Are We Too Dependent on Miracles?

This is a sermon I prepared for our weekly Refresh worship time this past week.  I felt very convicted by it and thought it could use a share. 

On the surface of it, this seems like a pretty straightforward miracle story – a reward for belief.  The prophet said the flour and oil would last and the widow trusted they would and they did.  But, as you hear it, is there anything that doesn’t sit well with you?  Any questions or problems that come up?

Maybe its just the time we live in, but I’m bothered by the power dynamics here.  Widows and children are the most vulnerable people in society.  This woman is ready to watch her son starve to death – she’s that desperate – and yet this random prophet shows up and asks her to bring him water, and she just does it.  The servant class is so baked into her, she’s ready to obey whatever this guy asks.

I have to ask myself, who is this guy to impose this upon her?  Yes, I get that God has orchestrated this whole thing, and he trusts that God will work it out, but it’s awfully mean, isn’t it?  I mean, I get the story and why it’s there, but I also wonder if we haven’t heard too many of these miracle stories.  I wonder if we haven’t become too dependent on the idea of miracles.

Think about it.  We use all the fossil fuels and minerals on our planet under the assumption that, by the time they run out, technology will have figured out a way to do what we need without them.  This is why climate change has lingered for so long – it wasn’t that people didn’t believe in it, but that they believed in a miracle more – that science would figure a way out of it that didn’t require sacrifice.

Our economy is built on debt – we encourage people to borrow.  These billionaires out there, they don’t have any actual cash – they just borrow against the value of their stocks, with the assumption that value always goes up, that there’s always more money out there.  It’s miracle thinking.

I was reading a lot, earlier this year, on Amazon’s hiring practices, because I guy I went to high school with ended up being a sort of whistle blower from the Amazon HR department.  They realized that people’s productivity goes down after a few years at a menial job, like stacking shelves or packing boxes, so they’ve set up their system to be really attractive at the beginning, but pretty terrible after three years.  They’ve designed their system to run through employees quickly and now they’ve run out of people.  They’ve burned out to many low wage workers, no one will do the job anymore.

Elijah didn’t worry about food, because God always provided for him – but that kind of put him in a position to impose on this poor widow, whose whole life has been nothing but suffering and imposition.  When we have this miracle mindset, it’s the people at the bottom of the pile who suffer – and in our society, we’re seeing some of this come home to roost.  We’ve got a lot of upheaval, because there are a lot of people who don’t see miracles.  They’re stuck with nothing and, like the widow, expect nothing.

When I worked at an urban youth center in Kansas City, during seminary, we’d always have volunteers (usually white, middle class, suburban) who’d wonder why these kids always had expensive sneakers and satellite TV, but they rarely had enough to eat.  There were complaints about their priorities.

I had to learn myself, and then teach them, that those priorities only make sense, when you plan to have a long term future.  If money or a job or a place to live could be gone tomorrow, you’re not thinking long term – you’re going to do what you can for yourself right now.  This is a different kind of miracle thinking – only a miracle will make this situation right, so I’m going to do what I can when I can.

Whether its a polluter tossing more coal into the furnace or an impoverished kid in line to buy Jordans, they’re both just banking on a miracle down the line.  For the rich, though, its an assumption “things will all work out;” while, for the poor, it’s a pipe dream, “we’ll gather a few sticks, make one last meal, and die.”  One assumes there will always be enough and the other is assuming there will never be enough.  Two sides of the same problem.

The gospel lesson here – where the Kingdom of God breaks in to the story – is that there is already enough.  It’s not about expecting the best or the worst of the future; it’s about believing that everything you need is already here.

Sometimes these biblical miracle stories make it seem like God is creating the problem God later intends to solve, right?  He asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, then provides a ram from the bushes.  He asks Elijah to take this woman’s last meal, only to give her more.  But that’s not what’s happening.  God is taking a common scenario from the world in which these people live, and changing the narrative.  Everybody in Abraham’s day sacrificed their firstborn to the gods; that was common practice.  God didn’t set up the scenario only to save the day; God radically changed the story.

Here it’s the same thing.  The prophet was a revered figure, someone with power.  It only made sense for him to take from those who couldn’t defend themselves.  That’s how society worked.  People who had things deserved them and people who didn’t have things didn’t deserve them.  The poor were just unworthy people.  Bad things only happened to bad people.  That was how society operated.

