like it because it’s spelled just like the English word “agape”, and that’s what I think that kind of love does. It leaves us in a state of shock, mouths wide open, highlighting the gap between our expectations and God’s grace.

So I invite you to a feast of abundant Agape. Today, during the next hymn and the time of offering, I invite you to give, but also to take. To come to the table and help yourself to whatever it is you want. Take something for later at home. Take something to share. Bring something to a neighbor.

Remember that you do not get to pick who joins you at the table or when or why, and thank God for it.

Come hungry and leave full, knowing that you are more than sufficient to bring God’s nourishing light to the world. Come seeking and know that you are found, and sent forth to find others. Keep this feast.

Law and Order, Will and Grace

Rev. Laurie Lyter

March 10, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

Scripture: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

8 1 all the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which theLord had commanded for Israel.

2 So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. 3 He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.

5 Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. 6 Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

8 They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear[a] and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.

9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lordyour God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.

10 Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Sermon: Law and Order, Will and Grace

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. And in twenty-first century America, we cannot get enough of their stories. CSI, NCIS, CSI Las Vegas, CSI Miami, CSI New York, Hawaii 5-0, Law and Order, Law and Order Special Victims Unit, Law and Order Criminal Minds, Criminal Intent, Criminal Minds – Suspect Behavior, Bones, Monk, Psych, Cops, To Catch a Predator, America’s Most Wanted, Body of Proof, etc. etc. etc. That is hardly an exhaustive list, and these are just the ones that generally start with someone stumbling upon a body, usually grotesque and in some way shocking. But we can’t, as a culture, look away, or at least, we don’t. From Cagney and Lacey and Chips to the inevitable CSI – Albuquerque, we seem to have an insatiable desire to consume information – fictional or “ripped from the headlines” of the processes of police, detectives, lawyers, and judges. We are fascinated by our own laws.

In the system of 5^th Century Jerusalem, on the other hand, the people of Judah have been thoroughly trounced by the Babylonians. Nehemiah was a former cupbearer for the ruler of Persia, Artaxerxes, and at his appointment became the governor of Judah from around 445 BC until 433 BC. There is much debate about whether Nehemiah the governor or Ezra the scribe came first, or whether they arrived on the scene at the same time, each active in the public life of the Israelites. It was a time of major conflict – between nobility and the poor, the Jews and their neighbors, a time of rebellion and destruction and intrigue.

This is a time and place of recovery and fear. The exiles are starting to rebuild after Jerusalem’s destruction about a century prior, the marks of the Babylonian Empire still on the buildings, the Temple a much less grand version of its former self.

On a raised platform and a determined day – the first day of the seventh month, Ezra stands before the people. Scribes are the learned men, the lawyers, the ones who know and, we hope, understand the law. So Ezra climbs up before the people and he does what they ask of him – he reads the Torah of Moses – the sagas and episodes of a people’s past. Every eye is trained on him. The people standing towards the back strain to hear his voice, and all the people silently wait, listening, learning, hoping to make some sense out of the world, remembering their miracles and their mistakes. He reads to both men and women. They read it together that they might begin to understand, to know what they have missed.

There’s something very secure about following the rules. In a way, establishing and following laws, at least in a democratic society, is acknowledgment that the collective wisdom of those who precede us might have a better handle on the situation than we do. And so it was in the book Ezra reads. The Book of Law is not only the Ten Commandments. It is a collection of laws on morality, socialization, inheritance, marriage, property, food preparation, purity laws, feasts and festivals, sacrifices, offerings, instructions for the priests, rules about historical artifacts like the Ark of the Covenant and the different altars, guidance on what to look for in governmental leadership, and so on. Much like our Scriptures today, the people rely on scholars to help them understand what all of this means. In this, there is often an unspoken promise – that, if you do these things, you will be safe, and perhaps even successful, in what you’re attempting. We don’t create and follow laws just for fun, or even to try to make everyone else live like us. We create and follow them to try to create a peaceful society where we can all exist. We hope that following this guidance will lead to a better way of life than we might otherwise have had.

Of course, all these hopes and promises don’t stop us from pushing to do things our own way. I recently had the opportunity to go snorkeling for the first time, out on a gorgeous barrier reef. And while the guides sped through the instructions – how to breathe, how to clear your mask, how to keep a good seal over the mouthpiece – I was definitely focusing a little too much on the guide’s warning to “not jump onto any sharks” to really absorb the lesson.

