Sermon: The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared

The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared

         Did you see the commercial for the newest breakfast cereal, Salt Cubes? 

         It starts off with Salty the cartoon deer in flannel and thick rimmed glasses pouring salt cubes into a bowl while two human children and their parents get ready for school and work. The dad takes the milk out of the fridge and is about to pour it on the cereal, when Salty puts his hoof over top of it and says, “Salt Cubes don’t need anything added to them. Just take a handful, chuck them in your mouth, and enjoy.”

         Which the family proceeds to do—they look like their trying to imitate The Cookie Monster from Sesame Street—you know the one (demonstrate)—by the end there are crumbs of salt all over the place.

         Then the Salt Cubes logo flies into place and an announcer says, “Salt Cubes: The Salty Breakfast Cereal!”

         Or there’s the new product “Eye-HighBeam-Glasses” a competitor of Google Glass. As you may know Google-glass essentially puts all the features of a smart phone into a pair of glasses.

         “Eye-HighBeam-Glasses” does something a little different. It takes two lights, as powerful as the high beams in your car, and constantly shines them in your eyes.

         I hope both of these fictional products make my point today fairly plain,

if we are the salt of the earth,

 and we are, we’re here for the sake of the earth,

and if we’re the light of the world,

and we are, we’re here for the sake of the world.

Salt is meant to preserve things and bring out their flavor—not to be eaten on its own.

Light scatters the darkness so that we might see clearly—otherwise it’s simply blinding.

         And so I want you to know, The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared.

Prayer

         The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared.

         What is the Kingdom of Heaven?

         We read today that we’ll be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven if we break a commandment, and if we’re not more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees we’ll never enter it.

         Now, I know some of you naturally assume this is talking about heaven/heaven… as in, where we’d like to go when we die.

         And that would be a frightening prospect. It would mean there is a hierarchy after we die. This might conjure up images of people on clouds playing harps,

some on really nice fluffy clouds, playing beautiful gold harps,

while others cling to storm clouds and play out-of-tune banjoes.

         But that’s not what’s going on. Heaven, for Matthew— like other Jewish writers around this time, is a way to say God without saying God—most likely because he doesn’t want to overuse or misuse the divine name.

         The Kingdom of Heaven—the Kingdom of God—is the hoped for rule of God, the time when all will be made right,

when the meek shall inherit the earth,

those who mourn will be comforted,

the merciful will receive mercy,

those who hunger for justice will be filled with it…

         Sound familiar? It is the very thing Jesus proclaimed last week—the beatitudes, the blessing of the disinherited.

         It is the very Ministry and Gospel of Jesus—it is what he accomplishes in his life, death, and resurrection,

and it is the calling we have on our lives as his Body in the World, the Church.

         And so, the point of the Law (the Torah), which we read Jesus did not come to abolish, but to fulfill, is to make the Beatitudes a reality—and clearly he doesn’t think the way the Pharisees are living out the Law is doing that; neither would breaking the Law of God bring about the Beatitudes.

         The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared.

         This good news of blessing—the Beatitudes proclaimed and made manifest,

that God has come near in Jesus Christ reconciling all people to Himself,

isn’t something to hold onto for ourselves, because then we end up gagging down salt cubes and blinding ourselves with unhelpful glasses.

         Neither is it something to water down, because then it becomes diluted, and something other than gospel.

         Neither is it something to hide, because then it is of no use to those most in need of it.

         I’m sure we can all imagine how these things can happen—

How the Gospel can become a me and Jesus type of devotion/

 Instead of a we and Jesus faith that challenges and shapes our lives lived together

         How the Gospel can be diluted and become a self-help system, or a culturally acceptable form of entertainment/

Instead of life out of death, encouraging the entire world to be life giving.

         How the Gospel can be hidden behind all kinds of other stuff, walled off from those in need—a mighty fortress keeping those out who desperately need to come in/

Instead of being a bulk worth against trouble and a lighthouse for those in darkness.

