Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Unworthy?


Unworthy?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 29, 2016



Scripture: 1 Kings 8:22-24, 41-43; Luke 7:1-10



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



He thought he was unworthy. The Roman centurion I mean. The one who sent some Jewish elders to ask Jesus to heal the centurion’s servant. He says it himself. He says he sent others to Jesus with his request for help because he didn’t think he was worthy enough to do it himself. He says he not worthy to have Jesus enter his house. He thought he was unworthy.

They thought the others were unworthy. The Hebrews thought the Gentiles were unworthy. We didn’t have a passage this morning where we hear them say it. In fact, in the passage we heard Solomon says pretty much the opposite. But that passage reminded me of passages where they say it. They say it pretty clearly in the book of Ezra, for example. The stories of that book are set after the people returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. In it Ezra is a priest. He gets really distraught because he discovers that Hebrew men have married non-Hebrew women. He orders those men to divorce their non-Hebrew wives and to send them and their children away. The text of Ezra says that marriage to non-Hebrews has polluted the Hebrew race. It has polluted the very ground of Israel. The book of Ezra says non-Hebrew women are unworthy of being married to Hebrew men. They are unworthy even of being present in Israel. The text says the people agreed with Ezra about that. They, the Hebrews, thought they, the foreigners, were unworthy.

Now, if people thinking themselves unworthy of God, and if people thinking that people not like them are unworthy of God, these passages wouldn’t be worth preaching on the way I’m preaching on them this morning. But see, unworthiness is a real thing in our world today too. It can come in different forms. Sometimes we think we are unworthy, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of love, unworthy of help, even or maybe especially unworthy of God’s grace. Christianity has done a really good job at the very bad work of making people feel unworthy. We’re all nothing but horrible sinners, we’re told. We’re all captives of original sin, we’re told. Our faith isn’t strong enough, we’re told. We don’t pray hard enough, we’re told. Christianity has also done a really good job at the very bad work of making Christians think that all non-Christians are unworthy. We have the only truth, we’re told. Our way is the only way, we’re told. Other people are all damned if they don’t convert to Christianity, we’re told. There’s unworthiness all around us today. We’re not worthy. They’re not worthy. No one, it seems, is worthy.

Why do so many people think everyone’s unworthy? I’m not sure I know the answer to that question, but I have some ideas. See, it is very much in the church’s interest, or at least in what the church mostly takes to be its interest, to make everyone unworthy. The church making everyone unworthy gives the church immense power. You’re not worthy of God’s grace, the church says, but believe what we tell you to believe, do what we tell you to do, and don’t do what we tell you not to do, and your unworthiness will be cured. The church says we have the solution to your unworthiness. Turn you lives, and your money, over to us, and we’ll see to it that your unworthiness doesn’t land you in the hell you so richly deserve for an eternity of torment. It may actually be more in the church’s interest to empower people and make them realize what God really thinks about them than it is to make everyone unworthy. But for most of its history most of the Christian church has worked really hard at making everyone unworthy.

Well, here’s the truth of the matter. God doesn’t think you’re unworthy at all. God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy at all. It’s not that we’re all perfect. Far from it. The truth is: God doesn’t care if we’re not perfect. God knows we aren’t God. God loves us just as we are. God loves everyone just as they are. That’s the truth about how God sees us, not that we’re all a bunch of unworthy bums.

We see at least hints at that truth in this morning’s scripture readings. In our passage from 1 Kings King Solomon is praying at the dedication of the temple that he has just finished building. In part of that prayer he mentions foreigners. He says that foreigners will come to the temple because they will have heard of the mighty deeds of the God of Israel. Solomon asks his God to hear their prayers and grant them. Notice: He doesn’t ask God to make them convert to Judaism. He asks God to hear and grant their prayers just as they are. To Solomon these foreigners are not unworthy the way they would be to Ezra centuries later. They’re not Hebrews, but they’re not unworthy. They are precisely they not us, but that doesn’t make them unworthy.

