nathanjhill.com

Welcome! I'm Nathan Hill. I write about theology, technology, and other stuff.

[nathanjhill]

Moving the Site

Hey to my few readers...

I am going to leave Tumblr and move to something a little more user friendly and under my own control. I’ll be sending out some notices when that happens.

[nathanjhill]

A Call to Worship for Epiphany

One: This is a day of new beginnings. Some of us seek the quiet darkness of midnight. Some of us seek the warm light of dawn. Many: Wherever we seek, God's love illuminates us. One: Some of us look to this new year in frustration. Some of us look to this season with hope. Many: Whatever we look for, God's love illuminates us. One: Let us walk together Many: And find God lighting our way!

[nathanjhill]

FYI

I’ve been posting some of my sermons to the updated University Christian Church website. Please check them out there.

[nathanjhill]

Do you deserve a break?

Scripture: Nehemiah 13:15-22

On Wednesday night, I was sitting in a church meeting at our regional office. It was late. Past 9 PM. It had been a long day with a ton of stuff on my plate. So I tweeted out a mild complaint - “I’m stuck in a church meeting - someone get me out of here.” And one of my friends on Twitter, Jason Poon, replied:

"Someone preach the theology of Sabbath to these people!!!"

Like many of you, I live a hectic life. As your pastor, my schedule is crowded with meetings and demands. Sometimes, I stay late into the night here at the church in vital conversation with you about the future of our church and how our ministry can bring Christ’s compassion to our community. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and believe in the mission God has given us - but I am the first to admit that sometimes it wears me out. Sometimes, I get tired.

Our church is made up of full-time students, federal employees, Uber drivers, teachers, contractors, consultants, and professionals of all kinds - each of you who knows this struggle - doing something that pays the bills and brings you joy but also wears you down. And even for our retirees in our church, some of you are busier after you retired than when you were working full-time.

Work is a gift - but friends, on this Labor Day weekend when we reflect on the gift of getting things done and enjoy a long weekend, I want to ask a practical but theological question -

Do you deserve a break?

In our capitalistic culture, we are taught and encouraged to work hard from a young age.

However, when we talk about vacation and rest in our culture, too often we treat them as luxuries, something that you must earn. Not everyone deserves a day off. Vacation is accrued. We call them benefits. We’ll pay you to work here, and as a bonus we’ll let you take a couple of days off every so often. Of course, those higher up on the food chain tend to have all the benefits they desire.

Too many struggling families have to make life or death choices over what they dare risk missing work for. Too many individuals could use a day off to deal with trauma and pain in their lives but cannot afford to do so. Too many bosses see a worker taking a day off as an annoyance rather than the best thing they can provide.

The word I want to focus on in my question at the core of this sermon is “deserve”.

Do we deserve time away from the hard work and stress of life?

Do we deserve the dignity of being able to recharge and refresh ourselves?

Do we deserve opportunities for self-care and self-love?

Do we deserve a chance to free our bodies from catering to the demands of others and instead experience being with God?

Whether or not you deserve a break is a question and a value that God is adamantly concerned about throughout scripture.

In our reading this morning, we pick up in the middle of the memoirs of Nehemiah, a Jewish leader and reformer who was tasked with helping his people return from exile and rebuild Jerusalem and their beloved temple. Jerusalem and its temple were at the center of Jewish religious and political life. This was a monumental task to be undertaken with great care and hard work.

Stone by stone, gate by gate, building by building, Nehemiah helped the people begin to put back the pieces of their homeland, torn apart by conquering armies years before.

In the midst of their efforts, Nehemiah’s people discover a scroll hidden away behind a wall in the temple, stashed there for safekeeping when the invaders toppled the walls and pillaged their capital. The scroll is a book of law, containing instructions for how to live according to God’s way. When Nehemiah himself hears these words, he tears his clothes out of grief for how much the people had forgotten how to live as their Creator asked.

Among those ways of God that the people had let drift from being central to their lives was Sabbath.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 reads:

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

The Sabbath day was meant to be holy, but as human beings do, we find loopholes in our rules and regulations. Some ancient Jews no doubt asked, “Work is prohibited on the Sabbath, but can’t I go shopping? Shopping isn’t work.” Or, “If we Jews aren’t doing the physical labor, isn’t it okay to assign the work to those foreigners over there?” In Jerusalem, Nehemiah discovered that on Sabbath the gates of the city were left open so that those foreign merchants, who maybe didn’t have to follow the rules like the Jews did, could come in with their food trucks, credit card offers, same day delivery, and fine boutiques to the delight of the residents.

Nehemiah in his effort to restore the glory of his beloved city knew that rebuilding the walls would be useless if the people did not rebuild their care for the life-giving ways of God - if they did not restore the respect for the holiness and sacredness of their lives. Sabbath was intended to be a distinctive practice that shaped the people apart from the ways of the world. Sabbath challenged them to worship God rather than money, consumption, and stuff.

So Nehemiah commanded the gates to be shut, shutting out the marketing, so that on Sabbath, his people might rest and take a day off from moneymaking and wealth generation and buying and selling and improving their status and filling their closets.

For one day a week, shut the gates, so that all people might join Creation in rest.

Sabbath was not just for human beings - but for everything:

In God’s Sabbath, even the livestock that provide us with meat and milk and eggs deserve a break.

In God’s Sabbath, even those who aren’t like you or those lower on the economic ladder - even those who were “slaves” of ancient Israel - and those who are victims of modern day slavery - or stuck in minimum wage jobs - even they deserve the dignity of a day of rest.

Sabbath speaks directly to the reality that human beings too often treat each other as livestock. We treat fellow human beings no different or worse than we treat the animals. We treat each other as animals of burden to help us achieve what we want, creatures to be loaded up and worked to the bone until we can replace them with the next low-skilled laborer in line.

Sabbath is resistance to that - Sabbath affirms the value of all human beings and the value of all living things in Creation.

And when we begin to practice Sabbath, we might begin to imagine a world where there is no more slavery and economic ladders and rat race and debt.

The good news of God is that we all deserve a break, a day off, a time to relax, refresh ourselves, and feed our souls.

Nehemiah shut the gates of the city to create that possibility for the people of Jerusalem -

Will we shut the gates in our lives so that we may return to a cycle of rest with God and all of Creation?

What are some ways we can do this?

We can take a break from success. Our society teaches us to crave success. If we aren’t climbing the ladder, then we are going nowhere. Success is wonderful, but God is far more interested in our faithfulness. We must shut the gate to the idea that we are only worth what we do and achieve in life. We are more than our accomplishments and our failures. We are God’s beloved, and that is enough for today.

We can receive mental health care. All of us will experience times in our lives when it is life-giving and sacred to get help to deal with the stress, anxiety, and pain we carry. I am always happy to meet with you as your pastor and do my best to listen and pray together, but a trained licensed professional can help any of us sort through the burdens we carry so that our bodies, minds, and souls may rest. It is never a shameful thing to seek help. And if you don’t need it, maybe you will encounter someone this week who does. Here are two numbers to remember - National Suicide Hotline - 1-800-273-8255, UMD Counseling Center - [phone]

We deserve to be with our people. This may be family, this may be a circle of friends, this may be people who know your journey best and can understand you better than anyone else. Sometimes, this is your church family - but sometimes, even your church family can’t be this for you. We all deserve space where we don’t have to perform for each other. Where we can be who we are just as we are. Where we can shut our walls and be who God created us to be. Do you have people like that in your life? Do you have space like this in your life? If not, you truly deserve it.

We deserve no more church meetings that go past 9 PM. (Haha)

Black feminist author Audrey Lorde wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Our Sabbath practice as Christians is resistance to a world and society that often seeks to devalue and degrade our human dignity - some more than others. In God, our humanity and our bodies are celebrated as temples where God’s Spirit dwells.

Yes, we deserve a break.

May we work for a world where all living things experience rest. May we care for ourselves and each other. May we take a break along with Creation

[nathanjhill]

What will the end of the world be like?

Scripture: Revelation 1:1-3, 6:9-11, 12:1-6, 22:8-11

In recent years, the movies, tv shows, video games, and books that seem to grab us are apocalyptic movies - movies about the end of the world. They are everywhere - and they are all grim. Atomic bombs, alien invasions, zombie hordes, pollution, oppressive governments, zombie hordes, natural disasters, and even the dreaded Sharknado.

These movies may be popular because the end of the world doesn’t seem so unimaginable in our time:

When terrorist attacks can ravage peaceful streets

When hackers can sway election results

When climate change eats away at our coasts and stokes wildfires, hurricanes, and famine

When oppression and injustice and violence have displaced millions

When bombs dropped by drones can snuff out lives with a click of a button

And for so many in our world - those suffering under tyrannical dictators, for refugees fleeing civil war and famine, and even for the poorest of the poor right here in the US, the apocalypse has already come. They are living it.

Author Christopher Finke argues that these “end times” films and media tap into our pessimism but also invite us to think about our rebirth. Maybe these stories about the end of the world capture our imagination because, on some level, we understand how fragile our lives and our society really are - and we wonder. What if we could start over? What if we could reshape our broken, unjust world in a new image? What if we could throw off the shackles of violence, pain, and inequality and write a new history?

Christians have always been interested in the end of the world. Jesus told his disciples that he would return like a thief in the night - so keep watch. The Book of Daniel overflows with prophetic visions about the upheaval of the world and its powers. But the book that paints a vivid, bloody image of the end times is Revelation. Here, we Christians are specifically drawn into a glimpse of what our “end of the world” will look like.

The Book of Revelation is probably the MOST controversial book in the Bible. Scholars and theologians have debated its meaning - whether it belongs among scripture or how to understand it - for a long time. The images it presents do not make good children’s books pictures. Blood, death, war, dragons, natural disasters, and lakes of fire. In Revelation we also find the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster.

But Revelation is more than just dire and grim images - there are also visions of heaven - the tree of life, lambs, angels, and a New Jerusalem. It’s sort of like Christmas but on steroids.

Every generation has an armchair theologian or two who proclaim that they have cracked the code to Revelation and know the precise date when Jesus is coming back. Some have tried to line up the symbols of Revelation with modern day political leaders like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan and George Bush and on and on, but no matter how fine-tuned the calculations and research, with each year, those predictions are proven wrong and we are left in waiting mode for Jesus’ return.

But Revelation doesn’t invite us into a calm patient waiting for Jesus’ return. Revelation is written with urgency. Jesus is coming soon. The battle between good and evil is on the horizon. Those suffering today will not suffer in vain.

Revelation is itself a vision. It is unique. The author, John of Patmos, claims in the opening verses to receive what follows as a Spirit-filled vision from God. John was a first century Christian, not the same John of the Gospel of John, and he likely was a witness to the persecution of the early church from culture and authorities as well as conflicts within the church on what it meant to be faithful to Jesus. There, on a Sunday morning (the Lord’s Day), in an attitude of worship, the Spirit of God falls upon him. Jesus comes to him and says, “Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.”

That word Revelation is what we call the book - and in this religious sense, it does not mean John simply had a bright idea or a sudden insight. Rather, the Revelation is an unveiling of the divine, an image given to him not out of his own power, but from God. God chooses to speak through John.

Following Jesus sometimes leads to these kinds of experience. Most of you come to worship each Sunday morning expecting to experience God’s love - but John’s Revelation reminds us that when we worship God, sometimes God uses these moments to reshape how we see the world. Do you come to worship ready to have our eyes open to the mysteries of God? If not, maybe we should.

The vision that God gives John is filled with symbols and riddles that draw upon the prophetic literature of the whole Bible. Dragons, beasts, lambs, angels, lakes, pits, seals, and trumpets. While we might be tempted to try to map these out and assign historical events to them, John’s vision is supposed to be symbolic. John wasn’t interested in nailing down dates and times - rather, in the words of scholar Elaine Pagels, John wanted

“to speak to the urgent question that people have asked throughout human history, wherever they first imagined divine justice: how long will evil prevail, and when will justice be done?”

In chapter six, a series of seals are opened by the Lamb of God, bringing forth all manner of pain and injustice and sorrow in the world. Death. Violence. Famine. Plagues. Economic uncertainty. In our scripture, the fifth seal reveals the martyrs of God, those followers of Jesus who were crushed and tortured and murdered because of their faith. In John’s time, these martyrs would not have been ancient people - they would have been friends, mentors in faith, church leaders, and risk takers. Revelation addresses right away the injustice of those who have been taken away by the evil of this world - their voices are heard wailing, “how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” How long until things are made right?

Revelation describes a cosmic battle between the forces of evil and the goodness of God - with heaven and earth as the battlegrounds. But rather than introduce new characters, Revelation centers upon Jesus. In Chapter 12, our imagination is pricked when we hear of a dragon prepared to devour a baby who is soon to be delivered by a pregnant mother. Elaine Pagels tells us that traditionally the woman is interpreted as Israel, or later in church history, as Mary, mother of Jesus, and the child is the same baby Jesus, who once again laughs death in the face and lives on. Jesus is rescued from the grave and ascends into the presence of God, prepared to rule the world with justice and righteousness.

No doubt, for Christians so long ago who heard this story, they felt reassured. They heard in this incredible vision the gospel story once again - Jesus had not left them for good. Though times were tough and evil seemed to be on the march, Jesus was prepared to come back and finish the gospel story he began. God would make things right. Evil would not have the final word. Injustice would not persevere. Jesus would reign forever and ever.

