Author: J. Barrett Lee

Beholding & Becoming

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
800px-Ice_crystals-03_01-24-2009
Image by Wilder Kaiser. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Believe it or not (and I know many of you won’t), I sometimes like to show up to work early.  With two kids at home, those few minutes in the car are sometimes the only quiet moments I get to myself in a day.

It just so happens that last Wednesday was one of those days and, before I went into my office, I took a minute to sit in my car and watch the snow falling on my windshield.  I thought about what was actually happening as each individual flake fell and melted into a droplet of water: The hardened, crystal structure of the ice was absorbing the heat radiation coming from inside my car.  It was literally a transfer of energy that was making those water molecules more flexible as a liquid.  Obviously, a liquid is more flexible than a solid crystal.  A crystal can only break, but a liquid can bend into any shape necessary.  If that energy transfer process continued, the liquid would eventually get hot enough to turn into a gas and the water vapor would simply become part of the air itself.

What struck me is that this process is an almost perfect metaphor for what happens to human beings as we grow spiritually.  We begin as small, hardened, selfish crystals.  We exist as solid individuals, obsessed with the uniqueness of our own crystalline structure.  This is what we could call “the ego-centric life”.  This is the state of being that says things like: “You’ve got to look out for number one; it’s a dog-eat-dog world; and it’s my way or the highway.”

But something happens to us as we grow older and begin to ask the “bigger questions” in life.  We start to think outside the box.  We meet good, decent people with political and religious worldviews different from our own.  Spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation lead us toward compassion and understanding.  We humans, like snowflakes melting on a windshield, become more fluid and flexible.

I would not hesitate to say that our souls gradually absorb the divine energy of the Holy Spirit and we begin to look and act more like Jesus.

If this process were to continue, I would venture a guess that our individual egos would eventually evaporate into the atmosphere of love itself, which is God.  Whether this final transformation can happen in this life or only in the next, I’m not sure, but the image is compelling.

It actually reminded me of the Transfiguration, which is the event in the life of Jesus that we traditionally recall on this last Sunday before the beginning of Lent.  In this story, Jesus and his closest disciples walk up a mountain to pray and, while they are up there, Jesus begins to glow with a kind of inner, divine light.

This is not the only time something like that happens in the Bible.  In the book of Exodus, Moses goes up a mountain to commune with God and comes back down with his face glowing so brightly that his fellow Israelites can’t even stand to look at it.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul refers to this Moses story and extends the idea of “spiritual radiation” to all people who seek a deeper closeness with the Divine.  Using the term “glory” to describe this “spiritual radiation”, Paul writes: “all of us, …seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”.

Along with Christians throughout history, Paul believed that Christ revealed the fullness of divine glory to the world.  As people remembered Jesus’ life, studied his teachings, and celebrated his death and resurrection, Paul believed that their lives would begin to resemble Christ’s more and more.  The divine glory (i.e. “spiritual radiation”) that shone in him would gradually become visible in us.

To put it another way: we become what we behold.  The more we look at Jesus, the more we look like Jesus.

Now, Paul had no way of knowing this, but he was actually picking up on insights that would one day be confirmed by scientists in the 21st century.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has described a phenomenon called neuroplasticity.  What this means is: “The more you focus on something — whether that’s math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain,” according to Dr. Newberg.

Dr. Newberg has spent much of his career studying the effects of prayer and meditation through the lens of neuroplasticity.  He has discovered that these practices actually have a concrete, measurable effect on the way your brain functions.  The more you focus on God, the more real God becomes to you.

Most of Newberg’s research has used subjects who pray or meditate for several hours a day, such as monks and nuns.  But there is nothing in his research to suggest that we “ordinary folks” can’t also derive some benefit from a regular spiritual practice, even though we might only have a few minutes each day to engage in such exercises.

Like Paul, Moses, and Jesus, we too can become what we behold.  As the apostle Paul said, we can “[see] the glory of the Lord” and “[be] transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”  The divine light that shone through Jesus and Moses can shine through us too, in a metaphorical sense.

