Every once in a while, our lectionary (the 3 year cycle of readings we hear on Sunday morning), gives us a text that I don't always feel the need to explain. I don't necessarily want to describe what the text is about. Instead, I just listen to the words as they're read out loud. I don't rush to unpack what they say. I don't try to understand everything that was written. I let the words flow over me and I wait for the Holy Spirit to open me to what God wants to say. The word God gives me might not necessarily be exactly the same word God gives you. Yet the lesson we hear from the Bible will work on us, helping to transform us into the people God knows we can be. 

Today's reading from the book of Romans 15:4-13 is a passage from scripture meant to do something to us. It starts by pointing us to the scripture we've been given and how our faith actually transforms us. Through Christ, our relationship with each other is refined, reformed, and made new so that we can always be a people of hope. And as a people with hope, we have been given words that help carry us through whatever life might throw our way. These words appear in our scriptures, in our prayers, and in the Spirit-filled interactions we have with one another. Yet there will be times when our faith will be shaken, our confidence in God will weaken, and when hope will be hard to see. And when that happens, a passage like this from Romans can help connect us to the God who will never leave our side.

So I invite you to just listen to these words today. Read them out loud if you can. Let the words Paul wrote nearly 2000 years ago feed your faith. One way you can do that is place the sentences from these passages in different parts of our worship service. Include verse 7 in the opening we usually share. Add verse 4 before we read any readings from scripture. Let verse 5 connect you with one another as you gather around the Lord's table. Let verses 10 and 11 be the reason why you sing loud. Let this passage from Romans fill your soul so that verse 13 becomes your anthem and your way of life. Because, right now, you are loved.  And regardless of where you are in your life, God is transforming you into something new. 

0 comments

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

Romans 14:1-12

*************

This September, for me, is a month filled with weddings. Over Labor Day weekend, I officiated the wedding of my sister-in-law and her fiancée. Two days ago, I was in Beacon, NY, standing next to a roaring waterfall as two people committed themselves to each other. And in less than two weeks, I'll be in the foothills of Colorado, officiating the wedding of one of my good friends from high school. Each one of these weddings is different. Each one is unique. And each one is filled with rituals. From the ceremony to the reception, each couple has its own vision of how their wedding day will go. The music will be done in a certain way and the DJ will play specific songs at the right time. The center pieces on the table during the reception will be big...or small...full of flowers or with candles floating in water. The ceremony will include traditional vows that are repeated, or vows written by the couple themselves, or I'll recite the words and wait for the very simple but very powerful “I do.” For the couple and their families, each part of the wedding event is a ritual that requires careful consideration, time, and attention. But there are other rituals at weddings too. And one of my favorite is, as a guest, the ritual of standing at a table, looking at a sea of name cards, trying to find the table I’ll be sitting at during the reception. There's usually a table at the entrance covered in name tags or a poster with the seating chart printed on. And once I find my name, I then scan all the other names, trying to see who is sitting at the table with me. This ritual of finding our table mates can be nerve wracking. We want to sit with people we know but...what if we don't? Are the people who will be sitting with us going to be like us or will they be totally weird? Or maybe we’re the weird one and we just don't know it yet? These and countless other concerns and fears zip through our heads when we're standing at the seating chart, trying to figure out who we are eating with. And these same feelings and anxieties about who is sitting at our table was right there, in the city of Rome, when Paul wrote his letter 2,000 years ago.

Today's reading from the letter to the Romans is our last selection from that book for awhile. We spent this whole summer discovering how this community of non-Jews struggled connecting their culture to their faith. The Romans hoped the teachings from this Jew named Jesus would help them master their passions - those feelings and emotions that stop them from being their best selves. The rules and rituals and methods they saw in Jesus’ teaching seemed to provide a way to turn these Romans be into the best Romans they could possibly be. Yet, the rules weren't so simple to understand. Different people interpreted the rules in different ways. Even when this small community of believers ate together at the 1st century version of coffee hour, conflict happened. Now, this wasn't a battle between vegetarians and omnivores even though verse 2 sort of sounds like it is. The problem was really about where the meat came from. Meat, in the ancient world, was very expensive. Few people could afford to eat meat on any kind of regular basis. Instead, people waited for these animals to be given out after they were used in a sacrifice. The animals would led into a temple dedicated to some god or goddess. They were prayed over, blessed, and then ritually slaughtered. Once the ceremony was over, the meat was served to anyone who needed it. For some in the Roman community, this meat was free and anyone could eat it because, well, those gods and goddesses didn't exist. But others felt eating such meat would violate the food laws that even Jesus might have followed. The act of sacrifice made the meat unclean and, in the eyes of God, would harm anyone who ate it. So, at the same table and during the same meal, there would be those who ate meat and those who didn't - and each side, at a minimum, would see the others are being totally weird. 

