Lost on the road to Emmaus

Mosaic from the Washington National Cathedral.

If this were a normal Sunday, people who gather in many churches would be hearing a story from the Gospel of Luke about two people encountering Jesus on the road to Emmaus. 

Of course, this is not a normal Sunday. People are not gathering in churches - although many may be gathering around a computer screen in their homes. They may still hear or read that same story. It’s a wonderful story for the moment we are in right now.

It’s a story of disorientation. It’s a story of loss, of grief, of discouragement. It’s a story of two people feeling adrift, lost on the road to a village that has no clear historical record of its existence. Yet it’s story of hope that emerges from hospitality.

For those who do not know this story, here it is in brief. Two people - perhaps a man and a woman, perhaps two men - who had been followers of Jesus are walking towards home having left Jerusalem after the execution of Jesus on the previous Friday. They presumably stayed put on Saturday, the Sabbath, and now were making the seven-mile journey home. They encounter a "stranger" on the road who asks them what they were talking about.

They tell him about this Jesus fellow, “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” who they had hoped would be the one to redeem Israel - the Messiah - but he was killed through the collusion of the religious and political powers of that day. Then, before they left Jerusalem on that Sunday, some women who were followers of Jesus reported to the group that his body was no longer in the tomb where he had been placed after his death. 

You can feel their anguish as they tell the story. They don’t have any idea that the man walking with them is Jesus - a clue that there was a transformation that had occurred to him through the resurrection.  His transformation and their disorientation dominates the moment. 

I am writing this on about the 45^th day of my sheltering in place. Oh, there have been occasional trips to the grocery store (during senior hours) and for take-out at restaurants. There have been many, many walks through the neighborhood and lots of time in video chats on Zoom. But life as I knew it is totally disoriented - and it’s going to stay that way for quite some while - even if the world arounds me starts to slowly reopen. 

For me, this is a relatively mild disorientation compared to what so many others are experiencing - illness for themselves or the death (alone) of a loved one; economic dislocation; exhausted health care workers; educational setbacks; a home bursting at the seams with frantic children and overstressed parents. Plus there is the shared anxiety for all of us about what life will be like a month from now, a season from now, a year from now. 

All of that makes it pretty easy to identify with these two people on the road. It’s almost like this stranger who is walking with them is wearing a mask and his identity is lost in the midst of the chaos of their lives.

Mosaic from the Washington National Cathedral.

He talks with them, offers new ways they can consider the sacred stories that had guided their lives. Dusk is arriving. In the midst of their grief and confusion, they reach out to the stranger who seemed about to go on into the night that was not far away.

“Stay with us,” they say.

And he did.

They share a meal. A real meal, at a table. No social distancing at that time. The conversation continues. Then the stranger does something they recognized. Here’s how Luke describes that moment: “He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”

Their hospitality offered them a path forward in their grief. His sharing opened their vision to a new way of being. 

On this disorienting path I am now on, one way to stay connected to those beyond the four corners of my dwelling is to be reaching out, to connect, to find ways to offer some form of hospitality, even when it seems to be from a distance. And then the second piece of the story - to watch for ways in the breaking of bread - metaphorically at this point - that I can recognize where God is at work in my life and in our world. 

Even sheltering in place, there are places where light and hope break through. Jesus and his friends arrived where they needed to be before the darkness fell. That’s the path I want to be on.

(If you want to read the actual Gospel story from Luke 24: 13-35, you can read it here.) 

A season full of Holy Saturdays

Holy Saturday - that day between when we remember the crucifixion of Jesus and the dawn of resurrection - can often seem like a lost day. Not this year.

On this Holy Saturday, I feel as though I am joining Jesus' followers in grief about what has happened, fear about what is happening and anxiety about what may happen next. 

For me, Holy Saturday holds within it so many of the emotions that are part of my life right now. Perhaps they are part of yours as well. And perhaps there are bits of wisdom we can draw from the ancient traditions in the Christian church about this day.

As the wise United Church of Christ minister Rev. Laura Everett wrote in a piece for Religion News Service this week, “I’ve never pastored through a plague before, but the church has.”

