Rocky's Priorities

The word Peter means rock. Cephas in Aramaic,  Petros in Latin. Jesus called Peter his rock. He would build the church upon this rock. But the funny part about Peter, or Rocky as one theologian calls him, is that he was not solid at all at first.

Peter made more mistakes than anybody. He denied Jesus three times, he distracted from the event of the Transfiguration by trying to build monuments, he even gets called Satan by Jesus just a few verses later. How could Jesus have looked to someone so unreliable to start the church? How could Jesus have seen rock-solidness when the rest of us can only see a bumbler? What was it about Peter that made him the one to trust?

Peter does one thing right in the gospels. When Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is, Peter nails it. 

"Who do you say that I am?" Jesus asks Peter.

"You are Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."

Peter knows who Jesus is and he devotes his life to Jesus. For all his faults and foibles, he puts Jesus first. He knows that Jesus is the Christ, the ruler of his life, the most important one in world. He makes Jesus his first priority. He gets that part right. 

As Christians, Jesus asks us all this very simple question. He asks it all of our lives...

"Who do you say that I am?"

We answer this question by the way that we live our lives. Is Jesus your Lord? Is Jesus the first priority in your life, above all other relationships? We answer this question not just with words but primarily with our deeds. Does Jesus have some time in your day? And is Jesus part of your financial budget? We set our priorities primarily by allocating our time and money. If you want to see what is most important to a person, look at their calendar and look at their bank account. Where are they spending their time and where are they spending their money? That will tell you much more than words.

On July 20, 1969, two human beings changed our world forever by walking on the surface of the moon. But before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong got out of the Lunar Module, Buzz did something amazing, something that very few people know about.  Buzz Aldrin gave himself communion on the surface of the moon. It was the first thing that he did. After his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.

 Aldrin was an elder at a Presbyterian Church in Texas. He wanted to do something for God on the surface of the moon. He wanted to show the world that God was the first priority in his life. He asked his minister what he should do and the minister suggested communion. Buzz did not know that this would be possible. So the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a vial of wine and Buzz Aldrin took them with him. He and Armstrong had only been on the surface of the moon for a few moments when Aldrin made the following public statement:

 “This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John and he took communion.

Later, he wrote about taking communion on the moon..."In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture...

 I am the vine, you are the branches.

 Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit ...

 Apart from me you can do nothing.

"I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.  It was interesting for me to think the very first liquid ever poured on the moon and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.  And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon - and who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."

Buzz answered Jesus' question, "But who do you say that I am?" by receiving communion on the face of the moon. How will you answer Christ's question?

Today, you will have an opportunity to walk around this campus and view a variety of ministries of this Cathedral. One way that you can answer Christ's question is to devote a portion of your time to serving God. This can happen in so many ways, from preparing the altar to serving a meal to the homeless. Look around. God is asking for your time, see what you can do to serve Jesus here in the core of the city.

In the next two months, we will also be asking you to make a financial pledge to the Cathedral. The more that you give, the more ministry can be done from this beautiful place. Consider your financial priorities. Is God right up there on your list? Are you giving enough to really be making a sacrifice for God? The amount of your pledge is not as important as the weight of its importance in your own budget. Giving should be the first thing that you do, not the last. Who do you say that Christ is in your life? Is he a top priority? It is sacrificial giving that changes the world. 

Buzz took communion on the surface of the moon. It was the first thing that he did. His first priority.

Peter left his home, his wife and his job to follow Jesus. What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to give? Do you take communion every week on the morning of the first day of the week? Is it the first thing that you do?

Jesus asks us all..."But who you YOU say that I am?"

How you chose to live your life...that is your answer.

Walking on Chaos

I have been consumed with thoughts about the Christians in Iraq. I picture their pure terror as ISIS comes for them, forcing them from their homes, killing, starving. What would you do? I picture myself singing Amazing Grace as I prepare to die.

    

CS Lewis once wrote that a Christian has really one choice between two alternatives. We can either believe that Jesus really was the Son of God or we can believe that he was a lunatic.  One or the other. Many want to comfortably think of Jesus as a revolutionary or some kind of nice prophet, but the truth is that the gospels record some pretty wild stuff. Jesus walks on water. Jesus cures blind people. Jesus brings the dead back to life. And Jesus says that he is the Son of God, so either he was mentally ill or an incredible liar, or he was who he said he was. You have to come to terms with the gospels as miraculous occurrences or write them off entirely. There is no in between.

Today's gospel is so miraculous as to almost seem outrageous. Jesus finally says when and shows some tough love. He tells the crowds to go home, go away. He tells everyone to go away. He goes up a mountain to pray through the night. He sends the disciples out in their boat. After all, that was how they got their food. They went fishing at night. On the Sea of Galiliee, the fish rise at night. It is just too hot during the daylight hours so they go deep underwater during the heat of the day and rise to eat insects in the cooler hours of the night.

