Loving Those We Cannot Fix

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for January 27, 2018

I noticed a bumper sticker on the rear window of a minivan parked in the Chase Bank parking lot in Ballard. What Would Jesus Do? Since Ballard is not exactly a major center of Christian piety, the sticker got my attention. (For my non-NW friends: Ballard is one of the most atheistic neighborhood in the US.) I then noticed another sticker right next to the What Would Jesus Do? sticker. This adjacent sticker had been damaged and hard to read. I looked closely. It was also a Jesus sticker. It read, “Jesus would drive in the RIGHT lane except to pass.”

I laughed and laughed. Only in Ballard—or Fremont—would I see a bumper sticker citing Jesus in support of proper freeway driving technique. They should have included one of the famous quotations by Jesus about traffic management:

“Nathaniel 13, verse 8: Why you take you donkey to town, do not take up the whole road. Leave room for your neighbor to pass.”

Bartholomew 4:6. “You hypocrites! You prohibit donkeys in the temple out of regard for God, but tie your donkeys in narrow streets making passage impossible for your neighbors. Fools, do you not know that obstructing your neighbor who is made in God's image is the same as obstructing God?”

Of course, I'm making up these “quotations” from Jesus. Jesus never said anything about traffic management in Jerusalem or in Seattle. Jesus never said or did anything that would offer a distinctly “Christian” approach to driving.

When we ask the question, What would Jesus do?, very often there is no specific example in the Gospel that provides a straightforward answer to the question. Instead, Jesus becomes a stand-in for our highest ideals. The name, Jesus, gets wrapped around our ideas of what is noble and wise and compassionate. Jesus was wise, compassionate, honest, good. When we ask What would Jesus do? We are asking what is the wise, compassionate, honest, good thing to do. And our answer to the question says more about us than it does about Jesus.

I faced this hermeneutical challenge as I worked on this week's sermon.

I began with pictures in my head. Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara. Each of these persons was born with special challenges. Each of them has received intensive therapeutic intervention. And each requires and will always require special help. We cannot fix these people. Not if “fix” means getting them to a place where they will be able to manage their own lives without special assistance.

These people are not going to grow up and take care of their parents. They are not going to earn enough money over the course of their lifetimes to pay for their care. Some will never manage their own money. Some will never speak. Some will never be able to change their own diapers. Not even if they live to be sixty years old. They will not become “productive members of society.” They will always be takers. Always.

With these people filling my mind's eye, I asked the question: What would Jesus do?

When I took this question to the Gospel I immediately ran into a problem. In the Gospel, Jesus solved every physical, material problem he faced. Paralyzed for 38 years—no problem. Jesus made the man's legs work. Blind? No problem. Jesus cured the blindness. A son who had demonic fits or seizures all his life? Not to worry. Jesus fixed it. Jesus solved every physical, material problem he encountered. Miracles were routine.

So when we looked at my collage of images of friends with severe challenges and asked what would Jesus do, the first part of the answer was easy: Jesus would heal them, fix them, make life easy for them. Which gives us no help at all. Because our friends cannot be fixed. Our friends have genetic disorders, chromosomal abnormalities, severe learning disabilities, and profound mental illness. And we cannot fix them. We cannot do what Jesus did. We cannot do what Jesus would do.

Jesus healed people. We are left to care for them. Jesus fixed problems. We manage problems. This is our life as the people of God. This is our life as the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus has placed among us people we cannot fix.

I have friends who attend the Bethel Church in Redding, California. This church specializes in miraculous healings. My friends have witnessed miracles. They experienced for themselves healing from incurable conditions. I love their stories. I do not deny the occurrence of miracles. But the town of Redding still has a hospital. And it is not empty. Redding has assisted living facilities. And people are not moving from assisted living back to independent living. Even in the neighborhoods surrounding Bethel Church there are children with severe disabilities. Even in the Bethel Congregation itself there are families serving as caregivers.

When we consider our children and friends and neighbors and parents who have special needs and we ask what would Jesus do? The stories of healing in the Gospel are not especially helpful. Because we cannot fix the people we know.

A few weeks ago, I listened to a theologian who expressed great admiration for the provision in the law of Moses regarding gleaning. According to the law, if you had a grain field, at harvest time, you were obliged to leave the corners unharvested. After you did your first gathering, you were prohibited from going back over the field a second time to make sure you had gathered every last stalk of grain. Instead, those unharvested corners and missed stalks were to be left for poor people who had no fields. Once you were finished with your harvest, they could harvest those corners and gather any grain that had been dropped in your harvesting process.

The theologian applauded this approach, making a veiled political point, saying this divine method of helping the poor meant no one got something for nothing. The poor people experienced the dignity of work.

