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Life Lessons from Luke: Following

6/26/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 26, 2022

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2 Kings 2:1-8; Luke 9:51-62

I want to begin this morning with a Jeopardy moment. So here is the answer, Cristiano Renaldo, Khaby Lame, Barack Obama, and Pewdiepie? What is the question? Any guesses? What they have in common is that they have the most followers in a particular branch of social media. Cristiano Renaldo has 456 million followers on Instagram. Khaby Lame has 142 million followers on Tik-tok. Barack Obama has 132 million followers on Twitter. And, Pewdiepie…yes that is his handle and he simply plays and talks about video games, has 111 million followers on YouTube. That’s a lot of people following each of them. However, they all pale in comparison to the followers of Jesus. Jesus has about 2.6 billion followers, or as Wikipedia puts it, adherents. The question we might want to ask ourselves this morning is what is the difference between being a follower of someone on social media and a follower of Jesus? Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to compare them to a follower of someone on social media is to be interested in their thoughts, insights, abilities, or music…or perhaps what they wear. To be a follower of Jesus, if we see being a follower through the lens of scripture, is to move from believing to being. Let me say that again, being a follower of Jesus is about moving from believing to being.

We can understand this movement from believing to being by understanding a bit more about who Jesus is on a fundamental level. On the most fundamental level, Jesus is the embodiment of God with us, and us with God. What I mean by this is that Jesus did not simply live as a great teacher or rabbi, which he was. He did not live simply as a purveyor of secret knowledge about how to get to heaven, which he did possess. He did not simply live as a healer, which he certainly was. He did not simply live as an apocalyptic miracle worker. Jesus was all these things, but more importantly Jesus was the literal embodiment of God with us, and us with God. This is the concept that Jesus was both fully divine (God with us) and fully human (us with God). And so, when the scriptures talk about Jesus’ desire to have people follow him, it was not just about his teaching, healing, or miracles. Following was about the transformation of human beings from those who believed in Jesus, to those who embodied us with God to become fully human as God designed us to be; meaning we are those who live in full communion with God, and it is the Spirit that empowers and directs all we that are and do. It is moving from believing to being.

I bring up the concept of following because it is at the heart of this section of Luke in which Jesus tells his followers several important things about following. First, he shows them that following is corrective. In other words, following Jesus, moving from believing to being, is intended to correct patterns of believing that are incompatible with being fully human. We see this in the strange story of James and John wanting to rain fire and brimstone on the Samaritans who would not welcome Jesus into their homes. While that might seem odd to us, we need to remember that Jews and Samaritans hated each other. They despised one another. So when Jesus is cutting across Samaritan territory and was refused the kindness that ought to have been shown to strangers, it was not a great leap for the disciples’ hatred of Samaritans to show itself. Jesus however rebukes them. Jesus rebukes them because he understands that he has come to give his life for the whole world and not just for those who are nice to him. He understands that Samaritans are children of God deserving of God’s love and grace, and that they have reasons to hate Jews since Jews under the Maccabees destroyed their temple and oppressed them. Thus, following is intended to correct those beliefs and actions that keep us from experiencing our true humanity.

The second thing Jesus wants his followers to understand is that following is continual. This is the focus of another odd story in Luke in verses 57 and 58. “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, following Jesus is not something someone does for a while, and then one settles down in one’s den or nest. Following Jesus is instead a journey without an end…there is no place to finally stop and lay one’s head as if the journey is over. In some ways one could liken this to professional athletes who still have coaches. NBA stars have shooting coaches. Pro golfers have swing coaches. Major League Baseball players have hitting and pitching coaches. These pros understand that they are on a journey to become better and better at their craft. They understand that there is room for continual improvement. The same is true with following Jesus. It is true because we are not just trying to get our theology right, but working to become new people. We are trying to become the people who God designed us to be. We are moving from believing to being, which is a lifetime endeavor.