Here, God is changing the narrative.  Rich and poor.  Powerful and helpless.  Both are being served and fed and saved.  Both get the same meager meal of flour and oil, but both get to live.  It’s not about the miracle.  It’s not about God coming through in ways we couldn’t predict, it’s about God re-framing how we look at the world: there is already enough.  The flour will last, if we are responsible in its use!

We have to approach our world with this concept in mind.  It’s not about the future.  God has provided; we just have to be willing to share.  We have to be willing to be vulnerable, to make sacrifices.

Our society tells us there’s not enough.  That’s why we’re encouraged to consume.  Buy this TV now.  Limited time offer.  This deal won’t last forever.  You’re going to miss out!  How many people have more money than they’ll ever need saved up?  We feel like nobody, but the reality is very different.

Everybody thinks they’re middle class, because we’ve created this notion of scarcity.  We won’t raise taxes on people making under $250,000, because that’s “middle class,” but even $200,000 a year puts you in the top 10% of households in this country.  $10,000 a year is average for the whole world.

We have to figure out what it means to create a system, a society, where we can all live sustainably here and now.  For us, the rich – and everyone in this room is massively wealthy when measured on a global scale – it means being willing to sacrifice, do with less, and absolutely change our mindset.

Typically, those of us in power want gradual change.  We tell people who’ve been left out or oppressed, “wait your turn, go slow, we’ll get there eventually, let’s not shake things up too much” but that’s just more of the same miracle mindset.  Something in the future will change the situation so everyone can be equal with no one having to give up anything.  That’s not reality, though – that’s miracle thinking.

The poor in our society, the oppressed minorities, they live in a world where there’s no expectation things will get better or change in any meaningful way.  We have to be able to see the world with those eyes as easily as we can see with our privileged “it’ll all work out” eyes.  We shouldn’t need to depend on miracles for everyone to survive.                           

So, then, how do our lives need to change?

Fraudulent Giants

This is a sermon I preached June 20, 2021 on the David and Goliath story.  I don't typically share sermons here, but I think this one came together particularly well and I've already heard positive comments about how it's helped some people with a new perspective - so here it is:

 The Israelites and the Philistines are in a stalemate. They’ve lined up on opposite ridges with a valley in between. Neither side can attack, because they’d be giving up the high ground – you just can’t win and uphill battle. They’ve been staring at each other for months – neither side can see a solution.

Goliath comes out and challenges any Israelite to single combat. Remember, he’s almost seven feet tall, which is more intimidating when you know the average height for a man of this time is just over five feet. In today’s equivalent, Goliath at over eight feet. And David is not an average man – he’s still a boy. Someone a head shorter than me up against a veteran Navy Seal who’s eight feet tall. Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone vs Andre the Giant – this is what we’re looking at here.

Goliath is a battle-hardened, proven fighter – wearing armor, the very best defensive technology – lightweight kevlar, head to toe. He’s also got a traditional sword, like you imagine from the movies – the blade might be five feet long, a spear with a razor sharp tip, the size of a softball – and a sharpened iron javelin, something he can throw a long distance – strapped to his back.

What Israel sees is almost no way out. It would take a miracle to beat this giant.

That’s what we face, sometimes. There are giants in our lives – cancer, unemployment, racism, loneliness, addiction – whatever it is, we see in front of us an insurmountable giant that can only be defeated by an act of God. It’s a problem too big and too tough for us to face on our own.

Although, maybe – just maybe – the problem is not the giant in front of us, but the way we see it.

Did you know we see things upside down? Our eyes invert what we see – when that data reaches your brain, it’s upside down. So why don’t we see everything upside down? Somehow, our brains have learned that we see upside down and they adjust for us. Our brains – and we don’t know how they do this – turn those images back over, right side up, so we can go about our days and live in our world.

Imagine how hard it would be for me to preach if the podium in front of me were actually right in front of me, but I saw it hanging from the ceiling. We don’t actually have to imagine. Some scientists made it happen in the 1920s. In what’s called the Innsbruck Goggle Experiment, a guy named Theodor Erismann had his research assistant, Ivo Kohler, wear glasses with special lenses that inverted everything we saw – his eyes saw what the brain sees: everything upside down.

