“Mosaic: Relationships” John 15:15 Matt 27: 57-61

We are now in the final week of Lent, when we celebrate both Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, being greeted by the waving of palms and shouts of triumphant and joy on Palm Sunday, through the final events of Jesus life throughout the week - eating the final meal with his disciples, being arrested in the garden, standing trial, and being sentenced to death. I hope that you will join us for the variety of worship services this week, as we focus on Christ in a way that leads us into the celebration of next Sunday. 

As we journey through this week, I cannot help but think about the relationships that Jesus had with those around him. The truth is Jesus was fully human and fully divine, and as humans we are created for relationships with one another. Jesus had relationships with his disciples - those who were like a family to him as he traveled around Galilee and beyond bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God. 

In the gospel of John, we find Jesus telling his disciples that they are no longer servants, but friends, because Jesus has shared teachings with them, shared life with them. While they may not feel that they understand everything that is about to happen, may not understand everything that Jesus has taught he has not hidden it from them,They are not left in the dark. They are welcomed as friends. 

Out of his disciples, some were gifted with an even deeper relationship with Jesus. Do you know that Peter is mentioned more in the Gospels then all of the other disciples combined? John is also mentioned quite frequently. They were with Jesus during some special and profound moments in his ministry such as the transfiguration. 

We don’t like to think about Jesus not treating all of the disciples as equals, yet, isn’t that true in our lives as well? Do we have the same relationship with every person that we meet? Or even the same relationship with every person we consider a friend? No. Each relationship we have is special, and has unique influence in our lives. 

Some relationships that we have are for a season. When I was in seminary I was close to the wonderful roommates I had, but as we scattered across the far reaches of the Northeast part of the United States, we are not as close as we once were. Other friendships are deep, lasting a lifetime. I have three such friends, who are as close as family, and we pour into one another through long conversations, texting throughout the week, and visiting as often as we can. We cannot be that close to everyone we meet, yet, we consider ourselves blessed when we are that close to a few. 

But even when we have such close relationships, they are not always perfect. We need to look no further then Jesus and his disciples to realize that this is true as well. When we find Peter with Jesus around the table in the upper room, Jesus tells Peter that before the cock crows three times, in other words, before the evening turns into day that he will deny even knowing him. Peter fiercly claims that this isn’t true, that he would do anything and go any where with Jesus, yet we know that what Jesus predicted did come to pass. 

We may have experienced a time of the imperfection of relationships in our lives as well - times when things seem to break down, and often when that happens, life seems to crumble as well. The disciples were not always friendly with one another - remember that argument that the had along the road one day, when they were weary and worn, about who would considered the greatest and sit beside Jesus when he ruled? They were not kind to each other that day.

Sometimes, even friends and family miss the point. Think about how we act even with those who are closest to us when we are tried from traveling as well? Is it always pretty? No. I think back to those dear friends I have - one I have traveled a lot with, and while we have had some amazing times on those trips, there have also been moments of tension and bickering, especially when we are tired. 

Of course, that wasn’t the only time in scripture that the disciples didn’t have model relationships. As we turn to Matthew’s text today, we find that it isn’t the twelve that take away Jesus’s body and tend to it for burial. Instead it is Joesph - someone who considered himself to be a follower of Jesus, but isn’t part of the twelve. There were many such people in Jesus’s life - those who offered him hospitality along the road, like Mary and Martha, those who offered financial support, those who looked to Jesus for wisdom and guidance, but who were not part of the those who traveled with him from place to place. Those who were closest to him, those who traveled from town to town, those who were together even when they were tired and had sore feet, those men abandoned him, out of fear, out of shame, for so many other reasons, and it is someone else who stuck around on the most horrific day of Jesus’s life, as he faced his death. 

Jesus had such folks as Joseph in his life, because his life and ministry was all about building relationships. With folks who were interested in hearing about the Kingdom. With those who were in need. With those who were seeking. With those who he called friends. With those who were simply attracted to the healing that he was doing. 

