Life in Narnia

Sermon 6-24-18

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Why did Jesus cross the road? (To get to the other side…. sorry that was kind of a bad joke) Well, that’s ok, it’s more of a story than a joke anyway… and Jesus’ disciples didn’t think it was very funny either. And it wasn’t a very funny thing that happened to them in the middle of the lake, on their way to the other side.

I used to live in an in-between, middle, magical place… called Central Jersey. You may have heard of it… very recently, if you are a fan of Stephen Colbert. The new governor made news for something that New Jersey-ians have known since forever: Central Jersey exists. It’s different from both North and South Jersey, and neither want to claim it. It’s a strange place of both Eagles and Giants fans, where I didn’t quite know whether to listen to NPR from New York or Philly (so I listened to both). It was described most recently as the “Narnia” of New Jersey – a place not everyone is convinced is real.

But I believe in Narnia…and I loved those books growing up. The first one I read as a kid, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” written by C. S. Lewis, tells the story of four ordinary kids who stumble upon this magical land of talking animals. The kids’ home in London is not safe, so they seek asylum from their eccentric Uncle, who owns the wardrobe in question.  

Inside, they find an entire country permanently blanketed by snow.  An evil Witch had forced everyone to live in a permanent winter, with never any Christmas. Now THAT’S mean!! Though honestly, after a few days this week, snow might have felt pretty nice.

The witch, however, is not the rightful ruler of Narnia – that’s Aslan, of course, a fearsome talking lion. The trouble is, no one has seen Aslan for a hundred years. And some of the Narnians are - understandably - wondering whether Aslan still cares about them, or even if he still exists. And this is where the human children enter the story.

Jesus too liked to tell stories, and if you remember he had just finished telling some tales of his own, in the form of parables. Last week we heard two short ones about seeds and mustard plants. Afterwards, Jesus decided it was time to go across the lake. Even though it WAS getting pretty dark, they left anyway, headed right for the country of the Gerasenes, an area full of people who were not at all like them. And they were not exactly eager to go there, either.

And to make matters worse, a big storm came along while they were in the middle of the lake. The wind and rain and waves beat down on their little boat - they were going to end up at the bottom of the lake for sure! In all their panic, trying to keep the boat from sinking, they remembered they had Jesus! But wait, where WAS he?

Um... excuse us, Jesus...

Oh, that’s right. Jesus was sound asleep in the back of the boat…. on a cushion. A CUSHION. Not cool, Jesus. Not cool.

I’ve never experienced a storm while at sea. And until I moved to Jersey, I had also never experienced a hurricane before. Give me raging thunderstorms or even tornadoes – I have experienced plenty of both growing up in the Midwest. But hurricanes? Hurricane Irene seven years ago was my very first. It ended up not being so bad, of course, but when it is 3 am and the weather channel is telling you to take cover because there are tornadoes forming INSIDE OF THE HURRICANE, things seem pretty serious.

Hurricane Irene happened only weeks after moving to New Jersey from seminary in Minneapolis that summer. I had recently moved, which did not go exactly smoothly either – the furniture was a week late, some my stuff arrived bent or broken, one of the cats couldn’t keep food down, and now Hurricane Irene. Welcome to New Jersey!

And yet, by the time the tornado warnings had expired that night, and I crawled back to bed, I wasn’t nearly as worried as I had been. Because while I sat on the floor in the closet, with the wind howling and the rain pounding outside… my two cats did not seem the least bit concerned.

"Excuse me... I AM NOT A SCARDY CAT"

Now, my cats are big wimps. One of them, Patches, will hide under the couch during a regular thunderstorm, like she did just this last week.

And yet, both of the cats seemed more concerned about what I was doing in the closet than what was happening outside. They poked their head in, like they were wondering what I was doing in there… and then wandered away to other night interests. And somehow that put me somewhat at ease. If these two scardy-cats weren’t overly worried about the scary weather outside, then maybe I didn’t have to be either. Maybe, just maybe, it would be ok.

  

In the midst of that storm on the lake, it may have seemed to the disciples that Jesus was asleep on the job. But Jesus didn’t stay asleep once his frightened disciples called out to him. No – when they called to Jesus, Jesus came to their rescue and calmed the storm. 

Similarly, Aslan, true king of Narnia, didn’t forget his people, either. Sightings of him increased as the witch’s power waned, and winter started to lose its grip. But the children visiting Narnia were very nervous when they heard that Aslan wanted to meet them. Seeing a lion in a zoo is one thing. Meeting Aslan the lion face to face would be very different. 

