Ezekiel 37:1-14, March 29, 2020, Sermon

“Will We Get Through This?”

Pastor Randy Butler 

The last few verses we just read tell us that this vision applies to the nation of Israel. They have been an exiled nation, defeated and taken away to Babylon. There are some who remain in Jerusalem in Judah, but not many, and what is there now is not at all what the people remember. The Temple is in ruins, the people are gone, the vineyards are overrun with thorns, and the marketplaces are empty. It feels more like a graveyard than the vital place of worship and commerce it once was.

So in this vision God takes the prophet Ezekiel to a valley and sets him down in this valley, a valley of dry bones. We are told very deliberately that Ezekiel is placed in the middle of this valley of bones, and that he is led all around them. Ezekiel is found smack in the middle of a place of death. He is walking through the valley of the shadow of death, as our favorite Psalm puts it. And in this place, this valley, God asks him, “Mortal (Son of Man) can these bones live?”

Now this kind of strikes me as an odd question, coming as it does from God, and Ezekiel gives what seems to me then a good and honest answer. “O Lord, You know.” As if to say, “How can I know the answer to that huge question? Lord only you know the answer.” I like Ezekiel’s answer because he doesn’t try to bluff his way through it. He doesn’t answer with super hero faith, “Of course Lord, with you here these dry bones are sure to live again. No question about it.” Instead he says he doesn’t really know, that only God knows. He has that  very common mixture of faith and fear going on in him at the same time. He thinks it could happen. “Could these bones live, again?” “I don’t know, only God knows.” 

That’s how it is with us too. Will we get through this Coronavirus? O Lord only You know. Will someone I know and love contract this virus? Will someone I know die from this virus. O Lord only you know. Will our national, our global economy survive this? O Lord only you know. Like Ezekiel, we too live with this mix of faith and fear in times like this. Because like Ezekiel, we too are mortal.

God doesn’t really engage the question any further. After Ezekiel answers, God goes on to more important matters. The grace here is that we don’t have to have all the right answers before God acts, or before we act. Life isn’t a pass/fail test that we must nail in order for God to use us. God asks strange questions, we answer honestly and go on from there. Ultimately it is an act of trust and surrender. God knows the answers.

But this doesn’t mean that we are passive bystanders. God has a very big job for Ezekiel. God wants Ezekiel to speak to these dry bones. He wants Ezekiel to do nothing less than bring them back to life. “thus you shall say to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you and cover you with skin, and put breath in you and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” And this all happens because Ezekiel speaks. “And as I prophesied suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together – and sinews, flesh, and skin, but no breath. And then breath is spoken into them and the breath came into them and they lived, and they stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

Now we are not prophets like Ezekiel. Ezekiel has an extraordinary divine call upon his life. But what we say, especially in times of crisis, has great impact. Our words can kill or they can bring life. In the late eighties Pastor Barbara Brown Taylor preached a sermon called "Words We Tremble to Say Out Loud". She speaks about the power of our words: “You don’t have to have a grand pulpit to utter them from…take the sun room at a nursing home, where you stand by the piano surrounded by wheelchairs full of old people, some of them dozing, some of them whimpering to go back to their rooms, less than half of them even aware that you are there. Say ‘resurrection’ in their presence. Say ‘life everlasting.’ Say ‘remember.’ Just let those words loose in the room, just utter them in the light and trust them to do their work. Or speak to a support group of people with AIDS. Worship with them if you can, lay hands on their heads and pray for their healing. Say ‘mercy’ to them. Say ‘hope.’ Say ‘Beloved children of God.’ Set those words free in their hearing and trust their power to make people whole.”

I’m reading a book called Love Your Enemies, How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt, by Arthur C. Brooks. He is arguing that we have moved past merely disagreeing strongly with each other in our country to treating each other with contempt. Contempt is scorn, disdain, as someone said, contempt is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of the other person. People from both sides of the political spectrum are treating each other not just as wrong but as morally deficient, inferior, contemptible. Brooks says that research is showing that “the starkest dividing line in America today is not race, religion or economic status, but rather political party affiliation.”

This suggests, as many have recently said, that the deeper threat of our time is a national spiritual virus, a hot fever of anger and resentment, a disdain and contempt that eats away at our souls.

Now we are vehicles, mere carriers of God’s word. But we are that. And as carriers, surrounded by the spiritual virus of our time, is it possible that the words we speak might be borne by the Holy Spirit to be life and wholeness and healing for one another and our world?  “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.” says Ezekiel. Might our words, by God’s power within us, be life and resurrection? Might our Spirit filled words even open graves?

