Sleeper Awake (and Quit that Darn Snooze Button)

Brad Sullivan

5th Sunday of Lent

March 18, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

John 12:20-33

Sleeper Awake (and Quit that Darn Snooze Button)

First of all, I’d like to thank my buddy Patrick Hall for his sermon last Sunday entitled, “Risking Exposure,” which helped draw out of me these words for today.  You can look him up, Patrick Hall, and search for his sermon from last Sunday called, “Risking Exposure.” 

Now turning to today’s sermon, I’ve recently found that one of the worse inventions ever created is the snooze button.  It’s a procrastinator’s dream.  You get to put off the day and stay comfy in bed, wrapped in the covers for just a little bit longer, which, if you’re going to do that just set the alarm for 10 minutes later.  The big problem with the snooze button is what doesn’t get done because of it, the morning walk or time in prayer, the rushing through a morning that could have been more peaceful.

Ok, so as non-horrific and only mildly annoying as that may sound, what about when we begin hitting the snooze button on life?   I know I need to do this thing now.  I know it’s important.  I know it’s where I need to go in life, but I really just want to stay as I am, so I’ll put it off.  Snooze.

When the Greeks came to see Jesus, that was an alarm going off for him.  As soon as he heard that a couple of Greeks wished to see him, Jesus immediately told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” aka, it’s time for me to go get arrested and killed.  Why was the fact that a couple Greeks wanted to talk to him an alarm clock for Jesus?  Perhaps because they were Gentiles, and Jesus realized that in order for his mission to extend to the Gentiles, he had to die and be raised, and the Holy Spirit to come upon his disciples so that they could all continue his work and grow his Kingdom here on earth.  Perhaps it was simply some pre-ordained signal given to Jesus by his Father.  “Now son, when a couple of Greeks come to talk to you, that’s when it’s time.” 

In any case, as soon as that alarm went off, Jesus hopped out of bed, and immediately began preparing his disciples for his coming death.  He told them that a grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die so that it could bear much fruit, rather than just stay as it is.  Jesus was talking about his Kingdom and the resurrection life within his kingdom both after this life, and in his kingdom life here on earth. 

Long before our deaths, we have alarm clocks going off, telling us that it is time for the Kingdom life here on earth, letting us know there are conditions and situations in our lives which need to die to let the Kingdom life happen.  We need to let go of an old resentment.  We need to stop drinking.  We need to stop going halfway with our faith and fully embrace the way of Jesus.  We need to let a past relationship go, or we need to stop fooling ourselves that we are ok as we are and admit to just how broken we really are. 

We all have alarm clocks going off letting us know that it is time to let that condition or situation die, and we hear the alarm, we know what we need to do, that it is time to get up out of bed, that shadow of the tomb, and let die what needs to die, but instead, we hit the snooze button and stay as we are, assuming we can manage life as it is, assuming we can try harder, do better, and largely stay as we are.  This is of course untrue, and we simply wait for the next alarm, keeping our whole lives in the shadow of death, rather than waking up, getting out of bed, and placing that part of our lives that needs death into the tomb.

Why do we do this over and over?  Why, when we hear Jesus calling us to let something in our lives die, do we keep hitting that blasted snooze button?  We could say lack of trust or lack of belief, fear at facing the new day without whatever part of us we need to let go, or sometimes we’re just so comfortable as we are, even if it’s not working, we’re just so comfortable lying in bed with the covers drawn up, that we don’t want to move.  We don’t want to change, because it’s just too hard to get up out of bed, when we know we’ve got that snooze alarm ready to come around again. 

The problem is that with this snooze alarm, is that in life, it only makes getting out of bed even harder.  We become more engrained in the life we have, and even though we know life is not working, the thought of risking change becomes intolerable.  Facing the new day is far too daunting, and we are far too tired, so we hit the darn snooze button again.

