Category: narrative lectionary

There’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree- Epiphany 2

There’s Only You and Me and We Just Disagree- Epiphany 2

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Narrative Lectionary Reflection
January 15, 2017
Luke 4:14-30

So let’s leave it alone ’cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree

-Dave Mason, We Just Disagree

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It was about 20 years ago, that I attended a large Baptist church in Washington, DC. The church was an odd mix, or at least it would be odd today. Evangelicals and liberals were somehow able to worship together, along side a healthy dose of members from Latin America and Asia.

The church decided at some point to hire a pastor to the join the good-sized multi-pastor staff. The person chosen was a woman with great pastoral care skills. At the time, there was a bit of controversy because she was pro-gay and some of the evangelicals in the church weren’t crazy about that.

I was at a meeting where a member of the congregation stood up. She was one of the evangelical members of the congregation and she had what could be considered a “traditional” understanding on homosexuality, but she spoke in favor of calling the pastor. You see, the pastor had been involved with congregation for a few years and the two had gotten to know each other. “We don’t agree,” I recall this woman saying when talking about the issue they didn’t see eye-to-eye on. But this woman was a good friend and she saw her as the right person for the job.

What’s so interesting about this story is that I don’t think it could happen today. Churches like the one in DC really don’t exist anymore. Evangelicals and liberals have sorted themselves into different churches and don’t really know each other. Which only makes it easier to highlight differences and demonize each other.

In Luke 4, Jesus comes back home to Nazareth and go to the local synagogue.  He reads from Isaiah 61:1-2, which is an inspiring text.  The people love this, a local boy made good. 

But Jesus knew what was going on in the hearts, so he decides to tell some more stories.  One is a story from I Kings 17 where the great prophet Elijah helped feed a non-Jewish woman and her son in the town of Zarapath during a famine.  The famine struck Jewish widows as hard as non-Jewish widows, but this was where God led Elijah.  Jesus then goes to 2 Kings 5 and tells the story of the prophet Elisha healing Naaman, a Syrian (not Jewish) general, from leporesy.  He was healed even though there were many in Israel that suffered from the skin problems.

This did not go well with the crowd.  The mood went from pride to a homocidal rage.  The pushed Jesus towards a cliff in order to throw him off, but Jesus was able to slip away.

Sometimes we can mouth the words that Jesus loves everybody, but in our heart of hearts, they are just that: words.  Deep down, we want God to provide for us, but not for that evangelical Christian.  We want to be showered with blessings, but we don’t want that liberal Christian getting anything from God.  We want to be God’s special people and we want those that disagree with us to go to hell.

But God doesn’t work that way.  When it is said that God so loved the world, it really means God so loved the world; as in everybody. Instead of welcoming people into God’s realm, we start to act like the holy bouncers deciding who is on the special list and who isn’t.

Jesus had a good way of holding up a mirror to people who thought they were good people and showing them who they really are.  Maybe if we were living in first century Palestine and Jesus showed us how we fall short, we might to join in throwing Jesus off a cliff.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was working for racial justice in the American South, many whites were willing to support him.  Maybe because they didn’t like the South and thought it backwards.  But when King started to take his campaign to the North, starting with Chicago in the 1966, many whites were turned off.  He had chosen to show a mirror to White Northerners and what they saw wasn’t pretty.

But the thing is, as much as this passage shows that people are not so pure, it also shows that God is loving of us, all of us even when we act like jerks. 

The two women in Washington, DC were able to get beyond boundaries to love and support each other.  In our modern age which seems more and more divided by class, race and ideology, we need to place our trust in a God that loves us all and pray that God give us a heart big enough to love “those people” as well.

Dennis Sanders is the Pastor at First Christian Church of St. Paul in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. He’s written for various outlets including Christian Century and the Federalist.

The Buzzcut- Baptism of Jesus

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Narrative Lectionary Reflection
January 8, 2017
Luke 3:1-22

hairdresser-1684815_640-1From the time I was about seven until maybe I was old enough to drive, my Dad would get me up at about 6am on a Saturday morning once a month to get to the barber shop before they opened around 7:30 or so. A line would form and Dad wanted to be among the first.

I hated doing this, especially during the cold, Michigan winters. Saturdays were for sleeping in and not trying to get to the barber shop before the other guy. However, we did it and maybe as a token of my patience, Dad would take me to breakfast where I would have pancakes.

