I started attending Silver Lake Conference Center in the summer before I entered 4^th grade.  I had been looking forward to being away for a week at camp for years.  I remember when the camp brochure came out that spring, sitting down on the floor and pouring over my options for days before making up my mind on which camp I would go to.

I also remember asking my dad over and over again what I would expect as a camper.  He just said “wait and see,” further piquing my curiosity and anticipation.

After 7 years as a camper, I became a counselor at Silver Lake and then later a dean – leading a conference of my own.

Over the years, people have often asked me what was so special about Silver Lake, why I kept going back year after year.  I could have given them a thousand reasons.  I could have told them about the spectacular setting in the hills of Northwestern Connecticut.  I could have told them about the amazing sense of authentic community felt there.  I could have told them about how it is a safe place for young people to be themselves and explore their relationship with God and their peers.  I could have told them about worshipping at the shores of the lake, or in the small chapel next to a waterfall, or about communion in the round with 200 people passing the bread and cup serving each other.

But I didn’t.

Instead of telling them all these things, I usually offer up an invitation – Come and See.  Come and see for yourself.  Experience the magic that happens in what we in Connecticut call God’s Backyard.

Come and See.

The story of how Jesus came to acquire his disciples is always one of invitation, rather than coercion.  We read in today’s gospel lesson how two of John’s disciples were following after Jesus as he walked down the road.  I imagine it was like two young girls following Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift trying to get an autograph.  Perhaps the two disciples were whispering to each other, “you ask him,” “no, you do it,” “no you,” and so on.  Jesus probably overheard them, so he turns around and asks, “What are you looking for?”

Stunned by Jesus actually talking to them, I can see them stammering, “uh…Teacher? Where are you staying?” in an attempt to get invited to hang out.

And instead of telling them, Jesus offers up an invitation – Come and See.  And so they go and hang out with Jesus.  In doing so, one of them has a revelation – an epiphany – and Andrew runs off to find his brother to tell him he has found the Messiah, and invite him to come and see.  Simon follows Andrew, meets Jesus and is transformed into Peter.

If we keep reading in John, the next section continues this motif.  Jesus heads off to Galilee and encounters Phillip, inviting him to follow.  Philip spends time with Jesus and realizes that he is the one the prophets spoke of.  He runs to find his brother Nathaniel, and invites him to Come and See.

And then there is Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4.  After spending time with Jesus, she realizes that he is Christ and runs off to her village, inviting the people there to Come and See.

Come and See.

A simple invitation from Jesus ripples outward as Andrew invites Peter, Phillip invites Nathaniel, the Samaritan woman invites her neighbors.  Over time this invitation has rippled across the world for people to come and see that Jesus is the Messiah.  All this from three simple words – Come and See.

Not from a threat, but an invitation – Come and See.

Not, “have you given your heart to me?” Not, “do you know the four spiritual laws?” And certainly not, “do you know where you will spend eternity?”

From a simple, “Come and See.”

As simple as these three words are, however, I believe many of us – including myself – find it hard to share our faith outside these walls.  These days in our culture, sharing our faith is at best unwelcome and all too often comes across as manipulative and offensive.

I remember I was in the Milwaukee airport when I encountered a street preacher standing in the middle of the concourse asking people if they had found Jesus.  Being the smart aleck that I can be at times, I responded, “I didn’t realize he was lost.”  I was then told that I would be going to hell for that comment and should repent or else face eternal damnation.

Probably not the best way to share your faith.  Scaring them into believing.

But notice, Jesus employs a different method.  No coercion.  No threat.  No intimidation. Instead Jesus says something that is second nature to anyone wanting to introduce a friend to a new movie, book, or band – Come and See.

I have a hunch that there is another reason that we feel uncomfortable sharing our faith, besides that it can feel pushy or manipulative.  I think that beneath our nervousness about not wanting to offend is something of a more basic inhibitor – we haven’t been trained to talk about our faith, let alone share it.

I was reminded this week that sometimes we pastors live in a fantasy world.  Our fantasy goes like this:  inspired by excellent worship, and even more our excellent preaching, you will leave church this morning making all kinds of connections between faith and your everyday lives, want to share your faith with your friends, and invite your friends to church.

You see what I mean? While it is a wholesome vision, it is really a fantasy.  A fantasy because adults are typically anxious about engaging in activities in which they don’t feel competent.  Most of us get nervous about learning a musical instrument, singing in public, or learning a foreign language if we haven’t already been trained to do these things.

If you take me out of my role as a pastor, I have huge anxiety about sharing my faith with others – and I’m a professional!  If I’m nervous about sharing my faith, it’s no wonder that people in the congregation – most who have had zero practice or training in sharing their faith – have so much trouble doing so.  It is a sheer fantasy for me to believe that suddenly, without training, people will begin talking about their faith with others.

