If you hold at all, hold loose
John 20:17
Have you ever heard a sentence or saying that seemed so “right” that you’re sure it came from an authoritative place? Like, “That’s so wise, I’m sure that my grandmother was the first one to have ever thought it!” Christian people are often tempted to, and sometimes guilty of, crediting anything “wise” to the Bible. “It’s in there somewhere, I just can’t remember the chapter and verse right now.” So things like “The Lord helps those who help themselves” get into our religion even though they are exactly opposite of what we learn from the Bible.
This week’s Gospel reading (John 20:1-18) included Jesus saying to Mary, “Do not hold on to me.(v.17)” As I pondered that sentence, I thought of a “wise saying” about “holding on”, “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” To learn more, I did preachers do in the 21st century, I googled it. I found lots of pictures of young cats hanging from ropes (no surprise), and also found the same quote attributed to no fewer than 4 different American presidents and one of the heroes of the American Revolution. Though any of all of them may have used it, it was not original to even a single one. Maybe a cat thought it up.
In the story we found Mary, who dearly loved Jesus, at the end of her rope. For all she knew, he was dead. She had seen it happen, and she knew where his grave was. Like many, or any, of us whose friend has died, she could get no nearer to him than to go to the tomb. So she went, and found what appeared to her to be the scene of a grave robbing: an open tomb and no body anywhere.
She was at the end of her rope. Even the testimony of ANGELS couldn’t change her mind. So when, at last, because of the sound of the voice of the risen Jesus, speaking her name, fell on her ears, she reached toward him, she intended to “tie a knot and hang on.”
But Jesus said, to her “Do not hold on to me.”
I Have To Go
He continued talking, explaining that he couldn’t stay around, “…because I have not yet gone back up to the Father…” He had an agenda, a set of other appointments to keep.
Ever since he started out his life as a wandering preacher, he had a set of things to do. Even being betrayed, tried and executed were things on his list, as was rising from death. He had told people as much, they just couldn’t hear him.
All of these things were done in service of an even greater task, to demonstrate God’s love for the world, that no person who believed in him would perish, but would have everlasting life.
Last week in a class that I teach to future pastors I asked students ahead of time to choose a Bible story that has characters in it, then to choose one of those characters, and then to plan the structure of a sermon preached as if the student was that character. One student chose the story of David and Goliath, and said she would tell it from the viewpoint of David. Another chose a story about the prophet Elijah, and claimed the part of Elijah. A third chose a story about Joshua, and chose the part of Joshua. We like to compare ourselves to people in the Bible, and usually choose the greater ones. I the story we just read from John 20, we’d likely see ourselves as Peter or the other disciple, the two “who believed”. Or maybe of Jesus, who “had risen”. Few of us would choose Mary, because she was the one who didn’t listen to the angels and then had to be warned away by Jesus because her agenda was to “hold on to” him..
The things we want are so immediate. We want our favorite football team to win the regional championship or the world cup. We want God to make sure that our Master’s Thesis, Doctoral Dissertation or Job Application is accepted. We want the number on our lottery ticket (or on our receipt from 7-eleven) to lead to the grand prize. All of these things are “in” time. But Christ is “above” time, and has a different set of goals.
When we are at the end of our rope, and hear Jesus call our name, and know we have been saved (as Mary did), we want everything else to stop, because nothing matters more than where we are at RIGHT NOW. That’s why Mary reached for him, and it’s when she heard him say, to her “Do not hold on to me, I have to go.”
They Have to Know
More than his own having to go, though, was his mission for her. She also had to go. People had to be told, “THEY” had to “KNOW”. Now, Mary had already gone to them once, we read that in verse 2, “She went running away to Simon Peter and the other disciple,whom Jesus loved, and told them….” Wasn’t that enough? Now she had to go again and tell them about the living Jesus. This was good news, but why her, why another trip, couldn’t he just send an angel or something so they could sit down for a cup of tea and some conversation?
No. Jesus mission for her was for the immediate errand, and then for her life as part of that group of disciples that grew on Pentecost and afterward to be the church of Jerusalem.
Jesus has a mission for us even when we’d rather stay. Jesus has stuff for us to say, even when we’d rather keep silent. Though he is “everyplace” and has armies of angels at his command, he sends us, to tell, to act, and to live the good news of the gospel, in the ways we treat each other, in the ways we treat strangers, and in the ways that people we don’t even know see us treating anyone and everyone we meet with and in the love of Jesus.
That seems too hard, especially when, like Mary, you find yourself at the end of your rope……and Jesus says to you, “Do not hold on to me. I have to go, and they have to know.
You Have to Grow
The name “Mary” is found on a lot of women in the New Testament. Jesus’ mother was Mary, Lazarus’ sister was Mary, and this one, known as “the Magdalene” because of her home town, was a third. Each of them, after her own fashion, loved Jesus, and as he loved (and loves) all people, Jesus loved each of them.
Part of what it means to love someone is to want the best for him or her. Parents learn this about children. At certain ages you just wish they would ALWAYS be like this, and at other ages you can’t wait for them to “grow out of it.” Loving means living with the conditions, good or bad, that people grow through, and taking joy in seeing people develop…. Not freezing them in place like a bee in amber.
It may seem that Mary wanted to hold onto Jesus just as he was that morning by the tomb, but its more likely she wanted him as he had been some time in the past (though she was “willing” to take him, dead or alive, as she found him that day). Jesus had been changed by crucifixion and resurrection, but there hadn’t been time for her to learn that yet. She wanted to stop herself, and stop him. That was no longer “love” but was “possession”.
Jesus did the loving thing, the hard thing. He set her free to grow.
Imagine two things, both common enough in our Taiwan context. The first you don’t see any more, but there are monuments to it at the Christian girl’s high school across the street. High class women in the Ching Dynasty in China hobbled around on bound feet. When an upper class girl was only 3 or 4 years old her parents would bind up her feet in tight wrappings to deform them and keep them small. The Scottish missionary women who founded the girl’s school across the street were part of a movement that said girls and women should be free, that the upper class cultural norms of the Ching dynasty were barbarity. If upper class families wanted their daughters educated, that school would not accept anyone with bound feet. The monuments over there were given by the Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan’s government, recognizing the school’s role in setting Taiwan’s women free. Their feet could grow, and their minds and spirits grow through the life education and example they got at a Christian school.
The other image is of a boat with an anchor. When a boat is to be kept from drifting, an anchor is cast out and grabs the land at the bottom of the water. But you don’t just stop the boat and let the anchor down. You have to know how deep the water is (let’s say, 10 meters) and let out 3 to five times that much rope from the boat to the anchor. And you have to do it while the boat is moving, otherwise the rope gets all tangled up and the anchor doesn’t hold. If you don’t let out enough line, then when the tide comes in and your boat rises, the anchor will pull away from what it’s holding onto and the boat will drift away. The art is in getting the anchor down at the right time and leaving enough length of rope or chain to hold the boat where it needs to be, but leave it free enough to go where it needs to go. .
Mary needed to keep her faith in Jesus. That was her anchor. She also needed to get some distance, so that her faith could grow, that was her “anchor rope.”
Jesus says to all of us, “Do not hold on to me, you have to grow.”
CONCLUSION
As we grow up we are constantly leaving things behind. Whether it’s the shoes that used to fit, and have been outgrown, or the earlier model of computer or smart phone that is no longer up to standards, or even the things we once believed, but which no longer “fit with” the person who we are becoming.
As it was for Mary, who was told not to hold onto the Jesus whom she had known, and lost, in the past, and not even to hold on to the Jesus who was standing in front of her, so it is also for us. Freedom from the past may be needed for us to fulfill our immediate mission in life, whatever that may be. Being anchored to that which gives life meaning, while free to drift with the movements of current and tide, is ESSENTIAL if we are to grow into the future that God has for us.