When I see photos of the people I most admire in recent history: Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa, Gene Robinson, and Oscar Romero, I see faces radiant with the glory of God.  I see people who have spent so much time looking at Jesus that they have started to look like Jesus.

So then, how is this process of transformation “from one degree of glory to another” available to us?  The simple answer is that this process just happens within us naturally as we spend more and more time and energy cultivating our conscious awareness of God’s presence.  Now, that’s a pretty abstract idea, so let me bring it down to earth: in practical terms, I think there is a lot of wisdom to be gained from those good old fashioned spiritual disciplines of Bible study and prayer.

Bible study should be a no-brainer.  We can learn how to follow Jesus by reading about his life and studying his teachings.  If you’ve never read the Bible on your own before, I recommend starting with one of the four gospels, like Mark or Luke.  Read just a little bit every day and think about what you’re reading.  Try to imagine yourself as a character in the story.  Watch for any words or ideas that seem to “stand out” to you.  Use your imagination.  Ask yourself, “Why did this word stand out to me, in this way, at this time?”

Daily prayer is another good practice to have as well.  If you’ve never prayed before, here’s a simple method for getting started: start by naming things you’re thankful for.  Even if you can’t think of anything in particular, be thankful that you woke up today, thankful that the sun is shining, thankful for the air in your lungs or the food on your plate.  As you go along, you might start to think of other, more specific things in your life.  Next, name those people or situations you’re concerned about.  You can be as general or specific as you like.  Some people like to keep a list of the names of people they’re praying for.  You can even pray for yourself.  It’s not selfish.  God knows you have needs.  Disclaimer: Praying for a situation doesn’t guarantee that things will always go your way, but it does mean that you are beginning to look at yourself, your needs, your life, and your world through a different set of eyes: spiritual eyes.  I once heard someone say: “Prayer changes you before it changes your circumstances.”

After you have given thanks and prayed for yourself and others, just sit for a while in silence.  Be still.  Close your eyes.  Focus your attention on the rhythm of your breathing.  This kind of wordless prayer is often called meditation or contemplative prayer.  Stay with it for as long as you can, several minutes even.  Personally, I like to do about twenty minutes of silent meditation per day.  If that sounds overwhelming to you, try starting with just five minutes.  This kind of prayer is often the most powerful of all.

Finally, I like to close my prayer time with something familiar, like the Lord’s Prayer.  We say it once a week here in church, but saying it daily can help the words to sink deep down into your bones.  The rhythm of the words by themselves can sometimes put you in a prayerful or spiritually attentive state of mind.

These exercises of prayer and Bible study are the two best resources I have found for helping us, as Christians, to re-center our lives on the presence of God.  The more we lean on these practices, the more our lives will reflect the glory of God.  As I said before: the more we look at Jesus, the more we look like Jesus.  We become what we behold.

We will be like those snowflakes, falling onto the windshield of a warm car.  The heat from inside the car will radiate into us, making us less cold & rigid and more warm & fluid.  We’ll be able to bend, flex, and go with the flow.  We’ll run together, like water droplets do.  The divisions between us will become less visible.  Given time near this heat source, we might even begin to evaporate and become part of the air itself: the atmosphere of God in which we live, move, and have our being.

Re-Blog: Why I’m Done “Growing the Church”

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Reblogged from Joey Reed, a United Methodist pastor in Tennessee.

No more just “growing the church”… Unless you mean something different when you say, “Grow, Church.”

Click here to read the full article

He talks about tossing the concept of “church growth” into the garbage (where it belongs).  In its place, he advocates placing “Growing in Grace”, “Growing in Love”, and “Growing in Depth”.  These things, Reed says, will make for a growing church.

I’ve had similar thoughts of my own in the past:

A Growing Church is a Dying Church

Needless to say, for those who have read my stuff before, I’m right there with you, Rev. Reed!

