SCRIPTURE: Luke 9:51-62
TEXT:62Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” THEME: The Church of God needs to compost for new generation of believers. INTRODUCTION My favorite Pod Cast is coming to an end. On Being with Krista Tippett is reaching the time, where its host feels that she has accomplished what she has set out to do and will stop the daily grind of producing a weekly show. I began listening to this pod cast after attending my first General Synod where Krista Tippett was a presenter at one of the workshops. Often times I would listen as I gardened and somehow, her topics seem to intersect the themes I was pondering that week. She began with interviews of scientist who held deep faith in God and were able to mesh the two as complementary instead of diametrically opposed. This week as I was hanging laundry I began listening to her latest offering, with Adrienne Maree Brown. Her biography describes her as; “A student of complexity. A student of change and of how groups change together. A “scholar of belonging.” A “scholar of magic.” She grew up loving science fiction, and thought we’d be driving flying cars by now; and yet, has found in speculative fiction the transformative force of vision and imagination that might in fact save us.” Wouldn’t you know it, this is exactly what this week’s lectionary reading is about? SCRIPTURE As Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, he has a vision of the People of God that is greater than what the temple can contain. Temple worship is too small and localized for what Jesus is bringing with the Love of God. The inclusive nature of God’s love reached far beyond the sin and sacrifice cycle perpetuated by the Jewish religion. Relationships with the Love of God are abundant, diverse, not centrally located but beyond age, race, nation and sex. God’s love is not dispensed, restricted, regulated or controlled, but surfed, moved by and washed over. Jesus is in Samaria to share the love of God, but old prejudices and suspicions prevent them from welcoming the Good News. The Demoniac is liberated from oppression as the pigs that host Legion are now destroyed. Afraid of Jesus, the Samaritan city asks Jesus to leave. So, Jesus leaves their own former demoniac to tell them about the love of God. Jews and Samaritans have a difficult history of betrayal, hate, disappointment, selfishness and abandonment. Judgments and accusations have been cast against each other. The next town over was also afraid. Mistrust, suspicion and intolerance characterize their encounter. They don’t even try to understand what Jesus’ setting his face towards Jerusalem is all about. Instead, they interpret Jesus’ actions as ignoring or minimizing them by leaving them for Jerusalem. They don’t realize that Jesus needs to go there to bring a newness to the people of God, beyond the limits of Jerusalem, which would include Samaria and all people. The third town they approach allows them to come but with conditions to their participation in God’s movement of love. We cannot control God much less the movement of God’s love. The measured relationships balanced between sin and sacrifice with God will be opened up with love; unregulated, inclusive and diverse through the Spirit. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” A new system of being the people of God will emerge to include all of these changes, as the Spirit gives birth to the church. Jewish temple worship cannot imagine the love of God singing praises in Hawaii. This is why Jesus turns his sights on to the events in Jerusalem. This is how he will be a Savior to All People, just as foretold to shepherds by the angels at Jesus’ Birth, “A Savior has been born to you for all people.” APPLICATION The old needs to be plowed under to fertilize the new God is creating in love, for the Kingdom of God. What is God venturing to create, fertilized by our last crops? Remember when we were young; we were defiant, we had energy, we resisted authority, we questioned why things had to be done the way they have always been done, we protested injustices. We dressed in ways that our parents disapproved of. We wore our hair in ways that made us look unkept. We tested the boundaries of independence and freedom. In our youth we made choices about substances, sexuality, and how we chose to behave. We had to make do with what we had. The modern pieces of technology we owned were a pocket calculator and a typewriter. The most important relationships we had, came from our family, the church in a variety of forms and love. Not that different from the emerging generations of Christians, except they have more distractions, more technology, more media at their fingertips and more cyber relationships. They are also more mature than we were at their age, but they don’t trust the structure and authorities as we have. So, they question what we have taken for granted as truth. Then when our structures witnesses more to a political democracy than community of God’s love, they choose not to continue to be part of the church. What has worked for us in the past may have to be composted to serve something that will reveal a modern-day foretaste of Heaven. Adrienne Brown says, “Change is coming. You can be prepared for it, and you don’t have to be a victim of it. You can actually shape it.” It takes “radical imagination” to see “beyond the constructs of what is and to see a future where we all get to be there, not causing harm to each other and experience abundance.” Part of our history as the Hawaii Conference was the sending of missionaries to the Micronesian Islands. Descendants of this missionary activity are now in Hawaii and their churches need places to worship in our community. What transformative imagination and vision is God giving us to be the church in a new way? CONCLUSION Adrienne Maree Brown’s interview was apropos in talking with Krista Tippett who is in her last season, as well as to us as we witness the strain of our own organizational structures. Our church will be working on by-law changes because we are not able to fill all of the nominated seats of the past. That structure has reached what they set out to accomplish but is impossible for us to continue in its current form. We will also be presenting a bare bone proposed deficit budget for next year, lacking the income from the County Fair. Adrienne Brown says when organizations accomplish what they set out to do, they should say, “Great. We did a good job. Let’s call it. Let’s learn what we need to learn and move on.” But instead, they say, “No, we need to persist. So, let’s change our mission, we’ll update our mission, and here’s what the philanthropy is willing to fund. And they get contorted.” She says, “now it’s time to compost this and process it and see where else the resources need to flow.” Adrienne Brown continued, “what you’re speaking to is the life force, right? Everything dies, but that’s kind of good. [laughs] It makes for a very rich world. All the richness, all that fecundity, all that beautiful miracle of life, it happens because we live in cycles, not perpetuity.” Krista Tippett responded, “And as you say, composts something else, right — other seeds. Other seeds then have their moment, have their time.” This is what Jesus is doing as he sets his face to go to Jerusalem. He is on a composting mission to nourish the seeds of a new crop.
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