“The Constant Gardener”

John 15:1-8

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

May 6, 2012

            It’s ironic, I suppose, but of late I have felt a desire to grow closer to the Lord while knowing that to do that would require me to sacrifice something of myself.  I would need to either get pruned or do some pruning in my life.  My chief obstacle was and continues to be time.  I don’t have enough of it.  And so if I’m going to change something in my life so that I can spend more time with God, indeed, abide with God, make my home with God, then I have to sacrifice my time with something or someone else.  But something was and is calling to me.  I sense a deep need to be closer to God than I have been in order to better serve God and to have a keener sense of shalom (peace, wellness, wholeness) within myself.  Shalom,[1] by the way, is what Jesus is offering us when we are going through distressing times in our lives.  When others tell us – and with sympathy and empathy I do not call into question – that we should “hang in there,” Jesus is offering us so much more and that is summed up in the word “shalom.”  Jesus is telling us here today that when we “abide” in him or “live” in him, find our “home” in him, we can then have a sense of healing when there is no hope for a cure (and I’m not just talking about physical healing).

So I gave up 4 hours a week ago to attend a workshop on centering prayer.  And I don’t need to go into the details of what that is about, but, again, I just had a sense that I needed to know more about it in order to be led into a closer relationship with God.

The group gathered and everyone went by their first names only.  It seemed to me that most of the folks there didn’t know each other, but the two leaders knew all of us.  And then we proceeded into the hows and whys of this method of meditation, of complete silence, of learning how to sense the presence and even the voice of God in the quiet.  We were not to put words into our time with God.  We were to set aside our requests, our pleas, even our praise, and just “be” with God.

I found it hard to believe that I could be surrounded by 15-20 other people and have the necessary sense of being alone with God.  But for two 20-minute sessions, that’s exactly what happened.  I chose a word to help me focus on what I was about and to draw me back into that quiet with God whenever my thoughts wandered out and away to the demands on my life and the attention on others and other things that I was sacrificing.

Centering prayer is not easy.  I have only begun to explore its ramifications for me.  I find it hard to set aside two periods of 20 minutes each day when I can be in complete silence with God, even if I am alone and my chosen place of prayer is quiet.  The noisy thoughts of life intrude without apology.

But what I know from personal experience is that one cannot become closer to God without sacrificing much of what the world deems important and to which we have signed on in the world.  To become closer to God, we have to not only prune ourselves in terms of what we think is important in the world and in our jobs and at school, but we have to allow God to prune us, allow God to enter fully into our lives and take hold, cutting off those parts of our minds and thoughts that are not bearing fruit for God.

This passage of scripture from John comes on the heels of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples.  He has just used the metaphor of grapes and bread to represent his blood and body.  Those of us who call ourselves Christians absolutely must understand that we cannot exist without that life-giving juice and bread.  We know that cut off from Christ, we are nothing.

Now Jesus seems to be turning us into farmers, or, at the very least, florists.  When those buds begin to form on the rose bush or the peonies, as much as we would love to leave them there because we are impatient in our enthusiasm to see those buds burst into flowers, we know that if we snip those buds, the flowers will be larger and more abundant.  We have to prune in order to get the results we want.

Jesus talks the same way of the fruits of the grape and their relationship to the vine.  The closer the cluster of grapes is to the main stem or main branch of the grapevine, the larger and more abundant that cluster of grapes will be.  The word Jesus uses here when he talks of the need for pruning is the same word he used when he talked of foot washing in the midst of that last supper.  There is a sense of cleansing in that pruning.  We are cleansed as we prune ourselves in order to spend more time with God.  And we are cleansed as God prunes us in various ways through the challenges in our lives.  Pruning brings us closer to God.

Southern Baptist Preacher Fred Craddock speaks of his father who really had no time for church and even less time for preachers.  He was convinced that all that preachers and the church wanted out of him was money.  “The church doesn’t care about me,” he would mutter time and time again.  “Church wants another name, another pledge, another name, another pledge.”  He never wanted the preacher to come visit and ordered him away before he could get to the door.  If there was a revival in town and the preacher brought the visiting evangelist by the house to introduce him, Craddock’s father would chase them both away, saying time and time again, “The church doesn’t care about me. The church wants another name and another pledge.”  Craddock says he heard that from his dad a thousand times.

But there came a time when things changed.  His dad was in the veterans’ hospital, down to 73 pounds.  The doctors had taken out his throat and put in a metal tube.  He was burned by X-rays.  He couldn’t eat and he couldn’t speak.  But when he went to visit him, he discovered his father surrounded by bouquets of flowers and stacks of cards 20 inches deep beside his bed.  And every flower, every card, every blossom, had come from people or groups in the church.

Unable to talk, his father took a Kleenex box and wrote a line from Shakespeare on the side of it. “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”

Craddock said, “What’s your story, Daddy?”

His father wrote, “I was wrong.”[2]

Pruning can be extremely painful.  Sometimes it comes down to just admitting that we have been wrong in our judgments of people and their actions.  Sometimes it comes in the midst of our own physical or emotional distress as we analyze how in the world things have gotten so bad or so out of hand.  And then we realize that we just didn’t stay close enough to the main branch in order to bear fruit abundantly and live.  Sometimes we come to realize that we need our church family even in the midst of differences so that we are held accountable for what we believe and what we say as is every member of that church family.  And sometimes we have to understand that as a church family, we must be willing to ask for and accept help (as well as give it).

A newspaper reporter went to interview a successful entrepreneur. “How did you do it?” he asked. “How did you make all this money?”

“I’m glad you asked,” the entrepreneur replied. “Actually, it’s a rather wonderful story. You see, when my wife and I married, we started out with a roof over our heads, some food in our pantry, and five cents between us. I took that nickel, went down to the grocery store, bought an apple, and shined it up. Then I sold it for ten cents.”

“What did you do then?” the reporter asked.

“Well,” he said, “then I bought two more apples, shined them up, and sold them for twenty cents.” The reporter thought this would be a great human interest story.

“Then what?” the reporter asked excitedly.

“Then my father-in-law died and left us $20 million,” the businessman said.

That man prospered not because of his own ingenuity, but because he was connected.[3]

You and I must be connected as well – to each other, certainly, in the church family so that we can be the face of Christ for one another.  But in the midst of that, we must also allow ourselves to be connected as closely as possible to that main stem, that main branch of the vine so that we can find our home in Christ, in God, and bear fruit abundantly in the way we act, in what we say, in our offerings to God and to community.  In so doing, we glorify the one who created us and gives us each new day, everything we own, and abundantly provides for us.  All we have belongs to God.  Sometimes we must be pruned in order to recognize that.  God has been busy pruning me, especially of late, and calling me closer to him.

Praise God, the constant and patient gardener, who snips us here and there and awakens us to the need for us to prune ourselves in order to be closer to God and Christ.  And praise the Holy Spirit for motivating us, causing us to listen, when God is calling us to himself.

Amen.

