Luke 14:1-2; 7-14 - Parties with Jesus

We all love parties: Birthday Parties, Anniversary Parties, Christmas Parties, Easter Parties, New Years Eve Parties, End of the School year, Beginning of the School year, Graduation Parties, Retirement Parties, House warming parties. If there is something going on, for which we might possibly think of throwing a party for, there is a party. We seriously need very little excuse to throw a party.
I have to say I love throwing parties. I love everything about throwing a party: Cooking, Decorating, having the house all sparkly and clean; simply having everybody over and having a good time. I think it is all great. I love having people over and enjoying being together. And I know I am not the only the here, who can say that.
Here in this passage, not only is Jesus at a party, but he tells two parables that talk about parties, in an attempt to teach his listeners about how we should live our lives and act toward other people. Jesus told these parables because of actions he was seeing among the party members which he did not believe were appropriate for people who were his followers, unfortunately it was perfectly acceptable behavior for party guests living in that day.

At parties during the time of Jesus, seating was important. Most of the time when we set up parties we don’t give much thought about who sits where, unless it is a wedding and we are trying to make sure that everyone at any given table gets along with and will have something in common with all the other people at their table, so that everyone will enjoy who they are sitting with during the reception. Otherwise we don’t give that much thought to it.
But in Jesus’ day, where you sat at the table was VERY important. At that time where you were seated in respect to the host was determined by your social status. The higher social status you had the closer you sat to the host. People cared a lot about where they sat at the table and would be very put out if the order was incorrect. Where you sat said something about how important you were in the community. It indicated how important the host thought you were, as well as dictated to others at the party how they were to perceive your social status. So when people arrived at a party everyone was trying to sit in the very best seats closest to the host so that others would see that they were important.
Not only was it important where you sat at a party but it was important for you to be invited to the right people’s houses. When people were invited people to come to a party at your house, the only people who were invited were those who were of the same social status and perhaps those who were of a slightly higher status. You only went to parties where the host was on the similar social status to you. Whenever you were invited to a party you were expected to throw a party in return and invite your host. In order to go to a party you therefore had to be able to throw a party for the host which would be on par with the party you attended at their house. So because of this, whose house you went to and who invited you to their house determined your social status.
Jesus believed that there was a better way to act as both a guest and a host. He did not see this constant jockeying for position and honor, that was so prevalent in his society, as proper way for anybody, much less someone who claimed to be one of his followers.
Jesus thought that that we should not try to bring honor to yourself by claiming your social status by sitting closer to the host than you should, it might end up shaming yourself and caused you to play a social game which Jesus felt was better left un-played.
Jesus also thought that instead of only inviting people of your own economic class to your parties, only inviting your friends, relatives and the neighbors you wanted see and with whom you wanted to be seen, you should invite the poor. Why? “For all those that exalt themselves will be humbled and all those that humbles themselves will be exalted” and “and you will be blessed because they can not repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Jesus saw that it was better to invite people over to your house who might not have enough to eat or be struggling to make it everyday, than to invite people over for a dinner party so that all your friends and neighbors would know exactly where you stood in the social pecking order. Jesus saw that giving of yourself to those who had less than you as a way of humbling yourself.
This passage begins with Jesus and the Pharisees at a party and Jesus is noticing how they are all jockeying for position so that they can sit in the place of honor. Jesus was commonly seen amongst the Pharisees, they were the “good Christian people” of his day. You know people like most of us. People who go to church on Sundays, read their Bible during the week, try to live the way God called them to live. They did everything that they were suppose to do, so that they could be the best followers of God that they could possible be and tried to do things to encourage everyone else to do so as well.
The Pharisees, as the “good church people” of their day, they were drawn to Jesus. Often times he taught things which resonated with them, that encouraged them and made them feel justified their way of life, but they were also leery of him. Sometimes, he said things they were not so sure about, you know like that thing he said about the Sabbath being made for man and not man for the Sabbath; they were not so sure about that. So they were watching Jesus closely to see if he would do anything that would let them know just where he stood. They were watching him to see if they thought was up to snuff. You see they thought pretty highly of themselves and had kind of designated themselves as the keepers of what was right and wrong when it came to religious stuff and they wanted to see if they could put their stamp of approval on Jesus.
But while they were watching him trying to see what kind of person he was, Jesus was watching them and saw exactly what kind of people they were. Here they were all gathered together at this party and they were trying to exalt themselves in everything they did. Not only did they see themselves as the religious authorities but they wanted to do everything they could to exalt themselves when they were among people, so people would look up to them and respect them and give them honor. Here they were worried about what Jesus was doing to see if he was up to snuff and all the while they were spending much time, worry and energy trying to sit in the seat of most honor at a dinner party.
Jesus does not think that how high you are on the social ladder is at all important. Jesus does not think that we should do things to show how great we are as far as social standing goes. All this does is to allow other people to give us honor and move us “closer to the host.” Jesus does not see this as a worth while endeavor at all. Jesus does not think we should spend our time with certain people so that those around us will be impressed with the kind of people with whom we associate.
So as we look at this passage we might ask ourselves, Does Jesus really never want us to invite our friends and relatives to our house for a dinner party? Should we instead always invite people who are needy and struggling? Does Jesus think it is wrong to hang out with your friends? That instead of spending time with people you like and get along with you, should go find the poorest people you can find and spend time with them instead? No, not really.
Of course it is good for us to share from our bounty with those who are struggling and who have less than us, but this passage is not so much about who we are inviting to our parties and where we are sitting as much as it is about humility. Jesus is concerned with us exalting ourselves, with us thinking to highly of ourselves; thinking that we are better than other people for whatever reason.
The Pharisees thought they were better than other people because they were such good Jews. They also then struggled with each other to be seen as the most honored, and to sit nearest the seat of the host. They saw themselves as above others and better than other people.
As Christians it is easy to think that we are better than everyone else –After all we ARE Christians. We live our lives by a different better standard. We love God; we strive to serve God with all we do. Due to all these things we generally are better people than most people.
I don’t know about you but I have fallen into this trap. In middle school I was teased a lot. I am sure most of us were. The only people who enjoyed middle school were the ones who made it a horrible set of years for the rest of us. In spite of the horrible teasing or perhaps because of it, I needed to feel superior to my tormentors in some way, so I thought I was better than everyone, because I was a Christian. I tended to lookdown on everyone else. I was a better person. I believed in Jesus. You can make fun of me but it does not matter because I am going to heaven and you are going to Hell. I have to admit it was kind of very Christianized version snooty. What I did not think about was what my actions said about Jesus Christ and what it meant to be a Christian in reaction to and toward my fellow students.
I was not a very good example of Christ-likeness. I was doing an alright job at the loving God part of being a Christian, but I was not doing a good job at the loving others part. I was actually fairly unloving in my response and attitudes toward my peers. I was doing quite a lot to honor myself, to lift myself up in my own eyes and I did kind of lord it over my peers. It really must have given then a warped view of who God is.
When we honor ourselves and lift ourselves above those around us and then call ourselves Christians, we are saying something about God which simply not true. When Christians act superior toward other people and are openly calling themselves Christians, those people will assume that we are representing the God we say we serve. And they will assume that our God is just like us. Jesus calls for us to not exalt ourselves, but to instead humble ourselves so that God may be honored through us and through our actions.