The texts given to us by the lectionary for today are kind of sneak previews of Easter; this passage and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in the gospel of John. It appears that we will not be worshiping together on Easter. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t risen. In this time of fear and sickness let us be and let our words be for healing and wholeness and life, and for resurrection. Amen.

1 Kings 17: 1-7, March 22, 2020, Sermon

March 22, 2020 Sermon

Pastor Randy Butler

I’ve been reading through large sections of the Old Testament in the early part of this year and as I began to read in the book of 1 Kings, I rediscovered the prophet Elijah who appears in 1 Kings 17 and whose story occupies several chapters. We come in his story, to the intersection of the spiritual and the political that we often find in the books of the Old Testament, with perhaps a message for us today in these difficult times. King Ahab of Israel who we are told did more evil than all the kings of Israel before him, has married Jezebel, daughter of the king of Sidon, who chooses to worship gods other than Yahweh the Lord, God of Israel. This causes great tension and distress for followers of the Lord in Israel, that the king’s wife is a worshiper of these foreign gods. In addition to the political and religious tension, they are in the midst of a drought and famine. Something very much beyond their control, not unlike the current health crisis we face.

Onto the scene comes Elijah, the first of the great prophets of Israel. Like other prophets after him, Elijah speaks the truth no matter what the cost. Prophets live by a compelling vision of the way things ought to be. They expose the illusions by which we live, ask disturbing questions about the assumptions we live by. They are by nature dissatisfied with the status quo, and they simply can not remain quiet. They engage, and they speak the truth. In the well-known phrase, they speak truth to power.

We are in the middle of a serious health crisis, such as we have not seen in a long time, or ever, in our lifetimes. And what we need in times like this is truth. Political leaders prefer to spin the facts to their advantage, and we don’t always get the truth. King Ahab refers to Elijah as the troubler of Israel, his enemy, because he speaks the truth, and Ahab doesn’t always want to hear the truth.

But right now we need truth. In the same way that someone diagnosed with cancer wants to know the whole truth of the matter, and not be given the sugar-coated version of the illness, we need and want the unvarnished truth, hard as it may be. We can deal with that. We’ll survive this current crisis, as long as we know as well as we can know what we are dealing with. We’ll get through it, just give us the truth. Give us the prophets. And let us too be truthful with one another.

Now Elijah of course does not just speak any truth, he speaks God’s truth. The truth about God; the truth from God. “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17:1) Elijah speaks God’s word; he speaks for God. For Elijah God is the king, and Ahab is accountable to God. God is really in control, not Ahab.

Now you might say, “God in control? Really? It doesn’t look very much like God is in control. Why can’t God just stop the spread of this virus if God is in control? Fair questions. Times of crisis raise these kinds of questions. And to respond to such questions with simple, glib answers would be misleading. The truth is there are no simple answers to these questions. To suggest that we know why, or how long this virus will last, or speculate about any of this is not helpful. In the Spirit of this message this morning it would be spinning the truth, putting the best face on the ugly truth. And today we won’t do that. There are no easy answers.

Still, having said that, there is little doubt in Elijah’s mind about who is in control. It is the Lord. In the face of the crisis of his day – drought and famine, Elijah leaves it in God’s hands. Perhaps one of the reasons we have a hard time coming to the same conclusion is that we are still so much in control of our lives - we Westerners who have most of what we need, who control much of our environment, and who even manage quite well apart from God. That is until something like COVID-19 comes along and changes everything. Then we discover how much we do need God. Mother Teresa once said, “You’ll never realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you’ve got.” God is all that Elijah has got, and he puts himself entirely in God’s hands.

Such radical surrender to God is not popular. It leaves the rest of us feeling exposed for our half-truths and compromises in daily life. And so we do our best to get rid of prophets. God tells Elijah to hide in a dried out old stream bed in the desert for a while, until Ahab turns his attention elsewhere.

Elijah isn’t running away, he is not hiding out. Prophets know when to make themselves scarce and when to return. This is what Elijah does – he comes and goes. Jesus of Nazareth had the same sense of timing. He knew when to engage and when to back off. We are told often in the gospels that Jesus left one place to go to another because the authorities were trying to destroy him.

So Elijah takes refuge in a Wadi. And there the Lord has ravens take care of him by flying in bread and meat. In the time of drought and famine God provided for Elijah and for others.

The financial markets have certainly been rocked by the coronavirus, down thirty percent over the last couple of weeks. Anyone planning for retirement, or saving for retirement, or in retirement has had to consider some change of plans. The future looks very different all of a sudden.

