A Good Neighbor

Sermon Luke 10: 25-37 September 1, 2019

A Good Neighbor

The story of the Good Samaritan is a story you have heard since the cradle or just about that long. When you hear the words “Good Samaritan”, you might think of the parable or perhaps the many hospitals with that name or centers for assistance. Or perhaps the “Good Samaritan” laws for those who assist people along the side of the road after an accident. All these references are to “good deeds”.

We naturally equate this parable with doing good deeds, even Jesus tells the lawyer at the end of the story “Go and do the same”.

But this is not a story about good deeds;

it is a question about eternal life.

The lawyer’s first question is what brings us eventually to this parable: thus many would be led to believe that to receive eternal life we must go around doing acts of kindness. If we spend our lives picking people up out of ditches, then God will surely recognize us and then grant us our reward.

Unfortunately, this is how the words of Jesus have been reinterpreted through time. We seem to need a way to make excuses for the choices others make. When we provide rational excuses for someone else’s inappropriate behavior, then it gives us a way out for our inappropriate behavior-our excuses. “I would have stopped, but I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment I had been waiting for for months.” “therefore God, my eternal life is intact, right?”

First the lawyer:

Jesus has been healing the sick on the Sabbath, he has been associating himself with unclean people, he has welcomed known sinners and so this lawyer seeks to find out if Jesus really knows the Law; to clarify to Jesus That HE does not obey the Law.

Hosea 6:6 “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings”. From this verse we know God requires more than obedience.

Jesus turns the question on the lawyer and he responds with the correct formula answer.

He knows that God requires this double love; love of God and love of neighbor.

We have a God who is all about relationship. It would seem that eternal life has to do with this double love; the ability to love God and our neighbor. As believers we then conclude that eternal life is about doing, about loving and trying to do what is right.

So, the lawyer who understands justice and judgment wants Jesus to clarify and asks, “who is my neighbor?”.

Second, we enter now into the parable.

The focus of this parable is on two people, the person in the ditch and the one who rescues him.

The man in the ditch is without description. He is anthropos, everyman. Perhaps like the “everyman” in the 15^th century play who was looking for eternal life. Everyman, any man, humanity, was lying in the ditch in need of rescuing, in need of someone to come and save him.

Two religious people pass by and do not even bother to stop, as a matter of fact; they make a wide berth around the victim in order to avoid him.

We have justified these two people over the years by saying the priest was unable to come near anything unclean and that is why he could not stop and that the Levite was on his way to the temple and if he stopped then he would have too much ritual to go through to carry out his functions in the temple.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t give any explanation as to why they didn’t stop!

We want to rationalize their behavior because it helps us rationalize our own.

It is the Samaritan,

the one despised by the Jews

who shows pity.

In the apocryphal scripture Sirach they refer to the Samaritans as “stupid” people. Who are the people we refer to with that name?

It is exactly this detested person that Jesus gives the hero role to.

It would have been a whole lot better if the Samaritan was the one who was in the ditch. It’s always easier to do kind things for those who are considered less than ourselves. “We’re good people we serve soup to the poor every Saturday night”, We’ve turned our house into a shelter for the homeless, we went to Africa and built a school for orphans; all these acts of doing things for the “less fortunate” make us feel good, make us feel justified.

Remember friends, we don’t have the identity of the person in the ditch except “anthropos” humanity. He could have been wealthy, or poor, he could have been royalty or a common man.

What we have is the identity of the one who came to save,

a person despised by many,

a person oppressed, rejected,

acquainted with grief and

not held in esteem.

Do we recognize someone else who fits this description?

This person, this Samaritan, is moved with pity.

The Greek word actually means moved from your gut, a very deep emotion, one that musters up all of your body’s senses. Several places in Scripture Jesus is moved with the same pity, the same emotion.

Everyman (humanity) is lying in the ditch and receives grace and mercy from someone despised by others, everyman accepts this grace without a word.

Notice that the person in the ditch does not have a dialogue yet he is the object lesson for us. Everyman or humanity has the opportunity of receiving grace, has the opportunity to receive eternal life.