         And yet, Jesus doesn’t ought us into salt/ or should on us, until we become light.

         No, Jesus says we ARE Salt and we ARE light.

         Salt can’t be anything but salt, and if a light is put under a basket that basket will soon be on fire.

         Both Salt and Light are naturally occurring things, both gifts from the gracious God who created all that is.

         It is not us who make ourselves Salt and Light, but the Holy Spirit calling us through scripture making us spicy and bright.

         We are salt and light.

        

         We share the Kingdom of Heaven in our life together. There are few places in our society outside the family where people of all ages meet together—but here we are, together. We share our sorrows and our joys with one another, lifting them both to God in prayer.

         We flavor this world, by living in such a way that the jobs, identities, and relationships we have in it reflect God’s love for His Creation. We give space for our children to grow into their faith here among brothers and sisters of the faith, mothers and fathers of the faith.

         We preserve our neighbors in need by collecting food and clothing for them and working for their wellbeing in a myriad of ways locally, and also nationally and globally, including the ELCA’s stellar work in creating affordable housing, stepping up when disaster strikes and staffing refugee camps throughout the world.

         We brighten the world with our ongoing proclamation of the Gospel and many opportunities to reflect upon God’s Word. Most recently in the planting of a Lutheran church in Jordon, in a Middle East experiencing an ongoing depopulation of Christians, we are sticking around.

         We shine a light on dark and confusing places when we wrestle with tough social issues,

and we highlight peacemaking when our Synod yearly sends teams to Bosnia to run Reconciliation Camps for children in order to help diffuse the longstanding tensions in that country, so the ethnic cleansing that happened in the 90’s will not happen again in the next generation.

         And those are just the things I can come up with off the top of my head.

         Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit has empowered us to be Salt and Light, and Christ has proclaimed it of us.

         I challenge you this coming week to listen carefully to the Spirit, and when you catch yourself being Salt or Light, to ponder it and to thank God for it.

         You are Salt and you are Light. The Kingdom of Heaven is meant to be shared.

A+A.

Psalm 112

Psalm 112

A is for A Happy Person, who is happy because they are in awe of the LORD, they delight in His commandments.

B is for Big, because their influence in the world will be big; their upright children will be blessed.

C is for Collection, because they collect many good things and their right action shall endure forever.

D is for Darkness, which will be overcome by the light of their justice—their grace, mercy, and righteousness glows!

E is for Excellence, which follows the generous lenders, who in all things act justly.

F is for the Faithful Righteous, who will never be moved; they will be remembered forever.

G is for these Guys who aren’t afraid of bad news, because their courage comes from the LORD.

H is for Hard as a rock and just as steady, which they are; they will win the day.

I is for the fact that I’ve seen their generosity to the poor; their righteousness endures forever; for all this they deserve praise.

J is for Just how much bad people can’t stand it; how bad folk grind their teeth and slip away in silence; how their wicked plans fail.

The Beatitudes Sermon Video

The Beatitudes

The Beatitudes

         Look at them flowing in like a wave of woe, like a river of the disinherited. This long line of broken people streaming out of Syria

—the diseased and demon-possessed, the epileptics and paralytics, the ailing and dying

—like Refugees all marching out to a hillside at the Jordon.

There Christ heals them.

There Christ blesses them.

         In that blessing he interprets the healing he has done to them.

         In that blessing he promises a life with God to all who hear his words.

Prayer

         To the Poor in Spirit, those wretched broken ones, he says:

         “Don’t judge by outward appearances. God’s favor is not measured by things—poverty and riches do not point to the depths, or shallowness, of your faith. Instead, all these things are gifts from my Father… we live in this world as a guest in someone else’s house, never claiming its contents for our own.

In your multi-fold poverty you have found an equilibrium relating to things,

neither trusting and lusting after goods, nor martyring yourself in order to show good spiritual discipline—Yours is the Kingdom.”

