| Mark 13:1-8 "This Is But A Beginning" |
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| Written by Rev. Don Lee | |
| Saturday, 18 November 2006 | |
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Wars and rumors of war, kingdoms and nations rising up against one another, earthquakes and famines; Jesus’ apocalyptic “world prophecy is in fact front-page headline news! Surely this is not the world that God hopes for us or our children. I believe that God is moving us a church to work together creatively to create sustainable change: A different future for our world. The question is what role does God’s Spirit have for us in this? As the church, we must earnestly seek together the vision God is now birthing out of the diversity and uniqueness of our combined voices. Granted, for some a shared vision may never go far enough but when it is the product of the Holy Spirit working in the life of the Church, it is sacred, full of power, and authentic to the witness of this church. At least 2 things contribute to our shared vision. 1) Our unique understanding of what it means to be family. Having come from a pretty dysfunctional broken family, the church, imperfect as it is, became the one stable relationship in my life as I was growing up. What does it mean to be family? One of my favorite bible stories is of the Good Samaritan. On the surface it doesn’t appear to be a story about family. After all these are two strangers; One who is robbed, beaten and left for the dead, the other, a traveler who goes out of the way to help this stranger in need. What creates tension in the story, however, is that the victim is a Jew, and those who walk by refusing to render aid, also Jews. By the way, when we read these stories it is important to remember that Jesus is a Jew speaking to fellows Jews about the way they should treat one another. Jews identify themselves as Sons and Daughters of Abraham (and Sarah). That strong familial identity still exists today. But in Jesus’ parable, it is someone outside the family, a Samaritan, who stops and renders aid. In Jesus’ day, there was no loss of love between Samaritans and Jews. But the Samaritan demonstrates what it truly means to be family by overlooking their differences and doing the caring thing. And that, according to Jesus, is what family is supposed to do. In a very real way the church has been my “good Samaritan.” In the aftermath of my parent’s messy divorce, my own parents and extended family weren’t able to truly “be there” for me. Talk about disaster, war and famine! It was the church that cared enough to stop; who treated my wounds and bandaged them; who spoke words of reassurance and comfort; who invited me to their table. Jesus’ mission, carried out primarily among Jewish communities, always pushed the boundaries of who deserves to be included in family: The poor, the widow, the orphan, the leper, and the prisoner. The Beatitudes, the Golden rule, the Lord’s prayer, the parables, teach us how to behave as family and I might add, how not to behave…that family does not strip members of their dignity; beat them up (verbally or otherwise), and leave them half dead. God’s beloved children deserve better then that. The after effects of God’s going, is not destruction but life, and life abundant. One of the things this church really does well is to treat others as family. I’ve seen members reorganize their entire lives to care for someone with cancer. You’ll get up at 4 A.M. in the morning so you can feed the homeless; you’ve emptied your pantries to help feed the hungry; you take a week off from work to go on a mission trip. You hand me checks saying, “Don, put this where it is needed most.” I see you forgive liberally. Of all the churches I have been privileged to serve or be a part of, this church is by far, the most non-judgmental, compassionate hearted. As a church we go beyond the humane thing, stopping and calling for help. We do the loving thing; we go out looking for the wounded! Programs like CHAP and Harvey’s Kids, our partnerships with Austin Street and Interfaith, our food pantry and ESL classes; our support of Christ’s Foundry and Nancy Boye, our missionary to Latin America; are all expressions of our missional identity. That identity recognizes our own brokenness and embraces Jesus’ teaching that only the one without sin is worthy of casting stones. Thus we leave our stones in the garden where they belong. We are all family, and our definition of family is constantly growing in ever widening circles. Our unique understanding of family is just one of the aspects of Holy Covenant’s identity that contributes to our shared vision. 2) The 2nd thing that contributes to our shared vision is God’s gift of our diversity in unity. Recently I described my own family this way. We’ve got married, singles, divorced, remarried, living together, Hispanic, Argentinean, Asian-American, natural born, adopted, resident alien, RCC, United Methodist, Southern Baptist, agnostic, bi-polar, ADD, Republican, Democrat, undeclared, rich, poor, middle, step moms, step kids, 2nd wives, eccentric, exotic, and looney…I’m telling you its a veritable circus! I think that describes well, Holy Covenant. I don’t believe that God’s intent is to homogenize our church. We are to celebrate the diversity of backgrounds, religious beliefs, and unique gifts. We acknowledge our differences, and place them within the context of our unity as the church of Jesus Christ. On a relative scale, there is no justification for breaking the unity of the church, according to the Apostle Paul. He writes in 1 Corinthians 8:9-13; 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall. While he’s speaking of eating meat used in worship of foreign idols, I think the jest of what he is saying is this: We cannot allow our differences to dissolve our unity. And so he writes in Ephesians 4:1-3, I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. If you have your bibles turn with me to 1 Kings 3:16-28. King Solomon is asked to judge between two women with competing claims to a baby. This is before they knew what DNA was. When King Solomon threatens to have the child divided in two, to appease both women, the real mother pleads with the king asking the child be spared and given to the other woman (which is, of course exactly what Solomon had expected the real mother to do). This is how he knows who the true mother is; she refuses to sacrifice the child to get what she wants. Vs. 28 All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered; and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to execute justice. When there are competing claims about what vision God has for the church, how do we reconcile the differences? Is it merely a case of divide and conquer? The majority rules and the rest can go somewhere else? Are we are willing to sacrifice the child (so to speak) to win the argument? I’m not going to answer that for you. All I’m going to say is if we get there and find that many were sacrificed along the way, I’m not sure we’ve been just or loving. I love this church and I believe it’s worth fighting for! This does not mean that you cannot speak to your beliefs or that if you see an injustice that you cannot address it. It means that this must all be done in the context of the church’s unity. I like the way the Message version of the Bible translates verses John 6:43-44, Jesus said, “Don’t bicker among yourselves over me. You’re not in charge here. The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me-that’s the only way you’ll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End. “But Don, the church’s shared vision doesn’t go far enough,” some might say. I defer to the wisdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero who once said: It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen. Pray with me, “God, we love you. We thank you. All of our resources come from you. We rejoice in your presence.” Amen. |
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