God’s justice and God’s grace is not limited to a select few, but is open to all.

A few years ago, I took a youth group to spend three days working at a homeless shelter in Louisville. The shelter was a hotel and those who lived there were learning all the skills of hotel work. Cooking, cleaning, management and so on. It was an eye-opening experience and a lesson about ‘all God’s creatures’.

I asked myself, ‘would I be willing to be vulnerable and get help from one of these people? I came to serve them, this was my mission to feel good about what I did not what they did for me.’  And yet, my life was altered and my tunnel vision changed.

I think the experience at the homeless shelter was recognizing the dignity restored to the men and women in the hotel.

People, once homeless, were given new life.

The men working in the kitchen were able to teach us how to do their job.

They taught us with pride and

helped me to realize that I wasn’t there just doing something to lift them out of the ditch

but

they were doing something to lift me

out of my short sightedness.

Thirdly, we then want to identify who is the neighbor.

Jesus, at the end of this parable turns the tables on the question who is my neighbor to who was the neighbor.

The answer was the one who showed mercy,

the one who approached others with grace.

Bonhoeffer says, “Neighborliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves”. I am the neighbor; you are the neighbor in this story.

Friday and Saturday our local CCYF (Community Christian Youth Fellowship) had a weekend experience at Camp OOTB. We had 11 youth gather to sleep in tents right on the water of Occohannock creek. We cooked our dinner over a fire, roasted marshmallows, made ourselves vulnerable to each other through challenge games, climbed a rock wall, went canoeing and swimming.

We learned a lot about each other.

We bonded.

We worshiped.

We grew in our understanding of our neighbor.

I think too often we choose not to participate in events or charity opportunities, or programs because the people involved are just not cool enough for us,

or the venue is only where ‘those’ people hang out.

Sometimes being a good neighbor is more about

 how we make ourselves vulnerable among the least of these

and allow them to be the teacher,

to be the ones who open the gates of heaven for us.

Perhaps, that’s the point Jesus was trying to make with this story more than anything else…perhaps.  

We as followers of Jesus Christ have the opportunity to share his grace with all those who we meet. We have the opportunity to share the good news of eternal life with humanity.

You see this parable of Jesus is meant to throw us into new awareness.

It is meant to help us understand the fullness of the Law.

The fullness of the Law is that it is about justice and grace.

The two go hand in hand, you can’t have justice without grace nor grace without justice.

If there was no grace in the Law then we’d all still be in the ditch.

But, grace is what lifts us out of the ditch and gives us new life, eternal life.

We are called to live our lives with the same grace that we have received.

The Good Samaritan is not just a good deed story

nor a rescue event,

but an example of how God

reached out to humanity through his son Jesus Christ

who gave his life for us so that we might reach out to others and so it goes…

Amen.

The Guard of our Heart

Sermon Luke 12:13-21 August 4, 2019

The Guard of our Heart

Psalm 121 is a psalm that provides comfort and offers the reminder that in all things God is with us. In the NRSV it goes like this:  I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
⁸ The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.

In this psalm it is clear to the reader that the Lord is the guard of our hearts, our lives and our very being. Our children’s catechism begins with the question, “who am I?” and we all answer, “I am a child of God.” From the beginning to our very end we belong to God. When we remember this, it becomes the heart of all of our life and our decisions. It isn’t just on Sundays or on days when we find ourselves worried about a moral dilemma. 

God isn’t the guardian of our hearts when we are in poor health or in need of our prayers to be answered. 

God is our guardian from our going out and our coming in, from this time and forever more.

With this understanding of God’s ever-presence we find ourselves without excuse for not consulting God in of our circumstances, whether we are rich or poor or satisfied or hungry, filled with abundance or scraping the barrel. 

God insists that we belong to him in all of this.  

