Category Archives: answers

Deck Chairs

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Yesterday, I rearranged the chairs in the church sanctuary. Since the second Sunday in the Easter season (the 1st Sunday after Easter), we’d been sitting in a circle with the altar inside the circle. Many people loved this arrangement. An smaller number of people hated it and there were a minority with no [expressed] opinion.
In an effort to be more visitor-oriented for the summer (our biggest visitor season), we moved the chairs back into their neat little rows. I did not put out as many rows as we had previously because we just don’t need that many chairs. We have moveable chairs and fixed pews. I arranged five rows of six chairs each on two sides (60 chairs). We also have four pews on each side, which could easily accommodate 5-6 people each. Let’s say 5. Thus, we easily have seating for 40 people in the pews.
Sixty plus forty is one hundred (100). We have available seating this Sunday for 100 people.
Last Sunday, at our regular service, we had 37 people.

 
37.
I thought about each of those 37 people as I arranged the chairs yesterday. The circle put us all closer together and made the space seem full and warm. This Sunday, forty people will be spread across seating for 100. The empty seats will be obvious.
And I arranged the chairs.
So frequently I am drawn into conversations about the shrinking church, about lowered attendance, about why people no longer make church a priority.
These are serious questions.
The answers are not really about the style of music or the kind of preaching or the kind of coffee or whether there is childcare.
All of those things are just a different arrangement of the chairs.
The truth is that the people who do regularly attend church (of whatever kind) have to be convinced that what is offered to them, what matters to them, could and would matter to other people. And then they have to act on that thought.
Our desire to see other people experience what we experience in church (if we experience something worth sharing) must be greater than our fear of rejection and failure.
We have to reject, forcefully- with the help of the Spirit, the forces that seditiously whisper the words “inevitable decline”, “too small to matter”, or “too old-fashioned” to oppose God and God’s work. 
We can arrange the chairs in all kinds of ways.
But if we believe that the message of Christ ever mattered, then we must move out in faith BECAUSE THE MESSAGE IS AS IMPORTANT NOW AS IT HAS EVER BEEN.
The message is as important now as it has ever been.
If we do not think it is worth sharing… worth conquering our fear… worth sinning boldly for… then it doesn’t matter. 

And it never did.
In that case, I have some chairs for sale. 

That’s Not An Answer

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Luke 13:1-9, 31-35
             Why do bad things happen to good people? Conversely, why do good things happen to people who seem evil? Why should a murderer have joy? Why should a gracious person experience deep grief? This is the question Jesus is confronted with in today’s reading. People want to know why God allowed the faithful Galileans to be killed.
            Jesus responds by asking if the people who were killed in the accidental falling of a tower were worse sinners and deserved to die. The questions that are being raised go all the way back to Job and beyond. We want to know why there is suffering in the world. We want to know why it comes to us and to those we love and to those we deem innocent.
            So, Jesus, ever helpful, answers these deep, heartfelt questions with a parable (everyone’s favorite). He speaks of a fig tree that is not producing fruit and the desire of the owner of the garden to cut it down, presumably to make space for a tree that will produce. The gardener gets the life of the tree extended by promising to rededicate effort to its growth for one more year.
            It is tempting to make a metaphor or an allegory out of this parable. To say that we are the tree(s), God is the owner, and Jesus is the gardener- bargaining for more time for us to produce fruit. However, that scenario pits the Father and the Son against each other, instead of seeing them work together out of love for all creation.
            Jesus does not say why bad things happen; he skips right over that question. We want the world to make sense- for bad things to happen to “bad” people or for bad things to happen as a direct correlation to bad actions. It is not so. God is in the center of all events, but not the immediate cause of all that happens. God is present in all pain and suffering, but not at the root of these things. Human freedom and freedom in the created order can, unfortunately, lead to pain and sadness. (What is freedom in the created order? It means that some things happen like the growth of cancer cells or natural disasters or freak accidents.)