Luke 13:10-17 - Freedom

She was bent, hunched over. Nobody really paid much heed to her. She could tell that people purposely avoided her by the wide path they around her as they passed by. She was not so much a person; she was a thing, something to be avoided. She could tell when someone noticed her, she could tell by how their feet stopped and then shuffled this way and that as they tried to figure out which way they were going to retreat to get by her. They would stop and then they would first try the left and then try to escape to the right, if that way did not work they would stop again and then quickly and nimbly find widest path of avoidance back to the left. She was always amazed at how nimbly other people’s feet moved. Her feet never moved that nimbly. Perhaps when you did not have to strain your neck in order to see the path which lay before you instead of always seeing what was on the ground directly in front of you, it was easier to move quickly and easily from side to side like that.
She looked at her feet. She had bared feet. It had been quite a lot of years since they had had any type of shoe to protect them from weather and from wear. They were dirty and they were worn. She could tell by looking at them just as much by feeling them that they were tired feet. The first thing she noticed about other people was there feet. She could tell how far someone had come by how dirty they were. She could also tell a little bit about their status in society by their sandals, the quality of the leather or the lack of sandals all together could tell you a lot about a person.
She had seen him walk by, the new teacher who had come to town. She had liked him the moment she had seen his feet. They looked like they did quite a bit of walking. But they also did not look like the kind of feet which shuffled or hesitated, she could not quite put her finger on what it was about them but she liked them. She nodded to herself when saw them; they were good feet, probably belonged to a good man.
She had heard the buzz about this new teacher, who had come to town and she had been interested to see him and hear what he had to say. She had come to the synagogue this morning specifically to hear what he had to say. She was standing there, listening to him speak now. She could see a small bug as it made its way across the floor, it was about to crawl up on some lady’s foot when we was caught utterly by surprise. There were the teacher’s feet right there in front of her. When did she loose track of what he was saying. She had not noticed him move over to her. Nobody purposefully moved over to her. Most of the feet she saw did their best to move away from her, but here were his feet right there, purposefully and steadfastly planted right in front of her. Not only had he moved over to her, not only had he stopped right in front of her, but he was talking to her. He was telling her that she was being set free from her ailment. He was touching her and her back was straightening. She saw his feet, then she saw his robe where his knees would be, his chest and then his face, gently, kindly looking at her. The first face she had truly seen in 18 years and it was the most beautiful face she had ever seen.

Chronic illness in Jesus’ day was seen a little differently than it is seen today. Today friends and neighbors would do what they could to help and support a person who was hindered in day to day life. In Jesus’ day a person who had a chronic condition such as the one this lady suffered from would cause that person to ostracized and avoided. Their illness would effectively render them invisible to the greater society. They would pass through life alone and unseen. It would almost be as if they were not a person at all but another part of the scenery, an object which needed to be gotten around in order to go about your day.
This woman went to the synagogue that day as she would have on any other Sabbath. Perhaps she was coming especially to hear the new rabbi who had come to town. Jesus’ presence would have caused quite a stir and nobody would have wanted to miss being a synagogue that Saturday, since it was his practice to speak in the synagogues on the Sabbath.
This woman would have come to the synagogue that day with little more expectations than to hear the new teacher who was in town and participate in the weekly worship service. But this turns out to be far from a normal Sabbath for this woman. Not only did she get to hear the new rabbi speak, but she got to have a life altering encounter with Jesus. Jesus was teaching in the synagogue that day. She was not coming to the synagogue that day with any thought about getting healed; one could expect that this was completely outside her expectations at this point in her life, after spending nearly two decades suffering from this problem.
While Jesus was there he saw her. Not only did he actually see her, but he walked over to her and spoke to her. You can only imagine how amazed she must have been at that point which of course would then pale at her amazement when Jesus reached out touched, declared to her that she was healed and she was. For the first time in 18 years she could stand properly. She came that morning to worship and leave, unnoticed and ignored as she always was, but instead she encountered the Son of God and here life was changed, forever in an instant.
Most people, who saw her that day, if they saw her at all, saw an undesirable. Someone to be avoided and ignored but Jesus, Jesus was different, when Jesus saw her he saw someone who was in need of his touch, in need of his healing. He saw a person who was suffering and he reached out and alleviated her suffering. He saw a woman who was bound and enslaved by something completely beyond her control and he acted to release her from that bondage and set her free from that slavery.

As soon as we think we understand what this passage is about it takes a turn. The passage begins by looking at this woman, her suffering and how Jesus stepped into her life and set her free. But then in steps the leader of the synagogue to make sure everyone understands the place of the Sabbath in their lives.
So lets’ do that real quick, let’s take a look at the purpose of the Sabbath. First of all we must remember God set up the Sabbath. In the very beginning of Genesis the author explains to his readers that, “On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work he had done in creation.”(Gen 2:2-3) It was suppose to be a day which was different in all others in that on all the other days you worked to live and to survive. On this one day you were suppose to lay all that in the hands of your creator and rely on God to sustain you. To stop all work, to trust God that even if you rested all that needed to get done would still get done. It was about relying on God and it was about stopping all that you did, taking a break from all that you did and allowing yourself to slow down and enjoy the life God had given to you and creation which God created. Part of the though process was if God needed to rest surely we humans who are not God, are far less than God and therefore do not have the eternal stamina of God must also need to rest.
The Sabbath was a day given by God and was suppose to be a day given over to God. Not only was it a day pointed to in the creation narrative but it was a part of the covenant which the Israelites had made with God. “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six day you shall labor and do all your work. But the Seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” (Ex. 20:8-10a) It was a day to remember that God brought them out of slavery in Egypt. That it was God who heard them cry, that it was God who came to rescue them when they were enslaved; that it was God who said, “My people will suffer no more!” Therefore, they were called to, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work-you, or your son or your daughter, or your male for female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female salve may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord you God brought you out from there with mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord you God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deut. 5:12-15)
The Sabbath was about resting, it was about respecting God and it was about trusting the creator to take care of creation. It was a day which called for people to rely on God. It was a day which allowed people to rest and rejuvenate. It was a day during which all the other cares of living were stripped from the people and they could focus on what they were created for, that is relationship with God and with each other. It was a day where nothing which HAD to be done could stand between you and your God. Traditionally it was also a day during which nothing which HAD to be done could stand between you and spending time with the people God had placed in your life, your family and those closest to you.

In the Gospel this morning, the synagogue leader calls Jesus out for misusing the Sabbath for doing something which had been forbidden by God to do on this day. He tells the crowd that God allows for these things to be done on all the other days of the week but they were not to be done on the Sabbath. But Jesus did not see things this way. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says the Sabbath is made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath. That is to say the Sabbath was set up for the Good and for Benefit of humankind. Humankind was not set up to serve the Sabbath. The rest we are to take on the Sabbath was not a rest we were to take for the benefit of God. God does not need a day dedicated solely to worship. God does not need for us to rest. We need the Sabbath. We need a day which says, “STOP!” Everyone needs a day during which we can set aside all that worries and presses in on us. God knows that unless we are ordered to stop, to rest to take a break, our inclination is to go and go and go and never stop. God knows this is not good for us. God also knows that in our go, go, go nature we tend to begin to rely on ourselves, we tend to begin to believe that it is us who are making things happen that it is our work, our labor which keep the work spinning. God knows that we fear that if we stop everything will come tumbling down. God knows that we, whether we admit it or not believe that the just might stop spinning if we do not work to keep it going. God knows that we need the reminder that God is God. God knows that we need acts of faith to help us rely on God. God knows that our relationships with each other and with our God suffer when we are not practically ordered to take time, to rest, rely on God, and focus on our relationships with on another and with our God. The Sabbath was created for us, for our good, for our benefit and not the other way around.
But before we all gang up on the leader of the synagogue, shake our heads disapprovingly and scorn him because he is yet another Jewish, scribe, Pharisee, teacher of the law, who was wrong and against Jesus, let me stand up and speak on his behalf. After all I don’t like it when anybody gangs up on anybody, especially if that person probably does not deserve to be tried and executed (so to speak) by a group of people who did not know him and lived some 20 centuries after his death.
You see I think the leader of the synagogue although misguided has a very good point here. Sabbath was not a day during which people where suppose to seek healing. If someone was actively seeking healing on the Sabbath, this would require the “healer” to do work on the Sabbath. It simply was not fair to tell some people they needed to let go, relax, take the day off and rely on God and then tell other people this does not apply to you. You don’t get to rest, you don’t get to let go, you don’t special time to rely on God. But there were some things which could be done on the Sabbath; in fact they were things which really could not be put off for another day. God made a list of these things and guess what, healing people was not something which God had seen as something which could not wait until the Sabbath was over.
So when the leader stepped in he was actually upholding what God had said. The leader wanted to protect the Sabbath and by doing so was in fact protecting people. The leader did not want people to start coming to the Sabbath worship service expecting to be healed, thus imposing on another person’s Sabbath and not allowing, healers to have this one day when they could set that aside, rest, worship and rely on God.
But Jesus was not so concerned about what might happen. Jesus was not concerned about someone imposing on his Sabbath. This woman had not come seeking to be healed but Jesus had chosen to heal her and he would have done it whether it was the Sabbath or the fourth of July. Jesus was not concerned about what day of the week it was; Jesus was concerned for the freedom of this woman. Jesus saw a woman who was enslaved to an illness and he desired to set her free and this was something which, in his mind, was completely in line with the spirit of what the Sabbath was all about.
Jesus argues his case by looking at the acts which God had allowed people to do on the Sabbath. God made allowances for animals to be set free to be able to get to the watering trough on the Sabbath, if God felt it important for an animal to be set free then how much more was God concerned about the freedom of those whom God created and loved. Basically Jesus was asking, “isn’t the freedom of this woman from the bonds of this illness, so that she may able to move freely more important than releasing the bonds of an animal so that it may be free to move to get water and food as it so choose?”
The Sabbath was not merely about sanctity and rest. It was also a day about being set free. It was a day which reminded the people about how God had set them free when they were slaves in Israel. It was a day in which a person was set free from the day to day grind, a day which was free, free of work free of worry; a day to be free to rest, worship and reunite yourself with your creator and with those around you. When you think about it that way, healing this woman is apart of the spirit of the Sabbath

