Jesus, Not Jesús: my daily struggle to find God in our midst

Be The Way...Or In The Way

1/26/2020

Jesus says, “Repent,” not because you want to get into heaven, but because heaven wants to get into you.

a couple of thoughts about crickets,
repenting and a place called heaven.
Matthew 4:12-23

I want to tell you a story about a monk who leaves his  secluded monastery in the rural part the country to visit his cousin in the big city. As they’re walking down the noisy street, amidst the clamor of city life, a fire truck moves through traffic, with its sirens blazing.

As it passes the two,  the monk asked “Did you hear that? It’s a cricket singing?”

His cousin replies, “How can you hear a cricket singing in the middle of all this noise?”

To which the monk answers, “I guess one hears what one is listening for.”

To make his point, the monk takes the spare change from his pocket and drops it on the ground. It’s a familiar sound that causes everyone around them stop in their tracks.

What getting your attention? If one hears what one is listening for, where does your ear go, what does your heart value?

Last week we heard Jesus ask, “What are you looking for?” Then he invited Andrew and his friend to come and see for themselves. Today, we are given a different version of this story. I hope that you will listen carefully to these words from Matthew’s gospel, to hear what Jesus is saying among the noises of everyday life.

READ Matthew 4:17-23

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peterand his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

How do you think people first heard Jesus as he began his ministry? How do you think they responded when they heard him say, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near”?

I suspect some people thought he was mad. And some didn’t bother to give him the time. But there were those who were intrigued. They wanted to know more. But what would make these four guys quit their jobs to follow this stranger?

“Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Many people today hear these words and think Jesus is saying, “Follow me, I know a back way into heaven.” Others hear and believe heaven is a place to escape this life – some kind of nirvana that’ll replace the hell they’re in. You might hear something completely different.

As for me, I don’t hear Jesus talking about leaving this world so much as I hear him asking what have I done, and more importantly, what I’m doing right now in the world. I hear him saying heaven has come down to earth. So how I’m gonna respond? What am I listening for?

Barrie Bates hears Jesus inviting us to examine our past…by taking an honest assessment of our present situation…which will give a clear indication of what our future might look like.

In addressing our past, Jesus says, “Repent.” I don’t know about you but this particular word used to raise the hackles on my neck. It carried such a negative connotation that it used to stop me from hearing anything that was said after it. I can still feel the harsh rebuke from those old preachers who’d wag their finger and told I was not good enough to be standing in the presence of God.

Truth is, Jesus is pretty straight-forward: “Repent.” If I am hearing him correctly, he’s not saying I’m not good enough. Instead I hear him say, “Ian, get your act together. Take inventory of your past. And let it go. Drop it like a fishing net, and follow me.”

When I tune my ear to Jesus I hear him telling me to stop holding onto all those little annoyances and petty gripes and senseless quarrels. I hear him say, let go of that stuff that weighs you down. And grab hold of God who lifts you up.

When I tune my ear to Jesus I hear him telling me that I am forgiven, loved, and free to live in the abundance of God’s grace right now.

watch service here

Jesus says, “Repent,” not because you want to get into heaven, but because heaven wants to get into you. This bring us to the present. “For the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s not on its way, but it has come. For some crazy reason God wants to dwell among us, to sit in our sin and to love us through it until heaven and earth are of one mind and spirit.

As Rohr often says, “You cannot not live in the presence of God. We are totally surrounded by God all the time and everywhere.” If that is true, then it tells me heaven is within our reach. In fact, “It’s so close we can touch, taste, smell, see, and hear it — if that’s what we’re listening for.”

In calling us to “Repent,” Jesus is inviting us to see signs of the kingdom fully alive and God’s abundant glory shinning brightly in us and all around us – especially when it comes to doing for and to others.

Thus Jesus tells Simon and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” He is calling them, and us, to participate in the work of God’s kingdom.  That’s a huge calling – one not simply reserved for ministers but for all of God’s children.