Whether you’re near or at the end of your rope, remember that it’s a rope, not a rock, that you’re on. Hold on…. Yes but let God’s Holy Spirit blow you in the direction that you need to drift, and in which you must grow.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN
He said, She said…..
TITLE: “He said, She said” TEXTS: John 4:5-30, Ephesians 5:8-14
26 March 2017 at Tainan International Community Church
INTRODUCTION
Twelve years ago, two women from India spent a year as international students in Tainan. As soon as they arrived, they began discovering differences between “home” and “here”. They did not like some of the differences, but eventually they found something that made everything they DIDN’T like fade away. They once remarked on how safe they felt in Tainan, out on the streets, in public, even when they were otherwise alone.
Like every place else in the world, there’s sexual harassment of women in Taiwan. The difference these women experienced was that here, it’s not out in the street. In India, sexual harassment has a “cute” name. It’s called, “Eve Teasing”, and it happens everywhere, especially on busses or trains. Women outside of their homes and not protected by a man have to endure strangers touching their breasts and buttocks. That’s the Indian “penalty” for going out without a man’s protection.
In Jakarta a woman out alone might be approached by a man, or by many men, with the simple request, “give me your phone number.” In Egypt women outside of the house, even in groups, will suffer touching from boys as young as 13 or 14 who will reach through a group of other women to touch or fondle someone. In New York City there’s something called, “Street Harassment”. It happens on the street or in the city’s train system. Men will approach women of color and say something as innocent as “Hey Mama, How you doin’?”. They expect a response and a conversation for no reason other than that they have been “friendly and nice.”
Every person comes into every encounter with a history and background. Today we’re going to consider a story from the fourth gospel, often called “Jesus and the Woman at the Well.” We’re going to try to look at it through the eyes of the main character…. The woman. She enters the conversation from a background of having been “Eve Teased”, or “Street Harassed”, or otherwise sexually mistreated by the men whom she has known up to the moment she meets Jesus. That’s when she heard the voice saying, “Wake up sleeper, and rise from the death…”
Be aware, Jesus is NOT engaging in Eve teasing or sexual harassment. To the woman, though, it doesn’t matter. HER responses come from the place where women around the world have, for all too long, been forced to live. With regard to these negative things that go on in the lives of our sisters all around us, it’s time for all the brothers here to wake up! Let Christ be OUR light, too.
Round 1:
Her Internal Dialog
I’m out here alone on a legitimate errand. But I’m not safe, there’s a guy sitting there He’s alone, too.. I’m glad that along with this water jar, I’m carrying a knife.
He Said
“Give me a drink of water.”
She Said
“You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan -so how can you ask me for a drink?”
Comment
Women are often harassed by men who approach them with “innocent” comments and requests to start the dialog that leads to abuse.
Wake up, brothers. When you are the only man in a room, or when you’re in a room with many men, and a woman comes in alone, she has reason to be afraid. It’s time for you to “wake up and rise from death, let Christ shine on you.
Round 2:
Her Internal Dialog
This guy won’t take a hint. I shouldn’t have responded to him at all, but I was taught from the time that I was little to be nice and to consider others’ feelings. Being “nice” has gotten me into some bad situations before, when will I learn. I’m glad that I’m carrying a knife. I think I’ll put my hand on it.
He Said
“If only you knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you life-giving water.”
She Said
“Sir,” the woman said, “you haven’t got a bucket, and the well is deep. Where would you get that life-giving water? It was our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well; he and his sons and his flocks all drank from it. You don’t claim to be greater than Jacob, do you?”
Comment
Sexual abusers disguise their intent, even from themselves, behind manyhigh-toned words. They imagine that the women they use really “want” what they’reoffering and like to be treated roughly and as objects. Sexual harassers and abusers imagine themselves to be GIVERS of life and pleasure, when all they are is TAKERS. They do not listen when told to go away. They consider themselves to be irresistible, so any woman’s resistance is considered fake. She really means, “I want you.”
Brothers, it’s time to “get woke”. It’s time to rise from our sleep. We are not irresistible, we are VERY resistible. If we’re going to be attractive and magnetic, it will have to be because the light of Christ shines in and through us.
Round 3
Her Internal Dialog
Challenging him about the bucket and about his respect for the ancestors should stop him. But, maybe it’ll make him mad and he’ll try to grab me. If he makes a move, I’ll stab him.
He Said
“Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring which will provide him with life-giving water and give him eternal life.”
She Said
Sir,” the woman said, “give me that water! Then I will never be thirsty again, nor will I have to come here to draw water.”
Comment
Basically, she told him to “Put up or shut up”. If he had something to offer her that was real, he should be able to show it, otherwise shut his mouth. Maybe that wasn’t a very nice way for a “lady” to act. Maybe she didn’t feel she was being treated as a “lady”.
Our words mean something. Have you ever met someone who makes an offensive or Rude comment, and when challenged, says, “I was only joking.” ? Having been drawn in to the conversation, because Jesus was promising something she thought she might want, this woman woke up from her sleep and challenged HIM. It’s kind of like someone saying, “show me the money.”
Round 4
Her Internal Dialog
Like so many of the men who come through my life, from the time I was just a little girl, he’s probably all talk and no walk.
He Said
“Go and call your husband,” Jesus told her, “and come back”
She Said
“I haven’t got a husband,”
Comment
Why should an adult woman need male sponsorship or approval for anything? We’re not talking about a child here, still under the authority of her parents.
We cannot hide behind our “culture”, because cultures in places like Jakarta, New York City, Cairo, Delhi, and Rome ALLOW the physical, verbal and emotional harassment of women. Sometimes “culture” is what has to change. And it does, when even a “culture” wakes from it’s sleep and death, and is exposed to the light of Christ.
Round 5
Her Internal Dialog
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Now he’ll attack me for sure because he’ll assume that a single woman has no man to claim that his “rights” to me have been violated. Around here, often a single woman is considered to be available to any man, but to assault a “connected” woman is punishable because it offends the man who owns her.
He Said
“You are right when you say you haven’t got a husband. You have been married to five men, and the man you live with now is not yearly your husband. You have told me the truth.”
She Said
“I see you are a prophet, sir,” the woman said. “My Samaritan ancestors worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God.”
Comment
Having been abused and trafficked from one man to another, sometimes under the sometimes false legality of marriage contracts which were not contracts, and other times without, she was not about to fall into the trap of discussing her morality. She changed the subject to talk about religious traditions and how Jesus, being from a different tradition, had no right to tell her anything.
The terrible revelations of sexual abuse of aboriginal children in church-run homes in Canada, Australia and other places show that religion can be used to mask all kinds of evil. This woman turns the tables on that technique, and uses “religion” to protect herself from having to talk to someone she believes in about to abuse her.
Round 6
Her Internal Dialog
If he pegs me as a sinner, not as the sinned-against and abused woman that I am, the attack is just around the corner. I think I’ll bring the knife out to where he can see it.
He Said
Believe me, woman, the time will come when people will not worship the father neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship, but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes. But the time is coming and is already here, when by the power of God’s spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants. God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”
She Said
“I know that the Messiah will come, and when he comes he will tell us everything.”
Comment
So, Jesus picks up on her talk about mountains and traditions, and switches it to talking about God and the superiority of HIS people’s traditions and religion. She ignores all of that, picks up on one word that he has used, “time”, and says, “now that we’re talking about time, LATER.” There are bigger people than you, we can agree on that.
In cases when women are abused, police investigation, court cases, verdicts and punishment can often be very slow to come. In the year 2000 in America, it took 219 days between the time a person was arrested for rape and a conviction was done in a court. For a woman to respond to an offer by saying, “Later, Maybe” is no surprise when, should abuse happen, resolution is often far, far away, and many times never comes.
Round 7
Her Internal Dialog
Appealing to Jacob didn’t get this guy to stop when we were talking about water. Now that we’re talking about religion, I need something bigger than Jacob. That “messiah” comment should have done the trick.
He Said
“I am he, I who am talking with you.
