Uncomfortable Care

1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

You don’t want to be like those sinners. They died.

Paul’s comparing his church in Corinth to the people of Israel out in the wilderness with God – remembering all the things that went wrong then, when the people didn’t fully trust in God, giving examples and asking: “You don’t want to die for your sins, do you?”

 

No, of course not.

You and I might add: God wouldn’t do that nowadays anyway, right? Didn’t Jesus change that?

 

Jesus does have some thoughts about that, which we heard today.

As people tell him about a group of Galileans slaughtered by Romans when they came to worship in Jerusalem, Jesus specifically says, No, they didn’t die for their sins.

They’re no worse sinners than the rest of us. God didn’t smite them for being bad.

 

That part should be pretty comfortable for us. Our modern theologies and ideologies reject the idea that collapsing walls or hurricanes or other disasters are God’s punishment for sin. 

But the human tendency to blame the victim hasn’t quite faded out in our society.  We still ask questions or make unconscious assumptions about what a person was doing “wrong” when they get assaulted; still talk about a pandemic virus and protective measures as if the moral rightness and wrongness of our choices determine our fate, even if we know differently from personal experience.

 

We probably do that because we want to protect ourselves. We want to know that we can avert disaster by doing the “right thing”.  It’s a natural, human thing to want that kind of control, but Jesus is having none of it:

Those folks didn’t bring it on themselves, he says.

But if you don’t repent, you’ll perish the same way.

 

You’re just as much at risk.

And - you can do something about it.

Repent.

Turn toward God.

 

We can’t protect ourselves from disaster and death by making ourselves more righteous (or at least “less bad” than the “worst sinners”). We can’t control fate that way.

But we can embrace God’s control of our fate.

We can accept and respond to God’s care.

 

The idolatry Paul is warning against, the habit Jesus is urging us to change, is an indifference or resistance to God’s care; to God’s working in and around us to heal us and the world. 

 

We resist, most likely, because God’s care isn’t always comfortable or comforting.

God’s care is aimed at our growth, at our becoming vibrant and life-giving, bearing fruit for the healing and nurture of the world, being more whole than we ever dream we could be.

And that’s glorious, but rarely restful. It usually involves unanticipated change and disturbing our comfort zones.

 

Jesus tells us a story about a fig tree that’s failing to produce fruit. 

The logical thing, of course, is to get rid of that tree.

But the gardener says, Wait. Let me care for the tree a bit more. Dig around and fertilize it.

Which suggests that perhaps God’s care for us, God’s loving work to nourish us, may often feel like digging up and disturbing all the solid ground around us.  And piling up a lot of …manure on us.

 

It’s not always easy, or comfortable, to be cared for in that way.

In a way that’s all about our fruitfulness, increasing our strength and abundance and vitality.

 

I’ve been through plenty of uncomfortable growth experiences in my life, and I bet you have, too. Experiences where it felt like the people who were supposed to be caring for me – parents, teachers, friends, pastors – stirred up things I didn’t want to change, brought me face to face with a lot of …manure in my life that I didn’t want to confront, or learn from, but nonetheless contained what I needed to grow stronger, more faithful, more generous, more vital, more whole.

 

A teacher who told me the truth about why I was about to fail their class. Friends who were honest about how I was hurting our relationship. A friend who backed me kicking and muttering into therapy I truly needed.

People who brought me face-to-face with the ways in which I had to admit that I had no power in myself to help myself, as we prayed at the beginning of this service – so that I could discover that I needed, and wanted, the care that God and my friends offered to me. And discover that each of those people disturbing me were holding all my discomfort and growth in strong protection and generous love. And I just needed to trust that care, and respond.

 

I suspect you also have had at least some experience of unwanted insight, disruptive change; of uncomfortable growth, and life-giving care that didn’t quite feel like care. 

After all, all of us go through adolescence.

