Peace on Earth?

               Good Morning!  This year seems to have just whizzed by hasn’t it?  Indeed, every year I find the months seem to go a little quicker and the days fly by just a little faster.  And, in all honesty, though, ladies and gentlemen, for every year that goes by I wake up and find the world is just that much harsher, and the people in it just a little more cruel.  This year was certainly no exception, was it?  In 2015 so many names were brought to our attention, names like San Bernadino, Umpqua Community College, Planned Parenthood at Colorado Springs, and Charleston, North Carolina.  2015 also brought up other names, names like Islamic State and Boko Haram, the latter an African Extremist group who proudly proclaimed that they would marry nine-year olds, abducted some 270 school girls and forced them into marriages.  While we got those children back, our 6 month response time to that kidnapping was of little use to the young women who were victimized and the vast majority of whom are now pregnant.  And indeed, adding to this list that is already too long, we find also the names of Kim Davis, Missouri University, the Baltimore Riots, and finally Paris France.  It makes me just want to hide.  Yes, when confronted with the shear immensity of how violent and ugly our world is becoming it is easy to just want to lose myselves in the holidays, to envelope myselves in Christmas lights and tinsel, in presents, and carols – anything really.  Anything so I don’t have to admit to myself that this day there is not peace on earth and even on Christmas there is no goodwill toward men. 

                But in light of all the conflict and ugliness we have experienced this year, be they racial, religious, or otherwise, there is hope for all of this.  The good news is the world doesn’t have to be this way.  It doesn’t have to be angry, hurt, and confused and we do not have to respond to hate with hate, and in these regards I want to introduce you to someone.  He is not here right now, though I keep him with me.  You see, as I mulled over all that the world has been through this past year, my thoughts kept returning to my old mentor in seminary.  Now, as your pastor I want to affirm again that for us as Christians the answer is still Jesus, but I think there is a place for the people God puts in our path, and that our teachers and fellow humans often have important lessons to teach us about Him.  My mentor, as he referred to himself, was the right reverend Dr. Wilbur P. Stone.  He was a farmer, a businessman, a missionary, a pastor, and a professor.  He was a self proclaimed Congregationalist Baptist Pentacostal who also enjoyed the occasional Roman Catholic Mass. We didn’t agree on a lot theologically, but the loving heart of this man always struck me to the core.  As a Baptist minister he did not think a number of things were proper, homosexuality and homosexual relationships being one of them, but his response to his brother when he came out of the closet was just phenomenal.  When his younger brother told his family he was gay and in a gay relationship, much of his family left the dinner table never to speak to him again.  Wilbur just sat there, and in his fifties no less, as his brother turned to him through terrible tears. He asked Wilbur, “Aren’t you going to disown me too?  Aren’t you going to tell me what a sinful human being I am and tell me I’m going to burn in hell?” Wilbur turned to his brother and said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, that is not for me to decide.  But I do know this, I am never going to abandon you, and wherever you are bound there will not be a day when you are not tripping over my love for you.”

                After my own study of the Scriptures and the history of the church, I disagreed with him that homosexuality was a sin.  Indeed, there is no evidence the church had much to say on the subject for its first 1100 years and had no problem producing wedding liturgy for same-sex couples.  But while we disagreed in theology we were in one hundred percent agreement over how that theology ought to be applied.  However, this is not the story I want to tell you about the man.  The story I am reminded of in these turbulent times is the story of Wilbur at one of his yearly Peace talks with Muslims in Eastern Africa.  While Israel and Palestine get most of the news coverage for peace talks in that part of the world, the fact is, as Wilbur and many others have found out, other places need them too.  And for many years Wilbur participated in these talks, addressing Muslim peoples pushed out of their homelands by their own Islamic brothers and pushed into tents where they had to rely on other peoples for food and water.  These talks of course had varying degrees of success but the time Wilbur remembered the most was one of the most recent. 