         To those who mourn, tears on cheek and sobs silent or aloud, he says the same:

         “Emotions don’t indicate blessedness. Surely rejoice always and again I say rejoice, for God is with you and loves you and will never let you go,

but be ready to mourn with those who mourn.

It’s hard child,

simply being faithful in this life brings enough mourning and sorrow, there is no need to seek more.

This life hinders and hems us in on every side, it will make our heart sad—

but I’m here for you and with you, I bring you comfort.”

         To the meek, hiding in the back and letting the mourning and poor go ahead of them, he says:

         “Don’t you know that the first shall be last—you surely have not lost your reward.

I see me in you—I see the one who is in the likeness of God emptying himself and becoming a servant

—the humility of all that

—I see it, and so does my Father.

I come for you as well as to the others,

and my Father’s world is for you too—you are not disinherited, in fact you will inherit the earth.”

         To those hungering for justice and thirsting for righteousness, haggard and determined, he says:

         “I see you, day in, day out, firm of face and refusing to be chased off, or overcome by the world’s ingratitude and malice, pushing forward with all the might you can muster.

I see how you act for the general welfare, doing right in a world far from it.

Keep your hunger and your thirst close!—or you will turn to despair, sometimes those drives alone will keep you going when an unjust world wants to grind you down to dust.

But know this, the intentions of God are for justice to roll down like water and righteousness like an overflowing stream.

Those intentions are made plain, satisfied, and filled, by my righteousness given to you, even as you struggle for its presence here among us.”

         To the merciful, tending to their fellows and paying as much attention to their needs as to the message, he says:

          “Truly you have born much in your ongoing acts of mercy, you’ve received more than your fair share of suffering in turning the other cheek.

Continue to trust that “vengeance is mine says the Lord,” so that you do not seek that vengeance for your self and sully your good name or your soul.

Know this, the Lord of Mercy grants you all mercy.”

         To the pure of heart, undistinguishable from anyone else in the crowd, he says:

         “Where the heart is pure, all is pure. That is why I point to the tax collector’s anonymous prayer, not the Pharisee’s hyper-public one.

A man shoveling coal and stained deeply with it, but trusting God and loving neighbor, knows of my grace more fully than a pastor with white robes and flowing words.

Purity flows from faith, trust in my Father’s promises—the Word of God and serving those in need. I say to you, as you did to the least of these you did to me.

When those two connect, faith and service, surely you see God!”

         To the peacemakers, holding back bloodshed and looking with understanding on the Other, he says:

         “Hold fast against those old bloodhounds, the rulers of the nations, whose wars maim many and cause famine and retaliation, then justify it all with a shrug and a chuckle.

Hold fast to the better angels of your nature

—hold fast to your conviction that everyone you talk to, and talk about, are children of the same Heavenly Father.

Take that eighth commandment and use it to tell the truth about your neighbor, but the truth told so kindly that it may even transform their intentions and make right their actions—change from gossip into grace.

And in your holding back of violence and speaking truth in love, truly you are my sister and my brother, surely you will be called a Child of God.”

         To the persecuted ones, threatened and destroyed for the sake of the Ways of God and of Christ, he says:

         “this is no easy way,

 to gain your soul you must lose the whole world—

they may strip you of popularity or reputation, goods, family, health or even life.

You might find before you torture and kidnapping—all kinds of evil—that’s to be expected, look what they did to the prophets, and John, and myself.

Yet, know this you poor hurt folk, yours is the kingdom of Heaven.”

         Look at them listening to Christ there by the Jordon

         Look at them, these healed women and men, given a life with God.

         Look at them, healed and blessed.

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One month without the internet

Well, this ends my one month of limited internet use.

Here are a few observations.

