Faith of Our Mothers -- Mother's Day

II Timothy 1:3-7

May 12, 2024

 

            My mom once told me that when I was a little girl, I’m guessing probably around Garrison’s age, I came in from outside with a skinned knee or elbow or something. I did what little ones do and I showed it to her because I wanted her to take care of it and me.

She cleaned it and bandaged it and gave it a kiss and said, “There, it’s all better.” And apparently I looked askance at her when she tried to end her comfort there and said,

“Aren’t you gonna say ‘bless your little heart?!’”

            Clearly, I was a budding Presbyterian even then, because I recognized that this was not going decently and in order. I mean there is a process to these matters, mom. First you bandage the bruise, then you kiss it to make it better, then you say, you always say, “Bless your little heart.”

            At my mom’s memorial service I told another story. The first time I broke my right wrist I broke it so badly I had to have surgery. To help with the healing I had to wear it in a cast with pins and an external fixator that came out of the cast to keep it in place. After eight long weeks I was able to have the cast and the hardware removed and I was able to drive for the first time, although it was not easy.

Back then we lived in the same town as my parents did, so I carefully drove over to see them. My wrist looked terrible. It was black and blue, and my skin looked like skin looks after it has been in a cast for eight weeks. It was just awful. I need to say that I was in my early 40’s at this time with two young kids, but when my mom looked at my poor beat-up, battered wrist, she picked up my hand, kissed it, and said, “Bless your little heart.” There is a process to these things.

            Today is Mother’s Day and while it is a happy day for some, it is a challenging, difficult, and even painful day for others. That pain and difficulty needs to be recognized. I don’t want to romanticize or idealize motherhood either. Motherhood is hard, parenthood is hard, and it’s complex. Mothers are human, which means they have flaws and failings just like everyone else. My mother certainly had her failings, just as her mother did, and her mother before her, and just as I do. My kids will attest to that.

            So, as I said, I’m not trying to romanticize motherhood or mothers. But I have always found it interesting that when Paul wrote this second letter to Timothy – a letter that was meant to encourage Timothy to hold fast to his faith and to trust that God was with him, to find courage in the belief that the Holy Spirit was empowering him, and that he was being called to witness to the gospel – Paul began by telling Timothy to remember the faith of his grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice. Paul writes that Timothy’s faith is not a faith that began in him first, but that was passed down to him, handed down to him, like a precious family heirloom, from his grandmother to his mother to him. Timothy’s faith is generational, and it began with these two important women in his life.

            My father was and always will be an important and beloved influence in my life and in my faith. But my mother’s faith was a constant in my life as well. As was my gramma’s. And clearly that must have been true for Timothy as well because Paul lifts these two women up as examples of faith and as the two people who planted the seed of that faith in Timothy.  

            As I said, Paul is writing to encourage Timothy in his faith and in his witness. To be a follower of Jesus at that time, especially to be one who proclaimed the faith, meant that you could literally put your life in danger. Persecution, physical literal persecution, of believers was a reality. It took trust and it took courage to share the good news of the gospel. Paul wants Timothy to not only cling to the spark of faith in him but to remember from where his faith comes and from whom it comes.

            Paul tells Timothy,

            “… rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

            The word rekindle, used by the New Revised Standard Version, here is a faithful translation of the scripture, but in this instance I think it loses some of the urgency, the passion that the original Greek conveys. Paul is urging Timothy to “agitate,” to “stir into a flame” this gift of God. Paul is persuading him, exhorting him to coax the embers of his faith into a brightly burning flame. Paul is telling Timothy to get stirred up!

            I wonder if Paul’s advice to Timothy is actually a warning; a warning against complacency, against a faith that is settled and predictable and placid. Don’t take the faith you have for granted! Stir it up, ignite it, take the faith of the generations before you and fashion it into a faith of your own! Stir up the faith of your family, agitate the faith of your childhood, mold it and shape it into a faith that is yours.

            In the past I have preached on this passage on Confirmation Sundays or Sundays when we emphasize Christian Education because teaching, whether its in confirmation or Christian ed or some other setting, is the way we teach our children and young people the foundations of our faith and give them permission and safe space to ask questions, to take the faith that is passed on to them and make it their own.