I always got the same haircut; short, but not too close. For years, Dad would tell the barber what I wanted. I think when I got around 11 or 12, I started telling the barber what I wanted. Well, one Saturday, when I was about 13, I told the barber I wanted it cut short. So he went to work and I sat not paying attention. When he was done and spun me around, I was shocked; he had cut my hair really short. I mean were talking the next step was looking like Kojack. Now, these days, that is my standard haircut, but back then it wasn’t and I thought I looked horrible. I remember just crying like crazy. Here it was, I wanted a little off the top; and I what I got was a buzzcut.

This got me thinking about today’s passage; some people wanted a little off the top and John the Baptist was preaching a total buzzcut.

John the Baptist is not anyone’s favorite Biblical character. He’s rude and can’t say anything nice and he certainly lives up to that in today’s gospel, if you can it that. The passage opens with the crowds who were listening to John. Many in the crowd decided to come forward to be baptized. I’ve learned that baptism is about being reminded of God’s love for us, but I don’t think John was sitting in on my seminary class, because he calls those coming forward a “brood of vipers.” He tells them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance and to not rely on religious or family ties for salvation. He talks about an ax that is getting ready to cut down poor producing trees and throw them into the fire.

When was the last time you saw a preacher say that at a baptism? If they did, I can bet they didn’t stay in the pulpit very long.

There was a time when I would have said that poor John was off his rocker. He was preaching a message of hell and damnation, a message of what my Lutheran friends like to say, “works-righteousness.” On the other hand, Jesus preached a message of grace. But these days, John was preaching a message of salvation and grace, but he reminds us this grace isn’t cheap, but costly. John, like Jesus, was concerned with how we live. Yes, we are saved by grace not by works, but the eveidence of our faith relies on how we live. The best testimony of being a follower of Christ, is how we live our lives. Do we live them in the same way Jesus did, welcoming all, forgiving others and helping those in need?

I think if John was around today, he might call many of us snakes as well. There are too many people, especially Christians, who will shout loudly that they are religious, holy people and yet their actions say sharply otherwise.

There are a lot of people out there who think that to be a Christian means accepting certain truths; Jesus is God’s Son, Jesus died and rose again, Jesus is coming soon. If you believe that, then you are all set. But John seems to be saying that’s not enough. Of course Christians must believe in all of this, but if those beliefs aren’t lived on in our daily lives, are they real to others? If we say we believe in Christ, and yet ignore the poor, or turn people away because they are different, will people really believe us?

Christianity isn’t just about accepting certain beliefs; it’s also about living as a Christian. John the Baptist told those in the crowd to share with those who have none, don’t extort and don’t overtax the populace. He was telling people that if they were coming to be baptized; they need to live lives of repentance and not do this just for show.

On an Advent night a decade ago, I heard a memorable passage from the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero. He summed up nicely what Advent and by extension what following Jesus is all about:

Advent should admonish us to discover in each brother or sister that we greet, in each friend whose hand we shake, in each beggar who asks for bread, in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union, in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves, the face of Christ. Then it would not be possible to rob them, to cheat them, to deny them their rights. They are Christ, and whatever is done to them Christ will take as done to himself. This is what Advent is:

Christ living among us.

God isn’t interested in shaving a little off the top. God wants us changed, to live lives for others.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dennis Sanders is the Pastor at First Christian Church of St. Paul in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. He’s written for various outlets including Christian Century and the Federalist.

Where’s Jesus? – Advent 3

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December 11, 2016
Isaiah 61:1-11

A few years ago at the congregation I was serving at as an Associate Pastor, members of the church were busy decorating the church for the Christmas season. The hallways are decked out in wreaths and garlands, Christmas trees are found in the lounge and in the sanctuary. The decorating had an air poignancy; this would be the last Christmas at the old location of the congregation. In a few weeks, the church would move to a new location a few blocks away.

One of the things that is always fascinating are the manger scenes. Like most folks, people tend to decorate the mangers with all the central characters; the wise men (even though they weren’t at the manger), the shepherds, Joseph, Mary and yes, Jesus. One my favorite mangers at church is one that is basically made for kids. The characters are all dolls and you can imagine a kid picking it up and squeezing it. That manger scene is a bit different. One of the young mothers set it up in front of the communion table. Mary and Joseph are there at the stable, but you have the shepherd on the steps leading down from the chancel and the wise men are all the way in the back of the church near the narthex.

What missing is Jesus. There’s no baby Jesus to be found.

