Tag: grace

The Scandalous Gospel of Grace (Rooted & Rising, Week 3 of 4)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12, Year C)

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A man walks into his doctor’s office and says, “Doc, I’ve got a terrible, piercing headache that just won’t go away. Can you help me?”

The doctor says, “Sure. Let me ask a few questions, just to get a medical history. Do you smoke?”

“No way,” the man says, “That’s a disgusting habit!”

“Ok,” says the doctor, “How many drinks of alcohol would you say you have in a week?”

“Zero,” the man says, “I’m a teetotaler, always have been!”

“Ok,” says the doctor, “Do you eat a lot of junk food?”

“None,” the man says, “Fresh vegetables are all I eat.”

“Ok,” says the doctor, “Do you watch a lot of TV?”

“No sir,” the man says, “The only thing I do for entertainment is sit at home and read my Bible.”

“Ok,” says the doctor, “I think I see the problem here. My prescription for you is a large pizza, a good movie, and Extra Strength Tylenol because, if I was as uptight as you are, my head would hurt too!”

I borrowed this story from songwriter Rich Mullins, who borrowed it from author Brennan Manning.

In one of his more famous books, Brennan wrote:

 “The trouble with our ideals is that if we live up to all of them, we become impossible to live with.”

Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, p. 74

Many people have never heard of Brennan Manning. He’s one of those spiritual authors who has a very niche market. He’s not an academic scholar. He’s a little too “Jesusy” for liberal and secular types, but he’s also too broad-minded for conservative and religious types. In short, Brennan Manning’s writing has something to offend everyone. If I were to sum up Brennan’s writing in a single phrase, it would be: “The Scandalous Gospel of Grace.” And scandalous it most certainly is…

Brennan got his start in ministry as a Roman Catholic priest. After several years, he burned out and sought treatment for alcoholism. In sobriety, he left the priesthood and got married. For the rest of his life, he traveled, wrote, and spoke about the unconditional love of God for sinners and “ragamuffins,” as he liked to call them.

I first encountered Brennan’s writing in college, when I was at the peak of my own religious zealotry. If you asked those who knew me, they would tell you that I was “on fire for Jesus.” But if you asked one of the few people who knew me well, they could tell you that I was a young man who struggled to believe in the gospel that he preached. I gave lip-service to belief in a loving God, but secretly worried that this same God was gleefully waiting to punish me for every sinful thought, word, and deed, no matter how small. It was during this time of my life that I first read the books of Brennan Manning.

At first, I scoffed at what he had to say, but I also couldn’t bring myself to throw his books away. I read them again and again, sensing that there was something important for me to hear in these words, but not knowing what it was. As it turns out, what I needed to hear was the kind of truth that could only be spoken by someone who had been knocked flat on his butt by failure, and could only be heard by someone else who had also been knocked flat on his butt by failure.

Today is not the day when I will get into the details of my particular story, but stay tuned: I’m sure you’ll hear it eventually. The reason why I’m telling you this much today is to emphasize the fact that this is not a story about me or Brennan Manning, but a story about the scandalous grace of God. The truth that Brennan Manning preached is the scandalous truth that each and every one of us is loved and accepted unconditionally, regardless of whether or not we deserve it.

To those who have not experienced abject failure, the scandalous gospel of grace sounds like a bunch of hippy-dippy, flower-child, peace and love crap. But to those who have reached the end of their rope, those whose “cheese is sliding off their cracker,” as Brennan used to say, the scandalous gospel of grace is the final lifeline between broken people and the bottomless pit of despair.

Don’t just take my word for it; ask any recovering alcoholic or addict. There are several of these saints living among us today. If you don’t want to do that, just ask St. Paul and his followers, who wrote the epistle reading we heard this morning.

Today is the third in our four-week sermon series on the New Testament book of Colossians. In the first week, we looked at the opening of the letter, where the author, writing in Paul’s name, gives thanks for the ways in which the virtues of faith, hope, and love counter the forces of cynicism, fear, and indifference. Last week, we talked about Christ as the invisible network that connects us all. Today, we are getting into the nitty-gritty of life in the real world, where we are constantly bombarded by messages that we are not good enough. These lying messages tell us that we had better get on-board with their program, which promises success and happiness, so long as we follow the author’s instructions to the letter.

What I love most about today’s reading from Colossians is how it calls out those false promises for the malarkey that they are.

Colossians says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”

What the author was talking about in this verse was two opposing controversies that were plaguing the Church at Colossae in the time when this letter was written. On one side was a group of very traditional religious people who said, “Jesus was Jewish, and all his apostles were Jewish, therefore any non-Jewish converts to Christianity must first convert to Judaism and follow the laws of the Torah.” On the other side were the non-Jewish converts to Christianity, who were influenced by the teachings of the Greek philosopher Plato, who said that salvation from corrupt physical existence comes from learning the secret knowledge of the spiritual realm, which is diametrically opposed to the realm of physical existence.

The people of the Church in Colossae wanted the author of this epistle to settle the argument and tell them which side was right. As it turns out, the correct answer was: “Neither.” Neither side was right in the culture war that afflicted the Colossian Christians.

The truth of Christ was based, not on the pious observance of traditionally religious people, nor on the esoteric philosophy of educated people, but on the unconditional love of Jesus, which reaches all people who call out from the depths of despair.

