Bread

Preliminary manuscript for the sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

For July 5, 2014

Exodus 18:8-12, KJV or NKJV or RSV

Exodus 24:9-12

Matthew 26:26-30

Worship events for the day: Baptism and Communion.

Toward the end of the day this past Monday, I was starved. I had left Washington at nine p.m. Sunday night with my daughter, Bonnie, headed for Wyoming. She drove all night. I took over about five in the morning, and we continued our drive to Laramie, Wyoming. I didn't eat breakfast because I knew a full stomach would make me even more drowsy. Same for lunch. We nibbled along the way, some chips. A few cookies, nothing substantial. Finally, we arrived in Laramie, found Bonnie's new apartment and unloaded the truck. Bonnie and her roommate were discussing the placement of the couch when I announced with some intensity. I've got to go find some real food!

I invited the roommate to join us. She declined and said she was going to finish her workout which our arrival had interrupted. Bonnie and I headed out to the truck. We were just getting ready to pull out when the roommate ran out and said, “I've changed my mind. I'd like to come.” She climbed in and guided us to a great little vegetarian restaurant.

Eventually the food arrived. After the waiter had loaded our table, I said, “It's my custom to say a blessing over my food. Are you okay with that?” The roommate nodded. I bowed my head and said, “Lord God in Heaven. Thank you for this good food and nice place. Blessed this food and our conversation. In the name of Jesus, Amen.”

Then we ate. The girls both got salads which seemed woefully lacking in substance to me. I had something the menu called a black bean tamale pie. And we talked. About music and career dreams and grand philosophies of life. This was the first time Bonnie and the roommate had met. There was the carefulness of strangers getting acquainted. There was the ease of conversation over dinner.

For Bonnie and me, it was a rehearsal of family tradition. When I ordered the black bean tamale pie, Bonnie told her it roommate, “I could have predicted that. Growing up, he served us beans and rice all the time.” And I knew that she was recalling our Friday night parties—haystacks (for those not in the cognoscenti this means a taco salad—beans, salad, corn chips) and friends and music.

That black bean tamale pie did not just fill the hole in my stomach, it recalled thousands of shared meals, shared times of laughter and conversation. The roommate couldn't know it, but I suspect our dinner this past Monday evening was her initiation into the extended McLarty clan. She's part of our family now. She protested when I paid the check, but I dismissed her protest, saying, “I'm in the habit of adopting my kids' friends.”

This is the power of shared food. For Bonnie and me it was another enactment of our shared life. For the roommate, an initiation. A first step into a circle that stretches half the world around.

That dinner was a perfect picture of what we do in worship. We gather here to celebrate again and again and again, our shared life. And our worship is the perfect occasion for welcoming others—newly adopted daughters and sons of God. Newly met sisters and brothers.

Shared life costs something. It's worth the cost, of course. Still, it's smart to acknowledge it costs. Adopting my daughter's roommate cost me a few dollars on Monday night. Adopting each other here as brothers and sisters, parents and children costs us money and time and heart. And these precious connections are worth every bit of the expense.

Today, we baptized Jennifer Buyco. When I buried her under the water and lifted her again, my hands did not belong to me alone. They were your hands, too, and the hands of God. I was acting for all of us. In obedience to Jesus, we buried her old identity rooted in heredity, family of origin, education, ethnicity and even gender and raised her into a new identity—she is now, officially, part of the royalty of heaven.

The Book of Revelation paints an astonishing picture of Jesus' plan for his people—all of them, men and women, every race and nationality—are destined to sit on the throne of heaven and share in the rule of God.

When I raised Jennifer out of the water today, I was raising her as royalty in the kingdom of heaven. She and we share a family claim to the throne of heaven.

In a few minutes, we will share “The Lord's Supper” together.

This ritual flows from the supper Jesus shared with his inner circle on the last night before he was executed. Because of the intense emotions of that evening, we remember that single meal. I tend to think of it as a single event, an “only-once” happening. We remember the words Jesus spoke to his friends gathered around the table. He took a loaf of bread, broke it and handed it around, saying, “This is my body which is broken for you.” Then he passed the wine cup and said, “Drink from it all of you, this is my blood.”

