Finding Faith as Mary Sings the Magnificat

‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.  Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

It is with faith that Mary begins her song to the Lord.  Her soul magnifies the Lord.  I love that phrase. Her soul will make the Lord larger.  Her spirit rejoices in God, her Savior.  Deep expressions of faith in the Lord.  The rest defines why she has such faith.  God has looked with favor ‘on the lowliness’ of his servant.  All generations will call her blessed.  The Mighty One has done great things.  Holy is His Name.

If there is not faith that God can change things, make things right, there is no chance for peace.  Because peace must be laid upon the power of the Living God.  Humanity is incapable of mastering that peace for ourselves.  We do not have faith in ourselves, we do not have faith in one another.  Yes, exceptions do exist, but they prove the rule. 

There is a story in the Bible where people have faith in themselves.  They fancy that they can build a tower that will reach up to heaven, the tower of Babel.  To prevent them, God mixes up their languages so they scatter across the face of the earth.  It is intriguing to consider what humanity may be capable of now as we continue to become a more globalized community.

There is this dichotomy that works in the concept of faith that we must be aware of as we consider how it is a foundation of peace.  On the one hand, faith seems to break down.  We believe in our Father, who art in heaven.  But humans continue to kill each other off in droves.  It is a challenge to have faith in an ultimate being who doesn’t seem to do anything in times of crisis. 

On the other hand, faith cannot stand alone.  Faith is joined to the fight for justice.  Faith is joined to the requirement to love.  It is there, as we are working for peace, that the power of faith shines through.  The direct work of faith is what I call a miracle, and miracles truly happen.  They seem to happen all the more often when love and justice are present. 

When Mary has faith, her soul magnifies the Lord, makes him larger.  When there are many of us magnifying the Lord, what power our faith takes on.

Justice-the First Leg of Peace

⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.

            We pull these verses from the middle of Mary’s Magnificat.  They do not track well with our typical American flavors of doing things.  For the next posts, speaking to the foundation of peace, we shall be looking to Mary's song to the Lord when she knew she would be the mother of Jesus.

These verses welcome to a most un-American culture war.  We do not toss out the rich and lift up the poor.  Every American is supposed to be able to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.  There is a built in bias that the poor are lazy and ‘defective’.  But truly, how is peace supposed to take root when there is such an economic disparity?

            Those who have will seek to protect what they’ve got.  Those who have not, where will they get but from those who have?  The argument is ancient, dating back for as long as there have been rich and poor.  ‘The rich get richer and the poor get poorer’, isn’t that that the melody of the age?  Who would dare to run on a platform of ‘redistribution of income’ in this day and age?  But here we are, bibles open

            It is all about God’s justice.  This is at the heart of the Magnificat.  Mary, the Mother of Jesus, singing that her soul magnifies the Lord!  Her soul makes him larger, more powerful.  She is about to become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God.  This is all about God.  There is a chiastic structure, a-b-b-a, the ‘a’ and ‘b’ lines paralleling their message.  This is a poetic device that adds strength to the meaning of the words.

a.        He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

b.      And lifted up the lowly;

b--  he has filled the hungry with good things,

a--  and sent the rich away empty.

            Why has God done this?  More importantly, where has Mary seen God doing this?  Is it in the miracle baby that her cousin Elizabeth is carrying around?  When did she become such an insightful social commentator?  She is living on the lowest of the lowly, single, female, poor, occupied in her own land, from a time and place where ‘ownership’ of women traveled effectively from father to husband, and she has been singled out by God.  No pressure.

            How does peace emerge from a culture war?  It could, in fact, turn into a shooting war if the rich truly felt threatened by the ‘unwashed masses’.  We have deployed active duty troops inside this country against protesters (Los Angeles, post-Rodney King). 

            The fact is, peace does not exist under the old order.  Oppression exists, poverty exists, malnutrition exists, greed exists, isolation exists.  Not one of those will bring peace.  Not one of those is a foundation upon which ‘peace’ can be built.  Suppression can exist, coopting the order can exist, but peace cannot.  Maybe a ceasefire, maybe exhaustion. 

            While I am not a proponent of violence, peace requires the revolution of justice.

How Christmas Shall Define Who We Are

The need is “Peace”.  It is one word that embodies so very much, from our Lord Jesus as our “Prince of Peace” to the great gift that will be brought to the world after the Day of Judgment.  It is the centerpiece of what our church is working toward.  Our tagline, “a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God”, is indicative of where a peaceful community is truly to be found.  Our mission focal points, on our kids, on pastoral care, on our relationship to Jesus, all pivot to bring peace into our lives.

                Peace sits on a tripod foundation: Love, Justice, and Faith.  I Corinthians 13 defines them as Faith, Hope, and Love, the greatest being love.  Can we dwell on the intimate connection of Hope and Justice? 

