Post-sermon discussion for March 27, 2011

John 4:5-42 – Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well.

This passage surprised me this year. This has never been one of my favorite passages. In fact, three years ago when this passage came up, I preached on the Old Testament lesson. For some reason, (Holy Spirit surely), this passage came alive for me this year.

Obviously, with such a long passage, there is much that is going on. However, a theme that seemed to leap out at me was that of religion.

Religion of the day should have kept this meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman from taking place for many reasons. 1) She was a woman and he was a man. 2) She was a Samaritan and he was a Jew. 3) Her past of multiple marriages. 4) Her present living situation. Jesus had many good and proper reasons to avoid conversing with her. No one would have faulted him for ignoring her, including the woman herself.

That he spoke with her, and that he touched her pain with God’s love was living water itself. God is not found in the dead water of all the shoulds, need tos, gottas, and musts of religion. God is present in the living water of personal relationships. God is all about love and love is living stuff that comes alive within relationships.

Not only does Jesus demonstrate what living water is versus the dead water stuff of religion, but he also talks about it. He does it first when he answers her question about whether the Samaritan religious passions are right or the Jewish religious passions. Jesus said to her, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” In other words, it is not about a place, or even a practice. It is about a relationship with spirit and truth. True worship happens as a result of a relationship with our God of love.

The other place where he talks about this is with the disciples. Surely they are wondering why they have made this detour into this village of Samaria. And they are wondering why he is talking with this woman of Samaria. Has Jesus forgotten who he is or who “these people” are? Jesus then talks about harvest, saying: “See how the fields are ripe for harvesting.” – yes even these fields here in Samaria. ALL people are hungry for a living, loving relationship with a God who is not out to judge them but wants to love and accept them for who they are.

Some have said that Jesus came to abolish religion. I think there is a lot of truth to that. It is not completely true, however, because God has and does work within religion. Religion offers a modicum of order in the midst of the chaos, and that order is helpful. Yes, the order within religion can and often does get in the way, as Jesus demonstrates here, but we do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I love this song by Jason Grey, and closed Sunday’s sermon by paraphrasing it. I’ll close this by offering the full text of the song here.
More Like Falling In Love
Jason Gray / Jason Ingram
© 2009 Centricity Music Publishing / ASCAP/
So Essential Tunes / West Main Music /
Windsor Hill Music / SESAC

Give me rules; I will break them.
Show me lines; I will cross them.
I need more than a truth to believe.
I need a truth a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet.
It’s gotta be . . .

More like falling in love, than something to believe in.
More like losing my heart, than giving my allegiance.
Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now.
It’s like I’m falling, oh, it’s like I’m falling in love.

Give me words; I’ll misuse them.
Obligations; I’ll misplace them.
‘Cause all religion ever made of me
was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet.
It never set me free.
It’s gotta be . . .

It’s like I’m falling in love, love, love, deeper and deeper.
It was love that made me a believer
in more than a name, a faith, a creed.
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me.

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 17, Monday

Do not lag in zeal. . . (Romans 12:11a)

Zeal

I think I agree with the author here. This is usually easier said than done. Yes, the “if onlys” take their toll, but so does the fullness of life and ministry. Even Jesus needed to get away for a time to recharge. Zeal is something that we usually lag in.

A number of times the author talks about being blessed, broken, and given. The connection he makes with the feeding of the five thousand, Holy Communion, and the way our Lord renews our zeal amazes me. The key word seems to be “broken,” that we need to be broken in order to have our zeal renewed. It was in the breaking of the fish and bread that the food was multiplied for 5,000. It is in the breaking of the bread that our Lord comes to us in his holy meal. It is when our wants and expectations, and ultimately our sin, are broken that we can be given for the sake of the world.

We are usually not too excited about being broken. How tempting it is to say: “If only we didn’t need to be broken. . .” And yet, we pray: “Break us as Christ was broken, for the sake of the world. In this, may our zeal be renewed.”
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 16, Saturday

. . . love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10)

Affection and Honor

It is impossible for me to imagine the love that takes place between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or, more specifically, how that love is manifested. Affection and honor are certainly the primary manifestations of that love. Trust and complete openness must also be central manifestations of that love. The book, “The Shack,” shed a little light upon this loving relationship within the Holy Trinity, but only a little. Again, it is way beyond my imagination.

However, we are created in God’s image. We are created to love. Therefore, as we continue to experience or uncover the depths and breadths of love, our understanding of God’s love grows. We not only learn more about how Father, Son and Holy Spirit love one another but also how that love is to be expressed in all that we say and do. Through our Baptism into Christ, and by way of the gift of God’s Holy Spirit within us we are incorporated into that love. We are made a part of that family. Therefore, the love we share through mutual affection and outdoing one another in showing honor is God’s love being manifested to the world through us.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 15, Friday

. . .hold fast to what is good. . . (Romans 12:9c)

Seeking the Good

It seems absurd to question what is good. I mean, we all know what’s good, right? Ah, but once we start to discuss what is good and what is not our differences within those discussions will quickly come to light. What is good for one person can be seen as imprisonment for the other. There is a significant amount of grey when it comes to defining what is truly good.

