Repurposed | Friendship

FBCGSO Sermons

Sunday’s sermon continued our summer sermons on Jesus’ parables – “Repurposed” – remembering that in describing the Kingdom of God, Jesus never asked people to leave their world. He imagined it in ordinary and everyday things, repurposed to make known the Kingdom. Read or listen to the sermon below.
https://fbcgso.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/08-28-2016_sermon.mp3

Luke 11:5-8

People keep asking me how I’m sleeping these days. It’s one of those questions that people pose to parents of babies, often with a twisted smile as if to rub it in.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that someone my age should get 7-9 hours of sleep each night… which is not really the norm right now… but I did hit the mark on Tuesday night.

Confession: this week I was in DC for a quick overnight trip – where I was by far the worst spouse among those in attendance for leaving Jenny at home with four children – but I was invited to be part of a conference on the role of faith in the public square. In this case I loved the topic, but many times when I travel I could care less the reason, I’m just trying to get to a hotel–waking up on a king-size pillow-top mattress, a TV on the wall that doesn’t have any kid’s channels. I woke up Wednesday morning, and I actually went for a long run through our nation’s capital; I paid homage to Honest Abe; I came back and grabbed a bottled water and towel from the lobby, “How was your run, sir?” someone asked. Back in the room I left laundry wherever I wanted, I turned the tv on full volume and took a long shower. I ironed my clothes while watching the news. Now, don’t tell Jenny any of this… but as I read the paper while drinking a cup of coffee I thought to myself, “I really should do this every day.”

But then hotel life is not real life. And real life is not so pillow-top and plush. We have responsibilities, family, maybe an early morning cry from the other room, or the stress of waking children up for school, or the grog that comes from a late night of studying, or the reality that many of us who work outside of the home are taking that work back into the home at night. We have racing minds as we think about our families, or a shoulder pain that wakes us up when we roll over on it in the night.

There are any number of things in real life that are keeping us awake, so when you do fall asleep and find some rest, the last thing you want to hear is a knock at the door.

That’s what happens in this parable of Jesus. A man has settled in with the evening. His children are in bed. His work is complete. The door is locked, when someone arrives with a knock on the door, and a request: “Give me three loaves of bread, for a friend has arrived – an unexpected guest – and I have nothing to give them.”

Jesus invites us to imagine a world where this happens. It seems strange and unfamiliar to those of us used to doing our own grocery shopping, and having guests announce their visits well in advance. The world of this parable seems a far-off place to us, even as much as we value and prioritize hospitality, we’re still not accustomed to this level where travelers feel comfortable dropping by at midnight uninvited, a desperate host goes door to door, and even the most reluctant, sleepy-eyed villager is compelled to give up three loaves of bread. It can seem like a distant ideal.

But it’s important to remember that for Jesus’ early listeners, this was entirely plausible. One of the greatest strengths of the parables of Jesus is the way they engaged people where they live, using elements of the everyday. In imagining the kingdom, Jesus said, “it can happen right here where you live, among your homes, your relationships, your villages…”

In this parable, God’s kingdom looks a lot like a village. And in this village – the economy – the standards are different than those we recognize. A guest has traveled at night, likely to avoid the heat of day. He has arrived late, and when the host has nothing to offer, he scurries to the neighbors. “Everything is put away…my children are sleeping…” The sleepy neighbor’s protest sounds reasonable to most of us… after all, when’s the last time we answered the door at midnight?

We’re a long way from such a village, and yet, we know that our streets, our society – our web of mutuality – includes so many people who are awake in the night.

How are we sleeping these days?

The Bible is full of the promise of rest. Pastoral images of the God in whose shadow we can rest, who covers us with the wings of a mother bird, who leads us beside still waters where our souls can be restored, who in the person of Jesus invites all of us who labor and are heavy-burdened to come and find rest for our souls.

It is the promise of God to all who come, and I believe that it might be the most powerful image of what the Kingdom of God means. Sometimes it seems abstract or distant, but I think it means a place where all God’s people have what they need to find rest.

