Judging other is Fun from Luke 6:37-45

So,

The reality is, judging other people is fun! I mean, I get it. We aren’t supposed to do that. But saying, oh my God, why did she wear that, is like, the bomb!

I like to judge what people wear, what people eat, what people drive, and especially the way they drive! And of all the types of people I like to judge the most are politicians and other Christians who are idiots.

I know, you are suddenly think, oh my, a complete pastoral failure, you Jeff just don’t measure up to what we expect in a Holy man of God!

Some amazingly good judging right there! Just saying!

So, why, oh why, did God give us such good brains, able to distinguish between wonderful people and my preferred group of social outcasts, if God didn’t want us to use them?

“I am no Pharisee”, I regularly say to myself, and then without a thought, turn, see another person and go, “Why, God do they even walk the planet”?

Which is why I just have to ask, why in heaven’s name did Jesus say “Don’t judge others!”

Was he just trying to ruin our fun, our haughty, self-righteous attitudes?

Was he trying to make us miserable? I mean, I already know I am as close to perfect as perfection gets, so what gives?

Is it possible, that Jesus thinks something more is at work here?

And just so we don’t get off track, this is not an attack on discernment, the spiritual gift my wife Sue says she most wants to have.

The reality is, we have to use the gift of discernment all the time.

We distinguish between water that is too hot and too cold and pick the one we need, or desire. It’s a very normal process, sometimes a safety issue, occasionally a choice between life and death.

While Noah was here, Sue had him help out by putting the mulch in the garden. Later on in life, he is going to sue her for breaking child labor laws.

But then once it was in the garden, she told him it was hot lava, and not to put his feet in it!

Why, because Noah would have happily walked all over the mulch, and he has learned that you don’t touch “hot”, one of his favorite words. You don’t touch a hot stove, a hot grill, a hot fireplace, hot water in the tub or sink, or Nana’s hot lava gardens!

If you are making tea, you want it hot. If you are making lemonade you want it cold. And if you are Noah and Loon Lake is 50 degrees, and therefore not hot, you go swimming, because Noah believes even tepid bathwater is too hot.

Yes, we have to see the difference between good and bad. Yes, we have to make decisions about politics and economics and people we want to listen to or not listen to.

But that is not what Jesus is talking about, discernment.

What Jesus is concerned about is the process of pushing people away because we have decided that we are somehow better than them, know more than them, are more righteous than they are, or conversely, that they are somehow worse than us, know less than us, or are less righteous than us.

Jesus is concerned that we are choosing to separate people from us on the basis of our determination as to whether they are worthy of our time, our compassion, and our love.

And that is just not the way God works, nor his kingdom!

And it is not to be the way the people of God work!

It’s interesting to come work at the Deacon’s Food Pantry, partly because it is really hard work, lots of fun, good fellowship, and also an eye-opening experience.

Because the need for food comes in all sizes, shapes, and as it turns out, all kinds of cars.

Just because someone drives up in a nice car, doesn’t mean that they are not unemployed and hungry. I often tell people who are not working to pay their rent and come to us for food. Because we can’t pay your rent, but we can feed you!

And just because they are wearing nice clothes doesn’t not mean that they are not fighting an eviction because they can’t pay their rent. Come get food!

Those who work the pantry have to set aside the desire and almost automatic tendency, to judge. It’s easy to think that some of these folks must be scamming the system! Not so easy to find out the truth, and for our clients, sometimes an embarrassing truth.

Are they scamming the system, maybe.

But as Father McHale said to me 35 years ago, do you want to stand before Jesus and be praised for feeding a family that looked rich but was hungry, or reminded that you didn’t feed them and they really needed you to help.

Don’t judge others, and God won’t judge you!

Because in order to judge another, you need to deem yourself the judge! And in our world, most judges are elected, and nobody elected you!

And in God’s world, there is only one judge, and guess what, it is still not you!

Jesus goes on to illustrate the principle.

He says, can a blind person – you - lead another blind person - me. What are your grounds for thinking that you can see better than someone else if we are both blind?

Are students better than their teacher? How can they judge that which they do not yet know? What kind of logic is required to get you to think that you know better than someone who has done this thing or studied it for a long time?

Can a person who has a log in their eye judge well how to remove a speck from another person’s eye? What kind of thinking is required to make yourself the better paramedic in this situation?

In order to be the judge of others behavior, you have to sit on the God’s throne, and you and I don’t. God does.

