English Language Sermon – October 26, 2008

“Jesus of the Waves” (Matthew 14:22-33)

October 26, 2008

Rev. Dr. David Andersen, English Language Sabbatical Interim Pastor

The disciples had just witnessed Jesus feed five thousand from a few loaves of bread and few fish. They had tasted of the miracle. They had helped to gather the abundance that was left. Life was beautiful. This is the way life should be. Never do I hope you hear me say that life should not be embraced and richly enjoyed. To me, it is profane to have much, yet not enjoy it.

I think the disciples must have almost been giddy as they climbed into their boat. Their full stomachs were a result of a miracle, and they were close to and loved by the one who had performed the miracle. He had stayed behind to pray and they knew his prayers would include prayers for each of them. And they knew he would meet them the next morning on the other side. Life was beautiful.

They pushed out from the shore. They set their sail and put their oars in the water. They were blessed. All was well.

When I was a child much of my summer was spent on the water in a row boat owned by my grandparents. What amazes me in looking back is how young I was when my parents and grandparents allowed me to go out in the boat alone or with a friend. We swam off the boat. We fished off the boat. We used the boat for transportation to get from one side of the small lake to the other.

Although the Sea of Galilee is much larger than the lake I knew as a child, it is much smaller than any of the Great Lakes, probably about the size of Lake Chautauqua, where Sharon and I vacation every summer. For the disciples, the sea provided their livelihood. It was their highway from one side to the other. It cooled them on hot days. It provided them with irrigation and endless hours of calm repose and reflection as they sat at the waters edge and watched the sunset or rise on the other shore.

The boat the disciples used was bigger than my row boat but not nearly the size of the power boats that populate our lakes today. Their boat was primitive and much more vulnerable to the storms that could rapidly occur, unlike any of our lakes of comparable size.

The boat is the Church. From ancient times and probably even known to the writer of the gospel, the boat has been seen as an image of the church. It is the symbol of the World Council of Churches. It is seen in the architecture of various church buildings across the world. The boat is the church and I hope every child finds the same pleasure in the church as I found in my grandparents rowboat.

Thus the church takes the new born infant or the new professing Christian on board at a service of baptism, promising to care and nurture the child or professing Christian through his or her journey through life.

Some days, however, when I was out in the rowboat I would look down into the water. It was deep and dark yet I could see the weeds that in my child’s mind looked like the arms of a giant squid. It was frightening, but in the boat I was safe. I hope that is how every child feels in church. It is a safe place to be. I applaud the inviting, creative, child friendly atmosphere of North Shore, hosting a large day care program, sponsoring an after school tutoring program, and maintaining a gym that is in use from morning to late evening. But all of our building should be welcoming and child friendly. Children should feel this is a good place to be and if their fingerprints get left on walls or smudge the windowpanes, praise be to God, because those fingerprints reminds us of God who has known and loved the one whose fingerprint it is from the beginning of creation.

The church is the boat and the disciples climb aboard and set sail. They leave the shore, but what are these shores, the one they leave and the one that is their destination on the other side. In Galilee the terrain of these shores is beautiful. There are green meadows and slopping hills with little towns lit atop. But, if the boat is the church what are the shores?

On the one side are the blessings of life where Jesus gives of the bread we need to live and the miracle of love that always turns scarcity into abundance. In tradition the other shore is not a temporal location but an eternal destination. The other shore is heaven where the fullness of love is known.

But, what of the sea that in the story read this morning became so turbulent the disciples feared for their lives? What is the sea? The sea and the boat upon it is the journey of our lifetime. It is our encounter with the world, our pilgrimage through this world. The boat, Christ’s Church, takes us aboard, shelters and guides us through life, leads us through our journey, then when our destiny is complete, docks at the port on the other side, when the one who was once young is now an ancient mariner and ready in a service of resurrection to be carried ashore on the other side.

Out on the sea, before that shore is reached, however, I realize I was right as a child to fear the weeds beneath the surface of the water, and every parent fears for their child, aware that the calm beauty of a placet sea can become a raging storm before the night is through. The sea is the world and it is often a very turbulent place to be. What of the storm? What of the heartache? What of the turbulence? Here, in these questions, in the midst of the storm, is the most important point of the story ready this morning.

