"RE" Words: Reconciliation




1 John 4:7-21
May 6, 2012

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

A friend of mine told me a story about a Methodist pastor’s experience in a Northern Pennsylvania church fifteen years ago.  It was the pastor’s first worship service as the new pastor of a church.  As a Methodist, as is their custom, he had been sent there by the bishop with little notice.  The previous pastor had only been gone for two weeks, and knowing that the congregation would be a bit flummoxed by losing their longtime pastor and getting a new one, all in the space of four weeks, the new pastor wanted to make sure his sermon was full of love, care, and hope. 

After he finished his sermon, he went to the back of the sanctuary to shake everyone’s hands as they walked out.  This was a church with a large center aisle leading to large double doors.  There were also doors leading out of the sanctuary at the back left and right.  He stood at the center door, waiting to shake everyone’s hand, but only about ten out of the 80 or so in attendance came to him.  The others went out the side doors. 

            What had he said that was so bad?  This was among the least controversial sermons he had ever preached.  Did he do something wrong?  Finally, he asked one of the members what was going on.  “Ah, the big butter controversy,” replied the man.  “Didn’t anyone tell you about it?”  “The big butter controversy?  What’s that?” asked the pastor.  The man then proceeded to tell him about something that happened a long time ago. 

            Thirty years before, the church had had it’s big harvest celebration dinner.  Being a farming community, many brought food from their farms.  One woman (we’ll call her Maybelle) churned a lot of butter, bringing it to share.  After the dinner was over, everyone cleaned up and left.  The unused butter was left behind.  Another woman (we’ll call her Kelly Sue), worried that it might spoil since the church didn’t have a refrigerator.  So she took it home with her.  A little while later, Maybelle came back to get her butter, but it was gone.  She was convinced that Kelly Sue had taken the butter because she was always jealous of her butter-churning skills.  So, she complained to her relatives in the church about what Kelly Sue had done, and everyone in her family took her side. 

Kelly Sue’s family, seeing that she was being attacked, took her side against Maybelle and her family.  The church became split, but being a family church they weren’t willing to leave and go somewhere else.  So on Sunday mornings the family and friends of Maybelle went out one door, and the friends and family of Kelli Sue went out the other.  Fifty years later the split still remained, even though all the original people were dead and no one really remembered the reason for the feud anymore. They weren’t even fighting anymore.  But the remnants of the fight still existed.  It’s amazing what can divide Christians against one another.  It’s amazing how easily divided we are by things big and especially small

Conflicts like these are common in so many churches.  And it’s these kinds of conflicts drive so many people away from church.  Christianity is held to a higher standard today by non-Christians than it ever has.  People outside of the church know that we preach love, humility, compassion, and being non-judgmental.  So when they see any of us acting out of anger, ego, selfishness, and being judgmental, they turn away. 

The irony is that walking away from church doesn’t make a person more loving, compassionate, humble, or non-judgmental.  If you really think deeply about the great butter controversy, you realize that it’s not just churches that get divided.  People are constantly divided—families, communities, companies, country, and nations.  We live in a divisive age in which relationships are disrupted all over the place, whether we are talking about churches, families, or the community, division is everywhere

Think about some of the most popular reality television shows—Dance Moms, Survivor, American Chopper, Real Housewives of Whatever city, Jersey Shore, and all the rest.  They are popular because television executives know that conflict and division sells.  We’ve become a shallow culture, an entertainment culture, and it nurtures division.

The irony of all our conflict is that it is our ability to cooperate that has allowed human beings to rise above all other animals.  As a species, humans have little of the self-protective or hunting skills of other animals.  Our teeth are small and our jaws are weak.  Our nails are brittle.  We’re not very fast.  We’re not very strong.  We don’t even camouflage well, yet we’ve risen above all other animals.  The reason is our ability to cooperate.  We cooperate better than any other species in ways that lead to innovation and that allows us to overcome all obstacles.  Yes, I know that ants and bees cooperate better on a massive scale, but not in ways that overcome problems and obstacles.  For example, when our habitat is threatened, we either adapt or change our habitat.  Ants and bees die.  We are divided, but what has allowed us to dominate the earth has been our ability to cooperate creatively.

Despite church butter controversies, Christianity does promote love, yet it is also very realistic about the ability of people to love.  Christianity calls people to unity, communion, and commitment to community, yet at the same time it knows people have a hard time doing these.  So Christianity also teaches reconciliation.  Reconciliation is as important as love because it promotes the idea that we can always love again. 

To understand what reconciliation really is, it helps to look at the origin of the word.  The word “reconcile” comes from the Latin, reconciliare, which is a combination of “re”(again) + “conciliare” (bring together).  It means to “bring together again,” and in the word itself is an understanding that division and conflict between people exists. Reconciliation is a return to relationship.  The Bible emphasizes reconciliation constantly.  It’s not so much in the teachings as it is in the stories.  A tremendous number of stories are about reconciliation. 

