Blog Archives

Filtering by Faith

11/20/2022

Rev. Bethany Peerbolte
November 20, 2022

Watch Service
Watch Sermon
Print Version

Song of Songs 2:8-14; Mark 7:14-23
      Quick Greek 101 refresher before I read the second verse or else this is going to sound like a really strange verse for me to choose for today.

      By the time Jesus began his ministry, language had become a cultural phenomenon and was regarded as a valuable art form. This is the age of Philosophers, poets, and storytellers. The masters of language were the ones who could take a gigantic concept and express that meaning in the fewest words. They would do this in different ways like combining multiple words to make a new more meaningful word or weaving together intricate metaphors. Language had become a dance between the speaker and the listener. The listener’s part was to bring their own experiences to infer deeper meaning than words could ever express.

      I think Jesus can easily be put into the category of a master of language. The sheer amount of meaning Jesus is able to pack into a parable, a short story, sometimes no more than a sentence long, is proof enough that Jesus knows how to use words well. A simple way for Jesus to pack more meaning into less language is to allow the listener to do their part of the dance and infer through logic that Jesus is talking about more than what he says. For example, to allow the opposite to also be true, the unspoken vice versa. Jesus does exactly this with The Beatitudes. Jesus says “blessed are the merciful'' and when we hear that, our logic also infers that the unmerciful are not blessed. That opposite expression isn’t explicitly said but by specifically linking blessings to being merciful Jesus allows those listening to infer the opposite is just as true. The Gospel of Luke confirms that Jesus meant the beatitudes to be interpreted both ways. Luke includes the opposite statements which reinforces that when Jesus taught the beatitudes, whether he said the vice versa statements or not, he meant for people to conclude the opposite, unspoken statement, was also true. We see this come up a lot in the way Jesus teaches. He likes to say the outlandish thing to get our attention but what he really means for us to learn is well, vice versa.

      Now we are ready to hear this verse from Mark. (Read from Bible)

      Okay, so you can see why I needed to set that verse up a little. These probably aren’t the parting words you expected me to pick today. BUT…as we just reviewed, we can take Jesus’ shocking word choices and infer in an equal and opposite direction to get a lesson that is a little more appropriate for the day.

      Jesus says that it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. He says this because the religious elite has just called out the disciples for eating with “defiled” hands. They didn’t wash their hands before they ate. SO picture it, Jesus is sitting with a crowd of people. People who are sick because the water they have access to is polluted. People whose spouses abandoned them and the only work anyone will pay them to do is sex work. People whose hope and joy have been shaved away by an oppressive form of government and defiled hands is what the religious leaders focus on as the problem!? It’s no wonder Jesus chooses to give this teaching with such inflammatory language. They are oblivious to the human reality right in front of them, gentle words are not going to get the point across.

      Jesus uses their word “defile” right back at them. There is nothing outside a person that can defile them, the things that come out of us are what defile us. WOW. Tto say this statement to this crowd: “What is outside you cannot devalue you.” To say this to people who ingest polluted water every day, whose work is universally considered profane, to say that your life circumstances do not in any way make you less worthy of love, and that God highly values you to people whose outer experience is filthy with injustice is a powerful statement for Jesus to make. There is nothing outside a person that can defile them.

      And here is where that Greek lesson really amps this teaching up. If the things outside us do not factor into our worthiness, then if you do have clean water, if you do have a job people admire, if the system supports your hope and joy, those things also do not factor into our worthiness. Life circumstances do not make us any less, or any more valuable to God.

      Then Jesus says the things that come out of us are what defile. He gives the disciples a colorful list of examples to show that, yes, there are terrible things in this world but they are not the result of what goes into our bodies; the traumas of this world are created in the hearts of humans. What do we DO when we see polluted water? What does our heart dream up in that situation? What comes out of us is what we need to be concerned about.

      And if what comes out of us can defile us then it must be true that what comes out of us can also “de-defile” us……or maybe the opposite of defile is just …. “file”? The English language is confusing. I looked up antonyms of “defile” and here are some options for us: “honor” “upgrade” “protect” “sanctify” “cleanse” What comes out of us is what brings an upgrade, it is what brings us honor, what protects us.

      If what comes out of us can defile us, then what comes out of us can also be cleansing.

Recently I took a class taught by Rev. Susan Beaumont to delve deeper into her book, “How to lead when you don’t know where you are going.” The pandemic seemed like a good time to study the topic. For one of the classes, Susan led a kind of breath prayer, but it was completely different from any breath prayer I had ever been taught. A breath prayer is when you repeat a bible verse or affirmation or selected words and you connect the words to your breath in and breath out. The most popular one is: “breathe in God’s light” and “breathe out the shadows.” All the breath prayers I have ever been introduced to follow the same format. Breathing in the good stuff and breathing out the bad stuff.