What about us? Are we also pouring into people? Are we also building relationships? I was talking to someone lately about relationships and we were saying how hard it is to have deep relationships in this world today, when our days are so full, and the time that we do have, we want to spend with our families, investing in them. But as the conversation continued I noted something very interesting - in this world today, we seem to act like if we cannot be best of friends, then it isn’t worth it. Oh friends, what a deep lie that the world is selling to us. The truth is that Jesus built relationships with anyone who was drawn to him - not just those who would be his closest friends. Are we building relationships with those with those who are seeking and those who are drawn to the Jesus-light shining within us?

At the gym earlier this year I received one of the most treasured comment that I have received - it was someone from another church who sat down next to me and said that she appreciated that I deeply loved the people in this community. Friends, are we known as people who deeply love this community? Yes, love this church, but love those folks who Jesus has placed on our path to interact with and share the love of God with? 

Are we invested in our relationships, or are we caught up in the tangled brokenness of relationships today that make us hesitant to invest in the lives of people? Let us take time today to lay down the burden of broken relationships at the foot of cross, know that Jesus understands. Let us confess those times that we have turned away from relationships with others because we are worried they aren’t worth our time. And let us pick up the grace to be in relationships that share Christ, relationships that Jesus has given us the gift of the opportunity to be a part of. Amen. 

“Mosaic: Resources” Mal 3: 6-12 Proverbs 3:9-10

We are now a few months past Christmas. However, I am an early Christmas gift buyer, so I have already picked out some of the things that I will start to purchase in the summer towards this coming Christmas. Why? Because I am not a very good last minute shopper. Santa’s secret workshop freaked me out in elementary school. It felt like I was cutting it too close. I want to have enough time to put real thought into gifts - often making gifts for people or picking out something that I feel that they will value.

However, I am not under the illusion that is true for all gifts. I am not a fan of buying generic gifts, but sometimes it just happens - for parties, or employers, or any host of other categories of people. Sometimes we just buy something because we feel that we have to buy something for that person, more out obligation than relationship. I want you to think about those gifts? Sometimes they end up being just the right thing. But how many more times do they end up being re-gifted or shoved into a closet or drawer to be forgotten or at a thrift store? Sometimes when we feel like we have to do something, it doesn’t end up being as thoughtful.

This same feeling can sometimes extend to our faith lives. The prophet Malachi has an interesting message for the people of Israel. God essentially tells the people that they are robbers. Specifically, that they are robbing God. Now, God is speaking to the Israelites about something very specific - that the tithe - or the ten percent of earnings - not being presented to God as a sacrafice. 

But I wonder if we are robbing God with our resources in other ways. Is it robbing God when we serve half-heartedly? Is it robbing God, when we give money, but not our time to the Savior? Is it robbing God, when we hold back what we fear that we will need? What exactly does it mean to rob God?

I often think back to the story of the loaves and fishes when it comes to discussing the resources we have been blessed by God. The story is recounted in different ways throughout the various gospels, with the numbers of those fed varying, but perhaps my favorite version is found in the sixth chapter of the gospel of John. The people have gathered from far and wide to hear Jesus teach, but when it came to be time for folks to eat, Jesus turned to his disciple, Philip, and asked where they were going to buy the food for folks to eat. Philip sputtered a little, perhaps wondering why he was the one being asked about this, before saying that six months wroth of wages would only begin to buy a little for each person, but not enough to fill them. But a little boy offered five barley loaves and two fish to Jesus. Probably all he had for his own lunch, but Andrew sort of rebuked the offering, asking what they were going to do with that. As if he was saying that there was no way that little offering was going to be enough. 

But it did end up being enough - Jesus blessed the boys lunch and started to distribute it to the people. When everyone had ate their fill Jesus asked the disciples to go around and collect the left overs - and oh were there left overs - filling twelve baskets.

The disciples in this story, were approaching the idea of feeding this many people - five thousand men and women and children - from a mindset of scarcity. There was no way that they could find enough food or buy enough food. There just wasn’t enough. In some other versions of this story the disciples actually tell Jesus to send the people away so they can go find food on their own, but that isn’t Jesus’s plan.

We, too, can approach life through the lens of scarcity. Thinking that we do not have enough. Often, when we think through this mindset, we actually end up wrapping our hands a lot tighter around that which we do have - not wanting to risk giving it up. Maybe we rob God when we approach life through a lens of scarcity, that leads us to no longer have an open hand. 

