The Promise of the Resurrection

By Rev. Mike Woods

Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008

 Jeremiah 31:1-6

John 20:1-18

                 On Friday I got an email from my brother who lives in Alabama. It was an email that had been forwarded to him by a friend, who in turn, had received it from someone else, who had had it forwarded to them by yet another person. By the time my brother had forwarded it to me, it had probably been forwarded about 50 times.

                The intent of the email was to inform as many people as possible of some news that had recently been featured on Good Morning America. It said that Microsoft Corporation had teamed up with America Online to develop a beta version of an email tracking system for use on the internet. But in order to test this new software, Microsoft and AOL needed as many people as possible to forward a chain email letter to everyone they knew. And knowing that people routinely delete chain email that ends up in their mailbox, Bill Gates – who is the 2^nd richest person in the world now (he recently dropped out of first place according to Forbes magazine) – is willing to pay each sender of this email $240 for every person they send it to. There were even testimonials proclaiming: “This is not a hoax!”

                My brother, the entrepreneur that he is, forwarded this email to probably about 100 people. And I have to admit, that I was tempted myself to hit the “Send” button, and a bunch of you all would have gotten a copy.

                But it’s too bad that things like this are just too good to be true! I thought it sounded a little dubious, so I went to Google and did a search on this email and got back a long list of web pages describing that this was a hoax – there was no such software in existence, and that Bill Gates had more to do than send checks to people that forward silly chain letters on the internet.

                But I was, at least, heartened by the fact that when he discovered what he thought was an opportunity to make a lot of fast, easy money, my brother thought enough to pass the information along to me, so that his older brother didn’t miss out. Which goes to show you that he really is a good brother at heart – even if he is a little gullible at times. Although, when I looked at the list of the hundred some-odd names he forwarded the email to, I noticed that my name was somewhere near the bottom – I’m not sure what to make of that!

                 Something that’s too good to be true!

                When she realizes that the man standing in front of her is not the gardener – it seems too good to be true!

                When she runs to tell Peter and the other disciple that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb, they cannot believe her and they have to see for themselves. It seems to good to be true!

                Later, when the disciple Thomas is told of this, he refuses to believe unless he can touch the wounds with his own hands, because it sounds too good to be true.

                They have grown used to living in despair, they have grown used to being defeated. They are all used to being the little guy, the underdog, of always being at the bottom. They’re used to thinking: “It’s hopeless! What’s the point of trying? We’re all alone, God has forgotten us.”

                On Saturday, during the Sabbath, the reality of what had happened on Good Friday had begun to sink in. Jesus of Nazareth – the one they had hoped to be the Messiah, the one they had hoped would bring liberation to a people who lived under occupation by a foreign power – was tortured, humiliated, and crucified on a Roman cross.

On Saturday, the followers of this Jesus lived in hiding. On Saturday, Mary, Peter, and the rest of the disciples lived in fear for their very lives. On Saturday, they were afraid to go out, afraid to be spotted, afraid to speak to anyone about what had happened. And the Roman authorities and their collaborators in the Sanhedrin were hoping things would stay that way.

But Easter Sunday changed everything!

On Easter Sunday, Mary and the rest of the disciples realize they no longer have to hide, because God has raised this Jesus from the dead! On Easter Sunday, they no longer have to fear for their lives; and they can come out, they speak to others about Jesus, and they can spread hope to a world that is enslaved to sin.

And, on Easter Sunday, the Roman authorities and the Sanhedrin, as much as they would like, cannot ever make things go back to the way they were on Saturday!

            The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the Southside of Chicago, has come under fire recently for some remarks that he has made about the history of racism in this country. If you know of Reverend Wright, then you know that he has a tendency to speak rather bluntly and that he uses a lot of colorful language.

I am a little shocked – not by what he has said, my opinion is I think he spoke truthfully, even though I may not have put it in quite the same way as he did – but shocked by the response to what he has said. There are those who contend that it is not the place of the church to speak of so volatile a topic as race. Or of any topic that may be potentially politically charged – such as the war in Iraq, or torture, or immigration, or hunger and poverty, or even AIDS. They do not want the church to have any visibility on these issues. They would have us be silent and hidden. They would have us go back to Saturday!

I do not believe that the criticism of Reverend Wright is an attack on him personally, or just an attack on the liberal denomination of the United Church of Christ, or even an attack on a particular political candidate. It is an attack on the entire church of Jesus Christ, liberal moderate and conservative, to drive us all back to Saturday! They would destroy the hope of Easter Sunday! They would destroy the hope of the promise of resurrection! 

After Peter and the other disciple leave, unsure of what to make of the empty tomb, Mary remains at the tomb weeping, her whole world shattered, when Jesus comes to her and calls her by name, “Mary.” And when she realizes it is Jesus, her initial reaction is understandable – she wants to reach out and embrace him in her arms and never let him go, now that she knows he is alive again.

But Jesus says something to her that is very strange: “Do not cling to me, for I am not yet ascended to the Father.”

I think that’s the temptation that the church faces on Easter – to cling to Jesus. As individuals, when we discover the joy of the resurrected Christ – and the freedom from sin that is given to us, the promise of resurrection and the thought of never dying but living forever with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven – we want to grab hold of Christ and never let him go, believing that as long as we have our own personal relationship with him nothing else matters.

But Jesus tells us, “No, there is much more that matters. Instead, go and tell everyone the Good News!” Instead of living in fear and silence on Saturday, tell the gospel to all who will listen!

Instead of keeping Jesus all to yourself, let the whole world know about the promise of resurrection!

Instead of being fearful that some might criticize you for being “politically correct”, join your voice with the voices of those who stand for the cause of justice and peace.

Without Easter, there is no promise of resurrection, no hope for those who despair, no comfort for those who morn. Without Easter, the cross has the final word and the tomb remains sealed. Without Easter and the resurrection, then the Romans and their Sanhedrin collaborators of our own time can forever keep us behind locked doors, hidden from the world, and silent as if everyday were Saturday.

But instead, we are a people who have the hope of resurrection! Instead, we are a people who cannot be cowed or driven into silence! Instead, we are a people who gather here on Easter Sunday – with Saturday behind us – and marvel and are amazed at the glory and splendor of the Christ whose presence is among us; and who sends us forth into the world to give sight to the blind, comfort to those who despair, courage to those who fear, and to spread the hope of the promise of resurrection.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When Not Seeing Is Believing

by Rev. Mike Woods

March 30, 2008, 2^nd Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

John 20:19-31

                Last Sunday we left off with Mary telling the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” This Sunday, we discover that the disciples apparently weren’t immediately convinced of the truth of this good news. It is Easter Sunday and they are still living in fear and the doors of their house are shut tight and locked. The good news has been proclaimed to them by one who was an eye-witness to the event – who saw Jesus with her own eyes, who spoke with him and who heard him call her by name. Yet, they are still not quite able to believe.

                So into the middle of this locked room, Jesus suddenly appears among them and says, “Peace be among you - do not be afraid and do not worry any longer. Look at the wounds in my hands, my feet, in my side. See and believe.”

                See and believe.

                The Gospel of John talks a lot about seeing. Jesus, we are told at the beginning of the Gospel, was the light that came into the world to give light to everyone who lived in darkness. When John talks about seeing, he’s not just talking about physical sight, he’s talking about being able to see and understand who Jesus really is and to believe. To be able to see, as John understands and uses the word, is to know that Jesus is the Christ and that he is the son of God. Literally, then, for John seeing is believing.

                When the disciples see Jesus standing alive among them – the wounds in his hands and feet still fresh and looking very lethal – they understand Jesus for who he really is – the love of God come unto this Earth and inhabiting the body of a human being, who would take on the wounds of the world to heal the world of its own wounds, and become the sins of the world so that the world might be forgiven of its sins. They see and believe, and their seeing is believing.

                But poor Thomas doesn’t get to see any of this! Somehow, he has the misfortune of not being there when Jesus makes this miraculous appearance among the rest of the disciples! So they try to tell him: “Thomas, we have seen the Lord!” and he won’t believe them!

                Mary had said these very words to the disciples – I have seen the Lord – and they didn’t believe her. Now the tables are turned on the disciples and they are unable to convince Thomas of this unbelievable good news.

                “Unless I can see the wounds in his hands and his side and can touch them, I will not believe!”

                Good for you, Thomas!

                I like Thomas. I don’t label him as a “doubter” or a “skeptic.” He brings a healthy dose of rational thought and common sense to the situation. What his fellow disciples are asking him to believe is more than just that a man who had died has now come back to life. After all, they had all seen Lazarus come back to life – the resurrection of the dead is really nothing new to them! They are asking him to believe that because Jesus was raised from the dead, there is no more sin, no more death, and that the evil of this world has been forever defeated.

Unlike his fellow disciples, Thomas has not been cowering behind locked doors in hiding from the world. He’s been out there! And he’s seen with his own eyes, that:  no, people still die; no,  people still sin in abundance; and no, there is still as much evil in this world now as there was on Friday when Jesus was betrayed and falsely accused and hung to die a shameful death on the cross. He does not ask to see a Christ who has been healed of his wounds. He wants to see a Christ that still bleeds for the world!

“If you want me to believe that what I have seen with my own eyes is not the way the world really is, then you need to show me something else – show me the wounds in the hands and feet of a living breathing Christ, and I will believe.”

I can understand how Thomas feels. I feel the same way. I think we all do at times. This world seems to be as fallen as it ever was. Every one of us gathered here this morning is a sinner. Not one among us can raise their hand and say “I no longer sin.” When we say the prayer of confession near the beginning of the service, I am reminded of my own sins during the week – and line-by-line I say to myself, “Yes, I did do that. Yes, and I did that, too!”