So I was all of three seconds into the water before panic overwhelmed me. I can’t imagine why wildlife was a bit scarce at first, what with me flailing around like a crazed jellyfish on espresso. And in my gut-instinct panic, I did the exact opposite of everything the guide had instructed. Never mind that he had been doing this a couple times a day for the last few decades, surely my plan of fast, shallow breathing, waving my arms around like mad, and only keeping my face down as long as I could hold my breath was superior. I hadn’t really thought it through that concretely, but on a very instinctive level, I was unwilling to accept that the wisdom of someone else’s experience could be more accurate than my own.

After what felt like an incredibly long time, I finally managed to convince myself I wasn’t drowning, and incrementally began trying it the way the guide had said to do it. And, what do you know, it worked! Suddenly, when I wasn’t thrashing up my own miniature whirlpool in the middle of the deep blue sea, there were stingrays and sharks, moray eels and sea turtles, and fish of every color. A whole barrier reef full of life was opened to me when I learned to listen, and trust another’s wisdom over my own.

Now this is not to say that blind allegiance to what other people think is a good plan. Fiction and reality are both rife with the stories of those for whom an allegiance to the law completely overshadows humanity. In Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables, the detective Javert has climbed his way from a childhood born in squalor to a leading soldier in an oppressive regime. The primary conflict of the story is between Javert’s fanatical commitment to upholding the law – a law which demands 20 years of slavery from a man convicted of stealing a loaf of bread – and Jean Valjean, who outruns the law but is an epitome of mercy, helping not only the less fortunate but also forgoing an opportunity for revenge on Javert. Such grace and mercy is so confusing to the overzealous Javert that he crumbles to a self-annihilating end. He cannot cope with a world in which the law isn’t the final Word.

Similarly, a different figure of perhaps slightly less literary greatness, Darth Vader of Star Wars infamy becomes so defined by a zeal for the power of the Empire that he becomes cruel and violent. The Force is an element of power – either for good or for evil – and the temptation of control proves to be too much for the former Anakin Skywalker. The same goes for Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, and countless other examples of when one person dictates the way of life for too many others– absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there is a whole lot of power in the Law. When the Law becomes primarily about controlling people through fear, it can be ruinous.

When we think about our criminal justice system, we must come face to face with the knowledge that we are one of very few countries that still puts people put to death as a punishment. We must think of those who receive death as punishment, as well as those who have been wrongly convicted or just plain fed to a monster that focuses on retribution instead of rehabilitation and reconciliation, and remember that we apply a sense of justice that reinforces hierarchical values, perpetuation of cycles of abuse, racial prejudice, and a sense of revenge. And then we must remember that God’s justice does not fit our neat parameters. God’s justice and our attempts at justice are not the same thing.

So it is important for us to notice that, here, Ezra, the priest and scribe, doesn’t demonstrate simple thoughtless loyalty to the Book of Law. He demonstrates respect and even reverence to the stories of God. He helps a community recall their past as a lens through which they might glimpse into their future.

While we can’t know what exactly Ezra was reading, we can gauge a lot by the peoples’ response – that they wept openly – and by Ezra’s response to their response – a summons to joy.

Which is, in and of itself, an incredibly complex idea. How do we define real joy? We Americans tend to put an intense emphasis on being happy. My friends from other countries always comment on the stereotype of over the top commitment to presenting ourselves as happy that is as central to the American identity as baseball or Apple pie. How are you? I’m GREAT! “It’s a pleasure serving you today”… really? It’s a pleasure hauling my dirty dishes around? While some might argue that this is about politeness, it certainly isn’t the same as experiencing joy. It is not being “cheerful”. Just as the law is not an all-encompassing safety net, but rather a commitment to constantly refining the wisdom of previous generations, so the call to joy is not a promise that nothing bad will ever happen to you. It is broader and deeper than that, and difficult to define. It is about having faith in the greatness of God’s feast, and drinking deeply of life. It is knowing that the deep well of God’s abundant love remains steadfast, even in the driest desert places of the soul.

2 Kings 2: 19 – 25

19 The people of the city said to Elisha, “Look, our lord, this town is well situated, as you can see, but the water is bad and the land is unproductive.” “Bring me a new bowl,” he said, “and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.’” 22 And the water has remained pure to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken.

