Scripture: Luke 13:1-9
Everyone has a theory about how things should be. If we were to spend this afternoon we would have probably fifty different ideas of how best to proceed into the future as a community, church, or nation. Wait did I say fifty…that might be a little low, even though we have less than fifty here. Each of us have so many ideas about how best to do things we are not even in unity in our own minds. It is actually quite humorous if you think about it.
The good thing about most ideologies is that it makes discerning what ideas you agree with easier. You do not have to think about it, and to be honest most of us don’t think about it. We go through life latched onto some ideology that we think suits us best and we hold onto it. It doesn’t really matter to us that at times that ideology and our actions do not actually reflect each other. We like the labels because it is easy. We like the label of Christian, spiritualist, Democrat, Republican, capitalist, or socialist because these labels seem to allow us to sit back and let our lives be defined for us. If I say I’m something then I do not have to prove it.
This is a problem because of the six ideologies I mentioned I strongly doubt there is one person in this room that is one hundred percent any of them. I say this because we each have this independent streak in us that does not want to be fully conformed into a group, yet we want to be accepted by it. Yes I even include Christian in that list.
Today’s passage is a passage about what it means to be a follower of God. Just as a warning you may not like what I have to say. I give this warning because each of us, even in our journey in faith, tends to get in our own way.
“At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” What a way to begin. This section of scripture is unique to the book written by Luke. It is unique not only in scriptures but in historical documentation as well. No one really knows what specific moment in history Luke is referring to. The do not even know if it is an actual even or just some hypothetical scenario used to test Jesus. I want us to consider it as an actual historical event because it very well could have been. I say this because the northern area of Palestine in the Roman era is similar to the American South. They have a nationalistic fervor that is almost annoying to people outside their culture, and a skewed view of what the nation is supposed to be. Galilee is filled with a bunch of good old boys that think they know what is best for everyone else and they tend to want to push the rest of the nation into their line of thinking. There were several groups among the Galileans that built up enough support amongst themselves that they tried to lead revolts several times. They had a reputation as being rebels, nonconformists, and trouble to the outsider.
Pilate is the Roman appointed Governor over Jerusalem. He is not directly involved with ruling the rowdy Galileans but he does have to deal with them on occasion since everyone must make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship in the temple and offer sacrifices. Pilate’s number one concern is to stop any uprising that would attract the attention of Rome, and history has proven that he did this with a firm hand. It was not uncommon for Pilate to send in the troops to settle things quickly, and he was not opposed to killing anyone that stood in the way of restoring order.
So we have a scene of civil war. Rome is stopping an uprising. A tyrant is being opposed. Terrorists are being vanquished. Depending on one’s perspective. There is much that could be said about this event. We could focus on the mingling of blood, which would not only have left their sacrifices ceremonially unfit, but also rendering the temple unclean. We could focus on the rebellion of the Galileans. Jesus takes a different route. It was a common understanding at that time that bad things happen to bad people. If something happened to you it is your fault because you lacked the faith. I say that as if it is a school of thought that passed away in antiquity but it is still present to this very day. It is probably one of the most widely accepted ideas in pretty much every religious culture. If you have a problem its your fault. Jesus asks those he’s talking to “did this happen because these guys were worse sinners?”
It is an odd question. It almost leads us to believe that maybe Jesus was talking to people that supported Roman rule. It could also be that these Galilean men acted independently without unifying the group so they sinned because they acted rashly. What we do know is that Jesus knew the hearts of those in this conversation. They were judging these Galileans. Some may have judged them as heroes to the cause or righteous martyrs. Some may have seen the men as the problem of the world they lived in, and others may have been more concerned with the sacrifices in what ever case Jesus is saying each judgment is wrong.
“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Harsh! This is where it gets personal. We judge. We use judgment to try to make sense of the world around us. We judge people to determine their worth to a company, or if they should be a member of committees. It is difficult to keep from judging. The issue with judging is that we often do it from a skewed perspective. We judge based on how something or someone will affect us personally or how they will affect our ideology. This manner of judgment has its place in some areas but not in the kingdom of God.
Jesus is telling them that they need to change their perspective. Repent, or stop and turn the other direction. Everyone talking that day was throwing out their ideas of why this tragedy happened. Jesus tossed in the idea, “what should you be doing.” If we fail to stop and turn the other direction, if we fail to stop and turn to God we run a risk. None of them were focused on what really mattered, not one person in that conversation was focused on what the true Kingdom of God was. Is the kingdom a nation devoted to religious structures, worthy to fight to the death over?