Now I don’t want you to walk away from here today saying, that the pastor does not believe in taking a Sabbath; a “Sabbath” being a day set aside to rest, rejuvenate, worship God and focus on our relationships with each other and with God. I firmly and whole heartedly believe that God calls us to take one day, just one day out of each week to, STOP; to stop our normal routine, to take a break from that which drives us and causes us to go, go, go and rest, relax, take a day long deep breath, rejuvenate, focus on our relationships with one another and focus on our relationships with each other. I firmly believe that the call to Sabbath is just as strong as a call on the people of God today as it ever was.
The point of this passage it not that Jesus does not think that it is important that we have a day set aside for worshiping God and for rest, as commanded in Gen, Ex, and Deut. This passage is not here to show us how legalistic the Jews in Jesus’ day were and get down on them for it. The point of this passage is freedom, that God desires freedom for all those who are called by Christ’s name, that God desires freedom for all humanity, that God desires freedom for all creation.
The key words in this passage are “set free” and “bound.” Jesus tell the leader, as well as us, that this woman was bound by her illness, just like the animals God made provisions for in the OT law, just like the Israelites in slavery. Jesus tells the woman that she is set free, just like the animals, just like the Israelites. Jesus is concerned about setting the captives free, Jesus himself tells us this when he read from the scroll of Isaiah when he taught in the synagogue in Capernaum. Setting the captive free is one of the things we are told the Messiah would come and do. And here we have Jesus doing just that. Christianity and Freedom
People often think about Jesus in the do’s and do not’s. When we think about what it means to become a Christian we think about how when we become a Christian we have to give up what we want to do. We have to give up our Sunday mornings and spend that time at church. We have to give up our time, so we can spend time reading God’s word and praying. We have to give up getting to act in the ways we want to and give up simply saying whatever we want to say and instead we need to allow God to work in us and through us, acting as Jesus would act and saying the things Jesus would have us say. When we think not merely becoming a Christian and we think about becoming a Nazarene it gets even more complicated. We have to think about giving up drinking, smoking, participating in types of entertainments which would not glorify God, and being careful that our manner of dress reflects our belief in holiness of heart and life. I am sure many of us remember the days when as Nazarenes we were not allowed to, to dance (in fact I resigned my position as NYI vice president so I could go to my senior prom), go to theaters, wear earrings, wear weddings bands, wear hats which drew attention to one self, and of course the strict guidelines as to what made up a broach of modest size. It seems as if there can always be something added to the list of what a “good Christian” does and does not do. As Christians it is easy to get caught up in all these rules. And at their heart they have our best interest in mind. They are there to help us have a concrete understanding of what someone who is living and acting in Christ-like ways may act. But when we start focusing on the rules for the rules sake and not looking to the heart of the matter or to the real purpose such guidelines were laid down, we can be just like the leader, worried that rules have been broken and that the breaking of the rule this one time will lead to eternal rule breaking and soon utter chaos. So often, we are trying to do the right thing and are trying to simply encourage others to do the right thing, just like the synagogue leader. But too many times, we have our focus on the wrong thing. Our hearts are in the right places, we want what is right for God and for those around us, but our focus is not on God, our focus is not on the heart of the issues our focus is on the rules and the breaching of the rules, as if the rules themselves are an entity which need to be protected and shielded lest they be harmed in any way shape or from.
This passage is here to show us that Jesus did not come to bind us up with a set of rules, but came to set us free. The “rules” that we get so focused on are not and should not be the focus of our lives as Christians. In fact they can not be the focus. Least we loose who Jesus is and what Jesus came to this earth to do. Jesus is freedom focused; focused on our freedom to love God, our freedom to live in relationship with him, our freedom to live lives that are worthy of the God that we love so much. Living life as a Christian, not a set of rules, it is that ability to live life the way it was created to be lived.
Being free is about allowing yourself to be free, as well as about allowing others to be free. It is easy to not only judge ourselves, but it is all too easy to begin to judge others by a set of standards and rules. We inhibit not only our own freedom but we try to enslave others in the same bounds in which we bind ourselves. Not only do we beat ourselves up but we make sure others know when they have done things wrong. Jesus simply did not come so that we could live our lives bound by a set of rules, no matter how right those rules may be. Jesus came so that we can know the freedom of living life for Jesus, the freedom of living life the way we were created to live, reunited in relationship with one another and reunited in relationship with our God. Living like as Christian may mean that the way in which we live our life will align with a list or a set of guidelines but that is not because we live by that set of rules or guidelines but because when we are living life reunited with our God, loving God and neighbor the way we were created to love it just so happens to align with that list or set of guidelines. We differently because we are compelled to live differently because we are living lives marked by love; marked by love of God and love of neighbor. We live differently, but we live this way freely out of love not obligation and living life this way results in a life marked by joy. Luke tells us that the lady and the crowd rejoiced afterward the healing and this whole discussion, because they were truly free to love, to worship God and to honor the Sabbath, not because God commanded them to do so but because these things are also a part of living life the way God calls for us to live life.
Following the commands of Jesus should be a freedom which we embrace because we love him, not a chore that we do because we must, because we are commanded to do so, or because it is on a set of rules or a set of guideline which tell us what it looks like to love Jesus. So allow yourself to rejoice in your freedom, allow yourself to follow Jesus, allow yourself to love the way God calls you to love. You are free to live, you are free to love you are fee to be the people God called you to be to be the people you were created to be and now THAT is something to rejoice because about because YOU, like this woman, have been set free.