That time when everything changes, nothing is comfortable, and in a lot of cases, care feels like punishment.  Perhaps you remember how malicious it felt when your parents tried to get you off the phone so that you’d get enough sleep?  Or how punitive it felt when parents or teachers or coaches took choices away from you, and told you you’d regret what you wanted to do? 

Perhaps you also know how punishingly painful it sometimes feels to be the one holding the boundaries of protection and love and care – to try to get an adolescent you love to get enough sleep, or help them make wise choices? 

 

You don’t have to be an adolescent to experience that.

The whole people of Israel went through that – as Paul reminds the church at Corinth – when God plucked them out of the limiting, oppressing, comfort zone of Egypt so that they could grow into a mature chosen people, and surrounded them in the wilderness with rules and resources meant to keep them safe and healthy and growing and vibrant, and Israel felt scared and vulnerable and resentful of the new rules.

 

You don’t have to be an adolescent, or a notorious sinner, or anything other than human to have had one or more experiences of how terrifying – and yet encouraging – it is to be forced or led to confront your fears, your inadequacies, your failings – to have the solid ground around you dug up, by someone who has your best interest at heart.

 

You don’t have to be an adolescent, or a fig tree, to grow stronger, healthier, more faithful from being held in a loving care that won’t let us be comfortable with less than wholeness, however much the process of growth disturbs us.

 

That’s what Jesus is telling us.

Today, and over and over again.

He’s inviting us, Paul’s reminding us, to look for, to recognize, to turn toward and embrace and trust the loving care that won’t let us be comfortable with idleness and complaint, that won’t let us stay lonely, hopeless, or limited, no matter how uncomfortable it is to become vibrant, fruitful, joyous, and beloved.

 

The season of Lent is a good one in which to look for and respond to the evidence of God’s care – for you, for me, for others. To watch for the moments or hours when we feel God bringing us air and nutrients and loving attention, even just a little, and to embrace those changes. To watch for moments or days when we feel God forcing us to grow stronger, deeper, wiser; disturbing the earth around us, and stirring up the …fertilizer we might not want, but need, and to practice trust as that happens.

 

A friend reminded me recently of studies that show that the practice of keeping a “gratitude journal” – of simply noting down each day one thing to be thankful for – like the taste of a favorite food, sunlight, life itself, the continued global availability of chocolate – noting down one thing a day makes us measurably healthier, happier, stronger people.  

 

I expect, too, that if you or I made it a habit, every day, to notice one thing about God’s care, we might become stronger, more faithful, loving and joyful, life-giving and vibrant people.

 

So will you watch with me, this Lent, for those signs of God’s care? Keep a “fertilizer” journal, maybe?

Look for God digging you free of where the world’s gotten too packed down around you, fertilizing your growth? For where God is spending time with us; nourishing and disturbing and nurturing you; or holding the world together when it’s too much for me, or you, or all of us? 

Will you watch with me for God’s deep, unshakable faithful care, and give thanks, and see what we grow into, together?

To Defeat the Devil

Luke 4:1-13; Deuteronomy 26:1-11

It doesn’t take much to defeat the devil. 

By the evidence in this story, all it takes to defeat the devil is a bit of quoting scripture.

Jesus doesn’t say a single word in this entire story that isn’t a specific quote or paraphrase from scripture. 

“One does not live by bread alone,” Jesus quotes.

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” 

And “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” 

Each of those comes from the remembrance of Israel’s years in the wilderness. And for those steeped in the holy story of Israel’s scripture, and our own, each statement resonates with God’s faithfulness in the face of human need, anxiety, and even complaint.

And the devil departs.

Even when the devil can quote scripture’s promises, a few fragments of the story of God’s faithfulness is enough to silence the devil.

That’s great news.

It may not be simple news.

Because what sends the devil away, what defeats every test, isn’t the ability to quote from memory, nor a specific set of magic scriptural words, but the whole story, and how deeply Jesus is living in that story.  A story of God’s faithfulness rooted so deep it doesn’t need to be said explicitly; what Jesus quotes is our response to that faithfulness.