The disciples’ boat was being battered. They were far from land. They held the rails and clung to one another. We see the picture, and suddenly we realize, there is one more question we haven’t asked. “Where is Jesus?” The Gospel of Luke says, “…he came walking toward them on the sea.” The psalmist says, “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the might waters, yet your footprints were unseen.” The most important point of this story is Jesus on the water, Jesus in the midst of the storm.

This is what we want to teach our children. This is what we need to learn, over and over as adults. Where is Jesus? He is where people hurt. He is where lives have been ravaged. He is where oppressors have stolen people’s freedom, famine has taken people’s food, disease has halved their bodies, and corruption has stolen people’s resources.

Where is Jesus? Jesus is where he is needed. Jesus is walking the waves in New Orleans. Jesus is walking the waves in Iraq. Jesus is walking the waves in Jerusalem and Darfur. Jesus is walking the waves of the clinics in Africa that treat the epidemic of Aids. Jesus is walking the waves of poverty on the garbage dumps of Guatemala. Jesus is walking the waves of anxious waiting rooms in our hospitals. Jesus is walking the waves of every mental hospital and nursing home corridor.

Peter seeing Jesus, shouted across the waves, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” The Lord said, “Come.”

A part of every parent’s education of their child is teaching them how to step out of the boat and encounter the storm. Every parent wants the best for their children and I agree, but what parents must come to understand is that the best is not all contained in school athletics, dancing lessons, play stations, cell phones and personal computers. The best may be, as youth must be given opportunity to learn, clearing the yard of a homebound person, or visiting a nursing home, or participating in a mission trip to New Orleans…life found, not by always being pampered, but by being helpful.

I believe, as I said at the beginning of this sermon, that children and youth should find church to be a fun place and a safe place, but I realize the church cannot compete with schools and clubs and rock concerts in providing entertainment and amusement. But what we have is a vision of a wider world. We can provide like no one else is mission trips and work projects that begin to introduce our children and youth to the Jesus of the waves.

Peter got out of the boat and started to walk toward Jesus, but then he lost his faith and began to sink until Jesus reached out and took him by the hand. We will never know the hand of Jesus in that way until we are willing to enter the storms of life. Thus a part of helping our children to know Jesus as Lord and Savior is getting them involved in helping others, entering the chaos of life upon the waves and finding their faith in holding onto Jesus. And it is the same for each of us. The full meaning of life will never be found until we take the risks. Jesus calls you out onto the waves. He calls you to be mediators and healers. He calls you to be teachers and volunteers. He calls you to get involved. He calls you to enter the turbulence and when you do there you will find the God who as Job says, “…stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea.” (9:8)

The waves calmed and Peter and Jesus reentered the boat. You always need the church to return too. It is your abode during the storms. It is your transport from one shore to the other.

You are not expected to swim from one shore to the other alone. You are not expected to go it alone. You have the hymns of the church to sing. You have the Bible to train your mind and inspire your soul. You have the symbols of the chalice and the baptistry to remind you of the one you serve. You have one another to encourage you and support you. You have the church, which in the name of Christ embraced you at your birth and journeys with you across the sea, and one day will enter the harbor on the other side, the journey ended, and take your body ashore.

And there on that shore at the end of your life you will meet the one you call Father. He will raise you up and welcome you. He will embrace you in love and call you his child. And he will ask you, how was your journey? How was your pilgrimage across the sea? And you will tell him about your life on earth.

God will listen, but then one question will remain. He will ask you, “Did you ever leave the boat, did you ever walk the sea, did you ever meet My son upon the waves?”

Let us pray: God, thank you for the security of this hour, this ship of faith and that when we leave and enter again the world we go to meet your Son upon the waves. Amen.

English Language Sermon – May 25, 2008

“Are You A Gentile” (Matthew 6:24-34)

May 25, 2008 – Memorial Day Weekend

Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield, Executive Minister ABC/MC

Are you a Gentile?

That was not the question I was asked.

