JUSTICE: Being Good Soil for the Seeds

Systematic justice and injustice are like the root systems of plants, always growing and adding new branches below the surface to strengthen and nourish the growth and fruit of the whole. 

This is from the Disciples' New Literal New Testament, the last verse that Steve read, and it said, "The one having been sown the seed on the good soil, this person is the one hearing the word and understanding it, who indeed is bearing fruit and producing a hundred and another sixty and another thirty." These are the words of Jesus Christ.

Transcript of sermon Preached Extemporaneously [Video] on July 12, 2020 at Briensburg UMC

This parable of the sower is one that for me, as I was reflecting, I think that I have to be introspective with this, because everything that Jesus is teaching us in this parable, we kind of have to apply that personally to our own lives. It's not something that we can look at somebody else so much and do something with. As well, we can look in our own hearts and minds and make changes and do an evaluation of our own personal situation through this parable.

I've been preaching the lectionary readings through the lens of justice because that's one of the great themes of the scripture and of the prophets, and especially like we always remember Micah 6:8, where he said, "What does God expect of you except to love tenderly, act justly and walk humbly with your God."

So, taking that and looking at it and bringing the justice issues of the day and all of our positions, so we're taking in the charge, what we're trying to do, and bringing us to the scripture and then hear what God says to us about that.

One thing that is a great image that comes to my mind in this passage, and that is the root system of any plant. So when a seed is planted and it sprouts and then it begins to grow roots, it sinks down a taproot, and then other roots come out to the side and other groups come off of that. And pretty soon it's a whole system there that nobody really sees unless they dig down. But you always see what's up on the top, but that's all supported by what's down underneath. And that's the system that supports it of sometimes big pieces and sometimes little tiny pieces.

They're always growing, always finding something new to add, something new to do, something new to strengthen the plant and to draw nourishment, moisture and all from the soil. That's why the soil is so important to this parable, because the root is so important to the plant. When we think now of our situation now, where we are today as our country and in our church is that we have all these systems in place. Some of them are just systems and over the years and centuries and all, that things that have taken root are just and good and they have a strengthened righteousness for everybody. But then there are some systems that aren't so good, amen? There are some that are unjust. And that's what we're hearing a lot about on the news is the systematic injustices that become built in to communities and churches and processes and our relationships.

So those we're trying to dismantle, but not just to leave a void. Even the more important than dismantling those is building and strengthening the righteousness and the goodness and the justice. That's one of the things that we've been trying to do here at Briensburg. I think we have sunk a deep root into the love, and to be rooted and grounded in love, as the apostle wrote. And we have been adding little programs and systems and ways of doing things that strengthen that and connections with people and so forth that strengthen that through the various issues of inclusiveness, of inclusive of race and LGBTQ and gender and immigrants and all of these things that we want to strengthen and be just and do right by them and by the Lord to minister his love.

So we can just picture that whole root system continuing to grow, continuing to strengthen, continuing to nurture. I'd like to share this. It's from Ephesians, I've got it right here, chapter three. "For this cause I bow my knees unto the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."

The Sower

So again, looking at ourselves and being introspective with this, we see ourselves as the sower in this parable. This is how The Message writes it. "And he spake many things unto them in parables saying, behold, a sower went forth to sow." And so Jesus spoke this parable and then to everybody, but everybody didn't really know what the riddle was in there. It was kind of a riddle to everybody. So a few events went by and we skipped those and we went to the explanation in the reading today that Jesus gave to his disciples and they have shared with us. I've fought these, what the riddle is in the parable of the sower. So one of them is the sower, the person that goes out and sows the seed. Paul said that, so some people sow and some water, but God gives the growth.

If we see ourselves as the sower in this, we can't really pick and choose where we're going to scatter the seed because we can't see other people's hearts and minds. So we sow the seed wherever we go, and somebody will come along and water it, we trust, and the Lord will give the growth. We don't know how or when that's all going to happen. We just know as the sower of seed in that role, that we just, like the one song says, sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness. We sow those seeds of kindness and mercy and love wherever we go, and we just see what happens, because we know that the Lord will take it from there.

I remember one time being in a revival and there it was a log church out in the country (probably I've shared this with other scriptures too because it comes up in my mind every once in a while). But this guy had a bad reputation for being kind of mean in the community all his life. But yet then you've got this revival. Right in the middle of the sermon, the door was opened and he came walking down the aisle. He got down on his knees at the altar and everybody was praying for him. Some other people joined him and were praying for him. It was somebody that the church had been praying for for years and years. And he got up and he turned around and he raised his hands out and extended them out like this, and he said, "I love everybody."

That was a moment of transformation in the community in addition to his own personal conversion in life. I mean, revival broke out in his own personal life and in the life of that church and community that night from seeds that had been planted and watered over the years in his life.

We never know. We never know what's going to happen when our role, if we see, or when we see ourselves as the sower in this parable, is just to scatter the seed. Seeds of love and kindness and mercy, seeds of the scripture, seeds of the love of Christ, seeds of faith. All of these different things that are part of our spiritual lives, to make them a part of the lives of the people around us and see what God does with it.

The Path

Then there are four kinds of soil that Jesus addresses and uses as examples in this passage. The first one here and in The Message is, he wrote, "When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn't take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so they evil one comes along and plucks it right out of that person's heart."

It made me think in my, of course, like I said, this is more, I guess this is kind of a confessional sermon when it's introspective, and you have to be looking at yourself. So I am, and then looking at myself through this, I thought about the ways that sometimes that I don't pay attention or I'm kind of shallow, or I don't really hear what somebody's saying. And sometimes there are things that I look back on that years ago, somebody said something and I ignored it. Somebody, some way that I didn't take something right and everything. I didn't take it seriously, and now it's a regret that I have, and there's nothing really to do about it except accept forgiveness and move on.

But that's that kind of a path that is where it just falls and it doesn't even take root before it's swept away by something. In this case, birds picking it up, but it could be anything. Anything that just sweeps the seed aside and that doesn't even have a chance to take root. I think for me, it speaks to my distractability or the shallow places in our hearts. So that's something for us to address, isn't it, in our lives? To try to make sure that we have less of that. Find those paths and identify them.

