Wednesday, August 31, 2022

A Seat at the Table

 Luke 14:1, 7-14    August 28, 2022

 

If you happen to meet Queen Elizabeth

-you should rise as she enters the room

-Americans are not expected to give a full bow,

but men can bow their heads and women are expected to curtsey.

- If she comes up to you, do not take the queen's hand,

but you wait for her to offer it to you,

- and don't shake to hard, just a touch will do.

- You may refer to her as “Your Majesty.”

 

If you find yourself next to her at dinner,

- You may speak to the Queen, but let her steer the conversation.

- By no means should you try to imitate her accent.

- And when the Queen finishes her meal,

then everyone's meal is finished.


We might look at these and chalk it up to some old world customs

we might think that we are beyond this kind of thing in our America.

But face it, everyone treats people who are rich or powerful

a little differently than we do other people.

We treat wealthy or famous people with a little more respect,

a little more honor, a little more attention.

 

Maybe we think that their fame will rub off on us,

Or that they will remember us some day.

Or that they will drop little packs of money where ever they go?

 

I worked for a wine shop in San Francisco

(It was a wine shop when important people called,

but it was really a liquor store.)

The owner was named Tony –

One day, the owner of the pro-football team called Tony

and asked him which winery he and his wife might go to

for a tasting and some lunch.  He was rich obviously.

 

Tony gave him the name of one and right after they hung up,

Tony immediately called up the winery and told the manager –

“when he comes to the winery,

give him the best of anything,

anything he wants and don't charge him.”

And the manager agreed and thanked Tony for letting him know.

The wineries did whatever Tony asked because

they know he would buy their wines if they did.

 

I shared an office with Tony and heard the whole conversation. 

I turned around to Tony, kind of incredulous and said,

“Tony, this guy can afford lunch, he can afford anything,

he could even afford to buy the winery,

why should they give him their stuff for free?”

He said, June, that’s how the world works.

The rich and famous eat for free.

The Banquet
Hyatt Moore


 

That is how the world works.

We treat the rich and famous with honor

and we expect some attention in return.

I’ll scratch your back you scratch mine.

Upward mobility. Favors and deference for the rich.

Everyone else has to pay their own way.

 

In our Gospel today,

Jesus is having dinner at the house

of some upwardly mobile clergy -

one of the leaders of the Pharisees.

These are big and important people

who are have been very adept at upward mobility.

getting to know and impress the right people.

And they would love to move up some more.

So they've invited Jesus over.

Who is not rich, but who is a little famous now.

 

They aren't necessarily enemies of Jesus,

they are probably more fascinated with him

Jesus is a kind of celebrity of the day

he's popular with the people,

and they want to see what he’s all about.

 

They were probably hoping for a pleasant meal,

something they could tell their friends about the next day.

Maybe cull some favor with Jesus, just in case

anything good comes out of him

 

But as we know, meals with Jesus and the Pharisees

are not often pleasant. Jesus is very good at making

those dinner parties pretty awkward.

 

First Jesus starts off with something

that could pass off as etiquette:

“Don’t try and get the most important seat.

Sit in the least important seat.”

 

And then, instead of telling them how honored he is

to be invited to join them that evening, Jesus tells them.

“Important church people,

Next time you give an expensive dinner, why don't you do it right?

Don't invite your friends, or your rich neighbors,

or the queen or the owner of the football team,

don't even invite me to the party.

 

To do the party right: Invite the poor, the disabled,

the ex-cons, the guys who have signs on the highway exits.

You should invite people who can't repay you.

Who have nothing to give.

That would be a party that God would enjoy.”

 

The story doesn’t say if they all got around to the meal this time.

 
Jesus gives them this helpful party hints for two reasons:

 

One: to prove to us, and remind us over and over again

that the status that the world puts on us is irrelevant.

The money, the fame the power, the poverty, the shortcomings,

the addictions, those don’t count.

 

Our self-worth doesn’t come from how much we have

or who people perceive us to be, or where we sit at a dinner

or if we’re invited to the party in the first place.

Our worth comes from God. And we’re all beloved children,

no matter what our status in this world

 

And Two:  This is God’s vision for his church in this world.

Jesus wants his church to be a place

where the poor and the lame

and the outcast are not just given charity and patronized and pitied.

