Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Towards Sunday, March 19, 2017

For two weeks already, and for two more after this Sunday, we will be reading the story in Mark 10:46-52 about Jesus healing a blind beggar of Jericho named Bartimaeus, to help us explore five practices of fruitful congregations.

The first week, we focused on Jericho's history of walls tumbling down, as a way of exploring and celebrating the ways of Radical Hospitality in our congregation (and asking whether there are maybe still more walls than we realize, that could use a little tumblin'.)

Last week, the emphasis was on Bartimaeus' blind desire to be near to Jesus and not to miss out on gift of God's messiah, as a way of understanding Passionate Worship in our life as a church.

And this week?

The particular miracle of healing blindness and of helping Bartimaeus see, as a way of understanding, celebrating, and perhaps praying for new ways of practicing Intentional Faith-Development as a congregation.


Is blindness a good image of what the world suffers from, these days?

Is healing from blindness, and being made able to see in new ways a good image of what Christian education is, and what it accomplishes?

How are children's eyes opened, and to what are they opened, at Fifty?

How are adults eyes opened, and to what are they opened, at Fifty?

What have your eyes been opened to in our church?  What would you like to be able to see more clearly, or deeply?

 

Sermon from Sunday, March 12, 2017

Reading: Mark 10:46-52

A NOTE about the sermon series for Lent, of which this is the first:

Lent is a season of self-examination, focused on how we are following Christ in living the life and love of God in the world.  It can be personal or communal, and this year we focus on how we as a church are living the life and love of Christ.

In a book called Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Robert Shnase -- a bishop of the United Methodist Church, outlines five practices, and we will look at our own church life through the lens of each:

March 5 -- radical hospitality
March 12 -- passionate worship
March 19 -- intentional faith-development
March 26 -- risk-taking mission and service
April 2 -- extravagant generosity

In the story of Jesus healing Bartimaeus (in Mark 10:46-52) of blindness,
all five practices are acted out in some way, and each Sunday we will explore how we act them out in our life as a church and as a body of Christ today.  This week we focus on the blind longing of Bartimaeus not to miss Jesus, as a way of exploring our own practice of, and longing for worship.
 

 

A blind beggar, sitting by the roadside,
hears that Jesus of Nazareth is nearby –
maybe just this one time and for only a moment,
and he begins to shout out and say,
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

His name is Bartimaeus and he lives in the city of Jericho, and but for those two details is his story not also our story, every time we gather for worship?

Like him we hear that a messiah has come and is near, but we do not see him.  It seems others have, and have been touched and made whole by him.  Hungry people have been fed.  Thirsty souls have been satisfied.  Broken and bent-over people have been healed and made well.  People at odds have been reconciled and re-united.  Empty and wandering people have found new meaning and purpose.  Sinful people, ashamed of their own lives, have been forgiven, set free, and welcomed into gracious, loving community with others around them.

We would love to see that.  We would love to see the messiah, know the presence of God, feel the healing love of God in our lives, in this church, in the world we inhabit. 

Maybe one time we did, but now have just the memory of it.  Maybe we glimpse it a little bit, but we’re not really sure.  Maybe we don’t know what Jesus really looks like, and we don’t even know where to look.

In some deep corner of our hearts, every time we come here on a Sunday morning as a Christian church to worship God, are we not like blind Bartimaeus shouting out to the heavens and to the darkness that surrounds us, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!”?

In the story there is a happy ending.  The blind man – Bartimaeus, finds himself in the presence of Jesus. 

Jesus stands still and says, “Call him here.”
And they call the blind man –
the people around him, say to him,
“Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 
So throwing off his cloak, he springs up
and comes to Jesus.

How many times and in how many settings and in how many stages of our life have other people done that for us?  Told us to take heart, that Jesus is not only calling us, but waiting for us?  That he was not only waiting for us, but they would help us find our way to him?

I doubt that any of us ever come to God and find the healing love we so long for, alone.

Every Sunday – there are so many who help to make this place and this time a place of worship for us.  From the people who clean the sanctuary and keep the yard outside neat and in order, to those who greet and usher and help teach Sunday school and staff the nursery, to the people who plan the worship and the music and prepare the bulletins and show the slides and sing in the choir and show up Sunday after Sunday to fill the pew beside you or in front or behind you, so you know you’re not alone, and not the only one wanting to see and be touched by Jesus.