      Well, this time Susan guided us to breathe in stress, grief, and pain and breathe out hope, peace, and comfort. Exactly opposite to what I expected. The practice is called Tonglen (tong-lin) which is Tibetan for “sending and receiving.”

      After a few breaths, it occurred to me that switching what I was focused on as I took in a breath and what I let out, essentially made me a filter. We were filtering the negative and producing the positive. It was so empowering. To focus my breath, my source of life, on taking in that which I saw as wrong in the world and being the filter through which only good could re-enter the world was an incredible feeling. Seeing myself in the role of a filter brought all my attention to the fact that I have a role to play for real. To walk through the muck of this world and do what I can to clean it up.

      It is exactly what Jesus is saying to the crowd and the disciples. A person cannot be defiled by the muck around them even if it enters into them. Now if that person is producing more muck, we have a problem. Our role, our place in creation is to actively upgrade this world. Jesus confirms that we have the capacity to live among the muck in such a way that we produce something altogether different, something honorable, clean, and upgraded.

      A few of you have said to me “We have been so lucky to have you here,” but what I hope you understand is that I am a product of the things that came from you. This church is not affirming because I am, I am committing the next chapter of my ministry to inclusion because you have lived out the value of inclusion in a way I didn't realize was possible until I was here. When I came to First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneurial leader. I became that because of the time I spent with you. The way you balance a love of tradition and passion for innovation is not something churches do well and yet….here you are. From you came the encouragement for me to experiment and fail and dream huge dreams. I am so lucky to have you…here.

      Now look, I get why searching for new staff and leaders is distressing. I have heard the stories and church lore that make it hard to hold on to hope. But this church did not become what it is today because of the leaders and staff who have been in the building. This is Everybody’s Church because of what comes out of your hearts. The care you pour out is why this church has such a great impact on places like Alcott. The regard you share is why this church has become a brave space for so many to authentically be themselves. The love that comes out of you is why people walk into this building and immediately feel like they are home.

      If you find yourself worrying about what Everybody's Church will become, know that it will become that which comes from within you. Everybody’s Church will always be what you nurture in your hearts and how you show up for one another.

      You have absolutely upgraded me during the time I have been here, and it has been my honor to be your Pastor. Thank you.

Rediscovering Jesus: Joy Sharer

11/13/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
November 13, 2022

Watch Sermon
Watch Service
Print Version

Exodus 17:17; John 7:37-39

It was pure joy. There is no other way to describe it. Only moments before, thousands of people had been holding their collective breath, waiting to see what was going to happen. Then the ball leapt off the bat soaring toward deep right field. Slowly it began to ark toward the foul line. The right fielder was moving at what seemed like light speed in the same direction. Then as the ball neared the ground the fielder stretched out his glove as far as was humanly possible, and the ball fell into it. In that moment, dozens, hundreds, thousands, and perhaps more than a million people leapt from their seats and experienced a moment of pure joy. The Houston Astros had won their first “non-cheating” World Series. The players leaped into one another’s’ arms. They surrounded their manager, Dusty Baker, and celebrated his first ever World Series. Justin Verlander could finally let loose; the crowd went wild. Two days later, schools let out, businesses allowed their employees time away and Houston celebrated the victory with an ecstatic, joy filled, parade. It is a moment we in Detroit can only dream about. Let me ask though, how many of you have ever had one of those moments, one of those moments of absolute joy, not necessarily about sports, but at any time in life, a moment of pure joy? How many of you would like more of them? If you do, then you have come to the right place because joy is what our Jesus story is about this morning.

I realize that nowhere in John’s words that we read this morning is the word, joy. Even so, I would argue that joy is the focus because of context. How many of you learned about context clues in school? We learned how to use them to decipher the meaning of unfamiliar words. The same theory often applies to Biblical texts. If we take them out of context, we often miss their central meaning. That is true of this morning’s story because the context is that Jesus is speaking during Judaism’s most joy-filled celebration, the Festival of Booths. The Festival of Booths was Judaism’s Mardi Gras. People would travel to Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire and celebrate. There would be parades, ceremonies, and elaborate rituals. All of these would be done in a festive, joyous manner. The reason for the joy is that the people were celebrating two things. First, they were celebrating the harvest. The reason it is called the Festival of Booths is that people would build booths out in the fields in which to stay while they harvested. But the booths were not simply intended to be convenient places to stay, they were to remind the people of those who journeyed through the wilderness on their way to the Land of Promise and God’s faithful provision along the way.

