Beth Braxton

August 30, 2009

James 1:  17–27

—————

Introduction to the scripture:

The book of James is known as a book of moral exhortations, the five chapters are a moral discourse for the early Christian community. Out of 108 verses in this small book of the Bible, there are 59 imperatives. These are noted as the moral imperatives of Christian identity, the practical wisdom of right behavior.

Listen to God’s Word and for God’s word: Read James 1: 17-27

“Be doers of the word and not merely hearers.”

Most of you know from going through our New Member Class that a motto I live by is: “practice what you preach.” I am humbled by this task of speaking God’s word to you. And indeed I feel it only has integrity if I am also following the Christ I exhort you to follow. This way of Christian life is a challenge and I know I am a sinner and often fail, But I DO seek to live what I say from the pulpit.

Well, this week on our staff retreat, we listened to a lecture by author theologian, Barbara Brown Taylor. She gave this lecture to about 800 preachers at the Festival of Homiletics. She took my motto–“Practice what you preach” and stood it on its head, even making it more of a challenge! She said you need to “preach what you practice,” or rather she was saying-you already do! Your life and your practices of life speak volumes before you even say a word! Who you are, what you do each day, speaks loudly! Your character shows through to people.

Does your life preach what you practice?

Yes, it sure does! The question is–and what does it preach?

A number of years ago I was on the session visits committee of presbytery. Our job was to make a tri-annual visit to the session of each Presbyterian church in our presbytery to see how they are doing. Is the church basically healthy? What are their joys and concerns?

Well, I will never forget this one visit to a church, which shall remain nameless. My colleague and I walked into the room where the session was meeting and the pastor is sitting in an overstuffed chair pulled way away from the tables where all the elders were sitting. His body language said I do not really want to be here; I have no relationship with this group; at the same time he was a fairly large man and seemed quit intimidating. The session elders spoke timidly. Whereas our other church visits had been full of lively conversation, here it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to participate. The pastor did not speak, but his character did!

Do you remember the movie, Simon Birch, based on the book, A Prayer for Own Meany? The Sunday School teacher in the movie, “Simon Birch” is another good example of a life out of place, talking religion, but her practice in the Sunday School classroom was one of frustration and anger with the children.

Okay we can all probably hear ourselves in an argument with our spouse saying, “I am not angry; no, and I am not yelling at you!” (Been there–done that!) Our lives are preaching!

The story of Rapunzel recounted in Grimes Fairy Tales reveals a practice common to many of us at times in our lives. Rapunzel was a damsel imprisoned by a witch in a tower without a door. The only access to the tower was through a solitary window at the top. When the witch wanted to visit she stood below and called for Rapunzel to let down her long, golden hair from the window. Then the witch scampered up, using Rapunzel’s hair as a ladder. Year after year Rapunzel sat in the tower, singing sad songs and waiting for someone to come along and rescue her.

We too often practice that victim mentality waiting to be rescued. The witch when she finds out that a prince has been visiting her cuts off her hair and throws her into the wilderness–(often wondered–did it not occur to Rapunzel that she could cut off her own hair and make a ladder to escape. The solution to her problem was with her all along!)

“And Then” is the title of a film short that we have shown to our confirmands; now we show it to their parents. It is a Swedish film, but that does not matter because there is little dialogue and one can easily follow the script by what the ten confirmands in the film do with the oversized Bibles they are given as a confirmation gift at the end of their class. One particular scene hit home to me–the young girl came into the church carrying her new Bible and she sees the pastor arguing with a parishioner, and stands there and listens for awhile then and throws her Bible down and walks out!

Has your life been a stumbling block to the Christian faith and life for others? Do you feel the duplicity in your life? (Saying one thing and doing another?) Do you hear and do? Do your actions match your words? Are your actions speaking louder than words? But not the message you want to give!

There are parents whose liquor cabinets are full and who enjoy weekend barbeques and parties at their homes where the booze flows, then they wonder several years later how did their teen become an alcoholic. Our lives are speaking volumes! The practices of our lives are speaking volumes.