Before meeting Aslan, one of the children naturally consulted his new friend the talking beaver and asked, “Is he… quite safe?” 

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”  

That didn’t automatically take away the children’s fear when they did eventually meet Aslan. But they took comfort that Aslan had a plan to save everyone. Good would (eventually) triumph over evil. Though that doesn’t mean it would be smooth sailing before the victory was complete.

We often get the idea into our heads that once we become followers of Jesus, our lives will be all bubbles and lattes– all of our questions will be answered, and all of our doubts will be put to rest. That the storms of our lives will cease to rage, and it will be nothing but calm seas from here on out. Alas, this is not the case. Just look at the lives of Jesus’ closest followers. This storm was NOTHING compared to what they would face as they brought the message of Jesus out into the world. For sharing this love, they were often attacked, put in jail, and even killed for their trouble. Just look again at Paul’s list in our 2^nd Corinthians reading – we will face, afflictions, hardships, calamities, and more.

But that didn’t stop them. They kept going, and they kept rowing.

Since that first year in New Jersey, I’ve been through plenty of other storms, some of them really, really rough. Plenty of times I feared that the wind would knock me over, that the waves would swamp me… that surely, I would go down while Jesus seemed to be taking a nap. But Jesus was never really asleep on the job. Whenever I called out, about to go under, Jesus answered, often in the form of small but precious acts of love shown to me by friends and family. And on THIS side of past storms, I can say NOW – Jesus was with me the whole time.

The same is true for all of us – in our call to follow Jesus, we have left the safety of the shore, and often find ourselves out of our depth in unknown waters. Storms are still going to crop up. It won’t always be smooth sailing. We are in the middle of the story still – maybe right in the middle of some storms ourselves - when the way forward is still dark and unknown, and we will often be afraid.

The same is true for our own little “boat” we call Family of God. There are plenty of storms for us to face along our way where Jesus calls us. We aren’t always sure what’s waiting for us, both over the next wave or when we arrive on the other, unknown shore.

Sometimes we will be afraid. Sometimes we will feel small, ignored, and powerless.

But we do know, that no matter when, even though life is not always safe… God is good. We know that we are loved and cared for. And Jesus is with us always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow-mustard-seed parable

Sermon 6-17-18

Grace to you and peace from God our creator, and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Around this time of year, you may also have noticed something about the fields you drive past this summer. When you do, perhaps even on your way home, take notice of the corners or around the edges. It doesn't matter what’s planted in the field – whether its corn, alfalfa, soybeans, wheat, hay - every corner of every field will be the same: The plants in the corners will be shorter, spindlier, and less robust than the rest. You would probably think that the opposite would be true: that because they don't have to compete with others in the middle of the field for sun and rain and soil, so that they would be taller and healthier because of it. But this isn’t the case. In fact, they are pretty wimpy-looking.

This reminds me of a poem that is sometimes quoted on inspirational posters in junior high schools, the one by Douglas Malloch that goes:  

The tree that never had to fight for sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain and always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king, but lived and died a scrubby thing. (Sound Familiar?)

Today, right now, you might feel like a scrubby thing, pre-Forest King or Queen – still a tender shoot, removed from all that is familiar and transplanted, physically or figuratively, to that high and lofty mountain where the air is thin, and the wind blows strong. But you are not on the mountain alone. Growth is slow and hard, but God is the one who is our gardener, and puts people in our lives to help us grow and thrive.

Who in your life has their roots firmly planted in the house of the Lord, as we said in our psalm today?

I once knew a woman in another church who might be a surprising candidate for “Best Flourishing Palm Tree” or “Cedar of the Year.” We’ll call her Janet. In her younger days, before I met her, Janet was an extremely active church member while raising a large and loving family. But when I knew her, she lived in a nursing home specializing in memory care, which she lived for many years before she passed away.

Janet may not be aware of what day or season or year it might be, but her memories of Holy Communion are deeply rooted, still green and full of sap, despite that she could not remember that her sister had preceded her in death, or the names of her grandchildren. But I always brought her communion, and she always knew all the words to all the prayers. One day she noticed a crease in the communion liturgy leaflet we would use together. As she held it in her hands and examined it, she said, “Look, there’s a fold in it. It must be from the many hands who have touched this before today.” The Lord’s promises were so deeply rooted in her, no memory loss could take that away. But someone had to have planted that very first seed in her.

