It's the thought that counts

Matthew 5:21-37

Maybe it’s happened to you – on a birthday, a Christmas, even a Valentine’s Day.  You open a gift, and discover that the object inside is well, awful.  It’s ugly, it’s the wrong size, there is no gift receipt, and you cannot imagine any circumstances in which you would ever use this gift.

And then – if you’re lucky – you remember what your parents taught you at childhood birthdays when your friends or grandparents gave you something you absolutely positively didn’t want…

“It’s the thought that counts.”

After those birthdays, probably your parents made you write a thank you note.  So you gritted your teeth and said thank you.  The giver was happy, Mom and Dad were satisfied, and sooner or later you got over your disappointment.

But Jesus isn’t done with us there.  Jesus wants us to be genuinely delighted by the gift

(the hideous, unuseable, un-returnable awful present). 

Writing a nice thank you note is right, but it’s not the path of righteousness, of the kingdom of God.

Because it’s the thought that counts.

You have heard it said, Jesus tells the disciples, that you shall not murder.  And I say to you that you shall not be angry.  You shall not be furious or resentful with anyone; instead, when there is anger in your heart, you shall drop whatever you are doing and resolve it.

When Jesus talks about “leaving your gift before the altar” he doesn’t have our Sunday morning worship in mind.   He’s thinking about a person in the middle of one of the mandatory big high holy day services at the Temple in Jerusalem – a service that’s taken two weeks off work and a major chunk of the household budget to attend – remembering a grudge against a brother-in-law who never pays back what he borrows or a co-worker who keeps lying.

And Jesus says that person is to walk out of the middle of the Temple sacrifice, travel several days back home, confront the person, offer compromise, whatever it takes to work out the problem for good – and then walk the several days journey back to Jerusalem to finish the service.  (The service the Law says you must attend, which will have ended while you’re on the road.) 

Jesus says that’s following the Law.

The law against murder – a law easy to agree on and not really that hard to follow – is a good and necessary law.  But righteousness – having a good, holy relationship with God – does not depend on keeping that lousy brother-in-law alive.  Following God’s law truly depends on abolishing the root of murder - keeping our hearts free from anger and fear and resentment. 

It’s not enough that you said thank you for the lousy present, and it’s not enough that you never had any intention of killing (or even smacking) the lousy brother-in-law. 

God wants gratitude and forgiveness from our whole hearts. 

Because it’s the thought that counts.

In today’s gospel, we hear Jesus talk about the Ten Commmandments, about adultery and murder, and swearing in the name of God. And Jesus’ teaching on these is incredibly demanding, offering ways of truly following the Law that feel very close to impossible to live out.  The week-long round trip to reconcile with the neighbor in the middle of a one-day mandatory Temple festival is a good example.  So is redefining adultery to include legally permitted divorce; so is cutting off your hand, or ripping out your eye.

It’s not a at all a comfortable lesson to take seriously, to preach, or even to hear.  Jesus knows that.  He’s just reminded us that we are to be salt to the earth and light to the world, bringing zest and clarity to life all around us.  And now he points out that living righteousness, living lives that shine with God’s light, is much more than following the letter of the law.

The letter of the law helps: Saying thank you when we wish we’d gotten something different, keeping our hands in our pockets when we’d love to wrap them around the neck of the person driving us crazy, staying out of our neighbors’ marriages, and telling the truth under oath are necessary.

We learn gratitude, and forgiveness, and honesty and healthy relationships by following the rules.

But to truly keep the law, we have to live with transformed hearts. 

Hearts that naturally resolve the lingering resentment before it gets in the way of our worship. 

Hearts that love the gift for the giver’s sake even before we write the thank you note. 

Those are hearts that give light to the world.

That’s why I’m so glad that Nancy and Marilyn proposed and planned our “Attitude of Gratitude” practice this month. Because you and I are already working, right now, on giving our whole hearts to God.  When we stop to remember and to write down and to talk about and celebrate our gratitude our hearts are healed and made ready for God’s law.