For example, the story of Joseph in Genesis is a story of reconciliation.  Joseph’s brothers did something terrible to him, selling him into slavery, which led not only to Joseph’s enslavement, but eventually to his imprisonment.  But in the end, after Joseph had become wildly successful, instead of exacting revenge on his brothers, he forgave them and reconciled with them.  The story of David and Bathsheba is one of reconciliation between David and God, after David had done something terrible in having Bathsheba’s husband killed in order to marry Bathsheba.  The story of the Prodigal Son is one of reconciliation in which the father both reconciles with and restores his estranged son.  Jesus forgives and reconciles with Peter, even after Peter had denied him three times.  And on the cross, Jesus reconciles with everyone, at least from his part, by saying on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 

Christianity recognizes that while people are called to love, they will still divide and engage in conflict.  Yet God is always calling us back to reconciliation.  And there are basic principles of reconciliation we can follow if we want to live a life that’s open to reconciling.  Let me share three with you.

First, reconciliation begins with humility.  To reconcile with another, we have to have a willingness to put away our pain, anger, and bitterness to be open to God’s love.  The fact is that very few of us will go through life without experiencing some sort of relational pain.  To overcome that pain, especially when it has been inflicted on us, we have to be able to put aside our ego and recognize that it’s not all about me.  To overcome conflict I have to be willing to say, “I can’t force that person to take responsibility for what she or he did to me, but I can take responsibility for what I’ve done, even if what I’ve done isn’t that much.  I can take responsibility for harboring resentment, bitterness, anger, and for not doing what I can to reconcile.” This kind of humility is one that opens us to God’s love by letting go of our anger, bitterness, and bile. 

Second, reconciliation is fed by forgiveness.  We forgive when we are willing to give the gift of letting go to another.  I know that forgiving others is hard, especially when we have been deeply hurt.  Most people don’t realize that forgiveness is literally “giving forward a gift.”  When we forgive, we give the most precious gift we can give another, which is to give them something undeserved.  We give them the gift of not holding against them what they have done to us.  Forgiving is not the same as forgetting.  But it is a gift we give freely to another who may have done nothing to earn that gift. 

It is popular among many Christians to say that we cannot forgive till another person has repented.  That’s a fallacy.  If we demand repentance, an apology, we are asking that person to pay for our forgiveness.  Forgiving is a gift, and it is ever more powerful when it is given without an apology or repentance. 

Finally, reconciliation is completed with otherness.  To reconcile we have to let go of “me” to become open to “we.”  Reconciliation means turning our attention away from MY pain, MY hurt, My-self, and turning toward another and saying, “I’m going to make you matter more than me.”  It’s when we learn to let go of “me” to focus on “we” that we begin to live lives pregnant with the possibility of reconciliation.

I want to close with a story that I think captures these three principles.  It’s a story that a mentor of mine, Jack Hodges, told me.  Jack was the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Murrysville, Pennsylvania when I served there as an associate pastor.  Jack told me about something that happened when he was the pastor of a church in Oregon. Apparently there were two women, Nancy and Linda, who had developed a strong distaste for each other. They both were longtime members of the church, and at one point had been good friends.  But then something happened.  They had a disagreement with each other and could no longer stand the sight of each other. 

This was difficult for the church because both were very involved in leading the church.  They often served on the same committees.  When one would come up with an idea, often the other would contradict it just for spite.  The division in them was causing a minor division in the church.

All of this changed one day during a worship service.  Jack had preached about forgiveness, and then afterwards led communion.  He said that he noticed Linda and Nancy glancing at each other during communion.  During the prayer after communion, Nancy stood up and walked down the side aisle. Then Linda stood up on the other side of the sanctuary and walked down the other aisle.  They met in the back of the sanctuary.  Jack wasn’t sure what would happen, and worried that they might start fighting.  He saw Nancy lift her arms, and then Linda lift hers.  They hugged and forgave each other.  Jack told me that this was one of the most amazing things he has ever witnessed. And it is no coincidence that this happened during communion.  Communion is a sacrament that is rooted in Jesus’ forgiveness after his body was broken body and his blood was shed.  It is a sacrament of forgiveness. 

They reconciled because they became humble, forgave each other, and focused on each other rather than themselves. 

We’re called to a different standard from those who live in and of the world.  We’re called to be in the world, but not of the world, which means we’re called to be better than the world.  We’re called to be a humble, forgiving, other-oriented kind of people.  We’re called to become the kind of people who make reconciliation possible

Amen. 
at

"RE" Words: Renewal and Reformation


John 20:19-29
April 29, 2012



When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”


Do you recognize this phrase?  Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda!  You should.  Well,… maybe you shouldn’t, but it is a phrase that lies at the heart of what it means to be a Presbyterian.  It’s a phrase used not only by John Calvin at the time of the Protestant Reformation, but it was coined by Martin Luther and became a catchphrase for much of the Protestant movement of the early 16th century.  It defined what Protestants believe, and it was a shot against the Roman Catholic Church of the time. 

The phrase, “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” means “church reformed, always reforming.”  Sometimes the phrase has a longer form, which is “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda, verbi dei.”  The additional phrase means, “according to the word of God.”  Basically, the idea behind this phrase is a recognition that we Protestants, and especially we Presbyterians, are a church that was reformed back in the 16th century, but that always remains open to God’s continual reforming.  We were renewed, and we are always undergoing renewal.

