Sunday Sermon - "Stones Cry Out"

Standing in the doorway

What is it about my office that seems to attract conversation taking place in my doorway? Virtually no one comes in and sits down. Seems that all my conversations happen in the doorway. Maybe I smell bad...no one wants to get close.

Today somebody started crying in my doorway. He was looking for something he couldn't find in a place he didn't know and I think that he was scared. But he started crying. Now I have joked with those in my doorway, been challenged, discussed sermons, spoken out loud credit card numbers, and done a great deal of business with someone in my doorway but never had anyone cry.

I don't want to make light of this because I can't shake it. Maybe he thought that he was being taken to the "Principal's Office" church-style. Maybe he thought that he was in trouble & he didn't dare approach to close lest he be detained. Maybe a lot of things. Yet I can't shake the scene... but I know why. I am humbled/disappointed by my inability, in this case, to recognize when something looks like business as usual but isn't. What he needed I didn't ensure he got. What he got was what I give seemingly everyone who stands in my door: an answer. I answered his question but failed to ask one myself.

So much of this job can be providing answers. When do we serve dinner again at the homeless shelter? May 16th. Do we have Sunday School this week? No. Standing at my door is something akin to Google. Type in what you want to know, get it answered, move on. Truthfully "handling business" with expediency can often be a springboard for success as an administrator, something Pastors are asked to do often, but at the end of the day I didn't feel God calling me into middle management. I believe that my relationship with God through Christ is indeed a relationship & it is also how I should live in community with others. It isn't economical, it isn't going to be the "best use of time", nor will it be the easiest way to live but I got to believe, especially when it is tough, that it is the most important thing that I do as a person and as a Pastor.

Sermon: Stones Cry Out - Luke 19:28-48

NOTE: This was the "script" that inspired the spoken sermon. There were, as always, points of departure.

With a well known & important scripture like ours today I think that it is important to set the scene - know what we are dealing with. Jerusalem would be the destination for pilgrims and faithful from all over the land and this city would be teeming with people taking up residence in every nook & cranny. Jerusalem at this time isn’t a very big city & with the population swelling for Passover there eventually was a point with it couldn’t hold anymore folks. This is where Bethany & Bethphage come in. Only about a mile away from Jerusalem, just on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, these cities became something of a hub for the travelers who were not staying in Jerusalem but making the journey into the city day after day. So it is safe to assume that the route Jesus takes on his journey would have been well traveled and well known.

When pilgrims were not in Jerusalem they would have been in ground zero for Jesus related chatter and fandom. These cities, not too far apart, were the backyards of Mary, Martha, & Lazarus. Just about anyone taking advantage of the hospitality of these lands would have heard the story of Lazarus’ raising from the dead at the hands of Jesus & might have had encounters with Jesus’ disciples or other locals who had first hand experiences with Christ’s teaching & healings. The Gospel of John even goes as far as to say that Lazarus himself was around at the time of the Triumphant Entry & that a “great crowd” had gathered to see for themselves Lazarus & Jesus. If we roll all this together we get a pretty compelling picture of a crowd, swelled with stories and firsthand experiences of the power and person of Jesus Christ who now climbs atop a donkey; a ritualistic clue as a fulfillment of prophesy. King Solomon rode a donkey to his coronation. The Prophet Zachariah tells us that the King comes triumphant & victorious riding on a donkey. The King is coming. The new King has arrived and he does great things! He raises men from the dead, upon him rests the power of God! His teachings are with authority! “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna! And now we are parading! We are waving our palms, we are shouting, whooping & hollering because today is the day! Today is the day when we finally can give those Romans a piece of our mind! And all this happening during Passover! We are being delivered! “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” What? What are those Pharisees saying to him? No we won’t quiet down! Even louder now “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” If I tell them to stop the stones would shout out.

Since college I have been captivated by this phrase: The Stones would shout out. When I learned it I was reading another translation - the Stones would cry out. That is the one that sticks with me. If I tell them to be quiet the stones will cry out. For years I have thought of those words of Jesus when I think about Palm Sunday, Easter, all of Christ’s life to be honest. Lately, as I have been working on this sermon I have begun wondering. What would the stones have said?

What would the stones have said if the “multitude of disciples” had stopped their parade? Jesus seems to give us the impression that the stone would echo the sentiment of the parade but I wonder - how many marching in this parade knew where it was heading? Did the palm waving, praise shouting, Pharisee denying average parade go-er know what their new King was up to? See, the popular understanding was the Messiah, the one who comes in the name of the Lord, would come in and establish rule, a government & civil rule in the classical sense that would ordain a season of God’s will upon the land. The King they were looking for was like the Kings of old. They were looking for another David. Did those men and women marching along the path know that this King, this Lord was not going to assume the throne? Did they know that this King wasn’t going to raise an army, defend the land, throw out the Romans & begin the rebuilding? Did they know that in just a few short days they would be shouting something different when it came to Christ? Did they know where this parade was headed?