Then there’s Luke’s story of the Roman centurion. He’s a military commander in the Roman army. He represents a foreign, occupying force in Galilee. He’s a Gentile not a Jew. He is presumably a pagan not a follower of Jesus Christ or even of the God of Israel. Maybe he’s not as bad a guy as many Roman soldiers were. After all, the Jewish elders he sends to Jesus say he loves them and built a synagogue for them. Still, he’s one of “them” He’s a Roman. He works for the hated foreign empire that has occupied the people’s land and oppressed them with its taxes. He thinks he’s unworthy. The story doesn’t tell us why he thinks he’s unworthy. Maybe he feels guilty about what the Romans are doing to the people. Whatever the cause of the centurion’s sense of unworthiness, this story tells us that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Jesus set out to heal the centurion’s servant. Would he have done that if the Jewish elders who came to him hadn’t said nice things about the centurion? I don’t know, but I sure like to think that he would have. Be that as it may, Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy.

There’s a great lesson for us in the way Solomon didn’t think foreigners were unworthy and Jesus didn’t think the centurion was unworthy. See, God doesn’t think anyone is unworthy. No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. There’s no one God doesn’t love. Now, an awful lot of people never benefit from God’s love because they aren’t aware of it. They deny it. They even deny the reality of God. Well, that’s their problem. It’s not God’s problem. Everyone is worthy in God’s eyes. Yes, for an awful lot of us repentance is necessary before we can really accept and live into God’s love, but God’s love is always there. For everyone. There are no unworthy people.

Which raises a pretty important question for us. No one’s unworthy as far as God is concerned, but what about us? Is anyone unworthy of love as far as we’re concerned? Well, I can’t speak for you, so I’ll speak for myself. I don’t know that there’s anyone I think is ultimately unworthy of love, but there sure are a lot of people I find it very difficult to love. I mean, people do really terrible things to other people, to other creatures, and to God’s world all the time. It’s a whole lot easier for me to hate those people than to love them. At the very least I get mad at them and sure don’t much feel like extending love to them. I’d be surprised if there weren’t people you feel the same way about.

So let me suggest something to both you and to myself. When we start thinking someone is unworthy of our love, or if we think someone is unworthy of God’s love, let’s remember the centurion in Luke’s story who thought he wasn’t worthy. And let us remember that Jesus didn’t think he was unworthy. Let’s remember Solomon welcoming Gentiles, who a lot of Jews of his time and later thought were unworthy, to the brand new temple he had built to God. Sure. There are people we don’t like. There are people we don’t approve of. That never means that God thinks they’re unworthy. So maybe we shouldn’t either. Amen.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

God Talk

This is the sermon that I wrote for Sunday, May 22, 2016. However, I ended up giving only about the first page and a half of it. The rest I made up on the fly. The recording of the sermon I actually gave should be online at malbtychurch.org.  Pastor Tom

God Talk
A Trinity Sunday Meditation
Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson
May 22, 2016