The phrase was a critique of the Catholic Church of the time.  The Reformers had seen that the Catholic Church never changed.  The church was doing things the same way in 1500 that it had in 500 A.D.  The result was that the church had built up defenses to maintain those ways, which included not letting lay people read the Bible for themselves or think for themselves when it came to religious matters.  So, the Protestant reformers reformed the church to allow the laity a greater role in the life and faith of the church.  But that wasn’t enough.  Reformers like Luther and Calvin believed that the church had to always be open to future reformation.  It had to be open to what God was saying today, and to adapt the church to modern realities.  We can’t stay in the 16th century.  We have to be open to sharing Christ and the Holy Spirit in a world that’s always changing. 

As Presbyterians, this idea of reformation that leads to renewal lies at the heart of what we say we believe.  Reformata, semper reformanda isn’t just a church idea.  It’s an idea for us as individuals, too.  It means that as a church and as individuals we are never complete.  In other words, the moment we as a church, or as individuals, believe that we have arrived—that our understanding of God is adequate, that our faith is complete—that’s the moment when we have turned away from God.  To be a Christian means to be constantly open to being reformed and renewed. 

For us Presbyterians, we understand that reformation and renewal are at the center of what it means to be a Christian.  We understand that Christians aren’t meant to have it all figured out, to be perfect, or to never falter or fail.  Instead, we are called to be people who are ready to grow all the time.  We’re called to take our mistakes, our failures, and our misjudgments and to become like Thomas with them.  We’re also called to learn new things, especially those new things that God is leading us to discover through new experiences.

I doubt that you are like me in this, but the apostle Thomas is one of my biblical heroes.  He gets bad press all the time because of what he said in our passage for this morning.  To be called a “doubting Thomas” is a bad thing, but this doubting Thomas ended up being the most courageous of all the apostles.  And Christ sent him on the most dangerous mission of all the apostles.

After the Day of Pentecost, the apostles gathered together and cast lots to decide who would go where to spread the Gospel.  Andrew was sent to the region that is now Armenia.  Peter would stay in Jerusalem (and eventually move to Damascus and then Antioch).  Later, Paul would go to what is now Turkey and Greece.  Others were sent elsewhere.  Thomas was given the lands that are now Pakistan and India.  Thomas did not want to go to, complaining, “I don’t want to go.  I’m not healthy enough.  I don’t speak the languages.  It’s too dangerous.  I’m the wrong person.  I’m not going.”  His refusal changed one day when he met Jesus in the marketplace.  The tradition says that Jesus told him that he wanted him to go to India.  Again, Thomas complained.  So Jesus approached a traveling merchant in the marketplace named Abbanes and sold Thomas to him as a slave.  He told Abbanes that Thomas had the carpentry skills he needed.  The price was agreed upon, and Abbanes approached Thomas and said, “Is that your master over there?” pointing to Jesus.  When Thomas said yes, Abbanes, said, “He has just sold you to me.  You are now my servant.” 

First as Abbanes’ servant, and later as a free man, Thomas spread the Gospel in what is modern-day Pakistan, settling in the Indus River valley.  From there he moved south and preached throughout India.  It was a difficult mission because many parts of India were ungoverned and dangerous.  Over the course of twenty years, Thomas faithfully traveled throughout India, spreading the Gospel.  He eventually settled near Madras, where he was tortured and killed because of what he was preaching.  The church started by Thomas, the Mar-Thoma Orthodox Church, still exists today, and has about 2.5 million members world-wide. 

Thomas, even though he doubted, also served with tremendous courage in places that were dangerous.  Thomas is my hero because he points the way to being an “authentic” Christian.  He is the model for the struggling Christian who has doubts and questions, but never lets them get in the way of coming to God.  Thomas’ doubts and questions led him to constant renewal and reformation.  He constantly became a new man because of his willingness to grapple with faith. Thomas had questions, which led to doubts, which led to seeking, which led to answers, which led to growth, which led his renewal and reformation, which led to him doing amazing things

Each of us is called to live a life of constant renewal and reformation, just as our church is called to constant reformation and renewal.  The problem is that so many people resist growth. We don’t want to grow.  We don’t want to change.  But whether we like it or not, growth is inevitable.  That’s the rule of life:  nothing remains constant.  Our bodies are a great example of this.  I’ve read that the cells of our bodies die and are renewed every three to five years.  We are constantly being renewed and reformed as human beings.  We might not like that reformation as we get older, but it takes place whether we like it or not. 

When I think of renewal and reform, especially as a Christian in every day life, I can’t think of a better example of this than R. A. Dickey.  Do you know who he is?  Dickey is a pitcher for the New York Mets.  In fact, he’s a very rare pitcher.  He’s the only knuckleballer actively pitching in the major leagues.  Last year he was one of the best pitchers, having compiled the thirteenth lowest ERA in the major leagues. 