Perhaps then, we need to start going to bed earlier, so we’re not so tired in the morning, and the thought of facing the new day doesn’t seem so daunting.  By going to bed earlier, I mean intentionally following practices of prayer, of scripture reading, of service to others, setting aside intentional time each day for prayer, learning more and more to trust in Jesus and thereby to be rested enough so that the alarm is not a horrid sound, but an invitation from a trusted friend. 

We also need to do these prayer and scripture practices, this service others not only by ourselves, but also in community with others who can help us learn to trust in Jesus more.  We need to admit to those prayer, scripture, and service partners, why we keep hitting the snooze button.  We need to admit to them and to ourselves what is keeping us in bed so that they can give us extra support so that we can get up out of bed in the morning, knowing we have others to help us face the world without the things we need to let die.  We need help putting things in the tomb.  We need folks with us at the funeral, and we need those folks with us to help us through the new life as our lives are remade by Jesus, as his fruit begins to grow. 

It is a daunting task to let die within us that which Jesus is calling us to let die, and that snooze button is so tempting, but what is waiting for us when we get out of bed is the resurrection life of Jesus’ kingdom here on earth.  The love of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the forgiveness and grace of Jesus all both received from Jesus and then given by us to others, that is what we are putting off every time we hit that thrice blasted snooze button.  His Kingdom.  His resurrection life. His grace and forgiveness, a new life unbound by that which keeps us asleep.  That is what is waiting for us.

“Sleeper awake,” Jesus calls.  “Quit that darn snooze button, and get out of bed, that shadow of death.  Let die within you that which needs to die, and follow me.”

Wreck It Rabbi

Brad Sullivan

3rd Sunday of Lent

March 4, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

John 2:13-22

Wreck It Rabbi

One of my kids’ and my favorite movies is an animated movie called, “Wreck It Ralph.”  Ralph is a video game character, a bad guy whose catch phrase is, “I’m gonna wreck it,” and in this movie, the video game characters are kind of alive and interact with each other when they are off stage, when no one is playing the game.  Ralph’s game is a game called Fix It Felix in which Ralph is, again, the bad guy, except that he doesn’t want to be the bad guy.  He’s good hearted, but in the game, his job is to destroy a high rise apartment building, and as he does, the tenants shout “Fix It Felix”, and the hero, Fix It Felix comes along and fixes everything that Ralph destroys.  So, everyone kinda hates Ralph, then as the movie goes on, they all realize that without Ralph, no one would play their game, and through the rest of the plot, we find that Wreck It Ralph is actually a hero, doing a lot of fixing of some bad things going on through his propensity for wrecking.  Spoiler alert, by the end of the movie, they’re all friends.

So, in our Gospel story today, when Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers in the Temple and drives out the animals that were being sold there, he’s kind of like Wreck It Rabbi.  He saw the animals and the money changers in the Temple, and he wrecked it.  The people were pretty stunned saying, “What the heck just happened?”, eventually calling out, “Fix It Pharisees.”

Well, most of our Bibles probably say, “Jesus cleanse[d] the Temple.”  If you’ve got a Bible that has little subject titles inserted in the text, then that insertion, that editor’s note, probably says, “Jesus cleanses the Temple.”  It’s cute and catchy as titles go, but here’s the problem, Jesus wasn’t cleansing anything.  See the animals and money changers, they were all supposed to be there.  The blood sacrifice of animals was part of the temple worship, given as offerings to God for a variety of reasons, including forgiveness of sins.  If you didn’t have the best or the right kind of animal of your own, well then you could purchase one.  This was all prescribed in the law of Moses.  So the people in weren’t making the temple dirty.  They were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing as prescribed in the law of Moses.  The problem was that the system was broken.  People were stuck under the weight of trying to manage their sin with God through animal sacrifice, and all of that time and effort and resources which could have gone to improving the lives of each other, went instead to trying to appease a seemingly angry God.

So, Jesus was not cleansing the Temple.  He was reforming it.  He was kinda taking a wrecking ball to his religion, actually, but he was following a long tradition of prophets and psalmists who kept saying over and over, “quit with this animal sacrifice stuff.  The temple should be a place of prayer, and seriously, God doesn’t need any goats, or sheep, or cows, or doves.  He made them; they are his already.”  As the prophet Micah wrote:

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’

‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old?