This past week, I started using the gratitude tracker and discovered that it’s really delightful to stop and write down the things I am grateful for: nephews, a cuddly cat, asparagus, music, the refreshing perspective of our first and second graders on prayer. 

And even though I thought I was pretty good at being grateful and open to God, I’ve been surprised at how much less worry and frustration I feel every day while I’m writing down the things I’m thankful for.

Every grateful thought is the door to a whole heart, given gratefully to God.  

This radical law of the heart is actually a wonderful place to live.   Because a heart that’s not weighed down by anger, or selfishness, or lust or half-truth is a heart with infinitely more room for joy and generosity, and love. 

Remember that awful present – the hideous one you’d never use that you still had to say thank you for?  Imagine opening that present and being genuinely, naturally, easily delighted by the care that someone took to find, make or purchase it for you.  Imagine not experiencing even a moment of disappointment.

Imagine never even feeling the resentment or the fear or betrayal at the behavior of a family member, neighbor or co-worker. 

Imagine a heart so whole that you never have a desire or an action that you’ll regret.

Those are the thoughts that count.

That’s why we practice saying thank you, saying we’re sorry, and keeping our hands to ourselves.  We practice to make our hearts whole.

Because when God has our whole hearts, we have hearts more whole than we ever imagined, and the world is full of light and life.

Gospel Story Day

Matthew 4:12-23 

You might have heard this story before:

One day Jesus began to prepare for a new phase of ministry.  So he got out the directory and called Simon to say, “I’d really like you to consider joining the Vestry.  We do good work and you get to help shape the direction of our ministry.”

Then he got Andrew on the phone and asked him to think about teaching Sunday School. 

Later that day, he was at the Home Depot and saw James and John.  They were catching up with each other in the plumbing section, and Jesus told them about a neat outreach ministry that his congregation was starting, and invited them to come to church with him some Sunday.

Everybody then went home and thought about it.

Does it sound like the story we heard Deacon Tom read a few minutes ago? 

Or does it sound familiar in other ways?

(It might not even need to be a church story to sound familiar.)

Whether you’ve recently invited someone to teach Sunday school or lead a Calvary event – or to help with a home project, volunteer at PADS, join a book group or team or any other ongoing activity, the story might have gone like that.

In the 21^st century, we are generally busy people, tired people, and often unsure of our leadership or not quite ready to try something new – so we don’t insist that people join us,

and we go home and think about it.

So even though I’m very familiar with this story of Jesus’ call to the first disciples, it always sounds a little strange to me. 

He interrupts people in the middle of a hard and busy day’s work, offers a cryptic command,(“fish for people” sounds pretty weird to guys using all their strength to haul in a wet, sloppy, fragrant and very heavy net), and immediately they drop what they are doing and change their lives forever.

It sounded weird and inappropriate to Jesus’ contemporaries, too.  It may even have suggested to some that he wasn’t a good rabbi – because good rabbis waited for disciples to come to them.  Advertising and inviting – much less commanding followers! – just weren’t done.

But some of us may actually long for an invitation like that, an encounter with God that is so clear and compelling that it changes our lives without a moment’s hesitation, easy to instantly accept.  I know I want that, when I get busy with details and deadlines.

That’s one of the reasons I love this gospel story.  I love the direct, compelling picture we see: Jesus clear on his ministry and mission, issuing a strong invitation, getting a direct response.   A simple invitation (well, command): “Follow me,” and God’s chosen people respond immediately. 

(Sound attractive?)

I want that for us – for me, for Calvary, for the church and the Christian faith as a whole. 

I want us to be so clear in our invitation, so compelling a presence of God, and so in the right place at the right time that people find it easy to turn from what they are doing and join us.

But the life of a congregation can seem very different from those bright, clear, compelling gospel scenes.