She Said
Nothing, And for good reason. A big group of men showed up, and One knife wasn’t going to be enough to keep her from being gang-raped. It didn’t take all that many men to rape and kill a 23 year old medical student on a bus in South Delhi in India in 2012. It only took two men to rape a 28 year old mother on a bus in Uttar Pradesh last year while her 3-year-old daughter hid in a corner
Comment
Fleeing a group of potential abusers, likely regarding them as scary, This group of strangers from out of town scare me. I’m leaving the jar, taking my knife and runningfor my life. My people, back in town, will protect me. Testifying to her own community, she says, “come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?” So they left the town and went to Jesus.
Her community MAY have included both men and women, but it’s my guess that she probably felt safest in the company of other women. These responded to her story because they accepted her as one of their own. In responding to her, they went to Jesus, and woke from their sleep. Christ came to shine on them. People respond to her story, because they accept her as one of their own.
We don’t get out of this story easily, especially the brothers among us. We can make Jesus as sweet and wonderful as he was, as he is, but that doesn’t change the implied threat that he WAS just by being male. That doesn’t change the “felt danger” that increased when his disciples showed up.
CONCLUSION
What’s wonderful about this story, which goes on through verse 42, is that a community of people come to faith in Christ. Stuck right in the middle of the story there’s a lot of early church teaching about the need to go out and spread the word of God. That’s good stuff, too. But we can’t let ourselves off so easily, brothers. Though we may not regard ourselves as threatening to our sisters here and in society in general, the experiences they and other women have endured may make them suspicious of us. As we are instructed in one of the verses we read from Ephesians today, we should have nothing to do with the worthless things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. We should bring them out into the light. Do this, and Christ will shine on you!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN
Stories on a Slow Friday Afternoon
March 22 Midterm Video Assignment
It’s been my practice in recent years to put students as much in control as possible during midterm and final examinations. I absolutely avoid asking people to memorize information and parrot it back at me, and often give them the opportunity a few weeks in advance to choose the topic area on which an exam or project will be based.
On March 22 the “pulpit skills” class discussed videos about making videos, not of sermon recording, but of one person talking to a camera. That inspired the midterm project I assigned. “Imagine yourself to be the pastor of Happy Jesus Presbyterian Church. Your church has a website. The website has a FAQ tab. Make a 1-3 minute video in which you respond to the question, “How do I become a member of Happy Jesus Presbyterian Church?” The videos are due in my inbox by midnight on March 31st, and we’ll look at them together on April 5th.
March 22 The Secret Death of a Bread Machine
Before heading out to class on the afternoon of March 22nd I set up and started our trusty second-hand (purchased years ago in a thrift shop) bread machine. When Char got home from work she could smell bread rising. She heard the machine beep, so pulled the plug and ran some errands. When she returned, she went to get the bread out of the machine and discovered uncooked dough. She vowed to be more careful in the future, and I put the dough into a pan in the oven to bake. It came out rather dense and chewy.
March 23 Over-reaction
Morning prayers at Tainan Theological College were led by the guy for whom I find it hardest to translate. He speaks rapidly and seems to hop from one thing to another, so I can’t follow his train of thought. I’ve settled for just translating sentences as they come into my ears, and not trying to make the entire thing make sense.
At the end of his talk to us, he delivered some news. That morning a dead cat was found in the chapel. He surmised that it had been abused and left there by a mentally ill person, so he warned us all to be careful of strangers on campus. Then the college president got up and doubled down…. We have to be very careful about keeping the gates on one half of the campus locked after dark and all weekend. We’ve been ordered to inquire the purposes of any stranger whom we might meet on campus. He said that his plan is to move all of the women in the dorm on the unlocked half of campus to a dorm on the locked half.
All this because of a dead cat: which maybe had been hit by someone on a motor scooter and had crawled to the chapel where it died; or maybe had been hit and injured by someone on a motor scooter who put it in the chapel where there was sure to be someone eventually to give care; or maybe was the victim of another such accident and had died, resulting in a superstitious person’s placing it in a “holy place” rather than hanging the body on a fence (which is the old custom here for dead cats).
March 23 Street Harassment Sermon
I got out of synch with the lectionary last week. I had good reasons, but the result is going back and picking up the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well for the 26th. Some feminist clergy have issued loud warnings not to preach this story in the assumption that this woman was immoral or a prostitute.
A week ago I saw a blog about street harassment in New York City, and it struck a chord. Women there have been harassed by guys sidling up and saying things like, “Hey, sis, you oughta smile more.” They are in open rebellion. I’ve chosen to use this as the lens through which to see the woman at the well. She’s afraid when, going to the well alone, she finds a man sitting there. Later, when a whole group of men arrive, she flees, fearing gang rape.
Maybe talk of gang rape from the pulpit isn’t the nicest way to tell a story that includes Jesus saying good things, but it may alter the way that the guys in church, including me, see our interactions with women.
Find it, as yet unpreached (unpraught?) at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3R7z0v0ZWtnakdoS05NSTdEZVE/view?usp=sharing
March 23 Dinner Out
Rose (the English name she uses) is a senior in the ministerial training course. She was a single mother until last year, when she married an older Taiwanese guy (David) who had returned from life in the USA to retire here. His two sons remain in America. Last semester, Rose made a last minute try to put together a dinner, but there wasn’t enough lead time, so it didn’t happen. This term she started well in advance and got commitments for March 23. There were 9 people around the table, good food, good conversation and a pleasant walk home.
March 24 Public Death of a Bread Machine
Friday morning before heading out the door I set up and started the bread machine, which takes 3 hours and 40 minutes to complete a loaf of whole wheat. I got it going before 8, so figured to smell warm bread when coming back from lunch for a nap.
At about 12:30 I opened the door and did NOT smell bread. I opened the machine and found dough. Just put the pan with the dough into the oven and set a timer for an hour, went and napped, and got a loaf when I was awake. Bread maker is now with the recycle stuff. The “spare” machine will now come out from under the stairs and become the only one in the house. Since the “spare” was older than the one in use, I’m concerned that before we leave Taiwan in August of 2018, there won’t be fresh bread in the house.
Unfinished
Not Finished Yet 19th March 2017 at Tainan International Community Church
1 Samuel 16:1-13
“Because God is still speaking, we have to keep listening. “
Introduction
Jewish believers around the world celebrated “Purim” last week. It’s a festival when they read and remember the stories of Queen Esther, whose story is told in the Bible book that carries her name. Little girls are taught to admire Esther and to take her as a hero and model for life. Feminists prefer Vashti, the queen whom Esther replaced, because Vashti stood up to her husband. Boys and men are told to model themselves on the character Mordechai, and everyone hates Haman, the terrible villain in the story.
We find our heroes in many places. For many people, it’s in the world of entertainment or professional sports. When I was a young kid, the home-run king of American baseball was a guy named Mickey Mantle, who played for the New York Yankees. I wasn’t much of a sports fan, but everyone knew Mickey’s name and he was widely admired. But apart from hitting a lot of home runs, I later learned, Mickey wasn’t really a great hero. He was a drunk whose alcoholism often resulted in cruelty to family, friends, and fans. In 1994 he entered an Alcoholic Rehabilitation program, partly because his doctor told him that the damage to his liver was already so severe that “your next drink could be your last.” He finished rehab, but only months afterward he required a liver transplant. Because he was rich and famous, he was allowed to “jump to the head of the line for an available transplant after only one day on the waiting list. He had surgery on June 8th 1995. At a press conference later that month, he said, “This is a role model: Don’t be like me.” He died with his new liver 2 months later.
Because I was one of those kids who grew up in Sunday School, I was encouraged to find heroes and role models in the Bible. When as a little kid I found my name, David, in the Bible, he became my hero. The boy who killed a lion, a bear, and a giant! What more could a kid ask for?
Transition
Now that I’m older and because as a guy my age David wasn’t very heroic, I relate more to Samuel, the old man we read about today. I find much to be admired in Samuel, but he had his “Mickey Mantle” side, too.