            Scripture: Psalm 8; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today is Trinity Sunday. I’m not quite sure why we have a specific Trinity Sunday. After all, for Christians (or at least most of them) God is always Trinity, so isn’t every Sunday Trinity Sunday? Oh well. The church calendar says that today is Trinity Sunday, so Trinity Sunday it is. Let me ask you something. How many of you think you understand the Trinity? Anyone? Well, if anyone thinks that they understand the Trinity, they’re wrong. No one understands the Trinity. Now, that might sound like a bad thing. After all, we say God is Trinity, is Three in One. How can we say that if we don’t understand Trinity? Well, the Trinity, that is, speaking of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, doesn’t really explain God. It doesn’t actually define God. Rather, it preserves the mystery of God by positing things about God that are simply impossible. God is Three in One, we say. Well, is God three? Yes, we say. Is God one? Yes we say. But of course nothing can be both three and one. I either have three cookies or I have one cookie, but I can’t have three cookies that are really one cookie or one cookie that is really three cookies. Yet in Trinitarian thought was have three divine Persons who are one God and one God who is three divine Persons. I have long thought of the Trinity as functioning like a Zen koan. You know, impossible questions like what is the sound of one hand clapping? The Trinity asks What are three when they are one, and what is one when it is three? There’s no adequate answer. There isn’t supposed to be an answer. Almost every answer people have tried to give to the question of the Trinity has been found to be a heresy. The great virtue of the Trinity is that it makes no sense. Because it makes no sense, it preserves the mystery of God, and that is a very good thing. Whatever is not mystery cannot be God because God must be beyond our understanding. Ask me later if you want that explained more. I don’t have time to do it now.
I have spoken to you many times recently about transformation and how I am convinced that the Christian church in all of its manifold manifestations must be transformed if it is not to die. This morning I want to suggest to you one way that I think the church must be transformed. It has to do with our language for God, and the language of the Trinity is Christianity’s classic language for God. Now, please understand. I am not suggesting that we all become Unitarians. Unitarians were originally Congregationalist heretics. They were Congregationalists, and they were heretics because they couldn’t accept the Trinitarian understanding of God. They are Unitarians because they aren’t Trinitarians. We believe in individual freedom of conscience, of course, and if someone wants to be Unitarian they are free to be it. I, however, am not a Unitarian. I don’t think Christianity should or ever could give up the Trinity.
What I want to transform is not the Trinitarian understanding of God. I really value the way the Trinity preserves the ultimate mystery of God. What I suggest we think about isn’t the Trinity itself but the language we use for the Trinity. I suggest that we think about his issue in particular: The language of the Trinity uses male images for two of the three Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son. That gender specific language bothers a lot of people today. Yes, I know. It doesn’t bother most of you, including most of you women. That’s OK, but the fact remains that it bothers me and a lot of other people today. The terms Father and Son are gender specific; and that specificity creates a problem.  Now, we all know, of course, that God is not really male. God isn’t female either of course, for God is beyond human categories like gender; but the language we use for the Trinity includes specifically male images. I think we need to consider how our insisting on using gender specific language for two of the Persons of the Trinity and for God in general conflicts with the Trinity’s great virtue of  preserving the mystery of God.
Using only male specific language for two of the Persons of the Trinity limits the mystery of God because it makes God sound too human. It makes God sound too much like one specific variety of us humans, namely, the male variety. Always saying only Father and Son for the first two Persons of the Trinity limits God by excluding feminine images of God from our most basic God talk. If the great virtue of the Trinity is that it preserves the mystery of God, and I think that that is its primary virtue though not its only one, then shouldn’t we be a bit wary about using only language that has a specific human meaning when we talk about God? I am convinced that we should. I am convinced that we need to broaden our God talk. If we would sometimes use male language and sometimes use female language (which for the most part we never do), we would do better at preserving the mystery of God because we would use two mutually exclusive images for the same God. Our quest should not be to pin God down the way we do when we always use only male God language. Our quest should be to preserve the mystery of God the way the Trinity does when we use it the way it is meant to be used, as a riddle, as a koan, not as an explanation.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that imaging God as Father is always and necessarily wrong. It isn’t. God as Father can bring great comfort to a great many people. God as Father has done that in the past, it does it today, and it will continue to do it in the future. It’s not God as Father that’s the problem. It’s God only as Father that’s the problem. It’s God never being Mother that’s the problem. It’s not Jesus having been a man that’s the problem. It’s our insisting that the risen Christ is still in some meaningful way male that’s the problem. It’s not calling God He that’s the problem. It’s always calling God He and never calling God She that’s the problem.
Now, it’s not going to surprise me if you say you’ve never heard a pastor preaching like this before. The male exclusivity of our God talk is deeply driven into our consciousness and our experience. It wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t. But here’s the truth. The Christian faith is going through a time of profound transformation. One of the things that is being transformed is our God talk. The postmodern culture that is emerging among us will not accept exclusive male language for God. It just won’t. That culture is moving beyond sexism in its personal and social relationships, and it is moving beyond sexism in its God talk too. We need to pay attention. Not of course give up the core values of our faith because the culture doesn’t like them. Never that. But is our exclusively male God talk a core value of our faith? I don’t think so. God as ultimate mystery is a core value of our faith. God as male isn’t. God as only male we can give up, and I am convinced that we really need to do it.
There are biblical precedents for feminine images of God, you know. Deuteronomy 32:11-12 images God as a mother eagle. At Deuteronomy 32:18b God is the One who gave the people birth. Isaiah 66:13 images God as a mother comforting a child. Matthew 23:37 images God as a mother hen. At Luke 15:8-10 God is like a woman searching for a lost coin. Yes, the God of the Bible is mostly imagined in masculine terms, but there are a few places like these when feminine images get a toehold in our scared text. We’re not being unbiblical when we think of God as a woman rather than a man.
So let me ask you to do something. For the rest of this service pay attention to the words we use for God. Pay attention to the Lord’s prayer. Pay attention to the language of the two hymns we have yet to sing. I think you will notice how male exclusive some of it is. Then do one other thing. To yourself, in silence, substitute Mother for Father. Substitute She for He. See how it makes you feel. Does it make you feel differently about God? I bet it will, if you’ll let it. Doing that sure makes me feel differently about God.