Colossians says, “Do not let anyone disqualify you,” and I really like that. Do not let anyone disqualify you, not the liberal philosophers, not the conservative clergy, not even yourself. Do not let anyone disqualify you, because you have already been qualified by the scandalous grace of God, who has welcomed everyone in the embrace of unconditional love.

At the beginning of this reading, the author of Colossians says, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Pay special attention to the first and last words of that sentence: “As you have received,” and, “abounding in thanksgiving.”

The key word in the first part is, “received.” Note that it specifically does not say, “achieved.” An achievement is something we earn by effort, like an academic diploma. By contrast, a gift is something that we receive, like a Christmas present. The proper response to a free gift is gratitude, which is why the sentence ends, “abounding in thanksgiving.”

There is nothing that we Christians did to earn our salvation, therefore there is nothing we can do to lose it. Our only role is to receive it with thanksgiving. As the Protestant reformers are so fond of saying, we are “saved by grace alone.” Our faith and our works are nothing but a grateful response to the amazing grace that has been so lavishly bestowed upon us by God.

In a way, every single one of us is an “illegal immigrant” in the kingdom of God, insofar as we have been brought into God’s good graces “outside of the law,” by the unconditional love of Jesus Christ, who proved his love for us “while we were still sinners” by dying for us, as the Scriptures say in Romans 5:8.

Kindred in Christ, we are saved by grace, not because of our spiritual knowledge or religious observance, but because each and every one of us is loved, unconditionally, by the God who made us. God’s love transcends every category that divides us, whether that be race, gender identity, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, political affiliation, economic status, or religion. God’s grace is universal.

You are loved. Full stop. No addendum. No provisos. No “quid pro quo.”

You are loved. This is the scandalous gospel of grace. There is nothing you did to earn God’s grace, therefore there is nothing you can do to lose it.

God loves you. This is the foundational truth of the Christian religion, and it is the ditch in which I am willing to die. If you have a problem with that, take it up with God, not me.

Amen.

Fire and Fruit

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon3 Comments

Sermon for Proper 8, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings.

Sometimes I walk into a conversation ready for a fight.

Like, I’ve been rehearsing my speech all day, muttering in the car, working up just the right balance of righteous indignation and devastating logic. I am locked, loaded, and ready to fire…

And then the other person just says,

“Oh gosh! I’m really sorry. Thanks for telling me how you feel. I had no idea.”

And now I’m standing there like,

“Ugh… Now I’ve got to rearrange my tone, because you were supposed to argue with me. I was all set for a fight…

And now I have to figure out how to be a reasonable human being…”

That’s more or less what happens to James and John today.

They’re ready to go scorched earth on a Samaritan village—and Jesus… doesn’t let them.

No fire. No fight. Just a rebuke, and a long walk to Jerusalem.

And maybe the most uncomfortable part is:

He’s still walking that way.

And we’re still being invited to follow.

⸻

I’ve been thinking this week about Inspector Javert, the relentless police officer from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. He’s a man of uncompromising principle, obsessed with justice. For him, the law is sacred—it orders the universe, separates good from evil, and gives people what they deserve. No exceptions. No second chances.

Then comes the moment that undoes him: Jean Valjean, the escaped convict Javert’s been been hunting, has an opportunity to kill him, but spares his life instead. And suddenly, Javert doesn’t know who he is anymore.

If I’m honest—there are times when I’ve recognized a bit of Javert in myself.

Moments when I felt sure I was standing up for what was right… only to realize later that what I really wanted was to feed my own ego.

I wanted fire.

Jesus offered fruit.

And that kind of grace isn’t cheap. It’s a costly grace. It doesn’t just change you—it undoes you, and makes you new.

⸻

In today’s Goslel, Luke tells us that Jesus has “set his face toward Jerusalem.”

That’s more than a GPS update. It’s a theological turning point in the story—a shift from healing and teaching in Galilee to a deliberate, unflinching journey toward the cross.

And the disciples are not ready.

They still want results. They want clarity. They want to win.

When the Samaritans won’t welcome Jesus, the disciples don’t just shrug and move on.

They say, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven?”

That’s not just hyperbole. It’s a reference to Elijah, who once called down fire on the enemies of God. These disciples think they’re following in a great prophetic tradition.

And in one sense—they are.

But they’ve misunderstood the spirit of the prophet, and more importantly, the Spirit of the Christ.

So Jesus turns and rebukes them.

Luke doesn’t tell us exactly what he said, but the Church has long remembered his tone: not fury, but love.

Some Bible translations insert an extra verse here. Biblical scholars call it a “textual variant” (in case you want to sound impressive at your next dinner party). The extra verse recalls Jesus saying:

“You do not know what spirit you are of.

For the Son of Man came not to destroy lives, but to save them.”

Whether those were his exact words or not,

they sound like Jesus.

They feel like him.

And they land like truth.

Jesus turns and rebukes them.

Not because the Samaritans were right.

Not because the disciples’ feelings were invalid.

But because they didn’t know what Spirit they were of.

⸻

That phrase lingers for me:

It’s as if Jesus is saying:

That’s not how we do things. That’s not what I’m about. That’s not who we are.

And Jesus is still saying the same thing to the Church today.

Fire is easy.

Fruit is harder.

Fire is fast.

Fruit takes time.

We reach for fire.

Jesus gives us fruit.

⸻

St. Paul knew this struggle well. Writing to the Galatians, he’s speaking to a community splintered by judgment and suspicion.

They’re fighting about circumcision and law observance.

