You are Welcome! You are Worthy!

Today was suppose to be our outdoor worship and picnic.  I say "suppose to" because it started raining at around 11pm/midnight on Saturday and as I write this at 5:30pm on Sunday it has not stopped raining or even let up from a steady downpour.  So we worshiped inside instead and had our picnic in the church basement.  It turned out to be a nice service even if the rain dampened our parade.  


But with an outdoor worship in mind I planned a few things differently than normal and decided not to switch them just because of the weather.  The biggest change was that I decided to base the confession on the sermon.  The sermon, which is below, talks about how we often feel unworthy to Jesus, and we,as Christians, often make others feel unwelcomed and unworthy.  Therefore after the hymn of the day I had people write on two different color slips of paper ways they have felt unworthy and unwelcomed and ways they have made others feel unworthy of God's grace and unwelcomed.  We then used what people wrote as a prayer of confession and asked for forgiveness and guidance as we struggle to change.  


The second thing that I planned differently because it was suppose to be an outdoor worship was I was a little more brash in my sermon than normal.  Now most people who know me, know that I don't have the cleanest language and I'm not afraid to make an off-colored joke or talk about a topic that some people find impolite to talk about in public.  And it is hard to just ignore that fact that Jesus refers to poop in the gospel text (Matthew 15:1-28 BTW I used the Message translation and a longer text than the assigned text for the day which was just verses 10-28).  However most people find hearing such things from a pastor while in the sanctuary a little off putting, but being outside and not in the traditional worship space can open people to hearing things that might seem a little impolite otherwise.  But I liked how my sermon turned out and based on what the message is I wasn't going to not refer to poop or ignore such topics as rape, sex, divorce, homosexuality and murder just because we ended up in the sanctuary due to weather.  So be forewarned - the word poop and vomit is coming.  Multiple times in fact.  And so is words like rape and incest.  But if you can get past that, which I hope you aren't that easily offended, I think you will enjoy the sermon and get a bit out of the message.  

Excuse me but was Jesus talking about poop and vomit?!   

This isn’t a text that we like to hear.  In fact it is one that we often want to ignore.  First we get this fairly graphic, at least by biblical standards, depiction about the digestion process, but also because we then hear about Jesus being out-right rude to this poor Canaanite woman. 

This doesn't mesh with our picture perfect Jesus. The Jesus who welcomed the little children and carried cute little cotton ball sheep.  The Jesus who’s picture hung in our Sunday School classroom, with a well groomed beard and mustache who looks freshly bathed.  The Jesus who we worship, the Jesus who we learned about as children didn’t talk about poop and was intentionally rude to someone.

I hate to break it to you but this is the same Jesus.  Jesus who healed the sick and multiplied loaves and fishes and walked on water is also the same Jesus who talked about poop.  Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a cross to save us from our sins is also the same Jesus who was intentionally rude to a woman who came to him begging for mercy. 

We often want to sugar coat the Bible.  Many pastors today will be ignoring the first part of this text today when Jesus talked about what defiles a person and focusing on only Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman, and then they will say things like Jesus was just testing the woman or explain that he really wasn’t being rude.  Others will ignore this text completely and instead focus on a more Sunday School appropriate text.  But I think that is a shame. 

It is a shame to ignore the parts of the bible that we find to uncouth, too crude, or brash or vulgar for our taste.  It is a shame to do this because when we do we are subtlety and not so subtlety making a statement about who we want to be part of our worshipping community.  If you really dig into certain parts of the bible there is a lot that would not be accepted actions in our modern society, incest, rape, genocide, adultery, pre-meditated murder, stealing and the list goes on.  Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and then told their father that he was mauled by a wild animal and died.  Abraham passed his wife Sarah off as his sister not once but twice in order to save his own sink, but as a result she was probably raped, not that it is ever referred to as rape in the Bible.  The people in the Bible are not always upstanding moral, role-models.  

And yet when we try to make them to be perfect people, or when we ignore those parts of the bible things that we find too vulgar, we are telling people that they are not allowed to be people in this community, this congregation, this church.  Instead in church, in worship, you need to be part of some 1950’s idealized perfect nuclear family, where the husband is the head of the household, the wife balances housework, child rearing and even a job and the children always obey their parents and never say an unkind word other than gee will-i-cers and golly gee.  But that is not who we are and that is not who we should pretend to be. We become no worse than those people Isaiah prophesied about "They worship me with their lips but their heart is not it in, they act like they are worshiping me, but they don't really mean it."  When we put on a facade to worship God, we are not truly worshiping God.  

We should not feel the need to put on a false façade in order to come to church, in order to worship God.  God knows who we are, and what is in our hearts when we are worshipping, working, driving a car, or drinking a beer at the bar.  But we as Christians as a whole do this, and make a statement, often unspoken, but occasionally spoken, that if you are divorced, gay, sexually active before you are married or outside of your marriage, drink, smoke, a drug user, have tattoos, swear or any other modern taboo that you are not welcomed here and Jesus did not come to save you.  And not only do others feel unwelcomed, they also feel unworthy of God’s grace.

And yet that is exactly the opposite of what our gospel message says today.  First Jesus gets questioned about why his disciples eat with unclean hands, a taboo in first century Palestine.  And Jesus response that it is not what goes into a person that defiles it but what comes from the heart.  Breaking taboos will not make you a person unfit for God’s grace, it will not make you a bad person.  However if from your heart you treat others badly, you have evil intentions, murder, commit adultery, fornicate, steal, or lie it is then that you become defiled, unclean.  It is not how you treat yourself that makes you unclean, but how you treat others.  Jesus is saying that taboo breakers are not only welcomed, but wanted!  Jesus is telling others that it is okay to be yourself.  If you get to dinner time and forget to wash your hands first, it will be okay, the world will not end, nor will your salvation be in question.