            But this is not just for young people. Even those of us who have passed the age of confirmation are still called to be learners of faith, learners of scripture, and to always ask questions. It’s not about being argumentative, it’s about growing in our faith, agitating our faith, and rekindling our faith. Just as Paul exhorted Timothy to get stirred up, we too are called to get stirred up. To stir up our faith, to rekindle it, to agitate it. We are never too old, and never too learned to stir up our faith through questions and discussion and learning. We may grow older, but we should never grow complacent in our faith.

After all Paul was many things, but the one thing he was not was complacent. From what we know of him, especially through his letters, was that his passion never dimmed, his fervor for Jesus and the gospel was never extinguished. His faith in Christ pushed him and helped him push others to live up the high calling they were given. Considering he was most likely writing this letter to Timothy from a jail cell, imprisoned for preaching the gospel, his faith was not only the most important thing he had, but it was also all he had. Paul understood more than most what it means to persecute and to be persecuted for faith.

            Paul agitated that flame of faith within him, and he encouraged Timothy to do the same by remembering where his faith began – in his mother and his grandmother. And we are called to do the same – to remember the faith of our mothers. But as I said earlier, not everyone can do that. Motherhood is not a perfect state of being, nor are mothers. So, what I encourage us to do is rekindle the gift of faith that is within us from whoever it came, from whoever planted it within our hearts – whether it was our mothers or fathers or grandparents or people in the church or a teacher or some other person who inspired us and loved us … or all of the above.

            Fred Rogers talked about remembering the person or people who loved us into being. Because that love is the spark of faith. That love is the seed of belief and hope and endurance. That love is the flame that pushes us and continues to grow us. Remember the person or persons who loved you into being. Give thanks for the love they gave you and the love that they inspired in you, and then rekindle it. Agitate it. Stir it up. What amazing things we can do if we stir up the faith that is within us, if we fan the spark into a flame, if we refuse to be complacent, if we remember, always remember, the faith of our mothers, our fathers, and all those who loved us into being.

            Thanks be to God for them. Thanks be to God for all of you. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

 

I Chose You -- Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 15:9-17 (Acts 10:44-48)

May 5, 2024

 

            When Zach was in second grade, I went to pick him up from school and I had a chance to chat with his teacher. I didn’t get to do that very often because pick-up time was usually organized chaos. But this particular day was different, so his teacher and I were talking about how he was doing in school, his abilities, and his struggles, etc. She commented to me that it was such a treat for her to see friendships develop between the kids. Zach and another little boy in the class were becoming good friends, and they spent as much time as possible talking and talking and talking. The talking wasn’t a problem when they were doing their classwork, but when they were supposed to be getting ready for recess or lunch or getting to the bus to go home, she would have to remind them to stop talking and get a move on. Because we lived in Iowa when my kids were little, several months out of the year required lots of extra clothing to go outside – like snowpants and boots and waterproof gloves. It was already a time consuming process to get all this gear on, so if the kids dawdled and talked too much it made it even longer. But his teacher wasn’t upset about it. She was a veteran teacher; she was used to it. She just smiled and told me that this was a special time in a child’s life – the time when they really began to make friends.

            The word friends has taken on new meaning since the advent of social media. On some platforms, I am “friends” with people I’ve never met. But I’m “friends” with them because other friends connected us. I am also “friends” with people I rarely see and have no real contact with outside of the internet. And I’m even “friends” with people I didn’t much care for when we were in close proximity with one another – say junior high school. I once read a comment from a fellow preacher who said that friendship has been cheapened by social media. I can see how this is true.

            Maybe social media has cheapened the idea of friendship, but despite that, I stay with it. For one thing, if you want to plan a high school reunion or reunion of any kind, social media is the best. Social media has also helped me connect with friends I believed I’d lost. And on more than one occasion, social media has helped my friends and me help another friend who was struggling from trouble in life and in her circumstance. There are people that I’m friends with who I wish I had worked harder at interacting with when we saw each other more often. I wish I had worked harder at seeing them as fellow children of God, trying to figure out life the same as I was. If social media has cheapened the idea of friendship in some ways, in other ways it has widened my understanding of it. Social media has helped me think outside the box when it comes to friendship.

