The Same Church, until the world is made whole

 Acts 8:1b-3; 9:1-31

 
I shared with my community a few weeks ago how Andy and I worshiped with the Church in Switzerland and found ourselves at home with these siblings in Body of Christ that transcends all languages, and nations.  A few hours ago, my son worshiped with the Church in Berlin, pastored by a Russian married to an American, where the first encounter he witnessed was the baptism of an Iranian. Right now, my daughter is sharing a meal with the homeless and formerly homeless counselors to suburban, middle-class campers coming this afternoon for a weeklong service learning pilgrimage of poverty, to learn from and serve alongside these leaders whose lives have had suffering and joy right on the surface. On Wednesday, right here our little congregation gathered on the patio and shared a meal, conversation and laughter, and split up into groups who listened to each other’s lives, watching for the movement of the Spirit. And I got to tell a third grader how my “thorn” last month that I was sad and worried about is, this month, my “rose” the very thing I am glad and grateful about, and he bore witness to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life with an eyes-wide, big-grinned, Hooray! This is the view I have in this moment of the Church. 

The story we just read is a further back moment in this ongoing story that is told looking backward, knowing the end before it begins. It is always moving through the upheaval toward the inevitable conclusion formed by God, and directed not by human trajectory or tragedy, but by the ongoing love of Jesus Christ living in and through those who trust in him.  So recognize this incident as a pivotal moment, when Paul—who will go on, unbeknownst to him, to write between a quarter to half of our bible, and whose journeys by sea and horse will spread the gospel throughout the middle East to Europe—gets brought into this Church where we are his siblings.  So, I was excited to get to this text! 

Only, all week long I couldn’t shake thinking about this story in this way: 

Imagine if, during Operation Metro Surge, a community of immigrants was hiding, worrying about what would happen if ICE found them. And then God called one of them by name, and said, Hey, right now, in this house on Hennipen Ave, a man named Greg Bovino has just had a vision of you coming to pray for him and him receiving his sight. I want you to go to him. 

A little bit it makes me sick to my stomach. 

We tell this story as Saul’s ‘conversion,’ and it is. And it is also the story of the community of Christ-followers who were minding their own business and still being persecuted, who were absolutely justified to be fearful of Saul and continually wary and guarded.

And suddenly I can see the harsh and impossible, the divisions, the horror, the brokenness of it all, of us toward one another, and it deflates me. Because from where this story opens, I can’t see a way forward that lets me hold onto my righteous anger or reiterate my boundaries and beliefs. 

On one side this tale begins with Saul as the hero. He is a devout, highly educated Jew with an impressive pedigree who also holds coveted Roman citizenship. He was born in Tarsus (in modern-day Turkey), and moved as a child to Jerusalem, where he studied under a famous and highly respected Rabbi, and became an expert at Hebrew scripture and Jewish law.  He is esteemed, zealous, and deeply committed to upholding the true faith. Saul has gained a name for himself for his relentless efforts to stamp out this heresy called The Way, where instead of worshiping the one true God, misled people are worshipping a criminal who was executed six years ago, Jesus, whom they call the Christ. Saul is on a holy mission to glorify God and defend the faith, and he has all the confidence and conviction to go along with it.

On the other side are the people of God sheltering in place, who had heard of the destruction Saul rained down in Jerusalem and been warned that he had his sights set on them next. These past few years after Pentecost, the Church has grown significantly, but Paul’s rampage in Jerusalem caused Christians to flee the city and scatter. The exact description reads, “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house. Dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison…” Then it goes on to describe the  stoning death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, which Saul attended, holding the coats of the other heretic-hunters and cheering them on. 

Now this mission he is currently on, to capture all the Christians in Damascus and bring them in chains to Jerusalem, begins with the words, “Meanwhile, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord…”

So here hide these Christians, afraid for their lives. 

And there we are. Stuck between two incompatible stories. Both claiming to worship the God of Israel.  

And then God speaks to one of these cowering Christians. Hey, Ananias.
Yes, God, I’m here and ready.
There is a man called Saul of Tarsus praying in a house a few streets over, and he has seen a vision of you coming to him and praying for him to regain his sight.
God, maybe you haven’t actually heard of this guy, but he is a bad guy, he’s hunting us down, just so you know. He’s already done so much evil in Jerusalem and here he has been given carte blanch to use whatever force he wants against us.  So… want to give a different instruction? I’m all ears.
 And God says Go. I have specifically chosen Saul to be my messenger. I have a plan for him and I will handle him. 
 
This story is astonishing. 

It’s also par for the course for this God. 
For two years we’ve been moving through the bible from start to finish and in no stories are the people the heroes, and nobody remains unchanged. Stereotypes get torn down, the lowly get lifted up, and the ideas people hold of right, or good, or even God, get destroyed and rebuilt. Futures are never what people think they will be because people dream too small and selfish. God goes right to the barriers and the impossibility, breaking chains, and parting seas, and opening wombs, and knocking down giants, and closing the mouths of lions and opening the mouths that could not speak, and out of death and finality bringing life and newness. 

