Turning the Tables

March 11, 2012

3^rd Sunday in Lent

Union Lutheran Church – Salisbury, NC

John 2: 13-22, Exodus 20: 1-17

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

As it is so often when we meet someone new, we want to get to know them, and further yet, we want our new friends to get to know us as well.  One of the ways we do this is by sharing pictures of our lives.  It’s fun sharing pictures and stories of our past with others who seem interested in getting to know us.  So invariably, we pull out the family album.  These books tell our story.

One of the books I show people from time to time is a photo album of my days in the navy.  I also have an album my parents gave me from when I was young.  Other pictures we share are standards for getting to know someone and allowing others to get to know us.  For instance, if you are married you are likely to share the pictures from your wedding.  We share pictures of our kids with relatives and those whom we haven’t seen in a while.  And if you’re not careful, someone might even come up with an embarrassing picture of you when you were either very young, or very unaware that there was a camera nearby.

We all have those pictures in our past.  Really, you think you know someone until you see some of those candid photos taken when they least expected it.  You know the type, shots taken them by surprise, with a mouth full of food, or striking a superman pose.   That’s when you get a glimpse of who a person really is.  Do you suppose Jesus might have had fun sharing such pictures of his life?

Think about it.  We all have seen countless pictures of Jesus.  Some at church, some in our homes, and still others in magazines, newspapers and books.  Most of the pictures we see of Jesus are rather pleasing.  Jesus as a baby lying in a manger.  Baby Jesus with his mother Mary.  Jesus the Good Shepherd, Jesus blessing the children.  There are also pictures of Jesus working miracles.  Feeding the five thousand, calming the storm, walking on water, and even Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead.

Do you think that if we were able to sit with Jesus and share his photo album that he would show us the candid shots?  What about the ones we don’t want to see?  A picture of him taken after 40 days in the wilderness?  Or how about Jesus rebuking Peter or cursing the fig tree?  Then we turn the page and see the picture of today’s gospel text, Jesus, with a whip in his hand, driving out the money changers and the animals from the temple.  What would we say to Jesus when we came across that one?  Would we ask him about it, or would we just pretend we didn’t see it and quickly move on?  The trouble is, we can’t ignore it.  It’s there, plain and simple, we do see it.  The real question is, would we ask Jesus what happened to make him so mad?  Or would we be too afraid to ask?

John, the apostle, doesn’t hesitate to bring it up.  In fact, even as Matthew, Mark and Luke include this event in telling of Jesus’ final days, John puts it up front.  From the very opening verses of his gospel account, John is helping us get to know Jesus.  Not just the Jesus in the nice pictures; John is introducing us to Jesus, the Word made flesh, the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  And already in chapter two, John leaves little doubt concerning how Jesus feels about sin.

Just this morning, only a few minutes ago, we heard the story of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments.  Ever since the fall when Adam and Eve bit the forbidden fruit, we humans have strayed from the precepts of God.  Following the Exodus, as a gift and model for living a godly life, God handed to us his Law, his teaching, his instructions.  God set boundaries for humans to live by, not as a rule to keep us under control, but as a gift that we might turn away from sinful behavior and live as God intends.  Yet, throughout history, throughout the history of the Bible and throughout the history of our lives, we can see where we have fallen short of God’s expectations.  Try as we might, we cannot keep even Ten Commandments, let alone live according to the totality of God’s Law.

The first commandment our heavenly Father gives to us calls us to have no other gods.  We are to worship and trust the One True God, the maker of all things.  Yet, when Jesus came to Jerusalem and saw that the temple had been turned into a market place, he was angered at the fact that even in the holiest of places; humans had replaced worship with greed, and trust with contempt.  It is of little wonder that Jesus, God’s Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us; it’s of little wonder that his response to such sinfulness was to turn over the tables and drive out those who made God’s house of prayer into a den of thieves.

Jesus came to turn the tables on sin.  He came to redeem that which was lost.  Jesus came to save people from their sins, so he scattered the animals meant for sacrifice and became the sacrifice himself.  During this time of Lent, as we continue to turn the pages of Jesus’ photo album that is the gospel, we soon come across the most difficult picture to look at.  Jesus at Gethsemane, Jesus before Pilate, Jesus being whipped himself, and finally, Jesus lifted up on the cross.  Such images of Christ are not the ones we choose to look at, but they are the ones we need to see.

Seeing such images during this time of repentance causes us to consider what tables in our lives Christ might turn over.  What is about our lives, our homes our churches that displease our Lord so much that he would take up a whip and drive them out?  Which of these Ten Commandments do we fail to keep most often?  How many “other gods’ do we put in front of the One True God?  When we speak of our neighbors, do we always cast them in the  most favorable light, or do we at times resort to bearing false witness in order to get our way?  Do we take only what is ours, all of the time, or are there instances when we take advantage of loopholes or get around the system for our own benefit?

