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One.

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John 17:6-19

6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

Here we are at our Kirking of the Tartans!  Fun!  

My love for my Scottish heritage stems from my maternal grandfather, my PePa…he loved all things Scottish and signed me up for the American Clan Gregor society as a junior member when I was a kid.  I’m still a member to this day.  PePa never made it to Scotland, but his stories of our ancestors captured my imagination…especially Rob Roy!   

When I played bagpipes in our high school marching band, he would always come and listen and watch.  He’d take me to highland games in North Carolina and Tennessee.  And, when I became Presbyterian, breaking from my Baptist upbringing, he was so proud because Presbyterians came out of the Church of Scotland!  Every time I’ve been to Scotland, I think of my PePa and I think he’s experiencing it with me.

My PePa believed in me.  There was a deep unity between us.  And, even though he’s been dead for a couple of decades or more, I still feel connected to him.  I spent a lot of time with him, we worked on a lot of projects together at his house and on his land.  

Today’s text says a lot about trust and working together, of striving towards friendship unity.  It’s filled with Jesus’ last prayers found in the Gospel of John.  I believe it was important to him and has great meaning for us.  

Our passage in John has much to say about unity.  Our unity starts with an understanding that all is from God.  God has created everything.  God has made God’s dwelling in us, with us, and around us.  This God is ever expanding around us and as we grow beyond ourselves, we can then begin to understand that our call is to be disciples of Jesus, following God’s Spirit into the world around us, where God is already filling, or has filled with his Presence.  

Jesus is praying for us, his disciples, those of us willing to grow, to change, to be impacted by our relationship with Jesus and Jesus’ love for the other in John 17.  We are called to carry on Jesus’ mission to be God’s living Presence in this world.  

Verse 11 calls us to remember that Jesus’ name is placed upon us, that we are marked by Jesus.  Because of this, we do have unity, but we don’t always live in that unity.  We are not always one.  Yet, we yearn for this oneness, this unity.  We are hardwired for it.  

A few years back, Bono, the lead singer for the band u2 wrote these words:

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we’re not the same
We get to 
Carry each other
Carry each other
One…life

One

We are not the same, we are created as beautifully diverse in thoughts, opinions, shapes, sizes, color, preferences, etc.  Yet, we can still be one.  We can still live in unity as we are marked by a God who lives in perfect unity.  Jesus is the word, the expression of God.  Jesus lived this out and calls us towards maturity in faith, not grumbling, gossiping, or complaining, but to the deeper stuff of understanding, trust, patience, peace, self-control rather than “others control”, and love.  We have to carry each other.  I have to carry you, and there will be a time when YOU have to carry me.  

And, as we have said, especially on this day of the Kirking of the Tartans, we are striving to be a  a multi-cultural congregation, one family of God, 

Friends, the folks in this community are noticing.  I’m listening, I’m hearing a lot.  So are others in our church.  We all want this church to be that place of diversity and unity and oneness loving the neighborhood well.  And, it is happening here in Westwood.  

Yet, we know that a church, any church or community or organization, can also not be places of unity.   It’s mostly not intentional, but we sometimes can’t seem to live in the unity that God’s given us. 

But, what I’m committed to and what I believe we are all committed to in this time and place.  We are moving towards a new story together, living in a new promise rooted in the nature of Jesus, in the nature of what God intended for us as the church, as his disciples.

Listen to the next few verses in John.

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

In this text, Jesus had just finished praying for his disciples and now he was praying for all of those who would believe in him because of his disciples’ message.  His prayer was for all of us, for each of us in this room.  He wants us to be so together, that we are one.  Jesus was giving us a great picture of his relationship with God the Father.  They were intimate, together, of the same essence or being, so unified that they were one.  Jesus was giving us that picture of the relationship of God within the Trinity.  This text says to us today  that the core of God’s being is relational and that Jesus is calling us into a deep and intimate relationship with this God.  In our Trinitarian understanding, God is constantly emptying into God’s Self and also filling up God’s Self…and, God includes humanity, us, in that cycle, that communion of the Trinity.  

Jesus prays his desire, his will, for us to be one so that the world may know that he was sent by God the Father.  By our being one with God and each other, the world may know and experience the love of God as they see our unity.  

When I was a kid in the 70’s, my dad (who was way more of Welsh ancestry than Scottish being a Jones…) was a volunteer youth director at our church, I remember hearing the youth group kids sing a song with the chorus, “they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love”.  

