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April 08, 2009

Roots & The Passion March 29, 2009

By Pastor Adam Thompson

Plants amaze me. They spring forth from the ground growing, changing, and moving without drawing attention and with only one goal….to spread their seed. For it is these seeds which contain the true thrust of the plants life. In each hard little case there is the tiniest bit of life.

Each little seed has a hard, glossy husk, within which its life is contained. But if it falls into the ground then its husk softens and rots and breaks open.

From inside the seed the power of its life begins to push outwards. The pattern of its life begins to unfold. Roots go down into the soil. A shoot comes up into the light where it grows stronger and taller and produces a single ear of corn. By harvest time there will be forty seeds where before there was only one. Next year if those forty seeds all fall on good soil they will produce sixteen hundred seeds. In the third year sixty-four thousand. In the fourth year over two and a half million. But only if that first seed falls to the ground and dies. So it is that Jesus offers life to the whole world. He offers himself, his life, to come alive in hundreds, then thousands, then millions of others. But first he must allow the hardness to fall away.

In our church calendar we annually observe Jesus' death through Lent, the season before Easter. During the Lenten season at Irving Park we have taken on John Wesley's three simple rules: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God as guides which set our hearts and minds on Christ. Today we enter into the third rule, stay in love with God. The imagery of the seed offered in the Gospel of John gives us a helpful metaphor which can inform our practical lives as we seek to stay in love with God.

In the text we see Jesus' last public appearance in the Gospel of John before being arrested and taken away to be crucified. Jesus' words drive home his pending fate as he pleads with those around him to recognize the significance of the events before them. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” This text could be interpreted in a way that leads to self denial and even self hatred for the translation of the original Greek seems to be convincing us that if we are to gain eternal life we must hate our lives, and if we love our lives we gain nothing.

If we are going to bring this seemingly backward advice to a sensible interpretation we must first look further at the context of the text. The first four books of the Christian New Testament are called the Gospels and they contain the stories of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The first three Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These are often called the synoptic Gospels because they contain several of the same stories and share a format of parables and short saying from Jesus about the Kingdom of God. John has longer monologues from Jesus about himself, his relation to God, and why and how the reader should believe in him.

In the section we read Jesus' disciples are approached by “some Greeks”. This is important because of who they are and how they approach Jesus. Remember Jesus has been raised as and is a Jew. At this point there are no Christians, but instead there are people who follow Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth. Most of Jesus' followers are also Jewish and most the stories we hear about from Jesus are in Jewish settings but in this, his last public dialogue, Jesus' message extends beyond Judaism to the non-Jewish Greek Gentiles. Even more this happens through Jesus disciples. The Greeks have some curiosity about Jesus and come to the disciples who point them to Jesus. This is a replica of the church after Jesus' death. Still today the church should serve as a place where people who are curious are pointed toward Jesus.

Although we only know these people as “the Greeks” even this small label can give us some insight. The Greco Roman culture was not so unlike our own the culture defined life and sent individuals on quests for self indulgence and self glory. Jesus, however, is saying that if you are to follow him you must die to all that self promotion and trust that God will make us far more bountiful than any action we could manage on our own. The seed's hard exterior represents the “cultures self aggrandizing life” and in our hatred for it, that shell breaks away and decays so that God given life can spring forth as a tiny root which plants itself in fertile soil and eventually creates life far more abundant.

We are seeds. Each of us are on some part of this process of breaking down the outer shell, planting our roots, and pushing forth the flowers which multiply life. At times the process seems beautiful, at times it seems constraining, at times we easily move from one step to the next, at times we struggle to find our way or even are forced to start over again, but through it all we hear this rule: stay in love with God.

The way we stay in love with God is planting our roots in the fertile soil of Christian Practices that have been around for thousands of years. A Christian Practice is anything you do that puts you in places where God has consistently moved through and inspired God's people. Of course God can reach our hearts however God chooses, but our traditions have given us certain practices that seem to work best for breaking away that outer shell and pushing our roots down deep. Public worship, contemplative prayer, meditation, reading scripture, prayer as art, Holy Communion, confession, fasting, and many more. There are hundreds of practices and the further we plant our roots and explore them the more likely we are to find the ones that work for us. You may have never heard of a Christian Practice before which means you need resources if you are going to do them….that is what the church is for. It is the role of the pastor and the church to provide those resources. Look at your life and find what practices you already do if you aren't experiencing the connection to God that you desire don't continue forcing yourself to do them come talk to me and we can explore other options. Your faith experience is unique to you and will require personalized practices that can help you stay in love with God.

We are seeds. Christian practices are our fertile soil. Jesus is telling us to fall down and allow our hard shells to fall away so that we can plant our roots deep into that soil. When we do the beauty of life springs forth in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Christ modeled this for us and in his death and resurrection he spread life exponentially just as a corn seed. And now he is asking us to do the same.

