Running the Other Way

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Jonah 1

October 28, 2012 • Portage First UMC

I don’t remember his name. I’m sure at some point I knew it, but I’ve lost it somewhere in the back recesses of my mind after twenty years. It was my third year at Asbury, and one of our required classes—actually two—was called Supervised Ministries, or SMin. One semester we were to spend in a local church, working along a pastor and learning the ins and outs of daily life in ministry. And the other semester we were required to spend in an institution of human need. I chose to work that semester as a chaplain at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. UK Med Center is a huge hospital, a regional teaching hospital, and that semester, there was a group of us who went there once a week, on Mondays, and spent the whole day working alongside the staff chaplain, visiting patients, and processing what we were learning. We were each assigned a floor to do visits on, and things were going along pretty well until one week, early in the semester, I came to a door that was closed. I went to talk with the nurse first, and I learned this man had AIDS. Now, this was in the early 1990’s, when we knew very little about AIDS except that it was a death sentence. Today, people live with it for a long time, but then, no one was even sure exactly how it spread. And I’ll admit—I was scared. I stared at his door for a long time. I knew I was supposed to visit him, but I wasn’t sure I could. So finally I gowned up, put on the gloves, and walked into the dark room. He wasn’t asleep, but he was obviously in pain. I told him who I was, and asked if we could visit. He said he’d rather not visit right then, but could I come back another time. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit I was glad he didn’t want to visit, so I didn’t push it. Instead, I left the room quickly. I remember leaning against the wall outside his room, thankful it was over. By the next Monday, I had worked up my courage and I went to his room first—only to find it empty. I never found out what happened to him—whether he had died or moved to a hospice center or went home. But I’ve never forgotten him. God called me to that place at that time to minister to that man, and for my part I was just glad to get out of it with very little time or effort spent.

Have you ever run away from something you knew you should do? And I mean knew you needed to do—way down in the deep parts of your soul. Have you ever run the other way? All of us have, most likely, at some point or another. We have an opportunity to something nice for that neighbor who is rude to us, and we don’t. We have a choice to share what we have with someone in need whom we don’t know and we spend that money on ourselves instead. We know that person in the nursing home or the hospital needs a visit, we know that relative needs to hear from us, we know what we should do, what we need to do—and we run the other way. Have you ever run away from something you know you needed to do?

Jonah did. For the next four weeks, we’re going to be looking at his story and how, in so many ways, his story is really our story. Many of us may have heard the story of Jonah in Sunday School or in a children’s Bible. We know the story of Jonah and the whale, and how he got gobbled up, spit out on the beach, and went to preach in Nineveh. But Jonah is a lot more than just a kids’ tale. Jonah is not a nice, bedtime story if you really read the book. For starters, Jonah is all about a call. God called Jonah to do a specific task. He was already a prophet. He was already preaching on God’s behalf, and then one day, while he was sitting in his home in Galilee, about three miles north of a little town called Nazareth (Ogilvie, Communicator’s Commentary: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, pg. 403), Jonah hears a call. Whether it was an audible voice or a deep nagging sense in his soul doesn’t matter. The fact is: Jonah knew God was calling him to do something specific. “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (1:2). What a call! Nineveh, you see, had a bad reputation. This was the capital city of Assyria; it was the center of Israel’s worst enemy. And while the city itself may have had around 120,000 inhabitants, the area we might call “Greater Nineveh” had a population of around 600,000. Lots of people, and Jonah knew they were wicked. On that point, he wouldn’t disagree with God. They were evil. Their actions caused pain and misery everywhere they went. They were a threat to Israel’s safety and survival. Nineveh was a symbol for godless tyranny (Ogilvie 402-403; Alexander, “Jonah,” Obadiah, Jonah, Micah [Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries], pg. 59). Sort of makes you wonder where Nineveh is today. What is our Nineveh? If were we called to Afghanistan or Iraq to preach the Gospel…if we were called to boldly proclaim the name of Jesus in the main streets in China…or if we were called to go to Gary and proclaim peace and restoration and hope and Gospel—how would we respond? You see, Nineveh is the place we don’t want to go. Yet God calls Jonah to go there and “preach against it” (1:2).

So what does Jonah do? You know the story. Jonah runs. The NIV says he ran away from the Lord. Literally, the text says, he runs from “the presence” of the Lord or “the face” of the Lord. He wants to go someplace God can’t see him. Nineveh was actually only five hundred miles northeast of where Jonah lived (Ogilvie 403); Tarshish, where he decides to head, was a lot further away. In fact, a journey to Tarshish, located in what is today southern Spain, would take almost a year by boat when you factor in stops at the various ports. Tarshish was the “westernmost place in the Mediterranean world.” If Jonah wanted to get away from God, he couldn’t have chosen a better place (cf. Ogilvie 404; Bruckner, NIV Application Commentary: Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, pgs. 42-43). Jonah’s not kidding around. He is REALLY running away!