View of the what once part of the Buick City complex in Flint, MI.

The young mother explained to me that since wasn’t Christmas yet, the characters in the birth story are still a ways off. As Christmas draws closer, they will move in closer and closer. What I was fixated on was the fact that there was no Jesus. She did a good job of hiding Jesus, because I could not find the baby Jesus any where in the sanctuary. Where’s Jesus? Where indeed. Advent is about waiting and expectation, but I wonder if sometimes it’s also about this scary feeling that hope will never come, that things will never change. I think about places like my hometown of Flint, Michigan, known now for the lead in its drinking water, but also a place where the auto industry’s shrinkage has left huge swaths of empty land  where giant factories used to be.  Or places like the Syrian city of Allepo that has been devastated by five years of civil war. It’s in those dark times that people feel that hope is not present and that Jesus is nowhere to be found. We might pray and pray and for whatever reason, it feels like the phone line is dead.

Where’s Jesus?

Isaiah 61 tells the returning Israelites that hope is on the way. This had to be good news to these new arrivals after coming back to the land from years away in exile to a place that was ruined by wars. The unnamed prophet tells the people that the holy city of Jerusalem that had been destroyed decades earlier, would be rebuilt better than ever. It’s a great story and would be even better if it just stopped there. But the background reveals that Jerusalem was never rebuilt in the way the writer of Isaiah 61 said it would-at least not in their lifetime. And yet, this passage is still one of hope. Actually it’s not just about hope, but also about faith. We have faith that hope will prevail even if we can’t see it.

As I said earlier, one of the Christmas trees is located in the lounge. It’s was decorated with lights and an angel at the top…and socks. That year, socks were being collected for refugees, helping newcomers have warm feet in the winter, since most of them are coming from tropical countries to chilly Minnesota. Advent is a time of hope, and sometimes hope comes in the form of…well, socks. Hope can come in the form of socks! It’s hard when you are in pain or suffering to see Jesus anywhere, but maybe we can have hope that Jesus is the giving of socks to the stranger, or in the kind word we give to someone grieving or simply standing by a friend as they battle cancer or even something that only God knows. It is in these acts that God brings hope to the burdened…and it’s where Jesus is found.

 

Dennis Sanders is the Pastor at First Christian Church of St. Paul in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. He’s written for various outlets including Christian Century and the Federalist.

Do Remember Me – Pentecost 22

October 16, 2016
I Samuel 1:4-20 and 2:1-10

Do Lord, O, Do Lord, O do remember me,
Do Lord, O, Do Lord, O do remember me,
Do Lord, O, Do Lord, O do remember me,
Way beyond the blue.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome a few years ago.  For the uninitiated, this is considered a form of high-functioning autism on the spectrum.  The diagnosis answered a lot of questions that I had, but the knowledge also created a sense of isolation.  No matter what you do, people don’t always understand what it means to have High-Functioning Autism.  People, even those close to you, don’t always understand what you are going through.  All of the sudden, you feel that you are alone, because no one really gets what you are dealing.

I can only imagine how it feels for women when they face infertility.  There would have to be some sense of isolation, a sense that in a world where everyone is happy, you are the only sad person in all the world.

hannaIn our text, we are introduced Elkanah, a well-to-do Israelite that has two wives.  One wife, Peninnah, was able to give Elkanah many children, while the other wife, Hannah wasn’t able to have children. Hannah’s barreness said many things about the women in ancient times. If a woman was barren, it was usually considered the woman’s fault. People around Hannah would wonder what she had done to earn this judgement from God. This is why her co-wife Peninnah would taunt her.

Not having children could also be an issue of life or death for a woman. If Elkanah died, the inheritance would go to Peninnah’s sons. She would have to rely on the kindness of those sons. Because she had no son, she could end up on the street if Peninnah’s sons chose not to help her.

On top of all this, she would have to deal with the shame of being infertile. Not only was Peninnah taunting her, but you have to think the other women in the town were talking as well. She probably had no one to turn if just to vent.

The men in her life weren’t much help either. Elkanah loved Hannah more than Peninnah, and showed her kindness. He tires to tell her that he is worth more than 10 sons. He meant well, but it wasn’t really helping Hannah.

When she prayed to God in the temple, Eli the priest chastised her, thinking she was drunk. Again, not helping.

Hannah was alone. No one could help her, let alone understand her.

In desparation, she prays to God. She asks for God to remember her, when everyone else forgot about her.