Discipline in Faith, Discipline of Self, Discipline with Church: How a pastor learned from a same-sex marriage and what came after – Tara Spuhler McCabe

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This is a reblog from ecclesio.com

It’s a reflection written by a pastor in my denomination who I have come to deeply respect.  On two very public occasions, she went beyond the letter of the law in order to incarnate the spirit behind it:

  • The first was when she officiated at the wedding of two women, even though our denomination’s polity does not yet provide for that function.
  • The second was when she willingly stepped down as Vice Moderator of our General Assembly, even though she had been duly nominated and elected to that position.

Tara has earned my admiration.

This is her story in her own words:

Here is the rub and the theological bankruptcy I feel I am “pastoring” in.  I am not permitted to order worship and celebrate the love of God in the covenant of marriage for the same folk whom I have baptized, confirmed, served communion, and even ordained as pastors.  There is a gross error in how we as pastors and congregations are then honoring the whole child of God whom we have started with in baptism.

Click here to read the full article…

The Greatest of These is Love

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon5 Comments

I’d like to tell you a story I heard several years ago about a church in crisis.  They were a relatively small church in a large, cosmopolitan city.  They were a young church, having only been planted a few years before, but had been around long enough to enter their second generation of leadership as their founding pastor moved on to another call and was succeeded by a popular, charismatic preacher.  The members of this church came from all across the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum.  From the perspective of church growth marketing analysts, this place was set to be a gold mine!  They had everything: a prime location in a major urban center, a diverse membership, and a popular, dynamic preacher.  What could go wrong?  Well, as it turns out, there was a lot that could go wrong… and it did.

Now, my first thought would be: It must have been the pastor.  What did he do wrong?  He must have become embroiled in some kind of public scandal involving money or sex.  That’s all you really hear about from ministers in the media these days.  But no, it wasn’t the pastor.  In fact, their charismatic clergyman hardly shows up in this story at all.

In spite of everything they had going for them on paper, this church was struggling in reality.  In fact, things were going so badly, this church’s founding denomination was thinking about pulling the plug on the entire operation.

The reality was that this church was tearing itself apart from the inside out.  What started out as groups of like-minded friends had become rival factions in an all-out war for power and control of the church.  Their pious posturing was a thin veil over blatant hypocrisy.  This ongoing dispute between cliques became so all-consuming that the real problems facing the church couldn’t be addressed.

Newer members of the church were struggling with various spiritual and theological questions, but there was no one to help them search for answers.

Wealthy members of the congregation, primarily concerned with keeping up appearances, would intentionally schedule church suppers during times when they knew that the poorer congregants would still be at work.  By the time the latter group arrived at the suppers, there was often no food left for them.

At one point, it became publicly known that a prominent member of the church was tangled up in a scandalous affair (with his own stepmother, no less), but so much energy was being spent on dealing with the rival factions that the affair went unaddressed and this family was unable to receive the kind of attention and pastoral care they so desperately needed.

Outsiders and other church leaders were aghast when they heard about how bad things had become.  Some wondered whether this sorry mess of humanity could even be called a church anymore.  They were beginning to think that closing the church might even be the most compassionate option.

Instead of closing it down, the denomination decided to send in another pastor to help.  As it turned out the pastor they sent was the church’s founding pastor, who had left for another call some years before.  He had several insights to help them deal with their various crises, but the best thing he did for them was trace all their little problems back to a single big problem: Love, or the lack thereof.  The main problem was that these people just hated each other.

It was their mutual hatred for each other that consumed the members of this church from the inside out.  They couldn’t function as a church.  There was nothing anyone could do to fix that problem.  They had everything going for them: a great urban location, a dynamic super-pastor, and several wealthy financial supporters with deep pockets, but none of those things could make the church grow or stop it from dying if the members didn’t embody that single most important core value: Love.

None of it meant anything without Love.