We plant the seeds every single day, but we don’t always know how they are going to bloom… whether it’s days, months, or years later, like in Janet’s case. For example, a few years ago I wrote some reflections for the devotional called “Christ in our Home,” some of them on these very texts. In one of them, based on our 2^nd Corinthians reading, was about would be like to be running a challenging course while remembering that Jesus is cheering you on AND running along with you. I send these devotions off and promptly forgot about them, having moved on to the next thing. Weeks after they had been published, I received an email from two women who told me about a road trip they did to run their first half-marathon. They were nervous about it, and took along this devotional. The day of the race, as it happened, was this very text, with my devotion! They found it so encouraging to think about while they ran. They wrote: Your words, God's presence and our faith… made it a day we will always remember.”  

My reflections on Paul’s words went out into the world and someone found meaning in them. I can tell you, there has been very few times in my life where I have actually gotten to see the fruits of my labors, so to speak.

But if the Kingdom of God is like a seed… what kind of seed is it? Well, Jesus, in true Jesus-fashion, tells us that the kingdom of God is like on of the least desirable seeds on the planet.

Must.... pull... weed..... 

As I probably have mentioned once or twice, I grew up on a small dairy farm in central Wisconsin, where my Dad planted fields of corn, alfalfa, soybeans, and hay as food and bedding for the cows that we raise. As you can probably imagine, myself and my siblings had a few chores to do growing up. One of these summer chores was “picking mustard.” How many of you know what a mustered plant looks like? Sort of like goldenrod… it can be found in a lot of fields and ditches around these parts. I’ve never seen a mustard plant become a great tree, but I do know that one plant in a field, if unchecked, will shortly become one field of mustard, since it’s a very invasive weed. When a single mustard plant “goes to seed,” it releases thousands of the tiny little buggers.

Taken by one of my members on a trip in India... holy cats look at all that mustard!!

Have you ever tried to put glitter BACK in the container that it came in? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. So, when we would go out to pick mustard in the field, if we were too late, we would pull up one plant only to witness a shower of seeds falling to the ground…. Knowing that we would just be out there again pulling all of THOSE mustard plants in a few weeks’ time! It was so frustrating!

But isn’t it interesting… Jesus compares the kingdom of God… not to a mighty cedar, but instead, to something like this mustard plant. Stubborn…. Persistent… often with uncontrolled or unpredictable growth… annoying to our carefully curated lawns that we would like our lives to be. Something so small and so insignificant has been elevated, in God’s eyes, to be the star in a parable about the most important kingdom on earth. Because in the kingdom of God, the least important and most overlooked are often given the position of most importance. You know – the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

I’d like to think that the Apostle Paul would be aghast and appalled at how his words have been recently used to justify acting in a way that is the very opposite, while in the name of “the kingdom of God.”

The kingdom of God is NOT support the separation of youth, children, and infants from their parents, when the reason is parents seeking a better life for their children in the first place. The breaking up of families, and the further traumatizing of the most innocent among us – helpless children – in this way abhorrent to the Lord and works against the rules of God’s kingdom.

What Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a rejected, tiny mustard seed, he is saying that God’s kingdom is not built by our hands, though we may do the planting. God’s kingdom is growing, even when we don’t know how or when. God’s kingdom may seem weak compared to the powers and rules of the world… but in the end the smallest, most vulnerable seeds will grow up to be the greatest in the Kingdom. 

The kingdom of God belongs to the weak, the tiny, and the helpless.

The kingdom of God is going to show up when we least expect it, in the very people we would not have anticipated.

The kingdom of God is spread through every act of love we do in the name of Jesus… and sometimes God has to bring forth the kingdom without our participating because of the weeds of fear and selfishness choking our hearts.

The kingdom of God is an infestation of a stubborn weed that we try our hardest to get rid of… and yet, it keeps growing back.

The kingdom of God is invading our lives, and will overgrow and break down our hearts of stone… and that is good news. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Pastor Lydia Ruins The Bible

Sermon 6-10-18

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Families are complicated, aren’t they? And there is at least one in every family who is always stirring things up, or just rocking the boat by doing something unexpected. It’s sort of comforting to know that in HIS family, Jesus was the “black sheep” …  that even Jesus’ family was complicated.

