Picture a line of people with
filled with expectations…think of the lines of people that waited to get into
Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Piper
Fowler of our church is so excited about her upcoming trip to New York with the
Kansas East Conference of the United Methodist Church. The UN-DC Tour has blessed and changed the
lives of many of us. Penny and I both
went on that trip on different years.
Mary Stamey and I went the same year.
It is a life-changing experience, to experience the centers of political
and economic power and to reflect on them from a Christian perspective. The visit to the Church Center for the United
Nations and our United Methodist office just across the street from our
nation’s Capitol Building is an enormous trill.
Throw in visits to those who represent us in Washington and a Broadway
play…it is great. She will come back and
give us a report.
We all line up for ice cream, our
favorite restaurants, sports events, weddings, plays, and concerts. Penny and I recently lined up to see the
movie, Les Miserables. Along with
Lincoln, it was one of the best movies I have seen. But as we went into the theater, Penny and
realized that we must be the only couple left on the planet that use cash. I feel that sometimes when I go to some
places and I hold out cash and see the frown.
But at the movies in Manhattan, cash is an advantage as there is a
special line for “cash only.” There were
all of these lines of people and I walked around to the left and there was no
one with cash and I got my ticket without waiting.
People are always in line to buy
things. People in this story were lined
up to get baptized by John the Baptist.
John, a relative of Jesus, was part of a movement to get people turned
toward God. With many things not going
well, many people wanted to get closer to God. John was happy to help with that but he
pointed out that he was not the Savior; Jesus was that. He was a helper to point people to Jesus.
One of the most remarkable parts
of this is that Jesus was eager to get in line to be baptized by John. And in that act he shows how eager he was, in
all his ministry, to line up with people, all people, especially the
downtrodden, the broken people who formed in lines hoping for a new beginning
with God. Jesus lines up with people who
need God. And for me that means me and
you.
Leonard Sweet re-tells an ancient
story about a gatekeeper at a city gate.
A traveler trying to find a new city in which to live appears out of the
darkness. The traveler approaches the
gate asks what the city is like. The
gatekeeper does something strange. He
reverses the question and asks the traveler, “What was the city like where you
came from?” The man said, “I am moving
on because the city charged terrible taxes and people were so selfish and
mean. It was awful. “ The gatekeeper said, “That is pretty much
what you will find here, too.” So the
traveler went on to another city.
Another traveler appeared and the gatekeeper was asked again, what is
this city like? The gatekeeper again
turned the tables. What was your city
like? The traveler answered: “It was great. The neighbors were friendly, ready to help
you. The politicians worked hard to make
sure life was good for all the citizens not just the rich business people. I did not want to leave. But my job ended. The gatekeeper said, “That is pretty much
what you will find here.” And in he
came.
A great deal of life is what you
see and expect to find.
I ran across a new story this
week that made me sad and shake my head.
It shows about human nature. On
Guernsey Island in the English Channel, a 29-year old Matthew Clark got in line
for a fishing contest with a big cash prize.
He had visited the island’s aquarium and saw a 15 yr.-old sea bass, a
huge fish, that he saw as his way to win.
He broke in stole the big fish and had plans to return the fish. He hid the fish until the weigh-in. This
monster won the prize. Until….until….one
of the other contestants recognized the fish as being the one in the
aquarium. He had just taken his family
there and he recognized the fish with its unique markings. After the contest was over he headed to the
aquarium and sure enough the fish was missing.
The man had planned to return the fish after winning. And to make it all worse the winner dropped
the fish and it died from the injuries.
When the fish died he could not put it back, so he sold it to a fish
market. Police identified the fish from
the remaining pieces. The man charged
with breaking and entering and theft and fraud confessed. He turned in the prize money and is doing 100
hours of community service. He
confessed. It is kind of silly story,
but it shows something of human nature.
And people wrote to him on how stupid he was. If he had just eaten the fish himself instead
of selling it, there would be no evidence.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
You would think the aquarium keeper would have noticed!