Yet Paul’s vision of Jesus broke the Romans’ expectations. The meat wasn't really important; rather, it was the people at the table who mattered the most. Since their baptism put them in a public relationship with Jesus, their relationship with each other mattered too. They were no longer just individual Romans trying to live their best lives. They had put on Jesus and are now the hands and feet, arms and legs, of God’s Son. Even though their bodies might feel like they did before and they might still struggle with their thoughts, emotions, and passions that caused them to sometimes hurt those around them, these Romans were no longer just themselves. They're Jesus too. They carry with them all the promises God makes to all of us - a promise of love, presence, and fidelity. Jesus gave himself fully over to the task of reconciling the world to its Creator; to the task of showing love to those shouldn't be loved; and saying that everyone, including you, has value. Jesus devoted himself to his neighbors. He gave himself to a world that didn't fully understand him and who killed him for sharing his table with people he wasn't supposed to. We can imagine Jesus, at that wedding in Cana, finding his name on a little card, seeing his table number, and refusing to scope out who he might be sitting with. Instead, he would be the first at the table, ready to welcome and care for all who sit by him, whether they realized he was Jesus or not. Our ritual of trying to foresee or maybe even control who we sit with is replaced by a Jesus who is already at the table, ready to eat and share and love whoever shows up. This kind of ritual isn't a ritual that is easy. It's an approach to life that is downright scary. It means we have to talk to people, to all kinds of people, and learn who they are and what their story is. We need to know who at the table eats meat, who doesn't, and why. We need to know ourselves well, to discover the side eyes of judgement we're throwing at those around us. And we need to be flexible in our own way of life so that we can adjust to the needs of whoever God puts in our path. Living this kind of life takes work. It does takes effort. It takes an imagination and a faith that knows we won't be doing this work on our own. Instead we get to live this kind of life because Jesus has already given his life for each of us. We get to serve our neighbor, to bear their burdens, to share their tables, and to help them thrive because the Lord, each and every day, helps us stand gracefully, faithfully, and wonderfully, tall. 

Amen.

0 comments

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Romans 13:8-14

****************************

What made it hard for you to come to church today? 

Now, if it was easy to get to church this morning - awesome. That's great. I hope whatever is working for you today stays that way for as many Sundays as possible. But I know not every Sunday is easy. Sometimes, your car doesn't start or you might wake up feeling sick or maybe, just maybe, today is the day when the Run the Reservoir half-marathon, starting at the Oradell Reservoir and going through Emerson, is literally running outside your house at the moment you need to leave to make it to church on time. Sometimes the road to church on Sunday is literally blocked off. But sometimes that road is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually blocked off too. Even when we make it into this building, we’re still not really here. Our thoughts, maybe even our soul, is somewhere else. And if I'm honest, my mind right now is where it was last week, with my in-laws and extended family in Tampa and the rest of Florida. I was blessed and honored to officiate the wedding of my sister-in-law and the amazing person she's going to spend her life with. The night before the wedding, we drove to the rehearsal in a downpour that flooded the streets, made the trees bend sideways, and reduced visibility to almost nothing. That storm didn't last long but Hurricane Irma will. Maybe a pastor shouldn't admit when they're distracted on a Sunday morning but today, I am. So what can we do with scripture, with faith, and with Jesus, when we’re not as present as we want to be?

In Paul's Letter to the Romans, a letter we've been walking through over the last several months, we’re now in the middle of what some scholars see as Paul’s vision of the activated Christian life. I like to call this the “now what?” of the gospel - the how-does-this-Jesus-thing-matter-for-our-lives right now. For the first 2/3rds of this letter, Paul laid out his argument about why Jesus, why his death and crucifixion, mattered to these Romans who lived hundreds of miles away from where Jesus grew up. Unlike Paul, we have no record of Jesus taking a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt and some parts of modern Syria was about as far as Jesus got and he wasn't there for very long. Jesus was just this young guy who grew up in a province that was considered a backwater part of the Roman Empire. And after stirring up things by eating meals with people he shouldn’t, the Roman Empire killed Jesus in the most scandalous way possible. As a modern day faith community preaching and teaching about how awesome Jesus is and how a relationship with Jesus matters - it's sometimes hard for us to remember that, in Paul's day, Jesus’ story wasn't really an asset. Jesus never raised an army, he never defeated a foe, he never secured some great victlory, he never won - and most of the people who followed him were the least of the least: women, slaves, Gentiles, tax collectors, and fishermen. From a Roman perspective, Jesus’ whole story was a distraction from who God truly is. The creator of everything couldn't be defeated so there's no way God and Jesus could be the same. Jesus’s story, Jesus’s cross, is a distraction from what we want God to be. We don't want a God who dies; we want a God who can't lose. We want a God who can turn away the storms - rather than a God who lives with us through them. The Romans wanted a god who overcomes - who displays power in ways that we can copy and helps us overcome our own faults, fears, and problems, forming us into who we think we want to be. That kind of god is a god who wins but the god we get is the God who loves. 