I’m not proposing changing all of the language of our worship right away. Transformation takes preparation, and it takes time. Really all I’m asking right now is this much: Be aware of the exclusively male language we use for God. Maybe try substituting if not feminine language then at least gender neutral language for God. Try calling God just God, not He. See how it feels. Keep doing it for a while. See if you get used to it. Today is Trinity Sunday, and it is a particularly appropriate time for us to think about the words we use for God. Those words really do matter. May we listen for the calling of the Holy Spirit in this and in so many others things as we move forward together in this church. Amen.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Transformed

Transformed!
A Pentecost Meditation
Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 15, 2016

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

What happened to the first Christians that Pentecost day so long ago when the Holy Spirit came upon them? They were transformed, that’s what. They were changed in the very nature of their being. That’s what transformation is. It’s not just change. It is deep, radical, permanent change. Mere change can be undone, and it usually is. Mere change is superficial. Mere change changes appearances, it doesn’t change essences. Transformation is a change of a being’s essence, who that thing or person is in the core of its, his, or her being.
Look at what happened that first Christian Pentecost day. All of Jesus’s followers, not just the twelve but all of them, were together in one place. That aspect of the story tells us a lot about them, actually. At the time that this story is set Jesus has been crucified. He has risen from the grave. He has seen and talked with his disciples, and he has returned to God and is no longer with them. Yet his followers haven’t disbanded. That’s what usually happened in the Roman Empire when the authorities executed a popular movement’s leader. It’s what happened with the followers of John the Baptist after the Roman flunky King Herod executed him. It’s surely what Pilate thought would happen after he executed Jesus. It didn’t. They’re still together in this story that is set fifty days after Passover, which is fifty days after Jesus’ crucifixion. Their leader is gone, but they’re still together. They’re still together, and there aren’t very many of them. We know that because our story says that they were all together in one place. We’re not talking the Louisiana Superdome here. That place was presumably a house, or maybe only a room in a house, in Jerusalem. We may not be talking about more people than are here in worship with us today. Well, maybe a few more than that, but not many.
Acts doesn’t tell us much more about them. I think maybe we can assume that they really didn’t have a clue what to do. Yes, they had seen Jesus risen from the grave, and they’d seen him rise into heaven; but all he’d said to them before that happened was something enigmatic about them receiving the Holy Spirit and being his witnesses in the world. Awfully vague, don’t you think? I’m pretty sure they did. They were such a small group of people. The Romans had executed their leader, and for all they knew the Romans might be coming after them next. They were probably together to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Pentecost, but I imagine they were wondering what in heaven’s name they were supposed to do next.
Then it happened. The Holy Spirit came upon them like the blowing of a violent wind and like tongues of fire, and all of sudden they weren’t the same people that they had been before that happened. All of a sudden they knew how to talk to people who spoke many different languages. All of a sudden instead of being a small group holed up in some house they had attracted a crowd. All of a sudden instead of cowering inside that house they were out talking to the crowd. All of a sudden Peter is their leader and their spokesman. He’s out there quoting the prophet Joel to them about people receiving the Holy Spirit, seeing visions, dreaming dreams, and prophesying. It’s hard to imagine a more radical transformation in that little group of frightened people.
Yes, I think they were transformed not just changed. We see their transformation in what they did that Pentecost day, but that’s not all we know about them. We know that they went out into their world spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire and probably even beyond the Roman Empire. That was odd. That was unique. That was dangerous, and many of them paid for their ministry with their lives. Going from a scared little bunch of perplexed people to being people who changed the world isn’t just a change. It’s a transformation. When the Holy Spirit came upon them they became the Church of Jesus Christ, and they were willing to lay down their lives for him if that’s what it took to spread his Gospel to people who so badly needed to hear it.
