4th Sunday in Lent: March 18, 2012

4^th Sunday in Lent: March 18, 2012

John 3:14-21

Preacher: Pr. Carrie B. Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In a certain January football game between the Denver Broncos and the Pittsburgh Steelers, some amazing things happened:

First, Tim Tebow passed for 316 yards against the Steelers and set an NFL playoff record with 31.6 yards per completion.

And if that wasn’t amazing enough, Tebow’s favorite receiver in that game was Demaryius Thomas, who was responsible for the game-winning touchdown in overtime. Thomas was born on Dec. 25, 1987. And who else has a birthday celebrated on Dec. 25? (hint: The answer is not Santa Claus…)

If you don’t know who Tim Tebow is (or if you haven’t watched television for the last 5 months), then you might not understand the connection, so here it is: Tim Tebow is a football player who has become famous for his open profession of the Christian faith—primarily in the form of kneeling in prayer on the field. He has even inspired a new word—“tebowing”—which means “to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different.”

Sports fans and Jesus fans alike took special note of the “3:16” connection in that particular January game, certain that it was proof of divine intervention. God must have been sending a message to the world via Tebow’s passing arm! And according to the tebowers, the message was this:

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16

I don’t know if the world got the message, but Google certainly did. That Sunday evening and into the next Monday morning, the most popular Google-searched phrase was “John 3:16”, as countless football fans tried to learn what all the fuss was about.

Many people may have needed to look it up on Google, but John 3:16 is still by far the most beloved verse of Scripture. It is memorized by Sunday School students, painted on posters, tattooed on arms, screen-printed on t-shirts, and, apparently, can even be found hidden in football statistics. It has become a sort of Christian tagline—an easy, one sentence sound bite that sums up more than 2,000 years of Christian history, theology, and practice. Do you want people to know you’re a Christian? Get a John 3:16 license plate! Do you want customers to know you’re a Christian business? Put John 3:16 on the bottom of your paper cups! (for the record, the In-N-Out Burger chain in California actually does this…)

If I sound a little cynical about the John 3:16 craze, it’s only because the extreme popularity of this verse has also contributed to the neglect and watering down of the Good News of God’s all-encompassing love for the entire world.

Let’s take those posters you see at sports events, for example. The poster-bearer may intend to send a message of hope and love via national television, but more often the message received is something like this: “I’ve got the world—and God—figured out, and so should you.” Or “I’m a crazy guy carrying a poster at a football game—please ignore me!’

Unfortunately, even though this verse has incredible, deep meaning for Christians who have learned it within a community of faith, outside of that experience John 3:16 can sound less like a love letter from God and more like a threat: “For God was so annoyed with the world that he gave you one chance to believe, and sent everyone else to hell. You’d better believe before this game is over.”

I doubt very much that anyone has been brought to faith in God and belief in Jesus Christ through a John 3:16 poster. And for this reason, I see those John 3:16 t-shirts, license plates, and other public witnesses as a matter of Christian pride rather than evangelism. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not advocating for Christians to stop having pride in their faith (in fact, telling Lutherans to be a little quieter about their faith is like telling Chicagoans to drink a little more beer on St. Patrick’s Day! Completely unnecessary.) But I do wonder if simply throwing this verse out there does justice to the awesome message of love we have from God in Christ Jesus.

Let’s look again at that familiar verse, but with its surrounding verses for a little context:

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

“For God so loved the world.” The word for world in biblical Greek is kosmos, which is the root for our words like “cosmic” and “cosmology”. Properly understood, then, John 3:16 proclaims that God so loved the cosmos, that he gave his only Son. God doesn’t just love Lutherans, or Christians, or Americans, or the good people, or the beautiful people, or those pay their taxes on time, or those who vote a particular way. God sent Jesus into the world because God loved the cosmos—people, animals, plants, worms, birds, the earth, the moon, the stars, and the planets that have been shining so brightly in the skies the last few weeks.

This is a love that won’t fit on a poster or a bumper sticker. This is a love we can’t quite grasp—for our love is limited. Our human ability to love is bound by our sin, by our inward-turning nature, and by our affinity for those who are like us. But God’s love is bigger than we can imagine. God’s love is so great that God sent the Son to be born among us, to walk with us, to suffer just like us, to die for us, and to be raised for our sake. Twentieth-century Presbyterian theologian and writer Frederick Buechner said this about God’s love: “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.”