                These peace talks were always respectful, always non-violent, but this particular time a hard lined conservative Muslim imam found out about the talks and he butted his way in.  He was rude and he was quarrelsome.  He interrupted Wilbur’s points constantly, seemingly having a quote from the Qu’ran for everything Wilbur had to say.  At the end the imam got up and made a speech to Muslims in the crowd.  The word of God in the Qu’ran was clear, he said.  Wilbur and these Christians were infidels and even simply sitting here listening to them was nothing less than a show of disloyalty to Allah.  He called on the Muslim men listening to repent, to rise up and denounce these Christians as the faithless deceivers that they were.  Within moments some the Muslim men arose from within audience.  Steel in their backs and righteousness in their eyes, they stood up before Wilbur could even react.  Boldly they rose up and pointed their fingers at the Imam and said, “would you please just shut the hell up.”  They got up and told him that after being chased into the wilderness so many years ago by their own supposed Muslim brothers and sisters that they now knew why the Prophet himself sought refuge with the Christians when he was chased away by his own people.  Ugliness and hate in fact did NOT win that day, and years of hard work building peace amongst two very different peoples was not undone by one man’s self-righteous bigotry.  There was Peace on Earth in that little corner of the world and it was there because there was good will toward men.

                Our gospel lesson today is found in John, but today I want to talk about Luke’s gospel.  I want to talk about the Christmas story that tells of censuses and inns; of shepherds and angels.  I want to talk about that gospel, because in that gospel goodwill is absolutely the point.  When we hear Luke describe Caesar Augustus’ decree, we hear merely words of history, of a man just chronicling down facts as an accountant crunches numbers.  But what Luke’s gentile audience would know that perhaps we would miss is that the Jews revolted at every census.  Unwilling to be tracked by their government and unwilling to be recorded so they could be taxed, the Jews would be stirred up in Judea and would engage in violent riots.  As a Gentile Theophilus, a gentile friend of God, you would be constantly confronted with the often deadly actions of God’s people.  And while yes the Caesars and Rome were hardly above critique, that tax money supported the country in ways that people really benefited from.  It went to roads that kept trade healthy, it went to the courts so people could submit their pleas, and it kept the lands policed and crime down – in all except Judea.  That is why the story of Joseph and Mary obeying the census would be so shocking and yet so very vital.  Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus commented that the Jews considered all the world an enemy, but not these Jews.  These Jews did not revolt, they did not make war, they did not turn to violence.  For a Gentile believer in God this news was the world to you, for the long foretold and awaited Messiah did not come through the self-righteous and the war mongering, but through the peaceful and the obedient.  It came from Jews who obeyed the edict of their country, risking not only estrangement from their fellow kin, but risking their own lives and the life of their child in traveling the dangerous Judean countryside.  This was the Holy Family, the family that bore you as a gentile no ill will and was willing to burden itself, even endanger itself, for your benefit.

                And we find as we read into Luke’s story further that the goodwill shown by Mary and Joseph that day God would simply outdo.  We find that though His own people were typically inhospitable, that though none would share or even give up their own room for a pregnant woman and her family, that though it was amongst a people who had no more room for their king than a stable and a feeding trough, God bore them no ill will.  He came anyway.  Though the Jewish faithful had been groaning for centuries for a return of the Davidic King, it is both shocking and despicable the only honor reserved for those of the line of David was apparently that of a shut door.  But when God sent his angels it was not to punish, it was not to rebuke, but it was to proclaim the coming of the Messiah with Joy.  And the shepherds, unclean vagabonds and thieves to a proper Jew of the city, it was to them that the angels came.  Those who had been ostracized, those who were looked down upon, they were not missed.  In fact they were given a special invitation.  Though there was many a reason for God to be angry and incensed, rightfully indignant and in a mind to punish, it is the Incarnation, the birth of God as a human being, that we find God’s true character – Love.  God bears mankind no ill will, it is we who bear ill will for one another.    