Sin does not seem to be gone from my life, nor does it seem to be gone from our world where the death toll of American casualties has reached over 4,000 in Iraq, and the number of Iraqis who have died remains uncounted but is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Sin doesn’t seem to be gone from a world where there is global warming caused by the abuse of the environment by human beings. Sin doesn’t seem to be gone from a world where health care for underprivileged children is defeated in a congress afraid that funding for such care would hurt the tobacco industry – as it was explained to me recently in a conversation with an aide for one of our congressional representatives.[1]  And sin is not gone from our lives, as we all struggle with the temptation to sin on a personal level.

If Jesus is the Christ, if he is the love of God incarnate in the world, then why is there still so much sin and evil in the world? If God raised this Jesus from the dead, and in so doing defeated the powers of sin and death, then why, over 2000 years later, do people still die?

You can understand why Thomas demands to see the wounds of the risen Christ. So it ought to be understandable when a skeptical world – a world that continues to hurt and suffer from sin and death – wants to know: “Where is the proof of God’s love?”

About  a week later, after Thomas throws out his ultimatum “show me the wounds or I cannot believe,” Jesus does appear. And he says to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see my hands; reach out your hand and feel my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And Thomas doesn’t even need to feel the wounds. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to have to look very closely at all. He has only to be in the presence of Christ, and hear the invitation to believe to respond: “My Lord and my God.”  

Now he sees. Now he understands. His seeing is believing.

Then Jesus says to him, in words that I think are especially meant for our times: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Then blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

How does a world that sees only sin and death see the wounded, risen Christ, who still bleeds and suffers for this world? How do we believe in something we cannot see?

There was a time in my own life when I struggled with that very question. Though I grew up in the church I could not see how the world was any different 2000 years after Jesus died and rose again. I grew up in a time when the church was beginning to come out on the wrong side of many issues in our society. I heard many pastors and church members speak against the civil rights movement. I watched as many of my classmates were taken out of public schools and put into private schools out of fear of integration. And I watched as the so called “Moral Majority” was formed in opposition to an extension of the Voting Rights Act.

We say that Thomas doubted. I more than doubted – I was cynical!

Then one day I saw the risen Christ! He appeared to me in the form of the dead bodies of five nuns of the Carmelite Order. They were from the United States and they had traveled to Central America, to the country of El Salvador. (For those of you who know something of Spanish, you know that El Salvador is Spanish for savior.) And in this country named The Savior, they worked among the poor campesinos, the landless peasants who lived in poverty. And they taught them to read and write, and they helped them to form themselves into cooperatives so they could sell their produce and goods on the open market and earn a decent living. But the existence of the cooperatives was threatening to the owners of the large plantations who dominated the market. With the collusion of the Salvadoran government and its army, they had the nuns kidnapped late one evening as they were driving back from the capital of San Salvador, and had them raped and murdered.

I watched in shock with the rest of our nation as we saw the bodies of these women on TV carried out of the shallow graves that had been dug for them. And there for me, at least, was the beaten, broken body of Christ. Here were five women who so believed that our Lord had indeed risen and that sin and death were defeated, they gave of their own lives to continue to carry out the mission of Christ. And once again, my faith was renewed and I believed.

It is to the church – which the apostle Paul tells us is the body of Christ – that a skeptical and cynical world looks to see the risen but wounded Christ. If this world is to believe that Christ rose from the dead, then it can only do so if we who are members of the church, who are disciples of this Christ, become as Christ to them. It is to us, the church, that the world addresses the demand for proof: “Show me the wounds in your hands, let me feel your side. Let me know that Christ still bleeds for me, and then I will know that Christ does indeed live and I will believe in My Lord and My God.”

Thanks be to God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Word on the Streets

by Rev. Mike Woods

April 6, 2008

 3^rd Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:36-41

Luke 24:13-35

                The Word is out on the streets! That is – the Word with a capital W! 

                On Easter morning, two Sundays ago, we saw the disciples hiding behind locked doors, afraid to believe the word of Mary Magdalene, who saw Jesus with her own eyes, who heard him call her by her name. They are afraid to believe that the hope of the promise of resurrection is a real hope, and not an escapist fantasy to help them to forget about the real world and its troubles. They are afraid because hope calls them from out behind the safety of locked doors and to go out into a dangerous world to spread the good news of the hope offered by the resurrection of Christ.

                Last Sunday, we saw that Thomas, who was not there with the disciples when Jesus suddenly appeared among them, could not believe. But not because it seemed too good to be true, or because he was afraid – but because he had been out in the world and he had seen that there was still sin and death. He could not believe because he had yet to be able to experience the resurrection with his five senses and his skills of reasoning.

                And today, on this 3^rd Sunday of Easter, our Gospel reading which comes from the book of St. Luke, takes place again on that fateful morning of Easter Sunday. Two of Jesus’ disciples, Cleopas and a companion, are walking the seven mile journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus. The disciples in Jerusalem had been afraid, Thomas had been skeptical, but these two are disappointed. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to lead Israel back to its former days of glory - to the days of Kings David and Solomon. What they got instead was a carpenter from Galilee who seems to have ended his life on a Roman cross.

                Have any of you ever been to see Ruby Falls? If you haven’t and you plan to go one day, don’t let my experience color your expectations. But if you do decide to go, don’t go on the Fourth of July – it’s their busiest day of the year. And don’t go in the middle of a drought like the one we’re having now – or there won’t be much of a waterfall to see. I went with my family when I was a teenager, one summer…on the Fourth of July…in the middle of a long dry spell. We stood in line in the hot sun for about an hour before we got inside to buy our tickets. Then the lady pointed us to another line to an elevator that would take us down into the mountain to the beginning of the cave. We stood in the elevator line for another hour, waiting on our turn. I guess we should have figured out then that we were just waiting in line to be disappointed – because the folks who were coming out of the elevator looked none too happy. In fact a few of them looked at all of us standing in line for the elevator and kind of just shook their heads in disbelief.

                When we finally got to the elevator and it took us down to the bottom of the mountain, we thought that we were finally making some progress. But when the elevator stopped and the doors opened, one of the tourists who was standing there waiting to go back up shook his head and told us, “y’all still got another thirty minutes of standing in line!”

                So, what could we do? We can’t get back on the elevator. It’s already taken us two hours to get this far and we only got thirty more minutes to go. Besides, the line to get back on the elevator runs all the way through the cave and we’re already standing at the back end of it!

                By the time we finally did get to see Ruby Falls, because of the drought, it was little more than a steady trickle of water. It didn’t look anything like the picture in the brochure we saw.

                So we didn’t buy any souvenirs in the souvenir shop. In fact, we just kind of wanted to forget about the whole thing. We wanted to put Ruby Falls behind us, go ahead and salvage the rest of our vacation, and get on with our lives.

                The kind of disappointment that Cleopas and his friend suffered is far greater than that. I’m not sure that I can adequately describe to you the depths of their disappointment. It’s more than just a feeling of sadness that things didn’t turn out with Jesus the way they wanted them too, they way they had hoped. They had lost faith in the dream They not only wanted to forget about Jesus, they wanted to forget about the rest of the disciples as well. They are on the street, walking away from Jerusalem, away from Mary and Peter and James and John, away from men and women they had lived with in community for the last three years.

                But Jesus calls them back to community. He calls Cleopas and his companion back to Mary and Peter and James and John. Jesus will not let them get away!  So he appears to them while they are walking on the street. Only they don’t know it’s him. Like Mary who thought Jesus was the gardener and Thomas who wouldn’t believe it was Jesus unless he could also see some nail holes in Jesus’ hands and feet, Cleopas and his friend think Jesus is just another traveler, and they ridicule Jesus a little bit because he appears to be the only one who does not know of what has taken place in Jerusalem over the weekend.

                That’s a little bit ironic, I think. They admonish this strange traveler for not having heard the word yet that Jesus had been crucified. But they are the ones who do not yet know that the Word is already on the streets – that is, the Word with a capital “w” that is on the street in the very presence of Jesus Christ, who stands before them in the guise of a stranger.

                But I don’t think that Cleopas and his friend have completely forgotten what Christ has taught them over this last three years. For the Gospel tells us:

²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, (Jesus) walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"

                As it was 2000 years ago, friends, so it is today! Christ is revealed to us in three ways according to this scripture: First, in the acts of benevolence we do to strangers. Does not Christ tell us in Matthew that “whatsoever you do to the least of these, so you have done to me”? While Cleopas and his friend believe that they are simply showing hospitality to a stranger, in fact they are welcoming Christ. Second, Christ is made known to us in the reading and the proclamation of the scriptures. Cleopas and his friend both remark: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" And third, Christ is revealed to us in the breaking of bread, as we gather together as a community of believers at the Lord’s Table to be the church, to be the people of God who are called to not flee from the fellowship of others, but to boldly invite the stranger in. It is here in the church, where the Word of God is read and proclaimed, the sacrament of Holy Communion is observed, and we welcome the strangers in our midst that Christ is made known to us. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Practicing Resurrection

by Rev. Mike Woods

April 13, 2008

4th Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:42-47

John 10:1-10

            I probably should have told this joke last Sunday, because the verse it references was part of the lectionary reading then. An old woman who lived alone awoke in the middle of the night to find that a burglar had broken into her home and she could hear him as he crept into her bedroom. Now she was a very godly person and instead of fearing for her own life she wanted to encourage the young man to turn away from his life of crime so she screamed out one of her favorite Bible verses, and the guy just froze – he didn’t move a muscle. She the picked up the phone and dialed 911. The cops came, put the handcuffs on him and loaded him into the back of the patrol car.