In other words, for early Christians and for us, Revelation tells us that the end of the world looks a lot like the Gospel.

History will somehow have meaning. There will always be hope, even if we cannot see it in the present struggle. All of future, even the end of the world, is in God’s capable hands.

The end of the world looks like God coming back to us to confound and disrupt evil.

The end of the world asserts God’s sovereignty over the emperors and kings and presidents of our age.

Revelation ends with God coming down from heaven to dwell with all of God’s children and bringing fullness to Creation.

Jesus tells John not to “seal up these words”. This vision wasn’t meant to be a secret message that only the insiders had the ability to decipher. Nor was it meant to be dark and grim news, no matter how many Christians in recent years have tried to use Revelation to scare us.

This vision is good news.

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I know about me - sometimes, I have reached moments of my life where it felt like I was experiencing an end. An end to a relationship. An end to my faith. An end to a job. An end to an opportunity. An end to a passion. An end to love for myself or my neighbor. An end to my ability to get up in the morning and face the day. An end to a desire to try to make the world a better place.

Those moments can feel apocalyptic.

They can feel like my story is over, like God has finished with me.

But I want to remind you in God’s hands even our endings can become beginnings.

Even when injustice or wickedness closes a way to you, God’s power laughs in the face of that evil and proclaims - “all things are possible”.

Even when our hope is running on empty for a situation in our lives and in our world, God’s goodness is on the march.

Even when the stories in the paper and in our social media feeds have us feeling low, God’s arc of love is drawing all things into Christ’s reign.

Even when we are getting a little worn out from imagining a bold future of our church, God is prepared to dole out heavenly visions if we dare but look with openness to God.

In God, those endings can get turned around.

Brothers and sisters, though we may be tempted to buy into the doom and gloom end of the world scenarios, scripture reminds us that God is ready to come back to us. Last Sunday, we lost a dear saint of our church, Ches. And for me, Ches’ devotion and care to his wife, Ruth, who preceded him a few years earlier, becomes for me a profound image of the end that we followers of Jesus wait for. When Ches lost his wife, his heart broke. Yes, he suffered. Yes, he felt alone. Yes, it seemed like a terrible end. But every Sunday when he was in church after her passing, he chose to sit in a chair closest to the memorial garden where her ashes are buried, so in his words, he could be close to her. He waited and watched for the moment when he would be reunited with his love. That for me is how the world will end for all of us who place our trust and hope in our loving God.

[nathanjhill]

Give Us What We Want (a sermon on leadership)

1 Samuel 8

What makes for good leadership?

Right now, authors and academic types are claiming that the world is experiencing an uptick in authoritarianism. Larry Diamond of Stanford University in a media interview described it this way - “they can do whatever they want, they can repress and arrest and even murder whoever they want, they can rule as nastily as they want.” (and face no consequences)

Across the world from the Philippines to Turkey to Poland and North Korea and maybe even right here at home, leaders are choosing to behave as bullies, cracking down on their opponents, trying to silence those who might disagree with them… twisting what is fact and what is fake. Maybe it’s not new - maybe it’s been going on along time, but this kind of behavior doesn’t seem to get challenged on the international stage quite like it used to.

Especially when we hear of talk right here in our nation of a President who claims to be able to pardon themselves of all wrong - it’s okay if we get a bit nervous or fired up in alarm.

What’s clear - we are in need of some good leaders for a time such as this.

But what makes good leadership?

I wonder if part of the rise of authoritarianism is an ancient need buried within as human beings - a need for certainty. A need for security. A need for, even if it is not a tangible sense of a safety, someone or something in our lives and in our society who makes us feel grounded in all the uncertainty that swirls around us.

A tough talking leader can do that.

Walls and big guns and echo chambers (of people who believe things like we do) and people who look and act like us can do it too.

All of those things can seem to make life easier, make us feel comfortable and safe, even if the reality is that life is rarely safe. The unexpected can happen. Evil is on the prowl. There are bad guys with guns. We live in a world with nuclear weapons.

We want a King.

We want a King who can sort through all of that madness and convince us that it’s all going to be okay.

Who is going to stand tough and talk a good game and make our worry go away.

It seems scripture is prepared to challenge our notions of safety and security in one glorious leader.

In our text this morning, we come across a word from the Lord through the prophet Samuel that is as eerily timely today as it was a couple of thousand years ago.

Samuel the prophet, appointed by God as an intermediator between the people and the Holy, has seen his ministry begin to wane. He is old - and his sons have become corrupt. They are unable to carry on the family business. They take bribes. They showcase a leadership that is not aligned with God’s way.

So the people ask for a change - they ask for a king.

Place this in context - When the people came to the Promised Land, they didn’t initially have a King. They were a way of life that was quite free other than the specific religious laws that governed how they behave and settle disputes and care for the poor and vulnerable. But when trouble struck or the people needed a word, God gave the people prophets, sometimes called Judges, to gather the tribes and lead them to repel invaders or critique their way of life when they strayed.

But times have changed - the people have seen what other nations are doing. They are away of the instability and chaos of the world. Maybe those neighboring peoples raised their tariffs or tried to threaten them or have come across their border. The people don’t trust God’s way - they want a King.

Here, the people of Israel clamor for a King - and they clamor for a King for all the reasons that authoritarians today are having a run of success. They want security. They want a warlord who will lead them into battle. They want to be like other nations, strong and significant. They want to feel safe and secure in a world of chaos and challenge.

Give us what we want - the people seem to say.

The prophet Samuel, knowing that his ministry is coming to an end just like his predecessor, Eli, listens to the people and consults God. Samuel is reluctant. After all, Samuel knew what God desired of the people - not for them to be conformed to the way of the world but conformed to the way of God.

God tells Samuel - they are not rejecting you - they are rejecting me.

Surprisingly or lovingly or with a mischievous grin, God gives them what they want.

But there will be a price. There’s always a cost.

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

The price for that “perceived” safety and security? Your lives. Your freedom. The fruit of your lands. Your children. And ultimately, a loss of your identity. God may not hear your cry anymore.

But the people, hard-hearted, are willing to take that bargain. Anything to keep up with the Jones. Anything to look as strong and mighty as all of their neighbors. Anything to claim that certainty in a world that seemed out of control.

And who does Samuel go and pick to be Israel’s first King?

Saul, who in Chapter 9 we are informed, most important credentials are that he is tall and handsome.

At first, Saul’s reign begins well - he must have been a terrifying sight in battle, but pretty soon, it begins to fall apart. No one person can fulfill all of those people’s dreams and desires. No one person can sustain the weight of the people’s desire for security. No one can be everything that people want and hope for. Saul too became jealous, bitter, distant, murderous, and hard-hearted. But at least he looked good while doing it, right?

Most cutting of all, the people, who were led out of bondage by a loving and just God, reject that God. They don’t want God to be their King. They want someone else. Someone they can touch and feel. Someone they can hang a portrait of on their living room wall. Someone who will give them inspiring speeches. They choose an idol over God.

How many times are we invited to choose an idol of security and safety over the One Sovereign God?

How many times have we chosen a candidate to vote for who is tall and handsome?

How many times have we chosen an ideology that offers certainty over reality?

How many times have we chosen to follow someone who looks and acts and believes like us even as God is calling us to place our trust in the Creator?

The opposite of safety and security is not vulnerability and irresponsibility but it is trust.

Trust in God’s creative, life-giving power.

Trust in God’s sovereign ability to hold us even in the midst of grief and uncertainty.

Trust in God’s leading and shaping so that we indeed might reflect God’s will in a world gone awry.

It’s past time to cast out those false idols and images.

All of our leaders are flawed. All of our leaders at one point or another will let us down. Including your pastor! And yet, the greatest among us must be the lowest, Jesus says.

For we Christians, our image of leadership comes from Jesus.

It comes from the one who the crowds talked about, crying out, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

The one who prayed in the garden, with sweat like blood dripping from his brow, “Not my will but your will.”

The one who was spat upon and mocked and tortured and who said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Jesus who as Paul’s letter to the Philippians said:

he was in the form of God,    did not regard equality with God    as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,    taking the form of a slave,    being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,    he humbled himself    and became obedient to the point of death—    even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him    and gave him the name    that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus    every knee should bend,    in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess    that Jesus Christ is Lord,    to the glory of God the Father.

This for me - and I hope for us - is an image of leadership that we seek.

Granted, I get that we as a church have a challenge. In a world where people come to church to seek security and safety, we are embarking on a project that challenges us to go to the margins. We are asking of each other to be open to the Holy Spirit shaping us in God’s image and not our own. We are calling one another to be stretched to place our trust not in bank accounts and weapons of war and political parties of any kind - but place our trust in God to provide for us as we face the wickedness of our day.

Sometimes, we come to church saying to God, Give us what we want.

But if we dare to listen and be open, we might receive exactly what God desires to give us - a place at the table, a part in God’s unfolding story of salvation and liberation.

Our church is full of stories of God’s provision - of God showing up in times of challenge and hope - of God giving us vision to live in this world. We know what it is to be vulnerable - may we commit to that call over and over again.

[nathanjhill]

Terrified & Amazed (Easter Sermon)

Scripture: Mark 16:1-8

On this glorious, transcendent, happy day, with our praise music, Easter lilies, baptisms, and joy, I need to halt our festivities for just a moment.

This morning, I want to challenge our default Easter attitude -

It’s time to put a little terror back into Easter.

Now, I know, for many of you, Easter is your favorite Sunday of the year. You are excited about that baked ham waiting for you at home, the triumphant melodies we will sing together, and those baskets of pretty colored eggs filled with candy.

Why do we need to talk about terror on this day of all days?

Well, did you hear it in our scripture this morning?

On that Easter morning so long ago, Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James, and Salome came to the tomb with burial spices to anoint the body of their beloved Jesus. Their hearts were heavy. Tears stained their faces. They lamented together as they prepared to offer a final honor to this man who blessed them with life and hope.

A man who now lay rotting in a tomb.

But that morning did not go as they planned.

In the light of dawn, the women were startled - the tomb was wide open. As they peered in, expecting signs of death and decay, instead there was a young man there, dressed in Easter whites, proclaiming - “He is not here; he has risen!”

But rather than rush from that strange sight singing their best resurrection hymn, the Gospel tells us:

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Terror and amazement.

Not exactly Easter joy!

What was so terrifying about that moment?

The Greek words for “terror and amazement” in our scripture are used throughout the New Testament to signify the limits of human experience - those moments in life when we see or witness something which cannot be articulated by mere human words or feelings. A spiritual awakening. A Holy Spirit moment.

The women rushed away in terror for what they saw and heard turned their world upside down.

Their beloved Jesus was not dead - he had risen.

How long do you think it took for them to think through it all, put the pieces together, make sense of this startling good news?

This wasn’t an Easter message made out of marshmallow chicks and chocolate bunnies.

This was dangerous stuff - this was a revolution.

That first Easter wasn’t safe.

Not for the world. Not for the Roman Empire. Not for the powers that be. Not for evil. And not for our lives.

That’s why Jesus had been crucified after all - here was a man who dared offer an alternative to the ways of the empire, the ways of greed and consumption, the ways of poverty and injustice. Here was a teacher who dared to threaten the religious institutions of his time that parted out grace and forgiveness like it was in short supply. Here was one who proclaimed freedom for the oppressed, healing for the sick, and justice for the poor, all without asking for permission from the mighty and powerful. Here was one who saw beyond skin color, nationality, and identity and made clear that all had welcome in the family of God.

Here was a man who loved fully, completely, unconditionally, suffering even for the sake of a world that rejected him.

No, Easter wasn’t safe - and neither was Jesus.

The women at the tomb fled in terror and amazement, because in their surprise, Jesus’ love couldn’t be contained or stopped by any power of this world, even death itself. Jesus wasn’t done loving them - and Jesus wasn’t done loving the world.

A love that will never let us go.

Brothers and sisters, coming face to face with unconditional, courageous love is a frightening thing.

How many times have each of us rejected an act of kindness, a word of grace, an invitation to be loved in our imperfection regardless of what we have done or who we are?

Like those women who became the first evangelists of Christianity two thousand years ago, we are too often tricked and bamboozled by the messages of our world which tell us that there is no such thing as unconditional love. We are invited to hate ourselves - our weight, our hair, our skin color, our experiences, our inadequacies. We are taught that injustice and violence are the way things are. We are encouraged to believe that our worth is based on our bank account, our retirement plan, our status in this world. We are shaped by division and sin, despising our neighbors and fearing that which makes us whole. We lust for that which cannot fill us, and we cling to the regrets of our failures and disappointments.

But Easter morning shakes the very gates of hell and and exposes the false, toothless gospels that lead to death and destruction.

As Dr. James Cone writes in God of the Oppressed, “Jesus’ actions represent God’s will not to let his creation be destroyed by non-creative powers. The cross and the resurrection show that freedom promised is now fully available in Jesus Christ.”

In Jesus, we find God’s love with skin on -

a love that cannot be vanquished by a bullet from a gun, by the mightiest empire, or by death in any form.

Resurrection is God’s final word that God will go to the ends of earth to love us.

God will reach into the deepest tomb - into the most hardened heart - and love you into eternity.

So this Easter, be afraid. Be very afraid.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have life everlasting.