“Which Came First? The Shepherd or the Sheep?”
John 10:11-18

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

April 29, 2012

            We can’t help but get this notion about good shepherds and bad shepherds in this passage of scripture, even though bad shepherds are never referenced.  We have the hired help who have no vested interest in the sheep for whom they care and so they flee when danger arises.  But there is no discussion here of good vs. bad.  That’s because the original Greek word used here and what Jesus intended for good does not have bad as an antonym or opposite.  The word good as a descriptive of shepherd (and, of course, the good shepherd is Jesus) carries a definition more attuned to an English translation of “ordered, sound, noble, ideal, model, true, competent, faithful, and praiseworthy.”[1]

Jesus is the epitome of a good shepherd.  He exemplifies a noble, competent, faithful, true and praiseworthy caretaker of the flock.  His actions are ordered, ideal and provide a model for all of us.  His decisions and his leadership and his admonitions to all of us are sound.  When we recite the 23^rd Psalm, written hundreds of years before Jesus lived, it is not difficult to picture Jesus in that role of shepherd:  providing for our needs, guiding us through difficulties, providing solace in the midst of turmoil, and protection from our enemies.

Protection from our enemies.  Now there’s an interesting one.  The 23^rd Psalm is specific about preparing a feast in the presence of one’s enemies.  We tend to picture – as the people of Jesus’ time did – a scene as we “good guys” are sitting down and eating a sumptuous feast while those we hate or hate us just stand there and watch, perhaps hoping for a tasty morsel to fall to the floor.  But when Jesus talks about being a good shepherd, we must acknowledge that he’s talking about the opposite:  everyone is invited to the feast – those of us who picture ourselves as “good guys” and those we also picture as the “bad guys.”  This applies to our friends and enemies within the confines of the church just as much as it does to Islamic terrorists domestically and abroad.  It applies to those we might consider to be bullies just as much as it applies to those who are meek.  It applies to Democrats and to Republicans.  We are all invited to the table.

What Jesus has done in describing himself as the good shepherd is make us take a second look at ourselves.  In his exemplary manner, Jesus has determined an orderly, ideal model for all of us by telling us that both friends and enemies are invited to his table, that extending hospitality to strangers and to people we don’t like is just part and parcel of being a Christian.  And it is his intention to bring everyone into his fold – make everyone part of the good shepherd’s flock – that we might all follow him and learn from him and take up the example he set for us of extending hospitality, inviting everyone to join us at the table – at his table, not ours.

But that’s a big part of our problem, isn’t it?  We come in here with an idea of a god that we have invented, a shepherd of our own concoction.  It is as though we put our individual job descriptions together for a shepherd to lead our flock or to lead us individually and we have interviewed and rejected those that don’t measure up to our standards.  We think that we, as the sheep, have a right to determine what qualities our shepherd should possess and if the applicant seems to be too different than we are, or too adamant about how we are to behave, or too demanding in terms of our devotion and time, then we’ll just keep looking for another shepherd.  Worse yet, we don’t look at all for a shepherd.  We are more content to wander aimlessly around without supervision than to have a shepherd who might lead us on a new path or along still waters with which we are unfamiliar.  Jesus doesn’t fit our job descriptions.

Abraham Lincoln had, from a very early age, what was called in those days “melancholy.”  Today we call it clinical depression.  In his late teens and early 20s, neighbors would take him in “to preserve this precious soul,” or, in other words, to keep him from committing suicide.  People who are clinically depressed will quickly tell you that depression is not something you can will to go away or defeat as though it were an enemy.  What Lincoln did was come to an understanding of himself, knowing full well that what he had within him was both light and darkness.  He did not think of the light and the darkness as enemies of one another – as opposites or antonyms.  Rather, he embraced both of them as inseparable parts of who he was, and he “integrated” the dark and light thus preserving not only his own life, but allowing himself to draw into the depths of his heart and find an understanding of light and dark in order to achieve success and manage the country in the midst of Civil War.

Author Parker Palmer observes in his new book Healing the Heart of Democracy, “Because he knew dark and light intimately – knew them as inseparable elements of everything human – he refused to split North and South into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’” a split that might have taken us closer to the national version of suicide.

“Instead, in his second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, a month before the end of the Civil War, Lincoln appealed for ‘malice toward none’ and ‘charity for all,’ animated by … an ‘awe-inspiring sense of love for all’ who bore the brunt of the battle.  In his appeal to a deeply divided America, Lincoln points to an essential fact of our life together:  if we are to survive and thrive, we must hold its divisions and contradictions with compassion, lest we lose our democracy.”  Upon the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, President Lincoln came out of the White House and declared, “Let the band play ‘Dixie.’  It belongs to all of us.”

Palmer says that’s the way we need to behave toward one another today “as we work on reconciling whatever divides us from ourselves—and then move out with healing power into a world of many divides, drawing light out of darkness, community out of chaos, and life out of death.”[2]

We are a people who are downright uncivil to one another. Our culture has not only allowed us but encouraged us to completely ignore the qualities of the Good Shepherd, to toss them aside as if that kind of leadership, that kind of care for others is simply old-fashioned, out-of-date, unrealistic.  And, yet, we have the absolute gall to call ourselves Christians, all the while leaving the qualities of the Good Shepherd to a man that lived 2,000 years ago, or maybe giving a nod to the likes of Abraham Lincoln; but that’s all history too.

You know, Jesus wasn’t some weak-kneed ninny who allowed himself to be pushed around or who walked away from a fight.  Jesus stood strongly for what he believed.  He was not complacent when it came time to make his point about the money-changers in the Temple.  He had studied the situation carefully and it was with deliberation that he charged in there that day and upset the tables and drove out the crooks.

The Good Shepherd possesses strength of will, there is no doubt about that.  He would not have gone to the cross and died there for us if he did not see a strong purpose in that.  That alone took a strong will.  But in dying on that cross and, leading up to that, in so many areas of his life, Jesus was ever unpretentious.

Parker Palmer suggests that, drawing on the example set by Abraham Lincoln, there are two words that describe what we all need in order “to evolve better and better answers” to the differences among us – chutzpah and humility:

• Chutzpah (nerve, self-confidence) to speak our minds about what we believe is right and wrong in the world and what we believe should be done about it; and
• Humility that is true enough to make us understand the necessity to listen to one another, to know that we do not possess all of the answers and we can only find answers when we are open to hearing other people’s thoughtful opinions.

Jesus had chutzpah and Jesus had humility.  That’s what made/makes him the Good Shepherd.  That’s what made him say he intended to draw all people to himself, that we might be one and undivided.  It is chutzpah and humility that the psalmist so clearly depicts when he speaks of the Lord’s providence, protection, and, yes, hospitality even to those who would hurt us.

We have, in this congregation, “official” shepherds.  The Board of Deacons serve as shepherds for each of you, tending to you as you have need, listening to you as you need to talk, advocating for you in the midst of grief, of illness, of challenge.  Our “official” shepherds are not infallible.  They do make mistakes.  And are still learning how to be good shepherds.  So to those of you who serve in this capacity, and to all the rest of us who say we are Christians but need a little guidance in that area, remember that Jesus the Good Shepherd had chutzpah and humility.

With those qualities we can be further assured that our souls will be restored as we are all invited and gathered at the table in the presence of and seated with our enemies.

Our Savior, like a Shepherd, leads us.  Amen.