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:7, 6, 8

Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with God.  That’s what Wreck It Rabbi wanted for Temple worship.  That’s what Wreck It Rabbi wants for our lives, and he is happy to wreck whatever gets in the way of that.  Sometimes our worship getsbtoo performance based, with people getting very upset if someone makes a mistake in the movement or words of the worship.  Wreck It Rabbi comes in and says, “this is supposed to be a house of prayer, not a theater company.”  Sometimes folks get angry with children making noise, and Wreck It Rabbi comes in and says, “Let the little children come to me, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.”  Sometimes we get so caught up in all that we do to prepare for our worship, that we end up thinking that our primary ministry is here, to prepare for our time here, and Wreck It Rabbi comes in and says, “Go in peace to love and serve me, in those you encounter outside of here, for that is your true worship.” 

As Jesus comes along and wrecks things, disrupting our worship time, we sometimes get calls of “Fix It Father” from those who have been disrupted.  Sometimes, it isn’t Jesus disrupting things, and we really do need to fix it.  Other times, Wreck It Rabbi may want us to be disrupted, taking us out of our comfort and our routine in order to wake us up to see him in our lives beyond the Temple, the church, the worship. 

By reforming the Temple, in the story we heard today, Wreck It Rabbi reminds us that our lives are not meant to lead us to worship.  We don’t spend our time preparing ourselves to be worthy enough to worship God in just the right way.  We spend time in worship and prayer to heal our hearts so that we can do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.  That’s God’s desire for us.  Our truest offerings during prayer and worship are the offerings of our hearts.  Whatever is holding us back from doing justice and loving kindness, that is what we offer to God.

In the Morning Prayer service, there is a prayer called, “A Collect for Saturdays,” and I love this prayer except for one word, “sanctuary.”  “Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures:  Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary…” (BCP p. 99)  Wait a minute.  Is there anything we can do to make us righteous enough before God to be worthy enough to come near to the holy place where God dwells?  No.  We aren’t going to make ourselves more righteous than Jesus already has. 

Wreck It Rabbi has no interest in gospels of sin management that keep us down under the heavy burden of fearing an angry God who feels that we are never good enough for him.  That’s part of why he and the prophets took a wrecking ball to the animal sacrifice system of Temple worship, and thankfully, Wreck It Rabbi continues to wreck our worship and our ways of life whenever gospels of sin management keep us down, fearing an angry God, rather than trusting in Jesus’ Gospel of light and grace which tells us we are beloved children of a loving God, and that we are worthy to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

So, that prayer, then, that collect for Saturdays?  I’ve changed that word “sanctuary” to “kingdom.”  No we pray, “Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures:  Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties may be duly prepared for the service of your kingdom…”  That is what our rest is for.  That is what our worship and prayer is for, so that we may be duly prepared for the service of God’s kingdom, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.

What does that look like?  Well, that’s going to be a bit different for all of us.  For me, one of my passions is children and schools.  I was at a meeting of faith leaders on Thursday morning with the HISD superintendent, Richard Carranza, and School Board president, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, among the topics discussed, they invited us to come to a training on March 29 to learn about how best to partner churches with schools to have folks be mentors for kids, to address the needs that principals tell us are there, and to be a part of the village that raises up kids in our community.  You can bet I’m going to be there at that meeting because that’s my passion.  That’s the broken thing that Wreck It Rabbi has given me a passion for where I would like to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

What about you?   What broken thing has Wreck It Rabbi given you a passion for?  What broken thing is Jesus calling you to fix?  That’s why we’re here.  Wreck It Rabbi has brought us here this morning to strengthen us, to heal our hearts, and to remind us that we are beloved children of a loving God so that as we leave this place, we may have eyes to see the broken places and systems of our world and say, “I’m going to wreck it,” and through that wrecking, to fix it, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.