The Stony Places

Then the stony places. The seed cast in the gravel. I like that image there, and it's not just the big rocks, but the little gravel places, too, in The Message. There, I think about the hardness of my heart. And sometimes it's easy to kind of identify that in the big things, when something really bad happens on the news and you say, "Well how can they be so hardhearted and cruel?"

But we really can't do much about their hardheartedness and cruelty except to pray. But we can do something about our own, to make sure that we don't have that in our own lives. And to evaluate the way we think about things, the way we talk to people, the way we do things, the way we pray and all of our attitudes, that there are not stones that are preventing the seed from growing and that are blocking that growth and they're messing up the soil.

I think that of the great injustices that we're reminded of when we travel around, when we see the slave walls where the slaves, one of the injustices that was imposed on them was to force them to go and dig up the stones out of fields so that the fields would bear the fruit. And then they carried those stones over and built walls around them, the slave walls.

But the stones need to be taken out of the fields. How are we taking them out? We can take them out in ways that are just or unjust, but when we look in our lives, we need to remove that hardness of our heart. Identify our own places of stony places in our own hearts and minds where we're not open to the new ideas and the new callings that Christ gives us in his word and in our relationships, in our fellowship.

The Thorns

And the thorns, the weeds of life. Sometimes we might not get all the rocks out and we might have the ground all tilled up, but then if we let the weeds grow, then that still negatively affects the plants that are growing around it, doesn't it? They grow up with them and they choke them out. Choke out is what Christ is referring to. Choke out the word.

For me, this is some of those things like distractions or other things I get tied up in or get sidetracked, or the things that we're worried about and the cares of the world that we're not managing in such a way that keeps them under control. So then they take over and choke out the actual crop that we're wanting to grow in our life, which in the parable, and some people translate it as sweet and others as corn or something, but some agricultural. But in our own hearts and minds, it's the fruits of the spirit. It's the crops of the spirit of God. The fruits of love, the fruits of being a disciple of Jesus that get choked out and they take second place and they become, maybe until that the word of God doesn't have any effect in our lives because we crowd it out with everything else. So we have to watch out for that and find ways when we see those weeds start to grow up, to pull them, get them out of there.

The Good Soil

But then that brings us to the good soil, and that's what the whole point of the parable is, really. That we would prepare our hearts and minds to be good soil for the word of God and to get rid of the things that crowd out. Get rid of the hardness, get rid of the carelessness with the word, and let it take root and grow in our hearts and minds by faith and make us more than we are. To give us the joy of our salvation, to give us the fullness of our healing in Christ.

We can just think of a field out there that has been cleaned all out and the ground's broken up and it's been planted and it's been cultivated and it's got good irrigation and good nutrition and everything, and the crops are growing beautifully and a beautiful crop comes up. That's what we want for our own spirits, amen? We want that good crop. We want good soil so that the plants that we really want, the things we really want in life can take root and grow.

You never can tell. I like how like he put it in The Message. "Beyond your wildest dreams." Jesus put it 30, 60 or 100 fold. I mean, just as much as you can imagine of the results that come from this in our lives, beyond what we can ask or imagine, so it says.

So that is the parable that we have before us today to think about, and I'd like to end with this prayer by Charles Wesley. It's in our hymnals. This is the third verse of I Want a Principle Within. I don't know if I can sing it, but if I can't, I'll stop and read it.

Almighty God of truth and love,
to me thy power impart;
the mountain from my soul remove,
the hardness from my heart.
O may the least omission pain
my reawakened soul,
and drive me to that grace again,
which makes the wounded whole.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

JUSTICE: The Great Invitation

Some people are forced to disproportionately carry undue burdens, and we are invited to share the load with each other and with Jesus. 

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28).

The great invitation got its name because of all the invitations in the Bible, this one stands out to the church historically as the one where Christ is most pointed in saying, "Come to me," and then he gives his reasons.

As we meditate on that this morning, I'd like to just kind of drill down on that. There were so many invitations given in the Bible. There's one where God says, "'Come now, let us reason together,' saith the Lord." There's a wonderful invitation at the end of the Bible, "The spirit and the bride say come. Let whosoever heareth say come, and whosoever will may come and drink freely from the fountain of the water of life."  "All you that are thirsty, come to the water without money, without price."

Transcript of sermon Preached Extemporaneously [Video] on July 5, 2020 at Briensburg UMC

Come unto me

There's constantly an invitation, and that helps us to see that the commandments and the teachings in the scriptures, the teachings that Christ brought, and our faith is an invitational faith. We don't force people to become a Christian or we don't try to scare people into becoming a Christian. We don't, and that's not how Christ does. He invites us to be a part of his fellowship. He invites us into these commandments, into the fellowship of love. He gives the command, but then he also gives with that the choice. Of course, I mean with the choice comes to consequences also of our choices, but so it's a constant invitation.

If we hear in each passage of scripture the invitation, then also can sense our appropriate response to that invitation, become a part of the mystery that Christ is calling us into in that invitation. It becomes some more than just something we're just told to do, but something we're invited to be a part of. There's a difference there. There's a big difference in that, in the ownership and in the belonging and in our whole participation in the kingdom of God.

In the Message Translation, this first part of the invitation is translated, "Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life." The invitation is to come to Christ personally, and that goes beyond even the teachings, into the person, into the personal saving relationship with God in Christ. In prayer, prayerfully we come to the Lord. We turn our thoughts to Christ. We center our hearts and minds on him, and he becomes for us a personal Lord and savior and not just the savior of the world or the center of the universe, but the center of our own universe, and of our own world, and our own savior, and our own Lord, and our own companion and guide.