And this is where Jonah’s story becomes our story, because we, too, often run from the presence of the Lord. We think we can hide, or we can go someplace where God won’t notice that we’ve forgotten our vows, our promises to him and to his church. Maybe we don’t literally get on a boat and try to get as far away as we can, but we do fill our lives with things that take us away from God’s presence, from loving God, loving others and offering Jesus. We fill our lives with stuff—we love our stuff today. We surround ourselves with stuff, and when we have too much stuff, we rent a storage locker to store all the stuff we can’t bear to part with but have no room for. Or we get a house that’s bigger than we can afford so we can store all our stuff. The “American Dream” has become about getting more and more, about bigger and better, and we’re so busy maintaining our affluent lifestyle we don’t have time to listen for God’s call in our lives. Or we get busy. We love being busy. Oh, sure, we complain about it, but really we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love it. We love being busy, being active. It’s not that the things we’re doing are bad. It’s just that busy-ness becomes our way of “runing” from God’s call. We get involved in every activity, get our kids on every team, and keep ourselves distracted with endless appointments and meetings so when God’s call comes, we can say, “I’m too busy for anything else, God.” And I’m not just talking about “secular” activity. We do it with religious activity, too. C. S. Lewis, in his wonderful book The Screwtape Letters, tells the story of a “senior devil” named Screwtape instructing his nephew, Wormwood, in ways to tempt people away from Christian faith, or if they become Christians, how to keep them distracted from growing in their faith. In one passage, Screwtape tells Wormwood, “An especially useful tactic is to keep them busy. Really busy. It's not hard to do, because they like to think the more work they do, the more spiritual they are…The busier they are, the more likely they will get tired and cranky with each other. We can have lots of fun when that happens. Keep them busy, and they don't take time to talk to each other. Even better, keep them too busy to listen to each other…Keep them too busy to plan ahead. The less planning and prioritizing they do, the better. We're especially in good shape when they don't have time to evaluate what they're doing…If you work it right, you can even get them to neglect their family and their own time reading the Enemy’s book because they’re ‘too busy serving God’ (The Screwtape Letters). Now, Lewis’ book is fiction, but it’s rather close to the truth, isn’t it? We flee from the presence of God,and we even manage to make it look like a good thing.

And yet, we cannot really ever flee from God’s presence like we think we can. The psalmist reminds us: “Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? to be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you’re there! If I go underground, you’re there! If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, You’d find me in a minute—you’re already there waiting! Then I said to myself, ‘Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I’m immersed in the light!’ It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you” (139:7-12, Message). Jonah learns that in pretty quick order. Actually, the sailors he’s with learn it first, because Jonah gets on the ship, goes downstairs and falls sound asleep—so deeply asleep that he doesn’t hear the storm raging on the sea. It’s a storm God “hurls” at the ship, we’re told (Olgilvie 407). He is, as Jonah will say later, “the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (1:9). He is Lord over it all, so why does Jonah think he can possibly hide here, in the bowels of the ship? It reminds me of the disciples in Matthew 8, where Jesus calms a storm and shows his power over nature, and they ask, “Who is this man?” (Matthew 8:23-27). Well, he’s the one who can calm the storm, and Jonah learns he can also send a storm when a prophet is ignoring his call.

The captain remembers Jonah and goes to wake him up, to bring him up on deck. And here is another place, I believe, where our story and Jonah’s intersect. Just like us, Jonah dodges responsibility for his flight from God’s presence. He seems incapable of admitting his mistake (cf. Bruckner 47), his wrong, his disobedience toward God. He’s even determined to make the sailors fix it. When they ask what can be done, he tells them they have to throw him into the sea. He’s not going to repent or make things right with God. Rather, he tells the sailors to basically kill him, and his death will be on their heads. They don’t want that, so they try to row themselves out of the storm. It’s only when it’s obvious that won’t work that they do what Jonah says. They throw him into the sea, and when they do, the storm stops. And “at this the [sailors] greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him” (1:16). God even uses the disobedience of Jonah to reach this group of sailors.

And so, we leave Jonah floating in the middle of the ocean this week, with this observation: he’s still not committed to what God wants him to do. We’ll see that more in the next couple of weeks, but he’s only responded to the circumstances. He’s not yet embraced what’s most important and most critical in God’s mind at this point. All he’s done is allow himself to be thrown into the sea and swallowed up by a big fish. Aside from deciding to run away, Jonah’s been completely passive in his response to God. He hasn’t even talked to God at all in this chapter, even though he knows what he’s supposed to do. He still knows what his calling is, what his priority is supposed to be. And that leads us to one further way our story intersects this part of Jonah’s story.

How important is the mission God has given us, his people, through this church? God still calls men and women to join him on his mission. We et that confused sometimes, and substitute what we want to do for God’s mission. But God has called us to become a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ, and we seek to do that here in a variety of ways. One way, obviously, is through worship and providing three different styles of worship each week so people can connect to God—some for the first time, and some for the millionth time. And so we invite people to come with us, to encounter Jesus in worship. But there are a lot of folks who won’t respond to that sort of invitation, at least not at first, which is why the other aspect of our mission is community-oriented—making a difference in this place where we live. Last Sunday evening, in Disciple class, we were discussing Jeremiah the prophet and what he told those who were taken into exile in Babylon. It was a simple message: settle down and make a difference right where you are. God’s call to us is still to make a difference, not just to be nice people but to let this community know there are people who love Jesus and who want to make life in this community better for them. So we collect food for the food pantry, we participate in Feed My Lambs so hungry children can eat on the weekends, we seek to break the chains of poverty in our community. We also reach out beyond our own city to making dresses and shorts for kids in Haiti, to providing clean drinking water in Guatemala, to building houses in Appalachia. We do that not just because we’re nice people, but because we have a mission to demonstrate and tell the love of Jesus in every aspect of life. So here’s the question: what is the most important thing in your life right now? Is that something worth giving your life for? Is it a mission that will make an eternal difference in your life and in the life of others? The only things that will last are the things God calls us to do to build his kingdom. Will it take being swallowed by a big fish for God’s mission to become our own? Will it take a storm for us to pay attention to God?