And always, always, God is drawing people deeper, wider, into love, into time, into this world, into relationship with one another, and pushing them outward to the stranger, to the outcast, to the enemy, to the other. God chooses a few admirable people here and there, and many ordinary ones, but also a lot of jerks, cheaters, fools, slow-learners and betrayers. And nowhere are people allowed to hold onto their righteous anger or reiterate their boundaries and beliefs. 
 So here God goes again.
 
I can’t imagine, and the scripture does not tell us, what happens inside Ananias, or between him and this little church in Damascus, what Holy Spirit miracle allows him to go to Saul.  I can imagine the fear when he approaches that house. The pleading for trust in God as his hand reaches for the doorknob.

And I can also imagine, because I have seen this sort of thing for myself, the forgiveness and faith of Jesus Christ moving through him despite him, as he steps inside to minister to this man who came to destroy him, the very embodiment of the threat he most fears. And likewise, Saul, utterly humbled and in need on the other side of the door, must now receive ministry from the people he came to destroy, the very embodiment of the threat he most feared. 
 
When Saul was thrown from his high horse by the blinding light and booming voice from heaven, I wonder if at first he recognized the experience – just like the prophets of old from the deep story of his ancestors, Moses, Elijah, the coherent, thrilling, terrifying moment when transcendence calls by name, only, how horribly discombobulating, then, for it to come not as an affirmation or invitation, but an accusation!  

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Who are you Lord?

And the answer shatters everything inside him, I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting!
 
Then suddenly Saul the magnificent is tossed into the wilderness of waiting, the liminal space of loss, confusion, guilt, and unknown, that permeates the story of God’s people again and again, sparing not even Jesus himself. Then, Saul spends three days in darkness without eating or drinking, until, into his tomb, God’s resurrecting love arrives in the form of his enemy standing right here, where he cannot see him and must reach out his hand.
 
 Saul now meets Jesus, in the touch and voice of Ananias, who calls him, against all human odds, ‘Brother Saul” and says, “the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.” Then, we’re told, “he got up and was baptized” from the death of fear and righteous hatred, into entirely new life in Christ’s own death and resurrection, “and after taking some food, he regained his strength.” 
 
And then Saul is welcomed into the living Body of Christ, who, instead of revenge or retaliation, fear or loathing, shares with Saul healing, nurture, blessing and identity. They give him friendship and begin to reshape his story by telling him the resurrection stories and their own stories. Here among them, the voice who called out to him from the blinding light is given hands and faces, sorrows and names, foibles and families, and Saul gets to know the risen Messiah.  And they too are set free from fear and righteous hatred, by receiving Christ in the person of their enemy. Then, Saul who came to capture the followers of Jesus, instead begins proclaiming in the synagogue that Jesus is the Son of God, and everyone who hears him is confounded and amazed.

A few chapters later, we’re told that the once esteemed and arrogant Saul eventually sheds his strong, famous Hebrew name completely, and goes exclusively by his Roman name, Paul, which means “small.”  

And this part of the story of God ends with the words “The churches in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria were at peace and grew through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
 
And here we are now, this little gathering of that same Church, about to bless some of our own and send them to another little gathering of the same Church, inside just one city of this whole, vast world, filled everywhere with little gatherings of the same Church, that is, people called to surrender our lives into the life of the living Christ, who, through us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will love without reservation or resentment, heal what is impossibly broken, and forgive and set free without ceasing, until the whole world is made whole.  

And to that I say, Amen!

The Conversation that Changes Everything

John 4:1-42

The Woman at the Well - aka. The Samaritan Woman

This week I spent 24 hours on a confirmation retreat reading theology with our high schooler, and a few hours preparing for our adult confirmation class that starts next week. One topic that does, and should, come up is, Why is the Bible important? What does it have to do with our lives? 

We believe the bible is the word of God, which is to say, it is a witness to the Word made flesh, Jesus, and that it tells the truth about who God is and who human beings are, and something of what it means to live a good life, filled with purpose and meaning. The bible shows us who God is by showing us who God has been for those who’ve gone before.  

We believe the bible isn’t like any other book - or family scrapbook collection of writings, as the case may be – because, while God can use anything, and does, the Holy Spirit opens us to hear God speak into our lives especially through this collection of poems, prayers, letters, memories, and ancient tellings of a God who is involved with this world, interacting with people, that has fed the people of this God for nearly two thousand years.  

That said, sometimes it can feel far away. Some of it prehistoric, after all!  The language is sometimes unfamiliar, and we often don’t understand references or background to what’s going on in places, so it can feel dry and distant.

Today, I want to bring it closer by addressing it directly, to see if we might hear more closely who God is and what God is up in this story.

Today, our person’s name isn’t known, she is sometimes called The Woman at the Well, or The Samaritan Woman.  

Hi, Samaritan Woman!