Now, I want to pause for a moment and pull the curtain back on this church that I’ve been talking about.  I haven’t told you the church’s name or who the pastor was.  It’s not a church in our area or our denomination.  In fact, it’s not even a church that exists in our century.  The church I’ve been talking about is the first century Christian church in the Greek city of Corinth, founded by the apostle Paul himself.  He was that founding pastor who returned to help his former congregation in crisis.

The letter of advice he wrote to them is what we now call the book of 1 Corinthians in the New Testament of the Bible.  The most famous part of that letter is the section we read this morning: the Hymn to Love in 1 Corinthians 13.  This passage is most often read at weddings, where everyone looks great, music is playing, and love is in the air.  Most of us probably heard those words this morning and let them breeze right past us because they are so familiar and so associated with saccharine euphoria that we miss their real meaning completely.

These words, when lived in reality, are radical and revolutionary.  They have the power to transform the way we interact with one another and rescue the future for a community that most people have simply given up on.  This beautiful love poetry was not written for a wedding.  It doesn’t spring up from the same part of human experience that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.  There is nothing sweet or saccharine about these words at all.

These words about love arose out of conflict within a church that was bitterly divided against itself.  These words are Paul’s challenge to every rival clique’s claim to superiority over others.  Listen to his words again.  If you’ve heard them before, listen to their meaning for the first time:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Can you hear the urgency in Paul’s voice?  He’s telling the Corinthians to stop acting like children and grow up.  These little spats that their cliques are having over church power simply don’t matter.  At all.  All their theological knowledge, their faith, their pledge cards, and their volunteer service to the church are rendered meaningless if they don’t know how to love each other.

Love and love alone makes a church.  And this love isn’t just some warm fuzzy feeling they get when they sing Amazing Grace or Kum Ba Yah.  This isn’t some hippy flower fest; this is the church of Christ.  In here, love only counts as real when it takes on flesh and blood in the actions of those who claim to possess it.

Love is patient.  Are you patient?  Love is kind.  Are you kind?  Love is not irritable or resentful.  Are you?  Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude.  Are you any of those things?  Love does not insist on its own way.  How often do you insist on getting your own way in a church conflict?

Is this making you uncomfortable?  It should be.  What Paul is talking about here is nothing less than a complete reordering of our priorities.  He’s not just trying to change the way we live, he’s trying to change the way we fight.

The Corinthian Christians had a rather skewed perspective on the fight that was tearing them apart.  They all saw themselves as heroes defending a battleground (i.e. the church) from dangerous enemies (i.e. their rivals).  In reality, they were not the heroes: they were the battleground.  God was the hero defending them.  And their so-called rivals?  They were not the enemy.  They were actually God’s allies in the fight for each other’s souls.

In truth, the Love that Paul wrote about was already present in each one of their hearts.  They were members of the same body: the body of Christ.  What was good for one was good for all.  There was no point to the rivalry then, because they were trying to divide something that couldn’t be divided.  The sooner they realized this truth, the sooner they would get over their petty little squabbles and get back to really being what a church should be: a community of people so full of love that it just naturally spilled over and into the surrounding community.  That’s how you define a healthy, growing church.  The pastor, the size, the building, and the budget are all completely secondary concerns.  Our first job is always to embody the love of Christ within our own lives, amongst each other, and eventually flowing out into the larger community.  When the people in this lonely world see that, they will be naturally attracted to it and will come from all over to see what it is that we have here.

What might that transition from hate to love look like?

It’s hard to say. “Love,” as Han Suyin said, “is a many splendoured thing.”  Love looks different when it takes on flesh and blood in the lives of different people.  I can tell you the stories of a couple of times in my life when I had to make that transition from hate to love.

Hate is a strong word, and I don’t use it lightly.  But in these two cases, I can honestly say that I really, actually came to hate my enemy.  The first was one of my seminary professors.  The second was a co-worker at my first job after seminary.  In both cases, I was the one in the right.  My enemy had hurt and offended me with words and deeds that I found demeaning and humiliating.  Time after time, I tried to reach out in friendship, but was repaid with cold indifference.  Eventually, I stopped trying.  I left them to their miserable little worlds and went on with my life.