All of you who labor and are heavy laden

 Then the invitation is given to ... well, it's given to all of you who labor and are heavy laden, or in the Good News Translation it says "all of you who are tired from carrying your heavy loads." There we begin ... As I said, we're looking at this through the lens of justice. There we begin to think, if we think about that in terms of justice, then we can think about our heavy loads that we're carrying, but sometimes those loads are unjust burdens on some people, burdens that'll be put on some people for reasons that are not fair, maybe on ourselves, maybe on others. Carrying undue burdens because of racism, or discrimination, or exploitation, or violence, or all these things that we've been trying to take a stand on to try to at least diminish or push back.

The remission of sins that we speak of, that's pulling that back and making it a little less than it was. Anything that we can do to address that and make it diminish just a little bit, even if it's only in our own minds and hearts, maybe it's in their own family and friends or however that we're able to, wherever we're able to do the work of the remission of sin, of pulling back this and these injustices, then we have done what about the scripture last week was about, about giving somebody just a little cold water, a drink of water will not lose their reward. It helps.

Christ invites all who labor and are heavy laden. If we think about some of the things that we've done in our lives, all of us could probably think of some times when we felt a little overburdened, when we felt like there was just a little much on us at that time. It can be in all of these realms. Sometimes it could be finances, sometimes relationships, sometimes employment or any other kind of things that are just hard, get hard to carry and we could get tired from carrying that. That's when Christ hopes we most remember his words, "Come unto me. If you're tired from carrying your heavy load, bring it to me."

Take my yoke and learn from me

 Then he said, "Take my yoke and learn from me." Again, in the Message it says, "Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you." The yoke is a symbol of unity, a symbol of working together. Christ in his invitation is inviting us to be the other side of that yoke.

When the beasts of burden are trained to the yoke, they usually put an older one that has more experience along with a new one that is beginning to learn how to do this, because the new one will just learn from the older one, will learn from that experience. Nobody, they don't read a book about it. They just hook them up. The one with the most experience just goes ahead and plods away doing what they know and have learned through their experience of pulling the load, and how to pace themselves, and how to draw whatever it is they're pulling. While the new one might struggle against it and might work against it for a while, but gradually kind of learns how it works, and it eases into the knowledge and becomes proficient in pulling the load to the point, and then maybe then that beast will be used to train another.

In that sense, when we're yoked with Christ, then we are his disciple in that kind of a sense that we are learning by doing. We're learning by being a part of the work that Christ is already doing, and we're brought in to that, and we gradually learn not to struggle against the load, but to pull it as it's meant to be pulled. Also, we're sharing that load, because if we try to carry everything by ourselves that's meant to be carried and meant to be shared, then we'd be carrying too much. Christ invites us to share the load. If we're not trying to do it all ourselves, then we find that Christ is helping us and the load becomes lighter and easier to bear.

The same thing works with us as we can use the same imagery with Christ and us in the yoke with ourselves and each other, someone else, other people and the carrying of their loads, because we kind of have the same system. We have the same system for teaching and the same system for learning. It's how we learn from each other. We help each other.

Going back to the commandment of Christ, he said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you, and everybody will know you're my disciple by this." That's a part of this invitation, because Christ offers this commandment as an option that we can choose. If we do, then everybody will know we're a disciple, but mostly we'll know we're a disciple because we'll be becoming a disciple by actually practicing the love that Christ practices. That's the invitation that we would become a part of that love that Christ demonstrated and that we would then share that with other people.

Saint Paul used to like to emphasize how that love was the fulfillment of all the law. Especially in Romans and Galatians he wrote about that. When he wrote about it in Galatians, he said, 'Love fulfills all of these laws, and so we don't need to get tangled up in all of those again. What we need to do is love one another as Christ taught us to love, and then we'll be fulfilling the law." Then he went on to the say, "And this is how you do it. This is how you fulfill that law, by bearing each other's burdens." That fits right in with this invitation, doesn't it? By bearing each other's burdens, you fulfill the law of Christ.

It really kind of helps us to know a little bit more about love just in that statement, doesn't it? It's not just that we feel affectionate toward the people around us, and we hope we do. We care about people. We love them, but it doesn't stop there. If we love as Christ loved, then we bear one another's burdens. We become yoked with them.

Then this is again a place where I think we can see the injustices that some people have in being maybe forced to have too much of the burden on them. It's coming out a lot for example in the news in the COVID crisis about segments of our population who are bearing too much of the burden. I think one thing I think about it is the healthcare workers, that they're bearing so much the burden of this crisis. Then if people are not helping them by trying to just be safe and trying to keep prevent the spread, then they're adding unduly to the burden, and they're also adding fighting against the yoke and causing making that burden harder, heavier to bear it. Heavier in the first place and then making it harder to bear, harder to pull, harder for those who are having to do that part of the job. We could probably apply that to all these other things about population, parts of the population that suffer more, not because of any fair reason or not because of these problems themselves, but because of additional burdens and additional expectations that are placed on them.

I am meek and lowly in heart

 Jesus said, "I am meek and lowly of heart." A lot of times we think of Christ more in that one incident where he cleansed the temple and that he's going to just go around and do everything like that, but that's not really representative of most of his ministry. In the Beatitudes, he said, "Blessed are the meek." He teaches us and the apostles taught about being humble. He says here, "I am meek and lowly of heart. I am gentle and humble." That's part of the invitation for us then is to be gentle with each other, gentle with the world around us, humble in our approach.

In seeing Christ that way, I think he's trying to remind us that we don't have to be afraid. Again, another way of saying that, "Don't be afraid to come to me. Don't be afraid to be yoked with me. Don't be afraid of the burden that you want to share with me. But instead, realize that I'm meek. I'm lowly of heart. I'm tender and compassionate. I'm empathetic to everything you're experiencing, and I want to be there with you through it all, and to be a part of it, and to help you bear that burden."

It reminds me of the song, Leave It There. "Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there." Do you have a burden on your heart today for anybody or anything, something that you're going through or something that somebody else is going through that you care about, somebody you care about? Maybe a rhetorical question, because I think we all do have those burdens and we have a burden for our community, and for the world, for our country, and everything that people are going through at that time. There's only so much that any one of us could do on our own, but together with Christ and with each other, we can do more because the burden is lighter. We can do more and the burden will still be lighter because we're doing this together. We're yoked together with each other and with Christ, and we're invited into that kind of approach to life.