Until heaven and earth are one, we need to shine the light of Christ on the darkness of places. We need to proclaim the Good News of God’s redemptive love. And we need to make known the glory of God’s marvelous works, so others will know they are of value to God.

When I hear Jesus say “Repent” I don’t hear a commandment. I hear a call to be a part of God’s community in the world, where the kingdom of heaven is revealed. I hear an invitation to be healed, restored, and redeemed back to my rightful place as God’s beloved child. And I hear a call from God to live fully and faithfully into that responsibility.

What is it that you hear? How do Jesus’ words penetrate your heart and soul? How do they cause you to react…to be a part of this community…in the kingdom of heaven?

While this church doesn’t have a building, we do have a mission: “To Love God, Love Others, and Serve Both.” We strive to be fishers of people, ambassadors of Christ, evangelists who tell their story so others can see God’s glory in their life.  And as we start a new year, we hope that you will join us in this mission.

Jesus is calling all of us to do some radical stuff. His demands haven’t changed since James and John dropped their nets to follow Jesus – who went around “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people."
Think about those verbs – teaching, proclaiming, and curing. This is how people are able to see that the kingdom of heaven is within their reach.

As the body of Christ, we represent Jesus’ sacrificial love by offering ourselves to be a living sanctuary where others can find rest.  Whether it’s you or me, or us all together, we are the church. Teachers and professors of God’s love in Christ.

We are called to be agents of change reversing the pain and suffering caused by injustice and war. We are to be the balm that heals the world of emotional, physical, or spiritual pain.

We are a community that loves and forgives and accepts all people just as God has been gracious to welcome us— if that’s what you’re listening for.

My hope for you today is that you will tune your ear towards Jesus. That you will stop fighting with the clanging noises of the world, and dance with our Lord to the divine music of everlasting life… to be a cricket singing…on earth as it is in heaven.

Work Cited
Bates, Barrie. Repent, Look for Signs of the Kingdom, and Follow Jesus. 01-19-2020.  (episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/repent-look-signs-kingdom-and-follow-jesus-epiphany-3-january-26-2020) Accessed on 01-23-2020.
Rohr, Richard. Yes, And…daily meditations. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2013) p. 71.

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Dawn’s beginning light

1/25/2020

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To awake alive in the morning is a blessed gift. We hold to a hope, setting our alarm clocks, believing this will be the way we awake every morning. Until that dawn in which we don’t.

What then do we make of our day? What hope do we hold onto, believing there is more to life than simply breathing? How should our heart beat? Like ancient drums of the orient far? Like summer rain upon a tin roof? To what rhythm or tempo do we keep with life here and beyond our conscious eye?

The 19th Century Russian Orthodox starets, Theophan the Recluse gives us this:
“Into every duty a God-fearing heart must be put, a heart constantly permeated by the thought of God; and this will be the door through which the soul will enter into active life. . . . The essence is to be established in the remembrance of God, and to walk in his presence.”

“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” - PSALM 63:1

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Love. Jesus. Love.

1/21/2020

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Loving the self. Damn that’s hard. I know I ought to do it. But at times it’s just takes to too much energy. In those days I tell myself, “At least God loves me.” That takes me a little ways up the path of life but saying it and believing it are two different things. Yes, God loves me. God is eternal. God is love. Thus, love is always present. I need to learn how to love myself eternally, you know like God loves. But how? Good question, me self! Simply by understanding God’s love as expressed through Jesus the Christ.

“The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Jesus was about love first and foremost, in word and deed. Jesus began with love for God, but inseparably linked that love with love for neighbor [1], with the understanding that neighbor includes the other, the outsider, the outcast, the last, the least, the lost, the disgraced, the dispossessed, and the enemy.

“This love for neighbor was, in turn, inextricably related to an appropriate love for self. In fact, to love neighbor as oneself leads to the realization that oneself and one’s neighbor are actually distinct yet inseparable realities. In today’s world, we must add that, for Jesus, God’s love extends to the wildflower, the meadow grass, the sparrow, and the raven. He saw all of God’s creatures as part of one heavenly realm, as did dear St. Francis, and as do more and more of us.”