One vivid example of that was Pope Francis on March 27 using the image of Jesus’ followers terrified in a boat in the midst of a storm. He was standing near a crucifix taken  from the Church of San Marcello al Corso in Rome for the occasion. It was a crucifix that had been carried through the streets of Rome in 1522 in the midst of the black plague, offering hope - and perhaps some healing - to the beleaguered citizens of that time.

He knew that we have been through plagues and pandemics before. Pope Francis said this as he stood near that historic crucifix: “We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.” 

For Francis, Jesus sleeping in the boat in the midst of the storm carries two messages - trust in God in the midst of the storm and a reminder that “we are not self-sufficient; by ourselves we founder.”

In the storm of our day, there is grief, fear and anxiety all around us.

Let’s start with grief. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, writes in her book The Liturgical Year, that within church life, this is a particularly empty day. She notes that in monasteries, they might sing “the morning chant of Tenebrae, a series of psalmic lamentations that punctuate the emptiness with grief.”

In many churches, this day would be the day when people arrive to decorate for Easter, to arrange the flowers, to make things ready for joy. But that is not happening this Saturday. We are left with that emptiness and the grief of our time - grief over deaths, grief over the stress health care workers are facing, grief over the horrible impact COVID-19 is having on African-Americans and people living in poverty or clustered in nursing homes. And yes, grief over the fact that people cannot gather together on this Easter Sunday.

Here, then, is an image of hope in the midst of this emptiness and grief. On that Saturday after Jesus died, the Gospel writers tells us, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna and other women were gathering spices and cloths they would take to the tomb to anoint Jesus. They were preparing in the midst of grief and they discovered unexpected hope.

Fear, however, accompanies grief on this Holy Saturday. Fear for ourselves - what if I get COVID-19? Fear for those we love. Fear for a world thrown into panic. Fear for the disorder that accompanies such dislocation. Fear for our democracy as we see elections disrupted by both health concerns and political maneuvering.

Like Pope Francis said, we are all in the same boat, but we fear those whose actions increase our risk, whose selfishness could sink the boat. We retreat more and more to self-preservation in the midst of our fear.

That Saturday after Jesus was killed, his followers surely were living in fear as well. They knew one of their members had betrayed Jesus. They knew that others had drifted off to sleep as the forces were coming to arrest him. They knew Peter, their leader, had denied ever knowing Jesus. They knew the Roman authorities would be looking for them to quash any remnant of the Jesus movement. So they stayed inside behind locked doors. They may not really have trusted each other much at that point.

It would not be until the women who made the brave journey to the tomb came back and said “He is risen” that anyone else dared go out. It was not until the transformed Jesus entered that room that they began to regain their courage. 

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus tells the women at the tomb. “Peace be with you,” he tells his followers in that locked room.

With the grief about the past and the fear about the present comes the anxiety about the future.

We each know the anxieties we hold in our lives. New York Times columnist David Brooks captured those across the nation when he wrote on Thursday about responses from readers who wrote to him how they were faring in the midst of this. “What you sent gutted me. There have been over 5,000 replies so far, and while many people are hanging in there, there is also a river of woe running through the world — a significant portion of our friends and neighbors are in agony.”

For college students, there is deep worry about the future. One wrote: “My future, which seemed so bright a few months ago as I anticipated graduating in May, now seems bleak and hopeless: How will I find a job with the economy tanking? How will I pay hundreds of dollars per month when my loan bills kick in during August?”

For the elderly, there is anxiety about whether this disease will kill them, whether they will wind up dying alone, whether they will ever get to see their grandchildren in person again. 

For workers, they do not know when or if they will get their jobs back or how they will pay their bills. For restaurant and bar and small shop owners, there is no certainty the businesses they have built will survive this. 

For all of us, we have no idea what our worlds will look like next month, next fall, next year. We know it will all change. We don’t know what that will mean for us. It is totally a sense of Holy Saturday anxiety.

Back to Sr. Joan. She wrote: “Every human being who has ever walked the earth has known what the emptiness of Holy Saturday is about…We will all know the power of overwhelming loss when life as we know it changes, when all hope dies in midflight…Holy Saturday faith is not about counting our blessings; it is about dealing with darkness and growing in hope.”

