Monthly Archives: January 2012

29

Jan. ’12

Take Thou Authority

Mark 1:21-28

Mark’s gospel tells us that early in Jesus’ ministry, our wandering Messiah and his band of followers went to a synagogue, a Jewish house of worship, and began to teach.

We don’t know what part of the Jewish Scriptures Jesus might have referenced, or if he had a particular topic in mind while in Capernaum, a little fishing village along the Sea of Galilee. Mark is typically spare in the details provided. The story instead focuses on the reaction the worshipers had to Jesus.

“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes,” Mark 1:22 tells us. In other words, the truth and power of what Jesus taught seemed rooted in the man himself, more so than the words on the parchment most likely in front of him, words they could have a scribe read to them any time.

Their reaction to Jesus happened even before the next, more tangible event, the entry of a possessed man into the synagogue. The “unclean spirit” within the man seemed to fear Jesus would destroy it and its kind, and it also declared through the man, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

With a very direct command—”Be quiet, and come out of him!”—Jesus exorcised the evil spirit, freeing the man from the possession he had experienced. And of course, the witnesses were astounded.

For nonbelievers, the story sounds anachronistic, rooted in a worldview of mysticism and evil spirits that a rational person should no longer accept. And even for Christians oriented to the idea of a spiritual realm, the story can seem distant, another tale of what Jesus did by way of his divinity a couple of thousand years ago.

It is my prayer, however, that I can convince you this is a story for today. Understood as part of the larger Bible story, it is evidence of the power available to Christians now.

My argument is fairly simple: Jesus was a convincing source of truth and power while on earth because he is God; the church as a whole has the same authority because the people who make it up are empowered by God. It is a very scriptural argument.

John’s gospel captures Jesus promising as much in John 14:12: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Jesus also promised power for his followers in Acts, after his resurrection and just before his ascension into heaven. And we see that power come, the Holy Spirit falling on Jesus’ followers and allowing them to spread the word.

The stories in Acts show those followers matching Jesus’ signs and miracles, up to and including the raising of the dead. We see healings so powerful that the sick need only fall under Peter’s shadow, and like the story of Jesus in Capernaum, we see even the evil spirits having to acknowledge the power now present in the world in Christ’s followers.

This doesn’t mean that all who come to the church for healing of one kind or another will be healed today; if you read carefully, you’ll see that wasn’t the case even in the early days of the church. And it doesn’t mean physical healing is permanent—we sometimes forget that everyone Jesus physically healed eventually died, as far as we know. Universal, permanent physical healing is a promise for the future, a mark of Christ’s final return and our entrance into eternity with our Savior.

We should have confidence as a church in our ability to show the world signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence among us, however. We should seek healing for people who are physically, emotionally or spiritually ill, praying that such healing will be a sign for those who need to know Christ.

We especially should look at the story of Jesus in Capernaum for clues about what our role in the world is today. He does a couple of very special things.

First, he takes Scripture and somehow shows people that it is alive and full of God’s power. Do we know the Bible well enough, and are we filled enough with God’s Holy Spirit, to show people how it applies in every moment of every day?

Second, he engages with evil so powerfully that what is evil already knows it is doomed. Are we confronting evil everywhere we find it—not just shaking our heads at it, but confronting it, rebuking it, calling it out?

When I was ordained, the bishop said something interesting as part of the ordination ritual. He told me to take authority, instructing me that I am supposed to draw on the power God has given me to do the particular work pastors are called to perform. The traditional words in the service of ordination are “Take thou authority,” spoken with booming conviction by a bishop.

Every Christian needs to hear those words. Every Christian needs to live those words. All of you, Take thou authority, using the spiritual power God grants you until such time as Christ returns.

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22

Jan. ’12

Thy Will Be Done

The Book of Jonah

If you’ve not read it start to finish in awhile, I hope you’ll take time to immerse yourself in the story of Jonah. It’s just four chapters long, but those few pages in your Bible reveal much about what it means to say to God, “Thy will be done.”

The story opens with the prophet Jonah at home somewhere in Israel, hearing from God with the clarity most biblical prophets seem to experience. God gave Jonah a simple command: “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”

Nineveh was to the east, in what is now the northern part of Iraq. (Its ruins are near the city of Mosul, where American troops fought so many battles in recent years.) It was one of the great cities of the Assyrian empire, a wonder to those who beheld it. Jonah had no doubt which direction Nineveh lay, yet Jonah headed west by sea, rather than east by land.