Recently I was listening to a discussion of the parable of the talents where this was identified as one of the problems. In the parable, Jesus tells the story of an overseer who left his servants with money. One with five talents. One with two talents and one with one talent. The first two servants invested what their master had given them, and upon his return they handed him a 100 percent profit - they doubled what they had been given. But the last servant simply hurried his talent in the ground. Often he is referred to as the foolish servant. In the parable he is even called the wicked servant. But I wonder if he was more the fearful servant - not wanting to risk what the master had given him. Maybe we rob God when we act out of fear instead of faith. 

In proverbs, the book of Wisdom, we find instructions to honor God with our substance, with what we produce. Often this scripture is mis quoted however to mean that we give to God in order to be blessed, which isn’t the point. The point is to simply give unto God what is God’s.

The truth brothers and sisters, is that we can’t do everything, but we can do something.  A few years ago my friend, Ellen, got married. When we arrived at the reception, instead of small gifts on the table, there were bookmarks stamped with animals, stating that the money that would have been used for favors was donated to the Heifer project. Ellen did something.

At one of the churches I served, there weren’t many children, but the children that were present wanted to do something. Their teachers thought that maybe they could raise enough money to buy a few chickens through Heifer international. But that wasn’t good enough for the kids. They got in their mind that they wanted to purchase a water buffalo. So they asked each member of the congregation to set aside money when they touched an egg - when they gathered eggs, when they had an egg for breakfast or when they baked a cake. The kids had a vision. They couldn’t do everything, but they could do something. 

Friends, we rob God in many ways, but perhaps most noticeably when we hold on so tightly to what we have that we don’t think we can do anything. That is our own brokenness in play, brothers and sisters. But God can take that brokenness and remind us that we have so much to offer. So much to give. We are simply invited to give what we have for God’s glory, including our very selves. Including our spiritual gifts. Including our time. And yes, even including our money. All of our resources matter, and when we give the little we have, the world can be changed. Amen.

“Mosaic: Responsibilities” Genesis 3: 12-13 John 14

For the last several weeks we have been talking about God can use all of our lives to bring God glory - even the broken pieces. Last year at Lent, a friend had folks in her congregation build a wooden cross that was at the front of the sanctuary. Week by week, people brought small broken pieces of glass and ceremic and rock and added them to the cross. The end result was a mosaic of brokenness that made something beautiful. We are joining together in proclaiming that God is the great redeemer and that God can use even the sharp, jagged, broken pieces of our lives to bring folks into the Kingdom. 

So far we have discussed how God can use our regret and rejection, which are certainly areas of brokenness in our lives. What we are talking about today, however, on the surface doesn’t look like a broken area - responsibilities. Our responsibilities are those things that we are accountable for. Something that is within our power, control, or I would say choice. 

However, responsibilities can become areas of brokenness in our lives when we start to believe lies about them. Perhaps the first lie around responsibility can be found back in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. Adam and Eve have been told by God that they can eat of any of the fruit of the garden except from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For a while, everyone seems okay with this, until a serpent whispers to Eve one day that God was actually trying to keep the best fruit from her. Some fancy twisted logic later and Eve was eating from the tree. Then she convinced Adam to eat from the tree. But when it came time to own up to what they had done - time to take responsibility - they tried to blame everyone else. Adam claimed Eve made him do it. Eve claimed the serpent made her do it. Which leads us to our first lie about responsibility “it’s not my fault.” 

Try as we might to claim that the choices we made are “not my fault” the truth is, we are all responsible for both the things that we choose to do and choose not to do. We cannot make other people do or not do things, and other people cannot make us do or not do things. A phrase that we don’t hear as much any more, but still comes up from time to time is “The Devil made me do it”. To be sure, Satan is a powerful force in our world, leading hearts away from God and God’s Kingdom, but at the end of the day choices around what we do and do not do, doesn’t fall to the Devil. It falls on us. 

Lie number two about responsibility is also connected to the story in Genesis. The lie that  we don’t need to watch out for one another, or as I like to call it, every person for their self. While Adam and Eve had no problem blaming others for the choices they made, we also don’t see much effort to stop one another from making bad choices. The truth is, we have a responsibility for one another. Now it may seem like I am contradicting what I just said before, and I still stick by the fact that we cannot make other people do things. But think about in families. Parents are responsible for children. Husbands and wives are responsible to one another. Responsibility is a mark of care and concern.

