To Live to God (First Timothy 1:12-17)

Francis Asbury, our congregation’s namesake, arrived in this country on October 27, 1771. He was twenty six years old.

Born and raised in England’s West Midlands, Asbury experienced Christianity as a force of hope and transformation at an early age. As a child, he remembered feeling “something of God as early as the age of seven” and saw religion help his mother come out of a very dark season of grief after the death of Francis’ older sister. As a teenager, he saw faith and holy living as positive alternatives to the destructive habits that followed industrialization into his community. With his mother’s encouragement, this was also the time when he became active in the local Methodist circles.

Asbury got a job working for one of the wealthy local families when he was thirteen. Finding his employers to be “one of the most ungodly families” in the area, he soon began apprenticing with a local blacksmith.

When he was 18, he began leading Methodist small groups or classes.

He started preaching in his early twenties, and, at twenty two, he left his apprenticeship to become one of John Wesley’s full-time itinerants–which means he was expected to become well read in Methodist theology and practices and to preach at various locations on a circuit.

After four years of circuit preaching in England, Asbury raised his hand to take an assignment that not many of his colleagues wanted. Wesley accepted his offer and appointed Asbury to a circuit called, simply, “America.”

On September 4, 1771, Francis Asbury boarded a ship in a place called Pill, which is near Bristol, England and began his journey. After a few days at sea, he wrote these words—a personal inventory of sorts—in his journal.

Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honour? No, if I know my own heart. To get money? No. I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do.

He never set foot in England again, but, over the next forty five years–the rest of his life–Asbury loved, led, and labored to bless and to make the place and the people to whom he had been sent the best version of themselves.

From Maine to Georgia, from the sandy Atlantic Coast to Kentucky’s bluegrass, and all stops in between, Asbury did what he set out to do. He lived for God and inspired so many–including the families that started this congregation–to do the same.

On December 10, 1771, a few weeks after he arrived in the colonies, Asbury gathered and prayed with the group that became the genesis of our church at a farmhouse just over the hill near what is today Central Avenue.

Of all the preachers Wesley sent to America, Asbury was the only one who stayed throughout the American Revolution.

In the course of his ministry, he travelled over 300,000 miles, crossed over the Allegheny Mountains at least 60 times, preached more than 16,000 sermons, and ordained hundreds of ministers.

Under his leadership, the number of American Methodists increased from fewer than 1500 at the time of his arrival to over 200,000 at the time of his death, and, to this day, we are one of three United Methodist churches just in Westchester County that still bear his name.

Memorials to Asbury often include numbers like these, and they are impressive. His stats read like the back of your favorite All Star’s baseball card, but Asbury’s numbers only tell us part of his story.

In the end, they point to the deeper convictions and beliefs that motivated him.

Asbury stayed in America because he felt a sense of calling and duty to be here, even when war broke out.

He loved this land and its people.

He travelled so many miles because he genuinely believed that Jesus had something good to offer the people in the next town, up the next holler, and over the next mountain.

He preached so many sermons because he had a way of talking about sin, grace, and salvation that hit the mark in peoples’ hearts.

As one awakened listener said, “[Asbury had me] ready to cry out, ‘How does this stranger know me so well!’” (Andrews, pp 78-79)

Yes, the numbers are impressive, but they hardly give the measure of the man, his faith, or his story.

Barbara Easton is a contemporary leader in the British Methodist Church. She wrote this remembrance about Asbury five years ago.

Why am I such a fan of Asbury? I think it’s because, by rights, he was someone that no-one should ever have heard of. Most things in life were stacked against him – he was an apprentice nail-maker with little education. Yet he was fired up by the faith that he found and this gave him an energy which nothing could stop. He didn’t have a lot of learning, but he studied (and kept studying) to get the education he needed. At a time when most people didn’t travel far, he went round and round the preaching circuit of the growing, challenging towns encouraging people to find a transformative faith like his. He was said to be an extra-ordinary preacher’. He didn’t always have great health or confidence, but he didn’t let that define him or what he could do for the church. He put up his hand and said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’ (Marking the 250th Anniversary of Francis Asbury’s Historic Journey to the USA)

“Whither am I going?” the young missionary asked himself. “To the New World. What to do? To gain honour? No….To get money? No. I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do.”

As I was preparing for this Heritage Sunday service, I came across a reference to First Timothy 1:12-17. I honestly can’t remember whether it was said to be one of Asbury’s favorite scripture passages or merely a scripture that reminded the author of his ministry.

Regardless, Asbury’s understanding of why he came to America helps put us in a position to grasp the power of the scripture lesson we’ve read together today.

Ostensibly written by Saint Paul, First Timothy 1 describes the change God’s mercy and forgiveness made in his life and the apostle’s hopes for how God would use his witness to bless others.

It’s a joyful expression of someone who knows that their life turned out better than they deserved because of God’s grace and who feels a responsibility to provide others with the support and encouragement to experience a similar transformation for themselves.

Hear the Word again.

I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:12-17)

I think that this is a beautiful and incredibly relatable passage.

It’s as if Paul is saying, “My life was a mess and I was working against everything good when God overwhelmed me with the faith and love that I so desperately needed, not because I deserved these things, but because it is Jesus’ nature to give us these things. So now I understand that what I’ve been through, how I carry myself, and how I treat people can help someone else start living for God and having a better life, too.”

“So that in me…Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.”

I love that closing verse and the emphasis it places on God’s patience. It’s not that God turned Paul into such a moral giant that people couldn’t help but be inspired by him. It’s not that God blessed him with the intellect to win every argument, the charisma to light up every room, or the humor to land every punchline.

It’s that God was patient with him and allowed him to fail and to try again, to grow in fits and starts, to mess up, yet always to love him with a love that would never let him go.

That’s what made change possible. God’s love in Jesus Christ was the catalyst of transformation.

That, after all, is the essence of the Good News.

You don’t have to be the perfect person who never screws up.