Jesus knew people, and he got in
line, to show his love for all of us, not just some. Jesus is eager to get into line with the best
and the worst. I need that salvation as
much as any. A church is not filled
with perfect people, nor necessarily the most respectable. We sometimes think that way. I know of one woman who has not attended
church for years because of something her son did. She feels like she is not worthy to come
here.
We are hungry people who have
found in this community spiritual food.
It is the Holy Spirit who nourishes us through community, spiritual
growth, and compassion.
There has been, since the
scriptures were written a controversy regarding why in the world Jesus was I think he did so:
1. Jesus
was eager to teach us that baptism is a means of grace.
He certainly was acknowledging
that he was part of world that needed much change. We as a global community have much to repent
of.
2. He must have felt a great deal
of connection with John. Jesus
agreed with John in wanting to put spiritual growth at the center of life. Many people were crying out for the light of
God and John wanted people to look in the right places. John was a forerunner. Jesus was thanking John for the hope he put
into people and the preparation his made so that Jesus then be seen as the new
life and new age of God’s spirit.
3. Jesus was showing us all God’s
willingness to meet us where we are.
When you see Christ going to get in line, you see a great love going
into a great redeeming act of claiming us, all humans. The Lord of Glory goes wherever people have
need. He did not care what that did to
his reputation. He was doing God’s
work. He often sat with outcasts. He stood beside them. He made our trouble, his trouble, our
burdens, his. The only love which can
ever have redeeming power is a love that goes out and connects with others.
George Fox said that for Jesus to
be baptized, we see a sign of solidarity with people in every condition, every
needs, every joy, and every sorrows of humankind.
4. Jesus
received the blessing of God and then passes it on to us. In the moment of the baptism, two things
came….a voice and a vision. The voice
spoke to him out of heave and in the vision of the dive the Holy Spirit
descended. The voices was the call for
which through many years Jesus had felt but not heard. The call was for the work of his life….the
Spirit empowered him for that work. …the answering of the call and the carrying
it out.
“Thou art my beloved…..in whom I
am well pleased.” That swept the last
hesitation from Jesus’ soul and the messianic vocation was accepted. And with this event came the vision, the
power. Visions give power.
The Holy Spirit which first
formed the earth was active here. The
Holy Spirit which fired up the prophets, blessed Jesus in a special way that
day. It focused his life and
concentrated it into a power that carried him all the way through the cross to
heaven.
5. This
event asks us to remember that we are able to bless one another. We are able to live as a faith community in
ways that communicate clearly: GOD IS
WELL PLEASED WITH YOU! And often that
comes at times when we cannot see that ourselves.
I ran across a story this week
about an older Jesuit priest who was asked to visit a Catholic Elementary School. After a first grade classroom discussion, a
girl came up for a closer greeting and handshake. She was excited to greet him and to tell him
she liked what he said and how he said.
He reminded each child how important they were to God. She was in line and finally got her
turn. (It was kind of like being in line
to see Santa.) In their brief
conversation, she suddenly realized that he was blind. In a second she went from joy to sorrow. She blurted out….you can’t see. The priest confessed it. And then she added, “You can’t see yourself.”
He hardly knew what to say. He could
feel how perceptive she was. He said, “I
guess you are right. I cannot see what I
look like.” She said, tentatively to the
old priest in a whispered voice, “You are beautiful.” The priest thanked her and left with a
blessing.
None of us are able alone to see
our beauty. We need each other to remind
us.
The Christian Faith is at the
center joy and gratitude. In our days
of worry about safety from gun violence, more taxes, budget cuts, it is time to
claim and celebrate God’s pleasure.
Grumping together will bind us together, but it will not lift up us
up. Jesus does that.
Les Miserables is a great movie
and I hope you take time to see it. As
I have ready John Wesley’s writings and the great good he did in England, it
can be argued that the Methodist created a system that prevented the violence
of armed revolution. John Wesley
preached that all are equal; factory workers and royalty are the same in the
eyes of God. His societies instituted
methods of care for those in prison and among the working people which
civilized and cared for people.
John Wesley got it right John
Wesley’s Rule
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
