“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. (Italics added)
          - Amos 5.21-24 (The Message; italics added)


Directed by God, the whole company of Israel moved on by stages from the Wilderness of Sin. They set camp at Rephidim. And there wasn’t a drop of water for the people to drink. The people took Moses to task: “Give us water to drink.” But Moses said, “Why pester me? Why are you testing God?” But the people were thirsty for water there. They complained to Moses, “Why did you take us from Egypt and drag us out here with our children and animals to die of thirst?”  Moses cried out in prayer to God, “What can I do with these people? Any minute now they’ll kill me!”  God said to Moses, “Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. And go. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”  Moses did what he said, with the elders of Israel right there watching. He named the place Massah (Testing-Place) and Meribah (Quarreling) because of the quarreling of the Israelites and because of their testing of God when they said, “Is God here with us, or not?”
          - Exodus 17.1-7 (The Message) 


Some of my favorite childhood memories cluster around rain, or more specifically, the powerful and majestic thunderstorms that rolled across the foothills of the Appalachians on summer evenings. The rainstorms – gully washers rather – were a frequent and readily available symbol of God’s majesty and power, and when I gazed on this spectacle, I felt very keenly the presence of God.

I remember, for example, the stream that roared through our backyard during such downpours. It wasn’t there earlier in the day; it was evidenced only by a dry, shallow gully running “catawampus” to the house (as we said back in the day). But during the storm it swelled and roiled and made its way on to the forest beyond our property, eventually to nurture and nourish flowers and trees, and provide refreshing drink for the animals. With one exception; when enough debris accumulated in the stream – sticks, tree limbs, clumps of soil and grass, old co-cola bottles, or the assorted item from mama’s garden – it would create a bottleneck and clog the stream. Then it would overflow its bounds and flood the flower gardens on either side; ripping up beautiful azaleas and washing away iris and daffodil altogether.

Moses must have felt like he had encountered a bottleneck when he faced the Hebrew children in the wilderness. They clogged everything around them with their debris – selfishness, petty resentments, self serving demands, fear, anger… you get the picture – and blocked the flow of God’s gift of water, nurturing refreshing water, from the rock. They were called to be a great people and a blessing to the nations; they were called to let justice roll down like waters, so that the nations might come and be healed; but they clogged the stream, hoarding God’s presence for themselves. Because of their dry, barren spirituality, God’s stream of justice would never reach beyond their bottleneck.

You know by now where I am going with this. We too are called to be a blessing to others; we too are called to let justice roll down like waters; but we too tend to clog the stream with our debris: bigotry, insensitivity, hatred, ridicule of those with different political or social views, navel gazing concern to provide for those close to home (read: those who look like me) and a felt responsibility for the preservation of our church… and our church alone. Let others fend for themselves. The only way to let justice roll down like waters would be to clear out the debris, and let God’s gully washer flow freely through us into the world God still loves. Now that would be a real gully washer indeed! 

Grace must find its expression in life, otherwise it's not grace.          
                                                           -Karl Barth

Reading:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After he agreed with the workers to pay them a denarion, he sent them into his vineyard.

“Then he went out around nine in the morning and saw others standing around the marketplace doing nothing. He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I’ll pay you whatever is right.’ And they went.

“Again around noon and then at three in the afternoon, he did the same thing. Around five in the afternoon he went and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?’

“‘Because nobody has hired us,’ they replied.

“He responded, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ When those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, each one received a denarion. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarion. When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ‘These who were hired last worked one hour, and they received the same pay as we did even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.’

“But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’ So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”
                                                      -Matthew 20:1-16 (CEB)

Refection:
It is difficult not to focus on the vineyard workers and apply our economic system to the situation in this parable. Every one of the workers in this parable ends up earning the exact same pay regardless of how long they worked. Those who worked the full day were paid a denarion and they were happy to make this money. That is, until those who were hired later in the day and even those who only worked a very short time ended up being paid the exact same wage. Most of us would have grumbled in this situation because from our view point it just isn't fair!

But what happens when we change our focus? What happens if we look at this parable from the viewpoint of the landowner? The landowner gave those hired early in the day what he had promised. The landowner valued all of the workers the same, regardless of when they were called to work. They were all worthy of the denarion in the landowner's eyes. 

Let's change the word "denarion" now into the word "grace". 

At the end of the day, do we still want to argue about fairness? Or will we accept God's generous gift? It's difficult to change our focus from the way our society works but Jesus asks us time and again to see it all differently. He asks us to open our eyes and see from the viewpoint of the Kingdom of God. Might it be time to change our focus?

But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”
                                                            - Paul of Tarsus



READING
The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written, I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots. So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb--preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation. While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”    

     - 1 Corinthians 1.18-25


REFLECTION
Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go. In this passage Paul is neither vilifying Jews & Greeks, nor writing off spiritual signs and reason altogether. Paul was himself a proud Jew, steeped in its traditions and rituals; and he had one first rate Hellenistic education. So if you read this passage as anti-Semitic or as anti-intellectual toward faith, think again.

Paul is, however, critical of certain notions of signs and reason that he thought led to a spiritual dead end. For example, if you seek divine fireworks, a spectacular occurrence so compelling it takes away the need for faith… forget it, Paul says. Faith is the lived experience of following Jesus, and will more likely lead to unspectacular service to others than to divine fireworks.

Again, If you seek a sure knowledge and understanding of God in order to package & contain God, and tie up all the loose ends… forget it, Paul says. He would agree with Thomas Aquinas that reason can lead all the way to a knowledge about God, to the conviction that God exists, but there it reaches its limits, and fails to comprehend God as vulnerable and loving; so loving, in fact, that God is willing to go to any length to put the world right again, as John’s Jesus says in chapter 3. At a certain level, this characterization of God seems quite absurd, but in the proper context it leads to comfort, courage, and joy.