When Jesus says “Worship and serve only the Lord your God” he’s offering not a rule to follow, but a whole testimony of what God has done for us.  Jesus draws that reference from a place in the story where Moses is telling God’s people to actively remember how God brought us out of slavery and to a land of abundance; how God chose us and our ancestors long before we were born.  

That “commandment” is a declaration of God’s care and love and power and faithfulness.  Which is the only antidote to the constant nagging forces of anxiety, pressure to perform, the demands of self-interest, the noise of the world – in other words, to the devil nudging at us, day after day.

You and I, in our own moments of test, in our own lonely wilderness times, also need that deep internal knowledge of God’s faithfulness. Not just to know scripture or quote it, but to know scripture as our own story, our own experience of God’s faithfulness from creation to the end of time.

That’s what God’s people are practicing in the story from Deuteronomy we heard this morning. Bringing the first fruits of their harvest to God, each household recites the story of God’s faithfulness:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor. When the Egyptians treated us harshly, God heard us, God brought us out of Egypt; gave us this land and its abundance. This happened to us, to me, and I bring this offering as a declaration that God’s promise has been faithfully fulfilled.

The story of God’s people is my story, they say. Each of God’s people proclaims every year, probably several times a year, that God’s faithfulness has brought me to this place; this time.

Jesus grew up steeped in that story; absorbed it from his human community of God’s people; along with other practices of remembering God’s faithfulness, at the door of every house, woven into clothing, told and retold to children and one another, ritually remembered in acts of worship.

Just like you and I are supposed to grow up, to live our adulthood, steeped in that same story of God’s faithfulness. Steeped in the story of Jesus’ faithfulness.
And we, too, are supposed to make it our own.

Because that is our armor against “temptation” – against all the ways the devil or simply the world around us works to draw our focus away from God, works to focus us on ourselves, our wants and fears, instead of on the rich, deep experience of God’s faithful care.

It is what we turn to sustain us in the wilderness of a long, ever-changing pandemic; to keep us balanced and grounded as the edges and horror of war in the world reach into our lives and community; to keep us focused on, and ready to share, God’s faithful love just as Jesus himself did and does, when our wilderness and “tests” don’t necessarily feel like “temptations”. 

That’s how scripture stops the devil.

When it expresses our confidence that we ourselves are part of the story of God’s faithfulness, both in our moments of abundance and happiness and in our times of test and stress and grief and pain.

That assurance that this story of God’s faithfulness is Jesus’ own; our own story is the difference between Jesus quoting scripture and the devil quoting it, too.

So what’s your story of God’s faithfulness?

You and I don’t bring the first tomatoes of our gardens – or the first paycheck of the year – to a priest and recite the story of Israel’s rescue from wandering, slavery, and need.

But we have – we must have – our own story of God’s faithfulness, and we need to repeat it, enter into it, tell ourselves into the whole of God’s story.

Maybe there’s a time when you were lost and found yourself in God; when you were broken or abused, and God’s strength brought you healing and freedom.

Your story may not have the sweep of the Exodus from Egypt, of course – one of my own stories is about finding a parking place right where I needed it, late on a night of grief and uncertainty, and feeling that little moment wrap around me as assurance of God’s faithful presence and care.  Every time I remember that moment, tell that story to myself or someone else, I’m wrapped again in that vivid assurance of faithful love.

Or maybe it’s a family story, generations back, of emigrating to a new land to find freedom and abundance; maybe it’s how your grandfather’s law practice or your great-aunt’s bakery quietly provided services or food to those who couldn’t pay, to the point where it could ruin the business, and yet the family always had enough. 

And even without naming God, your heart and your history knows this as an experience of God’s faithfulness.

Maybe it’s a story of a community you’ve been part of, like the congregation that sponsored me for ordination, who told the story of being on the brink of closure, being reminded that death leads to resurrection, and becoming a whole new congregation focused on giving away abundance and welcoming the outcast – so often and compellingly that it was all of our own story, each of us who hadn’t been there.

