A sermon for November 18, 2012 - Open Hands and Open Heart

A Sermon for November 18, 2012 (Proper 28, RCL B)

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for The Church of Saint Mary

Texts:             Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-14,19-25; Mark 13:1-8

Primary Message:              God always pushes us into new paradigms

Call to Action:          Be ready for the future; live with open hands.

Title:                        Open Hands and Open Heart   

O Lord, make us masters of ourselves so that we might become the servants of others. Take our minds and think through them. Take our mouths and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.

My dear sisters and brothers: God calls us to live with open hands and open hearts.

For many of us, this is not an easy thing to do. We become attached to those things in our lives which make us feel safe and secure and comfortable.

And we tend to cling closely to them. Now, this kind of attachment or clinging is a way of being, an interior mindset. But there is a physical action which closely corresponds to this. It is the clenched fist.

We all know it and we can feel it. Here; let me show you. All of you – right now, raise your hands and hold up two tightly clenched fists. Got it? Pay attention. Do you feel that?

Good. Now, open your hands and drop them down in front of you – like this – and hold out in front of you your two hands – open. OK? Now, can you feel the difference? Good. Hold on to that feeling for the next few minutes as we turn back again to our Gospel reading this morning.

As they left the Temple, Jesus said: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.”

My friends: try for a moment to place yourself back within the worldview of the disciples. Do you realize how shocking this statement from Jesus must have been to them?

To ask these faithful Jews to imagine the utter destruction of the Temple was asking them to imagine an entirely different world.

Let’s make sure that we understand this; that we’re clear about this.

For the disciples to imagine the destruction of the Temple is perhaps tantamount to you and I imagining the Capitol building in Washington, DC being obliterated, and the Washington monument being knocked over, and the Statue of Liberty being pulled down and tossed into the New York Harbor.

No, maybe even more. It is like imagining that a foreign power has done all of this and has taken over our nation and now we are no longer allowed to sing our national anthem or fly the American flag.

Can you imagine what it would feel like if those actions were now prohibited and liable to be punished swiftly and violently?

This is EXACTLY what Jesus is asking of these disciples!

To imagine an entirely different world, where this Temple – which had been the rich symbol and the central organizing principle of their nation and their culture for over 500 years – to imagine a world in which this Temple was destroyed by their enemies.

A world in which everything that they felt they could cling to, everything which they believed would last and would stand as inviolable and sacred  - where all of that would be taken away.

What the Lord asks is for them to change their entire consciousness, their complete manner of seeing and understanding the world.

Today we speak of this as a paradigm shift. This is an extreme case of it, to be certain, and it is frightening to consider, isn’t it?

Most of us are afraid when facing major changes, when those people or things upon which we had relied and counted on are no longer there.  

As soon as I begin to think of those things and consider the threat of them being taken away, then it seems that I instinctively become defensive. Such thoughts automatically place us in a defensive position.  We want to shield this thing, to protect it, to guard it.

We start to close our hands. We enter into a closed-fist position.

But God provides us with another way – a better way.

The power of Christ working deep within our hearts allows us to live our lives every day with open hands, and an open heart.

Not with closed fists, resisting any possible change to those things which we love and cling to. But rather open, sustained by confidence in the goodness of God.

To imagine the world in an entirely different way is vital for us to engage more deeply with God’s mission in the world, because God is the one who is always calling us forth into the future.

I recently heard the story of Katie Davis.

As an 18 year old from Tennessee, Katie was able to travel to Uganda during Christmas break in 2006 with her church youth group. What she saw there changed her life forever. Katie was immediately captivated by the people and the culture of Uganda. Her heart was touched by the graciousness of the Ugandan people, but also by their immensity of their needs. In Uganda, Katie was able to see the world in an entirely different way. And everything changed.

13 months later, in January of 2008, Katie had graduated from high school and she decided to leave everything behind.

Katie returned to Uganda to launch a new effort at helping impoverished children there to receive a basic elementary school education and the basic food staples needed to live, and to be nurtured by a loving, caring, Christian community. Today, Katie is a 24 year old young woman living in Uganda, still leading her non-profit. But what is more amazing is that Katie is now in fact a mother – at 24 years of age! – a mother of 13, because she has officially adopted 13 orphaned Ugandan girls. (See more of her story here: http://www.amazima.org/katiesstory.html).