You don’t have to know the answer to every question or to be somebody that everybody likes.

You just have to experience God’s unconditional love for you, to say “Yes” to it, and to let that love do what it does within you–to change you, your relationship to the world and your neighbors, your actions, your heart.

Whether or not he called First Timothy 1 one of his favorite verses of scripture, I don’t have any doubt that the people who knew him would’ve said that passage reminded them of Francis Asbury, and that a light like what Paul described shined within Francis that illuminated something profound and holy in the people he met and cared about.

We should be inspired and humbled that our congregation carries the name of such a devoted saint.

When he was twenty six years old and sailing off into the unknown of ministry in America, Francis Asbury admitted to himself, “[I don’t want honor or money, I just want] to live to God, and to bring others so to do.”

How would it change our lives and the scope of our ministry together if we pursued the same goal?

I’d like to find out “so that in [each one of us and in the community we build together]…Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.”

Thanks be to God for this Good News and thanks be to God for Francis Asbury. Amen.

Image: Portrait of Francis Asbury by John Paradise

Nobody Puts Jesus in a Corner! (Matthew 22:15-22)

Writer and educator Laurence Peter once noted, “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation."

I think this observation describes our nation’s ambivalent relationship with taxes very well and shows us that looking at our history through the lens of taxation can teach a lot about our most formative experiences.

Take, for example, the American Revolution.

Feeling as though they were being taxed by a government in which their interests weren’t being represented, colonial Americans declared their independence from England two hundred fifty years ago. They even fought a war about it.

But when the new government raised taxes to pay the bills from that war, the colonists-turned-citizens rebelled again and tested the mettle of the Founding Fathers and the young nation.

That’s the story of the Whiskey Rebellion.

A few decades later, when Emancipation inspired white supremists to find new and creative ways to maintain their privileges, poll taxes became a popular way of denying black people the right to vote, even as those same taxes became a major source of government funding.

Imagine that! Paying for what should’ve been the common good with money raised through racist practices–there’s a lot of history to unpack there.

Then, in the early 20th century, as Prohibitionists worked to eliminate alcohol from the culture, along with the substantial tax revenue it generated, the 16th amendment to the Constitution established the federal income tax to cover the losses.

And to this day, as we’ve moved into the second quarter of the 21st century, questions about taxes, tariffs, spending, and debt still remain central to our elections and the body politic.

Learning who has the power to levy a tax, what they tax, and how the money collected from taxes is spent offers important insights into what we as a country have been, who we are, and what we hope to become.

It’s also useful knowledge for students of the New Testament.

This morning’s Gospel Lesson is about taxes. Specifically, Matthew 22 tells of a time in Jesus’ life, just a few days before he died, when two rival parties conspired to ask him a “gotcha question.”

The rival parties were Pharisees and Herodians and their question was whether or not a faithful Jew could pay taxes to the Roman Empire.

Not surprisingly, whenever the Empire raised taxes, people groaned and complained.

In Jesus’ homeland of Judea, however, a serious religious question added a unique wrinkle to the public debate.

The question in Judea was, “Could a devout Jew, in good conscience, pay a Roman tax with a Roman coin that bore an inscription praising the Emperor of Rome–or Caesar–as a god?”

Jews who welcomed and benefited from Roman rule were unlikely to have a problem with such a tax.

Among these were the Herodians.

Other Jews were less comfortable attributing divine qualities to a government and its leaders and took exception to what they saw as the Empire’s arrogance.

The Pharisees fell into this camp.

Despite these important differences, however, the Herodians and Pharisees were willing to work together to set a trap for Jesus.

It turns out he annoyed them more than taxes.

So these two rival groups came together to force Jesus into a corner.

One regarded not paying taxes to Rome as treason and the other thought paying taxes was idolatry, so they asked, “Jesus, which are you? A traitor or a blasphemer?”

“Tell us what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”

We pick up the story in Matthew 22, verse 18.

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me a coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:18-21)

So what can we say about this?

First, we can say that Jesus seems to concede that the tax should be paid. The emperor’s name was on the money so the emperor had a claim to it.

However, Jesus didn’t stop there.

The scripture says he continued and said, “Give also to God the things that are God’s.”

That phrase hits differently, doesn’t it?

It’s not difficult to imagine his opponents celebrating that he had taken the bait of their trick question, only to realize that he had deftly turned the tables on them.

Pharisees and Herodians thought they had stumped Jesus, but his response caused them to question themselves.

The Gospel even says, “When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.” (Matthew 22:22)

Professor Christopher Bryan summarizes the predicament in which Jesus’ rivals found themselves.

What… bears God’s image, so that it should be owed to God? No Jew, Pharisee, or even Herodian could fail to know the answer to that. They themselves bore God’s image. They owed a mere head-tax to Caesar, because the coinage was Caesar’s. But they owed themselves to God, because they belonged to God...They have asked Jesus a question about their relationship to [the Empire] and he has answered it; but in doing so he has used the form of their question to challenge them with an altogether deeper and more dangerous question of his own, about their relationship to God. (Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church, and the Roman, p. 46)

Jesus asks the same deeper and dangerous question of the Church, and the Church hasn’t always been up for the challenge.

In some cases, we’ve answered Jesus’ question by offering a nearly unconditional endorsement of the political status quo.

Pay your taxes, do what your leader tells you to do, and don’t cause trouble—that’s what good Christians are supposed to do because disobedience is a sin and Jesus is only concerned about spiritual things anyway.

This has always been the answer preferred by tyrants and the privileged, but it seems unlikely that Jesus took a self-serving gotcha question about Roman taxes as the opportunity to jettison the entire witness of God’s justice seeking prophetic Spirit in the name of a go-along to get-along version of the Gospel.

No. That’s not what’s happening here.

Neither is this an invitation for disciples to seize the power of the government to achieve their own, self-appointed ends.