Strange isn’t it that when it comes to money, parables about money, straight talk from Jesus about money, anything written in the Bible about money, we preachers completely avoid it. There is a fear of preaching these Biblical texts. The fear that one of may be offended. There is a fear to speak of these texts because it can mis-interpreted into a need for more funds for the church and the preacher is finding him/herself caught up in the annual capital campaign for the church. There is a legitimate fear of preaching or even talking about these texts of money because they speak directly to our hearts, our nature, our real personhood.

The heart of this story reveals the greed, the idolatry of this man. The last thing we want to do is relate to a man in a parable that has a poor heart toward God.

If I had had time this week, it would have been delightful to turn this parable into one of the skits similar to what our youth did all week at VBS. The skits were hilarious and brought the point home of what was most important in each of the stories. The children were really able to understand the power of God’s love within them as it related to faith, boldness, kindness, thankfulness, and hope.

The parable is self-explanatory and really needs no interpretation. 

Perhaps what is most important with this text is our self-reflection.  

Let’s consider together a few elements of the parable.  

It starts out with a man asking Jesus to arbitrate a family dispute. 

How many police officers have been trained to save lives, to help people in trouble, to really be there to defend us-but spend more time arriving at homes caught trying to solve domestic disputes that have gone violent?

Jesus warns the man that he will not come between he and his brother, but tells him to be on guard for greed. 

Perhaps, the question before we enter into the parable is to ask ourselves where do we find greed in our life? 

Where do we find ourselves worried about the fairness of life? Because life is not fair-it is truly not fair. 

Where are we screaming to our moms that our brother has the bigger piece of cake? 

Where are we more concerned about what we believe is ours than we are about our relationship? 

Where is it more important in our lives to build up bigger and bigger things, our reputation, visual wealth, positions, name dropping, tall, tall silos, than it is to spend time in prayer consulting with God regarding our decisions?

Jesus enters into this parable to respond to the man who is worried about what his brother will do with his inheritance. 

We discover the man in the parable only considers his soul as a storehouse. This man has great wealth but only talks to himself about what to do with it. He shows no gratitude to God. 

He neither prays, nor kneels, nor offers up anything in appreciation to God. 

He doesn’t show gratitude to any of the workers who helped him achieve his wealth. He doesn’t show any gratitude to his family or his neighbors. The man in the parable is living his life in a selfish bubble.

The man fails to realize that all he plans to do requires the work of the hands of others. He has ignored completely the process of how he was able and continues to be able to live a life of wealth. He can do nothing on his own and yet assumes he is alone. And this is where God and God’s laws come in.

The condition is not that wealth or building storehouses or being rich is bad. Nor is it bad for those who are seeking to improve their lives to gain a better foothold in life, who struggle and scrimp and save to make ends meet, is also not bad or good or anything in between. But, where is God?

If our idolatry is the paycheck, the 401k, the social security, the inheritance from our family, then these things come first in our thoughts and our planning and our relationships and we have considered our "self-interest as our cardinal virtue". (Quote from Working Preacher) This is where Jesus is rebuking the brother who wants Jesus to act as executor. This world view ruins relationships. It ruins how we approach God and how we approach everyone in our family and in our life.

The tenth commandment is probably the hardest commandment of them all. We have all fallen to it. We do not see the wealth in our own home but see it beyond our walls. The Lord comes to us with gentleness in many things but he comes to us without shame and with boldness when it comes to our allegiances.

Jesus offers the truth in this parable about who and whose we are. It is not a parable to those who have great wealth or live comfortably to feel guilty at all. When there are those who accumulate and enjoy the life and the possessions they have, all with the understanding that these do not define them, they live their life of faith with fullness. 

The point isn’t the possessions but the greed and the idolatry. 

Our hearts our very being belong to God and God is jealous of our allegiance to anything else. 

What a joyful gift that is to know how much God really wants to be fully present with us at all times and through all things.

Jesus is the guard of our hearts. He wants to be first. He wants us to put all else aside and seek him in all things. 

Seek the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you. 

Let us call upon God to come by here and reside in us, reside in our hearts now and forever. Amen. 