The theologian was correct as far as he went. Those who can work, should work. But he left out Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara. If my theologian friend ran the world, a lot of people would die because they are unable to go out to the fields and gather. They are unable to cook. They are unable to turn on the water faucet. They cannot change their diapers, even at age 25.

Most of us have heard the phrase, “Give people a hand up, not a hand out.” Certainly, where we can, we should give a hand up.

One of the proudest moments of my life came during a performance by a brilliant musician who had been close friends with my sister back when we were kids. This singer paused in her performance and publicly thanked me for giving her a hand up. It happened during her freshman year in college. She was floundering, academically and socially. Then she attended a coaching group I led. She embraced a number of good habits. She got her feet under her. Grades and social life improved. She developed a solid spiritual life. And went on to a great career. She credited her turnaround to that coaching group.

I love the story. I gave a little help and it seems to have made a big difference.

But the story is useless—maybe even worse than useless, maybe even cruel—if I tell it in front of someone whose child will never speak or someone who is in college only because of the special assistance provided to blind students. My friend had the capacity to take care of herself, with just a little bit of temporary support. She got “fixed.” That's wonderful and completely irrelevant when we consider the needs of Quinn, Joel, Bryden, Orin, Alex, Cara, and Kara.

A friend is visiting us from Texas. He has a brother with schizophrenia. The brother began attending a church. The church embraced him. They demonstrated authentic “Christian” caring. They made him a part of their church family. They helped him with rent occasionally. Helped him find jobs. Took him on mission trips. For a number of years, this church's embrace of Paul's brother was a perfect example of the power of a loving church. They were a beautiful church. And life for Paul's brother was better because of the care that church provided. Then the brother went off his meds—meds he had been taking for years. He quit all medication, completely and permanently. His mind went out of control. He ended up hospitalized. People from the church—still demonstrating the love of God—went to see him. But he sent them away. He was hostile and fearful. He broke off all contact with the church because voices in his head warned him they were aliens out to get him.

They still loved him. They could not fix him. Still they loved him. That's what the church of Jesus does.

Late Friday night, my friend Paul was asking me about today's sermon. I explained my difficulty. I could not think of any problem Jesus could not fix. So how did I get at the question, What would Jesus do, in the context of people we cannot fix.

Then it came to me.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross on that final Friday afternoon, he looked down at the small group of friends who were gathered. In the group were Jesus' mother, Mary, and his most intimate disciple, John.

When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple he loved standing there, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son!" Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And from that time, the disciple took her to his own home. John 19:26-27

The problem Jesus' mother faced could not be fixed. She was a widow and soon to be childless. And faced decades of life with no one and nothing. What could Jesus do? What did Jesus do?

He asked his most intimate disciple to take care of her. Till the end of her life. Forever.

This is the picture of God's will for us in the face of those we cannot fix. Let us care for them. That's what Jesus would do.  

Judgment Day

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

For 1/20/2018

I was sitting in the Top Pot donut shop in Ballard, writing. At a nearby table three people were busy in conversation. Apparently they were security supervisors for a large retail complex. The lead guy was mapping out strategy and procedures for the other two people.

They talked of helping people. I heard about some guy who got stuck in a bathroom and security came to the rescue. Some other people got stuck in an elevator. People needed help with this emergency or that. They talked of how to make sure everyone who needed help got it in a timely fashion.

Then there was the other part of their work. Checking every stairwell top to bottom every shift because people sometimes sneaked in and camped there. And they had to watch for bad guys. They had to be aware when someone was casing the place looking for an opportunity to steal.

Listening in on their conversation reminded me of my own work with security. For fifteen or sixteen years, I served as the head of the security department at our annual Western Washington Adventist convention called Campmeeting. We had thirty employees. When I got there, many of the guys imagined themselves as policemen. They were eager find and bust the bad guys. Too eager, in my opinion. So I set about changing how we viewed ourselves. I told my employees that we were not a police department, we were the Happy Department. Our job was to make sure everyone on campus had a good time. Help little old ladies move into their accommodations. Help mothers find their lost kids. (We became really, really good at that.) Check bathrooms and make sure they were servicable. And yes, in the evening, we had to enforce the curfew and chase teenagers back to their tents.

Thinking of ourselves as the Happy Department helped change the atmosphere of the campus, a little. We had less and less “enforcement” work to do over the years. There were fewer conflicts that we had to manage.

But for all my talk about being the Happy Department, sometimes we had to become enforcers. We had to stop the bad guys.

One old guy had been coming for years. He created minor headaches, and was surrounded by an aura of suspicion. We heard third and fourth hand reports of him flirting with young girls. Then he proposed marriage to a minor, a young woman who was willing to tell me her story. We banned him from campus. Forever. Judgment day. And after that the campus was a happier place.