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

Bears and Astronauts

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland

February 24, 2013

Bet you all didn’t see that coming, did you? Bear maulings! In the Bible! Bears mauling kids! Because a prophet of God cursed them! And that’s why you never make fun of your spiritual leader. Okay, sermon over.

No, not really. We’re just getting started.

This piece of Scripture might seem like a somewhat unusual choice for the launch of confirmation class, but it does capture the imagination – which actually makes it a really great fit for what’s happening here today. Starting today, and for the next eighteen months, not only have fourteen kids claimed their desire to learn, discern, and grow in their faith, but fourteen adults have agreed to walk this path with them. These adults have agreed to be paired up as confirmation partners – mentoring their confirmand and learning together. On top of that, fourteen more adults have agreed to be anonymous prayer partners – one for each young adult – holding them in thought and prayer throughout this time.

A big part of this class will be stepping into some of the more mysterious aspects of being a Christ follower.

So it is with awareness of the mystery – and even absolute absurdity – of today’s Scripture that there are a few things I think we should keep in mind at the genesis of this and any new adventure.

First off, we are all in this together. You cannot extract the idea of community from Christian faith. We are called to live graciously, compassionately, and with abundant love for others. We are all both leaders and followers, called to lead and serve, teach and learn, shepherd and follow. We’re called to see God in all the people we encounter, and treat them accordingly. We rise together and we fall together, whether we are being chased by bears or not.

Second, and this is important, the Bible is weird. Today’s Scripture lesson should make that abundantly clear. But even stories that are more familiar to us – stories about Jesus and the loaves and fishes, or Noah and the ark, or Joseph and his well-documented multicolored coat – are actually steeped in things that seem strange. Maybe things that are strange. Sometimes you can make more sense out of it with studying what other people think or have written, and learning ancient languages and reading it from different contexts and vantage points. Sometimes it still won’t connect in a logical way. So the Bible is weird. And it does not always make sense. And that’s okay. This is our story and there is no part of our story that we should fear reading or talking about.

Do you guys know what a “theologian” is? It comes from the Greek word, “theo”, which means God, and “logos” which means “study of” – so it means a person who studies God. It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot when referring to smart people who spent their lives studying, reading, and writing extensively – people like Soren Keirkegaard and Karl Barth – but it’s also a term that now applies to you. If we spend our time thinking about God and our faith and what the Bible is trying to teach us, we are also theologians.

Part of how we practice being theologians is by not just reading Bible stories, but by attempting to enter into them by seeing the stories from different perspectives and different characters.

In this story, who are we? Are we the kids – the young people who get caught up in group-think, a mob-mentality that leads to bullying behavior? Forty-two individuals teasing a single man would be strange, but a group of forty-two caught up in chanting and bullying… most of us have witnessed that at some point. Even if we did not directly participate, witnessing it without speaking up makes us tacitly responsible. At one time or another, groups allow people to behave in ways that they wouldn’t on their own, encouraging shared responsibility and often, shared blame for past mistakes. The church definitely shares culpability for directing peoples actions in ways that have been, at times, exclusive, cruel, and definitely un-Christ-like.

Are we Elisha? Feeling a bit persecuted, and struggling with the fact that everyone expects us to be someone else? Elisha was a prophet who followed Elijah, but was definitely a very different man, trying to figure out his own way to be God’s messenger. Here, hits the end of his patience, and calls on God to handle it. We may or may not agree with the way he handled this moment or God’s action in it, but Elisha’s humanity and experience of being overwhelmed certainly speaks to us.

Or are we ever the bears? As ridiculous as that sounds, there are times when we feel so driven down the path to which we think God is calling us, we become aggressive, single-minded in righteous anger that leaves people hurt in our wake.

Maybe we’re none of the above, or each of them in turn as we move through life and through the story.

As we practice becoming theologians, we become the story tellers for others we meet. That’s the third point I want us to remember – that we are also all “theotokos”, which is a word that the Bible uses to describe Mary. It’s a title. Anyone remember what “theo” means? It means God, and “Tokos” means “bearer”. Not bears like the ones who did the mauling. But one who carries or delivers something. Or in this case, someone. Mary is bearing God by becoming the mother of Jesus. We each become the bearers of our faith by learning, speaking and, above all, living it. Someone wise once said, “You may be the only Bible someone reads”. St. Francis of Assisi put it, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

Or put another way, it’s worthless to hear and read all of this stuff if you won’t let it permeate your life.