Luke 12:49-56 - Looking to the signs

Luke 12:49-56

The passage we have before us this morning begins with fire and ends with the weather, two powerful forces in the ancient world as well as today. Both the weather and fire can be forces which bring us health and well being as well as forces which can bring utter destruction to our lives in mere moments.
Jesus begins this section by declaring the he came to bring fire to the earth and then goes on to say how he wishes for the fire to have already begun. At first glance this sounds pretty harsh. Most of us when we hear this probably immediately go to the destructive nature of fire. It makes me think of the song we use to sing as children which was about the Chicago fire. “Old lady Leary. . .” All it took to reduce a large portion of old Chicago to ruble was the misstep of Old Lady’s Leary’s milk cow. When we think of fire we often think about the destruction it can cause. Fire when, let go, can reduce a house or even a whole city to ruin right before our eyes. This cause us to look at this passage with an understanding of destruction, perhaps fire as judgment. Thinking about fire in this way causes us to come to this passage thinking about destruction and it makes it sound as if Jesus is telling us that he came here to burn and destroy, to decimate and to bring ruin the earth. Yet, we know from other places in scripture that Christ came to bring love, salvation, redemption, to draw all humanity back to God. So the idea of Jesus coming to lay the earth to waste with fire seems to be completely contradictory to what we know from other places in scripture. When our understanding of one verse seems to contradict what we know to be true from other places in scripture, this usually means we have missed something in the passage at hand.
Perhaps we are looking at fire in the wrong way. The fact of the matter is that fire is not simply known for its destructive nature. Fire can also be a very good thing. Fire was what cooked food. Fire was something which brought light during the night and gave warmth to a home when it was cold. Fire was that which held the wild animals at bay in the wilderness. It was also used to refine metal, it was used to burn out the impurities, make the metal stronger and to make it malleable so it could be shaped and formed into the properly.
In this light fire is a good thing, something which can form and shape, something, which can purify and cleanse. If we see this not as Jesus calling for fire to come to the earth to destroy but as fire coming to purify and cleanse, it makes sense why Jesus is desiring for that fire to already be kindled, for the fire to begin its work as soon as possible. Jesus desires for us all to be cleansed and purified, he desires for the work he came to this earth to be completed, for every heart to be turned toward God and for all creation to be living the way God created creation to live.
The image of fire can then be directly linked to the cleansing purifying fire of Pentecost. The believers were gathered together in the upper room as they were instructed by Jesus to do and suddenly a mighty rushing wind came and tongues of fire rested on all of them and they were filled with the Spirit of God. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is often referred to as a second baptism. The first baptism is a baptism with water and the second being a baptism of fire. Jesus, then, desires for the Spirit of God to fall up on all creation, to cleanse and to purify as the Spirit would do following his death and resurrection on the day of Pentecost.
Jesus points forward to the purifying, cleansing fire of Pentecost and the second baptism, and then almost immediately says that he himself still has a baptism to undergo. The death and resurrection pointed to in baptism was yet to come, therefore Jesus still has a baptism before him. Before the fire can come, before humanity can be reunited to their creator, Jesus must first be laid beneath the earth and rise up out of it again, as symbolized in the going under the water and rising back up out of it again which took takes place whenever someone is baptized. Not only is Jesus waiting with much anticipation for all this to come to pass but before the fire can come, before the Spirit can fall on believer, first Jesus must suffer, die, and be raised from the dead, and his passion and death is something to which Jesus is not looking forward, it brings him distress. It is much like a mother to be, who looks forward to holding her baby in her arms but does not necessarily look forward to whole actually giving birth part. Although she may be greatly anticipating the moment when she will hold her brand new baby in her arms, the idea of the reality of what it will take to actually give birth can cause great distress. Likewise as Jesus looks forward to the baptism of death which lies before him this causes him great stress, although it will ultimately lead to that which he desires most for the world.
But then Jesus tells us that even though the coming of the refining fire of the Spirit which is to come, is good thing, the good that is to come might not be what we want it to be. It might not be what we expect it to be. Many people expected the messiah to be a great military leader who would come and make all things right for Israel, who would restore the political fortunes of Israel and restore their national identity and set himself on the throne of David to peacefully rule the nation as God intended. But this is not exactly what Jesus came to do. Jesus did not come to bring military and political peace to a nation which had been in turmoil for hundreds of years. In fact restoring the nation of Israel not at all on Jesus’ agenda, in fact any kind of peace as they knew it was also not on his agenda.
Jesus was there to restore relationship with God. Jesus was there to restore life to the way God created it to be, but as the saying goes, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” Before all things can be truly set right all the things which are wrong have to be up ended and thrown to the wayside. Societal norms will be cast to the side. The things which you are told to value may not have any value at all. These are the eggs which are broken as the omelet of restoring all creation is made.
In that day and age the family was the center of society, even more so than we would like to think it is today. The family and familial relations were of the utmost importance. A son, no matter how old was not under any circumstance to stand against his father. This was also true for a daughter and her mother. And when a young woman left her house and went to live in the house of her husband her Mother-in-law stood in the place where her mother once stood in her life. These were sacred relationships, relationships which you respected at all costs. You did not under any circumstances turn against or stand against these most important people in your life. These relationships were to be protected and preserved above all other things and should be prize above anything else in one’s life.
Jesus is saying not only is he to not bring peace as they would see it, but ultimately choosing to live the way God was calling people to live should come above the most important relationships in your life. Jesus was not there to protect and up hold the norm of that society but Jesus was there to restore relationship with God and that relationship would stand over and above all other relationships and could very well break up that which would normally be considered sacred. God was there to be the top, to be the most important, to be the most sacred. If you were willing to follow God you must be willing to set aside all other things, no matter how important or sacred you might believe them to be.
Society might tell you this relationship CAN NOT be breached. The world may tell you, that you can not at any cost cross this line but if that relationship stands in the way of your relationship with God or that line is blocking your way to living the life God has called you to live that relationship must be cast to the wayside and that line must be crossed.
Jesus did not come to bring peace, Jesus did not come to up hold the status quo and become a pillar to support the systems protected and revered by any particular society. Jesus came to stand over and above these things. God is more important than social structures. Relationship with the creator of the universe is to be valued more than any relationship you may have on this earth. The standard which Jesus calls us to should be sought after over and above, and even to the contrary of, any standards which the world around us might call us to live by.
Jesus ends this discussion by talking about the weather. Now I have to say growing up this part of the passage never really made sense to me. How can a person “see” the weather coming? I thought it must be something that ancient people could do that we can no longer do, kind of like navigating across country by night using the stars. But, living in Kansas gave me a whole new perspective on looking to the skies to see the weather and understanding from which direction the wind is blowing to understand what will happen with the weather. In Kansas you could see a storm 50-60 miles off. You could see the rain falling miles and miles away across the plain. It did not take much thought to then notice which way the wind was blowing and which direction the clouds were moving and how fast, to understand whether that rain was coming your way and if so how quickly it would arrive.
Like wise the people in Jesus’ day knew that most storm systems moved from west to east and therefore if they saw a storm in the sky off to the west they knew it was going to rain. They also knew that the desert was to their South so if the wind was blowing in from the South, they knew that it was going to be hot. This was common knowledge; these were things that everyone knew. It took no special training. Understanding the weather just took living in the land and understanding the world around them.
Jesus was calling for his disciples to have that same kind of understanding of the world around them and about the gospel. They needed to stop being ignorant of the things which were all around them, that is the truth of the gospel. They needed to stop expecting Jesus to be who they wanted him to be. They needed to look to the signs, look at the horizon and see what was going on all around them. Jesus was here to cleanse them, to bring a baptism of fire which would purify them and make them into the people God created them to be. They needed to open their eyes to the signs around them and see that Jesus was not there to prop up the status quo of their society and live up to expectations which the world around them had set up for them. Jesus was there to go against the norm, to break up the failures of the sinful status quo and set things right, not bring peace for Israel but to set things right for all creation, to bring all humanity back into relationship with God. Jesus was not there to be the person they wanted him to be but Jesus was there to allow all of humanity to be the people God created them to be.
Jesus is calling us to be the people God created us to be. We were created to live in unhampered relationship with God. We were created to be pure and holy. We were created to love God and love each other with unfettered and inexhaustible love but sin and the separation which sin caused between us and God as well as with one another (let us not fool ourselves into thinking that sin merely affects our relationship with God and is not extended to all our other relationships). Jesus came to this earth to restore us to be the people God created us to be. He came to this earth to allow us to live the way we were meant to live. While he was here on earth his greatest desire was to usher in the coming of the refining fire of the Spirit which would allow this to begin to happen in the hearts and lives all those who choose to accept him as their Lord, savoir and restorer of their lives.
As Christians our deepest desire it to be who Jesus calls us to be, to be the people God created us to be, to be cleansed from all that disconnects us from God, to be freed from all that hinders us from being who we were meant to be, to be restored in relationship not only with one another, loving each other purely and wholly but to be restored in our relationship with God.
But this may not look the way you or I would hope for it to look. It may not follow the form or the pattern we want it to follow. Jesus did not come to up hold our expectations. He did not come to be who we think he should be. He did not come to prop up the societal norms or to bolster the inadequacies of any individual culture. Jesus came to shatter the norms, to tear away the inadequacies and restore things to their proper created order. Jesus did not simply come to make our lives better, he did not come to simply make our society the best society it can be, he did not come to make things perfect as we would see perfection, but Jesus came to set things right once and for all. Jesus came to shatter our understanding of perfection and show us what perfection truly is.
Jesus came to do all these things for us, for our community and for our world, but you and I have no control over the world, we have no control over our community but we do have control of ourselves. Jesus came to make things right beginning with me, beginning with you. Jesus came to shatter all expectations, I have, you have of him. Jesus came so that you might live, so that you may live abundantly, that is to live in pure unhampered, uninhibited relationship with God and so that you can learn to live same way that as you do in relationship with God in all your relationships in this world. Jesus came to call you to be the person God created you to be.
Jesus is calling for us to look around us to see the signs of this world, to see the truth of the Gospel to know and understand where the truth lies, to know and understand the expectations and the ways of our society and to know and understand how they measure up to the truth of who Jesus is and who it is God is calling us to be and to discern accordingly, what in this world is of value and what needs to be ignored. We need to be able to see the signs of the gospel and see where our society falls short in what it expects of us and then to refuse listen to the voices of our society in those areas of our lives, to not follow that line but to instead to live in the ways which God is calling for us to live.
Jesus also is calling for us to look to the horizon of our own lives, to be honest with ourselves about which way the wind is blowing in our lives and to understand how that stands up to what it means to be the people God wants to shape us and form us into being. Living in right relationship with God; living lives which are cleansed, purified by the fire of the Spirit of God, means living the way God created us to live; that is loving God with all our hearts, strength and mind and to love one another with and through the love we have for God and the love which God gives to us. Holy lives, lives pure and refined by God are lives of love.
In order for us to these kinds of lives, to live lives marked by the love of God, the lives Jesus is calling us to live, Jesus must be first in our life. In order for us to be the people God is calling us to be, we must live the way God created us to live, that is in relationship with the creator and that relationship must be the most important thing in our life. All other expectations, all other priorities must be rearranged around this primary priority. Anything that hinders, anything that stands in the way, anything which goes against God and against God’s call on your life must suffer, must be tossed to the wayside. Nothing is as important, nothing is more important than allowing the cleansing, fire of God to purify you, make you holy and bring you to a point where you are living the way God is calling for you to live.

