July 25, 2021, Sermon

"FREEING JESUS"

Ginger Rembold

The author writes,

“My knees hurt. The cushion at the marble altar almost did not matter. I could feel the cold in my legs, the ache of unanswered prayers. “Where are you, God?” I asked. Silence.

I looked up at Jesus in full triptych glory, surrounded by angels, robed in cobalt blue against a gilt background, shimmering sanctity. The small chapel in the great cathedral was one of my favorite places to pray, mostly because of this Jesus. Today, however, I was restless as I gazed intently at the massive icon of Christ. Usually, the image drew me deeper toward God, and the railing where I knelt was a place of awakening and wisdom. “Where are you, God?” I asked again. Silence.

“God?” A quiet please, really, the most incomplete of prayers.

“Get me out of here,” a voice replied.

Was someone speaking to me? I looked behind, around.

“Get me out of here,” the voice said again.

I stared up at the icon. “Jesus? Is that you?”

“Get me OUT OF HERE!” I heard again, more insistent now.

“But Lord…”

The chapel fell silent, but I know I heard a divine demand for freedom. I was not sure what to think, but I also did not want to tell the priest who was wandering up the aisle. I doubted the Washington National Cathedral would take kindly to the Son of God looking for the exit. And I was not sure what to

do. Smuggling an altarpiece out of the building was not going to happen. Instead, I got up and nearly bolted out, all the while envisioning how I might rescue Jesus from the cathedral. I felt bad leaving him behind.”

These are the opening lines from Diana Butler Bass’s new book, Freeing Jesus, and if this morning’s sermon sounds something like a book review, well, I suppose it might be! My sister loaned me the book in early June and I have used it for my daily prayer drawings over the past month or so. In doing so I realized it asks a couple very important questions for all of us...questions I may not present answers to this morning, but questions we all need to answer individually for ourselves.

In this morning’s scripture from Matthew 16, Jesus asks the question, “Who do YOU say that I am?” How we answer that question, the language and perhaps creed that we use, can confine Jesus and us. But WHO is a relationship word – an invitation that opens us to companionship, friendship, and perhaps love. It can really only be answered in how we EXPERIENCE Jesus for ourselves, not based on an ancient creed that perhaps has boxed Jesus into the church building throughout history. Yes...that is why we recited the Apostles Creed this morning. More on that later.

So...here are my two questions for you to mull around in your head….

Have we as a church people put Jesus into a box, confined him to the church building and Sunday worship? And secondly,

How would you personally answer Jesus’s question, “Who do YOU say that I am?”

The author shares six forms of Jesus that have been REAL to her in her life experiences. For the sake of brevity I am just going to touch on each one, somewhat to illustrate the many different relationships we can establish with Jesus throughout our lives.

FRIEND.

“I do not call you servants any longer,” Jesus said to his followers, “but I have called you friends.” (John 15:15)

Friend is perhaps our earliest introduction to Jesus as a child. Jesus loves me this I know. Jesus - our invisible companion. Friendship as children is the friendship relationship in its purest form. It is an intimate bond of trust, mutual exchange, love without conditions. The concept of friend or divine companionship collapses the sacred distance between God and us. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus!”

 

TEACHER

You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. John 13:13

Of the ninety or so times Jesus is addressed directly in the NT, roughly sixty refer to him as ‘teacher’, ‘rabbi’ ‘great one’ or ‘master’ (as in the British sense of schoolmaster). In the gospels the preponderance of action that occurs is Jesus teaching….at the temple, on hillsides, by lakes, in fields and campfires, at wedding and dinner tables. He teaches individuals, his disciples, crowds, smallgroups, friend and foes. Today we think of rabbi as a Jewish clergyman, but in Jesus’ time, it simply referred to one who taught with authority. Jesus taught with stories, parables intended to come alongside our current understanding and then expand or upset it. Theologian Marcus Borg writes, “Jesus was not primarily a teacher of either correct beliefs or right morals. Rather he was a teacher of a way or path, specifically a way of transformation.”

SAVIOR

Do not be afraid...to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. Luke 2:10-11

Butler-Bass writes, “Savior” may well be the most ubiquitous term that Christians use to describe Jesus...Yet, oddly enough, the term only appears twice in the gospels to describe Jesus.” (I had to look ubiquitous up – it means commonly used!) And the term salvation comes from Latin salvus, which originally referred to being made whole, safe, or in good health. Salvus was not about being taken out of this life; it was about this life being healed. Jesus was not killed so his death would save people; he was killed because he was already saving them. He threatened a world based in fear, not love. Salvation is about living beyond fear.

 

LORD

Why do you call me “Lord, Lord” and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. Luke 6:46-47

The word LORD held multiple meanings in the Biblical world, meanings that were personal, political, and theological. In the NT Greek the term used is kyrios – meaning Lord, Master, Ruler/King – each signifying dominion over the lives and fates of those under him. To say ‘Jesus is Lord’ was both subversive and empowering. Yet the priorities of Jesus’ kingdom would be exactly opposite of those in the world we know today – Jesus’ kingdom is one where holy generosity and true peace replace militarism, capitalism, and the me-first attitude so prevalent. Jesus can be Lord of our hearts, but must also be Lord of the whole earth in the most redemptive of ways.

 

THE WAY

I am the way, the truth, and the life. John 14:6

Jesus as The Way does not hand us a map when we are born and then disappear. For the map is constantly changing and there is no single road to follow for everyone. Bass writes, “But when you dare leave the map behind, Jesus emerges as the road itself and the Light that guides. I learned that Jesus as Way includes both joy and loss – not as separate roads, but more like companion routes. The ways of affirmation and abandonment were not easy, but they sometimes merged.” But always, if we stop to “breathe God in, breathe love out” we will find the Light marking the path to follow in that time and place.