Friends, we have a God who loves us so much and has done everything to show us love, even becoming just like us.  Jesus breathed his Spirit upon us,  God gave us the power of God’s Spirit to unify us.  God’s power and love transforms us as it brings us into relationship with God, making us one with God and with each other.  This world needs to see that love, and they will through our unity, our oneness, our radical hospitality and inclusivity of all people regardless of nationality, skin color, sexual orientation, age, whatever.we are all made in the one and diverse image of God…  Yep, as I’ve said before, I’m stuck with you and you are stuck with me forever, and that’s a long time.  We might as well trust God and get on with letting him form our community, a community marked by grace and unity, a community known as the body of Christ, the church.  May we live into this prayer of Jesus of being one, just as he has demonstrated to us by being one with the Father and with us…with all of humanity!  

Endgame.

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Jeremiah 31:31-34

A New Covenant

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

John 12: 20-33

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people[a] to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

My kids have an amazing memory.  Especially my son when he was younger.  If I promise something to him, or even hint at a promise.  He doesn’t forget.  If something comes up and we have to possibly be flexible, Brennan will simply say, “but you promised” and that’s the end of that for him.

If you are a parent, you know that it’s not always easy to keep your promises to your kids, try as you might, you simply can’t always do it.  Grace then becomes a necessary gift to demonstrate and teach!

Our Old Testament lesson is about the promise, or covenant, of loving relationship.  God has made promises to the people of Israel.  A covenant of deliverance from Egypt, which God delivered on.  Now the Israelites find themselves in exile in Babylon.  God tells them that he has new promises for them.  A covenant of abundance, of Presence, of blessing, of relationship.  In this passage, God uses the term husband.  Now, this is not meant to be patriarchal, but it was written a few thousand years ago, and the author is trying to convey something deeper than a masculine or feminine expression.  This is a word of deep relationship, of connection, of relationship.  The author is saying that God has made a commitment to Israel, to us, God is with us in relationship.

The passage goes on to say that God’s law will be put on our inward parts, on our hearts.  It will no longer be about following a set of rules written in stone, but they will be placed on our hearts, they will become a part of us and lived out.  

This is demonstrated to us by Jesus.  Jesus embodied the law as we have said before.  God’s covenants to us are fulfilled through Jesus in deep and powerful, and loving ways.  We are called to cultivate, to discipline ourselves to follow Jesus, or, rather, to know what it means to “live in Christ”. But, this discipline is essential in growing in our understanding of our true selves as created, redeemed, and sustain by God.  The root word of discipline even comes from disciple.  A disciple is a student, a follower of Jesus.  Now, Jesus also reminds us alter, that being a disciple leads to be a friend of one another and of God’s at the Last Supper.  Living in Christ, and being a friend of Jesus is more about being than doing.  It’s living out the Presence of God that is within and all around…and cultivating an awareness of our deepest identity that is in Christ.  

In our gospel lesson, we hear Jesus talking to some Greeks, probably Greeks who were seeking to know more about God, who were drawn to Jesus’ teaching because it had power and demonstrated a challenge to the current system that governed culture.  Jesus shares with them a hard thing to hear.  That in order for something to grow, it has to die.  He goes on to say that you have to lose your life to gain it.

This is hard to hear, yet true.  When I was a kid, we lived on about 7 acres.  My uncle lived next door and had a few more acres of land.  We shared a large garden that was about 1/2 the size of a football field.  Every year, in the fall, the plants and veggies in the garden would die and go back into the ground.  He had a larger farm with cows.  In the spring, we would go to the cow field where we had a manure pile.  I hated this job, but we’d load up a bunch of smelly manure and spread it on our garden.  Before that we would have tilled the ground to loosen it up and to churn up all of the dead plants into the ground.  It was hard work, but when did that, planted the seeds, and then put the manure all over it, the nutrients that came from the smelly waste, would cause the ground to produce life.  In order to do some of the more mundane chores, I would simply have to follow my dad and uncle’s lead, and live in a trust that they knew what they were doing, yet I benefited from great food and I learned a lot.  

Jesus is calling us to be truly human and to grow.  The way of Jesus can be hard, it requires trust, sometimes we have to spread some manure, till the ground.  Yet, seeds are constantly being planted in our lives and in the lives of others that produce beautiful things.

Friends, we may have gone through some difficulties, or death, in the past…or even right now, we may be dealing with addictions, with broken relationships, or strained relationships out of the pandemic and the tumultuous years we’ve gone through, maybe we have experienced betrayal even, having been betrayed or the betrayer.  We may have a physical set back or even death.  We have fears, anxieties.  Yet, I’m here to tell you that’s part of life, it smells, it’s hard.  God does not cause bad things to happen, but know that God is working to produce good things, to restore relationship, in all of it.  If we can trust God, then we may be able to see and to hear what God may want to pull out of the waste, out of death. 