The knuckleball pitch is incredibly difficult to learn how to do well, which is why there are no other knuckleballers in the major leagues.  When it is pitched well, it is virtually unhittable.  When it isn’t pitched well, it leads to home runs.  Most other pitches are pitched with the first two fingers stretched over the top of the ball.  A fastball is a pitch in which the pitcher throws with force, forcing the ball to leave the fingers spinning furiously backwards, which causes the ball to move through the air with little friction.  A good fastball goes between 90 and 100 miles an hour.  When throwing a curveball, the pitcher lets go of the ball by twisting his fingers to the side, creating both a backwards and a sideways spin.  That causes the ball to curve.  Most other pitches are variations of these two.  The knuckleball is their opposite.  The knuckleballer digs his nails under the horseshoe of the ball’s stitches in such a way that the nails to the first knuckle rest atop the ball.  The thumb and ring finger are on either side to stabilize the ball.  Then the pitcher lets go, with the result being that there is almost no spin on the ball.  A good knuckleball will spin no more than a quarter turn between the pitcher’s mound and home plate.  The result of having no spin is that the ball is unpredictable.  It goes up, down, and side-to-sde, depending on the wind conditions.  A good knuckleball pitch goes only about 60 to 70 miles per hour.  When it’s thrown well, it makes batters look foolish, often causing them to swing before the ball even gets to the plate.  You can imagine that batters hate knuckleball pitchers. 

R. A. Dickey took a long path to becoming the dominant knuckleballer he is today.  As a high schooler he was a phenom.  He was a can’t-miss prospect.  Scouts fell in love with his fastball and his other pitches.  He was drafted 18th overall in the first round of the 1996 draft by the Texas Rangers.  He was expected to sign a four-year contract for $4 million and a $1 million signing bonus.  Unfortunately it was found, during his medical examination, that he did not have a key ligament in his elbow.  They didn’t want to take a chance on him.  He went from can’t-miss multimillionaire prospect to the pitcher no one wanted.  He was devastated.  A few months later the Rangers did make an offer:  a standard minor-league contract with a $75,000 signing bonus. 

From there Dickey toiled in the minor leagues for 12 years.  He eventually became known as a four A pitcher.  What’s that?  It means that you are too good for triple A baseball, but not good enough for major league baseball.  You’re a pitcher in limbo. 

At age 31, realizing he had to do something to realize his dream of becoming only a major league pitcher, he decided to learn the knuckleball.  It didn’t go great.  He would alternate between being wildly successful and just plain wild.  He continued to go back and forth between the major leagues and AAA baseball. 

Things changed dramatically in 2006 when he had a baptismal experience of sorts.  He was pitching for the Oklahoma AAA team, and they were playing the Omaha Royals.  The hotel they stayed in had a glass elevator that overlooked the Missouri River.  Every year they stayed there, Dickey looked out over the river and wondered if anyone had ever swam across it.  He decided that this was the year he would do it.  He told his teammates about his plan, and they all gathered by the river as he plunged in and started swimming. 

He learned three things about the river very quickly.  First, it was filthy, and you couldn’t see more than an inch in front of you underwater.  Second, it was incredibly swift moving.  Third, there was a heavy undertow.  He swam furiously for about five or ten minutes, thinking that he must be most of the way across.  When he looked back to see where he was, he realized that he was barely halfway across, and that the current had taken him ¼ of a mile downstream.  He was now in danger of drowning. 

He tried to swim back to his side of the shore, but soon it was obvious that he wasn’t going to make it.  In utter exhaustion, he stopped and decided to give the river his life.  He prayed for God to take care of his wife and kids, and he slowly sank.  He said that it was a weird experience to weep underwater.  As he prepared to suck into his lungs the water that surrounded him, giving himself over the death and to God, his feet hit bottom.  That rejuvenated him.  He pushed back up to the surface, and using a combination of doggy paddling and pushing up from the bottom, he made it back to shore, where a teammate dragged him out.  He was a changed man. 

Before he went into the river, he had a 1-4 record with a 6.80 ERA.  From that point on he finished the season 11-2 with a 2.80 ERA.  The next season he made it to the major leagues for good.  It wasn’t just his pitching that changed.  So did his attitude about life.  He began to treat life more as precious, living completely in the moment.  This impacted his pitching because instead of worrying about the strike count, who was batting, or what the score was, he focused on each pitch as something special.  All that mattered was the pitch, nothing else. 

In his life, he started seeing a counselor to help him unshackle his life from the physical and sexual abuse he had experienced as a child from a babysitter and an older boy.  He worked on his marriage and other relationships, learning to trust others now with the burdens of his life.  And he focused more on trusting God.  He was renewed and it led to a reformation of his life.

Whether it has to do with growing in our understanding God, or growing in how we live life, we are called to constant renewal and reformation.  I have a phrase that I’ve applied to the life of a church, but I think it’s just as applicable to our lives, too.  “If we aren’t growing, we’re dying.”  I believe this about churches, and I used to say this a lot in the first few years I was here at Calvin Presbyterian Church.  I believe that if you are just trying to stay where you are, you are engaging in the first steps of moving toward death.  I think nature backs me up in this.  Look at any plant or tree.  It is always growing, and the moment it stops growing, it begins to die.  We are called to constant life through renewal and reformation. 

The question for us is which direction we’re moving in?

Amen. 

at

“RE” Words: Redemption





Ephesians 1:1-12
April 22, 2012

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.

