Five blocks north of the University of Washington in Seattle, near the corner of 50th and University, there was a little storefront painted Mediterranean blue. The sign, blue letters on a white background, read “Sahara” and had little camels painted on it. Frankly, it was not very promising-looking, had little street-appeal. Inside, there were 15 small tables with white tablecloths and glass tops. The walls were decorated with paintings done on white ceramic tiles, portraying the heroes of the owners, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the place of honor and largest painting showed the “Mahmoud grandparents,” the parents of Gus, the owner. Gus and his family were from Lebanon, and they ran the restaurant themselves, with their one employee, a gracious waiter from Morocco. Gus and his wife did the cooking, including the handmade baklava. Their son and his wife helped with the cooking and serving, and the grandkids were often to be found playing or doing homework or helping out. The food was wonderful – I still dream of their lemon chicken and shish kebabs. But what made it a truly memorable restaurant, one that we went back to over and over, was that Gus made it his business to invite everyone who walked through the door into this family, if only for a few minutes. When you walked in the door, he greeted you at the door with a huge smile and wide arms, and showed you to a seat. If it was your second or seventieth time there he remembered you. As he showed you to your seat, he asked about your health, your family, your life, and pulled the chair out for you. Whenever you thanked him, whether for seating you or for bringing water, he responded in a huge booming voice, “You are welcome!” And you knew that you were indeed welcome, in every sense of the word. And it was Gus’ great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for the time that you spent in his restaurant.
It is God’s great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for you in the world. And, like Gus, God wants to offer that welcome directly to you. So much did God want to offer that welcome directly, “in person” so to speak, that God came into the world as a human being, as Jesus Christ. In today’s story, we see an example of the welcome that God came to share. Jesus, walking along the road, enters a village and is approached by ten lepers. These are the last people to expect any welcome from Jesus, since they receive no welcome from anyone else they meet. Yet they approach him and ask him for mercy. And Jesus gives it to them. He tells them to go to the priests, and on the way they were made clean. Jesus doesn’t require anything of them, he simply sends them to the priests. It seems that they don’t even have to go there, since they are made well on their way to the priests. We don’t really know what happened to nine of them from that point on. They may have done exactly what Jesus told them to – gone to the priests. They have obeyed Jesus’ command, and they are anxious to have the priests restore them to society now that they are clean. They can’t be blamed for that.
But one, a Samaritan, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. But Jesus looked around for the other nine, “where are they?” We often hear Jesus’ remark here as scolding. Like when someone gives my daughter Grace a gift, and I nag, “Say thank you!” Read one way, Jesus says, “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” But read another way we might hear the longing in Jesus’ voice, the desire to know where they are, so that he can go and find them, and know them and be their friend. “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” In that reading, we hear Jesus’ desire to say “You are welcome!” He has said it to the one who came back, but he still wants to share the welcome of God with those other nine. Jesus wants more than a healing, Jesus wants wholeness. Jesus wants more than a quick encounter in the street, Jesus wants a relationship. God wants a relationship.
It was for relationship that God came to us, that God continues to come to us. Over and over, God tells us, “You are welcome!” We first hear that message in the promises of baptism, when we are welcomed into the body of Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross. “You are welcome!” We hear it each week when we join in the Eucharist, a word that comes from the Greek for thanksgiving or grateful. While we give thanks for God’s willing sacrifice for our sake, God again offers God’s own self to us in bread and wine. “You are welcome!” And we hear it from one another, in so many ways, when we offer friendship, support, prayers, fellowship, and love. “You are welcome!” Our friend Gus chose to carry out his calling from God by opening a restaurant and sharing God’s welcome with all who entered. Each of us is called to offer God’s loving welcome to one another. Christ Church Lutheran practices hospitality and welcome with one another, and is intentionally working to turn that hospitality outward to our neighbors. It is a challenge, but it is also a joy. Gus has retired now, and the Sahara has closed. But I will always remember the hospitality that Gus offered me and so many others. It was genuine, it was a joy. It was an inspiration to learn how to share the same joy that Gus always took in saying to each person he hosted, “You are welcome!”