The most interesting thing about looking through Jesus’s photo album is that, as we look deeper into the text, we begin to see ourselves.  As we get to know Jesus better and better, we also get to k now our own person, our own self.  We realize our need for a savior, and we come to realize the love of God as he gives us one in the person of his only Son Christ Jesus.

People of God, the lessons of Lent are heavy.  The texts we read and preach are such that as we study them, we see the complete picture of who we are, and more importantly, who God is.  Ours is a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Ours is a God who waited until just the right time to invade our world, dwell with his people, and serve as our example of Godly living.  He is the God who delivered his people from bondage, gave them the gift of his law as a guide, and when it became necessary, turned over the tables ridding his temple of sin and taking up the cross as the final atoning sacrifice for the sins of all.

It won’t be long until we turn one more final page in Jesus’ photo album.  On that day we will behold the most glorious of pictures of our Lord and Savior, there before the empty tomb, early in the morning while it is still dark, we will once again behold the Risen Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

If you choose, you can make me clean…

February 12, 2012

6th Sunday after the Epiphany

Union Lutheran Church – Salisbury, NC

Mark 1: 40-45

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s a little cute little story that has been circulating on the Internet.  It’s about a little boy named Tommy.  Tommy had just started walking to school on his own and of course, his mother was a bit nervous about it.  She was a bit of a worrier, so for the first week or so she decided that she would walk with Tommy and in the afternoons meet him at least halfway as he walked home.  One day, Tommy told his mother that he wanted to be like the big boys and walk to school by his self.  It wasn’t far and they knew everyone in the neighborhood.  His mom agreed, but still she was worried that something might happen to her son.  Then Tommy’s mother had an idea.

Their next door neighbor, Shirley Goodness, took her two year old Marcy for a walk each morning, pushing the stroller right passed the school.  She asked Shirley if she would follow her son at a distance, close enough to watch after him, but far enough that he wouldn’t take notice.  Mrs. Goodness agreed to the idea, her daughter Marcy loved going by the school and seeing all the kids.  The next morning as Tommy left for school, Shirley pushed Marcy in the stroller and walked a good bit behind Tommy.  As Tommy walked with one of his friends, Shirley would be watching from behind.  This went on for several weeks.

Finally, one day as they were walking to school, Tommy’s friend noticed this same lady was following them.  He asked Tommy if he knew they were being followed every day?  Tommy replied, “Yeah, and I know who she is.  That’s Shirley Goodness; she has her daughter Marcy in the stroller.   Tommy’s friend asked, “Why is she following us?”  “Well,” Tommy explained, “Ever since I began walking to school on my own, my Mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers because she worries about me so much.  The psalm has that part that says, “Shirley Goodness and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

Be careful what you pray for, you just may get it.

As we listen to this story, we can certainly get the understanding that Tommy’s mother loves him dearly.  She as she is willing to let him begin walking to school like the big kids, but she still goes to great lengths to ensure his safety and security.

More than anything, that is what this story is about.  It’s about a parent’s love for her child and the lengths she will go to care for him.  Within the text of our gospel lesson this morning, we witness the lengths that God is willing to go in order to guide us, lead us and protect us.  We have an example of God’s unconditional love for his people, and especially for those who are on the margins of society.

In ancient times, people who were said to suffer from leprosy were declared unclean.  They were cast out of the synagogue, forbidden to enter the community and required to warn anyone who approached them of their uncleanness and unworthiness.   Lepers were judged by others and found to be physically and socially unacceptable.  No one dared get too close lest they also contracted the disease.  More than anything, fear of the unknown is what motivated people to quarantine lepers, cutting them off from the community.  Fear is a powerful motivator.  It makes decisions for us.  Fear tells us where we should not go.         It points out to us the people whom we should not associate with.

More often than not, fear keeps us from building relationships that would otherwise prove to be pleasing in God’s sight.  Having served an inner city congregation within a community experiencing homelessness, some violence and plenty of other needs, I can assure you there are many social conditions that separate people.  Even here in Salisbury one can watch as those who have standing within the community steer clear of the perceived lepers around us.  Those with means overlook the poor and homeless who occupy the streets.   Sometimes people will even go so far out of their way, crossing the street simply to avoid contact with someone so obviously different.  Such encounters make us nervous.  We feel uneasy, we hope they don’t speak to us, mostly out of fear that they will ask something of us.  We don’t like to think about it, but in such instances, who is really the one who is unclean?            As the community turns away from those who seem undesirable or unlovable, who is really suffering from the effects of the scourge we call sin?