As a symbol of our desire to lay down our lives with Christ there is a bucket of seeds here. When you come up to receive communion grab a seed and push it down into the soil. Think about what practice you need to sink yourself into to stay in love with God and then come forward and take communion as a sign that God will meet you in this place.

Posted by vickie at 09:27 PM

April 05, 2009

Palm Sunday Sermon

Palm Sunday Sermon
April 5, 2009, Mark 11:1-11

On that day so long ago, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and was given a king’s welcome. Crowds, four to five people deep, lined the dusty road jockeying for position to get a look at him. Those who had previously been touched by Jesus brought others down to the road. They shared their experience of Jesus with excited voices and gestures.

At some point in the impromptu parade, children broke from the sidelines. They ran ahead shouting Jesus’ name and singing songs of joy. Other children joined in. As Jesus passed by, people didn’t stand in place, watching him ride off down the road. They ran ahead to find a new spot in the crowd to get another glimpse of him. The crowd never thinned. In fact it got larger and louder as Jesus slowly made his way down the hill from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. Squeezing through one of many city gates, Jesus made his way to the Temple. It would have been impossible to miss the action and excitement that this event had on the average person gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover Holiday.

Today is Palm Sunday--the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian Tradition. Palm Sunday begins the week on a high note. As we move throughout the week, the feelings quickly dwindle to leave a bad taste in our mouth, a sad song on our lips, and a tear in our eye. And while we are still grieving, Jesus is resurrected from the dead and we celebrate his Kingship again next Sunday on Easter morning.

It is possible to go from the high of Palm Sunday to the heights of Easter Sunday without taking the journey with Jesus through the darkness and despair of Holy Week. But to do that is to miss the strength of Jesus’ witness and depth of God’s love. To miss the events of Holy Week is to forget that God not only resides in the celebration God also resides in the dark, difficult times in our lives. And God will make a way where there seems to be none.

Our theme this Lent has been Do No Harm, Do Good, and Stay in Love with God. One Sunday in March, we acknowledged that we live in a broken world with broken relationships. Broken relationships are a part of living and learning to get along with others.

When it comes to human relationships, our world today is not so different then the world was when Jesus came. We like to think we’re more evolved, and in some ways we are. But when it comes to human relationships and our ability to harm others, we seem to make the same mistakes as our ancestors did. And when we think about our ability to do good, have we really come very far? We have the resources to feed the world but not the will to do it.

Our only hope in the broken world in which we live is to Stay In Love with God. To put our faith and trust in God to guide us, direct us, and love us into the people God created us to be. Jesus is the ultimate example of what this can look like. In Jesus we witness what it means to stay in love with God, whether you’re on top of the world or your world has come crashing in around you. As much as humanly possible, return God’s love for you and God will see you through.

And so we gather here this morning, to hear some of the events of Jesus’ last week. This morning we will move quickly from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Betrayal, the Denial, and end with Jesus being hauled off to be crucified. We will resume the events of Jesus’ crucifixion at the Good Friday Service at 6:30.

At Christmas, the birth of Jesus we are filled with excitement and anticipate unlimited possibilities for this child. Now the child has grown up and he faces decisions that will change the world. Throughout the course of his short time on earth, Jesus touched so many people.

And by retelling his story, Jesus continues to touch people’s lives to this day. As you listen to the events of Jesus’ last week, listen not only with your ears but with your heart. What is God saying to you in the events of Holy Week? What message does God have for you today, for this time in your life? Can I honestly believe that God has a message for each and every one of you this morning?

Yes. Because the more familiar I get with Jesus’ last week, the more I realize he faced events that pushed his faith to the limit. I’ve come to realize that “This is my story...This is our story!” How many of us have faced or are facing challenges that push our faith to the limit? How we act in these difficult times will not only impact us but have the potential to change the world around us for the greater good. We don’t always realize it, but we touch many people throughout our lives. Our influence can be positive or negative. It’s often up to us.

For example, when we come together in difficult times, instead of scattering and isolating in fear, God can use us to support and care for people around us. When we react to violence with non-violence, God can use us to make the world a more peaceful place. When we admit that we are frightened and humbly kneel before God, God will strengthen us for the work ahead.

If we act like Jesus, putting our faith and trust in God even when we don’t fully understand or want to follow God’s path, God will use us to touch the lives of people in unimagined ways.
In other words, if we so choose, Jesus’ story can be the main story that defines our lives. It can be the foundation upon which we build our life—a life offered to God as faithfully and lovingly as we are able to give.

So, in a few minutes we will settle in to hear The story one more time. Open your heart to the idea that you are a part of something larger than yourself--our world, our God, our story for all the children of the world. And as part of the story, listen for God’s message to you, this morning. It’s there, believe it!

Posted by vickie at 10:00 AM