State favored religion, so-called holy wars, faith in “God, Gold, and Guns,” but not necessarily in that order—disciples may find things like these tempting, but, truly, the only worthwhile debate about them is whether they produce a worse version of politics or religion, because it’s undeniable that they yield toxic versions of both.

For example, it’s hard to believe that Jesus wanted his very public and brutal death to show his disciples that what they really needed to do was take control of the state so that they could hang the right kind of people on crosses, but sure enough, just this week, a popular social media influencer shared with his millions of followers his belief that God must support state sponsored executions because Jesus had one.

That’s a position one takes when they just want God to bless the policies that they’ve already decided to support, not someone who is striving to seek God’s kingdom and to make Jesus the Lord of their life, but such is the confusion that occurs when we give more to Caesar than he deserves.

Jesus said, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

It’s easy to illustrate what it looks like when people get this wrong, but what does it look like when we get it right?

I think the only workable answer is that it looks like Jesus—the way he crossed barriers to show people that they mattered, the way he cut through the machinations of those who were set on malice and division, the way he embodied the Image of God and recognized that same image in others.

“Jesus is God’s politics incarnate,” note theologians Brent Laytham and Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom, and “God’s politics is a politics of forgiveness, compassion and mercy.” (Render Unto God)

The two writers conclude, “If we start with that as bedrock, then at least we’ll know who we, the church, are called to be as citizens of God’s kingdom.”

I like that perspective.

If we build our lives, our ministry, our witness on the bedrock foundation of Jesus, who is forgiveness, compassion, and mercy incarnate, “then at least we’ll know who we, the church, are called to be.”

There came a time in Jesus’ life, just a few days before he died, when two rival parties conspired to ask him a “gotcha question” about paying taxes. They wanted to box him into a corner–to turn him into a traitor or a blasphemer–but what he said left them amazed and confused.

We might not be as duplicitous as those who tried to entrap Jesus, but we still like to corner him and to try to make him say what we want to hear.

We want him to tell us that God will bless the positions we’ve taken and the policies we support.

We want him to say that the path of least resistance just happens to be the road God wants us to take.

We want to hear that we can keep the Emperor and God happy and satisfied and that it’s not going to cost us anything.

That might be what we want to hear, but no matter how clever the question, Jesus won’t be tricked into telling us that which isn’t true.

Nobody puts Jesus in a corner!

Instead, he sees through all our schemes, biases, and motivations and invites us to think about deeper and holy things–the things that make for justice, community, and love.

He avoids his rivals’ traps and our self-centereredness in order to share the Good News.

Caesar wants it all, but God already has it all.

Let us, then, build our lives, our ministry, and our witness on Jesus, so that at least we’ll know who we are called to be.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Augustus as Jove, holding scepter and orb (first half of 1st century AD)

Leave it Behind (Exodus 32:1-14)

The time that Moses spent on the mountain with God discussing and receiving God’s covenant for the people is one of the most extraordinary and important moments in the Bible.

We’ve touched on some elements of that story in recent weeks, but it deserves a closer inspection this morning.

Moses’ mountain top experience happened,you may recall, while the Israelites were making their way out of Egypt and the physical, mental, and spiritual slavery that they lived with there for generations. Guided on the journey by God, the people had miraculously crossed the Red Sea, received manna from heaven, and quenched their thirst with water from a stone.

After about three months, the people reached what the Bible calls “the wilderness of Sinai,” a rugged and mountainous landscape that, somewhat confusingly, is within the boundaries of the modern nation of Egypt.

Entering Sinai, God revealed the divine intentions.

This is how Exodus 19 puts it.

On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai…Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’” (Exodus 19:1, 3-6a)

It might not give us a warm fuzzy feeling, but God’s language here truly is intimate. In fact, the passage reads something like a wedding proposal. In essence, God is saying, “Look, we’ve been through a lot together, I love you very much, and I’d like to make this official.”

Author Thomas Cahill elaborates,

the great God YHWH, who alone has dominion over all, here adopts the posture of a suitor, one who woos a demanding woman, patiently explaining how highly he values her and how exalted he foresees their life together. The people are being prepared for something more than they have already experienced. (The Gift of the Jews, p. 135)

That new beginning was a covenant relationship and what follows in the scripture is the disclosure of the new relationship’s terms and expectations–the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, guidance for worship and community life.

It’s a scene that ends with a really beautiful verse–Exodus 31:19.

[And] when God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. (Exodus 31:19)

“Written with the finger of God” Amazing, right?

Like I said, as far as big moments go, this is as big as it gets, but while Moses and God were having a heart to heart on the mountain top, down below, the people were sending flirty messages to their ex.

Frustrated that Moses had been on the mountain for so long, the people asked his brother Aaron to “make gods” for them, which he did by melting down gold they had carried out of Egypt and casting it into the statue of a calf or a bull, a form of an idol that was nearly ubiquitous in the places the Israelites had been and where they were going.

What happened, therefore, can be understood as a result of the same mindset that led the people previously to complain that it was better to have food and to be a slave than to be free, but hungry.

It was a mindset that revealed the people were willing to stick with something familiar, even if they knew it would hurt them, rather than take hold of that which was liberating, but unfamiliar.

Comforted, then, by the well known image of a golden calf, the people cut loose.

They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel. (Exodus 32:1-6)

Again, Thomas Cahill helps us understand what’s going on here.

He writes,

What follows is an orgy of prostrations, animal slaughter, feasting, drinking, and as the Book of Exodus puts it discreetly, “reveling”--that is, sexual indulgence in the manner of pagan liturgy.

He continues,

[The people] have mistaken [the Creator] for his creation…With a little ingenuity, we might even conclude that they succeeded in breaking all Ten Commandments–but even five out of ten is a pretty good average for so short a time. (p. 149)

The golden calf unleashed a stampede of debauchery, and it elicited an intense response.

First, God saw what was happening and was furious.

Moses successfully convinced God to calm down, but then lost his mind with anger when he went down the mountain and saw for himself what the people were up to.

He smashed the stone tablets upon which the finger of God had written.