So far in my short time here at St. John’s I have seen this start to change.  Beginning in small groups such as the book study on Unbinding the Gospel, people have started talking about their faith.  Hopefully this trend will continue.  Next week, three of our Confirmands will come forward and share a little about their understanding of faith.  During Lent, we are hoping that some of the authors of our Lenten Devotional book will offer testimony to how the Spirit moved them in the process of writing their entry.  And as we gear up for camp this summer, I hope that we can find some people to share the way God has affected them while at St. John’s Camp.

As we talk about our faith within these walls, we hear stories of the way that God has transformed our lives.  This transformation is visible to all we know.  When they ask what has happened to change us, how are we to respond?

Jesus models a response for us.  Come and See.

Come and see what we do at St. John’s.

Come and see the way the Spirit moves in our lives.

Come and see.

After returning from a week at Silver Lake this past summer, I returned to my summer job at another camp.  One of my co-workers asked me what it is about that place that brings me back every summer and sends me home transformed.

You’ll just have to come up and see.

Amen.

image found here

Zacchaeus had lived in Jericho his whole life, but he didn’t feel at home among his people.  Yes, he was a Jew, but he was treated like an outcast by his neighbors because of his day job.  By trade, Zacchaeus was a tax collector.  In fact, he was the Chief Tax Collector – hired by the Roman Empire to collect the taxes for Caesar.  It was a hard job.  People didn’t like paying taxes to an occupying force.  He sometimes had to do nasty things to get people to pay.  But he was paid very well and had a lot of money.  Still he wasn’t happy.

Zacchaeus had heard about this Jesus fellow.  Here was a guy who was going around the countryside teaching about the way of God, teaching about what it is like in the Kingdom of God.  He didn’t really understand much of it, but he had heard stories about Jesus healing people – sinners even.  Zacchaeus knew he was a sinner, and he knew that something was missing in his life, although he didn’t know what it was that he was longing for.

One day, the news went around town that Jesus would be passing through Jericho that afternoon.  The town was all a buzz about this visit.  The Pharisees were planning on inviting Jesus to stay with them in their house that night – hoping to get a blessing for their pious work in the town.  People from all over Jericho began to gather along the street in hopes of getting a glimpse of this man.  Some were even hoping for healing from their various ailments.

When Zacchaeus heard about Jesus’ travel through town, a thought came to him – a thought from the depth of his soul – he just HAD to see who this Jesus guy was.  Is he who he says he is?  Zacchaeus couldn’t figure out why he had to see Jesus, he just knew he must find a way to see him.

Zacchaeus made his way through town to the road where the crowds were gathered.  Now, being a short man, he had difficulty seeing above the crowds in front of him.  He tried pushing his way through, but the people in the crowd wouldn’t let him get past.  Feeling more convinced that he just HAD to see this Jesus guy, he ran ahead of the procession a ways until he came to a large sycamore tree.  If you have ever seen a sycamore tree, you know they are great for climbing.  Seeing this tree, and its great limbs arch over the crowd and reach towards the street, Zacchaeus gets an idea.  He decided to climb the tree and shimmy along one of the branches until he was directly over the road.  There was no way he was going to miss Jesus now!

He saw Jesus come over the rise in the road, with a throng of people crowding around him and trying to get near him.  There was a group of people, his disciples maybe, that were trying to keep the crowds at bay.  And as Jesus neared the spot where Zacchaeus was perched, he looked up and saw the man in the tree.

“Zacchaeus,” Jesus called up to him, “hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

With excitement, Zacchaeus made his way down out of the tree and with a beaming smile welcomed Jesus, leading the way to his house.

As I sat down this week to study today’s Gospel lesson, one thing kept standing out to me each time I read through the text:

Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was.

He was trying to see who Jesus was.

And as I read this sentence over and over again, I began to wonder if Zacchaeus was trying to find something else as well.

• What if Zacchaeus was trying to find something to believe in?
• What if Zacchaeus was trying to find meaning in his life?
• What if Zacchaeus was trying to make sense of the world?

Does this change the meaning of this passage if we read it through this lens?  I don’t think so.

When I read the story of Zacchaeus as a story of a man on a journey to find something to believe in, the story that emerges from the text is a classic conversion story.  Zacchaeus embarks on a quest to see who this Jesus was and comes away converted to the ways of Jesus and forgiven of all his sins.

Zacchaeus, considered an outcast by society, was selected by Jesus out of all the others to stay with.  This singular act of welcoming by Jesus caused something to change in Zacchaeus.  A change of heart that spurred Zacchaeus to blurt out his repentance even before Jesus offered forgiveness.  It was a transformation that deserved to be celebrated.

How cool would it be if the Church was a place that sparked transformation in the way that Jesus did in Zacchaeus?  And how awesome would it be if the Church celebrated these transformations – big and small – as a community?