These people’s transformation gave rise to the Christian church. We are its direct descendants. Yet theirs isn’t the only transformation in the history of Christianity. The Christian church has been transformed many times throughout its history. It was transformed in the early years when it went from being a group of more or less isolated communities to a larger institution overseen by people called bishops. It was transformed, for better and for worse, when it became the established religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE. It was revived by the Scholastics in the High Middle Ages. It, or at least part of it, was transformed by the Protestant Reformation. Transformation has always been part of the life of the church.
Folks, it still is. Today Christianity is undergoing another transformation. Just what it is transforming to isn’t entirely clear yet, but this much is clear: What has been no longer will be. The churches of Christianity as it has been since the Reformation are dying. We can even see that happening in our little church here. Not that I think we’ll die anytime soon or even that we necessarily must die, but look at us. This church has never been big, but it’s been at times considerably bigger than it is today. Old fashioned churches like this on just don’t draw many people today. I don’t like that reality any more than I suspect you do, which is to say not at all. We may not like it, but the signs are all around us. Mainline churches like this one are dying. Even the supposedly successful Evangelical community churches that have help up longer than the mainline churches have are beginning to lose membership. All of that tells us that the Christian church is in the midst of another transformation, for transformation always entails the death of what was.
When an institution like the church finds itself in the midst of a transformation that it didn’t want, didn’t ask for, and doesn’t like, it has basically two choices. It can be transformed, or it can die. It can discern the signs of the times, welcome them, and adapt to them, or it can pretend that nothing is going on or that things will just get better. Then it dies. That’s because change can be undone, but transformation can’t. Folks, I don’t much like saying it, and I’m pretty certain you don’t like hearing it, but here’s the truth. The First Congregational Church of Maltby can be transformed or it will die. Not today. Not tomorrow, But eventually, and not all that far off in the future. That’s just how it is with churches like ours today.
So what does the transformation that will keep us alive look like? I wish I knew. I wish I could just spoon feed you an adequate answer to that question. I can’t. I am convinced that the answer isn’t for us to become more conservative, for the conservative churches won’t survive. I don’t think the answer is as simple as adopting some of the fads of contemporary culture—projected hymn lyrics, repetitious praise music, simplified theology that challenges no one. No, none of that.
So what? Well, I have a few ideas of what some parts of a transformation might look like. It may mean updating the style of our music to something that appeals more to young people. It definitely includes a focus on mission outside these walls. It includes becoming inclusive of people the Christian church has typically excluded, for our culture is moving beyond old prejudices and old fears to a way of life that accepts everyone the way God created them to be. An exclusionary church will be a dying church. It includes being really intentional about being more than a social club. Not that I think that’s what you are, but many churches devolve into that. It includes being really intentional about following Jesus Christ not just as our ticket to heaven but as our model for how we are to live our lives here on earth. It means acting not with the purpose only of saving the church but with the purpose of truly being Christ’s witnesses in this time and place. That means being witnesses to the power of the life of faith. It means being prophets of peace through nonviolence for the whole world and justice for all of the world’s people. The transformation that is under way isn’t about simply conforming to the norms of our culture, for from Jesus’ time to ours Christianity properly understood has been radically countercultural. The transformation that is under way calls us to be more countercultural, not less, about the things that really matter, things like trust in God, care for God’s world, peace, and justice.
Overwhelming isn’t it? Yes it is, but times of transformation are never easy. A faith that follows a crucified Savior surely must know that God never promised us an easy path. Jesus’ yoke may be easy and his burden light as he said, but they’re easy and light only because God is with us when we bear them. God knows the path is steep and full of obstacles. Yet in Christ Jesus we know that God is always with us on that path. To pick us up when we fall. To bless our successes and forgive our failures. To be there at the end welcoming us to our eternal home with God. With trust that those things are true we can do it. We can do it, that is, if we’re willing. If we’re willing first to be changed, then to be truly transformed. Are you? Am I? I think our remaining time together will tell. May God be with us as we struggle with transformation. Amen.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Would We?