In today’s text, Mark shares with us a healing miracle of Jesus.  But as we gain more understanding about Mark’s gospel, we soon see it is much more than a healing story.  Mark has one central theme that runs throughout his account of Jesus’ life.  With each and every passage, Mark is telling us that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of the Living God, the Messiah and Savior of the world.  Jesus is the one who is called Emmanuel, God with us.  He is the one who came to dwell with God’s people, to live as we live, fully human, yet he is also fully God.  He has the power to forgive sins, cure disease and bring everlasting life in God’s kingdom to all who believe and are baptized.  Today’s story is but one more evidence of the lengths God will go to save his people.

While society turns its back on the unclean, Jesus dares to encounter those who cry out for mercy.   While the leaders of the community segregate the clean from the unclean, Christ makes the unholy to be holy.  Jesus’ love, exhibited in today’s gospel, offers us something different from the usual way we are treated and judged.  God accepts us, not because our skin is perfect or our spirits unblemished, but because he has entered our condition and he knows our needs.  Christ knows our weakness, he understands our pain and he has experienced our suffering.  We are accepted because Jesus knows us as God’s children, redeemed with his own precious body and blood he so willingly gave up on the cross.  The power of his grace is sufficient for our salvation, no matter what sin, regardless of what fear, or any other blemish has come into our life.

Jesus does the unthinkable.  Where society demands that all stand clear and avoid contact with the leper, Jesus reaches out his hand.  Where earthly communities dictate we avoid contact with the undesirable, Christ touches them and holds them in his loving embrace.  Christ Jesus reaches out to touch each of us, to touch us, to make us whole, to restore us to the relationships that we should have in our communities, and the relationship we should have with God.  That is what this text is all about.  That is what the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion celebrate.  Christ touches us; he makes us clean, he reconciles us with God and restores us to one another.

Mark writes, A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

Jesus reached out and touched the man suffering from leprosy.  Through baptism, Christ Jesus also reaches out to us and makes us clean.  As he stretched out his hand to the leper and touched him, Jesus returned the leprous man to wholeness.  Just as he stretched out his hands on the cross to make us whole.  Christ Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world and became unclean in the eyes of God’s law that we might be made clean.  He allowed himself to be rejected so that those who are rejected might be accepted.

The point is: we are forgiven, every last one of us.    God’s love is there, waiting for us, at all times in our life. Christ extends his hands, reaching out to us, he chooses, he wills, Christ makes us clean.  We can’t earn his grace, we don’t deserve his love, yet Jesus offers his forgiveness freely.        All we have to do is call out to him.  All we need to do is kneel at his feet and ask him.  “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  And Jesus reaches out and touches us, heals us, cleanses us with God’s grace.

Jesus reaches out to us today.  Through water and the Word, through bread and wine; during our worship through sermon and song Jesus Christ reaches out and touches us, he bids us to come to him.  He calls us to follow in his ways.  Today and all days, God calls all Christians to be like Christ for the neediest among us, the poor and the hungry, the lost and forgotten.  Jesus chooses to touch us and to make us part of his family, his community, his church, and he calls us to touch others with his love.

People of God, as long as we have the love of God in Christ Jesus, we ought not have any fears.  As long as we are the recipients of the good news of God’s grace, we are compelled to go into the world and share this gift with all whom God places within our midst.  Because God gave his only Son to save people from their sins, we are forgiven, healed and made clean in the sight of God.  Let our thankful response be that we reach out and touch other with Christ’s love, sharing this good news with all whom we encounter.

Let us pray:

Holy and life giving God;

You sent your Son into the world that he might save people from their sins.  We know that if you choose, you have the power to forgive us, to renew us, and to restore us to your kingdom of glory.  Touch us with your grace, heal us from our sinfulness, and lead us into the word that we may tell everyone of your goodness, for we pray in the strong name of our precious Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, and all of God’s people said…Amen!

The Hands of Christ

The following is the first sermon in my Lenten series concerning The Body of Christ.

1st Sunday in Lent

John 8:1-11

The Hands of Christ

 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 This morning we begin our Lenten series concerning the Body of Christ, his humanity, his life among God’s people, his suffering and death for our sake.  Today our focus is on the Hands of Christ.

First of all, consider the hand.  Its purpose is to grasp and to hold things.  Its design suits its function very well.  When the hand is first employed it reaches out with an intended purpose.  The hand’s fingers grasp an object and hold it firmly, supporting as much weight as they can bear.  When the weight becomes too great, one hand may reach out in assistance to another.  Given the right set of circumstances, a hand can provide great strength and security.  It can provide a means to do work, or as in many circumstances, a hand can apply a gentle loving touch, a simple caress.  Hands can even speak.  No, they cannot talk, but they can communicate.  Hands can say “I love you.”