 

PRESENCE

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Matthew 28:20

The Trinity – God, Jesus, Holy Spirit. As much as philosophical theology tries to separate the threads of the Three-in-One, Jesus is known as the presence of God, made alive through the Spirit. Jesus is present near and far, here and there, completely with us yet absolutely beyond imagining. Bass writes, “The Christian faith is not ‘seeing is believing’ but rather ‘believing is seeing’. We must open our eyes and hearts and see Jesus’ presence in our lives. We need to see him in the places that we dare not to look and dare not to think about.” When we do, we will discover a God who is always on the move urging us to participate in his new creations.

 

UNIVERSAL JESUS

Friend.Teacher.Savior.Lord.Way.Presence. These are just six forms of Jesus the author has experienced for herself over the years – a continuum of encountering Jesus in new ways during her life journey. She concludes with the Universal Jesus – the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. A Jesus of Oneness, of welcoming and inclusion, the Jesus that connects ALL of us. A Jesus not defined by dogma or creeds, by church polity, but a Jesus within a circle with all of us, working to bring the Kin-dom of God to life.

 

To return to our two questions…

Do we need to unwrap Jesus? Free Jesus from the bondage of church polity? “There is a line – often a very thin one, between knowledge and dogmatism, between clarity and certainty – and far too many people fail to distinguish between being able to share the Good News of Jesus and zealous preoccupation with correct doctrine.” It seems the modern church may have some of the same difficulties the Jewish Sanhedran had two millenium ago when they tried to reign in this rabble-rousing rabbi who didn’t follow strict Jewish law. Do we as a church need to free Jesus today from confining dogma today? Secondly, ponder this week how you have experienced Jesus in your life. Who do YOU say that he is? Which form of Jesus defines your relationship now, at this moment in your life? Have you encountered Jesus in other ways? Do you personally need to release Jesus into a more active and real presence?

Covid hit while this book was being written. Church doors closed. Butler-Bass concludes,”If you wanted to find Jesus in a church during Covid, you couldn’t. The doors were shut tight. But as millions have discovered in these many months, Jesus is NOT confined to a building…...I did not liberate Jesus from the cathedral; a pandemic did. Jesus is with us. Here. Now. Everywhere. Always.” AMEN.

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15, May 23, 2021, Sermon

“Celebrating the Spirit”

Pastor Randy Butler

Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the Church. Pentecost itself of course was a Jewish celebration, but it was during that Pentecost celebration that the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus descended in wind and fire upon the disciples of Jesus gathered in Jerusalem, sometime around 33 A.D. So we celebrate Pentecost and birth of the church. But this morning we also celebrate the Holy Spirit as well. The book of Acts where this is all described is called the Acts of the Apostles, but it could just as well be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is the driving force behind all the Apostles’ activity.

Now even with all the Spirit’s energy in the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is often referred to as the shy member of the Trinity. There is a mystery about the Spirit. We sometimes have trouble relating to the Spirit, in some traditions still called the Holy Ghost. Jesus on the other hand was a living breathing person. We read about him and connect with him. The Spirit is harder to get a hold of.

But it’s the Spirit’s day. Though when we celebrate the Spirit we also celebrate the Father and the Son – they are never not together, today we highlight the Holy Spirit in our lives in the world and in the church.

In our text from John, Jesus is telling his disciples that he will be soon leaving them. This saddens them. But then he points out that it is to their advantage that he departs because then he will send the Spirit. If he stays, no Spirit yet. If he goes, then the Spirit comes. It’s like he is saying, “The best thing that could ever happen to you is for me to go away. That clears the deck for the coming of the Spirit.” Jesus the man, after all, was limited by time and space. He could only be in one place at a time. But His Spirit is everywhere in all places and at all times. The Spirit expands the presence of Jesus, makes his presence available to us today. We could say that the Spirit prolongs or extends the presence of Jesus, because the Spirit’s action is entirely related to the activity of Jesus.

We recently lost Anne’s father, who passed away in March 2020. But he was near us in Spokane when he died, and there are still reminders of him in our house. Pictures, of course, and some of his clothing. I often wear one of his sweaters. There are some batteries from his hearing aids sitting in a bag in the garage. I have been using a set of his unused razors for shaving. The jacket he wore is hung in our closest, still with a hint of his favorite cologne. Even though he is gone, his presence lingers. And it is like he is still with us – these delightful reminders of his presence in our home. They are like little relics serving to remind us of him.

Not surprisingly we have always placed an importance on the relics of Jesus. Throughout the centuries people have claimed to have a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, or a torn piece of his robe from the day of his crucifixion. The famous Shroud of Turin was thought to be Jesus’ burial shroud. That way his presence lingers. But Jesus is talking about more than all this, more than sentimental reminders of our loved ones.

When we have the Holy Spirit we have nothing less than the full presence of Jesus. Jesus says, “The Spirit will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and proclaim it to you.” And he adds, “All that the Father has is mine.” So all that the Father has belongs to Jesus and all that Jesus has is the Spirit’s. The Spirit is not making anything up that the Spirit has not gotten from the Father through the Son. In fact Martin Luther said humorously, “The poor Holy Spirit doesn’t know any other subject (than Christ).” So when we have the Holy Spirit we have Christ. We don’t need to wait for anything else or anyone else. And though we do look forward to that time when Christ returns, he has in some sense already returned in the form of the Spirit. Everything that God wants for us in Jesus Christ is available right now. And nothing is lost in his ascension to heaven. In the Holy Spirit we have nothing less than the complete spiritual presence of Jesus. So when he says in the gospel of Matthew, “Remember I am with you always to the end of the age,” he really is completely with us in the form of the Holy Spirit.