For God so loved the immigrant families, documented or undocumented…

For God so loved the gay and straight and transgender child…

For God so loved the victim of violence and the grief-stricken mother…

For God so loved black, white, and brown…

For God so loved the rich and the poor…

For God so loved the heartbroken and the hated…

For God so loved YOU.

And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Max Lucado shares a powerful resurrection story he first heard in Brazil.

There was a poor family with barely anything to their name living in a rundown little shed on the outskirts of a poor little village in the Brazilian countryside. When tragedy struck and the husband passed away unexpectedly, it left the mother, Maria, and their only daughter, Cristina, to eke out a meager existence in the slums. Maria did what she could, but life was hard.

Cristina grew to be a headstrong and spirited, beautiful young woman. She began to dream about leaving home and venturing out into the big city of Rio de Janeiro to make her own path, away from her mother. She wanted adventure - she wanted success, but Maria knew that Cristina, without much education and with her beautiful brown eyes and bright smile, would instead likely be forced to sell her dignity, her values, and even her body to the highest bidder on the bitter streets of Rio.

And despite Maria’s love, her persistence, their late night arguments, pleading for her beloved child to stay home, the mother came home one afternoon to find her daughter gone with a farewell note left on her pillow - Cristina had gone to the city to find the better life she had always dreamed of.

Maria knew immediately what she must do to find her daughter. She quickly threw some clothes in a bag, gathered up all her money, and ran out of the house.

On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With the purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.

When she arrived, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place where those who fell on hard times might end up. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture – taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note.

It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.

It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth, but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.”

She did.

This Easter morning, God invites you home.

“Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter.”

May this Easter morning fill you with terror and amazement. May the sin and regret in your life wilt in the face of God’s fierce, unending love for you. May the evils and injustices of our world shatter against the power of the resurrection. May you know an Easter that is not safe - but very very good.

He is not here; Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

[nathanjhill]

Worthy of Saving

Scripture: John 3:11-21

One of my mentors, Father Eugene Brake, this wiry renegade Catholic priest who worked at the Capital Area Food Bank, told stories that inspired me - like the time he chained himself to a government building to protest unjust programs for the poor or the time after Major League Baseball announced a huge deal that he drove up to New York City by himself and asked to meet with the Commissioner to get some of that money for food banks. (They didn’t let him past the front desk.)

One of the best, that I have shared a little bit about before, was one of his memories of doing prison ministry here in the DC area. Father B went down the line of cells to meet with the men, pray with them, or just greet them - but all of the men kept telling him to avoid the last cell on the right. Because the guy in there was a bad dude. A very bad dude. But Father B went anyway and met this tall, muscled man with tattoos all over his body, who indeed had this look of menace around him. And as Father Eugene drew close to the cell, this man reached out between the bars and suddenly grasped this roaming priest. To his surprise though, it was a gentle, loving grasp, and this bad dude kept saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to talk with me.”

This bad dude turned out to be just another child of God, worthy of love.

I learned a lot about following Jesus from Father B - that there is definite risk involved and that you might discover God’s grace in the unlikeliest of places.

Father B recognized in his life and ministry that some people in our society are simply deemed unworthy.

Unworthy of success. Unworthy of loved. Unworthy of second chances.

It’s a message that I know I carry with me. Some of it comes from the media that we consume on a regular basis, where every commercial and image reminds us that we probably should lose a few pounds, buy the newest iPhone, or invest in our retirement plans if we want to be considered responsible and cool people. Some of it comes from our vicious political conversations where bullying and belittling others is the norm. Some of it is simply from within, not feeling like we have achieved what we have wanted in life, found the right relationship to make us happy, or climbed the corporate ladder as quickly as we should.

We are always comparing ourselves to others - and it can always seem like we come up short.

When we feel that we are unworthy, we treat each other like that. We fear those who are different. We sometimes choose to hate as a means of puffing ourselves up. We dump things into our bodies and into Creation since there is nothing of value to be celebrated. We dismiss voices of others, especially someone who is trying to love us, because there is no way we deserve any of that.

It’s no surprise that we suffer under waves of violence in our country.

It’s no mystery that many people turn to suicide in their sorrow and pain.

I wonder - did you feel unworthy sometime this past week? Or do you know someone who has?

I wonder how difficult it has been for you or your loved one?

Such a place can feel like a darkest night.

In our scripture today, Jesus’ words come to us in the dark of night.

If you go back to the beginning of Chapter 3, Jesus’ teaching begins in a conversation with a Pharisee, a Jewish leader, named Nicodemus. Nicodemus sneaks in the back door, sometime after midnight, curious to learn more about this one that some people were calling Savior. Why did he come at midnight? We don’t know.

As a good Jew, was he afraid to be seen in public with Jesus, who had just in the last chapter, caused a huge scene at the temple, knocking over tables and driving livestock out of the temple?

Or was he a co-conspirator along with Jesus’ disciples, ready to launch this new kingdom and an overthrow of the Roman Empire?

Those are both interesting answers - but today, I want to imagine that Nicodemus was feeling like some of us do - unworthy. Unworthy of redemption, unworthy of the gift of life, unworthy of God’s love.

His questions to Jesus seem to give weight to that.

How can I be born again, rabbi? How can any of this be?

Nicodemus doesn’t quite get Jesus. He has heard some of the wonderful things that this rabbi has done, the signs and wonders, but he doesn’t understand. He’s come for answers - how can I get some reassurance that God loves me, that I’m not alone, that I am worth something?

Maybe Nicodemus was prepared to hand over his resume or recite scripture or do whatever this rabbi asked to prove his worth once and for all.

But Jesus was not interested in talking about Nicodemus’ life, his status, his wealth, or his choices -

Jesus just wanted to talk about God - God’s actions.

In John 3:16, one of the most famous verses in this Gospel, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Language scholars who study the Ancient Greek that the gospel was originally written challenge us to re-read this verse with a more accurate translation. A better translation is this:

“For this is how God loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

While Nicodemus is fretting about how to get into God’s good graces, Jesus proclaims plainly that God is already doing just that - Jesus is present right then and there on earth to announce the good news. The world is worthy. Human beings are worthy. Dogs, cats, plants, fish, whatever - it is all worthy of being saved.

And this is how he did it - by giving Jesus, who dared bring heaven and earth together.

Jesus says to Nicodemus in the next verse:

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

To be saved is to be reclaimed.

To be saved is to be confirmed.

To be saved is to be made, without a doubt, worthy.

Nicodemus may not have seen himself worthy of being saved, but God did.

In the midst of his darkness, God showed up - in his darkest hour, when Nicodemus could not sleep for the fear and anxiety that lay upon his heart, God met him face to face.

And Jesus loved him into the light of new life.

The good news for us friends is that God isn’t held back by our sense of unworthiness, our failures, our fears, or our past. If so, our gospel message wouldn’t be much good news at all. Rather, Jesus is telling us and reminding us that God’s heart is big enough for each of us and the darkness that we might face.

Whether our day is good or bad and we feel like we have fallen short of the glory of God, God still sees someone worthy of saving.

Whether you are homeless, wealthy, gay, straight, divorced, confused, victim, or victimizer, God sees someone worthy of saving.

Whether your family looks kind of normal or is an embarrassing mess, God sees a family worthy of saving.

Whether your city streets are wracked by gun violence or layered with years of oppression, God sees a city worthy of saving.

God even sees a whole planet worthy of saving.

God sent Jesus to bring heaven and earth together, to blend and blur the stark distinctions of our reality and our lives, so that we experience first and foremost God’s love. No more distance. No more separation. God with us.

Nicodemus, in his state of darkness, couldn’t see the light right in front of him.

And maybe there are days when we can’t either.

But when we encounter Jesus, the light begins to grow in us. It grew in Nicodemus - even placing him there after Jesus’ death on the cross, laying his rabbi and savior in the tomb with tenderness and honor that was fitting for his Lord. Nicodemus believed. He discovered the light.

Friends, God invites us to step into the light, the light of God’s love.

Following Jesus means pursuing that light, wherever it might lead, from prison cells to midnight conversations, and sharing God’s love that we find in our Risen Lord.

God’s light is the kind of light certainly reveals the ways in which we are broken but it’s also the kind of light, like sunlight through a stained glass window, that enhances our distinct colors and beauty.

God’s light is the kind of light that a dentist might use to eradicate a cavity and at the same time brighten our teeth to their full deserved splendor.

God’s light is the magic hour of Creation that permeates the majesty of the Blue Ridge mountains and the twinkling foam of the Chesapeake Bay and even the pinpricks of wonder overhead in the night’s sky.

Following Jesus, especially in this day and age, is not about hiding in the darkness and trying not to be noticed - but to move with confidence that we walk in God’s light and have permission each and everyday to share that light.

I think God is preparing you to tell someone this week that they are worthy of saving.

There is someone you will cross paths with this week who is slinking about in darkness and don’t know how beautiful they are. You will have an opportunity this week to tell them,

For this is how God loves you that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Former neo-Nazi removes swastika tattoos after unlikely friendship - YouTube

Step into the light and be healed. Step out of the darkness and know you are worthy of God’s love, worthy of your neighbor’s love, and worthy of eternal life.

[nathanjhill]

Cold Anger

Scripture: John 2

A few months ago, I attended a training in DC about impacting change in your community.

One of the trainers asked this intriguing question, “What are you passionate about? What motivates you? What makes you angry?”

Of course, I am passionate about a lot of stuff in life - my family, my ministry, a good hamburger - and lots of things make me angry, including as some of our church leaders shared in a meeting this past week, bad drivers and stupid people (who are probably one and the same).

But what the trainer wanted to me think about that day was not just those likes and dislikes - but my values, my beliefs, those people and issues which get my fire burning deep down within and compel me each day to get up and try to make this world a better place.

I had to think about the mission we do as a church and the neighborhood we serve - homeless neighbors, hungry families, uncertain moments in hospital rooms, difficult conversations laced with tears, students skipping school, fear and anxiety that leeches the joy from our souls.

And I thought about Jesus, my baptism, my journey of faith, and this compelling vision of the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, where in the words of Rev. Ralph Watkins of Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Jesus proclaimed, “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”

(Turn to your neighbor and say this.)

The trainer that day was challenging those gathered to see anger as a tool for the work we do as a church. To embrace this anger as we face the injustice and violence of our daily lives. To use it as fuel in our call to mold our neighborhood and our city into something beautiful.

Now, I get that this is tricky - we are taught from a young age that anger is bad. When you are a child, if you get too angry, what happens? You go to time out or the principal’s office. When we are angry, we tend to say and do nasty things to people we love. We lose control.

But that’s not the kind of anger the trainer that day was talking about. In fact, he had a name for it - cold anger. An anger that burns bright and fierce on the inside all the while you maintain your polite demeanor on the outside. An anger that gets you up each morning. An anger that doesn’t take no for an answer in the face of injustice. An anger that stirs up movements for peace, transformation, and reconciliation.

You know who else had this anger? Jesus.

Jesus knew cold anger.

I know this is a shock - we have been fed an image of Jesus as meek and mild, a huggable Jesus, a Jesus who will tuck you into bed at night, sing you a sweet lullaby, make sure your night light is on, and do your taxes for you.

While, yes, Jesus had enormous compassion for so many, he too got ticked off at the injustice in the world.

In our scripture today, Jesus goes into the temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and economic life, within was the Holy of Holies, a room where God’s presence dwelled.

In Jesus’ days, the temple had been undergoing major renovations. For more than 40 years, walls had been built. Bricks had been laid. The grandeur and glory of the temple was expanded.

But here was the problem - in a time when so many in the countrysides were suffering under Roman occupation, money kept going into the temple to finance this elaborate project. More and more resources, while people starved. More and more bricks, while families suffered. More and more coins, while farm land was snatched up by the wealthy and military elites.

To walk in to the temple was to discover that it had been turned into a shopping mall.

Jesus knew this. And it made him angry.

In the midst of the Passover festival, when the streets of Jerusalem were crowded with worshippers, Jesus steps into the temple and gets mad. He grabs rope, fashioning it into a whip and drives out the livestock from the courtyard. Then he upends the tables of the moneychangers. Can you picture it in your mind? The chaos? The confusion?

Jesus was angry because IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

The temple was not intended to be a marketplace, preying on the poor in favor of stuffing the temple’s coffers.

The temple was sacred, holy, a house of prayer for all people - not a first century Wall Street.

Theologian Ted Grimsrud imagines it this way:

God intended the temple to be a center for justice in Israel, but it instead became a center for injustice.

That’s why Jesus was so ticked off.

The temple, like so many religious institutions of our time, had built walls that kept those who really needed God’s help on the outside looking in.

Jesus knew that it didn’t have to be this way and was willing to tear it down and build it again through his life, his death, and his resurrection. Giving voice to that anger no doubt made him Public Enemy No. 1, putting him on a collision course to the cross, but also capturing the attention of the poor and oppressed who yearned for justice.

Part of our call as church is to give voice to the anger of our community.

To rumble and moan when our neighbors are hurting.

To listen for those who are being silenced and notice those walled out of God’s love and justice.