You see, I believe we are all a bit like Zacchaeus.  We come to church for a variety of reasons, and I think that many of these reasons are similar to why Zacchaeus had climbed up that tree.  We come to church because:

• We are trying to see who this Jesus was
• We are trying to find something to believe in
• We are trying to find some meaning in our lives
• We are trying to make sense of the world we live in
• We are trying to discover our true selves
• We are yearning for connections to God, to our neighbors, and to the world

The Church is the perfect place for this kind of searching.  The Church has been guiding people on their journeys for thousands of years, but in recent years I have begun to notice that there are some churches out there that don’t welcome this kind of faith exploration unless you ended up believing the correct doctrine that the particular pastor of that church was teaching.

What would it be like if we as a church consciously made room for this kind of searching?

When I was in confirmation class, this is exactly what happened.

In my confirmation class we were encouraged to ask questions.  There even was a “question jar.”  Each week we would take some time in class to take a question from the jar and answer it.  Instead of the pastor quoting some doctrinal answer for us, she always turned the question back to us, asking us what we thought.  What happened after the usual awkward silence of thirteen year olds, became a group discussion – sometimes very lively – about some deep and interesting theological questions.  I don’t recall if we ever came up with any satisfactory answers, but we sure did question.

It was during this time that I came to understand my faith not as a destination that I would arrive at when I learned all the answers to our questions, but began to understand my faith as an ever evolving journey in which I struggled to understand and constantly questioned, in the process believing even more deeply.

This was the first of my transformation moments.  A first conversion if you want to call it that.  And it happened because of the support of my church.

If I am called by the congregation to be the Associate Pastor of Children and Youth here at St. John’s United Church of Christ, I hope to encourage us to become a place that sparks transformation in the way that Jesus did in Zacchaeus.

In my work with the Sunday School, the Youth Ministries, and at St. John’s Camp, my hope is to make this a place that welcomes searching – welcomes people where they are on the journey and helps them find their own path towards Jesus.

My hope is to make this a place that allows God to be discovered.

My hope is to make this a place where the outcasts and the sinners are welcomed with open arms the same way we welcome our old friends.

My hope is to make this a place that reaches out to the world through mission work, showing the all encompassing love of God.

My hope is that when one of us has a transformation along our journey, we stop for a minute to celebrate that transformation.

When Zacchaeus was transformed by the amazing power of God’s love in Jesus, Jesus proclaimed to him and to the world that it was time for a celebration.

“Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Let us be a place where we welcome the seekers, welcome those on the journey – and walk with them hand in hand, celebrating our transformations.

Amen.

The texts for this week can be found here.

The church I am preaching at is celebrating Reformation Sunday that day, but the story of Zacchaeus is so rich with material that I am sticking with the lectionary readings for Ordinary 31.

Zacchaeus (I’ll be learning how to spell that really quick) is the short, rich, chief tax collector. And he had a need to see Jesus.  He really wanted to see who this Jesus guy was.  He wanted to see Jesus so badly that when he realized that his height disadvantage in the crowd was going to prevent it, he ran ahead of the crowd to climb that sycomore tree.  Jesus sees him and calls him down and announces that he just HAS to stay with him that night.  Zacchaeus climbs down and welcomes Jesus into his house – much to the grumbling of those who saw this, “there goes Jesus again, hanging out with those sinners and outcasts.”

As I sit with the story of Zacchaeus, I wonder if Zacchaeus’ yearning to see who Jesus was is similar to our yearning for something to believe in
-our search for meaning in our lives
-our need to try church out
-our hope to make sense of the world

Do those of us in the church make room for this kind of searching, yearning, seeking?  Will we welcome the outcasts and provide a safe space to do this searching?

Or will we just grumble because those sinners are trying to come to church again?

I love to hike and backpack.  I love to walk through the woods and listen to the sounds of nature, see the evidence of animals, the results of weather, and just enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.

But, sometimes, especially when the trail is very technical or my pack is overloaded – my focus ends up being not on the beauty that surrounds me, but on the small piece of trail that is in front of me.  I am putting all my concentration on where to plant my next step as I labor down the path.  All I can see is the trail at my feet and maybe a few yards ahead of me.

Then when the trail clears up, or I reach the summit, or I stop to take a break – and I stand up straight and I am finally able to see what’s around me; I am finally able to see more than just what’s at my feet.

If you’ve ever been backpacking, you know what it feels like to take off your pack after miles of hiking.  You feel an invisible force lifting you up, you feel lighter than air – and you cannot help but smile and move around as if you haven’t been able to move in years.  It is a feeling of freedom, a feeling of a burden being lifted, a feeling of being released from captivity.

I wonder if the woman in this morning’s Gospel lesson felt like that after Jesus healed her.

She had been suffering with crippling arthritis for eighteen years, but despite this, she still went to the synagogue on every Sabbath.  This week there was a guest teacher – a nomad from Galilee.  She had heard stories about him and was curious to hear him preach.  But, because she didn’t move as quickly as she used to, she arrived at the synagogue after he had started teaching.

As she hobbled in, Jesus saw her and called her over to him.  Embarrassed by the attention drawn to her, she made her way to the center of the room where he was teaching.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, you are free from your ailment!” and then placed his hands on her to bless her.

Immediately, she stood up straight – for the first time in eighteen years – and began praising God!