(Samaritans, by the way, same God and same ancestors as “the Jews” – better translated Judeans because they were all Jewish - but different practices, different scriptures, different worship.  Each one right; each one knowing the other to be wrong. Tense and distant, they avoided each other whenever possible. Which was often possible, and meant that despite the shortest route from Judea to Galilee being through Samaria, it wasn’t often used by Judeans.  And if Jesus had taken the regular route, this conversation might never happened.  They might never have met.  

But God so loved the world.  And Jesus went through Samaria.  

So the conversation happened).

It’s the hottest time of day, lonely and dusty, and you come alone to the well.  It’s just easier that way –you stopped trying to come in the early morning with the other women and children. Nobody really talks to you anyway, and it’s too painful to see them surrounded by their children, their big, loud families, talking about their sons, and husbands, and you trudging along behind with your water jug on your shoulders, no one to share your load.  So you come alone at the hottest time of day.

Today there is someone there.  He looks like a Judean, not Samaritan anyway.  He looks hot and tired, and he is sitting by the well.  You ignore him and go about your business.  Until he clears his throat and asks you, Excuse me, can I have a drink of that water?

And the conversation begins.   

Encountering God, seeing Jesus, this life of faith and following, is not about answers handed down from heaven, not about good behavior or earned right or accumulated knowledge.  It’s a conversation– it’s a back and forth with doubt and insight and frustration and challenge and breakthroughs and mysteries that remain unsolved.  

It’s sweaty, dusty thirst, a complicated living situation, and a lonely person who is drawing water in the heat of midday without the company of other women.  It’s the glaring differences, and walls that separate absolutely, but a moment of connection anyway, dignity, humanity, shared need, shared generosity.  It’s going from being trapped in the story of your life with nothing to give, to being a minister, in a position to help another person. Just like that.

And so the conversation begins.

He knows all about your tragedy.  You have no people; five times you’ve been divorced, abandoned, or widowed. Maybe it’s because you’re infertile, but a man can cast off a woman for nearly any reason.  

Over the centuries, I am sorry to say, you’ve gained the reputation for being of ill-repute, (after all, we deduce, there must be some seedy reason you go through men so fast). But the truth is, your more disposable than easy. 

Without husband or sons, you have no protection, security, food or home, so you cling to what you can, even though time and again you are discarded and ditched.  You’ve come to see yourself the way the world sees you - unwanted, unvalued – belonging to nobody and fending for yourself, outcast and lonely.  

But none of that stops him from having the longest recorded conversation he had with anyone, with you.  He sees you.  He talks to you like you’re smart.  He listens to you and answers back.  When was the last time someone listened to you and answered back?

Living water, he says. Springing up from within; water of life and living.  What does it mean? You feel alive, in this conversation, this moment; you arrived at the well dead, and right now you feel alive. 

It is said that to be seen and to be known is to feel love.  Love feels like this.  When he sees you, you’re a person, not a tragedy. 

A person, not a reputation. 

A person, not a burden.  

The life within you wakes up.  You’re someone who participates; someone with a voice.  When he sees you, you’re as you were meant to be seen. You feel your life as it was meant to be lived, longing to live within you.

I can see you’re a prophet, you say.  Your people say Jerusalem is where God is found and only if you worship there are you seeking God.  Our people say this mountain in front of you is the place God meets us.

Believe me, woman, he answers you, the time is coming when it wont matter – here, Jerusalem, wherever.  Those who truly seek God will do so in honesty and longing, and God, who is Spirit – not captured in bricks and mortar, doctrines and definitions – will meet those who long for God right where they are.

I know the Messiah is coming…. You answer.  

And a thrill of hope goes through you when he responds in the timeless words of Yahweh, “I am.”  This is when it all changed for you.  The whole world cracked open.

You left the jar, you know, like James and John left their nets, you walked away from the thing that had brought you there to begin with. You left behind who you were in that moment it all changed.  All that weighed you down, all that held you back from running, kept you silent from speaking, kept your eyes from meeting others, your heart from opening to the world around you, you left it there at the well beside him.  And you ran.  

You ran back to your town and you extended to the people the same invitation he offered to his first disciples, Come and see. You told everyone, Come and see this man who knows everything about me.  He can’t be the Messiah, can he?

And they came. They listened to you to.  

Turns out you are someone that people listen to.  Turns out you have things to say.

They invited him to stay that day, and he did.  

You know why they all listened to you, don’t you? 

You were completely different when you came back without that water jug. You ran into town confident, joyful. You slunk out of town a shadow, and you returned luminous and hopeful.  You had passion and purpose; your shoulders were back, and your head was raised, and your voice was firm, and your eyes lit up, and people couldn’t help but stop and stare, take in what you were saying. They could see for themselves that you were different. 

The way you yearned for the water when he said it – the way everything inside you longed to be filled, they felt that too, when they saw you.  It is like a spring, you know, that came right up out of you and spilled onto others, compelling them to go to the source of the water themselves.

It is said that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and dwells among us.  That day the Word-made-flesh dwelled among you.  “Love moved into the neighborhood.” As The Message puts it. And your people beheld his glory; they called him the salvation of the world.  Because they tasted the living water themselves.  