Jesus then shares another tragic event, the falling of a tower in Jerusalem. What causes towers to fall? Structures fall because those put in charge of them neglect them in some way. They fail to maintain the structure, to defend the structure against various attacks, or maybe they failed to build it properly to begin with. We do not know how or why this structure fell, but it did, and in the process it killed eighteen people. Tragic. Who is to blame? The people who died? A tower, in ancient times, was a defensive structure so when it falls it means that there was a break down in the government that failed to maintain something. It very well could have been that those eighteen people were supposed to keep the tower structurally sound but instead used funding for other purposes. They could have also been a victim of inadequate funding or rebellion. The same answer comes from Jesus, they were not worse sinners but if you do not repent then you will perish just as they did. Again the crowd looked to blame someone and again Jesus turns the blame not on one person but on all of them.
Repent! Stop and turn around go the other direction. The problem in our world is that everyone is going around thinking that they know the best way and they want to force everyone else to comply. Repent. That is not the Kingdom of God, no matter how benevolent or righteous it is, but the kingdoms of man. In the kingdoms of man, we want to see results and if the results are lacking we slash and burn and take down anyone and everyone that was associated with it. Repent. The Kingdom of God is not like that. The Kingdom of God does not look to place the blame on whom caused the tower to fall and why people were killed. We already know why that happened. Towers fall because people fail. People are killed because people kill. Repent. Stop focusing on answer those questions and start going a different direction. The Kingdom of God is focused elsewhere.
Jesus finishes this discussion with a cryptic story. “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9, NRSV)
What does it mean to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God? What does it mean to be a Friend of God, or a disciple of Christ? The answer is right in this story. The full gospel is presented in this short cryptic parable. It actually is not very cryptic. The world is the vineyard. Each of us is a tree or a creature of this earth, the adversary or the accuser has been given charge over the vineyard and it looks at us with judgment. The ruler of the air the kingdoms of man judge the tree as being fruitless and a waste of soil. In comes the gardener, with a very different perspective. Let us nurture and encourage the tree. Dig around it putting fertilizer in the soil to encourage growth. Then look at it.
The people in the conversation with Jesus were not looking to encourage or nurture growth, they offering judgment from a skewed perspective. Jesus says repent. Stop looking to accuse, stop becoming a hindrance, and start encouraging growth. This takes work. Repentance is not just the saying of a few words and magically you become a citizen of Heaven. It is work. It is the turning and the changing of one’s life to focus on the things important to God. The gardener worked with the tree. He dug down around the roots. If you have ever used a shovel you know that digging is work, but like most things if you keep working you will develop skills.
The digging around the roots is like the discipline of prayer. Prayer is not something that comes easy to many people. I would venture to say that a life style of prayer is probably one of the hardest things to develop because it takes time. It is more than speaking our requests to heaven; it is studying scripture, meditating on the scripture, examining our lives against the testimony of scripture, it is crying over our failures, and celebrating our liberation from bondage. Prayer is where we being our relationship with God and where we begin to Love God. Prayer is work but if we develop skills a lifestyle of prayer it opens up our lives for something more.
After the gardener digs, he adds manure or fertilizer. This is a catalyst for growth and change. As we pray we will often find areas of our lives that we cannot overcome. We may resent others, an addiction, a grudge, or something that is holding us from fully turning our lives to God. We may also find a calling to a ministry, or a correction in an attitude we need to make. We need something to encourage growth, because many of these things seem bigger than we can handle. Embracing the Holy Spirit is that catalyst for change; the Spirit is the fertilizer that encourages growth. If you know plants you would know that they grow to nutrients and water. Roots will always grow toward the things they need. Prayer opens our lives so that God can add the Spirit to our lives. As we embrace the Spirit more fully our roots spread, we begin to release more of our live into that realm of God reaching for more and more Spirit. This growth beneath the surface has a mirrored affect above the surface. As the roots grow the branches grow. As the branches grow more leaves emerge. As more leaves emerge more flowers bloom, and as flowers bloom fruit is produced.
This is all provided through the one that stood against the adversary or the accuser. We are not the Gardener. The Gardener is Jesus who provides the way for us to enter into a relationship with God by taking on all of our failures, and all of the judgment from the kingdom of man, and hanging them on a cross of shame. It is through Jesus that the Spirit flows into our lives from the Father. It is Jesus that stands between judgment and us and says give it some time, let me work with them, let me stand between life and death for them, and I take on the responsibility.