            The investigating officer that came asked the old woman what she had said to cause the robber to freeze, and she told him: “I said to him what Peter said to the crowd at Pentecost, ‘Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and your sins will be forgiven!’ ” 

            The policeman asked her, “Really? And he just froze?”

            “Well, actually, in my excitement, I couldn’t remember exactly what all Peter said. So I hollered out the passage: Acts 2:38. But he must have known that verse, because he stopped dead in his tracks!”

            The officer then went outside and climbed into his patrol car to take the burglar to the station. But along the way his curiosity got the better of him so he asked the burglar, “I have to know. Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was call out a Bible verse to you.”

            The burglar said, “What? A Bible verse?”

            And the officer said, “Yeah, all she said was: Acts 2:38.”

            And the burglar said, “Oh is that what she meant. I thought she was saying she was carrying an axe and two .38’s!”

            What Peter does say to the crowd that has gathered outside of the house where he is staying in Jerusalem has a similar but much more profound effect on them. Not only do they stop what they are doing, but they find they cannot go on with their lives as they had before. What Peter has said to them challenges everything about what they had thought to be true about the world they lived in. A man who had died has been raised to life by God. And the resurrection of this man offers new life to all those who will listen to the message, who will open their eyes to a new way of seeing, who will open their minds to a new way of understanding, and most importantly who will open their hearts to the compassionate love of a God who would become human and die upon a cross to drive out the evil and the sin and the injustice that prevails in this world.

            Peter’s message is: the world you think you understand is not as you understand it. Imagine, if you will, how this realization affects those who hear it!

            After two years of investigation, the Texas Rangers last week raided the religious compound of a fundamentalist sect of the church of latter day saints. This sect is not a part of the Mormon Church, which denounced polygamy over a century ago, but is rather a breakaway cult. But as the rangers came into the compound and began taking people away, starting with the children, what they found was a people that were so isolated from the rest of the world they knew no other way of life. They knew no other way of life than the system of arranged marriages at too young an age that was part of their life. They knew nothing of the world that went on around them, only what their leaders chose to let them know. And what their leaders told them of the world outside was twisted and distorted from the reality. So distorted was their perception of the world that it is unrecognizable to those of us who live in the outside world.

            In talking with some of you about this situation, it was pointed out that often when people are taken away from a cult setting like this, after a while they desperately want to go back. The new world that is opened to them is so shocking they experience culture shock, and they desperately need to go back to their old way of life.

            So it is surprising to me then, when the crowd that hears Peter turns away from their old life and chooses to embrace a new life. So powerful and compelling this new way of life must be. This is not a crowd that is always looking for the latest thing, or is willing to try on new philosophies or change old ways of thinking. This is a crowd that is suspicious of the new, one that venerates tradition.

            What Peter tells them of is a completely different culture – one they have never seen before; a culture that is so alien to the culture of the world they have known for so long, surely you would think they would protest being taken away and brought into it.

            What Peter tells them of the resurrection of Jesus Christ suggests a new culture – a culture of resurrection. This culture of resurrection contrasts with the cult of sin and evil and injustice that prevails in this world. The cult of sin is what we are used to, it is our way of looking at the world and thinking that things can never be different. It tells us that injustice is the order of the day. It tells us that peace has to be enforced with armies and guns and bombs. The cult of sin is our practice of evil in our lives, of substituting our own will in place of God’s, and of saying that “it’s a shame but this is the way things have to be.”

            After over 200 years of history as a diverse nation of immigrants, the people of the United States have been unable to solve the problem of racism in our country. We shake our heads about it and say, “it’s a shame but this is the way things are.” But God cannot live with the “the way we humans think things are.”  In raising Jesus from the dead, God gives to us a culture and a practice of resurrection. If God raised Jesus from the dead, then the cult of sin does not have the last word. If God raised Jesus from the dead, then there is something more powerful.

            The culture of resurrection, which gives us new life, calls us to a practice of new life. Luke tells us in the Book of Acts: “(The new believers) devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” The culture of resurrection is centered on a practice of devotion to God’s word, of hearing the scriptures read and proclaimed. In this scripture we see the birth of the church within this culture of resurrection.

But most importantly, in this infant church, is the understanding of relationships the new believers now have. They are devoted to fellowship with each other, we are told, in the breaking of bread and in the practice of prayer. But not just to each other, this practice of community goes beyond boundaries and extends especially to the poor. Luke tells us: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to everyone as they had need.”

            When we read these verses today it causes us a lot of consternation. This sounds like communism! People owning possessions in common, giving to those who are poor!  

In the practice of resurrection there is an understanding among the believers that whatever they have – be it the talent of singing, of teaching or preaching, or even monetary wealth – it was given to them as a gift by God and as a blessing. And blessings were meant to be shared and not to be kept hidden under a bush. The culture of resurrection destroys a notion of ownership that intends to deprive other people of the resources they need to live and survive. It teaches us that the world is not divided into haves and have nots, Blacks and whites, Asians and Hispanics, Arabs and Jews. The world is peopled by human beings who are all part of God’s good creation. The culture of resurrection calls us to live our life in imitation of the one who was resurrected, Jesus Christ, who forgave sinners, sat in fellowship with the outcasts of society, healed the sick, fed the hungry, and freed those who were in prison.

This culture, this new way of seeing, hearing, understanding, and doing – this practice of new life – remains a challenge to the church and its followers, even 2000 years later. Like the children who were brought out of the fundamentalist compound last week, we are confronted by a new way of knowing and understanding the world, a way that seems completely alien to the way we think things are.

But God has rescued us from the cult of sin. As the people of God we belong to Christ’s culture of resurrection. A new life, a new way of seeing the world. A new way of living in the world.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Stones of Life, Stones of Death

First Presbyterian Church

Elberton, Georgia

by Rev. Mike Woods

April 20, 2008 , 5^th Sunday of Easter

Acts 7:54-60

1 Peter 2:1-10

            Jeffery Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, said that it was not only last week’s biggest news story, but it was the biggest and most important story going on in the world right now. Now, it might surprise you to learn that he wasn’t talking about Britney Spears’s latest escapade, or the attempt by the Dr. Phil Show to bail out one of the teenage girls who brutally beat up one of her classmates on a video posted on YouTube, or even who the winner was on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser.” And, as big and as important as the event was, he wasn’t even talking about the Pope’s arrival in the United States to embark on a tour and speak to the Catholics of this nation.

            In fact, this news story has gotten only scant news coverage at all. But if you have been to the super market lately, you have certainly gotten a glimpse of it – the cost of food is drastically going up, and the signs are that it will continue to rise.

            Over the last 12 months, we here in the U.S. have seen the price of bread go up almost 15% and the price of milk 13%. And as shocking as that may seem to us – and it is – the effect rising food prices have on the poor in other countries is even far greater. In the country of Bangladesh, for example, a two kilogram bag of rice (4.5 pounds) costs half a day’s income for the average family. The price of a loaf of bread has doubled in many other parts of the world where the poor often spend as much as 75% of their income on food.[1] 

            But the situation of the poor in this year’s food crisis only came to the attention of the news media last week after several days of rioting took place in Haiti, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Mozambique over the rising cost of food in those countries. And though the rioting seems to have run its course, for the time being, the situation remains grim for the poor of the world. The rising cost of oil and fuel needed to transport food from farms to the market, the diverting of wheat and corn from food production to ethanol production, and the impact of global climate change on agriculture – all these things point to the fact that the price of food will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. As it always is, the poor are the first to suffer and the ones to suffer the most.

On this Sunday before Earth Day, which is April 22, we are reminded that in our efforts to be good stewards of the Earth God has given to us, we not only care for nature, but we also care for the human beings of this world who are the most vulnerable in our society, the ones who have been neglected and rejected.

            Stephen, in his speech to the Sanhedrin, speaks of others who have been rejected. And the list he gives to the Priests and the Pharisees, in his own defense, is really quite an impressive list of names. He begins with Sarah and Abraham, a childless couple, who were rejected by society for that very reason. He goes on to speak of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers; and of Moses, rejected by his own Hebrew people and the Egyptians who raised him. And the point that Stephen tries to get across to the priests and the Pharisees, who are sitting in judgment of him to decide his fate, is that in each of these instances the one who was rejected was the one chosen by God for salvation. The ones rejected by the world are the ones chosen by God for salvation. They are chosen not just for their own salvation, but for the salvation of the very ones who had rejected them. Such is the loving God that we have. Stephen goes on to point out that Christ too was rejected – rejected by his own people, rejected by the very ones he came to save.

            Peter, likewise in his letter, speaks of Christ as one who has been rejected, “a living stone rejected by human beings but chosen by God and precious to him…. ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’ ” 

            I notice that we have a cornerstone, here at First Presbyterian Church. It’s right outside the front door where its easy to see. It’s there as a marker and a monument. It tells us the building was completed in 1909 – almost one hundred years ago, that Rev. Stacy was the pastor at the time, and it also tells us the names of the architect and the trustees of the church. But most importantly, it tells future generations that whatever purpose the building may be put to in the future, it was originally built to be the church building of First Presbyterian Church of Elberton, Georgia. The cornerstone tells why the building was built, its purpose, and who built it.

The cornerstone of the church universal, Peter and Stephen remind us, is Jesus Christ. And the cornerstone of this church universal – the man who gives it its purpose, who is the architect of its building, and who is its head and shepherd – is a man who was born into a poor family, a family that probably spent most of its income on food, a family that probably crossed the border illegally into Egypt early in Jesus’ life. And this cornerstone of our church, was himself rejected by the authorities of his day.