See if her description of Holy Saturday matches what you are experiencing now:

“Today, the church is empty. Today, the loss finally sets in. We sit in the empty pews, pass the empty churches, heavy-hearted from the reality of yesterday, of Good Friday and its dashing of our securities. Today, alone and bereft, we come face-to-face with the question we try so hard to avoid the rest of the year: how do we deal with the God of darkness as well as the Giver of Light?”

Grief. Fear. Anxiety. 

They are all around me these days. They are all around on what seems like an eternal Holy Saturday. The followers of Jesus in his time had no idea that Easter would arrive with the next sunrise. We have no idea when we will get to the other side of this pandemic and what that will mean to us. 

But we do know that as we watch new life emerge from the earth that spring follows winter. We do know that as the sun creeps over the morning horizon, another day emerges from the darkness of night.

We do know that grief and fear and anxiety are part of our lives but they are not the only parts.

So I look forward to this Easter - whether that means Sunday, April 12 or some day farther in the future.

I look forward to the hope that it holds, the recognition that joy and sadness can co-exist and hold to the belief that ultimately, goodness is stronger than evil and life is stronger than death. 

One of my favorite traditions on Holy Saturday evening is to listen to this six-minute piece of music that ends Marty Haugen’s musical “That You May Have Life.” It’s the story of resurrection. It is the story of hope. May this be our future.

Worship in a streaming world

“We now have 8-track churches in a streaming world…the church is struggling to adapt,” is how the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III put it in his sermon on Sunday morning for Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Notice I said “sermon for,” not “sermon at.” Because like at churches all across the nation, Sunday worship is now coming through Facebook Live or You Tube or Zoom or some other video platform, beamed into people’s homes.

I have spent the past three Sundays surfing worship (that’s the worship nerd in me), trying to get a sense of how churches are doing this, to see if there were some approaches that appealed to me more than others.

And it’s not always easy, either for members or pastors. As Pastor Kristin Gorton from Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg wrote last week after a service with leaders in the sanctuary and others online, “For me personally, the service felt connected beyond the physicality of the building. Yet I choked up as service ended and I took the light of the Christ candle out of the sanctuary. The joy of gathering collided with the reality we would not be able to be together in this space for an indeterminate period of time..."

Even though I am a minister who has led my share of worship services, this is not a critical review of what people did or a handy guide to what might be done better. It’s a very personal reflection on the things that touched me with an awareness that each person and each congregation has to find the approach that works for them in this very unusual time.

“This is a period of time that is going to vastly reshape what church looks like,” said Pastor Breanna Illéné at Trinity United Methodist Church in Madison. “This is scary…Society is going to change.”

So here are some of what church in this era - or more specifically - worship - looked like to me.

There was quite a spectrum, based in part on the size of the congregation and past experience with sending out worship online. Blackhawk Church, in Madison, has great technological abilities as it has weekly beamed sermons to three different physical sites while also posting it online. While the feel of the worship changed with no people beyond worship leaders in the room, the service was smooth and engaging. 

At the other end of the spectrum was the Church of the Three Crosses in Chicago, where my daughter and son-in-law are members. Pastor Britt Cox leads the service all alone on Facebook Live from her living room. The service has evolved a bit over the past three weeks - more on that in a bit - but I appreciated the warmth and sense of community she created in a low-tech setting.

My home congregation, Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ in Madison, sent out a sort of do-it-yourself service before Sunday, an order of worship with links to musical presentations by youth in the congregation, a link to the text of the sermon, prayers, a link for the offering. 

Some of the more traditional mainline Protestant churches beamed out the service from their sanctuaries, pastors in robes and stoles, perhaps a few musicians at the site as well. For some people, it may have felt comforting to see their church and pastor like it was almost a normal Sunday, but the impact on me was one of distance and a formality that did not fit the medium. I'm also not sure an hour-long service works as well in this medium - shorter might be better, although some of my favorites did run for an hour.