Back in 1991, I was given a great privilege—something I consider to have been a great honor.  I was asked by a young woman named Ronda to listen to her for her 5th step.  I don’t know if you understand what this means.  She was involved in a 12-Step program as part of her recovery from alcohol addiction, and she wanted me to listen to her confession as she completed the 5th step of the 12-step program she was working. 

I had gotten to know Ronda over the previous three years.  She had been part of our youth group in the church I was serving as an associate pastor.  Her attendance had been pretty steady when she was in the 10th grade, but as she moved through her 11th and 12th grade years it became spottier.  In the fall of her senior year, her parents spoke with me about their suspicions that she had an addiction.  Knowing that I had a background as a drug and alcohol counselor, they wanted my help in figuring out what to do about their daughter.  I told them what I’ve told others:  that there are no easy solutions until the addict recognizes the problem.  I pointed out some things they could do to ensure that they weren’t being co-dependent, encouraged them to become part of Al-Anon (a program for families of addicts), and to prepare themselves for the day when Ronda was ready to do something about her addiction.

In many ways Ronda was just like many teens.  The drinking and drug culture was very much a part of the high schools in 1989, just as they were when I was a teen in the 1970s, and just as they are today.  For many years teens have faced significant pressure to party.  Their friends encourage them, saying, “Just try it.  It’s fun.  Nothing bad will happen to you.  You’ll love it.  You’ll feel so good.”  Once the drinking starts, there is a lot of fun, but that fun masks the dangers.  Abuse of alcohol, and especially addictions, slowly sap life out of people.  All that fun for those with a predisposition to addiction has a price, and the price is the ripping apart of families, friendships, and life. 

Ronda attended the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 1990, and her life quickly fell apart.  She immediately found the partiers, but now, free of her parents, she was able to devote her full attention to her addiction.  Her grades not only suffered.  They barely registered.  She was losing everything, and in the late fall of 1990, she admitted to her parents that she had an addiction and needed help. They were ready.  Ronda went into rehab, and afterwards started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  Through AA she started working the 12-Steps. 

Most of us have heard about the 12-Steps, but few who haven’t either worked them, or haven’t been in a relationship with someone who has, understand what they are.  The 12-Steps are a brilliant program that basically restores people to sanity through spirituality.  They help the addict turn over her or his life by looking for God, and then doing the work that allows God to lead her or him to a better way of living.  Here are the 12-Steps, along with some commentary by me: 

1.    We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.     Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.    Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

v These first three steps are very similar to the Christian idea of “metanoia” or conversion.  In the Christian idea, we recognize the full extent of our sin, we recognize that Christ wants to save us, and we turn ourselves over fully to Christ.

4.    Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.     Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  (We’ll come back to this)

6.    Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.    Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8.    Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9.    Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

v This is a very difficult step.  The addict goes back to everyone whom they have hurt and basically ask forgiveness.  Included in this is that we physically do things to rectify the harm we’ve done in our past.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

When Ronda asked me to help her with the 5th step, she simply asked me to sit and listen to her talk about her life.  She had done a deep exploration of everything she had done to hurt herself or others through her addiction, and was willing to share it with God and me. It is a real honor to listen to something like this, as painful as it is.  I’ve had the honor of participating in a 5th step with 6 people over the past 20 years.  Few of us, outside of working the 12-Steps, would ever make this kind of searing confession to another.  Ronda did, and it became the background for dramatically transforming her life. 

Do you know what Ronda was really doing with the 12th steps?  It has a connection with our passage for this morning.  She was doing the work she needed to do to let God redeem her life.  She wasn’t waiting for some miracle to take away the urge to drink.  Every once in a while I hear of people who say that they prayed for God to take away the addiction, and “poof!” the desire to drink goes away.  That’s not the way it is for the vast majority of drug or alcohol addicts.  Most have to do hard work to get their lives back.  They have to do very hard work to create a space for God to enter into their lives. 

Ronda was painfully and actively changing her life, step-by-step, to create a whole new life.  And a large part of her redemption was re-establishing a connection with God by, in a sense, “buying back” her life. 

I don’t know if what I just said to you made much sense—that Ronda had to “buy back” her life.  It might not, but buying back our lives is at the core of the Christian idea of redemption.  The word “redemption,” which we typically think of as meaning that we are lifted up and restored to life, actually has a deeper meaning.  It comes from the Latin word “redimere,” which literally means “to buy back.”  The original use of the word meant that when we lose something we often have to buy it back.  For example, it was used in the ancient practice of slavery. 

In Roman times, people could be enslaved for one of two reasons.  Either they were people conquered by the Romans in a war and brought back to be slaves; or they were people who fell so deeply into debt that they were made slaves.  Unlike the slaves of American history, slaves in the ancient world could actually buy back their freedom, either through their family or tribe paying a tribute to the slave owner, or through the slave actually earning money to buy back his or her freedom.