By traveling to a different culture, by living among the people, and by her willingness to leave behind all that she has known, Katie Davis experienced a paradigm shift. With open hands and an open heart, she is now able to work with God to change the lives of people in amazing ways.

We here at Saint Mary’s continue to find ourselves in a time of change and transition. Of course, nothing like that which faced the disciples in the eventual destruction of Jerusalem, and the dismantling of the entire nation of Judah.

Nothing at all quite like that, but you have faced many changes which are unsettling nonetheless.

And there is more to come. We are beginning to make plans now for a change to our Sunday morning schedule.  We are planning to change the start of our second service from 10 AM to 10:30.

We will do this in order to make way for something new: an hour of Christian Formation for all ages beginning every Sunday morning at 9:30. 

   

You may be surprised to know that this change was not even my suggestion, but we have discussed now it among the staff and among the Vestry and I support it.  

Why, you ask? Why change our Sunday schedule in order to make room for this Formation hour?

Basically, we need time together as a community in order to study and learn and discuss together. Gathering at 9:30 will allow our people from both services to meet together in groups to study the Bible, to practice different ways of prayer, to talk together about how we live as followers of Christ.

When the Legacy project is completed in early 2013, all ages will gather to do this from 9:30 to 10:30 each Sunday morning: our Guiding Ray classes will begin at 9:30, our teens will meet together in their new space below the Chapel, and different groups will be available for all adults to join. Then, at 10:30, everyone will be invited to gather for worship here in this sacred space. 

Thanks to all of you who have made the commitment to support the Legacy campaign, we will soon be blessed with wonderful new spaces where all of these different groups can meet together at the same time. It makes sense then for us to use these beautiful new spaces to their utmost potential.

Of course, there are a number of different issues to consider before making this change, and we need to take our time to consider all of these carefully before a change like this is implemented. Therefore,  we will wait until some point in the new year before this change is made.

My friends, we all know that change is difficult, but if we are wise then we will expect it and with God’s help we can be ready for it. Even more than this: by walking through this changing life with Christ, we can embrace the future even when it is unknown and uncertain.

God is calling us to imagine a new future, my friends.

Be ready for it – not with closed fists in order to guard yourself from the change that is coming.

But welcome the future with open hands, with open hearts, with confidence and trust that God is working all things together for good for those who love God and who are called as part of God’s purpose.

Amen. 

Enemies of the Cross

Sermon for 2 Lent (C RCL 2/28/2010), Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17 – 4:1; Luke 13:31-35

Please repeat after me: “I am - a disciple – of Jesus Christ. I follow – no other. He is – my life – and my future. I love him – and follow him – where he leads – now and always.”

My friends: it is so easy to become distracted. In the hectic busyness of life, we are bombarded by a plethora of messages from the outside. Circumstances in the world, in society, seem to move in ways that can make us feel trapped. And inside of ourselves, a variety of emotions swim and move around, often-times without having any idea from where they come. When life feels chaotic or beyond-our-control, when anxiety dominates our minds, it can become so very common to gravitate to one of the old stand-bys in human life, one of the common mindsets of human beings. And that, of course, is the approach of legalism.

This is what happened to the Pharisees, after all.

But who exactly are the Pharisees? It is important for us to understand who they are. In the Gospels, in our Lord’s teachings, the Pharisees are one of the key reference points that he uses to make his points. If we want to understand what Jesus teaches us, then we need to understand what it is that the Pharisees represent.

During the days of Jesus’ life, the Pharisees were one of the groups who taught in the synagogues and represented a specific school of thought. They were the ones who maintained the traditions of the elders who strict devotion. But it was the Sadducees and the Temple priests who were dominant, because the Temple in Jerusalem served as the clear, visible center of their world. It was the teachers of the Temple who guided the spiritual life of the Jewish people.

That is, until the Romans came and leveled Jerusalem entirely to the ground in the year 70 AD. Once the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people were devastated. The center of their world was lost and there was an enormous power vacuum. Who would lead them? Who would teach them? It was the Pharisees who rose to prominence as the primary teaching Rabbis. And, as is so often the case when you have anxiety-ridden leaders, the Pharisees moved decisively to consolidate their authority.

The disciples of Jesus, the first Jewish followers of the Way, remained as the primary challenge to their authority among the Jewish people. The apostles were offering a very different interpretation of the Scriptures than that of the Pharisees, and the apostles hoped, of course, to become the dominant teachers in the synagogues.