I assume that because my last name is Greenfield that there wasn’t any need to ask. It was simply assumed that we Greenfields were Jews.

That was almost forty years ago. My wife Barbara and I, and pre-school daughter Sarah, had only recently moved into our first home. That was in South Shore, a neighborhood that had once been pretty thoroughly Jewish but had, over the past few decades, become increasingly African American in composition. So when someone at the local synagogue noticed we were new arrivals, they were quick to call and tell us about their Hebrew Day School.

The woman on the phone described the philosophy of the school and the curriculum, and made special note of the fact that the enrolled children received instruction in elementary Hebrew.

“Would you be interested in enrolling Sarah in the school?” she asked.

I replied that we would be very interested, and in no small part because of the instruction in Hebrew. The caller was delighted to hear my enthusiastic response and proceeded to tell me about steps that would need to be followed so that Sarah could be enrolled as soon as possible.

At the end of the telephone conversation, I told the caller that I needed to disclose one thing, which I hoped would not disqualify Sarah from enrollment.

“What’s that?” she asked.

I said that she needed to know that I was a Baptist minister.

There was a very long pause at the other end of the line, but finally she said: “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and hung up.

I’ve often wondered whether she was “so sorry” for having put me through this ordeal – as if to offer an apology to me. Or was she so sorry that I had the bad fortune of being a Gentile.

If it was the latter and not the former – that is, if she was lamenting my condition as a Gentile – then she was in good company. Because Jesus, too, had sorrow – really, almost a kind of deep sadness – for those who were and lived as Gentiles.

Well, that’s not exactly true. What has for centuries been translated at “Gentiles” in the English Bible, doesn’t have any textual or linguistic basis in either Hebrew or Greek. “Gentile” has its origin in Latin, not Hebrew or Greek. “Gentile” was the mistranslation of the scriptural concept of “non-Jewish” or, more clumsily, the “unchosen.” A more accurate translation of this concept in the biblical Hebrew and Greek would be “the nations” or “the other nations,” or “the people of the other nations” over against the “chosen nation” or the “elect people.”

But for this morning, let’s still use the mistranslation as it appears in our Gospel lesson from Matthew – the story of Jesus lecturing on the mountainside – but still keep in mind when we use the word “Gentile” what it really means.

Now obviously Jesus himself was using the concept of “Gentile” or “the nations” or “the people of the nations” in a different way than most of his fellow Jews. For them – that is, his fellow Jews – this concept would mean either that the “Gentile” didn’t have the correct bloodline (we might put it today, the distinctive DNA) to be a Jew or that the “Gentile” didn’t follow the beliefs and behaviors that came from the Jewish religious traditions – didn’t, for example, follow the Laws of Moses, or the Jewish dietary or liturgical codes.

But Jesus, in our passage from Matthew this morning, is clearly not concerned about bloodlines or DNA, is clearly not concerned about following a set of laws and codes. In our Gospel text for the morning he clearly has something entirely different in mind when he wants to distinguish himself and his followers from the “Gentiles” or “the nations.”

Still, there’s nothing to suggest – or even hint – that Jesus is trying to set himself and his followers over against the faith and tradition of his parents or over against the laws of Moses or even the codes of behavior. There’s nothing here that reveals that he is prepared to stop being a Jew, or is asking others to give up their Jewish faith.

In a strong sense, it’s just the opposite: what Jesus is pleading for in this part of his lecture on the mountainside is that his fellow Jews recapture and re-embrace what is essential, what is at the core, what is absolutely fundamental to their Jewishness, their chosenness, their election as the nation and as the people of God. Furthermore, on precisely those terms, those terms that are essential, core, and fundamental (and here Jesus is really pushing the envelope) people with other kinds of DNA and other bloodlines, people who follow the core commandments and the core codes of other religious and cultural traditions, they too can be members of the chosen nation, can also be a member of the elect people, can become – listen to this – a non-Gentile!