One of the ways that we cope and explain our own families is to tell stories about where we came from… Maybe that’s why we’re suddenly obsessed with send-away genetic tests like “23 & ME” or from “Ancestry.com.” We have always tried to answer questions like: “Why is my family this way?” “Where did we come from and how does that effect who I am now?” And last but not least… “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons or not?”

Of course, I am referring to THE Story about the whole human family that we have all heard at some point: the one from Genesis, about creation and the fall. It’s a story worth hearing again in its entirety – since we only heard a small part today - so I’m going to give you the cliff-notes/ twitter version. The story of creation, first of all, is so epic that there is not just ONE version of the story but TWO (You can look it up for yourself on Page 1 of your pew bible)… and at the end of the second one, God gave the man free reign of the Eden, but told him, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except for one. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will die.”

Then Eve enters stage right, and all seems great… until there is trouble in paradise. The snake convinces Eve to try the fruit from the forbidden tree. Eve eats, then Adam eats. Their eyes were opened, and they knew they were in big trouble.

Which is right where our story picks up for today, as written in your bulletin.  God goes for the usual walk in the garden with Eve and Adam, but they hide from shame, and God knows something is wrong.  They point fingers and try to pass the blame but God still lays out the results of their actions: for the snake (No more legs), for Eve (pain in childbirth), and for Adam (endless toil for survival) and eventually, death for all.

Let’s take a look at what is ACTUALLY IN this story… like in our family histories, the retelling gets a little muddied over the years. We’re going to play a short quiz game about the story, but don’t worry… I’m going to make it easy. You don’t have to write down your answers and I’ll even allow this to be “open book” if you want to open your pew Bibles to Genesis chapter 3.

(I had this little quiz on a slide show, and I'll just share the questions with answers in bold:)

1 When did this story take place?

a.     6,000 years ago

b.    More than 10,000 years ago

c.     It doesn’t say, and it isn’t all that important to the point of the story.

2

What is the serpent?

a.     Just a talking serpent

b.    Satan in a silly mustache  

c.     Santa Claus

3

What kind of fruit did Eve eat from the tree?

a.     An apple

b.    A pomegranate

c.     No one knows!

4

Where was Adam when all this happened?

a.     In backyard mowing the lawn

b.    Taking a nap with a tiger

c.     Right there next to Eve

5

Who is at fault in this story?

a.     Eve

b.    Adam

c.     The serpent

d.    Everybody (including you and me)

Did any of those answers surprise you? I hope that they did. Have any of you heart of the YouTube series “Adam ruins everything”? This show closely examines things we take for granted… and in this case, in this story, we might say this is the ORIGINAL “Adam ruins everything.” If you recall, Adam was RIGHT THERE when all this went down, and, when God questions Adam about what happened, he passes the blame onto Eve AND God, saying, “The woman WHOM YOU GAVE ME, SHE gave me the fruit.” Like a little kid. Then Eve, in turn, SHE TOO passes the blame to the snake, blaming it for tricking her…. And the snake got the short end of the stick because there was no one else to blame.

From the Museum of Biblical Art

Surely NO ONE HERE has EVER passed the blame when they’ve done something wrong… I know, me neither! Haha, just kidding. In reality, this story, originally told thousands of years ago in a distant country in an unfamiliar language… somehow THIS STORY still tells OUR STORY.  A story that tells us about who we are, where we came from, and why we are the way we are.

Going back to what this story DOES and DOES NOT say…  First, what this story DOES NOT SAY…  it does not say that Eve was a seductive temptress and therefore all women are inherently more sinful than men. This story has been used and abused as a reason to mistreat us and keep us from being taken seriously. 

This story is not a science textbook. 

And this story is NOT a primer on WHO IS ALLOWED to get married – if you will notice, no mention of vows, bridesmaids, a white dress, cake, or the chicken dance is mentioned.

So then, what DOES the story tell us? This story tells us about God, and it tells us about ourselves. Families are complicated. Life, love, and relationships are messy and problematic and broken and full of mistakes and blame. Sometimes we are passive like Adam, to stand by and watch while objectionable things happen and do nothing to stop them. Sometimes we are Eve - curious, testers of limitations and seekers of knowledge, risk takers, who sometimes make HUGE goof-ups while daring to wrestle with hard choices.

This is a story about growing up, becoming an adult by moving out from the perceived perfection and simplicity of Eden, to make choices in a thorny and chaotic world. It’s the same story we tell ourselves in just in a million different ways in almost every coming-of-age story.

