Grace isn't cheap--it's free

Matthew 7:1-14, 24-29

Judge not lest ye be judged. Some verses bring us back to the King James Version by habit, don’t they? This is one so familiar, and it sounds SO easy. None of us like to be judged. Actually, that’s not quite true. We like to be judged but only on the areas in which we excel. It’s when we are judged in an area where we are not self-confident that we take issue. Judgment—it’s a thing we can all agree on; a thing we wish others wouldn’t do.

            It seems easy. Just don’t judge. But in a thousand little ways, we feel we have to. It’s good business to judge—whether a person is trustworthy, whether an investment is good, whether a candidate is right for a job. We have to judge. Heck, I’ve mentioned before that I come from a line of Cadwells whose job was to judge. Like so many things Jesus says, it seems so simple until you actually put it into practice. Then, things get messy.

            I’m reminded of that Bertrand Russell quote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are [sure of themselves] while the intelligent so full of doubt.” I think Jesus would agree. The wise will doubt themselves—will doubt their own capacity to make right judgments. The wise will understand that everything we do in this life, every choice we make, is covered by sin, stretching back to the Garden of Eden and forward to time immemorial. The wise will be full of doubts, and their judgments will always be humble and meek, because they know they are not God.

            The life of faith Jesus would have us lead is one where we hold this faith lightly, understanding that the strongest faith is the one held with a dose of humility, and the weakest faith is often the one that feigns strength. To hold faith lightly is not to wait something better, and not to lack in assurance and trust, but instead it means we are aware of our limitations—that we are human beings, full of poor judgments, and faith is not something of our own that we can control; it is something given to us as a gift, which should make us humble.

            “Judge not lest ye be judged” is not only about how we are supposed to act toward one another; it’s about the perspective we have on life, and it’s about understanding that there is truly very little that separates us one from another—a little bit of luck; a little bit of chance; a twist of fate; maybe some divine direction. To follow Jesus is to admit that we are incapable of saving ourselves. We don’t need to justify ourselves before the throne of the cross. We don’t need to look at everybody else around us and point out how much less of a hypocrite we are by comparison, because the moment you do it, you’re a bigger one. It’s a paradox Jesus understands perfectly.

Prayer is hard work

Matthew 6:7-21

There aren’t that many secrets that pastors know that you don’t. I suppose I probably shouldn’t admit that. It’s probably in my best professional interests to keep the veil between clergy and laity as impermeable as possible so that you believe I am the gatekeeper to all the secret knowledge, but the truth is I don’t have much of that. There is one thing, however, that I do know—that I suspect most pastors know—that I’m not sure everybody does, and it is this: Prayer is hard work.

            Really hard work.

            So much of the way our society talks about prayer treats it as something rather easy. “Thoughts and prayers!” But that’s just where the hard work begins. And I’m not just talking about remembering to do it, though that is part of it. Prayer is hard work because it is so much more than saying bedtime prayers, or getting on our knees, or even praying in worship. I’m talking about the hard work of having a conversation with God that is centered on something other than my own immediate wants and needs, and then coming to the understanding that that prayer doesn’t end just because I say “Amen.” It’s hard to know what to say to God, how to listen for God, what you should be asking for (if anything), how to express your thankfulness and also be honest about your feelings, especially when things feel pretty awful.

            The hardest thing of all is to listen for God against our expectations. We all have expectations of who God is and how the universe should work, and when God’s answer to our prayers runs counter to our expectations, it is incredibly difficult to live in that space. You have expectations and faith—choose one.

            In today’s scripture reading, Jesus addresses some of these challenges. He begins by chastising those who heap up long prayers. I’ve been in settings like this—where it starts out as prayer and soon turns into a hostage situation. God is not impressed by how big our words are. God doesn’t care about you showing off. Instead, prayer belongs in secret, which is tough, because deep down we want credit. More than that, we want people to know that we are devout. The world out there will always claim you are not devout enough; you are not Christian enough; but your job is not to please others but to please God. Part of the hard work of prayer is ignoring what other people think.

            Related to this is one of my great pet peeves. So, if you’re taking notes, this is one thing I cannot stand—when somebody, almost always on the internet but increasingly often in real-life, doesn’t believe you, and they say “pictures or it didn’t happen.” If you need pics to believe anybody did everything, then maybe you should focus more on your own experiences in the world, because it sounds like you are doubtful that this amazing world, where God is imminently available in prayer, contains anything exciting. The truth is you don’t need to take pictures to prove anything to anybody. The life of prayer defies documentation. You won’t be able to explain it, because this is between you and God.