Would We?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 8, 2016



Scripture: Acts 16:16-34



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



Have you ever found yourself in a place where it was hard to hang onto your faith? A place that caused you to lose faith in God? A place where you found you couldn’t trust God? Here’s a confession: I have. Maybe you don’t like hearing your pastor say that. Pastors are supposed to have rock solid faith, right? Pastors aren’t supposed to have doubts, right? Well, here’s the truth of the matter. We pastors are every bit as human as anyone else. Yes, maybe we’ve studied theology more than most people. Maybe we’ve spent more time with and learned more about the Bible than most people. Maybe we’ve been taught more about prayer than most people. Maybe we’ve been entrusted with the leadership of a faith community. That may all be true, but here’s the thing. All that doesn’t make us one whit less human than anyone else. We are as subject to doubt as anyone else. Maybe more so actually, because we spend more time thinking about God and our faith than most people. More so, maybe, because we’re acutely aware of doubts that maybe even we think we shouldn’t have. So yes, I have times when I doubt. I have times when it’s hard to trust God. Not all that often, but it happens.

So I was quite powerfully struck by our reading from Acts this morning. In that reading Paul and his co-worker Silas are in the Greek city of Philippi. We hear that Paul angered someone, who may have been a leading citizen of the city, when he exorcized a demon out of a girl because the girl kept following him around repeating the same thing over and over again for days on end. It seems he did it for rather selfish reasons, not to cure the girl but because he was so annoyed at her. In any event, she was a slave, slavery being something the Bible just takes for granted by the way. Her owner made money off of her possession by the demon because the demon gave her the power to predict the future. So this slave owner had Paul and Silas arrested and hauled up before the local authorities. He accused them of causing public trouble. The crowd turned against Paul and Silas. So the magistrates had them flogged, then threw them in prison in stocks. It must have been a physically and emotionally most painful experience for our heroes. Flogging is a terrible thing to do to any person, as is throwing them in prison unable to move because their feet are clamped down in stocks.

If all that happened to me, I suspect I’d be angry. I’d be angry at the girl’s owner. I’d be angry at the crowds. I’d be angry at the magistrates. I’d be angry at the jailer. I might even be angry at God. After all, I’m imagining myself in Paul’s place here, and Paul had been doing God’s work. He had been preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was about the work of bringing people to God through faith in Jesus. And what does he get for his efforts? Arrest, flogging, and imprisonment, that’s what. Surely not the reward he was expecting for his holy work!

Now, Paul’s human. He got fed up with the slave girl who was pestering him the way any of us would. But when he’s arrested, flogged, and thrown in prison, does he get angry? Does he lash out at his accusers and oppressors? Does he curse God and abandon his faith? Absolutely not. When, with his friend Silas, he’s shackled and locked in the deepest part of some miserable ancient prison, what does he do? He prays. Now, our text doesn’t tell us what he prayed, what he said to God, or whether he said anything at all. It does tell us that he and Silas sang hymns.

Now, once again our text doesn’t give us any details, but I can’t help but think that they were singing hymns of praise to God. I think that what happens next in the story suggests that that must have been what they were singing. A miraculous earthquake happens. The stocks in which Paul and Silas were locked spring open. The door to the prison spring open too. As far as we know there’s only the one jailer on duty, and he’s asleep. There’s nothing to stop Paul and Silas from just walking out of the prison and hightailing it out of town. Don’t you think that’s what you would have done? I’m afraid it’s probably what I would have done.

Paul and Silas didn’t. Why didn’t they? The answer is: their faith. Their faith in God led them first of all to trust God in whatever happened to them. Then it led them to love their enemy. It led them to be concerned for the jailer, who surely would have been blamed for the prisoners’ escape and punished for it, perhaps with his life. That’s clearly what the jailer thought would happen to him when he thought his prisoners had fled, for he was prepared to kill himself rather than face the consequences of their escape. So Paul and Silas stay. They stay sitting in prison when they could have escaped. They do it to protect the man who was in charge of keeping them in jail. Then of course they convert him to faith in Jesus Christ.