The author does a good job of showing us how terrible times, those experiences which we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, how these times can consistently contain some of our most poignant experiences with the presence and grace of God. So, does that make these experiences “good?” Good can come out of them, but are they in and of themselves good?

Maybe if we just drop an “o” out of the word “good” in this passage that would help. “Hold fast to what is God.” Yes, it doesn’t make the “holding fast” task any easier, but it might be easier to declare what is God than what is good. At least we know that God is love and that this God of love is holding fast to us whereas good does not hold fast to us. Good can be such a fleeting thing. God never is.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 14, Thursday

. . .hate what is evil. . . (Romans 129b)

Hatred of Division

I’m going to go out on a limb here to make a point:
At a rally in Washington this past fall that tended to lean a little more to the left than most Washington rallies lately, there were many humorous, anti-conservative signs displayed. One that made me laugh said this: Jesus hates figs, (Matthew 21:19).

Now there certainly isn’t anything funny about Jesus hating anything, especially that which the conservative signs proclaimed that inspired this sign. And certainly Jesus did not hate figs. His cursing of the fig tree was much more complicated then simply not liking the taste of figs. And that’s where the humor comes in. As absurd as it is to think of Jesus hating anyone, even those who condemned him to death, as well as those who pounded those nails into his flesh, so too is it absurd that Jesus would hate figs.

My reason for using this example is that it raises the question about what it is that God might hate, and today’s theme suggests that divisions among us is something that God hates. Anything that keeps us from loving one another might be a focus of God’s righteous hate. So, I can’t help but think that the signs which inspired the humorous sign are actually what God might hate because they promote divisions. With that said, I must also acknowledge my own sin when it comes to accusing those who wrote and carried the original signs. Am I not also creating divisions along the line of, “I hate people who hate.” Yeah.

So, it is with humble caution that I support all these thoughts about God’s righteous hate. Yes, God hates that which keeps us from loving one another; all that keeps us from living into the connectedness that we have been made for. But, oh, how it scares me to think of pointing fingers at that which I think God hates, because of how it too can create divisions. And maybe that fear is born out of righteous hate? Your thoughts?
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 13, Wednesday

. . .hate what is evil. . . (Romans 12:9b)

Hate

Zion’s Marks of Discipleship are: Pray, Worship, Study, Invite, Encourage, Give, Serve. In a way, the theme of this book is very similar to our Marks of Discipleship, except more so. As I quickly went through this book I found only two of our seven that made it into the list based upon Romans 12. So, this book contains thirty-eight other marks. To be fair, there certainly are connections between many of the marks listed in this book and our seven.

I’m writing all of this in light of today’s Mark of the Christian. “Hate.” Yeah. That would never make it into our list. “Pray, Worship, Study, Invite, Encourage, Give, Serve, Hate.” Nope. I’m not seeing it.

And yet, the author makes such a wonderful case for hate as a mark of the Christian based upon what Paul says here in Romans 12. There can be a holy and righteous hate, a hate connected with God’s hate. Yes, God hates what happens to people ravaged by polio or cancer. God hates what has happened in Japan. God hates all the evil and sin that causes so much pain and discord within this world. God hates everything that “distorts the beauty and goodness of all that [God] so lovingly create[d].” So, I embrace this righteous hate.

And yet, it scares the tar out of me as well. Way, way, way too much has been hated in the name of God that God certainly does not hate. I’m reluctant to use my extremely limited understanding of God and what God loves and hates as an absolute standard for what I should be loving and hating, let alone the standards I tell others to embrace. I know that within my own life, what I would have firmly stated many years ago as something God hated is not necessarily something I would firmly state today. What will the future look like with such declarations I might be tempted to make today? The older I get, the more cautious I become with such declarations.

And yet, it is comforting to know that what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil,” will happen, and not just in the life to come. And it will happen because God hates what is evil. And it will happen in this life because God’s hate becomes our hate. And so, we will push for just laws, and we will fund cancer research, and we will give money to alleviate malaria, and we will give money and make quilts to help those suffering from earthquakes. God’s hate pushes us to manifest the love of God in whatever ways we can throughout our daily lives.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 12, Tuesday

Let love be genuine. . . (Romans 12:9a)
(It just occurred to me that it might be nice to include the focus text. Duh.)

An Open Heart

It was interesting to think of the interior and exterior aspects of love in light of Paul’s call for letting love be genuine. Yeah. Genuine love needs the interior attention; the quiet times away for prayer and meditation; the intimate conversations between Creator and created. But, attending to the interior alone is not enough for genuine love. We must also attend to the exterior aspects of love; the presence of God within others; or, as the author suggests, allowing the needs of others to draw God’s love out of us. Again, it is not enough to just attend to the exterior aspects of love. There needs to be balance.