So learn a lot and learn well. Ask questions. Dive in. Or, better yet, dive up. Be launched.

I think “launch” is a good way to think about today. According to the official NASA Astronaut Selection and Training information, becoming even a candidate for being an Astronaut requires a bachelor’s degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics – that’s 4 years of college – with top grades. Then they must have three more years of work experience or at least 1,000 hours of time command of a jet aircraft. Most of them have another advanced degree, giving them an additional two – to – three years of training and experience. They have to be able to handle extreme changes in physical pressure on their system, have 20/20 vision, and stand between 62 and 75 inches in height.

If and only if they meet all of those qualifications, they head to the Astronaut Office of the Johnson Space Center in Houston where they go through a two year process of training and evaluation. As a part of their training, they become SCUBA certified, pass rigorous survival, and do space walks and emergency malfunction training, not to mention the intellectual and emotional preparedness required for being strapped to ten stories of explosives and launched away from your home planet. From a list of hundreds and hundreds of applicants, only a very select few will make it all the way through training and have the hope of becoming actual Astronauts.

It is easy, therefore, to mistakenly assume that it is all through individual success that astronauts become what they are.

But one thing that comes up again and again in all this training information is just how many people it takes to get these Astronauts ready for orbit. Yes, they have to be focused, driven, deeply intelligent, strong, and brave. The vast majority of them got that way from having parents, mentors, friends, and teachers who shaped and guided them. It takes teachers in the classrooms, engineers in the planning stages, and steady minds in the command center back home. It’s not as though one person can say, “I know, I think I’ll go to the moon today.” It requires work. It demands preparation. And it necessarily involves a committed group of people to help you get there.

And finally, if you want to follow Christ, you will look silly sometimes. Maybe even downright foolish. You will befriend the people who nobody else likes. You will think more about other people than yourself. You will love people who don’t deserve it. You will forgive people. You will follow a guy who was executed by his government and you’ll seek creation in a world that tells you to consume at all costs.

So, today, as we think about launching different parts of our life in Christ – with our confirmation class, our new anti-human trafficking initiative, and all things that God is calling us to do and be in the world – we buckle ourselves in as one community, through the strange and difficult and wonderful – and head into the mystery together. Five, four, three, two, one…. blast off.

Isaiah 6:1-8New International Version (NIV) 6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;  the whole earth is full of his glory.”4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

The Sound of Silence

Rev. Laurie Lyter

(with help from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel)

February 10, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland

Ours is an interactive faith. This is not just a scene, badly written, in which we must play. The relationship between calling and answering, hearing and speaking, listening and responding is crucial. This is the fulcrum on which Scripture pivots. God is relational, instead of distant or arbitrary. God is not at arms’ length – hers or ours. God is in conversation – reaching out, and responding, and sometimes present merely in the sound of silence.

It’s pretty spectacularly arrogant of us to assume that the book of God’s conversation with us has been completed with no future editions or additions in sight. To claim that God’s Holy engagement of God’s people is limited to one time or place is to claim limitation on God. The Scriptures are based on an oral tradition – spoken and heard, changed, like the mutations of our genes that enable us to thrive and survive, so too are the stories of our sacred texts. It is ongoing and ever-shifting, informed by the Holy Spirit. This does not make these texts any less important, powerful, strange, or magnificent. It just means that God’s prophets are still speaking.

Which is not to say that every person claiming special eternal insights is to be immediately credited with God’s own voice or commands. We should operate with full use of the intellect with which God endows us, and operate with critical mindfulness when people claim special Capital T Truth. It’s difficult to know who’s truth is the truest. However, we can look for some common threads in the fabric of prophecy.

One premise of prophecy is that it isn’t about speaking of things that are easily consumable. One great commentary on the difference between popularity and prophetic wisdom is in the twitter feed of @KimKierkegaard –a combination of the tweets of reality TV icon Kim Kardashian and the philosopher / theologian Soren Kierkegaard.

One such tweet declares, “A huge crowd met us in London! It reduced individual human beings to mere specimens, unrepentant and irresponsible. Def. A highlight of 2012!!” Another is, “Always be open to new hair looks! They divert you from the passing of life and postpone the moment when you shall have to face your conscience!” Oh popular culture… you’re breakin’ my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily. And yet this is an incredible commentary on the way we seek out philosophers and prophetic voices – even from such sources that strain any and all credulity.