The story tells us Jonah went to the coast and got on a ship bound for Tarshish, a place not easily identified today. In the novel Moby Dick, the clergyman at the New Bedford Whaleman’s Chapel, Father Mapple, preaches on Jonah and asserts that Tarshish must have been a port in Spain, the farthest point west a Jew in Jonah’s day would have known. It’s not a bad notion—we’re told Jonah is trying to go “away from the presence of the Lord,” so what seemed like the end of the earth would have been a logical destination.

Storms soon began to worry the ship on its journey to Tarshish, however, to the point that the pagan crew cried out to their various gods. The captain implored Jonah to pray, too. They cast lots to determine who was the cause of the problem, and the throw of the dice showed it was Jonah.

And, very early in the story, Jonah began to understand that God was present regardless of how far Jonah ran or sailed. He admitted to the crew who he was and what he had done, and despite their initial reluctance, he convinced them to throw him in the sea. The sea immediately became calm.

This brings us to the part we know best from childhood: God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah. (Yes, it could have been a whale; the Hebrew word used in the story literally means a large fish, but the Jews would have used this word to include whales.) In the belly of this large sea critter, Jonah prayed a powerful psalm, in part acknowledging that God is everywhere, even capable of hearing one of his rebellious prophets trapped beneath the waves, “at the roots of the mountains.”

In response to this prayer, God had the fish vomit Jonah out somewhere on dry land. And Jonah once again heard his marching orders: “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” This time, Jonah headed in the right direction, presumably after cleaning himself up a little.

Once in Nineveh, Jonah preached his message. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And here’s the twist we might not expect when reading this story the first time—those pagan, supposedly godless residents of sprawling Nineveh responded!

Even the king put on sackcloth and ashes and repented. He ordered everyone to do the same, and to fast. They went so far as to cover the livestock with sackcloth and withhold the animals’ food and water. The prayers, wails, bleating and lowing set up a din that had to reach to heaven.

God heard, and God relented from the destruction he had promised. And that, we learn, was precisely what Jonah feared would happen.

“O Lord!” he prayed. “Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Jonah was so bitter, he prayed that God might kill him. You see, the Israelites considered the people of Nineveh their enemy. The Jews had suffered terribly under Assyrian rule; Jonah had hoped for a scene of destruction worthy of Sodom and Gomorrah. And now, here was the God the Jews acknowledged, the God over all things, showing mercy to these people!

I said at the beginning that this story is important for anyone wanting to know what it means to say to God, “Thy will be done.” God’s will doesn’t always match our own. God is love; we often are a mixture of love, hate, anger, jealousy, and a whole other range of emotions and sinful desires that interfere with our ability to appreciate what God is doing in the world.

Here’s what I take away from the story of Jonah. I don’t want to be like Jonah. (I find it surprising the early church declared Jonah a saint.) I don’t want to run when God wants me to do what I might dislike, and I don’t want to be bitter when God clearly has had his way.

When my will fails to mesh with God’s will, I know I need to pray, “Thy will be done, and my will be changed.” Sometimes it’s hard to spit the words out, but I hope I grow to mean it more each day.

Christians actually find themselves in Jonah’s position on a regular basis. There is one command we should be able to hear clearly from God: Go into the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. It is our Great Commission, yet often, we shrink from it, wanting to run west instead of east.

The task can seem too large, and the people we are called to reach with the message of Christ can be, well, not that likable. Maybe we don’t like their ethnicity, associating them with people who hurt us. Maybe we don’t like their lack of social graces or their lifestyle. But when such things bother us, our will is misaligned with the will of God.

May God reveal to us where our Ninevehs are, and may we have the strength to go there.

 

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15

Jan. ’12

Church Math

Malachi 3:8-12

I should begin with a big word of thanks to all of you who have supported the church financially in any way. Those of us who lead the church don’t say thanks enough to those of you who support the church’s mission with your dollars.

So, thanks be to God for you; thanks, whether you gave a dollar or a thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars. When you give, you are part of the solution the church offers to the world.