God’s love is Good News for the universe, not for a limited few—which is one reason it’s so frustrating when John 3:16 is used –or heard—as a message of condemnation or a weapon of judgment. Perhaps it would help if we didn’t stop at verse 16, but made the effort to include verse 17 as well:

¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

In other words, God isn’t playing games with us. We weren’t given the Son as a limited time offer, this week only, subject to availability and not guaranteed in all areas. God loved the entire universe God created, and sent the Son to save it…period. Amen!

Is there judgment? Indeed—in fact, verses 18 and 19 state that “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” But condemnation and separation from God, rather than being an event that happens at the pearly gates of heaven if you have failed to believe in your lifetime, is visible here and now. Humans love darkness more than they love the light, and as a result many suffer in a hell of their own making. We may even have personal experience with the darkness and suffering of unbelief.

Unbelief does cause suffering. But belief isn’t about being theologically correct, or saying a magic prayer, or praying in the end zone after a winning game. Fredrick Buechner wrote: “Believing in him is not the same as believing things about him such as that he was born of a virgin and raised Lazarus from the dead. Instead, it is a matter of giving our hearts to him, of come hell or high water putting our money on him, the way a child believes in a mother or a father, the way a mother or a father believes in a child.”

What if, instead of tuning it out because it’s so familiar, we heard John 3:16 in this way?

“God’s love is cosmic. God didn’t send Jesus to condemn us, but to save us from a life of darkness and futility. Giving our heart to Jesus means living a whole and lasting life.”

This is the message of John 3:16, after all—but maybe all of that won’t fit on a bumper sticker! And this is really the point of this sermon: That God’s love is too big for a sound bite, and too important to entrust to the guys who bring their Bible posters to football games.

God’s love is amazing—and it’s too good not to share. This week, as we enter the 4^th week of Lent, inching closer to Holy Week and the story of Jesus’ passion on the cross, consider the greatness of God’s love. Consider how it has changed you. Consider those in your life who are not yet living in the light of God’s love, and how you can bring that light closer. Here’s a hint: you probably don’t need to make a poster.

One more time, a few words from Pastor Fredrick Buechner to close out the sermon:

“Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits people? Every person has his own tale to tell, including the person who would not believe in God if you paid him. Some moment happens in your life that makes you say Yes right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. Laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. Waking up to the first snow. Being in bed with somebody you love. Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you try to turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to Business as Usual, it may lose you the whole ball game. If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul. How about the person you know who as far as you can possibly tell has never had such a moment? Maybe for that person the moment that has to happen is you.” (quoted from “Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals” by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilsobn-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, p. 286)

3rd Sunday in Lent: March 11, 2012

3^rd Sunday in Lent: March 11, 2012

John 2: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

Preacher: Pastor Carrie B. Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I rarely watch the morning news shows anymore, having grown tired of hearing about the latest ways to stay thin, the season’s hottest new look, and the toys my kids will be begging for this Christmas. But a few days ago I found myself trapped in an armchair, weighed down by a cat, and therefore had the opportunity to take in all the “most important” news of the day.

That particular day, these were some of the top stories:

A clothing company in the UK has been selling men’s pants with a label inside featuring these cleaning instructions: “Dry clean only—or give to your woman. It’s her job.”

Forbes magazine’s newest female billionaire is the woman who invented Spanx undergarments (men, if you don’t know what these are, just ignore this part of the sermon.)

A soccer mom in New Jersey has been busted for running a brothel out of her home.

A notorious radio personality became a top story after using a string of nasty names and lewd comments to describe female college student.

Oh…and Snooki is having a baby.

Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, the news is that Jesus went a little crazy in the temple, after finding it had been made into a marketplace.

This week’s Gospel text usually lends itself to a fantastic sermon opportunity on Christian consumerism and how we misuse our modern day temples. But this week, what screams out to me from television, from radio, from billboards, and from political pundits, is how the temple of the human body (and in particular, the female body) has become a marketplace.