But strangely there is some freedom in this too. After all, the more we have the more we need to protect and save, and preserve and defend. And that takes a lot of work and energy, and it makes us worried and not very happy. On the other hand, when we have nothing we can spend our time and energy in more productive ways because there is no need to protect or defend what we don’t have or possess. Maybe this is why Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.”

If you are fortunate enough to have a retirement account or savings account here is my advice – don’t look at your account statements for a while. Be free of the worry. Let the crisis we are in be a new opportunity to trust and surrender to God in a way that we have not before, leaning on the everlasting arms of God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 3:1-17, March 8, 2020, Sermon

 “New Beginnings” 

Pastor Randy Butler

    This is one of the famous stories of the New Testament from the gospel of John, culminating in one of the most famous single verses of the New Testament – John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 
    It begins when a man named Nicodemus comes to Jesus one night. Nicodemus is a devout and religious man, and a spiritual teacher from among the Pharisees. We see that Jesus is going to be speaking with a religious man, a devout man. Nicodemus is not from the outside but from inside the tradition, inside the church. So this conversation will have something to say to us who are inside the church. Nicodemus is a church goer, we might say, so we church goers will want to pay attention. 
    He is intrigued by Jesus and is complementary of him, “Rabbi we know that you are from God – no one can do what you do apart from God.” But in that very statement Nicodemus reveals the problem with being religious and having ideas and opinions about God. We think we know what God can do and what God cannot do; what is and what is not possible with God. In answer to Jesus a few minutes later he will say, “How can these things be?” He knows that Jesus is from God, but he is still asking “How can these things be?” Dale Bruner suggests that Nicodemus is a kind of unbelieving believer. He says he knows about God, but doesn’t really trust in God. A lot of us in the church can be unbelieving believers. 
    Do you remember the story of the amazing Charles Blondin? He was a famous 19th century French tightrope walker. Blondin's greatest fame came in 1859, when he became the first person to cross a tightrope stretched 11,000 feet (over a quarter of a mile) across Niagara Falls. People from both Canada and America came from miles away to see this great feat. He walked across, 160 feet above the falls, several times... each time with a different daring feat - once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle, in the dark, and blindfolded. Then, the crowd “Oohed and Aahed!” as Blondin carefully walked across - one dangerous step after another - pushing a wheelbarrow holding a sack of potatoes. Then at one point, upon reaching the other side, Blondin suddenly stopped and addressed his audience: "Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?" The crowd enthusiastically yelled, "Yes! You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. We believe that you can.” "Okay," said Blondin, "Who wants to get into the wheelbarrow." The crowd went silent, no none moved, and no one volunteered to get in the wheelbarrow. They believed but they didn’t trust. We too can be unbelieving believers. 
    The conversation goes on. Jesus is not taken with Nicodemus’ compliment. He doesn’t say, “Thank you Nicodemus, I am glad somebody around here understands what I’m doing.” Instead he says abruptly, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again from above.” 
    Now Nicodemus is a smart man, and he picks up here, I think, on Jesus’ metaphorical language. He is not stuck on trying to figure out how a person can literally return to the womb. So he responds in the way that Jesus started, “Ok, but how can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” In asking that I think he is saying, “So are you saying that we all have to go back to the beginning? I have been teaching here for several years. I have my PhD in theology. They kind of think of me as an expert around here. Are you telling me that all that means nothing, that we all need to start over? That I need to start over?” 
    So Jesus’ response to Nicodemus, this expert and unbelieving believer, has three parts that fit a sermon nicely of course, but also address the three persons of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And Jesus starts with the Spirit. “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit” – a reference to baptism. But then this: “What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit…the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 
    Jesus is answering the certainty of Nicodemus with the mystery of the Spirit. There comes a time when we must all go back to the beginning, and adopt as some call it, a beginner's mind. Jesus is constantly calling the religious people to unlearn those things about which we have become so sure, and to let there be uncertainty, mystery. Is there room for mystery in your life? 
    The answers for Nicodemus start with the mystery of the Spirit. They continue with the life of the Son. Jesus refers to an incident in the history of Israel while there are traveling in the wilderness told in Numbers 21. The Lord has sent poisonous serpents among the people and is asked to relieve them of these snakes. So God says to Moses – make a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live. So Moses made a serpent of bronze and every person who looked at the bronze serpent would live.
    To snakebitten people God offers life in his Son, who like the bronze serpent is lifted up. Those of us who look at him will live. In this life not just in the next. Don’t put off living until the next life. The life that Jesus promises is for this life now. And eternal divine quality of life today. 
    I was talking with a couple of our guys last Sunday telling a few fishing lies, and as I suggested I might try to fish the Powder River below the Thief Valley Reservoir, I was quickly reminded to watch out for snakes. One time in Eastern Washington, where I was fishing on a hot summer afternoon, I prepared to fish along the bank of a desert creek, I just about stepped on a rattlesnake. He let me know I was getting a little too close by his rattle. I thanked him for that, looked at him and said, “Good afternoon,” and promptly stepped into the creek. I was okay with that until someone told me that rattlesnakes can swim. 
    I don’t know about you, but it sometimes seems like on land or water the snakes are snapping at me, my loved ones, our church and our world. And the snake, the serpent, is trying to bite me with his poisonous venom of negativity, anxiety, worry and despair. A toxic mix that spreads, is contagious. Jesus offers the antidote – our belief and trust in him, who is the way the truth and the life. He is medicine, the very reversal of the death process. In him we live. 
    The mystery of the Spirit, the life of the Son, and the love of the Father. The famous verse says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son. This whole undertaking has its source in God the Father, and his love. God who loves us enough to get involved in our world and our lives. 
    I was reading recently about doctors who get involved in the lives of their patients. There are doctors like that. One patient related the story of a doctor who came to treat a sick mother whose children had chickenpox. She gave advice to the mother and then left. And then it said she came back later with milk and juice and BBQ chicken and bananas. That was once special doctor. Another woman shared an experience she had with her oncologist, describing how for her a simple act had enormous power. She said once at the end of a treatment the doctor leaned over and tied her shoes. She said when that happened I felt like a human being again. After all this sterile equipment in the doctor’s office, that human act made all the difference. When doctors get involved in the lives of their patients they can cure in unexpected ways. One doctor told of a woman who had come to see him. He wrote some prescriptions for antibiotics and the asked, “What’s going on in your life?” He learned that the woman’s husband had just left her, and realized more than anything she needed some legal help. So he referred her to someone who could help. When she came back a few weeks later, she was beaming and healthy. The visit to Legal Aid had helped tremendously. She didn’t even need the antibiotics the doctor had given her. The doctor’s deeper involvement had given the deeper cure. 
    John 3:16 is the ultimate expression of how God our physician becomes involved with needy and sick human beings. “For God so loved the world.” The world, not just Christians, but the entire world – God involved loving and caring about it. “For God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:17. 
    We hear about Nicodemus twice more. Once he is actually defending Jesus before the council, and at the end of the gospels. He was there when Jesus was taken down from the cross. He and Joseph of Arimathea had Jesus buried at their own cost. This sometimes unbelieving believer, just like us, learned and grew with the mystery of the Spirit, the life of the Son and the love of the Father.

