Spirit of Grace

As concerns grow about COVID-19 and authorities are advising more “social distancing,” we are developing plans for how to stay connected in the event we cannot meet together in person. At this point, worship is still scheduled for this Sunday, March 15, but with extra precautions to limit points of contact. You’ll find the latest updates here and on the church’s Facebook page.

I pray that we will all to act wisely, but not fearfully.

Sunday 31 March 2019
The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Today, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, we turn to one of the best known and best loved of Jesus’s parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It appears only in the gospel of Luke, and is the third of three parables about things lost and found.

At the beginning of today’s gospel lesson, we hear the circumstances under which Jesus told these three parables. Jesus is attracting crowds of all kinds of people to listen to his liberating gospel. And among those who are coming to hear Jesus preach are many tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors, of course, were despised by most Judeans, because they collected money to support the Roman Empire who controlled their nation and occupied their land. So these sinners and collaborators were coming to hear Jesus.

But this is not pleasing to everyone. Specifically, we are told, some Pharisees and religious scholars are scandalized that Jesus not only welcomed these sinners to come and listen to him, but more importantly that he shared meals with them.

And sensing the disdain that these very religious people have for the way Jesus is conducting his ministry, Jesus tells three parables and how God cares more for sinners than for those who are already close to God. The first is the parable of lost sheep. If a shepherd has a hundred sheep and realize that he has lost one, he will leave the other ninety-nine in the wilderness and go searching for the one that is lost. And once he finds it, he will through a party to celebrate that he has found his lost sheep. Likewise, if a woman has ten coins and she loses one, she search the whole house until she finds it, and when she does she will invite her friends and throw a party because she has found the coin that she had lost. God is like that shepherd. God is like the woman. When someone who was lost in sin is found and brought home to God, God throws a party with the angels to celebrate that the one who was lost is found.

And then Jesus begins to tell a third story, the one we read this morning, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. A father has two sons. It’s a relatively wealthy family, wealthy enough, anyway, to have both slaves and hired hands. The younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance. This is, of course, highly irregular. This son is wishing that his father was dead. In the honor-conscious culture of the ancient Middle East, this would have been absolutely unthinkable. It would have been incredibly shameful. And it would be equally shameful for the father to grant his request. The father divides the estate between the two brothers. You’ll notice that the older brother doesn’t complain about it, either. He seems content to treat his father as if he were dead as well.

The younger son takes his fortune with him to a far-away country. Before long, he has spent it all. Notice what the parable does not say, here, though. It does not say anything about prostitutes. The son simply spends too much too quickly. There is no indication that he used the money for anything immoral. It’s his older brother who makes up the story about him spending the money on prostitutes. As with many people who come upon a great deal of money for the first time, he spent it without thinking much about what was coming next.

But it isn’t just spending his money that gets the younger son into trouble. He doesn’t run into real trouble until the famine comes. That’s when he has to find a job working with pigs. For a good, kosher Jew, this would have been an especially shameful kind of job, taking care of an unclean animal. And despite his work, he finds himself eating worse than the pigs do. He is without any family, without any means of support. He is on his own and desperate.

It’s at this moment that he comes to himself and decides to return home. He has nothing where he is, but if he returns home, he knows that even as a hired hand for his father he would be better off than he currently is. He practices his speech, what he is going to say to his father when he returns in shame. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands” He has sinned against heaven by violating the fifth commandment; he has not honored his father and mother. He no longer deserves to be called son because he has treated his father as if he were dead. He is going to ask to be a hired hand, which is the lowest place in his father’s household. You might think that it is worse to be a slave, and it’s true that a slave may have had a lower social standing. But a slave had a guaranteed place in the household. A hired peasant had no land of their own and no guarantee of work from their employer. Among men who were able to work, this would have been one of the most perilous places in society.