Now the Spirit also has a role to play in the world. It is a convincing and convicting role. It falls to the Holy Spirit to present an alternative view of the world, a completely different reality than what the world is based upon. It is the Spirit’s task to show how wrong the world is about fundamental issues, to call into question the very foundation upon which we build our lives. John says that the Spirit will reveal how the world is wrong about what is most wrong, wrong about what is most right, and wrong about who wins in the struggle between good and evil.

Jesus says the Spirit will show how wrong the world is about sin – about what is most wrong. Now there is a lot wrong with the world. We can draw up a long list – war, poverty, social injustice, world hunger, racism, sexism, etc. But Jesus boils it all down to what is most wrong – that the world does not believe in him. We ask, “Really is that what is most wrong with the world? Is disbelief about Jesus the fundamental problem with the world?” We are not so sure about that, but for the gospel of John that is the big problem. And if we trust what John says about Jesus, that he is the full expression of God in human form, and that this is true, well then to disbelieve it would seem to have major consequences. If we are wrong about what Dale Bruner calls God’s Great Personal Visitor to the earth, well, then that would be a big thing to get wrong.

We make relative most religious claims and truth today, we consider believing in Jesus a matter of personal taste or opinion. But the New Testament makes it the most important of all decisions. So the Holy Spirit convicts the world of what is most wrong. And what is most right. We might think that certain virtues and actions are what is most important. But again for the gospel of John it is Jesus who is most right in and for the world. His life, his death, his resurrection. He is simply what is most right about reality. No one, nothing is more righteous, more right. So the Spirit is to show the world how it is wrong about what is wrong, and wrong about what is right, and wrong about who wins in the end. Jesus says the ruler of this world has been condemned. And we can be assured then that the victory belongs to Jesus. It may not look like it at times, but ultimately God’s ways of love, mercy and justice will prevail. The world may see with despair, but we can hope, because we know the outcome.

Now this task belongs to the Spirit. The Spirit does the heavy lifting, thankfully. But we are still agents of the Spirit and we have our part. So the Spirit equips us too, guiding us into truth, giving us the words to speak, declaring to us the things of Jesus. The Spirit is still teaching us. It is the Spirit’s part to help us continually interpret and apply the words and actions of Jesus for our time. The Spirit helps the Bible remain a living breathing Word from God that is never set in stone but needs to constantly re-interpreted.

In the 18th and 19th centuries some supported the institution of slavery from Scripture. But we have changed. Nobody really uses the Scripture to argue for slavery anymore. We have changed how we understand the role of women in the church and in society. We understand the Bible differently than we did even just decades ago. The same thing is true for our understanding of human sexuality. Just as the Holy Spirit inspired these ancient writings, that same Holy Spirit now interprets and applies and gives us new understandings of these same writings. The writings haven’t changed but we have and the Spirit lives with us as we are today. This doesn’t mean that we are always modernizing the scripture to fit our views. It simply means that the Bible lives and helps us to grow as we evolve.

So we celebrate the Holy Spirit today, the One who is the very presence of Jesus with us, the One who convicts the world and the One who teaches us.

Acts 8:26-40, May 2, 2021, Sermon

“What Prevents Us?”

Pastor Randy Butler

The Bible is full of memorable and meaningful one-liners. At Jesus’ resurrection the angels say, “Do not be afraid.” Writer Richard Rohr calls that the greatest one liner in the Bible. Jesus says things like, “Abide in me.” “Go and do likewise.” The Apostle Paul in Romans: “You have been saved through faith.” The letter of 1 John: “God is love.” James: “Faith without works is dead.” These are pithy meaningful one liners meant to take a place in our hearts. Well, this morning we have two more to add. They both come from our text: The first is a command: “Get up and go.” The second is a question: “What prevents us?” “Get up and go, what prevents us.”

It doesn’t take much to see that we have, as preacher Andrew Connors puts it, “a get up and go” kind of God. Get up and go are perhaps some of the most important words in all of the Bible. From the very beginning God is telling people to go. To Abraham he says, “Go to the land that I will show you.” Abraham gets up and goes, and the rest is history. Moses is told to go back to his people in Egypt. He has all kinds of excuses not to go – but he does. Samuel is told by God to go and anoint a new king. Samuel goes and anoints David, even though Saul is still King. The prophet Jonah is told to get up and go to the people of Nineveh, whom Jonah despises. Yet after being thrown into the sea and swallowed by a big fish Jonah finally obeys God. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah are commissioned and told to go and speak hard things to Israel. Even Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus, are commanded to go to Egypt during a dangerous time for them in Israel. God is constantly telling God’s people to go, to leave what is comfortable and go to others who need to know the love and grace of God, this get up and go God.

This is especially true in the Book of Acts. The actual title is the Acts of the Apostles, and it tells the story of the spread of the gospel after Jesus ascends to heaven. Jesus tells them “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” He describes the mission field in concentric circles: Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. “Get up and go.”

And so we pick up the story as the Spirit is directing Philip. We are told that an angel of the Lord, also simply called the Spirit or the Spirit of the Lord in this text, said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” The text adds that this is a wilderness road.

As Philip travels along he sees a man in a chariot. He is obviously someone with wealth and privilege – he is in fact an Ethiopian, from south of Egypt, and he is the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia. Now Ethiopia in that day was thought of as the edge of the world, an exotic destination up the River Nile. So this is not the person Philip expects to see. But the Ethiopian is here because he has been in Jerusalem to worship in the temple. It is not likely that he is a Jew, but rather someone with a spiritual hunger and interest in God as the Jews understood God. We are also told that the Ethiopian is a eunuch. It was not uncommon for court officials to be castrated, and be eunuchs. This way they avoided distracting court intrigues and passions. Yet as a eunuch this Ethiopian is set apart, different, his sexuality not clearly defined. He is likely quite lonely, and as he travels this man is reading a scroll of Isaiah. This is the one Philip meets when he is commanded to get up and go.