And that’s why we’re here today.  It’s why we’ve disrupted everyone’s Sunday schedule, and haphazardly mixed 8 and 10:15 regulars into “your” pew.  It’s because today is Calvary’s Gospel Story Day.

(I know I invited you to come for the Annual Meeting, but that’s just another name for our Gospel Story Day.) 

Today the budget and bylaws and reports are the raw material of the Gospel According to Us.

Think back about 2010. 

Remember the schedule swapping? the setup and cleanup and painting?  the early mornings and late meetings, the moments of comfort, and chaos, and concern and delight?

Remember that, and listen to this story:

One year the people of Calvary went out to the neighborhood and said; “Hello!  We really appreciate how you make this community a great place to live.  Thank you!” And people immediately came to a fabulous party, and said, “No, Thank You!”

And again, the people of Calvary went out and said, “Did you know that God is here to welcome and care for you (outside the church) at the vet and on the train platform?  Really, everywhere.” And immediately the people in the neighborhood were amazed at the hospitality, and joined in worship, and said, “No one has ever done this for me before. Thank you!”

And the people of Calvary went on throughout Lombard and the region of Chicago, teaching by example, proclaiming the good news with Chili Cookoffs and Vacation Bible School, and caring for those in need or sorrow or joy.

Does that sound familiar?

Does it sound like the story of the call of the fishermen: bright and clear and almost easy?

(And did you notice –earlier – that at the end of the story Deacon Tom read, Jesus goes through Galilee teaching, and preaching, and healing – exactly the mission of our congregation every day?)

It’s a true story.  A Gospel Story. 

And it’s our story.

In the dailiness of life, and in the midst of all the work of keeping our ministries and building and worship going, it’s tempting to forget that our story is the Gospel Story. 

And tempting, on many Sunday mornings, to think the Gospel Story doesn’t sound like us.

But that is exactly what we must remember today:

Today when we choose leaders for our congregation.

Today when we affirm our ministry by careful attention to the budget and the generosity of our members.

Today when we hear reports, dot the I’s and cross the T’s, and say “Thank you!”

Today, when we eat together, and celebrate, and wipe down the tables and clean up the coffee.

We must remember that Sunday School and ECW and Coffee Hour and Vestry meetings and all the other work of our common life are how God builds the Gospel Story. 

That God’s call to follow, and to fish for people, often sounds like another meeting, another chore: a fragrant, slippery, heavy net to haul; another busy thing in a very busy world.

That’s the true story for Simon and Andrew and James and John, years ago in Galilee, and it’s true now. Meetings and work and especially cleanup are the true story of a teaching, preaching, healing, people-fishing ministry here in Lombard.  

And the true story is also the Gospel story, one that shines with clear invitation, the compelling presence of God, one that makes it easy to join in.

Does that story sound familiar?

It’s our story, after all.

Annual Meeting of the Congregation

January 23, 2011

Falling in love

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve seen a lot of birth announcements on Facebook recently.

In the old days – you know, a decade or two ago – when the baby was born you called people, using the telephone.  Grandparents, siblings, dear friends: the new baby’s family circle, got the call, and printed announcements or word of mouth took over from there. 

Today, within hours of the baby’s birth, family, dear friends, and perhaps hundreds of near strangers are informed of the baby’s arrival, stats, name, and first photos online.  An extraordinary number of unrelated people now share that intimate access to the birth day, including folks you didn’t even eat lunch with in high school. 

But it’s oddly similar to that moment two thousand years ago when the sky around Bethlehem suddenly rang with the angelic birth announcement.

To an unrelated group of shepherds minding their own business, the sudden and prodigal news of a baby’s birth, stats, name and general appearance were even less expected than a former colleague’s hospital photos. 

But the joy was real, and in this case the news was meant precisely for the hundreds, then millions of near-strangers who would eventually learn the baby’s story.

That’s the thing about Christmas.  The thing that’s oddly contemporary in a wireless, internet-connected world.  The news is for EVERYONE.  

