10.09.05 Sermon to SPCN Youth Group

[I delivered this sermon to the youth group at South Portland Church of the Nazarene. The verbal delivering of the sermon was expounded past these unedited notes. This was particularly hard as I felt very vulnerable and exposed after admitting so much. In a self critique I wish I had done better with the ending. The night before I delivered it I shared with Professor Severson how I was struggling with the passage. He sent me his sermon notes from when he preached this lectionary passage the last time it was in the cycle. I ended up taking two paragraphs from those notes without getting a chance to seek permission, my line of thought before reading his notes was on the idea of masks, I thought what he had to say matched up well and was put better than I could have, so many thanks Prof!]


Let me tell you about my week, its definitely not a week I am proud of, but it’s the type of week that colored the lenses of how I read the passage I will be sharing. Last Sunday night I returned home to an empty house after having a friend spend the weekend with me, and I began to have a party for one. I had a major pity-party and kept finding more and more reasons to keep this party going. Parties are supposed to be times of celebration and sharing the joy of the occasion with one another, not this one. I went all the way until Wednesday not wanting to leave the house, unhappy with everything going on around me and in my life. I didn’t want to talk to any of my friends who seemed to be much happier than me. I basically shut down and missed out of doing anything of worth for a couple of days. Honestly, I didn’t even want to speak tonight, I dreaded Sunday night and wondered how I could get a lame excuse out of it. Not because I don’t like you guys, but because I was mad at God. I thought that God should have provided me a youth ministry job where I could be making an impact on lives for God’s kingdom, I mean, God gave me the passion for doing that, shouldn’t I be getting something for it?

Well knowing I couldn’t muster the courage to get out of tonight, I also feared coming up here to speak wearing one of those masks Justin talked about two weeks ago. Even more so after I began considering tonight’s passage. I didn’t pick out tonight’s passage because it’s a favorite of mine, honestly I wish I had an easier passage to look at. Many churches use a calendar of scripture readings throughout the year. This calendar is called the lectionary and lives on a three-year cycle. Its what I looked at for a passage to work with. And this is what I got: Read Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2‘The kingdom of heaven
may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3He sent his
slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would
not come. 4Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been
invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been
slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” 5But they
made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6while
the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. 7The king was
enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
8Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not
worthy. 9Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the
wedding banquet.” 10Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom
they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was
not wearing a wedding robe, 12and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in
here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. 13Then the king said to the
attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 14For many are called, but
few are chosen.’ (NRSV)

The audience listening to Jesus tell this story would clearly see the offenses this king has endured. Here this king is throwing a party, a celebration and sharing of a joyful occasion, his son’s wedding. The wedding party in Jesus’ day was a huge event, probably far bigger than those parties you might see on MTV’s “My sweet sixteen”. Have you seen that show? It’s a show where these spoiled, self-proclaimed diva rich kids have these extravagant birthday bashes and along the way there seems to be all kinds of fighting with mom and dad over everything on what dress to wear, what food to have, should I have Ashanti or Nelly? I caught the ending of a show once, and the father totaled the bill to over 200,000 dollars for one night’s party. I don’t know about you but that’s a lot of money. These kids invite everyone who’s cool from school to be at the party, even the people they don’t know but provide some cool points for being there. This king has gone out and invited all these people for his party, and here he is getting rejected, his own messengers are getting killed.

I think I can plainly see these kinds of people. Today we would think of those in the world who reject the message of Jesus, as rejecting the invitation to God’s big party. I also can see myself having rejected the invitation in my own life this past week. Sometimes there are the invitations to celebrate that we are too self-absorbed with our own agenda to accept. Its not that it was lost in the busyness of life, the people Jesus talks about knew exactly what the party was going to be about and they rejected it.

The cast out guest bothers me. I see a lot of me in that man. Here is a man who showed up to the party, but he did a very bad thing, he didn’t wear the robe. You have to understand that this king would have provided his guests with the proper robe to wear, the robe was available to this man. He chose not to wear it. He brought his own agenda to the party, that’s as bad as not even attending. How do I see how I relate? I fell into a trap thinking that I should get something back from God for being willing to work in His church, and then throwing my own tantrum for not getting anything. Many people wear those masks at church like what Justin spoke on, but they are looking to see what they can get out of being at church. The hospitality of the king is a free gift, rejected by some, and then being taken advantage of by others.

