"Leaping Beyond Values" February 28-29, 2016

Isaiah 55 Luke 13:1-9 How hard it is for us to be vulnerable and let God be God! We like to believe we are so invincible death can't touch this. When we are threatened, we go to nice neat resolution of cause and effect to master problems, rather than living with being fragile, living in the raw places. After falling from the roof, I have learned a different vulnerability. I have had to change my life, doing physical therapy and daily exercise, where I never exercised before, taking medications as prescribed where I never took more than an aspirin. ALL based on a secondary Value system: that if you follow instructions, if you do what you are told, we can get better. I traded my invincibility for following orders, with an expected outcome of gaining Control again. But this morning, I invite you to consider believing in something beyond known values/assumed outcomes, by believe something more than what we control. Leap Year was created because Annual Calendars did not balance with the Sun, Moon and Stars, so once every four years an extra day, a 366th was added. Except that by the 2000th year, our Calendar had caught up, and there was no need for a Leap Day. The reason we persist is out of habit and tradition. Personally, I have come to believe in Leap Day as opportunity to Leap Beyond what we know, to Leap Beyond the Values we hold. One day, one day for which there needs to be no reason, in which we make leaps of faith, one day where we do not have to try to be God, where we can trust God to be! Last Sunday morning during our worship, we were shocked to attention as an Amber Alert sounded. We later knew that at that precise time a man who had been given child custody by the Courts, had been so jealous of his wife's love, he had killed their baby and threw her away in Onondaga Lake. There have been so many deaths, and try as we may, there are no answers. We seek blame. We blame the Father. We blame the Courts. We blame the Mental Health system. The Chief of Police named there were those who even blamed the innocent wife. With no one else to blame, we blame God. Later, we learned blizzard tornados that same day, killed thousands, destroying homes and businesses and lives in what were called natural disasters. We call these “Acts of God” and like the people in the Bible we come to Jesus and the Prophets, asking, begging: Does God Not Care? Where is God? I was blessed to attend Seminary in NYC in the early 1980s, and often listened to the preaching of William Sloan Coffin at Riverside Church. In particular, I recall the Sunday, after Coffin's own son died. There had been a terrible storm, Alex had lost control, driven off the road and drowned in Boston Harbor. Coffin thanked people for their comforting visits, prayers, words and casseroles. He thanked those who sat with he and his wife, offering no words but tears, sitting together in loss. But then the preacher began to Rage, to rage at well-meaning folk, who had sought to control what they could not answer, by saying “It was God's Will.” He asked: Was it the will of God that Alex did not replace his windshield wiper? Was it the will of God that we should be suffering? Was there something we or Alex said or did to cause God to smite him and us so? Was it the will of God that he was driving too fast trying to get to safety? No, this was a tragic accident. We do not know the Will of God. My consolation, my true consolation in faith is confidence that the instant the car left the road and sank beneath the chaos, the heart of God was the first that broke. That is the same statement of rage Jesus makes in the Gospel of Luke. Pontius Pilate was a Roman Fear-monger, a Military Officer persecuting people, whose role in life was to instill fear. Pilate invaded the sanctity of worship, of believers offering sacrifices in atonement to God for their sins, and he not only murdered them, he made demonstration of corrupting their blood with the blood atoning for their sins. Jesus responded to the people blaming God: Does this monster doing this make those who died any worse sinners than any of us? A natural disaster happened, a water tower fell and crushed 18 people, does your not being killed and that they were, make those people worse sinners than any of us? No, we all are sinners, we all are going to die, perhaps by accident, perhaps by murder or war, perhaps by mortality itself. But you posses what all these named who died, were never given: opportunity to find resolution, to forgive the sins between them. What Jesus said elsewhere applies here “Whatever you bind on earth is bound to heaven. Whatever you loose, whatever you forgive, is forgiven forever.” So whether the circumstances of this last week, whatever it is that challenges you to be caught unaware... rather than blaming God, leap instead to what you can do to forgive. Jesus does not answer the Question. No, Jesus/God invites us into a place of vulnerability. It is not a bad thing to feel fragile, to count your blessings and your breaths, not bad especially if that fragility, that vulnerability causes you to turn, to question, to re-evaluate life, to Repent. In Answer Jesus then tells this parable about a fig tree. The landowner comes wanting figs, and the fig tree has no fruit and commands “Cut it down, why should it waste life not providing my wants?” That is our regular response today... The Government is not doing what I want, vote them out. The banks serve their investors, not the community, not the depositors, so close them down. Our kids have not succeeded as we did at their age, so cut them off with “tough love.” My brother insulted me, he has never apologized for anything in life, but until he apologizes I cannot forgive him. But Jesus' farming parables are never about farming, this is a faith parable. The gardener asks: Give me 3 years, 3 years to break down and build up, to fertilize, then judge.” In the Bible, whenever a Parable names: there was a Gardener, this is God or God incarnate, 3 years of gardening... Jesus ministry... challenging judgement with request for a gift of life, we are talking about Grace. In the early years of our marriage, I found I enjoyed refinishing furniture. If our children were traumatized by anything, it was my compulsion to visit Antique stores and Yard sales. We dragged home more pieces, stripped and repaired them. But recently, I've come to realize that the things I had valued were no longer sought. Why would you want oak desks, if you work from a laptop? Who would want a China cabinet, if you eat carryout? Why have bookshelves with a Kindle? Values have shifted. The Nation of Israel had been the greatest, most prosperous and powerful Monarchy on the face of the earth, when suddenly they were beaten, carried off in bondage as slaves, prisoners of war. The people questioned “Is this the Will of God?” “Is there a God who Cares?” After 40 years or suffering, the Prophet Isaiah turned their questions on their head. “Why do you spend your money on what you do not need?” ReConsider that you have Needs and what you need. Repent! Isaiah challenged, why covet and purchase stuff that does not nourish and does not satisfy? Most of us hear the word “Repent” and respond with guilt as if faith were about personal morality. Repentance, at its root meaning is about how we think, our processing, the value we place on relationships and events and behavior. Repentance is not about “I am sorry” or asking for forgiveness. Repentance is a reconfiguration of your whole reality. Repentance requires seeing God, seeing ourselves, our perceptions of meaning, differently. We like nice neat cause and effect, simple answers to complex questions, but there is nothing wrong and a great deal of importance, to living with the questions. Jesus did not answer questions about Pilate, the murdered, or victims of circumstance, instead he responded to their questions with questions and a parable leaving them in the midst of their torn open places. When we face our fears, when we are in places of raw emotion, instead of seeking ready easy answers, we need to stop, look around, question what we have valued and what is beyond value, and where we would leap for that which could truly satisfy? There is no way to make life safe or make God tame, to be insulated from loss or fear, not if we are going to live life. But the leaping determines what we value beyond life and where we go.