Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song and Praise

This is Special Music by Tammy Heilman, accompanied by Deb Borton-McDonough at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

When preaching on today’s gospel reading, my friend, Bill Uetricht, has shared a story which addresses a practice all of us are so very good at executing – scorekeeping.  And, with his permission, I want to share that story:

In the beginning, God didn’t make just two people; he made a bunch of us.  Because he wanted us to have a lot of fun, and he said you couldn’t really have fun unless there’s a whole gang of you.  At first, we did have fun just like he expected.  We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, and acted silly.  We laughed a lot.

Then one day this snake told us that we weren’t having real fun because we weren’t keeping score.  Back then, we didn’t know what score was.  When he explained it, we couldn’t see the fun.  But he said we should give an apple to the person who was best at all the games and we’d never know who was best without keeping score.  We could see the fun of that, of course, because we were all sure that we were the best.

It was different after that.  We yelled a lot.  We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games.  Others, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score.

By the time God found out what had happened we were spending 45 minutes a day actually playing and the rest of the time working out scoring.  God was angry about that – very, very wroth. He said we couldn’t use his garden anymore because we weren’t having fun.  We told him we were having lots of fun.  He was just narrow-minded because it wasn’t exactly the kind of fun he originally thought of.

He wouldn’t listen.  He kicked us out, and said we couldn’t come back until we stopped keeping score.  To rub it in, he told us we were all going to die and our scores wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

He was wrong.  My cumulative, all-game score is 16,548. And if I can raise it to 20,000 before I die, I’ll know I’ve accomplished something.  Even if I can’t my life has a great deal of meaning because I have taught my children to score high and they’ll be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000.

Really, it was life in the garden that didn’t mean anything.  Fun is great in its place but without scoring there’s no reason for it.  God actually has a very superficial view of life, and I’m certainly glad my children are being raised away from his influence.  We were lucky.  We’re all very grateful to the snake. (Ann Herbert)

Yes, friends, we really are in bondage to the mathematical practice of scorekeeping.  We keep score in just about everything we do.  Education is built around scorekeeping.  Sports are built around scorekeeping.  Our finances and financial systems require bookkeeping, a form of scorekeeping, as we constantly focus on credits and debits.  If we look at today’s political climate and our political leaders, scorekeeping is the name of the game. After all, you must keep score so you can get even with others, get retribution, and win. Quite honestly, I think we would be hard pressed to find an aspect of life in which scorekeeping was not present in some shape or form.  Our passion for scorekeeping influences just about every facet of the way we live in relationship to others.  It even influences our ability to live into the forgiveness we have been given in Christ. 

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is teaching about forgiveness, and we discover that even Peter was into mathematical scorekeeping.  We find him asking Jesus how many times he should forgive a sister or brother who mistreats or takes advantage of him, and he almost seems magnanimous as he asks, “Seven times?”  Well, Jesus was not impressed with such a generous offer of forgiving a person seven times, and he gives Peter a different mathematical formula for his scorekeeping efforts:  seventy-seven times.  In other words, so many times that you need to stop counting!  Don’t keep score! You can never forgive enough!

The issue is not how much or how often we are asked to forgive or should forgive. For people of faith, the act of forgiveness is already a limitless, measureless act. Forgiveness is never not present in our lives and in our relationships. That’s the issue. Forgiveness is part and parcel of the Kingdom of Heaven and, as Christians, it is an aspect of our identity. It’s a constant. It’s not optional. It’s not a choice. However, far too often we want it to be a choice — and that is what is at the heart of Peter’s question.

Anyway, to help Peter and all of us better understand, Jesus again shares a story to emphasize what he is saying. Now, we need to remember that Jesus’ stories often contain a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration. This story is no different. Jesus tells about a king who ponders his own scorekeeping when looking at his accounts receivable.  This king discovers that a certain slave owes him about a gazillion dollars.  Jesus said the amount was 10,000 talents which was the equivalent of 150,000 years of labor.  It is such an outrageous amount we might as well say it was more than the combined national economies of all the G7 nations!  Well, the slave is summoned to appear before him.  The slave falls to his knees and begs for mercy, for time to do something that would be utterly impossible, for time to repay what is owed. Inexplicably and without so much as a word, the king relents. The king as much as shrugs and says, “Okay. I forgive the debt.”

And just like that, the slave is free. His utterly unpayable debt is vaporized, whoosh, like the sound of thousands of e-mails being deleted and sent to the trash bin.  His unpayable debt has been totally deleted and wiped from the books.