         And so our gospel is like our lives this Christmas season.  We too live in a world that chooses to be harsh and inhospitable.  We too live amongst an unforgiving people who seem to always find a reason to have no goodwill for their fellow man, people who see the lives of their brothers and sisters as worth so much less than even the briefest false feeling of righteousness.  These people are absolutely in the world, but the good news is that we don’t have to be like them.  Just as God chose not to make mankind his enemy that fateful night 2000 years ago we can do that too.  We can choose to be like God, we can choose to leave the world of anger and fear and pride behind, we too can enter our suffering world with both love and joy.  We can choose to love people different than us, to respect and show kindness to people with whom we do not agree.  Through this we can have Peace on Earth!  This is not merely a numb and impotent phrase we tell ourselves this time of year.  It is not a set of tinsel-colored blinders we put every December the 25^th, it is a promise made by the Maker.  Peace on Earth is not only possible, but because of the work of Christ it is the inescapable reality. 

                Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is in turmoil.  It is suffering and in despair.  The violence and the hate of this past year have made it forget the very real hope we have for a better tomorrow.  It threatens to turn the Peace and the Joy of this Day into a mockery.  It will not succeed.  It will not succeed because we know of a better way, a way that answers anger with kindness, hate with love and fear with Peace, a way that began with God extending a hand of friendship and goodwill to an undeserving people that 1^st Christmas morning.  May we inject the world with that same Christmas grace every single day of the year.      

Amen and Amen.

Religious Abuse

Good Morning!  Grace and Peace to you from God our Creator, and Jesus Christ, our risen Lord.  To start off, I want each of you to look around you.  Just take a quick a look.  What do you see?  Do you see people? Do you see park benches and trees?  Well what we see isn’t the theme of our message today, but rather it is what we don’t see.  It is about the things we miss or skip over, the things that maybe we should be seeing, but in fact are not.

                In going over our gospel lesson for this week I was drawn inevitably back to my own childhood.  The thoughts of preaching in the park today drew me back to playing over at my cousin’s house in Conroe, Texas.  They had a fantastic pool that we would swim for hours in, and I remember fondly the time spent there playing games and eating probably a little too much food.  Every time we went over to my aunt’s house I remember the smiling faces of family, of my aunts and cousins.  Over time, however, I found out what was not there.  As I grew older, as I matured and put aside childish things and grew into the adult I would become I saw those years more clearly.  I discovered what was in the shadows, what lurked unseen as my aunts greeted me with a warm smile and let us play for hours on end with her children. 

                My aunts on my father’s side were Southern Baptist, and indeed, one aunt was actually a Holy Roller and spoke in tongues, but in truth, I never cared about any of that.  Christians were Christians to my young eyes and, yes, it was strange, but if that is what brought her closer to God who was I to get in the middle of that?  However, I found out their reactions to me were never so friendly or accepting.  My Dad you see was raised Baptist, too, but when he married Mom he decided to become Lutheran, and that was something his family never really forgave him for or me as it turned out.  My Dad was an apostate to them and I learned that they personally referred to him often as “Satan” and literally called me his Spawn.  When I went over to their house as a child, all I ever saw were the smiling faces there to greet me, but what I did not see was how those smiles turned to sneers when I was no longer in sight .  But it did not stop there.  Already prone to extremism, I found out in college that my aunts and even one of my cousins would gather together around the Bible and routinely and fervently pray to God for my Father’s death.  I am not joking.  When Dad’s road construction company grew and flourished they feared that if a Lutheran business person was successful it would only lead other people astray and into sin.  They prayed for God to judge my Father and send a message to all those other sinners out there so they would be afraid and return to God’s Word – which by the way they and they alone knew how to properly interpret. 

                There are still some things I don’t know about those times, some things still hidden from sight, but some things I do know.  My cousins, as they began to age, had less and less to do with me.  What was once fast friendship and family slowly eroded to silence.  But worse than this was my Father.  A man I knew who was hard-working and practical, whose determination knew no bounds and was obvious in his love for his boys and his family, over the years I watched him devolve into something heartless.  After years of working with brothers who put on that same fake face, that same false love but stood behind their wives evil intent, he became a man lost in his own anger, who cheated on his wife, threw away his business and his faith , and now is so estranged from his children he tells people that we are dead.  No, no that’s not entirely correct.  He tells strangers that I am dead, my adopted brother whom he raised from infancy he just says was never his.  In all honesty, there are times when I look back at what they did, at what my father became, and I wonder.  In those lonely moments before sleep embraces me, as my rational mind numbs and the shadows begin creeping inexorably into the room, I wonder whether as they fervently prayed for my father’s death if some dark terrible thing didn’t finally hear them and choose to act.