Dead things rise again--Community, money, and scarcity

Matthew 5:1-20

Rolf Jacobson, an Old Testament professor at Luther Seminary, used to say—maybe he still says this, I don’t know—that the church says two things about money: The first is “money is evil” and the second is “give us your money.” I thought, on a Sunday when we are reviewing budgets and talking about shortfalls and generally concerned about having enough, that today was a good day to say something else about money.

The scripture for today actually is helpful with this, because it’s Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, preaching those beatitudes, and the beatitudes are useful for everything we do as the life of the church. They frame the characteristic with which we should approach any challenge as a church. So, I’ll get there in a moment.

But first, I want to return to that Rolf Jacobson quote. I think, subtly, we do say these things: Money is evil, and give us your money. And I think, in many ways, this is hugely detrimental to the ministry of the church. Money is not evil. Instead, it is a tool we use or misuse and a barometer for our priorities. Also, importantly, money means something different to every one of us. Some people could have millions in the bank account and still feel like they are stressed for cash, and others could have nothing and be swimming in debt and still feel like they are wealthy.

Meanwhile, the church—if we’re talking about money, because let’s face it, we mostly don’t—seemingly has one move: We ask for more. Give more. That’s clearly the desired outcome, but we need a much wider approach. We need to do more than ask for more; we need to do a much better job of lifting up what we are doing. Whenever there is a kitchen that needs updating, or stained glass, or something tangible, money comes in. It’s worth asking why? Because it’s tangible. Because you don’t need to tell the story; it’s staring at you. You can experience the kitchen or the stained glass; it adds something to your experience of church. But here’s the thing: So does every ministry we support. Our problem is a lack of story-telling about the ministries that do even more than a new kitchen and even more than stained glass or a wall.

Financial problems are as often problems of story-sharing as they are problems of not having enough. There is no question that this community has enough. The question is: When you feel strained, what tightens? And, as a church, we need to do a better job of sharing the impact that we have, and if we’re not doing that, then no letter-writing campaign or kick in the pants is going to change the tides.

So, what are we doing? Let’s get back to Jesus on the mountain for a moment. We are promoting meekness and humility and kindness. It’s worth remembering that most places don’t do these things. Most communities we are a part of don’t go out of their way to make you more humble and meek and kind. But we do. We have Sunday school and Confirmation and Bible Studies to teach it. We have a food pantry that reminds us of the needs of our community and connects us with some of the most vulnerable who we otherwise would not have eyes to see. We have quilting, and holiday helpers, and soup suppers, and youth service trips, and Men’s Lenten breakfast, and coffee hour, and serving groups, and all of that. Each in their own way lifts up the virtues we find in the beatitudes. We have worship where we have music, and liturgy, and ritual, and practice that centers us on God’s role in our lives. We have a lot going on.

The Backward Power of God

Matthew 4:1-17

The temptation of Jesus is all about Jesus in his humanity. And we don’t so often think about Jesus in his humanity, so we don’t tend to consider this a very important story. I mean, of course Jesus wasn’t tempted by Satan! He was perfect, obviously. When we think about Jesus, we tend to default to his divinity; the human side of Jesus doesn’t tend to interest us, I suppose because we are all human. We know what that looks like.

Jesus as fully God is easy. It allows us to focus on him as this perfect creation. He was without sin, we say. He died to save us. He lived exactly the life he was supposed to. This is easy. But the temptation of Christ reminds us of another very important reality: Jesus was also human. Fully divine. Fully human. And the question of which would win the day had not yet been answered when Satan takes him up on the tower.

            This story only makes sense if we put ourselves into the shoes of Jesus, the one being tempted. This story really only makes sense if there’s some chance that Satan will be successful. Something deeper is going on here than a mere object lesson in how awesome Jesus is. A real question is put to Jesus: Can you do what every other human has failed to do? Can you refrain from reaching out and taking the fruit of the tree?

            This story has happened before. You have to go back to the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, there was that tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God planted. It was the one tree from which Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat, so naturally it was the one tree that the serpent used in order to tempt them. He told them that if they ate from it, they would become like God. This is a huge temptation: Just eat this little fruit and you will know everything. You would eat it. You do eat it. In a million ways, we all eat that stinking fruit. In that moment, which has been lived out again and again throughout history, humanity’s weakness triumphed over God’s desires for us.

            It’s the same story all the time.

Satan assumes that Jesus will fall into the same trap. Every one of us does, after all. The boy-king is unlikely to be any different.

The long winter

Matthew 3:1-17

 It’s been a long winter.

I realize that isn’t true. By the standard of the weather, it has been a really excellent winter. But that’s not what I mean. I mean, I’m biased. Some of you have probably had awfully healthy winters so far. You probably also don’t have young kids. I was warned about this but didn’t fully appreciate how these germ-ridden children will not only make me terribly sick, but then stomp over me in my sickness, while I’m lying on the couch, and pull out all the glitter and acrylic paints and decide it is time to decorate the floors.