As we continue with Jonah’s story in the next few weeks, those are the questions we’re going to be wrestling with, but this morning, we’re going to give you a chance to put your faith into action in a small way, to begin to listen to God’s call. Now, you came here this morning planning to spend at least an hour, and we’ve shortened the worship service and are asking you to give the time you would have normally spent here anyway to participating in one of the projects Pastor Deb has set up. I’m going to have her come up and give us a brief explanation, then we’re going to pray and sing and send you out to put your faith into action. Who knows where God might call you! It might even be to your Nineveh. Listen, and follow where he leads.

How Would Jesus Vote?

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Matthew 22:15-22; Acts 5:26-39

October 14, 2012 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO: Promises, Promises (Part 1)

Well, that is the question, isn’t it? Can anything change? Every four years, we approach the election of our president with a mixture of hope and cynicism, gratitude and fear. It’s a unique privilege we have, to be able to vote for our leaders. I was reminded of that again this summer when we arrived in Cairo, Egypt on the day the results were released from their first free election. It’s a high privilege we take for granted. Our founding fathers set out to provide a system of government “by the people and for the people,” and yet these is a sense among many people today that we might be in danger of losing that freedom. Now, I’m not here this morning to be an alarmist; I’m not that by nature. If we lose the freedom, it will most likely be due to our own apathy. While in the last presidential election, 63% of eligible voters turned out, two years later, in the midterm elections, only 41% showed up at the polls. Indiana was even lower than that—below average, you could say—with only 37% of eligible voters showing up at the polls. In less than a month, we are faced with another choice, one that, as both sides have said, couldn’t be more different. So what do we do? Will we show up? And more to the point—how should we respond as Christians in the midst of this debate? Or, to modify a popular slogan, how would Jesus vote?

Now, some of you may be wondering why I’m even going there. I mean, the two things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company are politics and religion because inevitably, you’ll step on someone’s toes. But we have to talk about both things because it’s important, as people of faith, for us to approach everything—and I mean everything—from the worldview of the Christian faith. Worldview matters. If you believe that nothing really matters and that we are just here by accident, that life has no meaning—well, that’s going to affect how you approach others, how you treat the environment, and whether you vote or not. If nothing matters, why bother? Likewise, if you believe, as Christians do, that every life has inherent worth and that God has a plan for redeeming this old world, then that ought to likewise affect the way you treat others (as valuable in God’s sight), the environment (we don’t just squander God’s creation) and whether or not you vote. It’s that last one that sometimes, as Christians, we think has nothing to do with our faith, and yet I hope you leave this morning realizing that nothing could be further from the truth. Faith and politics do go hand in hand. Our faith has something to say about the way we interact with civil authorities and the way we vote.

Jesus, for instance, wasn’t afraid to deal with matters of civil governance—even when those matters were meant as a way to trap him, to trip him up. In our Gospel reading this morning, we read about a time when the Pharisees (who generally were anti-government, though their protests tended to be quieter and less public than some would have wanted) and the Herodians (who were pro-government and supported the Roman regime) got together in order to trap Jesus (cf. Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, pg. 420). And they try to trap him with a hot button issue. It seems the economy and taxation are always hot button issues, but whether or not the Jews should pay taxes to Caesar, the Roman emperor, was one of the hottest debates in Jesus’ day (Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 86). It was the subject of discussion at every coffee shop through the country. Why? Because the Jews didn’t want to be governed by Rome. They had been taken over, their land stolen from them, and then they were told they had to pay tax on the land they used to own. Beyond that, for faithful Jews, the coins you had to use to pay the Roman tax were a problem. The Jews believed you didn’t put images of human faces on your coins, and yet there, on the Roman dinar, was the face of Caesar on one side, and around the edge were the words, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, high priest” (Boring 420; Colson, God & Government, pg. 127; Wright 87). Caesar claimed to be both god and high priest; this was blasphemy for an orthodox Jew. There was only one God, and it was not Caesar. The coin went even further, depicting Tiberius’ mother on the back side as the goddess of peace. Do you see the problem, why it was such a hotly-debated topic? And yet, they had to pay Roman the tax with that coin. So these religious and civic leaders, who normally didn’t get along, come to Jesus with a question: “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” (22:17).