At first, Ivo couldn’t do anything. He could function pretty normally if he closed his eyes, but with them open, that first day, he couldn’t feed himself, walk across the room or even sit down. Even if you can feel the chair, if it doesn’t look like its there, its pretty tough to sit down.

While we might take it for granted, how we see is far, far more important than what we see. This, I think, is the real lesson of David and Goliath. The writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book a few years ago – called David and Goliath – where he outlines some of the details we may miss in the story. I don’t have time to go into all the details, but there’s a 15 minute youtube video you can find about it.

Anyway, for a human to be so extraordinarily large, Goliath would almost certainly have to have something called Acromeglia – its a pituitary disorder that essentially makes you keep growing forever – or at least until you get too big for your body to support. When I used Andre the Giant before, that’s not too far off – this is the same disorder he had, which lead to his great size. One of the realities of acromeglia is that in your teens and early 20s, you’re bigger and stronger than everyone, but you age quickly. Your joints break down and your back gives out – Andre the Giant could barely move at 30.

You see where I’m going with this? Goliath had been the mightiest of warriors, but it was likely, by this point, that he could barely move, that his vision was nearly gone, that his strength was failing him. The spear and the sword and the armor were probably doing him more harm than good at this point. Yeah, if David got within five feet of the guy, it probably would’ve been curtains for him, but as we know, David never intended to get close to Goliath at all.

Yes, a young Goliath could have picked up his shield and fended off the rocks coming from David’s sling, getting closer and closer, until his sword or his spear or his javelin or his bare hands would’ve been enough. This is what Saul was thinking, when he tried to make David wear the armor – give the kid a fighting chance – but Saul is not seeing the right way.

But nobody saw what was right in front of their faces: the giants in our lives are not always what they seem. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say God can’t do miracles or that God doesn’t do miracles – I’m just trying to say that miracles are miracles because they’re rare. They don’t happen very often. More often than not, if we’re going to tackle the giants in our lives, it’s not because God takes care of them for us, it’s because God gives us eyes to see them differently – to see them properly.

Let’s go back to Ivo Kohler, wearing the inversion goggles. He can’t do anything for himself. He’s got to be fed and led around by the hand everywhere he goes. He experiences some pretty severe psychological trauma right off the bat – but he’s committed to the experiment and he continues. Within three days, he says he’s starting to see things right side up – not that he’s getting familiar with his surroundings or learning to deal with mixed up vision, but that his vision is actually changing.

You see, it takes only a short time, a few days, for the brain to recognize this change in vision and catch up to what our eyes are seeing. By the 10^th day of the experiment, Kohler can tell no difference – he rides a motorcycle through the crowded streets of Innsbruck all on his own. His vision had completely changed. And when he finally took the glasses off, it was only another three days until he was back to normal. The human brain is one amazing thing. It can be wildly adaptable, but its also easily fooled.

The world we see around us is not as it seems. That’s the message of God’s Good News. Where we see might giants – eight foot tall, Kevlar-covered Navy Seals – God’s Spirit reveals half blind old man ready to fall over at the slightest push. Where we see brooding, dangerous strangers around every corner, the God’s Spirit reveals beloved children of God who only need one conversation to become a friend. Where we see need and poverty and desperation, the God reveals an abundance of resources if we’ll just trust each other and work together.

God is not calling us to sit back and let God handle the giants, God is calling us to step out on faith and see differently, to put on the inversion goggles of God’s Good News and look at the world upside down. Yes, its scary, and it can really mess us up for a while, but if we’re faithful to keep on it, despite bumping into furniture and spilling our dinner down our shirts, eventually we’ll learn to see this new way, God’s way, and those giants won’t seem so tough anymore.

The Good News of God is not the solution to all your problems. It’s not the path to an easy life or the answer to every question – but it is the path to engage the world in an open and life-giving way, to be human as we were created to be human, to tackle our challenges and setbacks by moving forward rather than cowering in the dark. So many of us spend our lives in a stalemate, staring across the valley at a giant we think is unbeatable, when God calls us to see differently, to live differently – and those giants may not always be what they seem.

Real Life and Real Life

So, last week was a crazy busy one. Not only that, but the business required a level of creativity that's difficult to sustain. I feel pretty taxed. So, because I missed last Thursday's post and I've got no time or energy to write one for today, you get my sermon from Sunday.