They’re drawing lines. Picking teams. Measuring holiness. Reaching for fire.

And Paul says: No.

“If you bite and devour one another, take care you don’t consume each other.”

Instead—live by the Spirit.

And what does that look like? Paul tells them that the Fruit of Spirit is:

Not rage. Not rivalry.

But:

Love that listens. Joy that lingers. Peace that roots.

Patience. Kindness. Generosity. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.

These aren’t achievements.

They’re not the result of trying harder.

They grow naturally from following the way of Jesus and desiring in our hearts to be the kind of person that he is.

Fruit doesn’t come by force.

It ripens slowly.

It grows from staying rooted.

⸻

Let me tell you a story about a pastor I once knew. His name is Buck Roberts.

His two young kids had been arguing one day, when the older one lost his cool and smacked the other.

Buck saw it happen and took his son aside to give him a stern talking-to. But when he got down on the kid’s level and looked him in the eye, something in the back of Buck’s mind told him to take a different approach. Instead of scolding or punishing his son, he just reached out and hugged him. The little boy immediately burst into tears and said he was sorry. The father’s mercy was able to inspire transformation more effectively than punishment ever could.

It was a small gesture.

But that moment—choosing to meet fire with something softer—has stayed with me.

⸻

I remember another time when I made a quick joke in the wrong tone and watched my friend’s face fall.

Words meant to be funny can land like fire.

I apologized later, and thankfully, my friend forgave me. But I carried it as a valuable learning experience.

Self-control isn’t just about big moral failings.

Sometimes, it’s about knowing when to speak.

Or when to stay silent.

Or when to say you’re sorry.

And that’s fruit too.

⸻

We might not be chasing someone across France with arrest papers, like Javert.

We might not be calling down fire from heaven.

But we know what it feels like to want to.

And we know what it feels like to choose something else.

To take a breath.

To stay rooted.

To begin again.

This is discipleship.

Not spectacular. Not showy.

But slow and faithful.

We reach for fire.

Jesus gives us fruit.

⸻

Let me be clear:

This isn’t about tone-policing.

It’s not about letting harm go unchallenged or injustice go unchecked.

Jesus got angry.

But even when he flipped tables, he didn’t burn down the temple.

His anger made space for healing.

Fire gets attention.

Fruit makes change.

⸻

So, kindred in Christ, here’s my invitation to you this week:

Take a look at the Fruit of the Spirit in today’s Epistle and pick one. Just one.

Let it live on your fridge or your phone or your dashboard.

Let it shape your prayer life.

Let it grow.

Let it ripen.

We reach for fire.

Jesus gives us fruit.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s how the kingdom comes.

Not in a blaze of glory.

But in a harvest.

⸻

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said,

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

That’s what fruit does.

It doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t make headlines.

But it transforms a landscape when enough trees bear it together.

⸻

So picture this:

Jesus turning to look at the angry disciples—not with fury, but with love.

Imagine him shaking his head gently, then setting his face forward again:

His eyes on Jerusalem.

On the cross.

On self-giving love.

And then imagine yourself there—following along with the group.

Not because you’re ready.

But because you’re willing.

⸻

In a few moments, we’ll come to this altar together. It’s a moment we’ve all been waiting for.

For the first time, we will come in a new way—as priest and parish.

And there—without fire or fury—Jesus will give himself to us again.

Not to punish us. 

Not to prove a point.

But simply… to love.

Jesus doesn’t just model mercy—he gives it.

In the Eucharist, he places it in our hands, into our bodies.

He makes us part of himself.

And from that grace, the fruit begins to grow.

It takes root.

It bears witness.

It begins again.

This is the Spirit we are of.

This is the fruit we are becoming.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

⸻

The Prodigal Father

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent.

Click here to read the biblical texts.

In his brief novel, The Great Divorce, Anglican author C.S. Lewis writes about an imaginary bus tour of heaven and hell. One of the many interesting things about this book is how he imagines hell. For Lewis, hell is not a realm of fire and brimstone where the wicked are eternally tortured for their sins on earth. Instead, he depicts hell as a place where people live in huge mansions and get whatever they want, whenever they want it. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? Well, the catch is that, with so much space and instant gratification available, people don’t need each other, so they just pack up and move farther away whenever anyone upsets them for even the slightest of reasons. This leaves vast tracts of empty cities where no one roams. Instead, everyone has locked themselves inside their own mansions and pace the empty halls alone all day, muttering about their “rights” and complaining that everything bad that has ever happened to them is not their fault. The real kicker is that the gates of this hell aren’t even locked; people can get up and go to heaven any time they want, except that nobody wants to. They would much rather stay stuck in their mansions, totally alone, and utterly convinced of their own self-righteousness. The souls of the damned in The Great Divorce bear a striking resemblance to the elder son in today’s gospel reading. I begin today’s sermon with this story because I too have a tendency to act like the self-righteous elder son in Jesus’ parable.

Here is my honest confession: Earlier this week, someone greatly offended me with something they said.

(PLEASE NOTE: If you are hearing this and wondering whether it was you, I want you to be assured that it was not. It had nothing to do with anyone in this room, this parish, or this town. I won’t tell the whole story here because it’s not important to this sermon. All you need to know is that my feelings were hurt and I was very angry about it).

I spent much of the week stewing in my self-righteous indignation, replaying the conversation over and over in my head, and losing sleep over it.