But they didn’t leave me.  Their hostile presence was still firmly lodged in my mind, even though we managed to avoid each other most of the time.  I learned what it felt like to grow hard and bitter inside toward another human being.  All of our public interactions were polite, but I seethed inwardly with a hot hatred I’d never felt before.  Mutual acquaintances quickly learned to never mention their names in my presence because of the sharp reaction it would provoke in me.  I had a problem: a problem with hatred.  Jesus said that to hate another person is to murder that person in your heart.  I get that now because I’ve felt it.

But the irony is that my enemies weren’t being hurt by my hatred, I was.  That fire inside was burning me alive without ever touching them.  My hate was keeping me from fully becoming the person I was meant to be.  Even though I knew I was in the right, that knowledge gave me no relief from the bitterness.  Something had to change.

I thought, at the time, that what I needed to do was forgive my enemies, just as Jesus had done to those who were crucifying him.  I tried and I tried hard, over and over, again and again.  I didn’t want to be a person who wallowed in hate.  I kept telling myself, “I need to forgive him… I need to forgive him…” but I just couldn’t.

And then, one night, it hit me.  I was standing on the balcony of my apartment in Vancouver, seething with more bitter thoughts about my enemy.  I said to myself again, “I need to forgive him.”  And then, it felt like I heard a voice whisper to me from the very back of my mind, “No you don’t.  You need to ask forgiveness for yourself.”  I believe now that what I heard was the voice of God, speaking wisdom to my heart.

The fact is that I was the one who had let my righteous indignation turn into bitterness, not my enemy who had hurt me.  I was the one who had allowed hatred to change me into the kind of person I didn’t want to be.  I had tarnished my enemy’s reputation with harsh words spoken behind the back.  I wanted the whole world to know what he had done to me.  I wanted him to pay.  But the irony is that I was the one who was paying the price and reaping none of the benefits of vengeance.  Beneath my anger, I was just as scared and hurt as ever.

After that initial insight on the balcony, I quickly realized what my next step needed to be: I had to face my enemy and ask him to forgive me.  I had to let go and throw myself upon the mercy of the person I hated.  It wasn’t fun, but it was the only remedy that could ease the searing pain in my heart.

When the deed was said and done, in both cases, relief came.  I never became close friends with either of the men I previously hated, but the war was over.  I found peace within myself.  More importantly, I discovered that an internal blockage had been removed from my heart and I was able to love much more fully than before.  I wasn’t just able to love my enemy more fully, I was able to love myself and world more fully as well.  Love was taking on flesh and blood in me, transforming me into Love’s hands and feet in the world.

Asking my enemy to forgive me, even though I knew I was in the right, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but it was worth it.

I think that’s the truth that Paul was trying to get across to the Corinthian Christians, who were so divided and hateful toward their fellow church members.  Paul wanted them to know that love is worth it because love is what lies at the center of reality.  God is love.  Therefore, our efforts to love one another are what make God’s loving presence more palpable to the rest of the world.  That’s our mission, as Christians.  That’s our church’s reason for existing.  If we’re not doing that, then we’re not a church, no matter how nice our building, how big our budget, or how handsome our pastor is.  Those things don’t make us church.  Love makes us church.

That’s all I really want to tell you today: Love one another.

Because I love you, because God loves you, and because there’s nothing you can do about it.

True Multiculturalism

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Thaipusam_–_DSC_0126(lr)_(3263404442)
Image by William Cho. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Looking for commonalities is the relatively easy part of forming a multicultural community. True multiculturalism, however, means being humble and brave enough to explore our different perspectives, experiences, traditions, and values while staying in relationship. It means bringing our whole selves to the table and inviting others to do the same, not just the parts that “fit in.” It means being willing to be changed.

~Kathleen Rolenz

Click here to read the full article

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

A blog started by a colleague concerned about recent changes in our denomination’s Board of Pensions. If you’re not Presbyterian clergy, this probably won’t be of any concern to you, but if you are, you should read it.