If in fact these two scholars are correct then I can learn how to love myself by opening my heart and learning how to love my pets, my children, works of art or music that isn’t always to my liking, or food that is different than what I’m used to.

“When I think of this [new] kind of Christianity of the future, then, I think of a movement of revolutionary love. I see it as distinctively Christian, but not in any exclusive way, because if we truly see love as Jesus’ point and passion, then the depth of our devotion to Christ will always lead us to love our Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Indigenous, nonreligious, agnostic, atheist, and other neighbors as ourselves. . . “

work cited
Adapted from a daily devotional from Richard Rohr on 01/03/2020.

Brian D. McLaren, “Three Christianities,” “The Future of Christianity,” Oneing, vol. 7, no. 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2019), 73, 75-76.

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January 21st, 2020

1/21/2020

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”What I am calling an incarnational worldview is the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally “every thing” and “every one.” It is the key to mental and spiritual health as well as to a kind of basic contentment and happiness. An incarnational worldview is the only way we can reconcile our inner worlds with the outer one, unity with diversity, physical with spiritual, individual with corporate, and divine with human.

”Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a “little dying” as you pay the price of inspiriting the world. Your simple breathing models your entire vocation as a human being. Like Christ, you are an incarnation of matter and spirit operating as one. This, more than anything we believe or accomplish, is how all of us continue the mystery of incarnation in space and time—either knowingly and joyfully or not.”

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe(Convergent: 2019), 18, 99, 178-180.

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Teach the Word

1/19/2020

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Start with love. Start with caring for someone else. Start small if you want to, but start. The more you practice proclaiming this the easier it becomes and bigger it grows.

And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

The other morning I was driving down a side street where a delivery van was double parked and blocking the flow of traffic. Normally this isn’t so much of a problem on side streets, but thanks to Amazon Prime there was a massive three car back up happening. People’s anxieties were flaring. And tempers were on the verge of bursting like a wild volcano.

Since I was in no real hurry, I hung back and flashed my high beams to let the other cars know that they could go around the van. Instead of going, they just sat there agitated. The more I flashed my lights, the more ticked off they got.

I began to think that no one taught them this well known gesture of kindness. So I drove on. As I past one car, the driver boldly showed me that she did know, another universally recognizable gesture that wasn’t so kind.

Whether it’s operating a vehicle, showing random acts of kindness, or flipping someone off in traffic, we know what we know…because someone first taught it to us. Math. Science. Language. Religion. We are always students learning from someone or something.

There are all sorts of teachers out there too. Pre-school teachers, substitute teachers, Sunday school teachers, professors from the highest ranks of academia to parents who homeschool their kids. And then there are bosses and co-workers, close friends, or people who, although you met only once, made an indelible impression on you.

We learn how to navigate life from learning or watching others. I heard a great scholar confess how he learned more about God’s grace and forgiveness from his dog than from anyone else. Is there a person you know or met who has made your life more blessed by what they taught you?

In 1979 I got a job as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant a block away from my house. I was hired by the owner, whose birth name was Francis L. Morris, the same name as a guy who escaped Alcatraz and was never caught. I mention that because Frank was a tough and intimidating man. A retired firefighter from the South Bronx, Frank was raised on the wild streets that he would later serve. Outside men like Evel Knievel and the Bionic Man, Frank was probably the first male figure I looked up to.

However, he was not the kind of teacher parents would want their children to have. He taught me how to cuss more colorfully, how to think more dangerously, and how to survive on the streets more skillfully…and often illegally. He made such an mark on my life that when I went off to college people always asked me what part of New York I was from. Just as someone taught Frank, and he taught me, I try to do my best to pass on the lessons I have learned.

In today’s Gospel passage, we see how this kind of teaching works. John the Baptist is out in the wilderness doing something new with an old ritual. People were coming in droves to see what he’s all about. In the midst of the dunking and shouting, Jesus walks by.

Out of nowhere, John blurts out, “There’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He’s teaching those gathered that Jesus is the one who brings true restoration between God and all of creation. Today, we know this because, as the gospel story reveals, John is testifying, he’s teaching us to what God has already made known to him.

God tells John and John tells us. This is how teaching works – said knowledge moves from the teacher to the student. And in this case, it’s the kind of knowledge that sends the students to go and learn more.

watch the service here

To those who meets Jesus will learn, it’s more than mere knowledge…it’s excitement, joy, transformation, new life…the kind of newness you can’t help but share with others, if only because others see the change Jesus makes in you.

Look at what happens to Andrew when he leaves his teacher John to follow Jesus. He is enlightened and runs to his brother Simon to teaches him what he knows about Jesus. These two brothers, who become part of the 12 disciples, will go on testifying – teaching others what they know in their hearts to be true about God’s transformative love in Christ. To those they teach, will in turn will go and do the same and on and on and on it goes… right up to this very moment in time. (Bowron)

And that’s where we come in. Like every aspect of life, we eventually make the move from student to teacher. As followers of Jesus, especially we who have been spiritually awakened to our belovedness in Christ, we have to proclaim this truth: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The question we all must ask ourselves then is how am I testifying this good news? How am I telling or showing the world that they too are a beloved children of God, made in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit? This is not just my job, but yours as well. We are all ministers, teachers, of this truth.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gives his students a great task. He tells them to go and make disciples of all nations. Go make students who then can become teachers who can go and teach others of God’s redemptive love and grace. Jesus knew if we don’t continue what he started then people will not know that they are loved, no matter what. They will be left empty, searching for anything culture and society offers to fill the void.

People are watching and listening, they are learning from you whether you know it or not. So how will you teach them? In what way do you live your life that bears witness to Christ? How do you show the excitement of your faith like Andrew did when he ran off and told his brother?

I understand not everyone is comfortable expressing their faith verbally. Most of us don’t want to be pushy or have people avoid hanging out with us. So here’s something I learned from a wonderful mentor about circumventing this uncomfortableness. He said, “We don’t beat people into the kingdom of heaven. Instead we must live the kingdom in such a way that others will want to join us there.”

When I was going through a difficult time in my life, a friend asked how I was able to cope. I answered, very much like Jesus did, with my own an invitation of “Come and See.” I asked, “What are you doing on Sunday at 11:00 am?” She accepted my invitation to come and learn. And a year and a half later, she married me in that church.

How do you teach or testify? I have a t-shirt that says “The Sermonator.” You might wear a cross around your neck. Both are powerful statements and great ways to start a conversation.

Another great place to start is in the way you show kindness to others. Kathleen always says it’s easier to catch a bee with honey than it is with vinegar. People may not understand why you are flashing your lights at them, but when you respond to a rude gesture with love, that is a teaching moment.

Even if you don’t say anything, simply being the love of Christ in the world helps to spread the love of Christ where it’s needed the most.

get your favorite minister a funny minister shirt

Start with love. Start with caring for someone else. Start small if you want to, but start. The more you practice proclaiming this the easier it becomes and bigger it grows. John lit the fire in Andrew, and Andrew lit the fire in Simon, and so we too are to light up the world as God’s beloved children.

Before her death some 500 years ago, St. Teresa of Avila wrote:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ’s compassion to the world;
yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.”

Yes, Jesus invites you to come and see. But today, I encourage you to go and be. Go and be a living testimony to God’s glory in your life. Go and be “like John, be like Andrew, be like the uncountable cloud of witnesses to God’s gospel of love, justice, peace, and presence. Show us all in your words and deeds, in all of your life, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world.” (Bowron)

Flash your light on this message and teach the world to see their place in the kingdom of God. Amen.

Work Cited
Bowron, Josh. Testimony, Epiphany 2. Posted on January 12, 2020 (accessed 01/16/2020).
https://episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/testimony-epiphany-2-january-19-2020.
Bartlett, David L and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word, Year A vol 1. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010) p. 260.

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