He ground up the golden calf, put it in water, and made the people drink it.

And then he went back to God and basically said, “I hope you’ll forgive them, but if not, just get me out of here.”

And God said something like, “I’m not gonna lie. This is a really big deal, but I’m not giving up on my people..”

“Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf…” (Exodus 32:35)

By now you’re probably thinking, “Good Lord, Pastor, couldn’t you just tell us one of those stories about Jesus today instead?”

I will. We’ll get there. But first, as wild as this story is, we really do need to deal with the Golden Calf.

Maybe the way to begin is to note that while we call it the Golden Calf because of its association with this specific scene from the Bible, in the big picture, it really was just a golden calf, one of many such idols dotting hearts, minds, and religious landscape in that time and place.

All across the area that we call the Middle East, different cultures represented various gods in their pantheons as a bull or a calf.

Archeologists and anthropologists even have a name for this phenomenon. They call it “regional bovine cultic activity,” which is a great way to make worshipping a statue of a cow sound totally mundane and commonplace.

Usually, these gods were associated with thunderstorms, strength, virility, and fertility.

In Egypt–again–where the Israelites had lived for generations, there were at least three of these bull gods.

Now, did the Israelites think they were worshipping one of these Egyptian bovines? Maybe. Maybe not.

But were they mimicking habits and religious practices that they saw in Egypt or had heard about there? I think that’s clear, and I think that the impulse to reduce their extraordinary relationship with the God of the Exodus to the ordinary stuff of idols and revelry is the reason the golden calf inspired such a reaction.

That’s why the story ends with a plague.

God was warning the Israelites that if they wanted to eat like slaves in Egypt and worship like slaves in Egypt, then they were going to end up like Egypt, far from the path to freedom and renewal that God’s Covenant made possible.

The scandal of the Golden Calf is that it revealed the people would stick with something familiar, even if they knew it would hurt them, rather than take hold of that which was liberating, but unfamiliar.

The question for us is, “Are we willing to make a different choice?”

Are we going to continue with lifestyle habits that leave us tired and depleted and expect to suddenly start waking up in the morning feeling refreshed and invigorated?

Are we going to resurrect failed blood and soil policies from history’s trash heap and expect that, this time, they’ll actually lead to a better future instead of tragedy?

Are we going to run it back with ministry models and ideas that have left the Church irrelevant, undisciplined, and unable to make disciples who are so firmly anchored to the rock of Jesus, his love, and his grace that they can resist the popular siren songs of the age?

Are we going to leave behind the familiar, but harmful in order to embrace God’s liberating mystery?

Now here’s that story about Jesus I promised you.

In the course of his ministry, at the time when the crowds were really starting to notice him, Jesus issued a famous invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

I don’t think anyone who heard that invitation had a golden calf slung over their shoulders, but I have no doubt that many had been carrying far heavier weights for a very long time.

Griefs and disappointments, anger and rage, worries, fears, regrets, broken hearts, broken dreams—Jesus has a way of seeking out people who have been carrying baggage like this for so long that it’s come to define how they see themselves and what others think about them.

It’s the kind of stuff that does nothing for us, but we can’t imagine ourselves without—like the way the Israelites dragged memories of slavery with them into the wilderness.

To weary and heavy laden spirits like these, Jesus says, “Put down those burdens, leave them behind, and let me help you stand up straight again.”

He said,

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

One of the hardest decisions people ever make is the decision to walk away from what’s familiar, even if they know it’s no good for them.

But Jesus says your freedom, your future–that you–are worth more than even all the gold that glitters.

So put down that burden. Leave it behind, and let him help you stand up.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?-1665. Adoration of the Golden Calf, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Bold Lines and Bright Colors (Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20)

Keith Haring is one of the iconic visual artists of the 1980s. Gaining attention and refining his style as a graffiti artist in New York City’s subways, Haring–who died of AIDs in 1990–went on to earn international attention by pairing his art–which featured bold lines, hyper-saturated colors, and often faceless figures–with his passion for some of the era’s defining social challenges—causes like promoting safe sex, raising awareness and research funds to fight AIDS, and protesting South Africa’s apartheid regime.

One of Haring’s most famous images was a poster for the organization ACT UP. It featured three figures and the message “IGNORANCE = FEAR / SILENCE = DEATH / FIGHT AIDS ACT UP.”

He also designed the album cover for “A Very Special Christmas”--one of the decade’s great Christmas albums which included tracks by the likes of Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi, Sting, Madonna, and U2.

But given our ongoing series of readings from the Book of Exodus, it’s Haring’s version of The Ten Commandments that is on my mind today.

First shown in France in 1985, this series of massive, 25 foot tall canvases “ain’t your grandma’s version of the Ten Commandments.” as one reviewer noted.

Writing about the exhibition’s American debut in 2008, Jenna Weissman Joselit remarked, “Roman numerals or wisps of Hebrew phrases are nowhere in evidence. Instead, Haring’s Ten Commandments constitute a heady brew of television sets, dollar signs, x’s, phalluses galore, and the artist’s characteristically faceless stick figures.”

The series is wild and I’m not going to claim to understand all of its eccentricities or even to know which canvas depicts which commandment, but it is, without a doubt, thought provoking, and its color, movement, and arresting impact capture something of the Sinai story that we miss when we reduce the scripture’s message to words chiseled in sterile stone.

Weissman Joselit’s review continues,

Some say that Haring used the template of the Ten Commandments to challenge—and subvert—longstanding assumptions about capitalism, domesticity, and sexuality. Others suggest that in making his own version of the Decalogue, Haring took on the religious establishment with which he had an uneasy relationship at best….When seen from that frankly autobiographical perspective, Haring’s Ten Commandments might well be construed as an act of repudiation. Then again, maybe it’s an act of reclamation. (Rules Writ Large, Jenna Weissman Joselit).

However we understand him and his work, Keith Haring reminds us that Exodus is a story best told with bold lines and bright colors.