It was partially inspired by chapter eight of Empathy for the Devil by JR Forasteros, which came out last week (and which I reviewed in my last post). I struggled mightily with how to make sense of the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, but the idea of psyche and zoe that he elucidated so well in the book framed what I was trying to say quite nicely.

Anyway, here's my take on Matthew 25:1-13:

There was a guy, we’ll call him Fred – an ambitious young man with lots of potential. He joined the military out of high school and stayed in long enough to pay for college and an MBA. He got the education he wanted, but when he hit the work force, he was already years behind his peers. So he worked extra hard, burning the candle at both ends – and within five years he was the youngest executive in the history of his company. A great success story.

He got there the right way, too. People genuinely liked him. He was tough, but fair. Fred was everybody’s image of a go-getter. Along the way he’d even managed to marry a wonderful woman, and after five years, they were starting a family – with his new position, they thought it best for her to take time from work and stay at home with the kids.

So Fred just kept going. He continued to work harder than everyone else and now he coached his daughter’s soccer team and made it home for family dinner at least once a week. They took the right vacations to the right places and his wife never felt like an outsider when she got away with her friends. They had anything and everything they wanted.

Fred and his family went to church, too – religiously, even – spent every Thanksgiving at the soup kitchen, serving turkey and eating with folks who just weren’t as fortunate. Will was one of the other volunteers – he and Fred knew each other from church and their families ended up sitting together one Thanksgiving. Will invited Fred to his pick-up basketball game.

“Oh man, I haven’t really played basketball since high school,” said Fred, “It was absolutely my favorite thing in the world; I’d love to come. You said 5:30 on Thursdays? I’ll be there.”

So Fred got up a little earlier, sent his secretary an email that he’d be in late and entered the middle school gym. The guys were going back and forth, maybe a dozen – running up and down the court in a way that was simply nostalgic. The smells, the echoes, the squeaks on the floor.

Fred jumped into the next game and started running. Most of it came back – his shot was a little off, but he hit one or two and no one was really young enough to play defense anyway. By the end, though, his lungs were burning and the lack of sleep couldn’t just be covered up.

As Fred heaved on the sidelines, Will came over. “We won, Fred, we have to play again.” Fred responded, “Sure thing, can I buy some of your stamina.” Will began laughing and started to play along, but then he saw something in Fred’s eyes, “You’re not serious, are you.” “Of course, I’m serious,” says Fred, “I need more stamina to play. I’ve got the money. What does it cost?”

Will’s a little taken aback, “Fred, you have to know it doesn’t work that way, right? We’ll just get somebody else.” He called to another waiting player and they started a new game. Fred was left, breathing heavy, voice sounding desperate, “C’mon guys, let me play. I just need a little energy, a little more oil for the fire. I’ll pay whatever it costs. Please, I need to play.”


I grew up going to church. I heard the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids any number of times. They’re all waiting for the groom. It’s getting late. Some run out of oil and ask those with oil to borrow some. I always wondered why they couldn’t just share the oil? If the groom is coming, that means they’re not going to need much more – surely there’s enough to give the foolish ones a little bit to tide them over, right?

The best answer I can come up with is that it’s a parable, an analogy for life and in real life, it doesn’t work that way. Like Fred, we discover there are some things we need we just can’t buy.
I can give you the best running shoes in the world, give you all the water and nutrition and maps you need – professional level marathon support – but if you didn’t train you won’t be able to run the race – it’s as simple as that. Some things in life require preparation.

You might say, like Fred in the story, I’m working so hard, doing all the right things, just trying to find happiness or fulfillment, or to appease my guilty conscience, and it just doesn’t seem like enough. We’ve all been there: desperate for just a little more oil. One more hour, one more dollar, one more prayer, one more date – just one more and I’ll have what I need to be happy.

Satisfaction is always just over the next horizon – and that’s what makes heaven such a hopeful proposition. We slog through life the best we can, then finally, someday, we have what we need.

If you come to adult studies you’ve heard this a whole bunch, but we get heaven wrong. The Kingdom of God is not about the fulfillment of all your desires; it’s about being content without them. The Kingdom of God is not some far off future event, it came with Jesus and while it’s not fully realized yet, we can begin to live into the Kingdom of God right now.

In the parable, the foolish bridesmaids didn’t have what they needed to enjoy the party, because they were waiting for the party, rather than preparing for it. They were looking for some far off heaven, rather than seeing the Kingdom of God all around them already.

It’s a confusing parable for us, because in our world things are reversed. The people we call prepared are the ones doing everything. Like Fred, they’re working hard, taking care of their families, and checking all the boxes of success. Jesus is saying, though, that these are the fools, the people who think they can work their way into the Kingdom by doing everything right.

In the end, though, they just end up desperately looking for more oil, because they never arrive. They never find what they’re looking for, just more pressure to do even more.

That sneaks into the Church as well. Too often we’ve made Christianity about checking off our own list of requirements. As much as we say we can’t earn our salvation, that’s what it sure looks like we’re trying to do. Church becomes a scary, unwelcome place precisely because we greet desperate, overworked, unhappy people at the door and hand them an additional list of things they need to do. Our solution to the problem is to do more of the same.

So it ends up that Christians look no different than the rest of the world. We might have a different checklist, but we’re still running ourselves ragged trying to get it done and desperate for just a little more oil to see us through the day. That’s not really a life any of us wants to live.

The good news of the gospel, however, is that the Kingdom of God is not some far off heaven. It’s not something we have to wait for or work for or discover the secret to get in. Jesus invites all people, the lost and the least along with the best and most prepared. He invites the wise and the foolish alike to enjoy the eternal benefits of true life in Christ. He even says, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

However – and this is the hard part for us – the invitation is not for a destination. The Kingdom of God is not about arriving some place, or achieving some goal. The Kingdom of God is a journey. It’s a path we have to walk. You can join anywhere and at any time – and it doesn’t matter if some people are farther along than others; we’re all in. You can be prepared or you can be totally winging it, but you have to understand it’s not about where we’re going, it’s about how we get there.
You ever wonder about the Sermon of the Mount? We read those chapters from the beginning of Matthew where Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, to give to anyone who asks without expecting anything in return, to not worry about what we’ll eat or wear – we read those chapters and our first response is “wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world like that?” We think, “maybe someday our world can be like that,” and then we go right back to doing things the same way.

These “judgment” parables always scare people, as if Jesus were saying, “Do this, or else,” but really Jesus is saying, “Life is short, here’s how to live it well.”

The wise bridesmaids are the ones who do life differently. They’re the ones who live not for the destination, but the journey. They’re prepared for life if the goal we so desperately seek never comes to fruition. They’re happy in all circumstances and always ready to respond with love and grace. They look like Jesus and there’s no reason we can’t look like them.

Yes, the Kingdom of God requires us to give up our goals, to let go of this desire to feel safe or happy or secure. I think we know, in our heads, those pursuits won’t really bring us what we want, but our hearts still believe they will. Guess what? Jesus is in the business of changing hearts.

Living into the Kingdom of God does cost us something, because we won’t look like everyone around us. We won’t be seeking after the same things. There is tremendous peer pressure in our society to live by a certain set of ideals and values all of which are designed to bring fulfillment and yet never will. People who step out of that life or approach things differently get labeled – and those labels are never good. Why? Because we all want the same things, but most of us are too scared to try a different way.

Some of you here are old enough to remember the Apollo space missions. NASA made those first astronauts huge celebrities. Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and all the rest were all over TV, with their crew cuts and their perfect American families. They didn’t look like hulking superheroes; they looked like regular guys.

It’s easy for us to watch videos of them floating around in space and think, “that looks like fun; I’d love to do that,” and forget the years and years of intense training that went into those space visits and the real, constant, inherent danger involved in every one.

What’s more, we see space as this exotic, attractive destination, where people like us can have the time of their lives. But I’ll tell you what, those Apollo astronauts did not see space as a destination; for them it was just something they had to do in order to get back home.

There’s a blessing I love, although I’m rarely brave enough to say it people: “May all your dreams come true tomorrow, so you can discover they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and you can get on living.”

We’re constantly in search of more oil to keep the lamps burning, because we desperately want to find peace, solace, comfort, greatness. The message of the gospel, though, is that you’re already home – the Kingdom of heaven is here! The key is to learn to live in the moment, to love the people around you, to give up the search for something great – and surprisingly, unbelievably, impossibly, you find what you’re looking for in the most unexpected of places.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen!

Power and Control

I don't typically share my sermon's like this on the blog, but this is the one I preached two days ago in Chestertown, Maryland. It's timliness is obvious, I suppose. The only comment I'll make is that I'm aware of the position I'm in even addressing such things as a well-educated, straight, white male - that comes with its own problems and blind-spots. I apologize in advance for how that colors my response. I agonized over this, far longer and with more prayer than any other sermon I think I've ever preached - but at some point, you have to say what you have to say - and this is it. The sermon text is Romans 12.


I was asked to preach today the weekend of the violence in Charlottesville. I imagine I’ll associate that event with this passage for a while. The whole thing is troubling, obviously, for a number of reasons, but I’ve been haunted these last few weeks by one line I heard in an interview with one of the participants. The man said, “These people are worthless; they’re making the country worse and they should go back where they came from.”

I want to be careful here. I don’t want to get into the “both sides” game that’s become so problematic. However, I do think this quote is a good illustration of where this passage is going today. When it comes to the ideology of race – there is a clear right and wrong – it’s because this is an issue with such a clear distinction between opinions that I think it makes a good illustration.

You see, that quote above – “these worthless people should go back where they came from,” – is the kind of hate we might associate with racists and bigots, but it came from one of the leaders of the counter-protest, the defenders of equality.

Now, let’s be clear, being the subject of hate and scorn does not give any credence whatsoever to this “alt-right” movement or whatever they’re calling themselves. We are all human beings. There is just one race: the human race – and we should, collectively, be lamenting the thousands of years we’ve spent acting otherwise and the terrible toll it’s taken on people around the world. We, especially we, should be working to heal and repair that damage as much as we’re able.

But, as much as there is a right and wrong ideologically, it pains me to see how often those in the right have used hate to condemn hate. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am a student of non-violence – many of my personal heroes are leaders of the civil rights movement, not just because of their cause, but because of their commitment to non-violence and the belief that love wins.

It’s troubling, mournful, to see how this generation – my generation – seems to be abandoning those ideals. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard language not just advocating the destruction of racism, but the racists as well. I’ve been seriously conflicted with how to affirm that the cause of justice and equality is righteous, while also rejecting the means by which it is so often delivered.

This is a timely and difficult example of a much larger problem. It might not be what you expected when we read that familiar verse from Romans – Be not conformed to the pattern of this world – but this is what I think of immediately, at least in our current context and reality. The pattern of this world so ingrained in us we don’t even know there’s an alternative, the pattern that we’ve largely come to think of it as part of our faith, when it is the exact opposite:

Power and control.

These are weapons of strength, rooted in fear. White supremacists fear the loss of power and privilege that’s long been the purview of white men. It’s a real and justified fear, even if it is completely lacking in perspective. White men do have less power, even if we’re still, by far, the most powerful group on the planet. But the fear is real. In fact, it’s basically the same fear that sparked the counter-protests: people with a real vision of justice and equality who are afraid that whatever progress has been made on those fronts will be turned back or snatched away. That’s a real fear, too.

When we are afraid, our first reaction is to recover control. That’s human nature. If someone is mugged on the street one night, they might respond by taking self-defense classes, or they might respond by never leaving home again – both responses are attempts to take back power they lost at the hand of another. They are fear reactions. It’s the pattern of this world.

It’s this notion that we should be in control that really gets us in trouble. And this is at the heart of Jesus’ gospel message: the actions of others are not your responsibility. That might sound strange, since Jesus didn’t say any of those actual words, but perhaps it’s more familiar this way:

Do not be afraid.

Our fear is entirely based on our inability to control other people. Even when we’re afraid we can’t do something – I’m not strong enough to be a good parent, I can’t do this assignment the boss just gave me, I don’t have enough money to make rent this month – the fear is not about our inability, but about how other people will respond. We’re afraid of being judged; we’re afraid of being fired; we’re afraid of being left alone and abandoned and exposed.

Even those existential fears, about food or money or shelter, are really fears that no one will provide for us if we can’t provide for ourselves. It’s not about our actions, but about how other people respond to them. We’re afraid of losing control.