What would the stones have said then?

One of my regrets is that I never had a chance to talk to my grandparents about their lives in more depth. I was either too young or too interested in Football, and girlfriends, and maybe school to sit down with them and ask about the war, the dust bowl, the history that they lived through & the experiences that shaped their lives. I treasure the little nuggets I have but I regret that much of their lives is a mystery. I believe that the mistakes that I make honestly come from my lack of wisdom when it comes to living & working and wisdom is something that I think age can get you. Wisdom to see the big picture. Wisdom to see the long, hard lessons of life played out over the course of your years. Wisdom gathered from the good & the bad, from a life spent in prayer, in love, in work & for some, in pain. And I bring this up because this is what I believe the crowd lacked: wisdom born out of a long life observing the coming and going of all things.

You see crowds will turn. Give them a little hope, give them what they want, answer a prayer or entertain them and they are like lambs. Any politician, celebrity or sports star will testify to this. But fail to meet up to the impossible, misguided, or self-serving expectations & lambs become lions; seeking to feast on the carcass of another disappointment. Crowds have virtually no memory but the stones have been around since the beginning. They have seen the comings and goings for centuries. Conquering Kings, outgoing slaves, the blood of the poor & the gold of the rich. They have seen it all. The stones have seen their fair share of parades of adulation. They have seen their faire share of funeral processions too. War Horses arrive all the time & yet what the stones have that we do not is the wisdom to see that our systems, our fixes, our Kings of the here and now are not ultimately able to save us. They are not ultimately what makes things right. The stones cry out Hosanna, Hosanna, they cry out Save Us, Save Us. A testimony born out of wisdom speaks of the whole world needing redemption & this does not happen with coronations, elections, or surrenders. The redemption that the world needs happens at Calvary. Redemption comes not from the makings of our governments no matter how popular. Redemption comes not in teachings, healing, popularity contests, or memorable slogans. Redemption is the work of God. Who can redeem the creation other than the Creator?

Palm Sunday & to a larger extent Easter happens apart from our ability to recognize what we need. The life & death of Christ, and the redemption that happens therein is the will of a God who’s ways are not our own & who’s message challenges the status quo yet twenty centuries later we still fail to recognize what ultimately saves us. Twenty centuries later we still cling to our colorless dreams of a world made better but hardly the fundamentally different world Christ spoke of.

Brothers and sisters, the stones are still speaking. Can you hear them? The concrete where the homeless sleep, the asphalt of our busy streets, the marble of the luxury condos, the very stones that make this church, all of them, they are shouting because twenty centuries later we continue to, as the scriptures say, put our trust in princes & reject Christ. Yet twenty centuries later Christ stands overlooking our city seeking to enter. Waiting to overturn our tables, to bring the Kingdom near, to redeem, to make whole, to sustain.

Do you want something that lasts forever? Immutable, unchanging, true today as it was the day before? Then we must find the one who comes in the name of the Lord. He makes his way to the Temple to do a new thing. If we hurry we can catch him.

AMEN.

Writing my sermon

I am preaching Palm Sunday & there is a little dance that happens in those sermons. Palm Sunday, the day that we remember Christ's entry into Jerusalem, is also called Passion Sunday. Whereas Palm captures the joy that accompanies Christ riding into Jerusalem, Passion describes the ordeal that awaits him the week ahead. To find a balance between the two is required. So that is where I am at.

I am just about 1/2 way done and I think that I will have the 1st draft in the can by tomorrow at this time. My hope is that despite the many things happening this week (my Mom arrives from California tomorrow) I will be able to have something that is faithful to where I feel God is calling me in this scripture.

Stay tuned for some external processing...

A Trailer & Website for our Wednesday Lenten Dinner & Class - Session 4

Ok, I know...tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day which usually means green food & other products, awful Irish accents, and other blarney. Coincidentally we also have our 4th Lenten Class & Dinner where we will be having homemade Corned Beef, Cabbage, Boiled Potatoes, and Green Sherbet (Hot Dogs for the kids) & we will watch and discuss the 4th video in our series entitled "Today."

This video asks us the fundamental question for mainline churches (& Christians): are our best days behind us? Come and tackle this questions with us together! Click below to go to the website and watch the trailer!

Go to the Website & Watch the Trailer

I am big in China

So I have been getting a few comments on the Blog as of late. Usually there are none or one to two rare ones here and there but normally zero. Sadly it isn't the feed back I was looking for. Someone or some people have been leaving pithy sayings in Chinese characters followed by a long line of periods like an ellipsis gone awry.