Homecoming & Presbyterian Heritage Sunday

Sermon Psalm 84; John 15:5-17  May 19, 2019 Homecoming & Presbyterian Heritage Sunday

Faith Stories Part I &II

Part I Psalm 84 at Francis Makemie Presbyterian Church at 9:15 am

Today is a big day in the life of the church. We made the decision to come and gather together, to ‘walk up’ to the house of God. It’s a moment each week that is an incredible experience to intentionally make the trip, the pilgrimage to the house of God.

This psalm means so much in light of this homecoming in that the pilgrims who are headed to the Temple of Jerusalem rejoice as they approach the city and see the Temple rise up above the ramparts and they experience something transformative, they express the sense of coming home. We, too, are pilgrims coming home rejoicing to see our church as we approach our town.

There is something special about this building. There is something that continues to draw people to come and sit in the quiet and the peace that this sanctuary offers. I’ve heard many of you express the power of the Sacred in this place. It’s as if this sacred space holds the thin space between heaven and earth. We have found this to be our safe, sacred space.

I’m not sure if the people three generations ago that set to the task of restoring this building to its original state realized they power of the gift they were offering to the generations that followed. Yet, their vision has brought an immense impact for our congregation today.

Perhaps, that’s what’s important to know today, important to realize today, that the decisions we make today impact those who follow.

Today as we hear the psalmist’s words, 

we can recognize the pilgrimage that we have been on. 

Perhaps, it’s a pilgrimage that started only today. 

Or perhaps, it’s a journey we’ve been on for a lifetime.

The physical act of our approach to God, to the house of God is in itself a means of grace, it is a manner of encountering in the very act of moving forward to God, to God’s people. An in the approach discovering that we are all God’s people. And when we make our way toward the house of God, we find we are making our way home. 

Welcome home.

But, that’s not the last of the power of God’s strength to transform us. The amazing wonder of God in these moments is the gift of the pilgrim, the faith journeyman (Journeywoman). We have the promise that where we pilgrim, where we wander, the pilgrim of God brings blessings with them.

You have brought blessings to us through your presence and when you go from here you carry blessings to your next encounter. 

And in these encounters we meet the Sacred, we meet and share God. 

Let us rejoice in this day of pilgrims, homecomings! 

O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you. Amen.

Faith Stories Part II

Part II John 15:5-17 at Naomi Makemie Presbyterian Church 11:00 am

Jesus tells his disciples to remember his root command: to love one another.

Looking out at all of you in this sanctuary today it is a reminder of the strength of love of the community of faith! It is also a strength of love for those who have gone before us! They made it possible for us to be here! Their love for God and for one another maintained things like light bulbs, and electric bills, heat, and paint, mowing grass, and making coffee. What me may have thought as mundane, made being present for worship and other activities pleasant and joyful.

Their strength of faith allowed risks to be taken, allowed decisions for ministry to happen; sometimes very difficult decisions. Perhaps, it is in the power of community, the collective joy of the presence of one another that encourages, and even excites the church to choose to do things they wouldn’t dare do by themselves.

As we reflect on the years of our time here what are some of those memorable moments?

In this gospel lesson, Jesus, speaks to his disciples as friends. He reminds them of all they have had together. He embraces them with words that will echo back to them in times of trial, challenge, and times when all hope seems lost.

Today, these words of Jesus let this faithful community know how it has been blessed through the years:

One gift at a time.

One member at a time.

One visitor at a time.

One minister at a time.

One elder at a time.

One child at a time.

There has been joy.

The work of God through Christ instills in us who we are and how we are called to be disciples in this place.

And then, when we are called to go beyond this place, the fruit of the vine goes with us.

The strength of the community in which we have been nurtured binds us together forever.

It makes coming home possible.

Because when we come home, we know we are reunited in the joy and the love of faith.

If any of us have ever had a vine in our yard we know how invasive they can be. So, if we look to our ministry and the work of God in us as a vine with really long branches, we can say we are far reaching with the ministry of Christ. We can say we’ve been the vine spreading beyond our garden and going wild everywhere. This is the Good News of the gospel, Jesus said, ‘ I say these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.’

