gospel

Deconstruct.

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The Baptism of Jesus

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The Temptation of Jesus

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

In a world of division and disillusionment, it is hard to know what we can depend on.  And, here we have a faith that says nothing is certain other than God’s love that resides within us and around us.  Yet, there are so many layers in our lives and culture that cloud that vision.  A lot of it stems from experiences.  

When I was a kid in a youth group, a freshman.  I remember going on a missions trip.  I loved our youth group.  I felt a part of something.  Before we left on that trip, the youth director, someone that I really respected, told us that we were going to King’s Island at the end of the trip.  Sounded fun!  Then he said we would have to wear long pants and our youth group t-shirts, which were 3/4 sleeve shirts with a funky hand coming out of heaven design on the front.  It was 1982, but not sure if that ever was fashionable.  I did not want to wear those at King’s Island…simply ugly shirts.  Plus, it was July! Who wears long pants in July at an amusement park.  I protested, yet, got over it.

That week, there were lots of great memories…and also a lot of practical jokes.

But, by the end of the week, we were all excited to go to Kings Island.  We boarded our church bus, it was full of kids and adult leaders, but I got a seat at the front.  I wanted to be the first one to see the Eiffel Tower…which was a big thing in our family when we went to King’s Island…a kind of competition.

Well, sure enough, as we got closer to King’s Island, I was excited, looking for the Eiffel Tower…I forgot all about having to wear my long pants and ugly shirt…even led a chant on the church bus with everyone saying “almost there”…then, like magic, I saw the Tower first and let out a yell of happiness!  I won!  Then I turned around to see everyone on the bus taking off their shirts and long pants to reveal that they had on short sleeve regular shirts and shorts on underneath their clothes.  I looked over at my youth pastor, who was also taking off his long pants and youth group shirt…I was the brunt of one major practical joke. I laughed, told everyone how funny it was…went to the back of the bus…and, yes, you probably know how I felt…dejected, alone, and disappointed.  

Over the years, I have felt more disappointment with the church…I know many of you have as well.  Yet, I still hang on to a notion that church can be so much more, for all of us.  Also, if you are like me, you have found great disappointment in what life was supposed to offer you and you have been disappointed with God even…like Jesus, wandering the wilderness…these have been amazing seasons of growth actually.  There is a word that describes what happens in our faith journeys in the wilderness of life, when we are faced with life’s ups and downs…that word is “deconstruction”, when we have to tear down all of the things and roles that we’ve been handed in our faith in order to “reconstruct” a faith that is not about certainty, but about living in beauty and mystery.

In our faith journey, we have times where we doubt God’s commitment to us…we forget…I know I do.  These are times where my faith is “deconstructed”, sometimes even a time of wilderness…but, it is through those times where my faith also grows.  And, through it all, at different times, we see that God’s commitment to us is deeper and more intimate than we could imagine.  

Our gospel, or “good news” text this morning is also about coming to a now moment of a promise fulfilled. 

The Israelites had been promised a Messiah, a deliverer.  Jesus, who’s very name means “salvation” comes on to the scene after John the Baptist had been announcing that the time was upon Israel for the Messiah.  John the Baptist recognizes Jesus as the messiah, he baptizes him, and then the voice comes out of heaven, the voice of God proclaiming that Jesus has relationship with the Father, his son.  That the relationship between God and humanity has been marked in Jesus through a shared essence with God and with humanity.  Jesus is the bridge.  And, he is loved by all that God is…when the voice of heaven pronounces this love, that is a message to us that God loves all of us as we share in Jesus’ humanity. 

It’s interesting to me that in the Gospel of Mark, the temptation of Jesus, Jesus’ going into the wilderness, comes right after this amazing moment of baptism, of commitment, and of God’s voice calling Jesus “beloved”.  

Mark doesn’t go into as much detail about the temptations in the desert as the other writers of the gospels do.  Mark seems to want to give us the facts without the details, the writer of Mark seems like he wants to get to the end of the book, the end of the story quickly.  