            Knowing that God is present in all things, but not the cause of all situations, Jesus does not answer the questions that we ask, but instead gives us the direction and information that we need to know and to remember. Through the parable of the fig tree, Jesus reminds us that pain will happen to everyone. Everyone will experience loss. Everyone will make a bad decision and experience consequences, sometimes negative and sometimes not. Everyone will (most likely) die. And everyone will experience God’s judgment.
            Jesus is reminding his hearers- then and now- that there are things we do something about and things we cannot. For the fig tree, and for us, fruitlessness is not inevitable. Through the Holy Spirit, God is constantly shaping us… using the events that happen to us and around us to bring forth good things for our neighbors, our communities, our families, and… even for ourselves.
            God is with us as we weather life’s experiences, but then helps us to grow into the producers that we have the potential to be. When we reflect on God’s grace, then, we have to ask ourselves if and how we are producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These things grow in us, by God’s help, and we are called to use them to mend the wounds in the world that are caused by bad choices, by poor use of freedom, by accidents, by the forces that oppose God and God’s good work.
            Instead of clearing up the mysteries of the ages, Jesus tells us that we are the answer to someone’s question. We are the answer to someone’s pain, to someone else’s inability to make ends meet, someone’s call for help, to the needs for justice, peace, and healing. Jesus reminds his disciples, his hearers, and those who would deride him that we can still produce this fruit without having all our questions answered.
            This is what it means to live in faith and to live together faithfully. Our life of faith is living together and living in the world until the time when we have all the answers, but the questions no longer matter. We are not brought together, we are not given faith, we are not believing for the answers. We are together, granted faith, and believing with the questions.
            Which does mean that we may become exasperated, on occasion with Jesus, with God, with the Spirit. We may yell. We may rend our clothing. But the difference between living in faith with doubt and not believing is revealed at the end of today’s reading. We can be with Herod, with the religious officials, with the people who demand answers or refuse reason, with those who reject Jesus. Or we can stand with Jesus, with the One who Saves, and say that we do not know all that we will know, but we know enough now, we trust enough now… to continue forward. We can say that we have received enough grace to sustain us into the next step. We can share with one another enough confidence that God is continuing to shape us, feed us, and nurture us into the producers of the fruits of the Spirit that the world so desperately needs.
            Jesus reminds us that, on this side of heaven, pain and death are going to happen. Judgment, God’s decisions toward us, is also inevitable. However, these things- separation, loss, and death- do not mean division from God. And they most assuredly do not mean inevitable unfruitfulness. The good news of God in Jesus the Christ is that God continues to use us for good, whether we know it or not. The world is changed through each of us, for Christ’s own sake. And we are gifted with the opportunities to be participants in God’s grace and creativity. We become co-workers and co-creators through the power of the Spirit.
            The Lenten season reminds us that the time to join with Jesus is now. We do so, invited by the grace we have already known. The promise of God in Christ to continue working in us so that we might bear fruit is the deepest measure of God’s grace. And while that grace does not answer all our questions, it helps us to live with our questions. The consolation of today’s reading is that we can live with questions and still live in faith.  

Dressed for Joy (Sermon 12/16)