Well, we might imagine this slave’s response.  Just picture him, walking away from the castle, standing a little taller, shoulders back, whistling a merry tune. If this were a musical, we might see him do a little jig.  As he struts along, he then sees a fellow slave, one who owes him a measly sum, so the slave stops in his tracks.  And, he lapses back into bondage, back into the bondage of scorekeeping and spreadsheets and accounts receivable and into a blind allegiance to what he sees as fair.

So, he says to his fellow slave, “Hey man. You owe me five bucks. Pay up now. Right now.” The fellow slave falls to his knees. “Patience, man, patience! Friday’s coming. I will get right with you.” But no. That is not good enough. The slave whose enormous, unpayable debt has just been forgiven is then extremely hard and cruel and mean to the other guy, his fellow slave. Immediately, he throws the fellow slave in prison. Really? Set free from an impossible debt, this man cannot look past a debt that would equal the cost of a cup of Biggby coffee and a doughnut?  The guy who had been forgiven a debt the size of the combined national economies of all the G7 nations could not find it in his heart to forgive the guy who owed him five bucks!?!

The difference between what was owed by the first slave and the fellow slave was astronomical!  When hearing this aspect of Jesus’ story, Peter and all the others had to have been stunned!  Everyone listening would have been shocked by Jesus’ words, shocked to even imagine such forgiveness.  And, we should also be stunned!

Friends, the scorekeeping job is not ours. Revenge and vengeance after being wronged is not our job.  Evening the score is not our job. Our job is to forgive.  Jesus shocked his listeners with the use of these absurd amounts regarding scorekeeping to show them that God’s forgiveness is limitless.  And so, again, when talking about the life Jesus calls us to live, Jesus turns our “normal” expectations upside down and inside out.

Jesus ends his story by saying that when the king found out what the first slave had done, he handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.  I like how Richard Rohr describes the end of this story.  He says:

The greedy and selfish debtor, who is owed a mere five dollars, throttles his fellow servant, ignores his attempts and promises, and throws him into prison (as if that is going to help). And in his attempt to imprison the other, he ends up being “tortured” and imprisoned himself. This is a classic Middle Eastern wisdom story. It is both a gracious statement about what we can always expect from God and an honest warning about how any refusal to forgive actually destroys and imprisons the very one who refuses to forgive!       

The parable ends with the invitational one-liner: “Each of you must forgive your brother [or sister] from the heart!” This is what the Master/God has just done. Jesus invites all of us in this rather easy-to-understand story into God’s nonsensical loving “from the heart” which is the final staccato phrase.

Friends, we follow the one whose nonsensical loving heart is most fully seen in the cross.  On the cross, God does away with scorekeeping!  On that cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And, as Nadia Bolz Weber says,

God’s forgiveness is like giant bolt-cutters, setting us free. And then God says go and do likewise. Forgive as you have been forgiven. Cut others loose too. Jesus commands it. It’s not actually a suggestion. He commands us to forgive just as he commands us to love.” 

This is a special musical presentation of Written in Red sung by Bob Nelson at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

This is a special musical presentation of Balm in Gilead sung by Christopher Lewis at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan

There is an old story about two men who lived in a small village.  They got into a terrible dispute which they could not resolve. So, they decided to talk to the town sage. The first man went to the sage's home and told his version of what happened. When he finished, the sage said, "You're absolutely right." The next night, the second man called on the sage and told his side of the story. The sage responded, "You're absolutely right." Afterward, the sage's wife scolded her husband. "Those men told you two different stories and you told them they were absolutely right. That's impossible -- they can't both be absolutely right." The sage turned to his wife and said, "You're absolutely right." 

That little story is rather humorous, and it helps to describe life within community when people do not want to face conflict.  Too often, disagreements and differences just simmer below the surface and people are never honest with each other.  And, as we think about life within the church, many people tend to think there should be no conflict within the faith community.  However, Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel lesson seems to proceed on the baseline assumption that conflict in Christian community is normal and natural and should be dealt with honestly.  It should be addressed with compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation.   And, from Jesus’ teaching today, we discover the community of faith is always called to bear witness to the forgiveness and reconciliation Christ is bringing into the world.