According to the Bible, the Ten Commandments are, after all, a gift to a people whose lives were filled with violence, abuse, signs, wonders, miracles, chaos, deprivation, faith, and failure that emerged from an encounter between their one-time fugitive leader Moses and their plague-dealing God on a mountain top shrouded in smoke, fire, and lightning.

There’s nothing sterile about that!

No, this is a messy story that pulsates with life, mystery, fear, and hope.

Maybe Haring’s perspective has something to recommend to us, then, that is missing from our culture’s obsession with making monuments out of the Commandments or arguing about where and when it’s appropriate to put them on display?

Forty-plus years since its debut, Keith Haring’s Ten Commandments remain provocative, as evidenced by the words of a gallery curator from earlier this year.

This series encapsulates Haring's belief in art as a tool for social change, offering a visual ethic that transcends its 1980s origins to address timeless human struggles….As we continue to grapple with issues of justice and community, Haring's commandments remind us of the power of imagery to inspire action and empathy. (Keith Haring's Ten Commandments: Decoding the Street Prophet's Visual Manifesto)

In 1978, historian Thomas Lawrence Connelly published a book that criticized the sanitized and mythologized way in which noted Confederate Robert E. Lee is remembered in our country. Connelly called the book The Marble Man.

In much the same way, we could call these verses of scripture “The Marble Ten” because, while we get that they are important, we really don’t engage with them or meditate upon them in any serious way.

Rather, we file them away with those scriptures we like to apply to the behavior of other people, but, when it comes to ourselves, “No, thanks. We’re good.”

As the great preacher Tom Long remarked,

In the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging "thou shalt not." For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society. For such an understanding…a two-and-a-half-ton rock…is a perfect symbol.

But Long says this understanding has serious flaws.

Understanding the [Commandments] as a set of burdens overlooks something essential, namely that they are prefaced not by an order—"Here are ten rules. Obey them!"—but instead by a breathtaking announcement of freedom: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery".

While other groups of ancient people followed similar codes of conduct, this was a specific code for a specific people who were on a journey with a specific god—the One who brought them out of slavery in Egypt and was making them free.

Like a cloud of fire to guide them at night, manna in the morning to feed them, and water in the desert to quench their thirst, the Ten Commandments were not only a blessing that met the needs of the present moment.

These were also tools given by God to the people to help them build a free and secure future.

The Commandments are a reminder that leaving physical slavery behind in Egypt was the just first of several steps in the people’s journey to true emancipation.

Remember when things became difficult and the people said that they would rather live as well fed slaves in Egypt, than die as hungry free people in the wilderness.

What did God do then?

God met their needs with daily bread and showed them how to survive without submitting to their own oppression.

In giving the Commandments, God did the same and showed them how to survive without resorting to the oppression of others.

1. Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

2. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall not make for yourself an idol… Because idols are burdensome, but God offers freedom.

3. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God.

Because when you lie about what God is doing you will forget what God has done.

Keeping in mind the fact that when Moses came down from the mountain the people to whom he spoke were three or four months removed from generations of slavery, we really see the Commandments in a new light.

4. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work. Slave masters demanded work from you, but God will give you rest.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

They lived and died as slaves without knowing the freedoms you can enjoy.

6. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not covet…anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Slavery devalued your lives, sex, property, even the truth and the ability to stand by your word, but as free people you will know, enjoy, and treasure these as precious gifts.

The Ten Commandments were never intended to be a burden to anyone, but a cause for celebration—the marks of a redeemed and free people.

They show us that life with God should be painted with bold lines and bright colors.

So let it be so with us today.

May God write the Ten Commandments on our hearts, not merely in stone.

May God set us free.

And may we always give thanks to God for this Good News.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: from The Ten Commandments by Keith Haring

A New Menu (Exodus 16:2-15)

Aimee Mullins wears many hats, some of which are athlete, actress, and public speaker.

If you’re a fan of Stranger Things on Netflix, you might recognize her as Terry Ives, Eleven’s birth mother.

If you’re a fan of TED Talks, you might remember her popular speech about adversity and adaptability.

It was the latter of these credits that caught my attention this week.

Mullins was born with a medical condition that required doctors to amputate both of her legs beneath the knee. She is well versed, therefore, in the conversations, emotions, and policies that shape our understanding of topics like accessibility and disability, even as she tries to deconstruct and expand how we think about those things.

One of her points of emphasis is the importance of seeing adversity as normal, not as some sort of deviation from what we should expect, not as some sort of curse that requires a hero’s effort to survive.

As sure as there will be sunny days and rainy ones, too, we will encounter resistance, pushback, and hardships as we move through life.

“Adversity,” Mullins remarked, “is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

The combination of matter of fact realism and optimism in these words really appeals to me, in no small part because few things get me thinking about the need to adapt like the start of a new school year.

September mornings in the Radmacher house look very different from August’s.

Three kids in three schools, two drop offs, one bus stop, new classes, new expectations, new schedules, new after school routines–even as I get caught up in how all the changes are affecting me, I’ve had to check myself and remember that all of these changes hit the kids even more intensely.

It’s no accident that within the first two weeks of school, everyone in our house has called it a night and gone to bed before 7PM at least once already.

Change can be exhausting.

So I was ready to hear what Aimee Mullins had to say.

“Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

Please, tell me more.

Mullins’ TED Talk continued,

The idea I want to put out there is not so much overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves up to it, embracing it, grappling with it….maybe even dancing with it, and perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent, and useful we're less burdened by the presence of it. [To paraphrase Charles Darwin,] “it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

And that’s when it hit me. Our capacity to adapt is one of, if not humanity’s greatest trait.

Across the wide expanse of the human experience, we find examples of individuals and entire communities adapting to meet the challenges of specific moments, particular climates, and emerging threats.

Humanity has found a way to thrive in the extreme heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter.

We’ve figured out how to live in tiny isolated villages and sprawling megacities.