We call it the Last Supper because it was “the last one.” Yes.

It was also a repetition. It was one in a three-year long series of shared suppers. Jesus and his disciples did life together. They ate together. When we take communion we are joining that tradition. We are joining that family. As members of the fellowship of Jesus, all of our meals are opportunities for reminding ourselves again of our privileges and responsibilities.

When we say a blessing over our food, we are renewing our participation in the heavenly family. Under the light of a blessing, a piece of toast and a glass of orange juice becomes communion. Dare I say it, even coffee and a donut, as meager nutrition as that is, becomes a point of connection with the heavenly family, if we are open to receive it.

Rituals teach us the hidden meaning of ordinary life. Communion teaches us that every meal carries the potential to connect us with heaven. Baptism teaches us that every passing through the waters—every morning shower—marks our entrance in a new life blessed by God.

Rituals reveal hidden meanings in the routines of our ordinary life. Baptism teaches us that every passing through the waters—every morning shower—marks our entrance in a new life blessed by God. Communion teaches us that every meal carries the potential to connect us with God and the family of God. Our worship here on Sabbath mornings, teaches us that God is present on earth, in Seattle, in music, in words, in art, and in the faces of ordinary people. Every worship service whispers to us, that we—you and I, ordinary disciples of Jesus—are the face of God for one another and the world.

So let us gather again at the table of the Lord and renew our connection with God and one another.

Family of God

Manuscript for sermon at Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventist Church

Sabbath, November 30, 2013

Luke 13 and 19

The story begins with a heart-breaking portrait of affliction. A woman has a horrible deformity of the spine. A kids' version of the story goes like this:

There once was a woman who had very much trouble.

So much trouble, in fact, she was bent over double.

All day long as she went about town

all she could see was down on the ground.

She recognized people not by their faces

but by the color and shape of their laces.

She could not see the sky or birds flying by.

She could not pick the figs in the tree by her house

Or fetch down the pot from the shelf up top.

One Sabbath this woman who had very much trouble and was bent over double, went to the synagoge as usual. And who should show up that day, but Jesus. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then Jesus touched her and she was immediately healed. Her back straightened. Now she would be able to look up at the sky. She could go home and pick her figs. She would be able to see the top of her teenage son's head.

Naturally, she was ecstatic and praised God.

The synagogue ruler, however, was quite annoyed. “Look,” he said, “there are six days for this kind of stuff. Come on those days and be healed. But today—why, this is the Sabbath! It is a day for worship, not for healing.

Jesus pushed back.

“You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water?

The answer was a foregone conclusion. Judaism had a well-developed ethic of the priority of life over ritual, even the life of an animal was worth more than a sacred ritual. So, yes, the most religious Jew, the most devout rabbi would not hesitate to untie his donkey and lead it out to water.

So, Jesus says, if you have that much regard for a donkey or an ox what about this woman?

This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years! Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” Luke 13:15-16

“Daughter of Abraham.” This woman was not just any human being, some riffraff drifted in from the street. She was Jewish nobility. She was an insider, a family member with a pedigree that went back to the greatest of great names. Daughter of Abraham.

When the synagogue ruler looked at the woman, he saw a deformed, misshapen, grotesque figure. He saw how different she was from the ideal of womanhood. In his eyes the magnitude of that difference was a measure of her unworthiness. To this professional, the extent of her deformity was a measure of how far she was from having any legitimate claim on the favor of God or the service of the community. “Get fixed.” he was saying. “Then come and worship.”

Or worship, if you must, then go get fixed. But either way, know you are not one of us.

Jesus cut through all this status game with a simple declaration: This woman is a daughter of Abraham. She belongs. She is in the family. And because she is in the family, the extent of her deformity is a measure of her claim on the resources of heaven, a measure of our obligation to her.

We just witnessed three baptisms. In an official, public rite we welcomed three young women with noble characters, bright minds, musical gifts, and admirable faith. Any family would be proud to claim these young woman as “part of the family.” We certainly are.