Repent or you will perish. Repent stop doing what you are doing and examine your life according to the Kingdom of God. God does not want us to rebel against a tyrant He wants us to love our enemy. God does not want us to let our structures to fall but He wants us to be stewards of the blessings He has given us. God does not want us to judge others according to strict codes, but He wants us to provide an environment where His creation can flourish and be fruitful. Without repentance we are just root bound dying trees. Dying trees are only fit to cut down and tossed in a fire. With repentance with we can turn our lives toward the Light of God and we can grow and His Kingdom can come to Earth just as it is in Heaven. You see it is not about what we can do ourselves but it is about what we can do with the help of our gardener.
We all have ideals and ideologies. We have them for reasons, but as we enter this time of open worship and holy expectancy let us all toss those away, because many of those ideologies are based on the kingdoms of man and not the Kingdom of God. Let us become a people of repentance, a people of turning. Let us become a people of Prayer, Worship, and Ministry. Let our lives be about loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others.
Scripture: Luke 9: 28-43a
I am one of those types of people that comes to believe that every story about Jesus, what he has done in the past, and really in the present and future quickly become my favorite. I would have to say that it is not because of the events but how I read scripture. I love to read, I love to hear people tell stories. When I read and listen to the stories my mind is somehow transported into a different time and place. I guess I am really the kind of person that could still spend a day in a library just surrounded by books.
A child reads and listens to stories differently than most adults. They do not just hear the story they visualize and become part of the story. They tie a cape on their back to become the characters, and they begin to carry the story on in their play. They not only hear the story they often become the story. Well maybe that was not the way you interacted with a book when you were younger, but it is how I did, my mom had video evidence of it. Miraculously that evidence went missing before she could use it against me.
How often do we read this story of Jesus, and just sit and ponder the theological implications of the situation? Come on everyone…Jesus was GLOWING; let your imagination get the best of you. He went up to the top of a mountain, started praying and began to glow. Scripture can be fun sometimes. Just think about it for a bit. What would you think about Jesus if you saw him standing there glowing before you? It’s probably best that he only brought Peter, James and John up there with him, I don’t know if Thomas could have handled it. He’d probably want to poke him with a stick or something.
The imagination is an amazing tool that many adults have let atrophy as they begin to mature. God gave us this mind and this ability for a reason. It is in the imagination that he can give us the greatest inspiration. Einstein began his theory of Relativity on a bus in a daydream, the author James Barrie was inspired to write one of the greatest plays, Peter Pan, watching children actively imagine as they played. And oddly enough some of the greatest theological and inspiring writings have come from using the imagination to visualize and interact with scripture.
I have often asked you to imagine the scene in scripture. To meditate on a character or what you might do if you were hearing the words directly. Today is no different. How could I not ask you to imagine this scene? Jesus was GLOWING! So I want you all to imagine this, make it as fantastic as you can, and answer one question: Would you want to stay?
Jesus withdrew often to pray. I have been saying this for the past few weeks. This is what is going on in this scripture. This time He takes three of his closest friends with him as he prays. In this time of prayer something amazing happens. This is not something that Jesus found strange but his friends were shocked. Have you ever really thought about this? Of course we can quickly say, “he didn’t find it strange he’s God.” I do not think that that answer is acceptable. It basically leaves out the reason for bringing the three friends up with him. Of course if he was trying to show them that he was God it might be a descent answer. But I think he was trying to prove a point that went beyond, I believe he was trying to prove to his disciples just how important and powerful prayer is.
Prayer is more than lifting our requests up to heaven to try to twist God’s favor to sway our way. Prayer is transforming. Remember Jesus started to GLOW! Prayer is where we join together with God, it is in prayer that God’s spirit begins to transform our lives and renew our minds. It is in prayer that we learn to hear the voice of God, where we discover who we are created to be. It is prayer where we become Children of the Light.
I love that phrase from our older Quaker vocabulary, Children of the Light, along with another phrase holding in the light. I really think it gives a wonderfully visual concept that connects this story with the power of prayer. Being held in the light means we take that concern of our friends into our hands and lift them up to God and somehow pass our hands beyond that veil that separates the realms of reality and place that concern before God. It also attaches us with the concepts of God presented by the writer of John when he speaks of the true light, which enlightens everyone, and the light shining into the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it. That in the light there is life. The light John speaks of in the beginning of his Gospel is filled with imagery that links right into this story. Jesus was Glowing.