After his prayer time, Jesus comes to the disciples by walking on the water. It is by now early morning. And when they see him coming, the disciples are afraid. Jesus says, "Take heart. It is I. Don't be afraid."

Don't be afraid. The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters in the beginning of creation and Jesus moved across the waters to the disciples. God says, "I move across the chaos and disorder and violence and hatred, I walk on top of all of it to find a way to you."

I watched the movie Heaven is for Real this week. It is the true story of a four-year-old boy who almost dies from a ruptured appendix and finds himself in heaven. He describes heaven with amazing accuracy and seems to have greeted a great-grandfather he didn't know existed and even a sister who died just a few months before birth. The little boy talks of his experience with child-like trust and innocence but the adults in his life and in his fathers church find his experience disturbing.

The church board meets with the boy's dad, who is the pastor of this small Nebraska Church, and they tell the pastor to stop talking about his son's experience. They don't want to hear it anymore. It's too disruptive, it scares them. It's just plain weird.

When faced with the possibility of true miracles, we want to run away. Give me comfort. Give me rational explanations. Give me the status quo.

All of us are called to follow Jesus out on that water like Peter did. We must move out of the comfort of the boat that we know will sustain us, focus on Jesus himself as our source of strength, and then step into the unknown. How do you know when you are walking on water? When you dare to try things that could truly fail. When you aim to follow Jesus and have no idea how you will get there. Being a Christian takes enormous courage. It means believing in the possibility of miracles. It means stepping out in faith.

My friends, the status quo is just not good enough. The boat of comfort that we live in is not cutting it. Christians are dying by the thousands in the Middle East. The Ebola virus is spreading with disturbing speed.  We don't need a tame God who comforts only. We need miracles! We need the God who walks on water, rises from the grave, and saves people. 

I want you to pray in a new way this week. I want you to pray with the conviction that God can and will bring peace somehow to the Holy Land. I want you to step out in boldness and ask God to save those Christians being slaughtered in Iraq and around the globe. I want you to pray for the ethnic Yazitis who are trapped on a mountain in Iraq, starving to death. And even more importantly, I want you to offer God your all.  I want you to be willing to step out in faith. Ask that God will get you out of the boat. Ask God what He wants from you. Then ask Him for the courage to do things you think impossible. 

    There is a priest named Andrew White who is called the Vicar of Baghdad. Ten years ago, he was pastoring a flock of about 6000 Christians. In the past decade, 1200 members of this flock have been killed and yet he refuses to leave Baghdad. He walks on the chaos and continues to pray for a miracle. He looks nothing like what I would have pictured. He is not big, strong, courageous looking. He has glasses and he talks with a slight slur. Father White has multiple sclerosis. When asks if he thinks the situation will improve for Christians, he says that he must believe this. He has no other choice. He must believe in miracles.

If you were on top of the mountaintop with 40,000 others surrounded and dying, what would you do? Would you let yourself be killed? Would you fight? In a way, we all are up there with them on that mountain. We are all waiting for a miracle.

To follow Jesus means to face chaos.  To follow Jesus means to be afraid. Peter was scared stiff! He had no idea what he was doing. But he did it! He walked on water. Yes, on that day he became anxious and sank, and was saved by Jesus. But there would be more chances for Peter to step out in faith. And he did just that, even to martyrdom. 

Let us not give up hope that our world can be healed somehow, that God is great enough to find a way forward. Let us have the courage to step out on the chaotic waters ourselves, just like Peter, and to put our trust in the Son of God who transcends all that we can begin to imagine.  For He is The Lord, the God who saves His people. 

This is the God of the Universe here! Of course miracles are possible.

Fishes, Loaves and Toxic Charity

Other than the resurrection itself, there is only one miracle that is present in all four of the gospel accounts.  We hear about this miracle in the gospel today. It is also one of the very few miracles in which Jesus distributes goods, the other being the miracle at Cana. The multiplication of the loaves and the fishes is so important and if we look closely at Jesus' actions, we can learn how to minister to those in need.

Jesus is one busy guy. The crowds will not give him any peace. He tries to get away and they follow him like a swarm of flies. And yet, he cares for them, despite all their neediness.

The crowd has followed Jesus, the sun is setting and everybody is hungry. The disciples tell Jesus to send them away so that they can find food for themselves. "We cannot help them," the disciples say. "There are just too many of them."

We can't do it. We don't have enough. That is what the disciples say. And that is what we say when confronted with violence in the Middle East, the outbreak of the Ebola virus, and brutalities in the Ukraine.  "I can't solve these problems," we say. "I just don't have enough...strength, resources, wisdom, patience, understanding...I just don't have enough!"