I wanted to start out with words of thanks because today’s text, read without much context, sounds like a mixture of threats and promises tied to whether you tithe¹ and give other offerings. Don’t tithe, and you are robbing God and faced with a curse. Do tithe, and you will receive an overflowing blessing. And I know that preachers often imitate this text, making threats and promises where church giving is concerned.

I will note that Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament in our Christian Bible, so we should expect more legalistic formulas for relating to God. Jesus Christ, the ultimate expression of God’s forgiving grace, is not yet in the picture.

I don’t, however, want to simply write off Malachi’s words about tithes and offerings as somehow irrelevant. In fact, this minor prophet makes a major connection between what he says about tithes and offerings and the reasons for Christ’s entry into the world.

Malachi’s straightforward question, “Will anyone rob God?” comes in the midst of other, more mysterious and far-reaching words. Just before he speaks of tithes and offerings, the prophet has been speaking of a coming messenger, to be followed by the arrival of the Lord. These words long have been associated with the ministry of John the Baptist—the Messiah’s herald—and the coming of Jesus Christ.

After Malachi speaks of tithes and offerings, he raises a new subject, how God will respond to the faithful. That leads ultimately to prophecies about “the great and terrible day of the Lord,” a time when the wicked and righteous are finally sorted, with the righteous entering a glorious new life. These images remind me of Jesus’ more detailed words in Matthew 25:31-46, where he makes clear that he will be the one to do the sorting.

All of that Messiah and End Days imagery, with talk of tithes and offerings sandwiched in between, causes me to reconsider my understanding of tithing. In fact, that big-picture perspective is what drives me to tithe.

Certainly, tithing was part of the Mosaic law, the code the Jews tried to live by to remain in relationship with God. It’s important to note, however, that tithing predates the law—probably the best example is in Genesis 14:17-20, where the future patriarch of God’s chosen people shares a tithe of his possessions with Melchizedek, the mysterious “priest of God Most High.”

Tithing also doesn’t just go away after God’s grace more clearly enters the picture through Christ. Consider this: How did the early church, made up largely of Jews used to tithing, respond to the resurrected Jesus? Rather than shrinking their giving, they gave everything they had, Acts 2:43-47 tells us, having “all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” If we could interview them, I think we would be hard pressed to find an early Christian who would describe tithing as anything more than a starting point in learning to give to support God’s redemptive work.

Scripturally, tithing for thousands of years has served as the baseline for how we participate in God’s effort to move us toward a time when evil is vanquished for good. In the world we live in now, a world where money is the primary driver behind how everything works, we still have to talk frankly about how money gets into church coffers. It gets there because people like you make commitments that the money will be there, and I think the tithe remains the appropriate beginning point for Christian giving.

Frank Buck spoke earlier in worship of how the church budget is designed to reach out to the world with the message of Christ. And I hope you got the point—one way or another, all those wonderful accomplishments that occur through worship, nurture and outreach ministries require money. How much money you give sets the thermostat for how hot our ministries can be.

Here’s a little church math to consider. As best I can tell, the average household in this congregation gave about 4 percent of income to the church’s work in 2011. That’s an average covering every active household at Cassidy UMC, whether a household gave nothing or thousands of dollars.²

If we could raise that average by one percentage point, incredible things would happen. A percentage point doesn’t sound like much, but if we would move from an average of 4 percent per household to an average of 5 percent, our ministry budget would jump by 25 percent—that’s more than $80,000.

And obviously, if we ever were to become a tithing church, with an average near 10 percent, our budget would more than double.

I dive into this church math for one reason. I want you to see there is power in tithing, the kind of power that helps change the world. It’s not about obeying some law; it’s about participating in the work God is doing in the world through Jesus Christ.

With more finances available, we could tell more people about Jesus. We could feed more people and clothe more people in Jesus’ name.  We could do more for our children and youth and our homebound elderly. We could start ministries we have yet to imagine.

Maybe we would minister with more programs and facilities to serve the people we’re trying to reach. Maybe we would reach out to the community with more paid ministry staff to lead the way. However we might minister, lives would be changed, even more so than they are being changed now.