We are called to receive that welcome as well. God desires relationship with us so much that God came to earth in human form, as a tiny baby. God desires relationship with us so much that the Father gave His only Son to die for us. And for that, we give our thanks, not only today, but every day. God wants our thanks, not because God needs it, but because God wants the chance to say to us, “You are welcome!”
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Parable of the Talents
In the movie Babette’s Feast, Babette, a French woman living in a remote part of northern Denmark, spends every penny of her lottery winnings preparing an elaborate meal. She serves it to the two sisters she works for and their small congregation, in celebration of their father and founder’s 100th birthday. But this community worries more about the dangers of good food and wine, and fails to recognize the incredible gift that Babette has offered. As it turns out, she was once a renowned chef, and in preparing this meal, she is not only offering her money, but also her extraordinary abilities. Yet when a visiting general comments on the soup, the man next to him replies, “I think it will probably snow all day tomorrow!”
In my short time here at Christ Church Lutheran, I have met some incredibly gifted people. Not only are they gifted in their abilities, from music to leadership, from hospitality to fix-it-ness, and a huge variety of others, but, like Babette, they are gifted in their desire to share those abilities. I should say, you are gifted in the desire to share your abilities. And I see a desire not only to share your gifts with one another, but with the community. This congregation has made a decision to be a transforming congregation, to be a transformed congregation, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the community and for the glory of God.
I am blessed to be at Christ Church at a very special time in the life of this congregation. In Greek, it is called a kairos time. A time of receptivity, a time of openness to what God is up to, a time of pausing to listen and to see what is stirring. It is often translated as opportunity, or right time. Kairos is a word that is about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. When Jesus begins his ministry in the book of Mark, he says “The time is fulfilled, the kairos is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the context into which you offer your gifts, whether they are gifts of money or gifts of time or gifts of ability. The in-breaking Kingdom of God, here at Christ Church Lutheran, in the company of the Body of Christ, is where you bring and share your gifts.
But it’s scary to offer our gifts nonetheless. We see that fear in the words of the third slave in today’s gospel reading. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Even if we do not believe that God is as the slave described the master, “harsh, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed,” we may experience community that way. Though we would hope that the church would be different, we are human, we are sinners as well as saints, and we fall short of the call that we have, to receive one another graciously. And so, it is often with fear that people meet us, the church community, and it is often with fear that we meet one another. We fear rejection, we fear humiliation, we fear being taken advantage of, and so we hide our talents in the ground. We fear that, like Babette, our gifts will go unrecognized, and while we pour ourselves out for them, people will talk about the weather.
But there is another word that is spoken in today’s text. Twice the master says, “enter into the joy of your master!” The Greek word for “joy” is chara. It is not actually related to kairos time, but the words echo one another. Chara means joy, and its relative chairo means rejoice. It is what the Magi did when the star stopped over the stable where the baby Jesus lay. They chairo-ed with great chara. They rejoiced with great joy. As we talked about in the adult forum Bible study a couple weeks ago, the magi were overwhelmed with joy. They were struck by an almost external wave of joy that washed over them and overwhelmed them. And then “they knelt down and paid him homage.” They worshipped.
In today’s text, that word comes again – enter into the chara, enter into the joy, of your master. It is a joy that is already there, and an invitation that is already there, no matter how, or even if, we choose to use our gifts. And it is a joy that is already there, no matter how, or even if, those gifts are received as we might hope. In spite of their selves, the dinner guests find themselves transformed by Babette’s feast. They find old jealousies and rivalries melting away, and they end the evening holding hands, dancing around the well in the center of the village, singing a song of worship and service. The Spirit moves through Babette’s gift, in spite of those who would ignore it.
And that is our calling: setting aside our fear, trusting that the Spirit will take care of how our gifts are used and received, we are called to enter the space where kairos time, God’s opportune moment, meets chara, the joy of our master, meets indeed the joy of our own hearts. We are called to hear what God is up to in this moment and to enter into that with our own passions and our own gifts. We are called to transform and to be transformed by the intersection of God’s kairos time and chara joy. In this way, our offering of time, of money, of ability, becomes something more than mere volunteerism. It becomes the mission of the Body of Christ in the world. It becomes the overwhelming joy that moves us to worship. It becomes worship.