God didn’t forget. Before she even conceived, her sadness went away. Maybe her husband couldn’t understand her. Maybe her co-wife was mean. Maybe the priest was rude. But God remembered her and that made her feel that she wasn’t alone. I think that’s why she could raise her voice in song in chapter two, because God remembered her in her moment of weakness.

People may not understand when we face hard times, but we can trust that God always remembers us and that can make us feel a little less lonely.

Dennis Sanders is the Pastor at First Christian Church of St. Paul in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. He’s written for various outlets including Christian Century and the Federalist.

 

Love Takes Time

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Sixth Week of Easter

Diversity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

For the last 2 1/2 years, I’ve been an African American pastor leading a mostly white suburban congregation in Minnesota.  On the surface this should be a wonderful achievement, a sign of racial progress.  If we could just come together then everything will be peachy.

But while I’ve done fairly well, leading this congregation, this is not always the case.  A number of large congregations have called African American pastors, only to have the whole process end in disaster.  Sometimes it’s a clash of cultures. Sometimes congregations didn’t realize what it meant to hire someone from a different racial background and how that could change the church.  None of this should stop churches from calling pastors of a different background than the majority of its members, but it is a reminder that diversity, as much as we like to celebrate it in American culture, is a challenge and it requires a certain fortitude to make it work.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, he urges this very diverse church to learn to love each other.  This was not an easy thing to do.  The church was riven by a number of divisions; Jews and Greeks, rich and poor with differing opinions and gifts clashing with each other and pulling rank over each other.  Paul tells them in chapter 13 that focusing on themselves, on what made them different than their sisters and brothers was not the way. “If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal,” Paul says.  If you have the spiritual gifts, but don’t have love it tends to not mean much.

Paul shows a better way.  Instead of focusing on the differences, he talks about a love that cares for the other.  “ Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant….Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things,” Paul says.  Love in a community is one that learns to love the other…even when you don’t understand them…even when they drive you crazy.

Paul’s love is not the love of teens or a newly married couple.  Instead it is a love that cultivates community. Like the tending of a garden, or the making of bread, love is something that is handled with care and with time.

I don’t know if some of the churches that had conflict with their pastors failed to cultivate love, but I do know that if we believe in diversity, in welcoming all of God’s people to the communion table, we have to be able to take time in developing love in the community.  Love takes time, but it is worth it.

I Promise.

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Genesis 6:16-22; 9:8-15
September 7, 2014
Ordinary Time

I don’t know when I noticed that Noah and the ark wasn’t such a wonderful little story for kids.  All of the sudden the images of happy animals in a boat gave way to a crowed boat filled with animals-animals that poop.  I’m a city kid so farm life isn’t familiar to me.  But I’ve been to enough animal barns at the State Fair to know that having pigs and horses and elephants and so on is going to create one big mess.

But then, that’s not the most frightening thing about this passage.  God is upset over God’s creation.  God saw the evil taking place and regretted even creating the earth.

So, what does God do?  God sets the reset button.

The water that floods the world is in some way an undoing of the creative process we see in Genesis 1.  The water comes and sweeps away all of the evil in the world.  No more animals no more humans.

Except not everything has been swept away.  God spares Noah, his family and all the animals.  This small remnant of creation will be the seed that rebuilds the earth.  Even as God judges, God also brings salvation.

The rainbow that God talks about is a reminder to God that God would never flood the earth again.  God’s creation would continue to sin, continue to drift away from God.  No matter, God would not destroy the earth with water again and the rainbow is God’s promise: no more hitting the reset button.  God would find another way to deal with the waywardness of God’s creation.  The rest of the biblical story is God finding a different way to restore God’s creation.

In 1997, a great flood hit the Red River Valley which straddles Minnesota and North Dakota.  Communities up and down the Red River were threatened with flood waters.  One such community was Grand Forks, North Dakota, the state’s 3rd largest city.  Despite a noble effort by citizens and volunteers, the rising flood waters could not be held back.  Fifty thousand people had to flee their houses as a result.  As the waters filled the city, a fire started in one of the buildings downtown.  Water everywhere and now a fire.  As the firefighters tried to deal with the fire using boats, a photographer for the local newspaper snapped a photo that became iconic.  In the midst of flood and fire, there was a rainbow.  The rainbow became a sign of hope to a beleagured community, a promise that things would be better.

In the midst of pain and sorrow, God tells creation and most importantly Godself that things will be better. Hope is around the corner.

I promise.