But where they are invited into the banquet,

Where they are given a seat at the table.

 

Not just in terms of eating and hospitality,

but where they are given power and a say

in their destiny and how they live.

Where they are not just nameless statistics,

but where they are given a voice and

treated with respect, and welcomed.

 

As followers of Jesus we are called to

love for love’s sake, and not for what we can get back.

To share God’s love, and our power, with those who have

the least of what the world has to give.

 

We live in an upwardly mobile world,

but for our own sake and the sake of the world,

Jesus calls us to be part of a downwardly mobile gospel.

Be a friend of the poor and the outcast.

 

Even after two thousand years of living with Jesus,

Christians almost always neglect Jesus’s call to this.

We play the world’s game of status and power.

we have our own church celebrities,

members with money and power are still treated with

more deference than others.

We still give honor to those with the most

hoping to get something back.

We still try to get to the head of the table and

we try to invite the right people to our parties.

But that is contrary to Jesus call.

 

I tell you, I don’t pick these readings, but sometimes the

committee that was formed in the 1980’s seem to know

just what’s going on in our lives.

 

This has been a week for us, and for me,

and an even longer one for the people living

next door to us presently.

 

If you haven’t heard, the people in the apartments next door

are being thrown out to make way for expensive condos.

Over 300 people could become homeless

because there’s no where else to go on Hilton Head.

But this church and Deep Well – the service organization

that was born out of this congregation – has risen to the occasion.

 

Our Press Secretary, Ann Matter put the article I wrote

for the newsletter on a social media app,

and the news stations in Savannah saw it and did stories.

You’ve all spread the word around

and contacted people and talked about it.

Just in one week, we’ve raised awareness of the situation

and changed the story from “Oh well, what are we gonna do?”

to “We all have to do something”.

The mayor even had to make a statement in response.

I imagine they’re rolling their eyes in the Town Council

when they hear our name, but good.

 

Our member Jimmy Rowe has used his

expertise, and his clout, and trust in this community

to go to the owners and to negotiate a better,

more merciful solution, which we’ll tell you more about soon.

 

People of our church are offering hospitality tonight

to the residents as they hear about options and developments.

 

We’ve raised almost 6 thousand dollars from our people

and from people in the community using our giving page,

and Deep Well has raised much more.

 

Deep Well is finding temporary housing for people.

And there’s much more we can do.

The Island has come together in compassion in response.

 

And we weren’t even organized.

We weren’t even ready for this.

And I was on away in a cabin in Georgia for most of it!

But we were ready for the Spirit’s call when it came.

 

This is a great example of how Christians

are called to use our power.

It is our job not to just give mercy to people in need, 
but to give them justice. 

To remind those in power to invite them to the table, like Jesus did here.

And to actually bring them to the table.

And to make sure they’re given a regular seat at the table.

We are asked to be the church that uses our power

for the good of all. We’ve got more work to do,

but we’ve made a good start here.

 

We are asked to make God’s will, on earth like it is in heaven.

To make the tables of the world look more like Christ’s table.

Where everyone is invited, and we all come to it the same.

Where none of us deserves to be here more than another,

but everyone is welcome.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

You are Set Free

 Luke 13:10-17
August 22, 2022

Rev. June Wilkins

 

Jesus is in a synagogue, it’s just like a church like this.

They’re having a little class discussion in there.

And a woman comes in who had been

bent over in pain for the last 18 years.

She couldn’t stand up straight at all.

Jesus meets her, lays his hands on her

and he tells her that she is set free from her ailment.

And just like that, she’s healed, stands upright.

And she’s off praising God.

Seems like a good day, right?

 

Now, was the reaction from the church people

wonder, disbelief, excitement?

No. The pastor is upset because Jesus

healed this woman on the Sabbath.

He said to his parishioners, “he had six other days to

do that kind of work, why would this man

break the Sabbath?”

So Jesus did an amazing thing,

but they couldn’t see past him breaking a rule.

 

Now we could ask, “why would Jesus break this rule?”

This woman had been sick for 18 years,

what would one more day have mattered?

He could have asked her to come back the next day.

Then everyone would have been happy.