The finale of this conflict came with the Birkat Ha-Minim, the Twelfth Blessing of the Amidah, one of the basic prayers recited in every synagogue. This Twelfth Blessing was added by the Pharisees in order to root out “the sectarians” as they called them, Messianic Jews who followed Jesus as the promised Messiah.

And so everyone in the synagogue became required to speak this following blessing, which actually reads more like a curse: “And for sectarians, let there be no hope; and may all the evil in an instant be destroyed and all Your enemies be cut down swiftly; and the evil ones uprooted and broken and destroyed and humbled soon in our days. Blessed are You, LORD, who breaks down enemies and humbles sinners.”

For Jesus and for the apostles, the Pharisees represent those who stubbornly demand strict adherence to tradition while ignoring that which is of the most importance of all. Paul refers to this as having a mind “set on earthly things.” For ease of reference, we call this mindset legalism. And don’t you think for a minute that it is one bit less prevalent now than it was 2000 years ago!

Tony Campolo tells a funny story of a man mowing the grass on a Saturday when he was brashly interrupted by his neighbor who happened to be a Seventh Day Adventist. Adventists, by the way, are a group who maintain the Sabbath and who insist that God has always intended the faithful to gather, to worship and to rest on Saturdays, rather than on Sundays. So his neighbor stops him while mowing and says with obvious disapproval, “It’s the Sabbath. You’re cutting grass on the Sabbath!” The man rather sheepishly tried to respond by saying: “Well, Jesus picked corn on the Sabbath!” The angry neighbor was not thinking too clearly, I suspect, when she responded by saying: “Two wrongs don’t make a right!” (Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, P. 155).

You see, unfortunately, many Christian people remain proud of their legalism: their strict observance of the outward form of tradition, although it is often obvious that their actions do not flow from a heart filled with love and joy.

In the Gospels, the Pharisees are always presented as the enemies of Jesus, those who oppose him and challenge him at every turn. Just before our Gospel episode today, in Luke 12:1 Jesus warned the people against “the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.”

This hypocrisy of the Pharisees reminds me of folks we knew when we lived in the country of central Virginia: polite, old-time Virginia people. One woman we lived next door to was always smiles and politeness, a true Southern lady who grew championship-quality daffodils. But it just so happened that her 5 year old son had not yet learned the art of Southern charm, and so when he used to come over and visit our busy young family, with two babies frolicking around, he would let it slip about how his mother truly felt. “My mom wasn’t too happy when your son was peeing in her daffodils!”

Smiles on the outside; but steaming mad on the inside! That, my friends, does not make for a good combination! Jesus lambasted the Pharisees for being so precise to make sure that their dishes were always cleaned exactly right, while neglecting justice for the poor and growing in their love for God.

The hypocrisy of the Pharisees remains a very real danger for us today.

It’s Lent now, as you know! Think about one of the traditional church guidelines for fasting, as an example. For centuries, people have avoided the eating of meat during Lent, and also on Fridays throughout the year. The idea – the end goal – has been to eat more simply as a type of fasting, and red meat was always gourmet fair. But let me ask you this. Which one of these meals accomplishes the goal more clearly today: A gourmet lobster feast or a fast food hamburger?

You see, the practice of avoiding meat is simply a means to an end. The problem with the Pharisees is that they have always confused the means with the end. But the goal of our discipleship – our training with Jesus – is that we become able to always keep these in the right priorities.

And this is one of the difficult things about being a Christian, living as a student-disciple of this Teacher, Jesus Christ. We are not given a manual on how to live. We have directions, yes, in the Scriptures. We have the example of Christ and those of the saints. But all of this needs to be translated and molded and shaped into a real life today, and that can be confusing.

Besides being baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is nothing else that we HAVE to do. But what we DO have to do is make sure that the Pharisees don’t win!

To be sure, the Pharisees are still with us today! The temptation to legalism is very much alive and well today. Let us remember that the goal of this journey that we are walking together is about our BEING and not our DOING, about the kind of people we are becoming.

One of the great preachers of our time, Fred Craddock, gave this simple summary recently about the trajectory of his life now that he is growing older. He said this: “Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully, and leave everything else to God” (Craddock Stories).

Now that is a plan for life in which the Pharisees do not win! Let’s not make it any more complicated than that. Amen.