So, please, Jesus reminds his hearers, move over, get down, kneel at the feet of the King of kings and Lord of Lords, and turn your sight from other people’s behavior and instead, see your own for what it is, in the way God sees it.

Then rejoice, that God’s loves you as much as God loves your neighbor! To God be the glory!

Amen.

Sermon for May 17 from Luke 6:7-36

So,

Do you have any enemies? People who dislike you, perhaps intently?

Are there people out there that perhaps you dislike rather strongly?

An author told this story about enemies. He said:

“A priest was giving a homily based on Jesus’s command to love your enemies.

“Now,” he says, “I’ll bet that many of us feel as if we have enemies in our lives,” he says the congregation. “So, raise your hands if you have many enemies.” And quite a few people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only a few enemies.” And about half as many people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only one or two enemies.” And even fewer people raised their hands. “See,” says the priest, “most of us feel like we have enemies.”

“Now raise your hands if you have no enemies at all.” And the priest looks around, and looks around, and finally, way in the back, a very, very old man raises his hand. He stands up and says, “I have no enemies whatsoever!”

Delighted, the priest invites the man to the front of the church. “What a blessing!” the priest says. “How old are you? “I’m 98 years old, and I have no enemies.” The priest says, “What a wonderful Christian life you lead! And tell us all how it is that you have no enemies.”

“All the (bastards) jerks have died!”

Okay! Problem solved!

Of course, not where the priest was going, but understandable.

But that still leaves us with this incredible teaching Jesus made in the Sermon on the Mount.

“Love your enemies”.

As Bill Cosby said in that old Noah and the Ark sketch, “right!” Or maybe, “no way”, or “yeah, that’s impossible!”

Jesus teaching seems so far beyond the realm of reality that we dismiss it.

But be careful, because Jesus is very serious!

So, what is Jesus going for here?

Jesus wants us to understand God’s nature and the way of God’s kingdom> he wants us to live in relationship with others in the way that God lives in relationship with us.

Even though we are not very good at loving God, in fact, sometimes quite terrible at it, God chooses not to judge us on that basis, but rather on the basis of God’s own love for us.

And we love because God first loved us!

One of the great joys of being a follower of Jesus, is to realize that even though at times I am really not a very good disciple - that I don’t live in ways or act in ways that please God - God still loves me, forgives me, and counts me as a friend.

And one of my great struggles as a follower of Jesus is to realize that even though you too are not a very good disciple, God still loves you too.

And that is essentially the challenge, to see people from God’s perspective and to treat them accordingly. To understand way down in the depths of our souls that God loves folks we don’t love and that don’t love us.

And to understand that we are to love others in the manner that God loves them, no matter what!

Not with a wimpy, irresponsible, mushy love, but with the strong, clear and purposeful love of God. We are to love others as a way of both being kingdom people ourselves and revealing kingdom values to others.

And for clarity, remember that the word for love here is the Greek word agape, a word that describes self-sacrificing, giving, and forgiving love.

This is not about doing for another person something to appease them or to change them; it is an act of kingdom presence all by itself.

Love your enemies, for by doing so, we reveal God’s kingdom to be present!

I read this past week a commentator who was noting that in the original Greek New Testament, the sentence that says “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to them the other.”

It is a different reading than in our pew bibles where the CEV reads, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, don’t stop that person from slapping you on the other cheek. The CEV makes it sound as if having been struck once, you should offer yourself for another.

But the author suggested that instead of understanding the passage just from the words, perhaps what we should do is imagine the setting where someone backhands you across the face as an insult.

The command then is, don’t leave the same check there to be slapped again.

Instead turn the other cheek, making a backhanded slap less likely, and therefore the insult less likely, and begin instead the intentional process of loving them as God does, not with acquiescence or anger, but with real practical tough love.

Offer to help. Offer to carry their bags, offer to do for them whatever it is that they need, offer to listen, offer even to get out of their way.

But don’t retaliate. Instead, seek, as best you can, their redemption!

My wife Sue tells a great story of a crabby, angry old woman who worked at one of the nutrition sites she used to help with when she worked for the office of the aging.

There’s lots of good stuff in between in this story, but the end of the story is that the crabby old woman was transformed after a hip replacement and all her horrible aches and pains went away!

Jesus says, Don’t judge.

Don’t assume.

Don’t retaliate.

And do act like a kingdom person and love your enemies!

Amen.