I found the author’s suggestion a little jarring, that Jesus needed the crowds to become more fully himself. It is difficult for me to think of Jesus as being in need. And yet, Jesus is fully human, and to be human means that we are made for each other; that we need each other. So, yes, Jesus needed those crowds to be more fully himself just as any one of us needs others to draw God’s love out of us.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 11, Monday

Love

I had to read this one a few times. There’s a lot packed into it. The freedom and love connection I was aware of. It was a central theme in my Ash Wednesday sermon. But, the directions the author took this in today’s reading amazed me. Thus, I needed to read it a few times.

I was particularly intrigued with the way he connected our need for approval from others as something that prevents us from loving. And, only when we lose ourselves in God’s love, a love that does not have any needs for approval from us, can we genuinely love others.

The thought that made me pause a little bit and come back to the text more than once, was the fact that our experience of God’s love comes to us in and through the love other others. So, don’t we then need the love of others? And the answer is yes, but we only need the love of God that comes through that love. If we need their approval independent of God’s love, then we lose our freedom.

I also thought it was implicit, if not directly, in the author’s comments that we are enslaved to what others think and really have no hope of freeing ourselves. For years within the LBW we acknowledged this through the opening words of the confession: “Most merciful God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Not being able to free ourselves is always a troubling thought, so much so that some denominations will not say this. Rather, they proclaim that we must free ourselves from sin in order to make ourselves acceptable to God. So, will we ever be free of the bondage of what others think of us? I suppose the honest answer, the one that I am reluctant to acknowledge, is that no, not in this life. We will never be completely free of that bondage. However, by God’s grace will get moments of freedom, and those moments will then allow us to truly love.

Yeah, I probably will need to read this one a few more times, and that’s OK, because reading it does give me glimpses of this wonderfully freeing love of God.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 10, Saturday

Gifted

When he was in grade school, my son said to me, “Dad, it is humiliating.” What he was talking about was my use of puppets for children’s sermons in worship. It was OK to use a puppet in Sunday School, but not in worship. Nope. That was humiliating.

And so I didn’t. It wasn’t until I was at my second call, eleven years into my ministry, that I finally got permission from him to use puppets in worship. As long as he didn’t have to come up for the children’s sermon, it was OK for me to make a fool of myself with puppets.

Doing the puppet thing is easy for me. In fact it is too easy. The conversations that I have with the puppets is a way that played when I was a kid. My grandmother used to tell stories in a very similar manner. And, because it is so easy for me, it embarrasses me very quickly when people gush about it. It feels like people are gushing about how I eat food or walk from one point to another. I just like having an excuse to play with the kids.

And yet, isn’t this the way that it is with gifts? It isn’t the complicated stuff. It’s the stuff that comes naturally to us. It is the stuff we are somehow born with. “We have gifts that differ according to the grace give to us . . .” My undeserved gift is doing the puppet thing. Someone else’s undeserved gift is being able to put a meal together. Someone else can run an adding machine. Another person can throw a football with amazing accuracy. Another person can make sound systems work. Etc. Etc. Etc. We are entrusted with these gifts in order to bless others, and they do indeed differ from one another, but they are all gifts of grace. All these gifts offer us the opportunity to let the light of Christ shine through us, “so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven.” And what a blessing, (a gift of grace), that these gifts come so easily to us.
Pastor Keith

“Marks of the Christian” Lenten Journey – Day 9, Friday

Needy

I feel like flipping it around and pondering the opposite for a moment, that being: “I don’t need you.” It is difficult for me, at this moment, to envision the circumstances where that wouldn’t be heard as an insult, a rejection, or a put down. “I don’t need you.” I suppose I might say that to parents who would want to take my hand now, as an adult, in order to help me cross the street safely. I don’t need their help crossing the street, but I still need them. I still need any and all people in my life, in one way or another, even the ones that drive me crazy.

“We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” What an incredible proclamation. Because we are joined together in Christ, we don’t just “stand” side by side. We are interwoven in such a way that we are a part of one another. Therefore, your concerns become my concerns and my joys become your joys. Being joined together in the one body of Christ means that we are also a part of each other’s lives. Therefore, I weep when I see people experiencing the terror of an earthquake in Japan.

A concern that I have politically is how comfortable a growing segment of our population is with promoting the myth of individuality along with survival of the fittest. I’m glad that I’m not living like an animal on the Serengeti. I like it that there are others who are watching out for my wellbeing, like police officers, and teachers, and fire fighters and nurses. I’d like to think that I’m doing the same. Compassion is what happens when we realize that we are “members one of another,” that we need each other, that we are in this together. Sure, we will not always agree on how best to take care of one another, but I’d like to enter that discussion with the assumption that we agree on our basic need to take care of one another. Lately that hasn’t always been the case.

Yes, there is a certain joy that comes when I don’t need to have a parent holding on to my bicycle seat, or sitting with me when I drive a vehicle. I still enjoy being able to proclaim, “I did it all by myself.” And yet, that statement is the beginning of a slippery slope. Did I really do it all by myself? Didn’t someone teach me basic skills at some point? Weren’t there others who provided the raw materials? I didn’t invent or manufacture the tools. We don’t really do it all by ourselves, and that’s OK. It is OK to need each other, and it is OK to be needy. Being needy opens our eyes to the precious gift of Christ present within community.
Pastor Keith