I jonesed for the internet for at least the first week. I’m not going to tell you it was a detox from an addiction, but it was a real sense of withdrawal. There is a particular feeling the internet gives me relating to multi-tasking that is a sense of electronic control, which I really missed. In fact, watching two or more TV shows at the same time (channel surfing) gives a very similar feeling.

I really missed Andrew Sullivan, Facebook, and Twitter, for their rate of updating and curating of internet content. I also missed having them on my smart-phone, as they were something to look at for a few minutes during boring moments and down time… I found myself looking at my smart phone… for nothing. That habit lessened after the first week.

One of the things I gained during this month was a renewed sense of the personal and the private. I would experience a moment which I would normally share with my 662 closest friends on facebook or to all my 289 followers on twitter, and I didn’t share it… instead I savored it privately, which is really much more important.

Additionally, I found myself emailing individual people something I wished to share with them, and we’d actually have an email conversation about the thing, instead of me putting it up on facebook and a bunch of people “liking” it just to let me know they’d seen me post it.

One of the things I’d hoped for was that I’d be more productive. Well, I have managed to start a writing project placing The Book of Revelation in its historical context, and read three books related to said project.

Finally, here are some faith related things I would have shared via facebook or twitter had I been using them. The Longest Sermon I’ve preached at St. Stephen, a pretty good sermon on Evangelism, and finally a Newsletter article which a colleague described as “eloquent and uplifting.”

My New Years Resolution—Goodbye Internet

I’ve decided to embark on an experiment. For the month of January I will go with limited internet (making exceptions for work related use as well as email).

A simple task really, before the ‘90’s it was just the way we lived, but I have found myself filling free time with hyper-link rabbit holes and somewhat obsessive (and probably distracting to those around me) peeking at my Smart Phone. In fact, I sometimes feel like, in an effort to multi-task, I’m training my attention span to be shorter than it need be.

Having read a few articles (ironically on the internet) about people doing this very same thing, it sounds like I’ll end up with quite a bit of extra free time and maybe I'll become more productive as a writer.

Then, reflecting on my experience of January, I’m going to continue with this experiment, at minimum making changes to my internet use, becoming a much more active user of the internet instead of a passive one, at maximum going the whole of 2014 off-line.

Christmas Eve Sermon

Christmas Eve 2013

            There was once a small boy who got a telescope for Christmas—and he would watch the skies, and he saw a star.

            This star was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, shining and good.

            And after a few nights of observation it became clear that the star was showing symptoms of turning into a meteor.

            He tracked its descent and miraculously it landed in his back yard one night, though no one else seemed to notice.

            He woke up his groggy parents—he was more excited that Christmas morning!

            And, after some prompting and poking, they joined him on the patio and saw the star—the meteorite there embedded in their yard.

            All that night they looked at it, and wondered at what it meant. It had the appearance of a diamond and a warm inner-light that was both eerie and inviting.

            In the morning they called a local astronomer and once he examined it he affirmed, “This is the find of a lifetime, we need to tell people about it!”

            To recap, the boy realized the star was there,

showed his parents,

they contemplated its meaning,

and they went and told people about the meteorite.

            Similarly, there are four simple things I want to tell you tonight.

God is with us!

Come and See!

Treasure it!

Go and tell!

Prayer

God is with us!

                        During my last open heart surgery, when I was 18, I was reading a book of short stories by the French Philosopher Voltaire. Thanks to the rough recovery from surgery I don’t remember anything about those short stories, other than the title of one of them, “The World as It Is.”

            That title captivated my imagination throughout recovery.

It grounded me in my situation,

forced me to be mindful of what I was experiencing,

it didn’t allow me to escape from my situation, but to be in it—to face full on “The World as It Is.”

            Similarly, for the season of Advent, I preached using ideas from an organization called the Advent Conspiracy, which focuses on preparing for Christmas as we experience it, with consumerism and worry about gifts and how to spend time with relatives and the “perfect Christmas,” and the hyper-extended season known as “the Holidays” and all of those things that cause us to dread Christmas.