We know from the other gospel accounts that Jesus was tempted to be relevant, powerful, and to solve the worlds needs.  Yet, he resisted.  Jesus knew who we was and that his life had more meaning, that hope for the world.  In order for us, to know and love each other well, to be inclusive and work towards personal and communal wholeness and abundance, we needed to see Jesus’ life, his coming to us, his living with us, his dying because of us, and his rising from the dead, overcoming everything, Jesus had to do the hard work of confronting his doubts, his demons, his temptations.

I think that says something to us…we are marked by God’s love…and that love, all love, doesn’t grow until it’s put into the wilderness, where temptations to move past something and get back to “civilization” or “normal” too fast prevents us from growing.  Friends, as we are walking this wilderness of life and culture, and faced with temptations of different voices calling us to this conspiracy theory or some ideology or so called “leaders” with empty promises…or, even worst, acting like nothing is happening and just ignoring what’s going on around us and wanting to be comfortable, we miss the opportunity to grow and become all that God intends.  

During this season of Lent, we have been given time to go to the desert with Jesus.  To confront our own demons, doubts, and temptations.  To see Jesus as the one who loves us and believes in us…and to mark our allegiance to God’s kingdom presence over anything or person in this world.  To deconstruct, or to die to self, in order to reconstruct or to live into new life, new birth.  

This is a call for us personally, and for us a church and a member of this community, this neighborhood. 

Our calling as a church is to be the people who live into mystery, into living in the universal presence of Christ, or the Kingdom of God if you will.  To have confidence and humility in who we are as the Jesus’ body.  To repent, which again, in Greek is “metanoia”, or change of heart and mind, where we need to and to grow from a time of being in the wilderness to a place of paradise and promise for the world around us.

It is hard work, letting God’s Presence emerge within us…seeing the Kingdom of God..yet we have a redeemer-kinsman, a friend, who is with us, in us, around us who want so reveal to us the abundance that is life with God. 

Friends, believe in the good news.  The time is now for Westwood First Presbyterian and for me and for you, to live into the promise of God’s Presence in our lives, of God’s kingdom of justice, fairness, honor, deep love, of God’s friendship with us to be lived out and made real for us and for our neighbors.

Fulfilled this Day.

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Mark 1:14-20

The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

In a little over a week, we have had a great…and amazing start!  As I was telling Mary Ellen, and others, I can’t give a word to what I’m experiencing, other than this call and getting to know Westwood First has been good, so good!  Mary Ellen had a great comment, instead of trying to give it a word or define, it, just experience it.  Love it!  Friends, we are experiencing a great new story that is emerging at Westwood First…it is good, and it has a great foundation, a history of those that are here now and those that have been with us in the past!  And, in the midst, we are already trying to figure out who we are as a church in this changing world, and who are as people and how we are getting connected and experiencing a stirring within our hearts, our very being.

In life, I oftentimes, maybe too much, try to figure things out.  I want to “know” and to work towards something.  My doctorate was in missional leadership to continue to understand church and how the church is shifting and growing.  You also may be picking up that I’m constantly working on myself.  I’m big on trying to figure out how I operate.  Which, can be good, but it really is simply allowing things to emerge, or to be birthed within me…and to live in awareness, or presence, of my self and others.   I think that’s part of my understanding of myself as being in God’s image and growing in my understanding of my gifts and talents and how God animates and even redeems them.  

I think it’s also part of being present, faithfully present, with myself, others, and seeing how God flows in and through all things.  Presence is a big deal.  When Jesus talks about Kingdom of God, or Heaven, or God’s reign as he does in this morning’s passage, he’s not talking about a nation or another place, he’s talking about  God’s Presence that is with us now, everywhere.  That God’s kingdom has been fulfilled and it’s our task to seek it, to live into it, and to try to be present with God as God is present with us.  We don’t build the kingdom, we live in it’s reality and let it emerge within and around us.  