There is no written version of today’s sermon, but do take time to listen to the three members of our confirmation class who provided a trio of sermons based on the disciples’ walk to Emmaus.  These young people reflect on how they have come to see Jesus walking with them in their own lives.

“Going to War”

John 20:19-31

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

April 15, 2012

            On Monday of this week, the committee in charge of putting together a brand new hymnal for the Presbyterian Church (USA) gave us a sneak peek by putting on-line the list of all the hymns to be contained in the new hymnal.  The new book is scheduled to be released this fall.  It has been 20 years since the Presbyterians produced a “new” hymnal.  We have several copies of that back in the Methodist Room.  It has a blue cover.  This 1990 version of hymns “approved” for Presbyterian use replaced another blue hymnal, published in 1970.  Before that, the Presbyterians had the red hymnal, published in1955 which replaced the black hymnal which was published in 1933.  I’m not sure what Presbyterians used prior to 1933.  And, as you may have noticed, we are a Presbyterian Church and while we sometimes insert hymns from various Presbyterian hymnals into our worship, we have not had a Presbyterian hymnal for use in this congregation in many, many years (and long before I appeared on the scene).

As music and worship have changed and, in some cases, changed dramatically, and the church has changed too, new incarnations of the Presbyterian hymnal have arrived.  Depending on whether you were raised Presbyterian, you might be familiar with any or all of the hymnals I’ve mentioned.  In the various churches of which I’ve been a member or served as the pastor, I have used all of those hymnals.

Now, before I go any further, I want you to take note that the two main hymns we’re singing today are “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.”  It’s important for you to note that because I did my worship planning for this Sunday weeks ago and I had no idea, other than the scripture, what would be the substance of my sermon.  Nor did I know that the Presbyterian Church (USA) would be releasing the list of contents of the new hymnal this week.

Having pointed that out to you, I want you to know that I learned on Monday that the new Presbyterian hymnal will have neither one of those hymns in it.

That doesn’t surprise me.  “Onward, Christian Soldiers” was last approved for Presbyterian singing back in 1990.  And “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” was last published in the 1970 Presbyterian hymnal.  Technically, Presbyterians have ignored both of these hymns for 22-32 years.  The reason those two hymns have been left out of Presbyterian publications is because of their war-like lyrics.  They talk about armies, and conflict, and the noise of battle.  They speak of marching as to war, of triumph and victory.

And what does Jesus say when he shows up the evening of his resurrection – shows up out of the blue in that upper room with the disciples?  He says, “Peace be with you.”  He says it twice, in fact.  And a week later when our doubting friend Thomas finally gets to see the risen Lord, Jesus says to Him, “Peace be with you.”

These verses of scripture may in and of themselves be used in pulpits across America this Sunday to explain exactly why we do not sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.”  Jesus didn’t talk about war.  Jesus talked about peace.

Well, there was a conversation on Facebook about the contents of the new hymnal and, I’ve told you before, I don’t post much on Facebook.  But I couldn’t resist because one person had observed, “Who cares about ‘Onward Christian Solders’ when you can sing, ’For everyone born, a place at the table?’ It is neither a loss nor a disappointment.”[1]  And another wrote, “I’m so glad ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ is not listed. While I have had to play the music a few times, I will not sing the text.”[2]

So I responded, “Leaving out ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and ‘Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus’ ignores the need, indeed, the requirement, that being a Christian is very difficult, especially when standing up against the culture. Those songs do not advocate war; they advocate vigilance and determination in the face of actual, very real threats against those of us who are “fighting” to maintain and gain ground in a community that is increasingly turning away from any form of worship of God and any deliberate part of the body of Christ, the church. I am reminded of a . . . song made recently popular by Lyle Lovett:  ”I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.”[3]  ”I’ll put my breastplate on…” etc.  All with scriptural reference and certainly not taken out of context of Paul.  Refusing to sing the text only makes me think you have not read that text in the context of the day and the church. It is more relevant than ever.”[4]

And I’m going out on a limb with all of you here today by pointing out in this scripture – as Jesus says repeatedly, “Peace be with you,” he also, almost in the same breath, tells his disciples to put their fear aside.  He sends them out into a world, a culture that was willing to hang Jesus from a cross until death, and to forgive them in his name.  He tells them to believe even though they doubt.  And he tells us to believe even though we are not like Thomas – we cannot see the mark of the nails in his hands and feet or the score of the sword in his side.  Jesus says we are blessed if we believe and he knows he is asking a lot, but if anyone has the wherewithal to ask a lot, isn’t it Jesus?

What is happening in this passage of scripture is Jesus sending his followers out as an army of the Lord, preaching and teaching, sharing, forgiving, healing.  He is saying, “Don’t you dare cower, don’t you dare hide.  We have the victory, the victory over death.  And it’s up to all of you to share that, as soldiers marching as to war.”

Clarence Jordan was an African-American preacher in the south in the 1900s who started a new church in Georgia that was composed of both white and black people.  They were harassed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Methodist preacher and bishop Will Willimon tells of meeting Jordan and of a story Jordan told:  He “said that it was one thing for him to endure such threats, but quite another thing to ask his young family to bear threats as well. One day, his little daughter came in from school crying. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

“’Daddy, some of the kids are mean. Bob Speck, when he sees me coming down the hall comes up and knocks me down. He says ugly words to me too.’

“Jordan’s heart went out to his little daughter. ‘Honey, you’ve got long fingernails. Why don’t you scratch his eyes out?’

“And she said, ‘Well, I thought about that, but I heard you say in your sermon that Jesus said we’re supposed to love our enemy, so I thought I shouldn’t scratch his eyes out.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: tomorrow I’ll go to the school and I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes while I beat the daylights out of that Bob Speck.’

“’Daddy, you can’t do that,’ she said.

“’Why not?’ Jordan asked.

“His little daughter replied, ‘You can’t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes.’

“It’s Easter,” Willimon writes. “Jesus has defeated death and returned to us, commissioned us, breathed his Holy Spirit upon us to do his work. We can’t be excused from following him for 15 minutes. He is with us now in life, in death, in life beyond death, for all time.”[5]

I agree.  We shouldn’t go beating up anyone or hurting anyone or bombing anyone.  We should never lift a hand to strike another human being.  But if you think for one moment that the Good News of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is going to find its way into the mainstream of American or world-wide thought without the determination, commitment, and training that it takes for any army, any military unit to win a war, then you are not aware of what we’re up against; you haven’t been paying attention to what the real world is all about.

And, no, we do not all worship the same god.  We worship the God of grace, of forgiveness, of mercy, of everlasting love, and the One God who is powerful enough to defeat death (hear that military word “defeat”?) and raise God’s only Son from the grave, have him appear physically (they touched him!) before his closest followers and at least 500 other people before ascending into heaven.  And because our God, our Lord defeats death, you and I have eternal life that begins right now and continues beyond the grave.

Christ sends us out as a mighty army to tell others this awesome news; to tell others, not beat them over the head with it.

“Like a mighty army moves the Church of God;

            Christians, we are treading where the saints have trod.

            We are not divided; all one body, we:

            One in hope and doctrine, One in charity.”  (“Onward, Christian Soldiers”)

And from our closing hymn:

“Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer;

            Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.” (“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”)

You won’t find those words in any recent editions of the Presbyterian hymnals, nor many of the other so-called main-line church hymnals.  They are too militaristic.  They are not politically correct.