I God commands and opens a way (vv. 1-5)
When I began to learn Taiwanese 35 years ago, I had to differentiate between the verbs that indicate “I have learned how to do that”, “I am able to do that”, “I am permitted to do that” and “I am willing to do that”. My mother tongue is not that exact. The words indicating “I have learned how” and “I am able” are the same.
In the first few verses of the story we read from I Samuel today, God told him to go do something that he had learned to do and was able to do, but he was “unwilling”. He had anointed one king, so we know that he “knew how”. There was nothing wrong with his hands and legs, so we know that “he was able”. His problem was that he was unwilling. Even though he was unhappy with the king, he was scared to do anything that would make the king unhappy. God commanded, Samuel refused, but God was not finished yet.
A few weeks ago in Taiwan we marked peace and reconciliation day, otherwise known as 2-2-8. I heard a lot about the events that happened 70 years ago, and some about what happened for 40 years after that. What lingers on, even in recent 30 years, is a reluctance on the part of many people here in Taiwan to touch political issues. In part, that is because there are so many more interesting things to do in life and on the internet. But in part it is because of what happened to those who “got involved in politics” in the decade following the second world war, and what happened to them.
Like Samuel, who didn’t want to go to Jesse’s house and anoint a new king, like Nicodemus, (whose story we considered last week), a man who told Jesus it was impossible to “go back into his mother’s womb and be born again”, we find reasons why we don’t need to do the things that God tells us to do. Consider how in the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to forgive our sins “as we forgive those who sin against us”, and yet we sometimes hold onto the sins of people who have sinned against us for years, if not until we die!
But as God opened a way for Samuel to go peacefully to Jesse’s house and do what he was told, even though Samuel would not be living when David actually became king, we have a way open today for our doing what God wants each of us to do. I don’t know what that is in YOUR case, it’s between you and God. If you want to involve me in the conversation you’re having with God about it, I’ll get involved. Otherwise, I’ll stay out of it.
Transition
Who knows the roads in the city better than anyone else? Who can get you anywhere without a GPS in the car? Of course, a taxi driver. But have you ever known a taxi driver to get lost? Rarely, but it happens. In the story we read today, the prophet got lost.
II The prophet loses his way (vv.6 & 7-11)
When God has cleared a way for something, has shown us that we know how, and that we are able, and that we may go, any claim we might make of “I’m not willing” is pretty weak. Everything was clear for Samuel, so he went to do what God told him. But, like a taxi driver who should know the way, but sometimes gets lost, Samuel started off in the wrong direction.
The culture of his place and time, like many cultures of our OWN place and time, respected the elder over the younger. (If you remember how, in Genesis, Jacob got two wives, it’s the same story. It’s not proper to prefer the younger one.) When he came to anoint a king, Samuel was pre-disposed to look at the eldest son of Jesse as the most suitable. Where did he get THAT idea? It was already in his heart. Jesse was of the same mind. He had 8 sons, but hadn’t bothered to call the youngest in from where he was looking after the sheep. He “looked down on youth.”
I worked in Shou Shan Presbytery’s Campus ministry center from 1984 through 1995. During those years, Taiwan became a country of freedom and fair elections. I recall once how a pastor on the university ministry committee said to me, when talking of an election going on in Kaohsiung at the time, that one candidate was obviously unsuitable because she had no experience. She was running on her father’s famous name. I politely reminded that pastor that my work was with young people. He had forgotten.
Upon whom do we look down in our social, political and church lives? Though I’m no longer in the campus ministries center, I still interact a lot with young people at the theological college (and with some older students as well). Like Samuel who initially got lost, we can, also like Samuel, be guided back to the way we should go. Even when we’re lost, God is not finished yet.
Transition:
We are not Samuel. We are neither Barclay (who founded the college) nor Shoki Coe (who helped re-open it after it had closed). We won’t make those mistakes. But, maybe we will. Verse 12 shows how someone else with whom God was “not finished yet” got lost.
III: The prophets’ heirs lose their way (v 12)
More than once in life, even after we’ve been given clear directions, we get lost, don’t we? In verse 7 Samuel was told, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature….” That’s pretty clear. But Samuel isn’t the one who wrote this stuff down. It was years, decades, even centuries later that, after this story had been told over and over, someone put it down for us today. Probably the same person who wrote verse 7 also wrote verse 12, and in that short space in between, he also lost his way. Look at what it says there in verse 12: “David was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” These are exactly the things that God apparently told Samuel not to look at in verse 7.
In a class that I teach at the theological college we are learning with “platform skills”, the kinds of things one does using one’s body, face, eyes, hands and other things to make sermons come across better. As we’ve looked at techniques of public speaking, some students say that these are inappropriate in church. When I ask them why, they can’t exactly say. They believe that church is supposed to be serious, and even boring. It should not be like a television program. I’m not yet finished with them.
We who have followed the prophets and the apostles have sometimes reduced them from the human beings they WERE to the white paper black words in which we read about them. The less familiar we are with the content of the scripture, the more likely we are to depend on only what is written there as we live our lives of faith. We need to read our bibles together, discuss what we read, and come to understand what we are reading, both as it was put down long ago and as we take it up today. We need to be able to think if we are going to be able to interpret scripture, culture, current events and human life to be spiritually healthy. We can’t “outsource” this kind of thinking to the pastor or church leaders.
Transition
If even prophets like Samuel, and holy people like those who wrote the stories into what we now hold as the bible, can lose their way, what hope is there for us?
Conclusion (v 13) God does what God intends
One of the joys of Bible reading is staying with the story to its very end. And in this one, a story people losing their ways, the conclusion is what saves us. In verse 13, we learn that God did what God intended. “The Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
May that same Lord who came mightily on David, do the same for each of us, that we might serve each other and God all the days of our lives.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN
Let us Pray
Lord God, writer of your own, of this world’s, of the nations’, of the families’ and of of individuals like ourselves, we offer ourselves to be edited and corrected by you. Seek us in our lostness, correct us in our wrongness, bring us home from our wanderings, and use us in the eternal story that you are writing eternally. In Jesus’ name. AMEN
Growing (March 15th)
Growing (March 15th)
Last week I began indexing the 1995 Chalice Hymnal to create a list of where to find the tunes therein set out in Numbered notation. This will make the entire thing more useful with pianists who have learned to play from numbers (a system familiar in East Asia) rather than from notes in 5-line staffs. I didn’t know when I began how big the project would turn out to be. The first thing that I dropped out was the idea of having a list of url’s so that computer versions of the tunes could be accessed. That was REALLY going to mean running down a rabbit hole.
The Chalice has 725 items (hymns, litanies, prayers, inspirational sayings, etc.) plus a selection of psalms with sung responses. I skipped the psalms, cutting down the number of things to deal with to 725. Then I skipped anything that didn’t have a tune, further cutting my task to about 600 items. As I worked through the Chinese hymnals and songbooks available to me, I figured that anything in the Chalice that was written after 1980 would NOT be in my sources. That cut me to about 450. I think I’ve found better than 350 of those. My next job will be to find more recent Chinese “youth song books”, which may have some stuff from 1980 and later.
Other things I discovered in the Chalice (which will be useful as time passes) are those litanies, prayers, inspirational sayings, etc. Rather than writing my own, or doing “copy and paste” from the internet, it will become my practice to choose from the hymnbook and say, “turn to # 319 in your and let’s read together what we find there”. It will also serve to imprint on the participants the usefulness of the book and the quality of what’s presented to us there NOT in musical form.
A hymnal is more than a songbook, and worship is more than listening to a sermon. Maybe, at age 65, it’s time that I grew up as a pastor.
Who You Gonna Call?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pyrIkDFYJMq1S0yTiNnsogdJRGFuNW87byLrjaxJrko/edit?usp=sharing
12 March 2017 TEXTS: Psalm 121, John 3:1-17
TITLE: Who you gonna call?