I think that Peter is intrigued by this image of stones. After all, the nickname Jesus gives to him, “Peter,” means rock. And Jesus tells him, “Upon this rock I will build my church” (Mtt. 16:18). So, it is natural then, that Peter sees Christ as the living cornerstone of the church. Christ is the founder of the church. Christ determines the direction and the orientation of the church. And the believers who are members of the church are themselves “living stones” which Christ uses to build the church. In this metaphor of “living stones,” Peter reminds us that the church is not a building – it is not this red brick structure we are gathered in this morning that was built in 1909 – but it is the community of faith whenever it gathers together to worship God, celebrate the sacraments, and carry out the mission of salvation God has given to us. We are the church, whether we meet here in this building, or in individual homes as the people in Peter’s day did.

But I believe that Peter gives us this talk about “living stones” not because it makes for a pretty metaphor to describe the church. Peter also means that we are “stones of life.”

We are stones of life because we have been given new life through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are stones of life because Christ has given to us his Spirit of life, which resides within us.

Before Christ came along, Peter tells us, we were stones of death – we did not know of God’s mercy. But now, we have received mercy and we are stones of life.

What has transformed us from stones of death to stones of life is God’s mercy, given to us through Jesus Christ. God’s mercy is life to us – without it we are stones of death. That same mercy that gives us new life infuses our very souls and radiates outward for all to see. Peter goes on a little later in his letter to encourage his readers to “live such good lives that when unbelievers see your good deeds, they will glorify God on the day Jesus returns.”

Stephen exemplifies Peter’s image of a stone of life. Originally chosen to care for the widows of the church, he began to preach the gospel to all who would listen. But his words so incensed the priests and the Pharisees of the Sanhedrin that they picked up literal stones of death and threw them at him. But even in his hour of death, Stephen does not curse those who are killing him, he does not attempt to retaliate in any way. He lifts up his eyes to heaven and says, “Lord, do not remember this sin against them.”

Mercy is life, is what Peter and Stephen are trying to say to us. Christ allowed himself to die upon a cross, so that we might know God’s mercy. Stephen becomes the first martyr of the Christian faith, not because he was a weak man, not because he was defenseless, but because he had been shown such mercy in his life he could not help but show the same mercy even to those who were trying to kill him.

And as he utters those words of forgiveness which resemble those of Christ, the Book of Acts tells us “he fell asleep.” I know this translation differs with what we read from Today’s English Version this morning, but the original Greek literally translates “he fell asleep.”  I don’t think it’s said this way as a nice way of putting it, i.e., as a euphemism for death. The belief of Christ and of the early members of the church is that those who have died are not really dead, they are merely asleep until Christ’s return to this earth. Then they shall be awakened and their bodies resurrected and they will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The mercy they have been given and the mercy they gave gives them new life. So Stephen does not die, he only falls asleep.

The conclusion we can draw from all of this is simple: those who have been shown mercy through Christ, the Stone of Life, are able to show mercy. For those who don’t know of God’s mercy, the Stone of Life is a stumbling block and causes them to fall. How can anyone who has never been shown forgiveness ever forgive?

As the living stones of the church is it not then for us to live the lives of ones who have been forgiven, to live in gratefulness of that forgiveness, and so that all may know of God’s everlasting mercy?

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Living the Faith”

April 27, 2008,

6^th Sunday of Easter

Acts 17:22-31

John 14:15-24

            I lived in the City of Atlanta, on two different occasions of my life. The first time was in the 1980’s. Back then, Andrew Young was mayor, only the second African-American to be elected as mayor of that city at that time, and the population was almost equally divided between whites and African-Americans. The Midtown area had been largely abandoned with many of the more economically affluent families who moved out of the inner city for the outlying suburbs.

            When I moved back just a few years ago with my wife to go to seminary - it wasn’t the same city! The suburbs were still growing, but a lot of people were now moving back into the inner city, and in particular to the Midtown section where there are now high rise condominium buildings. The mayor is now Shirley Franklin, the first woman to be elected to that position, and the population had doubled to over four million people.

            But Atlanta had truly become more of an international city. Beginning in the 1990’s many Korean-Americans discovered economic opportunities for business in Atlanta, and many of them began to move into the northeast section of the city, especially into Gwinnett County. Shortly afterward, other Asian communities began to move into the area, as well. Hispanics found work in the growing construction boom, and people began to immigrate from the newly liberated Eastern Europe – from Bosnia, Russia, and Estonia.

One summer I worked as a chaplain for academic credit at Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville. The head chaplain there told me that Gwinnett County was the most diverse county in the entire United States. There are more cultures represented, more languages spoken, more nationalities present there than any other county else in the US.

But Atlanta, I think represents just a cross section of what is going on in the rest of the country. The children who are now living are going to grow up in a country that is far different from what it is now: that is even more diverse and cosmopolitan. And this change is not just happening in big cities like Atlanta – it’s happening in places like Elberton, Georgia. Even here, we have a growing Hispanic and Indian population, and I would expect that trend to continue.

These changes in our culture present challenges to the church and the mission God has given to it.

But the church was born in such an age of transition. Throughout the New Testament, we see Jesus and his disciples encounter, not just their own people of the Jewish race, but Romans, Meades, Persians, Ethiopians, and people from all known parts of the world. The growth of the Roman Empire brought commerce and travelers from all the surrounding area to the once culturally homogenous Jerusalem. These were people who spoke many different languages, who had different customs than the Jews, and ate things like pork and shrimp – things the Jews considered to be unclean.

And this immigration of non-Jews from different parts of the world caused great concern for the people of Judea. How are they to preserve their Jewish culture, their traditions, and their language? They worried their young people will be adversely influenced by these different cultures? What they want to know is: How can we live our faith in the midst of such change?

One answer to this question is posed by the Pharisees and the priests of the Temple. They maintain that the outsiders are to be shunned, Jews should not even go into the homes of these new immigrants.

But Jesus speaks of a different way. Jesus wants to enter into a conversation with these people. Jesus even wants to sit down with them at table and eat with them.

            In this week’s reading from the Book of Acts, we encounter a young man who also wants to enter into a conversation with those of a different culture than he. Keep in mind, now, this is the same young man we read about last week who went by the name of Saul. You recall he was there at the stoning of Stephen –he was the young man who kept the cloaks of those who threw stones at Stephen. Later he even approves of the of the murder of Stephen.

The lectionary reading for this Sunday skips over a good deal. Step-by-step, Saul’s hostility to the believers of the way increases to the point of his own personal involvement in attacks and persecution. In today’s reading, however, we see a completely different person. He even has a new name – he is no longer Saul, a Hebrew name that harkens back to the days of King Saul, the first king of Israel, he is now known by a Greek name, Paul. And his new name belies a new attitude about the people who call themselves “Christians” as followers of the Christ. He has turned 180 degrees – no longer does he persecute the church, he is now a follower, himself. But not only is he a follower, he has become a leader and with the help of two friends, he is taking the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the rest of the world. Paul goes from being a Pharisee, one of those groups that wants to shun the outsiders, to being part of the movement that seeks to embrace them in the love and compassion of Jesus Christ.

Gradually, the Holy Spirit has been leading the church outward from Jerusalem, expanding its geographical boundaries north into Damascus and Antioch, and south towards Egypt and Ethiopia, and east as far away as India. The church is growing, encountering new cultures, new peoples, new languages, and different ways of viewing and looking at the world.

I do not think that God could have picked a better person than Paul to take the gospel westward. Having grown up – not in Jerusalem – but in Tarsus in the southern part of the nation we now know as Turkey, Paul knows the Greek culture. He understands it, he grew up with it. As a boy, he probably learned to speak Greek and to read the Greek philosophers.

In today’s lectionary reading, we see him in the city of Athens, arguably the center of Greek culture. And here, I think Paul is in his element. He knows these people, he understands these people. Most importantly: He knows how to talk to these people – and I don’t mean just that he knows the Greek language, I mean he knows how to talk to them, he knows how to get across to them.

He does this in a really wonderful way: First of all, he doesn’t insult them. When he first came into the city, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. Now Paul’s immediate reaction to this situation could’ve been to just ‘go ballistic’, start smashing idols left and right and calling the Athenians ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’. But he doesn’t.

The Rev. John Hagee made the news when he suggested that the people of New Orleans were themselves to blame for the Katrina disaster. The breaking of the levees, the severe flooding, the loss of homes and lives were God’s retribution for what, he said, were the sinful lifestyles of the city. In saying so, he insulted the people of New Orleans, many of whom are good people, who live righteously, and who did not deserve the calamity that befell them. To be truthful, there is sin in New Orleans, but no more so than in any other place in America. Had Paul said or done anything similar to what Pastor Hagee said and did, he would have been vilified in the same way that Hagee is being vilified (and rightfully so).

So, Paul instead tries to reason with the Athenians. Reason is a hallmark of Greek philosophy. He quotes their philosophers to them during his speech at the Areopagus, where the city council meets, to prove to them that we are the children of God and that God dwells within us. He uses the shrine erected ‘to an unknown god’ as an opportunity to tell them about a God that they do not know about. And he knows that the Athenians love to hear about the latest thing or the newest philosophy, and he pricks their interest in the new gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul is sensitive to the Athenians’ culture, he honors it when he quotes their philosophers. And although he speaks to them using a pagan idol as a starting point and pagan philosophers to end his point, through it all he preaches Jesus Christ and he never compromises the integrity of the gospel.

That much hasn’t changed over the last two thousand years. The church has thrived wherever it has encountered other cultures and displayed the sensitivity, honor and integrity that Paul displayed in Athens.

We are faced with the same challenge here in the US and even here in Elberton, Georgia. Do we shun those whom God has brought to this great nation and deny them access to the law, to social services and to education, as the Pharisees and priests of Jesus’ time. Or do we reach out to them in the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, who went into the homes of foreigners, sat at table with them, who blessed them with his presence, and who healed and forgave them? Do we tell them of God’s love for them, as Paul did, noting that we are all the children of God, whether we are Jew or gentile, black or white, Asian or Caucasian?