And people have survived situations and circumstances that they never would have chosen, that they wouldn’t even have wished upon their worst enemy, because deep inside they were determined that this moment, this challenge, this hardship would not break them.

This brings me to the scripture before us this morning, another episode of the Bible’s epic story of Exodus.

Last week we jumped into this story by reflecting on the moment when God created a space at the edge of the Red Sea where Moses and his people collected themselves and saw a way forward revealed where no way once seemed possible.

I told you then that I am approaching this season at Asbury as if we’re standing on the water’s edge like Moses and the people and that this is our moment to catch our breath, steady ourselves, listen, and find our way.

The Exodus story continues this morning on the other side of the sea where Egypt and slavery have been left behind, but new challenges arise daily–challenges like answering the timeless question, “What do we have to eat?”

Unfortunately, for the Exodus people, the answer was, “Not a lot.”

We pick up the story in chapter 16.

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." (Exodus 16:2-3)

Now it’s very tempting to shake our heads as we read these verses and stand in harsh judgment of the Israelites.

“They’re so ungrateful.”

“All they do is complain.”

Nag. Nag. Nag.

There have been a lot of sermons preached in that vein, and I’m sure I’ve preached a few of them–as if we’ve never been so “hangry” that it overwhelmed our sense of gratitude and reason.

But that quote from Aimiee Mullins got me thinking about getting into this story from another angle–of not seeing it as an indictment of the people’s lack or gratitude, but as an acknowledgment that adaptation is an essential characteristic for moving forward with faith and purpose.

Let me explain.

Those people who were complaining to Moses were, in fact, survivors. They had seen some things and, confronted by tremendous hardships in Egypt, they adapted and thrived.

Exodus chapter 1 says, “the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” (Exodus 1:7)

We should be really careful, then, about making them out to be weak-willed complainers.

But even still, in our story, those survivors are facing an existential threat.

They’re not imagining things.

They need to eat.

And it’s an ugly side of our privilege that would shame hungry people for not being thankful.

No, I think it’s possible that the point of our story isn’t to show us that the people lacked gratitude as much as it is about helping us to see that they were trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions and that the old way wasn’t going to work for them anymore.

Egypt’s flesh pots and bread ovens couldn’t do anything for the Israelites in the wilderness.

Those were just memories now, memories of a different problem with a different solution that wasn’t relevant to people’s current situation at all.

Doing what had worked in the past was a recipe for hunger in the present because the menu was changing in the wilderness.

The LORD spoke to Moses, "I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.'"

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.” (Exodus 16: 11-15)

“Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

As we consider the challenges we’re facing today, I believe it’s helpful to ask ourselves if we’re trying to solve them with solutions to questions that aren’t even being asked of us anymore.

Maybe age and health have shifted the options available to us.

Maybe you’re moving into a situation in which you need to be more independent than you have been, maybe it’s time to be more of a team player.

And for our church—every church for that matter—we’re always confusing the timelessness of the Gospel with the timeliness of the ministries to which we’re being called.

How many people, how many churches, are beating their heads against the wall trying to figure out what happened and why what they’re doing isn’t working for them anymore, when it used to work so well?

Like life in the wilderness, doing what worked in the past is a recipe for hunger–or frustration, or aimless church life–when we fail to hear the questions that the present moment asks of us.

But thanks be to God, hunger isn’t our destiny.

We just need to learn to live with a new menu.

The promise of our faith is that God offers us what we need to face our present moment, whatever our present moment is.

The Exodus story calls it manna from heaven.

Jesus said it’s daily bread and we should pray for it.

And in the lived experience of God’s people, it’s the willingness and openness to say this challenge, this hardship, this “adversity is just change that I haven't adapted to yet,” but I can, and I will, because God has more to say about who I am and what I can accomplish than any one or anything else.

And that’s why, even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, our’s is a story of Good News.

Thanks be to God for this Good News today. Amen.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flaming_Grill_New_Menu_board,_Malpas,_Newport_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7747384.jpg

Slowed Down to Move Forward (Exodus 14:19-31)

I enjoy doing genealogical research, learning about my family’s history, and, occasionally, working what I’ve found out into a sermon. For example, I remember preaching a sermon after Dana and I visited the small German town where generations of Radmachers lived about how my great great great grandparents Peter and Anna left that place and came to the U.S. with their kids in 1851. In fact, stories like that reflect one of the things about this kind of research that I find most interesting.

I suppose there are people who get into genealogy because their family tree holds secrets about long lost ties to royalty, tales of fortunes lost and found, and connections to famous people.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not my story.

No, I come from a long line of ordinary people who worked (usually as farmers), got married, raised their children, and, every now and then, picked up everything and started over in a new place.

And I love trying to figure out why they made the decisions they made.

Were they running away from trouble, running toward opportunity, chasing a dream, restless, desperate?

Did they feel like they were jumping into the unknown or did they see themselves as part of a larger migration, a historic movement of people?

Maybe it was a mix of forces and feelings like these.

Thoughts like these filled my mind recently when I did something with my research that I’d never done before. I plotted on a map all the places I knew about from which my German ancestors emigrated.

It started when I noticed that both Dana and I had ancestors from small villages in what is today the modern state of Bavaria. I found their hometowns on a map.

This person lived in a small town in Alsace, so mark the spot.

Hanover, Baden, Westphalia–more ancestors, more villages, more spots marked on the map, and so on and so forth until my map had about a dozen pins in it.

And then I took a look at the big picture.

While pins were scattered across Germany, more than half the spots I marked formed a tight cluster–really it looks more like a straight line–just south of Frankfurt, Germany.

I looked closer and checked some names and dates.

It turns out that, over a fifty year period in the middle of the 19th century, entire branches of my family and Dana’s lived in and left behind small towns in a region that you could drive across in a single afternoon today. Some of our people lived as close as ten, fifteen, twenty miles to each other, before making their way to America.

And it fascinates me to think about and imagine both the personal and collective forces those families felt working upon them.