                Peace is often confused with other things.  Here are five things Peace is not:

1. “Ceasefire”, or ‘the absence of war’.  A Ceasefire ended active hostilities between North and South Korea in 1953, but peace has never been achieved.
2. “Inertia”, or ‘the status quo’.  It can take some time to get things moving.  You know the expression ‘the lull before the storm’?
3. “Rest”, or ‘simple exhaustion’.  Everybody has to sleep, even the most evil among us. 
4. “Inactivity”.  Just because the terrorists haven’t attacked in a month does not mean that peace reigns. 
5. “Singular”, or of a single facet.  Multiple lines of work, aid, and activity must go into creating peace. 

Peace does not ‘happen’, peace is built.  Peace is maintained through vigilance and must be protected.  Peace abhors violence but peace will overcome evil with good when it must.  Peace must be the will of the community, it must have ‘buy in’ from the members of the community, it must rest upon its tripod foundation.

We can learn about Peace from our sister Abrahamic faiths.  In Hebrew, the term is “shalom” and in Arabic the term is “salaam”.  Study the terms and what they mean in the Jewish and Islamic traditions and we can learn much to our advantage in the Christian tradition.

Peace, it is who we must be and what we must be about to transform and heal this world.

The image is the baby lying in the manger.  When we have achieved peace, the baby will lie in that manger without fear of the cruel world, want of basic necessities, or lack of community to surround him.

A Time For A Slump, A Time To Rise

Jesus has hit a slump at the end of John 6.  After much detailed discussion of the body and blood that shall be broken and shed by him for our salvation, for his abiding in us, the people have found it to be too much to wrap their minds around.  There is a sharp exchange and many who'd been listening and following turn around and leave.


It is a very difficult conclusion to the surge of enthusiasm and support that began this chapter, at the feeding of the five thousand.


It comes to a point where Jesus turns to the twelve and challenges them, are you going to leave too?


Peter's response goes back to the basics.  "You have given eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."


His words are prophetic, going to the center of what it means for Jesus to be among us.  There are times when our lives hit the slump, when we seem to bottom out, when we do not know what is going to happen next.  In those moments, it is a matter of going back to basics.  What is the center of your belief?  What is in the middle of what you are trying to accomplish?  Return to that, re-cement your foundation, and the Lord will lead you to rise once again.

September 20, 2015 John 6:35-40 “What Shall We Teach Our Children?”

Our passage this morning starts with a great promise. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  It is the promise of eternal life.

The message that Jesus offers is obvious and straight forward.  He will never drive away any who come to him.  He is doing the will of the one who sent him.  He came down from heaven to do this work.  He is giving eternal life to all who believe.  All who believe will rise up with him on the last day.

For the next three sermons, we will be considering this message and the layers that are contained within it.

We are looking at it from a particular point of view; the point of view of how we teach others on their own journeys of faith.  The primary focus will be on our children, especially as we begin our new Sunday School year, but the teaching of God’s Word comes to everyone new to the faith Or returning to the faith.  As we consider the question of how we teach about our faith, my hope is that each of us will gain, better understanding and deeper insight into our own faith journeys.

What is the simple promise of this passage?  In Jesus Christ, you will never have the hunger or the thirst of wondering what happens to us after death.  The reason for this is that God loves us so much, He sent Jesus to be among us, to teach us and to love us, and to assure us of God’s gift of eternal life.

Wrapped up into this message are certain assumptions, that God is in control, that His creation is, essentially, a good and wonderful place, that, while some things go wrong, while bad things happen, they are not in control.

These are the assumptions that we make about the world, The world that we want to raise our children in.  And we make these assumptions although we know it is a complex world, we know how powerful sin truly is.  We know the evil that humans can commit against one another.  We have experienced these evils for ourselves, some of us directly in our lives, others of us through the connection we have with the lives and others.  All of us by the knowledge we gain of the events of the day.  Such as images of Syrian refugees fleeing to the Greek islands, or radio stories from Hungary about these refugees being put on trial as some nations seek to close their borders.  We have only to open our eyes and ears.  How often do we choose not to open our eyes, not to listen to the world around us, hoping that if we close our ears, the pain will simply pass us by.

But, on balance, do we believe that the power of God outweighs the power of evil?  This is the most basic question that Jesus is giving us His answer to.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  It is not a matter of having enough to eat or to drink, What is it that we hunger and thirst for?

• The end of violence,
• The end of poverty,
• The end of disease,
• The end of greed,
• The end of sin, the root of all these evils.

And, having gathered in this place, we believe in Jesus’ power, the power of God, to accomplish that.

This is the message of God’s power that we are teaching to our children.  From a distance, it can appear to be very black and white.  There are a lot of good guys vs. bad guys, winners and losers.  Sometimes, our Sunday school curricula are accused of sanitizing the bible, of removing the bad parts and promoting the good.  I do not accept that charge as an accusation.  I rather praise that as an accomplishment.

Sunday school is not teaching our children a lie.  Jesus IS the bread of life.  Those who hunger or thirst will never do so again.  That is absolutely true.  A good Sunday School curriculum will teach that in a way that is age appropriate, true to the nature of the bible’s message, wonderful in its motivation of our kids, but with the knowledge that it is not teaching everything.