Find rest for your soul

 When we think of these burdens, they can feel oppressive to us and become oppressive to us, and it can be even more oppressive to those who don't have this yoke, who aren't wearing it already, haven't already begun to work their way into the fellowship of this mystery of Christ. Think how heavy that burden can be for people that have tried to do everything alone without Christ. It almost like weighs you down. It makes you feel under labor, like you're laboring and carrying a heavy load already thinking about it.

But then it comes to this promise. "You shall find rest for yourselves. You will find rest, for the yoke I will get you is easy and the load I will put on you is light." Then you can feel, I can breathe again. The air is coming back. The wind is coming back into my soul, because the Lord is breathing breath into me. The Lord is lifting me up. The Lord is helping me through, and I'm not doing this alone.

That's the promise that we claim in this invitation, and it's why when Christ invites us, "Come unto me. You shall find rest." It's to lift that burden, to share, to teach us how to work it, and then to help us to become those who help others to do the same thing. Together, we all find that our burden is lighter and the load is easier to bear. All the while, we begin to find the rest for our souls, and it feels a lot better, amen? 

This is the great invitation. "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

 In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Black Lives Matter

Black lives matter, and to the extent they are devalued by racism all lives are diminished.

I stand with my African-American friends and colleagues in ministry in calling for an end to systematic racism and all racial disparities in policing, employment, health care, and every social justice issue.

The Biblical principles of justice expressed in the US Declaration of Independence apply fully to every person of every race without exception: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Platitudes ring hollow against the disproportionate brutality we are constantly witnessing.  We each must work to resist and eradicate the evil and injustice and oppression of racism in whatever forms it takes from our personal lives and from our institutions. We must intentionally live into our national vow in our Pledge of Allegiance: “with liberty and justice for all.”

African Americans are being dehumanized in our society to the point that inequity, brutality, discrimination and even public execution without trial has become acceptable in some circles and commonplace in some communities. God values each and every human life so much that God sent his only son to be our Savior.

Black lives matter, and we stand against racism.

Presented as a pastoral statement against racism for Briensburg United Methodist Church.

JUSTICE: The Kingdom of Heaven

The promise of Heaven is not a license to exploit people on Earth, but an invitation to transform our systems and bring them into conformity with the heavenly vision.

"And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 10:7 KJV)

These are the words of Jesus Christ. We all are familiar with the various issues of justice, the different ways that people use to try to divide humanity into different groups and turn them against each other for their own purposes, and to keep them from uniting against oppression of any of them. 

But our inclusiveness statement for our church says, "We invite everyone to share fully in the worship services, life, ministry, and leadership of Briensburg United Methodist Church inclusive of age, race, nationality, gender, LGBTQ, theology, politics, and legal status."

Transcript of sermon Recorded for June 14, 2020 at Briensburg UMC

The Bible invites us to listen to what God has to say about justice throughout all the scriptures, as it's one of the main themes that flows throughout all of the Bible. The statement that Jesus made on the kingdom of heaven being at hand is just as radical now as it was when he first began to preach it. The kingdom of God being at hand, the kingdom of heaven being close to us and manifesting itself in the earth is the spiritual realm being a part of our daily lives and not just a side part, but a central, governing, directing, organizing, ordering part of our lives as individuals and as the faith community and extending into all the realms of society.

The promise of heaven in the next world can no longer be used as a license to exploit people in this world. That has been a problem down through the ages as people would oppress people and expect them to just take it with the promise that in the next world, it'll all work out. Everything will be rosy in the next world, but in this world, you should ... They want you to just accept whatever they deal out to you without complaining, and then just to use people and for their own profit and discard them as though they were without value in this world. But the governments of this earth are expected to mirror the kingdom of heaven. Jesus taught us to pray, 

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Salvation is often construed in manipulative terms and defined in ways that make it be something that people do or receive or respond to for someone else's profit, for someone else's goals and agenda. But the word that is translated salvation in the scripture is also translated healing in the scripture. 

"I am the Lord that healeth thee." 

Every place that Jesus went about preaching about salvation, he also healed the sick. It was a big part of what he did. And in this passage about where he sent the apostles out to preach the gospel, he gave them the authority and told them to heal the problems of the people.

And so there's not really a difference there. There's not salvation, and then just this little side thing to prove a point as some would say, as to demonstrate the power. But the real goal was salvation. It's all the same goal, to save people, to heal them, to preserve us to everlasting life. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus preached is fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, 

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulders: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."

Jesus sends us, you and me and the others, to heal, to help and to liberate the victims of oppression and injustice. In our baptismal vow, in our United Methodist baptismal vow, we are asked, 

"Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil and injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?" 

Our resistance is like a spring, a steel spring, not in every respect is like a spring, but in this respect that, when the spring is compressed, then it pushes back with an equal force to resist and recoil against the pressure.

And in that sense, our resistance is like a spring, that when we see injustice and oppression in whatever of these many forms it takes, whatever the issue is, whoever the particular group of people is that's being oppressed or that individual who's being oppressed, wherever we see this oppression and injustice and evil, and we absorb it and then we push back, we recoil and we push it away. We have many peaceful ways of doing that. We are a people of peace. We don't violently respond to evil and oppression. As followers of Jesus, we do it the way he did. You can look at all of his life and see how peacefully he did. Even in the garden of Gethsemane, telling Peter to put his sword away. That wasn't the way that he was going to battle. It's a spiritual warfare.

And so for us every prayer, every message, every contribution, every act of kindness and mercy pushes back, gently but forcefully and with a meaningful resistance. As the hands and feet of Christ, we continue his earthly ministry, which he declared and stated for us in Luke 4, when he quoted again, the prophet Isaiah, 

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

In this passage of scripture, Jesus was going around. He had made that declaration and he was getting resistance for it, but he was going around and healing everybody anyway. He was getting pushback for his mission that he declared of healing and ministry and healing the brokenhearted and all of this preaching of deliverance and all that he was standing for. But his response was compassion. He looked out across the people, and it says that when he saw that ... This is in the English Standard Version, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd."