A few congregations I watched used a combination of Zoom and Facetime Live. This probably works better for smaller congregations, but seeing many people on the screen along with the pastor created a good sense of community. The handoffs from reader to musician to pastor were often more informal - pauses, "your turn now" - but it helped create a sense of engagement in the service.

Some churches are recording their worship services ahead of time, which provides an opportunity to make the experience smoother and weave in elements from other places online. Others are literally doing this live, which adds a sense of immediacy - and a willingness to deal with glitches - to the experience. 

There were some interesting approaches I saw. 

At Messiah Lutheran Church on Madison’s east side, Pastor Jeff Vanden Huevel led the pre-recorded service from a rocking chair in the gathering space at the church with a fireplace going behind him and his wife Melissa sitting next to him. He brought in a choir from a video, replayed a sermon he gave a few years back in the church and read the words of communion and shared bread and wine with his wife while inviting viewers to do the same at home with bread or juice.

At First United Methodist Church, Pastor Mark Fowler led the service from his study while Pastor Tina Lang participated from the back porch of her home where wind chimes and bird songs added to the moment. 

Some churches have extraordinary musicians who could play a role. At First Methodist, a quartet and a pianist in the sanctuary performed a stunning rendition of “Breathe on Me Breath of God.” At First United Church of Christ in Washington DC, a pianist and French horn player offered sheer beauty while today, very talented child violinists offered music. Latanya Maymon sang powerful solos at Christ the Solid Rock in Madison. 

Yet there could also be a sense of dislocation. At Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison, where their Gospel choir has a regional reputation, seeing only five singers in the sanctuary (appropriately spaced apart) seemed odd - although the music was great.

But sometimes simplicity has its own power. At Church of the Three Crosses, a husband and wife recorded hymns with vocals and a keyboard at home to lead the congregation in singing during the service. The congregation is seeking more of that from members in the weeks ahead.

And then there was communion. This is wholly new territory for many congregations. At Messiah, Pastor Jeff shared bread and cup with his wife while people were invited to share at home. At Blackhawk, Pastor Charles Yu explained that Jesus’ original communion happened in someone’s home and now people would share communion in their own homes. He read the words of institution and invited people to eat the bread and drink the cup.

“We are so used to doing communion in a certain way,” Pastor Yu explained. And like so much else, those ways are changing. 

Church, as Pastor Moss said, has entered a streaming world.

My phrases to live by

 

At the end of June, 2017, I gave my last sermon as pastor of Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg WI. I talked about the phrases that I have used to guide my life. I went back to look at them as we begin 2020 to remind myself and I thought I’d share them. Some are my phrases, some are from the Bible. (I have modified the reflection a bit from the original sermon.)

May your 2020 be filled with goodness and hope. 

“We are made in God’s image” You probably recognize that phrase from the first chapter of the first book in the Bible – Genesis. For me, it’s a constant reminder that I have dignity and, more importantly, so does every person I encounter every day. There may be things about them that I don’t like. I may not want to spend much time with them. I may want to challenge them on what they are thinking and might be doing. 

The bottom line, though, is that both they and I are in made in God’s image. If I can’t see the divine in them – or in me – I need to dig a little deeper.

“I might be wrong.” To me, this is an essential phrase in our time when political, theological, cultural, personal polarities so divide us from one another. 

It’s a reminder to me to listen to what those who disagree with me are saying, to seek the underlying principles that have led them to their conclusions, to question whether the way I prefer is really the only way or even the best way. As the line in that prayer that reflects the spirit of Francis of Assisi says:  “grant that I may not so much be understood as seek to understand.”

Here’s another important part of that “I-might-be-wrong” phrase. It’s not one that I impose on you, as in “You might be wrong.” Yes, you might be wrong, but let’s keep working on understanding the different ways we see the world. And if you are not willing to do that, well, then at some point I have to shake the dust off my feet and move on.

“It’s not that simple.” That’s kind of a corollary to “I might be wrong.” It acknowledges that there are usually more than just two dimensions to any issue we are struggling with. This is a particularly useful saying in the political arena, where politicians and advocates tend to frame issues as really stark choices between good and evil.  It’s the bumper sticker I have on my car.