Having practiced his lines, the son begins the long journey home. But while he is still a long way off, his father sees him coming. It’s not one of the servants or slaves who sees him. It’s the father himself, which seems to imply that every day the father is looking, searching, waiting for his son to come home. Immediately, the father is moved with compassion. There is no sense of bitterness or judgment. There is immediate forgiveness, immediate compassion. And at this point, the father doesn’t know anything about his younger son’s circumstances. He doesn’t know anything about what he has done with his inheritance. All he knows is that his son is coming home.

And the father runs out to meet his son. In ancient Middle Eastern culture, this is a shameful act. It should be beneath the father’s dignity to run for any reason. It would certainly be beneath his dignity to run after the son who has treated him as if he were dead. But despite the risk to his honor, he runs out to his wayward son, hugs him, and kisses him.

The son launches into his prepared speech, but before he can finish it, his father interrupts.  He never gets the chance to ask to be a hired hand. Instead, his father welcomes him home with a completely over-the-top display. The best robe, a ring for his finger, new sandals for his feet, a huge party, because, he says, “This son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!” Again, it is completely unwarranted. This son has acted shamefully. He has treated the father as if he were dead. He has endangered the survival of his family by taking half of their possessions and frittering them away. But the father acts with no attention at all to propriety. He makes a fool of himself in his ridiculous welcome to his ill-behaved son.

And that is precisely the point, because that is the nature of God’s grace. God cares for us more than God’s own honor. We see it again and again in the story of Jesus, God acting shamefully, acting beneath God’s dignity, in an effort to reach out to us in love. God shamefully sheds the form of divinity and visits us in human form in Jesus. God shamefully appears not in the form of a king, priest, or emperor, but in the form of a poor carpenter’s son from the unremarkable town of Nazareth. God shamefully consorts with tax collectors and sinners, much beneath God’s dignity. God shamefully submits to death, and not just any death, but the particularly shameful and cursed death by execution on a cross. God cares more about us than about honor. God’s love for us is more powerful than God’s sense of retribution.

It’s a sentiment that is captured well in a song I just recently learned, and I’m going to invite Melissa to come up and help share it.

God loves us with a reckless love. It is not something we earn or deserve. It is a grace that God offers us freely. God welcomes us lowly human beings and calls us children, sons and daughters of the Most High.

Like the older brother, and like those scribes and Pharisees who prompted Jesus to tell the story in the first place, there always seem to be some pious religious people who are upset by the radical inclusivity of God’s love. There always seem to be religious people who think they know better than God about who should be in and who should be out. But God surprises us again and again by accepting people we thought were outside of the scope of God’s love. God surprises us again and again with a reckless love that searches out the lost and celebrates when any one of us comes home. Through the grace that is offered us in Christ Jesus, we know that there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love. There is nothing that will cause God to disown us. There is nothing that will dissuade God from searching us out. There is nothing that can destroy the identity that we celebrate in the sacrament of baptism. There is nothing that can change the reality that God loves us beyond our ability to comprehend it, that God claims us as God’s own, daughters and sons of the Most High. Thanks be to God.

Sunday 9 September 2018
Gathering Sunday

John 4:7-14

We celebrate a lot of different new years. There’s the one that happens on January 1st. That’s the official New Year for the Gregorian Calendar. Why the first of January? It’s pretty arbitrary. It doesn’t align with anything in nature, like a solstice or equinox. It doesn’t have any religious significance. It’s simply the date when Roman consuls took office each year, as of 153 BCE. Though January 1st has only been the New Year in the English-speaking world since 1751. Before that, New Year was on March 25th.

We also celebrate a liturgical new year. It happens each year toward the end of November or the beginning of December. The liturgical year starts with the beginning of Advent, which always begins four Sundays before Christmas Day. We start our liturgical year waiting for Christmas, looking forward to the coming of Christ into the world.

We have fiscal years, as well. Some organizations start the year on July 1st, some on October 1st, some on January 1st.