They felt the life they were meant to live bubbling up inside them too, the love they were meant to share longing to spill out onto others.  They saw the light of the world. The light of the world saw them.  And they felt what it is to be loved. 

Now the disciples didn’t seem too happy about this at first.  They went off to buy the lunch and came back to a different evangelism strategy.  For truly, you are not only the first person Jesus revealed that he is Messiah, but you are the first preacher, really, the first evangelist.  Your whole town signs on pretty quickly, and you all weren’t even on the tour schedule, so no wonder the disciples were a little taken aback. 

But Jesus tells his disciples that day that they are part of something that started way before them and continues way after them – their part is important but this isn’t their parade.  The work they do now was begun by others, and that these people they dismiss without a thought are the ones who Jesus will be staying with for the next couple of nights, so just sit back and let it unfold – for God so loves the whole damn world.

And did they realize it then? Or did it take them a while? 

That Jesus will always be found in the world, that Jesus came for the world? 

That nobody gets a corner on God, and as soon as we’ve labeled ourselves the temple people, or the mountain people, or the true followers, or the good kind of Christians, we’re about to be surprised by Jesus who comes to and through. 

We are looking back at our ancestors in faith, at their lives and struggles and questions, and asking, Who is this God?  And what is God up to?  Did you know you are part of a long tradition of God interrupting and reorienting lives? You too know the stories.  

Hannah and her bargaining with the divine, her sacrifice of gratitude, 

Samuel and his leading the people, listening to God and obeying, even when God takes things a different direction, and all he can see is next step in front of him. 

David and his complicated life, and longing for God and enduring words of joy, pain, anger and gratitude prayed by people in your time and still in ours.  

You know how God gave all of them a different life than they thought they’d have, a different life than they were living when God interrupted things. You know how God used their lives to bring life others, to shape the world.  

But, water-sharer, gospel-bearer, that’s you now, too.  You don’t know us, but we know your story because you are part of our story, you’re a forerunner to our own faith, along with others you don't know but whose stories are now in our scripture, gathered alongside your own:  Anna and Simeon with in their confident waiting to see God’s salvation in the flesh, Mary with her willingness to set down what she thought was a good life to say Yes to participating in the great mystery of God with us, John, whose whole life was to share the message, that this one you’ve just given water to was coming into the world to save the world. 

You, chosen and beloved woman, with your baggage and your boldness, you were one minute dead and the next alive, one minute an outsider and the next a leader, one minute quietly going about your lonely business, and the next in a personal conversation with the Divine that upended your life and transformed your town.  

As you were the first in scripture, I’d like you to be our preacher today and have the last word.  And if you were standing here right now, I think what you’d say to us is this:

God isn’t hindered by how disconnected we feel, or useless, or stuck. We live our lives small and cut off, but God’s love is wide and infinite, and we are all caught up in it, all meant to share it.

You’d tell us that God surprises us, showing up in the wrong kind of person in the unlikeliest of circumstances, and often when our life has worn deep grooves, and we’re not expecting to meet anyone or change anything at all. And what God does is make us ministers for one another, just like Jesus is to us. 

A good life, you’d say, is a life opened up to encounter this God anywhere, a good life is life that stays in an ongoing dialogue with the God who comes in. 

And you’d warn us, when the transforming one encounters us, water jugs get left, the reasons we came in the first place get forgotten, stereotypes get shattered, barriers get torn down, relationships get mended, lives get reoriented, new possibilities emerge, fear gives way to hope, and death to life - it’s like drinking living water from a spring that never runs dry.

And then, you’d point us out to the world, back toward our lives, and gently tell us what you told the rest of them, Come and see.

Amen.

(This year, we are asking, "Who is this God and what is God up to?" And "What is a good life and how do we live it?" along with some of our biblical ancestors.  The sermons related to this series are here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David* (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here)

*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty.

The story of your life

Acts 9:1-22

According to a study conducted by political scientists at Louisana State University and the University of Maryland,  

"Just over 42 percent of the people in each party view the opposition as "downright evil." “Nearly one out of five Republicans and Democrats agree with the statement that their political adversaries “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.””

But their line of questioning did not stop there.  They continued by asking, “Do you ever think: ‘we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died’?”

 And some 16 percent of Republicans (or 7.9 million voters) and 20 percent of Democrats (that translates to 12.6 million voters) do think on occasion that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposition died. 

(As reported in the NY Times)

Every human being is living out of a story. 

Saul had a story. Saul’s story was that the Israelites had been corrupted by bad ideas. They had been tarnished by interaction with the wrong kind of people. Saul has the pure ideal  - what you believe matters a great deal. How you live matters. 

For Saul, it was crystal clear. The right way of life is threatened by these bad people, who worship not the true God, but a man, a criminal killed by the death penalty. These people are are not just wrong, they are evil. They are warping the truth and leading good people astray.  They must be stopped.  Saul is a righteous man. He is full of righteousness. He is morally right, his cause is just, he is virtuous and true, upright and worthy. And he gets lots of props for it.