Now what should have been a joyful celebration quickly turned into a debate, thanks to the leader of the synagogue who was all up in arms over how Jesus healed this woman on the Sabbath.  The leader, interestingly, blamed the woman (who didn’t even ask to be healed).  He said, “There are six other days when work can be done, come on those days to be healed and not on the Sabbath day!”

At this point in the story, I imagine Jesus shaking his head and thinking “man these people just don’t get it.”

Coming to the defense of the now healed woman; Jesus blasts the synagogue leaders.  “You hypocrites!  Don’t you untie your animals on the Sabbath and let them go down to the well to get water?  Then why shouldn’t this woman, a woman who is Jewish just like you and me, a woman who is one of God’s chosen people just like you and me – be untied from her burdens on the Sabbath?”

As is the case in many of the stories about Jesus, he takes the priests’ beliefs on what the Sabbath is about and turns it completely upside down on them.  The synagogue leaders are taking a very literal approach to the laws regarding the Sabbath.  Jesus, however, is suggesting that beneath the surface of the laws lays a deeper intent – the welfare of those in need.  You don’t keep the laws for the sake of keeping the laws, but for the greater intention that they serve.

Now, I think this kerfuffle in the synagogue is about more than how to interpret the law – I think the bigger question, the question that has been on my mind all week is this – what is the point of the day itself?

In the Hebrew Bible, there are two places where the Sabbath commandment is given, and each gives a different reason for why the commandment exists.  The first, from Exodus 20, links the Sabbath to the first creation story in Genesis, where God rests after six days of labor.  God rested, so we should rest, our servants should rest, and our animals should rest.  It is from this tradition that the synagogue leaders are drawing from.

The second tradition, as we heard this morning from Deuteronomy 5, links Sabbath to the exodus from Egypt.  It links Sabbath to freedom, to liberation, to release from bondage and deliverance from captivity.  It is this tradition that I believe Jesus is using to re-orient the synagogue leaders.  It is this tradition that Jesus is drawing from to re-orient our hearts to the Good News of the Sabbath.

Jesus reminds the listeners of other cases when it is OK by the law to release, to untie, to set free.  Jesus characterizes the woman’s ailment as being “bound by Satan.”  Jesus seems to say; “Of course it is OK to set someone free on the Sabbath day because the Sabbath day is all about freedom!”

The Sabbath day – whether it is the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday, or the Christian day of rest and worship on Sunday – reminds all of us that we too have been captive and were set free, and then invites us to look around and see who else might still be bound and waiting for release.

From this point of view, our day of worship – while called “a Sabbath to the Lord,” isn’t really for the God, but for us, for all of us who need to find rest and release, renewal and re-creation.  It is because of this that Christians moved their celebration of the Sabbath to Sunday – the day that Jesus was raised.  The resurrection itself was a form of release and deliverance  – in the ultimate sense – as we are released from death itself.

For many of us, this point about Sunday being about freedom has been lost.  I suspect that for many of us, Sunday has become a day of religious obligations.  It is about what we do for God.

What if, however, Sunday was about what God can do for us?  And recognizing that, about what we can do for others?

What if Sunday was about remembering how God has freed us so that we might free others?

A church near where I live and where I do some supply preaching has taken this to heart.   They began thinking of ways that they could share in the Good News of being freed of burden, and began thinking of how others in their community may need to be freed.  For them, this came in the form of helping those who are struggling with food insecurity.  They thought about ways they could help – stocking the food pantry or helping at a soup kitchen – but they wanted to something more local to their specific community.   So they started a weekly free meal at their church – and over the past couple of years this has grown from a small number of families to over 75 people coming together for a meal each week.

I have also heard about what this church is doing to release the burdens of being unemployed.  Last year, you started “Helping in Hard Times,” your ministry to those shackled by the difficult economic times.  By sharing the talents of those in this church, you are helping those who are trying to crawl out from underneath the burden of being unemployed.

What if Sunday was about freedom?  What if we took time on our Sabbath day to think about where we see God freeing us?  Where we still feel bound?  Where have we seen God healing us?  Where do we still feel crippled?

Think about it.  Think about God’s mighty acts in your lives.  Think about your places of brokenness.  Name them to each other in your conversations this week, lift them up in prayer – so that together we can call on God to be at work in, through, and among us for the sake of this world that God loves so much.

It was on the Jewish Sabbath day that the crippled woman received a blessing from Jesus and was freed from her burden.

It is on the Christian Sabbath day that Jesus was raised from the dead and released from the ultimate burden – death.

Will it be on the Sabbath day that we are freed from our ailments?  Will it be on the Sabbath day that we will see the brokenness in each other and seek out healing?

With God it is possible.  With God it can happen.

Amen.

Faith sits at what she uses for a desk every day for at least 10 hours.  She calls it her desk, but most people would call it a piece of plywood on top of milk crates.  She sold her desk a few weeks ago so she could buy groceries.  Faith sits at her desk for 10 or more hours a day on the internet searching for a job.  Each day she sends out 15-20 resumes, all over the country.  She has had 2 interviews in the last two and half years. 