                You see, ladies and gentlemen, we tend to focus on what is seen, and quite frankly to an extent who could blame us?  Digging too deep in the human experience is to uncover things that are not so wholesome, in fact they are often ugly.  To not look beyond the obvious, however, is irresponsible, for God has commanded that we love the world and its people as they really are, not how we willfully choose to view them.  Such needs to be our attitude moving into our gospel lesson for today.

                On the surface, our story might seem that Jesus is making new laws concerning Jewish cleanliness and declaring all food clean.  Indeed, Christian Theologians from Justin Martyr down to Mrs. McGullicutty’s 3^rd Grade Sunday School class often use these stories to talk about moving from the Old Covenant to the New, but such a reading fails to look past appearances and see the betrayal and the outrage inherent in the text.

                Our story tells us that the Pharisees and the Scribes had gathered around Jesus and his disciples who were eating without washing their hands.  While 2000 years later we often paint Jesus’ long time foes as some kind of silent movie villain, the Snydely Whiplashes of a bygone era, the reality is these people were not.  The Pharisees were respected countrymen, a group dedicated to preserving Torah and the Jewish tradition in a conquered land.  And the scribes, they were the Bible publishers of their day, entrusted with providing new and accurate scrolls for the Jewish Community.  These were people that had earned the respect of their fellow Jews, and rightfully so.  To find suddenly what they think of you, to discover the smiles and the fellowship present when you were watching slip away into sneers and derision when you weren’t.  To at long last peek behind the curtain and see the whole story for what it was, the people for whom you honored and had only goodwill, saw you in turn only as unwashed filth.  With up-turned noses they declare the disciples to be apart from Israel, asking in a backhanded manner, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands as the gentiles do?”

                 And at this, Jesus is outraged.  He says to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;  in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as Doctrine.'  You abandon the commandment of God to love your neighbor and hold to human tradition." 

                In response to the Pharisees’ jab towards his disciples, a jab that was for all the world was not about faith but for being a working people who happened to get both hungry and dirty, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being the very kind of Israelite that Isaiah preached against, a people willing to look holy and devout on the outside but inside were the furthest thing from it.  “So my disciples are terrible for not washing their hands, would you mind telling me what verse that was again?  You who are so knowledgeable of the Bible, please tell us where in Israel’s history did God ever require this of his people?  My disciples hands are full of dirt you say?  Perhaps that might have meant more if it came from someone whose heart wasn’t so full of rot.”

                It is here Jesus brings the crowds into the conversation and what began was a sly snide remark meant for a few is suddenly opened up for all the world to see.  He addresses his audience by saying something that we all thought was new but in reality was very old.  That there were wicked Jews who hid behind the religion of Israel to perform the deeds of their evil hearts was by all accounts not new, the prophet Micah reminded his religious audience that a thousand rams would not slake the Lord’s anger “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good… what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Likewise, the prophet Hosea who confronted the priests of Gilead and compared them to marauders, “God desires mercy and acknowledgment of Him rather than burnt offerings and sacrifice.”  What makes a man truly unclean, Jesus declares, has nothing to do with religious observance but the human heart, for out of that do all foul things come.

                I admit, this story hits me hard.  Not only is it because I have lived with Holy Bullies and shadowy headless monsters but I know that as Americans, indeed as a congregation, we know of this reality all too well.  People on street-corners shouting religion like bullets instead of applying gospel like salve, family twisting arms and spirituality so others conform to religion the way they like it, making ceilings and walls out of faith instead of floors that support.  But as disturbed as I am by this story, as terrible and ugly as the religious bullies are it disturbs me more that I can become it.  I can be the bully.  Yes, the same Peter cut by the Pharisees words in Mark was the same Peter in Acts whom God had to rebuke three times to not call Unclean what He has made clean.  This story hits home to all of us because we can see ourselves at every turn. We will live to be the Pharisee, the bigot who looks down on God’s children because they are different and we will use God’s religion as our excuse.  We will live to be victim, the faithful follower of God who will find ourselves in the shooting sites of the rotten.  But despite this, despite all of it I take hope, for though we can and will be the bully and the bullied, we can also be the Christ, the child of God who rises to the defense of his people and calling the evil out of the shadows where it thrives and into the light.