"Plain truth" Sermon for May 10

From Luke 6:20-26

So,

It’s Mother’s Day!

What a great gift Mother’s Day is, because quite frankly we don’t tell mom’s how great we think they really are! At least that’s what moms tell me.

No, really.

Moms are amazing. Not only did they house us, grow us, and then birth us, for most of us, they were also the most constant caregivers in our lives!

They made us wash behind our ears, take that awful medicine that they said was good for us, and made us eat vegetables. Some of them even made us make our beds, go outside and run of all that energy, even in the middle of snowstorms, and do chores!

Or was that only my mom?

The comforted us when we skinned our knees and when we skinned our hearts. They made treats to take to school, and got us or made us Halloween costumes, and even made sure that there was something in the stockings and under the tree on Christmas.

They bought our clothes or made them, made sure they matched, kind of, and when we wanted something cool and amazing to wear, did their best to find something.

And best of all they pretended to love those crazy Mother’s Day cards we made them, and the breakfast in bed with the burnt toast, and the spilt orange juice all over the tray.

And even when we were little brats, they loved us. Not all moms, but most.

And dads were okay too. But for just plain loving us, moms were and are amazing!

Kind of like God is, at least according to Jesus.

Loving us as we are, while helping us and even empowering us to become all that we can be, if we are willing.

But while moms always and forever loved us; most of them in their own way also told us the truth.

That when we were good that they were very proud of us. But that when we were bad, that there was room for improvement.

Moms rock! And they deserve every bit of the adulation we offer today!

Yesterday, I did a graveside funeral for a 96-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s Disease. She contracted COVID-19 just recently and as is the path for so many older folks, she died.

The family gathered outside at the grave site, spread apart around the casket, to say their final goodbyes, where I did a short service

The blessing for this woman and her family was that she was a lifelong Christian, and a lifelong Presbyterian; and, she was a Deacon, so you know she must have been amazing. (Our Deacons fed2 9 families on Thursday!)

She was a great wife and mother and grandmother, and great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother, and professional woman.

But here’s the other thing, she was also known for speaking her mind, the “plain truth” as she described it, making sure family knew exactly what she was thinking. Unvarnished it is said!

The best of moms do that too; they make sure that their children are loved, but understand the truth.

And it seems to me that is exactly what Jesus was doing here in the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. He is talking to God’s children and loving them, and telling them all about God’s kingdom, but he was also telling them the “plain truth”.

And unlike in Matthew’s version of the beatitudes, Jesus doesn’t pull any punches! He tells them the hard stuff, aimed perhaps at the Pharisees and priests and scribes, but also at some of Jesus own followers, perhaps.

Blessed are you if you are poor, hungry, crying, and hated with no one wanting to be around you! Because here is the plan. God loves you and God has got you!

You will inherit God’s kingdom, you will be fed, you will laugh, you will have a great reward in heaven.

But for those of you who have it easy, woe!

Literally, if you are full, well fed, laughing and have all kinds of folks saying wonderful things about you, be aware, there is trouble ahead.

Because if your brother or sister is struggling and you have done nothing to make a difference, stood up for them, bandaged their wounds, comforted them, got them a drink, a bit of your lunch and dried their tears, mama is going to have words with you.

They are your siblings, your flesh and blood, and you are your sister and brother’s keeper, so act like it!

Jesus’ description of the Kingdom of God is all about relationships and learning how to both “grow in faith” and “live out that faith”.

And there is no better example of what is looks like to love one another than to watch mom in action!

If mom is around today, be sure to give her some love.

And if she isn’t, send up a prayer of thanks to God for the ones who introduced us early on to Kingdom values.

And all God’s people said, Amen.

Sunday May 3 Sermon from Luke 6:1-11

So,

Question of the day, if we were to apply resurrection power to our worship experience, what would it look like, feel like, sound like?

I suspect the answers would be all over the place because our individual understandings of worship, as well as our preferences are all over the map.

None-the-less, I think it’s worth a think, because we have an amazing opportunity right now in these weird circumstances to apply resurrection power to worship.

Now, keep in mind, that is exactly what got Jesus in trouble with the Pharisees, scribes, and priests of his day. Because he, the incarnate presence of God, was challenging some pretty rigorous standards for worship with resurrection power. He was challenging Sabbath!

Many of us often think that Jesus was mad at the Pharisees because they were idiots. Be honest now! They were old fuddy-duddy stick-in-the-muds and they were ruining Jesus’ good fun.