Amos 8:1-12 - The Great and Fearful Day of the Lord

Amos 8:1-12
The Great and Fearful Day of the Lord

The sun is shining through the artistically colored windows. The worship team is at its prime. The people are all dressed in their Sunday best poised and ready for worship. They are standing tall, faces up lifted toward the sky as the music is about to begin. There is a quiet reverence in the sanctuary. It seems as if nobody is shuffling, nobody is restless, and everyone is focused on the song they are all about to sing. Even the dust gently drifting in the luminously colored beams of light filling the sanctuary seems Holy. The voices raises the chorus begins but God can not hear the words of song because of the chaotic din. The man on the third row is wondering if he can nonchalantly slip his cell phone out of his pocket. He is positive that the service started a few minutes late, will that mean it will run a little late, will he be able to make it downtown in time if the service is 5-10 minutes over. Why did he sit on the third row? He can’t sneak out toward the end everyone will see him. He stands looking up at the screening singing the words. His face looks focused; by all appearances he is engrossed in worship. There a woman toward the back on the right. She is smartly dressed; her hair is neatly pulled back. She is the picture of modesty and propriety, but as she sings she begins to wonder if she can get away with cutting Amelia’s pay, she just can not afford to pay that woman as much as she is getting paid. Perhaps, she can tell Amelia that the work she did this last time around was just not up to par. Sure she knows that Amelia works herself to the bone and really does a fine job but sometimes you just have to pay someone a little bit less. She can tell Amelia that the seams were just not right that she was just not as happy and then simply give her 20% less than the agreed upon price for the garment. It will be ok, Amelia will find a way to make up for it somehow, I bet she over charges some of her customers anyway.
As the song proceeds the din grows louder and louder. God looks down on the people, hands over ears waiting, waiting for the noise to stop, waiting for the din to die down but the service seems to go on and on the raucous get louder and louder and finally something has to be done. It is at this point that Amos (the tree farmer and sheep herder) shakes his head once again wondering why God can’t give him something pleasant to say to these people, he steps out of his anonymous place in the pew into the aisle and raises his voice above the melodious strains of pious worship and says, “This is what the Lord God [just] showed me. . .”
God can not hear the worship. The worship is pointless the worship is useless the worship is not worship, when over laid with the din of unworshipful attitudes which fill the sanctuary. God wants to mourn, God wants to wail, this is an outrage this is deplorable. God will turn their empty songs in to wailing, their hollow praise into mourning. If they want the festive worship over so they can get on with business, God will put a stop top the festivities.
Israel is a basket of over ripe the fruit the last of the harvest taken in. It is past its prime the bananas are getting a little brown the peaches are soft and the apples would probably be a bit mealy when bitten into but it is worse than that. They are not merely over ripe they are rotten, more than a little past their prime those bananas are so far gone they can’t even be frozen and turned in to bread, best just throw them out and wait until next year there is nothing good left from this harvest.
God is a little more than fed up with the people of Israel at this point. When it comes time for the festive observances which God had set up for them, they are not grateful for the break from the routine, they are not joyful in the celebration of how God had provided for them once again, they are not enraptured and engrossed in worship of their God who lovingly and faithful takes care of them in season and out of season. Instead they can’t wait to get back to business. They can’t wait to get back to their shops and to their markets they can not wait to get back to work. Not because they need the money and every moment they are spending away from their labours is resulting in not being able to earn the money they need to survive but because they want to get back to business practices which are just a little on the “shady side” to say the least. They are selling their harvests with bushel baskets which are too small. They are doing business with falsely weighted scales which are in their favor. Not only are they dishonest in their practices but they are cheating the poor and robbing the needy of their due. God had set up a system by which no one in Israel would go hungry and in their practices they are sweeping up every last grain so they can sell it with their dishonest weights and their small bushel baskets, but they were forbidden by God to sell the sweepings. They were not allow to go back through the field and harvest what they missed they were not allowed to take a broom to the threshing floor and pick up every last grain they were to leave this to those who had fallen on hard times they were to leave the leftovers for the poor and they needy so they could come and pick up the scraps which were over looked. But they were not doing this; they were picking every last head of grain and picking up every last wheat berry so that they could turn the most profit while the most vulnerable in their nation starved to death at on their doorsteps searching for the food which was rightfully theirs by law. They are not respecting each other and in doing so they are not respecting God.
God says they are like over ripe fruit. They look good on the outside but at the core, in the center of their beings they are rotten, rotten to the core. They might look righteous, they may beautiful but they are evil they are ugly. And God is tire of it. God can not stand to look at them any more. God can not stand to have them singing in the sanctuary. God is going to turn their singing into mourning and their songs into lamentations. God is mourning, God is lamenting it is high time that the people joined their God in this respect. They are going about their sinful lives, going living daily in the muck and the mire of their sin, pretending to be righteously dressed, pious minded people but they are really clothed garment they stole from the poor and their minds are continually on who and how they can cheat next, to get just a little more ahead.
God can not stand idly by while the poor are starving to death and the needy are trampled under foot. But this is not where God’s ire ends. Even as the people are cheating and stealing longing for the Sabbath to be over so they can cheat and steal some more they are full of pride. They seem themselves in a distorted mirror and instead of seeing who they really are, ugly, evil and rotting from the inside out, they find pride in what they see, believing themselves to be examples of piety, pillars of righteousness. They are a diva preening in the mirror seeing how beautiful she is proud of her long silky hair and her exquisite clothes who then turns from the mirror and lashes out at those she sees as her servants slaughtering them with her poison tongue and reducing them to piles of ash with her belittling triads. The beauty is really only found in the mirror because the person in the room is as ugly as can be. They are prideful in how they worship, they are prideful in their prosperity, and they are prideful of the peace they have brought to the nation. Their pride exceeds reality and so God says, that God will swear by their pride.
You must know at this point, that they believed that, you could not swear by something that is lesser than you. They believed you could only swear by something greater than yourself, so normally when God swore God swore by God’s self, since there was nothing greater than God. But here in this passage God, with tongue in cheek, swears by the pride of Jacob, Jacob being a representation of the people of Israel. God is telling them that their pride has gotten so big that even God can swear by it now.
God says, I am coming and I am going to set things right. In verse 9 God says, “On that day,” and in verse 11, “the time is surely coming.” If you were just reading this you might just over look these phrases or you might stop and wonder to yourself, ‘on what day?,” or “what time?” And you would be right in wondering because these were phrases which meant something to the people hearing them. “That day,” and the “time” which “is surely coming” is what Israel knew as the “Great and terrible day of the Lord,” often shortened to “The day of the Lord,” or even more simply, “that day.” This is the day when God will set all things right, the day when God will right all wrongs, the day when the evil will suffer and the righteous will be lifted up. This is a great day if you are righteous, if you are one of the ones who had been wronged. BUT, if you are the wrong which needs to be righted; if you the one doing evil, well then it is a terrible day; a day of which you should live in fear. And far too many in Israel at this time are on the wrong side of this day and God says it is coming. The day of the Lord is coming and they had better be ready for it, because they are lying and cheating and stealing and God is going to set them right and it ain’t going to be pretty and it ain’t going to be nice. It will be, for them, a day filled with mourning and lamentations. It will not be a day to which they will look forward. It will be a day to avoid; a day to push off as long as possible. But God says it is coming and you had better be ready.
Amos is standing up in the temple of the Lord and telling the people there who have gathered before God to worship, that their worship is worthless, their praise is empty. They might as well go home and prepare for the day of the Lord, because this is not what God called for them to do.
We gather each Sunday here in this sanctuary to draw close to God; to hear God’s voice; to give God the honor and praise which God alone deserves and I can not help but wonder what God has to say to us this morning. Are we attending to the voice of the Lord, are we listening to God’s words, and allowing them to change our lives and remake us into the people God is calling us to be? Or do we come to God this morning worried and distracted by many things. Are we distracted by the care of our worldly lives? Are we more concerned with what we will do when we get home, or when we get back to the office tomorrow, than we are to attending to the will and ways of our God for our lives? Are we here in body but not here in our hearts?
We come before God this morning, and we might look like ripe fruit but are we rotten on the inside? We might be able to stand before our friends and loved ones here in this church and appear to be the people God is calling us to be but God knows what we look like on the inside. God knows if at the core of our beings we are not the people we appear to be on the outside.
We as Christians look forward to the day of the Lord; we look forward to Christ’s return. We look forward to the day when God will set all thing right once and for all but first we must be ready for that day, first we must seek the heart of God and allow God to remake us so that we are no longer a part of that which needs to be set right.
This is God’s call to us this morning. We gathered here to worship and the din and the raucousness of our distractions and sin have nearly driven God from our midst this morning and Amos has stepped into the isle and told us that we need to change. We need to set aside that which distracts us from God, we need to allow God to cleanse us of our unrighteousness and anything in our lives which is pulling us away from God and allow God to cleanse us and purify us, so that we can join with those who look to the horizon for our Lord’s coming with hopeful anticipation instead of fear and trembling. The day of the Lord is coming, let it be a great and not a terrible day for you.

