Making the intentional choice to align ourselves with the unfolding reign of God is a profound, even a momentous choice. While the text for this week from Luke’s Gospel talks about conflict in Jesus’ coming, it doesn’t mean that Jesus comes into our midst like a wrecking ball. Jesus doesn’t come spoiling for a fight. The division that Jesus speaks of, that is related to his ministry, comes not because Jesus instigates it. The conflict comes when the people who continue to stand in opposition to what God is doing persist in holding onto the behaviors and attitudes that continue to create harm, division, oppression, and marginalization in the human community. The conflict comes, for instance, when those who doggedly hold onto white supremacist attitudes continue the actions to marginalized people of color.  This is an important distinction for us.

While it is easy to characterize Jesus’ emotion in this text as anger, I think there is more to it than that. Anger is certainly present, but I think beneath the anger is a deep and profound sadness. The people who should have been the ones to most understand and align with Christ’s ministry have proven themselves to be among the most obstinate to the coming reign of God. These folks have chosen their own power, privilege, and prestige over being a part of God’s coming Kingdom.

To choose to align ourselves with God, means that we must choose, ultimately, between God’s way and our way. It is a momentous choice.

Do not be afraid, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. What? Really? A gift? God’s reign will be with us as a gift? We don’t have to toil to receive it? We don’t have to follow draconian rules of self-denial? God’s healing, God’s blessing, God’s renewal, and the possibility of resurrection and new life…Is it really ours to receive? Yes, friends. In our text from the 12th Chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes it that clear. In a time when leaders saw the compliance of others through the use of fear and control, Jesus seeks to release his followers from the burdens that others have placed upon them. Jesus makes it abundantly clear that the Gospel he preaches and embodies is meant to be a blessing for us, and a blessing through us.

As we have been considering in the previous weeks, this is a gift we receive by choosing to align ourselves with the work that God is doing. Going back a few weeks ago, when we considered the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done’ we are seeking to do just that. We are praying that we may align ourselves with what God has revealed in Christ. In a world that continues to marginalize and ‘other’ people, may this promise strengthen you to make space for others. In a world that continues to do harm and violence under the guise of nationalism and purity, may God’s promise strengthen you to be a be a beacon for the unfolding reign of God.

First, we had some technical issues this week, so the beginning of the sermon is missing.

In a world where acquisition and material excess are endemic, the question of when is enough, enough? is not a particularly popular question. When so many people have had such wild success at acquiring staggering amounts of personal wealth, it is easy to feel entitled to getting a taste for ourselves. Why shouldn’t we. We justify this mindset by thinking that we are entitled to it, or that we have earned it.

Our Scripture text for this week has very clearly teaching on this matter. And yet, the clarity of the text, interpreted in incomplete ways can skew the teaching. Jesus’ thought is more expansive than something we do, like a task. The teaching is also more than a simple dollars and cents economic calculation.  When he encourages his disciples to be “rich toward/with God” he is describing a relationship. The deeper question this begs is: do we see our lives, who we are and what we have as gifts from God? If we are growing in our ability to see our life as a gift from God, it will influence how we see our material wealth and how we respond when we unexpectedly receive more.

With all that is happening around wealth and equity in our world today, this conversation is critically important.

Welcome back to the sermon podcast from Redlands 1stUnited Methodist Church. I’m back from hiatus and glad to bring this sermon to you.

While prayer is an essential part of our faith and our relationship with God, it is often misunderstood. There is a strain within the Body of Christ that approaches prayer as if it were a cosmic vending machine. We look at all the goodies behind the glass, make a choice about what we want, incant the name of Jesus, and it is delivered into our hands. If read from the most literalistic interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on prayer, you can get there.

However, if you unpack fully what Jesus offers when his disciples ask him to teach them how to pray, you wind up in a place that is altogether different. The Lord’s Prayer, as many traditions refer to it, isn’t an exercise in arm twisting God to get what we want. Instead, Jesus is teaching us how to align ourselves with what God is up to in the world. As God continues to reveal God’s realm and reign in the world around us, the Lord’s Prayer helps us to see and understand both what God is up to and how we learn to participate in that unfolding work.

This week’s sermon takes a deep dive into this important teaching.

Human experience reminds us regularly that adversity and trauma are inescapable. As much as we might like to escape or avoid this reality, the only healthy response is to work through it. Even if the work is more like a slog, we are still better off just dealing with it in the best way we can. This kind of trauma and pain doesn’t simply vanish from our lives if we deny or avoid it. The pain is held within our body and our spirit. Despite the cultural currents that encourage us to avoid dealing with pain and adversity, there is a history in our faith tradition that helps us to navigate this in a healthier way than avoidance.

The hymnbook of Israel, the Book of Psalms, is filled with examples of people who had experienced a wide range of adversity and trauma. They were not meek about taking these concerns to God. They would take even their rawest feelings and emotions to God. Jesus’ lament on the cross is a prime example, from Psalm 22. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” Even though some voices in our history would try to squelch this kind of honesty with God, it is a necessary part of faith, then and now. Lament is so much more than just yelling at God; lament also includes a moment when one takes a deep breath and remembers that even in that moment of pain, God’s promise is still the anchoring reality of their life.