When I sat down to write this sermon, I read the passage and froze stiff when I got to the part about the elder son. I realized that, after my week of angry pouting, I could not, in good conscience, stand in this pulpit on Sunday morning and preach about the good news of God’s amazing grace without being a complete and total hypocrite (because that’s exactly how I’ve been acting). Like the elder son in Jesus’ parable, I wanted my enemies to be punished for what they had done to me; I wanted the scales of justice to be set right, only to realize, when I was confronted by the words of Jesus in Scripture, that I am, as my mother used to say, “full of bologna.”

“Holding onto resentment,” as the Buddha once said, “is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to die.” That was me this week.

What struck me so hard is that Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son is not really about the prodigal son. It has more to do with the elder son. Jesus tells this story in response to a group of upstanding and religious citizens who were offended that Jesus was “hanging out with the wrong crowd.” In response to their complaints, Jesus tells three stories. The first and second stories are about a lost sheep and a lost coin, respectively. The third and final story was about a lost son who ran home with his proverbial tail between his legs after going on a bender and waking up face-down in a pigsty.

The part of the story we know best begins with the younger son asking his father for his share of the family inheritance. Normally, this sum of money would only be given out after the father had died, so this request was the equivalent of the younger son saying to his father, “You’re dead to me.” I can only imagine the pain that the father felt in that moment. But, instead of berating his son for saying something so stupid, the father honors the request and divides his wealth between his two sons.

As we know from the story, the younger son squandered his inheritance by partying hard until the money ran out and he fell on hard times. When he finally hit rock bottom, the younger son came to his senses and decided to return home. It’s important to note that this decision was not based on any sense of remorse for his actions, but out of the base desire for self-preservation. The younger son concocted a rehearsed speech, through which he hoped to con his way back into his father’s good graces.

When the younger son gets within sight of his family home, Jesus tells us, in what I think is one of the most comforting passages in the entire Bible, that “while he was still far off,” his father got up and ran to meet him. I love this verse so much. The father did not wait for the son to make it all the way home, but ran to him “while he was still far off.” This verse should be a great comfort for those of us who realize that, even after years of following Jesus, we are still very far away from where we ought to be, spiritually.

The father was not standing on the front porch with arms crossed, tapping his foot and waiting for his son to finally crawl his way up the driveway. No, Jesus says that “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran to him and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

The younger son, probably taken aback by this extravagant display of affection, nevertheless starts into his rehearsed speech, but his father doesn’t let him finish. He interrupts the speech with an enthusiastic call to start a party. This interruption should call into question everything that Christians have come to believe about the proper order of confession and forgiveness. The father does not wait to see if his son is sincere about his change of heart. He does not even let him finish his prepared speech.

(I wonder what it would be like if the priests in our church were to interrupt the congregation’s prayer of confession during the Sunday service and pronounce the absolution before they had even finished!)

The son is already forgiven before he even finishes confessing his sins, so great is his father’s love for him. So great is God’s love for you and me, as well, according to Jesus.

God does not forgive us because we repent; God forgives us before we repent. God’s amazing grace is what gives us the strength to repent and amend our lives in the first place.

So, a celebration ensues at the house. But, as we know, all is not well with the elder son, who had stayed home to work dutifully on his father’s farm. We learn a lot from the elder son’s reaction to the news that his brother had returned home. Unlike the father, the elder son was not happy to see him. We learn even more about the elder son’s misconceptions about who his father is.

He says to his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you.” This is our first clue that something is off about the elder son’s perception of his relationship with his father: he thinks of himself as a slave, not a son. He thinks that his father is only interested in obedience, not love. He sees their relationship as merely transactional, not personal. He assumed, quite wrongly, that their relationship would end if the son was not perfectly submissive to the father’s power. The younger son’s return to a celebration would have completely upended the elder son’s faith in a morally-balanced world.

The next thing the elder son says is, “I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.” Now, this is a very puzzling statement. Earlier in the story, Jesus remarked how the father had “divided his property between [his two sons],” at the younger son’s request. Presumably then, the elder son would have already received his share of the family estate which, according to the inheritance laws of that time, would have been a double-portion of that which was given to his younger brother. So, when the father tells his eldest son, “All that is mine is yours,” he was not just speaking metaphorically or hyperbolically; he meant it literally. The fact that the elder son still sees himself as a slave, who has never received anything from his father, is incontrovertible proof that the elder son has entirely misjudged the character of his father.

In the end, this is not actually a parable about a lost son, but about two lost sons. The younger wandered away and wasted what had been given to him; the elder stayed home and forgot that he had been given anything at all. The elder son, by Jesus’ account, is the one who is in the more spiritually precarious position.

The real story, however, is not about either of the sons, but about the father. The father comes out to meet both of his lost sons where they are, in the midst of their self-made mess. Traditionally, this story has been known as “the parable of the prodigal son.” The word “prodigal” comes from a Latin word meaning “lavish or extravagant.” The most lavish and extravagant thing in this parable, as I see it, is not the younger son’s wastefulness, but his father’s graciousness and love toward both of his sons. For this reason, I would like to suggest that we rename this story, “the parable of the prodigal father.”

Kindred in Christ, the good news of this story is that our Father in heaven, as revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, loves us more than we deserve, more than we expect, and even more than we understand. God’s amazing grace and unconditional love annihilates all of our manufactured misconceptions about who God is and who we are, in relation to God.

The truth is that we are loved and we are forgiven by God. Full stop. No provisos, addenda, or quid pro quo. It is a free gift; we did not earn it, so we cannot lose it. Nothing is required.