Maybe your story isn’t precisely a story. Maybe it’s the words of a prayer, or a hymn, or a pattern of scripture, worn smooth with repetition and time --- 

Now I lay me down to sleep…I once was lost, but now am found…. give us this day our daily bread…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil… all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well… Here I am, Lord… the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…

words that started as a stranger’s expression of God’s faithfulness, and have worked their way into your heart, to be your own truth, your own story.

This Lent, this season of renewal and reflection, make it a practice to tell this story of God’s faithfulness – from your own experience, from your family, from scripture or the traditions of the church – at least once a day, to yourself. Tell it to others as often as you can. Tell it as your own story, your offering to God.

And if you don’t know your story yet, this season of prayer and study and reflection can be the time to find it: to sort through your personal experience, the well-worn stories of your family, to read a bit more scripture, and find what resonates with you, what you would like to tell as your own story – and repeat that. Re-read that story. Say that prayer again, and again. Tell the oft-repeated story with your father when it’s the four-hundredth time you’ve heard it this visit.

And listen to our prayers, as we gather. Listen for your story as we tell our shared stories of God’s faithfulness Sunday after Sunday in the scripture we read, in the Creed we repeat, in the consecrating prayers of communion, [in the hymns we sing].

Because all it takes to defeat the devil is the story of God’s faithfulness, which is truly our own story, yours and mine and Jesus’.

More Than We Can Handle

Luke 5:1-11

Has anyone ever told you that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle?

Maybe you’ve said it yourself.

It’s a fairly common idea, usually meant to be comforting – to assure you that you’ll get through this, whatever it is, even though it’s currently overwhelming.

But that saying is wrong.

God definitely gives us more than we can handle sometimes.

I’ve got scriptural proof.

We just heard a story about Jesus giving Simon a catch of fish that breaks his nets; that threatens to sink not just his boat, but his partners’ boat. That catch of fish is way beyond what Simon’s equipment can handle, and definitely more than what he can handle. (His first response to the miracle is to tell Jesus to “Go away!”)

There’s other scriptural evidence, too.

Like a story about when the people of Israel get tired of the daily manna that kept them going in the wilderness, and complain that they want meat. And God gives them quails. Miles and miles of quails, more than they can ever catch and eat, or handle. So much quail they get sick.

Or when the first disciples complain to Jesus that they can’t handle feeding all these folks who follow Jesus around to listen to him, and Jesus has them hand out so much food they’ve got a ton of leftovers to handle. 

There’s more scriptural evidence, but it’s more than this sermon can handle.

God can, and often will, give you or me more than we can handle, too.  God has more abundance, more gifts, more glory, more miracles, more love – and more desire to give all that to us – than you or I - or all of us together - can receive. 

It doesn’t always seem that way. 

Many of us feel like we could use a lot more of God’s abundance. That the thing that’s hard to handle is not having enough food, or resources, or hope, or help, and the only thing we’ve got too much of is trouble.

That experience is real. 

This story doesn’t deny that. Instead, it is in part a promise we need to hear: that God will give to overflowing, even if we haven’t seen it yet.

And this story recognizes that often there is something blocking our access to God’s abundance, or God’s access to us. 

Sometimes, that’s a structure built into our society that distributes the abundance of nature or humanity in an unjust way. 

Sometimes it’s a fear or a shame or some stubborn doubt within us – trained into us by painful experience, or a habit we chose for ourselves. 

Sometimes it’s simply the conviction that we have to, need to, be able to handle everything ourselves.

All of those things, by the way, fall into the category of sin: the attitudes, habits, expectations, actions, culture and socieoeconomic structures that create distance or division between us and God. 

Most of us; normal, everyday, sinful people, in the normal, everyday, sinful world, like God to stay relatively contained – to help when we ask, but to stay out of the stuff we’re used to handling for ourselves. 