According to Genesis, we are all Imago Dei, made in the image of God:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27)

And according to 1 Corinthians 6:19, we are temples of the Holy Spirit:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19)

Scripture also says that Jesus himself abides in us, as we abide in him. Furthermore, our bodies are not our own, but have been bought with a price, and should therefore glorify the body.

But instead of being glorified or honored as temples, our bodies have become marketplaces. Moneychangers have moved right in, appropriating sacred space and making it their own.

Women’s bodies in particular sell everything from blue jeans to toilet bowl cleaners. Those annoying pants labels I mentioned, sexist as they are, achieved just what they were designed for: a few angry protests from women, and tons of media attention. Sara Blakely has made a billion dollars selling us special underwear—underwear that promises to shape us into more perfect versions of ourselves (because we all know our bodies are wild animals to be tamed, not temples of the Holy Spirit!). That New Jersey madam made millions selling other women to high-profile businessmen through her suburban brothel. MTV is rightfully concerned with how much money it will lose, now that a pregnant Snooki won’t be enticing viewers with her usual Jersey Shore partying. And as for the political pundits who use women’s bodies and women’s health as pawns in their game? They hope to use our bodies to buy a few votes.

All of this misuse of the human body seems so normal and such an everyday part of our lives that we may wonder: “What’s the big deal? Isn’t this just the way the world works?”

But then we turn back to Scripture and to that scene where an angry Jesus clears the moneychangers out of the temple:

The Jesus we meet in the temple isn’t gentle Jesus, meek and mild. This isn’t the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay. This is Jesus, angry prophet, driving out every last one of the moneychangers, dove-sellers, and cattle rustlers with a whip of cords in his hand. In his zeal to clean up the place, he even overturns tables and pours money onto the floor.

What angered Jesus so much was arriving at the temple of the Lord—the dwelling place of God and the holiest spot in Jerusalem—and finding that it had been invaded by businessmen with their own agendas. This wasn’t just a falafel stand at the entrance of the temple or a lemonade stand at the entrance of a church. These were folks who had moved right in to sacred space, ignoring the presence of God in favor of making a profit. “Take these things out of here!” Jesus shouted. “Stop making my Father’s house into a marketplace!”

You see, a temple isn’t just a building. It is the dwelling place of God. It is holy ground, and a sacred refuge. A temple isn’t intended to be a place of commerce or of unholy transactions.

If you had walked into church this morning and were greeted with signs announcing “This sermon sponsored by Microsoft” or “All communion wine offered by Gallo Wineries”, or even “We use only Dasani brand water in our baptismal font”, you might feel a similar outrage. It’s easy to understand how this kind of commerce has no place in a house of worship.

But if our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, made in God’s image, and if Jesus himself abides in us, then it also offends God when human bodies are used for personal profit.

Jesus was consumed with zeal for his Father’s house and cleansed the temple of the moneychangers who had invaded it. Today, we are called to the same zeal wherever we see sacred spaces, holy places, and especially human faces being used, abused, and destroyed.

Wherever women are raped, human sex trafficking is tolerated, or blatant sexism is a joke; wherever the right to receive health care for our own bodies becomes a matter of politics; wherever the female body is used as an advertising gimmick; wherever black bodies are lynched, undocumented bodies labor for our benefit, or child soldiers are used to fight an unholy war—Jesus calls us to zealously speak out and actively overturn the tables of injustice. Every human body is made in the image of God, a temple of the Holy Spirit which deserves to be treated with reverence and honor.

Followers of Jesus are called and empowered to speak out as he did in the temple that day. We can do much to change the way human bodies—male and female, young and old, white, black or brown—are treated.

But when Jesus challenged the abusive systems in place in the temple that day, he also issued a prophecy: “You may destroy this temple, but in 3 days I will raise it up.” Those in power thought he was talking about the building. Even the disciples didn’t understand until later what he meant.

Of course what Jesus was prophesying was the cross and his own death. He knew where he was headed. He knew that to speak out against the powers and principalities which made the temple a marketplace, kept food from the hungry, and kept poor people in the gutters, was to write his own death warrant.

But he also proclaimed that the cross wouldn’t be the end of the story.