The only thing God requests of us, out of love, is that we trust in that love and pass it along to others, through our words and actions. Even this meager request is more for our benefit than God’s.

In a world torn by self-righteous violence, the humble testimony of those who know that they are loved, in spite of our best efforts to prove otherwise, has the power to undo the shackles of our own self-righteousness and liberate us from the hell of our own making.

May each of us trust that we are forever held by this love and do our best to demonstrate it to others, to the end that they too might join us in proclaiming the good news of God’s amazing grace.

The Gardener Who Never Gives Up

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent.

Click here for the biblical readings.

Hi, my name is Barrett and I make poor life choices.

Back in 2013, my family and I moved from upstate New York to western Michigan. We figured it would take a couple of days to pack up our stuff, load the truck, and get on the road. After all, we had made a similar move just a few years earlier, coming from the west coast of Canada to New York.

What we failed to account for, though, is that our previous move involved two broke seminarians in a one-room apartment. Everything we owned fit in the back of a modest U-Haul. Over the course of the intervening years, we had amassed a much larger collection of furniture, books, and kids (with all their accompanying accoutrements). A couple of days and a U-Haul wouldn’t be nearly enough to get the job done this time.

A visitor to my house asked, “Hey, aren’t you moving to Michigan next week?”

“Sure,” I said, “I figure I’ll just throw some stuff in boxes and hit the road.”

My friend very wisely took that opportunity to gently talk some much-needed sense into me, “Listen, you’ve got a lot more stuff in this house than you did when you got here. I don’t think a couple of days is going to be enough time.” Thank God for good friends, because this blessed soul organized a whole cadre of neighbors who descended upon my messy house for the entire week that it took the lot of us to get things packed and cleaned before moving day. In the end, everything came together right on time, but there’s no way it would have if it hadn’t been for the love of these people who rescued me from the mess of my own making. All in all, the stakes were relatively low in this crisis, but I was very grateful for the community that made a safety-net for me, when I needed it.

For other people, the stakes aren’t so low and a safety-net is not always there when they need it. Most of us have made regrettable decisions, of one kind or another, in our lives. Tragedy often strikes when unfortunate circumstances combine with our poor choices to leave us in a real pickle. Some of our unhoused neighbors, for example, could tell us heart-rending tales of woe about how they ended up living on the street, through no fault of their own. Others who have never experienced housing insecurity might be tempted to dismiss such stories as mere excuses. “The poor are poor,” some might say, “because of their own fault. If they had made better choices, they wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Thinking this way is tempting because it provides a false sense of security. Some might think, perhaps unconsciously, that they can protect themselves from disaster by being smart enough, good enough, or careful enough. But the reality is that life is rarely so simple. All of us have known good and hardworking people who nevertheless suffer hardship. The scary fact is that all of us are more vulnerable than we would like to think. Moralizing about the causes of disaster will not protect us when bad things happen to good people, especially since good people are also prone to making mistakes, from time to time.

So then, the real question for us Christians is not, “Why are the poor poor,” but, “What will we do about it?” That is the question that Jesus addresses in today’s gospel.

At the opening of the passage, Jesus talks about two terrible events that had happened in recent memory for his listeners. The first was a violent attack on worshipers at the temple by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. The second was a building collapse in which eighteen people had been killed. Jesus answers the question about blame in a very straightforward manner: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”

Jesus typically asks more questions than he answers and often responds to questions with figurative stories, but this is one of the few times when he gives a direct and unequivocal answer: Did these people deserve what happened to them? No, they did not.

What he says next, however, almost undermines what he just said. Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did!” In this moment, Jesus almost sounds like an old-timey southern preacher, screaming through a megaphone while standing on streetcorner soap box. But that’s not what Jesus intends.

It helps to understand that the word “repent” has very little to do with feeling guilt or fear. The Greek word translated as “repent” is “metanoia,” which literally means, “change your mind.” Likewise, the word used for “perish” is not just referring to physical death, which eventually happens to everyone, but spiritual death. The best definition of “perishing,” in the spiritual sense, was given by Dr. Martin Luther King when he said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Jesus’ warning about “perishing” is about this kind of spiritual death that we are in danger of experiencing, if we do not change our way of thinking about the misfortunes that befall our fellow human beings.

What then is the alternative that Jesus recommends we follow? To answer this, we need to look at the parable Jesus tells in the next part of the passage. It’s the story of a fig tree that is not performing as expected. The owner of the field wants to tear up the tree and throw it away to make room for other, more productive plants. But the gardener recommends patience and care instead. He says, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.” He recommends that more attention, not less, be given to the plant. He doesn’t give up, but gets involved. God, according to Jesus, is more like the gardener than the owner of the vineyard.

Jesus presents us with the image of a God who does not give up on us, but is willing to get the divine hands dirty with hard work. The implication is that, if God doesn’t give up on us, then neither should we give up on each other.

What I find most interesting about this parable is the unresolved ending. We, the audience, don’t get to find out how the story ends. Did the owner agree to the gardener’s suggestion? Did the extra effort pay off, in the end? Jesus doesn’t say, so we just don’t know. The open ending of this parable does not leave us with certainty, but with hope. There are no guarantees in this life, but the stance of getting involved, rather than giving up, is the best hope we have for making a future that is better than the status quo we are enduring at this moment. The ending of this parable is Jesus’ way of telling us, “The ball is in your court. What are you going to do?”