We're like sheep, not in every respect, but in this respect, in the respect that we're like sheep in that like of being frightened and scattered by both religious and secular politicians acting like wolves to divide and conquer us. In the King James Version, it says they fainted. And here in the English Standard, it said there were harassed and helpless. The people that Jesus was looking out across and feeling compassion for were not unlike us in many ways. Consider the situation for them and how similar it is to our situation right today.

• One way was that they, like many of us today are in our world during this pandemic, they were victims of dreaded diseases for which there was no cure or immunity. 
• Another way, they were victims of racial injustice and institutional injustices that were instituted by the Roman government, and that were perpetuated, these injustices, by many in the religious community. 
• Another way is they were victims of economic disparities, highlighted in the New Testament by the system of taxation personified in repentant participants like Matthew and Zacchaeus. 

Jesus' empathetic response to their unbelief and pushback against his ministry was to have compassion on them.

Unlike a lot of times when we have people that don't like what we're doing, the response sometimes is different than of Christ, but we're expected to respond as Christ responded to their pushback when he stood up for these people, when he stood up for healing and wholeness and for the liberation of those who were in prison and stood up for the oppressed. And he said that people would treat us in the same way they treated him. Of course, it hasn't been as bad for us yet for many anyway, as it was for him anywhere near, there's hardly any comparison at all.

People didn't like it when he stood up for justice, when he stood up for people, when he stood up for and stood against their oppressors. But yet his response was to have compassion on them and to teach them and to heal them. His response was to have compassion and to teach and to heal and to preach the gospel of the kingdom to them. Jesus told us to pray. Tells us to pray in a lot of different situations. But in this situation, he said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." That's in Matthew 9:37-38 in the English Standard Version.

It's not enough just to say, we're going to pray about it. We're expected to actually pray. Another part of that is that people know that a lot of times someone will say, they'll pray for you, or they'll think about it in lieu of actually doing something that's in their power to do. When we pray, part of our prayer is the work we do to accomplish it while we're praying for it. So part of our prayer is that God will show us what our part is in the answering of that prayer, not just to say we'll pray and then go off and not even give it another thought, or just to say a prayer, but not be paying attention to what God is instructing us in that prayer.

Remember that James said, 

"The heartfelt prayer of a righteous person availeth much." 

So the prayer itself helps. Somehow in ways that we can't know, God uses our prayers as a part of the work that He is doing, the work of creation and the work of sustaining and redeeming the world. We're a part of that in our prayers. God also uses our prayers as an opportunity to communicate with us and to share with us of the changes that we need to make in our personal lives. And also God uses that opportunity to help us understand what we need to do ourselves to shape and transform the world and to bring the kingdom of God to bear in the various situations that we are a part of, and that we have voice in, that we have a vote in, or that we have opportunity and influence.

So God uses prayer to shape us. And of course, there's a lot of teaching about prayer in the Bible. There's an invitation through Isaiah where God says, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord," to come and just spend some time with the Lord. And through that, our sins get clarified and washed away. And their guidance is opened up for us, and our relationship with God is built, and we are strengthened and given our guidance and direction.

Jesus also suggested that when we pray, we should go in a private area and really pour our hearts out to the Lord, where nobody else was around. We could just be free to talk however we wanted, and really good things worked out with God. Hear Him and speak to Him and share our thoughts together. So he says for us to go and pray, pray about these things. Not just say you'll pray about it, and not just say it to make other people feel good, but actually pray. Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers. 

Now, the harvest is the people who are ready to make changes in their lives.

When he looked out across, there were all these people, they were like sheep without a shepherd, they were helpless. They were hurting and they needed someone to help pull them together and guide them, and to do the work of unity and love and of resistance to oppression and the work of justice. There were people there that were ready to make a change. That's the harvest. When we look out and we see people, we see the people of our world rising up, it's because they're ready. They're ready. They're ready to make changes in their lives and in the life of the community. And we see many of those changes already going on. Sometimes at a pace that's hard to even believe, because people are ready and the people that are ready are the harvest. The Bible speaks of them in this passage, that's who Jesus is talking about.

Look at all the people that are ready right now for change, ready for transformation and reshaping of our society and of our world, and of their own personal lives and attitudes. They're ready to be a part of something new, something better, a more just, and an equitable system. They're ready to do the work that is necessary to bring that about, the work of justice. And so we pray for those in the harvest, and we pray for those that God sends out to do this work, to organizing and the preparation on the study and the actual making of the rules, changing of the laws, changing of the system and procedures and the policies.

The laborers are those who work for reform and justice and the implementation of God's peace and justice throughout society. Those are the laborers that we probably are sent. Jesus sends us as laborers into the field. And in Matthew 10:1, this is the way it's said in the Message, "He gave them power to kick out the evil spirits and to tenderly care for the bruised and hurt lives." Power is authority, but we're not just the authority of being told we can do something or certified with a piece of paper, but the authority along with the capability, along with in our way of looking at it in the body of Christ authority with the spiritual gifts that are necessary to actually carry out while we're authorized to do. We have that.

The Holy Spirit working within us and among us provides us with the spiritual gifts that are necessary to carry out whatever it is God is calling us to do in whatever circumstances we may find ourselves. With our authority comes the resources under the providence of God and the methods that are needed to exercise that authority. Our instructions are the same as he gave these apostles when he sent them out. The instructions are to stand against the demonic influences of injustice and oppression in whatever forms they may present themselves, racism, discrimination, exploitation, and violence, just to get started with the list, all of these ways that people find to divide people and to oppress them and to crush them, to put their knee on their neck, all the ways that people discover new ways all the time too, but yet they're the same old things, the old wine in new skins in a way.