What comes to your mind when you think of hands?  Something very emotional, perhaps.  The first thing our own tiny hands grasped as infants was probably a finger of our father or mother.  Our parents’ hands caressed us, changed us, fed us, held us, played with us.  Some might think first of a father’s strong, calloused hands taking your own hand in order to show you how to do something, to teach you, guide you, to protect, or to touch and reassure.  Others might think first of a mother’s gentle hands stroking your forehead as you lay sick; hands that playfully tousled you hair, cooked and served your favorite meal, hands that washed and bandaged cuts and scrapes.  In both cases, we recall hands that loved.

Today, we consider Jesus’ hands.  Jesus’ hands combine that strength, gentleness, love and more.  Jesus’ hands were the strong hands of a carpenter, and yet the gentle loving hands of a healer.  Much has been written about the hands of Christ.  We often read about the wonders that took place by his hands; wonderful and mighty works done by his hands, yet with such a gentle touch.

Early in his ministry when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying sick with a fever; Jesus touched her hand, and the fever left her.  The hands of Jesus were hands filled with love, hands that welcomed and touched everyone.  The hands of Christ touched lepers with love, risking infection from that hideous disease.  They were hands that could be trusted, trusted by the sick, trusted by the lame.  The hands of Jesus could cause the crippled to walk.  The hands of Jesus could cause the deaf to hear, and the hands of Jesus could restore sight to the blind.  They were hands that could even be trusted to bring life back to a child who had died.

These hands of love were hands that could also forgive.  In our Gospel lesson a woman was caught “red-handed” in the very act of adultery.  When she stood accused and brought to Jesus, the beautiful hands of Christ bent to write in the dust.  What do you suppose he wrote?  Did he write the names of all those in the crowd and the sins they themselves had committed?  Did he write the Ten Commandments?  Truth be told, no one knows what it is that Jesus wrote in the dirt with his hands.  But all those eager to kill the woman by stoning her, suddenly and quietly walked away.  No one condemned her.  Christ Jesus, with the hands of love had compassion on the woman and said, “Neither do I condemn you; go and do not sin again.”  The woman’s hands loosened from the bonds of sin so that she might go and serve God with hands of love.

Forgiveness at the hands of Christ.

And what of our hands?  In your hands this morning you have a nail.  Earlier I asked you to consider the hand.  Now consider the nail.  The nail’s purpose is to hold things as well, hold them together.  As with the hand, its design suits its function very well.  When a nail is first employed its tip violently and efficiently pierces the surface of one material meant to be fastened to another.  Driven deeper and deeper, the nail finally penetrates the one, and then begins sinking deep into the other.  Given enough length, the nail will finally penetrate the second object where its shaft may be bent over so that the two in essence become one providing great strength and security.  Because of the nail, two objects are joined, affixed.  Only until one is ripped from the other, or the nail straightened and driven back can the two be separated.  Properly applied, nails employed by human hands do good work.

The work we do with our hands in the name of Christ is the work of love.  Following the example of Christ Jesus, we strive to love our neighbor, serve those who are in need, feed those who are hungry, love those who long to be loved.  Yet all too often, we humans fall short and our hands become instruments of something quite different.  Because of sin, our hands become instruments for consumption rather than service, greed rather than generosity, and hate rather than love.  Because of sin, our age old rebellion, our human hands become something quite different; they become as like nails.

Take a moment and consider the nail, held in your hand.

Finally, consider the cross, where nails and hands meet.  Neither functions toward its desired purpose.  The nail rips through the flesh of the hand, penetrating through to the rough wooden beam.  The hand is wounded, broken, bleeding.  It is unable to grasp, unable to hold.  The nail is misused in a most despicable way, tearing down rather than building up.  It restrains the hand, destroys its ability to do work, to apply a gentle loving touch.  The nail denies the hand its desire to touch; keeps it from applying a gentle caress.  Yet, even as the nail is misused, given the right set of circumstances, the hand still speaks.  Though wounded and bleeding, pierced and dying, the hands of Christ reach out and say “I love you.”

To ensure the same forgiveness granted the woman caught in adultery would be available to us also, the hands of Christ, his strong, skilled, healing, loving, forgiving hands were nailed to a cross.  In order that we may be forgiven and gain the assurance of everlasting life in God’s kingdom, the hands of Christ bore the weight of the world’s sin.  Christ died that we might live.  Christ died in order to save us.  Christ died at the hands of humans; yet he was raised by the hand of God.  Consider the hands of Christ; the hands that forgive, the hands that conquer death, the hands that give life.

As we stretch out our empty needy hands this morning, God fills them by his loving hand.  Why?

So that we might live.  So that we might live; so that we might love, so that we might be as the hands of Christ for others.

No doubt you’ve seen pictures from Japan following the earthquake and tsunami.  It will take more than the hands of humans to repair the damage.  It will take the hands of God.

Consider the hand.  Its purpose is to grasp and to hold things.  Its design suits its function very well.  When the hand is first employed it reaches out with an intended purpose.  As we extend our hands toward others, let us do so as Christ did for us; with complete and unselfish love.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.