When I failed to adequately plan for my big move from New York to Michigan, my friends could have easily shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, that’s just what happens when you fail to plan ahead!” They could have rightly left me stewing in a mess of my own making. I am so grateful they did not do that. Out of their great love for me, they made my problem their problem and turned a moment of crisis into a moment of grace.

Kindred in Christ, the uncertainties of life and imperfections of human nature mean that we are all in the same boat together. We can choose to give up on each other and say, “It’s every man for himself,” or we can get involved with each other, get our hands dirty, and lean into the hope that we can make a better next year than we had last year.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus gives us some practical advice on the kinds of things we can do to show up for each other. The Church has traditionally called them, “The Corporal Works of Mercy.” They are: To feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick, to visit the imprisoned, and to give alms to the poor.

Like the gardener’s suggestions in Jesus’ parable, the Corporal Works of Mercy are not a guaranteed plan of social reform; they are a list of virtues that Christians ought to be practicing, for their own sake. We cannot solve the world’s problems, nor can we protect ourselves from the dangers of calamity and our own stupid mistakes, but we can show up for each other in a spirit of care and concern, willing to get our hands dirty with the kind of work that Jesus Christ calls us to do. By following Jesus, and practicing the virtues he taught us, we bear witness to the loving presence of the God who does not give up on us, who gets involved in helping each of us clean up the messes of our own making, and gives us hope for a better tomorrow than we had yesterday.

Friends, our God does not give up on us, so let us not give up on each other. Let us work together in hope, because it is a hope worth working for. Amen.

It’s Mine, And I Share It With You

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized2 Comments

Click here to read the bulletin. Readings included.

It amuses me sometimes when my kids really get into fighting over something at the house. I can pinpoint the exact moment in their epic struggle for justice when the tragic wail ascends to heaven over the unbearable tyranny that is being imposed upon them by their sibling. It’s usually over something electronic, like the computer or the television. Each of them is equally committed to their belief that the immutable laws of justice in the universe demand that they are the one who gets to claim ownership over the device in that moment. The outrage is so unbearable that the conflict sometimes comes to blows and an electronic device might go sailing across the room. And that’s usually when my wife or I decide that it’s time for a parent to intervene.

It reminds me of the times when my brother and I would get into similar battles as kids. It was the early 80s, so we didn’t have many electronics around the house, but kids never seem to have trouble finding things to squabble about. I remember one time as a five-year-old, in a fit of righteous indignation, I insisted that these toys were my toys, so I shouldn’t have to share them with my brother. And our quick-thinking mother came up with the perfect comeback: “No, they’re my toys, and I share them with you!”

I think sometimes that God wants to say the same thing to us grownups, when we bicker and fight over the things we think belong to us. People get so worked up about my house, my car, my money, my church, my country. I imagine God in those moments as the patient but stressed out mother, still in her bathrobe on a Saturday morning, shouting back her words of wisdom: “No, they’re mine, and I share them with you!”

The God we serve is a giving and forgiving God, but we humans, in our selfishness, often take that generosity for granted. We get all kinds of worked up over something that isn’t going right in our lives and quickly turn to shake our fist at the sky and shout, “Why, O God? Why?!!!” And when someone else, one of our brothers or sisters, comes along and asks something of us, we react as if some great injustice has been done to us. “Why should I have to give my spare change to that homeless person? This is my money; I worked for it!” And God says, “No, it’s my money, and I share it with you!”

We rarely stop to think about how much we’ve been given, and I don’t just mean material wealth. Think about sunlight. We remember from science class that stars shine by transforming matter into energy by way of nuclear fusion. I read a book recently that noted how our sun converts four million tons of its own matter into light energy every second. That light then travels 93 million miles to our planet, where it warms us in just the right amount to sustain life, and it does this for billions of years! Just think about that level of generosity and compare it to the paltry gesture of dropping a few coins into a hat for a fellow human being who has been standing out in that same hot sun all day.

We like to complain about the weather, how it’s always just a little too hot or a little too cold for our liking, but do we ever stop to think about the amazing and delicate balance that has kept life going and growing for all these millennia? Do we ever stop to give thanks for the wonder of it all? Or are we still too caught up in our own little tizzies about the next little thing that isn’t going quite right in our lives?

In today’s gospel, Jesus draws our attention to the great generosity of God that is constantly being poured out upon us, just as the sunlight is poured indiscriminately over the face of the earth. Jesus marvels at the way that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

And our God is so gracious and unassuming in this ministry, never waiting to be thanked before offering the gift. Like so many human parents, God’s hope is that we will one day realize how much we have been given and pay it back by paying it forward to others. Children often don’t appreciate how hard their parents work to provide for them. And the parents don’t ask for recognition. Our only hope is that our children will one day be parents themselves, and will work just as hard to provide the same kind of love and care for their children. Jesus shows us today that God hopes the same thing for us.

Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven”.

It is a foregone conclusion that children tend to look like their parents. In a physical sense, they “bear the image” of the ones who made them. In the same way, each and every one of us is made “in the image and likeness” of our Father in heaven. Jesus asks us today to embrace that divine likeness in our own lives.

But something has to happen before we can begin that work in earnest. We need a Copernican Revolution of the soul.

Copernicus was a scientist in the middle ages who discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe. By careful observation, he figured out that our planet is traveling around the sun, not the other way around. This discovery sent shockwaves throughout the world. People’s whole conception of their lives was turned upside down. Church officials ranted and raved against Copernicus and his heretical ideas.