Another man raised my suspicions but I knew of no definite offense. I had not even heard of any allegation of wrong-doing on his part. But I was worried. Then a kid I knew told me something specific. I called the police. There was an investigation and this man went to the big house. Day of judgment. And then the campus was safer. Tragically, the world was a better place because he was not in it. That is sad. It is also true.

Sometimes being the Happy Department required us to be tough with the bad guys.

I love the language of our Old Testament reading this morning from Psalm 96.

Let the heavens be glad, and the earth rejoice!

Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!

Let the fields and their crops dance in mirth.

Let the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD,

Just a couple of pages later, we find similar language in Psalm 98.

Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!

Let the earth and all living things join in.

Let the rivers clap their hands in glee!

Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the LORD.

Rivers clapping their hands. Trees singing. Fields dancing. Mountains rejoicing. A happy world.

Some of you spend time on the water. Sailing, cruising, kite-boarding, kayaking. Have you ever been out on the water on a sunny day? The sky is blue. Here and there pillows of cottony-white cumulus clouds are floating in the blue. A slight breeze ruffles the water and keeps you from getting hot. It's late afternoon. The sun sprinkles sparkles across the tops of waves. At that moment the whole world seems just right. The whole world is happy.

That's the picture these scriptures paint.

More relevant to the season. Imagine you are a skier—many of you don't have to imagine. Imagine it's a Tuesday after a big snow. You have the day off and head to the slopes. There's twelve inches of powder. It's 28 degrees and sunny. No wind. Because it's a Tuesday, it's not crowded. You own the slopes. You're in the middle of a run and pause before resuming your flight. Sunlight is every where, a million diamonds sparkle in every direction. Overhead, an intense blue sky. It's quiet. A couple of jays swoop across the slope and land in the tree beside Inside you. Off in the distance you hear a couple of kids squealing and giggling as they dig themselves out after a fall.

This is the world imagined by the poet in this Psalm.

Mountains dancing. Trees singing. Rivers clapping their hands. Waves shouting hallelujah. The earth itself under our feet skipping with delight.

How do we get there? What is the path from this place to that place?

Judgment.

Each of these Psalms follows the same line. Mountains dance. Trees sing. Rivers clap their hands. Waves shout hallelujah. The earth itself under our feet skips with delight. Why?

Oliver read the words for us:

because God is coming!

God is coming to judge the earth.

God will judge the world with justice.

Judgment day. We can hardly wait. Finally, everything will be set right. Hallelujah.

This is not the whole story. There is another picture of judgment. We heard it in our New Testament reading that Violet read for us.

Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. Then he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. "And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me. But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. "What sorrow awaits the world, because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting. So if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better to enter eternal life with only one hand or one foot than to be thrown into eternal fire with both of your hands and feet. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. "Beware that you don't look down on any of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father. Matthew 18:2-10 New Living Translation (Accessed through Blue Letter Bible.com.)

God is watching. God takes special delight in little ones. We are most in tune with God when we tend and care for the little ones.

God is watching. God takes special umbrage when little ones are harmed. You don't want to have God walk around the corner just after you have called a child stupid. You don't want to run into God as you walk away from a child in need. You touch a child—and it would be better for you to have been hauled out into Elliot Bay and dropped overboard with a pair of concrete boots on. God is watching. And the Bible declares over and over that God is watching with the intent of ultimately overruling the decisions of the powerful in favor of the powerless. God will reverse the advantages conferred by wealth and status and size and intelligence and beauty and nationality and ethnicity.

Those on the bottom will be lifted up. And those on top will find themselves on the bottom.

Nearly all of us here are among the privileged. Compared with other people in the world we are privileged beyond calculation. We were born in the right country to the right parents with sound minds and bodies and opportunities to turn work and study into financial security. We are blessed.

In the judgment, God will ask how we used those privileges. God will ask if we noticed those beneath us in the pecking order of the world.

Many of read in the news this week of the horrific domestic abuse by David and Louise Turpin. These parents turned into monsters to their own children. The grandparents of the kids have reported that the children memorized long passages of the Bible, some memorizing the entire book. I'm afraid I know where this story is going to go. I'm afraid we will learn these parents thought they were doing right.

Echoing Jesus, I would say, it would have been better for David and Louise if they had died of snake bite out in western Texas. Or heat stroke.

Yesterday morning, Don and I were talking. He said, “Someone should have shot those people.” Then he challenged me: You think God would be okay with that?”

Inwardly, I laughed. Don had me. I'm a pacificist, all around nice guy. I think of the church as God's Happy Department. We want to make the world better and save everyone in the process. We are called to serve the world. Mostly that means smiling service.