Another man also known to have a radiant skin condition met Jesus on that mountain. Moses would also withdraw often to pray and when he did he would return to the camp and people would be afraid of him because his face would be shining, and as he stayed in the camp it would gradually fade. It happened so much that he would put a veil over his face, because the people began to notice the fading more than the shining. Moses was transformed. He too would glow after he spent time in prayer with God.
Then another man was seen, a man who spent most of his time running away from people out to kill him, because when this man went into prayer fire would come out of the heavens, and one time the fire that came down lifted him up carrying him beyond the veil. Fire and light, both have an illuminating property. These two pillars of faith were right there with our glowing Jesus.
The discipline of prayer is something similar between all of these figures. When we read about the prayers of these men they are not often eloquent like a politician’s speech, but are more likely simple words uttered out of a deeply intimate relationship. These men were drawn to pray, not out of duty but they found that the time they spent in prayer was where they drank the drafts of life. And when these men prayed it was as if the very laws of nature were held in suspension.
Prayer is powerful but it is not magical. These men of ancient Hebrew history seemed to control God through prayer but that is not the truth. These men knew God. When Elijah prayed for the fire to come down on the alters of Carmel he did not command God but simply acknowledged that that moment was a good time for God to do what He had already told Elijah He was going to do. When Moses pleads before God for the sake of Israel, he did not change God’s mind but God was actually revealing to Moses what He was already doing and would continue to do. The same is true today. We say that we believe in the healing power of prayer, and I do believe, but I do not control God but instead we converse with God about a shared concern and He reveals his plan. I believe that Prayer changes things, like some many of our Christian authors claim, but I believe that that change is more often in our own perspective as we grow closer to the one that holds the world in his hands and places the stars in the skies with his finger tips.
So have you encountered the incredible Glowing Jesus? Have you experienced that time in the light, in a place where it seems as if everything around you just stops as you enjoy time in prayer? All to often we rush through prayer jumping in and out before the light even gets warmed up. But there are other times where it seems as if God was sitting in a chair waiting for us to stumble in. I have been in the light, no I am not saying that I glowed, but I have been in a place where the intimacy with God real. In that place I knew the mind of God for the situation that I held in the light. More often than not the conversation revealed that what I was asking was wrong and that God had something else in mind.
The disciples wanted to build shelters and stay there on that mountain because they like many of us were not accustom to hanging in that suspended state where the past, present, and future can all meet. They had a taste and they failed to realize what the true power of prayer really is. Prayer is where we talk with God. To talk with God means we tell Him what our needs are but also wait so He can tell us what His needs are. He may let us know that He is going to act in some supernatural way, He may tell us to just leave that concern for Him to worry about, and He may tell us to do what is right. There are even times where there is no concern we carry but we just go to spend time with our Friend. It is good for us to be there, just as the disciples said but we cannot stay. We cannot stay because the power of and in prayer is that it transforms us, it illuminates us and strengthens us to be the laborers God requires to extend his kingdom. In prayer we begin to see how His will can be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. In a sense prayer is where our imagination and God’s imagination meet and we can see and learn what it is God wants to do. We hold the concerns in the light, but we must then turn to walk back down that mountain to carry the answer and love of God back down to the people to whom we have been called to serve.
The very next day the incredible Glowing Jesus and his three disciples walked down the mountain and into a crowd to minister yet again. They immediately were met with agents of the adversary trying to leach the joy of that mountain radiance away. Yet the crowd knew that there was something about Jesus, something attracted them to him something drew them in. The darkness shall not overcome the light. And all were astounded at the greatness of God. We meet God in prayer, He illuminates and transforms us to do what he created us to do, and he sends us back out. We do not have to know exactly how everything will work, we just need to go and do what we are called to do, to shine in the darkness.
Prayer, Worship, and Ministry. The three things Jesus taught his disciples to do. Love God, Embrace the Holy Spirit, and Live the Love of Christ with Others are the three things we as Willow Creek Friends are called to do. They are the same, it is the journey of faith boiled down to the purest form, but often things in the purest form are also the most powerful. If we were to actually live this pure faith what would happen? I asked earlier as we imagined this scripture being played out before us if we would want to stay? I now ask as we join each other in Holy Expectancy and open worship will we be willing to go?
Scripture: Luke 4:21-30
Imagery is important to many of us. We hear a voice and often times we create an image of what the person speaking would look. When John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon in the first televised debate, we had the first image-based election. Those that listened to the debate had one idea of who dominated where those that watched the program had a different idea. Why was there a difference? Imagery. The voice and the face do not always fit our imagery. In the case of Kennedy and Nixon, those that listened thought Nixon won and those that watched favored Kennedy, because of image.