While that may be a convenient way to think about it, it really misses the point of Jesus’ arguments with them.

The problem wasn’t that the Pharisees weren’t unfaithful, or weren’t doing their best to maintain the wonderful traditions of the Jewish worship of Yahweh in the most trying of circumstances, they were!

And I think Jesus admired some things about the Pharisees, especially their faith and their devotion to scripture. But they were missing the power of worship precisely because they were so worried about keeping the form!

Understand, in the midst of occupation after occupation, they were desperately doing everything they could to codify and regularize Jewish devotion so it wouldn’t be destroyed and washed away by the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Romans.

They loved God, they wanted to do right by God. They were just, according to Jesus, getting it all upside down.

They were so concerned to preserve, and codify and regularize worship, that they were in danger of removing God’s power, God’s joy, and God’s delight in his people right from it.

They made the mistake so many others have when they take their faith and make it concrete instead of abstract.

I know I’ve said this before but children start out mentally thinking about the world in concrete terms. They have no ability to think abstractly, and so don’t.

I play steal Noah’s nose. I grab it with my fingers (and yes there is some risk) and then tell him I stole his nose. And he thinks I actually have his nose.

He can’t conceptualize the idea that I am faking him, pretending to have his nose when it is still plainly on his face. So, when I pop it back in place, he laughs to think that somehow I stole his nose and put it back.

Later in life, we begin to think less concretely, and can begin to understand ideas that are abstract, like devotion, love, compassion, and eventually, maybe, trigonometry, although not all of us do it very well.

And for some of us, it is easier to revert to concrete thinking in times of great stress, than deal with the abstract.

Like those Pharisees!

Keep the law and keep the tradition, exactly. Put your hope is in keeping things the same, even if, as Jesus points out, those concrete traditions no longer represent the love and joy and compassion of God that they originally were meant to demonstrate.

So, what would worship look like, feel like, sound like, if we applied resurrection power to it today?

Well, for one, we wouldn’t start with the tradition, we would start with God! We would start with Jesus, with God’s presence among us. And we would start with us, trying to figure out how we can worship God with our whole hearts in a wildly changing world.

One of our members stopped by this week to hand me a church envelope. Now I know what you’re thinking. She could have used tithe.ly (https://tithe.ly/give?c=52802) and not stopped by! 

True, but that wasn’t my point, although maybe it helps make the point. Instead my point was this. 

She is living with her mother in Port Jervis, taking care of her. And getting up and getting to church was a problem. But now, church is at her house each Sunday, and for that matter any day of the week she chooses to watch online at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/otisville.presbyterian) and Youtube (https://www.youtube.come/otisvillepres) .

She can’t see all the people she would love to see until she gets on Zoom, but she can see worship, sing the songs, pray the prayers and now, participate in the Lord’s supper with whatever she has in the house.

Resurrection power, worship in new circumstances.

So, for example, instead of being Pharisees about the whole thing, worrying about whether the bread on the communion table is the right bread and the liquid in the cups is the right liquid, we can instead worry about whether we have gathered around the table as many as we can possibly fit!

And then we could focus on what our meal together represents, abstractly, God’s love, God’s gift, God’s presence.

We are not alone. God is with us!

We are not without means. God has gifted us!

We are not unloved or unlovable. God’s loved us so much, he offered his own son on our behalf, that through him, we might have eternal life.

We worship, out of a sense of joy, delight, and amazing love.

We are jubilant, as Sheila Moore says!

It doesn’t matter that on the Sabbath day we come to worship him in PJ’s or dressed up, with our hair uncombed or in a brilliant braid, and breakfast as the perfect worship accompaniment. What matters is that we come.

Just like those disciples on the way with Jesus on the Sabbath. What mattered was not that they ate the grain they had picked as they tried to keep up.

What mattered was that they were with him!

Amen.

Sermon for April 26

So,

When things are going well and everything is just coming up roses, we are usually pretty confident that God is with us and is blessing us.

We believe that God is smiling down and that is why everything is so good.

But what about when things aren’t so good?

I think the reality is for many of us, then aren’t quite as sure.

If things are bad for just a moment, then the feeling is often fleeting and easily dismissed. But what do we do with our understanding of our relationship with God when we are suffering?

This is really important stuff, because for some of us, we are only one tragedy away from really questioning our faith, and maybe losing it entirely.

Why?