            Jesus might not have referred to his understanding of friendship with the disciples as thinking outside the box, but by calling them friends he was changing their status. They were no longer just disciples to a teacher or servants to a master, they were friends. When Jesus called them friends, he was not referring to pals or buddies or chums. He was referring to them as loved ones. Being his friends meant that they were part of his family, an integral part of his life and of him. Being friends meant more to Jesus than just a label or category. It was a relationship with God in God. Friendship meant abiding, remaining in God as well as with one another. Friendship meant obeying the commands of the True Friend, the True Vine. The number one commandment that Jesus gave was to love one another. You are my friends, you abide in me, and I abide in the Father. We all abide together in love. So, love one another as I have loved you. I chose you, and this is what I command. Love one another. And this is what love is, laying down one’s life for one’s friends.

            This is the love that Jesus embodied for his friends. Jesus literally laid down his life. He went to the cross and sacrificed his life for the love of his friends. However, Jesus does not only lay down his life for the disciples or the people of Galilee or the folks from his hometown of Nazareth. The cross was and the cross is for this world.

            Earlier in John’s gospel we hear the words “for God so loved the world …” It was for the world that Jesus was willing to die. Jesus not only preached sacrificial love, but he also lived it and he died for it. For God so loved the world – the cosmos, the entirety of God’s creation. So, I don’t think I am unfairly stretching the analogy to say that the entire world consists of Jesus’ friends, or at least a wide and beautiful diversity of people Jesus calls to be his friends and chooses to be his friends.

            In our text from Acts, Peter also gets a new understanding of what it means to be friends. All of chapter 10 consists of Peter being pushed to see through new eyes what it means to be clean and unclean, pure and impure. It begins with a centurion named Cornelius and Peter’s vision of a sheet filled with animals that by the standards of the Law were considered unclean. Peter wanted to obey the Law, to stick with what he knew and understood about what was right and what was wrong. But God insists through this vision that Peter see beyond the box that he previously dwelled in. This was not merely about clean and unclean food. This was about people. God was choosing people, calling people, all kinds of people. Saul, who persecuted believers, was chosen and called. Cornelius, a Roman centurion was chosen and called. And as we read in our verses in this chapter, the Holy Spirit descended even upon the Gentiles. In other words, a whole lot of people were chosen and called and answered that call to abide in God through Christ. A whole lot of different kinds of people were now friends.

            I know that this kind of friendship goes beyond social networking and the shallow kinds of friendships that we experience. I know that befriending the entire world is a daunting task to say the least. But I do think these passages remind us of the fact that loving God means loving God’s people, all of God’s people. And Jesus did not just suggest this, he commanded it. He commanded us to love one another, to see the other as a loved one, a member of the family. As he chose us, we must choose each other.

            Love comes up a lot in the gospels, and indeed in the whole of scripture. So, I know that I have said this before. Love is not just about how we feel. Love is not just warm fuzzy happy feelings. Let’s face it, we don’t always feel warm fuzzy even about the people we love most in the world because all of us make mistakes and mess up and hurt the people we love. Love is not just something we feel, love is something that we do. Love is a verb. Love is action. Love is deed. We may not feel love, but we must live love. We don’t have to feel love to live love. And we should always strive to live love.

Yet, it occurs to me that when Jesus commanded us to love one another, maybe he did mean that we should feel it as well. Maybe we were commanded to show love, to enact love, and to feel love for one another. By commanded us to feel love, Jesus commands us to change our hearts, change our minds, and change what we do as well. Maybe the command to love one another is to truly believe that the world is filled with our friends, our loved ones. How different would the world look if we not only acted this way, but felt this way, thought this way? What would the world look like, what would our country and communities look like, what would our church look like, if we strived to live out the commandment Jesus gave us? If we lived as though we were all friends? It is a tall order indeed. But Jesus is not just our role model. Jesus is our True Vine. We abide in him. He is the source of our love. He is the source of our friendship. He is the One from whom all friendship comes, and in whom we abide, remain, and stay. He chose us and calls us to choose one another. He laid down his life for his friends, and he did so with a loving heart. Can we do the same? Can we feel the same?

Let all of God’s children and all of our friends say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.