Christmas as it is, warts and all.

            And it’s worth dwelling on the ups and downs of our lives, not escaping from them to some sort of dream world

—because that’s the world Jesus comes to, the world he is God with us in,

this world as it is, is the world he comes to.

            A world with an uncertain family and a long Christmas Journey, a world with frightened shepherds and tentative fiancées, Emperors and Governors, censuses and taxes.

            The same world as our own, with family troubles and joys. Unmet expectations and unrewarded sacrifices, as well as moments of grace and surprise.

            With births and deaths, taxes and tithes, loneliness and familiarity.

            This world we live in is the world that Jesus comes to, not as an escape for us, but to be in among us, with us and for us.

            In the world as it is, here we find God, because “God is with us!”

Come and See!

            Do I have news for you! God is here.

Come and see!

            Come and See in a trough, well-swaddled and far from home.

            See him there, the one we call Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

            See him there, this little one, so new and fresh, so gentle and fragile.

            See him there, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

            Come and See the infinite and the finite, the common and the uncommon, Humanity and Divinity, God for us in the common things of life.

            Come and See him in shared words of consolation among faithful people.

            And see him in Water and Spirit making children of God

            See him in God’s Word for us.

            Him in our giving thanks and in our shared meal—his very body.

            In our being salt and light to a bland and drear world.

Come and see.

Treasure it.

            Yes, treasure this gift given to us.

            Take it with you everywhere you go—the message that God is with us,

this babe in the manger.

            Make it your incessant prayer, hold it close to your heart like a talisman.

            Bring it with you, because you’ll need it. You’ll need this moment of celebration, this clear moment of surety, in times of trial and times of doubt.

            Bring it with you, as well, because it grows and changes. It, like a child, will surprise you and grow, mature and greet you in new and wonderful ways.

            Like Mary treasure all these things in your heart.

Keep the good news close and make it your own,

allow it to transform you and protect you and surprise you.

Go and tell.

            God is with us, you’ve seen it and will continue to see it, you cherish and nurture this truth as it does the same to you. How can you not share it?

            Share this good news of God come near,

God here in the World as It Is,

seen in the manger and at the altar and throughout our lives—with us everywhere we go.

            Go and tell.

            Tell it everywhere you go,

tell of the shepherds and angels and mangers and the salvation that we have, because God is with us.

            Like that junior astronomer who saw the star, showed his parents, contemplated its meaning, and told the world, let the Christ child do the same to us this night.

            Brothers and sisters.

God is with us!

Come and See!

Treasure it!

Go and tell!

A+A

My Advent Sermon Series

Advent 1: Worship Fully


Advent 2: Spend Less


Advent 3: Give More


Advent 4: Love All

Advent 4: LOVE ALL

             Quite a ride huh? This 4 week journey of Advent toward Christmas.

            This van ride, this road trip, in which we took out our GPS to track and figure out where we are at and where we’re going… that is that we’re lodged in a secular Christmas season that starts around Halloween, but we’re going toward a Christmas in which we Worship Fully Jesus, God come fully to us.

            Then we lightened our load, tossing out the excessive consumption we as a society are consumed by—we spent less, and in doing so we recognized that our worth has nothing to do with the worth of the gifts we give, but instead our worth comes from the Love of God found in Christ Jesus.

          Then, last week we looked around and saw our fellow passengers, and we didn’t just look at them, but gave more … gave them our time, we began to wrestle with our connections with our friends and family and how we can nourish those relationships and cultivate interdependence.

           And now, here we are, two days from Christmas Eve, it’s just over that mountain. It’s just through that bank of fog.

          You can almost see it.

          You can almost hear it.

          In fact, you can hear it.

Listen

Listen!

(CHOIR SINGS MAGNIFICAT)

          Yes, you can hear Mary’s song, the Magnificat—you can hear her interpret for us what that manger means, what Emmanuel, God with us, is all about.