Every Saturday, Faith and her husband load up their minivan with stuff and head out to the local flea market and sell their belongings.  Her husband is selling his collection of Star Wars toys this week for a fraction of what they are worth.  Faith is selling the living room furniture.  They are just trying to survive.  They have lost their house, their jobs, and are losing their faith. 

Faith and her husband are what have been termed, 99ers.  Those who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks, and have exhausted all available unemployment benefits. 

“These last few years have been a living hell,” Faith says, “We’re dying emotionally, spiritually, and physically.” 

Despite her name, Faith says that she is finding it hard to have faith that things will get better, finding it hard to have any hope at all of finding a job.  It’s easy to lose faith when it seems that the deck is stacked against you. 

I know a little about what Faith is going through.  Except for a part time job as a lifeguard at the Y, and summer jobs at camp, I have been unemployed for 64 weeks.  There have been times in the last 15 months when I have felt like I would never find a job; that I would have to start looking for a job in the corporate world.  I was losing faith in myself, in the church, and having doubts about God calling me to ministry. 

I’m sure that many of us would feel like this in a similar situation. 

Then there’s Abraham. 

Abraham is a familiar character to us.  He is the father of the world’s three great religions – Islam, Judaism, and later Christianity.  We know that God chose him for a special purpose.  We know that he never saw the outcome of the promises God made to him, but he still kept faith.  We know that Abraham didn’t always get it right by God, but in the end God rewarded him. 

Let’s take a quick look at the story of Abraham. 

Beginning in Genesis 12, God chooses Abraham, then called Abram, and makes three sweeping promises to him:

• Land
• Descendants
• Through him, the whole world would be blessed.

 Then a famine came and Abram took his wife Sarai (later Sarah) to Egypt, passed her off as his sister to protect himself, received a dowry for her from the Pharaoh and then God “afflicted the Pharaoh with great plagues” because of her.  Pharaoh then sent Abraham and Sarah on their way with all their newfound wealth. 

They return to the desert Bethel, Abram rescues his nephew Lot from thieves, and God restates his promise of offspring in the beginning of chapter 15.  Abram doesn’t believe God, Sarai is barren after all, and reminds God of this.  But God promises that Abram’s own offspring will be his heir. 

In chapter 16, Sarai tells Abram to take her slave and have a child with her, but after she conceives, Sarai has second thoughts about it and banishes her.  God, however appears to Hagar, the slave, and admonishes her to return to Abram and Sarai, and promises that her child, to be called Ishmael will be the father of a great nation.  So she returns and gives birth to Ishmael. 

Abram and Sarai get their names changed in chapter 17 by God to Abraham and Sarah.  God then appears to Abraham and Sarah disguised as 3 Bedouins and again predicts that the 99 year old Sarah will bear a son.  Sarah laughs, God reveals himself, and scorns Sarah for laughing.  

Later Abraham and Sarah move again to another desert area and Abraham again passes off Sarah as his sister to protect her.  The king takes her as a wife, and again God intervenes and prevents the king from committing adultery. 

Finally, in chapter 21, Sarah bears Abraham a son who they named Isaac, which means laughter.  

Then, after many decades of promises of a son, God then commands Abraham to sacrifice him.  What kind of faith would it take to sacrifice your own son?  A faith that I’m not sure I have, but Abraham sure did.  He took Isaac up to the mountain and prepared him for sacrifice, and just as he was about to take his knife to his son, God called out to him and stopped him. 

In the end, Abraham died without seeing the promises of God fully realized.  He never saw the Promised Land.  He never saw his sons become great nations.  He certainly didn’t see descendants as numerous as the stars.  But he still had faith in God.  A faith that caused him to hold fast to the promises of God. 

I don’t know if I could ever have a faith like Abraham.  But then again, even through all the difficult stuff that has gone on in my life – here I am.  I can’t exactly explain why I’m here, except because I have faith in the promises of God. 

Faith is a funny thing.  It is hard to explain what it means to someone who hasn’t experienced it themselves. 

Listen to this translation of the first verse of chapter 11 in Hebrews:  “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”  

“Our handle on what we cannot see.”  What a perfect summation of this idea of faith.  And one I can relate to. 

When my father died ten years ago, it was devastating.  But even through all the pain, all the grief, all the anger of losing my dad so young – even through all that, I felt an odd sense of comfort.  I couldn’t really explain it, and had no words for it until I was talking with my grandmother about it after the memorial service.  When I was explaining to her this odd feeling I was having, she told me it was faith. 

Faith.  Our handle on the things we cannot see.  The assurance of things hoped for.  

Life is hard.  We know this.  There is so much suffering around us, and within us.  We all have our struggles that make it hard to believe that there is any hope out there for us.  Beneath all this suffering, however, there is a greater and more powerful but unseen reality.  It is this reality that gives me some measure of comfort when life seems unbearable. 