How does the story of the woman bent over double, the Daughter of Abraham, connect with the lives of these young women?

First this story is a promise: On behalf of God, we are saying to Sophie, Irina and Charlotte, “Your place here is not created by your beauty, your character, your intelligence, your moral achievements. We take delights in all those virtues. Yes. And if they all were gone tomorrow, you would still be part of the family. If something happens and you end up bent over double for 18 years, we will still claim you as our own, as God's own.”

Second this story is a challenge, a call: You are called to speak on God's behalf. God calls you to say to one another and to your classmates and neighbors: you, too, are welcome among us. You, too, are children of the Heavenly King. You are called to see with the eyes of God. To see yourself as God sees you—dearly beloved. And to see others as God sees them—deary beloved.

Baptism welcomes all of us into a community committed to healing. Among us brokenness is acknowledged. We don't pretend that being bent over double is normal. We reject the idea that being bent over double is just as good as standing upright. But rather than condemning the person who is bent over double, we join them in longing for healing. We do everything we can to provide for healing.

When the woman who was bent over double was healed, naturally she was ecstatic. And she was not the only one who got excited. When Jesus pushed back against the synagogue ruler's protest, and insisted that healing the woman was the exactly right thing to do, the rest of the congregation joined the women in happy celebration.

This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did. Luke 13:17

Baptism brings us all into a family where we celebrate healing. Our response to human brokenness is a hunger for healing, a hunger that over time displaces our “natural” hunger for vengeance and even our hunger for propriety.

In Luke 19, we read another story about inclusion in the family of God. Zacchaeus was a prominent tax collector in the city of Jericho. Tax collectors were opportunistic business men, widely regarded as morally deficient. Zacchaeus heard Jesus was coming to town. He wanted to see Jesus, but because he was short and because his life could be at risk in a dense crowd, he climbed a tree along the route Jesus would take into town. (In that culture, tax collectors were seen as collaborators with the enemy because they were acting on behalf of the Roman occupation army. Nationalists would happily kill a collaborator if they could do so without getting caught. A short man squeezed in the middle of a dense, milling crowd would have been a tempting assassination opportunity.)

Jesus stopped under the tree, looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down. I'm going to eat lunch at your house this afternoon.”

Zacchaeus tumbled out of the tree and led Jesus and his entourage to his house.

This time the sentiments of the crowd were aligned with the judgment of the Pharisees. They were mad at Jesus. He was contradicting their own prejudices. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. Luke 19:7

At his estate, Zacchaeus put on a feast. At some point in the dinner, Zacchaeus made a little speech.

“I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Luke 19:8

Jesus, hearing this speech, responds,

Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. Luke 19:9

By going to dinner at Zacchaeus' house, Jesus had demonstrated that he saw Zacchaeus as “inside” the family. When Zacchaeus responded by renouncing deceptive practices and pledging himself to restitution and to generosity, Jesus said in effect, “This proves his place in the family. These are our family values. This kind of behavior is our family tradition.”

The Bible imagines the church as a family—an idealized family.

When someone in the family gets sick, has an accident, loses a job, experiences grief, a healthy family rallies. The family pulls together to see what can be done to support the person.

When the Bible describes baptism as a death and resurrection it is highlighting the radical nature of our identity in Christ. We bury our old identity and are raised with a new identity. We come up out of the water as the newly born children of God, people who have been born into a new family.

In this new family, we have high ideals. We aim to be holy. To love people the way God loves. To forgive as we have been forgiven. To be self-controlled and wise. To be compassionate and generous. To be disciplines and courageous.

When we observe in ourselves or in others a gap between performance and these ideals, we understand that gap as room for growth, as an invitation to orient our lives again toward these noble goals. The gap between performance and the ideal is an occasion for grace—God's pardon, our pardon.

In the family of God, there is no condemnation. Instead we live in hope.