Here’s what I want you to walk away with today: You are not required under some sort of law to tithe, or to give at any level. As grateful recipients of God’s eternal grace, however, you are invited to participate in God’s restorative work, using the financial resources God has given you.

¹I should explain what tithing is; it is only in recent years that I’ve discovered a lot of Christians don’t fully understand the word. Tithing is giving 10 percent of your “harvest” toward God’s church. For most of us, our harvest now amounts to cash income from work or investments. Offerings are what we give beyond this basic commitment.

²This average is a little hard to calculate because I don’t know what each Cassidy UMC household earns, so I have to rely on reports of what the median household income for the 37664 zip code is. And that number varies depending on which agency does the reporting. But 4 percent is a reasonable estimate.


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08

Jan. ’12

The Unbaptized Nose

Mark 1:4-11

Jesus’ baptism clearly was important. All four gospels record the event in their own ways, with Jesus journeying to the Jordan River, where he steps into the water. There, his cousin John has been readying people for the coming of the promised Messiah.

Jesus’ baptism also complicates our snap responses regarding what baptism is, however. Generally, Christians think of adult baptism as an act of repentance, a symbolic washing showing God our desire to flee sin.

But Christians also acknowledge Jesus as the sinless Savior of the world, God in human flesh. His lack of sin, possible because of his inner divinity, is what makes him a worthy sacrifice on the cross, the only perfect being capable of atoning for humanity’s break with God.

So we’re left with a question: Why does a sinless God-man participate in a baptism of repentance? Complications can be a blessing, however. They often lead us to deeper truths.

Let’s consider a baptism I witnessed about seven years ago while volunteering in prison ministry in Kentucky.

While in seminary, I preached in a Sunday morning service at the federal prison near Lexington, Ky. The worship was energetic, just what you would expect from men who had done some terrible things but discovered that Christ still wanted to forgive them.

And even better, I was going to witness the baptism of a prisoner. I was a bit mystified when I arrived, though. There was no water in sight.

I did notice an unusually large wooden altar on the chapel platform, and soon I understood why it was so big. The prison trusties removed the altar’s lid and slid a set of wooden steps against the altar’s side. Inside this cross-adorned box was a tub of water.

When it came time for the baptism, the newly converted inmate walked up the steps and then, with a little help, stepped in the box and sat in the tub, which was invisible from where I was seated in the congregation. A prison chaplain named Tom stood over our new brother in Christ and lowered him into the water.

That’s when things got strange.

I expected Tom to hold this man under the water for a second or two while saying the appropriate words. Instead, the chaplain continued to bear down. He then adjusted his position, getting both hands into the downward push and really applying some weight. And then he adjusted again and pushed even harder.

I began to wonder if this friendly chaplain, this wonderful man of God, harbored some secret grudge against this prisoner. But why would he drown a man in front of this many witnesses?

Finally, Tom brought the new Christian up. I was perplexed until the end of the service.

“Uh, Tom,” I asked. “What was going on during the baptism?”

“I couldn’t get all of his face under,” Tom replied, making a circle around his nose with his fingers. “The trusties didn’t put enough water in the tub.”

That got me to thinking about the fate of unbaptized noses.

Two demons are walking along in hell. The first one notices something on the ground and asks, “What’s that?”

The second one says, “Oh, that? That’s an unbaptized nose. The rest of that guy got into heaven, but we got the nose. It never went under the water.”

It’s a ridiculous image, of course. But realizing it is ridiculous helps us understand the real meaning of baptism. The water is important, of course; in different ways, Christians use water as a common symbol when people are ready to first commit themselves to following Christ. But we also know from Scripture that we are baptized by the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ baptism seems to be more about the incredible presence of God that enters our lives.

First, Jesus’ baptism shows God’s desire for solidarity with humanity. Even though our sin is offensive, God’s love for us causes our maker to want to stand with us as we repent, even experiencing with us the pain of death as Jesus died in our place for our sins.

Second, Jesus’ baptism serves as an early sign of how God is going to continue to work in the world through Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, and then afterward through the body of believers who form the church.

After Jesus’ baptism, we are told the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit descended like a dove, publicly anointing the Messiah. A voice from heaven also declared Jesus as “my Son, the Beloved,” the one who had pleased the Father.