In The United Methodist Church, we have an appointment year. Every pastor and deacon is assigned to their place of ministry starting on July 1st. Every year between the last Sunday in June and the first Sunday in July, the roads are crowded with United Methodist clergy families in U-Haul trucks, making their way from one appointment to another.

But one of the more significant ways we mark a new year in our culture is with the new school year. It’s not always the same day in every place, starting anywhere from late July to late September. But at least for the first 20 or so years of our lives, these are the kinds of years that have significance. We measure our years by which grade we were in. Parents who have children in school tend to divide their time into the school year and summer break.

And in the church, we too align our programs to the school year. In the summer, most activities take a hiatus, just as most students and teachers take a break from the regular order of school. More so than the calendar year or the liturgical year, it is the school year by which most of us tend to measure our lives.

Which makes today a sort of New Year, the beginning of the program year. Choir is back in session. Sunday school is starting.

And at the beginning of this program year, we’re doing something we haven’t done before. We are adopting a theme for this year. It’s something they did in the church where I had my internship years ago, Calvary Baptist, in Denver. But I’ve never done it since then.

This is the longest I’ve ever spent pastoring a church. I’ve always stayed in a church for four years. But I’m in the beginning of my fifth year here now. And as the beginning of that fifth year was approaching, and as I was thinking about how to be an effective pastor in a church beyond a fourth year, God put it on my heart adopt a theme, an image that could focus us for this year together.

So I brought it our Board. I told them, “At the next meeting, I want us to adopt a theme for the coming year.” To which they responded, “What do you mean, a theme? What is this for?” “I’m not sure,” I answered. “Something short, like a slogan, something that can give us focus in the coming year.” “How will we use it?” They asked. “I haven’t figured that out yet,” I said. And I have to admit, I still haven’t. But I trust that God has some plan for us, and I trust that this is a part of that plan, and that the rest will be revealed as we live into it.

So we spent the better part of our next meeting trying to discern the theme that God had for us this year. Where have we been as a church? Where is God calling us?

The breakthrough came from Bob White. A single verb. To effervesce. Dictionary definition no. 1, (of a liquid) to give off bubbles. Definition no. 2, to be vivacious and enthusiastic. From there it was short trip: Effervescent Faith.

But what does that mean? you might ask. What does an Alka-Seltzer tablet have to do with faith? Plop, Plop, fizz, fizz, is not exactly a profound theological statement. Isn’t it a bit flighty, ephemeral. Well, effervescence might be more relevant to faith than it seems at first glance.

Let’s turn first to the thesaurus. So effervescence can refer to bubbling and fizzing in a liquid, but it can also refer to a human state of being. Effervescent: vivacious, lively, vital. All three of these words mean full of life. Here are two more synonyms: animated, high-spirited. Both of these mean full of spirit. These are theological words. Full of life. Full of spirit. That is how we describe a life lived in God. Filled with life that comes from the Lord of Life. Full with spirit that comes from God’s Holy Spirit. When we are living the Christian life, we are full of life, we are full of Spirit, we are effervescent in faith.

What else can effervescent mean? Bubbly, ebullient. These give the sense of motion, of action, of activity. If something is bubbling or boiling, there is energy behind it. There is life. There is potential. There is power. An effervescent faith is active, it is in motion, it is powerful.

What else? Effervescent: shining, sparkling, scintillating. These words catch the attention. They draw the eye. They provide light and beauty. An effervescent faith finds the beauty in every situation, finds the spark and the sparkle even in the midst dreariness and darkness.

What else? Effervescent: happy, jaunty, jolly, cheery, cheerful, perky, sunny, zestful, upbeat, peppy, bouncy. Contrary to what some of us were taught as children, it is okay for a Christian to be happy. It is not necessary to be always dour, pious, controlled, reverent. There are times for those things. But many times we Christians get stuck in that mode, and we forget about one very important fruit of the spirit. We forget about joy. I count myself as the worst offender. I spend so much time trying to be proper, reserved, measured, thoughtful, contemplative. That often sours into being judgmental, resentful, critical, condescending, disapproving, depressed. Those things are far, far away from faith. They forget about joy. An effervescent faith is joyful. It does not just ignore the struggles of life, but it also isn’t consumed by those struggles. An effervescent faith is not afraid to be joyful, not afraid to celebrate, not afraid to praise. An effervescent faith looks for the joy in any situation.