Amos 7:7-17 - The Unpopular Will of God

Amos 7:7-17

When you talk about the prophets of the Bible, Amos was the very first of the prophets which come later in the history of God’s people. First there is Moses and then you had the judges and Samuel but then you have the latter prophets. The book of Amos may not be the first one when you are reading straight through the Bible, but Amos is the first of these latter prophets if you are looking at the prophets chronologically. This does not mean there were no prophets who came before Amos, but this means there are no prophets whose teachings were important enough to be considered as part of the Holy Scriptures. The fact that Amos is the first prophet of his ilk is important, because although Amos says a lot of things with which those of us who are familiar with the Bible and its general content might be familiar, this was new stuff to his audience. The way Amos spoke and the things Amos had to say had never really been said before. In many ways Amos was a prophet like none who had gone before him.
He spoke at a time of great prosperity in Israel. The country was at peace. Life was good. There was plenty of food, the land was plentiful, and the temple was running smoothly, the monarchy was running smoothly. Young women could spend there time mooning over young men. Young couples were working together, to build homes and houses and eek out happy lives together. Babies were being cuddled in the arms of indulgent grandmothers and grandfathers sat on porches late into the evening telling engrossed audiences of young children about how the sun was hotter, the snow was colder and how they walked everywhere up hill with no shoes.
One would think that this would mean that it was a high point in Israelite history, but it is not. It was a time of great prosperity but it was also a time of great corruption. Many were well off and life was good, but for many others, times were hard, life was not fair and no matter how hard they worked and no matter how many long hours they labored they just could not get ahead. Life was hard, and the future was bleak.
This was a time when the rich were getting richer at the expense of the poor. They were taking advantage of the poor to get richer. Those who were well off were well off because they were cheating others in the market place and not paying people what they deserved to be paid. They would make a “small bushel” and use hollow weights to work things in their favor so when they did dealings with those who had labored hard they were cheating people out of a fair wage. And this displeased the Lord greatly. God asked for two things, God asked for the people to love God and for them to love their neighbor and, the last time I checked, cheating people out of hard earned money was a very poor way to show someone love. And God thought this was down right despicable.
Because Amos is the first of the Biblical prophets of his era, although his teachings are filled with themes with which we may be familiar, when Amos came to the people of Israel this was the first time Israel was hearing any of this. One of these themes is the idea of Israel being taken into exile as a result of their sins against each other and against God.
Although the idea of foreign kings taking a conquered people into exile is a concept those of us, who are familiar with Biblical or ancient history, find commonplace, this was not true of the people to whom Amos was speaking. At this point in history the concept of exile was absolutely unheard of. Amos proclaims the exile before it was common practice for enemies to take their defeated foes into exile. This is not only the first time in the Israelite history the people are told they will go into exile, but it is the first time anyone, anywhere had heard of doing this. No conquering king at this point in history had ever taken a nation into exile. Exile, being the practice of taking the best, the brightest and the strongest people in a conquered nation and carting them off to live in another part of your kingdom as a way of weakening the conquered nation, and dispersing the section of people who could potentially be the biggest threat, so they can not bond together and become a threat. It was also a way to get the cream of the crop of a conquered people to work for you. The first king to ever take another nation into exile occurred for the first time about 8 years after Amos dies, when King Tiglathpileser of Kir, took the Ara-ME-ans into exile.
So you put yourselves into the position of the people to whom God was sending Amos to give this message. What Amos was saying did not make sense. This threat of exile was a crazy threat. “What do you mean God is going to send us into exile? What does that even mean? Why would a conquering nation do such a thing? Amos your crazy! No country is going to just cart the majority of a population of their conquered foes off to another land. That is absolutely ridiculous. You’re a not a prophet, you can’t even prophesy right. Go home where you belong!” Not to mention that Amos does not hold back any punches. He does not sugar coat this message on single bit. He describes the bleakest, scariest and darkest parts of what it means to be a conquered nation, just to make sure the people truly understand how bad this is going to be. He lays it out there like it is and takes some pretty good flak for it.
The particular part of the book of Amos which we are looking at this morning is the third vision in a group of five visions which God gives to Amos speaking about the judgment God is bringing down upon the people of Israel for the kind of lives they have been living. The first vision is about Israel being destroyed by an army of locusts. The second is a vision about Israel being destroyed by fire. This vision is the vision about the “plumb line,” which is followed by a brief dialogue between Amos and the King. The fourth vision is a vision of a basket of ripe fruit and the last vision is about an earthquake which brings destruction to Israel. So the vision we have before us this morning is just one gloom and doom vision in the midst of quite a collection of visions of gloom and doom.
So as we begin to look at the vision in the passage we have before us this morning, I don’t know about you but as I look at this text a huge question comes to my mind, “What is going on with this plumb line stuff?” It almost does not seem to make much sense. When something in the Bible does not make sense to me in English, I go and look it up in the Hebrew. And guess what this does not make much sense in the Hebrew either. In fact going to the Hebrew does not help me understand what is going on in this passage; all it does for me is tell me that this is so hard to understand in English because it is nearly impossible to understand in Hebrew. The word here which is translated “plumb line” does not literally mean “plumb line.” The Hebrew word is “anak.” And quite frankly we don’t know what it means. There is a special word scholars use to be all scholarly about not knowing what something means and that is “hopoxlagomena.” So when we run across a word like this one we say to each other, “‘anak’ is a “hopoxlagomena.” And every one goes, ahhh, hmmmm, I see. So now you can be all scholarly too. I can say, “’anak’ is a hopoxlagomena and you all can say, “. . . So anyway hopoxlagomena is really just a fancy way of saying this is the only time this word is used in the entire Bible. Not only is it the only time it is used in the Bible but this particular word is not found in any other sources, which means that there no way of coming to an understanding what this word means. The word here is one of which nobody really knows the definition.
The root of the “anak” word is “tin or tempered metal.” Some people have translated it “lead” which led early scholars to believe that this is talking about a lead plummet on a plumb line. Thus the reason why so many English translations say, this is a wall which is built with a plumb line. But the words “built with” are not even in the Hebrew so it could be that a “plumb line” is being held up to see if the wall is standing up straight. Now I am no metal worker or (alchemist) but I am pretty sure there is a big difference between lead and tin and others agree with men and thus conclude “plumb line” is not what Amos meant when we spoke these words.
Other scholars see that tin is an alloy of bronze which is the metal of which weapons of the day would have been made. The verse would then be talking about a wall made out of tin or weapons, a threat to the people saying that this is a metaphorical “wall of weapons.” This would have God standing beside a wall of destruction. This could be a metaphor saying that an army was going to come and destroy the people and this would be the judging force of God coming down upon them for their disobedience and failure to live the way God called for them to live.