This passage from Hebrews, in a sense, is about the “however.”  That “however” raises its head here and there, lifts up from beneath the trouble and turmoil, interrupts the incessant noise and electronic chatter and turns our attention towards those promises. 

After giving us his definition of faith in the first 3 verses, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews goes on to remind us about some of the heroes of faith from the Old Testament.  Abel, Enoch, Noah, Joseph, Moses, and David are all lifted up in the portion not included in the lectionary in addition to lifting up Abraham in our passage this morning. 

The author reminds us that even through immense hardship, persecution, and even death – these heroes got through it all because of faith. 

But what about doubt?  If we have faith, does this mean we can’t have doubt?  Remember that Abraham and Sarah had plenty of doubts on their journey.  Sarah even laughed at God for suggesting that she would bear a son! 

Doubt is a necessary part of faith.  The two cannot be separated from each other.  That being said, I want to state that doubt is NOT the opposite of faith.  Doubt is a mark of faith. 

Anne Lamont once said that faith without doubt isn’t faith – it’s certainty.  Elie Wiesel called faith without doubt indifference. 

Even amidst the doubts, Abraham and Sarah remained faithful to God.  They held onto hope.  They trusted.  They acted on their faith. 

I want you to notice here that I haven’t defined faith here as a set of beliefs that we ascribe to.  Diane Bergant reminds us that “faith is more an openness of mind and heart than a set of theological propositions.”  Faith is not theology – theology being the study what we believe to be true about God.  

Preacher and professor Fredrick Buechner sets up the difference for us:  “Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly, intermittent, and full of surprises.” 

Faith isn’t something we do, like theology is.  Faith is a gift from God – a gift that cannot be taken away from us.  

Faith is empowering – because faith is a gift from God, it empowers us to act on our faith.  You’ve heard the term “Leap of Faith,” it is exactly this empowerment from God that allows us to take this leap. 

Faith is messy – because we sometimes need to take a leap of faith, things do not always turn out as we expect them to.  We are put into situations that challenge us to our core.  But because faith is from God, we are able to see the divine presence amidst the messiness. 

Faith is a verb – faith is seeking to make the world more like what Jesus imagined.  

Faith is longing – it is a homesickness for things we cannot see but what we know deep down awaits us.  It is that yearning for our own promised land. 

Faith is a lump in the throat – that feeling of joy that causes you to tear up when you see something in the world that is happening the way God intended it – whether it is while serving the poor, seeing the beauty of creation on a mountain top, or sensing the true community being built among 56 screaming 5^th & 6^th graders at Silver Lake. 

Faith is less a position on God than a movement towards God – we are all on a journey with each other and with God towards a redeemed creation, towards the day when the kingdom on earth is as it is in heaven. 

Faith is waiting – because of faith we become a waiting people, a hoping people.  A people who are not content with how things are today; a people who are waiting for that day to come when we are reunited with God, a people hoping for a better tomorrow. 

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

But still I wonder how people like Faith, people like the 99ers can have any hope.  How can anyone without any prospects of a job hold onto any semblance of hope? 

As I pondered this question in light of our scripture lesson this week, I stumbled on this quote from Buechner: 

“By faith we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to last truth…Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things – by faith we struggle against all odds to be able to see – that the world is God’s creation even so.  It is he who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving.  That is the last truth about this world.” 

Faith is trust.
Faith is hope.
Faith is a gift from God and for that we are truly thankful. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The first time I met my college girlfriend’s parents was at harvest time. They lived on a farm about an hour north of Omaha, Nebraska, and I remember driving along the dirt roads towards the farm, watching the lights of the combines in the fields moving along well after 10 at night. It seemed that as we made our way north out of the city, every field had machinery working to bring in the harvest. The air was heavy with the dust of the corn fields; at times it looked like the fog we get in the valleys here in New England.

The next morning, as I was getting the tour of the farm, I saw the results of the harvest. Inside the machine shed, where all the equipment should have been stored, were instead 3 huge piles of corn, reaching from floor to ceiling – about 2 stories high.

“Why is all this corn here, instead of in the silos?” I asked.

“Oh, the silos are full,” was the reply, “the machine shed is full, and next we are going to put it outside under tarps.

As it was explained to me, the price of corn was so low that fall, that many farmers were not taking their harvests to the market, hoping to wait for a price increase. The harvest was so abundant that year that they were running out of places to store it. I don’t remember how well that strategy worked for them that year, but I can’t help thinking of that farm tour when I read this morning’s Gospel lesson.

Our story starts off with a simple question by someone in the crowd, a request by a man to settle a family dispute about inheritance, even though the law required the older brother to inherit a double portion. It is an odd request of Jesus, it’s not a theological test, or a request for eternal life. Jesus is asked to mediate a problem over an estate distribution.

But, Jesus declines to act as a judge over the situation, instead seizing the moment to teach. Turning to the crowd, he warns them to be on the lookout for greed, “for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he tells them a relatively short parable, the one that has become known as the Parable of the Rich Fool.