Now, Matthew doesn’t tell us what they do next, but I picture them smiling and rubbing their hands together. They’ve got him, they think. If he says, “No, don’t pay the tax,” he’s immediately branded as an enemy of Rome. He’ll probably be arrested. If he says, “Yes, pay the tax,” he’ll lose the people’s support and be seen as a collaborator with Rome (Colson 127). They’ve got him. There is no way out for Jesus—and yet he finds one. What Jesus does next is ingenious and sets the tone for any discussion about religion and politics. First of all, he asks them for a coin, which they give him—which means they are carrying around the very coin they claim to hate. They have the currency of Rome handy, on their very person. So immediately, Jesus has incriminated the Pharisees. Then he asks a question to answer their question: “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” (22:19). Well, they knew whose image it was; they didn’t need to look at the coin to answer him. “It’s Caesar’s,” they say. “Well, then,” Jesus says, perhaps handing the coin back to them, “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (22:21). It’s his inscription. It’s his image. Caesar has authority over the state, so give what belongs to him back to him, Jesus says. They must have been stunned, maybe too stunned to say anything before he adds, “And [give] to God what is God’s” (22:21). What Jesus teaches here, Paul later writes to the Romans: “It is necessary to submit to the authorities…as a matter of conscience…for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor” (Romans 13:5-7). Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but be sure to also give to God what is God’s. Worship, for instance, doesn’t belong to Caesar; worship belongs to God alone. Are you as faithful at worshipping God as you are at paying your taxes? That’s the question Jesus sets before these local authorities.

In this passage, Jesus affirms that there is a place for human government, for civil authority. He doesn’t engage in wild revolution against the Roman Empire; he affirms their role, but he reminds his listeners and us that government’s role is limited. The state cannot take the place of God. The state is not able to save us. So what role does the state play, Biblically speaking? That’s an important question to answer as we head to the polls, because the leader we select will determine the sort of government we have. In Romans 13, Paul argues that God himself has set the government over us, and that we should submit to the rulers. “For the one in authority,” Paul writes, “is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (13:4). Peter put it this way: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (1 Peter 3:13-14). Now, let’s remember this is the Roman Empire they are talking about. It’s not a kinder, gentler government; it’s a society that was often antagonistic toward their faith. And yet, both Peter and Paul (who will both go on to be martyred by the Roman Empire), stand firmly in Old Testament tradition and remind us that the state has the God-given role of restraining evil and promoting justice. That is its role, and knowing what belongs to the state and what belongs to God is what Jesus was getting at when he talked to the Pharisees and the Herodians. So the church, Biblically speaking, has the role of drawing people toward God and proclaiming the good news of Jesus. And the state’s job, according to the Scriptures, is to restrain evil and promote justice (Colson 102-103).

Of course, it’s hard to know today what justice is. Justice is not whoever wins in the courtroom, and justice is not a matter of majority vote. As people of faith, we believe there are moral absolutes which don’t change just because public taste or fashions or attitudes have changed. Justice is not whoever is loudest, or what one person decides it is, no matter who that person is. Justice is also not just what you or I perceive as “fair.” Justice, according to the Bible, is not based upon a party’s platform but upon the unchanging standards given to us by God. In our day, so-called justice can be bought by the highest bidder, but true justice does not change. It is the same for the rich or the poor—in fact, the Bible’s most often concerned about the poor, the disadvantaged, the ones no one else remembers to look after. When you read the Scriptures, you find constant calls to take care of the poor, the orphaned, and the widow. Why those in particular? It’s because, in that culture, they literally had no one to take care of them. The poor weren’t afford opportunities to advance in some sort of career; poverty tended to be a generational lifestyle. The orphaned had lost their only means of protection and support—their parents. And the widow had likewise lost her livelihood. The husband was the one who worked, who provided, and there were very few options for widows unless they were willing to become prostitutes. And so God commands his people to take care of those no one else would take care of. That’s what justice looks like. God commands his people to look out for the least, the last and the lost. When it comes to voting, then, we have to ask if the candidate we’re considering has a concern, a passion for those whom society looks down on. And I’m not talking about just handing out money, because until recently in history, compassionate care like that was the responsibility of the church. The government only stepped in to provide services when the church stopped. So in some respect we have no one to blame but ourselves and our own stinginess. The government’s responsibility is to provide an environment where justice for those on the underside of life—the least, the last and the lost—can have a fighting chance to become more than they are right now. Governments are to restrain evil and promote justice.

In our particular case, our government was established with Biblical principles. Even though not all of our founding fathers were practicing or even believing Christians, they recognized that a Judeo-Christian worldview was the best hope of sustaining the sort of government they envisioned. In fact, John Adams, second president of the United States, put this way: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Author Os Guinness argues that our way of life depends on a three-legged stool, which he calls “the golden triangle of freedom.” He puts it this way: “Freedom requires virtue, which requires faith, which requires freedom, which in turn requires faith, which requires freedom and so on, like the recycling triangle, ad infinitum. In short, sustainable freedom depends on the character of the rulers and the ruled alike, and on the vital trust between them—both of which are far more than a matter of law” (A Free People’s Suicide, pg. 99). Much of the responsibility for continuing to be a free people rests not on those we elect, but on us. Government has its place, but it cannot make us virtuous people. Freedom requires virtue—an unending commitment to doing the right thing. And where do we find encouragement, even challenge, to be virtuous people? Within our faith. Virtue requires faith. And for us to practice faith requires freedom. Virtue, faith, and freedom are absolutely essential to continuing our way of life. When leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was reportedly asked by a certain Mrs. Powell what kind of government they had decided on. What had they given the American people? Franklin is said to have replied, “A republic, Madam—if you can keep it” (Guinness 54). Can we?