A lot of Christians run into trouble in making their faith real when their knowledge and instruction has never progressed beyond the lessons of their Sunday School days.

The truth of Scripture is no different from the many other truths that we learn about in life.  We can look to historic events, like the Revolutionary War or World War II.  We can pick a sporting event of great local import, like Superbowl 42.  Or we can go with something far more every day, like what time is bedtime in your household?

In each of these events, there is a simple truth that can be stated without fuss, muss, or bother.  The colonies won the Revolutionary War and formed the United States of America.  The Allies beat Hitler and won the Second World War.  In Superbowl 42, The Giants beat the Patriots and spoiled their attempt at a Perfect Season, and the people rejoiced.  Bedtime in your house, is it 7:45, for mommy?  7? 8? 9? 10? You have your own rules for your kids.  About our faith: “Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty.”

Each of those statements are true.  Each of them are accurate, each of them are entirely appropriate, insofar as they go.  Our kids will learn the truth of Jesus, they will learn stories of the Bible, truthfully, accurately appropriately, at least insofar as they go (certain details, that may carry a PG-13 or even an R rating, we may hold back until a better age).

But we have to recognize that this teaching is only the beginning, not the sum total of what they will receive from this church about their faith.  Because we have to recognize that it is not enough.

What happens when we run up against the bigger questions of life?  What happens the first time you are truly hungry for the bread of life?  Truly thirsty for the living waters?  What happens when you are convinced that Jesus could not love you because you do not love yourself?  And you are convinced, in your soul, that you are unlovable?  What happens when you have a blind faith in Jesus to protect your children from terrible things, and a terrible thing happens?  When you tried to protect your child and you could not and it looks like the Jesus you love simply would not?

This is why it is so critical to recognize that what we are teaching our children about Jesus is only the BEGINNING of their walk with Him.  It has to be because a Sunday School faith is not enough.  It is the same as life.  We do not consider an education ending at kindergarden, or elementary school, or middle school, or high school to be enough.  Our nation is focused on the training that comes after high school, whether in college or in the trades or in the military.  Our kids could learn about July 4^th , the Declaration of Independence, and the Revolutionary War in kindergarten or the first grades.  Then, as grownups, they could go on to write a PhD dissertation, adding new knowledge to our understanding of what happened at American Independence.  It is the same thing with our faith.

As we grow in faith, the bible stories do not change (although we may start to include some of the more… mature portions), except that if our children picked up their bibles, we would not edit what they read, would we?  Still, the breadth and depth of what the stories of the bible mean will expand.  How they touch our lives and expand our horizons and fill us with the love of God and help us stand even in the worst disasters of life, held up by His power.  That is what is going to grow inside of us.  And, as our children grow, we are charged with the responsibility of helping them discover the greater and richer breadth and depth of that truth.

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  I have been treating these words on the same level as a historic truth or a sporting victory.  But there is something fundamentally different here.

I speak these words here and now, the bible speaks them to us, I commend them to your memory as an added commitment of faith to the coming week.  But there is something far more powerful at work here.

Behind the face of these words is a grand truth, stretching from this pulpit, back across time and geography to the cross of Jesus Christ, to his tomb found empty, back over and across reality itself, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into each of our lives.  Wrapping us in the knowledge that we will never hunger or thirst again is the sure and certain truth of Jesus’ love for us.  Gathering in this Neighborhood, women and men of faith who are prepared to plumb the depths of this truth, not simply for ourselves, but for our children and for any member of our Neighborhood in need.  What I pray we will remember for our children is that today, on this Rally Sunday, we commend them to a lifetime of learning, growth, and faith in Jesus Christ.  A lifetime that we, in turn, will dedicate our own selves to, once again.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  May our faiths ever grow that these words shall forever be our truth.  Amen.

What Shall We Teach Our Children?

This Sunday is Rally Day, the Kick Off to our Sunday School year.  Our passage in Scripture, John 6:35-40, speaks directly to what it is we have a Sunday School for.  We want to teach our children that Jesus is the Bread of Life.  We want them to know the truth, that in Jesus, they will never hunger or thirst for the ultimate things, the spiritual things of life and what is beyond life.


But do we hit them with the entire truth of the sinfulness of the world?  Of the evil that surrounds us?  Of just what it is that Jesus' death and resurrection do, in fact, overcome?  Or should our teaching be more age appropriate?  More graded to the maturity and the readiness of our children to accept the truth of life?


This Sunday begins a three Sunday series (broken up by the first Sunday of October, when Mjr. Betty Israel will be leading worship), a series that will look at how Jesus develops and deepens his explanation of being the Bread of Life, how it truly impacts and applies to our lives, how it is dependent on how our own knowledge and faith deepen as we act in His name.

"In The Shadow of the Cross"

This week, Dr. Glory Thomas will be preaching from the pulpit at the church.  The title of her sermon is the title of this posting.  Her texts will be Isaiah 50 : 4-9 & Mark 8 : 27-38.  It is a joy to welcome her to our church this Sunday.  Next week, we shall be continuing in our study of the Gospel of John.