Today’s gospel reading has been a difficult passage to digest in the Western church. In the western world, we have been deeply influenced and shaped by the Enlightenment philosophy of John Locke, so much so that the dominant understanding of the local church in the modern world has been that of a voluntary association of autonomous individuals.  This is especially the case in America, where toxic individualism, with its emphasis on independence, self-reliance, and individual authority, is held in such high esteem.  In our culture, church is often a place of self-sufficient individuals who gather for worship on Sunday, as their calendar permits, then leave to do their own thing throughout the rest of the week.  But, at the time of the early church, the faith community was a place of mutual interdependence, where each member was incomplete without the other, where the suffering of one was truly the suffering of all, and where the honor of one led to the rejoicing of all.  This reading from Matthew assumes a close-knit community of committed people of faith.  And, in comparison, few churches in today’s culture can claim that assumption as we live in an age of radical malignant individualism.

As we approach this reading, we need to recognize these different cultural contexts.  And, in a polarized society such as ours where we are often defined by our differences, in a climate of anger and violence, in a context of toxic individualism run rampant, we must recognize that this gospel reading has tragically and too frequently been used and interpreted as a legalistic weapon to clobber others.  Far too often, this passage has been used to provide rules of engagement for combat rather than the rule of Christ to love, forgive and reconcile. 

As we all know, honesty, forgiveness, compassion, and reconciliation are rarely the watchwords of our church conflicts, let alone conflicts in the greater community or in our country.  Within faith communities, far too often anger, hurt feelings, and lack of clear communication drive us toward either sweeping everything under the rug to keep peace, or openly hostile entrenched positions that lead to explosions with people permanently leaving the church.  But, Jesus says there is another way.

First, he asks us to use direct and respectful communication.  If we are struggling with something a church member has said or done, we are not to talk behind his or her back.  Nor are we to stage a dramatic public confrontation during fellowship time.  We are to take time aside, after the initial rush of emotion has subsided, and engage in dialogue with that person one-on-one.  If that conversation is not fruitful, we create a small group of all parties involved to discern and pray together.  If no progress is made, then we let transparency be our guiding principle and search for a solution as a whole church community, bearing one another’s burdens and seeking reconciliation.  Now, as we are all aware, some conflicts and disagreements are so deep that even these steps cannot ease them.  So, Jesus says, “If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  Well, with these words, we tend to breathe a sigh of relief.  Too often, we find these words enable us to feel justified, and then we simply shun and push aside the supposed troublemakers, making ourselves feel comfortable again.  Hooray!

No!!  That is not what Jesus is saying.  We are not off the hook at all.  Why?  Because of how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors.  What can we learn from his words and actions toward them that we can then apply to our fellow church members?  Well, remember that, when Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple, he emphasizes the Pharisee’s grandstanding pride and self-satisfaction versus the tax collector’s pained and private acknowledgement of his own sin.  To treat a fellow church member like a tax collector would then be to realize that beneath the outer façade, that person might be hiding a great deal of pain and regret over his or her own actions in the conflict.  Jesus says this tax collector went home justified and forgiven.  Could we not look for the hidden self of the person with whom we are in conflict and have our compassion awakened?  Could we not realize that we ourselves might be in danger of praying like the Pharisee, proud and certain of our own righteousness?

Jesus treated reviled tax collectors and sinners with mercy, with invitation, with hospitality, and with love.  When Jesus tells us that we are to treat our most stubborn and contrary faith community members like tax collectors, he is telling us to treat them as he did, disciples who are God’s beloved children.  And, remember, Matthew himself was a tax collector!

And, what about those despised gentiles, any of those we consider “other?’  Well, again we can look at Jesus’ example.  One of Jesus’ most famous encounters with a gentile was the healing of the despised Syrophoenician woman’s daughter.  He initially refuses her request saying the food for the children of Israel cannot be given to the dogs.  Her clever and persistent response, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table,” convinces Jesus to change his mind.  Now, if Jesus, himself, can be persuaded to soften, become more understanding and change his mind about someone, can we not do the same?  Jesus was not afraid to really listen and be changed by what he heard.  We are given the opportunity to do the same!

Jesus’ instruction to treat those with whom we disagree as tax collectors and gentiles opens to us a whole array of creative and surprising paths toward reconciliation.  All of this is so important not just because of the simple reality that there is no such thing as church without conflict.  It matters because of how Jesus concludes his instructions saying, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  How we choose to treat one another when the going gets rough has consequences that far outlast questions like the theology of sexuality or that knock-down drag-out fight over the carpet color in the narthex.  We have the power to bind and loose.  With our choices, we can bind each other even tighter into our separate camps and polarized positions, or, we can loose ourselves from our pride and our ever-present need to be right.  We can loose one another from assumptions and stereotypes and bitterness.  Having been freed in Christ, we can then do as St. Paul says in our reading from his letter to the Romans.  We can put on the Lord Jesus Christ.  We can put on the clothes of Christ and be bound together with the unbreakable love of the crucified, risen Christ – a body tested, refined, healed and flourishing with new life.