Nobody decides to be self-righteous.  But we live out of stories that perpetuate it.  I am this so I am clearly not that. I identify with this group, so by default, and sometimes gradually, I agree to abhor that group.  I hold to this ideal, am guided by these good and right principles, so how can I associate with those who do not hold to what is good?  I am confident of my rightness, bolstered in it, secure beyond doubt by all the things that keep reinforcing my story, and therefore I am dead certain of their wrongness. 

Left to our own devices we will all seek to justify ourselves at the expense of others. This is, by the way, sin. Disconnection from God and each other.  Left to our own devices we will seek righteousness at every turn; we are so very tempted to be right.  We will make enemies faster than friends, and they’ll last longer. 

Saul is going to Damascus with a story. 

He’s a zealot for the faith, drawing on the stories in Hebrew scripture of those whose holy zeal pleased the Lord, and who turned Israel away from their sin and corruption and back to God. He is fanatical and relentless, invested and dedicated,and has become a rather famous heretic-hunter. A few chapters back he held the coats and watched while the Jesus-follower Stephen was stoned to death. Because with evil spreading like this, perhaps it might be better if large numbers of these folks just died.

Saul had a story, and his life had one mission: to stamp out evil and stand up for what is good and right and true. Imagine if Saul had had a Twitter feed.  All that he could accomplish today!

We are almost through our year on grace, friends. And our theme right now is grace infinite – grace that comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. Grace is the way God interrupts our story and gives us a new one. God either meets us in our places of death and nothingness, or requires that something in us die and we face our nothingness, so that we might find real life. 

Saul is on his quest for God, guided by his story, firm in his ideals, righteous and true.  And it’s all going as planned when suddenly, in a blinding light and voice from heaven, he is confronted by voice, who calls him by name.  Saul, why are you persecuting me? 

Who are you? He answers. 

And God, the great I am, answers him with a name.

I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 

Get up and enter the city and you’ll be told what to do.

And Saul is thrown into an identity crisis. 

An identity crisis is when the story you are living no longer works for you. 

All you thought made the world make sense no longer holds up.  

A person in an identity crisis is a person without a story.

Saul’s story is taken from him. He is a person without a story.

Directionless and helpless, he is led by the hand into the city like a frightened child. For three days he lives in darkness, confusion and fear, unable to eat or drink. 

Then the voice of God calls out again. 

But this time it’s Ananias, one of the community of Jesus-followers, whom God calls by name. 

Ananias. 

Here I am, Lord. He answers, all faith and eagerness, just like the prophet Isaiah, Here I am, Lord, send me!

Everyone has a story, and Ananias is no exception. 

He is a follower of Jesus the Christ.  He is ready to do as God commands. He also knows who Saul is.  And he and his community have every reason to despise and fear him. 

Saul is the enemy. His ideology is wrong, his beliefs are dangerous, and, if the rumors are to be believed about what he has done, he may even be lacking the traits to be considered fully human — he behaves like an animal, after all.

God tells Ananias to go to this certain street to a certain house and find this certain man, Saul of Tarsus. This man is praying and has seen a vision of Ananias coming to lay hands on him so that he regains his sight. 

But Ananias balks. Perhaps he hasn’t heard correctly. Perhaps God is not informed as to exactly who this person really is, what evil he’s done. Certainly God cannot mean for Ananias to help this man. He’s the enemy.  

Our stories are very, very powerful.

‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ 

But God says, Go, I have chosen him to be an instrument to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings and the people of Israel, I myself will show him how much he is to suffer in my name. 

So Ananias goes, even though it could be a trap. Even though this person is someone he has good reason to fear and distrust, in humility he goes to share in Saul’s death experience. 

He goes in the ministry of being with someone in an identity crisis.

Ananias arrives and finds Saul in his paused state of weakness and waiting, a man without a story.  Ananias places his hands on Saul, and touching him, he calls him, “Brother Saul” and says, “the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you met on the road, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 

And when they encounter one another, it’s Jesus they meet.  

No idea will save you.  No rightness or righteousness will save you.  Only encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not give Saul an ideology, a superior insight or a moral high ground. He gave him a person: I am Jesus. 

I am Jesus whom you persecute. 

I am Jesus whom you now meet in the touch and ministry of another.  

I am Jesus who crucifies your story and gives you another in its place. 

And from there Saul finds himself welcomed into the community of Jesus- followers, that just a few days earlier he had intended to destroy.  And they find themselves welcoming in this one they knew as their oppressor who had been intent on their destruction.  

And the grace of God meets them all in the person of the other. 

When Saul comes to the Damascan community of Jesus-followers, he is no longer the invincible warrior for God, fighting for what is right. His self-righteousness is gone. His upbringing, education and training in reason or argument cannot bolster him.  His undisputed faith or stellar reputation are now meaningless. His legendary courage and rock solid conviction of purpose are worse than worthless here. 

All of Saul’s somethingness has been stripped away.  

He comes vulnerable. He comes in his nothingness.  

He comes only as a person, among persons.