But Jesus was not politically correct.  We need to spend less time worrying about being politically correct and more time doing what Jesus sends us out to do:  to tell others of the love of God in Christ, of the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead and the life everlasting.  And when others know that Good News, they will understand completely when we say to them on his behalf, “Peace be with you.”

Amen.

“The Sweet Smell of Fresh Bread”

Mark 16:1-8

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

April 8, 2011 (Easter)

             There was a day when I used to bake fresh bread from scratch and I did it regularly.  No bread-baking machine.  Carefully I put the ingredients together, kneaded it until it “felt right”, and then shaped it into a loaf, covered it with a kitchen towel, and waited for it to rise.  Sometimes, I couldn’t resist peeking under the towel to see, if indeed, the loaf was doing what it was supposed to do and whether any little bubbles appeared on the surface which would tell me that I hadn’t quite gotten it right.  When the time was right, into the oven it would go, and, oh, the wonderful smell of freshly baking bread would come wafting out of the oven and through the house.

            When I got adventurous, I tried my hand at French bread.  And then I invented my own version of a honey whole wheat.  That one was a really sweet smell.

            While I did serve as an elder in the church, I was never ordained as a deacon, but I did take training for hospice care.  Those first steps were difficult and it happened that the first person to whom I provided any kind of care at all happened to be a member of our church, and a wonderful woman.  When I knew I was going to visit her, I would bake a loaf of the honey whole wheat to take with me.  I knew that she preferred a whole grain bread, even though she didn’t eat much of anything.  But it was kind of odd because I felt that just showing up empty handed to talk when she wanted to talk and just sit in silence as she slept with labored breathing was not enough.  I had to show up and take something.  I had to feel that I was contributing something.  I could not show up empty-handed.  The offering of myself was not enough.

            Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome must have had some of that feeling as well.  They wanted to perform some sort of service to their Lord even though he was already dead.  So they put their heads together and, in their grief, they consoled one another by acknowledging that Jesus did not get a “proper” Jewish burial.  His body was not properly anointed with the spices used for burial.  And so, while wanting to visit the grave, they did not want to show up empty-handed.  They wanted to contribute something.  As soon as the Sabbath was over and they were able to perform any kind of work under Jewish law, they fetched the spices from whoever sold them at that very early hour of the morning and made their way to the tomb at first light.

            Many of us visit the graves of loved ones and place upon them flowers or wreaths or other little mementos.  Some of us find some solace in visiting those tombs, perhaps because that’s the last place we stood in the presence of our loved one, even though he or she has already been dead for several days.  But we could see, prior to the burial, some physical evidence of where that body was, even if only hidden in the casket.  The women who went to Jesus’ tomb that morning had not had the benefit of a funeral procession.   They did not see him placed in that tomb.  But word had quickly spread where Jesus was laid.  They were not so unlike us, were they?  They wanted to be in his presence once more.  They wanted to know for certain that he was there and they wanted to do something, to serve him one last time, to leave with him the dignity of a proper burial.

            They didn’t have a clue how they were going to move that huge boulder away from the entry to the tomb.  And they must have had some trepidation at even seeing his broken and bloodied body after three days and without the benefits of modern embalming methods.  The stench would have been horrific.  All of that might have been enough to keep them away.  But they could not turn their backs on him.  They loved him so much.  And they knew, without doubt, he loved them.

            The story, of course, is that upon arrival they discovered the stone already rolled away and the tomb empty.  In Mark’s version, there is a young man whom we can safely assume was an angel, a messenger from God, assuring them that Jesus had risen from the dead.  And he gave them the promise of actually seeing Jesus again if they would just go tell Peter and the others, because Jesus had said he would meet them again in Galilee.

            But this is where things are so different according to Mark than they are to Matthew, Luke, and John.  Mark tells us the women “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  The other three gospel writers tell us that it was the women who were the first to proclaim the Good News of Christ’s victory over death.  And while you will see in your Bibles additional verses after the ones we read today, scholars are certain that these verses were not written by Mark, but added later by early Christians.  Mark just ends his gospel with a mystery.  The women were amazed and fearful and they said nothing to anyone.  And even those earliest in the church were uncomfortable with leaving that mystery “as is.”  They had to add a few details to answer a few of their own and our questions.

            But having that mystery is part of the resurrection glory, isn’t it?  We know that someone eventually couldn’t keep the news to herself.  Once their fear subsided, one of those women, if not all of them, must have confided in the other disciples, told them what they saw and heard.  And, of course, from other accounts, we know that Jesus did, in fact, show himself to the disciples as promised.

            Mark just invites us to be comfortable with the mystery.  Mark has already shared the story of Jesus’ death on the cross – and for us.  But Mark wants us to be satisfied with the very real fact that we can’t explain everything.  We must accept, on faith, what Mark relates about the women:  an angel told them Jesus had risen from the dead.  And, some way, somehow, Jesus would meet them again in a physical, not heavenly, location called Galilee.

            Yes, there is a mystery to the resurrection.  Nonetheless, it is real, it happened.  And, yes, there is a mystery in why we take comfort in not going “empty-handed” to visit one who is dying or has died.  But that is also where our faith kicks in and, I think, in bringing something, anything, as an offering, we find ourselves comforted in the sure and certain knowledge that because Christ defeated death, the ones we love – and even our own selves – know that we have eternal life as well.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons why we bring an offering of financial gifts to our worship service.  We come not empty handed, but with something that will provide further service to the Lord.

            When we come to the Lord’s table to share in his supper as we did on Thursday evening and as we do most always on the first Sunday of each month, we are always reminded that the bread we eat is a sign and a seal of Christ with us.  It is his body.  But its scent is not the horrific smell of one left dead for days in a grave.  It is the sweet smell of fresh bread.  An indication of life and the sustenance the bread, the body of Christ, provides.

            Christ is alive!  He is risen from the dead!  And we have eternal life, beginning right now.  And all we have to offer in the midst of this marvelous mystery is ourselves.  Even empty-handed, we belong to the Lord.

            Amen.

John 13:1–17

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

April 5, 2012 (Maundy Thursday)

A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the four pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.

“Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your puppies.”

“Well,” said the farmer as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, “these puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.”

The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.

“I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?”

“Sure,” said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. “Here, Dolly!” he called. Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur. The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse. Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up.

“I want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to the runt. The farmer knelt down at the boy’s side and said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.”

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers. In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg, attaching itself to a specially made shoe. Looking back up at the farmer, he said, “You see sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.”

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup. Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.

“How much?” asked the little boy.

“No charge,” answered the farmer. “There’s no charge for love.”

The world is full of people who need someone who understands.[1]

You and I all come here tonight in various states of vulnerability.  This Holy Week I have thought more deeply than I ever have before about what Jesus might have been feeling about his ministry, especially after he rode into Jerusalem to be met with the shouts of adoring crowds and, yet, knowing they would turn their backs on him.  And as he gathered with his closest followers on that night of his last supper, he knew that even those who he may have loved the most would betray him, deny him, turn their backs on him and allow him to die without so much as a protestation, without stepping up and simply declaring, even in small weak voices, “This man has done nothing wrong.”