In one of my favorite of these stories, Matilda by Roald Dahl, the title character finds herself – as many child protagonists do – gifted with special powers but thrust in a world where she is at the mercy of the grownups. Like Eve, Matilda longs to have control over her life, and in themusical version, she and her friends imagine with one another how awesome it will be once they are adults:

“When I grow up,” they sing, “ I will be smart enough to answer all the questions … and… I will eat sweets everyday, and …. I will go to bed late every night… and … I will be brave enough to fight the creatures that you have to fight beneath the bed each night to be a grown up.” 

But we all know, when you grow up… sometimes the creatures under the bed still gets you know matter how brave you are.  

But fortunately for us, this story also tells us about God. God, who hovered over the waters of creation at the very beginning… who created all the land, water, animals, and us… is also the God who walked in the garden with Eve and Adam, the first members of the Family of God. This is a God who created US and who walks WITH US even when we would rather hide in shame over the confusing mayhem we find ourselves in or have created for ourselves and others.

Death and brokenness and sin may be the legacy our first “parents” have passed on to us… but God does not leave us in this state. This may be the origin story of our family, but it is not the end of the story. Adam may explain why we are the way we are, but Jesus tells us a new story about who we belong to and where we are headed.

We belong to a new family because of Jesus. A new family where our siblings do not necessarily share our genes, but instead share our passion for the gospel.  A new family where our siblings might not be related by blood, but instead united through the blood of Jesus. A new family brought together not by the waters of our mother’s womb but by the waters of our baptism and the promise of an empty tomb.

And this is pretty much going to be the exact opposite of the family interactions we are familiar with – not “family” as we are used to with drama, disagreements, hurts, and grudges. This will be family as we are meant to be – God’s Family.

Jesus calls this new family – still full of imperfections –to be a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom where everyone is treated with fairness and respect, where all feel safe, welcome, and valued, both within these walls and without. Every Sunday, every day, every moment, is a “family reunion,” minus the potato salad. Only – it’s a RE-UNION as “members of the Body of Christ, part of one Family of God” as I begin the service every Sunday. “Welcome. There is a place for you here….” …Right here, in God’s Family. 

So, my siblings in Christ…. WE are the Family of God, aren’t we? …. So, let’s get out there and ACT like it! Amen!

Everybody Get a Sabbath

Sermon 6-3-2018

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Welcome to the Sundays after Pentecost! … yeah, I admit, it’s not the most exciting of the season of the church year… it’s not refreshingly contemplative like Lent. It’s not festive and joyful like the season of Easter.  It’s not hopeful and expectant like Advent.  The time after Pentecost is the Long Green Season of the church, and it just seems to go ON AND ON AND ON… all the way until we get to Christ the King Sunday after Thanksgiving. Needless to say it’s the longest liturgical season we have….

But not to worry. We have a few blips of “special” to dot the liturgical landscape for us from now until then – Reformation Sunday in October for example. For now, we are back in the Gospel of Mark after a really long time in John, which is good because this is THE year of Mark’s Gospel, which is the snappy, fast moving, tweetable gospel with a very grumpy Jesus. Here we see, right from chapter 2, Jesus is making the rule-makers and the rule-keepers of his day angry by messing up their little world of regulations created from commands that actually comes from God, which we know as the Ten Commandments.

Our reading from Deuteronomy describes God’s full explanation of the 3^rd commandment – honor the sabbath day and keep it holy. God says that “Six days you shall… work. But the seventh day… you shall not do any work.” Not you, not your husband or wife, not your kids or your farm animals or your pets or the immigrant in your towns, not your slaves. The Israelites were to remember that THEY were once slaves in the land of Egypt, forced to work day and night without rest… until God sent Moses to free them and lead them to the promised land.

In the 3^rd commandment, God reminds us that God is about liberation. God hates slavery and bondage of any kind.  THAT is why God invented the Sabbath day… which, by the way, means that the Sabbath was the first ever labor law. God invented the first half of the weekend… not too shabby.

Fast forward a few thousand years…and we humans have done what we humans do best – make what is simple and life-giving into something overly complicated and difficult! What began as a safeguard of life and liberation became compartmentalized and regimented. If we are not allowed to work… then what constitutes WORK? It’s an excellent question… is plowing a field work? Definitely! What about preparing and cooking a meal? Usually, that’s work, right? … Doing laundry? That is definitely work…but what about driving a car? Pushing an elevator button? Flipping on a light switch?