I believe that living the faith in this part of American history requires that we study the wholeness of a stained glass window, like these windows. They are made up of many different individual pieces, of many sizes, shapes and colors. But although they are each very different, their differences complement one another, and fit together to create something beautiful.

What a wonderful way of thinking about the great nation in which we live. What a wonderful way of thinking about the church, which gathers together all believers in every time and place – people of different cultures, who speak thousands of different languages – but  who all live the faith of Jesus Christ by loving as Christ loved us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Speaking the Language of Flame

by Rev. Mike Woods

Elberton First Presbyterian Church

May 11, 2008

Mother’s Day & Pentecost Sunday

Numbers 11:24-30

Acts 2:1-21

            I don’t mind telling you all that I was a little anxious when I discovered last month that Pentecost and Mother’s Day fell on the same Sunday this year. I knew I could write a Mother’s Day sermon or a Pentecost sermon that would each stand alone, but how are you to combine these two topics together?

            But then I got to thinking: there is something of a connection. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples and gives to them – among other things – the gift of prophesy. And the gift of prophesy is the ability to speak on behalf of God and to point out to others what it is they are doing wrong and the consequences of their sinful actions. Don’t mothers have that same vocational calling?

            “Michael Wayne Woods!” I used to hate to hear my mother call me by my full name. I knew I was about to hear some prophesy: I was about to hear what I had done wrong, and I knew that my mother wasn’t content to wait for judgment day for me to experience the consequences of my sins – she thought it best for my sake that I get a little taste of what was in store for me, immediately right then and there!

            But the calling of motherhood, like the prophetic calling, isn’t just about instilling discipline in children. It is also a call to nurture and care for the children or people God has called you to serve.

            We see some of this in the excerpt we read this morning from the Book of Numbers. The children of Israel have been wandering in the desert for quite some time. Food is scarce and they complain to Moses: “Have you brought us out to the desert to starve to death?” Moses tells God of the people’s complaints, and God sends manna for them to eat.

            Now when I first read this story as a child in a Bible Story book, for some reason I had it in my mind that manna was like bread. And I envisioned the children of Israel going out each morning with picnic baskets picking up freshly baked loaves of bread that had fallen from heaven onto the ground. I don’t know where I got this picture from. If you read the account in the Book of Numbers it says that “the manna was like coriander seed,” with the “color of gum resin.” The people would beat it or grind it, boil it in a pot and make a pancake out of it (11:7-9).

            This doesn’t sound very appetizing. It reminds me of dirt cookies. If you’ve been following the news about the current food shortage being experienced around the world, you’ve probably heard that food has gotten so scarce and expensive in Haiti, people have taken to eating dirt cookies. Basically, they take some flour, mix it with some water and dirt, make a pancake out of it, and cook it on a stove. You can imagine this doesn’t taste very good, and a lot of Haitians are experiencing gastrointestinal problems. Some have died from eating too many dirt cookies.

            The manna the children of Israel eat is probably only a little bit better than a dirt cookie.  But when you’re hungry, you’ll eat anything! You’ll eat manna. You’ll eat dirt cookies.

            But after a while, you get tired of eating manna. You get tired of dirt cookies. And the people are in a such state that they are ready to riot. And Moses doesn’t know what to do about it. So he asks God, “Why did you give me the burden of caring for all these people? Did I give birth to them that you could say to me: ‘Carry these people in your bosom, as a nurse carries an infant, and take them to the new land.’ They need meat, they need protein. How am I to take care of them?” (11:12-13)

            Moses likens his prophetic calling to that of motherhood. “Did I conceive this people? Did I give birth to them?” He is alone in this task, with no one to help him. The tone that he takes with God when they converse even becomes a little sarcastic: “What did I ever do to you, that you would give me these people to carry?” For those of you, men and women, who have faced the task of having to raise a child on your own, without the help of a spouse or family, you can sympathize with the burden Moses faces caring for an entire nation of people. It is a lonely task, one that takes up all of your physical, mental and emotional resources.

            There is an ancient saying among the peoples of Africa that has caught on recently in the West: “It takes only one woman to give birth to a child, but it takes a whole village to raise it.”

            “You need help,” is how God replies to Moses. “You cannot nurture and carry this people on your own.” And God tells Moses to gather 70 of the elders of Israel together and bring them into the tent of meeting and there God says, “I will take some of my Spirit which I have put in you, and put it into them. They will help you to nurture and carry this people. You cannot do it all on your own.”

            And these 70 elders are brought into the tent, the Spirit of the Lord descends upon them, and they begin to prophesy. 70 elders to speak the word of the Lord to the people! Words of comfort when they need comfort. Words of challenge when challenge is needed.  I’m sure Moses is excited to see that he now has all this help!

            But then a curious thing happens in the story. They stop! It’s like they ran out of breath or something. And they never prophesy again. They never speak on behalf of the Lord again. They only do so one time in their lives; there in the tent of meeting, away from the people living in the camp. And the words they spoke, the words given to them by the Lord, are never heard by the people for whom they are intended.

            The words of this book – the Bible, which testifies to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – are useless if they remain here within this building, if we never utter them beyond those doors. The love and compassion that God has for this world cannot remain a secret locked within our hearts. The bread of life, richer than the manna from heaven, cannot be withheld from those who subsist on a diet of dirt cookies. And the resources and capabilities God has blessed us with that are more than sufficient to provide enough food for all the people of the world should not be restrained by economic concerns, political squabbling, national boundaries, or other petty concerns of human beings, while people die from hunger and starvation. Witness what is happening in Haiti, witness what is happening in Myanmar.

            We reject the Spirit of God if we elect to speak about God’s love within the confines of these walls only. Indeed, we even strangle the breath of God within us, if we do not show God’s love and care and concern to those we encounter in our daily lives during the rest of the week.  

            So those seventy elders turned out to be somewhat useless – or 68, as it turns out. For a couple of the original 70, a pair by the names of Eldad and Medad, weren’t in the tent when the Spirit of the Lord came down. Maybe it was too crowded or they were running late, but whatever the reason, they received the Spirit while standing out in the camp, while they were still among the people. And apparently they didn’t get the memo from the other 68 that told everyone that what they were doing was just for show – they were to just accept what was being done to them as just an honor that was being bestowed upon them, and not to worry because everyone anticipated that Moses would still be responsible for the carrying the burden of being the resident prophet. But Eldad and Medad are so overcome by the Spirit of God, by the breath of God (those of you who have been taking the one of the two Bible studies we are offering may recall in our study of the Creation story in the Book of Genesis that the Hebrew word for spirit also can mean breath, breath and spirit are the same), that they cannot stop prophesying to the people. The breath of God that gives them life also gives them the Word of God to speak to the people.

            “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them,” Moses says when some people are a little put off by what Eldad and Medad have to say.

            Would that we were all prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on us. This is first expressed by Moses as a hope – a prayer that God apparently hears and responds to. Later, the prophet Joel would express this as a promise from the Lord who says, “In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy…. Even to slaves, both men and women, I will give my Spirit and they shall prophesy…. And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

            And then, according to the apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost, this promise is fulfilled – the prayer of Moses is answered. For the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples and they prophesy. Even today, everyone of us gathered here this morning is called to speak the word of God as a result of the Spirit that has been given to us in our baptism. As disciples of Christ then, every breath we take should reflect the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved those who hated him, who healed the sick and sat down with the sinners and outcasts of his day, and who died upon a cross in order to rise again so that all might have life and have it in abundance. This is not just an anticipated hope for something that will come to pass in some far distant future. Peter tells us it has already come to pass. The spirit of God awaits your acceptance, it awaits you to simply inhale and receive God’s mercies, and then to exhale and breathe God’s mercies on all those who surround you. Breathe in God’s mercies, breathe out God’s mercies.

            The disciples who gather at Pentecost, unlike the 68 in the tent of meeting, can’t put a stop to their own prophesying. They are so full of God’s Holy Spirit, it burns within them with passion, and it burns above their heads as a tongue of flame – or a “language of flame” which would be the literal translation of the Greek, glossai. In other words, the disciples speak with passion about the powerful love of God for the world made known in Jesus Christ. And each disciple is given the gift of a different language of flame. And the word of God pours out from them with such strength that they cannot keep it within the confines of the house where they are staying. And people walking by outside on the streets of Jerusalem, people from all different parts of the world, can hear them. And they can hear the word of God being proclaimed to them in their own native languages: Syrian, Arabic, Persian, Latin and Greek. The language of flame that Luke describes in the Book of Acts is the message of God’s love for a broken and fallen world – a world filled with violence and bloodshed, a world where the poor go hungry and have nothing to eat but dirt cookies only ninety miles away from a nation that suffers from an epidemic of obesity and throws enough food away in one day to feed all of Haiti; and millions starve in the aftermath of a cyclone even though planes loaded with food sit on nearby runways. 

            It is more than appropriate then that Mother’s Day be observed on the same day as Pentecost. This language of flame was spoken in 1858 (150 years ago) in West Virginian by Anna Reeves Jarvis when she started Mothers’ Work Days to draw attention to the living conditions of impoverished mothers; and then again in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe who founded the Mother’s Day of Peace and urged mothers all across the world to speak out against war, to beg nations to settle their differences by diplomatic means and international tribunals, and to so love their sons and daughters that they would never inflict violence on another human being.

            My mother, who passed away over a year and a half ago, I believe felt this same flame in her heart, and that is why she would call me by my full name whenever I had done something wrong: to remind me of who I was, that I was her son, and she loved me so much that she could not bear to see me give in to the sins and temptations of the world. And because of Jesus Christ, she so loved this fallen world, she could not stand the thought that her own son, one of her own, would ever bring any harm to any one of God’s children.