Then there are still other scholars that see this word as a word play on a similar Hebrew word, “anacha,” which means to sigh, moan, or groan. God is standing in front of a wall of moaning and groaning. God is going to wipe away the arrogance and self indulgence of the people and set them to moaning, because God will destroy them.
So, who would have thought that going and checking on one little Hebrew word would dredge up so much scholarly thoughts. Wading through all the different ideas as to what this word means and therefore what is being set among the people is a long and a rather difficult endeavor, but no matter how you understand this one word, it is not looking good for the people of Israel. God is telling them that something bad is about to happen and it is because of the way the people have been behaving.
So Amos makes this ominous proclamation about the people of Israel being out of plumb and they will be destroyed or God is going to send a wall of destruction and they will be destroyed, or God is sending a wall of moaning and groaning because they are going to be destroyed. The fact of the matter is no matter which way you understand this oracle which God gives to Amos to give to the people, they are going to be destroyed.
And what happens next? The priest Amaziah goes running off to the king, like my 5 year tattling on her sister, telling the King what Amos said. Now as I am working through this passage I want to note a couple of things. First of all Amaziah the priest of Bethel, which means “House of God, leaves Bethel, the House of God, where Amos is preaching and goes to the palace, the house of the King and tells him that Amos is in the center of the House of Israel, conspiring against the King, which last I checked not exactly any where near to what Amos was saying or doing. The King then had Amaziah leave the house of the King and go back to Bethel, the house God and tell him that he should leave Bethel, the house of God, and go back to Judah to his home town, Bethlehem, the house of bread, and go earn his bread there, because the King will not have Amos preaching in the King’s sanctuary and or in the temple of the kingdom. Go home preach your message somewhere else, we don’t like it. We don’t need you prophesying round here.
And Amos’s response is pretty straight forward, “Hey, I wouldn’t do this if God didn’t tell me to, go talk to him.” He was not a prophet by trade, he was a herdsman and a dresser of trees, he was a keeper of livestock and a gardener, this was not what he wanted to be, this was not what he trained to be but this was what God called him to be.
It might be helpful to know that during that time there were schools for people who wanted to be prophets and people who were trained as prophets went there to learn how to be prophets and tended to then settle down near those schools. Also, just like with any other trade, often times if your father was a prophet you would follow in his footsteps and be a prophet as well. Amos did not go to school to be a prophet, nor was he a prophet because his father was one. He was trained as a shepherd and as a dresser of trees. You know what the nice thing about sheep and trees is; they don’t yell at you or go running off and tattle to the King about you, when you are “just doing your job.” People are definitely a lot harder to work with then sheep and trees.
Amos had not planned on being a prophet. Being a prophet was not his chosen career path. He was a prophet because God called him to be a prophet. He would gladly go back to the sheep if God would let him. So Amos responds to Amaziah’s belittling comment about going back to Judah (and the house of bread) to earn his bread, by basically saying that he did not chose to be a prophet but God chose him. What else could he do, but obey?
God said, “Go prophesy to the people. “ And that is exactly what Amos did. And as this little conversation between Amos and the King with the priest Amaziah as a go between goes on God gives Amos a little addendum to the prophesy he has already given and Amos begins now to paint a vivid picture of a land that has been ravaged by war. Well not exactly war, but the destruction that often follows a war. Amos paints the picture the desolation which a defeated nation finds themselves in when they have been completely and utterly demolished by their enemies. The men are all dead and the wives have no way to make a living, so they are forced to be prostitutes, selling their very bodies, their very beings to those who have defeated them, their sons and daughters have been killed as part of the destruction of war, there is nothing left to speak of and their lives are in shambles, and the people are lead out of the city in lines, that is as slaves. Amos describes to them what it looks like for a nation to be taken into exile. Nothing good, nothing beautiful, nothing worth having is left. And if any thing which is note worthy or good is left it is taken away. If anyone with any skills is left they are taken away. Amos described to them what it means to say that they are being sent into exile. And they will be lead off and they will be taken to live in a far off land, where they will die, never to be return to the land of their birth, never to return to the land which God had given to them. God sending them into exile meant that God was taking away the land which God had given to them.
Usually when you read a passage such as this there is a “but,” there is this will happen “unless” there is an “if,” somewhere and we get to see what will happen if the people repent, what will happen should they choose to go down a different path, if they choose to turn from the way they are living now and return to living the way God called for them to live. But there is no, “but” in this passage, there is no “if” and there is no “this will happen unless.” God just ends it there. I have been patient and my patience is wearing thin. This is the way you are acting and these are the consequences for those actions.
Now as I said before this is just one vision which predicts the destruction of Israel among four others which do exactly the same thing? Following the final destruction, there is an oracle of restoration. In the final chapter of the book God says, “The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when . . .I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel.” When the time of judgment is over God will restore them in the hope that having dealt with the consequences of their unfaithfulness to their God and to each other, they will mend their ways and live according to the ways God has called for them to live. But first the consequences and the consequences are great.
In the midst of all the doom and gloom in the midst of all the judgment and destruction stands a man, a man who is doing nothing but simply, plainly, and perseveringly doing the will of God. Amos is quite an amazing figure. He stands up in the house of God, before the priests of God and the people of God and tells them the word of God, which God has given to him to give to them.
Amos is a man, a humble man, with a humble hard working job and God comes to him and tells him that he needs to do something. He needs to go and speak this message, this hard message to a people who don’t want to hear it, to a priesthood which are little better than schoolyard tattle tales and to a King who wants to claim the people, the kingdom and the temple and the Lord God as his own. This is not the easiest thing to do. This is not the easiest message to give, but this is what God asks Amos the tree trimmer and sheep herder to do. God asks him to go. God asks him to speak the truth and God asks him to do it even when it is hard.
And he goes and does it. He goes and does it even though the people are against him. He goes and does it even though the king is against him. He continues to do the will of God even when all the religious leaders are against him.
What God calls us to do is not always easy. What God calls us to do is not always popular. What God calls us to do does not always win us the esteem of our peers, or the authorities but all that does not matter, because what matters is that we do what God calls us to do.
Amos went to the temple and he spoke the words of God to a people who would not listen. Amos stood in temple and spoke the words of God to religious people who went and spread vicious rumors about what he was all about. Amos spoke the words of God to the king, even when the king told him to go home and keep quiet. Doing what God wanted him to do was not easy, it was not popular but it was the right thing to do. And so he did it.
God does not ask us if what God asks us to do is easy. I hate to tell you, rarely is it easy. God does not ask us if it is popular, and I can tell you most of the time it is not. God just tells us to speak truth, to live the truth and to be the truth in a land and culture which does not believe they want to hear, see or know the truth.