Then there are those of us who grew up with one parent as an alcoholic and experienced the constant arguing over drinking so we became the peacemakers and as adult children of alcoholics, we have to be aware that our lives preach co-dependency! or, trying to fix it (relationships).

James words about not just hearing but doing are consistent with the poem “Children Learn What They Live.” By Dorothy Law Notle, it’s a good poem to hear again as school is starting.

-              If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

-              If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

-              If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.

-              If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.

-              If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.

-              If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.

-              If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.

But the poem continues––

-              If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

-              If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.

-              If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.

-              If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.

-              If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.

-              If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.

-              If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.

This understanding that we preach what we practice agrees with the hierarchy of learning also. I used it when doing teacher training with my Sunday School teachers in my DCE days.-It is a triangle. At the top is what we learn by what we hear –– only 10%, we learn a little more by what we see, and even more if we can do a simulation, but we learn the most by actually doing. I can tell you, explain how to fly an airplane (not really). I can show you pictures of the flight panels, etc. If we get in a flight simulator you really begin to learn, but you know you’ve learned by the actual experience of flying the airplane itself!

What we do, our practices, is important! How we live our lives day by day is important! Be “doers of the Word, and not hearers only,” says James. Be persons whose lives are a testimony to the story of faith. We are called in this passage to be persons whose lives speak Good News by how we live; how we treat one another! We are to live lives that speak of God’s presence in the world!

Our New mission statement is about practices––It says “Becoming Disciples through Sabbath, Study and Service.” Yes, we become disciples of Jesus Christ through the practices of Sabbath, study and service.

We practice Sabbath: coming in here every Sunday. Your life is a testimony of honoring God every time you bow your head in prayer at the dining table, every time your morning walk praises God for the beauty around you, every moment of soothing a crying child, or rocking a baby to sleep, singing softly the old hymns to an elderly parent, walking the labyrinth, listening in silence to God. These are habits of the heart that show a way of life that speak of the virtues of Sabbath.

We practice Study: with Bibles open on our laps in a Women’s circle, sitting in a living room pondering questions of scripture with a ChristCare group, participating in Sunday school dialogue on faith themes in literature or the position of the prophet Amos, watching Bill Moyers on PBS discussion of Genesis with theologians, attending the year long Disciple Bible study, or during times of personal devotional reading. These are habits of the heart that show a way of life that speak of the virtue of curiosity and learning!

We practice Service when we give of ourselves to help another: drive someone to a doctor’s appointment, teach a rainbow class, walk 26 miles in a marathon for cancer research work with Jr. Highs down at the soup kitchen in D.C., mow the lawn of a handicapped neighbor or for the church, hold a door, lift groceries, make a bed, sort clothes at ECHO, coordinate the hypothermia program, provide shelter for the homeless, spend a month in Kenya distributing food to orphan, teach a child how to work a computer, or write a check for a need or say a prayer. These are habits of the heart that show a way of life that speak of the virtue of compassion, love, and justice!

James is calling us, as he did those first Christians, to be persons of practice, to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. He uses the image of looking in a mirror in verses 23-25 to explain his point. “For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and on going away immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act–they will be blessed in their doing.”

James is saying for faith to be real it must be translated into deeds. Here he agrees with ancient moralists that theoretical correctness matters little if one’s life does not conform to the ideas one espouses.[i]

Christianity and Church are not just about teaching correct theological thought–God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit–they are about embodying the Word of God, the words of Jesus. They are about a life lived in the Spirit. Salvation is not just about something you believe or feel, according to James–it is about talking and walking like Jesus.

There is a little chorus we learned in Kenya called “I’m Gonna Shine.” It goes like this: 

“I’m gonna shine

I’m gonna shine

I’m gonna shine

I’m gonna shine

So when people see me they see you Jesus,

I’m gonna shine,

I’m gonna shine,

O my Lord, I’m gonna shine!”

That’s what it is all about–letting our lives shine with the presence of Christ.