No greater joy is there than to be among friends. Be filled with joy. Amen.

An Idle Tale

Sermon Luke 24: 1-12 April 21, 2019 Easter

An Idle Tale

The women were the first to witness the resurrection of Jesus. They chose to share their joy with the other disciples. Yet, these words seemed an idle tale to them. Today we can ask ourselves the question, ‘what witness to the resurrection will we believe?’ ‘Is the resurrection a truth tale or an idle tale? Where have you encountered the resurrected Jesus?

Today our sermon comes to you in the form of a dialogue between Joanna and Mary Magdalene. Let’s listen in together.

Joanna: Mary, do you remember the day we went to the tomb and found it empty?

Mary: Oh, dear Joanna, do I ever! You know as well as I, it has turned our world upside down.

Joanna: Yes, it has. Who would have thought it? There we were grieving women following our tradition taking our spices to the tomb to care for the body of our Jesus…

Mary: I remember wondering how you the wife of Chuza, the steward of Herod, could get away without being followed by Herod’s guards. You had such courage to be a disciple of Jesus. Chuza was under incredible scrutiny in his job. It seemed like everyday Herod would ask him what he thought about Jesus.

Joanna: It’s true Chuza would come home always looking over his shoulder. He knew that Herod wanted to be rid of Jesus. He knew that Herod was ruthless and wanted to make sure no one in his region received more attention than himself. Yet, we felt a strong sense of God’s presence with us. I knew following Jesus was risky, but I knew he was our Lord. It was wonderful to support him and provide for him.

Mary: Jesus was always showing us his gratitude. No matter what those around him would say or do, Jesus always stopped and let us know how much he appreciated our hospitality. I miss him at table with us.

Joanna: Oh, Mary, I do too. We were so fortunate to be able to follow him everywhere and witness his healing power and his miracles. We were able to listen to him tell us stories about God’s love for us. We were able to feel his touch on our shoulders. We knew he was Lord because we were with him.

Mary: That’s true. But, the greater gift is we were witnesses to his resurrection.

Joanna: Oh yes, yes! Such an idle tale wasn’t it!

Mary: Laughter-Oh if I could have that day lived over again and again just to see the faces of John, James, Peter, and the rest. ‘An idle tale’ they told us. After all the years we had been with them and with Jesus, they couldn’t believe our truth. It still makes me laugh deep inside…those poor disciple men.

Joanna: Well, we should give them a little credit. We probably wouldn’t have believed them if they came running to us with the news of the empty tomb.

Mary: If it had been them to find the empty tomb first they might have taken up arms and gone after the Roman soldiers, there’s no telling what could have happened…but it didn’t happen that way…

Joanna: I still remember every detail of that morning. And the days that followed. You and Susanna, the other Marys, we all met on the path to the tomb. I got up at home as usual before the sun arose. I prepared some food for the family. Then, I gathered my basket and placed the jars of oils in it. You had a basket of spices. When we met on the road we realized we had more than we needed. But, none of us wanted to be without something to anoint our Lord.

Mary: We hugged each other and started toward the tomb. We talked about how the stone needed to be rolled away. We knew it was heavy. Other tombs in the area had smaller stones but this one was huge. I remember we also wondered about those guards.

Joanna: We weren’t sure what the Romans did with their dead. Would they understand our need to come and anoint the body of Jesus?

Mary: Before we could answer our own questions…we came to a sudden stop and just stared.

Joanna: We couldn’t believe our eyes. The stone was rolled away. We wondered if the other disciples had gone ahead of us. We went in to look, but the body of Jesus wasn’t there!

Mary: And suddenly two men appeared in the tomb with us. They just appeared! Scared us to death!

Joanna: Not quite death, we’re still here.

Mary: haha

Joanna: I remember their exact words. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen…

Mary: As soon as those men told us, I remembered Jesus telling us those things, and my heart began to stir within me. I knew what he had told us was true. I believed!