Like Simon, at the beginning of today’s story, probably preferring to keep God a little distant, or contained. He’s known Jesus for a while; seen him heal people, including Simon’s own mother-in-law. He’s probably interested in what Jesus has to say, liked some of Jesus’ advice about how to treat others, and wished more people would take that good moral teaching to heart. 

He’s happy to lend Jesus his boat – his workplace – for a pulpit. But I suspect that Simon didn’t really expect – or want – Jesus to turn his whole life upside down, or expect great things from him. 

He’d probably be happy to keep Jesus out of his fishing business. He’s certainly not expecting or looking for help.

And when Jesus finishes his sermon and tells Simon to go deep, and catch some fish, I can just hear the low expectations (and maybe eye-rolling) in response. “Boss, there aren’t fish out there; we were working all night (when the fish are supposed to be running) and got nothing. But, whatever, if it’ll make you happy.”

I suspect that Simon doesn’t realize – in that moment of low expectations – that he’s just made a decision to trust that’s going to change his life. Still, he puts aside logic and his own experience, and the way you’re supposed to do things. Puts aside how tired he probably is after a night of fruitless work, and trusts Jesus enough to do this quirky, unlikely thing. 

And gets so much more than he can handle.

The fish are sinking his boat, and suddenly he’s up to his neck in the direct experience of God and abundance and miracle and the unmistakable realization that all this transformation stuff Jesus has been teaching actually means his life is changing beyond his imagination.

He protests – as many of us would, too, when God grabs us by the scruff of our necks and drenches us in transformation! 

And all Jesus says is: Don’t be afraid. From now on, you’ll be catching people. 

(I bet it makes no sense to Simon in the moment, but) I think Jesus is saying: It’s okay. You don’t need what you’re suddenly afraid you’re going to lose – these tools of your trade, the predictability and security of the everyday. 

Don’t worry that you can’t handle all this miracle and abundance. It might seem like God is asking too much of you. But in fact, all this extra is for God’s work, which has more room and possibility in it than your boat, or the life you’re used to, and God can handle it. 

Then Simon does leave behind all those daily things that couldn’t handle too much God – his nets, his habits, his mostly predictable job and the security of the everyday – and follows Jesus, immersing himself in more God than he can handle.
And eventually finds himself doing what Jesus does: upending other people’s lives with abundance, and transformation, and more God than we can handle.

Your life, maybe.

My life.

Maybe more love than you can handle – where you feel like your heart’s going to fly apart because of how much you care for other people – how deeply you love your friends, family, refugees, the other drivers on the road, the most annoying neighbor on the block or colleague in the office – people you didn’t know it was possible to love.

Maybe more generosity than you can handle – people offering help or praise or time you didn’t think you could ask for, or earn, or needed. And you don’t know where to find room for all this support.  Or maybe your pride in being self-reliant starts to break apart from the abundance of people who want you to rely on them, too.  

Maybe more joy than you can handle, and even in the middle of a dragging pandemic winter your smile muscles just can’t keep up with the delight God’s pouring into you. Or more hope than you know what to do with, and your usual caution or protective skepticism breaks down, even when you’re pretty thoroughly burnt out.

Or maybe fish. With Jesus, you can’t ever rule out suddenly having too much fish.

Because God really does – as often as possible – give us more than we can handle.

All it takes, sometimes, is for you or me to give Jesus a little bit of trust about something that doesn’t seem to matter much. 

A little setting aside of our logic we use to protect ourselves, or our dependence on our own hard work. 

And then, without quite knowing how it happened, there’s an overflow of hope or generosity or peace that starts to break down our skepticism, our habits, our logic, or sink our self-interest under the weight of love (or fish).  

And then, perhaps, Jesus will suggest to you or me that we could leave behind those habits, those doubts, and the security and predictability of being able to handle it all, and immerse ourselves in too much God. To let God handle that extra we can’t handle, and join Jesus to fish our friends, or neighbors, or strangers, into God’s world of more love, hope, generosity, joy and grace than we can ask or imagine… or handle.