As people of faith who live in a land where we can elect our leaders, we need to remember several key things. First, the government is not God, and does not deserve our highest loyalty or allegiance or worship—those things belong to God. And God is bigger than the government. Jesus makes that quite clear in his discussion with the leaders of his day, and so did the disciples in Acts 5. The disciples have been healing and teaching about Jesus, out in the public, and it’s made the religious leaders nervous, so they bring them to the city officials for questioning. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” the city officials say. And Peter, bold and brash Peter, tells them, “We must obey God rather than human beings” (5:28-29). You can’t say it much more clearly than that! Our highest loyalty belongs to God, because even though we are citizens of the United States, we are first of all citizens of God’s kingdom. Even some of the city leaders recognize that, for later in that passage, as they debate what to do about Peter and the other disciples, one of the Pharisees named Gamaliel, steps up and reminds them that they’ve had other revolutionaries, and once their leader was gone, the movement died out. As for the disciples, he says, “If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (5:34-39). The first thing we affirm and hold onto as we approach the election is that God is bigger than any government.

The second thing we do, as people of faith approaching an election, is to pray. Over and over again in the Bible, we are commanded to pray for our leaders, to lift them up to God faithfully. When is the last time you prayed for our president, or our governor, or our mayor, or any of our elected officials? Too often, we’re willing to talk loudly and boldly about the ways we disagree with them, but do we do what the Bible tells us to do and pray for them? It’s not a suggestion; it’s a command. So pray that they would be people of wisdom, righteousness and justice.

Third, hold candidates accountable for pursuing justice—true justice. Does the candidate have a firm stand? Does it square with Biblical principles? And can the candidate be trusted to carry that out? I think we have a responsibility, along with giving our prayers, to question, challenge and push candidates and office holders on matters of Biblical justice. This is not a matter of “pushing our agenda” down someone else’s throat. If we believe, as we do, that Biblical justice is rooted in creation, in the God who created it all, then it’s more a matter of working and calling and asking for the best possible outcome. Those Ten Commandments give a pretty good basis for a civil society, whether they are posted on the wall of the courtroom or not. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t lie, honor your parents, and all the rest—those matters of justice are the basis for a civil society, regardless of which worldview or tradition they come out of. They are the laws upon which our nation was founded, and they provide a basis for caring for the least, the last and the lost. Is the candidate willing to work so that all are welcome at the table and all are treated fairly? It is our responsibility to hold our leaders accountable.

Fourth, and I hope you’re already thinking this way, bring your faith to bear on your decision of who to support and vote for. Now, this is not saying that, as Christians, we can only vote for Christians. I don’t believe just being or claiming to be a Christian qualifies a person for office. Rather, we want the best person for the job. Think about it this way: if you had a leak in your pipes, and you had a choice between two plumbers—one of which was a Christian but didn’t really have much in the way of tools or knowledge about the ways pipes work, and the other was a non-Christian, but had the best tools and was trained in the latest plumbing technology—who would you call? I hope you’d call the best person for the job, and the same is true when we go to vote for a president or any office (cf. Hamilton, Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, pgs. 214-216). Of course, in an election year, many claim a faith in Jesus Christ, whether they have one or not. Sometimes it’s simply politically expedient. So it’s worth our time to discern whether or not they are telling the truth. John Wesley might ask: is there evidence in their life and practice of faith? Do they exhibit the fruit of their faith? Are they growing love of God and neighbor? Do they worship regularly? And are they seeking to live out that faith consistently? A worldview, remember, should inform everything we do.

Perhaps this is the place to address another matter when it comes to voting and campaigning, and that’s how we treat each other while we’re advocating for “our” candidate. I don’t know the exact demographics, but in a church this size, we’re a mixed bag of Democrats and Republicans and Independents and whatever else might be out there. We have differing views. Sometimes we want different things from our politicians. And we’ve watched as politics has taken a negative and nasty turn the last few years, where ads focus more on what is wrong with the other person than on what the candidate promises to do if elected. What I’ve seen in the last few years is how we, even in the church, have adopted that campaign strategy—from our conversations about politics to the way we represent ourselves and those we believe in. I don’t know a year when I’ve seen more negative posts on Facebook about this party or that party or this candidate and that candidate than this year. We tear each other down because we have different views, or we demonize someone else because they see things differently than we do. We engage in gossip, malicious talk, slander, disrespect, mean-spirited rhetoric and worse. We forward e-mails and videos without checking the truth of the messages contained within. Perhaps we say things online we wouldn’t say otherwise because we can—that’s certainly true in many areas of life! But is that a Biblical way of reacting? Paul gives us direction here, I think, when he writes to the Ephesians: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:29-32). When Paul says we “grieve” the Spirit, the word there means to “inflict distress or intense sadness.” Do we grieve the Spirit in the ways we treat each other, especially those who are on “the other side” from us? Jesus is not a Democrat nor a Republican—both sides get it right sometimes and wrong other times. So let’s treat each other in a way that reflects compassion, kindness and forgiveness (cf. Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong, pgs. 32-35) as we bring our faith to bear on the election season.