And so we ask, “What does it mean for us, First Pres. Baker, to get up and go? To whom are we sent? Where is our wilderness road? Where does it lead us? What about the Baker gay community? Many struggle today with roles and definitions and sexual identities. And more than ever before in America there is open discussion about these issues. LGBTQ communities are growing as more and more people reject traditional sexual definitions and question sexual identities. This may be difficult for some to accept, but it is a reality. The gay community in Baker City continues to grow, and times have certainly changed.

Where is God sending us? To whom is our gracious God asking us to open up our doors and be welcoming? Perhaps our get up and go God wants to send us to the Powder River Correctional Facility. Maybe there is a prison ministry for us. Or maybe God sends us to the children of our community, as God surely has. We continue to provide over 250 backpacks every week for children and families in need. Maybe we are sent to children and their families playing on the sports and recreation fields, or in their choirs and music programs. To whom is God sending us, telling us to get up and go? How might we continue to put to use our significant financial resources in the community? Might we begin our own foundation that funds children or prisoners or whomever?

Get up and go. That is a good one-liner. The next is a question. What prevents us? As Philip joins him the Ethiopian has many questions and Philip is glad to answer as best he can. And as they ride along talking, they come to a body of water, perhaps a creek, and the Ethiopian asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” I have simplified it to apply to us as well. What prevents us? What prevents us from being baptized or baptizing or sharing the good news? What prevents us from getting up and going? What hinders us, inhibits us, prevents us?

Sometimes our interpretation of the Bible prevents us. The book of Deuteronomy says very clearly, No one who is a eunuch shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. It says the same thing about foreigners and other outsiders. But the Bible is often in conversation with itself, and when we read the prophets, Isaiah says this: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than my sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” So you see the prophet Isaiah wrestling, taking issue with his own scripture in the Torah the book of Deuteronomy.

The Ethiopian happens to be reading too from Isaiah and he asks about this description of a suffering servant there: Like a sheep led to slaughter, silent before its shearer…in humiliation justice denied, his life taken away from the earth. He doesn’t even open his mouth. Who is the prophet talking about? And of course Philip connects the description in Isaiah with Jesus, who suffered for us, was crucified for us, who loves us enough to die an unjust death on our behalf. Jesus, who knows and understands the eunuch’s own suffering and alienation. He loves the eunuch.

So we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus who loved us died for us, was raised for us. And we understand the scripture through the interpretive touchstone of Jesus Christ and his love for us. Everything else in scripture is subject to Christ. And we place troublesome, sometimes archaic passages alongside the life death and resurrection of Jesus.

Sometimes the desire for church order prevents us from getting up and going. The eunuch didn’t display a great grasp of the Bible or theology. Should Philip have waited to baptize him until he had been through Christian education classes? Should he have waited to baptize the eunuch in church, not out here in some creek away from the community? These proper church obstacles prevent us from carrying on the ministry of Jesus Christ where and as we find it, not as we might like it to be.

And our erecting of boundaries prevents us too. The tribalism of our day prevents and hinders the testimony of the love of God. Division within the church, division in our culture. Our own certainty about who is right and who is wrong gets in the way of reaching others with good news for their lives.

So all these things can prevent us, but really what prevents us other than our own selves and our fear? What do we wait for? What prevents us? As we move into a new season of life and ministry these are important things to consider. Let us live freely and boldly in the years ahead in the name of Jesus Christ in our community. We are a gifted community of Jesus followers with much to offer the Baker Valley. What prevents us? Let’s get up and go.

John 10:11-18, April 25, 2021, Sermon

"Life with the Good Shepherd"

Pastor Randy Butler

Our Psalm from the Old Testament this morning is one of the most well-known and beloved passages of scripture. We find it written in the bulletins of memorial services and funerals, and it has given comfort and strength to people enduring various adversities for something like three thousand years.

Preacher Will Willimon points out (and I owe a lot of my thoughts to him this morning) that perhaps because of its familiarity Psalm 23 sometimes loses its punch, and in addition, all the action is on God’s part, and we are left as the recipients of God’s shepherd like care. The Lord is my shepherd, he makes me lie down, he leads me, he restores me, he prepares a table for me. It’s all on God. As one of the other Psalms says, “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” That is Psalm 100, which gets the roles right – the Lord is God and we are not. The Lord is the shepherd, and we are the sheep of the Lord’s pasture.

This all leaves us activist minded modern American Christians feeling a little lost and without much to do to stay busy with the Lord’s work, to do our part. I remember a member of my congregation in Seattle who once said to me after a sermon, “Your sermons are nice, but you don’t ever tell us what to do.” It has been popular for some preachers to provide an outline of the sermon in the bulletin, even provide a one-two-three fill in the blank piece for us to write down and take notes with us for the week, so that we will know what to do as followers of Jesus. The man who made comments to me about the sermons eventually left us for a church that could be more specific and concrete for him. But I have never been comfortable with such a direct and specific approach. I would rather tell you what God does than tell you what to do.

Now there is no doubt that the scriptures tell us what to do in places. Faith without works is dead says the epistle of James. “He has shown you,” proclaims the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of you? Act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Although Micah too is not very specific. I confess that I sort of admire Islam and its emphasis on the five pillars – the profession of faith, prayers, alms, fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca. That is specific – do those things and you are a good Muslim.