Yet, it seems that Adam and Eve didn’t extend that to one another. They didn’t try to stop one another. They didn’t try to talk to each other about what was happening or what they were doing. In other words they didn’t hold each other accountable. Accountability to each other is a sign of responsibility. 

Now of course we can take that way too far. When I was in seminary I spent a summer as a faith-based community organizer in Texas. I lived in the spare bedroom of the woman who was essentially my supervisor and every day she would come home from her time at the bank and ask me about every minute that I spent working - essentially wanting me to prove that I was working.  That isn’t the type of accountability that I’m talking about. Instead, I’m talking about the type of accountability that I have with some of my dearest friends. I was talking to a friend recently and telling her about some of the struggles I was having and she listened patiently before saying “Here is what I am hearing and seeing in your life.” Before asking questions that got to the heart and soul of where I was. By her listening, observations, and suggestions she steered me a whole different way. She held me accountable. 

We see stories in scripture both of folks who get the idea that we are responsible for one another and those who don’t. One story we find is in the book of Acts of Annias and Saphria. This couple decided to sell a piece of land and give the money to the early church for ministry. Only they didn’t give all the money over, the kept back from themselves, which was certainly allowed, but they lied about it. Telling the disciples that was the amount of money they got for the land. Peter called them each out about their lie. He held them accountable and gave them a chance to confess, but they kept insisting on living in their lie. They missed the point that the church was trying to be responsible for one another. 

Another truth about responsibility is that we all crave for a place to belong. On a very large list of things that Americans fear, based on a survey from Chapman University, twenty two percent of folks ranked being afraid to very afraid of being lonely. Let us take a minute to address the fact that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. I am an introvert. In order to recharge my batteries after a long day I like to be alone to process. But that does not mean I am lonely - the feeling that I have no companions or company. 

The disciples were afraid of being alone as well. Selections of John 14 are traditionally read at funerals. Jesus is telling his disciples that he is going to die, that he is going to leave them for a period of time, in order to go prepare a place for them. And the disciples start to question where this place is and how they are going to know how to get there. Jesus tells them that they are not going to be alone, even with his absence, because the holy spirit is going to be sent as an advocate for them. But I also tell folks at funeral services that they are not alone because they have one another. 

We have a responsibility to be there for one another, because as the body of Christ we belong with one another. We have a purpose together. And we have a responsibility to keep welcoming one another - welcoming the stranger, the seeker, the person who is feeling lonely, so they can know the love of a Savior. See we don’t just have a responsibility to one another in the body of Christ, we have a responsibility to this community to be the body of Christ, reaching out in love and with a message of Christ.

Here’s the thing about responsibility - we don’t always get it right. The noun “adult” has been turned into a verb in recent years as “adulting” often around how we fail at being adults from time to time. The same as true of the church. The church is not meant to be a stagnant noun, but instead a verb in action, and sometimes we fail at the responsibilities entrusted to us a church. Yet, that is not the final word. Even when we do not live up to our responsibilities or when we try to make it about things that they are not, or we miss the point, God can take our brokenness and redeem it as we are sent back on our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We are a work in progress - broken pieces and all. Amen. 

“Mosaic: Rejection” Matthew 9: 12-13 Matthew 27: 27-31 1 Peter 5:7

Brokenness is often something that we do not think about celebrating. It is painful. It is hard to go through. And yet, we believe in a God who can make something beautiful out of our broken pieces of life. We are now in the third week of Lent and our second week in our sermon series Mosaic, based off of a Lenten study by Rev. Shane Stanford. 

Brokenness is not something that we talk about very much in our culture. When you ask someone how they are doing, many folks are unprepared if anyone gives them an answer beyond “fine” or celebrating all of the good things that are happening in our lives right now. We reserve the pieces of our life that are not going fine for close family and friends, in private. 

My dad made a comment at a family dinner recently that really struck me - we are naive to not realize how much brokenness is in the world around us. Church, we are naive if we think that everyone we interact with on a daily basis is truly fine. We celebrate that we have a savior that has come to bind up the broken hearted, yet we live in a culture that tells you that your brokenness is shameful. That is why as the Church, we need to talk about the broken places in our lives and in this world.