And when political leaders or voices in our world say nothing can be done, we instead say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When a family calls our church desperate for help to fend off a looming eviction, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When gun violence takes the live of 17 in a high school or 9 in a church, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When working poor in our community or neighbors on disability can barely stretch their paychecks to get by, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When homeless neighbors are kicked out of libraries and shopping malls with nowhere to go, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When spouses inflict vicious violence upon those they claim to love, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When men and women are victims of human trafficking, sold into sex slavery or held against their will, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When a child goes to bed hungry in our neighborhood, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

When anyone feels like they are de-valued and not worthy of love, we say:

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

Like Jesus, we are invited to use our cold anger paired with the vision of the Kingdom of God, where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, to disrupt, overturn some tables, and offer another way.

Following Jesus means being willing and open to this kind of resurrection revolution.

Friends, I am grateful as your pastor that I recognized right away that as a church we burn with cold anger for our own homeless neighbors, and because of that, you have been generous in hosting hypothermia shelters here in our church space, the Day Center in our Narthex, delivering food to families and meals to those who are hungry. But I’m always getting us into trouble by asking God - what else can we do? What is next?

A couple of years ago, we became the first church in Maryland to participate in a powerful mission called Bridge of Hope which aims to help homeless families one at a time. A team of church members, called mentors then, covenanted with one single homeless mother and her baby, living at the time in a car, and supported this young woman on a slow road to getting back on her feet. It was a challenging and incredible journey.

Today, we are excited to announce a relaunch of Bridge of Hope, partnering with the Gabriel Network to help one homeless single mother and her family escape the broken cycle of poverty and start life anew. You will hear more about it later in the service.

I am so proud as a church that we go beyond even immediate needs of food, laundry, and showers and be called to do our part in ending an injustice that should not exist in the wealthy, resource rich country in which we live.

I believe that cold anger we have comes from Jesus. It is Jesus’ anger for the way our world hurts and wounds so many. It is Jesus’ anger for the way neighbors are divided against each other. It is Jesus’ anger at poverty and racism and abuse that runs rampant. It is Jesus’ anger at violence consuming us. It is Jesus’ anger that the world still doesn’t understand that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Friends, I believe Jesus knows you and the state of your life, whatever it is you are facing - even now, he is prepared to knock over some tables and raise some holy hell so that you might know how precious you are in his sight. Hear him today say to you - “YOUR LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”

Come, follow me.

[nathanjhill]

Eat My Dust (Mark 1:9-15)

When I was a child, there was nothing more fun than a good race. Now, we didn’t do it like the Winter Olympics, on ice rinks or down sheer snowy banks - no, our races in elementary school were simple. You didn’t need elaborate equipment or referees. Just a bunch of kids, boys and girls, lined up on a sidewalk, seeing who could sprint from point A to point B the fastest.

There was this one kid - James Nelson - who was the fastest in my school. Ahh, James Nelson. He had the cool shoes. He had the confidence. He had this look when you lined up next to him before the race, a look that said - “you’re gonna eat my dust”.

And sure enough, when someone would yell “go”, James would leave you in his dust, no matter how hard you tried, no matter how cool your shoes were, no matter how fast you were feeling that day.

Now that phrase I’m using, “eat my dust”, I don’t want to assume everyone knows what it means. It’s origin is in competitions - in races - when one athlete gains such a lead, such an advantage over their opponent - that he or she can mockingly turn to them and say, “you ate my dust”. It’s a taunt and insult - rubbing in a dominant victory.

In these Winter Olympics, it’s something Chloe Kim and Shaun White could say to their snowboarding competitors - or legendary Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt might say to the inferior competition he faced in his prime.

It’s not necessarily good sportsmanship, but I wanted to play with this phrase today as we began our new Lent sermon series, Like or Follow Jesus.

You see, there is kind of a Judeo-Christian resonance to this phrase, “eat my dust”.

Some of you may have heard a famous sermon by pastor and speaker Rob Bell years ago, where he referred to an ancient Jewish saying from the Mishnah that challenged those who wanted to become more like their teacher. It goes:

Let thy house be a meeting-house for the wise; and powder thyself in the dust of their feet; and drink their words with thirstiness.

It’s a very evocative image - if you want to become wise, become like the sage that you seek to emulate. If you want to soak in the wisdom, experience, and perspective of your teacher, douse yourself with the dust of their feet.

A true student then sits at their master’s feet, listening to every word and sliver of teaching. A true disciple serves their teacher. Especially, as Rob Bell pointed out in his sermon, “eating their dust” means following your rabbi so closely that the dirt from their footsteps would get all over you - head to toe.

And in the ancient Jewish way, if you wanted to become holy like that rabbi you admired, you stick with them so long that some of their holy might just rub off on you.

In these 40 days of Lent, when we prepare ourselves for Easter and for resurrection, our invitation is to “eat Jesus’ dust”, to follow him closely on his ministry, hear the stories afresh, walk where he walked, see what he saw, love who he loved - and get some of that holy rubbed off on us.

In this sermon series then, I setup this contrast - do you like Jesus or follow Jesus? It doesn’t have to be an “either/or” - we can like Jesus and follow him, but in our interfaith culture, it is clear that there are a lot of people who claim to like Jesus but don’t seem to follow him.

Rather, they follow other teachers - they (and maybe we) become -

students of addiction and self-indulgence

students of violence and coercive power

students of wealth and greed

students of hatred and segregation

Especially this past week, when we continue to look at the state of our world in all of its complexity and violence and misinformation, there are many people, many leaders, many wisdoms that are shouting from our marketplace and social media. Come, follow me! My way will lead to abundant life. My way will lead to fame and fortune. My way will lead to security. My way will promise you your heart’s desire. My way will make you the fastest, the most intelligent, the most successful, the most beautiful…

Jesus here is more like in my childhood foot race - long gone, nowhere to be found.

People choose these paths, even many of us who call ourselves Christians, and meanwhile, children are being slaughtered in our schools. Families are literally being ripped apart. Neighbors are being deported. Men and women are being put out onto the streets with no place to call home. We are losing our ability to trust each other and our leaders. These other teachers aren’t helping us thrive and survive.

My invitation to all of us today is to think of these next five weeks as an opportunity to “eat Jesus’ dust” - to sit at his feet, chase after him, stick so close in our lives that we can’t help but be covered in His holy that we desperately need in our broken world and in these difficult times.

In our scripture that we read so beautifully together, I want you to notice afresh how important location is in the Bible. Following Jesus in our text this morning has a literal meaning. Jesus goes places.

Let’s name the locations we heard clearly in this text:

We discover that Jesus is from a town called Nazareth in the Galilee region.

Jesus goes to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist.

Immediately, Jesus is driven out into the wilderness.

Then Jesus returns to Galilee to begin his ministry.

As a pastor who spends a lot of time digging into scripture, I admit that I am quick to skip over these cities and locations in these passages. Some of them are frankly unpronounceable. They are foreign names. They aren’t my landscape - and yet, as we think about “eating Jesus’ dust”, maybe we should stop and consider where Jesus went and why it was so important that the gospel writers placed Jesus in a particular location, village, and region.

Let’s take Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Nazareth is a strange one, because it is historically insignificant. One historian claims that the earliest mention of Nazareth outside of the New Testament was in the 3rd century, nearly 200 years after Jesus’ death. The consensus among archaeologists is that in Jesus’ day Nazareth was nothing more than a stop sign on the way to bigger, better cities - maybe a population of 200 people. In other words, Nazareth was a small podunk town in the middle of nowhere - insignificant and unimportant.

In the gospel of John, Nathaniel, when he meets Jesus for the first time, asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

Nazareth was not a prime vacation destination.

And Nazareth was located in Galilee, a northern part of historic Israel, distant from Jerusalem, the capital, away from the epicenter of Jewish religious life and politics. Galilee was a unique area of historic Israel in Jesus’ day because of how mixed and diverse it was - not just observant Jews but lots of Roman people and foreigners who found plenty of opportunity to farm and fish and cultivate a strong economic life. Growing up in this context, some historians had wondered if Jesus, on trips to nearby cities, was exposed to Roman culture and people from all over the known world. His family and neighbors likely wondered - how does one remain a faithful Jew when Roman temples are being built in the next town over?

Galilee was where the tensions of being a faithful follower of God and the ways of the world came so readily into contrast.

Jesus leaves Galilee and goes to the Jordan River, one of the most important rivers in the Bible, a body of water that is both a physical boundary and a symbol of how the Jewish people came to be. It was Moses who led the Israelites up to the Jordan - it was Joshua who was charged with leading them across it and into the land God had promised them. And it was there - that John the Baptist set up his wilderness camp revivals, offering to plunge anyone into its flowing waters who wanted to clean themselves of sin and turn their lives around, repeating the journey their ancestors had taken so long ago.

In some ways, the Jordan River is the baptismal font for the whole Jewish people, marking their identity as chosen by God.

And then the final location - the wilderness - a vague and strange image. The Greek word for desert is eremos, which literally means uninhabited place, without people, a desert. Another slightly different reading imagines the wilderness as a place that is haunted, where evil and darkness roam, kind of like that dark place underneath your bed. It’s there that Jesus spends 40 days and 40 nights, wrestling with Satan, with only wild beasts to keep him company, relying on angelic room service to sustain his weary body and soul.

Jesus emerge from that wilderness excursion, not beatdown and overwhelmed, but announcing the kingdom of God at hand.

Put all these locations together and you see Jesus make this dramatic movement:

From nowhere to somewhere

From life-less places to life-giving places

From the old into the new

Jesus, in other words, gets around.

Jesus’ movement is core to his ministry - going along the highways and side streets, into the busy corners and the desolate places, at the watering holes of civilization and into the throne rooms of power and privilege. He touches the untouchable and dines with the unworthy. He debates with the righteous and blesses the sinner. He proclaims life when death is all around. There seems to be no door and no path left untraveled for this dusty rabbi.

He sets a precedent that those who follow him have to be willing to “eat his dust” - ready to go to those unlikely, uncomfortable places in His name.

The fact that God sent Jesus to be rooted and contextualized into a specific place and time tell us that God is not interested in making any of us abstract stereotypes - God saw the needs of Palestine under Roman occupation and God sees the present day needs of America. God saw the needs of the wounded and sick in Jesus’ day - and God sees the diseased and shattered of our own. God walked among regular folk - so God can walk among us.

Centuries later, that call continues for us in this Lent season.

If we want to understand what took Jesus to the cross, we need to be ready to “eat his dust” - to go with him into our places of life-less-ness - right into the epicenter of our cursed and haunted realities.

When we follow Jesus, our path, marked by the shadow of the cross, will take us into the open wounds of our land:

Into Parkland High School

Into ICE detention centers

Into ground zero

Into brothels and gambling dens

Into hurricane-shattered homes of our neighbors

Into drug ravaged streets of our hometowns

Into the marketplaces and PG Plazas of our city

Though the old spiritual goes:

I want Jesus to walk with me

Sometimes, it is Jesus who is calling out to us come with him and see what he sees, touch who he touches, love who he loves, and teardown that which seeks to hold back his healing love.

To be covered with Jesus’ dust is to be covered with the stuff of life.

This week, I particularly tasted some of Jesus’ dust. I think you did too when you helped with our guests here from Warm Nights and the Day Center. Doing this work with hurting and homeless neighbors, you definitely get your hands and feet dirty. There are times when tempers flare, when the tension rises, and when things can get a little ugly. But praise God, even when things get ugly, Jesus is there.

Jesus is there in the tender tears of a child of God who doesn’t understand why life is so hard for them, why every door is shut in their face. Jesus is there in the outrage of our neighbors who are disappointed in a society that blames the poor for being poor. Jesus is there in the homemade meatloaf, chicken casserole, spaghetti, cake, and cookies offered up to those who are hungry. Jesus is there in the potential for a new order, a new reign to break in through our relationships with those who are poor and struggling.

The kingdom of God becomes not an ethereal dream-like page from a children’s coloring page - but becomes the here and now lived reality of a diverse people who dare to live into another order, into new relationships, and see that even lifeless people and places are venues for God’s work to be done.

Friends, I know many of you well - some of you I am still getting to know. The good news is that Jesus knows your name. Jesus knows your home, your neighborhood, your workplace, your hometown, your state, your country. Jesus might even know your iPhone password. Jesus knows even the heartbreaking lifelessness in your heart. What might it mean to you that Jesus walks with you into those places? What good news is it that Jesus knows the state of your life and still calls you by name? The good news is that Jesus plans to meet you there, even when you don’t deserve it, and invite you to share in spreading the good news - a new life is available, a new community is breaking in. Don’t you want to taste it?

Jesus, says - come and eat my dust.

[nathanjhill]

Set Apart

Scripture: Jeremiah 1:4-10

What a glorious day it is to be together - to worship - and celebrate the completion of this journey with our sister in Christ, Tracey Perry.

Tracey, we are so proud of you - for the hard work you have done - for your preparation for this moment.

We are thankful that God called you.

Today, I want to re-examine just what it means when God calls us.

“Call” remains such a strange word - a biblical word - that captures something more than the typical job search process that many of us go through in our lives.

Call indicates that God is somehow involved. There is something divine and mysterious at work.

Why else would someone leave behind their comfortable federal job and enter into seminary, spending all that money and time on those thick theological books, hunched over final papers about systematic theology, church history, and Disciples polity? Why else would someone commute back and forth from the north side of Baltimore down to both seminary and a little church at the intersection here in Hyattsville? Why else would anyone go through all that work just so they could go and pastor a motley group of Christians in some pothole-ridden town somewhere? Now I know William, Tracey’s husband, has been incredibly supportive of this journey, but you wonder if more than once he looked at his wife and wondered, are you sure you know what you are doing?