And they receive him. 

They release their idea about him and receive him as a person.  

They give him a bed, and meals, and friendship. They tell him the resurrection stories and talk about their own trust and transformation.  Instead of revenge or retaliation for the death of Stephen, instead of fear and shunning and self-protection, they see him and receive him as a person and love him.

In the Body of Christ, Saul experiences the risen Messiah. The voice who called out to him from the blinding light is given hands, and faces, and names, flesh and foibles and families. They become his ministers, and they receive each other as Christ.

In the presence of their enemy they surrender their own story and receive a new one. It’s a story of healing, nurture and blessing. And forgiveness. They forgive Saul. And his story is reframed and retold, as God’s interruption of grace always does. 

Now he looks back at his life and sees the damage he has done, and the futility of his self-righteousness, and the truth of his belovedness and belonging to God and to these others.  

Who are you, Lord? 

I am Jesus, the person whom your ideas persecute. 

I am found among those you are persecuting. 

And so are you. 

Your identity is given to you, your story is restored, in the ministry of shared weakness and death, in the encounter between persons.

We don’t want to see each other as persons. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Non-violent communication, says, "It's hard to believe that those who are doing things far outside our value system are human beings like the rest of us. It's very challenging."   

We wont give the benefit of doubt to each other because we are afraid.  

Perhaps we’re scared of an identity crisis. 

What if we lose our story? What if this person makes me change my ideas?  

What if accepting this person is the same as accepting their ideas?  

What if their false and dangerous ideas spread to the people I care about?  

What if, by seeing them as human, equal and beloved, our story is corrupted, and we no longer know who we are?  

The human temptation is always toward self righteousness. It is always toward building our own somethingness. We are always tempted to write our own story. To build and maintain our own identity. To form our own I am from our ideas and accomplishments. 

But the Christian life is one of being knocked to the ground and given an identity crisis, and then a new story. 

Saul dies to his story of zealous righteousness, and awakens to his story of grace, experienced alongside these others whom he had seen as enemy. This experience is so transformative that it becomes his story, his life message, his purpose.  Everything he had been about up till now is seen anew through the lens of amazing grace. Throughout all the letters he ends up writing and all the places he ends up going, before the Gentiles and Kings and people of Israel he speaks to, Saul tells his story as a recovering self-righteous-aholic who has been saved by grace.

We find out a few verses later that Saul’s name is changed to Paul – which means, “Humility,” perhaps the last name that he, or anyone else, would think to give to this man. And yet, he lives into it – even up against his own reoccurring instinct toward self-righteousness, which he names, grace is the story he keeps living and telling. And it turns out Ananias' names means "The Lord gives grace."

We call this story, “the conversion of Paul.” But it’s also the conversion of Ananias, and the conversion of the Damascan community of Jesus-followers.  It’s the transformation of all of them.  To follow Jesus is to welcome Christ in the person of their enemy.  To serve God is to come vulnerably to be cared for by God at the hands of their enemy.

Everyone is living from a story.  In any other story we have about ourselves, our jobs or families, our educations or accomplishments, in what we’ve lost or survived, it becomes easy to start thinking, “I did that. I earned that. I survived that. I guess I was great.”  It’s easy to see ourselves as the good and others as the bad, easy to place ourselves above, over and against one another. 

But you can’t do that in a story of cross and resurrection. You can’t get comfortable in the rightness of your ideas in a story that keeps sending you back to your sin, back to your nothingness, to find there the person of Jesus Christ, who meets us with grace and forgiveness and belonging we can’t earn. 

You were in sin and Jesus found you.  That is the story of your life. That is the story of Saul’s life now. And we have the freedom to live now out of this story. Inside all the other stories in our lives- our jobs and our families, our communities and the things we care about and pursue, inside them now we live this story: that we are sinners saved by grace.  Like good and holy Saul, like faithful Ananias and the Jesus-followers of Damascus, we are always in need of conversion.

Where is Jesus saying to you today, I am Jesus whom you persecute?

Or, I am Jesus whom you meet in the touch and ministry of another?  

Or, I am Jesus who crucifies your story of righteousness and gives you a story of grace in its place? 

Grace comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. In grace, Jesus calls us by name and gives us an identity crisis. Then the Holy Spirit brings us to other persons, to find there between us the very person of Christ. Our story of disconnection from God and each other is crucified, and we are given a new story, of belonging to God and belonging to each other.  

May God resurrect us again.

Amen.

Changing, and Being Changed

A sermon on Annual meeting Sunday.

Luke 4:14-30

Last night a friend posted a photo on Facebook of rack at a store with something blue, triangular shaped, quilted, and embroidered with flowers hanging on it, and said, “I think this ‘hat’ at the Good Will is actually a mislabeled tea cozy.’ 

 The first comment underneath was, “What’s a tea cozy?” and he had to go on to explain that it’s a cover you put on your tea pot to keep the tea from cooling too fast – and not the tea pot you boiled the water in on the stove, the ceramic one you serve the tea from.  