Image has always been an aspect of our human thought process. We use image in choosing a spouse or a president, we want the image in our mind to fit with the person filling the role. The funny thing is that God could care less about image because image can be faked. The celebrities of our culture on the stage they have an image that they put forth, but when they are living their daily life it is something totally different, in many cases we would have a difficult time recognizing some of them without their makeup. God does not care.
When the people of Israel chose their first king, they chose Saul. Saul was a head taller than everyone else. He looked like a warrior, he was handsome and he portrait the image of a king. Saul did not act the part. When Saul was face with a giant problem, he like everyone else hid out in his tent, waiting for someone else to face the giant. The king that God chose to lead his people in the ancient days of Israel was different. No one expected him. David was the youngest of the family and to be honest the family was not that great in the nation. David was not very big, was not the greatest looking, but there was something about him that did set him apart. He was a man after the very heart of God. He did not care what others thought and instead he drove forward with God. David faced the giant that made the nation tremble because he had faith in God, not in the image.
Image is not everything even though that is what our culture would like us to believe. The ad campaigns we will watch on TV between football breaks, will all be focused on image. Very little will be on substance, because image sells the goods. For instance a few years ago a car was introduced to the market that had a great image. The Prius was the very image of green; it gets great gas mileage and has very low emissions, which gives it a great eco-friendly image. On the other side of the spectrum is the Hummer; its image was one of a different variety. The Hummer was the image of tough, rugged, and strength. It consumes fuel like a body builder consumes protein shakes. I read an article about the greenness of these two vehicles around the time the prices of fuel began to rise, in the article it stated that the actual pollution factors were not exactly what the image portrait, would you believe that in the total manufacture and use of the vehicles you could drive a hummer for over 10 years and not pollute the environment as much as a prius. Now this is older news and I am sure the statistics have changed, and I am not saying that I dislike the prius I actually like the prius in many ways. My son rolls his eyes when we look at cars because he looks at sports cars and I look at fuel economy. I would buy a prius over a hummer any day. But sometimes the image we see is not exactly the whole truth.
We have an image in mind for many things. The image that we like is wealth, power, and beauty. These are the things that drive our culture. These are the tools use in our economy. Yet just like the difference between Saul and David, the things that mater in God’s eyes are not what we would imagine.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says. The scripture that he refers to is that Messianic prophecy of the anointed one bringing the good news to the poor, giving sight to the blind, and freeing the captive and oppressed, and proclaiming of the year of the Lord’s favor, that we spoke about last Sunday. Today is that time, Jesus says. The terms year and today, like most units of time in Scripture can have a double meaning, it can mean one year or it can mean and an era, today or right now. In this case the year of the Lord’s favor is an era. Jesus is saying that today, or right now, is the beginning of a new era.
Can you imagine the excitement? They had this image of what was going to happen when that era began and this native son just said that that time is now. But wait, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” In the very meeting of worship where the proclamation of a new era was being announce already people were beginning to see a differences between the image in their mind and the face before them. This is Jesus, Joseph’s son, the carpenter. The Messiah was to be a king, a warrior, not a handy man that you would call to help hang a door. They knew and were excited about the ministry their native son had in the surrounding area but seriously this is just Jesus, they knew him and as far as they cared he was nothing great. Their own children used to play with him, they went to school with him, and they had Joseph and sons do work for them. This is just a carpenter not a king.
Image is not everything. There is a reason it is difficult for people to come back to their hometown if they have made a name for themselves outside the community. It is because the hometown has not changed. If I were to go back to my old high school, I would find like many of you that the popular people in high school that did not move away from home were still the popular people in the community. If they held a class office they now hold a city office, and the football team probably forms the sheriff’s department. They hold their position because they have always held a position. Jesus’ hometown is like many small towns across America, there are the rulers and the people. Jesus is nothing great in their eyes because He is just the son of Joseph.
Prophets are not easily accepted in their hometown because prophets tend to shake things up. They bring out into the open and say that things are not as they should be, which is fine if you are talking about another place, but it becomes personal when you say those things about your home. Elijah and Elisha were pretty important prophets in the history of Israel. Jesus points out that of all the people that were in need from their own nation these guys said what they said and it was to outsiders that they ministered, because it was the outsiders that listened. A widow from Sidon received blessing during the famine, not because she was better than all the other widows but because she opened her life and doors up to Elijah when everyone else hated him for proclaiming that it was their sin that kept the rain from falling. And Elisha healed the Syrian king an enemy of Israel, right in the middle of turmoil. Israel rejected the prophets and the blessings went to those that listened and responded, the outsiders. The hometown people did not receive the blessing because they were too caught up in themselves to listen.