Most of us, at some point in our lives, feel denied and betrayed.  And we know how much it hurts to have friends and spouses turn away from us.  On the other hand, most of us have also been the deniers and the betrayers, not only the recipients of that hurt, but the donors of it.  In some ways, we are all crippled by the hurt we have suffered at the hands of others, and in other ways we have all crippled others with the hurt we have consigned to them.

But Jesus, the scripture says, “. . . loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  That is, Jesus loved his disciples, he loved Peter who would deny him and Judas who would betray him and he continued to love them until he took his last breath on that cross.

Jesus, who experienced it all – only without sin – understands us.  He understands what it feels like to be hurt by others and he knows whereof he speaks when he gives all of his disciples, including all of us tonight, a new commandment, a new mandate (that’s where we get the term “Maundy” Thursday…from the word “mandate”):  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

You know, a pastor’s stole is not just a piece of decoration.  A pastor’s stole carries two meanings with it and was devised with two pieces of scripture in mind.[2]  One would be the comparison of the stole to the heavy yoke placed on the oxen.  And Jesus said, in that context, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

And the second connection the pastor’s stole has to Jesus comes from our scripture tonight.  The stole represents the towel that Jesus used to wash the feet of his disciples, a menial task, a task never, ever performed by anyone but a slave or, in the absence of a slave, a woman.  During supper, when Jesus knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples, he was exhibiting love beyond their ability to understand.  Peter wanted no part of it; declared that he would never allow Jesus to wash his feet.  And when Jesus called him out and said that Peter must allow him to do it or not be his disciple anymore, then Peter suddenly jumps from not wanting his feet washed by Jesus, but his whole body.  Peter has missed the point.  He’s all in when it comes to giving allegiance to Jesus with his lips at that moment in time, but a few hours later, his lips deny that he even knows the man who would lower himself to be a servant, a slave to others who he loves so much.

Jesus said, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

They did not understand the washing of their feet.  How could they possibly understand that he would allow himself to be hanged on that cross and die for them…for us?

He did have a choice, you know.  He didn’t have to do any of that.  He was not only the Son of God, he was God.  And in his servitude, he saved us from our own sins and understands us better than we understand ourselves.

And now, like the little boy with the tiny little puppy, we are to understand one another, love one another as Jesus loved us.

“No charge,” answered the farmer. “There’s no charge for love.”

Amen.

“Fickle-dee-dee”

Mark 11:1-11

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

April 1, 2011 (Palm Sunday)

            Each of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) handle the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem in different ways.[1]  There are some details that are the same.   Some stories differ.  Matthew and John’s stories are altogether triumphant, but Matthew puts a stronger emphasis on Jesus’ kingship.  In Luke, the crowds hail Jesus as king and the Pharisees call him teacher but there are no palm branches in sight.  John also portrays Jesus as a prophet who foretells the destruction of Jerusalem and weeps over the city.  And in Mark, as we just read today, Jesus really isn’t hailed as a king at all.  We don’t get the impression of the same kind of triumphal entry into the city as the other gospels, but, rather, a simple and lowly ride into the city where he is welcomed by some kind of unidentified crowd who, nonetheless, spread palm branches in his path.

No matter how we might want to reconcile these various interpretations of what actually happened that day, we know that before the end of the week, those people who welcomed him, the disciples who followed him, the disciple on whom Jesus said he would build his church (Peter), and another disciple (Judas) – all of these people, lowly, normal people, everyday people like you and me – would turn their backs on this man whom they professed as their Lord and their King.

The deal here is that the people in those days just as all of us here today expected and expect a Messiah that meets our criteria, a King who rules in a manner consistent with what we believe is right.  Jesus didn’t make the grade then and he doesn’t make the grade now because I don’t think we would recognize him if he did show up here in person this morning.  We have an idealized version of who Jesus is and what Jesus would do if he were here.  All of us think that Jesus would agree with our particular theological and political positions.

The Anglican theologian and scholar N.T. Wright, has a new book out in which he discusses the very real fact that most Christians in the western world are puzzled why the gospels are there at all.  And, he says, it’s because we’ve dissected them and analyzed them to the point that we don’t see any coherence to them anymore and we’ve lost sight of what they mean.  It’s time to put them all together again, and, “when you do, it’s explosive.”

He reminds us that a lot of Jesus’ parables are told precisely in order to say “no, the kingdom isn’t what you thought it was.  The story the gospels tell which is how God became king is one the whole western world has not only not wanted to hear, it has forgotten that story is even out there in the first place.”

Wright says that in the “western tradition,” Jesus’ divinity is the major view of who he is. Certainly, we would agree that Jesus was divine – that he was fully human, yet fully God.  But Wright suggests that we have put so much emphasis on the divinity, on Jesus’ ability to work miracles and stand in transfiguration with the likes of Moses and the prophet Elijah, that we have forgotten that Jesus is not only the Son of God, Jesus IS God and that God becomes king in Jesus.  “And that means God is running the show.”

Now, here’s the clincher as far as I’m concerned with what Wright says, “. . .however you’re going to do your politics in society, if you are a Christian, you should do it in such a way as to find a system that acknowledges the Sovereignty of God even though how that works out is going to be very tricky.”[2]

So the way I see this working together is that while we continue to raise up Christ’s divinity, we are also to recognize that God has come to earth, is running the show, and our response needs to be to acknowledge that life on earth is not what God intended and that human beings have created systems, governmental, school, private business, and, yes, even the church – systems that do not in any way resemble or act like God is here and in control.  That has happened because we want a God created in our image rather than the other way around.

I can barely remember an old folk song which, I think was played on the radio at least long enough for people to learn it and then it probably didn’t last long.  Written back in the late 1950s, the song is called “Plastic Jesus.”[3]  In those days, and I suspect they still exist in some quarters today, you could buy a plastic Jesus and mount it on your dashboard, I suppose to remind you that Jesus was with you and protecting you from wrecking your car.  And the song that resulted from all of those plastic Jesus’s mounted on dashboards across America should remind us (because while things have changed since the ‘50s, this hasn’t) that we have created an image of Christ in our heads that doesn’t match who the real Jesus was and is.  The words to the song are, at times, blasphemous, and the original lyrics have been expanded to many, many verses and renditions.  While it would be considered mild by today’s standards, it left folks aghast back in those days. But here’s a taste of what the original lyrics said about the plastic Jesus on the singer’s dashboard:

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘Long as I got my Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car.

Could go a hundred miles an hour
Long as I got the Almighty Power
Glued up there with my pair of fuzzy dice

Riding on the dashboard of my car.

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car

Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I’ll go far.

What you and I and those crowds in Jerusalem want is a kind of plastic Jesus, one who will protect us from all manner of personal misbehavior, who will be there when we want him and who will stay away when we don’t.  We want, like the crowds in Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, an invention of our creative minds who we can summon up when we need help and curse when things don’t go our way, whose name we can take in vain or who will allow us just to turn our heads and not say a word when others do.  We want a Jesus who will fill our pockets with money and if everyone doesn’t live as well as we do then we will support our system and let Jesus take care of everybody else if he wants to.  What we want and what we have conjured up – just as the crowds in Jerusalem did that day – is a convenient Jesus.