There is power in baptism, in Jesus’ baptism and in our own baptisms. We see this fact affirmed later in the early church, when people were baptized and then sensed the Spirit upon them, or vice versa, when they experienced the Spirit and then were baptized to acknowledge their new relationship with God.

And that’s why we don’t need to worry about unbaptized noses—the Spirit has them covered.

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01

Jan. ’12

Begin with Praise

Psalm 148

Why were we made?

We each can consider how God has called us to live and arrive at different answers, noting our roles and influence as parents, neighbors or workers in the world. There is, however, one answer we all share.

We were made to praise God, to declare him Creator, the being over all things. We are called to lift up words of praise in worship, be it worship in the church together or in other moments of our lives. When we fail to praise God, we fail in our primary task.

I love Psalm 148. It reminds me that we regularly should pull out all the stops and praise God. I don’t mean you have to jump up and down and wave your hands like you’ve just rung in the new year in Times Square. (If that’s how you worship, however, go for it.)

I simply mean that on a regular basis, we need to dwell in the truth that God made us, and that we love God because we owe everything to our Creator. Praise is more than simply giving thanks—it is acknowledging who God is regardless of whether we feel thankful.

We’re also reminded that we as humans are not alone when we lift up praise. Psalm 148 links praise to God’s creation, implying that everything made in this visible world and the unseen spiritual world exists first to extol God.

The angels in heaven are called to praise. The sun, moon and stars are called to praise. Fire and hail, snow and smoke are called to praise. The mountains, the hills, the wild beasts, the tame animals, kings and princes, young and old, all are called to praise.

Yes, it’s poetry, but it’s not over the top. Not when you consider that the being we declare God stands outside all of these things, even what we now know to be an enormous universe. Stars are huge and space is vast, but next to an infinite being they might as well be specks—nothing with defined boundaries can compare to the infinite. And in some mysterious way, even they are called to declare who God is.

Let’s focus on the stars and planets for a minute, learning from them. Their lives are unimaginably long. Other than our own sun, the stars we see are so far away that the trip their light takes to earth can be measured in years, centuries, or millennia.

And yet, while going through their clockwork motions a couple of thousand years ago, they managed to arrange themselves in a way so as to declare to tiny little humans on the earth below that Christ was present in the world.

That’s the best theory, anyway, as to what the so-called Star of Bethlehem actually was. Forget about that brilliant beam of light from the sky we see in Christmas television specials—the Bible actually doesn’t describe such an event. (Forgive me for messing with some precious childhood imagery. I call that picture we all carry in our heads the “Little Drummer Boy Effect.”)

In fact, if you’ll read the story of the wise men in Matthew closely, you’ll see that no one in Jerusalem had noticed anything odd going on in the sky above nearby Bethlehem. The wise men could actually see in the sky what had drawn them to the Promised Land, but they had to explain it to the king and other residents of Jerusalem.

These wise men most likely were Babylonian astrologers, people who studied the sky for messages about what was going on in the world. They in particular watched for close alignments of planets and stars, noting when these objects seemed to meld into one brighter-than-usual point of light. (They had no way to distinguish between planets and stars in their day, except for the fact that planets looked like stars that wandered among otherwise predictable points of light.)

Three of these heavenly bodies came together in unusual ways that would have spoken volumes to these astrologers, who would have been familiar with Jewish prophesies of a coming messiah. One, Venus, represented femininity and birth; another, Jupiter, represented a king; and then there was the star Regulus. It also was associated with kings and was in a constellation these astrologers would have linked to the Jewish people.

Watching these planets and stars interact in the sky was enough to convince these astrologers to hop on their camels and head through the desert toward Jerusalem in search of what they thought was a baby king. Most likely, Jupiter was the primary light they watched, as it was the one heavenly body consistently involved in the series of conjunctions they observed.

In making the universe, God had set into motion objects in the sky that would come together at exactly the right time to praise the God who saves us, the God willing to take on flesh and walk among us, the God who ultimately died on the cross to save us from our sins. Even non-Jews hundreds of miles away were provided a means to understand something incredible had happened in the word.

The skies were made to praise God. We were made to praise God. So, praise God!

For a presentation detailing the astronomy mentioned in this article, take a look at this MSNBC slide show based on astronomer John Mosley’s book, “The Christmas Star.”

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