:: EVERGREEN CHRISTIAN CHURCH ::

The theology question, the religious question and the faith question before us in this series of summer sermons celebrating our twenty years together in ministry is one and the same: "What is the word that gives life? What is the word that raises the dead? How can we have abundant life, full life, meaningful life, gracious life, eternal life?" This really is the only question because religion is about life. When we make anything else the subject of religion we have lost our way.

We are gathered as a church in the presence of Jesus to talk about life.

We have been given all things to enjoy life and we have been bewitched into thinking we have to have all things to enjoy life. Thus, overburdened with things and our attachments, we have become underpowered for loving and its opportunities.

The text in today's gospel (Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30) contains some of Jesus' wisdom teaching about life. It contains two things. One, the text contains an ironic view of people's dissatisfaction with life, no matter what. And it contains a wonderful invitation to life.

This generation is like a bunch of spoiled children. They can neither weep nor laugh, go to the funeral or go to the wedding. They hated John the Baptist because he didn't eat and drink. They hated Jesus because he ate and drank with all kinds of people. John was not sociable enough. Jesus was too sociable. Some people are never satisfied with life or religion. Spoiled beyond belief, complaining about life has become their only option.

But then comes the invitation. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Don't you like to get an invitation? Christian faith is never a coercion-it is always in invitation. It is an invitation to life.

Remember, we are talking about being sentenced to life by the Christian gospel. And we are talking about the fundamental guiding, inspiring and challenging sentences for living as Christians in the world. And in the first few sermons, we are weaving the basket to hold the essential fragments of the faith.

Through the zig zag journey of my days I have tried to pay attention to my life. To my life, to the lives of others...in the valleys as well as the peaks, in the deserts as well as the oases, in the darkness as well as the light, in the suffering as well as the ecstacy, in the sinfulness as well as the faithfulness. And I confess that there has been enough of all of it in my life. I have learned more from my foibles and my failures than from my certitudes and my strengths. I encourage you to till the soil of your own foibles, your own questions, your own sins before attending to proclamations and pronouncements. If you do not, you will not be of much use to anybody.

So I hope these life sentences will help us to see life as we are living it. I have gathered these sentences from all over the place as I have tried to pay attention to experience...from my own head and heart, from my hearing of the gospel and seeing it enfleshed in the lives of so many in so many unexpected places, from conversations with my traveling companions, from sacred and profane texts, from my teachers, and writers who have been my conversation partners. Living theology is, in fact, an effort to expand the circle of "relevant others" with whom we are in contact, in order to overcome the stringent boundaries in which our life has imprisoned us, not making room for love or life.

What we are seeking in these conversations about life and faith, then, is not some systematic theology. Rather we are seeking not so much information as insight, not so much instruction as inspiration for the living of our days between birth and death. I hope these insights will help you to pay attention to your own life, and to the community where your life unfolds, and to reaching out to others where life is hard, denied, and deprived, with the death forces of evil, injustice, bad religion, illness, poverty, war and tragedy arrayed against it.

I am aware that changes in my own life have come not through something taught or some technique mastered, so much as through experience and conversation in a relationship. The world is now too large for anything but wisdom and too small for anything but love. We will learn to live "I-Thou" or we will not learn to live at all.

Again, religion is about life as we live it as beings of desire. I confess with the poet Neruda that "I have lived." And I confess with Luther that I have become a theologian by "living, by dying, and by being damned, not simply by understanding, reading and speculation."

Think, then, of the life of faith, your life of faith as "paying attention" Many people simply allow life to happen to them-no real thought or reflection, not real plan or direction, no over arching story to make sense of life, to give it meaning, and to fill it with the joy of hope for the future. So here are some faith questions to help you pay attention.

What have you made of your life?

What has life made of you?

What have you become and what are you becoming.

What are you paying attention to? Life is measured by what we attend to. As I have said before, the road of faith opens up only before those who take it. Until you step out, there is no road for there is no faith. It is equally true that the road of faith opens up to those who pay attention.

In faith, we pay attention to:

I. God

(Creator and source)

(Savior and redeemer) Augustine: "Our hearts are restless until we rest in thee." (Sustainer and presence)
Pay attention to the invitation: "Come to me." (Goal and destination)

II. Yourself

What do you want from life? You are likely to get what you pay attention to! As Carlyle Marney said, however: "Don't expect more from life than your fundamental principle can deliver."

What do you value?

What do you desire to be saved from and for? Be specific here. Pay attention to the invitation: "Take my Yoke"

III. Others

Life is found in relationships. We do not live "I-It" but "I-Thou." To be surrounded on the north, east, south and west by yourself is a lonely way. Individualism is life with your things! Personhood is life with your relationships...those who have loved you and whom you have loved.

Pay attention to the invitation: "Learn of me." The man "for others."

The life of faith is paying attention. Let's pay attention to the invitation very carefully:

1. Come to me-a person not an idea, philosophy, so self help program.
2. Take my yoke-a commitment with a companion.
3. Learn of me-the way of the servant Jesus and wisdom of God in the world.
4. Rest-grace not legal striving or religious fanaticism is at the heart of Christian faith. Sabbath is given us to make visible that we are not primarily producers and consumers, but worshipers.

Victor L. Hunter
Pastor, Evergreen Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Extra biblical sources used in preparation of this sermon:

Rubem Alves, What Is Religion?

Richard Lowery, Sabbath and Jubilee

Carlyle Marney, Unpublished papers, Interpreters' House

Preaching Through the Christian Year