Yes, it’s easy to get paralyzed by never choosing the path you think is best on any given issue. Ultimately, we have to make choices. But what “It’s not that simple” reminds me is that I should never think I’ve got the solution all figured out when I first learn about the problem.

“It’s only temporary.” That’s a phrase that has gotten me through some tough times in my life. It’s not about the state of the world. It’s about the state of my being. And yes, I know, some things are not temporary, like chronic pain or a degenerative disease or a terminal illness. I have never had to live with something that drastic, for which I am grateful. 

But the “it’s-only-temporary” phrase speaks to me about both short-term and long-term distress. It gives me a calm place to go when things in my life seem to be spinning out of control. And it gives me hope in the long term because I believe that God’s love carries me beyond the limits of my body. 

“Be still and know that I am God.” This comes from Psalm 46 and is a phrase I often use when I want to slow down, breathe, be mindful. Sometimes I drop off a word until the only word left is “be.” Then I add the words back. I like the rhythm it helps create in my life. But more importantly, it reminds me that I am not the one in charge, so teaches me to try to approach what I do with a bit of humility. 

"Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” You know that line from the prayer of Jesus that is in the Sermon on the Mount that we sometimes call the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father. To me, the whole idea of forgiveness is one of the essential messages of Jesus. 

Any of us who have ever been wronged by another know that forgiveness does not come easy. The greater the wrong, the greater the harm done to us - the harder it is. And there are times a glib message from others to forgive an offender can be destructive in itself. It’s not something those on the outside should be pressuring us to do.

Yet forgiveness is so intertwined with my understanding of God and Jesus. I trust that God will forgive me when I take a wrong turn. I love that image of the God of Second Chances. I know that I need to reach inside myself and forgive myself for mistakes I make, without overlooking the impact those mistakes may have on others. And then I need not to let the harm others have done to me take control of my life. 

It’s a hard phrase, one that I can spend a lifetime working on. And that leads to another phrase.

“Jesus asks us to do the hard things.” Just think about the things Jesus said in what we call the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) – hunger for righteousness, be a peacemaker, forgive your offender, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, love your enemies. Whoa! Who can do all that?

To me, that’s the hard part of being a follower of Jesus. We like the portrayals of Jesus as someone who understands our humanity, who offers comfort, who embraces little children and heals those in torment. I am consoled by his promises of God’s love.

Still, the challenges that he holds out for me will take a lifetime to even approach accomplishing. Step by step, I try to get there, recognizing that what Jesus asks often goes against my very human instincts and society’s very seductive norms.

 “He took bread, blest it, broke it and gave it to them.” This is a line from the story of Jesus meeting a couple of followers on the road to Emmaus on the first Easter. They did not know who he was until be blest, broke and shared the bread. 

The scripture reference to that verse is on my car license – LK2430. I think that whole Emmaus story defines for me how we ought to living as we follow Jesus. But for a moment, I’ll just focus on that one line. 

When we take what we have, give thanks for it, treat it as a blessing to be shared, not to be hoarded, then we are on the road with Jesus.  That’s a pretty simple idea. It’s not as simple to live out. If we see ourselves made in God’s image, then we will see God in others as well and we will be companions with them in Christ.

 “We will never say ‘we’ve always done it this way.’ ” This is a phrase that I have learned from the people of Memorial UCC that I can apply to my life.

When the congregation of Memorial UUC moved from the area near the UW Field House out to Fitchburg in the late 1980s, this became a mantra:  “We’re starting over. We will never say ‘we’ve always done it this way.’ ” That allowed Memorial to try new things, to let go of those things that were not working, to weave people into the life of the congregation easily and graciously as they arrived.

That phrase is a reminder to me not to get too set into routines, not to get too locked into the comfortable but to be willing to try things and go places where my natural caution might hold me back. 

“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” This familiar line comes from Paul’s first letter to the people of Corinth (1 Cor 13: 13). It’s a good phrase to end on, because love is the guidestar for how I hope to live, whether the intimate love of my wife Ellen and our family, the harder love of those I don’t like so much, the sustaining love for God and that I trust God has for me. 