How often do we act like this man? Showing up in church, going through the
motions of Christianity, with the garment of holiness – the garment of
hospitality still hung in the closet. God has offered us the tremendous
grace to live with genuine, selfless receptivity, love and
vulnerability. God has sew together the garment of holiness by the life and
blood of his Son, and has in tremendous generosity extended that garment to you
and I. How foolish we must look in the eyes of God when we attend the party
wearing the wrong clothes!
Put in simple
and plain language, we bring bitterness, resentment, judgmental attitudes,
selfishness and negativity into God’s church. We want to be a part of the
party, but we aren’t willing to part with our grudges, our protective walls and
our right to what we believe is coming to us. We keep on attending the
party – perhaps for years on end, and all the while we leave the clothes of
self-less love and holiness hanging in the closet…willing to be at the party,
but not quite willing to wear THOSE clothes (Severson sermon notes)

It’s apparent God does not like that. By not wearing the right clothes we are missing the party altogether. Maybe by not having the right clothes we are missing the party we weren’t meant to live in by being genuinely there for the new kid at school who sits alone, or the friend who has a parent going through cancer, or maybe that friend is facing such terror alone. I know I wouldn’t have seen such things this week, so tonight I want to put the right clothes on.

Faith and Wisdom

For Christ did not send me
to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the
cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. 18For the message about the
cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God. 19For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ 20Where is the one
who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God
made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the
world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of
our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks
desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
26Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by
human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27But God
chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in
the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the
world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29so that no
one might boast in the presence of God. 30He is the source of your life in
Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption, 31in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one
who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ ~ 1 Corinthians 1:17-31

First off I want to say that I think it is extremely important to get a quality education. I know that I was enriched and challenged by my classes at ENC. The religion department seems to be well rounded in the diffrent fields of the Christian faith and in the Nazarene tradition. With all that said, I still wrestle in intense agony over the issues of faith and wisdom.
Last week the daily office (lectionary) had readings from 1 Corinthians. The first chapter which I have a block quote from continued to make me wrestle with trying to find the common ground that would sit somewhere between all my theories and ideas about God, Trinity, Church, etc., with the faith that is loaded with foolish love and self-sacrifices for God. I think that in my readings and own thinking I often fall into a trap of trying to define God, tyring to figure out how God works. And making God merely academic, relying on the little wisdom I have often makes me an atheist on many days. Some of you may need to catch your breath that I might have said on some days I feel like an atheist. There are days when I am so challenged by what I think is wise I lose my faith, I place too much onto wisdom.
Paul seems to be saying that God is above humans best abilities of wisdom. Often when things seem to fit into a certain structure of what God is, God flips it upside down, allows human kind to nail the incarnate on a cross as a criminal, a sinner against God, how can God be against God?
Monday night when I listened to Elie Wiesel talk about "why pray?" I hear and see a man who has witnessed the most perverted humanity ever, the Holocaust. Wiesel speaks about pray being the human expression to God, giving God praise and glory, or protesting God's movement, seeking help in times of despair. He also spoke of when the Prophet Jeremiah said it was God's fault that Jerusalem had been destroyed. In the days of the Holocaust many Jews and Christians saw an absence of God, a dead God. I would wonder how any young man at the age of 15 could ever again believe in God, much less pray, and Wiesel says that he prayed with his father in that camp, and if he can pray in that camp, why shouldn't he pray today?
I may have botched up the descriptions of what I heard in that lecture, but through that lecture those things stood out. Why faith? Why Pray? Wiesel seemed to answer it on tradition, if his father could do it in the camp, so he could. Thats a fine answer. But what was there to worth praising God about when you lived in Hell? I wrestle through these issues leaning on my wisdom. What I fail to do is lean on them on faith, like Wiesel seems to say. "If we could pray in that camp why shouldn't I know?" is a faith statement that declares that God is still the sovereign Lord who deserves the worship of humans in the good and bad times.
As hard as I try I can't answer the tough questions of theodicy. The gap is faith, something that seems very foolish.