The final thing, then, is to continue to serve others and work for Biblical justice, no matter who is elected on November 6. The outcome may be to your liking or not, but ultimately, if our first allegiance is to God, our calling is still to work and serve and seek first God’s kingdom. The late Chuck Colson, no stranger to politics himself, once put it this way: “Christians are to do their duty as best they can. But even when they feel that they are making no difference, that they are failing to bring Christian values to the public arena, success is not the criteria. Faithfulness is.” Success is not the criteria; faithfulness to God and to God’s mission is the criteria. That’s our calling. No matter whether the politicians keep their promises or not, we still can.

VIDEO - Promises, Promises (Part 2)

So how would Jesus vote? I apologize if you came here this morning expecting to be told which candidates to vote for; that’s not the church’s role. I do want to encourage you to vote, to take your civic duty seriously. Beyond that, we all have some serious questions to ask. Who will lead with the strongest commitment to what we know as Biblical justice? Who will lead with virtue, faith and freedom? Who will recognize the proper place of government, and seek to restrain evil and promote the good? We have some serious decisions to make in the next few weeks, decisions that should not be made along party lines or based on sound bites. Read, study, absorb, understand what each candidate seeks to bring and remember that your first loyalty is to the kingdom of God. So which candidate will allow the church to accomplish our mission, our calling? Ultimately, remember this truth: no matter what happens on November 6, our calling and our allegiance is not to a nation, but a kingdom—not to a president, but to a king, one who loved us enough to give his life for us. No matter what happens in November, nothing will be able to separate us from his great love, and friends, in the midst of all the bad news that surrounds us, that’s the very good news. That’s the very best news of all. Amen.

Let the Children Come

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Matthew 19:13-22

October 7, 2012 (World Communion Sunday) • Portage First UMC

Today is World Communion Sunday, and all around the world, this day, the body of Christ unites around the table to share in the bread and in the cup. As many ways as we can imagine for communion to be done, there are probably even more variations taking place on this day. Kneeling, standing, chanting, singing, coming forward or being served in pews, chairs, or on the ground—in wide variety and in many locations, today, we celebrate holy communion as one body. And yet, not quite as one body, because we not only have many different practices, we also have many different beliefs about this holy meal. One of the things I appreciate about the Methodist tradition is our practice of the open table, and one of the reasons I appreciate and love that is because I can never remember a time I wasn’t welcome at the table. As a kid, growing up at the Rossville United Methodist Church, I always knew I was welcome to come and kneel at the communion rail along with my parents. I would be served bread and juice right along with the adults. Not all traditions practice that. Some traditions say you have to be a member, or you have to be a certain age, or have been baptized a particular way. The bread and the cup, which should bring Christians together around the world and across denominations, continues to divide us, separate us, as we act as if we are the ones who decide whether or not someone can come to the table or not.

Now, Jesus never directly addresses the question of who can come and who can’t. When he gives the gift of communion to his disciples, and to the church, he never says, “At this age or with this action, you qualify for communion.” Nor does Paul. Paul does say that “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves” (1 Corinthians 11:27-29). But Paul is not talking about a certain type of person. In that passage, he’s trying to correct the Corinthians, some of whom are getting drunk off the wine that was part of the Lord’s Supper. He challenges them to make sure they are coming to the table with a right heart, that they are coming to the table to receive and experience Jesus rather than to get drunk or to be noticed. So who is welcome? Who can come to the table?

We begin to get a glimpse of an answer to that question when we look at the way Jesus interacted with people. Jesus very typically welcomed and talked to those whom society looked down upon. He sat with the woman at the well (John 4), which was a shocking thing to do. Jewish men did not speak to women other than their wives. Jesus welcomed a tax collector named Zacchaeus, and even went to eat at his house (Luke 19). Tax collectors were even more despised then than they are now, because they were seen as collaborators with Rome and traitors to their own people. Jesus touched a dead body, which would make him religiously unclean. But Jesus raised the boy to life and gave his mother back her only son (Luke 7). Jesus dined with lepers (also unclean) and prostitutes (Matthew 26; Mark 14). He touched demon-possessed people. He argued with Jews and Gentiles alike. He even spoke to religious officials. And he welcomed a zealot (a violent revolutionary) into his band of disciples. Jesus hung out with and welcomed all sorts of folks at his table. But there is perhaps nothing more telling than the story we read this morning, the story of the time when Jesus blessed the little children.

Matthew tells it this way: “People [probably mothers] brought little children [the word means infant or toddler] to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them” (19:13). The blessing of children by the laying on of hands had a long history in Israel. Often, this was done by a father passing on a blessing to his children—one generation “handing on the torch” (so to speak) to the next (Wilkins, NIV Application Commentary: Matthew, pg. 646). But with Jesus, there’s something else going on here. These mothers had probably seen or at least heard about what Jesus’ hands could do. Jesus’ hands would touch people who had a disease and the sickness would go away. Jesus’ hands would touch blind eyes and suddenly the people could see again. Jesus’ hands would touch those who were demon possessed and their minds would become peaceful again. If you saw and heard about such things happening, wouldn’t you want those hands touching and blessing your children as well (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pg. 211)? They weren’t bringing the children to Jesus because they thought he was the Messiah or the Savior of the world. They were bringing the children to Jesus because they knew he would welcome them.

