God's Time

 Advent is about time.

It is about marking time before the world changes.

It is about marking time before we change.

It is about marking time for another magical event in our lives.

It is about marking time as we wait for justice, peace, love, and joy.

Marking time has become strange to me these days.

And not just me.

I have had multiple conversations this week with multiple people about time.

People are having trouble since COVID started remembering when things happen or don't happen.

I know that I am really struggling with this these days.

I just keep saying that everything was about 5 years ago.

One person was saying how they remembered being at our open house last year.

The problem is we didn't have one.

 

I know that we think of time as linear.

As we grow older, time moves on.

But the older I get the less linear time is.

My memories all collapse into one thing.

Can any of you remember one advent being different from another?

What about Christmas?

Maybe that is a good way to mark the time.

Certainly, I have certain memories about different Christmases.

They are laid out in some timeline.

The Christmas of my childhood.

The Christmas of being married.

The Christmas of living in New York.

The Christmas of living back in New Hampshire.

But the actual one all mesh together on that timeline.

What about you how are you experiencing time these days?

 

In the Bible, time is not necessarily linear.

We are told that God's time is not our time.

The events in the Bible don't always unfold on a linear path.

There are repetitions and things that go out of sequence.

And this morning we are told by Jesus that the ultimate end of time is not for us to know.

Perhaps because our own sense of time is not always reliable.

What we see in the world can only be viewed through our narrow understanding of time.

We live in certain times.

Those times all have their moments of war, famine, and pestilence.

They all have their moments of false prophets.

And we can only view what is our past and present.

We don't have a special view into what will be the future.

And for me, this is the most important thing about advent time.

Is that all we have is our past and present.

And even our past is complicated.

We don't remember everything and we don't always remember it in the right sequence.

All we have is moments in our mind's eye.

Moments that remind us of the love we shared with someone.

Moments that remind us of our failure and how we overcame it.

Moments of joy and sadness.

 

And this for me is the most important thing about Jesus teaching on the end of time.

It is really all about faith.

This is what time has to teach us.

This is what our memories of the past have to tell us.

That it is about faith.

It is about living in an uncertain world and still setting our sites on God's future.

It is living through all of the ups and downs.

It is living in a world filled with sin and still having hope for the good.

 

I saw on Facebook someone said, "I can't give thanks this year because of all the bad things happening in the world."

This I don't understand.

I understand that the world is a mess.

We see mass shootings piling up, the war in Ukraine, rampant inflation, people experiencing homelessness, political division, climate change, racism, homophobia, and a mental health crisis like never before.

There is no doubt the world is a mess.

However, when we give thanks it is because the world is a mess.

We give thanks to saying that in spite of all of it we still believe in the goodness of God.

We still believe in love, peace, and justice.

We still believe that God will see us through.

I can acknowledge the problems of the world, and see all the wonderful things in my life that God has given to me.

Giving thanks to me amplifies our need to help people living in different conditions.

 

Because as I look back on my life.

As I think about where I have come from.

I know this for sure.

None of it is possible without faith in God.

I won't go into specifics, but this has been an extremely difficult year for my family.

And the only way I have been able to survive and keep going is through faith.

And that faith is not my own.

It was handed down to me from my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

I saw how they struggled but kept going by the grace of God.

I saw firsthand the power of faith in our lives.

 

Friday, was my wedding anniversary.

My wife and I were talking about the things we have faced in our 22 years of marriage.

A couple of things stood out from that talk.

One, we can't remember all the details.

Two, some days it seems like 22 years flew by, and other days it seems like it is two lifetimes.

(Time is a funny thing.)

Three, we were thankful for our faith which is the foundation of our marriage and our life as a family.

We both know that we would not have been able to get through everything without it.

 

I want to be careful about this next part.

I don't want to give the impression that what is most important in life is coming to church.

I do lament that kids are not being given that same foundation.

Because I think the world feels like it is coming undone.

It feels like things are always falling apart.

And the thing that we lean on in those times is our faith.

 

This week I was visiting with one of our members who just had surgery.

They were telling me that before that surgery the nurse told them that they seemed very calm.

They told the nurse that they were calm because no matter the outcome they knew God was with them and everything would turn out the way it should.

That is the kind of faith we need to face these days.

That is the kind of faith our children still need.

That is the kind of faith that our forebearers taught us.