A Sermon About A Sermon

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I imagine there must have been some excitement in the air that morning as people entered the synagogue, dressed in their Saturday best.  Perhaps some of the regulars were shuffling to find a new place to sit, since their usual seats were taken by the folks who normally only show up at Yom Kippur and Passover.  But they came to synagogue that morning because they heard the news about the new guest preacher.  One of their own, a local son, was returning to Nazareth for the first time since he began to make a name for himself in the region of Galilee.

Many of them remembered Jesus as a small boy, running around and playing with his friends while the adults made small-talk after the service.  Now, at age thirty, he was beginning to garner a reputation as an itinerant rabbi, a teacher of the Torah.  There were even some astonishing reports of unexplained, mystical healings associated with his visits.  If even a few of these rumors were true, then surely he was about to save the best for them, the people of his hometown, the very ones with whom he had grown up and lived.

They were good-hearted, hard-working, small-town folk who came together Sabbath after Sabbath to honor their Jewish heritage and listen to the wisdom of the Torah.  They knew Jesus and he knew them.  They were the ones who taught Jesus those old stories of Moses and the prophets.  Now, Jesus was the one who would preserve that history and pass it on to yet another generation, as it had been passed down to them by their ancestors in that very same synagogue.  This was a very big day indeed.

The service itself, like every Shabbat service, featured the singing of the old psalms, praying prayers, and of course reciting the ancient Shema, Israel’s oldest creed: “Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai alone.”  This faith formed the core of their tradition, preserved and passed on from generation to generation.  And now, they were proud to welcome one of their own, Jesus, as the newest defender of the faith and guardian of the tradition.

After a reading from the Torah, there was usually another reading from one of the prophets.  That week, it came from the book of Isaiah.  Jesus read out loud: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Heads around the room were nodding in agreement as the old familiar words washed over them for the umpteenth time in their lives.  They knew the story behind the words as well:

The prophet was writing to a community of Jews who had just returned from multiple generations of slavery in Babylon and Persia.  It was in that place and time of tribulation that their religion had taken the shape it now held for them.  They had come to believe that their God, Adonai of Israel, was the one true deity and all others were mere pretenders to heaven’s throne.  In Babylon, alienated from the land of their ancestors and the Jerusalem temple where sacrifices were made daily, their Jewish ancestors had turned their attention to prayer and the study of the Torah in synagogues under the tutelage of learned rabbis.  As strangers in a strange land, their ancestors had proudly struggled under oppression to preserve their faith and culture.  The very existence of this synagogue in the small town of Nazareth was a testimony to their success.

Finally, after three generations of Jewish children had grown up under a Babylonian whip, the Persians invaded and conquered Babylon.  These more open-minded Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild, so long as they promised to remain loyal and subservient to the Empire.  The prophet writing in this section of the book of Isaiah directed his words toward these newly returned exiles.  They were faced with the task of rebuilding their country from the ground up.  How would they even start?  What values and ideals would shape this new society?

This particular prophet, writing in the name of another ancient seer, Isaiah of Jerusalem, who had lived and died centuries before, reminded the people of the ancient tradition of the year of Jubilee, a special holiday that came only once every fifty years.  In this year, every debt would be forgiven and every slave set free.  The land and the people would rest and then emerge with a fresh start, a new lease on life.  The onset of this holiday was certainly “good news to the poor” for it brought release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, and forgiveness to the debtors.  It was a fresh start.  The future was suddenly wide open.  Liberated by the pronouncement of divine forgiveness, a new generation of people was free to rebuild the world anew.  This is why they called it “the year of the Lord’s favor.”  It seemed to them like heaven itself was smiling.

Back in the Nazarene synagogue, the old men heard these ancient words with tears in their eyes and smiles under their beards.  God had been faithful, their people had survived, rebuilt, and passed on their heritage to another generation of Jews.  And now, here was Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the little kid who used to play in their streets, now grown up tall, ordained as a rabbi, and preaching his first sermon in his hometown.  The people survived.  Their tradition lived on.  God be praised!