            May this flame that burned above the heads of the disciples at Pentecost burn in the hearts of every mother and every one of us. In the name of our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“I am with you always”

by Mike Woods

Elberton First Presbyterian Church

May 18, 2008

Trinity Sunday

Psalm 8

Matthew 28:16-20

            I believe all of you know that when I was growing up, I was a member of a small church – about the same size as this one – that was part of the United Methodist denomination. But they were also part of a circuit with two other United Methodist churches that shared the same pastor. So, they were all like a little trinity of churches that had joined together. They did mission together, fund raisers together, formed a youth group together; and the members of those three churches got to know each other pretty well.

            My brother, Steve, and my cousin, Tony, used to visit a friend of theirs who went to one of those other churches. And their friend’s mom got used to seeing Steve and Tony together all the time. Whenever Steve would go over to visit, Tony would always be with him. In fact, I believe it got to the point that she saw them together so often that she wasn’t able to recognize either one of them if she ever encountered one of them apart from the other! If she saw Steve walking in the mall or somewhere, and he wasn’t with Tony, she had absolutely no idea who he was!

            She saw Steve and Tony together so often, that I believe she began to think of them as one person. And she wasn’t real clear on their names, either. She would call Steve, Tony, and Tony, Steve. One night when the two of them were visiting at her house, she started to say something to Tony – but when she began to say his name, she started to say, “Steve”. So the first sound that came out of her mouth was “St.” But as soon as she said that, she remembered, “No, that’s not Steve, that’s Tony.” So she quickly tried to change her words to say, “Tony.” But the result was that what came out of her mouth was the word: “Stony.” She said, “Stony.” There was a brief moment of silence, then everybody in the house cracked up! Thereafter, the two of them were known as “Stony” everywhere they went – in all three churches.

            I tell this story today, on Trinity Sunday, because that’s kind of what the Trinity is like: separate individuals who become so intertwined with one another that you can’t tell them apart from one another.

            At the very beginning of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, we see the three of them together. In the first chapter when the Father is beginning the work of creation, we also see the Spirit of God (i.e., the Holy Spirit) hovering over the face of the waters. And God begins the work of creation, by speaking words. The Word of God, as we are told in the Gospel of John, is Jesus Christ, the son of God. So the first couple of verses of Genesis reads like this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

There they are: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Creator, Word, and Breath of Life; the three working together, in communion with one another. It’s not clear to us which of the three is doing what in the work of creation; or which one is the primary leader directing the work of the others; or which one is responsible for doing what. All three seem to be equally engaged in the task of creating the universe; all three seem to be equal taskmasters, none of them giving orders to the other or outranking the others; and all three join their work together, complementing what the other has done: the Spirit coming forth from the mouth of the Father as a breath that forms the words that bring creation into being: “Let there be light!”

On the cover of this morning’s bulletin is a symbol of the Trinity: three circles that come together in such as way that they share some space together and form a pattern that neither could create on their own. Yet, they still remain three individual and distinct circles.

This is the God whom we worship, the God in whom we believe. This is the God in whose name we are told to baptize and make disciples, by Jesus Christ – who is the Son, who is the Word of God, the Word spoken at creation – when he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the world, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” 

The Christian concept of the Trinity is not of a pantheon of three gods. Nor do we have an understanding of the Trinity that makes one person of the Trinity, the Father, as the head god or the leader of the pack. One of the seminary professors at Columbia that Myong and I have studied under was fond of saying, “God the Father is not the Big Kahuna, with the Son and the Holy Spirit being the little kahunas under him.” This is because there is no order or rank among the three persons of the Trinity, each is equal to the other. And they are not so separate that they can be without one another. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John, “I and the Father are one. I am in the Father and the Father is in me (14:11).” There is an interconnectedness between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that is the image of God.

I believe these ideas of the three persons of the Trinity being equal to one another and living in community with each other is critical for us to understand because it gives us a clue for how God intends for us to live our lives – in relationships of equality and in community. The Psalmist in this morning’s psalm makes note of this when he takes wonder at the marvel of the creation.  “For you have made (all) human beings a little lower than God, and crowned them (all) with glory and honor,” he says. The psalmist is not speaking of one or two people only. He doesn’t mean just the king or the queen. He means the entire human race, in the order of creation, is created to occupy a position that is above the animals, but just lower than God. In the way that God views the world, there are not some people who are more important than others, who get more of God’s attention, and love and blessings than the rest of us do. Now, there are some people would probably like for us to think that they do, but in truth God has no favorites.

I don’t stand up here before you every morning because I think God likes me better than God likes any of you! I assure you that’s not at all the reason. But I believe that God has called me to this pulpit precisely because I am like a lot of you, because I am not really very different from any of you. The ideal of human relationships, the way in which human relationships will be in the Kingdom of Heaven, and the way in which God calls the church to be in its present form, is one of equality between people, regardless of race, gender, economic status, or social order. For this reason, the apostle Paul tells us, “(Galatians 3:28)  (Among you) There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The church is called to live out the equality God wants for us, the same equality that exists between the three persons of the Trinity, and the same equality God wants for all human beings throughout the world.

When we come into these doors, any division that might exist between any one of us that puts one human being in a higher status than another no longer exists. When we are baptized into the faith, we die to the way of the world that gives certain privileges to some human beings and denies them to others.

And God also created human beings to live together in community, as the Trinity itself is a community of persons. The philosopher, Aristotle, once remarked that human beings are social animals. It is not in our nature to live life solely as individuals, looking out only for ourselves, interested only in our own self preservation.

The nation of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) has been in the news a lot recently because of the cyclone that killed almost 100,000 people, and because they have refused aid until recently from the rest of the world. Here is a nation of political leaders that has become so preoccupied with their own self preservation that they will allow their own people to suffer, to go hungry or die of thirst, because to accept aid from the rest of the world might expose the people of Myanmar to ideas and influences other than those of their own government. As the Trinity is a community of persons, so all the people of the world are created to be in community. For this reason, our denomination through Presbyterian disaster assistance is attempting to provide aid to Myanmar, and more recently to the people of China who were affected by the earthquake there. For this reason, we lifted them up in our prayers, this morning.

And the church is also called to be a community, like the Trinity. It is here at the Lord’s Table that we gather to celebrate and worship God. It is in our fellowship that we work with an pray for each other, that we share each other’s sorrows, carry each other’s burdens, and that we laugh and rejoice together. But the fellowship of the church is not limited to just the people within these walls. It extends to other churches, as well – it extends to Westside and Calvary, for instance. And to the Lutheran and Episcopal churches with whom we have participated in ministry with, as well. When we look at just ourselves, at just First Presbyterian, we can sometimes get a little discouraged because we are small and many of us live on limited incomes. But we are not in this alone! With the other churches that have joined us in ministry, we have a strength that some of the bigger churches in the area may not have by themselves. Because when we reach out to people across the railroad tracks at Calvary or into another neighborhood and racial culture at Westside, we find it is there that we encounter Christ. Where different people meet each other in love and fellowship – putting any differences in race, gender, or economics they may have aside – the body of Christ becomes whole, and there is unity in the midst of diversity, and equality. And in this place where we meet Christ we are reminded of his words to us from the Gospel of Matthew: “Do not fear, for I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.”

In the name of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Troubles

by Rev. Mike Woods

May 25, 2008

Memorial Day Sunday

Isaiah 40:8-16

Matthew 6:24-34

Matthew 6:34 (NRSV) "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Matthew 6:34  (KJV) Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

            “Do not worry about tomorrow, for today’s troubles are enough for today.”

Myong and I have a professor at Columbia who teaches biblical Greek and who is very found of that particular verse. She used to quote it to us at least once a day in class – usually in response to a question some of the more precocious students would ask, getting far ahead of themselves and the rest of the class (I hate students who are like that). But she always liked to quote the King James Version, which made it sound far more ominous: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” And man, Let me tell you she wasn’t kidding, either! She would take us through one entire chapter of our Greek textbook everyday! Everyday we learned a new verb tense or a new noun declension! And at the end of every week, she would give us a test on everything we had learned that week and in the previous weeks! What she was trying to tell us was, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, because today you got more on your plate than you’re aware of!” 

            “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Note the emphasis on the word evil. This is one of those instances that I think the King James probably comes a little closer to accurately expressing the idea that Jesus was trying to express to his disciples. That’s because the word “evil” kind of stands out where it is in today’s selection from the Gospel. It makes you wake up and take notice. It causes your brain to change gears suddenly because up to this point, Jesus has been speaking reassuring words. He has told us not to worry, not to fret over things like food and clothing. And he has told us to take comfort in the knowledge that God knows what we need in our lives and God will take care of those things.

            Jesus has calmed us, he has reassured us – then he mentions the word “evil”! And our hearts get to beating faster and adrenaline starts to course through our veins. And he is warning us, that there is still evil out there.

            I do not believe that there is a promise in this scripture that if you turn it all over to God, then you will never have anything to worry about.  Quite the contrary: Christ is simply telling us there’s not point in worrying, because “can any(one) by worrying add a single hour to (his or her) span of life?” [Matthew 6:27]

            When I did mission work in Nicaragua 20 years ago, I stayed with a family who had a son who was about my age. I think he exemplified the point Jesus is trying to get across in this passage. He told me one time, “Whenever I have a problem that I know I can do something about – I don’t worry because I know I can do something about it. But if I have a problem that I can’t do anything about – I still don’t worry because I know there’s nothing I can do about it!” What’s the point in worrying abut things you can’t do anything about?

            But there are certainly those in our world for whom it is a legitimate necessity to worry about where their next meal comes from or where they will find shelter and clothing. And, I would point out,  many of them are Christians.