Going back 2000 years ago to the Jewish faith, and their understanding of life with God, buying back through redemption was very much a part of their faith. The ancient Jews (as well as the Greeks and Romans) understood life as having basic economical principles.  The Greek word for economy was oikonomoor “oikonomos.”  The word wasn’t used the way we use it today.  Traditionally oikonomos meant the “managing of a household,” which typically was managed by a slave.  If the slave managed the household well, he could buy his freedom, but if he didn’t manage it well, he could lose his life.  For example, there was an incident about the time of Jesus when Caesar Augustus was at the home of a wealthy man, who had a pool in the middle of his dining room filled with electric eels.  He kept it there as a reminder to his slaves to be mistake-free.  During dinner a slave dropped a precious crystal wine goblet.  The master threw the slave into the pool of eels.  Augustus was so appalled at this that he commanded that the wealthy man himself be thrown into the pool. 

Anyway, the Jewish and Greek understanding of a relationship with God, or the gods, was that if we managed the household of our lives poorly, and let it deteriorate or fall apart, we lost it.  To restore our lives, we had to pay to get it back in shape.  In other words, God was not going to subsidize our lives freely.  For both the ancient Jews, and the Greeks and Romans, buying back life meant making temple sacrifices.  Temple sacrifices were central to Jewish life.  Once a year every Jewish man and woman was expected to go to the temple in Jerusalem and sacrifice a pure, unblemished goat, lamb, or dove.  That would “buy back” her or his purity for a year.  But, of course, immediately the sin would accumulate, requiring another redemption, or buy back, the following year. 

Christianity teaches that because this system of sacrifices was imperfect, and couldn’t lead to permanent redemption, God wanted to get rid of the system forever.  God wasn’t satisfied with these sacrifices.  God wanted a relationship with us that got rid of the focus on sinfulness forever.  So Jesus was a perfect sacrifice that obliterated the need for temple sacrifice, whether it was Jewish, Greek, or Roman sacrifice.  In effect, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was the sacrifice of the perfect man.  It was a sacrifice of God on the cross, who permanently bought back our lives by being a willing sacrifice.  There was a price that Jesus had to pay to be the perfect sacrifice.  He bought back our lives with his faith, selflessness, love, and willingness to be killed  for us.  He paid a price that we couldn’t afford, and his sacrifice ended the sacrificial system for those willing to follow him.  This is a redemption that lasts forever by restoring our relationship with God from God’s side.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t harm the relationship from our side.  There are times when we need redemption in a practical sense, even if Jesus redeemed us permanently in a salvation sense.

It’s hard for us to truly understand this idea of sacrificial redemption because we’ve never lived under a religious system where yearly sacrifices were made.  The ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans lived under this kind of system. They understood it in their bones.  For converts to Christianity, this theology of redemption made perfect sense because it meant they no longer had to live under this sacrificial religious “economy.”  They were free because of Jesus’ sacrifice. 

Just as I said on Easter, that resurrection isn’t just about the cross, but about how our lives can be resurrected, redemption isn’t just about Jesus paying the price for our debt on the cross, but about how we also can “buy back” our lives when we’ve damaged them.  Despite the understanding that Jesus has redeemed us from sin permanently in terms of God’s role in our lives, that doesn’t mean that we don’t do things that harm our lives and require redemption.

Whenever we misuse or abuse our lives, there’s a price to pay to get our lives back in order. God doesn’t want us to make an animal sacrifice.  God wants us to make the kind of sacrifices Ronda made in her life.  God works on the barter system, and wants actions from us that restore our lives.  The prophet Micah spoke about this kind of sacrifice more than 600 years before Jesus.  He recognized that the Jewish system of temple sacrifices really wasn’t what God wanted. So Micah said to the people of his day, “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  (Michah 6:6-8)

The word, “justice,” above really isn’t a good translation of that word.  We think of justice as the law and just punishment.  For the Jews, justice meant a kind of “rightness.”  It meant that we live rightly with others in all ways:  the rich care about the poor, the king cares about the subjects and vice versa, we live in a right way according to God’s law, etc…  Micah was saying, 650 years before Christ, that God doesn’t want a sacrifice of animals to redeem our lives.  The price God requires is that we humble ourselves before God, recognizing that our lives were unmanageable and that God wants a different way. God wants us to live in kindness towards others so that we restore relationships with them.  And God wants us to live in a kind of rightness where everything fits together again.  Sounds a lot like the 12-Steps. 

Let me take all of this stuff I’ve been talking about and wrap it up for you.  What the idea of redemption means is that it doesn’t matter what happens in our lives—what we do or what is done to us—redemption is always possible.  God always offers a new life to us, but we have to buy it back with how we live.  We can’t buy it back with money.  We have to buy it back with rightness, kindness, and mercy. Ronda bought her life back through this kind of hard work.  We buy ours back through hard work of reaching out for God, prayer, faith, sacrifice, and “rightness.” We can’t take shortcuts. 

A member of our church once told me about how he had to learn this lesson of no shortcuts when he was in drug rehab.  He said that in the rehab center they had white lines painted on the floor, creating a path that meandered through the facility.  To walk anywhere in the facility, you had to stay on the path between the white lines.  If you stepped out of them, you could be kicked out of the program.  So, in going into the cafeteria, for example, you had to follow the path, which entered the room, stayed along the wall, and took a circuitous route to the food.  It was teaching the patients to take the right path, even if it was harder.  They were learning redemption.