Matthew 4:1-11, March 1, 2020, Sermon

 “His Test, Our Test” 

Pastor Randy Butler

Anne told me that there has been a box of chocolates sitting on the shelf in our pantry since Valentine’s Day. She is very good about the healthy rationing of these amazing chocolates with caramel and sea salt. Now I like chocolate, but to be honest it is not the greatest temptation to me. If you put a bowl of kettle corn in front of me, that sweet and salty popcorn – that is a different matter. It won’t last long. It’s the same way with pistachio nuts. That whole thing of taking the partially cracked nut, breaking that shell open and popping the delicious nut into my mouth – it’s irresistible. 

Playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist anything but temptation.” The famous actress Mae West said, “Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always pick the one I’ve never tried before.” Temptation. We laugh because the truth is the word temptation makes us squirm a little. We prefer to keep it on the light side because we know that temptation is real. Just ask an alcoholic, or someone battling with substance abuse. Or ask someone who is dangerously close to having an affair, or someone who could just push a few buttons, change a few numbers, and make a whole lot of extra money. Temptation. Soon it is about more than chocolate and popcorn. 

And it is also about more than a red faced guy with a tail and a pitchfork, the popular depiction of the devil. Jesus may be having a vision. After all he has been without food for forty days. Or what he hears may be the temptations spoken by others to him, that he now hears in his own mind. Seems likely to me that Jesus is going through a difficult internal struggle out there in the desert. We can say this much – that the hardest temptations are those that seem like they are good and can improve the world. Someone said, the hardest temptation is the one that doesn’t seem like a temptation. 

Just before this he has been declared to be the Son of God at his baptism. When he came up out of the waters, a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” That is the last verse of chapter 3, and then the first of chapter four says, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” This is going to be a test, a test of just what kind of Son he will be. What path he will choose. The tempter begins his first question, by saying, “If you are the Son of God…” 

And he didn’t just wander out to the desert. The Spirit of God led him there, right after his inaugural baptism to be tested. Out into the howling burning desert – no food for forty days, a place where no human should be, and Matthew says the tempter came to him. This tempter is very intelligent, and asks high stakes questions. He isn’t just standing there with a box of chocolates and pistachios. This will be a test of the kind of person Jesus will be, we will be, a test of our calling, our loyalties, our life. Tests and temptations dig that deep. What kind of person will I be in my life? What is really in my heart? What am I going to base my life upon? 