In our New Testament text, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” There it is again – Jesus is the good shepherd, he is the one who lays down his life, not us. He does the heavy lifting. We are left to follow. He is the shepherd, we are the sheep. He leads, we trust and follow.

We are invited to abide. Jesus says that in chapter fifteen. “Like the branch abides in the vine, abide in me as I abide in you.” Our action, if you can call it that, is to abide. Here Jesus says “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” So our activity is to know and abide. The emphasis is more on being than on doing; on abiding and dwelling with and in God. I’ve always loved Psalm 90 – “Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Psalm 90 invites us to dwell in the eternal presence of God. Psalm 23 promises that we dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That is our starting point – “Not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and gave his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,” as the letter of I John puts it. “We love because God first loved us.”

Twentieth century monk Thomas Merton once wrote that the root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God, the faith that one is loved by God, irrespective of one’s worth.

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” Note that he does not say “I am the good teacher, and you are my students. Here are your assignments for the week. When you complete these, come back on Sunday and we will tackle the next subject.” Nor does he say, “I am the good manager, and you are my staff. Each of us has a job to do. Let’s meet on Thursday at nine a.m. to see what kind of progress we are making toward our goal.” He doesn’t even say, “I am the good social services director. Please check on the following cases for the week, and report back to me.” He says none of that, does none of that, but simply says, “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” He is pretty much doing all that really needs to be done.

Many observers have suggested that the American church lives by what they call moral, therapeutic deism. What is that? Well it is about morality – doing good things, being good people. It emphasizes techniques, ways to fix ourselves, improve ourselves. And it settles for deism, the idea that God sets everything up and then leaves us to fend for ourselves. Moral, therapeutic, deism. We want to know that we can control our destiny, do something about it. Fix what is wrong.

Like most of us perhaps, I have had to learn that I was not in control of my destiny or anyone else’s destiny the hard way. About fifteen years ago our family was rocked by the experience of mental illness. It led to behaviors and incidents that shook us. And as that was happening, I began to realize that my perfect family was not so perfect. That I was not a perfect father and husband, and that it was not in my control to fix everything that was wrong. Things were not going well. We were out of control. They are better now, better than they have been in years, but it took being out of control to give up control. I simply had no choice. That is why I have come to love and appreciate the Twelve Steps. The first step says, I admitted that my life had become unmanageable, the second says, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

I put my life in the hands of my higher power, who I understand to be God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To the best of my ability, and every day, I turn over the heavy lifting to God. My life is in God’s hands. The Lord is my shepherd, I am one of the sheep.

Maybe that is why Psalm 23 is read so often at funerals or memorials services. Because at the time of death, when all human effort and striving are done we have no choice but to surrender to the care of the good shepherd who lays down his life for us. I am not an overly activist Christian by nature. I am probably inclined more toward the contemplative and mystical side. And I don’t want to impose my spiritual personality upon you. But this morning I do encourage us to rest in the presence of God, and in his son Jesus Christ, our good shepherd. Amen.

Luke 24:36b-48, April 18, 2021, Sermon

“Keeping it Real”

Pastor Randy Butler

I’m calling this sermon “Keeping it Real” because the last year has seemed so unreal. We have been stumbling around in a pandemic haze, isolated, unable to visit as much as we like. We can’t touch each other, we can’t shake hands, we can’t hug. It was great to be in worship for Easter this year. But even that had a touch of unreality about it – fewer people, no singing out loud, subdued greetings. It felt incomplete. When I first arrived in Baker I heard about the great Easter feast that was prepared by one of our members – but in two Easters I’ve never been to it, because of COVID. We have not celebrated that most sacred of meals – the Presbyterian Potluck, where you sit close, pass and share the food, pour the drinks, talk and eat. What a strange time it has been – unreal, surreal.

Our text tells us that it is the first day of the week after the Sabbath. And the disciples of Jesus are stumbling around in a haze too. Jesus had been crucified a couple of days earlier. And yet on this day there was word of an empty tomb, the body of Jesus gone missing. And a couple of them had even claimed to see him; that he walked with them from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They claimed that he was alive, risen from the dead. And so it is that evening. They are talking about all these things and Luke says that Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” They were startled, even terrified and they thought they were looking at a ghost. This cannot be real, they thought.

Seeing the shock on their faces he says, “Wait a minute, it’s me – look at my hands and my feet – go ahead and touch me if you want. It’s me Jesus – flesh and bones just like before. I am definitely not a ghost.” And then to make the point he asks if they have anything to eat. We assume after all that ghosts don’t eat, and yet here he is eating, just like everybody else. I like to think that he is having fun with this little demonstration – eating a piece of fish with a big grin on his face while they stare in amazement. “Look,” he is saying, “I’m real.”

But we can understand the disciples because we too wonder if Jesus is real. Easter has come and gone. He is risen indeed, but a lot of life has happened since, and perhaps Jesus seems sort of ghostlike to us too. We forget, and we are faced with the concrete realities of our jobs, our families, our very real bills to pay and real deadlines to meet. We are immersed in our reality and Jesus seems unreal, like a specter on the horizon, a ghost. His presence and reality is transparent, foggy, and we are left with a kind of phantom faith, a vague sense of God and God’s presence on the margins of our lives. So how do we keep it real? How do we move from this vague sense of God to real contact with God? Our text gives us some clues.

First we stay close to Christ’s humanity. Preacher Fred Craddock notes the continuity between the risen Christ and the Jesus who died. They are one and the same. Christ remains flesh and bones, even in his risen state. He has a physical body - he eats, has physical substance and form, his wounds are still visible. He is transformed no doubt, but he is not so spiritual now that he doesn’t need a body, that he can discard his wounded body.