And that love...can be weird. We sometimes take the words Paul uses here, words that come from the Old Testament and that Jesus himself uses, as some version of the golden rule: if we want other people to treat us well, then we should treat them well to. But that rule depends on what it means to be treated well and who gets to decide what that looks like. Every culture and society has rules about who gets treated in what way; which kind of people are owed certain honors and privileges and respect and which ones aren't. A janitor doesn't have the status a CEO has which means culturally, that janitor is lower on the being treated well ladder. We can say that the janitor deserves respect. We don't give the janitor a red carpet arrival. We save that for the CEO who makes 4000 times that janitor's salary. We carry this culturally defined list of who is owed what - inside of us. It's something we are given because we live here. And the Romans had their version of this list too. So when Paul talked about love, the Romans thought they knew what he meant. The Emperor, the rich, the person who wasn't a slave, is owed a different kind of love because their status is different from the poor, and the slave, and the sick. But the “now what?” of the gospel, of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection means, that the rules of what we think others are owed is undone. Everyone is worthy of love. Everyone is owed love. And every other rule that causes us to treat others differently in ways that are not life giving - those rules are a distraction from what being with Jesus is all about. Love is love is love which is given to us by a God who knows that the walls we build between each other can only come down if the grace of God comes straight into us. And that grace changes us into living, and breathing, and being who God wants us to be rather than into who we think we ought to be. 

That grace knows that, sometimes, we're going to be distracted. Some Sundays, it's going to be hard to get to church. It's going to be hard to hear and sing and pray because our soul feels like it's a million miles away. Yet even when we are distracted from Jesus, Jesus isn't distracted from us. He's still in the words, even when we can't hear them. He's still in the bread, still in the drink, still in the prayers we might need the people around us to speak on our behalf. He's here because he promises to be. And there's nothing we can do to break the promises Jesus makes. Because the Jesus who lived like us, who loved all of us, and who died for us is the same Jesus showing us how we can live for everyone else. In the words of a colleague of mine who is working in Texas and whose church spent all this week clearing out homes damaged and flooded by Hurricane Harvey, “a loved people serve people.” And there is nothing that can distract Jesus from loving us.

Amen. 

0 comments

What are the things in life you wish you liked? What do you keep trying, hoping that this will be the time when you finally enjoy it? There are two of these things on my list. One is bleu cheese. I try it every time I see it. I want to like it. I pray that I will like it. I know I should like it. But when I take a bite of it, I can't take another. Next to bleu cheese is running. Growing up, I tried soccer, lacrosse, and basketball. I picked sports knowing I would need to run up and down a field. I even tried jogging for fun once. But running is something I've never been into. One of the issues I have with running is the pain. Once I start running, sharp pain radiates from my shins. I've learned different stretches and coping mechanisms over the years to deal with the pain but that pain is always there. I wish I liked running. I wish I enjoyed running races because I would like a cool medal. Nothing so far has made running "fun" for me. But I keep trying. God willing, this will be the weekend I complete my first 5K and come bak to New Jersey with a medal in the shape of a bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese. 

Today's reading from Romans 12:9-21 continues what we heard last week. The Romans are trying to embody a life that follows Jesus and Paul is laying out what that life looks likes. Paul starts with love, honor, and service. He advocates taking strong stances against everything that keeps people from God. He explains that a life lived in harmony with others means showing hospitality to strangers and being generous to the people sitting next to you. We're called to know people, crying when they cry and laughing when they life. We live to be with people and to bless them, focusing on the needs of our neighbors instead of ourselves. Paul is advocating a way of life that is difficult to understand and even harder to live out. Yet it's a way of life rooted in Jesus Christ. Jesus had the power to seek vengeance, to raise an army, to establish a political kingdom on Earth that could push the Roman Empire into the Sea. As the Son of God, he could use his power like we do.  He could have been violent, destructive, and focused on only his own immediate needs and wants. But he didn't. He went to the Cross because God's number one desire is to love, save, and redeem all of us. A Jesus-like life is hard. A Jesus-like life involves sacrifices. A Jesus-like life means always loving even in the face of evil. We keep loving because Jesus keeps loving us. And it's that kind of love, service, and honoring of others that can truly change the world. 