However, just because Jesus would welcome them doesn’t mean his bodyguards would. I mean his disciples, who are acting like bodyguards in this passage. They’re not trying to be mean here, although it is true that, in that first century culture, children had a pretty low position in society (Wilkins 646). Their one desire, I believe, is to protect Jesus (Barclay 212). Jesus is tired. Jesus is preoccupied. Ever since the Transfiguration, back in chapter 17, he’s been moving rapidly and talking a lot about his death. He’s been healing and teaching and there’s been little time to rest. But all that talk about a cross must have worried them (cf. Barclay 212). You don’t talk about a cross with a smile on your face. Jesus is burdened; he knows what’s coming, and so the disciples are just trying to make space for their master. Everyone wants to see Jesus, but these kids—well, they don’t need to bother him. And so the disciples try to send the children away.

But the problem is they’ve got their priorities mixed up (Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 46). What they don’t realize is the children are anything but a bother to Jesus. This short little scene tells us a lot about the savior. He had to have been a fun person to be around, a happy person, a caring person, because otherwise, children would have stayed away. He was, it is said, the kind of person children loved to be around, and author George MacDonald turned that around and said one time that “no one could be a follower of Jesus if the children were afraid to play at his door” (Barclay 212). But, more than that, what we see here is that Jesus was never too tired and never too busy for anyone. Whoever needed him received everything he had to give, from the children to the sick, from the elderly to the wealthy. Philip Gulley once said Jesus never went out of his way to help someone, because someone needing help was never an interruption to Jesus. It might have been a change in the agenda, but it was never “out of his way.” Despite the disciples’ objections, Jesus welcomed the little children, blessed them, and even used them as an example for discipleship. He put it this way: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (19:14). What did he mean by that?

Remember, children were not valued all that much in Jesus’ day. It was the wealthy, the powerful, the influential whom people noticed. In fact, in the very next story as Matthew tells it, Jesus meets one of those folks. We call him the “rich young ruler,” though that’s a combination of characteristics from three Gospels. Mark tells us simply he is a man (Mark 10:17). Luke tells us he is a ruler (Luke 18:18). And Matthew tells us he is young, probably between twenty and forty years old. Most likely, he is some kind of religious lay leader, possibly a Pharisee, because those folks were usually well-off financially. And he had to have been well-known. There weren’t that many rich people in Jesus’ day or in the area he lived (Wright 48). So he comes to Jesus and he asks what he must do, what action he must perform, to gain eternal life. There’s a lot of stuff going on here we don’t have time to get into today, but Jesus answers him by repeating back five of the ten commandments. Every good Jew would have known those ten commandments, and it’s interesting, isn’t it, that the five Jesus recites all come from the second half of the ten. They’re all commandments that have to do with the way we treat each other (Barclay 214): don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, and honor your parents. But “all these I have kept,” he says, and yet there’s still something lacking. Something within tells him that simply obeying the letter of the law is not enough. There’s still an emptiness inside. That emptiness is there because the ruler is worshipping something other than God. He’s trying to earn his way into God’s good graces by doing “good things,” but he’s not worshipping God. His life is not centered around God. It’s centered around this other thing. And Jesus knows that, which is why he cuts, then, to the heart of the matter. “If you want to be perfect,” Jesus says, “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (19:21).

Now, let me say that Jesus is not issuing a prescription for all people in all time here. He’s giving one man a direction, but the larger principle in play here is that whatever gets in the way of our complete devotion to God needs to be removed. That’s what we need to get rid of. For this man, and maybe for some of us, it’s our great wealth. Certainly, in our country, we’ve become so wealthy, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to depend on God. You see, the question the man asks is, “What do I lack?” What do I need to be complete? And Jesus says if you want to be complete (which is probably a better way to translate “perfect”), get rid of that thing you depend on so much and place your whole life in God’s hands. “In order to be complete, you must be empty” (Wright 50).

The next sentence in this story, to me, is one of the saddest in all of Scripture: “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth” (19:22). He couldn’t give up what he worshipped, and he would continue to live with that hole in his soul, that lack, until he becomes like a child—completely dependent on his heavenly Father.

I think that’s part of why Matthew puts these two stories together—it’s that contrast. The young man had everything the world had to offer and yet he had nothing. The children, who were looked down upon and had nothing of their own, who had to depend on someone else (their parents) for their food and livelihood, had everything. Children are weak and vulnerable. They have no power. They have no influence—at least as the world understands that. We know they have influence with their parents! But they have nothing to offer anyone—no advantage, no financial gain (if anything, it’s just the opposite). There was no reason Jesus should have preferred them over the rich young man. I mean, think about it. When we see the big-name preachers in photos, who do we see them with most often? Wealthy people, influential people, powerful people. We don’t see them with children, and yet that’s who Jesus preferred, because to him, children are the perfect metaphor for discipleship. In fact, just a chapter earlier, in the midst of yet another argument by the disciples about who is the greatest, Jesus called to himself a child (some think it might have been Peter’s daughter), and he told them, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (18:1-5). And that, then, ought to cause us to ask: how do we become “like a child”?