We do not follow an eternal Christ divorced from historical existence. The Christian life is not so spiritual that it is without suffering for others, without a cross, without our own wounds, without engagement in the concrete life of this world. Craddock says that Easter is forever joined to Good Friday; to follow the risen Christ is to follow the one who bore the cross.

When we meet and talk with each other as fellow followers of Christ, and with members in the community our conversations are not always lofty and spiritual. More often they concern the worries and fears and losses and pains of everyday life. Certainly we pray and bring God to bear on the issues, but we are often talking about a loved one, the loss of a job, the fear of sickness. Our spiritual life is not vague, ghostlike, floating in the heavens. Rather it is anchored in real life, in the flesh and bones humanity of the crucified and risen Jesus. Do you have anything to eat? Asks the risen Jesus. That is how real he is. We keep it real by staying close to him, the real Jesus.

Second, we stay close to scripture. When Jesus finishes eating his fish he reminds them of the big story of scripture that points to his life and suffering and resurrection. He does the same thing with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In both cases Luke says that he opened up the scriptures to them. He became present to them in the scriptures. The Living Word somehow inhabits what is written. So that the disciples would say, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he opened the scripture to us, while he was teaching us?”

One of my early memories as I was coming to faith in Christ in my college years was being in group Bible study with others from our college fellowship group, and I remember my heart really stirring within me as we talked openly and honestly about what we were reading. My heart was burning within me. And Christ was becoming real to me. Christ is made known, becomes real as we read and study, discuss and pray the Bible together in our churches. Martin Luther once said “The Bible is alive; it speaks to me. It has feet; it runs after me. It has hands; it lays hold of me.” Jesus becomes real as we encounter the Living Word in the written word of scripture.

And last, we keep it real by bearing witness to what we know about Christ and serving in his name. Jesus is sending the disciples. They are witnesses of these things and they are to proclaim his message. Speaking and serving makes it real, makes him more real.

We all think and process differently. I’ve heard some people say that they aren’t entirely sure what they think until they express it to someone else. What is vague and unformed in our minds becomes clear when we say it out loud. When it moves from our minds and takes the form of words it becomes concrete – real. This is true of how we share our faith experience too. When we share our spiritual experience verbally with others at the appropriate times it becomes more real for us too. Anyone who has taught, any teacher, will tell you that they learn as much or more than their students.

And of course when we serve we embody Christ. We become Christ’s hands and feet. We become “Little Christs” as others have said. We aren’t getting by on phantom faith anymore, we are living out our faith by serving in practical and concrete ways. In 2018 we went to Haiti with twelve or fourteen people from our church in Seattle. Several youth went with us. We connected with and stayed in a church in a village called Chardonnieres way out on the Southwest peninsula. Our focus was to establish a relationship with our new friends in this church there, one we hoped might last over the years. And one afternoon the men from our group were invited to join the men’s group from their church. So we met and we had some conversation together but the highlight of the afternoon was playing games together. We played simple, silly games with balloons and tennis balls. Some of our youth and grown men - Haitian and American men playing games, competing and laughing our heads off. And as we were settling down and closing our time together one of the young men from our group turned to me and said, “You know, today I feel like we are doing what Christ wants us to be doing. I want to do more of this.” We were preparing another group to go when COVID hit, but every one of the youth who went on the first trip signed up to go again because in that experience Christ was becoming real to them.

So let us keep it real and stay close to the humanity of Christ, stay close to the Living Word of God in the scriptures, and speak and serve as Christ’s people in Baker. May Christ be ever more real to us and with us in the days ahead. Amen.

John 20:19-31, April 11, 2021, Sermon

“Is Seeing Really Believing?”

Pastor Randy Butler

Bertrand Russell was a famous twentieth century British philosopher known for his rigorous thinking and brilliant mind. He was also an atheist, believed that religion was mostly superstition. And at one of his lectures, a woman asked him what he would say if it turned out that he had been wrong about God, and found himself standing outside the Pearly Gates when his time came. When the woman asked the question Russell’s eyes lit up and he replied, “Why, madame, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.’”

I wouldn’t presume to argue with a brilliant philosopher, but Russell’s answer does make me wonder: How much evidence is enough? What role does evidence play in the life of faith? What is the connection between that word faith, and belief?

In our passage this morning, we begin on the evening of that first day – the day of resurrection. It is Easter evening and the disciples are gathered together in a room with the door locked. And yet John tells us that Jesus shows up. He simply reports that Jesus came and stood among them, doesn’t say how he got there through the locked doors. And in a very touching moment Jesus blesses his disciples, saying, “Peace be with you.” He charges them and prepares to send them into the world, and then breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

But one of the twelve, Thomas, was not there that first night, and so the others tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas is insistent and says, “Unless I see the mark where the nails were driven through his hand, and I put my finger on that mark, and unless I touch his side, (where Jesus was stabbed), I will not believe what you are saying.” I am guessing that this didn’t go down too well with the others, his dismissal of their seeing Jesus. “You weren’t even there, Thomas, when Jesus showed up. Apparently you had something better to do on the night we had heard that he might be alive. You weren’t there but he was.”

So a week later Thomas is there with them. And although the doors were shut again, Jesus comes and stands among them again. Says again, “Peace be with you.” Sort of a repeat performance, as if for Thomas’ sake. And Jesus accommodates Thomas’s demands exactly: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and touch my side.”