Second, they were to remember God’s gift of water from the rock, the story about which we read this morning. This story was the basis for one of the greatest and most joyous celebrations of the festival. Priests would come down from the Temple carrying ritual water jugs, walk out of the Water Gate in the wall of Jerusalem, and go to the pool of Siloam. There they would fill the pitchers with water and return to the Temple, and then pour the water around the altar, in full view of the people. The priests would not travel alone on this ritual journey. They would be accompanied by thousands of people singing, dancing, waving palm branches, and being lifted to a state of almost rapturous joy. And I believe it was in that moment, sometime during that joy filled parade that Jesus spoke these words, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” In other words, what Jesus was saying was, if you find joy in this ritual, you haven’t seen or experienced anything yet. Come to me and find true joy. Come to me and find absolute joy. Come drink it in because I am the one, the Word, who brought not only life, but joy.

Joy is intended to be one of the central aspects of our faith. The word is used almost two hundred times in the scriptures. And the image of joy is to be something akin to the joy Astros’ fans felt and the people at the Festival of Booths felt. It is supposed to lift us out of the funks in which we may find ourselves and into a fuller sense of being alive. The questions this raises then might be, where do we find this joy? Where can we go or what can we do to experience it? The answer can be found in this morning’s story. It begins with Jesus giving us joy through the Spirit. This is what Jesus meant when he said that water would flow from the hearts of his disciples, meaning joy would be present in us just waiting to pour out. The discovery of joy continues in the growth of gratitude, gratitude toward God. I say this because the people at the Festival of Booths should not have been grateful or joyous. They lived in an oppressive economic and political system. They were regularly singled out for persecution. Their lives were economically and physically tenuous. Yet they found gratitude and joy. They found it by remembering all that God had done for their ancestors in the wilderness, all that God was doing for them in the harvest, and all that they believed God would do for them in the future. They were grateful for past, present, and future. And this gratitude showed itself in joy.

This my friends is where we can find joy as well. We can find joy in the growth of our gratitude. There is a problem with this concept though because we live in a society of ingratitude, because we have become a society of dissatisfaction. What I mean by this is that rather than being a society of gratitude for what we have been, are being, and will be given, we have become a society that is constantly dissatisfied with what we have had, have, and probably will have. My best example of this is a person who called 911 this past week because the pork they had been served at a restaurant was too pink. It didn’t matter that they had someone waiting on them, cooking for them, and cleaning up after them, they were dissatisfied and expected the police to fix it. And though this is an extreme example many of us have experienced dissatisfaction. We buy something, contract for something, order something and it doesn’t meet our expectations and we become dissatisfied, and it is this constant dissatisfaction that robs us of our joy even when we have so much to be grateful for. We have clean water, warm or cold water, food in our pantries, a roof over our heads, the freedom to gather for worship, the freedom to vote without fear, the ability to speak our minds, and above all, a God who loves us. We have a God who become one of us to allow us to slake our thirst for joy in God’s infinite love, mercy, and grace.

What I want to do this week is to challenge all of us, me included, to grow our gratitude. The way I want to do that is to have each of us find three things for which we should be grateful … just three. Then, each morning offer God a prayer of thanksgiving for those three things, and then remember them throughout the day with gratitude. Then allow some joy to begin to build up so that as Jesus quotes the scripture, “Out the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living waters.” Or in other words, out of our hearts will flow rivers of joy in which the world can bathe.

Rediscovering Jesus: Life Sharer

11/6/2022

Rev. Dr. John Judson
November 6, 2022

Watch Service
Watch Sermon
Print Version

Psalm 16:8-11; John 6:35-40
Minus one-hundred-ninety-six degrees Celsius. Anyone know how cold that is in real temperature? It is -320 degrees Fahrenheit. It is almost as cold as our basement gets during the winter here when we don’t turn on the heater. But other than our basement there are few places or processes that need that kind of cold. Dry ice is only -109.3 Fahrenheit. So why would anyone need that kind of cold? The answer is, to possibly live forever. Today as we meet in this pleasant sanctuary there are about 500 people who have had their bodies placed in cryogenic chambers with the hope that one day they can be thawed out and medicine can miraculously revive them, transform their genes, and make them live forever. They want to be medically resurrected. And lest you think this is some sort of anomaly, think again. There is a multi-billion-dollar business out there where scientists are dedicating themselves to solving the riddles of the aging process. They are looking to not only slow the aging process so we can live for hundreds of years but stop the aging process all together so that we never die. And why are they doing this? They are doing this because the billionaires who fund them do not want to go through the door of death.