I wonder how we would respond to a prophet from our own community? If someone here were to get excited about a ministry of some sort would we support it or let it pass by because they are just someone’s kid, or maybe they are from a family that is not seen as being weighty? Image and truth, the image is what we look at, the truth is where God sits. The image is the Messiah coming in to bring about the kingdom of God in some mighty and victorious swoop; the truth is something the kingdom of God is already all around us.
The people of Nazareth went into a rage when Jesus said these words to them, they drove him out of town, and up onto a hill to through Him over a cliff. I wonder why they were so angry? The first answer is that he claimed to be the Messiah and his face did not fit the image that they had for the role. The second answer and probably the more applicable is that Jesus was telling them that because they were closed to change they were going to be left behind from the blessing of the coming kingdom. These were religious and devout men and Jesus was basically calling them worthless hypocrites. They were saying all the right words in the synagogue and playing the right roles, but in actuality they were no better than those ancient children of the Northern Kingdom that rejected God and were forever lost.
In God’s economy, the tools used to produce and measure success are quite different than what we use in the world. The ones with the most are often the ones that God will use the least, and the ones that have the least will often receive the greatest blessing. The first will be the last and the last will be the first, or the great will be humbled and the humble glorified. God does things differently than the world, because what matters to Him and what matters to the world is different. We tend to measure success in terms of power and wealth; in God’s economy those things are not important. In His economy, or in his Kingdom wealth is just a tool used to gain what is really important. Power or the influence over people is often measured by how many bodies we can convince to follow and serve us. In God’s kingdom influence is used in serving others. Our opinions and our money are just tools, in God’s eyes the amount of money you placed in the offering plate is nothing but some screws and wrenches used in building up the kingdom. We think it is important because that is what the world uses to deem our worth, but to God our bank account is of no greater value than the items in our junk drawers, which are only useful when they are put to use.
We are just like those people in Nazareth or ancient Israel. We are fine with a preacher saying how those poor people in Africa, Nepal, or Iran need the Gospel. We accept and understand that. While we pray for them our community is falling apart around us and we are just sitting around saying I sure wish Jesus would return and rapture us. By saying that we are actually saying that we do not believe in God. By even uttering words similar to that we are actually saying that we give up, that we do not trust that God can do what He says He can do. We are not supposed to sit back and wait for the Messiah to come, we are supposed to spread the Kingdom of God. Yet instead of focusing on the kingdom we get trapped in the world’s ideas of politics, economics, and philosophy. We watch the news and hear of Egypt rioting and we want to send drones in to level the nation instead of sending ministers. We hear of shootings and we want to ban guns instead of going into the city to help get kids out of or prevent them from joining gangs. The church is forgetting what is important in God’s economy. It is not about money or power but lives. It is not about controlling but serving others. It is not about letting the world rot in their sin but to minister to them and anointing them with the healing oils of Christ.
We often get caught up in the image of things, instead of getting caught up in the truth. We want a big thriving church because that gives us the image of a strong spiritual life. The image is just a mask if we do not truly have the reality. Our church will not grow unless we are true to ourselves and to God. We have gone too long trying to be something we are not. We are Friends, we have a history and a legacy that is beautiful; one that promotes simplicity of life, peace, integrity in word and deed, community, and equality of all people before God. I have said that our spiritual ancestors tried to distill Christianity down to the most pure and essential forms and in that process they found prayer, worship, and ministry to be that expression. Those are the activities Jesus himself participated in. He withdrew often to pray, He made it His custom to worship, and He ministered to those marginalized by society.
Those men 2000 years ago sought to throw Jesus, their King, off a cliff, and we ask why? It was because Jesus told them that they had the words all right but the actions all wrong. It does not matter if we have the correct theology if we are not willing to live that theology out. Jesus wants us to bless those around us, like the widow Zarephath. He wants us to open up our meetinghouses and bring healing to those that oppose us like Elisha did with the Naaman. This begins with recognizing what the image and the truth are, to learn the difference between the tools and the products. The Friends Church will grow in the future, but only when we open our lives to the Spirit’s leading and follow Him even when that leading seems like it is coming from the most unlikely of places from the least likely people. It will come when we become a people Loving God, Embracing the Holy Spirit, and Living the Love of Christ with others.