And that’s only this one hour Sunday morning.  What about the rest of our lives and all the people who help us in so many ways to find our way to God, to get to the place where Jesus waits for us, to be able to hear a word and feel a touch of healing in our lives.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” is a prayer that is answered maybe always and only through the help and the ministry of other people in our lives.

So the blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.”
Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Our life is changed when we really see and meet Jesus.  New meaning emerges.  New directions take shape.  We begin to follow and live a different way.

And it’s not only us that’s changed.  Our being-changed changes others around us as well.  Makes them more open to something new in their life as well.

Because Bartimaeus did not write his own story.  He did not insert himself into this telling of the story of Jesus.  It was somebody else who saw him, saw his healing, saw him then following Jesus, who decided this had to be part of the telling of who Jesus is, and what Jesus does.

I wonder if the people who saw and told and retold the story of Bartimaeus until it just forever became part of the story of Jesus, were also at least some of the people who at the beginning of the story tried to keep Bartimaeus quiet, told him to shush, didn’t think he belonged in the picture and the story at all?

But then they saw something they weren’t expecting.  They saw Bartimaeus and Jesus in a new light.  The blinders were taken from their eyes.  They too were changed.  And they could not but tell the tale.

I wonder, when we are healed and have our eyes opened, or when we see someone else’s life changed for good in some way by God and by Jesus, does it change us as well and make our understanding and our telling of the story of God and of Jesus that much bigger, and wider, and more inclusive of the most unlikely characters?

Because aren’t we all blind Bartimaeus sitting by the roadside, shouting out, “Jesus!  Son of David!  Have mercy on me!”?





Monday, March 06, 2017

Sermon from Sunday, March 5, 2017 (Lent 1)

Reading:  Mark 10:46-52

A NOTE about the sermon series for Lent, of which this is the first:

Lent is a season of self-examination, focused on how we are following Christ in living the life and love of God in the world.  It can be personal or communal, and this year we focus on how we as a church are living the life and love of Christ.

In a book called Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Robert Shnase -- a bishop of the United Methodist Church, outlines five practices, and we will look at our own church life through the lens of each:

March 5 -- radical hospitality
March 12 -- passionate worship
March 19 -- intentional faith-development
March 26 -- risk-taking mission and service
April 2 -- extravagant generosity

We will look at these practices and our commitment to them with the help of one Gospel story all five Sundays -- the story in Mark 10:46-52, of Jesus healing Bartimaeus, a poor beggar of Jericho, of blindness.  This story is the last public incident in the life of Jesus just before he begins -- in fact, just as he begins his final journey to Jerusalem and the triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11) which we will read the following Sunday -- Palm Sunday, April 9.

In the Bartimaeus story all five practices are acted out in some way, and each Sunday we will explore how we act them out in our life as a church and as a body of Christ today. 



Why are we doing this?  Why are Elgin and Wes McEneny, Dave Furry, Lillian Klemp, Jane Franks, Mike Fennema, the Trustees and the Property Committee and the Council giving so much time and energy, and committing so much of the church’s money to installing a lift and making sure it’s done right?

Is it because of the law – that in 5 or 10 or whatever years our building will be illegal without one? 

Is it because we need it – because some of our most active members find it increasingly hard to get up and down the stairs to the Lower Hall and the Upper Room, and they can’t take part – get excluded from things the rest are able to do?

Is it also because we care about the needs of others beyond us?  That we’re sensitive to the needs of people not here yet, and who we’d love to invite in?  Who we’d like to be able to invite to use our building for events of their own?  Who we wish would feel comfortable enough here, and welcomed enough here, to join us in something that may be of interest or help to them?



The story we’ve read this morning – and that we’re going to read for the next four Sundays, takes place in the city of Jericho – just on the edge of it, actually. 

Did you ever learn that old Sunday school song about Jericho – the one with the chorus:

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho.
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.
And the walls came a-tumbling down.