 

But I think Jesus purposely broke the rule

and healed this woman on the Sabbath, right there

in the sacred place, because his objective wasn’t just to free

the woman, his objective was to free everyone.

 

Now the Sabbath is and was a great gift especially in Jesus time.

Back then, most people worked seven days a week.

It was very unusual that people would take any day off.

But the God ordered them to take one day a week off.

 

The world told people that they were only as good

as what they produced, how they fed the economy.

But God told them that they were precious even

when they weren’t producing anything.

Sabbath was great gift that God had given

to the people for their and well being

and to help their relationship with God.

It was a gift, a discipline, and reminder of God.

We should probably take our Sabbath time more seriously today.

 

But, as often happens, the religious leaders took this gift

and turned it into a rigid law.

If anyone were to do any work on that day,

they were chastised and even brought up on charges.

 

And the Sabbath worked easily for those who were stable.

But for those who were poor,

for those living on the edge of poverty,

for those who had to beg or collect food for a living,

it could be a hardship.

In the gospels, Jesus and the disciples were

chastised for picking ears of corn to eat on the Sabbath –

when they were just getting themselves something to eat.

 

This is not just the truth for the Pharisees

or for Jewish religious law at all.

All religions often will take a good idea -- a gift from God

and turn in it into a weapon of control.

A way to scrutinize other people. A litmus test.

They used it to catch other people “sinning”

They turned it into a way to make themselves

look better and have more power over people

and to make other people look bad.

They turned it into a method of bondage or imprisonment.

 

Worship? You needed to do that in the appointed time 

in the appointed way or else you’re not a good Christian.

Communion? Only certain, worthy people get to eat.

Sex and sexuality? Forget about it, you’re doing everything wrong.

Couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer and the 10 commandments

correctly in front of the teacher at 6 years old. (that was me.)

You’re marked for life. You don’t love Jesus enough

 

Rules can do that. They can be good gifts to help us be faithful.

And they can become bondage.

We end up serving the rules, instead of the rules serving us.

The rules can be used to hurt people

and shame them instead of setting them free.

 

When the church only sees the rules,

then we run the danger of only seeing the world

for how people are breaking the rules.

God’s way can become a way of more pain than a joy.

 

How many times has the Christian Church been a place like that?

How many times have our churches placed bondage

on spirits rather than freeing them?

How many times have rules come before relationships?

How many times has dogma stood

in the way of the movement of the Spirit?

 

For many people outside it,

the church been identified as the place of

forbidding, restriction, bean counting, and finger wagging

 

Even if we’re not chastising people for breaking the rules,

we’re mired in our own bureaucracy

and unable to act when the need is there.

we’re slow, we’re far too careful, we over-think.

Things get stuck in endless committees.

Analysis paralysis.

 

God’s church has a reputation for being

quick to judge and slow to act.

God’s church has the reputation of being

the place of “no” instead of “yes".

 

So often Churches have the resources:

we have the people, we have the know-how,

we know high people in high places,

we even have the inspiration to do something,

But individually or as a group, we put it off,

tomorrow, later, maybe another day.

 

This woman could probably have waited,

She was used to waiting.

I’m sure she was used to being put off and brushed aside

by friends and family, by the religious leaders, by the people of God,

If Jesus had told her, “look, today is the Sabbath

and you know, rules are rules.

If you just come back tomorrow, I’ll help you.”

She would have said, of course I understand, I’ll come back.

She probably expected that exact reaction.

 

But here was Jesus, and there was her need.

Jesus has not come here to reinforce rules,

or to give us more rules, to uphold traditions,

or to help us hide behind our bureaucracy and systems.

Jesus has come to free us.

 

Jesus has come to free us from those

outside forces, illness, pain, injustice, addictions.

And Jesus has come to free us from our own

self-imposed bondage, our own prisons,

our own fears, our own restrictions,

our own apathy, the prisons that we put ourselves

and other people in in the spirit of “good order”

or “following the rules”

Jesus means to free all of us from all of that.

 

18 years is a long time to be bent over.

But many people have been bent over longer.

Waiting for hope, healing, justice

waiting for God to intervene and heal.

Well, we are God’s hands and feet in this world.

We are the body of Christ.

 

If you read my newsletter article,

we’re facing an issue here on this Island.