“You brood of vipers,” said John the Baptist—not about my daughter but maybe also about my daughter. “You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

One of the lessons I learned in seminary was that there is no need to preach the law at a people broken by it, who feel it in their bones already. This is why I believe preachers who stand up and proclaim judgment and fear and wrath at funerals don’t know what they’re doing. At times where we understand our frailty and our limitations, like funerals, the weight of the law is already on our backs; there is no need to pile it on. The law is already reminding us that many things are final and they can’t be undone. At a funeral, we don’t need the law, because it is the water in which we swim already. At funerals, we crave the Gospel.

It is the same for all of us in this long winter. I’m not sure we have much need for John the Baptist at the moment. Repent. Sure. But most of you don’t need to be called a brood of vipers. Just Natalie. The rest of you are OK. You don’t need to be called that, not because you aren’t sinners. You’re just as limited as you were in the cheeriest of times. Rather, in this long winter, you are more aware of it by nature. We know it every time a family member comes home sick, and we know it every time we hear that somebody we knew and cared about has died, and we know it when we want to go into town but the winds are howling and we can’t see to the end of the drive. Everything about this season reminds us we are fragile. Nobody is arguing with John the Baptist. We come to the waters looking for renewal time and again—anything to free us from this constant refrain of life’s limitations.

That’s the baptism John offers. Repentance. Sin. Repeat. For all our ordaining John with the title of “John the Baptist,” his baptism is actually pretty weak. It is more like confession. It is a consistent, repeated ritual of repentance, confession, and absolution, where God washes away sins only to have them pop up again in the morning. John’s baptism only required returning more often when the winter was long.

Breaking down those walls

Matthew 2:1-23 

           Those three wise men that we so often sing about at Christmastime are traditionally associated with this time of Epiphany. They come riding into town as the birth of Christ transitions into the implications of God-incarnate living amongst us. On Christmas Eve, I talked about the frankincense and myrrh, how these were incense often used at burials—how the kings were, perhaps unwittingly, giving this child the gift of spices for his own burial. I talked about how appropriate that is.

            But we need to talk about what happens next. The Gospel of Matthew says, “Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’”

            Leave this place, because it is not safe. I find it fascinating that the holy family is told to flee to keep Jesus safe. Jesus, who spends the rest of his life set toward the cross, begins his time on earth being rushed away from it. As with every instance of evil in our lives, God could have intervened. It didn’t need to happen this way. Instead, the angel tells Joseph: Get up, take the child and Mary, and flee to Egypt. That’s an order.

Christmas Eve: The birth and death of Christ

Luke 2:1-20

Babies are wonderful, aren’t they? I mean, I should know, because mine is the wonderful-est. He’s the most beautiful, most special, best of all things in the whole world is mine—that baby. How astonishing is it that of all the possible babies in the world mine is the most perfect?!

            Sorry, everybody else, you’ll have to fight it out for second.

            Then, they grow up.

            The miracle of Christmas isn’t a perfect baby, because we know every baby is perfect, but the true miracle is this baby is God-incarnate, not destined to become a little sinner like the rest of us; in fact, destined to be the Savior of the world. This baby—Emmanuel.

            See, the reality is that my perfect little baby is also perfectly broken. For all the love I have for him, I can’t pretend he isn’t a stinky little guy—literally and figuratively. I mean, nobody is more self-centered than a baby. They are so inconsiderate of my sleep needs, my sermon writing, the fact that I’m under the weather, and my desire to have just ten stinkin’ minutes to myself. Geesh. We only let them get away with this stuff because they are babies and they don’t know any better.

            But this baby, this Jesus, was somehow different. What would it look like for a baby to be born without that inclination to turn in on himself? Honestly, how much did Mary and Joseph luck out when Jesus was waiting to feed at their convenience? Or when he took conveniently-timed bathroom breaks? There were lucky, that is, until they understood the cost. This child—this once-in-a-universe happening—had an ultimate destination—a telos—that didn’t fit his perfection. Or, rather, maybe it fit it perfectly. In this broken world, all things bright and beautiful end up at the cross. Christmas is the start of that road to Golgotha, those first steps from manger to tomb.

            Because babies are so beautiful and so fragile, this is a move we are naturally scared to make. Come on, pastor. Don’t bring that stuff into this. Let’s stay with Christmas—none of this Good Friday/Easter stuff. But this ignores the reality that Christmas is part of the Easter story and vice versa; it’s all connected, and there is a reason that the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. This is not just happy-go-lucky nonsense. Tonight is the real deal.