They too lived through famine, wars, false prophets, political division, and pestilence.

They faced all those things with faith that God's time was coming, and that everything will turn out the way it should.

That God's time is not our time.

That we don't have to know the future just live with faith, hope, joy, and love.

 

For me, that is the time that marks our advent season.

It is not about linear time.

But about God's time when all will be well.

Where we give thanks not only for our blessings but the ways in which all God's children know God's love.

A time when our faith will be rewarded with all the goodness of God.

Until that time.

Let us live in this time.

Let's take the memories of the past and use them to make today the best it can be.

Let us have faith in God's ability to turn things around, and make us only live in God's time that is filled with faith, hope, joy, and love.

Amen

 

 

 

 

To My Children on Their 16 and 18 Birthdays

 To my children on their 16 and 18 birthdays

On your 16th and 18th birthdays let us pause to acknowledge the miracle that is this day! The fact that you are here is a miracle. It is a miracle for so many reasons. You traveled through the heavens to come to be my children. It is a miracle that your grandparents all went to the same church. It is a miracle they were friends. It is a miracle that your mom and I knew each other for our whole lives. It is a miracle that we happened to both be working at camp in the summer of 1998. It is a miracle that we fell in love. It is a miracle we got married. You are a miracle to me.

But now that means even more. Your being here today is a miracle. It is the providence of God that you are here. The thing about miracles is that we don’t know their meaning, or why. All we can do is accept them in gratitude. All we can do is thank God for this day. We can appreciate the miracle that is in our lives. We can look back and thank God that we were saved from our own paths of destruction. We can pray for more miracles.

Miracles are not always big and splashy. They are not always a burning bush, calming storms, or healing some disease. Instead, they are the small things that make up our lives. They are leaves in fall, a sunny day by the lake, a good meal shared with friends, love of family, hard work, a job well done, and a new skill developed. Miracles are the everyday things that give our life meaning and purpose. I didn’t understand that until I became a father. Until I held each of you in my arms for the first time. I saw in you my miracle. You are my life’s meaning and purpose. I hope you forgive me for all the failed times that I forgot what a miracle you are to me.

As you turn 16 and 18 I am thankful for the miracle that you are. I am thankful every day that you are my children. I am thankful every day that all of the miracles that proceeded you have led to this day. I hope every day you stand in awe of it all. I hope you see how precious you are. I hope you see that love has traveled through the universe, through the heavens to bring you to this point. I can only pray for more miracles for you. As the universe unfolds before us, God who holds all things together will continue to unfold the love and grace that brings all things together for good.

Love,

Dad

Living In Paradox

 Lately, I have been working on an important spiritual practice.

I have been working on holding that two opposing ideas can both be true.

In this world, we are often told that we have two options.

And we must choose one or the other.

We are told that it is right and wrong for every situation.

We are told that we must decide what one emotion we will have for a given situation.

Most of our faith is put to us in this way too.

We have to choose.

We have to choose which side we are on, and what is the right way to believe.

 

For example, have you ever answered one of those political surveys?

They give you a topic and then ask what you think or feel about it.

And it is always only two choices.

I really dislike those because I often don't think either of the solutions they offer.

I remember one time I was taking one of those surveys, and I was talking about how I felt and thought about a particular subject.

The pollster said, "Sir, you have to just pick one of the answers?"

 

Life is not as binary as we are told.

It doesn't have to take it or leave it.

My way or the highway.

This or that.

 

I really started to think about this after my mother died.

Because I often felt two emotions at the same time.

I felt extremely sad and extremely grateful and even glad.

Sad that my mother was no longer here on this earth with me.

Sad that I can't go and talk to her and get her advice.

Glad that I had her as my mother.

Glad for all the things she did teach me.

Glad that I was blessed to have her love.

Two seemingly opposing emotions at the same time.

 

Maybe our emotions and our thoughts have room for paradox.

Maybe we actually experience paradoxes more in our lives than we want to admit.

What if our faith was built around this idea that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time?

 

It would start at the cross.

It is here that we see paradox most strikingly.

Jesus is strong by being weak.

The king of our lives is the one who dies on a cross.

A sinless savior is killed as a criminal.

Jesus saves us by giving up his life.

Today in our Gospel we hear people mocking Jesus because he saved others, but seemingly can't save himself.

Jesus did miraculous things for people.

He healed people from physical and emotional trauma.

He fed 5,000 people.

