Lord I want to be a Christian

9/3

Pastor Bob and Elder Geraldine Herrin

On a cold and rainy morning, I walk down Beverly Road in the Kensington neighborhood In Brooklyn to the Beverly Presbyterian Church. A pleasant neighborhood with old Victorian houses. Later l learn that it is also a culturally mixed community with many folks from the islands. And that later today, the streets will be filled  with children chasing away the devil as part of the Jouvier West Indies celebration….I am met by Elder Geraldine Herrin, a very active lay leader, who will work with me in the service…Here is my reflection:

Lord, I want to be a Christian…

Someone once said to me that there were two kinds of Christians…the ones who heard Jesus say, ‘Pick up your cross and follow me” and those who heard him say, “ I came that you might have life and have it  abundantly” and that the two really didn’t understand each other. I’ve been  thinking that there’s more to it than that. That in order to have it abundantly, we need to pick up our crosses…while not forgetting joy…

Well, Lord I want to be a Christian…

Our brother Paul has a pretty good list of what it takes…let’s go over that again….you could almost do a sermon series with a sermon about each one of these..as I read them, think back over the last week to anything that may relate to any of these…

9Let love be genuine;

hate what is evil, 

hold fast to what is good; 

10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.

 12Rejoice in hope, 

be patient in suffering, 

persevere in prayer. 

13Contribute to the needs of the saints; 

`extend hospitality to strangers.

14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 

15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 

16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 

17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 

18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 

19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 

20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Are there particular traits of a Christian listed in this passage that you find particularly difficult? How might you practice them this week?

But we have to live these things out in the real world…

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.    Really?

What does that mean strategically in our own time?…

Let me be personal a minute…a few weeks ago I came to the Roulette here in Brooklyn…there were over 500 people came out..a choir of over 50 people from three generations singing protest songs from three generations…black, brown white, Asian, gay, straight, bi, trans, young, old….it was moving …and they had information tables up from all kinds of partner groups doing good things..like urban gardening and community organizing…one of the groups was Gathering for Justice  started by Harry Belafonte and concerned with child incarceration…

But right now, they’re asking people to turn off the National Football League because Colin Kaepernick cannot get a job….last year, he decided not to stand for the nation anthem because of the ongoing crisis of African-Americans killed by police…and the fact that police are never indicted…so now no team will hire him…

I grew up in Pittsburgh, rooting  for the Steelers was a way of connecting with my hometown. Something my family would do every weekend. SO now next Sunday, what will I do?  I have to think about this…See, we have to make these things real in the world we live in…

Like we all can get behind hospitality for strangers, right? Write our letters of protest related to our President’s wanting to ban immigrants and build a wall… we all have immigrants in our lives…it only gets REAL when we get to hard ones like “blessing those who persecute us..”

I mean really? How do we do that?  Jill Duffield of Presbyterian Outlook writes of being at the Charlottesville protests and a colleague of hers looked over to the other side…with the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan guys…and her colleague said, there’s a lot of pain over there….and Jill felt ashamed that she had not felt any compassion for them….

Who persecutes you? How do you bless them? Do you pray for them? And what do you pray? Do I really want our President to change? What’s going on inside you?

Also note the conditional in the peaceful living part…

If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, leave room for the Lord’s vengeance….

If you really want to be a Christian…if you really want to follow Jesus, it’s going to hurt…this is how much…when Jesus  tells Peter what’s going to happen, and note that his greatest enemy is not the occupying Roman army, it’s the religious establishment that has sold out to the Romans…

Charles Sykes in Sunday Times…in reference  Paul Ryan quoted…Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play “ A Man for All Seasons” :  what profit a man to gain the whole world, but for Wales?

And Peter’s responds to Jesus, O No Lord, not you…and Jesus responds get thee behind me Satan..

(In Jesus ‘ day, Satan was basically the  accuser and tempter…not so much the devil and punisher…)

Why did he say that? Because as a vulnerable human being he would  just as soon avoid the whole thing…

The passage concludes with …there are those in this generation that will not taste death before Jesus’ kingdom comes…what?

I’m not completely  sure…but I think here is where we get back to abundant living,…here we are back to JOY…

Rubem Alves said that he was tired of the politics (theology) of heart burn…that we can’t just project images of suffering … that numbs people…(or they numb themselves…) In the end, If you want people to believe in a better world, they need to see it, imagine it…we need images of beauty..and to be able to celebrate, in his words,  Life in all its perplexity, paradox and most of all profound beauty…

In all this I see the smiling face of Archishop Tutu…who long before apartheid fell declared we have already won…and lived as if it were true until it became the truth…life abundant….

Lord I want to be a Christian…in my heart….