It’s a song about the time way back in the beginning of Israel when the people have escaped from slavery in Egypt, have travelled in stages across the desert of Sinai, and after a 40-years’ journey are at long last coming into the Promised Land, the land of Canaan.  Behind Joshua as leader – Moses has already died, they cross the Jordan and begin to take over parts of the land.  A lot of battles are fought and heavy losses are suffered as they attack and overcome the defences of a number of cities.  Except for the city of Jericho, where something really different happens.

Here at God’s command instead of attacking the walls and the people behind them with swords, spears and bows and arrows, and having to win by violent conquest, the people march seven times around the city, blow their trumpets and rams’ horns as loud as they can at the completion of each circuit, and on the completion of the seventh circuit and the seventh blowing of the horns, the walls … yes, the walls came a-tumblin’ down.  The walls separating them from the people inside, and from where they want to be as well, just come tumbling down.

What a wonderful image of the kingdom of God coming to be in the world! 

Walls just a-tumblin’ down.  Walls that people put up around themselves, disappearing.  Walls to defend ourselves and to keep what we have for ourselves, no longer working.  Walls that keep others locked out and us locked in, no longer being there.  Walls that divide and separate humanity into insiders and outsiders, no longer being part of the world we share.

Is it still possible for walls to come a-tumblin’ down?  Without battles, without having to fight, without one side having to beat the other, without terrible losses of so many kinds on both sides of the wall?



In the time of Jesus there were walls still in Jericho.  The people of Israel themselves rebuilt the walls as soon as they moved in.  They were as concerned and obsessed with protecting themselves against others as the original people of the land had been before them.

And it wasn’t just physical walls that they built and maintained.  It never just is.

In the time of Jesus the city of Jericho was a city of many segments and many different populations.  So close to Jerusalem, it was a bedroom community with neighbourhoods of up 12,000 Jewish priests and Levites who worked at the Great temple in Jerusalem.  There were poorer, more common Jews who came in from the countryside to find a better life, who ended up in poorer parts of the town separate from the Temple class.  Jericho was a Roman provincial capital with Roman and Gentile bureaucrats and officials – like Zaccheus the tax collector, who were generally hated by the Jews and would have had their own part of town to live in – probably the more affluent and comfortable.  And then there were the really poor, the lame and the blind, the lepers and the outcasts, who lived on the charity of others, but in their own ghettos and conclaves apart from the people who gave them alms. 

All kinds of walls, with communities defined and divided by race and religion, by class and culture, by occupation, employment, disease and disability.  And those walls were – and still are, as hard to breach as any physical wall.  Did you notice, for instance, how when poor and blind Bartimaeus starts calling out for help – for healing of his disability and loneliness, a lot of people around him and around Jesus tell him right away, and quite angrily, to be quiet and not make a ruckus about his blindness and his need.

He is out of place.  To the people who are there to see and be with Jesus it seems he doesn’t belong with them.  He isn’t acting appropriately, and doesn’t fit in.  Jesus, as far as they could see, has something else on his mind.  He is starting on his way to Jerusalem, the holy city, and to their mind, this man just hasn’t got the memo.  Wrong time and wrong place.  There is – or at least there should be, a wall to protect them from having to deal with him, and to keep people and problems like him away from who they are and where they are going.



Does that ever happen – do we ever fall prey to that easy human impulse to exclude, to push away, or to not open up as much as we think we do, in our life as a church? 

We have all kinds of ways of welcoming others, of opening ourselves and our building to people around us, of inviting people in to be fed, to be cared for, and to be included.  We also go out to where others are, and we really do extend the circle of our care out into the community in so many ways.  We remembered and celebrated a lot of these things at the start of our worship, and no doubt there even more.  This is a great church to be part of, for that very reason.

But is there still – is there always some room to grow in what we do and how we do it?  Maybe in addition to what we already do?  Are there some doors yet that could be opened a little bit more?  Some circle that could be made even wider?  Some wall that still stands, that with a little circling and a timely few trumpet blasts we could make come a-tumblin’ down?



Jesus, when he hears the faintest cry for help
that everyone else around him is more than happy
to try to keep quiet and make go away,
is the One who right away stops,
stands still to hear the cry even better,
and says, “Call him here.  Let her come.  Bring them to me.”

Are there times,
are there ways,
are there ministries and groups and activities of our church
by which we can say to those around us
even more than we already do,
“Take heart, get up, he is calling you”?