Now that is radical. It’s radical if you are a Jew listening to Jesus on the mountainside, and it’s radical if you are a Gentile listening to Jesus on the mountainside. He’s saying to his fellow Jews that you can’t be Jewish if you place your bloodline and your DNA ahead of something that is even more essential for your Jewishness, if you place your following the Jewish laws and codes ahead of that which is even more fundamental to your Jewishness. And he is saying to the Gentiles, you are not excluded from being the chosen nation and being an elect person because of who your parents are or what religion or culture you’ve been a part of. It’s radical because he’s saying: we’ve all got it wrong in this business of who’s in and who’s out, who’s included and who’s excluded, who’s blessed and who’s condemned.

So what is it, according to Jesus on the mountainside, that makes it right for all of us: Jews and Gentiles alike?

Well, it turns out that it’s all fairly simple, pretty basic.

First of all, it is to recognize that neither Jews nor Gentiles can serve two masters. As much as we want to make it otherwise – as much as we want to believe that somehow we can pull off serving two or three or four masters, can somehow manage to pull off living that way – it just isn’t going to work. In the end, one of those masters is going to win out and make all the rest subservient to that one.

Jesus here lays it on the line about these many masters. In the end, the Jew and the Gentile are going to have to choose between the God who created and sustains the whole universe and some other god. And Jesus chooses the most likely candidate as the alternate god vying for loyalty and devotion for Jews and Gentiles over against the sovereign God of the whole universe: the most powerful god competing with the God is the one who entices our loyalty and devotion to wealth, our loyalty and devotion to money and to things, our loyalty and devotion to the accumulation and hoarding of money and things for oneself.

That’s a genuinely tempting god. It’s a god who is so tempting because it appeals to the weakest point of our human nature: our insecurity about ourselves and our insecurity about others—that we won’t have enough to satisfy what we think we need AND that someone else will have more than us, and therefore make us feel smaller and weaker and less important. And it is made all the more tempting if we live in a country that says we are only successful if we’re making money, and buying lots of things, and accumulating more and more, that says we’ve got to spend more on these things in order for the country as a whole to be well off, that says, in other words, that we as Americans can only prove that we’re the chosen nation and the chosen people if we serve the god of wealth, of money, of possessions.

But Jesus on the mountainside says, “No.” You can’t make wealth, and money, and possessions your god and delude yourself into thinking that you can also serve the sovereign God of the whole universe. That somehow you can fit the sovereign God of the universe into some subordinate place within a system in which wealth and money and possessions are in first place. It just won’t work, Jesus teaches. You can’t be a chosen nation and an elect people if you choose that god.

Jesus on the mountainside puts it in the starkest terms: if you are enslaved – and there he got it exactly right, because that’s what making wealth and money and possessions your god will do, it will enslave you – then you will end up despising (that’s the word, “despising”) the sovereign God of the universe – hating, scorning, resenting, dismissing with contempt that sovereign God. You may not say it out loud, but that’s what you will feel.

If you chose that god of wealth and money and possessions then you are a Gentile and a non-Jew, then you are a part of “the nations” and the “people of the nations,” and you exclude yourself from being a part of God’s chosen nation and God’s elect people.

But you’ve got to choose. You can’t, Jesus teaches, serve two masters; you can’t serve two gods.

Let’s be clear what Jesus is NOT saying here: he isn’t teaching that we ought to stop earning enough money to meet our legitimate needs, that we ought to stop having savings to meet expected or unexpected circumstances in the future, that we ought to stop securing the possessions that are required for our lives. All of that, according to Jesus, is legitimate. In fact, he teaches that the sovereign God of the universe helps and motivates us do exactly that. But we cross that line out of God’s domain and into Gentile territory when wealth and money and possessions become our god.

So how do we know when we’re coming close or if we’ve crossed over that line from God’s chosen people into Gentile territory?

If I’m hearing Jesus in his lecture on the mountainside right, I think he gives us three warning, three alerts, three markers for our becoming Gentiles.

The first alert is when we find ourselves worrying about our own lives in an excessive, even compulsive way: worrying, as Jesus says, about “what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, and what you will wear.” When these become preoccupations – and just think for a moment about how we are instilled as Americans today to think constantly about these very things: eating too much, or too little, or eating the wrong things, or drinking special water, or water in certain kinds of plastic bottles, or the shape of our bodies (too thin or two fat, or too many lumps here and not enough curves there), or what styles of clothing we ought to keep up with – when those issues become the things we worry about, then we know, according to Jesus, that we’re coming close or that we’ve crossed over the line from the God’s domain into Gentile land.

The second warning is when we sense we are lessening our trust in the sovereign God of the universe – when we wean ourselves away from the God who created and who continues to create us, when we separate ourselves from the God who lovingly sustains us and graciously forgives us and caringly sets us back on the path of righteousness, when we distance ourselves from the God who calls us to do the sacred work of God’s will for the world. It’s when we start trusting only in ourselves, or trusting only on what some Gentile-inspired device or strategy will do for us that we come near or cross over that line that distinguishes God’s domain from the land of the Gentiles.

And then the third marker is very much related to the first and second: we’re in danger of becoming Gentiles when we are more concerned about ourselves and less concerned about others – especially those who need us. It’s when we are so worried about our own life that we are blind and insensitive to what others need – and what some others need desperately – for them to have life at all. It’s when we so trust human devices that will serve us and overlook the possibility that by trusting in the sovereign God of the universe we can serve the needs of all those others who God loves so deeply.If those are the three warning signs, the three alerts, the three markers of danger, what then, according to Jesus lecturing on the mountainside, helps us stay in God’s domain, what helps us be a chosen nation and an elect people, what helps us avoid becoming Gentiles?

This is what he said then, and what he says now. Listen, these are the words of Jesus:

Therefore, do not worry, saying “What will we eat?” or “What will be drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things. But you should, you must, strive first for the dominion of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

What is that “dominion of God?” What is “God’s righteousness?”

It is, according to Jesus, that chosen nation and those elect people who choose to do what God does.

God takes care of the birds of the air, God feeds them and gives them shelter. God cares for the lilies of the field, God clothes them and adorns them. God loves and cares for all that God has made – not the least, God loves and cares for the human beings who God has created and entrusted with the love and care of the earth that God loves.

So if you want to be a part of God’s domain, God’s kingdom, God’s community, give of the life that God has given you so that you can love and care for the whole world that God loves the whole world.

Surely love and care for those who are in need – those today who are suffering from natural disasters and human-made disasters, those who today are suffering from deprivation and despair, those who today are suffering from injustice and from war, those today who are suffering from illness and ignorance, all those who desperately need our help.

But love and care also for the Gentiles, those who, even in their abundance and wealth, worry and are anxious about their life, what they will eat, and what they will drink, and what they look like, and what they will wear, and what people will think of them, and whether they are important enough, and if someone is better than them. Lead them, my sisters and brothers, to the mountainside and let them learn of Jesus, lead them to the mountainside and let them hear his lecture, lead them to the mountainside so that they can stop worrying, and stop being anxious, and stop being preoccupied with themselves, lead them to the mountainside so that they can learn to trust the loving and forgiving and gracious sovereign God of the universe, lead them, my sisters and brothers, to the mountainside so that when they are asked “Are you a Gentile?” they will be able to say, “No, I’m a child of God and I’m a part of a people of God called to do God’s work in the world that God loves so fervently.”

* * * * *

This Memorial Day weekend we pay our respect, in gratitude, to those who have given their lives for this nation, who have paid an ultimate price of self-giving on behalf of our nation’s ideals of equality and freedom and mutual service to each other. God bless every one of them.

It can also be a weekend in which we, as followers of Jesus, recommit ourselves to a still greater cause, a still greater chosen nation, a still greater elected people. The question for us, then, is whether we, in our commitment to God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, will be willing to make sacrifices, even an ultimate sacrifice, for God’s cause of loving and caring for the world.

Will it be said of us after our passing from this earthly life, that we chose not to be Gentiles, but in the living of our lives chose to listen to and follow Jesus.

If that is your choice, you are invited to declare it publicly this morning by coming forward during the singing of the last hymn, to join not just this congregation of Jesus’ disciples but also whole community of Christ, the community who gives itself for the renewed life of God’s world.

Amen.