Which begs the question…. At what point does avoiding work become WORK? It seems easy for those of us in the Christian faith to pass judgement on our Jewish brothers and sisters on some of the customs around the sabbath that I’m sure some of us have witnessed. But before we congratulate ourselves on our so-called liberation from Old Testament Laws, we should remember that we Christians were the ones who instituted things like Blue Laws...  and are the reason I can’t get a chicken sandwich from Chick Fill -A on Sundays, even in airports. And one of my pastor colleagues admitted at our weekly text study that it really bothers him when his neighbor mows the grass on Sunday, because when and where he grew up such things just weren’t done.

Many of us can remember a time like that. But it seems to be less and less our current reality. More and more opportunities crowd into our Sundays. Church is no longer the only building that is open on Sunday morning. On Sundays we are FREE – free to shop, free to cook, free to work, free to eat out, free to see a show, free to play sports… so much freedom! We are free to do so much! …or are we? Does THIS kind of freedom really free us?

We seem to be stuck between too many rules about how to rest so that resting is hard work, and too much freedom and choice so that we don’t get any rest at all. Neither of these options are actually life-giving. And that is EXACTLY what the sabbath was designed to do for us: to be a source of life for all of God’s people.

At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, God tells God’s people that we have two choices before us – the path of death and the path of life.  It’s pretty obvious that God wants us to choose life. And the point of Shabbat – sabbath – is a means for us to choose life, and to have life abundantly.

You are free to choose where to spend your Sunday morning, and you have chosen to spend it here. Congratulations – and also, I’m sorry…. you are rewarded by hearing the words of crabby Jesus, challenging people like us – people like the Pharisees - who like to have ways of living clearly laid out.

I just love the trick question that Jesus asks the Pharisees. He doesn’t ask if it is lawful to do an act of good work on a day where work is not supposed to be allowed. He instead asks – what is better to do on the sabbath, something good or something bad? of course, the “RIGHT” answer is to DO NO WORK on the sabbath. Except for the little fact that the RIGHT answer is totally WRONG. Somewhere along the way we forgot that God is not about rules; God is about people and relationships and love.

What if the Sabbath was not about NOT working… but instead was about making room for God to work? What if the sabbath wasn’t just about what we SHOULD NOT do… but instead be about what we CAN and SHOULD BE doing for others?

I am especially thinking about those who cannot afford to rest, who cannot afford to take a sabbath or a day off on Sunday because they need to work long hours or multiple jobs to both feed their families and pay the rent. What is it that brings life-giving joy for those whom a day off TODAY is not always an option?

Today is the day where we take a break from thinking that the priorities of the world make the rules. And sometimes we need to be reminded relieve other people from the “rules” we impose on them.

People are hungry and need to be fed TODAY. Single parents are working three jobs without a living wage, who need justice TODAY. The earth needs a break from our addiction to fossil fuels TODAY. Our children need a respite from the incessant treadmill of higher and better achievement TODAY. New mothers need the right to rest their bodies and care for their brand-new babies and not lose their jobs TODAY. People of color need relief from the constant worry from people’s suspicions and prejudice… TODAY.

I once heard a story of a church who raised money to give a needy family a nice refrigerator, since this family could not afford one. But this family decided to take the money and go on a really awesome family trip instead. The church was understandably upset – after all, who wouldn’t be excited about a new fridge? wouldn’t the quality of life of this family greatly improve? Wouldn’t the family save money?

Now I won’t say if this family was right or wrong, but really, after all, doesn’t every family deserve the opportunity to spend time together and to build memories that will last their entire lives? What is more important – improved food quality? Or improved family quality? What if – totally hypothetically –this trip revived their bond as a family? What if the children grew up treasuring this memory of renewal and grew up inspired to give back to others?

As Jesus might ask, is it better to give a family nothing or to let them spend their money on something life-giving that we might not have chosen for them?

Everyone needs sabbath. And everyone deserves sabbath. That is why today is so special. Today is the Lord’s Day. Today is the day we remember that God created us and gives us everything that we have. Today is the day that we remember that Jesus died and rose again so that we may have life and have it abundantly. Today is the day we receive Jesus’s body and blood to keep us sustained for the ongoing work of justice for all of God’s children.

We cannot do it all the works of God’s justice in one day. And that is why the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, comes to us every seven days. Every seven days, a chance to be reminded of who made ALL our days. Every seven days, a chance to be renewed again, and to work to renew others. Thanks be to God. Amen.