Keep this idea locked away in your mind, heart, and soul for when you really need it.  Your life may not be in trouble right now, but at some point it may end up in trouble because of choices you’ve made or will make.  When you get there, remember that God is always there, waiting to redeem you.  The question you have to answer is whether you’re willing to do the work to be a part of that redemption?  Are you willing to do the work of buying back the way to a life with God?

            Amen. 
at

"Re" Words: Resurrection






Mark 16:1-20
April 8, 2012

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.
After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.

About 5 years ago I had an epiphany.  I had an “aha” moment, a “eureka,” that really helped me to understand much better of the core of Christianity.  Perhaps this “aha” was the kind that only a geeky pastor would have, but maybe you’ll be interested in it.  I discovered that, for some reason, Christianity has an obsession with words that begin with RE—with what I call “re” words.  If you look at many, or even most, of the core words Christian theology uses, the have the prefix “re.” The fact that we have so may Christian words that begin with the prefix “re” says something essential about we Christians.

So, I began to compile a list: Revelation, redemption, reconciliation, restoration, reformation, renewal, renunciation, repentance, reflection, regeneration, relationship, respect,… and at the top of the heap, Resurrection. 

This led me to a question:  Why is Christianity so focused on “re” words?  In pondering that question, I got an insight into Christian faith.  The prefix “re” means “back” or “again.”  I realized that at it’s core Christianity recognizes that humans constantly go off the path God intends for us, yet God is constantly doing things to get us to “come back again.”  And this constant calling to come back teaches us about the essential nature of God.  God doesn’t focus on how we’ve turned away.  God focuses on calling us back. 

Think about the words I shared above.  Revelation, at its original core, means to “lift a veil again.”  The word, redemption, means to “buy back again.”  The word, reconciliation, means to “concile,” or “bond, again.”  Reformation means to “form again.”  All of these words really say that God is calling us to come back from whatever we are doing on our own, and to rediscover what God originally intended for us. 

The most important “re” word for us Christians is the word, resurrection.  Resurrection is a returning word, which means to “surge or rise again.”  It’s a word that we think of in terms of Jesus rising again from the dead, which is what we celebrate today.  But there’s a lot more to the idea of resurrection than Jesus’ rising from the dead on Easter.  Resurrection describes an ongoing reality for Christian life.  It’s not just something that happened 2000 years ago, nor is it just something we hope will happen to us some day when we die. 

At the core of the Christian faith is a belief in, a faith in, a hope in the idea that no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how low we go, not matter how far we stray, no matter how much our lives fall apart, when we re-turn to God, our lives can be resurrected.  In other words, central to Christian belief is the faith that we are not defined by how low we go, by how far we stray, by how much we’ve screwed up, or even by our sin.  Christians are defined by how, with God’s help, we are able to rise again—a rising again by returning to God’s way for us.  God created us with a purpose, but we stray.  But God is always calling us back, and when we return, we can become resurrected and reborn.  When I think of this broader meaning of resurrection, my mind often goes to a man named Starr Daily. 

You probably don’t know that name, but he was a very, very popular Christian speaker in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.  He travelled both nationally and internationally, speaking about God’s love and the power of personal resurrection.  In the 1920s he had been quite infamous, but for entirely different reasons.  He was infamous as a criminal.  By the time he was sixteen he had one goal in mind.  He wanted to become one of the most feared criminals in America.  This was the age of Al Capone and countless bootleggers, and he wanted the fear-focused respect these criminals received.

He ended up being put into prison twice by the time he was twenty, and while in prison he learned his lessons well.  In prison he learned how to plan and pull off capers.  He learned how to crack a safe.  He learned how to plan a getaway.  His imprisonments served as a school for his later criminal work.

Upon his release from prison, he formed a gang of criminals who robbed banks.  Daily had the reputation of being the best safecracker one could find.  There was no safe he could not open.  Only his own drunkenness allowed him to be captured.  He became careless and was caught.  The judge, upon sentencing him in 1924, said “I know you are a sick man, and putting you in prison will not help you.  Still, my hands are tied.  I am sending you back to prison for the rest of your life.”  The judge knew him well.  Before he had become a judge, he had been Daily’s defense attorney to first time he came before the court.

In prison, Daily remained as fearsome as he was in freedom.  He terrorized the other prisoners, trying to strike fear into their hearts.  Twice he tried to escape, but was caught both times.  Then he tried to start a prison riot, all for the purpose of capturing and harming the warden.  He hated the warden because he was a harsh and tyrannical man.  What foiled the plot was a prison snitch.  Daily was caught, taken, and thrown into the “hole.” 

The hole was a dank dungeon in the basement of the prison where prisoners were taken to be “reformed.”  Few could last more than a week in the hole.  The hole was a small, cold room with water seeping down the walls, and only a small slit near the ceiling for light to come in.  The routine was simple.  At 6:00 a.m., a piece of bread and a cup of water were slid into the room.  Soon afterwards, Bull, a violent and mean-tempered prison guard, came in and shackled the prisoner to cuffs that hung from the ceiling, forcing the prisoner to stand for twelve hours a day with his arms raised.  Within days the prisoner’s feet swelled and turned black, while his wrists chafed and cracked, seeping blood from the shackles.  After twelve hours, the prisoner was taken down, given another piece of bread and a cup of water, and then left on the cold floor to sleep. 