Chimney Cove, the apartments next door to us,

that have been there longer than we have,

is being sold to developers.

 

We knew that might happen,

but they are evicting people from their homes,

in the most uncaring, irresponsible
and unjust way.

They’ve given most of them only 30 days to get out.

Threatening them with the sheriff.

And where are they supposed to go?

 

We are people with means and power.

We know people, we can talk with people people will listen to us.

We can tell them how unjust and unacceptable this is.

 

We’re working with Deep Well on ways to help

the people of Chimney Cove

and Christ Lutheran is raising funds to help

their immediate needs, and I hope you all give to that.

 

But this whole thing is wrong.

It’s wrong for them next door and it’s wrong for people

in the past and in the future who are vulnerable

and will be displaced from this Island to feed someone else’s gain.

Taking away what little some people have because

someone wants more.

 

We have the ability to change that.

The city has the ability to make sure this doesn’t happen again

and we can help persuade them that things have to change.

We can help make this a place that cares for all it’s people,

rich and poor alike.

 

So what should we say?

“We have rules, we have processes to follow.

We’ll get to you when we can?

Should we say,

“Churches shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing?

We’re busy with other things?

Go somewhere else? wait until tomorrow?”

Or do we actually act like Jesus?

 

Jesus has come to free all of us.

To help us to stand up straight,

to free us from our bondage,

from our restrictions, from our excuses, from our apathy

from whatever is holding us back

from doing what God would have us do.

 

People of God, you are set free from your ailment.

Stand up, rejoice, and follow the Spirit of God.

Monday, August 15, 2022

Jesus Didn't Come To Bring Peace

 Luke 12:49-56

August 14, 2022

 

Aww. Jesus was so nice last week.

Don’t be afraid little flock.

God wants to give you the Kingdom.


And then we get this.

Jesus has come to bring division to this world.

Stephen B. Whatley
The Glory of Christ

We usually think of Jesus as the one for peace, love.

I told you that Jesus said “do not be afraid” 21 times

second only to the imperative to

“love” which he says 125 times.

 

But not right now.

Yes, Jesus final objective is love and peace,

but Jesus reminds us that doesn’t 

always mean quick peace.

Not at first. At first, Jesus usually brings division.

 

Really, in this reading today, Jesus sounds stressed out.

He even says he’s stressed out right at the beginning.

 

I don’t know if I’m completely comfortable with

the idea of a stressed out Jesus either.

Jesus most often seems calm as a cucumber, above the fray.

In control of things, but right now he’s

telling us he’s stressed. He says:

“Let’s get on with the whole thing, because it’s stressing me out!”

 

And there’s a good reason for Jesus to be stressed out.

 

So, we’re in chapter 12 of Luke right now.

In Chapter 11, Jesus is invited to dinner at the house of a Pharisee

and while he’s there, Jesus neglects the,

religiously mandated hand washing ritual to prepare for his meal.

The Pharisees see this and start grumbling about it.

 

And Jesus starts to berate the Pharisees

“You are worried about how clean the cup and the dish are,

but your insides are corroded”

Which would have been enough to get his point across,

but Jesus proceeds to go on for 20 verses

(which is really a long time in terms of scripture )

“Woe to you”, Jesus says, “You give money,

but you neglect justice and the work of God.”

He criticizes them for their hypocrisy

and tells them that they’re not doing their job.

And he’s doing it pretty loudly and forcefully.

 

And then when the religious lawyers in the room said,

“Well, Jesus, when you say that, you’re insulting us too.”

Then Jesus starts in on the lawyers


“Woe to you lawyers too!”

“You load people with burdens and don’t’ lift a finger to help them.”

And “you are responsible for killing God’s prophets.”

Then apparently, Jesus left the dinner party.

Right at the end of the last chapter,

Jesus just took on a group of the most

powerful and influential people in Jewish society at the time,

and then just dropped the mic and left  without

even eating with them or making nice.

 

Then in Chapter 12, Jesus goes out to a crowd of a thousand people

and tells them, to “Watch out for the hypocritical Pharisees”.

 

Jesus is pushing the prophetic envelope here.

He’s stirring the pot. He’s calling out the bad behavior

of some of the most powerful people around him.

Basically, he’s just set into motion

the things that will eventually get him crucified.