            I am thinking particularly of the continent of Africa, where there are more Christians than anywhere else in the world. It is the most Christianized land than any other and, without a doubt, the very center of Christianity today. But the continent of Africa is also one of the most desperate in the world. There is hunger and starvation in Ethiopia and Somalia; political unrest in Kenya and Zimbabwe; and the plague of AIDS ravages the entire continent.

            If we interpret Jesus’ message to us here to mean that we will never want for food, we will never want for shelter, or that we will never lack the clothing we need, then we obviously have misinterpreted what Christ is saying to us. The simple truth of the matter is that good Christian people do go hungry – they even die from hunger!

It’s important for us to keep in mind to whom Christ is speaking in this passage. For the most part, the people who have gathered on the side of the mountain to hear him preach are people who are able to buy or grow their own food. They are those who really have no need to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or have sufficient clothes to wear, and a place to live. Christ is not speaking to the masses of people in this world who face starvation or homelessness. Christ is not speaking to the people who lost their homes in Myanmar, or the victims of hurricane Katrina, or those in California who recently lost their homes in the wildfires.

For those of you here today, who have worries about your health, or who are looking for employment, or who have concerns about the well-being of loved ones, Christ is not telling you: “Shame on you for worrying!” Where there is reason for concern, know this: that God is with us in our worries, that God knows of our concerns, and that God weeps whenever we do. These are the troubles of today for which we do have cause to worry.

            But Jesus does speak to those of us who put the striving after the things of this world first and foremost in our lives. In the verses that immediately precede our selected reading for today, Christ tells us: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but instead store up treasures in heaven which will last forever (6:19-20).” It’s in this context that we have to understand what it is that Christ is trying to teach us in this passage.

            We do live in a world that, even more so than the world in which Jesus lived, compels us to want to buy a lot of really useless stuff. I’m going to confess to you a certain weakness that I have. I love to go through the Sunday paper, and take out all the sales flyers for the electronic stores – you know, Circuit City, Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy – and I go through them and look at all the neat little gadgets they have. And I start picking out the ones that seem interesting. And then I take a little mind vacation, and dream about how nice it would be to have some of those items. And then I start thinking about ways that I could use some of them in my ministry. Then slowly I start convincing myself: since an iPod or an MP3 player would have some use in ministry, then maybe I need to go ahead and get one of those! If I listen carefully, I can even hear what I think is the Holy Spirit telling me: Mike, buy one of those MP3 players!

            It’s usually Myong who brings me back to earth. “That’s not the Holy Spirit you hear, Mike, it’s somebody else!”

            Indeed it is somebody else! Jesus starts out in this morning’s scripture trying to warn us about this somebody else: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)

            We have a choice is what Christ is saying to us today. What is it you want to be first and foremost in your life? Treasures on earth – fancy food, fancy clothes, fancy cars, fancy electronic gadgets – that are always temporary pleasures? That always satisfy you for a little while, then they are gone, or go out style, or are replaced by an upgrade, or that you eventually get bored with?

            Or should we strive first for the kingdom of heaven, which gives us treasures stored in heaven that bless us and those around us, not only in this life, but beyond this life? Treasures that are truly eternal, that never go out of style or need an upgrade?

            Well, yeah. It’s an obvious choice when you put it in so simple  terms. But exactly what are these treasures in heaven? What does Christ mean when he tells us “strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things (food, shelter, clothing) will be given to you as well”?

            It would be impossible for me to try to answer that question in the remaining few minutes we have left in this service, or even in just one sitting. Jesus has been trying to tell the people who gathered to hear him preach on the mountain just that very thing in his entire sermon. He tells them how to seek the kingdom and how to store up treasures in heaven. And in so doing he calls them to discipleship, to live their lives in a way that emphasizes, not the things of this world, but God’s plan for redeeming a fallen world.

            Over the course of this summer, starting when Myong and I return from Montreat on June 8, we will take a closer look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’ll peek at the treasures that Jesus mentions, and especially about the cost of those treasures. For these treasures are priceless, but not without price. They cost Christ his life on the cross.

            But they are given to us freely by God’s grace. And because they are given freely and without reservation, they are to us the most treasured possessions a person can ever own. They bless the lives of those who carry them in their hearts and are part of God’s plan to restore justice and a culture of abundant living to this suffering world.

            Thanks be to God who is grace, love and community; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

A Community Called Blessed

by Rev. Mike Woods

First Presbyterian Church of Elberton

June 8, 2008

10^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Matthew 4:23-5:12

Part 1 of a 10 part series on Christ’s Sermon on the Mount

And he opened his mouth and taught them saying…

Mtt. 5:2 (KJV)

            A few years ago, Myong and I made some friends from the Czech Republic. Their names were Pieter and Lucka Slama, and their 3 year old daughter, Marta. Pieter and Lucka struck us as very shy people, but also as very friendly and they were probably the best friends we made while I was in seminary. Pieter was a visiting scholar from a seminary in Prague, and not too long after he arrived, he was asked by the seminary faculty to deliver the sermon for our daily in chapel worship one morning.

            After he read the scripture and he was ready to begin his sermon, he looked out over the students and faculty who had gathered there, and started off by saying, “I understand that it is the American custom to begin every sermon by telling some sort of joke…” which caused a lot of laughter among us students but made most of our seminary professors cringe just a little bit in their pews. And then he apologized, admitting that he didn’t have a joke to tell. And our professors sighed with relief, while the rest of us felt a little disappointed because we had hoped he would share with us a story tinged with a bit of Eastern European humor. But he then went on to give us one of the best sermons we ever heard in that chapel.

Somehow, Pieter managed to keep our attention in a number of ways: his rich Czech accent was delightful to listen to, and his humble personality was gentle and inviting. But we also knew he was an expert in the Old Testament, and we knew that what he had to say about his chosen text that morning came to us with some amount of authority.

            I like to think that Jesus, in a similar way on the top the mountain, through his gentleness of spirit and because he spoke intelligently and with authority about the things he addressed, he manages to grab the attention of the crowd and hold it throughout his sermon through the use of a device. And the device he uses is a lot like a joke in some ways.

A joke, when you’re telling it, sets things up in a certain way, in a certain order, and the crowd has certain expectations about the ending. But then comes the punch line! Things are turned over and around, words are given double meanings, and the ending that occurs is completely unexpected and delightful to behold!

            Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount just like that. With a play on words! And endings that are unexpected but joyously delightful! He gives them eight in a row – one after another – the collection of verses that we have come to know as The Beatitudes.

            Now the crowd that had come to hear Jesus, Matthew tells us, were the sick, those who suffered from chronic pain and depression, the demon-possessed, and those who were paralyzed. They came from all around: from Galilee, from Syria, from Jerusalem from across the Jordan.

            And Jesus looks out at this crowd and he begins by telling them some things about themselves they can’t quite believe – that they are blessed.

            Blessed are you who are poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.  This is the twist that Jesus gives his opening remarks in the Beatitudes. He tells the most unlikeliest people that they are blessed! Now when the Gospel of Luke recounts the Beatitudes (6:20 ff), Luke says simply “Blessed are you who are poor.” To this Matthew adds, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The crowd that had gathered around Jesus is full of both types. There are those in the crowd who suffer the ravages of poverty, who live with a lack of food, clothing and shelter. But there is also in the crowd a number of people who enjoy a stronger financial base. Jesus calls both groups of people, rich and poor, to gather together and form a community – a community he calls blessed. To the poor he says you are blessed, for yours is the kingdom of God. But to the rich he says: “Woe to you, for you have already received your comfort; and for you who are well fed now, you will go hungry.” (Luke 6:24-5) To become part of the blessed community, to be part of the kingdom of heaven – if you want to be in on the joke, so to speak – Jesus calls on us who are not poor to be poor in spirit. To be “poor in spirit” for those of us who do have enough to eat, who do have enough clothes to wear, who do have a roof over our heads means to stand in solidarity with those who are poor.

            Some good news from a couple of weeks ago that probably didn’t get reported as much as it should have been was that Burger King, the fast food giant agreed to pay the workers who pick their tomatoes an extra one penny per pound. That might not sound like much, but it practically doubles the wages of the tomato pickers who live mostly in the southern part of the state of Florida. This was good news because Burger king was the lone holdout – McDonalds and Taco Bell agreed to pay the extra money years ago. And it all came about, even though the tomato pickers were not represented by a union and Burger King had been insistent that it would never agree to pay the extra money, because of some college students, mostly from well-to-do families, who gathered together, who found out about the plight of the workers who picked those tomatoes. And what they found out appalled them. To visit one of these tomato fields in Immokalee County, Florida is unlike seeing anything like you would expect to see anywhere in the U.S.  It is more like visiting a third world country where you would expect to find people working almost as slaves, with little food to eat, no clothes but the clothes on their back, and forced to live in cramped shacks built out of scrap tin or cardboard. And the students, when they discovered these conditions, chose in spite of the wealth they had grew up in to stand in solidarity with the workers who picked the tomatoes instead of the wealthy people who owned the restaurants – they chose to be “poor in spirit” even though they were themselves wealthy. And they said to Burger King and to McDonalds and Taco Bell, “if you do not pay these people a decent wage and better their working conditions, then we will call for a boycott of your restaurants.” And they did, and they got support and endorsements from our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and from the United Church of Christ, and the National Council of Churches. Then universities like Samford University in Birmingham refused to let these restaurants do business on their campuses. Then one-by-one, they began to fall: first Taco Bell, then McDonalds, and now just a few weeks ago Burger King.