Finally, Jesus wants his followers to understand that following is critical. What I mean by critical is not criticism, but critical as in the most important thing. I would argue that this is the meaning behind the final four verses. “Jesus said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” In both conversations the people involved believed that there were other obligations that were more important than following Jesus. Burying one’s family was a mitzvah, or good deed that all Jews were expected to do. Saying goodbye to one’s family was a way of honoring one’s parents, or one’s spouse. Each was important. So, when Jesus says these things, he is not asking people not to bury their dead or say goodbye to family, he is instead reminding them of the critical nature of following: that it is only in following, in moving from believing to being, that one can truly emerge as a new human being. Putting anything else in the way of following restricts the transformation that God has planned for us.

Following Jesus is what Cindy Merten has been helping us do for the past 23 years. She has helped children and adults move from believing to being. She has helped people of all abilities move from believing to being. She has helped us understand that following is a lifelong pursuit and a critical part of our lives. She has been a gift to the process of embodiment for hundreds and hundreds of children and adults. I hope that you will stop and thank her this morning before you leave.

My challenge to all of us then is this, to ask ourselves how am I working at following Jesus that I might be the embodiment of the true humanity that Jesus is offering?

Life Lessons from Luke: Risking

6/19/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 19, 2022

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2 Kings 9:1-3; Luke 8:27-39

      You can see it on their faces. They are doing a risk versus reward calculation. They are trying to determine how much they will wager. Will it be a little or a lot? It often depends on whether they are ahead or behind, on how much they are ahead or behind, or perhaps how much they know about the categories at hand. Sometimes it depends on whether the individual is someone willing to risk everything. Regardless, when a Daily Double shows up on the board, it is never clear what the contestants will do. For those of you unfamiliar with the Daily Double, it is not a new lotto game from the Michigan Lottery. The Daily Double to which I am referring is an option in the game of Jeopardy to wager as little as a dollar or the entire amount that a contestant has accumulated. Most people seldom bet everything because they are not willing to risk all that they have accumulated. Still, it is always a risk versus reward scenario.

      Calculating risk versus reward is something that we do every day. I say that because every day we take risks. We take risks getting out of bed, driving a car, going to the grocery store, or eating at restaurants. Each of these is risky because we could trip and fall, be in a car crash, get Covid from someone in the checkout line, or end up with food poisoning. Yet, on a regular basis many of us do all these things. We do so because we do a risk-reward analysis and decide which risks are worth taking, such as driving in a car…and which are not, such as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to see if our parachute will open…though I know there are those among us who have done this. These are the type of risks that we are constantly weighing. But this raises a question for us this morning and that is, how do we evaluate the risk reward relationship along our faith journey?

      Throughout the scriptures there are people who are willing to take risks and those who are not. This morning we have two stories which show us how this works. Our Old Testament text concerns one of the company of prophets. We don’t know his name, but what we do know is that the prophet Elisha asks him to risk his life. This prophet is to go and anoint a general to be king. There are several problems with this action. First, there is already a king who would kill the prophet if he discovered what the prophet was up to. Second, the general works for the king who might see this anointing as an act of treason and kill the prophet. Third, even if the general allowed the anointing, his men might see this an act of treason and kill the general and the prophet. So, all in all a risky business, which calls upon the prophet to do a drive by anointing…meaning as soon as the oil hits the general’s head, the prophet is to flee. The outcome of the story is that the prophet weighs the risk; death; and the reward; doing God’s will and chooses the latter.

      Our second story from the Gospel of Luke contains not one but two stories of risk vs. reward. The first story is about Jesus. Jesus has taken his followers out of Jewish territory and into Gentile Lands. On the surface this is not a great risk, though the two groups did not always get along. The greater risk is that the boat in which Jesus and his friends are riding comes ashore in a place haunted over by a man of superhuman strength; strength that is the result of demon possession. Though the people of that area had bound him in chains and shackles, they could not hold him. He was a man of whom all around him were afraid. The man could have attacked Jesus and his disciples. There was also the risk that when Jesus commanded the spirits to leave the man, they could have inhabited the disciples. While we tend to see Jesus as a superman, we need to remember that he was fully human, and as the cross reminds us, capable of dying. Yet Jesus weighed the risk and the reward; being harmed or doing the will of God and making this man whole. Like the prophet hundreds of years before him, Jesus chose the will of God. But this is just half the story.