That’s hard for some.  I know there are probably some folks in this room who are ready to give up on their life with God and maybe even giving up on church.  I’d love to tell you about a God who is giving you, and giving Westwood First Presbyterian new promises of life.  Our future with God is filled with God’s intimate presence with us as we practice disciplining ourselves through community with each other, through reading the scriptures with new eyes, through practices such as contemplation, lectio divina, listening, sabbath, and service.  We will be starting some new things this spring with our adult education, which we will call the “Westside Abbey @ Westwood First Presbyterian,” where we will be cultivating some of these practices and teachings.  The word Abbey means “joy” in its Hebrew roots…it also denotes a space set aside for spiritual growth.  God is calling us to cultivate a life and love with radical inclusion in our communities and within ourselves.  There is grace, and there is trust…both go towards growth.

The title of this sermon is “Endgame”.  My son and I used to watch the Marvel movies when they came out, so I thought of that movie!  

Jesus talks about the “endgame” in the gospel passage.  But, it’s not like the endgame in Avengers.  Jesus is not a super hero in the way that we imagine super heroes.  He is not crushing enemies.  He is following the way of humility, of emptying, of dying, which is much more powerful than any Avengers movie storyline.  It’s a storyline of practice that has changed my life, your life, and the world.  

Jesus knew this, Jesus also knew that he had to die.  He died because of his challenge of a system that kept all of us enslaved to a way of life that was getting us nowhere…yet Jesus overcame that system, challenged that system, and invites us to love our neighbors as he did…Jesus even overcame death and is alive today, giving us hope that as he is lifted up, we are lifted up with him and are able to live full lives forever with him.  The Ruler of the world in this passage is both Caesar and a deeper ruler, some would call Satan or evil systems…Jesus came to usher in a new reality that is both spiritual and material.  A new way of living.   

Let us be a church that lives out this radical call on our lives to follow Jesus by living in Christ.  That in knowing our identity in Christ, we don’t have to force our God on others, just love others well and allow God to be shown through us!  

Consumed.

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John 2:13-22

13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?”21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

It seems like I can be consumed by a lot of things at times.  I have a lot of interests.  If you go to my basement, you’ll see lots of hiking and camping gear, lots of fly fishing gear, rock climbing gear, and, of course, running shoes and clothes.  Just walk into my office, look at the shelves and walls, you’ll see a lot of interests.  Doing different things, having interests, are not bad in and of themselves, but, if they consume you, then, not so healthy.  We can even become enslaved to them.

Our Old Testament lesson comes from Exodus that we didn’t read this morning.  The Israelites had been held in slavery in Egypt.  They were oppressed and under a system that kept them from even imagining their potential.  A friend of mine, Walter Brueggemann, has some things to say on this.  Dr. Brueggemann is one of the world’s foremost old testament theologians. I also had the privilege of being in a small group with him for a year or so where we explored issues around Jubilee and legacy.

Dr. Brueggemann believes that the Exodus story has been played out throughout history.  The Israelites were reduced to producers.  The Egyptians were consumers.  They needed the Israelites to produce in order to maintain their lifestyle.  The Israelites were enslaved.  And, if we aren’t careful, we become producers and consumers and can become enslaved to either system, or even both at the same time!  We are so much more and God is the equalizer who called forth a new system that calls us towards true freedom.  Not freedom defined by doing whatever we want and ignoring the needs of others, but actually of being who we were created to be…persons in deep love with ourselves, others, and through the love that God has for us.

In that new system, God gave Israel some guidelines.  These are looked at as commandments, but they are deeper than that.  The Israelites had been living under an oppressive system, the law that Moses gave was meant to be deep abiding principles to live by that gave life and meaning to every relationship.  

The overriding principle is a deep passion for God.  To be consumed by God’s relationship with us and pursuit of us.  That love, that relationship that releases from slavery as producers or material consumers, to people filled with purpose, meaning, and the freedom to love ourselves, others, and God.  

Friends, we live in a similar system today.  The gap between the rich and those living day to day is getting wider, and the pandemic has actually highlighted that gap.  We are easily fooled by cultural, political and even religious manipulations that keep us from becoming the persons God has created us to be.  It has created bias within us and around us that we all need to sort through…I know I have my bias!  We are called to live into a new reality that is marked by God’s love for us and our love for God and others…and to have imagination for a better way of living!