They're the old ways just finding new ways to put people in their place and then make people feel that they're second class citizens of this world. All those ways that there are, that's what these people were encountering there. People that were sick and had no hope of health care, people that were tormented by the demons, which we often like to think of as those spiritual entities beyond our understanding or someplace in the spirit realm, but just think about how much of that demonic torment is by people who enjoy causing trouble, starting up trouble or pitting people against each other for their own gain. Dividing people in order to further their own agenda, rather than standing up for what's right and for standing against oppression or being that spring that resists and recoils against discrimination and oppression and all these various other things in whatever forms they take.

We're sent to heal, and that healing includes body, mind, spirit, and soul, includes our relationships, includes the relationships of those around us. It includes all the struggles and difficulties that people go through, that's what salvation and healing is all about, is to make the world a better place for everybody and to make each person's life and situation better in some way. Most of us don't really have a lot of ways that we can do that, but we do have some. One of them is a sacramental way by prayer and laying on of hands and anointing with oil as described in the Bible and in the liturgies and history of the church.

This is like an outward invisible sign though, of what is happening and empowering how the spirit is empowering us with the grace and the gifts to heal in more practical day by day ways. We have the outward sign. We have the things that the laying on of hands for example, is an outward sign, but it's a sign of something inward and powerful and real that is happening, to bring the answer to the prayer is the wholeness and the healing of individuals, but also of communities and societies.

So we're called and sent to do whatever we can do. First of all, to prevent harm. First do no harm. The first way to heal is to not make it worse, "do no harm," to prevent the spread of diseases or prejudices or brokenness and heartache. And then to support those who are working to bring healing. Everyone involved in providing humanitarian relief services, we support them in our prayers and by contributions that we can make wherever we can make them, whatever is practical for us in our personal situation. And support everybody and all the service industries and on the mission fields and those in Christian vocations and other religious vocations that work to bring relief and wholeness and justice and peace and harmony. And to restore where there has been disasters and to stand against oppression.

All the ways that we can support each other in preventing the spread of anything that hurts other people and where we can support each other in the building up of doing good, and building people up and making life better for people. In our heritage, we have a saying that was attributed to John Wesley about doing good and being kind to everyone whose paths we cross. 

Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.

Another way might be the way that Isaiah put again, 

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God." 

Jesus sent with authority to heal and cast out the demons, and we take that in the broadest sense of the authority that God has given us in its broadest definition of healing and casting out evil. He also sent them to preach and to liberate, tell them ... This is how it says in the Message, 

"Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons." 

The kingdom of heaven is among you and within you was one of the things that Jesus used to say. And through the scriptures and through our conversations, he still says it, the kingdom of God is within you. The kingdom of God is among you. The kingdom of God, as he says, here has come unto you.

What a radical statement, because the kingdom of God is a form of government, kingdom, government, reign of Christ. We say the reign of Christ in our lives. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is God's law governing us. There are many types of government where we usually associate first off the geographical boundaries of different countries of the world or different states, or even our counties or whatever cities and everything. But in geographical terms, we think of our government.

But within that is also the political realm, and oftentimes that crosses all these boundaries. So we have the political government and that changes back and forth regardless of what the boundaries are. It kind of goes with the politics of the day and who's leading, and who's in charge. In our country who got elected, in some countries who took over, but we think of that government like that, or groups like that that rule either by election or by force. But government also includes our social groups, the different organizations we belong to that they have bylaws and they have rules and they have procedures as to how things are done.

Our churches, our families, all of the different ways we associate with each other and make rules to govern our behavior and our work and whatever it is that we're doing, line out the scope of what that group is doing. In many cases, the rules aren't ever even written down, we just know what they are. Or we kind of learned through experience like in our families or with our friends and everything. Thinking about it, you have some rules that guide, you know what you can do and what you can't do, you know what's expected of you. That is a form of government.

The children of Israel when they left Egypt, before they went to the promised land, there was a 40 year period there where they received the Torah through Moses, and that became their organizing document, their constitution, their law. And for those people and for that society, they were a nation. They were considered a nation, but they didn't have any geographic property. They were on the move. They were wandering in the wilderness, according to our scriptures and tradition of the Judaic tradition that they had to be in a land, but they were slaves in that land.

And so they left and they had land that was promised to live in the future, but the generation that left Egypt and was promised this land in the future, they didn't make it to that land. They just saw that and moved around. And it was their succeeding generations that entered the promised land and occupied that physical, geographical territory. But the people who were wandering in the desert were still considered a nation and they still had a law. They still had these rules and that was their government. So, however, that we're organized, that is our governing principle. That's the way we operate. That's the way we're governed.

The kingdom of heaven is a spiritual government. Jesus told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world." We don't have a military that rises up to protect it or replace another government or anything like that. This is a spiritual kingdom. The law of this government is love. This government has as its task to work to transform this world into a reflection of the very best that heaven has to offer. I love to think about heaven. It's my favorite thing to think about. My favorite songs of the faith are songs about heaven. Now, when we all get to heaven, what a day, a glorious day that will be, and on and on. I better not start in on that because when we think about heaven, our minds go to the sweet by and by, and what is offered in the future, like the promised land that was offered to the children of Israel as they wandered in the desert.

As we wander in this life, we are comforted by the hope of heaven in the future. We're often manipulated by that, by people like I brought up in the beginning by people saying, just put up with injustice in this world, not complaining about all the ways you can get ripped off and just go ahead and take it, and then just look forward to what you're going to have in heaven. We should look forward to what we're going to have in heaven. It's a beautiful thing to think about all the beauty, all the joy that is prepared for us, and all the very best of this earth and of our relationships and of our life, all brought to its fulfillment.

All of our friendships and kinship, all of our family and friends that have gone before us for generations before, how we'll be united with them, most of them, we have never met yet. Many people that we have, and that we've loved here in the earth and they've gone on to be with the Lord and now we're going on and soon we'll be with them. And those that follow us will eventually join us there too. And we have everlasting life and we have all of these things that God promises. I love in the book of Revelation at the end of the Bible, where John saw the city and that represents so much of the beauty and glory of God, just in that small little picture there of the city of new Jerusalem.