0 comments

Below is Pastor Marc's manuscript for his sermon on Romans 10:5-15. You can also listen to it by clicking here. 

***************

Righteousness is a funny word. It’s not a ha-ha funny kind of word but one of those words usually reserved for fantasy novels or cross-stitched and hung on dining room walls. It's also a word scattered all over the Bible and one….that even I, as a trained religious professional, don't always know what to do with. I know that righteousness has something to do with God. And righteousness should be something that I want. But when I take this word that Paul uses at the start of our reading from Romans today, and try to get to the center of what it means, I'm left with something in soft focus. Now, it's not really fair to jump into Paul’s letter right at this point and with only these few verses to look at. Paul is actually in the middle of an argument that he started in chapter 9 and will conclude in chapter 11. We're basically jumping into the middle of Paul’s train of thought and that makes this passage tricky. If we’ve studied Paul before, know the book of Romans well, and understand the different logic tricks Greeks and Romans used to make their point, then jumping into the middle of Paul’s argument isn't as frightening as it could be. But if we haven't done that kind of work, what then? What do we do with righteousness? We might decide to avoid Romans all together. Or worse, we might assume that a superficial reading focusing only on a few verses in this letter is all that we need. But I think there's another option. We can come to this text knowing there are things we don't know. We can enter today's reading knowing we bring our own definitions, assumptions, and understandings to the text. We don't have to understand righteousness right away. Not getting it is...ok. God wants us to bring ourselves as we are, fully into these texts because these texts are bringing God fully into us. 

On Friday night, as I went to bed, I did what I always do: I grabbed my phone and opened up my social media feeds to get one more look at the world before I called it a day. And in between the cat pictures, animated gifs, and articles telling me what kind of avocados I should put on my toast, I saw pictures that terrified me. In the middle of the night, on a darken college campus in Virginia, a crowd of a few hundred, mostly young men, were bringing more than just themselves to Charlottesville. They also brought lit torches. They first assembled at the edge of the campus of the University of Virginia. Most carried tiki torches that lit up their white faces in a yellow and orange spotlight. No one tried to hide who they were because they weren't scared of being found out. They were there to make others afraid. As they marched through the campus, they chanted slogans like “Blood and Soil” and “You will not replace us.” They matched their white supremacist slogans with nazi salutes and violence, encircling the 20 or so college kids on campus who protested them. And once the march started to break up, they headed towards a local church where over 700 clergy and faith leaders were hosting a prayer service for justice and peace. After that service ended, they couldn't leave for several moments because the white supremacists forced them to stay inside. The Friday night terror march was just a precursor to the big event scheduled for the next day. These torch bearing people wanted a fight and they were planning to bring it. 

Now, when it comes to events like this, I….take it personally. I read and watch, becoming absorbed as the event plays itself out. I pay attention because, as a Mexican-American, I can’t look away. When a neo-nazi screams “end immigration,” I know they're not inviting my brown skin self to stay. I've lost count of the number of times I've been told to go back to my own country even though New Mexico and Arizona and Colorado were comfortable places for my ancestors hundreds of years ago. When a white man waving a Confederate battle flag shouts, “you will not replace us,” I've read enough “think pieces masquerading as serious thought” to know he's advocating for a world where my mixed family, where my 2 kids, don't exist. I can't pretend that this is only a problem in other places because I’ve seen Confederate flags flying just across the reservoir from here. And the church itself, can't ignore this stuff either. In a photograph taken yesterday, a black police officer was standing guard, protecting the Constitutional right for these neo-nazis and members of the KKK and armed militiamen to say their hate filled words. And in that same picture, a white supremacist is holding a sign calling the Jewish people the children of Satan with using verses from the gospel according to John to defend that kind of hate and evil. [Note: After I preached this sermon, I discovered this photograph was taken in July but I believe the message is the same.] As a Christian, a pastor, a person of color, and as a father, I don't have the option to ignore when Charlottevilles happen because that kind of ideology feeds a hate and evil that is part of my life everyday. 