James mentions “the implanted word” (v.21) as what saves us when we truly receive it. “The moral life of Christians begins, then, with ‘putting aside’ all those qualities of arrogance and desire and rage that oppose ‘God’s righteousness’ (v.20), and ‘putting on’ the qualities of meekness and hearing that will enable them to be reshaped according to ‘the word of truth,’”[ii] into deeds of that word!

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)  Let us remember that we too are to enflesh the Word. And let us remember that our lives DO preach what we practice! So let’s give good sermons this week!

Amen? Amen!

Thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for the idea of this sermon.

[i] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XII, (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1998), p. 189.

[ii] Ibid.

MaryAnn McKibben Dana
August 23, 2009

Genesis 2.7-9, 15-17, 3.1-13, 22-24

———————

We all know what this story is about, right?

The Fall… Our pew Bibles call it “the first sin and its punishment”… Original sin… that state of being that we all take part in by simply being human. We were given the simplest of tasks, and we blew it. God says, “You may freely eat” of any tree. Freely, with abandon, with lots of choices, this tree or this tree or this tree; we can make a big tasty fruit salad with all the choices we have here. Just don’t eat from that one: that one right there in the middle of things. You know the one, with the thick yellow tape roping it off: “Do not cross,” the one with the little placard next to it like at the botanical gardens, “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, native to Eden, of divine origin, beautiful fruit, deadly.”

Of course we ate from it.

Of course we hid ourselves, by piecing together a bunch of flimsy little fig leaves,

so we could hide from God, hide from God.

Of course we pointed the finger at everyone but ourselves. Of course we did.

What else would we do? We’re sinners.

Adam and Eve are a sort of Everyman and Everywoman. The point of this is not to be a historical tale that took place on a particular day way back at the beginning of time. It’s a tale that takes place every single day with every one of us. We’ve all got what a case of the Can’t-Help-Its. We can’t help it. What else can we do but sin? What else can we do but disobey God, cross that yellow police tape, and then point the finger of blame somewhere else? Adam and Eve want so much to be their own gods that they alienate themselves from the one God—a broken relationship that has been repeated again and again throughout history, and will only be fully repaired through the work of Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and humankind. Original sin is the disease, The Fall is the event, and Jesus is the cure.

That’s what this story means… right?

Hold on to your hats, folks…

I’d like us to consider a different interpretation of this story. Why? Because we can… because before this story was wrapped up in a theological debate about sin and salvation, it was a story, and stories can contain more than one meaning. I remember after the movie Field of Dreams came out, I was telling some friends how much I enjoyed it because it was about the consequences of taking a leap of faith. “What are you talking about?” one friend asked. “That movie is about the relationship between a father and son.” “No way,” said another, “that movie is about the enduring power of baseball!” And so forth. And of course, the movie is about all those things. And more.

It’s just that I’ve been hearing sermons on Adam and Eve my whole life, and have felt that the original sin stuff, the “fall” stuff, is good doctrine, but just a little bit ill-fitting to this story… or at least, incomplete.

In fact, original sin is a theological doctrine that did not get layered on this story until much later. If we take away that doctrine… (and put it somewhere for safe-keeping, it’s important stuff!)… we’re left with a whole bunch of questions:

First, doesn’t this seem pretty harsh of God? Adam and Eve make one mistake and they’re kicked out of Eden? How are we to respond to such a God? What are the implications of worshiping a God who offers not three strikes, but one strike, and you are out, punished, forever, Paradise Lost… and not just Adam and Eve, but every single human being that would come after them. Does a God with a zero-tolerance policy inspire us to love God, love neighbor, and love ourself, to drop our nets like those early fishermen and follow Jesus? Maybe… if we’re afraid of what God will do to us if we don’t… but as I said a few weeks ago, a “because I said so” God is an inadequate view of God.

This expulsion from Eden for taking a bite of a piece of fruit seems out of proportion to me, especially since this is the same God who will lead a grumbling people out of slavery, who will someday die on the cross out of non-violent love for humanity and will say “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive them, by the way, for actions that are a whole lot more grave than taking a bite of fruit.