Author and friend Brian McLaren says this:  

Jesus used imagination to punch a tiny hole in their walls of confirmation bias, and through that tiny hole, some new light could stream in and let them know of a bigger world beyond their walls.

Jesus came to us fully embodying the Law and with an expansive, divine and human imagination.  He was the law in human flesh, the example.  We have this account from his life in the book of John this morning.

The book of John, like the other Gospel accounts, is presenting the life of Jesus, while declaring that he is the Son of God.  After entering Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the Temple.  The Temple according to Jewish understanding in which Jesus was a part, was the center of religious life in Jerusalem.  It was a house of worship to the one God and at its center, was the very presence of God dwelling on earth.   There was a system of sacrifice where worshippers could come and purchase doves to make atonement for their sins at the temple.  Since they came from all over, they needed money changers to convert their currency so that they could buy what they needed to leave at the altar.  There was nothing wrong with this practice, it was a necessary function in the Temple to make sacrifices.  Yet, it had become a huge operation and was interrupting the practice of prayer.  It was a “busyness” that was distracting to those who were there to worship.    

Jesus was frustrated to see the Temple be a distraction, so he makes a point by driving them out all who were selling and buying.  The Greek work used in this text is a form of the verb “ekballo” for “drove out”, or literally to throw out.

Now, Jesus doesn’t hurt anyone physically in this text, he does no harm other than moving some furniture.  Nor was Jesus interested in starting a protest movement as he acted alone.  Jesus casts out those who were selling and those who were buying.  Folks had turned the temple into a place of consumption, rather than a place set aside for worship and community.  This didn’t set well with Jesus. He wanted folks to know that they are more than merely consumers…that they themselves are the temple of God and that this temple was a place to remind them of that.  

After throwing the folks out, Jesus sticks around and something happens:  others came and shared space with Jesus.  The lame and the blind, those who were not whole and felt marginalized, those who had nothing to give came to Jesus and were healed and restored into community. 

The religious leaders were angry when they saw what was happening. Jesus was threatening the status quo, the way things had been done.  

He even said that the temple would be torn down…that this system of consumption can’t sustain itself.  Tear it down and it would be rebuilt by him in 3 days.  The religious leaders mocked him.  But, in effect, Jesus was saying that this system of exploitation is ending, I am showing you a better way.  Your system leads to death, my life leads to resurrection.  The old way has to go, a new way based on God’s love for all is here.

Oftentimes, I meet folks who describe themselves as “church refugees”.  They long to know that church is more than just showing up on Sundays or simply about being busy, they long for a house of prayer where they can simply be and live, love, and serve others.  They feel like they live in a foreign country, longing to inhabit their promised home. 

You may be sitting here today feeling anxious, frustrated, or a “refugee”.  I believe that God is calling each of us to inhabit this church, to be a part of Christ’s body and consumed by a zeal to gather together and worship God in community with others, really to see and experience this God that lives within all of us and all around us.  God is probably not calling us to turn over any tables around here, yet he is calling us to not settle for the status quo.  God does not want us to be distracted from seeing God in everyone and being God’s body in this world.  We are called together to be God’s dwelling in which God’s very Spirit, God’s Presence lives.  We fill our lives, our temple that God has established, with so much that oftentimes we forget who, or rather, who’s we are.  God is calling us to be “consumed” by our identity as the body of Christ.  God calls us to not simply just go to a house of prayer, but for each of us, joined together under Christ, to be God’s house of prayer.  I tell folks all of the time to “own” the space God has called them into, to have agency.  In other words, to remember that we are not powerless, we have the very power of God within us and around us and that power is evident when we spend time in silence or with others in prayer and when we put our focus inside and outside on a God who animates who we are, our gifts, for the good of ourselves and others.

God has blessed this church in many ways and God calls us to be a foretaste of what his Kingdom will someday be.  I shared this with a friend recently, I had a very lucid dream about Westwood First Presbyterian.  I was walking into this building and it was filled with energy:  there was a coffeeshop, craft and food markets, a pub even!  There were also folks of all varieties in this place, a hub of activity for the community.  It was also filled with all sorts of non-profit and for-profit work that lined up with this notion of working for the common good.  I was looking for a meeting that I was supposed to attend and a group of folks from the church met me, so sure of themselves and their desire to be a welcoming presence.  They were consumed with a love of Self and Others and seeing God’s flow in this congregation and community. 

Friends, being consumed by the things of this world leads to a dead end…being consumed by God’s love leads to overcoming, even death…as we are consumed by this God who loves us so, may we be a beacon of hope to our neighborhoods and beyond by how we live and love each other, God, and the community around us.