This week in the mid-week Bible study the discussion turned to whether any of us would turn our backs on Jesus as the crowds did those few days after he rode into Jerusalem.  And, folks, I had to confess that as much as I really, really try to follow Jesus – the Jesus I believe is not the convenient one – I might find myself denying him along with Peter.  The reason is that following an inconvenient Jesus is really hard in good times because following one who is the Sovereign God when much of the world doesn’t results in a lot of hardship, in acrimony, and makes one the object of ridicule.  What if I had to see Jesus face-to-face, even in a crowd?  If the crowd were cheering, I would certainly cheer.  But knowing how hard it is to be his disciple without him standing physically right here makes me think that when push came to shove I would give in to the crowd mentality and deny him too.

If you can say with certainty that you would never, ever deny Jesus under any circumstances – well, good for you and teach the rest of us how you do that.  But for those of us who find ourselves afraid of what our own weak reactions might be, well, what we have to remember is that the gospels are true – all of them.  Jesus is God.  God is the king.  And the cross to which Jesus walks this week is one built for all of us to die upon, but none of us have to because Jesus did that for us.  Our view of Jesus is way too small, and our hearts and minds are fickle.

Christ the Lord is King.  “His kingdom cannot fail; He rules over earth and heaven.  Lift up your heart; lift up your voice! Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!”[4]

Amen.

“Front Row Seats”

John 12:20-33

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

March 25, 2012 (Fifth Sunday in Lent)

            What do you suppose God was up to when those Greeks – of all people!  Greeks!  …when those Greeks approached Philip to see if he could hook them up with Jesus?  They had come to Jerusalem to worship, the scripture says.  It may have been that they had been converted or were thinking of converting to Judaism from whatever pagan or secular gods that were particularly popular among the Greeks in that day.  I think of the confirmation class in the midst of this as they come to some of their own decisions about what they believe and whether they are ready or want to join the church.  There are lots of questions that arise about the whys and wherefores of how God works, why Jesus had to die, who to believe when it comes to being a Christian.  These Greeks, if they were newcomers to Judaism, would have had a lot of questions too.

By this time, Jesus was something of a rock star.  If someone tells me that Lyle Lovett is coming to Madison, my first thought is how do I get to see him and what are my chances of getting a front row seat?  Do I ask just anyone on the street for a ticket?  No!  I figure out who has the tickets, who has access to them, and then I contact those people or that person and stand in line if I have to in order to get the best seat I can.

That seems to me some of what these Greeks were doing.  They had asked around:  Who knows Jesus?  Who are his closest friends?  Who do we see to get access to him?  Jesus was constantly surrounded by crowds, by fans, and by those who were not his fans at all but were there only trying to get the goods on him to have him locked away.  These Greeks wanted not just to see him from afar.  They wanted the best seats; they wanted to be up close and personal.  And without doubt, they had questions for him about what he believed and what he taught.

It is also, perhaps, the first time that the disciples got an inkling that Jesus’ attraction was not limited to those of their own ethnic persuasion.  These were foreigners and, as such, would have been greeted with suspicion at best.  After all, God’s covenant was with the Jews and no one else.  So not knowing exactly what to do with all of this, Philip told the Greeks to hold on and he would see what he could do.  Did he go directly to Jesus?  No, Philip went to another of Jesus’ “handlers,” Andrew, talked it over with him, and when the two of them couldn’t figure it out, they went to Jesus to tell him he had some groupies out there wanting to talk with him.  And foreign groupies to boot.

If John has put all of this in chronological order, and if nothing has been lost in the writings or the translation, it would, at first glance, seem that Jesus completely ignores the request from Philip and Andrew and, therefore, the Greeks.  But I wonder if the news that Jesus’ message has spread beyond the immediate region makes a bigger impact on Jesus than we might think.  Once he has been told that these foreigners are interested in seeing him, Jesus would have had perhaps also the first inclination that his own message had spread sufficiently that his followers would be able to carry it on without his physical presence with them.

Instead of giving Philip and Andrew an answer about the Greeks, Jesus launches into this business about the need to bear fruit (perhaps spread the news of Jesus’ message?).  And, then, in succession, he teaches them that loving life in this world, with its discrimination against those who are different and its systems that keep the poor poor and the rich rich, that keep women from being full and equal partners in the life of the church and the family, that tossed aside widows and children, especially female children, as though they were worthless, cultural systems that were designed and redesigned to vest power only in those that the culture or the Temple or the church deemed powerful – if we are to love all of that life, Jesus teaches, we will lose our lives.  The accepted culture of the day (including our own) would swallow them and us up.  But, he says, if we hate those systems enough to turn our backs on what society says is right and be willing to be ostracized for trying to change those system, being cast out, being shunned by friends, neighbors, family, those in power, and those who don’t even know us, thus losing our lives as we know them today in order to follow Jesus (as, apparently, these Greeks were thinking about doing), then just as those old lives would die, we would be born again with eternal life beginning immediately.

Jesus concludes this interlude that began with the visit from the Greeks by saying, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there my servant will be also.  Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

It would seem, then, Jesus is concluding that just because someone looks different than we do, sounds different, speaks a different language, thinks differently, had a different color of skin is no reason to turn away from them.  Jesus says if we are his followers, we must be wherever he is, and on this particular day he was in a place that was attracting newcomers, new believers, very odd people into his midst.

Evangelist Tony Campolo tells the story of his father[1], an Italian immigrant who “would spend summer evenings gleaning beans at a farm just outside of Philadelphia.  Farmers let him and others glean the beans that had not been picked by the regular pickers, and sell them at a roadside stand.  It was a way of making a few extra dollars in the course of a week.

“It was hard work,” Campolo writes, “but my father was determined to make the few dollars that would enable him to get a decent place to live and buy food.  One evening, as he was picking beans, he looked up from his work and saw, down at the end of a long row, a gigantic African-American man moving quickly, picking beans on either side of the row.  He was picking so fast and so effectively that my father knew that it would be no time at all before all the beans that could be picked would be gone.

“Exhausted and discouraged,” Campolo says, “my father simply sat down on the ground with his empty pail between his legs and watched the giant of a man moving toward him.  Then, surprisingly, the black man stopped just a few feet in front of my father, smiled, took his bucket of beans and dumped them into my father’s bucket.  Then, still smiling, he said, ‘Someday when you see someone who is tired and needs some help, remember what I did for you and you do it for him.’

“My father never got caught up in the racism that pervaded America in the 1930s and ‘40s because whenever he met an African-American person he would think of that giant of a man who had been generous to him in his hour of need.  He always told me as I was growing up to forget race because there was goodness and evil in all races, and he had seen the best and the worst in each of them.”  Campolo concludes, “Lovingkindness is a trait that all Christians should exhibit.  When it is lived out, it can break down the barriers that divide people and can make them one.”

It doesn’t appear that Jesus met the Greeks or if he did we don’t know about it.  But on the heel of discovering that his message had spread, that it would be carried on, he turned to those closest to him and confided in them and in God how his soul was troubled.  He knew he was to die and he didn’t want to suffer.  But he voluntarily went to that cross in order that God would be glorified and that all people would be drawn together in him.

