Sermons
An open invitation
I feel like one of the most joy-inducing questions you can hear from friends at the end of a visit—especially if you’ve been there a few days and, like fish, you most likely “stink”—is, “When can you come back?” It means they’re glad to be with you and long to be with you again. You have an open invitation.
This thought makes me smile often as I gather with a small group offriends for Morning Prayer several days a week. The first thing that happens in The Daily Office after confessing our sin, and being reminded of God’s invincible and inexhaustible absolution, is the “recitation as reminder” of an open invitation from God to us; The Venite (a.k.a. Psalm 95). Venite is Latin for the first two words of the Psalm, “O come...”. We’re responding to an open invitation. God is glad to be with us!
This is not a small thing.
When you look for them, you’ll find these kinds of invitations throughout the Scriptures. It’s not surprising then, that when Jesus sought to describe his heart’s essence to his followers (the one and only time this happens in the Gospels), he embedded it in an open invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
The other cheek
When I was young, I shared a room with my brothers. It was mostly amicable. But we were carefully attuned to fairness, which meant that one’s assets (toys, souvenirs, personal space) were scrutinized for any hint of excess. We noticed if one had more than another, or less, and in general the balances would be equalized.
My older brother did press his advantage, though. Somehow, I got a pair ofboxing gloves for Christmas—just one pair. My parents didn’t think this through sufficiently, but my brother did. “Steve, why don’t I take the right-hand glove for the first round, and then we’ll switch so that you can finish strong with the right hand.” I thought this was rather generous until I was immediately caught with a strong right hook in the first round. There was no second round. And I did not have the opportunity to turn the other cheek nor to seek out the cheek of my opponent.
In general, though, I don’t have many memories of strife over these things. Why? I think it was because my parents loved us and provided for us, and we did not experience lack. We did not feel the pressure to take what belonged to each other because it wasn’t necessary.
It has been much harder for me to feel this sense of wellbeing from God as I’ve gotten older. I carry wounds from life experiences that make me fear loss—ofmy job, my household, my reputation. And when I’m afraid of losing something, I feel threatened and my desire to be generous diminishes.
God wants us to know that in all the things that matter most, we have more than enough. Through his generosity, we have all we need to be generous towards others—even our enemies. We need not fear, we need not feel threatened, we need not conserve or hide ourselves from engaging others.
As the missionary Jim Elliot famously said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
This Sunday, we’ll explore Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-48) that informs us how to respond to those who take from us and those whom we consider to be our enemies. And there we’ll see that the key to generosity is love.
Lost in translation
A few Sunday’s ago Redeemer enjoyed a visit from our friend, Emily, recently returned from the Oaxaca region in Mexico where she was doing translation groundwork with Wycliff Bible Translators. She’d been there serving a small people group whose dialect has no written language. That afternoon, sitting around the table after we’d eaten, she shared a few stories that had made her time there memorable and meaningful. One in particular stood out to me.
Whereas in English we’re limited to only one word for “eaten” (as in, “Have you eaten?”), the language of that region has two. The first word means, “Have you eaten?” and the second, just subtly different, basically means, “Have you “tortillaed?”” In that region if you haven’t “tortillaed” you haven’t had a proper meal and it’s assumed you are therefore hungry. They would sometimes tell a host they’d “eaten” (in the first sense, because they didn’t yet recognize the difference) only to have them begin immediately to prepare a “proper” meal. One with tortillas.
It was a difference, lost in translation, that caused some tension for them because they really didn’t want to risk imposing on the hospitality of their gracious, but mostly subsistence-farming, hosts.
Jesus’ teaching in the portion of the Sermon in the Mount from last week and this can cause some tension primarily rooted in four words, which because ofsome limitations in English are often lost in translation: righteousness, anger, insult, and fool. But the Sermon on the Mount is, after all, a sermon—practical teaching given to regular folk. It is neither an esoteric discourse of sublime irrelevance, nor a treatise of aspirational but mostly unattainable—and certainly unsustainable—morality. It is meant to be metabolized in us.
Jesus gave it to bring hope, to give life, and to describe the kind of everyday life that’s within the reach of the Kingdom of the Heavens.
Something is Amiss
Something is amiss in the way we come to know things.
The Jewish people had Torah, God's own guidance and instruction for them. They had the prophets who interpreted Torah for their unique circumstances and called them to repentance. And yet, it wasn't enough. Jesus had to to challenge and correct their interpretation. He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
The Greeks and the Romans had philosophy and rhetoric. They had a tradition of wisdom literature that we continue to study today and masterful expositions of metaphysics and politics. And yet, it wasn't enough. Paul had to challenge and correct their expectations. He said, “When I came to you, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.”