Not that Kim Kardashian identifies as a prophet. At least I hope not.

No, prophets speak of things that matter, With words that must be said, in spite of their unpopularity. In the din of post-modernity, those words are often lost in the dangling conversation and the superficial sighs, in the borders of our lives.

Another important premise of prophecy is that prophets are not necessarily super human. The wounds of disbelief and hurt and slurs are things the prophet carries with them - the reminder of every fight that laid them down or cut them til they cried out, in anger and in shame I am leaving, I am leaving but the prophet still remains. Even though on their travels it’s the same old story, everywhere they go they get slandered, libeled, they hear words you’d never hear in the Bible, the prophet puts one foot in front of the other, faithful in knowing they are on their way, even if they don’t know where they’re going.

The prophet may just be walking down the street, knowing it’s a street in a strange world. Even if he doesn’t speak the language, and he holds no currency. Even if he is a foreign man. When he is surrounded by sound, noise, even, the cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages, there is still the openness to God’s handiwork and God’s message to pass along. This is sacred listening. The wise person does not meet God only in temples – but sees angels in the architecture. The prophet sees possibility where others do not. The words of the prophets don’t always make it to our sacred texts, after all. Sometimes they are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.

Yet another premise of prophecy is that there is a necessary dismantling of the self which being a prophet requires. You can almost hear their insecurity in turning to face God, as if they are saying “I have come to doubt all that I once held as true. I stand alone without beliefs – the only truth I know is you”. But in that commitment to the life of prophecy, there is faith in God’s ultimate goodness, “There but for the grace of you go I”.

Prophets are those with megaphones and microphones and those who barely whisper. They come in the form of galvanizing groups and individual protests. But is the Word still the Word if the Prophetic voice is silenced? Or does the Word always find a way out?

Today we participate in the Red Hand Campaign – an opportunity to help amplify the voices of those crying out under the tyrannical fear of a war which forces their participation. This is a form of slavery and one which has impacted tens of thousands of children whose voice we might never have heard if not for the prophetic wisdom of those near and far who articulate that this is not simply a political problem but a theological and moral imperative.

The prophet is one who looks at children killed by an angry man’s war and says, “no more”.

The prophet is one who can examine those prophets who lay down their lives that others might know justice, the martyrs who follow Christ’s example of non-violent resistance, and can say “He was my brother and he died so his brothers could be free.”

Through the hazy shade of winter that clouds the human experience, as the leaves that are green turn to brown, we must always be listening, and responding, knowing that God speaks through lots of different people in different times and places.

Of course, the people chosen to be prophets are wildly, gorgeously unpredictable. We might think God would never speak through a child.. except, of course, for Samuel, whose very name means “God has heard” – a child promised to the work of God before his life even begins. And so early prophetic possibility arose with a young teenager writing of her experiences hiding in an annex from the Nazis, with words of hope that spoke to a vision of another world. And so it might be with a child speaking out against bullying in their school today, a wisdom and bravery beyond the norm of their age or power or station in life.

Nor might we assume that God would speak through the fearful who run from their call. One who feels lost – empty and aching and doesn’t know why, yet is too afraid to leap in. Yet God leads even those who feel unsure of whether or not they are up to a Holy task. Like Jonah and so many other prophets.Like Mother Theresa, a woman who became world-renowned for her commitment to God’s call to serve the poor and vulnerable, who also had her doubts. Shortly after her move to Calcutta, she wrote, “Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God — please forgive me.” Prophets are not instantly – or necessarily ever – at ease with their call.

Nor might we expect a Prophet to be someone who’s done time or been deported… except for maybe Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, living through seven visions across the decades, far away from the comforts of home. Or someone banished to a harsh island prison like Robbin Island, for 27 years as Nelson Mandela was in Apartheid-battered South Africa. Someone cursed to their face, told “Go home outsider”. The immigrant. The rabble-rouser. People who aren’t even from around here.

So it is a singular, predictable wonder of Prophecy that the prophets themselves – those chosen to speak God’s Words – have very little about them that is predictable at all.