      The second half of the story concerns the people of the land where Jesus and his disciples landed, and where Jesus healed the man with the demons. These people had lived in fear of the demon possessed man. We would assume then that when he was cured there would have been a celebration. The people would have come out of their homes and carried Jesus into town and given him wonderful gifts. Yet they had a risk reward calculation to do as well. Their risk reward had to do with the fact that Jesus had sent the demons into a herd of swine and the swine had drowned themselves. To put it simply, Jesus’ act of freeing the man was only done at great financial cost to many of them. The question they were facing then was do we invite Jesus to stay and risk other financial losses or do we ask him to leave and run the risk of another demon possessed man arising. They chose the latter and asked Jesus to leave.

      With all of this having been said, many of you may be asking yourselves, as I did for much of this week, so what is the risk that we take as Christians? I asked this because regardless of what you may hear in the media, Christians are not persecuted in this nation. We can worship freely. We can speak of our faith freely. We can read our Bibles freely. And because of these freedoms it would appear as if there were no real risk in being a Christian…yet there is. There is a risk because of what we are called to believe. As Jesus people we are called to believe that God is a God of justice and mercy. We are called to believe that God’s love is for all persons and that we have no right to say who is in and who is out. We are called to believe that we are to love not only God but neighbor. We are called to believe that we are to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, and visit the prisoner. We are called to believe that we are to share what we have with those who don’t have enough. And these beliefs are risky because they call us to do what we believe.

      If we believe that God is a God of justice and mercy, we are to work for justice and show mercy to those whom the world doesn’t believe deserves mercy. This is risky business. If we believe that we are to love all persons and refuse to say who is in and who is out of God’s love, then we must act and love all of those people we might not want to love. This is risky business. If we believe that we are to love our neighbor and our neighbor is everyone, even our enemies, then we are to truly love our enemies. This is risky business. If we are to give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, house the homeless, and visit the prisoner…then we must do this regardless of the personal or financial cost involved. This is risky business. Living our beliefs is risky business…personally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. This is the risk reward calculation that we must make every day.

      I wish this risk reward calculation could be easy, but just as in deciding on what to risk on the daily double in Jeopardy depends on any number of factors, so too does each risk we take for the kingdom of God. Some may be simple and the risk low. Others may be more difficult and the risk to ourselves great. Yet if we are to be Jesus people, then we need to at least make the calculation. We need to ask ourselves if the risk is worth the return and allow the Spirit to guide us. For in so doing, we just might discover that we can be like the prophet, and Jesus and risk it all for the Kingdom of God. My challenge to you this morning then, is for all of us to ask ourselves how am I measuring the risk and reward of faithfulness in order that I might do the will of God as the best I can.

Life Lessons from Luke: Healing

6/12/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 12, 2022

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2 Kings 5:1-15; Luke 7:1-10

      It looked like a great idea for continuing education. Many of you may not be aware that one of the things that ministers are encouraged to do is to engage in continuing education. Over the years I have taken a few short courses, watched videos, or simply done some reading. But this was the perfect continuing education opportunity. First it was online. Second, it was only eight, one-hour sessions. Third, the price was, well, reasonable. Fourth, even if I could not use what I learned in the church, I could probably use it as a sideline income generator. Oh, and what was this continuing education? It was a course on healing. That’s right, in eight, one-hour sessions I could learn how to lay my hands on people, channel the power of God, and heal them of all diseases. Just imagine what a difference that could make. None of you would have to go to the doctor. None of you would need surgery. Just drop by and see Dr. John and everything would be well. Even so, I made the difficult decision to not take the course…though it might have been interesting.

      Healing. Of all the stories and occurrences in scripture that cause people to pause, question, and doubt, the healing miracles and stories are probably close to the top of the list. As 21st century believers we have physicians, therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostic tests, robot surgical equipment, and a whole host of other scientifically oriented items that cause us to look askance at the healing stories. There are other Christen traditions in which healing still plays a significant role but for Presbyterians we usually follow John Calvin’s lead when he states that the miraculous spiritual gifts such as healing and speaking in tongues were simply a part of the life of the early church and no longer function in the modern world…even if for Calvin the modern world was the 1500s. This always raises the question of what do we do with these stories? Do we argue over whether they were “real”? Do we argue about whether this kind of healing is still possible? Or are there other alternative ways of understanding them? What I want to do this morning is to offer a different way of seeing these stories, and that are signposts pointing to God’s ultimate desire for humanity. Meaning that human beings, in God’s final consummation of all things will be made whole. They will all be healed.