Our three-year-old grandson, William, who lives in Grand Cayman, now knows how to initiate a Facetime call to us all by himself.  When he calls, I read books to him, we sing songs, and we play games.  One game he loves to play is a form of Follow the Leader, in which he makes crazy faces, then I make the same face.  Or, I will make a funny face and he then follows. It is just so much fun!  However, our game abruptly ends when the follower decides he no longer wants to copy the leader, when he decides he wants to do something else.  

Today, Jesus teaches the disciples and each one of us about what it means to Follow the Leader, Jesus style!  He tells the disciples what it really means to follow him as their leader.  He is alarmingly blunt about what it means to follow him, and Peter does not want to go there. 

Peter has just experienced a monumental come to Jesus moment where he responded to Jesus saying, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”  Jesus had just called Peter a rock and said that he would build his “called out” beloved community, the church, on the rock of Peter’s testimony and confession of faith.  Jesus has just made Peter a kind of deputy leader in the kingdom of God.  And, now, Jesus seems to ruin the moment they had all just experienced when he tells Peter and the others, "Look, the road to Jerusalem is filled with nails. They'll pierce me and put an end to me, but after three days God will reclaim my life."  

Well, only a short time before this, Jesus had given Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” a major leadership position, with the power to bind and loose.  And, as Peter now hears Jesus speak of what lies ahead, Peter has the audacity to seek to use his newfound sense of authority as he attempts to bind Jesus!  Peter clearly had a certain vision in mind regarding what it means for Jesus to be the leader they had hoped for.   And, the things Jesus is now saying certainly do not fit his perception of the leadership they anticipated in a Messiah.  Peter takes Jesus aside and says, "Come to your senses, man. Don't you remember I just pronounced you the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God? These things that you are talking about don't happen to God; and God forbid, they must never happen to you."  Now, what really goes unsaid is, "Because, of course, that would mean that these things of which you speak would also happen to someone who followed you, someone like me."

Peter's perception of the Messiah’s leadership and his own importance as keeper of the keys is then abruptly shattered as Jesus barks back at him saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a scandal, a stumbling block to me, for you have set your mind not on divine things, but on human things."  Well, the rest of the air escapes from Peter’s self-important balloon as Jesus goes on to say, "You want these keys?  Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.  You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am.  Don’t run from suffering; embrace it.  Follow me and I’ll show you how.  Self-help is no help at all.  Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.  What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?  What could you ever trade your soul for?"

Peter and the disciples were ready for a Messiah who was supposed to come and restore the Jewish kingdom, make the Jewish kingdom great again, by overthrowing oppressive empires, and they saw themselves assisting in this effort.  But now, Jesus is talking about going to Jerusalem to suffer and die!  Jesus gives them an ad hoc lecture in God's plan for the Messiah and the kind of kingdom he is ushering in.  And, following this kind of leader is just the antithesis of what they had anticipated.

Well, in our culture today, I have to say we are no different.  We are a people who are interested in winning.  We are people who want to be in charge and on top.  We are self-absorbed people who want to stay within the cocoon of our comfortable lives, stay in our little bubbles, and not get into the thick of the need in this world.  We are people who live in a very self-centered, narcissistic culture, wanting to avoid the pain and messiness of life.  We do everything we can to avoid suffering and self-sacrifice.  Yet, Jesus tells us that if we want to gain life, life that truly matters, we are to follow him and do as he does.  He tells us we will gain life that truly matters when we follow him and do things like sooth the pain of the sick; care for children in need; hammer nails in houses for those without shelter; share bread with the hungry; visit those in prison; help and assist people who have lost everything in fires like those taking place in California, or in hurricanes like Laura; work to end and dismantle oppression of any kind; work to dismantle the racism that plagues our culture.  And, Jesus calls us to do this in the selfless way he models for us, by letting go of our egos – by letting our egos die.  And, letting our egos die is quite honestly, one of the hardest aspects of discipleship, let alone leadership, because it leads us to living lives of sacrificial love as Paul instructs in today’s reading from Romans.  It means we become accomplices with Jesus in doing things like blessing those who persecute us, blessing and not cursing them.  It means never seeking vengeance and retribution because God says, “Vengeance is mine.”  It means feeding our enemies and giving them water to drink because only good overcomes evil. Yes, following the leader, Jesus style, is difficult, but the rewards are great.