Perhaps Prophets are the particularly intuitive storytellers and memory keepers of generation after generation who kept these stories alive. A most peculiar man, or woman, or child in most peculiar circumstances, speaking from a place of collective memory and to a future of that which might be.

Perhaps prophets are the exceptional reflection of God’s light – a light which frees others. It says I know you’ve been eager to fly now, so let your honesty shine, shine, shine now. Here I am.

Maybe the prophet is the one who pierces that silence, ready to lay down their own autonomy and safety like a bridge over troubled water. This isn’t about the evangelism of conversion – it is living out the truthful reminder to people that Jesus loves them more than they could know.

Taste

Rev. Laurie Lyter

February 3, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The Call of Jeremiah

4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

9 Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

 

John 2:1-11

2 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

4 “Woman,[a] why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.[b]

7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not so very long ago…

The baby boy in a manger, the baby bird in a nest,

Helpless, hopes pinned to a Holy Mother and Father and Earthly Mother and Earthly Father,

The realization of revelations in difficult days…

Outrunning Herod, minding the Authorities of the Accounting in the census, the senselessness of fear, sprinting the labyrinth of command and vision.

A starry night of peace and poverty holding hands like lovers running under the cover of darkness,

A shadow of shelter in this life and the Prince of Peace, everlasting, united as the light never extinguished.

 

Not so very long ago, the young man in the temple,

Awkward pre-teen still growing into his limbs,

with a voice that cracked and a truth that shook,

Befuddling his rabbis,

Schooling his teachers,

Confounding his mother,

Abandoning the roots meant to confine and define and secure us all, naming instead a new path.

He is reading ideas from ancient scrolls made new.

The words roll comfortably off His tongue.

He is speaking – no, remembering – no, living -ancient words.

He knows well the call that says –

you are not too young, too old, too wise, too simple, too sacred or too profane, too anything – you are exactly who you are meant to be, formed before you were in your mother’s womb, set apart.

 

With this coal of faith, with this simple gesture, I touch your lips, and you will speak Words of unimaginable truth.

 

You are mine. You are beloved.

 

And not so very far from now,

The memories on the tip of your tongue, soon enough He will be tipping the tables

Turning the tables on you, on me, on us, on everything we knew

Upending everything we thought we believed in,

Healing the sick, confronting the hypocrites, giving out second chances at every first encounter,

Tax collectors and those wracked by demons, the destitute and the foreign and the lepers and the lame.

All collected by Him, the shocking tribe of God’s chosen people.

 

Escalating, fishing for men, for women, for all until there was nowhere left to go but the cross.

The vicious taste of bile, the iron-clad taste of blood, the bitterness of fear and adrenaline,

The speech of pain and the tortured Word.

Unthinkable.

It is coming, these kept promises.

But it is not His time yet.

 

For tonight

There is just the taste,

The task at hand, the flagon and goblet,

Filling the cups before fulfilling the prophecies,

the potency

Heady flavors, sweet aromas, the bouquet of crushed grape,

Long before the promise and burden of blood spilt and bread – the insatiable hunger finally fulfilled– the body broken

for you, and for you, and for you.

 

For tonight there is just a wedding – a boy and a girl and two families joining together,

and insufficient wine to celebrate as custom wills it.

 

A groom – adoring, bewildered, moving towards his future, and his family to be.

A bride – adorned, bejeweled, hoping for her future, leaving one family for another, becoming something new.

A master of the banquet – frantic on the inside, silently panicking servant as the revelation comes that the wine vats are empty.

 

 

There is no more. We came to experience the abundant celebration of life and our cups run dry.

Such disappointment. Such is life.

Parched party-goers exchange awkward glances – perhaps it is time to leave after all.

 

Until a man, bidden by his mother, embarrassed before his friends, prompted to perform his unthinkable gifts, creates anonymous abundance – a wedding gift with no tag attached.

 

Quietly, somewhere below or above or beyond the recognition of the rest of the festival, He changes things.

Vats filled to the brim with well water – water that cleans and quenches but does not bless – become something new. Rich and deep and subtle. Powerful. Otherworldly.

 

Delicious.

The best of wine brought out last, instead of first.

A celebration of the long flavors of life everlasting instead of the cheapness of our approach mortality,

Testament to the rich possibilities of God’s own banquet,

An invitation to drink deeply.

 

Dare a dram, risk a sip, see what happens when you sample such abundance.

It’ll ruin your palate for anything less.