One of the tools that I’ve used in counseling and in spiritual direction is the Enneagram.  The Enneagram is a model of human personality which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.  It has been around for hundreds of years, and has evolved over the years.  My personality type on the Enneagram is a “3”.  That’s often called the “achiever” of the “effective person”.  I value getting things done essentially.  I’ll work towards whatever measure of success that I have for whatever I’m doing.  There is a lot of good to that, but there’s also some darkness with that.  The good is that I feel pretty confident in who I am, it’s not arrogance, I genuinely like being me.  The bad is that I can base my value on what I achieve rather than who I am.  I can also be a workaholic, just ask Debbie!

It’s important for me to be able to take time off.  That’s why it’s really hard to get a hold of me on Fridays, my day off, especially in the morning.  It’s also why I periodically go to the Abbey of Gethsemani in KY, just like I’m doing for a couple of days this week.  I need Sabbath rest.  I need quiet.  It helps me to cultivate this sense of presence, of seeing God’s Kingdom presence in me and around me.  It’s especially important to me in this season of transition. I want to stay present to myself, to creation, and to you…  

And I get it, it’s scary slowing down and simply “being” present.  Oftentimes, when left on our own, we begin the hard stuff of questioning ourselves, we see the dark places in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and we don’t want to go there.

WB Yeats wrote this:  “It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.”

I also think that it’s important for us to ask these questions collectively as a church.  We have to slow down, listen to each other, our communities, and to God.  That’s why I’m really curious and hopeful for what we are learning during this post pandemic world and with so much political and social unrest.  How are we growing? 

As a church, we’ve done a lot of stuff, a lot of it is pretty amazing actually.  But, I’m sure we also realized before the pandemic, that we needed to change, we realized that what we’ve done, doesn’t work.  The pandemic was a struggle, a lot of suffering, but it’s also forced me, and all of us, to ask some great questions.  

As we ask these questions, Jesus invites us, just as he invited his disciples, to be fishers of others, to invite others to live differently in this world, to be present with one another, to a ask deeper questions.  

I found this statement from our Presbyterian Book of Order of all things that I think resonates well with this morning’s message.

In Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all creation, the Church seeks a new openness to

God’s mission in the world. In Christ, the triune God tends the least among us, suffers the

curse of human sinfulness, raises up a new humanity, and promises a new future for all

creation. 

…a new openness to the sovereign activity of God in the Church and in the world,

to a more radical obedience to Christ, and to a more joyous celebration in worship

and work; a new openness in its own membership, becoming in fact as well as in faith a

community of women and men of all ages, races, ethnicities, and worldly conditions,

made one in Christ by the power of the Spirit, as a visible sign of the new

humanity; a new openness to see both the possibilities and perils of its institutional forms

in order to ensure the faithfulness and usefulness of these forms to God’s activity

in the world; and a new openness to God’s continuing reformation of the Church ecumenical, that it might be more effective in its mission.

Our scripture passages this morning give testimony to God’s Kingdom being made known and lived.  In our gospel passage, it says we need to repent.  We do.  The Greek word for repent is “metanoia”.  It means to change one’s mind.  We need to change as persons, we need ask hard questions.  We also need to do that as a church.  If we do repent, if we do change, together we can bear witness to God’s Kingdom around us and in us, God’s Presence rising up all around us. 

My bet is that if we do that, then others may want to join us…even in a world that does not join things as much these days.   Others may see the beauty within us and around us and contribute to that beauty.  It happened with the disciples…those nets!  Overflowing!  They had trust…a friend of mine told me once that an organization will grow, in some way, as fast as the speed of trust.  Well, if this past week is any indication at Westwood, then watch out!  We’ve handed over trust to one another and to God’s flow in a short time.  Thank you!  So, if the first couple of weeks is any indication, then fasten your seatbelts friends!  We may find ourselves in a place of Presence, of awareness, and of a different kind of growth as we become the persons, and the congregation, that we’ve always wanted to be…the one God created us to be.  Amen?