He calmed storms, and walked on water.

He walked among us as one of us, even though he was God.

Power comes from serving and letting go, and not commanding and ordering others around.

And in Luke's Gospel here is Jesus on the cross actually saving others.

Here is Jesus telling a criminal that he will be in paradise.

The cross is filled with contradiction.

It is filled with paradox.

No wonder the Gospel writers don't really try to explain its meaning.

Instead, the show us what it was.

Instead, they let it stand as it was.

And they let us work through what it means for us.

 

Some have tried to make the cross only about one thing.

Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin and death.

That is the sentence that we hear most often.

I believe that.

But it isn't all the cross means.

It isn't all it has to say to us about our faith in God.

The cross says so much more.

And perhaps we don't have to make it only say one thing.

Because it is also an example to us of what it means to follow Jesus.

It is also God's way of laughing at evil and saying it has no real power over us.

It is also God's way of showing us that there is more to life than what the world says is power.

It is also God's way of showing us the true nature of God's love for us.

I could go on and on.

But the point is that it is all those things for us.

 

In our lives, we need paradox so much.

Because what I have found is that one thing is never enough to explain all the things I have to face in this life.

One emotion is not enough to explain my pain at losing someone I love.

One thought is not enough to explain how I feel about the issues that we face in this life.

One idea is not enough to solve the problem I am facing.

One way of looking at life does not explain all the complexities of the reality of people's existence.

One word is not enough to explain my faith.

It is complicated and needs more than all of that.

 

I fall into the either/or category very easily.

And it is often at my own peril.

I will sometimes make declarative statements.

At the time they sound good.

And then later on I will say the opposite, and someone (usually my wife) will remind me that I just recently said the opposite.

Then I have to confront that I am either a liar or that life is more complicated than I wanted to admit.

 

The cross always confronts our ability to make everything easy.

Or to make us comfortable with absolute statements.

On the cross, God took away our self-righteous talk, and our self-justification.

Instead, we are left to confront the parts of ourselves that are the two thieves on either side of Jesus.

Both of them are wrong, but one with a declarative statement about how the world works.

The powerful use it for their own good.

The other sees sin in himself and confesses his need to be remembered for something.

On any day I can be either of those two people.

One day totally confident in who I am and what I am doing.

The next realized that I don't know anything.

One day I will believe I figured out how the world works.

The next realizing that it can also work in other ways.

 

I believe holding things in paradox is an important spiritual practice.

It keeps us away from absolutism.

It keeps us honest about ourselves and our ability to make sense out of everything.

It keeps us humble.

It shows us our need to be remembered by God.

It helps us to see our neighbor's life and hold it in high regard even when that is not our life experience.

 

If you are confused by life.

If you are searching for spiritual help.

I want to suggest to you that you too can hold two opposite things in tension.

I know that doing that has helped me mourn.

It has helped me to love my neighbor as myself.

And it helped me to start at the cross because it is there that I am saved.

I am saved from myself, from my need to be a know it all.

It is at the cross where our king dies to save us.

That paradoxical statement is the truth that leads us to paradise.

May the cross be the place where we are remembered by God, where we give up our need for simple answers, where we learn to love our neighbors, and where we are saved.

Amen

 

 

God Looks Up at Us!

 

Today's Gospel is a perfect Gospel story for reformation Sunday.

It says everything that Martin Luther wanted us to know about God.

The Reformation is the moment when theology changed in the Church.

It is the moment when things shifted from what we do, to what God does for us.

In this story, we could focus on Zacchaeus.

We could talk about what made him go out to see Jesus that day.

We could talk about him climbing a tree.

We could talk about how he changed his ways after this encounter.

But the story is really not about Zacchaeus.

In fact, all Bible stories are not really about the people in them.

They are stories about God.

Stories about how God interacts with us.

How God uses grace and love to entice us to faith or change our lives.

We usually make the mistake of focusing too much on what we do, and not enough on what God does.

More than anything else that is what the Reformation was about.

Luther wanted people to focus on what God was doing for them, instead of people focusing on what they could do to please God.

 

And in our story this morning there is an important moment that happens.

Jesus is walking down the road and he looks up.

He looks up to see Zacchaeus in the tree.

Why is this important?

Well, when we think about God we usually think of God looking down on us.

We think of an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud looking down and looking for ways that people are misbehaving.