            This is what Jesus means when he says “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He wants to remind those of us who are not poor that it is the most unlikeliest people who are blessed in the kingdom of God. The poor are blessed – not the rich; those who mourn are blessed and not those who mock; the meek and not the proud; those who long to see justice and righteousness and not those who exploit the system for their own ends; those who are merciful and not the ones who demand vengeance; and the peacemakers and not those who delight in the false glory of war and violence.

            Do you get the joke? Do you see how Jesus twists things around to come up with an ending that is unexpected but delightful?

            It comforts a good many in the crowd: the poor, the mournful, the hungry. But it makes a few of the rest of us cringe a little bit, too – those of us who live here in the United States, for instance, who for the most part have enough to eat, and clothing and shelter. But even to us in one of the world’s wealthiest nations (we are no longer the wealthiest nation by any standard), Christ invites us to be part of the community of the blessed. If it is not in our lives to live as the poor and take vows of poverty, then we should at least live in solidarity with the poor, as Christ did, and as God does.

            Jim Wallis, who is the publisher of Sojourners magazine, is found of pointing out that there are over 2,000 verses in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments, that deal with the issue of poverty. In each of those verses we are shown not a God who “helps those who help themselves” as Benjamin Franklin once stated incorrectly, but rather a God who is most concerned with those who are powerless and unable to help themselves. And when God chose to take on the form of a human being, God did so in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and was born into the household of a humble carpenter, the poorest of the poor for that time.

            The God whom we worship is a God who has always been in community with the poor, the humble, the hungry, the sick, the demon possessed, and who is always merciful and desires peace among those who would be called God’s children. Our call as followers of Christ is to be part of this community called blessed; to be part of the kingdom of heaven.

            In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Looking for Loopholes

by Rev. Mike Woods

Elberton First Presbyterian Church

June 15, 2008, 11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:17-20

Part 2 of a 10 part series on the Sermon on the Mount

            There’s just one main point that you should come away with today, if you understand nothing else that I’m about to say. It’s this: If you’re looking for loopholes in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t bother – Jesus pretty much closes all of them off in the 4 verses I just read to you. There are no loopholes to be found!

            I know this for a fact! Because I’ve been looking for them myself, and there are none! Believe me, if there were, you would be the first people I would let in on it!

            We read here that Jesus even goes so far as himself to say in effect, “If you think I have come to tell you about any loopholes, then you have another think coming. In fact, if anything, I have come to raise the bar of righteousness just a little bit higher!” And then after those words he begins with his famous sayings “You have heard it said …” to which he adds, “but I say to you …” which make up the rest of the sermon. And he does indeed raise the bar a little higher, as we’ll see in the coming weeks as we go through the rest of the sermon.

            “I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”

            For those of us who would be Jesus’ disciples, we are put on notice: This is not going to be easy!

            For those who might come to Jesus thinking that all they need is a “personal relationship with Jesus”, Jesus wants them to take an extra step in their lives. He wants to talk to them about repentance, he wants talk to them about how they can be made into a holy people. He wants to tell them: “It’s not enough to simply be my buddy and ask for forgiveness. I want you to be redeemed.”

            Last week, we began this sermon series by talking about the Beatitudes. And you recall, we said that Jesus began by looking out over the crowd and seeing gathered there the poor and the poor in spirit, the humble, the merciful and those who long to see justice restored. And he said to them, “Rejoice for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”

            At this point I can imagine there is a murmur that goes through the crowd. “What is this?” they ask. “What is he talking about? What is this kingdom of heaven?” They are confused.

            Then Jesus, through the Beatitudes, describes to them what the kingdom of heaven is like. “It is a place,” he says, “where things are unlike the way they are here in the kingdoms on this earth. It is a place where the poor and the poor in spirit are blessed – not the rich. It is where the humble and not the proud are blessed, those who mourn and not those who mock, and those who show mercy, but not those who strive for vengeance.”

            And he goes on to say to the ones he has called blessed that “You are the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” Salt, as you might know, in Jesus’ time was used as a preservative, as much as it was for flavoring. Even today, we still use it for that purpose. The presence of salt in food keeps it from spoiling and makes it last longer.

            And Jesus tells the blessed ones in his presence – the meek, the poor in spirit, the peacemakers and the merciful – that they are the salt of the earth. Their presence on earth like salt’s presence in food helps to preserve it and to keep it from being spoiled by sin.

In the same way, they are the light of the world – the character of their discipleship to Christ illuminates the dark places of the world where sin hides in the form of injustice, hatred, and poverty. “Let your let light shine before others,” Jesus tells them, “so that they will see your good works and know that those good works come from no one other than God.”

            But salt, if it ever loses its flavor, really isn’t much good for anything! Without the flavor that it imparts to food, it’s useless! And a lamp hidden under a basket might as well not be lit at all!

            How then, as the blessed ones God has called to be the disciples of Christ, do we keep from losing our saltiness? How do we light a lamp bright enough to shine on the dark places of this world?

            Jesus’ answers to those questions are in the three verses that are the focus of this morning’s sermon. If you don’t want to loose your saltiness or to have your light hidden, then by all means keep to the law and the prophets. And not only that,  but your adherence to the law must be even greater than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. “Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

            The crowd is stunned and silent. They go back to murmuring among themselves. “What is it this guy’s saying?” they ask themselves.

            “He’s saying there ain’t no loopholes.”

            I’ve told this joke once before from this pulpit, but it bears repeating again. There’s a famous story often told about W.C. Fields. Near the end of his life, a friend went to visit him and was surprised to catch him sitting in bed thumbing through a Bible. “W.C.!” his friend said in disbelief, “could it be that you’ve finally found God!”

            Fields put the Bible back on the nightstand and said, “No, I’m just looking for loopholes!”

            Are we to wait until the end of our lives hoping that heaven is open to us because of a technicality?

            The kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us, is for the poor in spirit; it is for the meek; it is for the peacemakers. It is not for those who become rich by taking advantage of poverty; or for those who are proud and arrogant; nor is it for those who profit from the misery of war and human violence.

            Jesus doesn’t want us to rely on cheap grace – the kind of grace that doesn’t cost you anything. The kind of grace that says you can continue to live in your sinful ways, just ask for forgiveness occasionally, go to church on a regular basis, put a little money in the collection plate and all will be fine.

            The apostle Paul warns us against this form of cheap grace in his letter to the church in Rome:

Romans 6:1-4  What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  ² By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 

            Through our baptisms, we died to the power of sin in our lives. When the water touched our heads, whether we were infants or whether we were full-grown, God reached out from heaven to claim us as one of God’s own children. We no longer belong to sin, we no longer belong to the ways of this world! We belong to God!

And Jesus wants us to deny the kind of grace that allows us to spiritualize our beliefs and ignore the pains and sufferings of the world. There’s a passage from the Book of James that has gotten a lot of media attention lately from the presidential campaign. In this passage, James the brother of Jesus, tells us, “faith without works is dead” (2:17).

James 2:14-16  ¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?  ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,  ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

It is not enough to simply call yourself a Christian, it’s not even enough to say you believe in Jesus. As James points out to us, even the demons believe that much. It is not what we believe that brings us into the kingdom of heaven, but how what we believe changes our lives.

If we believe in Jesus and we have hope for his coming kingdom on this earth…if we have hope for a time when sin will no longer exist…if we have hope that even death will be defeated, then as the people of God, we cannot continue to live as if the ways of sin and death continue to have a hold on us.

There was a wonderful movie a few years ago starring Robin Williams, and I highly recommend it. It’s called Jakob the Liar and Williams plays a Polish Jew during the time of the Second World War. Poland was occupied by the Nazis and the Jewish neighborhood where Jakob lives has been barricaded from the rest of the city. The time is near the end of the war but Jakob and his fellow Jews have no way of knowing that because radios and newspapers are not allowed. One night, Jakob accidentally finds himself outside close to curfew, and the German soldiers find him and send him to the commander’s office for questioning. While there, in a room by himself and waiting to speak to the officer in charge, Jakob overhears a radio news broadcast. According to the report, the Russian Army has invaded Poland and has advanced as far as a city only 25 miles away.

This is good news, but he doesn’t let his captors know that he has heard it, and he wants to share it with his friends in the Jewish ghetto, many of whom have lost hope by this point, some are even contemplating suicide.  But if he tells them how he heard it, he is afraid he will be suspected of being a Nazi collaborator. So, he makes up a small lie: He tells his fellow Jews he has a radio hidden in his house and has been following the news of the war. And he tells them that the Russian Army is near and that it is only a matter of time before they are liberated.

Some choose to believe him, but others doubt because he won’t let them listen to the radio to hear the news for themselves (he can’t-the radio doesn’t exist). But those who do believe, their lives are changed. They begin to clean their houses so they will be presentable when the soldiers arrive. Others prepare to reopen their businesses, anticipating new commerce that will come when they are liberated. But most importantly, they look at their German captors in a new way – with courage. They know that the Nazi’s can have no more power over them – they know their captivity will soon be coming to an end. They have hope!

The law and the teaching of the prophets is like that! It is the way we live our lives, as God meant for us to, in grateful anticipation of the coming kingdom of God when death and sin will no longer have any grip on us.

Abide by the law and the teaching of the prophets, Jesus tells us, because that is what God has freed us from the power of sin and death to do. As people of hope who know that sin’s reign on this earth will come to an end, we stand up with courage to the ways of sin on this earth.

We work to put an end to poverty, to racism, to discrimination in all its forms – because we are people of hope. We work to put an end to exploitation and oppression both near and far – because we know that these have no place in the kingdom of heaven. And we spread this good news to everyone who will listen, to everyone who will believe – because we know that if they too have the same hope, then that day when the reign of sin will finally come to an end is one day and one person closer. And until that day when God’s kingdom is finally here, not one letter, not even one stroke of a letter will pass from the law.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.