      What is the door of death? The door of death is the one door that only one person has ever gone through and come back again. It is the door we go through when we breathe our last breath, our heart stops, and our brain activity ceases. It is the door that human beings have been aware of since the dawn of time and have feared for just as long. What is on the other side of the door we wonder? Is it reincarnation as a different being? Is it animation as a spirit? Is it to the eternal hunting ground or golf course? Almost every civilization has imagined what is on the other side of the door of death. In the earliest Hebrew scriptures there was nothing on the other side of the door, death was the end. In Greek and later Hebrew scripture Sheol is on the other side of the door. Sheol is this shadowy, dimly lit world from which one never came back. This is what the Psalmist believed, “For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.” This is not referring to life in heaven, but merely that God protects from death and its aftermath. Only in the time of Jesus were people cognizant of an afterlife with God. Even so, few people were excited about going through the door of death. And so, Jesus addresses this reality throughout the Gospel of John, and rather than having people fear going through it, he wants to give them hope.

      To understand how our morning’s text works we need to set the stage by drawing upon the heart of John’s theology. And to do so, what I am going to do is use images rather than philosophical or theological language. I do so because this is what John does. John paints theological pictures for us to see so we can gain a deeper understanding into who Jesus is and what Jesus came to do. Let’s begin then. We begin with the image of the door of death. From all appearances it is a door that only swings one way, inward. People go in and never come out. But then one day, the door mysteriously swings the other direction and out steps the Word. The Word had been with God and was God. The Word was also life. What this means is that the Word made flesh, Jesus, was more than a preacher, teacher, and healer. The Word made flesh was life, the very life of God. So imagine, if you will, that life is like a light shining out from God’s own self. That light is what brought life into being. That light is what gives us life. And that light was not stuck on the other side of the door, but was now shining forth from Jesus of Nazareth, the light of the world. This is what Jesus means when he speaks of himself as the bread of life. I realize it is mixing metaphors, but he is the life that comes when people eat bread that allows them never to be hungry or thirsty. This is life sustained by the life that is shining from Jesus.

      Where we go next with our image is that Jesus, the Word made Flesh, who is the life of the world, has come to share that life. Jesus does not simply radiate that light and life so that people will admire him. He shares it. He shares it with anyone and everyone who wants it. Years ago, my next younger brother went to a scientific conference in Siberia. The first day there was a buffet lunch. My brother and his American colleagues waited politely to get in line. That was a mistake. The Russians in the room immediately swarmed the buffet like locusts and there was literally nothing left for the Americans. Some people see Jesus’ light and life like that. There is only so much to go around, and only certain people can have some of it. The Gospel of John paints a different picture. Verse 40 puts it this way. “This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life.” In other words, Jesus is like the server at a reception who never seems to run out of those little hors d’oeuvres. They just keep coming and coming. This is what Jesus does. He keeps offering life. He says, here it is. Come and get it. And the most amazing thing about this life is that it is not a thing, but a connection to the life of Jesus, which is a connection to life in God. And this connection can never be severed. So just like Jesus glows with the life of God, so too do we.

This image then changes the sign and the hinges on the door of death. It changes the door of death to the door of life that swings in both directions. I say this because at the end of verse forty, we hear Jesus saying that people who receive life from him have eternal life and he will raise them up. Note carefully what Jesus says. Those who take the life he shares “have eternal life.” He does not say, will have eternal life when they die. He says they have eternal life now - in this moment. They have it because they are sharing in the life Jesus offers which is the very life of God. Thus, when we walk through the door, it is not the door of death, but it is the door of life because we already possess the life Jesus has shared. We are moving if you will, from light into light. Finally, the image is that the door swings both ways. We hear this when Jesus says, “And I will raise them up at the last day.” This my friends is resurrection; resurrection like Jesus’ resurrection in which we are raised up in the fullness of life. How this works, what are the physics of this, I don’t know, but I know that Jesus promises that the life he shares is a life that not only sustains forever, but that comes full circle, without a cryo-chamber or life extending therapy.

      If I were a good Southern Baptist, like many of my friends, I would give an altar call. But we are Presbyterians, and so what I want to challenge you to do this week is this, bask in the light. I want to challenge you to bask in the light and life that Christ has given you. Doing so without fear, without worry. Simply see the new sign on the door, that says door of life.

Filtering by Faith

Rediscovering Jesus: Joy Sharer

Rediscovering Jesus: Life Sharer

Subscribe by Email

Categories

Archives