It looks like this: ..........................................

Now here in lies the problem: each period is not just a period but actually it's own link. Each dot takes you to a different website that can best be described as "not safe for work."

Some cyber-investigating shows me that this is a common practice on blogs. Blogs taking about art and geometry, new styles of crochet, and many others have been hit. As a precaution to whatever latent security risks these links and comments might hold I have begun deleting the comments as I find them. You can still see your comments (if they are appropriate) but the malicious ones are going away.

What I want to do & What I am doing

An idealized day for me would be spent reading something I can't put down in a room with lots of natural light and cool air. I would grab a chair, a seat on the couch, or sit on the steps of the back porch and read all day. I currently am reading 3 books that I would love to devote that much time and energy to. Reading for me is a passion. An idealized day would be spent reading but how many days do I give over to something I like doing so much? Very few.

The truth is that if you are like me our passions end up on the back burner for the busyness of work, life, and responsibility. We put so much of ourselves into the things that seem to be the most pressing, the most lucrative, the most productive that on some level we loose the ability to prioritize justly. Let me unpack this...

Paying bills has to be a priority. Going to work has to be a priority. Spending time with your children, your spouse, partner, friends, whatever has to be a priority. Exercising your passions for art, literature, cooking, music, etc has to be a priority. All these things have to be a priority but how do we rank them? Is work more important than spending time with your children? Is reading more important than getting a jump on filing your taxes? The answer I think is a matter of understanding what it means to prioritize justly. We must work to see ourselves as a whole and not a compartmentalized body. Wholeness means that the work that we do and the books that we read are both formative in the construction of ourselves & that while work pays better than reading (in most cases) we cannot be whole unless we seek a just balance between passions and promotion. Scripture ( and the Byrds...click here) teaches us that "to everything there is a season" which means for me that I must think in terms of the totality of life rather than those things that seem to be either most pressing, lucrative or the like. I must ensure that the passions of being alive are not oppressed by what it takes to afford to do them.

So today I am going to thank God for the things that I have been given. For my love of reading, travel, and the like but also the gifts that I have been given for the Call that I have. My prayer is that I can find the harmony, the just priorities between what I want to do and what I am doing. This is my prayer for you as well.

See you Sunday.

A Trailer for our Wednesday Lenten Dinner & Class - Session 3

For the 3rd session of our Lenten Dinner & Series we will seek to tackle the 3rd of our "Five Good Questions": What Does it Mean to Trust God?

To do this we will be watching the Nooma video entitled Kickball which helps us understand our call to trust in God is rooted in the truth that God is indeed good. Check out the link to the video website & trailer.

Watch the Trailer

What is that bright yellow thing in the sky where the grey clouds used to be?

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the flowers are busting loose from the soil & the nasty ice/snow is fading into the cold recesses of properties where sun isn't likely to find it. I am always amazed at the staying power of a plowed up pile of snow. Once white and fluffy, once ripe fodder for snow-people or angels, or snowballs, this grayish white pile of snowy ice lasts forever even as the sun shines and the temperature climbs. One such pile lives in the 2nd Ave. parking strip that lines the church.

Taking up residence in a single parking space this pile of snow is about the size of of my old Ford Festiva. Jr. High Science tells us that heat, sunlight, and salt form a deadly combination for snow and ice, yet after many days of being exposed to at least the first two the pile remains & my guess it has a few more days left in it. But this, despite my surprise year after year, should be expected. After all there is a lot of snow. The outer layer reflects the sunlight which also insulates the bulk of the snow residing inside the mound & with tons of snow and ice the pile is built to last. It puts up a good fight for the changing environment that it currently finds itself in.

If I am honest, I am impressed with the pile. I think that it does something that we as a church have struggled with for sometime. Whereas a single layer of snow won't last an afternoon with a shining sun, the pile takes all those individual "layers" and brings them all together to form something stronger and more stable as a collective than could be achieved as a single individual. The "strength in numbers" lives out as the temperature climbs but the pile remains. As a church, not just Boulevard, but as an universal church we often fail in pile building because we are so accustom to individuality. We want to build up individuals but we often forget that wisdom exists as a group, that strength exists as a group, and it is only as a community that we can survive when the rising temperatures of our time arrive.

Are you part of a pile?

A Trailer for our Wednesday Lenten Dinner & Class - Session 2

We are now in Week 2 of our 5 week Lenten Series & Class & this week we will be looking at the question: "What does it mean to have a relationship with God?"

Like the first week we will be using the Nooma video series to help us explore this question and others as we try to find harmony between the living out of our faith and our lives.

To get us ready for Wednesday, here is a link to the video's website and trailer:

Website & Trailer