So Jesus comes in and says, “You aren’t in control, and you never will be.” And that’s supposed to be our hallelujah moment for today, our good news. You aren’t in control and never will be; Praise the Lord! I know it sounds terrible, but that’s because we’ve spent so long being conformed to the patterns of this world. We’ve been so ingrained with the idea that we need to be in control of as much as possible as often as possible that we don’t see the good news when it’s right in front of our face.

We never look at it from the other side of the equation. Even if we control everything in our lives we could possibly conceive of controlling, it’ll never be enough. People will still die. We still argue with spouses and kids. Jobs are lost. Mistakes are made. Control is just an illusion.

When Paul says here, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,” he’s saying, “stop trying to control everything – in fact, stop trying to control anything at all.”

Why are we challenged to give sacrificially? Most of the world, if they’re generous, is taught to make a budget, figure out what you need to live, and then spend a sizeable portion of the rest on others. That’s sort of the worldly principle of generosity. Christians are different, though – Jesus calls us to give everything, even, quite literally the shirt off our back, if need be. We’re called to give until it hurts and then give some more. We’re called to figure out what others need to live and then budget for ourselves with what’s leftover. Why? Why do we do this?

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons, but one big one is simply to remind ourselves that our bank balance does not equal control. No matter what’s in the investment fund, our future is more dependent on the grace of God than the sweat of our brow. We have a different motivating factor than mere survival or even personal happiness. And that is foolishness to the world around us.

We are living into the Kingdom of God and this vision of the world in which there is no fear. Attempting to shout down an angry, hateful mob does not eliminate fear, it heightens it. God has instilled within us a greater creativity than that – we have the ability to respond to hatred with love and to violence with peace, if we’re willing to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

I struggled for the longest time trying to figure out why verses three through eight are where they are in this chapter. If you skip from verse two to verse nine, it makes total sense with what I’ve been trying to say. “Honor one another above yourselves” is exactly the kind of outrageous thing Jesus calls us to. The world tells us to secure our oxygen mask before assisting others – because it makes sense – but Jesus has a different way of life in mind. “Be joyful in hope and patient in affliction. Bless those who persecute you. Be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not repay evil with evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.”

You can move from verse two to verse nine seamlessly, yet Paul puts this thing in between – something we’ve seen him write in many other letters as well – we are part of one body with many members; we’re all different, but important. He talks about spiritual gifts and contributing to the people of God through your strengths. But why is that here, in this position?

Well, after some time pondering, I think it’s about fear again. We’re afraid because we don’t know how other people will react to us. We’re afraid of what they’ll do – or not do –so we try to gain and maintain control. We try to wall ourselves off, if not from people, than from needing people. We love having friends, but we hate to depend on them.

This is precisely what Paul is telling us we have to do in verses three through eight. He says, You can’t do it all yourself. No matter how hard you try, how much you work, all the effort in the world, you do not have everything you need. We need each other. In fact, you’re not even ‘you’ without me.

We forget this sometimes, because in English “you” is both plural and singular, but 99% of the time we see “you” in scripture, it’s plural. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” It’s something we do collectively. We’re in this together.

So ,what does that mean when it comes to Charlottesville? In that case, you’ve got a group of people saying exactly the opposite. “If you’re not white or male, we don’t need you.” It’s a message of hate spawned from fear – it might even be a universal fear, that we’re not needed, that we are worthless – and out of that fear, we attempt to grab power by making those around us worthless and lesser. Hate flows naturally from fear – that is the pattern of this world.

Too often our response to hatred and fear is doubling down, is meeting hatred and fear with more of the same. Christians are called to end that cycle – to be not afraid – and we show our trust, our lack of fear, not by acting powerful and in control, but by responding in love. When someone comes at us with hatred and violence, the Christian response just might be, “You may not need us, but we still need you.”

This doesn't mean we allow hatred and violence and evil to go unopposed, but we must not oppose them with power and control, but with love. It’s a dangerous position, for sure, but it’s not weak and it’s not backing down – it is the turning of our actual bodies into a quite literal living sacrifice. It is putting our money where our faith is, believing that sacrificial love, in imitation of Christ, can really change the world. It is showing, with our bodies, that we are not in control, and breaking the cycle of hatred and fear.