That’s good of course, but it’s Paul and Silas staying in jail out of concern for him that really strikes me about this story. There is a powerful lesson for us in that part of the story. There is a powerful challenge for us in that part of story. Let’s take the lesson first. The lesson, I think, is that it is precisely in the worst times of our lives that faith can help us the most. Maybe I’ve told you my personal story of that truth before, but even if I have I’m going to tell it again.

Some of you know that my first wife Francie died of breast cancer. It happened almost fourteen years ago. We knew her death was coming, but even so, when it came I was devastated. It was easily the worst time of my life. I was devastated, and I had what many might find to be a strange reaction. I was at home with Francie when she died. Through my tears of that evening I had one very strong yearning. I wished that I had my robe and stole at home with me. I wanted to put them on. I wanted to wrap myself in the symbols of the faith. I wanted to clutch the symbols of my Christian faith and my Christian calling for comfort and strength. I didn’t have them at home. They were at the church in Monroe that I was serving at the time. I did have something else. I had this cross that I’m wearing this morning and that I wear most every time I lead worship. Francie gave it to me the day I passed my Ph.D. dissertation defense and became Dr. Sorenson for the first time. It has her initials, my initials, the date of my dissertation defense, and a Russian word that means essentially congratulations engraved on the back of it. So I put it around my neck like it is right now, and I held it tight. It helped. It helped in part I suppose because of its connection to Francie, but mostly it helped because it is a symbol of Christian faith. It is a symbol of Jesus Christ. It represents all that faith offers us in those most difficult times of our lives. It helped get me through. I don’t know how I would have survived Francie’s death without faith, and this cross is a symbol of that faith. In the worst times our faith can give us the greatest strength. When all seems lost it can give us hope. I think maybe that’s what Paul’s faith was doing for him in those stocks in a prison cell so very long ago. Yes, like I said a moment ago hard times can destroy faith; but they can also strengthen it. The hard times in my life have strengthened mine. I hope that maybe the hard times in your lives have strengthened yours.

That I think is the lesson in this story for us, but I said here that there is also a challenge for us in that story. Here’s what I think the challenge is. Let me use myself as an example again. By the time Francie died I had been practicing my Christian faith pretty actively for over twenty-five years. I had not only been a church member who attended worship regularly. I had gone to seminary. I gotten had a call as a Christian pastor. I had been ordained to the ministry of Jesus Christ. I hadn’t stashed my faith away in my attic only to drag it out when I thought I needed it. It was at hand, ready to give me its comfort and support, because I was no stranger to it, and it was no stranger to me. Paul had been practicing and living out his faith too for a long time before he got thrown in prison in the story we heard this morning. That’s challenge for us. This story challenges us to keep our faith active and alive at all times in our lives. It challenges us to practice our faith even when we don’t feel any particular need or desire to do it. And it challenges us to remember our faith in those times when it would be so easy to forget it, so easy to give up on God. Paul met the challenge. Would we?

Of course I know that you aren’t seminarians or ordained ministers. I know that none of us is the founding Apostle of Christianity the way Paul is. That doesn’t matter. We can all practice our faith every day. We can all pray every day. We can all come to church every Sunday. We can all study the Bible and other great works of Christian faith. So let’s accept the challenge so that we can reap the blessings of our faith. Let’s all be not just Christians but practicing Christians. If we will do that, our faith will indeed get us through whatever comes our way in life. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Who Are We, Part 2


Who Are We? Part 2

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 1, 2016



Scripture: Acts 16:9-15



Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.



In my sermon last Sunday I raised some questions about just who we are as the First Congregational Church of Maltby. I said that I see a certain parallel between the context of the earliest Christians who struggled with the question of whether the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also for the Gentiles and our context in which Christianity is becoming a minority voice in a largely atheistic or agnostic society. This morning I’m going to look at that issue again and raise some more questions about it. Please bear with me. This is important stuff.

Now, I know as well as anyone how different the world of the New Testament was from our world. Still, when I read our passage from Acts for this morning I was struck again by what may be an important parallel from the world that story of Lydia discloses and our world. This morning I want to work with that parallel to see what issues it might raise for us.