No doubt, there was probably a moment or two when Tracey asked herself the same question.

Most of us on this journey do. Do I know what I am doing? Did I really hear a call from God? Is any of this worth it? Am I worthy? Did God call the right person?

And especially in those moments when we feel inadequate and overwhelmed -

Is there any chance God has a Do Not Call list?

And if there is, can I be added to that list?

In our scripture today, we can hear the prophet Jeremiah’s call in this light.

God spoke to Jeremiah, “Hey child, before you even came to be, before you were a twinkle of possibility in your parents’ lives, I set you apart. I’ve got a job for you. You’re gonna be a prophet to the nations.”

Scripture doesn’t immediately tell us a lot about Jeremiah - he was a preacher’s kid. He probably knew his way around the temple and the Torah - but like many preacher’s kids, Jeremiah wanted nothing to do with ministry.

So Jeremiah resisted - “Hold on, there God - did you at least check my resume? I can’t even tie my spiritual shoelaces, and you want me to speak to the nations? Are you sure you have the right number? Don’t you see my name on the Do Not Call list?”

I don’t blame Jeremiah. Why do any of us who are called choose to be a pastor or prophet?

If you want to make lots of cold hard cash and retire with millions in stocks, ministry may not be for you.

If you want to be on the frontlines with the poor and hungry, there are probably more effective organizations in which to make a difference.

If you want to be famous, you’d have a better chance climbing the ladders of stardom through Broadway, Hollywood, or Youtube.

If you want to order people around and have them do what you say when you say it, I hear the army needs more drill sergeants.

If you want to have less drama and conflict in your life, maybe try politics.

But the truth is, for most of us pastors, we didn’t choose it. In some sense, this vocation chose us.

Just like God chose Jeremiah.

Just like God chose me.

Just like God chose you, Tracey.

And once you are claimed by God, it’s very difficult to walk away. It’s not like other jobs - God will stubbornly ignore our request to be put on the Do Not Call list.

That’s why there are first career clergy and second career clergy and third career clergy and clergy who just can’t stay retired.

That’s why even in the church we talk about a priesthood of all believers - and deacons and elders and musicians and Sunday school teachers who have a call too.

Some of us get the call early - some of us get it late - but the Spirit will insure we all get it at the right time, whether we like it or not.

God says it this way to Jeremiah - “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…”

This verb “know” is the same verb used by God to describe the Creator’s connection to the people of Israel, to the people of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. It is imagery to me that implies intimacy - it resonates with Psalm 139:

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

God knows Jeremiah - the good and the bad - head to toe from his curly hair to his stinky toenails. God knows the snoring sounds Jeremiah makes at night - God has seen his tendency to procrastinate the night before a particularly important sermon. God knows Jeremiah’s willingness to go out of his way for some good soul food. God can even glimpse the deepest fears that Jeremiah is afraid to share, the regrets, the shame, the heartache, the brokenness…

God knows Jeremiah’s strengths and Jeremiah’s inadequacies.

But God chooses Jeremiah anyway.

And more than just choose this unlikely prophet, God reaches out and touches this young prophet’s lips to place a word in his mouth.

God’s creative power flips those irritating inadequacies into prophetic potential.

Now when Jeremiah speaks, it won’t just be his book learning doing the talking. It won’t be his natural ability. It won’t be what he heard from his parents or friends or the priest down at the temple - it will be from God.

It will be a word burning within him.

Jeremiah was called to serve God’s people in a time of national tribulation, when armies were encamped on the border, when the People In Charge staffed their cabinet with “yes men” and troublemakers, when the fragile political and religious life of the Jewish people was at stake. Without God, indeed, Jeremiah would have been inadequate - but with God, there was more to Jeremiah than meets the eye. God’s holy consecration on his life turned this inarticulate youngster into a mighty prophet for the Most High.

Today, just like in Jeremiah’s day, we are in need of people called by God who dare to speak and live a Word that proclaims a good news over and against the fake news of sin and death in our world. Our neighbors are dying. Communities and families are being torn apart. Our very creation is groaning. As Jesus told his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

God needs laborers - like Jeremiah, like you, Tracey, like each of us.

Indeed there is much work to be done. God tells Jeremiah his ministerial appointment will not just be about doing the happy stuff. Sometimes, we clergy long for a church where we just get to complete building campaigns, plant community gardens, and dedicate babies. But ministry calls us to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and even overthrow. Sometimes, there are weeds and vines and thorns and trash and brokenness that needs to be uncovered, exposed, and coaxed into the light. Maybe there was a golden age of doing church - but in our present time, when our neighbors mistrust religious leaders and religion is used like a club to wound and destroy lives, when white supremacy is on the march and human dignity for too many of our neighbors is in question, ministry has never been messier.

Tracey, I know as you continue to grow into your call, you will find yourself knee deep in this mess time and time again. There will be great days when the Spirit moves freely and lives are transformed - and there will be evenings when you will ask, “is there a Balm in Gilead?” There will be times of transcendence and courage when your people will risk everything for Jesus - and mornings when you will regret ever getting out of bed. There will be those Kairos moments when you will witness healing as sin and shame are washed away in baptismal waters - and then frustration when you will stare into the demonic face of racism, xenophobia, and hate and long for a bigger baptismal pool to dunk all of it in.

But in all of it, in all of the mess, in all of the turmoil, God will show up.

God reminded Jeremiah, that though he may feel inadequate, though his salary may not be as high as others, though he may be disrespected and maligned, though he may not know where his next sermon might come from, though the powerful might want to throw him in jail:

Do not be afraid of them, (said the Lord) for I am with you to deliver you

God will show up - God will be with you, Tracey - in the messiness of this thing we call church - in the eyes of a newborn, in the tender tears of a grieving widow, in an addict turning their life around, in the birth of a new church, in the liberation of a sin-sick soul, in a homeless neighbor taking their first step into their new home, in the ringing of wedding bells, in a well-delivered sermon, in mighty times of worship, in the generosity of the people you will serve, and in a brother or sister in Christ choosing to answer God’s call just like you did.

Despite all those things that will make ministry hard and difficult, despite all the challenges that will come, my hope and prayer is that you will find yourself looking back and giving thanks that God called you anyway.

Today, Tracey, we will lay hands on you to bless you and affirm to you that we have already seen God show up in your life.

We recognize that God has called you by name - God has already reached out and touched your lips.

God has given you words to speak, my sister.

We mark this moment of your journey to recognize that indeed you have been set apart, consecrated to share a word of liberation in a time of oppression.

Our church needs you. Hurting communities needs you. And especially, after seminary, after those ordination interviews and papers and psychological examination and all the tasks, it’s clear - God needs you.

Thanks be to God!

[nathanjhill]

Christmas: How will you tell the story?

This evening, let’s talk about stories.

Stories shape our lives. Stories shape what we believe. What we know. What we anticipate. How we think the world works. How we make sense of our world.

Does the good guy always win? Do the couple fall in love? Can Santa deliver presents on time?

The fact that the Hallmark Channel begins showing Christmas movies at the end of October tells us that we are hungry for stories that lift our spirits, that soothe our aching souls, that offer us a break from the oft cruelty of our world.

Just remember back to the conversations and events we have endured in our world this past year - racism, inequality, bullying, sexual harassment, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, famine, drought, wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, violence… How much easier it would be to turn on one of those sweet Christmas movies and forget about it all?

Most of us are quite aware that life does not always work out like a fairy tale - but that does not stop Hallmark and the movie companies and books and TV from feeding us those stories. We are constantly told stories in our lives - stories that offer to us a chance to get rich, be successful, find happiness, and make sense of our world. Some of the stories marketed to us sound really good -

Violence will solve all of our problems and make us safe.

If someone is rich or famous, they deserved it.

If you work harder and faster and longer, you will be happy.

Everything is going to be okay.

But you don’t have to live very long to find out that many of those stories that our society, our workplaces, and sometimes even our family don’t always come true.

That’s why in our Advent series this year in church I have asked this question - how will you tell the story?

Not just any story - but the story of Jesus, of Christmas, of God coming into flesh to be with us.

The story we heard in scripture tonight doesn’t need a lot of exposition. In some ways, it is simple - a baby, born to a normal couple, Mary and Joseph, in a small village on the other side of the world. The baby wasn’t particularly remarkable at first - he didn’t clean his own diapers or know how to read from birth. His parents, despite encounters with divine messengers, were just people too. They did not have advanced degrees or great fortunes. And Bethlehem was just another quiet, sleepy farm town on the outskirts of the big city.

And yet - this baby turned out to be extraordinary - a child who as he became a man would begin to say and do the most peculiar things, standing on the tradition of his Jewish forefathers and foremothers, proclaiming a new kingdom that was breaking in, a new story that God was unfolding right there in the people’s midst.

A young man in whom people would catch a glimpse of heaven - a young man who came that the prisoners might go free, the blind might see, the lame might walk, and the poor would hear the good news.

A man called Jesus, Messiah, Savior, Lord, Emmanuel, Prince of Peace.

For the numerous people that followed Jesus or encountered him, his life spoke this new story - a story that there was something more to this existence, there was goodness able to hold back the darkness, there was hope bursting forth from dry places, the weak were loved just as much as the strong, the poor were favored, that justice for those who long suffered was on the way, healing would abound for those who felt cast out and forgotten.

On the cross and Easter Sunday, he proclaimed that even death will not have the final word.

The audacity of this Christmas story is that it speaks to a God who brought light into our darkness not with violence and fear - but in a quiet way, in the birth of a child, in the love of a family, and by walking among humanity. Like one of us.

Christmas is a story about how God partners with humanity for our own redemption. An angel invites Mary to participate in the renewal of her people by carrying this child. Joseph is tasked with fathering this little one. Shepherds and wise men are given front row seats to the big news. Family members and prophets join in the celebration. Ordinary men and women, disciples, are invited to follow him.

And tonight, we are reminded, no matter what we may be going through, no matter how angry we are at the state of the world, no matter how much we long for justice to be done among broken relationships and governments, no matter the stories we have been telling ourselves to sleep well at night ——

We are being invited to be a part of this story.

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold

While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,

Where fear companions each day’s life,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed,

Christmas is waiting to be born:

In you, in me, in all humankind.

-Howard Thurman

The child in the manger is inviting us to come and see - to hear the glad tidings - to know that for once in our life, we are not alone. We are not being sold a false bill of goods. For once, we are being woven into a story that transcends our broken lives. A story that will not let us down.

Friends, I want to say it as simple as I can - Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world - God so loved us - God so loved you - that God came to be with us, to redeem us, to heal us, to love us to heaven.

Our world, this year, in years past, and in years to come, needs this story - how will you tell the story?

[nathanjhill]

Christmas Eve: Co-Mission

One of the more popular Christmas songs that you might catch on Christian radio or even performed by our choir and musicians this time of year is “Mary, Did You Know?”

The song asks a question:

Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? Mary did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new? This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you

Mary, did you know?

Rev. Broderick Greer, an Episcopal priest and liturgist in Denver, Colorado, is not a fan of the song, he admitted on his Twitter account recently. It cheapens who Mary is and was. Certainly, no parent or caregiver ever quite knows what the future holds in their commitment to a child or loved one - but Mary’s YES to God’s plan surely wasn’t meek and mild. Her YES indicated that she was quite aware of what it meant to be the mother of the Messiah.

In our scripture this morning, our attention and focus is always drawn to Mary’s answer to the angel’s pronouncement - it can easily read as an obedient, polite response to the strange, perplexing tidings that the messenger of the Lord brings to her.

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

We can imagine her bowed low, kneeling in the presence of this divine messenger, afraid to make eye contact.

But I don’t think that’s fair to the Mary we discover in scripture.

Yes, Mary was to be the mother of Jesus as the angel says, favored by God, for this divine mission project.

But scripture tells us more - much more.

Mary was also the rebellious woman of God whose heart burst forth into a holy fight song after her YES to God, singing:

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

She was a proud, strong mother who unloads on her son when he went missing after a family trip to Jerusalem and she later found him in the temple, lecturing the teachers of the law. She says to him, with that look that only a mother can give, “Child, why have you treated us like this?”

Mary was the same woman in the Gospel of John, who at a wedding in Canaa, gets into her son’s face when the host of the celebration runs out of wine, as if Jesus had something to do with the wine running out in the first place and as if he could do something to fix the problem. By the way, though Jesus complained at first, he did do what his mother told him to do.

She was among Jesus’ followers, popping in to check on Jesus during his ministry among the masses and crowds of his day. Surely, she watched as he delivered his powerful sermons - as he was nearly stoned by his hometown synagogue - as he argued with religious leaders - as he healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, made the lame walk, and spoke good news to the poor.

Mary was there at the end too, wailing in sorrow, watching her son suffer in agony upon the cross, weeping as he took his last breath, huddled over his body, cradling him as only a mother could.

And she was even there, the Book of Acts tell us, in the fellowship of believers after Jesus’ resurrection, praying and waiting for the coming Spirit that would birth the church. Even in her old age, she stayed a mother of the movement.

All of this helps us better understand how Mary responded to that angel:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

Mary was not an acquiescent, quiet, meek human who had no choice or agency in response to God’s request - she was a co-conspirator in the divine agenda. Her faith and response reveal to us “a God who is setting the world right.” And Mary wanted to be part of that story - not just for her own sake but for her long suffering people and broken world.