So after Jesus has fasted for forty days, the tempter says to Jesus, “You must be hungry. Why don’t you just turn these stones in front of you into bread. That is, if you are the Son of God and all that. Nobody will know, it’s just you and me out here. It won’t hurt anybody. Go ahead.” And Jesus’ response? “We do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It is found in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. It’s really important because Jesus is saying, when he is at the end of his human resources, he is still basing his life on God, and putting his trust in God. God will be his food, his sustenance. This is the big question at the beginning of his ministry. And at every place along the way, just as it is the big question for us. Upon what will you base your life? By what will we live? And the answer Jesus gives is, “We do not live by bread alone, but we live by the bread that comes from God.” That is the source of his life and ours. God will be the staff of life for us. The essential, the staple, and the mainstay of our diet. Of course we need physical bread. This is a question of our fundamental orientation and approach to life, our ultimate spiritual food source, our ultimate trust. Upon what foundation will we build? Will it only be our families, our jobs, our hobbies, vacations, our retirement, our friends? Will everything in our lives be determined by our senses, our stomachs and physical appetites? Or is there something more? 

This is the first test, because failing this Jesus won’t go any further, and neither will we. Let me add here, however, that this isn’t just a one time test for us. You can retake this test. It is possible that this very concentrated short narrative captures the tests and temptations Jesus faced his whole life and ministry. We too face tests of our ultimate loyalties, what is deepest in our hearts many times. If you fail once you will have other chances. 

So seeing that Jesus has passed this first test, the tempter tries another approach. “OK, if you are so spiritual and religious, and scriptural, let’s go to church together. I can quote scripture too you know.” He takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple in the holy city of Jerusalem, and he thinks he knows his bible pretty well, and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus responds, again from Deuteronomy, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” 

What kind of a question and answer is this? It seems to me that this is the temptation of any successful church or church leader. Anyone who aspires to the pinnacle of the religious world is subject to great temptations. But it is also a temptation for faithful Christians everywhere. Will we base our faith on show or substance? Do we want everybody to see how religious we are, standing up – look at me, look at me, or will we walk the quiet sometimes hidden way of Jesus. We all face this temptation. 

Finally the tempter takes Jesus to a very high mountain where he can show him all the kingdoms of the world. And there he says, “All this I will give you, If you will fall down and worship me.” For Jesus this was perhaps the temptation to use political means to accomplish his kingdom goals. But he knows the pitfalls of such an approach. It is also the temptation to great power, and the trade-offs that come with such power. “This can all be yours if you will just fall down and worship me.” 

Brings to mind the stories of Faust and his bargain with the devil, or the updated version of the story in the play Damn Yankees. A middle-aged real estate agent Joe Boyd is a long-time and long suffering fan of the Washington Senators baseball team. They are just terrible. One evening after his wife Meg has gone to bed, Joe sits up late, complaining that if the Senators just had a "long ball hitter" they could beat the "damn Yankees.” And presto, this smooth-talking guy named "Applegate" appears. He offers Joe the chance to become "Joe Hardy", just the young slugger the Senators need. Joe accepts, even though he must leave his beloved wife Meg. He does insist on an escape clause - the Senators' last game is on September 25, and if he plays in it, he will remain Joe Hardy forever. If not, he has until 9:00 the night before to walk away from the deal and return to his normal life. What will he do? What will we do to get what we want? What is the price of success? What will we do, what will we do to get what we want, what is the price of our success? 

Jesus answers all the devil’s questions with reference to Scripture. He knows the power of the word of God in scripture to respond to the wiles of the devil. The psychology of this is important. The ancient desert fathers were fond of pointing out in this story that Jesus didn’t invite conversation or debate with Satan. That’s dangerous. He doesn’t entertain these temptations. He just answers with one line and then moves on. Don’t need to entertain the tempter, just answer and be on with things. 

Jesus also answers the tempter’s questions with reference to God. Each answer names God. He has absolute trust in God. His answer to these temptations is God and God alone. For God alone my soul waits in silence,” says Psalm 62, “from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, I shall never be shaken.” I like these words from the opening of the Scots Confession written during the sixteenth century Scottish Reformation, in the old language: “We confess and acknowledge an only God, to whom only we must cleave, whom only we must serve, whom only we must worship, and in whom only we must put our trust.” Amen.