It was an abundant harvest, and the farmer ran out of room to store his crops. So, talking to himself, he decided to build bigger barns to store the fruits of his labor. And once that was done, he relaxed and enjoyed a well-deserved break. But God had a different plan for him. God comes to the farmer says, “You fool – tonight you die, what will happen to all the things you have? Who will get them?” The parable ends with the ominous words of Jesus, “So it is with whose who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”

When I first read this parable, I didn’t see what the problem was with what the farmer did. It was a bumper crop, a good year. What did a farmer do with an abundant harvest in those days before they could sell it on the market? He puts it in the barn and stores it for later. Isn’t that what Joseph did in Egypt? Took the bumper crops for 7 years to store for the upcoming lean years? After storing the crops, the farmer relaxes. He can afford to, he has earned it.

It’s easy to make the rich farmer into a cartoon style fool, easy to lump all those who are rich into the same category as other unsavory characters, but that is such a sweeping generalization that it is not fair to those who are rich and share their wealth with those who need it.

As I was reading some Garrison Keillor this week, I thought that maybe our rich farmer was more like the Norwegian Bachelor Farmer characters Keillor mentions in his tales of Lake Woebegon. He is alone on his land; he works hard, he is frugal and takes pleasures in the simple things: a good harvest and a full barn. Maybe not a life filled with relationships, but perhaps the abundant life looks different to some folks.

There is no indication that the farmer is a bad man, that he is cheating anyone, or breaking any laws. But he is characterized as greedy because he has a lot and keeps it for himself instead of sharing it with the needy. He tears down and builds bigger.

As I was thinking about this, it hit me. It is not a parable about greed per se. It is a parable about priorities. The rich farmer had his priorities all wrong. He was focused on living what we would call today “The Good Life.”

Even though we have been living in lean times the last few years, we are still being bombarded with cultural messages encouraging living the good life. Turn on the TV, and the remote control leads us to visible signs of what it means in America to live that life: The Apprentice, The Real Housewifes of Orange County, Jersey Shore, or Millionaire Matchmaker. The radio dial points to songs like “Billionaire,” “If I Had a Million Dollars,” or “Money.” And then there are all those preachers out there preaching the “Prosperity Gospel,” saying if you believe in Jesus, you will be blessed with material wealth.

Like a hamster who is running inside the wheel, we humans are hooked by whatever is presented to us. And in our culture, the vision is of the good life. We are told, “You will be happy if you are wealthy, if you are beautiful, if you express yourself in anyway that feels good, if you are young and healthy, if you are secure.” This is the good life.

I know I’m guilty of this thinking from time to time. Every time Steve Jobs announces the latest product from Apple, I begin to pine for it, thinking somehow it will make me happier, make my life better. I’ve even been guilty of being offered two jobs and picking the one that had a higher salary instead of the one that would bring me more satisfaction. That decision ended up causing me more grief than the money was worth. Material possessions don’t bring happiness in and of themselves. But yet, we still yearn for the good life.

There is a problem in this yearning – in the pursuit of the good life we become hamsters on a never-ending wheel of motion, moving at a pace that gets more and more difficult to sustain. The good life becomes something we have substituted for the real thing – the blessed life.

The last couple of years have been hard on my wife and me. Mrs. Tour Guide and I have both struggled through bouts of unemployment and underemployment, and we have had to learn to live differently. It has been a rough ordeal, but through it we have discovered that we are happier today than we were when we were financially secure. Sure, it is still a struggle each month when it comes time to pay the bills, but we have learned in the process how to live the blessed life.

Jesus suggests seeking the blessed life, one in which we are “rich towards God.” It is clear that we must let go of the idea of the good life in order to receive the blessed life. St. Augustine said it well, “God is always trying to give good things to us, but are hands are too full to receive them.”

In contrast to the cultural message we are bombarded with everyday, I want to share with you a few thoughts on how to live the blessed life, how to live “rich towards God.” These are things that Mrs. Tour Guide and I have come to learn and through them we have grown closer to God and closer to each other.

First, live more simply.

What began out of necessity has become a way of life for us. When unemployment first hit us, we had to quit cold turkey. There could be no more random trips to Target to see what was new and what we wanted, let alone needed. Every shopping trip had to be planned out of necessity. What did we really need to live? It turned out that we didn’t need much. And over the course of time, we realized the freedom in not wanting. Because we knew couldn’t buy the latest toy, the latest movie on DVD, we were released from the burden of trying to get it. It was a freeing feeling for me. And financially, we became free from debt as well. Even on our limited income, by living simply and cutting out everything that wasn’t a true necessity – everything except food and shelter, we were still able to pay down our consumer debt to almost nothing.

All of us can obsess into the night about wanting to possess something, or worry about preserving or protecting it. The poor are not burdened with these obstacles, and the truly rich person is wise in the knowledge that this is not what life is about. Living simply is being rich towards God by not buying into the cultural expectation that the one who dies with the most toys wins.

The second thought about living the blessed life is to enjoy the harvest and share it with others.

