Sturgis – South Dakota – population 6,000.

By all accounts this is a sleepy little town near the foothills of nowhere.

Except for one week of each summer, at the beginning of August,

this sleepy little hamlet is converged upon by half a million people on motorcycles

for the mother of all motorcycle rallies.

The most amazing bikes, the fastest bikes, the newest, shiniest, loudest,

most tricked-out bikes in the world will all be gathered together

in one place for one crazy week.

I have wanted to own a motorcycle for a while now.

Something really mean looking.

Something that when you rev it up car alarms go off all down the block.

Because it’s true what they say,

“Four wheels move the body, but two wheels moves the soul.”

There is just nothing like the feeling of riding a motorcycle,

the road whizzing past you only inches below you,

your bike cutting through the warm air,

it feels like pure freedom.

I would love to own a motorcycle,

and maybe even one day ride it into Sturgis on that first week of August.

But I’ve now taken the motorcycle licensing test twice

and both times I’ve failed.

So, in the meantime, I own a scooter.

It’s called: Twist ‘N Go.  (With a capitol “n” rather than the word “and”.)

People say it’s cute.

I wasn’t really going for cute.

I can get it up to 50 miles per hour on a steep downhill.

Let’s just say, I’m not going to take it to Sturgis any time soon.

Because, if you didn’t already know, there is a sharp divide

between those who ride hogs and those who ride… piglets.

If you ride a motorcycle you know there’s a little secret hand signal been riders.

Maybe you’ve witnessed this before:

Two motorcycles drive past one another on a street

and the one rider takes their left hand from their handle-bars

and points down with a couple finger,

then the other biker non-challantly does the same thing.

I imagine it means something like,

“Hey, nice bike man.”

“Thanks.  Live free or die.”

“Ok.  I will.”

But I have YET to get a wave-back while on my Scooter,

…And I’ve tried.

(I hear that there are other clubs that have a similar secret handshake,

VW Beetles, Jeeps… come to find out, they also do not wave at me.)

Some bikers will smile and give me a token little wave…

but they’re totally like… “uh, right.”

I’ve even got less polite hand signals before,

But it is evident that my Twist N Go Scooter

is not impressing anyone with a Motorcycle any time soon.

It was the week before Passover in Jerusalem

and the city was crammed with people from all over.

Jerusalem is where all the action takes place.

And this was the week that celebrated what the Romans feared worst, revolt.

Passover fueled the hope that God was going to do to the Romans

exactly what God did to the Egyptians that enslaved their ancestors.

With huge signs and wonders and with a mighty arm God would some day

send them back to Italy with their tale between their legs…

But who would be God’s new king to do this???

Enter Jesus’ gang.

They are so excited about entering the city, they are telling everyone -

“This guy is it!  This guy is the one you have been waiting for!

He’s coming!  Come on!  He’s coming!”

And the crowd is whipped into a frenzy!

I mean, people are cutting of branch from trees

and throwing them down on the road like he’s royalty…

It basically meant – “We are laying out a red carpet for you to walk down”.

People are literally taking off their clothes

and throwing them down where Jesus will be riding in.

It’s Jesus mania and the crowd is amped up.

Then, he makes his GRAND ENTRANCE!

Here comes the King,

riding into Sturgis …on a scooter.

50cc’s… it get’s great gas mileage…  and it’s kinda cute.

Probably not gonna win any races at Sturgis.

Probably gonna get beat up and laughed out of town… or worse.

Tell Zion’s daughter,

“Look, your king’s on his way,

poised and ready, mounted

(On a stallion, on a war horse, on a chariot…  nope.)

On a donkey, on a colt,

foal of a pack animal.”

And the whole crowd is saying,

“Hooray! Hooray!  …Wait, who is this?

I thought he was that powerful miracle man?  Who is this guy?”

And Eugene Peterson’s version of the Gospel of Matthew says,

“All of Jerusalem was UNNERVED.“

We don’t like being unnerved.

We like our nerves exactly where they are.

And the fact that Jesus,

the one the people have been hearing some pretty promising things about,

makes his grand entrance on a pack animal, on a scooter,

continues to unnerve us who want Jesus to be a certain way,

to get certain things done,

to address certain situations that need addressing,

to make the changes we want to see made in the universe,

because he’s not gonna do that on the back of a donkey.

This unnerving process goes on to hit some other pretty big nerves:

The first chapter of the Gospel of John says this:

“No one has ever seen God,

but the one and only Son,

who is himself God

and is in closest relationship with the Father,

has made God known.”

The only way to know what God is like,

is to know what Jesus is like.

Later on in John’s Gospel Jesus says,

“Yeah, the Father and I – we are one.”

So here’s the amazing, annoying, unsettling thing about Jesus:

At every turn Jesus defies my assumptions about God

and makes me throw out what I think I know about

who God is

and how God thinks,

and how God acts,

and how God feels.

Jesus makes me re-evaluate everything that I ever thought about God.

Like: How would God enter into the world?

As a poor helpless baby of a single teen mom in an occupied country

was not really what I was imagining.

Like: How would God make a ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem?

On an old borrowed (or stolen!) donkey…  not really what I was imagining.

Like: How would God destroy sin and death and everything

that hurts and harms and enslaves the creation that God made?

By not returning violence for violence,

forgiving the ones who brutally murder him,

giving his very life for the reconciliation of his enemies,

and trusting only and entirely in the Father for his resurrection…

again, not really what I was imagining.

Jesus, his very existence, requires that

we either utterly change what we assume about God,

or that we utterly reject Jesus.

(This friday’s service will tell us how that went.)

But even after reading the Gospels for 30 years

I continue to be unnerved by Jesus

and what he tells me is actually true about God.

Jesus continues to disrupt my assumptions about God,

who God delights in and how God works.

Does that happen for you?

That’s the question for conversation tonight…

“How has Jesus made you change your thoughts about God?”

In the past, or even right now?

Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

- proclaim good news to the poor – fulfilled,

- early release for inmates – check,

- sight for the blind – did it,

- freedom for the oppressed – doing it,

- proclaim God’s year to act – fulfilled!

And all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

They said: “He’s one of us!  He’s our ‘boy’.  And now he’s come back home to do all these nice things for us.  I like where this is going.”

And it’s at this point that the story could have taken a very different direction.  It could have gone like this:

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, did many wonderful things for the people of his home town and they liked him very much.  He wrote a few books, became a tenured Rabbi, and eventually he died at a ripe old age, surrounded by his disciples singing songs.  The end.  And that would have been a nice story.

But for some reason Jesus didn’t leave it there, while all the people were giving him compliments and pinching his cheeks he had to go and ruin it.

I like getting compliments,  But beware of compliments – for often times they say more about the one who gives them then the one who receives them…  Beware of compliments – for often times they are secretly given in return for your alliance…  Beware of compliments – for often times, when these unspoken alliances are broken, compliments turn into criticism in seconds flat.

So, Jesus didn’t leave it there.  He didn’t quit while he was ahead.  He had to go and ruin it, because he refused to be their little darling.  He refused to reinforce their “cul-de-sac of God’s blessing”, where grace can get in, but it can’t get out, where God loves the insiders and loathes the outsiders.

So, Jesus couldn’t just leave it there.  He knew the short shelf life of praise and the rejection that would soon follow.  He knew that the same crowd who shouts “Hosanna in the Highest” & “Save us Son of David!” on Sunday could just as easily shout “Crucify him” & “Give us Barabbas” on friday.

So, he said to them, “No doubt you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”  And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.

But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them were cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.

Do you think he struck a nerve?  One minute, “They were amazed.”  The next minute, “They were filled with rage.”  Every family system has certain unspokens that everyone knows not to talk about.  Sacred cows, pushed envelopes, pushed buttons, unmentionable that are not allowed to be mentioned at the dinner table.

What are your family’s?  What is the truth that is not allowed to be told?  Do we have any here in the U.S.?  in Edmonds?  In the Church? at Beloved?

Do you think Jesus found one in Nazareth?  What exactly was it about what Jesus said that made these friends from the old neighborhood want to do what happens next?

They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

One minute they’re saying, “Hey, you are one of us!”  And the next minute, “Scratch that, we want you dead!  What would it take for them to want to kill one of their own?

Maybe for Jesus to say, “I am doing all these amazing things that the prophet Isaiah spoke about… but… I’m not doing any of it for you.  I’m doing it for the outsiders.”

Maybe for Jesus to challenge their very assumption about what it means to be blessed by God and who is blessed by God.

They, like us, had a certain national and religious identity, and a vision of how the messiah would support that identity… but he didn’t.  And that was the one thing you weren’t allowed to do.  They want to kill him, not because he condemned them… he never condemns them.  They want to kill him, not because he tells them what they have to do or not do… he doesn’t demand anything from them.  He simply tells them what he is doing.

And here’s where it hits the ground:  Whenever the gospel is spoken, it doesn’t remain simply a historical story.  When the gospel is spoken, the risen Christ walks among us and speaks to anyone who can hear it… right now.

So who is Jesus including in his love that might outrage you?  What could Jesus say to make you want to push him of a cliff?  You don’t think you’ve got buttons?  Just think, who would spoil this cozy community for you if they walked in the door right now?  What are the limits of welcome in our community for you?

There’s just too many children, too many old people, too many young people, too many white people, too many liberals, too many conservatives, too many homeless people, too many married people, too many single people…  or just too many people.  What are the limit’s of welcome in our community?

But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

The story could have taken a different direction here.  It could have gone like this:  “They led him to the brow of the hill and hurled him off to his death.  Then went home and had some tea and said, ‘That Joseph’s son was always trouble.  Let’s not speak of this again.’  And the world would never have heard the words, “Blessed are the poor.” “This is my body given for you.”  ”Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  ”He is not here.  He has risen.”  and “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Here’s is God’s love for the villagers of Nazareth:  The love of God that never gives up, that cares more for others than for self, doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.  The love of God that doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, that doesn’t force itself on others.  The Love of God that Isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others.  The Love of God that doesn’t revel when others grovel, that takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, that puts up with anything, trusts always, that always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.  This Love of God whose name is Jesus Christ, doesn’t let the story end here, instead Jesus passed through the midst of them and went on his way and they were spared of the ending that they, in their rage wanted most.  The love of God wouldn’t allow it, because the love of God is constantly drawing the outsider in and sending the insider out.  This love never allows for stagnancy.  If you are hearing Jesus it’s only right for you to be filled with rage or filled with compassion for the outsider…  anything less might mean you’re not listening.

Because if you have any doubt that there is such a thing as “original sin”, meaning that humans don’t have to learn how to sin, it’s just a built in function of our humanity to have this natural bent towards self-centeredness, an innate drive for self-preservation at all costs to the other, if you have any doubt about “original sin”, all you have to do is have a baby. And that’ll clear it up real quick.

I’m pretty much convinced now that if it were not for the witness of Christ’s Church, we wouldn’t give a second thought about God or our neighbor.  You don’t believe me?  You think babies are only sugar and spice and everything nice?

What convinced me was watching my six month old son at a play date with another six month old.  Moses was clear on the opposite side of the room playing happily by himself, when he turned to see that this other little baby was reaching towards a yellow ducky.  Instantly, Moses dropped his toy

and speed crawled across the room, with one hand he snatched the yellow ducky from the child’s finger tips, while with the other hand on the child’s head he pushed himself to his feet and proceeded to wave the yellow ducky over his head in triumph…. You little destroyer.

That’s when I realized, “The only reason why babies are so cute is because they are powerless.  If Babies actually had any real power to carry out their evil plans for world domination we would be doomed.  It would be a global pandemic.  Giant babies would be destroying homes and nations and whole continents.”

But here’s the scary thing.  We only get better at destroying as we get older.  And we get better skilled in disguising the way we snatch the yellow ducky.  At our core, we are giant-destructive-babies.

But what I love about babies is that they’re honest about it.  They are the most genuine, the most earnest people that I know.  And really, they can’t help it.  They haven’t developed the filters and disguises that we have.  They have yet to make the adult realization, “Wait a second.  Pretending to play nice might get me what I want.”

I wish I was honest about my sin as those baby-destroyers.  I wish we were all as transparent as babies are, Because also at our core, we desperately want to be seen for all of who we are.  And confession is how we do that.  As much as we might cringe at the word, repentance is what we want most.  The poet Ranier Marie Rilke makes his confession like this,

“With my half-mouth I stammer you,

who are eternal in your symmetry.

I lift to you my half-hands

in wordless beseeching, that I may find again

the eyes with which I once beheld you….

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame

that now I find myself again.

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained

in an all-embracing mind that sees me

as a single thing.

I yearn to be held

in the great hands of your heart–

oh let them take me now.”

That’s what we want.  Not to be compartmentalized in a hundred hidden pieces, but to be held in the safety of God’s hands as one thing.  Given all of my son’s self-centeredness, I absolutely adore this little guy more than I’ve adored anything in my life.  How is that possible that I am so in love with this little destroyer?

Without a doubt, that is the love that God holds us with.  And that’s the environment that God is creating in the Church.  God wants to make the church a safe place to not be right, a place where being right is not the requirement, it’s not what’s most important, because what’s most important is the grace of Jesus.  God wants to make the church a safe place to confess, where being loved and accepted is a given, it’s off the table, it’s no longer questioned.  God wants to make a safe place for us to confess: “I am not all that I pretend to be…”

A safe place to confess: “My marriage is in ruins and right now I can’t even imagine how it could be turned around…”

A safe place to confess: “I have sinned in thought, word and deed, by what I have done and what I have left undone…”

When you think about it, just about every other place in life you have to be right, you have to have it figured out, you have to justify your existence, by creating a reason for why your job should keep you around, why your friends should invite you out next weekend, why your family should do anything more than what’s obligatory.  Just about every other place in life the consequences for not being right,

is being shamed, being an outcast, being alone.

But in this place, the Word of God comes to you that says, “You are loved first and without conditions.  You are free to be wrong, because my relationship to you is not negotiable, and it’s not dependent on you being right.  It will not be taken away from you as a punishment for not having it figured out.”

My new friend Seth from our Sister Church House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver says it this way:  “I walk through the world constantly defending my right to be in the world & in the church at all …. the relief for me when I walk into House [...for All] every Sunday at 5pm is that I get to be wrong – that I get to not have all the answers – that I get to talk about how I am complicit in those injustices hourly – that I get to be called to a different standard: one that is not about how right or just I can be, but one that is about how much I am loved.”

This Advent, here’s how you can prepare for when God comes close: receive these words of John the Baptist, “Repent” in a new way – in the context of safety. Because when God comes close it’s now safe to confess. When God comes close you are seen for all that you are, and you are loved.  You are utterly loved. When God comes close the question, “Who shall stand the day of his appearing?” is answered with the angelic words, “Don’t be afraid.  I’ve got good news for everyone.”

* Special thanks to Seth and her words from #c21, by which this blog was inspired (meaning I totally ripped her off).  You can read her blog here.

You may not know this, but last Sunday was reformation day, or as mid-westerner’s call it, “Lutheran pride day”.

At it’s worst, reformation day will simply commemorate what happened in the long past, a reform movement in the European church.  And at it’s worst, today will be yet another frozen moment in which the Church’s culture becomes crystalized and even further disconnected from the world around her.  But at it’s best, reformation day will lure us into what we are becoming, not the reformed church, but a constantly re-forming church.  This was even at the heart of what the folks who first coined the term “emerging church” meant before those words were bought and sold as a christian commodity. At it’s best today will form and reform our hearts by grace through faith in Christ, as it did in the first century with a beggar named Bartimaeus, and as it did in the 16th century with a professor and pastor named Martin.

Grace Alone.  Faith Alone.  Christ Alone. These are the marks of a beggars revolution that continues to conform us to the Gospel of Jesus.

SOLA GRATIA – Grace Alone

St. Mark, or the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of Mark, wrote this gospel story from within the Church.  He was a part of the community that directly knew Jesus and he tracked down all the stories that people in the community could remember about Jesus in order to pass them on.  So if you’ll notice, he doesn’t generically say, “A blind man”.  He names the blind man.  He calls him Bartimeaus.  What this little fact tells us is that Bartimaeus was likely a part of that poverty stricken early Church in Jerusalem that St. Mark was a part.  So this story is likely Bart’s story – from the horse’s mouth.  This was how he entered the Church and Old Bartimaeus wouldn’t let anyone forget it.  And even though Jesus tells him to, “Go”, the story doesn’t end that way.  Instead it says, “Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.”  And where else was he going to go?  His one job, begging, was taken away the moment he was healed.  So he became a part of the traveling community of Jesus, and he continued to tell his story of the grace of Jesus.  His words, “Have mercy on me!  Have mercy on me!” became the lyrics for a song that the early Church sang every Lord’s Day called “Kyrie”, you may have heard it.  And what Bartimaeus holds up for the Church and the world is that God’s grace in Jesus is pure gift.  He couldn’t pay for it, he couldn’t do anything for it.  But he was good at begging and Jesus is good at giving.

I was in Iowa two weeks ago taking a preaching class, the professor asked us to look back over our last thirty sermons. He said, “Everyone basically has one sermon… it’s said a million different ways, but everyone has basically one sermon. So what’s your one sermon?”  I asked Bonnie what she thought my one sermon was, after a bit of thinking she said, “God’s grace in Jesus Christ is for you.”  That was the biggest affirmation that anyone could have given me.  Because, it’s true, I’m totally grace monger.  I can’t get enough of it and I can’t preach enough of it.  Without this fierce grace of Jesus Christ continually reforming us, we immediately turn in upon ourselves, and lose any and all thought for God and neighbor.

Without this fierce grace of Jesus continually reforming us, the Church goes right back to selling tickets out of hell.  Without this fierce grace of Jesus continually reforming us, we just dog-eat-dog under the cover of an innocent smile.  For us, in order for Church of the Beloved to move into this next stage of our life and mission together, to welcome the stranger into our community, to give ourselves away for our neighbors, Christ must perpetually reform our hearts with his fierce grace.  Because without Grace Alone, we’ll be just another country club

disguised as a Christ’s Church.

SOLA FIDE – Faith Alone

Generally, we think of faith is a thing, a characteristic that someone has.  You must possess faith in order to be saved, or healed, or loved by God.  And you know that you have faith if you cry your eyes out, confess that you are a sinner, believe in Jesus and then ‘bam’, you are ‘saved’.  And now that you are saved there are some things that you got to do, like stop hating everyone and read your Bible, and go to church and stuff.  But if this was the criteria for God saving you, it wouldn’t be a grace.  Faith would simply become another work, another thing you got to do.

But faith is not a thing you do.  It’s not a proposition that you reason yourself into, nor a belief that you leap into,

nor a doctrine that you squeeze yourself into to.  You don’t do faith at all.  If anything, you get “faithed”.

Perhaps more accurately, faith is best described as the relationship that exists between Jesus and you. Faith isn’t something you need to go get in order to get the relationship between Jesus and you, it is the relationship.  Another way to say it is, having Jesus as your savior is not the result of having faith, rather having faith is the result of having Jesus as your savior.So there’s no room for trying to compare ourselves to one another and feed the insecurities and competition that comes with comparison.  This is why the apostle Paul says, “I have no room to boast.  It is solely by God’s gift that we are saved, through faith, so really no one has any room to boast.

But if you really want to boast, boast about what God is doing.”  I know that there’s an expectation for a “take home” message.  Something that you can do about it.  But what happens when you get “faithed” by Christ,

is you hear the words, “I love you so much.”  and a relationship is cultivated.  Faith doesn’t give you a take-home word, rather it is the Word who takes you home.

St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Church in Rome, “Faith comes from hearing…”  And this was the case for Bartimaeus, ‘He heard that Jesus was coming” Bartimaeus got “faithed”, and yelled out, “Have mercy!”  Then “He heard that Jesus wanted him to come to him”  Bartimaeus got “faithed”, and said, “Rabbi, I want to see”

It was Christ’s faith in him that made him well.  For us, in order for Church of the Beloved to move into this next stage of life and mission together, to gradually make a hub of ministry in a 100 year old mansion, to raise the support to purchase and renovate it for all the type of outreach that we can imagine, Christ is going to have to seriously “faith” us every step of the way, because without Faith Alone, Church of the Beloved will be

just another do gooder’s club disguised as Christ’s church.

So if “…by Grace through Faith” means that there no longer exists a list of things you “got to do” to be accepted by God, then what, in your freedom, do you “get to do?”  I love what happens in the disciples in this story.  Their first reaction to Bartimaeus is to shush him.  Doesn’t it seem like the disciples are always shushing people? The Church still thinks that being a disciple promotes us to the status of head shusher.  But here is the graceful thing – here’s the faithful thing about Jesus, he invites his disciples to do the calling.  They go from saying, “Be quiet” to saying, “Jesus is calling you.”  I’m really not sure which is a greater miracle in this story - Bartimaeus going from blindness to sight, or the disciples moving from shusher to callers. Jesus still invites us, invites you, to be a people that puts away shushing, listens deeply to one another and says, “Jesus heard your cry and he’s calling you”. God’s voice of choice is yours, Beloved.

I sit with people all the time who are disenchanted with the Church and they cry-out and say, “I don’t feel called to be in the Church.” “I don’t hear the voice of God.” “I don’t think God cares.”  And I know that cry, because it’s my cry too. And I know that we need one another because the voice of Christ in my sister and brother is stronger than the voice of Christ that is in me.  And so I say, “But God has heard you, because I’m here reminding you that God cares about you.  Plus, I care about you, and I’m the Church, just like you are.”

On his death bed reformer Martin Luther spoke these last words, “We are beggars, that is certainly true.”

And we are. We are a revolution of beggars.  Just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.  Just one Bartimaeus telling another Bartimaeus where to find grace.  Just one disciple telling another disciple,  “Hey, Jesus heard you crying, and he’s calling you.”