Neither the employees at the Good Will nor the friends on Facebook knew what this thing was even for. Because, in life, things are always changing. 

Last night I updated the church website with new photos. I didn’t mean to, I was there for something else, but I took a second and really looked at the photos for the first time in a long time.  And I was dismayed at how outdated they were.  Nearly every photo had people in it who are not here anymore. They’ve moved in on their journeys, are with new communities, connecting to God alongside different people, fulfilling baptism promises to different children.  Or they’ve died and been buried.  Or they’re in assisted living and unable to remember who they are, much less who we are.  

The kids in the photos are becoming teenagers and the babies are becoming kids, and there’s no more choir, and we stopped doing 5^thSundays at St. Joe’s.  All these photos were obsolete, showing a different LNPC than the one in front of me right now. 

Time moves so fast, and life is always, always changing, and isn’t it so strange to be human?  It's so strange to want to so badly to belong and to be always trying to figure out how and where you belong, and whether you still belong, and how to help other people belong without losing your own belonging.  It’s so strange to want so badly to be ok, to be good and safe and whole and right, and ok, and it’s scary to wonder if you will be ok, or how long how will be ok for, or what you will do when you’re no longer ok.  

All week long I found myself wanting to label Jesus’ townspeople in this passage. What jerks, what idiots, fickle fools who one minute think he’s amazing and wonderful and the next minute, literally want to kill him.  
Apparently we’ve always been bad at not getting what we want.  
How like every twitter war between conservatives and liberals, and liberals and liberals and conservatives and conservatives, every new cultural scandal and celebrity disturbance and dramatic political development.  The rise and fall of darlings to demons is a regular affair these days.  

We think we’re in it against each other, that there’s only so much love and acceptance and security to go around, and some people have had more than their share for too long so it’s time to take it from them and give it to others. We think belonging can be bestowed and withheld, that it can be lost, and it can be earned, and that somehow, it is ours to police.  And that’s not new either.

Jesus didn't’ belong to them. He belonged to the whole world – the Magi figured that one out when he was still a toddler.  But his own people have yet to get this.  And they think that if he belongs to other people, then they must be getting the short end of the stick.  They should get first dibs on the miracles; they raised him, after all.  

But before they even get to say it, Jesus takes the words out of their mouth.  No doubt you’re thinking,Why not a little kickback for the hometown, Jesus? At least do for us what you did for others! But that’s not going to happen.  No prophet is welcomed back home – in fact, let’s talk about the prophets –in each of these two stories – they healed one person, and that person was an outsider.

And the people's excitement and admiration turn to seething fury.  How dare he? Who does he think he is?  Rage fills them. They want to destroy him.  If others get God’s gifts and God’s blessings and the miracles and all the rest of it, what do we get?

Jesus doesn’t belong to us. He belongs to the whole world.  The Church, even we ourselves, this church, it doesn’t belong to us.  It belongs to the world.  It is God’s vessel of love to the world; we are that. That is who we are.

This year LNPC is 97 years old.  Along that path the congregation built and then added on to this building in a time when nearly everyone in the country went to church. It was designed to perfectly meet the needs of the 500 people who regularly gathered here.  It had classrooms for the different grades for Sundays and Wednesdays, and a much-used fellowship hall in a basement that everyone could get to on their own two feet. 

Over the years, as the church changed, the building’s uses changed with it – classrooms became a library, then a gathering room, the chapel a yoga room, one Sunday school room a sewing room, then back to a Sunday school room.  And now we rattle around in this big space and do our best to give it away to the community.  

And I bet those who were here in the 1960s couldn’t even have imagined that their building would one day hold artists and dancers and nursing moms meeting with their babies, and a neighborhood group and theater groups and other congregations.  Goodness!  And in a few weeks the country of Senegal will have an election polling station here, and just this week another congregation is asking about using our basement, and we still can’t seem to find enough ways to use this building to its fullest, or enough money to pay for its mounting needs, while at the same time, more and more people are being blessed by the gift of this space that we are entrusted with, and we’re doing a not half bad job making a stylish and functional hat out of this tea cozy.

Clearly we cannot, and should not, be trying to use this building for the reasons and ways it was built to be used.  That reality no longer exists, not in America, and not in this congregation.  And we do not have pews full of people for whom giving at least a tenth of their income to the church is a routine, no-brainer thing because church was the only charity game in town.  And even if we did, would we want people to give all their giving-away money to keep up this building and maintain this institution, when they could be feeding starving children or digging clean wells or giving homes to people without them?  

It’s a strange time to be church.  

It might make us wonder if we are going to be ok, or how long how we will be ok for, or what we will do when we’re no longer ok.  

The eager hometown crowd filled with ideas and expectations gazed starry-eyed at Jesus and didn’t hear a word of what he said.  What he said is, God is always, and already, and even right now, today, in this very place, in the business of setting captives free, and healing people, and bringing freedom to the oppressed and this, now, is the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee-  that is, the year when all debts are canceled, and all who have made it big are brought down and all who’ve been brought down are lifted up. 