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Isaiah 61:1-11
How many of you know the adage, “Wear clean underwear, because you never know when you’ll be in an accident”? While I do not want to know how many of you follow that rule, I suspect many of you think about what you wear each day. Am I dressed or ready for the car to break down? Am I dressed or ready if I had to sit for a while and wait? Am I dressed and ready for walking around the store, getting gas, watching a toddler, changing a tire, having lunch with a friend?
This is a question I ask myself all the time. Especially as the number of clothes I have that fit begins to dwindle, I ask myself, “Is this what I want to be wearing for a hospital visit? For an emergency call? For pastoral authority in the office?” Sometimes I’m not dressed, or I don’t feel like I am, for what I need to do.
On Friday, after the initial shock of the news out of Connecticut, I was thinking about opening the church into the evening for prayers. When I decided to do that, I was wearing jeans and a sweater. A fine outfit for sitting in the office and writing a sermon, not what I wanted to be wearing when we were opening the church and I was talking with the people who came in and out all day. “I’m not dressed for this”- I kept thinking. What I really meant was- I’m not ready. I’m not prepared for this.
This is not the first time this has happened. Someone here once told me- it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, just show up. Good advice, but I know I’m not the only one to whom this happens. How many of you felt overwhelmed this week- either by the season, by events, or by memories? How many of you have had a call during the day or in the night- for which you weren’t dressed, for which you weren’t ready?
Thus, in considering that the third Sunday in Advent is Joy Sunday, I don’t feel dressed for it. If we had colored candles, this would be the pink one (the others being blue or purple). Joy Sunday! And that’s what the task that the prophet Isaiah delivers to Israel and that is also communicated to us, as our task, through Jesus. It is our task to seek joy, to be found by joy, to communicate joy.
Isaiah says the role of the prophet, which is now the mantle that goes over all of Israel and extends to all who live by faith is this: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  (61:1-3)
Do you feel dressed to do that? To declare the year of the Lord’s favor? To bring good news to the oppressed and to comfort all who mourn? Do you feel ready to proclaim joy?
Joy is not happiness. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness)- not something we can produce ourselves, but something that God brings forth in us. Joy has the twinge of the fight, of how far it took to get there, it is hard earned and treasured. Joy is the light that shines in the darkness and shines that focused beam, making us aware of how dark things can be. How can we be ready for joy? How can we be ready to proclaim it? How do we dress for this?
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed in Christ.  To be clothed in the experience of weeping at the death of a friend, to know betrayal, to have eaten good-bye meals, to have people turn away from grace, to feel forsaken… and to still taste resurrection, to still hope in return and restoration, to trust in the possibility of peace, to rest in the light of Love. 
The only way to be dressed for joy is to be clothed in Christ, clothing which comes with all of these experiences, the accessories of faith, if you will- the very real experiences of this very real life.  Joy is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of God.
            I cannot tell you why bad things happen. I cannot tell you that we will live to see the good that God will bring from some of the tragedies of our lifetimes. I cannot undo the exile of the Israelites and I cannot redo Friday with a different outcome.
            God is not the “why” of tragedy and devastation. God is the how- the how we get through it. God is the where- consoling to the grieving, receiving the dying, walking with the confused and afraid. God is the who- the One who made all things and loves all creation. God is the when- a mystery to us, but a promise of renewal and bringer of unexpected joy. God is the what- the what we shall wear, the what we shall say, the what we shall turn to.
            When there is no “why”, there is a Holy Who/Where/How/When/What that clothes us in grace, that dresses us in mercy, that accessorizes us with joy. We come as we are to God’s dressing room- the baptismal font, Holy Communion, a conversation with a friend, a time of prayer- and we are draped in Christ.
            What do you wear to do that proclaiming, to be a priest of the Lord, a minister proclaiming God’s favor (as Isaiah says you are)?
            (Make the sign of the cross). You wear the sign of the cross and…
There! You’re dressed for proclamation. You are wearing the promise of the Holy Spirit, the mark of Christ crucified and risen, the symbol of hope for the whole world. You will never be more ready to bear joy. You will not find anything that fits you better. There’s never been a more graceful fit, a closer fit, a more beautiful shape. The cross is the clothing we’ve got… its emptiness, its inability to be the final word, its attempt to stop the Word of Life… it is how God dresses us to go out into the world. The sign of the cross is our clothing for grieving and for rejoicing, for sorrow and for joy. The sign of the cross is our Christmas sweater, our Easter suit, our Epiphany workout clothes, our Pentecost learning outfit, our clothing for waiting, for hoping, for proclaiming.
            It is Advent and we wait. We wait for a great deal, including joy. But we’re dressed for it, when it comes. Saved and clothed in righteousness by Christ’s own faithfulness, we are dressed to heal, to share hope, to be a part of the work of the kingdom. In the midst of tragedy and hope, we are dressed, in the cross, to seek and to be found by joy. Amen.