I have listened to mothers of disabled children talk of their dreams and longings for their children. Of course, these mothers want more for their children. But that longing has nothing to do with condemnation. It has everything to do with loving dreams. God dreams of our success, our achievement of holiness and righteousness. God's awareness of the obvious gap between our aspirations and our performance does not lead God to reject us, condemn us. Rather God uses that gap as a call to invite us to try again, to aim higher, to receive forgiveness and to pass it on.

Baptism links us together in a community of hope.

Here at our church we have a couple of young men who are unable to shake our hands or respond in kind when we say good morning. That doesn't stop us from saying good morning. When I see Alex or Quinn, I call them by name and greet them. I would be thrilled if they reached out and shook my hand. I would be ecstatic if Alex responded with a big smile. It hasn't happened. But that doesn't stop me. It leaves me hoping. Someday. Maybe.

The stories of the woman and Zacchaeus turn out right. The woman bent over double stands erect. She can see the sky and pick her figs. The corrupt business man becomes generous and conscientious. We cheer the wonderful turn arounds in these stories. But the spiritual heart of the two stories is not the way they turn out. The spiritual heart of the stories is the radical vision of family announced by Jesus:

This woman is a daughter of Abraham. This man is a son of Abraham. Those who looked like they did not belong, had the status of insiders and old timers.

Baptism declares us, even us, to be insiders and old timers. We belong here. This is our family. Further, baptism declares that we, even we, have been given the full responsibilities of insiders and old timers. That is, we are called to reach out. To bring help and hope and healing to all. We are call to participate fully in the mission of God.

Dawn

Sermon for Green Lake Church, a Seventh-day Adventist congregation

December 1, 2012

Text: Matthew 4:12-17

Note: This will be my first sermon as the senior pastor of Green Lake Church. I will miss my North Hill Adventist Fellowship congregation immensely. On the other hand I'm excited about the prospect of ministry in the Wallingford, Freemont and University neighborhoods of Seattle.

Years ago in Akron, Ohio, a woman approached me after church. Could I baptize her daughter, Annie?

I should have been a little less enthusiastic. The question fleetingly crossed my mind: why was Mother asking me about baptism for a daughter I had never met? But I was so excited by the prospect of giving Bible studies and preparing someone for baptism, I took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Could I baptize her daughter? “Sure. Of course. I'd be honored. Let's set up a time for Bible studies and we'll prepare Annie for baptism.”

“You don’t understand.” Mother responded, using the language of that time and place. “My daughter is retarded.”

“No problem.” I answered. “I'll make it real simple.”

“No, you don’t understand. She’s severely retarded. She can’t talk.”

This was a problem.

Mother gave me more information: Annie was twenty. She was about two speaking developmentally. She was still in diapers. The reason I had never seen her was that her mother did not bring her to church. Annie was given to spontaneous, loud vocalizing and erratic movement. Rarely she had seizures. Ruth didn't feel comfortable bringing her to church. But could I baptize her? Could Annie join the church?

Mother knew her request was against the rules. Adventists practice “believer's baptism.” We do not baptize children at the mere request of their parents. Instead baptism is our recognition that persons—whether they are little people who have grown up in the church or big people coming to church as adults—have the capacity to choose to accept grace, to choose to cooperate with God, to participate in goodness. Believer's Baptism expresses our profound commitment to freedom.

We do not baptize two-year-olds. Our doctrine precludes baptizing babies in diapers. Still, Ruth was asking me to baptize her twenty-year-old baby, Annie.

Mother tried to minimize the violation of the rules. “I tell Annie all the time that Jesus loves her. And I think she understands. Sometimes I think she says Jesus. It's not very clear, but I'm pretty sure that's what she is saying.”

What to do?

Church doctrine is unambiguous. Church policy is clear. Equally clear was the desperate longing of this Mother's heart. For her, baptism was the doorway to the kingdom of God. The idea that Annie would be excluded from the kingdom of heaven was a darkness too heavy to bear.

So, in a private ceremony, we broke all the written rules. Overriding tradition and doctrine and policy, we baptized Annie and received her officially as a member of the church.

That Sabbath afternoon was a fulfillment of our scripture reading.

"Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, hear this: the people sitting in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the territory of the shadow of death a light has dawned. Matthew 4:15-16

We see Jesus lighting a mother's life in a fantastic story in Matthew 15. Jesus was on a private retreat with his disciples. He had actually left Galilee and gone across the border north into a non-Jewish town to escape the press of the crowds. Somehow a pagan woman finds out Jesus is there. She accosts Jesus and company, begging him to exorcise her daughter. First Jesus ignored the woman. When that didn't work to get rid of her, he told her that her request was inappropriate. In fact, Jesus said, she was asking him to go outside the limits of his divine commission. To state it as bluntly as possible, Jesus told the woman, “If I do what you are asking, I would be acting contrary to God's calling.”

Then what did Jesus do? He granted her request! He brought into her life great light. Jesus regard for actual human need was so intense, that it prompted him to step outside the ordinary limits of his divinely-given mission. (See Matthew 15:22-28.)

Certainly for that mother, Jesus arrival in her neighborhood was the dawning of a great light.

I'm intrigued by the cryptic words at the beginning of this verse—Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. Zebulun and Naphtali were two of the twelve tribes of Israel. They are not particularly famous or infamous for anything. They were the nobodies of Israel, or maybe I should say, they were the everybodies, the ninety-nine percent (or more accurately the sixty-five percent). They had no connection with the monarchy. They were not priests. They weren't famous as warriors. They were just plain folk.

Metaphorically, Annie's mother was one of those Zebulunites. She was a nobody. The only person in her family active in the church. No connections to the important people in the congregation. No college classmates at the General Conference. A true believer living in faithful obscurity.

The darkness referred to in the prophecy was not “special darkness.” It was not extraordinary, newsworthy horror. It was the prosaic darkness characteristic of the human condition. It is the darkness that arises from our fear of alienation. Our suspicion that we are not included. The darkness that haunts a mother's heart when she wonders if there is place in God's church, in God's kingdom, for her special-needs daughter.

Let's go back to our scripture. Matthew described the beginning of Jesus' ministry using the language of Isaiah: Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, Galilee of the Gentiles, hear this: The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. Those are the words of Isaiah and Matthew.

Jesus used entirely different language: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent.”

The “great light” of Isaiah and Matthew is the news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's close. Real close. It's right here.

It is so close, so available that repentance makes sense. It's doable. It's possible.

“Repent” is fancy religious language. It would be better translated, “Turn.” or “Alter your life.” Make a good change.” Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, so turn, enter. The door is right here.

Jesus does not tell people to adjust their lives in an effort to attain the kingdom of heaven. Rather he tells them, the kingdom of heaven has moved into your world. It's here. It's available. So turn. Turn now. Turn here. Turning is not a desperate, Hail Mary, long shot, aiming at some unlikely goal. It is the confident turning toward the welcoming presence of God.

The story of Annie's mother awakens our sympathies. We are all happy together that Annie was welcomed, that the rules were adjusted so Annie's mother's heart was filled with light.

Sometimes darkness haunts people whose vulnerability is much less obvious than Annie's. People like Nicodemus and Thomas. People like Bob.

When Bob and I met he was taking his first tentative steps back toward some kind of connection with church, unsure whether there was really a place for him.

We shared significant interests outside of church. We became friends. I heard his story. When he first encountered the Adventist Church it was perfect medicine for the chaos and dysfunction in his life. It made sense. It helped. He embraced it completely, zealously. A couple of decades later he was a leader in his church. A paragon of Adventist virtue. Then he found some cracks in the edifice.

Twenty years of obeying all the rules had not transformed all of his unruly impulses. It seemed to him, he was essentially the same person he had been when it all began. He was obviously had not become good enough to pass the heavenly inspection.

He was going to be lost.

The final proof of his hopelessness was his inability to believe the world was 6000 years old. When he had joined the church, he happily set aside everything he had learned in his geology classes and embraced the doctrine of the church. Twenty years later, he could no longer do it.

The church taught 6000 years. He did not believe it. Could not believe it. So, he had resigned himself to being lost. There was nothing to be done about it. He lived in darkness.