                That we need to learn these roles, that we as a Church must learn that are times we must stand up and be strong, times to sit back and nurse wounds, and even times to look down and be found guilty is self evident.  That we may need to risk taking a shot meant for another, that may need to be humble and let someone defend us who is better at it than we are, that we may need to be sorry even if we cannot see what we have done wrong, these are essential lessons for Christ’s church especially moving into the twenty-first century. 

As I talk around, as I keep in touch with seminary colleagues and even other church-goers, they tell me the same sad story – one of failure and frustration.  We talk and then the conversation turn to me, “Keven, how’s your church doing?” and I find I have an embarrassment of riches.  We’re growing!   adding members and having visitors, we’re helping people both at home and abroad taking care of orphans and mothers in need, we’re performing baptisms and interceding for people through Prayer, and let me tell you this Church has some spiritual oomph.  I’ve been here for over a year and every person I’ve put into that Prayer book has seen positive change.  These things are happening because of who we are.  They look at us, they look at the leadership of this church and the see Luther the priest and musician, Luther the teacher and scholar, and yes, even Luther the spitfire.  They say here is a place where people of vastly different understandings, philosophies, and background, and yet they put it all down to work together.  They look at you and see, here, here is a congregation that doesn’t care where I’m from.  They look at you and see soil to grow in, they look at us and see something else, they see home.  But if we are to continue this, if we are going to continue growing in the next decade we need to learn the lessons of our gospel story and learn them well and accept people for who they are because that is what Jesus did.

  And to do this, I have an actual practical assignment for you.  It isn’t homework, so we can all just calm down a little bit.  I have asked Pastor Don to include the Apostle’s Creed in our worship today, it is one of the earliest creeds of the Christian Church.  Before today you spoke it aloud and saw only what is there.  Today, as you read it, I want you to do the opposite, I want you to speak the words and notice what is not there.  I want you to see what the earliest church saw as important, and for the first time I want you to see what they did not.  In the creed you will see nothing on how you are to read your Bibles, you will find no trace of what to think of evolution or even what to think of other religions.  Indeed, I dare say that every major complaint and rift in the Christian Church over its two thousand year history, every fight that Christians bully each other over daily, you will find our forbears thought were extraneous.  To them all that was needed were the simple truths of God as our Creator Redeemer and Sustainer, for out of that lens of faith will all else be made clear.  It is not that they didn’t believe other matters weren’t important, it’s not that they didn’t disagree –sometimes they did so vehemently.  Rather, however, they believed that any important matters not in the creed would come in their own time as God would provide and it was not worth dividing the body of Christ.  Let us as Christians rejoice over what has united us for centuries and let us not be Pharisees over which people of good conscience may differ.  Amen.               

To What End Our Religion? Sermon 7/26/15

To What End Our Religion?

A number of people often wonder why sometimes the lectionary seems to repeat itself.  The Gospel of Matthew contains some 28 chapters, Mark 16, Luke 24, and the Gospel of John has 21.  With such a plethora of material it seems strange that the lectionary would sometimes pull from the same basic set of events one week after another.  Well, there is a reason for this and that reason is they aren’t really repeats.  Each gospel has its own story to tell.  Jesus’ life was seen as so big, so incredible, that people believed that one account would simply not do Him Justice.  While many accounts of Jesus’ life were written at various times and for various reasons, the early church very quickly came to recognize four that clearly stood above the rest – each with a slightly different view.  So while it may look to us that our lesson today is simply the same story that Craig related to us last week the reality is each gospel is told for different reasons and paints a slightly different picture.

                Last week we read from the gospel of Mark, a gospel very likely written to Gentile Christians during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.  In the midst of that reality, faced with the power of the unstoppable Roman war machine Mark uses his story of the loaves and fishes to remind his audience of the power of compassion.  Sieges, after all, often meant people would go hungry as food would be rationed or indeed used up by your soldiers, but whereas War brought hunger and death, the power of this Jesus, the power of compassion, brought food and life.  Yes, whereas Rome conquered human bodies, this Jesus conquered the human heart.  That is Mark’s story to tell, but it is not John’s story.