Jubilee was an actual thing, the compounding of the weekly Sabbath day of reminder and reorientation, building up to the seven year Sabbath where the land rests and people live off what they’ve saved to remember and return to the truth, and now the seventh of thatyear – the biggie – after 49 years everything there is goes back to the start.  The giant reset button year.  The computer crashes, all data is lost, all people are once again equal, nobody better, nobody worse – you don’t get to keep what you built up and you no longer have to scrape by. 

Remember? We all belong to God and we all belong to each other.  

It’s not just words, Jesus is saying, this is real. It’s really the way of God that is always breaking in.  

And it’s here right now.

Each one of you came here today.  You woke up and got dressed and ate breakfast and got in your cars and decided to come here. You made two dozen small choices in this direction, any one of which could have shifted the outcome.  You chose not to stay in bed, not put on sweats and chip away at your to-do list, not to turn the car the other direction and do the grocery shopping instead, but to come here.  

You came here because you believed there was a reason to be here.  Even if it was just out of habit, underneath of that somewhere, you believe this is a worthwhile use of your precious, limited time. You thought you could receive something, or give something, or feel something, or learn something.  

Thank you for coming here. For bringing yourself through those doors.  That’s not a small thing.  When we come together, God meets us.

This thing we are doing – believing that God is real, trying to practicing trusting that this is so, reminding each other that it is, talking toGod, even when it feels illogical, listening to stories from a book written centuries and cultures ago as though it has something important to do with us, doing these strange, ancient rituals with bread and juice, and these institutional formalities with words like ‘elders’ and ‘ministry’ – this thing we do here is part of what tells us who we are. It is part of how you live out your unique personhood and your belonging in the world.  By coming here, you say – this is what I choose to help define my life, to be known as, to shape me in some way.  Even as things change, this is something timeless and deep and it matters.  

Maybe it’s been a while since I said it, so it bears saying again, really strongly: This is God’s church; it is not ours. It’s not ours to protect or preserve, not ours to innovate or adapt, not ours to save or keep.  We are here to give it away.  To share ourselves, to love the world, to serve our neighbor.  This is why we exist as a congregation; this is who we are. God’s Church came way before us and endures way after us, and as we say every communion and will again today – we are one teeny little expression of the Body of Christ for this one particular time and place, different than it was before and different than it will be later, and letting God make us into just what is needed here and now.  

Our security, and our hope, and our belonging, do not reside in what we’ve built, and they don’t reside in what we can control or preserve or maintain. 

Our security, and our hope, and our belonging exist in in God.  

This is not words or ideas. 

This is a real, living being, the source of all life, whose power mostly sneaks in weak and unassuming and surprising ways, and who doesn’t care about bigger and better and winning and making a name for yourself or coming out on top or succeeding or ensuring your place is secure, but instead built in a reset button, lots of them, in fact. And has no qualms about using them regularly.  

This is the being who marched into his own hometown, told them what God was up to, said, I know what you’re wanting, but it’s not going to happen. Get with the picture, pay attention, join in what God is doing. 

It’s not going to be what you thought, most likely, or even what you wanted. 

But it is what you need. It’s what the world needs.  

And they nearly threw him off a cliff for that.  

But that doesn’t make it not true.

Change is an inevitable part of being alive.  

But transformation, resurrection, life- these are Jesus things; this is what the Holy Spirit does in us, to us, and through us.  It is what God is already and always doing.  Not just now, not just all of a sudden.  Every moment, always, God is bringing newness and life and hope into our world, into our lives. Sometimes it just takes us a while to catch on and join in.  But that doesn’t mean God isn’t already and always doing it.  

This is why we got out of bed and came here today. We believe this is so, Lord, help our unbelief.  And we want to experience it.  You and I come together here because we are choosing to be changed by God, toward God, toward life. 

And it’s not going to be what we thought, most likely, or even what we wanted. But it is what we need. It’s what the world needs.  

The Church is God’s vessel of love for the world. God is doing this and it will continue. But what that looks like, and how that happens, is not the same as it was in the past, and it will be different in the future.

For our part, here and now, I think it’s about being brave enough to welcome Jesus. The real Jesus, not the Jesus we wish he would be.  (And remember, we meet Jesus, who is God with and for us, when we are with and for each other).  And it’s about praying for the courage to recognize and grieve any misguided expectations and desires that might keep us from seeking Christ and what he might do to change us.  And it’s about resisting the urge to scramble for survival, or grasp for what used to be, or compete or compare to try to belong or be ok, and instead it’s being extravagant and excessive in acknowledging the belonging of others, and confident and certain of our own.  And it’s telling each other the truth, and working out our disagreements in love – no literal or figurative hurling off of cliffs. 

And as we keep showing up to this, we will listen, and get better and better at listening, deeper and deeper, so that we hear the voice of God in each other, and can be the voice of God to each other.  And all the while, this is about trusting that the Church is, and always will be, God’s vessel of love to the world.  And so with resilient joy and unchecked hope, let’s buckle up and go along for the ride.

Amen.