Now, we’re talking about childlikeness, not childishness. There are plenty of childish adults around today. What we need are people who live childlike, which means we’re open to new and unpredictable things (cf. Wright 45). We’re open to trust and believe and hope and play. As we grow up, it’s far too easy to become bitter and angry and cynical and hardened. Life has a way of doing that to us. The things we go through, the losses we face, the unfairness of so many things, the way we are treated by others—all of those things pile up and begin to harden our soul. Throw into that a generous mixture of all the things that call for our worship, our attention—money, sex, power, influence…we could on and on. We get caught up in daily life, in planning and preparing and handling all the endless details that we forget how much a gift life is, and how it’s meant to be enjoyed. Watch a child and see how they live in the ever-present “now.” It’s those sort of qualities and more, undoubtedly, that causes Jesus, in this passage, to declare that children are closer to God than anyone else standing nearby. Children are more receptive to Jesus’ blessing than any of the adults standing there. William Barclay once said, “It is life’s tragedy that, as we grow older, we so often grow further from God rather than nearer to him” (212). And yet, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these children. And he calls us to have a childlike faith, a childlike heart.

When I became a dad, I quickly realized I could learn more about having a relationship with God by watching the way my children reacted and interacted and lived life than I could by reading any book. For instance, I’ve learned many times over the years that children are painfully honest—and God wants us to be honest with him as well. Didn’t we read that in the psalms several weeks ago? I’ve also learned that little children don’t tend to hold onto grudges. They don’t nurse hurts for months and years on end. I always thought children should come with some sort of owner’s manual, because I distinctly remember bringing Christopher home from the hospital and thinking to myself, “Now what?” And so we’ve made mistakes along the way, and yet when our kids were young, they didn’t get up every morning and yell at us for the mistakes we made yesterday. No, today was a new day, and those things were in the past. Having a childlike heart involves forgiveness and allowing God to take care of the hurt. I’ll be very honest: that’s a hard one for me; it’s one I have to work on constantly.

Another thing I learned about childlikeness is that children play until they are exhausted. How many times would you come into your child’s room at night and they’ve just collapsed on the floor, maybe clutching the last toy they played with (when they were supposed to be in bed)? Or how many times do children protest going to bed because they’re not tired and you know they are? Children invest everything they have in what they are doing. Adults tend to invest only what we think we have to, the bare minimum, and we think we get away from serving God at a certain age, or when we’ve “done our time.” Perhaps part of being childlike is giving everything we have, all of our energy, to serving God in whatever way we can. One of the saints I knew at my last church, Pauline Huffman, was 99 years old when she died, and one time when I talked to Pauline, she told me she was upset she couldn’t do as much as she used to for God and for the church. She felt useless. So I told her what we really needed was someone to pray for us, for the church, for the people in the area. Could she do that? Yes, she said, she thought she could, and Pauline gave her all to that ministry, as far as I know up to the point of her death. We play until we’re exhausted and invest ourselves fully in every experience.

Another thing I noticed is that little children aren’t generally afraid to try new things. That’s how they learn—even when when they might get hurt. Touch the stove, you learn it’s hot. Put that thing in your mouth, you’ll learn pretty quickly whether it’s good to eat or not. They’re not afraid to try new things, but as adults, we make all sorts of excuses about why we can’t do this or that. I can’t deliver a pie to a newcomer; I might say the wrong thing. I can’t greet guests; they might be someone who has come for a long time and I just don’t know them. I can’t go to Bible study; I don’t know enough yet. (I’ve actually heard that, and it’s amazing how we don’t realize the self-contradiction there.) I can’t share my faith, I can’t give a tithe, I can’t serve on a committee. But have you tried? You know the best way to find what your gifts are? Try something. If it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t fit, try something else. Childlike faith moves ahead and isn’t afraid to try new things.

And most of all, childlike faith trusts. Cathy hated it when I would toss the kids in the air or when we would play like that, but neither Christopher nor Rachel ever complained. They trusted that their father would catch them, and I did. But at some point in our life, we all move to Missouri—you know, the “show me” state. Prove it to me, God. I can’t trust you to work in this way because I have to have all the evidence first. Or I have to be in control. Children don’t wait—they naturally trust. These kids that played at Jesus’ feet trusted him. And I know trust is in short supply these days—too many people and too many institutions have failed us. But we’re wrong if we judge God by human standards. It ought to be the other way around—the human standards are judged by God, who is absolutely and utterly trustworthy. So—can you come to Jesus as child? Can you trust him?

Because that’s all it takes to come to the table of the Lord. It’s not up to Deb or I to determine who can come and who can’t. All that’s required is to come to the table with the heart of a child. The invitation is simply this: “Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.” You hear me say it often: in the United Methodist tradition, the table is open to all who love Christ or who want to love him. Jesus put it this way: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (19:14). So come as a child this morning, and find in this bread and this cup a reminder of your heavenly father’s great love.