But if we look around our world – take the long view that arcs out from our places of rest and renewal, like this very church – we catch sight of so many who are sleepless, who are rest-less, living very far from the recommended 7 to 9, and we can think of the reasons.

Hunger has a way of disturbing sweet dreams. Violence and fear of it disrupts “peace and quiet.” Stress and sickness keep minds active and awake and bodies tossing and turning.

We might remember the single mother; it’s all she can do to catch a nap in between shifts of her 2^nd or 3^rd job.

Or the man who sleeps outside, constantly aware of his surroundings and never really falling asleep.

Or maybe the nervous parent pacing frantically through the early morning hours praying for a sick child and wondering how she’ll find the care she needs.

Or the couple who’s up late at the kitchen table, trying to figure out how they’re going to stretch the funds to pay for college and offer the care they want to an aging parent who’s ill.

Or the family working round the clock to put their home back together after a flood, or what about the child who sleeps in a zone where he can hear the sounds of conflict and the rattle of war?

Many of us were rattled from our sleep to a greater awareness of the crisis in Syria a couple of weeks back through the image of a toddler who was pulled from the rubble of his home after it was hit in an airstrike – the boy and his family survived – but there was something about the image of him in the ambulance that disturbed, rattled, provoked a swell of international reaction. What comes because of that is yet to be seen. Will I just forget and slumber once more, or be moved to greater awareness? But I think the most jarring part for me was to learn that moments before his home caved in, he was sleeping.

It’s what we do at our most vulnerable, and if he can’t sleep safely, where can any of us sleep?

That’s the message of this parable at its core: if someone can’t sleep on their side of the village, then I can’t simply sleep peacefully on mine.

Jay Hogewood is pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge – and for the last two weeks amidst the crisis of the flood and the response, Jay and his church have found many people coming to their doors. They have found themselves a center for the first phase of response: making meals, housing families in a makeshift shelter, helping evacuees find more stable housing, coordinating volunteer teams, and meanwhile planning worship, and sermons, and Bible Studies. Jay is exhausted and there is little rest for him in sight. One day last week he was heading out when he remembered he needed to drop a family off at a hotel, so he packed his Ford Escape, ran inside to grab water and his phone, and behind him was a 17 year old boy named Wendell who said, “Excuse me…”

“Hey, man, Can I help you?” Jay asked, of course not really meaning it at the moment.

The 17 year old boy had a blank stare on his face and was drenched in sweat.

“Um, hey, I’m Jay. Is there anything we can help ya with?”

“Oh, okay then, well, I’m Wendell,” the 17 year old says. He was sweating from the walk he’s taken up Gardere Lane – a sidewalk-less street. A mile or 2 Wendell has walked to get to the church.

Jay braced himself for what Wendell would ask him.

“Mr. Jay, I just wanted to see if I could help with these…” Wendell put his little mesh backpack on the ground and carefully, he took out a stack of seven shirts and two pairs of slacks and put them in Jay’s still unwelcoming arms. “They’re clean,” he said, surely seeing the suspicion in Jay’s face. “Oh and one more thing,” He pulled out a hand sized teddy bear (with a 2007 LSU National Championship little shirt on it). “I want one of the children to have this,” he offered. “And here’s something else for y’all.” Into his pocket, he reached and placed two $1 bills in Jay’s hand.

“I think y’all are showing the love of Jesus here. Hope you have a good day.”

He turned to go. On foot. Down a scary street. In the stifling heat of the day.

And Jay got in his air-conditioned car, and he wept.

See, the standard of the village – which is the standard of the kingdom, itself – reminds us that sometimes this person that comes do the door will have something that might just save us, that just as they come with a need, they also come with gifts that we will need.

I think that’s ultimately why the man rises from his sleep and answers the door.

It’s the persistent knocking of the neighbor that awakens the man, yes, but then look again at these two words: “his persistence.”

The word for persistence – in virtually every other instance it appears throughout ancient literature – is translated, instead, “shamelessness.” Instead of the persistence of the knocker, what if it’s really the shamelessness of the sleeper at work here?