The Fifth Sunday in Lent: Seeing Jesus

3/22

Jeremy shares his song

One of those Sundays it felt good to be here. We begin by singing our Lenten chant, but this tine doing it with the Psalm that it comes from, Psalm 51, with our chant as a refrain.

Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within my soul 

PSALM 51:1-12

¹   Have mercy on me, O God, 
          according to your steadfast love; 
     according to your abundant mercy 
          blot out my transgressions. 
²   Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, 
          and cleanse me from my sin.

³   For I know my transgressions, 
          and my sin is ever before me. 
⁴   Against you, you alone, have I sinned, 
          and done what is evil in your sight, 
     so that you are justified in your sentence 
          and blameless when you pass judgment. 

R
⁵   Indeed, I was born guilty, 
          a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶   You desire truth in the inward being; 
          therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 
⁷   Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; 
          wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 
⁸   Let me hear joy and gladness; 
          let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 

R
⁹   Hide your face from my sins, 
          and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰  Create in me a clean heart, O God, 
          and put a new and right spirit within me. 
¹¹  Do not cast me away from your presence, 
          and do not take your holy spirit from me. 
¹²  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, 
          and sustain in me a willing spirit.

And we begin our reading of the word with Jeremiah 31: 31-34 where the  law will now be written on our hearts, it will have become part of us. And Jeremy shares his song Strange Arrangement, reflecting on human frailty.

Our Gospel is John 12: 20-33.

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

²⁷“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

So how’s your Lenten journey been so far? We are nearing the end. These are difficult day for the institutional church. The Roman Catholic diocese is closing churches left and right to pay for the renovation of St. Patrick’s. Half of our New York City Presbyterian churches do not have pastors. Half of our members belong to only five churches. Our national office cuts staff every two years and rents out half of its building as our local Presbytery rents out about half of its already reduced office space. The other mainline churches are not doing much better. We’re a long way form the day when President Eisenhauer laid the cornerstone for the Rockefeller paid for 475 Riverside Drive where it was envisioned all our denominations would headquarter. One by one the denominations fled, usually to the Midwest. Which really didn’t solve the problem. Like  if your office is in Louisville, you see the world, well, from Louisville.

Meanwhile the Korean Presbyterians (One of over 200 Korean Presbyterian denominations ) who worship here after us are filling  every inch of our building to overflowing…. And tbey’re nearly all under 30….

Still, though mainline Presbyterianism is failing, we still managed to finally gather enough Presbytery votes last week to succeed in having  marriage redefined as between two people. And last summer’s hard fought narrow vote to divest from companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine was courageous and important.

And there are new communities being born like the Hot Metal Bridge Church of Pittsburgh that began as a Bible study in a tattoo parlor. Moved on to a bar and later bought the bar. They use theatre, and music and food to keep the community together.

In our Gospel story, we  need to check out what Jesus is doing here…some Greeks came looking for him. This means they were non-Jews who hung out in the synagogues because they liked what they heard…maybe spiritual but not  religious…

And now they’ve been hearing a lot about Jesus….want to check him out.. So what do they do? Of course they go to the only two disciples with Greek names…And to speak to them, Jesus uses a metaphor rooted in a Greek religious ritual that used a seed. It was no random metaphor. He was speaking of something with which they would be familiar. He uses a ritual they know…Like Paul’s all things  to all people again..

The story also tries to make sense of Jesus’ death..

The Greeks say we wish to SEE Jesus… and when they SEE Jesus, what do they SEE?

We need to be clear about something..the criticism of those who love their life is not a criticism of loving life and living life. It is rather an acknowledgement of the current corrupt reality of life in the empire. IE, the way the world is, their life in the system..Jesus on the cross exposes the system for what it is…and so overcomes it. Gaining life by losing it, so to speak.

Or to put it another way, if God is capable of enduring humiliation, suffering and death, there is no barrier between us…

Desmond Tutu made a powerful affirmation of faith when he said apartheid must fall because righteous suffering cannot be denied its goal of salvation. Note he said salvation…salvation and liberation…salvation giving the freedom to make liberation inevitable.

But let us say this as well…suffering is  not God’s will, there is nothing inherently valuable about suffering…but God can work through suffering with us … if we are open to working with God.

SO what is the practical advice today? We wish to see Jesus.. There is this idea in Latin America, ver/hacer, that is see…then do…When we act in such  a way that when others see us, they see Jesus in action, that action them becomes possible for them as well. That’s what law written on the heart means…the path, the way of Jesus has become so much a part of us that it is the way we live..

Let us take that with us through the end of our Lenten journey.

Once again, we enter into our prayers with I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.

And for our final hymn we sing Jesus Walked that Lonesome Valley. But I have a caveat…we don’t walk it by ourselves. Though there is a unique call, a unique challenge, a unique path for each of us, we walk together, with each other on this journey.

We wish to see Jesus….