Poem of a sermon blocked pastor

Sermonblock - 9pm, July 17, 2010

I am stuck
stuck like a duck in the muck
can't move, can't grove, can speak words that are smooth.
hey won'd flow, or mow or even come out slow
hey just stay and play in my mind, little pictures at play
won't become words or verbs or sounds they just play around
stuck in my head and I dread the coming of the dawn it is all wrong
no joyful song just the sound of the gong like on that show that we watch so long ago

Being the Children of God

Galatians 3:23-29
Being the Children of God

(The Story of Creation)
I want you to envision the human race as a single human being.
A tiny infant crawling among the soft grasses of a well nourished garden.
A well loved, well protected infant, laughing with the birds as they sing; with snakes and snails and lions tails for toys.
She learned how to walk among the poppies and how to run in the weeds.
And life was pretty good, before she made the choice she was told not to take;
before she choose to go where she was bade not to go.
And taking that false step which moved her out of the safety and security provided for her there in the garden.
She moved from safe and secure, to alone and afraid, working hard for all her days.
As this child grew and continued to pull away from the love and the embrace of the one who loves her.
She was placed under the care of a governess, one who can teach, lead and guide this young one as she grows.
The rules are firm and the consequences are harsh,
but there is love in the discipline. There is reassurance in the consequences.
The governess, the rules, the discipline all placed there for her good,
to shape and mold her and draw her back to the one by whom she is most loved.
And then when she was ready and it was the right time,
she was released from her governess, set free from the disciplinarian and showed to her beloved.
She walked with him and spoke with him and learned of his love for her but he could not stay.
She was not yet ready, it was not yet time for them to begin their life together so he left and promised to return
Return when she was old enough; return when the time was right
and then look love into her eyes,
shake his head adoringly at the firelight of her smile,
rejoice in the roses on her cheeks,
brush her radiant hair back from her face
and he would take her by the hand to lead her into the great wedding feast of the ages.
For this she was created,
for this day she was born and all eternity sings a song which echoes forward and backward through the ages;
All things singing this one song, which is found in every brook
and on the beak of every bird,
felt in each breeze rippling through every blade of grass;
This one song, forever sung at this one moment rejoicing.
All things of beauty being but a foretaste and afterglow of this one event
The wedding feast of the Lord, the great day of rejoicing, to which all of creation arrives ready to bless, this much anticipated bride,
finally come to full bloom, finally come, finally wed, finally the Lord and his Bride will be one.
This is the story of creation.
This is the story of the Church,
this is OUR story told and retold a hundred times
but always barreling forward to this one event when all things are set right and glory will shine, the sun will sing and fullness and completion will be found in all things.
When the bridegroom of all creation ushers his bride into his home and gives to her all that has always and will always belong to her.
- Kazimiera Fraley June 19, 2010

This is the story of all creation, this is our story, this is where we are going and this is where we have been. It is this story, or one similar to it, which Paul has in his head when he tells the Galatians that the law was our disciplinarian. Paul is trying to explain to the Galatians the purpose of the law when they are no longer bound to it as they once were. Paul has been trying to make a case for Gentile Christians such as those who are in the church at Galatia to not have to do the works of the Jewish law in order to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Paul believes that with the coming of Christ Christians are freed from the law to live and to grow closer to God through the love and grace found in Jesus Christ. So Paul explains to them that the law was a disciplinarian; not one who has come into beat the sense into a child, but instead one who is brought in to nurture, to teach and to guide a child through the early years. A governess or a tutor, was one who watched over a child until the child is old enough to be released from his care, which would have been in early adolescence. This person served a role which was much needed at a certain time in the child life but when it was time, when the child was old enough to move on, he was released from the care of the one who watched over him, so that he could begin to prepare for adulthood.
The child, in the context of this passage, is the people of God who later become the Church, but in a broader sense is all humanity, in that, the call to be children comes to each ones ears and the love of God reaches out ready to embrace each and everyone who turns from his or her own wayward path and begins to walk along the path which God places before us.
The child was under the care, tutorage, and guidance, of the law while a child, but with the coming of Christ, childhood ended and adolescence began. Adolescence is a sort of a time between times. Just like a teenager, the people of God, the people of Galatia, the Church, are (is?) caught in the growing pains of being a teenager. The rules are different, the expectations are different. To try to continue to live as a child at this point in life is ridiculous. “Foolish” is actually what Paul calls the Galatians for trying to do so, and he wonders who has “bewitched” them because something supernatural must be at work for a teenager to want to continue to act, to live and to be treated as a child.
The Church finds herself at this strange time between the times. The time when, like a teenager we are so much like an adult but are not quite there yet, when we are definitely not children, who have to be watched after and cared for by a babysitter but are not quit ready to march into adulthood at this moment. We are in the time between times, the already and not yet, after Christ has come but yet still waiting for him to come again. Growing and learning in grace; growing and learning together; trying to figure out who we are; trying to figure out who we are becoming; wanting to be the bride of Christ, but not yet living the fullness of what that means and what that would look like. We are but a shadow, but and reflection of who we will one day be.
It is in this time of confusion, that Paul gives those to whom he is writing a touch stone, something tangible that they can wrap their heads around, he reminds them of their baptisms. All of them had at some point been baptized. He reminds them that as Christians they were baptized into Christ and as such they should be clothed in Christ. Paul, at this point draws directly upon common baptismal practices of his day. When it was time to be baptized all those who had come to be baptized would all come to the water together, men, women, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, Jews, Greeks, Romans, slaves, and freemen alike, all would come down to the water, all dressed in the clothes which designated who they were, clothes which were different depending on whether you were a man or a woman, a child or an adult, rich, poor, Greek, Roman Jew, slave or free - Clothes which spoke to the world about who you were.
When they came to the waters edge they shed their clothes of distinction and all entered into the water and were baptized together without distinction and emerged from the water to be re-clothed in white. They were different, they were distinct before they entered the water, but when they emerged from the water they were clothed uniformly in white, they were clothed in Christ, united in Christ, one in Christ. The cleansing waters of baptism not only washed them of their sin but it also washed them of all that divided them and separated them one from another. When they exited the waters they were all clothed in the same thing. They were all clothed in the same One. Christ washed them, Christ cleansed them and Christ united them.
When they emerged they emerged together the Body of Christ, the Beloved of our Lord, who is waiting for Christ’s return; a Bride who is waiting and making herself ready for the return of her bridegroom, who will usher her into the great and everlasting wedding feast of all eternity.
We are that Bride, all of us who call ourselves by Christ’s name; Christian, are united in the waters and come up together washed, cleansed and re-clothed in Christ. We are loved, we are united and all that divides, and rises up between us is washed away in the waters of baptism. We are to look at one another and no longer see a man, a woman, a child, an adult, rich or poor, but we should look to one another and see a sister, a brother, one with whom we are united, one who is also beloved by our Lord and thus loved by us. But our wall crushing, line erasing, status unseeing and colorblind glasses of baptism should not end at pew’s edge but should extend beyond these walls, beyond all borders. Where ever we look, where ever we go, we should see a lost sister, a wandering brother, a beloved auntie who can not find her way, an uncle who needs our love, for all those who populate this earth and all who draw cognitive breath are those who our Beloved desires to join with us, desires to know the truth we know and be clothed as we are clothed.
The transformative power of the great story in which we play the lead is that it teaches us, and shows us not only who we are, not only who we will one day be, but it shows us who THEY are and who THEY can one day be, for the heart of the story, the climax toward which we are moving, is that one day THEY will be apart of US and WE all together will move and grow and be who, only through Christ, we can be. When we look at the world we should not see Christians and non-Christians, referring to those who are not apart of us, inferring they are against us, that they are our enemies, people with whom we are waging battle, but instead let us look to the world and see not that it is populated with those who are non-not-Christian but instead see that it is populated with those who can be Christian, those who could be Christian, those who in a sense are pre-Christian. If we as Wesleyans take the grace which goes before; previenient grace seriously. We must believe that God in God’s infinite grace is leading them toward Christ each in their own way, but not quite there, YET. Let us hope that someday, through us, through Christ, through grace, through faith, they too will one day know Christ as we know Christ, love Christ as we love Christ and rejoice in the love which only a life in Christ can find itself.
So let us join hands with one another brothers and sisters and know that together we are Christ’s beloved and let us look to our world and with big hearts full of love and compassion reach out and invite them in so they too can be brothers, and sisters with us, joined together, so that one day when Christ comes, he will turn to Us and invite Us into the great eternal wedding feast of eternity.