This post contains thoughts I'm wrestling with and will be going back and forth on, I'm not pleased with how this post ended, I think I could use some questions to get my thought lines moving on some of the many directions I have gone on tonight.

Hands of the Potter

[Editor's note: This post was orignally written on my xanga site, I am moving it here to help set the tone of the type of writing I want this site to be, if you want my silly side then keep going to the xanga page]

And Lord when you listen to the song of my life, Let it Be, Let it be, a song so sweet, let it be...

Ever have a favorite song that if you were trapped on an island and it was the only song you could ever hear, you are pretty sure you would want this one song? Ever have a song that has lyrics that you say "That's me!" and that you wish you had written because it hits close to home on your own thoughts and feelings? Well I have a song that I fell in love with a couple years back.

I don't know exactly when I first heard the song on Caedmon's Call "Back Home" album, which I bought when it came out....then I bought Chronicles and it was on that as well, its the version I like best.

Everytime I hear that song it relates to me, it excites me, its my theme song. I often quote one of my favorite lines as an away message "Mud from the sty is still clinging to the Prodigal Son, but I'm on my way back home." Its a line, an image, that speaks of grace in such a powerful way. If you think of the Prodigal son who left home with riches in mind, ending up living in a pig sty with that mud covering him, at the pit of despair for failing on his own strength, he remembered his father's house to which he left the sty for home. That mud and stench would cling to him along that journey.

As a disciple of Christ, I layed my life out to be God's clay, imagery, which comes out of Jeremiah, of being the clay, being a substance that is molded by the Potter.

Jeremiah 18:1-6:
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : 2 "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel."

That is where I want to be, I want to be in the Potter's hand.

Clay is an interesting substance, ripped right from Webster's dictionary clay is: "an earthy material that is plastic when moist but hard when fired". I'm sure most of you already understood that. I have a few items in my own house I made from clay in elementary school art. I made this bell that with a little imagination is in the shape of a moose. I remember the project went the course of a few days. After a few days that clay I began with was drying up, and was a lot harder to move, in a way it became stubborn. When it became like that I would be able to add a little water and it would regain its plasticity. After getting my bell in the right form the teacher put it in a kilm and fired that moose up. When it came out it was no longer a material I could move around. It had become changed, I could then put in a little clay ball dangled on a string and bounce that off the walls of the clay to make a bell like noise. It became a real bell, no longer just the goal or idea of a bell when I began getting my hands dirty, but the real thing. I hope that I don't become dry clay, but am surrendered for the Potter to make something real out of.

It seems like everytime I try and go out on my own I fall into another sty of mud. But I know of a home that I am heading for. I know of a Potter who takes some of the strangest materials and makes wonderfully new creations out of them, like the plain substance of water he made into wine, the best I can do is throw some chrystal light into water to make lemonade, certainly its not like the same substance of wine (since I am the good Nazarene I don't know that much about wine). Its the hands of the Potter who lovingly, carefully, deliberately molds us into a vessel that is real and purposeful, that is where I want to be, on that wheel, on my way back home.

I know my words can barely do justice to expand on the song, so I'm just going to leave the lyrics to the Caedmon's Call song "Hands of the Potter" (and for the record, if you search for its lyrics online, the line of being mud from the sty comes up a lot as sky, but there are some sites that have it correctly as sty, and if you don't believe me, listen to the song for yourself).

Lord if I’m the clay

Then I’ve been left out in the sun

Cracked and dry, mud from the sty

Still clinging to the prodigal son

But I'm on my way back home

Yes I'm on my way back home

Into the hands (into the hands)

That made the wine (wine) from the water

Into the hands (into the hands)

The hands of the potter

Lord if I'm the clay then

Let your living water flow

Soften up my edges, Lord,

So everyone will know

That I'm on my way back home

Yes I’m on my way back home

Into the hands (into the hands)

That made the wine (wine) from the water

Into the hands (into the hands)

The hands of the potter

And Lord, when you listen for the song of my life

Let it be, let it be, a song so sweet

Let it be, let it be, a song so sweet

Let it be...

Lord, if I’m the clay then lay me down

On your spinning wheel

Shape me into something you can fill

With something real

And I'll be on my way back home

Yes I’m on my way back home

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