Joanna: Some of us were not so sure. We were perplexed. But, still we knew we had to run and tell the others what we had seen and heard. We had to share the news.

Mary: We knew where to find the eleven. They had gone together after Jesus was buried. They had not left each other’s side. It was still the Passover and no one wanted to leave Jerusalem just yet. We were lost without Jesus. We really didn’t plan for him to die…and we really didn’t expect him to be alive again either!

Joanna: It was unbelievable! When we told the eleven they looked at us as if we were crazy. I remember Peter giving us one his looks. But, after all the guys kept repeating our words back to us and saying ‘idle tale, idle tale’, Peter just got up and ran out.

Mary: When he came back he had the same look on his face that we did. We sat there for hours not saying anything, wondering what it all meant.

Joanna: Now, so many years later, I still wonder if my response to the empty tomb would have been any different. I still wonder if it would have been any different if the men believed our witness, our testimony of what we saw?

Mary: Looking back, it was very different for each of us. John believed as soon as he walked in the tomb and saw the linen wrappings lying there. For me, it was when the words of Jesus came back to me through the words of the angels who appeared in the tomb.

Joanna: My story is so different from you and John and Peter. The empty tomb wasn’t a witness to the resurrection of Jesus for me. I remember thinking they just stole his body. I was upset. Confused. But not believing.

Mary: You always were a skeptic. You and Thomas were so much alike. I wonder if you two were related?

Joanna: Hey…That’s not fair. There are a lot of people in the world just like Thomas and me. We don’t buy into everything that comes along our path.

Mary: And so the rest of us were just gullible?

Joanna: No, nothing like that. It’s just that we’re all so different and Jesus knows that. God knows for sure, that’s why Jesus came. To meet each of us right where faith becomes real.

Mary: It’s where the joy and peace in believing fills us and we can witness to this truth of faith within us. It’s as if the resurrection has happened in our own hearts. It’s as if his new life fills us with new life.  At least that’s how I can explain the resurrection story for me. So what is your resurrection story?

Joanna: I think Jesus came alive for me when we were all in the same room together and he showed up. Before I saw him I heard his voice say, “Peace be with you.” It was the sound of his voice that warmed my heart and I believed. At that moment he came alive for me.

Mary: We’ve heard so many stories through these years. Now that Jesus has been gone for so long the stories are still so amazing. People come to us and tell us their story of how Jesus has come alive for them. How he has become real and living and fully present in their lives.

Joanna: Who would have thought the resurrection story would continue to be told and continue to be as real today for so many as it was for us so long ago.

Mary: An idle tale …or a witness to truth…

Joanna: Indeed…what’s your resurrection story (to the congregation)?

Amen.

 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Good Friday meditation April 19, 2019 Community Worship Seven Last Words of Jesus

 influenced by the words from Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery from his Good Friday sermon preached at Duke Chapel 2013

Ø  My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?     Mark 15:34

On this Good Friday, the day we face the truth about death, we are stunned by the words of Jesus as he ends his life with a cry out to God.

A cry of abandonment.

A cry of giving up.

A cry of rejection.

A cry of dismissal.

A cry of torment.

A cry of powerlessness.

A cry of desertion.

A cry of forsaken.

We look to Jesus and yell back at him, ‘what’s up with you?!’

You’re supposed to be the God of power for me.

You’re supposed to be the God of energy;

the God of wonder;

the God of ‘I can do anything’;

the God of miracles.

What’s up with you Jesus, get down off that cross and come help me, come save me now!

Yet, Jesus keeps hanging there.

He keeps dying.

He keeps on calling out to his Father.

He bleeds.

He bleeds a lot.

We don’t like blood.

It scares us and makes some of us faint.

We don’t like to look at it and we certainly don’t like to sing about it.

We feel like if we sing about the blood of Jesus we’ll forget about the love of Jesus.

  

We think if we sing about the blood of Jesus we are only thinking that it is his blood that saves us. And being good theological students we know better than to focus just on one part of Jesus. We really, really don’t want to get ourselves up in arms with our church members by singing dirgy and sad and somber and bloody hymns. As good Presbyterians we’ve taken a lot of those bloody hymns out of our hymnbooks.