This week’s sermon unpacks this important part of our faith.

The power of Pentecost Sunday can often get lost in the celebration of the day. We know the story of speaking in tongues, which often seems inaccessible to us. It isn’t just that they spoke in tongues, it is what they spoke. They stood up, empowered by the Holy Spirit to tell God’s story as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is a powerful story of healing for all of creation. It was the power to stand up in a public square to speak powerfully and boldly, in a language that made sense to those from all over the world who heard them. This witness was counter-cultural. It didn’t end on Pentecost. The fledgling community of faith went forward from this day. They went forward into the broader world to stand up and speak God’s story of life and love the needs of the worlds they encountered.

This is a particularly empowering witness for us today as we consider all the corrupting systems and experiences we deal with today. We are called to trust in all that God will be a part of and at work through us when we arise to speak this story. We don’t want to be a jerk in the ways that we share, civility does matter. But the call to engage in civility doesn’t absolve us of the need to speak God’s story of mercy and justice with boldness and resolve.

Among all the ways that we might characterize Scripture, it is a liberation story. God’s self-expression of love for all which God has created is liberating. The unfortunate reality of the human condition is that imprisonment is an all-too-common experience. Emotionally, spiritually, and physically, we know the need for liberation. Our text from the Book of Acts is a story of God’s liberating love at work through the ministry of Paul and Silas. In addition to showing the power of this liberation, it also spotlights the risk that is at play when corrupt forces seek to maintain their imprisoning ways.

This text also shows, through Paul’s bold action, that we are not powerless in the face of the corrupting influences that would want us to feel disempowered. As we grieve and absorb the ongoing scourge of gun violence in the nation, and the feckless policy makers who refuse to do the things that will make us safer, the corrupting influence of power and profit would seek to keep us cynical about our ability to effect change. The good news is that God’s liberating love is still at work. Paul’s witness encourages us to stand up, speak that story, and participate in the work in our life and community.

In a chaotic world, the striving for peace feels more critical now than at any other time in our lives. Peace, however, isn’t something that just happens, it is something we pursue. It comes from having God at the center of our being. It isn’t the absence of conflict no matter how much the world might want to describe it that way. Conflict will always have winners and losers, the way the world practices it; therefore, the world’s peace doesn’t get us where we need to be. The Holy Spirit, the Advocate, as Jesus refers to her is the bringer of peace in our life…the peace of Christ, which stands in stark contrast to the peace the world claims to bring. With the pursuit of peace, we are looking for a center of relief and being centered, a calming of our spirit.

The experience of peace is the unwavering assurance that God has made a home with us. As God makes a home with us, there is not only peace but there is power to move forward, faithfully, as followers of the risen Christ.

In the wake of yet another racially motivated mass shooting we are experiencing again what has become the familiar cycle of grief and recriminations. With the rising tide of white supremacist ideology that is sweeping the globe, the need to have difficult conversations about our history of racism is greater now than it has been in many years. However, meaningful conversation in the public square seems to have been fully overcome with what more resembles ideological cage matches. Old fears and wounds have been torn open and we seem more motivated to protect our interests than to build a world that makes space for all of humanity.

One of the realities that we are reckoning with is the truth that the church has done more to perpetuate this cycle than to break it and be a catalyst for building the beloved community envisioned by Jesus. Our Scripture this week, from Acts 11, reflects the difficulty the church has had with breaking old cycles of division. As Peter stands before the Council in Jerusalem, to bear witness to how the Holy Spirit is at work beyond Judaism into the Gentile world, he is confronted by old racist tropes about Gentiles. Instead of arguing, Peter speaks of his firsthand experience of how God’s Spirit is being poured out, without partiality, even to Gentiles. His conclusion is that he is not willing to hinder the work of God as the Gentiles are receiving the Spirit in the same way that they had.

With all that continues to plague the church and world, what walls could we break down if we fully embraced and committed to the reconciling love of God?

A very good friend of mine is fond of saying, “comparison is the thief of joy”. Simple, elegant and very much to point. How much of our life and joy is diminished when we start comparing ourselves to someone else? We start to see our self in terms of too much, or not enough, compared to people around us. This is a particularly harmful practice when we consider faith and discipleship. When we start to measure ourselves against the people, we perceive to be icons of the faith, we are often left wanting. Maybe we are too caught up in the rendering of their story, with its compressed for time quality, which makes everything seem fast and easy. In any case, it is easy to believe that too much relies upon our strength and our initiative.

The one subplot in the Scripture stories that center this worship experience and sermon is that Paul’s call and Peter’s redemption are certainly not initiated by Paul or by Peter. It is the risen Christ, who is present and at work, who initiates contact and gets the redemptive work rolling. To be certain, we do have a role to play in faith and renewal, but it is not to initiate it. The Hard Choice of discipleship is letting go of our perception of self-reliance and our tendency for comparison. It is enough for us to trust and embrace the initiative that God is right now taking in our life.