          In her self-proclaimed lowliness she encourages us to look around and see our neighbors with new eyes.

          She encourages us to actively be concerned for, and on the look out for, those who are so often invisible.

          She encourages us to recognize how this “God with us” changes how we are with one another.

          She encourages us to celebrate the topsy-turvy tumult of Christmas.

          She encourages us to love all.

          Let us pray.

          We drive toward that music, over that hill and through that fog, doing just fine, we’ll all get there in time.

          Then comes a banging against our back window.

          Holy cow, there’s an ill-clothed very pregnant woman banging on our window!

          “Why didn’t you stop for us?” is the first thing out of her mouth.

          “We didn’t see you,” we reply.

          “What do you mean you didn’t see us? I waved and both of us shouted at you when you drove by us, we even flashed you with our high beams.”

          We mumble something about “the fog,” squish her into our Advent Van with us, and drive back a quarter mile to an Oldsmobile Station Wagon—with the wood paneling and everything—broken down there—there’s a man with his head deep down into the engine.

          “Didn’t think you’d stop,” he said, “people rarely do… it’s like they don’t see us… too focused on Christmas I suppose.”

          Two of us get out and hold engine pieces in place while he does something that gets the car running again, while the rest share a thermos of hot chocolate with the woman.

          They thank us, tell us they’re the guest of honor at Christmas and it’s good they’ll be able to make it to the manger, and then drive off toward Christmas…

but we all sit in our little van with the heat going for a while. We drove by Mary and Joseph… what does that mean?

          It means, as we go along on our travels there will be fellow travelers broken down on the road, people put in lowly places and in need of a helping hand.

          It means we have to look for them, because there is a lot of fog in life, and we sometimes are so concerned with the songs of the season that we don’t engage our eyes as well as our ears. There is, in fact, a danger that we’ll miss seeing God with us, God among us, among us all.

          I think of a situation a fellow Pastor just dealt with—there was a man living in their recycling bin who wasn’t welcome at the local shelters for a variety of reasons. The church opened their doors to him and he attended their bible studies and the coffee hour after worship, when he can’t make it to worship itself… and they finally found him a shelter that will take him in…

and when he left one of the children innocently asked, “Was that Jesus.”

          Truly out of the mouth of babes.

          Yes, preparing for Christmas, going along this long Advent road, means being unsettled by those broken down along the way, unsettled because the song Mary sings is an unsettling one,

one that topples the ruthless and enthrones the lowly, feeds the hungry and sends off the rich unfed.

One that insists we care for, and be with, human beings broken down along the way, because that’s the very act of God we’re preparing to celebrate.

          And today you have in your hands two small ways to help those broken down on the highway of life.

          The first is an insert you’ve likely seen for the last month to help fund the ELCA’s response to Typhoon Haiyan—

if there has ever been an example of a people made low and in deepest hunger the survivors of that horrible Typhoon are an example.

          I probably don’t need to remind you all, but just in case you’ve not heard, the ELCA’s response to disasters is phenomenal—we had boots on the ground in the Philippines before the US military did.

For that matter,

as those in New Orleans and the people on the Jersey Shore can attest,

we stay committed to healing that which has been broken long after everyone else has left.

          Secondly, there is the ELCA Good Gifts Catalog—a program that went out to people all around the world in need and asked the simple question, “what do you need?”

“What do you need to fight malaria?

what do you need to fight hunger?

what do you need to create or sustain your new church, and your seminary?”

and then set up this program in which we can give those very things as gifts.

          I’m sure there are other ways we can help those who are the least among us,

those stuck on the road leading toward Christmas—

in fact I’m sure there are more concrete, down to earth, and personal ways to do this that you all know of, and I hope and pray you will do so.

         

With that we’ve reached the end of this Advent road—all that remains is to rejoice that God has come near in the person of Jesus Christ. A+A