It sounds impossible, but it starts here, folks. We aren’t just transformed into living sacrifices at the drop of a hat. The whole purpose of the Church is to be a place where the Kingdom of God is lived out as an example to the world. We have to love each other, before we can love our enemies. We have to reach across whatever divides exist here – class, race, gender, income, age – as a means of training ourselves to take this good news to the world around us.

The people of Jesus Christ do life differently. We are not conformed to the pattern of this world. We remind ourselves of this every week as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This is a small scale enactment of what Paul calls our true and proper worship, which is to live our lives like we really believe what we’re doing here today. We come to the table together, one body, one family, united – everyone is welcome and everyone is equal – then we have to live like it, even when it hurts.

Preacher

For most of my life people have been telling me how good a writer I am. I'm not saying that in an arrogant way, although it has been a struggle over the years to keep from getting too proud or too self important over my abilities. People seem to like what I have to say and the words seem to come together relatively effortlessly. For a while now, I've been identifying myself as "a writer." For example, if I hear a particularly well worded piece of prose, be it in a book or a paper, I'll tell someone, "I'm a writer, so I appreciate how good this is." You're right, that does come off as arrogant. Guilty as charged.

Several years ago I was first exposed to a fantastic movie called Wonder Boys. I won't go into the whole plot synopsis, but it is essentially about the craft of writing, but the true genius of the movie is not in the plot or the acting or the story itself, although all of those elements are fantastic, the true genius of Wonder Boys is the screenplay. The writing is so masterfully crafted that the mere words coming out of the actors' mouths are a joy to the ear. Nothing seems so wonderful to me as a well crafted sentence and this movie is chock full of them. While I haven't read the book that inspired the movie, much credit can be given to the screenwriter (Steven Kloves) who parlayed this movie into a sweet gig adapting the Harry Potter series for the big screen.

During the course of Wonder Boys, there is a scene where a fictional best-selling author addresses a writer's convention with the simple line "I am (pause for dramatic effect) a writer," and is met with uproarious applause. That always puzzled me. It seemed too simple, too indulgent. Perhaps I wasn't a writer after all. I can't resonate with a ridiculous statement like that.

All of this has come to mind as I process the slow demise of our Saturday Evening Worship service. For the past eight or so months, I have been working with a small group of people to lead a rather non-traditional, traditional service at our church on Saturday evenings. Part of this responsibility required me to preach a sermon each week. (Before you all tune me out here, yes, I am a preacher, but every single negative thing that comes to your mind right now, is probably also something I hate about preachers. So hear me out.)

This service kind of arrived at a unique juncture in my life. I was given a chance to explore what I believe to be the call on my life, that is to preach. At the same time I am given this opportunity, I am also enrolled in my first "preaching" class. The combination of these two things has allowed me to explore vast corners of my life that would otherwise be left cluttered. I was able to use the non-traditional atmosphere of the service to expand my creative outlook on preaching and put into practice the theoretical elements of preaching I picked up in class.

Each week the sermon became a writing assignment. It fit far more naturally than anything else I had ever tried. You can ask Carl Winderl how well my foray into short fiction went (luckily I took the class pass/fail and he was gracious). I write poetry, but even I, in my arrogant haze, know it's more for therapy than show; and novels have always seemed so long and scary to me. I needed a creative outlet to express my usually non-fiction premises in a way that would impact people without bogging down the message.

Low and behold: the sermon.

Our service ended last week. In the vacuum of that time and effort commitment, I have been reflecting on its lost place in my life. While I am relieved to have the stress and pressure of the weekly service lifted for a time, I cannot help but desperately miss that outlet in my life. As the Rev. Dr. Larry Lott said recently, "Preaching is the hardest thing you'll ever do...but you love it!"

So as I reflect on this time in my life, the writing talent I have developed and the lack of belonging within the writing community, I have come to a stark, but satisfying realization. I can identify with that character (played admirably by Rip Torn, by the way; perhaps one of the greatest stage names ever conceived) in his statement. While I am not a writer, I am a preacher; it defines who I am. It is a big enough and comfortable enough role with me that it can define me, yet it is large enough and spacious enough that it will allow room for growth in all aspects of my life. I'm not sure if this is what people talk about when they find a sense of purpose, but it certainly gives me confidence. I am... a preacher.