                No, whereas Mark was writing to Gentile Christians John seems to have written his gospel to the Greek-speaking Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire.  Though Mark wrote his gospel to encourage people who were already believers in Christ, John explicitly tells his audience that his book is written that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they would have life in his name.  It is not that Jesus is less compassionate in John’s gospel, no not at all!  But rather the story that John tells uses the same facts about Jesus but for a radically different people.  And it follows that if John wants to write his gospel so his Jewish audience will come to believe in their Messiah, it is also only natural to want to highlight what that belief looks like.

                In our gospel reading for today, John has Jesus on the far side of the Sea of Galilee and a great crowd of people are following him.  However, unlike the other Gospels John makes sure to tell his audience why.  They are there because they saw the miracles that Jesus performed on the sick.  They are not there because of faith, they are not there to learn anything profound, they aren’t even there to have the sick among their number healed.  Jesus had become a TV show, a spectacle to watch if you could make the time, not unlike the circus.  Still, despite this Jesus decides to work with it.  He sits down upon the mountainside and sees this great throng of people coming toward him, waiting expectantly for a miracle.

                Knowing what they are there for, Jesus decides to take this as an opportunity to reveal himself.   He turns to Phillip and says, “Where can we get bread for all these people,” knowing very well what he is going to do.  Phillip, of course, looks upon the crowds and declares that six months of a man’s wages could not by enough bread for each one to have a bite.  Another of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, however, responds in faith.  Wishing to find any small way to respond to his master’s wishes, he comes forward saying that he has found a boy who has some small barley loaves and a small amount of fish.  “But,” he says, “how far will they go amongst so many?”

                Jesus tells the disciples to have the crowds sit upon the grass and to let them take as much food as they want.  In a miracle both reminiscent of Elisha and the man from Baal-shalishah where God declared the crowd would eat and have some left but also reminiscent of the Exodus - where the Israelites followed God into the wilderness and were fed by God with the bread from heaven - both the crowds and the disciples find that they can have as much bread and fish as they please from this boy’s small basket and it just doesn’t ever seem to run out!  Just as the Israelites did in the wilderness so long ago, Jesus has his disciples gather what is left, wanting nothing to be wasted.  When the disciples had finished, the meal that fit into one basket had grown to fill twelve!  One basket for every tribe in Israel, as it turned out.  Twelve baskets filled to the very brim.

To us, living in our scientific day and age, this tale is seen merely as an interesting yarn of how the laws of nature were somehow broken but to John’s audience it was an act steeped in meaning and rooted in the very history of the Jewish people.  But how does the crowd respond?  Is it in faith?  Is it in gratitude and wonder?  No, despite not once in its own revered Scriptures was anyone but God ever described as having these powers, Despite that Moses never fed the Israelites miraculously with bread, despite that Elisha couldn’t make the food never run out, and despite the fact John the Baptist came mimicking Elijah down to his clothing and even his diet, the crowds proclaim that here in Jesus is the Prophet that was to come into the world.  No doubt deeply disappointed and saddened by this, Jesus senses that the crowd is even coming to make him king by force and so he retreats up the mountain- alone. 