Jesus finished his reading, rolled the scroll back up, and handed it back to the attendant.  Then he sat down in the rabbi’s chair, which is what they used back then instead of a pulpit, and began to preach.  He gave them the main point of his sermon with his opening remark: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Wait… what did he just say?  Fulfilled?  Didn’t he mean to say Honored, or Remembered, or Preserved?  What does he mean by ‘Fulfilled’?  If those ancient words were being ‘fulfilled’ ‘today’, it would mean that the story of our people is not yet over.  It would mean that the journey home to freedom is not yet finished.  It would mean that the task of rebuilding a new community is up to us, not our ancestors.

Even more importantly, it would mean that the year of Jubilee is now.  All debts are off and all slaves are free.  A fresh start for us, not just a bunch of people who lived once upon a time.

Jesus brought their tradition to life by showing it to be unfinished.  A new world was being brought to birth by the age-old values of forgiveness and freedom.  The same Spirit that animated the ancient prophets like a fire shut up in their bones was ready to set hearts on fire in that synagogue.

By appealing to this passage, Jesus deftly drew from multiple layers of tradition in order to make his point.  Present, prophet, and Torah each represented different strands woven into a single tapestry in this sermon.  Jesus appealed to the very deepest parts of who they were and what they valued as loyal, faithful Jews.  He called them toward their higher calling through a fuller vision of who they were.  He opened their eyes to the presence of a dynamic reality that is still unfolding, still working in their lives in order to bring fulfillment to the prophet’s ancient vision.  Like any good preacher, Jesus brought the past into the present in order to shape the future.  He opened their minds to possibilities that boggled their imaginations.  He showed them a vision of what this world could be like if it were remade along the lines of these Jubilee values instead of the exacting cruelty of the loan shark and the slave driver.

Jesus introduced the people of his home synagogue to a living tradition, a prophetic tradition that reveres the memory of the past by trusting the promise of the future.  Jesus invited his neighbors to follow the trajectory of the prophets rather than standing by their writings.

I believe that same invitation is now extended to us, the people sitting in this church today.  We too can best honor the heritage left by our forebears by tracing the trajectory of their lives, rather than dogmatically hanging on their every word.  To quote the Buddhist poet Matsuo Basho: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”

Like those members of the Nazarene synagogue, we have our own tradition that we would like to preserve.  Beginning with Jesus, we might follow our tradition through the likes of the apostle Paul, Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, and Karl Barth.  Each of these voices (as well as many others) is worth paying attention to.  But it is always a dangerous thing to make an idol of history.  None of these voices carries the last word in matters of faith and ethics.  Every generation of believers is still responsible, as heirs of the tradition, for continuing to interpret spiritual truth (as we understand it) in its day.

Our church tradition has a slogan that reflects this conviction: Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda.  “The church is reformed and always to be reformed.”

The Reformation never ends.  The story is not yet over.  The Christian faith begs to be interpreted and applied in our day, just as it was in Calvin’s and Paul’s.  Our interpretations will not match theirs exactly.  John Calvin, for example, would shudder to learn that we now ordain women to preach in the very churches he founded.

There are some who argue that we have departed from “the faith once delivered to the saints” because of these and others of our practices that differ from our forebears.  I say that we are not heretics but pioneers, reformers, maybe even prophets.  Our task is not to blindly adhere to the words written on a page, but to critically follow the trajectory of the values expressed in those words.  Following the image of the Jubilee that Jesus used: what does it mean to forgive debts and liberate slaves in 2013?  Following Paul and Calvin, what does it mean for us to be reformers of church and society today?

As we stretch our minds to answer these questions, we continue the living tradition that was handed down to us from our ancestors.  We honor our history by moving it forward, trusting in the guiding light of the Spirit to lead us home to the One from whom all blessings flow.