And that’s the word John uses, quoting Jesus:  “I will draw all people to myself.”  Draw.  We aren’t beaten about the head and forced to follow Jesus.  The confirmation class will tell you that I have repeatedly told them that if they are not yet ready to join the church or not yet ready to express their belief that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, then no one will think badly of them for being honest about that.  We are not bribed or otherwise sucked into some kind of cult that follows Jesus.  We are free to come and to go.

“We’re drawn into the healing community of the forgiven—not yanked or cajoled or sweet-talked. Pondering what God is up to in such gentle, magnetic, sure-handed drawing, we can allow our [in telling others the Good News] to be assured rather than shrill, persuasive more than demanding, and patient in awaiting God’s outcomes.”[2]

After all, we have front row seats.  Each of us is guaranteed a front row seat for the continual demonstration of grace, forgiveness and love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

“Just Believe?

John 3:14-21

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

March 18, 2012

            There was an article – featured article – in the paper[1] this week about a man named Carlton Harris.  Harris started dealing drugs at age 12, later attempted to shoot a fellow high school student, and has been convicted of several crimes including assault, drug dealing, robbery, burglary, and bail jumping.  He has done prison time in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

He’s 31 and a few months ago, he was put on notice by Madison police that it was his last chance to get his act together.  He is considered to be one of the 10 worst chronic violent offenders in the community, and now he’s being monitored by police who are “looking for any sign of a screw-up.”

He has a new wife and she has three kids.  But he’s optimistic about a new program that takes 10 offenders at a time as a re-entry program to provide the guidance, jobs, and assistance these offenders need to make a go of a good life instead of a bad one.  Harris has been blessed with several jobs, “always trading up in pay or hours” as he has moved on.  But he’s not making ends meet and has trouble paying his rent and wife is currently out of work.  Most recently, he landed a job at Jack Link’s in New Glarus where he is paid $12.75 an hour.  But he hopes to do better.  He is learning carpentry and is two years into an on-line degree in business administration.

“Asked if he might turn back to a life of crime if times got hard, he says he’s ‘more than positive’ that he never will.

“’My wife helped me find God, and that’s a major part of it,’ he says. ‘We pray together and this is my main support system – her and the kids.’”

The story goes on in some detail about the whole host of support that he is receiving from the community.  His personal testimony to God playing a “major” part in his recovery is never touched upon again the story.  If you just scanned the long article, you could very well have missed it.

“My wife helped me find God, and that’s a major part of it,” he said.

This business about John 3:16 in the scripture today plays a major part in not only Carlton’s recovery, but our own.  Most of us can recite by heart (or should be able to) “For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

You see, it’s that stickler “believes” that makes it all too easy for us.  But for Carlton, well, I’d say, at least for the time-being, he gets it.

Christians are always slapping “John 3:16” on placards to hold up at ball games or putting “John 3:16” on their football eye black.  John 3:16 seems to be the answer to every question that comes up regarding Jesus and being a Christian.  It is the definitive answer to all of life’s problems:  believe and be saved.

There’s nothing in that about faith.  There’s nothing in this passage about faith.  And when we lean so heavily on that one verse, it would also lead us to believe that our profession of belief in Jesus as the Messiah is all it takes to get a ticket to heaven.

To a point, yes, that’s true.  But when you read the original Greek in which all this was written, when you understand that John’s intended audience for his book were the Greeks who prized philosophical thought and intelligence, and when you put this verse in the context we have today, what we must also know is that saying it with our lips in not enough.  Public profession of belief in Christ is not enough.  We have to follow through.

There has long been a debate in the Christian church about faith vs. works; or expressing our belief in Christ as the be-all, end-all and that works don’t figure in to our salvation.  It just isn’t so.

The scripture equates darkness with evil and the light with goodness.  Implied in this (and made clear in other sections of John’s gospel) is that Jesus is the light.  John says we are in charge of our own destiny according to how we choose up sides.  Those that turn to the dark side choose condemnation.  Those who take up with the light see salvation.  And, if you’re anything like me at all, and I consider myself pretty average, on any given day at any given time, you would find me choosing up to the wrong, the dark side.  So, you see, it’s not just a matter of saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”  Because, by golly, I do believe and I love the Lord.  But it is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by minute process in which you and I are absolutely in charge of our fate.

Because, you see, “Jesus came into the world not to condemn it, but to save it.”

So it’s up to us to believe, yes, but it’s also up to us to decide whether we will be obedient in that belief or only give it lip service.  Whether we are true to what we say we believe or whether we are just a bunch of hypocrites.  If our actions, our deeds, our works do not actively reflect that belief, we’re goners.

But if they do, if we really work at being our part of the body of Christ whether we’re the brain, the big toe, or the armpit, it is then that we can know salvation – and not just in the next life.  This isn’t just about the next life.  It’s right now, present tense.  Whenever we actively choose the light over darkness, whenever we are deliberate about allowing our actions to be seen by others rather than waiting for the dark to carry out our less than desirable dealings, we are saved in the light.  But when we deliberately choose to turn to the dark side (and we do it all the time from gossiping to back-stabbing, to stealing the office pencils or a friend’s final exam answers), we are not just tempting fate, we are condemning ourselves to a life without God.  And that, in a nutshell, is hell.

You and I hold all the cards.  Jesus didn’t come here to pass judgment on us.  Jesus came here to save us.  To offer himself up to death on a cross for us so that we could be spared condemnation.  But when he did that, he took himself out of the equation as to who gets into heaven and who doesn’t.  Because you see, we make that determination ourselves.

Carlton deliberately put a gun to a throat of a high school classmate and pulled the trigger.  But the gun jammed.  Instead of just walking away, he “tried to work the slide to clear the weapon.  He raised the gun again to [an]other student’s neck, pulled the trigger and again the gun wouldn’t fire.”

Now, you and I can pass judgment on a guy like that and all of his subsequent bad deeds.  But the fact of the matter is that Carlton stands just as much of a chance of knowing the goodness of salvation as any one of us in this room this morning.  And it just might be that Carlton is standing in better stead with God today than any of us here.

Yes, it takes belief to know salvation.  But it takes putting that belief into action to ensure it.

During this season of Lent, while we reexamine the kind of people we are and determine of what sins we are guilty and how we can repent, how we can change, it’s good to commit to memory if we haven’t already or summon up the words that have become so second nature to us that we have taken them for granted and allowed ourselves to misappropriate and misinterpret them.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes and obeys him may have eternal life.”

All it takes to know salvation, to see heaven, in this life and the next is to believe and to obey.  It’s a lot harder than we originally thought.  The good news is that you and I have a support system right here in this church family.  God continues to bless us with one another as we seek to hold ourselves and each other accountable according to God’s will.  And Jesus has already taken the fall for us.

Amen.

“A Real Bargain”

John 2:13-22

Rev. Gretchen Lord Anderson

First Presbyterian Church, Lodi, WI

March 11, 2012

            I am told that last Sunday after worship was over, our guest preacher was asked how he was feeling about the morning.  He expressed an obvious sense of peace and, among other things, said, “It felt like church.”