Her YES was the bold, mighty proclamation of a woman who believed God could do a new thing in her and in the world.

I wonder if you have ever believed like Mary - that what God could do in her life God could do in your’s?

Mary’s story - and the Christmas story - challenges us to rethink what we know about God and God’s agenda - and how we are invited to be a part of it.

The audacious act of Incarnation, God coming in flesh to be with us, disrupts and shakes down our notions of who God is.

Mary’s encounter with the divine suggests that God is not somewhere out there, far away - a God who leaves us human beings to our own devices and retreats to hide behind the swirling cosmic dust of a distant galaxy.

That God looked with favor upon Mary and her people denounces the theologically simple idea that God is angry and wrathful and would rather human beings suffer than experience goodness.

Mary’s affirmation thoroughly dismantles the idea that only some people are good enough or have the right credentials to be used by God for the redemption and salvation of the world. Gender, immigration status, socio-economic class, race, ethnicity, language - God will use who God will use.

Mary throws a wrench in our dogmatic, theological boundaries - in the words of episcopal priest, Rev. Penny King, Mary is considered by some to be the first priest:

she offers up the sacrifice of her Son, her own flesh and blood to be the Bread of Life and she presents this to the world, as at Jesus’ birth, at Jesus’ death; Mary can say better than any priest, “This is my body, this is my blood.”

Christmas also dismisses again and again the idea that God is disinterested in what human beings are going through in all of the complexities of life - God gave God’s Son, Jesus, as Messiah, as leader, not to simply win or cheer up dreary individual souls but in opposition to governments and systems that oppress and crush human life. King Herod, for one, took note of this poor child’s birth - and Mary and Joseph experienced those early years with their baby boy as political refugees, crossing borders to survive.

“Mary knew what it was like to pray that her child might get home safely when the lanterns lit up and the sun set over the streets of Nazareth” - Mary knew what it was like to have your family’s economic reality controlled by a foreign occupying power - Mary knew what it was to suffer.

Mary may not have known that all of these hardships were to come - but she knew who the Messiah was, and she knew that a journey with God would lead along that long moral arc of justice and reconciliation for a broken world.

Christmas is unequivocally thus God’s YES to us and to Creation.

Mary’s YES to God becomes our YES in Christmas - a yes to becoming part of God’s mission project.

Christmas is an invitation to be in Co-Mission with God, to be partners in this work of redemption together.

God uses Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, shepherds, and wise men - all ordinary people with ordinary gifts and flaws - because God’s love draws all of Creation into community. God involves us human beings in the acts and narrative that bring wholeness to an aching planet. God chooses us over and over again, even when we are at our worst.

Like Mary, our YES to God marks the moment when the Holy Spirit serves as our divine messenger, inviting each of us to be vessels for the new thing God is doing. Our YES is part of that dance of gifts we receive in this season:

the gift of repentance, to turn our life around and toward God

the gift of baptism, a washing away of our brokenness and welcome into God’s family

the gift of testimony, being able to witness with our lives what God has done for us

and especially the gift to be mission partners with God

Sometimes, God calls us to a mission where we use our talents and gifts for the work of the church or the blessing of neighbors. Sometimes, God calls us to step out and do something we can never be prepared for, something we are untrained to accomplish, for the sake of others. There will be twists and turns, just like in Mary’s yes to God.

Broderick Greer writes again:

“When we say "yes" to God's desire to be born in us, we are saying "yes" in general, because like every relationship, there will be numerous surprises.”

But for those who long for justice and righteousness, for those who seek light to overcome the darkness of poverty, grief, and violence, our YES to the incarnation enables our hands, our feet, our voice, and our compassion to be God’s vessel for the redemption and restoration of our world.

Korean pastor and activist, Cho Wha Soon, tells a Christmas story of her own in the 1970s when God led her to evangelize among factory workers in her country, especially among young teenage women who were forced to work long, stifling hours as their nation pushed to ignite its economic growth. But despite her preaching and evangelization, she hit a brick wall. At first, Cho told the women that they needed to worship, to go to church on Sunday mornings if they want to be saved, but because many of these young factory workers were not allowed to take a day off to be at worship, they resigned themselves to the fact that they would never be saved.

Cho, perhaps feeling God’s Christmas spirit suddenly become real to her, understood then that “doing theology is not just a matter of the brain, but also a matter of heart, and most importantly, ‘a matter of feet’, which challenges us to put out feet and our whole selves in the shoes of the weak and to act in solidarity with them.”

Rev. Cho had to leave behind her comfortable home and way of life, open herself to be a vessel for God’s love, and go and live and work among the people who needed light in the darkness.

She had to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

This Christmas Eve and this year ahead, God may be asking you - are you ready to say YES to this new thing, to the Messiah, to the Kingdom breaking in even now? Are you ready to be a gift to others? Are you tired of standing on the sidelines? Are you ready to say YES to God?

[nathanjhill]

Testimony: Who Are You?

Scripture: John 1:6-8, 19-28

Who are you?

No, really, who are you?

That question from our scripture passage today has stuck with me this week. Now, on one level, we answer that question often in our lives when we start a new job, make a new friend, go on a blind date, or whatever - but there’s another level to that question. In some sense, “who are you” is the question we spend our lives trying to answer.

What are you here for? What is your purpose? What gets you up each day? What do you really believe? What do you stand for? What makes you angry? What gift do you bring to the world?

Who are you?

In his book, Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer says it this way:

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

This question of identity may not seem like something you have much of a time for in this busy Advent season - but it may be one of the most important questions we can seek to answer as we prepare for Christmas:

In a consumeristic holiday season where we shop til we drop, stuff our mouths with delicious cookies and pie, and try to stay sane through the pressures and expectations that our culture imposes on us…

In a time of political divisiveness, when neighbors are pitted against neighbors and the stakes seem high…

In a cultural moment when our morale boundaries are being challenged for the way we and our leaders treat women in the workplace, the poor, the vulnerable, the immigrant…

We are being asked, as people of faith and as human beings, who we are.

Are we the kind of people that go along with the masses and the shopping mall crowds? Are we the type of community that shuts off the suffering and pain of the world to have a happy holiday? Are we different?

What do our lives speak in this time of anticipation and preparation for the coming of Jesus?

Two thousand years ago, when a group of priests and Levites approached the notorious wilderness prophet called John the Baptist, they point blank asked him the same question - “Who are you?”

We don’t talk much about John the Baptist in the Christmas season. He is not our favorite person of Advent. Do any of you put an ornament of John the Baptist on your Christmas tree or wear an ugly Christmas sweater with his face embroidered into it? How many Christmas carols do we sing about John the Baptist? Can you purchase greeting cards that lead with some of John’s famous words? aka “Brood of vipers, who warned you to fly from the retribution that is coming? Merry Christmas from the Hill family”?

No, John the Baptist makes us uncomfortable. We want to pass over John on our way to Jesus as quick as we can. Jesus was provocative too - but he had some compassion, some tenderness. John meanwhile lived out in the desert, wearing camel hair jump suits, eating fried locusts, drinking honey tea, and throwing all day pool parties. He got into arguments with political leaders, was locked up, and ultimately executed for his rebelliousness. His peculiar gift, the thing that seemed to draw the curious, hungry masses out to his campsite revival, was his invitation to his Jewish siblings to be baptized in the Jordan River, to wash themselves clean and renew their identity as God’s people moving into God’s future.

John’s life was speaking, causing waves and controversy in a time of cultural, morale, and political uncertainty. And the people, struggling under the weight of oppression, fearing that they were losing who they were, and longing for God to show up in a bold way, trekked out into the desert to see him up close, hoping that he was the one they had been waiting for.

So when the priests and Levites asked him just who he thought he was, those gathered crowds may have been at first disappointed.

John replied, “I am not the Messiah. I am not Elijah. I am not the prophet.”

Can you imagine the groans? The disappointment? The people had their hopes up - that John was their savior, their leader, their realized hope. The Roman Empire was going to be toppled. Wicked King Herod would be no more. Justice would reign. Our land would be restored. God would visit us again!

But then, John, waiting until the people and the religious leaders’ grumbling died down, spoke in his booming voice, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.”

And then perhaps to excite the crowds even more, a cryptic little line - “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.”

Suddenly, the crowds begin to turn around and look at each other, wondering - who is it? Who is the Messiah standing in our midst?

John, our scripture says, was not the light - but he came to testify to the light - to point to the light - to direct those who were searching for light to the Messiah who was on his way and was already among them.

To testify, or as we say it more commonly, our testimony, is both a legal word and a church word. Some of you may have been called before in a courtroom to testify about a person or an event for a legal record. But in our religious life, testimony is to give witness to something God has done or is doing in your life. And while testimony can be a powerful story you tell, your best testimony, like John the Baptist, is your life - it’s who you are.

For John the Baptist, his life was his testimony - his purpose was to give witness to what God was doing in the people’s midst, entering into the world, that God “became flesh and lived among us”.

So in a way, we can’t really have Christmas without John announcing Jesus’ entrance.

I have a special place in my heart for people introducing me to great stuff. I’m sure you do. One of my seminary friends introduced me to Yunkyong during a break in class one day. I had a brother-in-law who sent us copies of the Star Wars movies on VHS growing up. My brother got me into skateboarding. I still remember that day early on in my ministry here when Sandy Stark found out that I didn’t know what Ledo Pizza was and compelled me to have my first experience - and I can’t thank her enough.

We all have those people who introduce us to wonderful people and opportunities and things - John the Baptist is the one who introduces all of us to the Christmas story - without him, his witness and leading the way, we would not be here.

And likewise, just as John’s life spoke and is testimony to what God was doing then, our lives have the potential to speak and testify to what God is doing right here and now. Our lives can become gifts to others - our voices can demand transformation for the vulnerable. We can point to Jesus showing up among the masses and crowds of our world. The way we answer “who are you” introduces our neighbors to a God who is living and moving among us.

Latin American theologian Pablo Richard contends that “testimony can change heaven and earth.”

Testimony is more than just our story - of how we got through a tough time, how we discovered that God loves us, how we heard our call - testimony is asserting that there is another way. That you can survive without playing the game of our culture. That you can love those who our society might say is unlovable. That you can thrive even when the decks of oppression are stacked against you. That even the gravest injustice will not overcome God’s radical love.

Our lives can speak this alternative to neighbors who are searching for something different - for meaning, for a new identity not grounded in what you might buy or what you might do for a living or the things you have messed up in your life. This is an identity based in the Christmas message that you are God’s child. That’s who you are. And if you are God’s child, then the glad tidings of this season remind us that we are not alone - that we belong. That we are loved. That there is help. There is another kind of community.

This past week, I did a ride along with Hyattsville police as part of our ongoing clergy dialogue and collaboration with the city. Our first call came from the middle school - a 14 year old girl had walked out mid-morning. She had been struggling and told a friend that she was running away from home. It was a tense situation. When the family arrived at that school, holding back tears, scared and nervous, I had a chance to introduce myself to the girl’s older brother. When I told him I was a pastor, the first thing he said to me was, “No offense, but I don’t believe in God. I don’t have a religion.” And I was like, okay, fine. We began to talk - about his sister, about the stress this family had been going through, the uncertainty and hardship of their lives…

After going through the report process, later that day, another police officer called in that they had found her near a friend’s house. So, we drove over - and the girl got very upset. She didn’t want to go home. Maybe she was afraid. She would not talk to the police officer. Finally, after we had driven to her house, I had a sliver of opening, sitting there in the car with her. So I took the moment to introduce myself, and no sooner had I gotten that I was a pastor out of my mouth, then she spoke clearly and plainly, “I don’t believe in God.” And I just smiled and said, “Well, that’s okay - I wasn’t really asking about that. But I just wanted to tell you that if you need to say something to me that you can’t say to the police officer, if you are in danger, I will listen.” She didn’t say another word.

My heart broke for this young woman - for her family, for the crisis in their midst, for all of those who feel alone, who may be afraid of going home, who need to know they are loved…. And then to feel convicted that our church needs to find a way to love families like that.

As church, we need to rediscover our comfort for the wilderness - Christmas begins on the edge of society. Christmas is on the fringes. Christmas is rooted in those who grieve and suffer and need their identity as children of God renewed.

May our lives speak.

May we have the courage to testify to the light.

May we risk looking for the Messiah in our midst.

So that we too when asked, who are you, may say - there is one who coming who is greater - prepare the way of the Lord!

[nathanjhill]

Repentance (Advent)

Scripture: Mark 13

I am always amazed, brothers and sisters, how it seems like every year, earlier and earlier, our grocery stores, shopping centers, and holiday commercials change, flipping quickly over to those jingle bells and wintry landscapes and big sales events and especially those annoying car commercials where some jerk buys his wife a new car on Christmas morning, putting one of those big red bows on top of it. Those car commercials drive me up the wall - because if you are in a healthy relationship with someone, buying a car requires conversation. I don’t want to go too far from here - but what if you pick the wrong color? What if your spouse wanted 4 wheel drive? What if they wanted all leather interior?

Too much risk.

But despite the commercials and sales, we gather here in worship to talk about the real meaning of Christmas. And that is what our sermon series is about this year. We recognize that there are more and more people in our culture and our lives who do not celebrate Christmas or maybe do not know the gospel story. If you are one of those here today, we are so glad you are here. It is can be confusing to understand what Christmas is about when all of those movies turn it into heartwarming stories about family, fireplaces, Santa Claus, gift giving, and holiday hijinks. So, Pastor Tracey and I are challenging you to do something different - to answer this question - how will you tell the story of Christmas?