Friends, like Peter and the other disciples, we face the chasm between Jesus’ call to discipleship and our own lives as part-time volunteers for the Gospel. Few Christians abandon everything for the Gospel’s sake. Most of us simply fit our Christianity into the open spots on our calendars.  But in this passage Jesus links the life of discipleship with his own path.  We are to follow his leading.  And, astonishingly, Jesus offers crucifixion to those who would follow him.  In a bold assertion of God’s boundary-crossing grace, Jesus takes as his logo and brand the grim killing tool of the world’s superpower and says to us, “Take up your cross.  If you want to follow me, deny yourself; if you want to find your life, give up your life.” 

The gospel is always an invitation to death before it bestows new life.  This is how God’s love will redeem and resurrect sinners from the futility of life devoted to profit and winning and the “all about me” syndrome that is so present in our country.  Because Jesus leads by dying on the cross, we may now give ourselves to him and die to the powers that possess and control us.  Following Jesus is about following him into the messiness and dysfunction of the world and carrying the cross.  We do not control or bind God, and we do not stipulate or give Jesus the conditions to our discipleship; instead, we risk contamination and insecurity by releasing the need to protect our very own lives.  

Following the leader, Jesus style, means living in solidarity with Jesus’ own way of life in this world.  Instead of binding Jesus for our own self-preservation, we must faithfully follow and bear witness to him, “even at the risk of losing our lives.”  And, the most amazing aspect of following the leader Jesus’ style and participating in the very life of Christ’s living body in the world, is that we find ourselves resurrected to new life.  

It is hard to follow Jesus to this place, but he says he will make good on his promise.  Although new life, life that truly matters, will not be an easy life, Jesus promises that the day is coming when the “Son of Man” will appear in glory.  God has already acted decisively and ultimately in the person of Jesus.  God has already acted!  And so, we follow, trusting that there will come a day when God will wipe away all tears, a day when death will be no more, a day when mourning and crying and pain will be no more.  The promise of full redemption for this entire world is unmistakable and certain. Thanks be to God!

This is a special musical presentation of Above All sung by Christopher Lewis at Faith Lutheran Chuch in Okemos, Michigan.

This is a special musical presentation of How Can I keep From Singing by Christopher Lewis at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan

I suspect some of you have experienced “come to Jesus moments” in your life.  Such moments are epiphanies in which one realizes the truth of a specific matter or situation. A come to Jesus moment can be a time of realization, a moment of decision, a moment of truth, a critical moment, a moment of revelation, or a moment in which one reassesses priorities.  Quite often such moments in our lives mark a turning point and they are life-changing.

Today, when we meet up with Jesus and his band of twelve bumbling misfits, we hear about Peter experiencing a come to Jesus moment.  Jesus has been traveling with his disciples, teaching, listening, and reaching out to people.  There was a divine energy being released into the world through him and it included a passion for justice as well as healing and compassion for all people.  Jesus’ ministry was growing and expanding and, wherever he went, people thronged to see him. I have to say, if one might compare these happenings to experiences in today’s culture, one could say Jesus was trending and going viral, he was lighting up social media in the first-century world!  In other words, things were really happening!

As Jesus and his band of misfits continue their travels they come into the district of Caesarea Philippi, a place of power and governmental authority where there would have been ample evidence of Roman rule and pagan religions.  There were multiple temples and statues of foreign gods.  And, it is in this significant place, a place where the power of empire is on full display, that Jesus asks his followers, “What are people saying about me?  Who do people say that I am?”  The disciples then begin rattling off the results of the most recent public opinion poll, saying: "A certain percentage of people say that you are John the Baptist, or at least like John the Baptist. And some think you're the second coming of the great prophet Elijah. And still others believe you're stern and austere like Jeremiah or one of the great prophets from our tradition. In other words, Jesus, people are beginning to put you on the Mount Rushmore of Jewish prophets! You're really making a name for yourself. You're really going places, Jesus. Isn't that fantastic?" 