Neither Jews nor Greeks—gifted in their own ways—arrived naturally at knowledge of the Gospel. None of us does. The sort of knowledge that Jesus and Paul invite us to discover originates from elsewhere and expresses itself in different, surprising—perhaps shocking—ways. Paul says that Gospel knowledge is not “of this age,” not a “spirit of this world,” “not taught by human wisdom,” not understood by “the natural man” or “the rulers of this world.” Rather, its source is the Holy Spirit, its content is Messiah Jesus and him crucified, and its location is in his followers.
This Sunday, we'll explore a passage from Paul's letter to the Church in Corinth. There, we'll see that the way we know is grounded in who knows us.
#Blessedd
If you google #blessed, you’ll get an astounding 1,220,000,000 results. That’s 1.22 billion. With a b.
#Blessed is a popular meme generally meant to express to the world gratitude for—or sometimes brag about—the good things one has going for them. It’s “a good thing” (a much lesser meme at only 363,000,000 hits) to be genuinely grateful. We should, after all, count our blessings...as the Sunday School song emphatically instructs.
But what if Jesus has an entirely different notion than we generally do of which life is the good life? What if it’s a lot closer to what Paul Simon wrote in the song, “Blessed”: “Blessed are the sat upon, the spat upon, the ratted on.”?
Is this the kind of life we should aspire to?
This isn’t an idle question. Misunderstanding of the “blesseds” given by Jesus in the Sermon in the Mount have caused intense pain and confusion down through the ages and continue to do so today. Strangely enough, the blesseds haven’t uniformly been a blessing. So,
Who is it, according to Jesus, that has the good life?
What is it to be #blessed?
And most importantly, how does it help frame the power of the Gospel?
Eight Words
A few years ago I asked a mentor—a thoughtful and energetic octogenarian—the big question from last Sunday’s sermon: “So, you’ve had a while to figure this out…what do you truly want?”
I will never forget his answer. He shared that he’d spent nearly a decade thinking about that very question, pondering what he’d say to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren if he had only one remaining breath. Ten years of meditation that came down to only eight words, one for every decade of his life.
Eight words that wonderfully illuminate a story told in this week’s Gospel.
Eight words you’ll have to wait for.
The More Beautiful Question
American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright e. e. cummings famously wrote, “Always the beautiful answer who asks the more beautiful question.” I keep this quotation framed on my desk because it’s something I want to never forget. In parenting, pastoring, coaching, and flight instructing I have found this to be, if not always easy, true. Ask the more beautiful question—the question that sparks the imagination or gets to the heart of a matter at hand—and the beautiful answer inevitably comes.
Jesus was the master of the more beautiful question. In this week’s Gospel reading when two of John's disciples turn from him and begin following Jesus, he wheels around on them and asks them the question that’s at the heart of why every person with agency does everything they do, or nearly so. It’s why kids misbehave, and why adults often make great sacrifices…or don’t.
It’s a question so basic you might read the passage a hundred times and miss its significance. But it’s also a question so profound that it’s the heart of Christian discipleship.
No Free Lunch
An economist I read and listen to regularly, David Bahnsen, wrote an excellent book last year entitled, “There's No Free Lunch”. His thesis is straightforward. If we’re going to keep the lights on as a society and advance the cause of human flourishing, there is one overriding reality we must never forget: a “free” lunch is never free…someone always pays.
This is, in fact, a reality so basic and profound that even Almighty God submits to it. Hebrews 9:22 says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” There is no Life without death.
It’s to constantly remind us of this reality that the Lord invites us to feast regularly at his Table. And when we truly consider what Communion models for us, it helps give the incarnation of Jesus meaning. Someone with actual flesh and blood just like us would have to die. And if things were truly just it would be us. But instead, Jesus chose to take on flesh and blood—to become incarnate—and offer himself as a sacrifice on our behalf. In the mystery of the Eucharist, through the elements of bread and wine, we meet that same self-sacrificing Jesus and are nourished by that gift as we are in no other way.
But that’s that the Gospel Sacraments—Communion and Baptism—do. They’re outward and physical signs of inward and spiritual realities. Something is actually happening in them. Something God does.
Every year on the Sunday following Epiphany (January 6th—the Twelfth Day ofChristmas), we commemorate and contemplate The Baptism of our Lord by John in the Jordan River because it also helps frame the meaning of the incarnation. In fact, neither Jesus’s baptism nor our own makes much sense if not considered in that light.
So, to begin to understand the meaning of the Baptism of Jesus, we must understand the reality, the physicality, of being human and what it means for us to say that God saved us by becoming like us…what it means for Almighty God to have emptied himself and become human.