While we will stalk about hope, peace, love, and joy, we are going to talk about some of the other gifts that Jesus brings into our lives in this season - gifts that enable us to tell others what Jesus means to us.

What if one of the greatest gifts you might receive this Christmas was the opportunity to turn your life around?

In our scripture this morning, Jesus is giving his disciples an earful of advice about the difficult days of persecution, upheaval, and change in store for them - before the Son of Man (before he) returns. His followers will be kicked out of synagogues. They will be dragged before the courts. There will be division. There will be wars. Families will turn against families… Merry Christmas?

Jesus’ words does not read like a heartwarming Christmas story. This is not in any of the children’s books. This has never been made into a charming animated TV special. This is the not scripture to tell your kids before you tuck them into bed with visions of sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads.

This is a passage with urgency and a little fright.

Listen again to this bombastic Advent story:

But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

This apocalyptic vision sounds more like a disaster movie than a Hallmark holiday feature.

When Jesus returns, creation itself will be re-ordered, twisted, turned, shaken to its core.

Jesus is warning his disciples - that there will be distractions, bad teachers, and difficult days - all signs, like a fig tree changing its season, that Jesus is on his way to gather his people up.

Jesus commands his followers to do one thing - “keep awake!”

But I prefer what I say to my kids some mornings, “Wake up!”

일어나요!

French: Réveillez-vous!

Spanish: Despiértate!

Throughout all the turmoil and war and division you may see and experience, stay on your toes - keep your head up - be prepared - watch - listen - get ready.

Jesus uses a simple illustration of a master leaving his servants behind as he goes on a long trip - but he gives them no expected return time. If the servants are “faithful”, if they carry out the work to which they are assigned, if they live as they should, then it won’t matter when the master will arrive home. They will have nothing to hide and nothing to fear:

But Jesus’ point is this - do those servants have their lives in order? Are they living as they should?

This morning, as we begin Advent, I want to challenge us to think about this “wake up” alarm as a call to repentance, a very theologically appropriate call for our society, for each of us, as we begin this unique Advent season. Repentance is a church word. It falls in and out of fashion. It’s a theological word that has been playing on my mind in the case of sexual harassment cases, Russian interference scandals, broken families, and broken lives. Repentance means to turn around - to make a 180 degree in your life - from a course of action that is wrong or sinful or downright evil to one that is good and decent and compassionate.

Repentance is not simply saying, “I am sorry” - it is reorienting your life, shaking up your own created order, and changing who you are and how you live.

Most of us are not thinking about the season of Advent and the holidays as a time to change anything. We are most of the time just trying to get through it all. We would be just fine with status quo. But if our lives are to be preparing for the coming of Jesus, this may be the best season to think about what needs to change to make room for Jesus, so that we too are faithful followers.

So that we too are ready!

What is that change that you might need to make to prepare?

Imagine if the greatest gift you might offer yourself and those you love was a turning around, a reorienting of that in your life that is destroying you, eating you up, and burdening you down.

Imagine if the greatest gift you could offer to a loved one was an invitation to be released from that sin that holds sway over their life.

Imagine if the greatest gift you could proclaim to our aching world was a way of life that might fulfill them more than anything sold in a store.

Imagine if the greatest way we could bless others was to reorient our lives that we might become part of God’s oncoming torrent of justice and righteousness.

Repentance is not simply turning away from evil things - it is a turning to the goodness of God and a holy compassion that says, no matter what you have done, you are loved and you are worth more than your greatest mistakes.

As I shared yesterday at Melissa Rowley’s memorial service, Christmas is the good news that comes down into our messy mangers, broken hearts, and weary souls.

That is something worth staying awake for - that is the kind of thing that we might set our alarm clocks by - that is a gift to anticipate and prepare for with all of our being.

Here’s how you make that first step:

You say “yes” to God.

You pray, “Jesus, come into my life.”

And then you get to doing the pruning work. Jesus uses this powerful image of the fig tree in our text, and he uses that kind of image elsewhere in the gospels. He says that good things will bear good fruit, and negative things will bear negative fruit. Now, that doesn’t mean when we follow Jesus that we always get it right - or that everything is going to work out and we’ll have a brand new car with giant red bow waiting on our doorstep on Christmas morning. It means that this process of repentance gives us an opportunity to decide what in our life is bearing the kind of fruit that is good and sweet and what is sour and rotten?

That pruning work is part of our effort to “stay awake” - to stay on our toes - to be doing the faithful work of loving our neighbors and our families, working for justice and peace, cleaning up that which is sick in our hearts.

What fruit in your life do you need to toss out this Advent? What kind of story would that tell to someone in your life who thinks Christmas is just about parties and sales?

Close with Just Mercy story

Lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, who has gained fame and recognition for his incredible work with people on death row and under unfair criminal sentences, tells the story in his book, Just Mercy, about a visit to see a mentally disabled man named Avery Jenkins. Avery had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death - despite the fact that it was clear he had serious behavioral issues and mental illness. It was clear to Bryan and his correspondence with Avery, that the condemned African American man had probably not been fit to be tried as an adult. It was hard to hold a conversation - it was hard to interview him - and every time Avery saw his lawyer, the first question was, “Did you bring me a milkshake?”

On the first day Bryan went to the prison where Avery was held, he couldn’t help but see this pickup truck sitting out in the parking lot covered “with disturbing bumper sticks, Confederate flag decals, and other troubling images”. One of the stickers read, “If I’d known it was going to be like this, I’d have picked my own damn cotton.”

Did I mention that Mr. Stevenson is an African American man?

Disturbed by this pickup truck, he walked into the prison to sign in and meet with his client. He had been to a lot of prisons and knew the routine well, but this time, he was greeted by a tall white man, about six feet in height, very muscular. This security officer stopped the lawyer and said, “If you want to see your client, you need to be searched first.”

Mr. Stevenson nodded and started to comply, taking off his shoes.

But the guard stopped him and said, “You’re going to go into that bathroom and take everything off if you expect to get into my prison.”

Bryan tried to push back as a lawyer - he knew the protocols and his rights - but the man stopped him again, “Now, you can get into that bathroom and strip, or you can go back to wherever you came from.”

Finally, after jumping through all of these demeaning, de-humanizing hoops, Mr. Stevenson was led in to meet his client, figuring out that complying was going to save time and trouble. But just as he was about to go into the meeting room, the security guard stopped him one more time and said, “By the way, did you notice that truck out there with those bumper stickers, flags, and a gun rack?”

Bryan nodded, “Yes, I saw that truck.”

The guard’s face hardened. “I want you to know, that’s my truck.”

It was clear to Bryan that this information was a threat - to keep him in his place, to keep the power structures in place.

And as his case with Avery, who kept asking for that chocolate milkshake every single time they met, went on (REPEAT THIS), Mr. Stevenson and his organization got Avery’s sentence back into court to be reviewed. Guess who was tasked with driving Avery to court and back? That outright racist correctional officer, sitting in that courtroom, back and forth, back and forth. But the appeal went well - with mental health experts, foster parents, family history all coming out with the hopes that Avery might get the help he needed and there might be some leniency for what he had done. Avery, like many kids on death row, had a history of being sexually abused, being beaten, being abandoned - even by the very foster parents charged with caring for him.

About a month later, feeling somewhat hopeful about the hearing, Mr. Stevenson went to see Avery. The truck was there again. And guess who greeted Bryan at the door?

Bryan knew the routine, “Look, I’ll step into the bathroom to get ready for your search.”

But this time the guard stopped him. “Oh, Mr. Stevenson, you don’t have to worry about that. I know you’re okay.”

Now Bryan was a bit nervous - what was going on here? As the guard led him back to meet with Avery, the guard began to open up:

“You know I took ole Avery to court for his hearing and was down there with y’all for those three days. And I, uh, well, I want you to know that I was listening. You know, I - uh, well, I appreciate what you’re doing. I really do. It was kind of difficult for me to be in that courtroom to hear what y’all was talking about. I came up in foster care, you know. I came up in foster care too. They moved me around like I wasn’t wanted nowhere. I had it pretty rough too. But listening to what you was saying about Avery made me realize that there were other people who had it as bad as I did. I guess even worse. Well, I think you done good, real good.”

The guard reached out his hand - and the two shook hands.

And just about as Mr. Stevenson was to go in and meet with Avery, the guard grabbed his arm one more time. “Oh, wait. I’ve got to tell you something else. Listen, I did something I probably wasn’t supposed to do, but I want you to know about it. On the trip back down here after court on that last day - well, I know how Avery is, you know. Well anyway, I just want you to know that I took an exit off the interstate on the way back. And, well, I took him to a Wendy’s, and I bought him a chocolate milkshake.”

Bryan never ran into that guard again - the rumor was that not long after that, that guard quit that job - maybe just maybe that time with Avery in that courtroom started him on his journey of repentance, turning away from racism and hatred and anger to new life.

There is something to this story that captures what Christmas is really about - light in someone’s darkness - that both of those men in the prison, though one was a security guard, were incarcerated by darkness - and suddenly, light dawned to show them both another way.

What if your Advent wasn’t about stuff and noise and anxiety and fear?

What if your Advent was about turning back to a God who loves us, who knows how much we struggle, and who steps into our lives and this world to love us to heaven?

Are you ready to keep awake?

[nathanjhill]

Armor of God (Ephesians 6)

Ephesians 6:10-17

Lately, on the radio and on the occasional bit of TV I watch, I have noticed advertisements for a company promising to protect your precious online identity. Hackers, security holes, data breaches, and incompetent employees are around every corner - from your favorite Black Friday shopping website to your local gas station, and if you aren’t careful, poof - your credit card number, social security, home address, personal information, and frequent flyer numbers are in someone else’s hands. All of which can wreck your holiday spirit and maybe even your life.

So this company promises their services to become a sort of armor against the wiles of credit card skimmers and the cybernetic arrows of Russian hackers.

This is no laughing matter in our world anymore - most of us here have already been hacked at least once from one of these major breaches. Business and government institutions spend big money to firewall sensitive data and give an illusion of security, but there are always holes and backdoors and weak passwords. And every time we jump over to the newest security measure it seems like, that one isn’t good. Why, I remember when having a picture on your debit card was supposed to be the height of protection - and now, I don’t think they even bother with that anymore.

While being secure on the internet is a legitimate concern for us, we live in a world where services that promise to protect us perk up our ears. We pay attention, even if we are feeling good about our situation - home alarm systems, anti-theft devices, community policing programs, neighborhood watch, and on and on. Even if we have not been the victim of a crime, there is a deep anxiety that danger is lurking around every corner.

And even though I am an optimist at heart, I don’t disagree. If it’s not our experience, we know a family member or neighbor who has been a victim of crime. We know lives that have been shattered from the unexpected or the pain we so easily can inflict upon each other.

There are few safe places anymore - schools and colleges are the staging ground for violence. Churches and mosques across the world are riddled with blood and bullets. Our own homes have erupted in domestic violence, spouses turning weapons on each other. And you may have seen this article about a supposed plan from North Korea to drop a nuclear bomb into the super volcano in Yosemite National Park, which sounds like a bad James Bond movie and not real life.

Whether we like it or not, we must admit there is a danger in this world. There is struggle. There are people who are desperate and immoral. There are shadowy faceless entities out there that want to destroy us - there are governments and institutions and businesses that will trample on us if they can get ahead. Each day, whether we like it or not, when we wake up to go about our day or go online, we face risk - we step into enemy territory.

Eugene Peterson, in his commentary of Ephesians, says it plainly - “Christians live in hostile country.”

No, he’s not talking about the so-called War on Christmas or arguments over religious freedom or the idea of there being some kind of religious war in our world.

Peterson instead makes the case that from the beginning of the church - from the time of Jesus and his disciples - throughout history - Christians have had enemies. Sometimes, those enemies have come from within the church. Sometimes, they have been forces and military power from the outside. But on an even larger scale, Christians face the undeniable reality that not only are we to believe differently than the rest of the world but we are to behave differently. We are to live counter to the ways of this world - the ways of greed, selfishness, pride, hate, and abusive power. And that has made many Christians a target.

Paul in Chapter 6 of his letter to the Ephesians is writing to early churches who know that life is a struggle. Some historians make the case that the early church was mostly comprised of working class or poor people. A common critique of early churches were that they were nothing but a bunch of widows and orphans. There was persecution from Roman authorities - Christians lived counter to the Roman religious traditions, so they could stick out like a sore thumb when everyone else was partying at some festival or the other. This made daily life a grind, a challenge, a risk - week to week, only their practices of community, of worship, of prayer, of the Lord’s Supper, of receiving God’s abundant love could sustain them and nourish them.

So Paul pauses first to encourage these early Christians to stand firm - to stay strong in their challenge times - and then casts an image of their daily struggle as something far bigger than just a game of survival. Remember, as I have reminded you throughout this series, Ephesians never keeps the volume knob at 5 - Paul always wants to blast his message up to 9, 10, or even 11. In Verse 12, he proclaims, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Wow. Think about this - Paul was saying that for those early Christians, their normal weekly grind to get through a difficult day, perhaps as a slave in a Roman household or as a poor daily laborer or even a widow or orphan was vastly more important than they might realize. Your life, your actions, your story was the setting of this grand struggle between good and evil - a stage for God to wage war against the darkness that seeks to consume Creation.