Jesus promises that wherever temples are destroyed, God will bring new life and resurrection. The cross of Christ is our promise that God will always bring life out of death, freedom out of oppression, hope out of despair, righteousness out of sin, and love out of hate. We glory in the cross, which is our promise that God restores relationships, recovers innocence, heals bodies and cleanses temples. For the message of the cross is foolishness for those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God!

This is God’s Good News for all those who have suffered rape, abuse, bullying, or persecution of any kind. It is Good News for those who have seen addictions or cancers move in and invade their bodies. The cross is God’s Good News for every person whose body has been into a marketplace, used for profit instead of honored as a dwelling place of the divine.

Because of the cross of Christ, we can not only speak up when we see human bodies being defiled—but we ourselves can also stand in the shadow of the cross, and say to the powers and principalities who would dishonor our bodies:

“No matter what you say about this temple…no matter how you desecrate it or try to destroy it…no matter what you do to this place where God the Father dwells…It will be raised up.”

2nd Sunday in Lent

2^nd Sunday in Lent: March 4, 2012

Mark 8:31-38

Preacher: Pr. Carrie B. Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When I was a brand-new college student at Oklahoma State University—a freshman eager to begin my studies as a piano major—I thought I knew exactly what it meant to be a musician. After all, my dad was a music professor, and my grandfather had spent his entire career as a high school band director. One whole side of my family was involved in music in one way or another, and I had always known I would be following in their footsteps. The only difference, of course, is that I would be a performer, not a teacher like my relatives. I walked into the music department that first day ready to begin my glorious career as a professional pianist.

But first, there was an assembly of all freshmen music majors. A professor stood to welcome us to the program, and then he said: “I know you all want to be musicians. But if there is anything else you can do in life—if there is anything at all that will make you happy and fulfilled outside of this profession—you should do it. The life of a musician is hard. Most of you won’t make it. You’ll need side jobs to make ends meet. Only a few of you will have a go at a career. So if you think you can be happy doing anything else—go do it.”

How’s that for a pep talk? But of course, he was right. The life of a musician is rarely one of glitz and glory. Record deals, NPR interviews and concert dates at Carnegie Hall are few and far between. The reality of life as a musician is long hours in the practice room, late night gigs at senior proms, playing in a wedding polka band to pay the bills, and working every other waking hour at Subway. It’s a hard life, and not one to be entered into lightly. You should know what you’re getting into.

When Jesus gathered his disciples together in the days just before he entered Jerusalem, he gave them a similar sort of reality check:

³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly.

The disciple Peter didn’t like this pep talk one bit! In fact, he had the nerve to disagree with Jesus and rebuke him in front of the others: “No way, Jesus! I refuse to believe it! It doesn’t have to be that way!” I can picture Peter as the starry-eyed freshman music major, determined that these words weren’t for him—it can’t really be the way he is describing--he would certainly be a star, no matter what the professor said.

But Jesus, turning and looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter right back and said,

“Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

And then, gathering the whole crowd around to listen along with the disciples, Jesus continued his “come to Jesus” speech:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Scripture tells us that Jesus said all these things “quite openly.” The time had come to get real about what discipleship would mean after Galilee, and especially after Jerusalem and Golgotha. Following Jesus would no longer mean being a roadie, on tour to new villages to see his astonishing teaching, healing, and feeding miracles. Now, according to Jesus, if you wanted to be his disciple, you would be carrying a cross, and losing your life. Not exactly glamorous or full of glory, is it? But, it’s a hard life, and you should know what you’re getting into.

This appears to be a terrible marketing strategy. It’s hard to imagine anyone signing up for voluntary cross-carrying duty as a lifestyle. And perhaps this is why we rarely speak “quite openly” about the realities of life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Instead, we focus on the attractive qualities of the Christian life in general, and church in particular. When we do speak openly, we often present the situation like this: (Yes, these are all real phrases from Chicagoland church websites)

· “You're invited to check out our church this Sunday for creative teaching, meaningful worship, an unforgettable kids program and a church that knows how to have fun! We provide complimentary coffee.”

· Or we extend invitations like this one: “If you're looking for a church home, we'd love for you to come by and see if we're a good fit. We believe God is in a good mood, and His heart is for you.”