No wonder he’s stressed out.

 Then, after, he warns the crowd about

the Pharisees, he starts this monologue

that we’ve been working on for the last few weeks

He says:

 Don’t be afraid of the religious leaders and politicians

don’t fear those who kill the body,

but can’t do anything else to you.

 

Don’t store up useless treasures on earth.

Don’t waste the time you have.

 

Don’t worry about your life

The lilies in the field and the ravens are fine

and they don’t worry.


And then, what we read last week,

Don’t be afraid little flock.

Just be prepared when God needs you.

 

Then we get the stressed out Jesus we read today.

I’m not here to make nice.

I’m here to stir some things up.

Which he has. Very well.

 

It’s almost as if chapter 12 is Jesus talking to himself,

like he’s trying to convince himself and deal with the sudden

realization of what he’s set in motion at that dinner party.

He’s getting a picture of what his destiny is,

and he knows that his life is not going to end well.

There will probably be a lot of pain involved.

 

Remember, Luke is the same gospel that has Jesus

sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane,

asking for God to take away this cup that

God wants him to drink.

Stress.

 

Now, Jesus said those things to the Pharisees and lawyers

because he has compassion for the people.

The normal people without power.

The ones that they were supposed to serve but were neglecting

and putting great burdens on.

 

Jesus is love incarnate,

the love of God come down to earth.

But this love is not the happy, puppies and kittens kind of love,

This is the hard, difficult love.

The love that comes in the form of truth, and honesty.

It’s the love that comes through justice and change.

This is the love that comes through the cross.

As a famous theological writer, Frederick Beuchner wrote,

“The Gospel is always bad news before it is good news.”

 

Jesus is not here just to have people get along and put on a happy face. 

Jesus is here to fix things, to change us, others, the world,

the systems of the world, our churches, our relationships . . .

Not just cheap peace, but real peace.

And that causes upheaval, and division, and stress.

 

We’ve all seen how cheap peace works.

If you’ve ever had a quietly tense Thanksgiving dinner

with your family, you know what cheap peace feels like.

We’ve all had to smile around someone we’ve had major,

deep disagreements with but too much water has gone under the bridge

 to talk about in front of all these people or it’s too painful to bring up again. 

We’ve all had to make nice around someone because 

they were just too powerful because they could do what you wanted to get done, 

and if you didn’t they were likely to fire you, or have you fired, 

or ignore you, or do the opposite of what you wanted, or worse.

 

I knew a brother and sister who spent years

keeping cheap peace and putting on their happy faces

for the sake of their parents who they both loved.

Then when we were planning the funeral, one of them

chose the wrong hymn and they stood up screaming at one another.

Real love, doesn’t stop at cheap peace.

Real love -- the transformation and reconciliation

that God is intent on -- requires real truth and change and

that often causes real pain and real division to get there.

We always have to go through Good Friday to get to Easter Sunday.

 

When we look for God’s work in the world,

Lots of times, we only look at the good news.

The joy after years apart, the people hugging, and helping.

That’s the feel good story

But when we’re in the middle of God’s work it

doesn’t always look so beautiful and sweet.

God’s work can look and scary and stressful.

Even Jesus was stressed and even scared when he was in the middle of it. 

Jesus is not here for simple repairs.

Jesus is here for renovation.

Lots of you have gone through renovations in your house,

and we went  through one in our church that ended just last year.

And it’s messy, and it dusty, and stressful and people

argue and disagree, and then the pew cushions are bright purple

and you don’t know where the can opener is,

And then if they find some water damage or termite

damage, then they have to do more digging and removing

and replacing and it’s more costly and more stressful

 

And we just want to get to the end, but you

have to go through all the trouble and stress

to get  to the other side, there’s just no two ways around it.

 

So it is with the sin of this world.

God is not just trying to make a cheap peace or simple repairs.

God wants to renovate everything.

God wants to get to the bottom of our hatred,

greed, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, our love of power,

our neglect of those in poverty.

God wants to renovate the whole house.

And that creates upheaval and a lot of dust.

 

We pray for peace all the time.

And I’m sure we’re thinking about the time when

no one is fighting or disagreeing.

But when we pray to God for peace, watch out!