How amazing would it be to sit with them around their tables or take a walk with them to find out what they were thinking, what they were worried about, what they wanted to accomplish?

You see, while our ancestors ultimately took part in a mass migration of millions of persons from Germany to the U.S in the 1800s, each person, each family, in real time, had to make a decision to stay or to leave what they knew and step out into the unfamiliar, and, to me, those are the decisions and stories that truly capture and express the depth of the human experience.

You know the experiences I’m talking about.

The moments where you ask yourself, “Should I stay or should I go?”

Times when you question if the wise move is to hunker down and ride this situation out where you are, or if you need to get out of there as soon as possible?

The realization that you’re not even sure how you came to be where you are, but you’re here now, so what are you going to do about it?

Now look, as far as I know, my ancestors were able to ask and answer these questions for themselves. Their journey to this country wasn’t forced on them, a luxury that not all of our ancestors had.

Even still, if questions like that stir anything within your heart or spirit, if they get you thinking about your life, your family, or the lives of people you care about, then you’re in the right frame of mind to hear one of the most familiar and powerful stories from the Bible in a new way today.

Moses and the Israelites were on the run.

Theirs was a freedom movement–a sprint to leave trouble, oppression, and bondage behind.

But their former captors–Egypt’s pharaoh and his army–were in hot pursuit.

Then, to make matters worse, trouble got out in front of the Israelites again.

The people were on the run until they couldn’t run anymore.

They’d reached the sea, or was it a swamp? Regardless, Moses and his people were stuck.

They were stuck, but they were not hopeless.

Up to this point on their journey, the people had been following God’s lead.

The Bible says that God guided the people by appearing to them in the daylight God as a cloud of smoke and as a pillar of fire at night.

But now, at the water’s edge, something new happened.

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night. (Exodus 14:19-20)

The people were sprinting, their captors were chasing, everyone was heading toward a calamity, and then God slowed everything down.

With Pharaoh's army held at a distance, Moses and the people caught their breath, steadied themselves, listened, and found the way forward.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left…. [and they] walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-29)

The miraculous crossing of the Red or Reed Sea is theological bedrock because it speaks to the very nature of God.

God is a God of liberation.

God rejects oppression.

God will go to great and creative lengths to make a way forward possible for those who yearn to be free.

Now let me just stop here for a moment and point something out. I don’t think our nation or any nation, for that matter, will find a full and comprehensive immigration policy in the story of the Exodus, but we as people of faith can most definitively say a few things about the subject.

Lying about people, treating them with contempt, like they are less than human, that the color of their skin or the place of their birth makes them inherently inferior to red-blooded white Americans, or anybody else for that matter—those attitudes and any policy based upon them deserve to be washed away like the forces of slavery in our story.

Borders and laws exist, of course, but when cruelty becomes policy and people are made to suffer as pawns in the schemes of the powerful and entitled, God’s Faithful Ones should be crystal clear about where we want to be when the Holy Presence moves to separate oppressors and those destined for freedom.

But, I digress.

I am approaching this season at Asbury as if we’re standing on the water’s edge like Moses and the people and that this is our moment to catch our breath, steady ourselves, listen, and find the way forward.

Behind us is a whole litany of challenges that required us to take action, challenges that required us to respond, and challenges that by God’s grace, we’ve met.

I’m talking about things like broken boilers, COVID, and the sea change that has occurred in church life over the last decade.

We’ve met the challenges before us, but life and ministry aren’t just about reacting to what’s chasing after us or what we’ve left in the past.

Sometimes we need a new vision for where we can go with God and sometimes God gives us the space and the time to glimpse a way into the future that we might otherwise miss.

A lot of life is meeting the moment when you have to do something, and that’s ok. Life’s “Have To”s are important.

But sometimes the moment comes when we say, “Of all that I can do, I’m choosing to do this because it’s where God is calling and leading me.”

I think it’s possible that we’re in such a moment—like when the pillar of smoke and fire became a hedge of protection around God’s people—and that the series on prayer we just finished, and the Dream Catching sessions we’ll begin next week, and our retreat next month can help each of us find a new way to be our best selves and a reinvigorated church.

That’s what I hope and I pray that we’ll find our new path together. Amen.

Image: Kotarbiński, Wilhelm, 1848-1921. Crossing the Red Sea, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Perfect Harmony (Colossians 3:12-14)

Dolly Parton died this week, a breaking news story that touched disparate corners of this country like few others can.

Who else will be mourned this weekend in gay dance clubs and evangelical churches alike?

Only Dolly.

Even more than her talent as a songwriter and a musician, Dolly’s true genius, it seems, was her love for people. I think that’s why so many mourn her death. They mourn because, even though they never met her, they believed that she cared about them, that when she said, as she so often did, that “she just loved people,” she meant it, and that her love included all of us.

By putting people above everything else, Dolly had a special way of getting us to appreciate and think about things that really matter, about holy things, and the ways of Jesus, and it was her death that got me thinking about a story from the Gospels.

One day, having worked up an appetite while following in his steps, Jesus’ disciples plucked some grain, some wheat or barley, from a nearby field and ate it.

And that’s when the trouble started.

Mark’s Gospel tells us that some Pharisees–that is to say members of a Jewish sect who were particularly zealous about observing the community’s religious law–took issue with the disciples’ snack break.

The problem was that it was a Sabbath Day, the God-ordained day of rest, and, in the eyes of the Pharisees, the disciples’ actions constituted a Sabbath violation.

The Pharisees said to [Jesus], “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:24)

And Jesus, as he did so often when asked a pointed question, responded with a story.

In this instance, he gave the Pharisees a history lesson, and reminded them of the time King David played loose with the rules in order to feed his troops.

And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food, how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?” (Mark 2:25-26)

Then, as he also did so often, Jesus took a conversation about food and made it into something so much more than food.

He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Said another way, “The Sabbath was made for us. We weren’t made for the Sabbath.”