INTRODUCTION
Today could be called, “take a risk Sunday.” The first risk I’m taking is the sermon title and the pictures on the screen from the 1986 and 2016 versions of a movie. You might just begin thinking about one or both of those, and not listen. The second risk is that we’re going to look at a video for a couple of minutes. It’s from an American university, and it’s meant to be fun. It is modeled on the kind of TV commercials often seen in America during the kinds of programs that old folks like to watch. It identifies a disease, and announces the discovery of a new medicine, and recommends that you ask your doctor to prescribe it for you.
(Show Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQq1-_ujXrM
OK, now, when you need help, “Who you gonna call?” Both of the places we read in the Bible today asked this question, and in each of them we got “approximately” the same answer, though by different routes.
I: Psalm 121: Not the Mountains
30 years ago I visited a little harbor town on the Pacific seacoast of America. The town had ocean on one side, and forested mountains on the other. From some places in that town on clear days you could see far away to mountains so tall that trees didn’t grow on the tops of them.
At the church I was visiting there was a beautiful painting of that clear-day mountain view on one wall, and under it were the words that we read at the beginning of Psalm 121 today, “I look to the mountains where my help comes from.” It was a beautiful picture, and the verse is a good one, but the two didn’t go together very well. The painter changed the words of the second part from a question into a statement.
Considering the mountains to be the “land of the gods” is pretty common in religions ancient and modern and around the world. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion are considered holy. In the New Testament we can read about the Mount of Olives and Mount Carmel. Greek Folk religion had gods living on Mount Olympus. Hinduism in India has Mount Kailash, and modern-day North Korea, a non-religious or anti-religious state, relocated the birthplace of their Great Leader Kim Il-sung from wherever he actually was born to Mt Baektu, which was held as holy in ancient Korean folk religion.
Assuming that the mountains are the dwelling place of gods or of God is natural enough, but the Psalm we read today told us not to expect much from mountains. The poet starts by telling us of his action and his hope, “I look to the mountains, where will my help come from?” (Action: LOOK. Hope: HELP.) The second part is clearly a question. The answer begins in verse 2 and continues all the way to the end of the last verse. It’s NOT the mountains, but the God who made the mountains who will help. We get a description of what to expect when looking to God for help: protection, attention; guarding, shielding, safety at home and when away.
I enjoyed the video we watched. I hope you did, too. Being a student and not understanding is very common. In one class I was teaching last week, I described what I want students to do for next Wednesday 3 times. Four of my five graduate students “got” it, but the fifth one had to have his classmates explain it even more. I had thought I’d been clear enough. At the school where I teach, and, apparently at the university where the video came from, students who don’t understand don’t like to ask their teachers. (Maybe it’s different in your school.) What happens with students who don’t understand is they EITHER suffer OR they ask their friends, who maybe didn’t understand, either.
Our instruction from the psalm is: don’t look to the mountain, look to the one who created it. In the “Jesus story” we met someone who actually went to the teacher to ask. But it doesn’t look like it was an easy conversation.
II: Nicodemus’ Visit
Nicodemus was identified to us as a leader of his people and a member of the group of the Pharisees. That’s all. Don’t try to put too much into that word, but don’t ignore it, either. Going to Jesus, Nicodemus called him “rabbi”, which means, “teacher.” He added that he believed Jesus to be “a teacher sent by God” and mentioned the signs that Jesus had done. It seems that he had questions about God and the things of God, which is why he went to the guy who he believed to be a teacher sent by God. Hey, when you’ve got questions, “Who you gonna call?”
Jesus didn’t wait for the question. He just began talking, and along the way mentioned something that seemed to be more than a common miracle. He talked about being born “again” or “from above”. That probably wasn’t the question that Nicodemus came with, but eventually Jesus forced the conversation this way, and it stayed there because being “born again” or “born from above” seems so strange. So this student (a leader of his people) and this teacher (sent from God) went “around and around”. After a while, Jesus got tired of the conversation. Verses 10-13 show him first criticizing Nicodemus for being slow to understand, and then teaching him a Bible lesson from his own people’s history.
What Jesus may said ends at verse 15, where the gospel writer takes over to explain the whole thing to us in two verses. Among Christians, many people hold John, chapter 3, verse 16 to be so central to Christianity that we forget the conversation with Nicodemus that comes before it and the verse that comes right after it. Since we’ve already talked through verses 1-15, I’ll read those last two: (John 3:16-17)
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to be its judge, but to be its saviour.”
Remember the video from the university? Compare this story: Though Nicodemus was NOT suffering from FMOOWMP, he still took the medicine, “FOH”. He went to the professor (Jesus) for help. The video promised that FOH would be the answer for FMOOOWMP. Did it work for Nicodemus? We don’t find out in chapter 3, but near the end of the gospel, when Jesus’ dead body was taken down from the cross, Nicodemus was as one of the guys who put it body into the tomb.
III: What do you need help with?
In some religions with many gods, there are hierarchies, some gods higher up and more powerful than others. Christianity doesn’t allow that. Only ONE God, and even though God is described as ‘Trinity’, there’s no rank there, but an equal fellowship of “three persons in One God.” That doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried. Through creation of the cult of saints, prayers are sent first to saints and only passed “higher up” if the saint herself or himself can’t take care of the matter directly. So you’ll find people praying to St. Anthony for help with finding something they’ve lost. Irish women are supposed to pray to St. Bridget of Kildare when they need help while in labor to give birth.
What do you need help with? It depends, doesn’t it? And when you need help; “Who You Gonna Call?” When I encounter computer troubles, I’m not likely to pray, I’m more likely to curse. For computer troubles I don’t turn to the mountains, or to heaven, or to a saint. I turn to a book, or I listen to my wife and phone our son in America.
When I feel that I’m in danger, I DO pray. That’s when Psalm 121is helpful. Not because it tells me how or what to pray, not because it contains magic words to get God to do what I want, but because it reminds me to trust in the ONE to whom I’m praying, the one who neither slumbers nor sleeps.
And in those frequent times when I’m confused about the nature or content of my faith in God, I also pray. That’s what Nicodemus was doing in the story we read from John 3. He was confused. He believed some things about God, then saw or heard about the signs that Jesus was doing, and connected these with “being from God”, so went to get answers.
We’ll never know exactly what questions he INTENDED to ask Jesus, because the people who wrote John’s gospel hijacked the story and used it to teach about being born “from above”, which they regarded to be a VERY IMPORTANT part of relating to God in Christ. They wanted the folks of their time to know about it, and THAT’s the message that comes to us today through this gospel story. Nobody doubts that “being born from above” was central in Jesus’ teaching. We’ve no reason to doubt that Nicodemus came to talk with Jesus one night. But putting the teachings and the event together, that’s the ART of gospel writing, and through that art we learn important things: 1)about Jesus; 2)about what he taught; and 3) about the community of believers who carried those things along and eventually wrote them down for us decades later.
CONCLUSION
To answer the question of the title, “Who you Gonna Call?”, we’ve had three inputs today. They come in an order of importance from lowest to highest for us to remember. The lowest is the video, the middle is the Psalm, and the highest is the Gospel story.
FROM THE VIDEO: If you’re a student, don’t be afraid to visit your professor in his or her office. Doing so can result in success.
FROM THE PSALM: You are protected by God. Compared to that truth, the fact of a mountain is only a little bump.
FROM THE GOSPEL STORY: Getting born from above, or born again is something that God does to and for us. We don’t earn it, we can’t make it happen. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. So stop trying to save your soul, and begin growing it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN
Let us Pray:
We call on you God, because you are greater than the mountains, so we trust in you to help.
We call on you Jesus, because yours are the words of eternal life.
We call on you, Holy Spirit, because through your action we are born again.