When I heard about this I thought it ironic because last Sunday Terry and I attended a Presbyterian Church in Florida.  And when we left the place, we remarked, “It didn’t feel like church.”

It’s not that there was anything wrong with the service we attended.  Everything was done decently and in order.  And it may just have been that we chose the wrong service for us to attend.  Clearly, this was a popular church:  the sanctuary was packed (unlike our own last week).  The congregation offers three services on Sunday morning all in different worship styles, plus another worship gathering on Wednesday evenings.  We will just have to visit a few more times and try them all out to see if we might find “church” in one of the other settings.

There are few of us who do not have a sense of what church “feels” like to us.  We may walk into a new church with no expectations other than to worship God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit (and that’s pretty much what Terry and I had planned last Sunday), but atmosphere, the way things are done, the hospitality of the congregation toward strangers, its transparency, openness – all of those go into helping us feel whether we have been to “church” or not.  And, I suppose because Terry and I are who we are, we may have a heightened sensibility (or have our radar tuned differently) to what we perceive is right or wrong about church – whether it is this one or someone else’s.

While we haven’t seen Jesus in the Jerusalem temple since he was about 12 years old [remember that story about how he was so deeply into conversation with the teachers there that he missed the bus when it took off for Nazareth causing his parents to make the trek back to find him?], it would be safe to conclude that Jesus made annual trips to the Temple with his family every year after that.  Ever since the day of Moses, Hebrew and then Jewish men beginning at the age of 19 or 20 were required to pay a Temple tax which was due around the time of the Feast of the Passover.  We know that Jesus paid the tax at least once if not every year it was required of him and it would be safe to assume that he would have accompanied his father to Jerusalem at least a few of those times between the ages of 12 and 19.  My point here is that Jesus would have witnessed several times the commerce that was occurring at the Temple in the Court of the Gentiles.

People would come to pay their taxes but because those had to be paid in Temple coins rather than everyday federal coins, moneychangers were established – no doubt by the Temple leaders – to exchange that money . . . just as you and I must exchange U.S. currency for foreign currency when we travel outside the country.  The Temple Tax was used for the upkeep and maintenance of the Temple, simple as that.  In addition, people who wanted to bring a sacrifice to the Temple (also dating back to Moses’ time), had to use the Temple currency to buy those animals on site if they did not want to bring them over long distances.  You may remember that Joseph and Mary brought two doves to be sacrificed when Jesus was an infant and presented to the Lord at the Temple.

As you might guess, the charges associated with exchanging money continued to increase, thus lining the pockets of not only the moneychangers who were essentially employees of the Temple, but the leaders of the Temple themselves.  The problem, as in so many cases we can see today, is that the Temple leaders took their eyes off of the will of God for the Temple and its people and learned it was an easy way to make a fast buck at the expense of those who were not only required to pay the temple tax, but of those simple, faithful people who, wanting to honor God through these animal sacrifices, additionally sacrificed their hard-earned money to do so.

So, Jesus would have had years to observe and think about what he believed was right and wrong regarding the commerce going on at the Temple.  What felt like church and what didn’t feel like church.  All four of the Gospels give a version of this story, but only John says that Jesus made a whip and put it to use.  Charlton Heston may have disagreed with me, but I don’t believe that Jesus’ use of the whip was intended to perpetrate physical harm on any of the animals or the people.  It was, however, a pretty deliberate and I would suggest pre-meditated method of getting everyone’s attention.  If we are to connect that whip to anything, I would suggest that this was a foretelling of how Jesus would be whipped before being hanged on the cross.  Considering the point of the entire scripture, this may be a very legitimate view.  Let me explain.

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple was not so much about the money changing or the animal purchasing in and of themselves.  Both of those could certainly be justified in the Scriptures.  But what he saw made him take deliberate action to drive out the livestock and overturn the money tables, all to call attention to the fact that the love of God could not be bought and sold and that the love of God could not be contained within the walls of the Temple.  And, ultimately, that the love of God, formerly thought to reside in the Temple now resided in this man known as Jesus.

We hear Jesus tell everyone within earshot that the building, the Temple building, was virtually worthless.  It could be torn down, destroyed (and, of course, it was destroyed about 70 years later and never rebuilt).  But while it had taken over 45 years to build it in the first place, Jesus said it could be raised up again in three days.

He wasn’t talking about the building.  He was talking about himself, his coming whipping and crucifixion and, then, after three days, his resurrection.  God would raise him up in three days.

What Jesus was attempting to do was to get the Temple leaders and the people to see that bringing or buying sacrifices to the Temple no longer had any value in God’s eyes.  God wanted them to love God, to know that God is love, and to find that love in physical form, not in a building, a temple, or a church structure like this one, but in Jesus Christ himself.

We can see this work of Jesus repeated through the history of the Christian church, most notably to you and me through the efforts of Martin Luther and John Calvin.  Luther didn’t trounce into Vatican Square and raise hob, but he did nail 95 theses, 95 arguments on the church door in Wittenburg, Germany, that were designed to point out that, once again, church leaders were trying to make a fast buck at the expense of people of faith by selling indulgences, little scraps of paper guaranteeing admission to heaven when folks forked over enough money to the church.  Later, Calvin gave the Reformed and Presbyterian churches their start by making it clear that houses of worship needed to be free of icons and decorations and items that would distract from worshipping God, that our emphasis needs to be on the sovereignty of God and the authority of Jesus Christ as head of the church.  Calvin said that the church must be reformed not only from the artificial and man-made demands of the Roman Catholic Church of his day, but that the church must always be reforming according to the will of God.  Neither Luther nor Calvin spoke to the importance of a building.  Both of them emphasized that the church is the body of Christ – you and I are the body of Christ and we must live according to the will of God, not human beings.

When Terry and I were winging our way back from Florida, it was beautiful flying weather.  And as we passed to the west of Chicago, we had a view of the city we had never imagined before.  It was so clear we could pick out the John Hancock building on North Michigan Avenue.  O’Hare Airport was obvious.  And I discovered that if I held up my thumb to the window of the plane – just the end of my thumb – the entire city and the airport were blocked out.  So clearly there one second and so hidden the next.  And it made me think about the millions of people there and I could not see them even though I could see the buildings they inhabited – and I thought with wonder how it is that none of that is hidden from God, that God knows the name of every one of those people, that God is working in each one of those lives, that God loves every one of them plus all of the billions of other people all around the world.  And that God could never been contained within a particular temple or church building.

That’s great news for all of us.  God has revealed God’s self in a man named Jesus.  God gave Jesus all the authority over heaven and of earth.  And Jesus promised to be with us until the end of the age.

A building can’t do that, even one with beautiful stained glass windows.  Neither can one worship service be the be-all end all in terms of finding what’s right for any of us in building our relationship, deepening our relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

In this season of Lent, perhaps this story of the cleansing of the Temple should be one we take with us as we examine our own lives as the body of Christ, whether we are reformed and reforming according to the will of God.  If we are, then when we gather, it will be evident, transparent to those who are our guests that Christ is found here, but not kept here.  That God moves in and through us here, but is not contained here.  That we, as the body of Christ and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit will move from this place into the world, perhaps upsetting a table or two as we seek to be the church and live according to the will of God.

Amen.