Jesus’s point is pretty straightforward.

As a day of rest, the Sabbath is a gift from God to humanity for our enjoyment and benefit. It’s a celebration of freedom and God’s blessings, not a chore or a cudgel.

According to Jesus, it was the religious gatekeepers “tsk tsk,” not the disciples’ snack, that most seriously missed the mark.

In this way, the story about Jesus and his disciples getting scolded for eating heads of grain on the Sabbath illustrates some timeless conflict that exists in religious circles—the conflict between law and grace, between rules and freedom, the conflict between people and institutions.

An observation by Professor of New Testament Matt Skinner elaborates on this point. Skinner writes,

It must be noted that Jesus’ argument was hardly novel and therefore not scandalous on its surface. In fact, when he notes that the purpose of the sabbath has always been to serve humankind (as opposed to making humankind serve some stern religious principle), he is essentially restating [a well known scripture] in which God institutes the sabbath so a people who once toiled in slavery can forever enjoy at least a modicum of rest. Rabbinic traditions dating to a century after Jesus if not earlier expressed opinions similar to his words in Mark 2:27…The proper function of the sabbath is to promote life and extol God as a liberator. Everyone knew that.

The next time we read through Mark’s Gospel we can dig into why Jesus made the authorities angry if he was only doing what everyone agreed was right. After all, he didn’t end up on a cross without stirring up some trouble.

For our purposes this morning, however, I want to dwell a bit longer on the conflict at the heart of this story and how we can apply it to our ongoing discussion about praying. Specifically, I want to bring it to bear on the topic of confession and praying for forgiveness.

Maybe more than anything else we do, praying for forgiveness and to forgive others brings to mind our relationship with the rules that we aspire to live by because praying like this is both an exercise in telling on ourselves for breaking those rules and naming names when we believe someone has broken a rule and harmed us.

When engaging in such prayers, our hearts and minds can be pulled to one or two extremes.

On one hand, we can become so obsessed with the rules that we find infractions and sin everywhere we look. Some will turn their gaze inward and become obsessed with their own failures and wretchedness, while others will excel at pointing out the problems with what everybody else is doing.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter where they’re looking, because the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie “Saved!” in which the judgmental character played by Mandy Moore angrily hurls a Bible at a wayward classmate as she snarls, “I am filled with Christ’s love!”

On the other hand, the other extreme turns talk of forgiveness, pardon, and salvation into some sort of toxic brew that convinces believers that the rules don’t apply to them.

People who succumb to this temptation act as though Jesus has somehow given them carte blanche.

“I’m forgiven,” they seem to say, “so I can do whatever I want.”

Or they come to believe that “rules are for suckers” and that having a good cause or reason for what they’re doing means they're no longer bound by any authority.

And in the end, the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of politicians, or pastors, or anyone who lies, cheats, or even commits violence to protect the reputation of their leader, their movement, their institution, their church, or, as is probably the case most often, to protect their own fragile ego.

“Rules for thee, but not for me” would be their motto.

But as he did on that Sabbath Day so long ago, Jesus points us to a more excellent way.

We just don’t get a sense that Jesus wanted us to be religious for religion’s sake. He, instead, lays out a way of living that sets us in harmony with God and one another.

Dolly was on to something when she aspired to just love people.

Listen to how Saint Paul explains this is our reading from Colossians.

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14)

Notice how Paul speaks about forgiveness in the context of practices and virtues like compassion, kindness, and love that build and repair relationships.

There’s nothing static or legalistic here.

Rather, the Gospel message sets us free from such rigid systems, systems that prioritize their own survival, and turns us towards one another as a matter of utmost importance and a means of strengthening our relationship with God.

So it seems we can bring all of this to bear in our understanding of forgiveness.

Just as Jesus would point out that the Sabbath is made for us and that we aren't made for the Sabbath, I think it can also be said that forgiveness is made for us and we aren't made for forgiveness.

By that I mean that we have been given this gift that sets us free from having to be defined by and to define others by the biggest mistakes that we make.

Instead, we can rest in God's love and to aspire to the kind of harmony, partnership, and friendship that Jesus demonstrates and invites each of us to enter into with him.

And that brings us back to Dolly.

This week you've probably heard a little bit of the background behind her huge hit, “I Will Always Love You,” a song born of her friendship and business partnership with a man named Porter Wagoner.

Little side note, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton played the county fair in my hometown in the early 70s.

Anyway, during that era, Dolly was coming into her own as an artist and was ready to break out and pursue her solo career. She had a contract with Wagoner, though, that he intended to enforce and that inevitably led to conflict.

The situation became quite bitter.

Dolly wrote “I Will Always Love You” for Wagoner as a statement of self-respect and defiance.

She was going to do her thing.

She was going to break out on her own, but her action was not born out of hatred or animus.

She did, and always would, love him.

Now, that's a beautiful sentiment, but I think one of the really powerful aspects of that song’s significance is that, towards the end of Porter Wagoner's life, as their careers had gone in very different directions once they split, Dolly purchased his entire musical catalog and gave it back to him as a gift, so that he and his family might have a measure of financial security.

It's one thing to sing songs about always loving someone. It's another to demonstrate the kind of forgiveness that bears witness to that love in real terms.

Dolly gives us a beautiful example of that of what it means to put people first.

And as we come to be a people of prayer, thinking about forgiveness, thinking about our own need for it and our own calling to share it, I pray that we'll do the same.

I pray that we will come to understand prayer as a force of our liberation and the liberation of others. Prayer offers us a way to reach our highest ideals, and, above all, as St. Paul tells us, it is a means of clothing ourselves with love–a love that binds everything together in perfect harmony.

It’s only right that on the Sunday after Dolly passed, we find ourselves thinking about perfect harmony, isn't it?

So let us endeavor to do that in how we live, how we pray, and how we treat others.

Thanks be to God then for this good news today. Amen.

Image: Publicity shot of American singer Dolly Parton, 1977. Public Domain