What is the passion, the joy, the chara, of Christ Church Lutheran? What are the needs of our community, both inside this building and out, that our passion might serve? That is the question that this kairos time has set before us. As we listen, we will surely hear God’s answer, and God’s kairos time, God’s in-breaking kingdom, will collide with our God-given chara and passion. And the results will be spectacular!
In my short time here at Christ Church Lutheran, I have met some incredibly gifted people. Not only are they gifted in their abilities, from music to leadership, from hospitality to fix-it-ness, and a huge variety of others, but, like Babette, they are gifted in their desire to share those abilities. I should say, you are gifted in the desire to share your abilities. And I see a desire not only to share your gifts with one another, but with the community. This congregation has made a decision to be a transforming congregation, to be a transformed congregation, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the community and for the glory of God.
I am blessed to be at Christ Church at a very special time in the life of this congregation. In Greek, it is called a kairos time. A time of receptivity, a time of openness to what God is up to, a time of pausing to listen and to see what is stirring. It is often translated as opportunity, or right time. Kairos is a word that is about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. When Jesus begins his ministry in the book of Mark, he says “The time is fulfilled, the kairos is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the context into which you offer your gifts, whether they are gifts of money or gifts of time or gifts of ability. The in-breaking Kingdom of God, here at Christ Church Lutheran, in the company of the Body of Christ, is where you bring and share your gifts.
But it’s scary to offer our gifts nonetheless. We see that fear in the words of the third slave in today’s gospel reading. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Even if we do not believe that God is as the slave described the master, “harsh, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed,” we may experience community that way. Though we would hope that the church would be different, we are human, we are sinners as well as saints, and we fall short of the call that we have, to receive one another graciously. And so, it is often with fear that people meet us, the church community, and it is often with fear that we meet one another. We fear rejection, we fear humiliation, we fear being taken advantage of, and so we hide our talents in the ground. We fear that, like Babette, our gifts will go unrecognized, and while we pour ourselves out for them, people will talk about the weather.
But there is another word that is spoken in today’s text. Twice the master says, “enter into the joy of your master!” The Greek word for “joy” is chara. It is not actually related to kairos time, but the words echo one another. Chara means joy, and its relative chairo means rejoice. It is what the Magi did when the star stopped over the stable where the baby Jesus lay. They chairo-ed with great chara. They rejoiced with great joy. As we talked about in the adult forum Bible study a couple weeks ago, the magi were overwhelmed with joy. They were struck by an almost external wave of joy that washed over them and overwhelmed them. And then “they knelt down and paid him homage.” They worshipped.
In today’s text, that word comes again – enter into the chara, enter into the joy, of your master. It is a joy that is already there, and an invitation that is already there, no matter how, or even if, we choose to use our gifts. And it is a joy that is already there, no matter how, or even if, those gifts are received as we might hope. In spite of their selves, the dinner guests find themselves transformed by Babette’s feast. They find old jealousies and rivalries melting away, and they end the evening holding hands, dancing around the well in the center of the village, singing a song of worship and service. The Spirit moves through Babette’s gift, in spite of those who would ignore it.
And that is our calling: setting aside our fear, trusting that the Spirit will take care of how our gifts are used and received, we are called to enter the space where kairos time, God’s opportune moment, meets chara, the joy of our master, meets indeed the joy of our own hearts. We are called to hear what God is up to in this moment and to enter into that with our own passions and our own gifts. We are called to transform and to be transformed by the intersection of God’s kairos time and chara joy. In this way, our offering of time, of money, of ability, becomes something more than mere volunteerism. It becomes the mission of the Body of Christ in the world. It becomes the overwhelming joy that moves us to worship. It becomes worship.
What is the passion, the joy, the chara, of Christ Church Lutheran? What are the needs of our community, both inside this building and out, that our passion might serve? That is the question that this kairos time has set before us. As we listen, we will surely hear God’s answer, and God’s kairos time, God’s in-breaking kingdom, will collide with our God-given chara and passion. And the results will be spectacular!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
All Saints Day
For All Saints Day today, we took all of the names of those who had died in the history of the congregation and hung them around the sanctuary. Our inspiration came from Hebrews 12, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." We also collected names of loved ones outside the congregation. At the end of the day, we had over a thousand names hung on individual slips of paper, in chronological order by date of death. You can see the installation, and a few of our family's saints by clicking here.
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