God is going to do it the right way.

We’re praying for renovation.

 

Whenever I see struggle, unrest, protests, arguing,

a lot of dust being raised in our country and our world

and I wish it would just end, I comfort myself

with the thought that God is doing a lot of renovating.

God is digging up those beams eaten by termite and rot

and really getting to the bottom of all our problems.

Jesus came to bring peace, but we will probably see division first.

 

But don’t be afraid little flock.

Don’t worry about your life.

The lilies in the field and the ravens

are fine and they don’t worry.

 

Don’t store up useless treasures on earth.

Don’t waste the time you have.

And don’t fear the powers that be.

They can’t take what’s really important.

 

So let us continue to be Jesus in this world.

To bring justice, truth, light, and hope to this world.

and to share the love of Jesus.

The love that comes through struggle and hard work,

like the love we see on the cross.

The love that stresses us out before it heals.

The love that brings true peace.

Monday, August 8, 2022

Getting Ourselves Ready

 Luke 12: 35-48 August 7, 2022

 

“Do not be afraid” Jesus tells us.


 

When was the last time you were afraid?

Like really afraid of a real and present danger.

I was trying to think about that for myself.

The last time I was genuinely in danger and afraid.

I was trying to think of what I did and what was my reaction.

 

And I actually couldn’t remember the last time.

I know some people have had terrible incidents in their lives

and some people have reason to fear every day.

Some people have careers that make them face danger.

Some people have had health problems that are scary.

But those are unique situations, and not normal ones.

 

Realistically though, most of the time

most people, here in this room and around us,

don’t have any real and immediate reason to fear most of the time.

But it doesn’t feel that way, does it?

 

Fear seems to be all around us.

There’s this constant low level hum of anxiety.

We have the “what if” fear.

There’s “what if’s” about our health, our safety, our economic situations,

our friends and spouses, our parents.

Now, when I think about the “what if” type of fear,

I don’t have to go back so far.

That kind of fear is almost daily, constant.

 

There’s what if’s about climate change, 

about the political state of the country right now, what if there is another pandemic,

what if I fell off a ladder while I’m painting my bathroom?

The list could go on and on!

 

Our heads are filled with what if’s.

TV and movies fill our heads with what ifs.

Our news media fills us with what ifs.

Our politicians – of all stripes fill us with what ifs.

“What if” has great power in our lives. It changes us.

 

I think this is what Jesus is talking about when

he says “do not be afraid, little flock.”

Do not be afraid.

Jesus uses this phrase “Do not be afraid”

 - or something like it – 21 times in the gospels,

It’s second only to phrases in which he

implores us to love one another.

 

Jesus knows what power fear has in our lives.

 

Fear changes us, it does things to us.

And none of it is good.

it makes us suspicious of other people

It makes us isolate ourselves,

It makes us hold onto things,

it makes us leery of anything new.

 

It can stop us from doing, serving, trying new things, taking risks.

It can stand in the way of love, sharing, understanding,

forgiving, relationships, creativity and community.

Fear can prevent us from living in the moment

and noticing the great things that God is doing right here and now.

 

You cannot appreciate the kindness of a stranger if we

live in fear of strangers.

We cannot try something new if we’re always afraid that we’ll fail.

I cannot get my bathroom painted if I’m preoccupied

with the what if’s of ladders.

I mean a reasonable caution and awareness  about things is

healthy, but we can turn every concern into full blown “what if” fear.

  

Do not be afraid, little flock.

Your father wants to give you the kingdom.

Jesus reminds us that whatever does happen, God will be there with us.

We can’t lose it all because God is giving everything to us.

 

So no matter what happens in this world

Even if an asteroid hits the earth and we’re all done for.

The kingdom of God will be ours. So do not be afraid.

Easier said than done, but this is what Jesus asks of us.

 

So in one breath, Jesus says “do not be afraid.”

And then in the next breath he says

“Sell all your possessions and give it to the poor”

 

Now I’ve been trying to figure out

what the connection between the two is.

Here’s what I came up with after a while:

 

Now when Jesus talks about things, I don’t want you to

just get an image of people who have lots of stuff in their house.

(and that’s not just because Bob and I have a lot of stuff in our house.)

I don’t think this is only about an abundance of things.