Along the Road -- Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 8:26-40

April 28, 2024

 

            Ethiopia is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Modern day Ethiopia is landlocked now, but its ancient boundaries bordered the Red Sea. The Queen of Sheba, who traveled to Israel to test the famed wisdom of King Solomon, was Ethiopian.

In north central Ethiopia in Lalibela, the Emperor Lalibela ordered rock hewn churches to be built when he reigned in around the 12^th century. When you hear the phrase, rock hewn, you might think of rough, rustic structures that are more like openings into caves. At least that’s what I thought. I couldn’t imagine what these churches might look like. These churches, which are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a place of pilgrimage for people of faith, are some of the most magnificent structures I’ve seen – and I’m going only from pictures. They are solid rectangular churches of granite that rise up from deep trenches. They were sculpted inside and out with magnificent detail. Even the roofs are sculpted with ornate crosses, which makes sense when you realize that the first sight of these churches comes from above. There is nothing primitive or rustic about these ancient churches. Instead they are a testament to the advanced architectural skills that have existed in Ethiopia for centuries.

            Ethiopia is also known for being one of the first countries in the world to make Christianity its state religion in around 300 ce. While it’s quite likely that with the trade routes between Ethiopia and the lands surrounding ancient Israel, word of this new religion, this Way, would have reached Ethiopia through multiple means, the credit is given to the story from Acts that we have before us this morning.

            Everything about this story of the encounter between this Ethiopian eunuch and Philip is both strange and wonderful. Unlikely is the word that comes to my mind. Philip’s story alone is remarkable. Just a few chapters before this one he and twelve others, including Stephen, were commissioned to feed and care for the widows in the community. That meant they oversaw food distribution. The apostles needed time to pray and spread the word so they laid hands on these twelve so that they would also be empowered by the Spirit to do their own unique work.  But the Spirit is never to be underestimated and it blows where it will. It moved Stephen to speak to the powers and principalities even though it meant his martyrdom by stoning. And Philip? After Stephen was killed, Saul led a severe persecution against all the believers in Jerusalem. So, except for the apostles, all the other believers were scattered. Philip traveled into Samaria. He had not been commissioned to preach or evangelize, but a calling is a calling. He preached to the Samaritans. And his preaching was extraordinary and powerful. The enmity between Israel and Samaria had not lessened since Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, but that human animosity could not hinder the Holy Spirit working through Philip as he preached. His preaching expelled unclean spirits from those who were possessed.  Folks who were lame or paralyzed walked again. Philip’s preaching even converted a magician named Simon. Simon was baptized, and although he once performed acts that amazed all those around him, now he was amazed by the miracles and signs that happened through Philip because of the Holy Spirit.

Regardless of what the original intentions were for Philip’s ministry, the Spirit blows where it will. It directed Philip in a completely different way than any of the apostles or Philip could have imagined, and the results were astounding!

If this were another kind of story in another kind of context, we might have heard that Philip was promoted to the next level of leadership. After all, his results in Samaria were incredible, why shouldn’t he move up the ladder of success? But that’s not the story we have before us. Instead of allowing Philip to remain in Samaria and continue his work there, Philip is told by an angel of the Lord – which is another name for the Holy Spirit – to get up and go south.  Take the wilderness road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.

The word wilderness in this road’s name is exactly what it implies: a wilderness, desert, little or no life, arid, dangerous, wilderness. One commentator I read pointed out that telling Philip to “go south” was not only a direction but a time. He would have been told to go about noon when the heat of the day was at its most extreme.

Let’s recap. Philip is told to travel the wilderness road, the arid, deserted, possibly dangerous road in the heat of the day. No one should have been traveling on that road at that time of day. No one should have been on that road to encounter, much less to preach or witness to. And if no one was there to preach to, what use would God have for Philip to journey along that road? It was all completely unlikely.

But if Philip questioned this directive, we don’t read about it in our text. He just got up and went. 

As he walked along that unlikely road at such an unlikely time, something else completely unlikely happened. Another traveler came down that dusty, deserted stretch, and an unlikely traveler at that. An Ethiopian eunuch, an official of the court of Queen Candace, indeed the person who oversaw her treasury, was in his chariot leaving Jerusalem for home. The Spirit tells Philip to go over to the chariot. Philip ran to it and when he did he heard the eunuch reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading, and the eunuch invited him to join him and guide him in the interpretation. 