He said that the tabernacle of God is with people and God Himself shall wipe away every tear from their eye. There shall be no more tears, no more crying, no more pain, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more sin, no more death. All of those things are themselves passed away. The Lord Himself would do this, he said. And then it has all that imagery that speaks to us so eloquently. All through the Bible, another one of the great threads of the Bible is the heaven and the perfection of love and fellowship and kinship and friendship and all that we seek for. It just makes us feel so good in our hearts when we think about the glory that awaits us in the life of the world to come.

"They sing the lamb in hymns above, and we in hymns below." (Charles Wesley)

 It's all so close. It's all part of this spiritual life that God brings us into. But it's not just over yonder. It's not just some day yonder. We are expected and called and invited and encouraged and sent to make everything that we can do here as reflective of everything we dream of there as absolutely possible each day. We are invited and sent to love today, as perfectly as we can in the same ways that we envision we will love in heaven. The justice that we certainly expect there to be in heaven, we're supposed to be working on that here as well. Maybe we can't get it all done today, or even each of any one of us in our lifetime, but together we can work on making it a little closer, a little better, a little more like heaven.

And so the radical thing about Jesus preaching that the kingdom of God is present, is at hand, is that expectation that whatever governments we're a part of here are supposed to be reformed to be like the expectation and the joy and the anticipation that we have of heaven in the world to come. That didn't sit well with people back then, and it doesn't sit well with people now. People often use the Bible and religion, not the way that Jesus described here in sending people out and not the way he described in the Sermon on the Mount. But they use them as an excuse and a license to manipulate and to oppress, which is completely antithetical to everything that the Bible is about and everything Jesus and his teachings are about.

The kingdom of God is present in our hearts and minds. We speak it into new degrees of existence in our own lives when we pray, as Jesus taught us, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. And then the lectionary passage for this second Sunday after a Pentecost concludes with a verse that in the King James, it says, "Freely you have received, freely give." I like how Peterson translated that in the Message, "You have been treated generously, so live generously." Don't get sidetracked from your mission, the mission of Christ by greed or what James referred to as partiality toward those who have other agendas. Trust God for the resources. Don't let the cost of ministry hinder the work of the kingdom.

You've been treated generously, be generous. In the way that you minister freely, freely and generously pray and work for the up building of the kingdom of God in this life and in the life of the world to come. Generously and freely work for justice, and for the fair treatment of everybody everywhere, for equality, for good to be for everybody without any kind of limitations or without putting people in categories and then dividing them against each other. Freely work for unity and stand against evil and injustice and oppression and whatever forms they may take.

So go, we're always ... He's always saying, "Go." Go.
"And as you go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

In the all powerful name of Jesus. Amen.

Presenting Ourselves to the Lord

The child grew and became strong and was full of wisdom and God's blessings were upon him. (Luke 2:52 GNT)

We present Christ to the world, in the way we present ourselves -- not just books and rituals and beliefs about Christ, but the person. We invite everyone into a personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

[Listen to the audio for this sermon]
Preached extemporaneously at Briensburg UMC on February 2, 2020.

The scene is the presentation of the Lord and the Holy family entered to the temple, but they weren't known as the Holy family back then. They were just a family, a poor family who came bringing the sacrifice, not of the wealthy family, but the one that was prescribed for poor families, 40 days after Christmas, today. For the ritual purification of the mother and the presentation of the child. And there were two particular characters in that story that were lifted up in the biblical account. There was Anna, the prophetess who spent all her time in the temple praying and worshiping God and praising God. And then there was Simeon who had been looking for this day to come when the Christ would be born, and somehow the spirit had impressed on him and revealed to him that he would live to see that day. And I like how the Bible says that the Spirit brought him to the temple just at that right time to meet Christ.

And he took him up in his arm and blessed him with a blessing that hundreds of millions really of Christian Jews to this day as part of their night prayers before they go to sleep. And along with remembering through the day and giving it an account of their soul for the day, examination of their conscience and a prayer that we would sleep peacefully. That we would sleep well and die peacefully. 

"Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace, according to your word.  My eyes have seen the salvation that you have prepared for the world"  (Luke 2:29-31; Nunc Dimmittis).

 In that ritual and all the people, they praised the Lord, they praised God for what was going on, they upheld the tradition that had been handed down to them. But there was an extra little significance there for some of the people that were present because the Holy family was offering Christ to the world and the world didn't know this yet. But it was still Christ and he was still being offered. And I love this part that he grew. From there on he grew, and wisdom and stature and the blessings of God were on him.

He didn't just step into his whole role. He was the Messiah already, but he hadn't lived into that role yet, he was just beginning. And it took him his whole life to live into the role of who he was and who had God made him and sent him to be for us. And likewise, it takes our whole life to live into the roles that we have. Where God has callings for us, God has opportunities for us, but it takes us our whole life to live that all out. And what's really a blessing is that we have all of eternity to keep living into it. However far away we've got so far, that's not the end, it's still at the beginning. Like we sing, 

When we've been there ten thousand years,Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise,Than when we first begun.   (Hymn, "Amazing Grace")

 Christ was offered to the world and grew into the role and grew into the relationship.

And the world, they grew into a relationship with him, and we have grown into a relationship with him. In sending the ministers to come to the newly formed United States to preach the gospel, and form the Methodist church, John Wesley had this great command that echoes down and reverberates through the centuries, "Offer them Christ." There are a lot of things that the people of God have to offer. Churches small and large have a lot of things that we offer people, do all kinds of things, hopefully to help people whenever we can. And we have different ways of encouraging each other and we participate in big projects and all of these are very important. But there are some things that as it says in one of our rituals, "The means of grace, the church alone supplieth:"

[The Church is of God,and will be preserved to the end of time,for the conduct of worshipand the due administration of God's Word and Sacraments,the maintenance of Christian fellowship and discipline,the edification of believers,and the conversion of the world.All, of every age and station,stand in need of the means of grace which it alone supplies.
(UM Baptismal Covenant III)]

There are some that only the church can offer. Only the people of God can offer, only the Body of Christ can offer it to the world. And chief of all those is Christ himself.