We call on you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to be our guide, now and forevermore. AMEN
The Whereness of Temptation
FOR DATE 5 March (Lent 1) 2017
TEXTS: Genesis 3:1-7 and Matthew 4:1-11
TITLE: “Whereness”
INTRODUCTION
(Display card with “ _______-ness)
This “word ending” is one way that, in English, you can turn an adjective, like “kind” into a noun, like “kindness”. A couple of others are “softness” and “Lateness”. The process works with other words and today we’re going to use as we consider the bible stories we’ve just read.
Both stories dealt with temptation. Because we’re Where that happened, so our title is “Whereness”, a word you won’t find in your dictionary, and that you shouldn’t use in front of an English teacher. And since we’re using a new word, we can’t do old stuff. Perhaps as you listened to the Bible stories you already figured out what’s going to be said. Well, whatever you might have expected, let it go. New words require new ways of seeing things.
EXPECTED SERMONS
Some Bible stories have “sermon outlines” right there in them: “Three points” just naturally fall out of them. Our Genesis story had 3 characters: 1) the snake; 2) the woman and 3) the man. Put in the setting as the introduction and make an application to contemporary life as the conclusion and you’ve got a sermon. I can’t remember if I’ve ever preached that sermon, but that just means I can’t remember. Maybe you’ve heard it somewhere. And in the story we read from Matthew, there are three temptations. I KNOW that I’ve preached that one somewhere else before. If I could have found the file on my hard-drive I wouldn’t have had to write a new sermon for us. But Praise God, I couldn’t find it. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t one of the better things I’ve written.
(Display card with “ _______-ness again)
From either of these stories we could consider several “___ness” es of temptation: 1) the “WHATness (focusing on the content of the temptations in the stories); 2) the WHYness (focusing on the human conditions of the ones being tempted); 4) the HOWness (focusing on the one who did the tempting and the methods). From any of those approaches, we could make applications to our lives here in 21st Century Tainan. That would produce what one of my colleagues at Tainan Theological College calls, “a SAFE sermon”. We could do the expected things and arrive at the expected conclusions. But then, you wouldn’t have to listen.
Today we’re going to take a risk, (something that’s not popular in church). We’re going to explore the WHEREness of temptation; the LOCATIONS and SETTINGS of the stories. Where they might have been on the map is not as important as where they were in the lives of the characters. We’ll try to apply that knowledge to where it is in our lives (not at which street corners in Tainan) that temptation comes.
As we move into the “where” of temptation, I have to admit that as I wrote this last week I kept falling into the “WHEN”. If you notice me doing that, wave at me or clap your hands or something. Get me back “WHERE” I should be. OK?
WHERE THERE IS EASE
Among the pictures that have been on the screen today are several that can be found when doing a Google image search for “Paradise” or “Garden of Eden”. The pictures that come up are beautiful, and make you want to leave urban Tainan and head for the hills. These places seem to be where the weather is warm enough so that you don’t have to wear too many clothes, or ANY clothes, and cool enough so that you don’t sweat too much. The food is near, the light is gentle, and someone else cooks the meals and washes the dishes.
The Genesis story was set in a garden. People there had the companionship of animals, of each other, and of God. Earlier in the story (in chapter 2: 18-24) it is mentioned that God had made the people to be suitable companions for each other. I’m pretty sure that suitability, companionability and being without clothes would have naturally led to sex. It seems to me that Paradise must have been a very pleasant place to live and to work.
In this wonderful place there was also something else…. Temptation to act in ways that would ruin the whole thing. Temptation is natural. It’s part of creation. As we think about it, we can spend our time blaming: We can blame the characters for being: 1) evil (like the snake); or 2) weak (like the people); or 3)negligent (like God coded the design of creation without taking weakness and temptation into consideration). We could do that, but it’s not our purpose today. Looking at WHERENESS means that we are here to consider the place.
Paradise is a place in our own lives. It is where everything is easy, and it is a place where temptation can be just too strong to resist. WAIT a MINUTE, we’re in central Tainan. Things here are crowded and noisy and not necessarily clean. Though we may HOPE for paradise, but we’re pretty sure that it doesn’t and won’t look like central Tainan. It will be somewhere FAR, FAR away from here.
But paradise is always right next door. It lurks in the place where our next job, the one AFTER our current one with all of its struggles, awaits us. In the time between knowing we can leave THIS job, (or degree program) and before we become disillusioned with that NEW job, we’re in paradise. In between living the sad reality of the present and basking in the false hope of the new and potentially perfect new reality is the place WHERE we get tempted. For the people in the Genesis story, paradise was wonderful, but the expectation of a greater perfection led to the taking of forbidden fruit.
Paradise also can be found WHERE the hard work ends and we’re freed from struggle, but it’s a place where we let down our attention to staying secure. Paradise is found WHERE we’re praised for having done good work, so next time we take shortcuts and do sloppy work, whether at home, at work, at the gym or in the art studio. And WHEREVER we go to feel good can be a place of temptation for us if it leads to us forgetting God or feeling that we can do all things by ourselves.
It’s easy for a preacher to say, and I’m sure you’ve heard it more than once, “If you experience temptation there, then don’t go there”. But since to tell you that would be to say, “avoid paradise”, I’m not going to say it. Be aware, though, that even where Paradise meets you, there will be the danger of messing it up.
WHERE THERE IS SCARCITY
The New Testament story also had a “WHERE” in it, the desert. A place where resources are scarce and people are few. The choices are pretty simple, as basic as life and death. In getting the story set up, the author of Matthew gets us to the “WHERE” pretty quickly. Following directly on mention of a voice from heaven declaring Jesus to be the son of God, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. By the second verse we have a time signature of forty days, and not much is left to the imagination. At the end of verse two, we’re told, flat out that “Jesus was hungry.
The “Whereness” of temptation in this story is that of scarcity, of hunger. Obviously there was hunger for food. There was also hunger for companionship, for conversation, and for meaningful work to do. Into the big holes left by these hungers, temptation came roaring. The “WHERES” of scarcity and hunger in our own lives are locations for our own temptations.
I have a car. Though my wife drives it to Chang Jung University a couple of times a week for her job, I don’t use it much, other than to go shopping for groceries on Saturday mornings. Last week Juan and Ruth Carmona came with me. We got a late start, so in between the first and second places where we were going to do our shopping, we stopped for lunch. It was a good stop, not just because the food was tasty, but because it kept us from buying too much junk food in the store.
People away from home and in a foreign place (as are many of us here) can become lonely for people who speak our own language, and we might find friends among them with whom we would never associate at home. It’s our need for companionship and the language that we hold in common that draw us to each other. In 1958 a political novel, “The Ugly American” came out. It was about the American failure in South East Asia even BEFORE the war in Vietnam. Part of the failure was that the Americans who went to deal with local people in South East Asia, diplomats, military advisors, aid workers, missionaries and others, could only communicate with each other or with the few people they found who could speak English. In the wilderness of no effective communication, they made friends with the wrong people.
Whatever it may be that we call ourselves professionally, scholars, scientists, teachers, homemakers, journalists, or whatever, our work must have meaning, or it will leave us hungry. A person in a lowly tech job, creating nothing but with all the power of cyber space at her command, may end up hacking into databases just to have something interesting to do. As a result, an evil man becomes the president of the United States of America.
Where we are hungry, we must take care not to fall to the temptation that is everywhere. 500 years ago Martin Luther compared temptation to birds that fly over our heads. He said that we can’t stop that from happening, but we CAN prevent birds from making their nests in our hair.
CONCLUSION
Going into the week ahead, 1) who we are, 2) what we do, and 3)why we do these things are all valuable to consider as we try to live righteous lives. WHERE we find ourselves might also be worth a look, too. Stay out of the desert, where hunger will make you vulnerable, but don’t allow yourself to get too comfortable with the ease of life in Taiwan, where you’ll let your guard down.