In Mark's rendition of this miracle, before Jesus does anything at all, he asks a very important question. He asks, 

"What do you have?

Or

"What have you got?

Instead of focusing on the lack of food, money, resources, Jesus asks them to identify what it is that they DO have, and then he multiplies it. You may not have much but you do have something to offer. What is it? What is your offering? 

Jesus could have made food appear out of nothing, but he didn't do that. He used what they had. He asked them to contribute to the miracle.

This summer, a group of us have been reading an amazing book. It is called Toxic Charity. The author, Robert Lupton, argues that non-profits and especially churches have been throwing money, clothing and food at the poor for decades without asking for anything in return. This kind of behavior presupposes that the people you are serving have nothing to offer, nothing to contribute. If you feed them without asking for their contribution, you demean them.

We send mission groups to foreign countries where we, for example, build houses. In doing so, we may be making ourselves feel better but the local people are basically being treated as if they cannot build their own houses, as if they have no skill and need complete rescuing. This creates a kind of toxic dependency, as the African villagers begin to believe that the only way they can improve their lives is to wait for Americans to come and build for them, feed them, dig their wells. 

In the last fifty years, the continent of Africa has received $1 trillion in benevolent aid. And yet, country by country, Africans are poorer today. Per capita income is lower than in the 1970's. Over half of the 700 million people on the continent live on less than $1 per day. Dambisa Moyo, African economist and author of the book Dead Aid, writes, "The foreign aid becomes a disease which pretends to be a cure." 

We do the very same thing to the poor of this country. We try to provide for their needs often without asking for them to contribute. Churches converge on neighborhoods, planting flowers and picking up trash, bruising the pride of the residents. We give children Christmas gifts as if their parents are no longer capable of giving. We fly off on mission trips to poverty-stricken villages, suitcases full of goodies, trips that one Nicaraguan leader says "turns my people into beggars."

No one has been worse at toxic charity than churches. Why? We want to help. We want to be generous, to do what is right. We want to do what Jesus did. But we have forgotten that the very first question to ask is not "what do you need?" No, the first question that Jesus asked was the polar opposite. He asked, "What have you got?"

Lupton talks about his first year in inner-city ministry. He brought a pile of wrapped Christmas presents to a family in the core of Atlanta. He unloaded the presents in the living room of their apartment and the father was so ashamed that he walked out of the room....

Does a person have a strong body? Can they hold a hammer? Can they clean a kitchen in exchange for food? Can a father earn those Christmas presents for his own children by doing some simple tasks, thus preserving his dignity and enabling him to be a father once more? 

The crowd of people with Jesus had so little, just five loaves and two fish. But Jesus took what they had to give BEFORE he served them. He gave them their dignity by asking them to contribute to their own meal. They contributed before Jesus did anything at all, and, best of all, he used everything that they gave as part of his solution, part of the miracle.

Every Sunday, we share Christ's body and blood together. But there is something immensely important that happens before the priest says the prayers. The bread and wine are carried up the center aisle from the congregation. These gifts, they come from you. We could easily bring them in from the side, but we bring them up from the midst of the congregation because Christ makes his Eucharist from what you can give him, from your contribution, from your offering.

Charity should never be a one-way relationship. Always the one who is serving the poor should acknowledge that they too are receiving something in return. It is relationships of mutuality that create love and strength for the days to come. 

Lately, when I turn on the news, I feel completely powerless. One of our members, Richard Samuel, is in Guinea right now and hiding from the Ebola virus. I have no answers for how to help him. I have no answers for how to end the mind-boggling hatred and violence which infects the Holy Land. I am dumbstruck by the way that the Ukrainians are suffering.  But just when I am feeling overwhelmed, I remember Jesus' words, "What have you got?"

I have prayer. I can pray. I can study and learn. I can listen to the cries of the world and ask for God's guidance. I can welcome Father Raja into our midst and try to help other Christians fleeing violence. 

Many years, ago, when things were more peaceful in Israel, I went to the Galilee with JD, to the place where they believe that this miracle occurred with loaves and fishes. There is a sixth century mosaic on the floor of the old church there. The mosaic is replicated on your bulletin cover. Just five simple loaves and four fish. Take a look. It doesn't look like much, does it?

Listen to me now.  

It is not your job to fix the world. God alone can do that. All Jesus asks of you is for you to give Him whatever you have. What is your five loaves and two fish? Give your gifts, your money, your skills, your prayers. Give yourself. Give your intelligence, your listening heart. These issues are complex and not easily solved. We must be willing to do all that we can. And Our Lord will do the rest. 

What have you got? Whatever it is, it is all that Jesus asks of you, no more and no less. Give what you have and then let God do the rest.