As you would expect, I argued. Certainly, the official doctrine of the church was clear. Still, just because he did not believe that particular item in the church's creed, that did not mean he was excluded from church or from the kingdom of heaven.

Bob dismissed my words. “That's just you. We're friends, so, of course, you're going to say that. You're a liberal. No offense, but the people who really count don't think like you do.”

No, I argued. On this point, it's not just me. And I told him the following story.

In the early 2000s the General Conference organized a series of conferences on Faith and Science. I attended as an observer. In the third and final conference held in Denver, a number of conservative theologians called for the church to be more activist in rooting out every faculty member who evinced the slightest doubt about 6000 years. Two of the most pugnacious leaders in this camp were Michael Hasel and Fernando Canale. On Friday afternoon both were on a panel.

A pastor stood and addressed Fernando Canale, “I held evangelistic meetings some years ago. A scientist attended the meetings and asked to be baptized. He worked at a leading research facility in the area. I found out he was already attending church. He was keeping Sabbath at some considerable cost to himself. And he was paying tithe. However, he told me he had one problem. He just could not believe in a short chronology. My question to you: Would you baptize him?”

Canale responded: “That is not the question before us. We are here to debate the official doctrine of the Church. And on that we must be crystal clear. We are talking about what is to be taught and preached in our Church. The actual decision about baptizing someone is a pastoral decision to be made in light of a full knowledge of the circumstances and spiritual life of that person.”

The pastor would not let it go. “Of course, I understand we are debating theology here. But I want to know when I go back to my Church what kind of ministry you are requiring of me. Would you baptize someone who was keeping Sabbath, paying tithe and attending church but did not believe in six days/6000 years?”

Canale clearly did not want to answer the question, but to his credit he finally did. “Based on what you have told us, yes, I would baptize him.” Michael Hasel agreed with Canale.

“So,” I said to my friend Bob. “It's not just me.”

And so, I say to you, behold the astonishing power of the light that shines from the ministry of Jesus.

Canale and Hasel have spent much of their professional lives in the church fighting to exclude slightest hint of wavering in the church's doctrine regarding the age of the world. They believe any weakness in this doctrinal point would undermine the entire system of Adventist theology. Adventist identity and mission would crumble into nothingness if we gave an inch regarding geochronology. The very survival of the church as an institution requires absolutely unbending rigidity on this point. They have written this. In the Faith and Science Conferences they delivered passionate lectures along these lines. Then when confronted not with an idea but with a person—a particular human being, a scientist who held a repugnant idea, but still a person, a human being—in the face of this single person their entire bombastic crusade crumbled. Why?

It was the light that shines from Jesus. For all their doctrinal purity and theological certainty, they could not imagine making the argument that Jesus would exclude a man because of his opinions about fossils. They knew, as every person who is acquainted with the gospels must know, that every time Jesus confronted a conflict between preserving institutional prerogatives and caring for a real, live human being, Jesus cared for the person. Jesus welcomed the person. Jesus touched the person. Jesus defended the person. Jesus shone a great welcoming light.

If Jesus could welcome the tax collector Zacchaeus as a full-fledged son of Abraham, if Jesus could pronounce a Roman centurion's faith superior to any exhibited by the proper people of God, if Jesus could turn on its head an incontrovertible accusation of adultery, it is not possible to imagine he would shut the door of heaven to someone because of their opinions about rocks.

The light of Jesus welcomes my friend Bob, and Dan and Robert and Jean and all those others who have been driven by their own studies to question some element of the Adventist creed. By the rule book Annie's lack of cognitive development excluded her from formal inclusion in the family of God. By the rule book, Bob's hyper cognitive development excluded him from formal inclusion in the family of God. The light that shines from Jesus illumines a welcome into the kingdom that exceeds the power of any rule to exclude.

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light. On those sitting in the territory of death, a light has dawned.

This Advent season, allow the light of Jesus to suffuse your mind. Then, as you are warmed and brightened, look for Annie's mother or a friend named Bob and share the light.