And then thinking of elaborate ways to punish those who have done wrong.

 

What we get in Jesus is the opposite.

We get a God who looks up at us.

Who searches us out.

Who finds us in the place we find ourselves and invites us to a different place.

Notice in the text that Jesus doesn't stop and chastise Zacchaeus.

He doesn't stop and say, "Zacchaeus how dare you steal money from people!"

Instead, Jesus stops and invites Zacchaeus to a meal.

 

I have been thinking a lot about Jesus in our story this morning.

How it changes drastically how we think about God and ourselves.

How we desperately need a God who looks up to us, and not down on us.

We need a God who helps us grow with invitation rather than scolding.

 

This week I went out to eat for lunch with someone every day.

(I have said this before but it needs saying here. At least half of my job is eating lunch with people."

And every one of those lunches was about life and the difficult things that we face.

About losing someone we love, about trying to raise children, about trying to navigate relationships at work, about paying bills, about trying to do the right thing.

Life is so complex.

It is beautiful and wonderful, but also so difficult.

Do we need another person in our lives to tell us what we are doing wrong?

Do we need another voice in our heads telling us that we have failed in some way?

Do we need another tally of the ways that we have not lived up to some expectation either of others or ourselves?

 

I would argue that we don't.

Most of us know that life is hard and that we haven't quite got it figured out.

I am going to guess that Zacchaeus knew that he was not well-liked.

I am going to guess that he knew that he wasn't living up to other people's standards, or God's standards.

I am going to guess this because he went out to see Jesus that day.

He was looking for something.

But the way that Jesus interacted with him.

The way that Jesus invites him to a meal.

The effects are so much better than being told by another person that he has failed.

 

I am wondering if you ever had a moment or moments like that in your life.

Moments where you know you messed up, and you knew it was your fault.

But instead of judgment and condemnation, someone offered you grace and mercy.

 

It has happened many times in my life.

One time when was when I was in college.

There was this semester when things in my life were not going so well.

I had lost my grandfather and was grieving that loss.

There was this college chaplain who was new and she was not easy to get along with.

I was not doing well in my classes.

I was partying a lot.

I am not sure why it was all so out of control, but it was.

That semester I think I got two Cs and two Ds.

It wasn't good.

I really thought my parents were going to be really upset.

Instead, they were compassionate about it.

They wanted to know what was going on, they wanted to talk about why things didn't look good.

We talked about things.

When I went back to school I went to the chapel one night by myself.

And I prayed that God would be with me that semester.

I prayed that I might come out of the fog I was in.

I heard God reply to me that it was going to be ok.

I heard God invite me to come down and get back on track.

That semester I made the dean's list.

Grace and mercy are better than ridicule and the law.

 

My parents and God looked up at me in my tree and invited me to come down.

They invited me to do better.

I think this is what the Reformation was about.

It was about knowing the God we have in Jesus Christ.

The God who walks among us.

The God who knows our weakness.

The God who looks up and invites us to a meal.

The Reformation was about faith in a God of grace, instead of one who is burdening us with the law.

As Martin Luther once said, "The law says 'Do this', and it is never done. Grace says, 'believe in this' and everything is already done."

 

We have enough people in this world that look down on us.

We have plenty of people that tell us we are no good or don't live up to some standard.

We are judged all the time.

It is nice to know that God is looking up at us.

 

As we move into the unknown future with all of its complications.

As we move through life, with all of its challenges.

I think it is even more important to remember what Jesus taught us, and what Luther remind us of.

Because when life is complicated one way we often try to control it is by making new laws, and by bemoaning the fact that other people are not doing the right thing.

It makes us feel better sometimes to think we can control people by simply making them feel bad about themselves.

 

But Jesus has shown us that God is not interested in that.

God looks up at us.

God finds us in our tree.

God says, "Hey I have been looking for you. Come down and let us talk about it over a meal."

And through that grace, we find our footing.

Through grace, we find the people God has called us to be.

May God continue to find you.

May we continue to celebrate and give thanks for that life-changing grace.

Amen

It's a Trap!

 It would seem that today's Gospel is rather straightforward.

Don't be a self-righteous religious person.

That could be the whole sermon.

(Maybe some of you want that to be the whole sermon.)

However, as I have lived with this text this past week I see it is as more complicated.

Jesus' story is a trap.

It is a trap because no matter what position you take you end up being a self-righteous religious person.