Well, Jesus wasn't taking a poll. Jesus was trying to take the disciples to a deeper place. And that is why, in this location of empirical governmental power, he then turned to them asking a subversive, even more penetrating question. Jesus asked, "But who do you say that I am?"  Well, Peter, always impetuous and the first to react, has a come to Jesus moment and blurts out, "You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God!"  Quite honestly, when we hear the rest of the gospel story, we know he spoke these words without fully understanding what he was saying.  But, Jesus responds saying, “By golly, you got it right!  God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah!  You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers.  My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am.  And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are.  You are Peter, a rock.  This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.  And, that’s not all.  This community will have power.  You will have complete and free access to God’s kingdom, keys to open any door and every door: no more barriers between heaven and earth, earth and heaven.  A yes on earth is yes in heaven.  A no on earth is no in heaven. In other words, this community has the power to interpret the law in light of new situations.  The realm of heaven will concur with the church’s interpretation.” (The Message)

There can be no doubt that the Jesus of the Bible, particularly Jesus as described in the Gospel of Matthew, meant to build a community.  There is no doubt he meant to leave behind a community of followers who lived into the ways of God that he himself proclaimed and lived. In this reading from Matthew, the Greek word translated as church is ekklesia. This Greek word referred to the local political assembly, or the people "called out" to a town meeting.  Matthew is the only gospel to use this word.  So, Jesus, in referring to his followers as an ekklesia, meant that the “called out” community of the faithful would persevere in and continue to live out his teachings, as his influence lived on following the fate he felt awaited him.

As we think about this story, it is important to remember and recognize Peter’s confession when he experiences that come to Jesus moment.  This is a powerful moment of recognition. However, later on Peter will screw up mightily and he will completely misunderstand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah, what it means to confess Jesus as the Christ.  He will later resist Jesus’ intention to turn himself over to the authorities, and he will eventually deny and abandon his Lord.  But, in this moment, he confesses Jesus is the Christ. 

In light of all that is going on in our country at the present time, in our present empire, we cannot help but ask ourselves, “Who do we say Jesus is and what does it mean to say that Jesus is the Christ?”  For all of us, as we respond to these questions, there is a certain sense in which we too have a come to Jesus moment.  More and more, as I respond to that question and confess Jesus as the Universal Risen Christ, what makes sense to me is this: Christ is not just a person. Christ is not just a title. And, Christ is certainly not the last name of Jesus. No. Christ is a word that names the divine being, the divine energy that was released into the world through the life of Jesus. Just as stars explode and new planets are formed, so in the life of Jesus a certain kind of Christ energy was constellated and released into the world, into the cosmos, an energy that is still changing people. This is nothing less than the energy or presence of God. Compassion exploded into the world through the life of Jesus.  Forgiveness, unconditional love, and inexhaustible grace invaded the world through the life of Jesus. Creative, transforming, and inspiring goodness was released into the world through the life of Jesus. I like to think of Jesus as a Christ-Burst – a burst of God energy that continues to shape the world one heart, one person, one community, and one situation at a time.

We who are part of a faith community are daily called to bear witness to that Christ-Burst wherever we live and move and have our being.  We are called to live with the same passion and commitment as that early “called out” community to which Matthew’s gospel was written. We are called to live into the ways of God that Jesus himself proclaimed and lived. We are being called – in our individual and communal lives – to daily confess the universal, risen Christ. We are called to confess the suffering Christ who always, always sided with the vulnerable in both word, deed, speech, and action!

On this morning, Maude, Rachel, Lily and Sami, you answer that call as you make public affirmation of your baptism.  Today, you confess the suffering Christ who will always be with you, the Christ-Burst energy of love that will always hold you as you go through life. Like Peter and like all of us, there will be times when you fall short, not living as deeply or truly into your confession as you should.  At times, just like each one of us, you will even get confused or scared about what that confession really means.  And, quite frankly, you will discover that as we live together within this “called out,” beloved community, it can be a messy place.  But, Jesus promises that he will build his church. God is at work through this “called out” community of which we all are a part.  And, guess what?  We who are part of this community of whacky, messed-up, bumbling misfits continue to live out our come to Jesus moments through the choices we daily make, every time we do things like feed the poor, house the homeless, care for the sick and dying, care for refugees, advocate for the vulnerable and forgotten, work for justice and peace, walk with the suffering, work to dismantle racism, and reach out to become engaged with this needy, hurting world by sharing the gracious love of God in Christ.  That is our identity!

This is a special musical performance by Bob Nelson of Turn Your Eyes on Jesus at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.