In that story a wealthy woman named Lydia hears Paul preaching. She accepts his word about Jesus Christ and has herself and everyone in her household baptized. The text says that she was “a worshipper of God.” Now, I think that our text means that she was what is more commonly called a “God-fearer.” In the first century CE in the Roman Empire God-fearers were Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, who were attracted to Judaism but who hadn’t converted to that faith. There were communities of these folks around the synagogues in all of the major cities of the Roman Empire. Philippi, where Lydia lived, was such a city. God-fearers were people who were attracted to Judaism’s monotheism and its ethical teachings but who couldn’t accept all of the Torah law which Judaism taught and to which it adhered. They participated in the life of the synagogue and of the Jewish community but never became Jews themselves. These are the people among whom the new Christian movement spread most quickly. It seems that most of Paul’s converts were from these God-fearers. It makes sense to me that Lydia was one of them.

As I read this story last week something occurred to me. The Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were surrounded by people who were, I think we can say, spiritual but not Jewish. Today our Christian churches are surrounded by people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. They are for the most part spiritual but not Christian. I wondered whether the way the Jews of the synagogues and Paul and the other Christian missionaries of the time related to the God-fearers could teach us anything about how we Christians and our churches might relate to the large number of spiritual but not religious people all around us.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have an answer to that question; but as is so often the case with me, that question raises a lot of other questions that I think we would do well to spend some time with. In particular, the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were not willing to give up the law of Moses in order to make the God-fearers full members of their communities. The God-fearers couldn’t accept Judaism’s kosher dietary laws. Even more importantly, the men among the God-fearers could not accept Judaism’s law of circumcision. So a barrier remained between the Jews and the God-fearers. They got along together. They lived and probably even worshipped together, but they never fully overcame that barrier. Paul came along and said you can get everything you love about Judaism without obeying the Torah law by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. A great many God-fearers did.

Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. It offered one God instead of the multitude of gods and goddesses of Greco-Roman religion. It offered a God who cared how God’s people live and who instructed the people in how to live, which the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses never did. It offered a God who wished only blessing for God’s people. Yet the barrier of the Torah law remained. For the Jews it was nonnegotiable.

It seems to me that Christianity has a great deal to offer our spiritual but not religious countrymen sort of in the same way Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. We offer the one true God. We offer a God of love, compassion, and forgiveness. We offer a tradition rich in spiritual practices through which we find and live our connection with that God. We offer community, something most Americans sorely lack these days. We offer an ancient and proven spiritual path that connects people with God and God with people.

Yet some barrier remains between us and the spiritual but not religious folk around us. I’m not sure just what constitutes that barrier. I suppose it may vary some among the people who have rejected Christianity without ceasing to consider themselves to be spiritual. I can suggest what some of those things may be. The insistence of most Christians that one be able to recite one of the ancient creeds without mental reservation in order to be Christian. A rigid biblical literalism that most people today with knowledge of science, the techniques of critical study, and inquiring minds can’t accept. Rigid notions of sexual morality that most Americans today can’t accept. An insistence on using obscure language about the Incarnation and the Trinity that doesn’t make much sense to many people today. There are many things about American Christianity today that a great many people who believe in God and seek a relationship with God just can’t accept.

Which raises a very important question for me. The Torah law was, and is, Judaism’s nonnegotiable. What are our nonnegotiables? What are we willing to give up or compromise in order to make our faith more accessible to spiritual but nonreligious people today? What can we give up? What can we not give up? What can we give up and still be Christian? What would cause us to cease to be Christians if we gave it up?

Folks, those are major questions before the Christian faith today. The world is changing. The world has changed. The church is changing. The church has changed. Some people say those changes are a major shift in culture that isn’t going to go away, the kind of shift that only happens every 500 years or so, the greatest change in the church’s context since the Reformation. They say that the Christian faith must deal with that change if Christianity is to survive, and I suspect that they are right. I’m not sure I can answer my questions even for myself, and I’m sure I can’t answer them for you. They are, however, really important questions. They are questions we cannot avoid wrestling with. Throughout our history the Christian faith has adapted itself to very different and changing cultural contexts. We’re being called on to do it again. Sometimes that reality makes me say “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.” Still, the reality remains. I pray that in our time together we may do some wrestling with those questions. The whole Christian church must wrestle with those questions if it is to survive in the postmodern world. I’m ready to do it. Are you? I hope so. Amen.