That would be too simple. I think this is about security.

 

To humans, possessions often equal security.

We talked about that last week with the storehouses.

There was a video I watched a while back of people

evacuating a plane that had a fiery landing.

It showed most of the passengers in the smoke filled cabin,

reaching up and opening the overhead bins to get their bags

and the flight attendants are yelling over the speaker,

“Forget your bags, just jump off the plane. Forget your bags.”

I don’t think these people were particularly greedy.

I think they were afraid.

When we feel fear, we want to grab our things.

Doesn’t matter if it’s real fear like this, or “what if” fear.

Possessions can give us security.

And Jesus tells us to sell all we have.

 

So, Jesus is not just telling us to de-clutter

and live a minimalist life and have just a few tasteful obj’dart

Jesus says sell everything we possess.

Get rid of our security.

 

Jesus is saying, take those things that you rely on,

that you trust in and let go of them.

Maybe it is things, keepsakes, precious objects, 

money, storehouses of things. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Maybe it’s a regular schedule, or a routine.

Maybe it’s your solitary life, or constant interactions and activity.

Maybe your status, your position,

maybe it’s emotional self control, or emotional outbursts,

Or maybe food, or wine or TV. It’s different for everyone.

I don’t know what it is for you.

Jesus is saying, don’t rely on that.

 

Stop relying on everything that you rely on

give up your security blanket, and see how you do.

Take off the training wheels,

take away everything for you that stands in the place of God

and sell it, get rid of it, give it to the poor.

Put all your eggs in God’s basket.

Put God’s promises to the test and see what happens.

 

Then when you have nothing left, you can see how good God really is.

You’ll see that is where your treasure is,

and that is where your heart will be too:

In God’s care.

 

That’s why people who have felt real genuine fear

and not just the “what if” fear can tell you best about God’s presence.

They have known first hand about God’s presence with them.

 

Jesus invites us today:

Do not be afraid, divest and unload.

Stop worrying and saying “what if”

Give away what you’re clinging to,

close your eyes and jump off the cliff, metaphorically,

and you will fall into God’s arms.

 

Another way to put it is,

if our arms are filled trying to hold onto

what we already possess,

how can we take what God is trying to give us?

 

Now we always have to remember, that in modern times,

we automatically think of things individually and personally,

but Jesus and the gospel writers were almost always talking

about a community, a group. Do not fear little flock.

 

As a congregation, we should not live in constant fear

of what could happen, convinced of the awful fate might behold us.

We shouldn’t wallow as a congregation in the million “what if’s”

that could or might happen. Fear will not serve us.

 

And we shouldn’t cling to what we once had

or what we think we have now,

We should not cling to our pre-concieved

notions of how our future will unfold.

As a congregation we need to be ready for God to give us the Kingdom

in unexpected and unforeseen ways.

 

Churches who are ready for God’s mission

don’t necessarily have a fool proof plan, but they are prepared.

We get ourselves ready spiritually, emotionally, and physically

to be ready for whatever the Spirit calls us to,

“Get dressed, ready for action, and have our lamps lit” Jesus says.

Don’t be afraid. Stop relying on our security blankets.

Get ready for the Spirit to come and surprise us.

 

And when we do, Jesus says,

The master will come home and sit you down at the table and serve you.

Little flock, our Father in heaven wants to give us the kingdom.

 

When we take these risks,

when we put aside our fears,

when we give away that which we depend on for security,

When we jump off that cliff

We have assurance that we will get a return.

Not in more money, and not in more security,

Jesus never promises us that.

What we get back is the security that God was there.

That God will be there, that God is always there.

And that is a treasure that cannot

be destroyed and cannot be taken from us.

 

As we learned in our history review on Wednesday Nights,

this congregation has seen the edge of that cliff many times.

The people here have taken risks in the name of Jesus.

And God has been with us.

Sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we failed.

But God has always been with us,

to help us through, to shepherd our success,

to rethink our failures, to comfort us,

and to get us looking forward to the next thing.

 

What are we clinging to?

What possession, fear, prejudice, suspicion,

anxiety, desire are we holding on to that

that will hold us back when the Spirit blows through again?

 

Let’s get rid of it, sell it, give it away.

Let’s get ready for what God is about to give us.