Faith, Anxiety and Strawberry Ice Cream

August 11, 2019, Baraboo UCC

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Luke 12: 32-40

It was a Saturday night at Jose Hobday’s family home in Texas. Her brothers were playing outside. She was sitting in the front room doing her homework. Her mom and dad were in the kitchen with their money spread out on the table, trying to figure out how much they had to live on for the next week.

The scene could have been played out in many houses in many eras. This was about 75 years ago in the very poor household of a family that was part of the Seneca-Iroquois tribe. 

I have long considered Jose to be one of the wise people in my life. She was a Native American woman who became a Franciscan nun. 

She spent the early part of her life as a nun teaching in various parts of Wisconsin. She tangled with those who wanted to draw narrow boxes around the understandings of Christianity and of God. She was the first woman to engage in dialogue with the Dalai Lama. (And she managed to get kissed by actor Richard Gere on the very same day!) 

She struggled with demons of her own, ranging from alcohol to cancer. From those struggles, she helped others cope with the struggles of their own. She died in 2009 at age 80.  (Here's more about Jose's life.)

I think this story from her childhood can shed a lot of light on our lives today and can amplify our scripture readings.

Let’s start with the anxiety her parents were feeling that night. They were not sure they had enough money to buy food for the family in the days ahead. 

I would imagine there are many folks here who have known that sense of anxiety. For some, it may be anxiety as their lives have been dislocated by the economy. For others, it may be a memory of a tough time in the past, a memory that still can stir anxiety lest it happen again. Maybe it is a general anxiety about the state of our world.

That night at her family home, the young Jose could hear her mother making the case for holding a few dollars back for emergencies.

She could hear her father making the case for paying off the unpaid bills. 

She could feel the tension in the house. She could feel her stomach muscles getting tighter and tighter. And then it happened.

Her mother walked into the living room and handed Jose several dollar bills. 

She said:  “Honey, go get your brothers and go to the drug store and buy some strawberry ice cream.” 

Jose should have been delighted, but she was horrified. 

She ran into the kitchen to talk with her father. 

“Did you hear what Momma told me to do? Take all the money we’ve got to live on and spend it on ice cream?”

And what do you suppose he said?

“Honey, your Momma is right. When we start worrying this much about a few dollars we are better off to have nothing at all. Go get your brothers and buy the ice cream.”

The story doesn’t end there.

The kids went and bought the ice cream.

Her mother turned on the record player, opened the doors and invited in the neighbors.  

There were bowls and spoons on the table and big brown bags filled with ice cream. 

All the kids in the neighborhood gathered around. Jose’s memory of that time is vivid.

“I don’t remember what we did for money or food that week,” she said. “but I’ll never forget the party we had that night. Going out and buying that ice cream was kind of flinging ourselves into the arms of God.”

If we are going to fling ourselves into the arms of God, we first of all need to have some sense that God is there. 

It’s a pretty fundamental question for those of us who gather here on Sunday mornings. How we gather for worship and what we do as a result of this time together has a lot to do with how we sense God in our midst. 

Is it a church like Isaiah described, focused on rituals, or a church that reaches out to the world, that shares the strawberry ice cream - I mean the grace - that is part of our lives?

Isaiah was writing about worship that had run amok for the ancient Israelites. 

“I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; …bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me…I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.”

Our ancestors in the Jewish faith often struggled with the tension between grand gestures and God’s simple but challenging demands.

Remember the story when the Jewish people had escaped from slavery in Egypt and were wandering in desert? Moses left them to go up a mountain to pray and they gave up hope in him and in God. They melted down their jewelry to make a golden calf they could worship. That did not turn out well for them. 

Remember the story of David who lived in a palace and thought that God should have a beautiful place to live as well? God sent a message through the prophet Nathan: “I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another.” A God on the move did not need anything fancy.

Remember the story of Jesus going up the mountain with Peter, James and John? After they saw him glowing with radiance along with Moses and Elijah, they wanted to build dwellings for the three of them. Jesus was not looking for a special dwelling. 