But history, as we know, proved Copernicus right. The earth is not the center of the universe. Ours is just one planet circling around a small star in a galaxy of billions of other stars, which is only one of billions of galaxies in the known universe. Copernicus’ idea caused a revolution in the scientific world, but it’s one that turned out to be true. And I thank God for Copernicus, because he has opened us up to discover so many more wonderful and useful things about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

In the same way, we humans today have once again fallen into the trap of believing that we are the center of the universe, while everything else simply revolves around us. In our sinfulness, we set ourselves up like little gods in life-or-death competition with all the other little gods around us. We battle each other for supremacy, screaming all the while, “It’s mine! It’s mine!”

But Jesus, our great Copernicus of the soul, comes alongside us to reveal the truth that makes us simultaneously smaller and bigger than we could have possibly imagined: We are not the center of the universe. We are not gods, but we bear the image of the God who says to us, “It’s mine, and I share it with you.” Jesus directs our attention to the bountiful generosity of God and invites us to participate in it, in our own small way.

Nowhere does Jesus embody this truth more fully than in his death and resurrection. In his passion, Jesus bore the sin of a world full of people who wanted to believe that they were the center of the universe. His Copernican Revolution of the soul was so dangerous to their agenda that they would stop at nothing to shut him up. And Jesus, ever the exasperated mother dealing with a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, willingly absorbed the full force of their hatred and violence. And he died there on that cross.

But then, in the greatest revolutionary moment in human history, he tore open the gates of hell and made death itself begin to work backwards. He rose from the grave, breathing peace to his betrayers and pronouncing, once and for all, that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:39)

Friends, this is the good news in which we stand today: We are not the center of the universe. We are the recipients of God’s amazing grace and Christ’s self-giving generosity that turns the world upside down. This grace is offered freely for you and for all by the One who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

“It’s mine,” God says, “and I share it with you.”

Jesus invites us this morning to join his Copernican Revolution of the soul and return the favor of this grace, not by paying it back, but by paying it forward: “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven”.

And remember the words of the old gospel hymn:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven.
There is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful, we would gladly trust God’s Word,
and our lives reflect thanksgiving for the goodness of our Lord.

The Unquenchable Fire

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

Click here to read the service bulletin, including the biblical text

Introduction

There is a story of a young novice in a monastery who goes to his abbot and says, “Father, what can I do to attain Salvation?”

The wise old abbot responds, “As little as you can do to make the sun to rise in the morning.”

So the novice replies, “What then is the purpose of meditation and all our spiritual exercises?”

And the abbot says, “To make sure that you are awake when the sun begins to rise.”

I love this story because it does such a good job of getting right to the reason why we, as people of faith, put ourselves through the hard work of prayer and the rigorous demands of the Christian life.

Saved by Grace

As Christians in the Reformed tradition, we are fond of insisting that salvation comes to us by grace, as a free gift apart from our good works, ritual observance, and correct theology. We receive this gift by faith, but even that receiving faith, St. Paul says, is a gift from God, “so that none may boast.”

We sainted sinners and sinful saints are utterly incapable, either by works or by faith, of doing anything to make the light of Christ appear in our hearts or world. Like the young monk in the story, we can do as little to attain salvation as we can to make the sun rise in the morning.

Like the shepherds of Bethlehem in the Christmas story, we do not bring Christ to birth, we simply bear witness as the Word of God “takes on flesh and dwells among us.”

Exegesis

In today’s gospel, we encounter a man who understands intimately what it means to bear witness to the presence and activity of Christ in the world.

Radical Prophet

St. John the Baptist was a dangerous radical and progressive prophet whose task was to “prepare the way” for Christ’s first coming to earth. I call him a “radical” because of the Latin term radix, which means “root.” John was a powerful mystic. As the last prophet from the Old Testament era, his ministry was inspired, not by a particular school or tradition of rabbinic interpretation, but directly by God.

Religious traditions need prophetic renewal from time to time. Without direct experience of the divine, religions begin to calcify and get “stuck in their ways.” The Buddha played a similar role in the Hindu faith. We Protestants might point to Martin Luther and John Calvin as prophetic voices in 16th century Europe. In Judaism, there were many prophets who arose throughout the history of Israel. Prophets, as radicals, reconnect the faithful to the “root” of their faith in God. They are always “dangerous” to established authorities because they call into question “the way we’ve always done it” and remind us of our core commitments to God and neighbor.

This is exactly what St. John the Baptist is doing in today’s gospel. He calls the people to a renewal of their spiritual and political lives by announcing:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Bearing Fruit

He has particularly harsh words for the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two major parties of established religious authorities in first century Judea. To them, John says:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

By “fruit,” John means the kind of changed life that a person leads when they have come into a deep relationship with God.

The religious leaders would have been understandably offended by such comments. They might point to their seminary degrees on their office walls. Or they might make reference to their traditional ancestry, which they trace back through the prophet Abraham in the biblical book of Genesis.

But John anticipates this defensive response. He says:

“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

In other words, John recognizes this ruse for what it is: a distraction from living the kind of life that God envisions for the covenant community. After liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, God said to them, in effect, “I want you to be a different kind of community from the nations you see around you. Old patterns of exclusion and oppression must not be present among you. I want the nations of the world to look at you, my people, and see what kind of God I am.”