Daily survived fifteen days of this, and then was left for another two weeks unshackled as life ebbed from him.  The warden wanted to make an example of him.  If Daily died, so be it.  During those two weeks a question formed in his mind:  What if he had used all of his energies for good instead of bad?  Daily began to hallucinate.  They were filled with weird images, but slowly they began to coalesce.  Eventually he found himself standing in a horseshoe shaped garden that he remembered from his childhood.  Even though it was a hallucination, or a dream, he later said that it was the most real experience he had ever had.  At the other end of the garden stood Jesus.  Jesus then walked toward him and stooped a few feet away.  Jesus looked him up and down, and then looked into his eyes in a way that pierced Daily’s very soul.  What surprised him was that Jesus didn’t judge him in a punitive way.  Jesus loved him.  He felt Jesus’ love penetrating his soul, and as it did Daily felt all of his hatred, anger, and bitterness leaving him.  He felt nothing but love.

Soon afterwards, Daily witnessed a parade of people walking before him.  It was all the people he had ever hurt.  Daily poured out his love onto them, asking them for their forgiveness.  Then another parade of people walked by, and these were all the people who had ever hurt Daily.  He then poured out his love and forgiveness on them.  Suddenly he heard a sound.  It was the prison door opening.  In walked the guard, Bull, who looked down at Daily on the floor and said, surprisingly, “Do you want me to steal a sandwich for you from the cafeteria.”  Daily’s response was even more surprising:  “No, that’s okay.  I don’t want you getting into trouble on my behalf.”  Soon afterwards he was taken from the hole and put into the prison infirmary to recover.  Over the course of the next five years doors miraculously opened for him.  By 1945 he was remarkably released from prison. 

He was a transformed man, a reformed man, a man determined to make a difference for good and for God.  Over the ensuing years until he died, he spoke everywhere about God’s love.  He wrote books about God’s love, books with titles like Rebirth and Resurrection, Release, You Can Find God, Love Can Open Prison Doors, This Is the Life, Recovery, and Faith, Hope, and Love.  In all, he wrote over 27 books.  He also worked to transform the prison system so that it focused more on reforming prisoners rather than merely punishing them.  He was a man who descended into a tomb, and discovered Christ, and as a result he was resurrected. 

The fact is that most of us never have and never will go as low as Starr Daily, but we don’t have to go that low in order to discover the possibility of resurrection.  All of us will struggle at some point in our lives, if we haven’t already.  None of us gets out of life alive.  Whether it is a broken relationship, illness, unemployment, or anything else, we will find ourselves at some point in something that feels like a tomb.  If we are willing to return to God in those times, we can experience resurrection.

Paul talks about this a lot in his letters.  In Romans he says, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”  Paul was saying that the whole focus of Christian life is to live a resurrected life that’s defined by what God is doing in us, not by what we’ve done wrong or by what wrongs have been done to us.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the fact that Jesus was crucified and came alive again.  I know that many people have a hard time with this concept, with this possibility, because it doesn’t make rational sense to them.  And as a result, they shut themselves off to the deeper messages of resurrection in life as a result.  I will tell you that I made my peace with Jesus’ resurrection many years ago when I decided that if God can create a universe, God can certainly become incarnated in a man and be raised from the dead.  But I certainly can’t prove this, nor will I try.  But what I can prove is that for many who open up to God in this faith, especially when their lives are down, their lives can be resurrected.

We’ve seen this at Calvin Presbyterian Church during Lent.  We offered a sermon series titled “Preachers from the Pew.”  And each sermon demonstrated how lives can be resurrected.  Bill Lambert talked about how his ambition and drive led him to eventually attain all he had wanted, at the price of feeling estranged from his family and discovering things falling apart at work.  He put Christ at the center, and he experienced a resurrection in his life and career.

Harley Allen spoke about experiencing a resurrection while struggling with his re-diagnosis with cancer, and while two of our prayer ministers prayed with him.  Karen Stubenbort spoke of her resurrection after having to kick her heroin-addicted husband out of her house and life.  Carrie Baker spoke about having to turn to Christ, and about having her life be resurrected after being told by her husband, on Christmas Day three years ago, that her marriage was over, that he was moving away, and that there was nothing she could do about it.  We heard Cary Efaw talk about turning to Christ and having his life be resurrected after a life of pain from being a Vietnam vet, suffering two major accidents that crushed a hand and left major parts of his body burned, and being fired and unemployed 6 times in 7 years.  Finally, last week we heard from our associate pastor, Connie Frierson, about having to turn to Christ and having her life resurrected after her husband died suddenly at age 54.  What I can prove from their experiences is that each of these people experienced a resurrection of life, which is what is central to Christian faith. 

We celebrate the resurrection today because it is a reality and a possibility for all of us.  We’re not defined by the mistakes we make, or by the struggles we face.  As Christians who are part of the resurrection, we are defined, in the end, by how God allows us to rise again in this life and in the afterlife

            Amen. 
at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)