Alright, I’ve got two more words from the thesaurus. Effervescent: enthusiastic. Enthusiastic means excited, eager, passionate, fervent. We get the word enthusiastic from Greek: ἐνθουσιαστικός, Guess what the Greek word actually means. It literally means possessed by a god. Inspired. An effervescent faith means letting God live in you. It means letting God bubble up inside you. It means being yeasty, being productive. It means giving yourself over to God’s inspiration. An effervescent faith is enthusiastic.

And finally, an effervescent faith is irrepressible. It cannot be easily contained. If it is put under pressure, if it is agitated, it is likely to break free, it is likely to burst forth. It can destroy barriers. It can send things flying. It does not give up. It pushes back. It resists. An effervescent faith is irrepressible.

But what does this have to do with the Bible? you may ask. It’s all there in the lessons we read this morning. There is the irrepressible joy of Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into God’s presence with singing. It does not say, Make a well-refined noise unto the Lord. It does not say, Make a beautiful noise, make a harmonious noise unto the Lord. No. It says make a joyful noise unto the Lord! Worship God with gladness! Sometimes we get stuck on trying to do it right, trying to do it well, and we forget to do it joyfully.

And from Isaiah, You will draw water with joy from the springs of salvation. You will draw water with joy from the springs of salvation. A spring that bubbles up, that provides life. A spring that brings forth bubbling water, even in the midst of a desert, even in the midst of drought, still it gurgles forth. You will draw water with rejoicing from the burbling springs of salvation.

But most important this Sunday is the word from the Gospel of John. Jesus is alone with a foreign woman at a well. His disciples are off running errands. And Jesus asks her to draw a drink of water for him from the well. But she is confused by his request. She is a Samaritan. He is a Jew. They don’t get along. They both think the others are bunch of heretics. But for some reason, Jesus violates social convention and asks her anyway. He asks for a gift from her.

But, as it turns out, he has a gift to offer in return. Ask, and I will give you living water. Living water, in the ancient world, generally meant water that is moving. Spring water the bubbles up from the ground is living water. A bubbling brook that gurgles over stones is living water.

But Jesus has a different kind of living water in mind. Everyone who drinks this well water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.

A spring of living water that bubbles up into never-ending life. That is what faith in Jesus does in us. It is a spring of living water that bubbles up into never-ending life.

It is there in the good times, when it is easy to be joyful. In the celebrations. In the births, and weddings, and anniversaries, and graduations, new jobs, successes, first loves, triumphs. It is there, bubbling up, exuding joy.

But it is also there in the hard times, when nothing seems easy. In the struggles. In the deaths and breakups and illnesses, layoffs, failures, broken hearts, defeats. Even then, the spring does not run dry. In fact, it is in those moments that Jesus’s living water is most important. Like an oasis, a spring bubbling up in the desert, offering refreshment, coolness, life. It is always there, a deep reserve of God’s love, hope, and joy. An effervescent faith that stirs up within us, gives us the grace to forgive, the strength to endure, the hope that sees beauty even in the midst of ugliness, joy even in the midst of sorrow, life even in the midst of death.

Effervescent faith. What are we doing with these words this year? I don’t know. But I’m excited to find out. Carry this image with you. In our worship, in our meetings, in your daily lives. An effervescent faith, a spring of living water that bubbles up eternally in the soul. Let us see what it does in us. Let us find out how it changes us. Let us discover what it brings forth in us, as we reach for that living water that quenches our thirst, that cleanses our sin, that washes away our fear. Living water. Eternal spring. Effervescent faith.