      To understand this idea, I want to use a Texana illustration. Which is especially fitting since my family is here visiting…and they will all get it. In Texas there are a series of the world’s largest car and truckstops called Buc-ee's. They are on major interstate highways and they are known for several things, including clean bathrooms and kitschy Texana merchandise. But the other thing they are known for are their road signs. Some of them read, “You can Hold it…Buc-ee's only 276 miles ahead.” “No waiting for our java to load.” “Let us plan your next potty.” And the one that is most germane to this morning, “Here is your sign.” These signs are always assurance that there is a place of rest and refreshment ahead. This is the way the healings in scripture work. They are reminders that God has something wonderful ahead. They are reminders that God’s ultimate plan for humanity is that we be healed and made whole. This means healed on both an individual and a communal basis. The individual basis is healing such that human beings become capable of loving God and neighbor…that as the prophet Jeremiah stated, the Law would be written on people’s hearts, and they would just live it. Communally, healing can be seen in the Book of Revelation where there is a tree in the garden of the New Jerusalem whose leaves are intended for the healing of the nations. These are the healings toward which the signposts are directing us.

      What this means then is that these healing story signposts are to engender hope. The distance between my parents’ house in Houston and our house in San Antonio was almost exactly two-hundred miles. And as Cindy often said, it was probably the world’s most boring drive. You sort of point your car toward home, drive in a straight line and set the cruise control. And though we often stopped at Buc-ee's along the way, there were other times when we were in a hurry and did not. Yet the Buc-ee's signs were signs of hope. They were signs of hope because the reminded us that we were two-thirds of the way through our journey and home was around the corner. This is the hope that these healing stories give us. They tell us that the condition in which find ourselves is not the last word. That the condition in which we see the world is not the way it is always going to be. That there is hope that just as Naaman and the slave were healed so can be creation; so can be humanity; so can be our relationships; so can be our nation. There is in these signposts hope that God is at work continuing God’s healing mission and that one day we will arrive.

      Finally, there is one more important aspect of these stories which we ought not to miss and that is that this promised future healing is open to all. Buc-ee’s makes sure that motorists know that they are open for business for all kinds of vehicles. Trucks, cars, RVs, motorcycles, and yes, Buc-ee's is even installing Tesla supercharging stations for electric vehicles. In other words, the refreshing and rest of Buc-ee's is open to all. This is what this promised future of healing and wholeness does as well. To make this clear all we need to do is to look at our two stories. The first is of Naaman, a Syrian general who was the enemy of Israel. He was suffering from leprosy, a horrific, slow, debilitating disease, for which there was no cure. Naaman is told that there is someone in Israel who can heal him. He sends gifts to the king of Israel who is afraid that Naaman will attack him because he, the king, has no ability to heal the general. Into this story then comes the prophet Elisha who tells Naaman to go and bathe seven times in the Jordan river. While at first hesitant, the general does so and is healed. The second story concerns a Roman slave. Not a Jewish person as a slave, but probably a captive from another nation. Even so, the healing power of God is made visible in his or her life. What this means is that God’s end game of healing and wholeness is not limited to any subset of human beings but is offered to all.

      This morning on the way to church I was listening to an interview with a musician who described the last several years as the world being turned inside out. I would argue that that is an appropriate way to describe what we have been and are still going through. And in those times of the world being turned inside out it is often hard to find a firm frame of reference for our lives. What I hope for all of us this morning is that we will allow these healing stories to help offer us a frame of reference in that they remind us that God desires a healed world. That God is at work slowly, but consistently bringing that world about through us and through others. My challenge to you then is this, to ask yourselves how am I allowing the healing stories of scripture give me hope in this moment?