There was unfortunately no identity theft protection or credit score or public defenders to protect you from the forces of evil in those days, but Paul speaks in this powerful and poetic way and describes a suit of armor that these early Christians may put on to resist being ensnared by the evil and violence and abuses of power around them.

The belt of truth around your waist

The breastplate of righteousness

Shoes to help your proclaim the gospel of peace (maybe for running)

The shield of faith to hold back the flaming arrows of the evil one

The helmet of salvation and finally the sword of the Spirit

For early hearers of this letter, these images would have been familiar - everyone had seen a powerful and mighty Roman centurion, the image of stability and military competence. The Empire was protected and maintained through the power of its military, its armies, its forces at work against their enemies. These centurions could be terrifying - and no doubt, early Christians may have faced their wrath.

But the irony here is that the armor of God is nothing like what centurions wear. They are not fashioned of iron and bronze - we do not wield a sword into battle like soldiers do. Our armor comes from and is rooted in God and in the practices of our daily faith. Our armor too does not dazzle in the sun or terrify our neighbor - but it is there nonetheless, girding us, equipping us, helping us stand firm as we face each day and try our best to be the soil for God’s resurrection to burst forth.

The armor of God enables us to love more boldly - to witness to what is good and true - to hold back evil that seeks for each of us to give up and let it give sway over our lives and the lives of our neighbors.

Paul was reminding these early Christians - and perhaps us - that being a Christian is not a journey that will ever be free of conflict - to practice resurrection is to plunge our lives into the midst of the tectonic shifts of heartbreak, pain, loss, and fear all around.

I know this is not an easy idea today - who wants more conflict in their lives?

What is Paul suggesting then?

One - God is with us in the conflicts we face. The truth is a powerful gift to deal with conflict, but some people do not want to hear the truth. Righteousness does not mean that you are right - it means that you seek right relationship with your neighbors and with God. The gospel of peace is not something you can do with out your feet, moving among neighborhoods and families and lives. The shield of faith challenges us to remember that it is only God who we can trust to know our truest identity that of a child of God. It is the helmet of salvation that keeps our eyes and minds directed to the bigger picture of what God is doing to redeem the world. And it is the sword of the Spirit that guides our words, our tongues, and our lips.

We enter into conflict as Christians not with over-confidence - but with the humble spirit that we are woven into God’s story and if we listen and seek God’s way in the mess of it all, God will lead us through.

Remember the words of the Psalmist -

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?”

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

Those whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.

But the second more subtle and convicting “good news” I read in this final chapter of Ephesians is this - as Christians, if our life of faith does not draw us toward conflict, we may be doing it wrong. Again, I don’t think Paul is thinking of Facebook arguments or church board meeting fights or picketing your non-Christian neighbors. The conflict Paul is thinking of is the kind that creates the healthy room for growth and tension in our lives - where we are stretched to love in greater capacity, where we are asked to step out in faith into a new role or new way of doing things together, where we are called upon to risk our lives for the well-being of others and our neighborhoods, where we draw boundaries at work or at home on who we are and what kind of life we truly shall lead with integrity and compassion.

The armor of God gives you permission to take Jesus with you - into all those nooks and crannies of your lives - and the more you make room for Jesus, the less room there is for the forces of evil and darkness all around. No room for hate, no room for abusive domineering power, no room for intimidation, no room for inequality or injustice, no room for white supremacy, no room for the status quo. We cannot follow Jesus and not face the ways in which this cosmic struggle between good and evil is about our souls and our lives just as it is our neighbor’s.

The good news is that it is in this space of conflict where your life might become a witness to someone else who thinks they are going through it all alone.

I have been grateful for this six week study of Ephesians - I hope it has been interesting to you. But one of the things that I have really come to see in this expansive view of the theology of this letter is how important church is to our journey of faith. And it’s struggle because church can be just as messy as out there. Right now, our church (UCC) is in the midst of some real conflict as we are being stretched to love more abundantly and boldly. There have been some instances where we are not holding back our anger. We have been a little impatient or fed up. We are going through some transition. We are not communicating well. My tendency as a pastor (and sometimes as am middle child in my family) was to shy away from conflict. /Why can’t we just all get along?/ But God has really been working in me to see that this conflict - among different leaders, around our vision - is an opportunity for growth, for each of us to see and wonder if God is doing something bigger than we can ever imagine. This is a time to reconnect, to listen, to love, to discover why it is that God has brought us together. It is a time to put on the Armor of God.

Yes, we are often afraid - for good reason in this world, but family of God, when I look at you, I don’t just see a bunch of nobodies - I see a mighty company of God’s finest, equipped and blessed and prayed up to go into this world and proclaim the good news that there is something greater than the violence and decay around us - there is a love that can bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim release to the captives, and give sight to those who struggle to see.

We are equipped to go about God’s work - may we enter in with courage together!

[nathanjhill]

Ephesians 5: Imitating God

Imitating God

Ephesians 5:1-2

I grew up with siblings, so we liked to find ways to get on each other’s nerves.

One of the best ways to do that was the copycat game. Raise your hand if you know the copycat game.

Basically, you repeat whatever your brother or sister says.

“I’m hungry.” / “I’m hungry!”

“Stop it.” / “Stop it.”

“Mom, he’s repeating me.” / “Mom, he’s repeating me.”

“You are so annoying.” / “You are so annoying.”

“Leave me alone.” / “Leave me alone.”

On first glance, our scripture this morning sounds like it is inviting us to play the copycat game with God - to imitate God, repeat God, sound like God, talk like God, and even walk like God. If that was the simple prescription to follow Jesus, this discipleship journey might be a whole lot easier for us. All we would need to do is a slap a bracelet on our wrist that says, “What Would Jesus Do”, and do it.

Following Jesus is a lot harder than that though, especially when we get frustrated, angry, wound up, disappointed, disenchanted, and wore out. Following Jesus is not a simple copycat game or else all we would have to do is go around in our lives looking for fishermen and tax collectors to inspire, healing the sick and poor we find along our city sidewalks, and spending whole days out in the desert praying alone.

Author Richard Rohr says that the real challenge in this spiritual game, is not that we aren’t sincere when we want to imitate God, but it’s that we put a lot of distance between us and God. We want to follow Jesus, but since we don’t live near any deserts and don’t encounter any tax collectors or fishermen (for the most part), we make our spirituality all about how we feel on the inside, an internal exercise, or we make our spiritual journey something that is unattainable because of who Jesus is.

Jesus was perfect - so we try to be perfect.

Jesus had all the answers - so we try to have all the answers.

Jesus sacrificed everything - so we should sacrifice everything.

Jesus may really be perfect and have all the answers and so on, but let’s not forget that Jesus was human just like us - a person who lived and breathed and walked and talked and got tired and worn out and loved and felt afraid and experienced frustration and knew what it was like to be rejected just like we do. And who lived out his ministry among the imperfect followers that he gathered to his side.

Jesus wasn’t interested in copycat followers - Jesus wanted followers who would write their own stories and share God’s love in their own voices and in their own ways.

Paul is thus asking these early Christian communities imitate the very nature of God that they discover in Jesus - the essence and fragrance of God’s love, forgiveness, and liberation. In this way, we can define growing spirituality, this idea of practicing resurrection, as not growing more perfect or having all the right words to say or memorizing the whole Bible or having perfect attendance at worship, as our constant effort to grow closer to God that God’s love might grow outward from us.

That’s imitating God.

The rest of this Chapter in Ephesians lays out what this look likes in some very concrete ways. In the verses that immediately follow, Paul explicitly identifies some of the behavior and sins that can wreck our ability to imitate God - trading in lust for love, and trading in generosity for greed. Paul says when we do that, we begin to worship something else than God.

But I really just felt like I had to wrestle deeper with a sometimes complicated and controversial section from verse 21 and on, in my bible listed under the heading “the Christian household.”

This section is an example of what many theologians call clobber verses. These verses have been used many times by preacher, theologians, and Christians to clobber people over the head, scripture wielded like a weapon to hurt and wound people, taken out of context to justify all kinds of terrible things.

Verse 22, for instance, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.”

I have not heard many sermons in my life preached on this passage, but when I have, it has almost always been used to justify awful, abusive behavior in the name of God. Women who are in relationships where they are being abused and violated have been told to stay in the relationship because they should be “subject” to their husbands. Or when there is a serious disagreement, women are told by men, using the Bible as a bludgeon, to give up and lose their argument because God says so.

In recent weeks, we have seen many women step forward and speak publicly about sexual harassment and abuse they have been the victim of - I know some of our women here in our church have been victims of such evil too. This scripture passage in no way condones such behavior in the church or anywhere, no matter how someone might want to twist the text to their own purposes.

Scripture must never be used to justify the mistreatment and oppression of anyone - for when you do, you are not imitating God.

What then do we do with a passage like this?

Let’s take a look at the context. Paul in this letter to the Ephesians is not talking about a “so-called” nuclear family, like what American culture has taught us the building block of our communities - two parents, two kids, a dog, a house, and a Netflix account. The Roman household, which was the culture in which Paul was writing, was quite a bit different.

A Roman Household in the time of the Ephesians had a patriarch of the family, probably a husband, at the head, at the top. Just below him was usually a wife. Further below were kids, any other relatives living in the household, and servants, if the family was wealthy or powerful enough.

The patriarch of the family, in Roman culture, had the authority and final say over everyone in their household - wife, children, relatives, servants. Even the servant’s children. Final say meant final authority - over their well-being, their life, their death, their future prospects, their marriages, their debts, their roles, their freedom. There is evidence that some Roman patriarchs did use this power to kill anyone in their household who dared disobey them. There was no recourse.

Marriages, likewise, were not usually about love, romance, or care. Marriages were typically arranged to broker deals between families or powerful people. Women in the household could be married off at as young an age as 14, usually to much older men. And if the husbands did not have romantic interest in their wives, that meant that any other women, including slaves, could be the target of their interest.

Thus, the Roman household was rife with the potential for abusive power on a regular basis - there was no sense of equality as we understand it or marrying someone because you love them or letting someone have the freedom to dictate their own life’s direction.

So here comes Paul, knowing that the churches in the 1st to 2nd century were wrestling with how to live in such difficult times, living in households where power was being abused, where authority was being mishandled. Where life and death was at stake - Paul challenges early Christians not to ignore the social customs and run off into the desert but to “up end” them - subvert them - live and love in a different way.

All are to submit themselves to Christ. Yes, while wives are to submit themselves to husbands as is the Roman way, husbands should submit themselves - not to Ceasar and the way of Ceasar - but to Jesus. Husbands are to love their wives just as Jesus loved the church - to see their bodies as one. To inflict pain on a spouse was to inflict pain on oneself. The scripture speaks of a serious and deep mutuality, a growing closer to God in a culture that could be hostile to the way of God, a growing closer as a family in a culture that celebrated violence, abuse, and conquest as the way to get things done. Paul paints this incredible image of what it might meant to imitate Jesus in an unlikely and familiar place for early Christians.

So the question is not for us to take Paul’s description here as a prescription for our families - but to challenge ourselves to think about what it means to imitate God in our relationships in our homes - among roommates, partners, siblings, parents, grandparents, or whoever we share our lives with.

How we might live out the love of Jesus with those closest to us?

Ephesians’ image of the household challenges us to imitate God - to imitate Jesus - by being about each other’s liberation. To serve each other. To see ourselves as interconnected. To reject relationships that suffocate us and wound us. To reclaim a different way than Ceasar.

Ephesians’ image of the household, and the whole chapter, challenge us to connect our sense of spirituality, not just with Sunday morning worship or big lofty ideals, but with the most mundane routines of our lives. Not because God wants to micromanage us - but because it is through the ordinary stuff of sharing breakfast, cleaning our homes, talking with our loved ones, and meeting the demands placed upon us - that God is imitated and glorified.

In the Hill household, this means that I am not serving my wife if I make her pick up my dirty laundry everyday - or do the dishes - or do the laundry. Or vice verse or whatever. It means I need to model that to my children - that their mom is not a servant to bring them a plate of delicious food every evening - they have a role. They can love their mom by serving too. And God is interested in that - picking up dirty socks is as spiritual an act as fasting for 24 hours.

I hope that image challenges you - but this is the incredible image that all of Ephesians paints for us. We are caught up in this story of God, this drama of God, where God moves us into our world and makes us saints, despite our brokenness - where God makes us one and tears down the walls between us - where God is infused into our everyday lives in the most mundane and ordinary ways, because even our families are a staging ground for God’s love to be shared and lived out.

Spirituality is thus not something that takes us away from the world but moves us deeper into it.

Blogger Martika Diaz wrote back in June, every time she grudgingly picks up a pair of dirty socks off the floor for her family, she recognizes the good news that God does that for her (and for all of us) on a regular basis - picking up and sorting out our messes, showing up in our pain and isolation, and washing us anew that we may shine, once again, with the brightness and beauty of God’s incredible love.

Where does your life need to imitate God this week? What are the dirty socks that you need to pick up a neighbor, a co-worker, a spouse, a friend? Is there a situation in your life where someone has chosen power over you and you need God to transform that situation? Do you need to get out of an unhealthy relationship today? Do you need to turn something mundane that you do at home into a place of spiritual growth?