Wherever you go, wherever you find yourself, don’t forget that you are accompanied and strengthened by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When the result of being tempted means you fall into some sort of failure or sin, remember that you are always welcome with God, who, through Christ, has forgiven every sin you have, and ever will, fall into. AMEN
“Pits and Peaks” a Transfiguration Sermon
“Pits and Peaks” Exodus 24:12-18 & Matthew 17:1-9 26 February 2017
Introduction
So far this afternoon we’ve seen a lot of pictures of mountains. Have you climbed a high mountain, like, maybe Mt. Merapi in Sumatra, Mt. Merbabu in Java, Mt. Kelam in Kalimantan, Jade Mountain in Taiwan, Yangming Mountain in Taipei or Longevity Mountain in Kaohsiung?
We didn’t have any pictures of pits, but the world has a lot of those, too. Between Jordan and Israel is the lowest point on the surface of the earth. We call it the Dead Sea. It’s surface is 430 meters BELOW sea level, and it’s bottom is another 304 meters lower than that! In Northwest China there’s a place called the Turpan Depression, which includes a dry lake surface 154 meters below sea level. In Djibouti on the horn of Africa there’s Lake Assal, 155 meters below sea level. Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, is noted as the lowest point in North America, (86 m) below sea level.
The surface of this earth has its highs and lows. The surfaces of our lives have their highs and lows, and the course of our lives as spiritual people runs through highs and lows. We read Mountaintop Experiences from the Bible today.
I We read Mountaintop Experiences from both the OT and NT
From the Old Testament we read about Moses, who went to a mountaintop with his helper, Joshua. (Somewhere along the line, mention of Joshua dropped out.) Moses stayed on that mountain for more than 40 days in the presence of the Lord. At the end of the verses we read, he was still up there.
In the New Testament we read about Jesus, who went up a mountain with three friends. In that story, the friends saw Jesus glorified, “..his face was shining like the sun and his clothes were dazzling white.” They also saw Moses (representing the Old Testament Law) and Elijah (Representing the prophetic promise) talking with Jesus. And, as at Jesus’ baptism, there was a voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus to be “my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased.” In the middle of all this glory, the disciples first response was quite natural They hit the ground! Later, when they looked up, it was all gone. “they … saw no one there but Jesus”. For those guys, though, this experience was Wonderful!.
Great successes in life, things like falling in love, and spiritual experiences of deep communion with God are often compared to “mountaintop experiences.” As a teenager I went away to “church camp” a couple of times for a week during the summer. Where I grew up there were mountains not far away, and the “camps” were located there. The week was designed to stir the teenagers to greater spiritual heights. It worked on me! On the last evening before we would go home there would be a meeting to get us even more excited about God. Things were really running high.
The two stories we read today are placed in the church year at the end of the season called Epiphany, during which we consider God’s self revelation in the metaphors of glory and light. They come just before the season of Lent, during which we will consider human sin. This week we’ll move from the mountaintops. Next week we’ll move into the valley, then spend 6 weeks walking with Jesus on his way to the cross.
II Off the mountaintop
In the Exodus, the story of Moses, God and the mountain goes on. While up there he received from God a couple of stone “tablets” which God had personally sliced out and on which God had personally engraved the Law. But when Moses came down he found the people whom he had left behind, under the spiritual care of his brother and the elders, worshipping a golden calf! He was shining with the glory of having been with God, and immediately met great disappointment. In anger he threw down the stone tablets (made by God and written on by God).His people had shown that eheyt were not worthy of having God’s law.
Things work out, eventually, and a few chapters later, there’s another story in which God tells him to “Make His Own” pair of stone tablets and to being them to God on the mountain (a heavy load to bear). On this second set of stones, MOSES wrote the law. Quite a comedown from the first time. BUT, having been in the presence of the Lord, when he came down the second time, his face was shining because he had been speaking with God.
The New Testament story doesn’t have one big comedown, but three small ones. 1) In the middle of it, one disciple suggested abandoning everyone’s mission and just staying up there with Jesus, Moses and Elijah. He basically said, “Let the rest of the world go to hell. We’ve got what we need.” 2) Then there’s that bit of all 3 friends being overwhelmed by what they’ve been experiencing and responding in worship and awe, only to have most of it taken away “they saw no one there but Jesus”. And 3) as they came down the mountain, Jesus told them to keep it all a secret, “tell no one about this vision you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from death.”
When teenagers go to church camp and get stirred up about God through the week, on the last morning before it’s time to go home, they’re told that the “mountaintop” experience might not continue back at home. Hearing that advice, many vow to maintain the mountaintop’s zeal and excitement. I remember that speech. I was so literal-minded that I didn’t understand they were talking about the “Spiritual high”, not the elevation above the plain.
Peaks, and pits. Life is full of them: 1) the mountaintops and salt lakes of geography; 2) the Mt. Sinai and Golden Calf pairs of Bible history; 3) the ecstasy and agony of young love; and 4) the hopes and disappointments of national life. All of these have their peaks and their pits.
III 2-2-8 and Taiwan’s history
The geographical “pits” of the earth often get names associated with death and sadness. Today we’ve mentioned The Dead Sea, the Turfan Depression, Death Valley and Badwater Basin. These are NOT places we’d ever want to stay.
We reside here in Taiwan, a nation with its own twisted history of peaks and pits. It was a poor backwater ignored by China (which only cared about as far as Peng-hu until the 17th century, when this land was discovered to be valuable). Then the entire place was a county of a larger province in China for decades until it was elevated to the status of a Province of Imperial China. Then it was given away after China lost a war with Japan.
Some local people saw this transfer of power as a chance to rule their own place, but the Japanese put a violent end to that kind of thought. During the Second World War, as things turned against the colonial rulers, some local people hoped that reunion with China would see them getting the chance to take over the places in the colony that Japanese had held. They would be the ones running the local province of China that had been a Japanese colony for 50 years. BUT when the officials from China arrived to take the very top spots they put their friends from China into all the places that the Japanese had left open upon departure. Local people were again disappointed.
The Chinese Compatriots and their friends who arrived starting in August of 1945 were the ones that their president, Chiang Kai-shek, could spare. He was busy fighting a civil war with the Communists at the time. His government needed resources. As bad as things had been bad prior to 1945, they got worse for Taiwan, as the rice and other food was shipped to China. Then local men were drafted into the army to fight in China (something that the Japanese hadn’t done.)
The hoped-for mountaintop was switched out for the pits of misrule and massacre, which is what Taiwan marks on Tuesday with the 2-2-8 holiday. For 40 years afterward, people were not allowed even to talk about it. It was treated as if it had never happened. You can look at the old newspapers from 1947 and you won’t find anything about it… until 1987, when Taiwan began again to open up politically.
In the past 30 years of gradually increasing freedom, Taiwan has climbed out of the pits, and last year scored as the freest nation in East Asia. On a world score, Taiwan scored better at being free than even the United States (Taiwan got 91 points, the USA got 89). Freedom House, the American organization that gives these ratings, has been doing so since 1941, and has a good record of being believable. Oh, by the way, China got a score of 15, which was one point LOWER than it had in 2016.
This week we remember the low point of Taiwan’s history, the events surrounding February 28 of 1947 We also celebrate a climb to the particular mountaintop on which we now dwell.
In life, we need to pay attention to both the peaks and the pits.
CONCLUSION
We don’t WANT to stay in the pits and we don’t GET to stay on the mountains. Sometimes they are close together. 1)Death Valley, the lowest place in North America, is only 136 kilometers from Mt Whitney, which is the highest point in the United States outside of Alaska. 2)Moses was up on that mountain with God, but the people at the base were with the golden calf. 3)Jesus and his disciples were STILL ON THE MOUNTAIN when his friends began to get things wrong and experience disappointment. 4) The hopes of Taiwan’s people were dashed again and again throughout history until the 30 year climb to freedom began in 1987.