In our reading from Isaiah, God says: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

In one of her books, Jose Hobday reminds us that this is not just an ancient tension. She recalls the story of worshipping the golden calf, then writes: “We worship gold...In a culture that worships money, simple living is radically counter-cultural. Theologically, it is refusing to worship the idol and insisting on the freedom to worship the one true God...Simple living calls for us to reverence all that is…Our worshipful reverence then extends to people. We make space for a handshake, for eye contact.”

Let me take you on a quick journey to Prestonwood Southern Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, just outside of Dallas. Our tour guide will be Rev. Angela Decker, a Lutheran minister from Minneapolis whose book, Red State Christians, just came out in the past week. 

She was at Prestonwood for their worship services last year for the July 4^thweekend. When she arrived at the mega-church’s arena space that seats 7,000, she found it covered with red, white and blue American flag bunting. On the stage were many, many American flags. The service opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem. There were highly produced videos and sound tracks. 

She thought about a conversation she had had earlier with Dean Inserra, a prominent evangelical pastor from Florida who had told her, “In this linking of nationalism and Christianity, we are forgetting about the message of Jesus…When we do that, we have a gospel distortion.”

I think Isaiah might have understood that.

Decker thought about that First Commandment that Moses brought down from the mountain as the people worshipped the golden calf - “I am the Lord, your God. You shall have no other gods before me.” And about the Second Commandment - “You shall make no idols nor bow down and worship them or serve them.”

Decker sat in that July 4^thchurch service remembering the wounds her grandfather who was seriously injured in World War II, her father-in-law who was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1968 and she was filled with pride for her nation. But then she added, “ My love for my country and my love for my God warred within me.”

What would God make of these patriotic rituals that overshadowed the message of Jesus? What would God make of the ways we all get distracted by the glitter of life?

So who is the God we worship when we gather here on a Sunday morning? How do we know that God?

Maybe we sense God in the gentle touch of a parent or in the trusting eyes of a baby. 

Maybe we sense God as we stand under a star-filled sky – a universe so vast it is beyond comprehension. 

Maybe we sense God in the clasp of a beloved. 

Or we sense God in the person sitting with us as we grieve a parent’s death or who hugs as a relationship is falling apart. 

We get a sense of a power in the universe beyond ourselves and we get a sense that this is a gracious power, one whose love embraces us.

For some people, the sense of God can be a fearful thing. They feel they are dangling over a precipice held up by a very tenuous thread. 

There are hints of that in the rather strange story Jesus told in the Gospel reading today.

The slaves – a term that really seems awful in our day, but reflected the social strata of the first century – are supposed to be vigilant until the master returns. 

The implication is that if they lose their focus, it will go badly for them. 

But there’s a different twist to this story. The master returns, puts on an apron, a serves a meal to the servants. It’s an image of a gracious God, a God into whose arms we might be willing to fling ourselves.

If we get a glimpse of that God, a God whose love is there for us, if we can nurture a sense of faith in that God, then we can begin to take seriously those challenging words of Jesus at the beginning of our Gospel: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jose’s parents totally understood that. Their treasure was not in the meager cash that was on the kitchen table. Their treasure was in the sense of family and community that surrounded them. 

I’d like to say their treasure was in strawberry ice cream – my favorite – but really, the ice cream was just the vehicle to get to the real treasure of people gathered in celebration around their table.

If your budget has been stretched to the limit, 

if your anxiety is high over how all the tensions in our world right now, 

the idea of not being afraid and giving away what you have might seem ludicrous.  

And then we hear those words of Jesus - ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

That is a call to not be so wrapped up in the making and accumulating of money that we lose our sense of what really matters in life. 

It’s a call, to echo Isaiah, to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

After all, it’s not about our net worth. It’s about how much strawberry ice cream we can buy today. But that only counts if we buy the strawberry ice cream to give it away to others – especially to those who really need it.

We start with faith – at least a glimmer that there is a God whose love is with us, that we are not alone in the universe. 

Knowing that, we don’t need to be quite so anxious about all the challenges of daily life. 

And then when we can trust in God, even when we don’t have much, even when we feel what little we have is in jeopardy, we know that we are at our best when we put on our aprons and serve others and fling ourselves into the loving arms of God.