Living by the Spirit or Living by the Law

I can't find my bulletin from yesterday so I am guessing that the Scripture was Galatians 5:1-26. I hope I am correct. I like the translation that Brian and Shannon use for scripture. It is contemporary and very understandable.

Today at Haywood Street there was a little extra craziness. The weather is hot and Asheville has gotten too much rain this year. Everyone was grateful for a dry day and a cool place to gather and eat. The meal was Native American fare, turkey, squash, cranberries, salad, hominy, apple bread, and grape cobbler with whipped cream. It was all yummy as usual. Unfortunately, one of the guests got sick during dinner. They had to call the paramedics. It was all well in the end, but it made for quite a concern.

There were less of us in the Clothes Closet than usual. Only Linda and Judy from Mars Hill, Gina, and a new companion named Jordan who is one of the youth from the area who want to participate in Haywood Street's mission. We missed Lora, Marie, and Phyllis.

There was great need for toilet paper and diapers. Those are supplies we can't get enough of. I can't imagine what living on the streets requires, but those two commodities are definitely in high demand.

I sat with Jordan at lunch and with a woman Presbyterian minister from Brevard who was there to "catch" the Spirit. The minister asked so many questions that I forgot to go relieve Judy so she could come and eat. Fortunately she came to eat without my taking her place, but she missed the service because of that. I am sorry.

The service was led by Shannon because Brian is in Oklahoma City attending a conference. She did a wonderful job in his absence.

The question she began with was whether it was necessary to be circumcised or not. It seems there was much being made in the church in Galatia over requiring the Gentiles to be circumcised like their Jewish brothers in order to be true Christians. Paul set it straight and quickly. It was of no matter. They were bogged down in a petty thing, a matter of the law. But if we go back and look at why the Jews were circumcised, we find that it was very important to them. It was a sign of the covenant they had through Abraham with God that they would be fruitful and inherit the earth. That sounds pretty big, though Shannon didn't go into that. Also we are talking about grown men who must undergo circumcism, not babies. That sounds pretty big, too. But Paul said it wasn't important. Paul is concerned for the Galatians because they are headed down the wrong track and are being divided over matters that had no real importance.

Hence Shannon asked, "Isn't the Law important?" What about tradition? What did Paul mean about following the Spirit? The congregation responded. I thought the response that I liked the best was that it was both simple and complex. It is. We are free through the Spirit to choose life with God, but the Law is still important. "Jesus came not to do away with the Law but to fulfill it," said Shannon. What does that mean? Someone else in the congregation quoted part of the Scripture from James that says you call My name and you cast out demons in My name and you pull at my robes, but you do not do the will of the Father and I will not save you. I like that verse because I have lots of Christian friends who talk a lot about God and yet do nothing for the poor, the imprisoned, the sick, the widows, and the orphans. In James we find in the next verse to the one quoted, the work that those people who were calling out Jesus' name should have been doing. But we are not justified by works. We are justified by faith. They are both empty as Paul reminds us in Corinthians one without the other. Because if we are God's children and have faith, we have no choice but to choose to care for one another as if we were all one and to serve one another.

I am not sure we ever got to the heart of the matter yesterday. In my own experience I have been called by God sometimes to do things that I thought were against the Law, now not to hurt someone or to deny God, but to break the absoluteness of the Law. Yet, when I did as He told me to do and acted in love, it turned out to be in His will and the wrong was made very right. It is like Jesus gathering the wheat from the field and healing the sick on the Sabbath. Both of those were against the Law, but they were done in love and ended up bringing people into relationship with God, not putting them off. Shannon was trying to make that point. That relationship with the Spirit was the important thing. I'd add listening to the Spirit carefully with much discernment and then acting according to love. Rules were made to be broken, but love, agape love, was not. When weighing the two, Law and Love, acting in Love wins every time.

Another quote by C. S. Lewis, one of my absolute favorites:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

A Man who was the One

“God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
― C.S. Lewis

The lesson for today was from Luke 19. It was about a man of small stature and big purse named Zacchaeus. Now Zacchaeus was in charge of all the tax collectors and though he was a Jew he was hated because of his profession. But Zacchaeus wanted more than anything to see Jesus when he came through Jericho where Z lived. He wanted to see Him so much that he was willing to humble himself and climb a tree to do so. When Jesus walked beneath the tree, He called out to Z to come down and take Him home with him for dinner. Z did. Z was so moved by Jesus that he gave half of everything he owned to the poor and paid back everyone from whom he had stolen four fold, according to the law of Moses. Jesus pronounced Z a good son of Abraham, a good Jew, and told him that because of what he was doing, Z and all his household were saved.

Brian started out his sermon with this: Zachaeus' wealth could make him safe, but it couldn't save him. He repeated it. Then he asked what Z had to do to be saved. The congregation responded. He had to give away half his wealth. Yes, but what else? He had to give back what he stole when he collected the taxes. Yes, but what else? He had to seek Jesus. Yes, but what else?

I have thought about this all afternoon and evening. What else? He had to be willing to humble himself and admit that he needed to meet Jesus more than he needed to keep his dignity. He had to be willing to offer Jesus his hospitality when Jesus asked for it.

Then Brian told a Christmas story. It was about a pageant in a church where the head of the Official Board played Scrooge. At the end he stood in a window and called out to an actor, a young boy, in a street. A little boy on the first row responded instead of the actor and came on stage. The man playing Scrooge came down out of the window and looked at the boy and said to him, "You are the one, the one I wanted."

Brian then let Jesus use his eyes and his fingers to point to everyone in the congregation as if they were the little boy, the One He wanted. And we are. It was a powerful moment. Amen.

The Banquet

Luke 15: 4-7 and Luke 14: 16-24 and Matthew 22: 2-14

“God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace.”

― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Buechner paints the wonderful picture of the stereotypical homeless who God invites to His Banquet because all the Chosen people are too busy to come. But in Luke we hear that even the poor were not enough to fill the hall so he sends his messengers out to the country lanes and city streets to bring in anyone who will come.

As I read Buechner’s and Luke’s descriptions of the wedding banquet, I cannot help but think of the Holy Chaos of the dinnertime at Haywood Street Congregation on Wednesday. The tables are dressed in white linens and everyone is served on china. No one is left out and the food and welcome are plentiful. The folks around the tables are the people who have responded to the invitation by God and Brian and Shannon to come, eat, and receive the blessings of being a child of God.

Not everyone is wearing their wedding clothes, however. In Matthew 22: 2-14 we read a continuation of the story of the invitation to the banquet. It is interesting to note that we have to accept not only the invitation to come, but we must also wear the attire the Host provides. Yesterday I sat with a young woman who I overheard telling another youth who had on her wedding clothes, a T-shirt saying she was a “Youth in Mission” that she didn’t believe in God. I could not hear the reply of the young woman in the T-shirt so I don’t know if she said what I’d have said, but the young woman who doubted had good reasons for her doubts, mostly her experience with people in her life who had not been trustworthy so her belief in this loving God was shaky at best and non-existent yesterday.

I understand. I wish I could have sat nearer. I’d have told the doubter not to fear putting on the wedding clothes of faith because her honesty and doubt were acceptable to God. He invited her to His feast, but she had to take the courageous step into believing He cared. It is not easy, if you have suffered abuse or neglect by your family or the world, to believe in the goodness of God. All of us who have put on the wedding clothes have to continue to provide support and caring until those who have answered the invitation to the banquet know in their hearts that they are truly accepted and that putting on the wedding clothes, acting in faith not wearing a T-shirt necessarily, is the way to eventually trust the love of God.

Bother the Home Front

Brian began today with a story about a church that wanted to build a new sanctuary in a neighborhood. They went to the zoning board to get permission and were told they were not allowed to build a church that looked like a church and certainly not one that had a cross in view. The neighborhood didn't want to look out its windows on such a thing. The church went back, decided to comply,  and told the zoning board they were going to build a house like all the other split levels in the neighborhood and they would put a small 2 inch tall cross over the front door. They didn't want to bother the neighbors.

The Scripture today was from Mark 6:1-13. It was Jesus' return home to preach. Mark does not tell us what he says, but instead he comments on Jesus' comments to His sermon. Then he tells what Jesus told his disciples to do, their mission and how to pursue it. Jesus comments that a prophet is honored except among his own community and his family. Now it was interesting that the early comments of the congregation that listened to Him was amazement at his wisdom, but soon it turned grim. Jesus was unable to perform many miracles because of their lack of belief.

Maybe it would be helpful to look again at Luke's account of this visit home, Luke 4: 16-30. Jesus reads first from Isaiah and says he is the One who God has "anointed to preach good news to the poor. He was sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He goes on to quote the Old Testament accounts of Elijah helping the widow and her son who were from the region of Sidon and Elisha helping Naaman, a Syrian, none of whom were Jewish. In Luke's account the congregation tries to throw Jesus from a cliff they are so mad at him for saying that God chose a non-Jew, not once but twice, to help instead of some of His chosen people. Jesus walks away from the situation.

In Mark he goes on to tell his disciples to take nothing with them when they go out to preach and heal. He is telling them not to be like the magicians and fortunetellers of that day who had a special pouch under their outer garment to take bribes for telling fortunes or doing magic for people. His disciples were to wear one tunic, not two. There would be no question about their taking bribes. They also were to take nothing with them and wear only sandals. Upon coming to a town they were to enter a home and stay in that one place, but if they were not accepted, they were to dust the dirt from their sandals signifying their disdain in a peaceful way.

The point was Bother the Neighbors, Anger the World, and Claim your Power in the Lord. We are not to be invisible to the world, but invincible to the world. It is important to recall what Isaiah said about this Messiah, not a man of worldly power, but a man of Godly power whose priorities were to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed, not the wealthy, the religious, or the comfortable. Those are hard words to digest because most of us are wealthy by the world's standards and all of us are comfortable, if we are not religious by our fathers' standards.

I am reading a book by Luke Timothy Johnson. I'll be commenting on this book for several weeks. It is called SHARING POSSESSIONS. Luke Timothy says that how we treat other people shows how we treat God and vice versa. This book is about idolatry and faith. Possessions he defines with a much broader stroke than one would usually think as all things we say we "have." Since we "have" thoughts, a body, beliefs, and time, as well as things, we make lots of idols. It is only when we can truly share these things that we are living in faith. I think that Mark and Luke are discussing a big "have" the people of Jesus' hometown had, they had an idea of who the Messiah or God's Chosen would be and how He would act. That idea was not Jesus. I wonder if many of us really "have" faith or if we really have an idol of our own making who we like to think of as Jesus.

Just a few thoughts on today. There was a church youth group visiting from Brentwood, TN Presbyterian Church. I grew up in Nashville and went to Brentwood United Methodist Church so I felt like I had a connection to these youth. I sat with some of them at lunch. I felt like they didn't quite know what to make of the church and the people who are members. It was interesting. I'd love to be a fly on their walls tonight as they discuss their experiences. Also, I had a chance to see Cody and say "Hello!" He smiled the sweetest smile at me. Penny, the church lady dog, came and got a pat under the pew during the service. Shannon's little girl was at the service. She looks like Shannon. It won't be long before she has a little sister. I know Shannon will be glad. Ann asked me if I'd like to write a memoir of one of the unhoused who wants to tell his story. I told her I might. He wasn't there today so we didn't get started, but I think it might be important to tell some of their stories.