“Because of his shamelessness – because he is ashamed to stay in bed – the man will get up and give him what he needs.”

In Jesus’ world, such shame was not simple guilt; it was a standard of life together. People gave, because they knew at some point they would find themselves on the road, or maybe they had found themselves there before. Surely, they would be annoyed by a knock at the door – but at some level, they would see themselves through the keyhole; they would see their own circumstances in the man knocking. And when you see yourself standing there, how can you not awaken?

“I cannot give you anything!” the man says. The reluctant villager yawns and cries from within, “The door is already locked…My children are asleep.” But from the outside, there is another voice. It’s inaudible and unrecorded, but it is clear: it’s the voice and demands of the village shouting back, “You can’t simply sleep if your house is secure, if your children are safe, if your loved ones are well-fed…if others aren’t.” Their restlessness is your restlessness. And if someone can’t sleep on their side of the village, then how can I simply sleep on mine?

That’s why I wonder if our faith is meant to be as pillow-top and plush as we sometime make it.

I wonder if sometimes we mistake faithfulness for contentment or for ease.

For all the talk of rest and peace and comfort, the Bible calls us to be wakeful, too.

And in addition to the peace God provides for the weary, God also sparks a restlessness that might in itself be a virtue of faith in Christ. More and more I think to follow Jesus is to be in a wakeful, restless state in the midst of this world that God so loves.

The restlessness that reminds us we are unfinished people, in an incomplete world that still is still in need of the saving grace of God and Christ.

That’s what this parable is asking of us, I think.

The parable is not asking us to do it all, but it is asking us to stay awake, stay alert to those who yet knock.

When I was a pastor in New York, at Metro Baptist, our church got a lot of knocks at the door.

The church was just across the street from the bus depot where people were arriving to New York City, often without a plan or clear prospects. They’d ring the bell, they’d knock on the door, and they’d try to get all the way in to the office area. There were many times when someone asked for something the church was not prepared to give, and we had to shut the door.

One of our summer interns experienced this one evening when a man came to the door wanting a place to stay. He was sick, coughing, no place to go, and she did what she could, gave him a sandwich bag and some socks, but was clear that we weren’t equipped for him to stay there. And she was right. We had groups staying upstairs; we had children coming the next morning; we had staff we were accountable to; there was no way we could let him stay there. So she shut the door. And it was the right decision. Even as she made the right decision, the plausible decision, she didn’t confuse that with the gospel. She noticed when she shut the door, the man slid down and leaned against it, and she was so heartbroken by it, that she did the same. And she could hear the man coughing on the other side, so she just sat there, tears in her eyes, and prayed as she listened to his coughs. She sat up half the night mourning his circumstances, grieving all that divided them, and praying that the gospel, the kingdom, might be made known.

There is a lot that’s happened in that building, but I’m not sure there is anything that has ever happened in that building that’s any closer to the kingdom of God than that grief, that restlessness that said, “there must be more; there must be more that God can make possible here in our midst.”

The parable is not asking us to do it all, but it is asking us not to sleep too heavily, not to shut the door too easily, not to slumber too readily.

In the next chapter of Luke, Jesus tells us a story about a man who has it all, and he goes asleep taking it easy, before God calls him a fool. His grave mistake is that he falls asleep too quickly.

And later in the gospels, when Jesus needs his disciples most – and he is awake in agony and self-doubt in the garden – they fall asleep: “Could you have not have stayed awake?”

Such is the Kingdom of God. The kingdom of the one, whom we learn in scripture, neither slumbers nor sleeps–a God who is awake to you and to me in all of our grief and brokenness.

For Luke, this parable is about prayer and the ways we seek this wakeful God, “Ask and it shall be give to you… seek and you shall find… knock and the door shall be opened.”

In other words, God is no sleepy villager, but the one who is wakeful, alert to our needs, constantly working for our good, and again and again opening the door to us, no matter how many times we wander out into the night and struggle to find our way back home.

And that God is seeking followers who would wake from their slumber, who would hear the slightest knock, who would stay restless enough to dream of a new world, even as they lie awake.

So let me ask you: How are we sleeping?