Bleh, can’t we just sing the peppy songs and skip Good Friday. I mean this day is really so depressing and our faith is happier than that.

And if we really want to grow our churches and bring in more members we need to provide for exciting and energetic entertainment. Right?

But, the one thing we cannot hide is that Jesus did die.

He did die a horrible, bloody, agonizing death.

And the prettier we make it,

the more cleaned up it becomes,

the more we end up worshipping a plastic coated Jesus.

Perhaps, the bobble head Jesus for our car dashboards.

The truth is Jesus cried out.

Jesus screamed.

Jesus yelled.

Jesus howled, shrieked, hollered, wailed, squawked and shrieked.

Folks it wasn’t pretty.

Jesus did what one third of the authors of the Psalms did. He lamented.

Jesus used the very words from Scripture to cry out to God.

He used the words from Psalm 22.

Just as Jesus used the words from Scripture in the desert, now that he is again in the dry and thirsty land of death, he used the words from God to God.

We wonder why his last words were filled with such grief and sadness.

If Jesus is our Lord and we want him to be our joy and we want to let others believe in him as their joy and salvation, how can we justify this lamenting end of life?

We watch him die alone. There on the cross, on Golgotha we watch Jesus forsaken and wonder about the God who forsook us.

On this Good Friday we wonder what we are supposed to do.

And as we watch Jesus cry out we too cry out.

That’s right.

We cry out for our own losses when we thought God was not there.

We cry out for our own death row experiences when we witnessed people die at the hands of others unjustly.

We cry out to God the very words from God, why have you forsaken us?!

Who are the soldiers, the firefighters, the policemen all shot as they sought to save? Shouldn’t we be crying out for them?

Who are the children, the youth, the innocent walking and playing, and doing the things that bring them joy only to be brutally murdered, assaulted, shot down in cold blood, strung up in prison, knocked down in school rooms, destroyed as they seek to grow up? Shouldn’t we be shrieking, yelling, screaming at the top of our lungs to God with the words from God, why have you forsaken them?

Jesus uses his voice to bring power to the word of God one more time.

As he cries out his abandonment, God is right there tearing the curtain of the Temple wide open!

Jesus’ loud cry does two things.

His loud cry makes it clear that there is much in this world that is wrong. He cries out so we too must cry out for all the wrong in this world.

We must use our voices at the top of our lungs to bring down the imperial systems that deny, that dismiss, that diminish God’s people into segregated sections.

Where people are hungry all the time-there is no reason for this.

Where people fight about religious institutions, there is no reason for this.

Where people suffer at the cruelty of others, there is no reason for this.

If we, the people Jesus has called to faith, do not cry out, the stones themselves will-remember those words just last Sunday-how soon we forget.

When we say these things we are told not to preach politics from the pulpit and somehow when we say we must speak up against tyranny or against systems that are unjust, we are told to be quiet because that’s stirring the pot and its not pretty and its unbecoming to a lady preacher…or a gentleman preacher…do not rock the boat we are told.

And what’s worse, we listen,

because we want to keep our flock,

we don’t want to be driven out of our congregations.

We want our members to be happy and entertained by the joyful Jesus.

But, Jesus did cry out on that Good Friday and so should we on this Good Friday.

The second thing that his cry to God brought was the bringing down of the curtain of division.

His cry demolishes the religious order.

His cry crumbles all that was walled up by rules, segregation, inequality, and unites them across the barriers once set.

His loud cry made God accessible to all.

No longer is a priest the way of conversation with God.

No longer is a sacrifice made for forgiveness from God.

No longer is a payment in the treasury needed for sanctification.

God is open to all; for all of us to cry out together Abba, Father!

Today on this Good Friday, we lament, we see the blood, we call on God with the words of God, and we say, ‘we will take the cup of salvation’. Amen

Community Pastors Preaching Good Friday together.