But John doesn’t end his tale there.  Later that evening, John says, the disciples go down to the lake and set off for the city of Capernaum.  John recounts that it was dark, and that Jesus had not yet rejoined them.  As was common for sea-going travel in that part of the world, a strong wind arose and the waters became very rough.  Being poor fishermen, however, it would be very unlikely that they could afford a boat meant to take the kind of weather the sea was about to throw at them.  Indeed, as the story says, three and half miles from shore they would be too far to swim to safety if the worst should happen.  The disciples must have been on nerves end and scared almost witless.  It is then, however, that they see Jesus coming toward them walking on the waters of all things!  Already frightened I could only imagine how they felt upon seeing this.  Indeed, as other gospel writers recall the disciples believed he must have been a ghost!  In the midst of those uncertain waters though, here Jesus does something very curious.  Here, in the midst of their grave need Jesus takes the opportunity to reveal himself again.  Now, our English translations often have Jesus saying, “It is I, do not be afraid” but that isn’t quite true.  Jesus doesn’t say “It is I, do not be afraid,” he says, “Ego Eimi, may phobeisthe”- “I am, do not be afraid.”  Uttering the name Yahweh, the personal name given to Israel through the burning bush, Jesus reveals his true nature to them.  It is here we come to John’s true point.  Whereas the crowds were shown Jesus’ true nature but disregarded it for an earthly political figure, the disciples are told straight out, and they accept him willingly just as he is.  And upon his acceptance into their number, they find the boat miraculously ashore at their intended destination, safe and sound.  One instance of revealing and crowds misunderstand and reject, and God Incarnate withdraws, leaving the crowds still wandering in the wilderness, the other with acceptance and gratitude followed by miraculous salvation and rescue.

                In the ancient world, you see, they didn’t have Microsoft Word, they didn’t have printing presses or even whiteout.  To make a book was a monumental expense in terms of money, effort and time.  As such, what came out of that process wasn’t just a book and it wasn’t just a story.  It was a craft, a work of art as well as history that was written because there was an important lesson that needed to be taught.  When John wrote to his fellow Jews it was not merely to impart a story they could find in another gospel, he is not throwing out an interesting anecdote to fill up space until he reaches the resurrection, rather he is deeply challenging his audience to analyze the very motives of their Jewishness.  He is asking his fellow Israelites “To what end is our religion?”  Is our beloved national identity, is our way of life, our understanding of God and the universe, is it about seeking an authentic relationship with the God who still walks among us or is this just a selfish means to a selfish end?  Do we go about doing our religion, do we quote from our Scriptures, show up at our places of worship because we seek a real encounter with God in the wilderness of our lives, or are we just sort of here for the show and hoping to get fed?  Do we seek the King because he is there to be sought, there to be with us in our darkest night and our roughest seas, or is even He just there so we can get what we want, a king that we make by force to replace the things, the beliefs, and the people that we don’t like?  These are the challenges John is placing before his audience, and they are as valid for the faithful now as they were two thousand years ago.

So the question must be asked, not only of us personally but as an American Church: To what end is our religion?  What are our motives, why do we as American Christians go about this business of faith?  Is it to be entertained?  Is it something to do when we have a day off?  When we argue our faith over against another, when we quote our Scriptures and invoke our God, is it for the other person’s benefit - or is it forcing the kind of Jesus we want to be king over their lives?

Ladies and gentlemen let it not be so!  I have been an American Christian for some 38 years and I am sorry to say that the most selfish and manipulative people I have met have never been atheists, and that is to our shame as a nation.  But is it not to our shame as a congregation.  Like the disciples, when we saw the public’s reactions to the gospel of forgiveness, an attempt to take the truth of God’s love and twist it into something it wasn’t, we left.  We looked out at those lonely waters and we struck it out on our own knowing fully the dangers those waters posed.  We went anyways.  When those waters got rough, when we were scared trying to keep the waves from crashing in and swamping what we meagerly had, we saw Jesus out on the waves and we invited him in just as he was, and those storms came and went didn’t they? 

I am not telling you this lesson because you need to learn it, you already know it well! No, I am telling this lesson because this is the lesson that disciples teach to others.  Just as John understood this lesson nearly two millennia ago and was empowered to challenge his fellow Hebrews so it is our job to learn this lesson well so we might challenge the faithful of our own era.  And let this be our message: Accept the real Jesus.  Not the Jesus that is to your liking, not the Church that puts on the best show, not the Christianity that lets you force your understandings onto others.  The real Jesus.  The Jesus who invites us to know Him and His Father in every act that they do.  The Jesus who affirms others as a good people with an honorable history worthy to be called the children of God.  The Jesus who would rather withdraw than let us make a mistake and the Jesus who comes off of mountaintops and across stormy seas to be with his own when they need Him most.  That is the Jesus of John, and may we be ever faithful to Him.  Amen and Amen.