Well part of the reason is because we have come to assume that God doesn’t want us to suffer, and that if we were God’s chosen, then we wouldn’t, even though the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that is not the case.

Suffering, struggling, persecution, difficulties, illness, financial disasters, and relationship problems are all part of the life of a follower of Jesus.

Jesus even reminds his followers in a passage I’ll be preaching about in two weeks, that “blessed are” those who are struggle, in what is called the beatitudes in Luke and in Matthew.

Because in weakness, God’s power is revealed!

Like in these two stories of resurrection power told in Luke 5 about a man with leprosy and about another man with really cool friends who was paralyzed!

In the first Jesus is busy traveling early in his ministry, preaching the good news, and folks had begun to realize that Jesus was an amazing speaker and that he was really something much more.

Entering a town Jesus is recognized by a man with leprosy.

Leprosy is a disease that causes nerves in the extremities to stop working. Because of that, people with untreated leprosy often cause injury to themselves without knowing it, which then results in infections, the death of parts of the body, and then disfigurement.

Leprosy was also a bit of a broad category in biblical times for any skin disease that could cause the skin to go bad and so in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, there were rules about how to treat people with the disease.

One of the requirements was that people considered to have leprosy were to live outside the villages, stay away from everyone, announce their own presence by shouting “unclean”, and only go to the priest to be declared “clean” if the skin disease left them.

But this man, somehow realizing who Jesus is, approaches, doesn’t shout “unclean” falls on his knees and tells Jesus, “Lord, you have the power to make me well, if only you wanted to.”

While being safe, and healthy, and financially well off can make us complacent, sometimes suffering can propel us into the presence of God.

Because in weakness, God’s power is revealed!

And then we see resurrection power at work, as Jesus declares, “I want to” and touches the leper, healing him, and sending him off to the priest to be declared clean.

Suffering is always an opportunity to see the power of God at work. It is also an opportunity for the people of God to bring resurrection power to bear on the needs of suffering people.

I know you have heard that our Deacons fed 163 people through our food pantry last month. That number is going to go up, and our Deacons could use your support. Go to Tithe.ly and make a donation to the Deacons. Write a check and send it in. Do your part to put resurrection power to work.

Together, we can do this.

It is not something we can do alone. It’s not something Jesus did alone, empowered by prayer, and by a community of disciples all learning how to apply resurrection power.

The second story isn’t about a man who recognized Jesus and asked to be healed, but rather about a man whose friends recognized Jesus and wanted the paralyzed man to see Jesus.

Oh my, isn’t that the gospel in a package tied up with a bow! Individuals and communities so desiring the healing of friends, and family, and the community and the world that they are literally willing to do anything to get them into the presence of Jesus!

While Jesus was debating with the Pharisees their understanding of the law and how holy people need to be to come into God’s presence (they thought they were holy enough, but the paralyzed man was not), the man’s friends climbed onto the roof of the house, cut a hole and lowered their friend down.

Wow! When was the last time you tried that hard to get someone you know and love or perhaps someone you don’t much like at all into Jesus presence?

And since Jesus knew that the Pharisees thought the man was paralyzed because he was a sinner and therefore unacceptable to God, Jesus forgave the man’s sins just like that, just like God does, so now he could hang out there all day with Jesus, God incarnate!

Suffering, struggles, pain, sadness are the very places God is, always. In those times we are in God’s presence. We are not suffering because God has abandoned us! God has chosen to join us in our suffering through Christ.

But, just in case some were unclear about it all, Jesus told the paralyzed man to get up and walk.

O, dear Pharisees, thinking your holiness is so amazing that you could walk right into God’s presence (and in this case not even recognize God) and that another man’s struggles are evidence of his sin, look again!

He is rolling up his mat and going home. His friends are rejoicing. They all believe in a God of joy, of miracles, and healing, and resurrection power.

They see right here God’s presence. How about you?

Do you see God’s presence in the trials and tribulations?

Do you see Jesus in your suffering?

Do you understand that our calling as followers of Christ is to find every person laid low and bring them to the master, the one who walked out of the tomb?

Are you ready to stand up, roll up your mat, and follow him?

Can you see in the troubles that surround you, the incredible presence of Him who is risen, risen indeed?

Come, grab a corner of the blanket, and we will take our friends, our family, our world to see him who knows our troubles and loves us, and forgives us, and promises us eternal life.

Because in weakness, God’s power is revealed! Amen.