One of the greatest enjoyments in my life is food. I love to try new restaurants and go with friends and enjoy a good meal and conversations. But on a limited budget, this was not possible anymore. There was just no money to eat out. I still love food, so I began cooking more meals at home and inviting friends over to share in them. I found great pleasure in sharing the bounty of my food with others. It became even more enjoyable than going out to a restaurant with them.

On a wider scale, we are called as Christians to share our bounty with those who don’t have much of anything. The poor have a place at our tables and in our lives because, like us, they are children of God. A Haitian proverb states, “God gives, but he does not share.” God is the source of all our blessings, but we are given the responsibility of dividing and distributing them.

My final suggestion for living rich in God is to offer and give thanks for all the signs of the blessed life around us.

Give thanks for the church that opens its doors each week to welcome the hungry in for a free meal. For the young girl who plays the violin for an elderly neighbor. For the family that establishes a foundation so that immigrant students can complete their education. Give thanks for all those who seek to serve the outsiders in our communities.

Instead of lamenting that which we didn’t have anymore, my wife and I began to give thanks for that which we did have – a roof over our heads, food on our table, friends and family that care for us, and in the process we realized just how blessed we were.

The parable of the Rich Fool is not one about greed. The farmer wasn’t inherently greedy about his possessions. It is a parable about priorities. The farmer was focused on building bigger barns to house his harvest.

If we continue in Luke past the end of this morning’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples “Do not worry about your life, about what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”

The message Jesus brings to us throughout the Gospel is that we are being called to live a radically different life than our culture is telling us we should be living. Jesus calls us to seek to live a blessed life, a life rich in God. And if we begin to live like this, we will find true happiness, a happiness that is not tied to our things, but tied to our relationships with God and with our neighbors.

The blessed life. A life rich in God. That is what I am seeking. What are you searching for?

Amen.

Photo: The Good Life by Ken Bailey

The first time I met my college girlfriend’s parents was during the harvest.  They lived on a farm an hour north of Omaha, NE, and I remember driving along the dirt roads towards the farm, watching the lights of the combines in the fields moving along well after 10 at night.  The next morning, as I got the tour of the farm, I saw the results of the harvest.  Inside the machine shed, where all the equipment should be stored, was instead huge piles of corn.

“Why is all this corn here, and not in the silos?” I asked.

“Oh, the silos are full, the machine shed is full, and next we’re going to put it outside under tarps,” was the reply.

You see, the price of corn was low that fall, so low that many farmers were not taking their harvests to the market, hoping to wait for a price increase.  The harvest was so abundant that year, they were running out of places to store it.

When I read the Luke passage for this week, the Parable of the Rich Fool as it is traditionally known, I thought of this story.  I am supply preaching at a church I’ve never been to before, so I’m not totally sure where my sermon is going at this point in the week, but it might just have that illustration.

What are you thinking about with the texts this week?

For most of the spring I was struggling to find hope in the search process.  Finally, after much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, I realized that God is calling us out of state.  I resisted searching out of state for so long because I had already lived outside of Connecticut for 8 years (ok, so 5 of those years were in college, but I was in Missouri for 9 months a year).  I just didn’t want to leave my home.

But, Mrs. Tour Guide and I realized that I am not going to find a call here in CT, so I expanded my search radius to include most of the UCC conferences in the Northeast, and even had my profile distributed to the Nebraska Conference and the Southwest Conference.  With in a few weeks of that the emails and phone calls came pouring in, and the search process picked up.

So now I have so much I want to share, but I am at the point in the process when I need to enter the Cone Of Silence until I have news that can be public.

I hope to be able to share something in the next month or so.

Two weeks ago I was supply preaching and hoping to get an audio recording of that sermon to distribute to search committees.  As happens often, Murphy decided to intervene and the worship failed to record.  Luckily for me, the pastor felt bad and has offered up the pulpit to me this Sunday so that I can get a sermon recorded.

My first thought was to preach on the 1 Corinthians 13 passage that is familiar to everyone as the one used at most weddings (we even used it at my wedding), but after consulting with the pastor, I am preaching as a part of her sermon series on how God is moving in the church.

It looks like right now I am using both the Jeremiah text and the Luke text, focusing on prophetic voice and how what God is calling us to be and do is not the road we envisioned we would be taking.

Where is the spirit leading you this week?

Truth is, I’ve felt stuck in a rut.

Stuck in the sense that nothing has been happening much on the search front.  I’ve been diligent about checking the weekly postings of available positions in the UCC, and sending my profile along to churches that interest me, but not much has happened as a result.

I did have one more interview last week, and so far it seems like a good fit.  I am preaching this week and will be sending the audio from that service to a couple of churches that have requested to “hear” me preach.  I hope that bears fruit.

I have been struggling to keep up hope that God will lead me to a call soon, but as the days, weeks, and months pass by, it is harder to keep hope alive.  So it is my prayer that God will give me patience in the search, and that with that prayer, I can keep hoping that something comes my way soon.