The Marks of the Church: Transforming

6/5/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 5, 2022

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Joel 2:23-29; Acts 2:1-13

Some people said it tasted like bubblegum. Others said it tasted like cherry. Some said that it had a mixed berry or perhaps a strawberry flavor. One person described it as “cheap strawberry syrup, but with an aftertaste somewhere between chewing rubber gloves and aspartame.” A recent Reddit post on this stuff garnered 13,000 comments from people who remembered it fondly. It even made BuzzFeed’s list of 90’s nostalgia even though it was invented in 1972. For Cindy, me, and our children we simply referred to it as “the pink stuff.” How many of you remember “the pink stuff?” For those of you unfamiliar with “the pink stuff,” it was the antibiotic Amoxicillin in its pediatric, liquid form. It was the miracle drug for young parents. It could turn our hurting, suffering, children who were hurting from ear and other infections, back into their joyous and loving selves. Though it didn’t work instantaneously, we knew that it would do the trick, and that the children we loved would be restored to us once again. Let me ask this morning, have any of you ever wished that there was an adult spiritual pink stuff that could take angry, hateful people and turn them into loving and joyous people? If you have, you are in luck because there is such a thing…and it is the Spirit of God.

In order to fully understand what I mean by this view of the Spirit, we need to step back and look at the larger picture of what God has been and is doing in the world. We begin with the words of the prophet Joel. Joel is addressing the people of God who have been through two of the most dreaded events in the life of an agrarian culture: drought and a locust invasion. These two events are what often caused starvation and relocation of peoples. Without access to foreign grain or water people found themselves in desperate straits. The word from Joel though is that this is not how God wants God’s people to live. Instead, God desires that people experience the fullness of all that creation can offer them. Thus, God has given early and late rain such that the threshing floors shall be full of grain and the vats overflowing with wine and oil. But God does not stop there with the restoration of creation, but God continues by promising the transformation of humankind; transforming humanity into the people God desires them to be. And God will do this through the giving of the Spirit. “And I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on your male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” This my friends is God’s promise of universal transformation in which people are intimately connected to their creator.

This idea of God's continual work of transformation lays the foundation for our Pentecost story. But before we make the connection, I want us to be clear that the Spirit of God does not just suddenly appear at Pentecost. The Spirit is integral to the Old Testament. The Spirit was at creation. Moses speaks of the presence of God’s Spirit in the wilderness. The Spirit infused both King Saul and King David. The Spirit gave visions to the prophet Ezekiel. And Zechariah speaks of God’s Spirit empowering other prophets. So, the Spirit has been around. But what we believe about the Spirit that arrives on the Jewish festival of Pentecost is that this is the moment that the Spirit of God becomes the spiritual pink stuff intended to heal and transform the world; that, as Peter puts it, this is the moment that Joel had been referring to in his ancient prophecy. And we can begin to see this transformation as it takes the fearful and timid disciples, and turns them into fearless and bold proclaimers of the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. And not only does it do those two things, but it shapes them into a community in which all persons (remember Joel’s “all flesh”) are not only accepted but are embraced and transformed. The spiritual pink stuff of the Spirit has been unleashed into the world.

I wish we could say this morning that this spiritual pink stuff of the Spirit has transformed all persons; transformed all flesh. But looking out at our world…and even at times looking at our own lives, we can see that the transformation is not complete. We can see anger, hatred, jealousy, pride, violence, and perhaps all sorts of other sins loose in the world. This creation has not yet become what God desires it to be. Which is why these Sunday mornings are so important. They are important because here in this place, or online, or if you are watching this later on YouTube, we are taking the next dose of the Spiritual pink stuff. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff in the act of baptism where we profess that the Spirit is present and we make commitments to the children and to God, through which the Spirit can operate in us. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we hear the word read and proclaimed, as the Spirit uses these words to transform us. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we come to the table and eat the bread and drink from the cup, because we are transformed as we are fed. We are taking the Spiritual pink stuff when we allow the music to transform our hearts and minds. We are taking the spiritual pink stuff when we spend time with others, being transformed by sharing our lives together.

My friends, God desires us to be transformed into the image of God’s one and only Son, Jesus of Nazareth. We can do so by being open to the Spirit, and by partaking of the Spiritual pink stuff, such that we are made new each day. My challenge to you then is to ask yourselves, how am I being open to and engaging with the Spirit so that I may be transformed.

Life Lessons from Luke: Following

Life Lessons from Luke: Risking

Life Lessons from Luke: Healing

The Marks of the Church: Transforming

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