One of the places we experience brokenness is this world is rejection. We all experience rejection on so many levels throughout our lives. Maybe as a young child you are turned away from a group you used to be friends with. Or weren’t picked for a team. As an adult maybe you weren’t the candidate selected for your dream job. 

Jesus knew what it was like to experience the brokenness of rejection. On the night he gathered his disciples together for their last meal together on Earth, he told them that one of them would betray him, that Peter would deny him, and that by the end of the evening they would flee. Of course they all claimed that this would never happen. That they could never abandon Jesus and that they would be loyal to him to the very end. Yet, it happened just as Jesus predicted.

Some of the disciples hid in plain sight, like Peter, who denied when asked that he was a follower of Jesus. Others hid behind locked doors, fearing what was going to happen. But both were forms of rejection - they didn’t do as they said they would - standing beside Jesus until the bitter end and suffering the same fate as him. A fate of standing in front of the court, being stripped, given a scarlet robe and crown of thrones, being mocked and struck and spat upon. They weren’t crucified with Jesus on the cross the next day. Jesus faced all of that alone.

And perhaps that is what makes rejection so painful. It feels like we are going through life alone. The truth is, people hurt one another. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. That hurt can lead to anger. Or a desire to not want to be hurt again, so we become guarded. As humans we deeply disappoint one another, but that isn’t the end of the story.

We hurt one another because of the sickness of sin deep within our souls. But Jesus offers a word of hope in the face of such ailment when he said, “Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick… For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” In other words, Jesus has come to heal our brokenness. To heal that sin sick part of us that breaks others spirits. 

But the good news does not end there. Even if others reject us, Jesus will not. Jesus walks with us through whatever we may face in life, showing us glimpses of grace even in the face of pain and disappointment. In other words, even when we feel the most alone, God shows up. God cares for us, even when it seems like others do not. 1 Peter states that plainly. 

The problem church is that we are the representatives of God and when we don’t show up, at times folks think that is a sign that God has abandoned them, which is just not true. And that is not to say that we have to get it right, one hundred precent of the time, but we do need to ask ourselves if we have a way to show up at least most of the time. 

This is especially hard when folks go through long illnesses. How does the church show up after the initial diagnosis? How do we keep showing folks that we care about them so they don’t feel like they are rejected just because they can’t get to church as much any more? One of the churches I served did this so well. When people had long term illness, there were a group of ladies that would call at least once a week to offer to bring meals over - anything they wanted. There was another group in the church who would send card any time someone was on their mind. It wasn’t a one time thing. It was consistently showing up, so people knew when they couldn’t come to church, the church would come to them. 

Because I have heard far too many stories as a pastor about people who left the church because they thought the church had forgot about them. People who tried their hardest to pretend that rejection didn’t matter, but after a while it just ate at them, until the rejection made them feel so un-valued and forgotten that they left. 

But, as the church we need to bring the message that people are not forgotten to more folks then just those in our pews. I think we also need to be asking ourselves the question where Jesus would go if he was in our community? Where would Jesus go to bring the message to folks that they are deeply care about, are not rejected or forgotten. To the hospitals. To the prisons. To the coffee shops. To the schools. To so many places where people are trying to hide the shame of their brokenness ever day. If Jesus would go to those places, we are called to go there as well as the church. 

One year, while in college, two friends and I did something odd for vacation while studying abroad. While everyone else took 2 weeks of vacation to explore all sorts of places, we decided to give a week in service to spending time with children whose parents were going through divorces. It was a type of care group put on by the church, whose express purpose was to proclaim that these children were cared about and not forgotten. Now we still did travel a bit and during the evenings we explored the city where our college was, going to plays and museums and restaurants. But during those days we reflected the love of Christ to this specific group of kids.Where are the places that you are feeling the tug on your heart to go and proclaim that people are not rejected? Not alone. That they are cared about. 

Because the truth is as the church, we are still going to mess up from time to time. We may not always get it right, because the truth is we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. Rejection shows that. But we also serve a God who proclaims that the brokenness and messiness of rejection is not the end of the story. And God can use us to draw folks in to the message of love and salvation found in Jesus Christ. God can take the broken pieces of rejection and invite folks into a new community, the body of Christ, where we proclaim that you are welcomed and you are loved. Amen.