Philip began with that Isaiah passage and told him, to quote the old hymn, the story of Jesus. When they came to some water, the eunuch was moved to ask for baptism. More specifically he said, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” 

The chariot was ordered to stop. They got out. Philip baptized the eunuch. When he and the eunuch came out of the water Philip was snatched up by the Spirit and taken away. Apparently the eunuch was not surprised by the unlikeliness of Philip disappearing from the road, because still drenched from the waters of baptism, he went on his way along that road rejoicing. Unlikely as it may have been, Philip found himself in Azotus. From there he went through each town proclaiming the good news.

            What was a court official of a queen doing on that road? What was a man, who on the surface seemed to have no qualifications to preach or evangelize or baptize, doing on that road? What was water doing on that road?! It was a wilderness road, an arid, desert road in the middle of an arid, desert land! But there it was, there when it was needed.

            And this eunuch, who was doubly an outsider – both a foreigner and one who would have been considered to be without gender, who would not have been allowed to be in the temple in Jerusalem – was not only traveling away from Jerusalem where he worshipped the God of Israel, he was also open-minded and open-hearted enough to have a stranger join him in his chariot and interpret scripture for him. Even as a eunuch, this man had greater social status and power than Philip did, but that did not prevent him from listening to Philip and trusting Philip to act in the name of Jesus.

            And Philip who was commissioned to table fellowship and nothing more has followed the Spirit’s call to preach, to witness, to go to unlikely places and unlikely people and tell the story of Jesus. Because of his willingness to go, he meets an unlikely person along that unlikely road and the good news of the gospel is shared, the Word of the Lord is heard and believed, and the world is changed once more. It’s all very unlikely.

Everything about this story, from beginning to end, resounds with the unlikely. None of it should have happened, yet it did. But why do I find the unlikeliness of this story surprising? I shouldn’t be surprised at all. None of us should. The word unlikely should really be the subtitle of scripture. The Holy Bible: An Unlikely Story about Unlikely People Being Called in Unlikely Ways to Bring an Unlikely Message to Unlikely People from God.

Abraham and Sarah, an unlikely couple who were childless and older than dirt, were promised by God that their descendants would number more than the sand on the ground and the stars in the sky. Jacob, their grandson, was a scoundrel, a schemer, a cheater, a liar, completely unlikely. But his name became Israel, and he was the father of a nation, God’s chosen people who would bring God’s blessing to the world. Moses should not have lived to see his first birthday, but the unlikely circumstances of his rescue and the unlikely way he was called by God, began the exodus of God’s people out of Egypt.

Ruth, a Moabite who should have gone back to her own people, stayed with her mother-in-law, Naomi, and married Boaz in the most unlikely of ways. Their unlikely marriage resulted in a grandson named Jesse and in a great-grandson named David. David was an unlikely choice for King, but King he was.

But what was most unlikely was that the Word became flesh, the Divine became human, starting off in life the way we all do – tiny, helpless, and powerless. And when that unlikely baby was born, the first tidings of his birth were announced to an unlikely group of shepherds! That tiny baby grew up to be an itinerant preacher and called together a woeful band of followers who never seemed to get it right; even when their teacher told them exactly what was going to happen. He would die but death would not win. In the early hours of the third day, without witnesses, he would be resurrected, the most unlikely event of all.

The expression says that “God moves in mysterious ways.” I would change the word mysterious to unlikely. God calls unlikely people to do unlikely deeds in unlikely ways. That’s how God’s purposes seem to be worked out – in the unlikely.

Our faith seems to be based on all that is unlikely. It doesn’t follow logic. To some it even sounds a bit nuts. But it seems to me that it is the unlikeliness of it all that makes the good news the Good News, because unlikely in God’s eyes does not equate to unworthy. Unlikely is not the same as unable. God’s purposes for good and for love and for life are worked out through unlikely people in unlikely places and in unlikely ways. That includes those whose call some might question. That includes foreigners and outsiders and Others. That includes all of us. God’s purposes for good and for life and for love are worked out through all of us, unlikely as we may be. And for that I say, thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

Amen.