But the people of Israel, like all peoples, were consistently unable to live up to this high standard. We read in the Old Testament just how often God’s people “missed the mark” and began to take on characteristics of Egypt, Canaan, and Babylon. They worshiped humanly constructed images and ideologies in place of God, exploiting the earth and their neighbors. This is why God continually sent prophets like John. They called the people back to what it means to be God’s covenant community on earth.

Facing the Consequences

When the people refuse to listen (which is most of the time), God warns them that this way of life (“Every man/woman for him/herself”) leads only to death and destruction. This is why John says:

“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Notice how John does not name God as the source of this destruction. We might be tempted to think of God as the primary actor in this event, but I think it would be just as legitimate to think of it as a natural consequence of our tendency toward selfishness and the violent ways of the world. God’s intention, in sending us the prophets, is to save us from this path of self-imposed destruction. If we refuse to heed this warning, God respects our decision by allowing us to face the consequences of our actions.

Wheat and Chaff

The good news is that there is another way. Even in the midst of our rebellion against God’s ways of peace, God is present and active. In first century Judea, God sent St. John the Baptist to prepare the way for Christ.

John says:

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

At first glance, this image might seem like another warning of wrath and judgment. But it might help if we look more closely at John’s image of the Messiah as a farmer winnowing a harvest of wheat.

Wheat grains grow inside of a husk on a stalk, much like corn. In order to salvage the nutritious wheat, the husk must be removed. This is done by a process called “winnowing.” In the ancient world, farmers did this by setting the pods over a fire. The heat would crack the husks open and the wheat would fall out. Then the farmer would toss the pile in the air with a large fork. The wheat would fall through while the husks (called “chaff”) would be blown away by the wind.

Here’s the interesting thing: the wheat and the chaff are parts of the same plant. I take them, not as symbols of two different kinds of people (“good” and “bad”), but as two realities that exist within myself. I am, at the same time, both sinner and saint. There are good parts of me and bad, wheat and chaff.

Chaff is an essential part of wheat. It protects the precious grain while it grows on the stalk. Without it, the grain would be vulnerable to predators and the elements. But there comes a time when the chaff must be removed, or else the grain will never fulfill its destiny to make new plants or be ground and baked into bread. In the same way, we who live in this complicated world are a mixture of more useful and less useful parts. These parts of us must grow together for a time, so that we can become fully-formed, well-rounded people. We wrestle with these complexities and long for the simplicity of a life where only good remains forever.

When I imagine my destiny at the end of life, I imagine God taking those less useful parts of me and separating them from the goodness in me that reflects the divine image. I see divine judgment as the “winnowing” process, by which goodness is preserved and evil eliminated. Whatever is left at the end of this process is that which will live forever in God.

Unquenchable Fire

How will God accomplish this division of good and evil with us? John tells us quite clearly:

“He [Christ] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

This is directly related to the winnowing process. The Holy Spirit, the presence of God within us, is the winnower’s fire that liberates the good wheat from the chaff we no longer need in our lives. God is at work within us, transfiguring us day by day into the divine image and likeness.

And John reassures us with the good news that this inner fire of God is “unquenchable.” That is, all the chaff and sin within us is unable to snuff out the presence and power of the Spirit.

Kindled by Water

This fire was kindled in us, ironically, by water in our baptism. In that moment, when the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection were applied to us, the Holy Spirit came to dwell in us in a way that cannot be undone. Baptism is not so much something that we do for God so much as something that God does in us. Baptism is the sign and seal of God’s pledge to save us and never leave nor forsake us.

Baptized Christians are part of Christ’s Body, and Christ loves us as dearly as we love the parts of our own bodies. He could not abandon us any more than one of us could cut off a hand or a foot. This is why John calls the fire “unquenchable.” We can resist the Spirit, but we cannot snuff her out entirely.

Application

The prophet invites us, in this Advent season, to “prepare the way” for Christ’s coming by cooperating with the energy of the Holy Spirit, who is already at work in us, separating the good wheat from the chaff we no longer need. We are invited to return to the roots of our faith and consider again what it means to be a member of Christ’s Body, the covenant community of God’s Church in the world.

This work is not something we do for God, but what God is doing in us. We cannot make Christ appear in our hearts any more than we can make the sun to rise in the morning. The good news is that Christ is already here, working God’s will in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our only choice is whether we will resist or cooperate with the work of the Spirit in our lives.

St. Paul writes, in his first letter to the Thessalonians:

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” (1 Thess. 5:23-24)

This Advent, may we open our hearts to allow the fire of the Spirit to crack open our hard shells, and the wind of the Spirit to blow away that which we no longer need. May the water, wind, and fire of baptismal grace gather us once again into the barn of the Church, where we will dwell together in peace at Christ’s coming.

‘God Helps’: Finding Good News in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

Recording of today’s sermon from North Presbyterian Church, Kalamazoo

“Our ‘wounded-ness’ is the part of us that God loves with that same maternal care that holds Lazarus to her bosom.”

Click here to read the biblical text (it is also read out loud at the beginning of the sermon)

The Scandalous Gospel of Grace

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

IMG_0793Here is a recording of today’s sermon from North Presbyterian Church, Kalamazoo.

Today we celebrated the 152nd anniversary of the founding of the congregation.

Today is also the day we moved into our new worship space at First Congregational Church. This was the last Presbyterian sermon to be preached from this historic pulpit. Photo of the procession by Edie Trent.

Click here to read the biblical text.