So let’s not give up on signs, they may very well play a role in the spiritual life; and for Pete’s sake let’s not give up on reason in favor of an unthinking faith that is gullible to so many shallow, lowest common denominator answers to life’s questions. Rather, let’s gather on Sunday and reflect on how we may with integrity incorporate both into our spiritual life. 

God help the outcasts hungry from birth; show them the mercy they don't find on earth. The lost and forgotten they look to You still, God help the outcasts or nobody will. I ask for nothing, I can get by; but I know so many less lucky than I. God help the outcasts the poor and down trod, I thought we all were the children of God.
                                  - Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz    



Reading: 
Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-- these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
                                              - Isaiah 56.1, 6-8    


Reflection:
Some two years after I defended my doctoral dissertation – just when I had begun to forget the agony of the experience and recover from the intellectual aches and pains inevitably identified with graduate study – some two years after I defended my dissertation, I learned that I had gone about it the wrong way! Oh brother! I learned that I had martyred myself beneath a heavy weight of research and writing, when the central question I posed comes with a ready made, simple answer. Jeez! Say it ain’t so.

Long story short, in my dissertation I compared the notion of salvation in the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospel of John. When I presented a paper at a professional conference two years later, a prim and proper New Testament professor informed me that the entire edifice of my work was bogus, because the Greek notion of salvation that underlies John is absent from the Gita, as is the reality of salvation itself. Wow! I explained that I had used the word salvation in my title in a general sense; as shorthand for the ultimate fulfillment of life, but since the title was already too long (you don’t even wanna know), I used the word salvation.

Upon reflection, however, I realized that my colleague had gone way beyond semantics (she probably knew the Gita is in Sanskrit) and had submitted the Gita and the faith tradition it represents to a litmus test determined by Christian doctrine… and found it wanting. I realized that she had oversimplified a complex and nuanced notion – life’s fulfillment – and managed to dismiss one of the great spiritual traditions of human history at the same time.

I share this story because it occurs to me that we are all in the habit of seeking the simplest possible answers to life’s questions – a habit illustrated so very well by my colleague - and inevitably finding that the correct answer is simple… and it’s my answer. For example, ask most any Christian what salvation means, and she or he is likely to say something like, “Going to heaven when I die.” Now, I won’t argue with that; shoot, I am really looking forward to the fulfillment of my life in union with God. I would quickly add, however, that salvation is so much more than ultimate destiny, and that it refers to God in the present tense at least as much as in the future sense; God as present reality, not just future savior. I would contend that God has our back, and this frees us to explore and enjoy the present reality of that which we call salvation.

And it ain’t just about me and Jesus either. Salvation is given expression – I would say reality – in compassion; in reaching out to others in need; to other children of God who could use a little salvation. Otherwise stated, God is saving us (present progressive tense) through the very act of reaching out to and accepting others. I’m not advocating some form of salvation through works, but I am saying in no uncertain terms that we are all in this together; that salvation is lived out in compassionate relationships.

Isaiah glimpsed something of this. Notice how the notion of deliverance, of God’s salvation, is revealed in this passage as embracing others – the foreigner (read non-Christian) and outcasts - accepting and affirming them as God’s other children. All of these will be invited to God’s holy mountain, and to God’s house of joy that shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Wow! What a wonderfully rich and nuanced notion is this thing we call salvation. And we haven’t even gotten to the Gita. Don’t worry; I’m not going there. But I will go so far as to propose that we share the prayer of Esmeralda in the Disney animated version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, that God will help the outcasts, the lost and forgotten who look to God for compassion. Because if God doesn’t help them, she says, nobody will. To which I respond, “Is nobody home?” 

We continue this week with a sermon series entitled, "God's Cameo's: Finding the Spiritual in Reel Life" and we will discuss a movie which is currently running in theaters now, The Fault in Our Stars. 

I will attempt to give you a quick synopsis of the movie (without having to give a spoiler alert in case you have not seen it yet) which is based on the book of the same title by John Green. The central characters are two teenagers, Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, who are dealing with cancer. They struggle with the deep questions of life and even though their lives are filled with uncertainties, they find joy in the world around them. While this movie will cause even the strongest person to cry, it is filled with an underlying love that is so deep that you will leave the theater with a heart full of hope.

Our text this week comes from John 15:1-8:

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. He removes any of my branches that don’t produce fruit, and he trims any branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit. You are already trimmed because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise, you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything. If you don’t remain in me, you will be like a branch that is thrown out and dries up. Those branches are gathered up, thrown into a fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified when you produce much fruit and in this way prove that you are my disciples."

This text brings such imagery. A vine can take on many forms. It can be long and sinewy making it difficult to clear. It can be luscious and thick creating a beautiful covering on a fence. It can be dying in places and needing to be trimmed. Whatever the vine looks like, Jesus tells us in this text from the book of John that he is the central vine and we have been created as branches reaching out from this central vine. The vine provides the strength for the branches and gives the nutrients that sustain them. The vine does not exist without the branches reaching out.  What does this vine provide for us to keep us moving forward and reaching outward? Hope? Love? Strength? Compassion? I think our list could be exhaustive.

The Fault in Our Stars has so many teaching opportunities that we could focus on but Sunday morning we will narrow our focus on just a couple. Love and hope. Hazel Grace and Augustus show us that even through suffering, they continue to reach out through basic human relationships. They show us that even through suffering, love and hope remain. 

If you have not seen the movie you may watch the trailer here: