Piney Grove UMC & St. Matthew Lutheran Church
Lenten Services
March 16, 2016
Genesis 33:1-11; Acts 11:1-12; Matthew 5:21-26
Tonight’s theme is reconciliation, and just a couple
Sundays ago we heard that word also in our lectionary readings. Our Epistle lesson two Sundays ago included 2
Corinthians 5:18, where we read “God… reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” I commented on how the Good News translation
of the Bible gave us a definition for reconciliation, because it worded that
verse to say, “God… through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and
gave us the task of making others his friends also.” So, reconciliation is changing from enemies
into friends, and tonight we’re talking about fasting for reconciliation, so
this is giving something up in order to become friends. Have you ever done that? It may be the friend you just don’t talk
politics with, or they’re an avid Yankees fan, and so you talk about baseball
in general and teams outside the American League East. I have a good friend who doesn’t tolerate
gluten and so we make sure to find restaurants that have a gluten-free menu
when we go out to eat together. I have
another friend who’s vegan, and so she picks the restaurant, usually one I’ve
never heard of, and, you know, I can usually find something to eat there, too. It’s not a big deal to me, and it is to
them. I can go without meat or wheat
gluten or chemicals in my food, and I won’t go hungry. I can bite my tongue in a conversation and
it’s not the end of the world.
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul writes, “I am a free man,
nobody's slave; but I make myself everybody's slave in order to win as many
people as possible. While working with the Jews, I live like a Jew… In the same
way, when working with Gentiles, I live like a Gentile… Among the weak in faith
I become weak like one of them, in order to win them. So I become all things to
all people, that I may save some of them by whatever means are possible.”[1] For whatever reason, I’ve been reflecting
more the past couple weeks on the mission work that I’ve done, and part of my
philosophy is to adapt as much as reasonably possible to the host culture, and
that’s all the more Paul is talking about here.
I mentioned last time my service in Nicaragua. While I lived there, I lived with a host
family. I ate my main meal in the middle
of the day. I took quiet afternoons
whenever possible, although didn’t often take a siesta. I wore capris pants and sandals the most
often and shorts and sneakers much less often because I wanted to blend in a
little more. While I loved getting a
ride from someone who had a car, I often walked or took the bus or a taxi to
get places. And it made a difference to
the locals that I lived as one of them, even though I was an American. It made a difference in my witness. It made a difference in their knowledge of
just how committed I was to serving among them.
It made a difference that I wasn’t committed to an American lifestyle
even while living in another country.
What I think we worry about here is losing
ourselves. Is being a meat-eater a core
part of my identity? For my husband,
yes. For me, it’s small potatoes. Did my style of dress really change that much
in Nicaragua? Not especially, because it
was still me doing the shopping. I just
bought more of certain styles and less of others. Does my identity revolve around when I eat my
main meal of the day? Not really. My identity revolves around and is centered
in being a beloved child of God. That’s
the most important part, and that part doesn’t change, no matter where I am
serving. In Maryland, I wear more
sweaters and eat more fresh seafood than I did in North Carolina. I also get to go to more Major League
Baseball games. And I LOVE the
predominance of the color purple! It’s
my favorite color, and I didn’t even think twice when I bought a pair of purple
pants a few months after moving here. It
didn’t occur to me until much later why the
store even carried them in the first place.
Food, clothing, daily routine, these are all external factors that play
a minor part in who you are, yet can play a major role in relationships.
What plays a factor into this choice to downplay your own
personal preferences is humility, and we certainly see that in how Jacob
approaches his brother, Esau, after many years of estrangement. If you remember, Jacob and Esau are twins
born to Isaac and Rebecca, and although Esau is the oldest, Jacob is the one
God chooses to be part of Jesus’ lineage.
And their falling out happened when Jacob talked Esau into selling his
birthright for a bowl of chili and then later tricked their father into giving
Esau’s blessing to Jacob. Isaac thought
he was blessing his firstborn, yet he was mostly blind and Jacob, with his
mother’s help, had covered himself in furs to pretend to be his brother, who
was much hairier than him. That story
ends with Esau begging his father to bless him, also. So, Esau has lots of good reasons to be mad
at his brother and Jacob knows it. After
stealing his brother’s blessing, Jacob ran away and lived with his Uncle Laban
for a time. However, then he and his
uncle play a game of tricking each other, involving Laban’s daughters, Leah and
Rachel, and now Jacob needs to leave his Uncle Laban’s farm. So, he sets out to return towards home, where
he knows Esau is. In the chapter before
the passage we read tonight, Jacob sends presents and messengers on ahead to
his brother, and the night before is when Jacob wrestles with an angel all
night long, until the angel finally “cheats” and does something funky to
Jacob’s hip. Then we have the day
of, and Jacob, who is now limping and worried about his messengers’ reports of
Esau, is steeling himself to meet his brother.
He arranges his family just so, with this order of children and maids
and wives. And he went first, in front
of them, “bowing himself to the ground seven times until he approached his
brother.”[2]
You see, reconciliation, making friends out of enemies,
isn’t something that just happens. It
takes work, it takes prayer, it takes thoughtfulness, it takes planning in
order to maximize its chances of success.
It takes fasting, giving something up, whether it’s your pride, like in
Jacob’s case, or toning down your hatred of the Yankees in order to get along
with a Yankees’ fan. In Peter’s case, as
we read in Acts, it meant being willing to lay aside food laws, that God had
put into place in the Old Testament, and as a good Jew, Peter had always
followed. “It was unlawful [even] for a
Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile,”[3]
yet now God is saying “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”[4] This sounds a little bit like last Sunday,
when we read in Isaiah God saying, “Look, I am about to do a new thing!”[5] Reconciliation is God doing a new thing. One
of the things we always have to remember is that only God can change
hearts. If there’s animosity like Jacob
and Esau’s, if there are hard hearts involved, if there are deeply, deeply hurt
feelings involved, then only God can heal the divide. Perhaps this may be a good lesson for the
politics in our country today. I can’t
soften your heart. My 18 month old baby
might be able to, but I can’t make anyone’s heart grow three sizes like the
Grinch.
That’s God’s work. And that’s why we fast and pray and we turn
it over to God and let him do his work.
We step out of the way, refraining from putting stumbling blocks in the
way of others. Each of us can get in our
own way and put enough stumbling blocks in our own path. We don’t need help from anyone to do that.
And that’s why, in this snippet from the Sermon on the
Mount that we read, Jesus encourages us to make friends with each other, to not
stay angry with each other. Anger may be
a cute little red guy in the movie “Inside Out,” but when he takes control for
too long, it gets harder to let him go.
I’ve joked recently that I need to make a playlist, or a mix tape (I’m old enough that I’ve made as many mix tapes as I have playlists), and I
need to include songs like “Let It Go” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Those are both songs about fasting for
reconciliation, believe it or not. Shake
it off, let it go, those are other ways of saying fast, refrain from dwelling
on those things, don’t let yourself get stuck down in the negativity or the
criticism or the anger, or whatever it is that’s bothering you. Instead, be reconciled to yourself, be
reconciled to your friend, be reconciled to God. Don’t be at war with yourself, or your
neighbor, or God. Change from enemies
into friends, find some peace, receive others with open arms, just as Esau
greeted Jacob, just as the father welcomed home the prodigal son in our Gospel
lesson from Sunday. Let it go, fast from
the anger, take a break from it, stop dwelling on it, and turn back to God,
turn back to the way that leads to life.
One of my best friends is a Yankees fan, and in case you
haven’t gathered, I am not. They are my
least favorite team in all of baseball.
But you know, we went to a Yankees’ game together a few years ago, and
we both enjoyed it. We both love
baseball, it was each of our first and only time at Yankee Stadium. I liked the game because the Yankees were
losing for the first seven innings. My
friend liked the game because the Yankees came from behind and won the
game. It’s fasting to stay friends. Fasting for reconciliation. Giving something up, in order to turn from
enemies into friends, or to stay friends and not become enemies. May God give each of us the grace to shake
off whatever we need to shake off, to turn to him when our hearts are hard, and
to welcome with open arms those with whom we’ve argued. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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