But sometimes, it means thundering opposition. Because we are the people of God, we strongly oppose every act of oppression. We denounce evil, especially the use of power to advantage the powerful, the use of wealth to advantage the wealthy, the use of law to advantage the mighty. Do not balance budgets on the backs of hungry children. Do not preserve our comfortable lives at the expense of our grandchildren. Do not harm children.

Instead, let us join with God in cherishing and nourishing every little one—both those who are literally little—children. And those with fewer advantages, smaller privileges than ours.

As we do this we will find ourselves cooperating with God. We are preparing the world for the glorious day of judgment when the earth and all that is in it will sing for joy. When the fields will dance, when the ocean will sing and all the trees will clap their hands.

Grown-up Jesus

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for Sabbath, January 6, 2018

Texts:  Deuteronomy 6:1-7, Luke 4:14-21

A week or so ago I visited a construction sight owned by a friend. Around behind the house, grubbing in the dirt, working to tunnel a drain pipe under an existing sidewalk, was my friend's grandson. Home for the holidays and hard at work.

When we think of kids coming home for the holidays, it's natural to think first of gatherings around the table or in the living room. But shared meals, as rich as they are, are only part of what it means to be family. Shared work is also part of the story.

And the more grown up they are, the more we rely on them.

I remember years and years ago, when there were challenges with the family computer, it was “dad to the rescue.” That has now completely changed, of course. In all things electronic, I go to my kids for help and advice.

If I have trouble with my phone, I consult my son. If I need to buy a computer, I just find out what computer my daughter bought, and I buy the same one.

This movement from dependent childhood to masterful maturity shows up in the story of Jesus.

The Gospel begins with the stories of Jesus' birth—the shepherds and wise men and angels. The Gospel passes over the growing up. There is no teenage Jesus in the Gospel. We make up stories of Jesus faithfully and uneventfully working in his father's carpenter shop all through his teen years. In the devotional telling of this story, there are never any family arguments, not disagreement between Joseph and his maturing, smart stepson Jesus. Maybe. My guess is that Jesus was a little more normal than our legends imagine.

The Gospel skips over all that and with one brief exception takes us straight to the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Jesus' public works begins explosively. Almost instantly he gathers large crowds with his preaching and healing. After weeks or a few months, Jesus finally returns home to Nazareth, the town where he had worked in the carpenter shop for twenty years.

They invite him to speak in the local synagogue. He accepts. He reads the day's scripture reading.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me,

for the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted

and to proclaim that captives will be released

and prisoners will be freed.

He has sent me to tell those who mourn

that the time of the LORD’s favor has come. Isaiah 61:1-2.

The congregation relishes these words. They imagined themselves to be the poor people who would receive good news. They were the brokenhearted who would be comforted. They were the captives who would be freed. They were the recipients of divine favor.

What was there not to like?

Then Jesus launched into his sermon. Before he finished the audience became so furious, they rushed him, grabbed him and dragged him out of town and were going to shove him off a precipice.

Why did they get so angry at Jesus?

Because he talked just like the ancient prophets. He sounded like Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jesus rejected the self-congratulation that lay at the heart of their religion challenged them to see other people as the poor and brokenhearted and captives.

The good people of Nazareth were happy to claim Jesus as their native son as long as he was doing good work in other towns. He was making them look good. But they couldn't take it when he challenged them to make greater effort in the direction of the ideals proclaimed by the prophets.

This story of Jesus is replayed in every generation in the church. We are people of the prophets, the people of Jesus. We are custodians of the words of the Hebrew prophets”

But let justice pour down like a flood,

And righteousness like a mighty river. Amos 5:4

He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes between strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Micah 4:3

This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. Jeremiah 22:3

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:44-45

We do the best we can to live out these high ideals. We aim to do right. We build our lives, make the necessary compromises to get along in the world. We become comfortable with our way of life. Then our kids become teenagers and young adults. They read these ancient words and they come back to challenge us. They demand that we do better.

I plead with you who are young among us: keep your ideals alive. Speak out loud your highest, purest moral convictions. Unsettle us with your uncompromising vision. My prayer for us who are older, for us who have settled into the best routines we could manage as we balanced the demands of ordinary life and the call of the Gospel—my prayer for us is that we will be more receptive to our children than were the residents of Nazareth. We will not be able to live out fully the highest ideals of our children. (They will not either, but let's not tell them that. Let's allow them to discover this on their own.) We may not be able to achieve all that our kids dream of, but I pray that we will encourage their vision and do all that we can to bend toward their ideals. How can we do less as the church of Jesus Christ?

This fall, a group of people from Green Lake Church, heard the call to mission, the call to use the gifts God had given them to do something good in a far away place. I've asked Brian McGrath to share with us some of their experience.