When Saturday morning came to Charlottesville, the clergy gathered again for a sunrise service. Like the night before, I was following it through social media and more. I saw as men and women, Jews and Christians and Muslims, bishops, pastors, priests, and deacons, including bishops from our own denomination and colleagues I went to school with, marched. They headed to where the rally was taking place and they brought with them their collars and stoles, kippas, hijabs, and that's...it. That's all they brought. They stood between the white supremacists and the counter protesters. When the white supremacists finally arrived, they came ready for a fight. They wore body armor and helmets. They brought shields and clubs. Some were armed, wearing army fatigues and carrying AR-15 rifles. They were hoping for violence. They were hoping for confrontation. They wanted to incite terror. So they banged on their shields, shouted slurs against Jews, African-Americans, and gays. They made as much noise as they could...and the assembled clergy, without a weapon in sight, just...sang. They met the evil in front of them with the love of God in the song - this little light of mine. In the face of this one-sided hate, bigotry, and violence, these God-fearing interfaith men and women, met this evil by singing about the light God gives them. And this light lets them stand in the face of hate and sing, sing, sing. 

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, isn't asking them to bring their rhetoric or intelligence or understanding to the problem of righteousness. Instead, he's too busy telling them to stop trying to bring God down and instead see how God is already here. When we take this passage and make it some kind of test, where Jewish law and faith in Jesus are put against each other, we cheapen what we already have in God. We pretend that there's some kind of work, some kind of thing we need to make ourselves believe, to get God on our side. But if we instead remember that the “you” in this passage isn't general, that Paul is really talking only to a community of Gentiles, then this passage is less about what the community needs to do to get on God’s good side and, instead, is about God being with them right now. God, through their baptism, has made adopted them as beloved children. They are now newly chosen, bound together in an inclusive story that includes a Jewish savior who, on the Cross, opened his arms to all. Paul’s thought process is focused on these Gentiles, on these Romans, alone. And because they know God, because they are baptized by God, and because Jesus died for them, they now get to bless others like God blessed them. They now get to share God’s story with their family and friends. They now get to pray and worship and sing every Sunday morning. They get to be like Jesus to all who are in need. They get to do all these things not because they are righteous but because God is. And God’s righteousness means that God keeps God’s promises - these promises of love, hope, fidelity, and mercy to all of God’s children. It's God’s righteousness that let's us be God’s people. It's God’s righteousness that let's us know that love will never be overcome by hate. And it's because of the hold God has on each us, that we get to stand tall in the face of evil, confront racism and white supremacy in all it's forms, and undo it's hold on us and our communities because we bring a different kind of torch, we have a divine kind of light, a light that Jesus gave to us, and we’re called to let it shine, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Amen.

0 comments

Taking a Sunday off during a sermon series is a little problematic. But like the British band Big Audio Dynamite says, "Life carries on, even when I'm not there." And that's true. Life is happening to other people and in other places even as you read these worlds. As human beings, we are the centers of our own little universes. People and situations revolve, interact, and move through and around us. We sometimes act as if the possibilities of life are limited to our own experiences, senses, and imaginations. But other people lives, thoughts, and experiences that are not our own. We are all centers of our own little universes but we are not the center of the entire universe. Yet with God's Spirit, we can see what a full, thriving, and loving life can possibly be. 

This passage from Paul's letter to the Romans 8:12-25 is amazing because Paul is making a bold claim here. He's telling this small community of two dozen people that they are who the world is waiting for. These men and women, rich and poor, slaves and free, are everything. Now, there is a dangerous way to read this passage. If the Roman community took these words as an excuse to push others away or to act like they are the only people entitled to being with God, then Paul's words create an us-vs-them view of the world that is problematic. The Roman community would seem themselves as "winners" and reject, forcefully, anyone who doesn't fit in. Their relationship with God would be an entitlement that would be for them alone and no one else. 

But Paul isn't, I think, doing that here. We need to remember the context of Paul's letter. He is writing to a small community located in the capital city of the Empire that killed Jesus. They are a community that celebrates and worships someone who was killed as a criminal in the worst way possible. They worship and celebrate what should be the epitome of weakness and smallness. And as a mixed community, they are filled with slaves who had no control over the violence inflicted on their bodies. This community is insignificant. Yet it's this community that Paul says is worth everything. They, through the Spirit, will change the world. 

And how will they do that? Paul doesn't go into details here but will later in his letter. The how is rooted in the why because living with the Spirit makes a difference. We can see that in our prayers. When we pray, the Spirit is helping us to believe that our smallness can talk to the everlasting God. In our worship service, that's why each Sunday has a specific prayer of the day. Before we read God's story and share with Jesus a holy and special meal, we ask God to make that Spirit live within us. This Spirit doesn't ask us to create a world of winners and losers. This Spirit asks us to live a life of love that is as complete as God's love for each of us. Because it's this kind of love, a love that even sacrifice itself for its enemies, that all our universes need. 

0 comments