 

Many texts in the Bible contain both law and Gospel in them.

They speak to us about something that we should do but don't.

And they tell us about the forgiveness and mercy of God.

Today's Gospel is such a text.

Depending on who you identify with you get both law and Gospel.

 

Let me explain by telling you a story about something that happened to me this week.

I had lunch with someone from our congregation.

We had a very nice lunch.

This person told me a story about someone else in their profession who was cocky.

This person never admitted that they made mistakes.

And in the story, the fact that they would never admit to making mistakes made things worse.

I was thinking about pastors I know who do the same thing.

I was telling stories about other pastors who could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by simply admitting that they had made a mistake.

I then said something like, "I don't understand. I just admit the mistake and things go much better."

 

After I left the lunch I thought I was going to use those stories we shared as an example today of what not to do.

I was going to tell you don't be like those cocky people.

You know those people who think that everything they do is great and think that they know everything in the world.

You know those people who are so cocky they try and tell you what you should and shouldn't do.

You know those people….

And suddenly I realized what I had done.

Do you hear it?

I became self-righteous.

I was judging someone else based on what I would do.

 

And that is the trap of our Gospel this morning.

It is turning being humble before God and others into the law.

It is saying that a true person of faith would be humble.

A true person of faith would never act like the religious person in our text this morning.

True Christians don't brag about themselves.

I better go out and be more humble.

And let me tell you that once you try to be humble you are not humble any longer.

 

Not only that but that is part of the history of the interpretation of this text.

It has been used over the years to be anti-Semitic.

To say that Christians are better people.

Christians don't have the law, and Jews only have the law.

See what happens to Judaism, you end up with the Pharisees.

You see how easily we fall into the trap.

Now we are better people, or more faithful people because of this.

Let us never forget that all the disciples are Jewish, Jesus is Jewish.

There is plenty of Gospel in Judaism.

And there is plenty of law in Christianity.

We cannot self-justify ourselves by being against other people.

 

So you see how easily we fall into the law trap.

We humans are really good at this.

We are good at taking what Jesus means to be a parable about grace and turning it into, "you better be humble or you will turn out like that guy."

 

So how do we avoid the trap?

This is what my mind could not figure out this week.

I got it twisted up so many times, and every time no matter what I say it all sounds like the law.

And maybe that is the point.

 

When we can't outthink, outwork, out scheme God.

When we come to the end of it all.

When we are left with no more self-righteous propositions.

When we can't see the fault in our neighbors, because our own faults are too much.

When there is nothing more to say or do.

When we tried all the options, none of them work.

Then we are ready to say, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

 

God take away my pride.

God takes away my judgment of others.

God take away my foolish belief in my own ability to be humble.

Maybe, even then we can see grace for the religiously self-righteous.

Maybe, we can see that fasting and almsgiving and even self righteousness are simply an attempt to make them feel better about themselves.

And it is the same impulse that I have.

 

I like to tell stories about what a great pastor I am.

I like to believe that I know what I am doing.

I like to think that my success is somehow my own making.

I like to think well of myself.

And I am happy to tell a story about someone else who, "doesn't get it."

 

But maybe there is no use for that before God.

There is no use before God for our bragging and our self-important speeches.

Instead, there is only grace.

Grace for you and me.

Grace from our love of laws, and easy answers.

Grace for our love of judgment of one another.

 

I don't know where the tax collector found that grace to pray that prayer.

I don't know how he got to the temple that day.

I don't know the disappointments he faced or the struggle of his life.

I also don't know how the religious person got there.

I don't know the struggles he faced either.

 

What I know, and what you know, is that Jesus in Luke's Gospel comes for both of them.

Luke's Gospel is one of universal salvation.

Jesus in Luke's Gospel saves tax collectors, soldiers, religious people, non-religious people, deaf, lame, rich, poor, and everyone in between.

Jesus in Luke makes it known that God is there for all people.

And that God extends grace to them all.

 

I take solace in that today.

Because I can't seem to get out of the trap.

Try as I might I end up back in the law, and I forget the Gospel.

I end up trying too hard to be the person God wants me to be.

I forget that it is only when we have tried everything, and everything we have attempted fails us, that we come to the moment where we surrender to God's beautiful and terrifying grace.

 

May God lead you out of that trap too.

May you be able to pray ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 

And in that letting go may you see God's grace.

Amen