This miracle of God, born human, living among us, is remarkably public and undiscriminating.

It’s because that baby, born in a stable, announced by angels, is our all-access pass to God.  Near-strangers, the ones who don’t even appear on the Christmas card list, that’s who gets intimate access to God, tonight.

In Luke’s story and in Matthew’s, the people who come to see this baby, to witness and celebrate the birth, are precisely the people we would never imagine in our own family nativity stories.

There are shepherds – the first century Palestinian equivalent of day laborers, widely regarded as unreliable and socially marginal. 

And there are magi. Foreigners.  They hang out with governors and kings (also not the folks who usually come to visit the baby in the hospital) but they probably had accents and funny clothes.

That scene around the manger is full of people who don’t belong there: the infant asleep in a feed trough, a mother and father far from home.  Animals.  Laborers.  Foreigners.  

That picture is God’s announcement to us that in Jesus, everything changes.  This infant is God’s gift to us of unrestricted welcome and access.

God, born human, is wide open to the unlikely, to those who seem undeserving, to strangers, to you and me, reaching out our hands to hold a baby.

For the last couple of months, Brian and Ruth Ann Pfohl brought their foster baby Easton to church, and I watched as he passed from arm to arm, cradled by people he’d barely met.  Like the infant Jesus, Easton was on loan to us, and like Jesus his love and nurture came from strangers, adoptive parents, and unexpected friends. 

Like the infant Jesus, Easton simply let us fall in love.

Other parents of this congregation have told me about watching their child pass from arm to arm, in worship and at coffee hour, held and loved by friends and near-strangers in a mutual and unplanned act of trust.

Holding a baby is an act of radical intimacy. 

And here, especially tonight, you don’t have to be a parent to hold the baby, to nurture growth and love with the ordinary physical support of your arms and body. 

You don’t have to be a family member, or even a close friend, to fall in love, to have grace and compassion kindled in your heart by the weight of an infant in your arms.

God is born – in an unlocked, temporary stable, open to all and sundry – so that you and I can never lose that intimate, nurturing, radical access to God. God is born an ordinary, extraordinary, human infant so that you and I, strangers to the family but beloved of God, can fall in love tonight. 

And over and over again.

The Christmas miracle of birth and angel news is a miracle of invitation.  You and I are invited to family intimacy with God, tonight and forever.

Of course, intimacy isn’t easy.

Once they get inside our hearts, babies grow and change and take us to unexpected places, demanding that our hearts grow with them.   It’s the same with anyone we relate to in love.  Intimacy erodes our defenses against grace and joy as well as grief and pain. 

So vulnerability is part of Christmas.  

At this season our dependence on one another for hope and happiness is more obvious than usual – around the table, under the tree, in a mall or in a candlelit church – when the world insists on brightness and cheer.

And that, too, is why God is an infant, tonight, surrounded by strangers.   A baby’s fragile body depends on the constant support of others for nourishment, cleanness, and even warmth, and God invites us to offer that care. 

Tonight, God the baby is vulnerable to us, open to the pain and the delights of human relationship.  From this time forward, every human hope and pain, every fear and every joy, is felt by God.

Once we fall in love with a baby, we belong to that baby for life.  

Through sleepless nights, new discoveries, bruised knees and hearts, abundant growth, the care and joy never end.

And that, too, is why God is born in a stable, announced with exuberant joy to strangers in the field, and visited by foreigners.  God the infant invites us to open our arms because tonight no one, no one at all, is left out of that invitation, that love, that belonging, because it doesn’t end in that stable. 

This miracle is meant to go on and on.

Day in and day out, the Christmas miracle of birth and love keeps hold of us.

Tonight, there is this infant, God made flesh, so that the unlikely, those who seem undeserving, strangers -- you and I -- can fall in love with God.

Because once we fall in love, the miracle claims our days and nights, our hearts and hopes,

and filled and surrounded by love, we belong to God for always.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010