Now it is easy for us to criticize Thomas, his absence at the first appearance of Jesus, his reluctance to believe the others. His famous doubts have given rise to the name “Doubting Thomas” for anyone who has reservations and questions. But the others stick with Thomas – we don’t read that they throw him out, criticize or berate him. And Jesus certainly doesn’t. I think that one of the lessons of our text is that faith grows and develops not in isolation, but in community; in the give and take of fellowship with others, where we can ask questions, explore the claims of Christian belief, and come to our own conclusions.

This was certainly true for me. I was twenty one years old when I first went to a college age fellowship at a Presbyterian Church. I’d never been to church much, didn’t know all the things others knew about the Christian faith. I was a student at the Cal State University located right near the Church. And as I started going to this college group at the church I decided to take an Old Testament class that was offered. And I also took a fascinating class on Medieval history, which of course has a lot do with religion. And so when I went to this Christian college group I asked a lot of questions, thought of myself as a serious seeker, and intellectual inquirer. I am sure at times I was quite annoying. But my new friends, more mature in the ways of their gracious and loving Lord, well, they put up with me, loved me, even seemed to like me, and it changed my life. I am here today because of that experience. They gave me room, let me find my own way and ask my own questions.

Jesus’ invitation to Thomas to touch and see his wounds honors Thomas’ doubts, and respects Thomas’s unique journey. We aren’t expected to be gullible, to just accept and believe without any questions. Like Thomas we are invited to investigate the credibility of the resurrection. It is quite in-credible after all. Questions are OK, even expected. Maybe the Lord took great delight in showing Thomas his wounds. But then he finally says to Thomas, “Do not doubt any longer, but believe.” At some point we are invited, exhorted to decide and follow Jesus.

Insufficient evidence, said Bertrand Russell. Maybe. It is not always very clear. But as someone said, there is proof sufficient to convince those that are willing to be open, and proof sufficient to challenge, even judge those who are obstinate, for whom there will never be enough evidence. Sometimes our questions serve to avoid making a decision that we know will change our life. Questions can become intellectual diversions and bunny trails that keep us from joining Jesus on the way that leads to life. Are we engaging in honest inquiry or stubborn hard hearted resistance? After all the reasoning and questioning and exploring there is a time to decide. There is a tipping point, and we will have to decide, even if we don’t have all the evidence we might like.

Jesuit scholar John Kavanaugh went to work for a time in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. At this time of his life he was searching for a clear answer as to how to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. They talked for a while, and then she asked “What can I do for you?” And Kavanaugh asked Mother Teresa to pray for him to find clarity. She paused for a moment and said, “No, I cannot do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” Kavanaugh said to her that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for. But she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Ultimately all we can do is trust. We will never have enough evidence, enough information, enough clarity. At some point we finally have to act. Act with vigor, as Bertrand Russell himself said on another occasion, even without complete certainty.

Interestingly in our text Thomas is called the twin. As Bible teacher Dale Bruner asks, are we not all in some sense twins: real believers and yet semi-unbelievers at the same time? Faith is not certainty, it is well, faith. We will always be a mixture of faith and un-faith. But we can still act. We can still decide.

Thomas does – Oh does he ever! He sees and touches Jesus and then exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” This the loftiest view of the Lord given in all of the gospels. Nowhere else is he addressed as God in the four gospels. From the lips of the doubter comes the most exalted name: my Lord and my God.

He has indeed made his inquiries about this incredible resurrection of Jesus, and he is convinced. He moves from knowledge to faith. There is a shift from his head to his heart. And that must be our shift too. Jesus for Thomas is not just universal Lord and God, but his Lord and his God. We must make the Lord our own, make God our own. As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ has made me his own.”

Now today we have less to go on than Thomas did. He could see Jesus, talk to Jesus, see and touch his wounds. That was tangible evidence. We don’t have the same hard evidence – we have testimony about the evidence. We call it the witness of the apostles, their writings: the gospel of John and the other three gospels; the letters and other writings of the New Testament. Written primarily by those who knew Jesus or were close to those who knew him. The New Testament is the testimony of the apostles, whose witness we now decide to be enough or not, for us. Our text closes by saying that Jesus did many other signs which are not included in this book. But these were written so that you may come to believe. John is giving his best testimony concerning the evidence of Jesus’ life death and resurrection. This is John on the witness stand. He wants us to believe and he wants us to have life. He wants us to read his testimony, believe it, make it ours and experience a fullness of life we never thought possible.

So let us do our honest investigation, ask our questions. But then let us believe and act and live. Amen.

John 20:1-18, April 4, 2021, Easter Sermon

“Joy Comes With the Morning”

Pastor Randy Butler

I heard about a pastor who asked a question in an Easter children’s message. “What were Jesus’ first words after he was raised from the dead?” the pastor asked. It was silent for a moment and then a young girl raised her hand excitedly, “I know! I know his first words! He said: Tah dah!”

Of course it wasn’t like that at all. No “Tah dah!” Jesus in fact is very mysterious in his first appearances and words on that morning. His resurrection is all quite understated. There is no description of the actual event. None of the gospel writers tell us how it happened. We just read about a rolled back stone, an empty tomb and angels, and later these appearances of Jesus. And when he does appear he doesn’t go directly to Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the Roman governor to let them know their plans to dispose of him didn’t exactly work out. He doesn’t go immediately to Jerusalem or Rome and say, “Just wanted to let you know I’m alive.” None of that; none of what he could have done. He goes to Galilee instead, an inconsequential place in the Mediterranean world of the first century. And he returns not to the rich and powerful, but to those who knew him, to people like Mary Magdalene.

John tells us that Mary sets out by herself this morning – the first day of the week, while it was still dark. What would take place in the next couple of hours would change her life, would change the world, but she started out by herself in the dark. She wasn’t thinking about resurrection, she just wanted to see Jesus’ body. It was a dark time for her as she walked to the tomb. As Dale Bruner puts it, it was like the church was down to one person on this sad and dark morning.