The world can't offer Christ. We offer Christ to the world. Christ to the world we bring, the world to Christ we bring. That was the only thing the song says, 

Christ for the world we sing;
the world to Christ we bring.  (Samuel Wolcott, 1869; Hymnary.org)

That's our central focus. That's our central thing that we can do that no one else can do. If we didn't do it, which we are, but if we weren't, then who would? It comes from the salvation, that hope of salvation, the relationship with God in Christ comes through the body of Christ to the world. We serve the world in that way and everything else that we do is part of that. And that's why we offer him. We offer Christ and we offer Christ the way that Mary and Joseph offered Christ, the way that Simeon received him and held him up as somebody who's alive and living in and real. And not as just pages in a book. Our creeds that are recited or any of the rest of the things that we do.

When they came, they had all of that, the ritual, the tradition words and the scriptures, all of that. The hymns and all that they had in their service, but what they were offering, that wasn't what they were offering. That provided a context that pointed to what they were offering, that celebrated what they were offering. What they were offering was the person, this little baby, this human being, this person, they were offering Christ himself. And that's what we offer. And it can be cast in a lot of different songs and rituals and programs and times and places, but we're offering this personal saving relationship with Jesus Christ and then everything else about it celebrates that and points to it and informs us. And then as we say in our communion liturgy, 
"We offer ourselves in union with Christ's offering for us at Calvary." When we offer ourselves, we don't just offer a book about ourselves, our biography, just like when we offer Christ, we don't offer the book about Christ, the biography about Christ. We offer Christ himself.

When we offer ourselves, we present ourselves to be there, to be present in each other's lives and present in the life of the world. As individuals, as a congregation, as a denomination, as the faith community, we offer ourselves to be present in the world, caring and loving, and being who we are. Paul wrote it this way, 

So then, my friends, because of God's great mercy to us I appeal to you:
Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God,
dedicated to his service and pleasing to him.
This is the true worship that you should offer.
(Romans 12:1 GNT)

We're invited to offer Christ and with Christ we stand and offer ourselves. To be the hands and feet of Christ, to be the vessel through which Christ connects with the people around us. 

And we're invited to make that intentional by practicing presence. When Jesus was presented at the temple, it wasn't something far off in the future.

If we read it in the Bible, we think of it as that was a long time ago on a long, and long way away. But for the people who were there, it wasn't a long time ago or far away, it was right then and there and it was happening. They were seeing Jesus, they were seeing the event, they were sharing that, they were participating. It was all happening right there. And really that's what the scriptures and the songs and the prayers and the conversations that we have, all the things we do, they're not supposed to take us away from where we are, they're supposed to bring us into the experience of the moment. In our ritual for communion in a few minutes we'll be [celebrating the presence of Jesus]. Not to take us back and out away from where we are, but to bring all of that into the present, not just to take us back to Cavalry, but to bring Cavalry to Briensburg. To bring the Upper Room to Briensburg this morning, to us who are here.

And to each of the places where this Sacrament is celebrated, to bring the focus and the reality of God's presence to right there where we are. And we might express that in all kinds of different ways. We might have all kinds of different ways of communicating that, but that's what we're bringing. We're bringing ourselves around the Table of the Lord. We have a lot of different ways of thinking about the mystery of the sacrament and what's going on. When we have our prayers and our ritual and when we pray, "Make this be for us, the body and blood of Christ," and when we repeat Jesus' words, "This is my body, this is my blood." All different people have different ideas about how to understand that and how they perceive it, how they feel it. 

I always think of Dr. Gordon Thompson. He taught at Candler School of Theology where I took the Ministerial Course of Study back in the 80s,and he taught... The sacraments was one of the courses that he taught. And something that he said comes to my mind every time when we have communion. He said that for us, it's not so much about the mystery on the table, but the mystery that's happening around the table. 

That's something to think about I think is for us that we don't try to argue and try to answer all the questions about the part that what's going on with the bread and the wine. We try to focus on what's going on in the hearts and minds of the people who gather around the table of the Lord and who share this sacrament together with faith and confidence. God is present with us and within us and that's the focus of it all. Of everything that we do. Back in the medieval days there was a monk in France and he was a dishwasher at the monastery and a cobbler. He wrote a lot. And then they wrote down a lot of what he said about practicing the presence of God, brother Lawrence.  ("Practice the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life," by Brother Lawrence. CCEL.org)

And the emphasis that he had was that in whatever we do, wherever we are, whatever work we're doing, whatever relationships that we have intentionally practice noticing that God is present there with us. That's our presentation, isn't it? That's when we praise the Lord presenting God's self to us wherever we are in any activity, any moment in our lives. Intentionally practice that presence. And it brings us to our own presence, to being intentionally present to the people around us, to living out the present moment and being aware of what's going on within us and around us in that moment. 

I'm notorious for not being very observant. Right? Cheryl can fill you in on a lot of things about that. Sometimes it's a struggle. You want to just be thinking about other things and your mind drifts. Well, I shouldn't say "yours" in this case, I should say like it is, "mine."  My mind wanders and drifts and thinks about all these things and I love to think about a lot of different things. But sometimes I find that then I'm not quite in touch with what's going on right there in front of me, what's going on right around me, sometimes what's going on inside me, in our thoughts and feelings. And that kind of calls us back to Simeon's prayer again, and the churches use of it over the centuries to remind us at least every day, to take a moment to think about who we are, and where we've been today. What's been our day today. To be present in the company of the Lord, like Wesley Grace, "Be present at our table, Lord." 

And we pray that this morning that in all that we do and say we'll be present with each other. Really know who's here and what they're thinking and feeling and what they're saying. Hearing what they're saying and seeing their face. And when we join around the Table of the Lord, that we feel each other's presence and the presence of Christ within us and among us. That divine presence that we share becomes central to our reality. And then when we take it outside the door and share that with the world, and be present to the world and bring Christ's presence to the world, we present Jesus to the world. 

In the name of Jesus, amen.