· We create state of the art websites that promote our “talented live band and a style consistent with today’s culture” as well as “dynamic guest speakers from around the world”. We might even include a link for purchasing “bold Christian apparel.”

· And in a last ditch effort to get people in the door, we promise that “All weekend services last for ninety minutes – you can always expect them to start and end on time.”

Now, just to be clear, I have no problem with most of these individual features of Christian worship or of our life together on Sunday mornings. In fact, complimentary coffee, good music and services that start on time are a definite draw for me! But I wonder how different it would be if we told the truth, quite openly, about what Christian discipleship is like the other days of the week.

I wonder what it would be like for us to say, quite openly, something like this:

· If you want to follow Jesus, you’ll have to leave your own priorities and values at the door.

· If you want to follow Jesus, you’ll spend less time in the church and more time on the streets.

· If you want to follow Jesus, keep in mind that the church won’t always conform to your needs, but Christ always transforms you for his needs.

· If you want to follow Jesus, you should know that suffering goes beyond sitting through a bad sermon or eight verses of a hymn. As a disciple, you will carry the sufferings of others in your heart and on your back.

Perhaps this also is a crummy marketing campaign. On the other hand, being a Christian isn’t easy, and you should know what you’re getting into.

The time has come to tell the truth about Christian discipleship. Why? Because Jesus was quite open about the necessity of picking up your cross to follow him. But we confuse the message:

1. We either bypass the cross altogether and promise people they will find a life of perfect joy and no pain if they become a Christian; or:

2. We confuse our own personal life struggles with Jesus’ invitation to discipleship.

The first problem—leading others to believe that being a Christian is all sunshine and rainbows—results in new disciples who feel side-swiped and lied to when the struggles of life don’t disappear upon joining the church.

But the second problem—confusing our own sufferings with Jesus’ invitation to discipleship—is also a lie. We get a cancer diagnosis, or we have a problem teenager, or we lose our job, and we find ourselves saying: “Ah yes, this is the cross I must bear.”

And indeed: Cancer sucks. Unemployment is heart-breaking and home-ruining. Burying a loved one is unimaginably hard. It takes a mountain of faith and strong shoulders to bear such crosses. But these sufferings are not the cross of discipleship! Suffering and grief are the result of a broken and sinful world, which the cross of Jesus Christ has redeemed.

When Jesus says “Take up your cross and follow me”, he’s not speaking to the cancer patient—he’s speaking to the one standing by the bed of the cancer patient. He’s speaking to the neighbor of the jobless father. He’s speaking to the friends of the struggling or grieving parent. And he says: “You there—yes, you!—pick up that cross and follow me.”

If you want to be a disciple, take up the sufferings of your neighbor. Lighten their load. Walk next to them. Go where they are going, even if (and especially if) it leads to suffering and death.

If you want to be a disciple, stand with the Kearns family as they grieve the loss of Jennifer, age 19—not only for many hours at the visitation, but in the months and years to come.

If you want to be a disciple, be there for the Vito family, helping Kelly with the burden of raising a family without Frank.

If you want to be a disciple, stand with the illegal, homeless, unpopular, mentally ill, foreclosed upon, imprisoned, heretical, or just plain unpleasant people in your midst, even if it means you, too, are reviled and ridiculed and gossiped about.

If you want to be a disciple, speak out—quite openly—when the speech, actions, and laws of others cause your neighbor to suffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was hanged for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, once wrote: “How is a disciple to know which is his or her cross? We receive it upon entering the discipleship of the suffering Lord, and come to recognize it in the community of Jesus.”

It is by living in community—worshipping, praying, laughing, crying, and breaking bread together, that we learn the cross we are to bear. We will know it when we see the suffering of our neighbor. We will know it when the love of God in Christ Jesus compels us to reach out and pick it up. And with the help of Christ, our Savior—and in his footsteps—we carry our neighbor’s cross, for the sake of the Gospel.

Jesus said: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” It’s a strange marketing strategy. It’s an unpopular church growth model! But faith tells us this: The way of the cross is also the way of life, and hope, and resurrection. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is God’s Good News, which is poured out on us and which we receive, quite openly, in the Word, in the waters of baptism, in bread and wine, and through the cross-bearing love of our Christian brothers and sisters. Amen.