Staying on top just doesn’t happen! What we can TRY to do, however, is to hold onto some of what we receive when on the top, to help us through the difficult times that are sure to come. a)The glow on Moses’ face likely was a comfort to him when the people he was trying to lead betrayed him over and over again. b)The disciples who went up that mountain with Jesus were told NOT to speak of what they had seen there, “until they had seen the Son of Man raised from Death.” But they they could share the story with others who hadn’t been there, and THAT’S how it got to us, through the writers of Matthew, Mark & Luke. And That’s also how it ended up in I Peter 1 as well. c) In our own lives, when we’re on the peaks, scavenge up whatever we can find there, cherish it, and hold onto it. Because when it’s time for pits, our own or someone else’s, we can find resources for giving a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, or the support that is needed on the long, sometimes slow, climb back out.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN
Starting from Zero
“Starting from Zero”
19 February at Tainan International Community Church
TEXTS Matthew 5:38-48 Psalm 119: 33-40
PROPOSITION
When we start from Zero and Aspire, we build towards completeness.
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INTRODUCTION
As a teenager, I became interested in machines. I liked to take them apart and reassemble them, hoping against hope that they would run again. . It began with my bicycle and eventually moved to my first, second and third cars. I had many tools, and I got a lot of experience working on those cars because I wasn’t very good at fixing them, so often had to repeat the repairs over, and over. Along the way, I learned to distinguish between the things that were under the bonnet (as it’s called in England) or hood (as it’s called in America) and which maybe should simply be called the engine cover.
Then I came to Taiwan for 2 years and learned that I could easily live without a car. When I returned home for graduate study I began riding a bicycle and no longer carried any tools. One day I met a man whose car had stopped by the road. Both the boot and the engine cover were open. I thought that I might help, but had no tools. It soon became clear that he knew little about tools or cars. In his hand he held the lug wrench, used for removing a wheel when changing a tire. He was using it to randomly tap on different things he saw under the engine cover.
Being able to distinguish one part of a machine from another is not necessary for life, but it can be helpful. Being able to see how things fit together is basic to understanding them.
Analysis is also at the heart of the prayer we read in Psalm 119: 33 today. “Teach me, Lord, the meaning of your laws, and I will obey them at all times.”
I: A “GRAB BAG” OF STATUTES
If we were to analyze the verses we read from Psalm 119 today, we might start with the many different words used by the poet to describe the law of God, which is the topic of the entire psalm. In the 8 verses we read, God’s law was called, “law, commandments, promise, judgments, and commands.” The English translation we use at Tainan International Community Church is written in a simplified vocabulary. A more “standard” translation uses more terms: “way, statute, law, commandments, decrees, promise, ordinances, and precepts”
Our New Testament reading, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, had a lot of different parts to separate from each other. We could spend all of our time this afternoon going over them one by one and thinking about what was meant by each of these: (Read 9 items off of small slips of paper, dropping them into the offering bag one by one as you do)
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too.
If someone takes you to court to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well.
If one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one kilometer, carry it two kilometers.
When someone asks you for something, give it to him.
When someone wants to borrow something, lend it to him.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you”?
We could consider each of these and attempt to figure out how each applies to the lives of people living and moving in 21st century Taiwan, but if we did, we’d miss the performance of Elijah’s Oratorio at the cultural center at 7:30 tonight. Therefore, we’ll just do a couple. (Take the offering bag to the congregation and have 2 people each take out one of the little pieces of paper, then extemporize on each of them.)
If any of those 9 statements sounded like a rule, perhaps it was. In life we want to know all of the rules, either so we can follow all of them or figure out ways to get around them. Psalm 119:39 puts it this way, “Save me from the insults I fear;….”
II: A SUMMARY OF MATTHEW 5:38-47
Though point-by-point analysis is important for scientists and literary critics who have the time and the need for such things, we don’t have that privilege as Christians if we are to live in community with others, whether Christians or “not-yet-Christians”. That level of analysis would take all of our time, to find all of the rules in the Bible and then to make sure we were obeying all of them. It would leave NO time left for community.
To do that with just the verses of the Sermon on the Mount that we read today might take us all week. So let’s take these in two big pieces. The first,(rom verse 38 to 42) basically says, “Don’t Resist Evil” Some of the people who listened to Jesus thought they had the right to take back “equally” what had been taken from them, if that involved an eye or a tooth, it was clear. But, if you hit me, it hurts me more than you realize, and when I give you back what I think is an equal hit, you’ll feel that I added something, and then you have the right to hit me again just to make things “equal”. Someone has summed it up this way, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everyone blind and unable to chew.” Jesus said that even though this was the law of his people at that time, it was not the way. If God used those standards, which of us could stand? So what was God’s way? We meet it at the cross where Jesus suffered and died, not resisting evil but taking it upon himself for our sake.
Verses (43 to 48) basically say, “Love your enemies”. For the people who heard him say this, it was a new idea. They were familiar with the idea of “love the people of your family, your tribe, your town and your nation”, but once one had crossed the borders, they were not obligated to love anyone, least of all foreign enemies who threatened their feelings of security. Though enemies can be personal (as others in the lab or at the company who are our rivals for promotion), enemies can be “family enemies” (people whose ancestors did something bad to our ancestors), other towns, other religions, other nations, the list can go on and on, but Jesus doesn’t allow us to make lists. We are to love people. FULL: STOP.
III: DEALING WITH THE DEMAND FOR PERFECTION (Matthew 5:48)
Psalm 119: 37 reminds us to seek God’s way of life, “Turn my eyes from looking at vanities, give me life in your ways” The problem is, God’s ways are perfect.
In Matthew 5:48 we’re instructed to meet God’s standard: perfection. That’s a hard standard. It means getting a score of 100 on every exam and in every course. It means never making mistakes, either because you were careless or deliberately sinful. It means never having to use an eraser on a pencil, or the backspace key on your computer keyboard.
Teenagers and young adults often struggle with parents who refuse to accept any score less than 100, or any rank lower than “top in class. If God wants that from me, then I not only don’t want it, I don’t really want God. So maybe the problem is my understanding of perfection.
When did you learn to walk? Were you good at it from the start, or did you fall down a lot? It’s likely that your first steps weren’t perfect, but that’s OK, nobody required you to do it perfectly the first time.
How did you learn to write? Have you ever found something that came from your hand as you were learning to form your letters or write Chinese characters? It didn’t look very good, did it?
At each stage in our lives, at each stage in our development of skills, there are different degrees of “completeness” that apply to our progress, and as good as we get at something, we may attain the world’s highest standard, but we will never reach perfection. One theological system calls this “total depravity”. It doesn’t mean that everything is completely bad, but that nothing is completely good. There’s always something lacking.
So, let’s look at the demand for perfection “as your Father in Heaven is perfect” to be one for “completeness”, as complete as you can be at that stage of your growth. Only God has arrived at perfection. None of us is there yet. None of us will EVER be as perfect as God, or will BE God. Completeness is still a high standard, but it DOES recognize that you haven’t yet arrived at the greater degree of completeness that awaits further along the line. It’s a day by day thing. Each day’s completeness is its own. Each morning we start at Zero growing toward that day’s completeness.
None of us is perfect. All that’s demanded of us is to be as complete as we can be right now. That doesn’t exactly make it easy, but it makes things more possible. We should not demand perfection of ourselves, and we especially should not demand perfection of our enemies. Whatever we see lacking in THEIR completeness, whatever imperfections we may see in them, we probably can see to the same degree when we look in the mirror.
CONCLUSION
That doesn’t leave us completely “off the hook” or “unresponsible” for ourselves, for the ways we live, and for the ways we interact with each other. Jesus commands us to act in certain ways that we have not yet attained, things having to do with how we respond to evil, and whether or not we pray for people who persecute us. If you’ve already arrived at completeness in areas like this, please teach me how I might do it.
As we leave today, with the love of God’s law (from the Psalm) and the goal of completeness (from the Gospel) fresh in our minds, we should go also with a plan to make one step towards completeness in some area of our lives. Choose whichever area you like. Personally, I’ll be working more on relating to others than on my table tennis serve. But name it, aim at it, and work to get there.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN
Aboksu 