And then Jesus goes and obeys the laws of the land and as a results treats a Canaanite woman, an outsider, one of those people who would be unwelcomed throughout Israel, as if she is the scum of the earth even though she is begging for mercy.  Jesus calls her a dog and says that he came only for Israel; that their sins are keeping him busy enough as it is.  Now I don’t know if Jesus was intentionally treating her badly in order to make a point or if Jesus was having just a very human moment, but either way the woman, in her great come back “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” remind Jesus that there is always plenty and that she too is worthy of God’s mercy.  And in doing do Jesus gives her more than she asked and heals her daughter.

See all are welcomed to partake in the Kingdom of God.  All are invited to worship Jesus.  And all should be welcomed here, in this place, in our worshipping space, both out here and inside.  And we are invited to come as we are, to come as who we are, whether we fit in better as an extra in a 1950’s sitcom, at a Harley rally clad in leather, or waving rainbow flags in Greenwich Village.  We are invited to be who God created us to be, and we are all worthy of God’s grace, God’s amazing mercy that is pour out upon all of us, even if we feel unworthy, even if we feel at times like poop or vomit or a dog.  Because we are worthy of God's grace and we are welcomed by God and hopefully we are also able to welcome all of God's children as well.   

How Much Do You Need? and An Unexpected Heart

Today we worshiped outdoors.  And before I get to the sermon I need to mention one thing that happened.

For the confession, we wrote on slips of paper things that we put before God, things that we give more importance to than to God.  We then put these 4x4 slips of paper on a nail in the center of the cross and burned them.  As the papers burn they form a rose, which symbolizes that God takes things that can be ugly in our faith and turn them into something beautiful.

We then put the cross to the side.

After worship, we had a picnic on the church lawn with a variety of lawn games and some things from worship got left out, including the cross.  At the end of the picnic, when just a few people were left, including one family who was late for worship and missed the confession, I went to go put the cross away.

When I go to grab the cross, I look at the burn mark left from the papers, and there in the center of this cross is  a black heart.

What a beautiful symbol!  And since this cross is used throughout the year for various things it will be a wonderful story to tell.

So now onto the sermon.  I referred to the confession in the sermon, in fact the sermon was why we wrote down things that we put before God instead of sins, which is how I normally have down this confession.  I also focused on the gospel text for the week which is Luke 12:13-21.

Enjoy!

How much do you need?

It is an interesting question with many different answers depending on how to qualify it. Money? To retire, to live comfortably, to go out to dinner, to put away for a rainy day, to go shopping, for a new car, a new house, to send your kid to college, and the list goes on!

There is never enough, we always want more. Well if I had more money I could have the nicer car, the bigger house, the newer phone, the fancier computer, the larger barn. And the more we have the more we want. We are greedy!

Greed was the man’s problem in this parable. He had more crops so he wanted bigger barns and he was already rich to begin with.

And greed is the person in the crowd’s problem as well. He already received his share of the inheritance, but now he wanted more.

And isn’t greed our problem as well.

At the beginning of worship we wrote down things that we put before God, things that keep us in bondage to sin. I’m guessing that many of you wrote down physical, material things. Maybe it was the home that you can’t quiet afford and is too big for your family anyways. Or the car that you treasure, or the boat that you spend more time on than should. Maybe you wrote down things that are a little harder to put your finger on, sports that you follow religiously, or finances that help you achieve a certain level of status. Maybe you wrote down your job that keeps you working at all hours even when you are with your family. Maybe you even wrote down family and friends. Yes, we love them but we keep putting them higher than God on our priority list, allowing them to take advantage of us. Did anyone write down themselves? When we put our material goods ahead of God and others, really we are putting ourselves first.

See that is what all this greed boils down to, all these treasures, why the rich man was a fool. Greed is “I” focused. It is putting yourself first. In the 3 short verses where the rich man speaks in the parable he refers to himself 14 times! In fact he never mentions another person. Not a field hand to help him tend his crops, or a carpenter to help build the new barns, or friends and family to relax, eat, drink and be merry with. Was he just going to party by himself? Well that is awfully boring.

It doesn’t matter that we have stuff or that we accumulate stuff, it is human nature. What matters is who we are focused on. The rich man was only focused on the un-holy Trinity of me, myself, and I. The person who asked Jesus to tell his brother what to do, only cared about himself.

Those items that we wrote down earlier are fine in and of themselves. Jesus doesn’t end the parable by saying “so it is with those who store up treasures for themselves because they are not rich towards God.” No he says but! “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich towards God.” Do you put your treasures, your possessions, your materials, your items first. Or is God first?

Jesus tells us to watch out for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Thank God! Because there will always be people who will have more than us. But we can always, regardless of how rich or poor we are put God first.

We put God first when we don’t have possessions for the sake of having them. When we are able to admit that we don’t put God first, we are putting God first. When we give our possessions, our wealth, our material goods and our time generously to others we are putting God first.

When we are “I” focused, we care about what others can do for us, including God. But when we focus on God, putting God and others first before us, we care about what we can do for others, how we can help others and be God’s hands in this world in order do God’s work. We see how God has blessed us in many ways in order to care for others.

And God blesses us abundantly! God has blessed us with our wealth, our homes, our cars, our savings accounts, our collections, our hobbies and much, much more. God blessed the rich man with land that produced abundantly. God blessed the person in the crowd with parents who left him an inheritance. God blesses us in everything and every way. But if we are “I” focused and greedy, we stop seeing the blessings that God has given us and instead just see how our blessings do not measure up to others.

So the question should not be “how much do you need?” for there will never be enough, but “how much have you been given?”