But that is where resurrection begins – in the dark. It has been a dark year for us. Sure we are coping, but I think this year of isolation and pandemic and economic loss, and fear has taken its toll, perhaps in ways that we don’t recognize. It has been a hard year. We have been working our way through the dark. But so has God been at work in the dark. It is precisely in the dark that God does his resurrection work, his re-creation of life. The book of Genesis tells us that the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the earth until God said, “Let there be light.” God created life from the darkness and chaos. And God does it again in the darkness and chaos of the tomb. God working the nighttime shift to create life from death. This is the nighttime work of God. God is at work in our darkness.

So when Mary arrives at the tomb, she sees the stone rolled away and concludes that they have taken the Lord from the tomb and she runs back to Peter and John, referred to her as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and she tells them, “They have taken the Lord and we do not know where they have laid him.” In her mind Jesus is still laid out flat somewhere – dead, by no means alive.

When the two disciples hear this they run off to the tomb, in a kind of footrace. The gospel reveals a little rivalry here. We are told that John outran Peter and got there first. Then Peter arrived, following him, says John, looked in the tomb saw the grave clothes laid aside, and then John, who reached the tomb first, we are told, just so we know who got there first, John goes in the tomb and it says that he believes. But then strangely, Peter and John go back home. Kind of anti-climactic, incomplete. And maybe it is no wonder that Jesus doesn’t appear to these two competitive disciples trying to outrun each other to the tomb. There are perhaps so full of themselves that they wouldn’t see Jesus anyway. They just go back home.

But Mary, who apparently ran back to the tomb with them – she stays, right there at the tomb, weeping. She is not going anywhere until she has some answers. She doesn’t budge. She has this passion to be near Jesus, dead or alive, what Dale Bruner calls “the abiding, sticking to it, hanging in there, making one’s home with” kind of faith that Jesus so loved in his followers. Perseverance, love, desire and drive to stay by Jesus’ side, no matter what.

And this reminds us that the Christ life takes some desire and persistence. Being a follower of Jesus takes some perseverance and it takes some effort. It doesn’t just come to us naturally. It helps to worship regularly, but it also takes regular prayer, reading of scripture and the stories of Jesus, good Christian spiritual books, writings that feed us and motivate us to the kind of desire and faith that Mary demonstrates in our text. It takes serving and trying to live the life of a disciple, a disciple like Mary Magdalene. She is our example this morning, not Peter and John.

She stays and she weeps but she also looks in the tomb, and she sees two angels. Why didn’t Peter and John see the angels when they went into the tomb? Again maybe only those who weep see angels. Maybe patience and love beholds angels. Angels appear to those on the patient watch of love, as someone else put it. So Mary stays and sticks with it, and sees through her tears.

But she is still confused, operating, if not totally in the dark, still in a sort of twilight. In her mind there is still only one option – Jesus dead. When the angels ask her why she is weeping, she says again, “They have taken Jesus and we don’t know where they have laid him.” In her view of things there is only room for Jesus in horizontal position, Jesus laid out. She has no place in her mind, no category, for a vertical Jesus, risen, alive and well. It simply does not compute yet. It’s like she is living in one dimension only – flat. She is not yet ready for a three-dimensional living breathing Jesus standing upright, can’t fathom it.

So when this man speaks to her, “Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thinks he is the gardener. John tells us it’s Jesus, but she doesn’t know that yet. And her response again, “Just tell me where they laid him, and I will take him away.” She is kind of at her wits end.

Now I am kind of mystified here. I wonder what Jesus is doing. He knows full well why she would be weeping. He knows exactly who she is looking for. Why does he ask? Is it like he is teasing her? Do you know how it is when someone makes a surprise return home after a long absence? You see this a lot on things like Funniest Home Videos. Someone is filming the return and reunion of a son or daughter in the military. The camera is on his mother. She is not expecting this at all – furthest thing from her mind. Her deepest desire is that her son would be here for Christmas or whatever the event, but no way expecting it, not on her radar. And yet here comes her son. He is dressed in his uniform, and she doesn’t recognize him at first, and he is kind of toying with her, wanting to surprise her. And then “Oh, my son, is it really you?” And there is this joyful tearful reunion.

Well, it’s a totally unexpected reunion isn’t it? Jesus and Mary. She is not expecting Jesus to be upright. But he speaks her name and she recognizes him: “Mary.” “Rabbi, is it really you?” and she embraces him.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead undoes all that we expect and all that we assume about life. It rattles all our certainties, calls into question all that we thought true, about life and death. From now on anything can happen because death has been defeated. Life is victorious.

But here’s another thing. I was reminded of this by Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, and we have already pointed it out. Jesus doesn’t show up with a big “Tah dah!” He doesn’t go back to the leaders in Jerusalem to set them straight, or to the Temple or the military palace, the centers of power and influence. He goes back for Mary. He speaks her name. He doesn’t even at first reveal himself to the foot-racing disciples. He shows up for her – while she is crying and distraught. He comes back for her. He will have other things to do. Doesn’t even want her to hang on too tight. He has big things to accomplish still. But before all that he has time for her.

And so yes, the resurrection of Jesus does certainly rattle us. One of the other gospels says the earth shook when Jesus rose. Resurrection is an earthquake. As writer Leif Enger says, “When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. The resurrection is a miracle, and a miracle contradicts the will of the earth.” It takes that kind of miracle to defy the big stuff – the darkness of our time.

But know this too – Jesus is risen for you and for me. Like he did for Mary, he comes back for us. He has time for us. Reunion! He is risen, he is risen indeed.