Where is the grace in a zero-tolerance God?

But there’s another issue with this story: Does this not seem like a bit of a setup? Why would God create a tree that God didn’t want anyone to eat from? Why would God set up this test?

Now, we might respond to that by saying, “Well, God had to do that because we have to have choices. Adam and Eve had to be given a choice to do the right thing—without that, they’re just puppets, without any free will.”

Well, OK. Except I wonder how much freedom Adam and Eve had in that garden. If Adam and Eve did not have knowledge of good and evil, until they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how were they in any way equipped to evaluate the merits of their actions? Punishing Adam and Eve for this would be like punishing a llama for not being able to do calculus.

And that right there is the sticking point for many folks.

The Jewish writer and theologian Harold Kushner has written about this story not as a fall story, not as an example of Paradise Lost, but Paradise Outgrown. He points to the story as an example of the ways we as humans are always seeking after greater knowledge and experience—for good and for ill. Remember Adam and Eve in the musical Children of Eden, which we performed here some years ago? They begin to get bored by the perfect predictability of life in the garden. In this interpretation, Eve (and then Adam) are restless in Eden, where everything is perfect, everything is provided, and they eat the fruit in a search for wisdom.

That’s a fanciful way of illustrating what Kushner is talking about. He sees the decision to eat the fruit as a yearning for wisdom, for complexity and depth. We can read this story as one of being fallen… and we can read this story as one of becoming more fully human.

This is our story, is it not? It is human nature to grasp for what we don’t have. Not content with things as they are, we strive, we question, we experiment, we grow. This can happen in healthy ways (children maturing and leaving the homes they grew up in) and unhealthy ones (people who cheat on spouses because they think something better is out there).

One thing is certain, however—once that quest for knowledge, wisdom or experience has begun, life can never go back to the way it was. Adam and Eve never return to Eden. Children “can’t go home again”—things aren’t ever quite the same. And destructive deeds between spouses cannot be undone.

In Lois Lowry’s young adult novel The Giver, Jonah is an eleven-year-old boy who lives with his family in a strange society in which everything is carefully controlled. All decisions are made by the benevolent elders of the community: whom people will marry, what jobs they will have. Even clothing and hairstyle are regulated. Strong emotions or outbursts that would be disruptive to the community are discouraged. Every aspect of life is designed to maximize harmony and the orderly functioning of the community.

Jonah is given a unique job in the community: he becomes the Receiver of Memory. His role is to keep all of the knowledge of what has gone before, in case the elders ever need to consult that wealth of wisdom for advice. Jonah’s like a human library; he becomes the container for every piece of history, every emotion and human event. Through a series of meetings with the outgoing Receiver (now called the Giver), he learns and experiences things he’s never understood before, everything from snow to sunburn, from Christmas to a broken leg. He comes to realize how narrow the life of the community truly is. They do not know the joy of zooming down a hill on a sled… but nor do they know the horror of war. They don’t know good or evil. He alone does. And it is a terrible burden.

I have always pictured Adam and Eve’s experience of good and evil with a similar cinematic flair: they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in an instant this knowledge comes to them in a series of powerful images flashing through their minds’ eye. The glow of family flashes to the devastation of brother killing brother. The exquisite beauty of creation is drowned in flood. They see the totality of human experience laid before them and are stripped naked by it, vulnerable in a way they never were before. And once they have gone down this path, things are never the same again.

Both these stories of Adam and Eve and of Jonah present a profound loss of innocence. And yet, Jonah realizes that his life before receiving memories was not much of a life at all. His was a world with no depth. His process is not unlike that described by Paul in I Corinthians 13, who “thought like a child, spoke like a child, reasoned like a child,” and put away those things when he became an adult.

We might think of Adam and Eve’s story in a similar way. Without the knowledge of good and evil, what are we? We are just like any other animal who walks, runs, gallops, creeps, soars on the earth. Knowledge of good and evil is what makes us human. And it is what makes us… like God.

The serpent says to Eve, “You eat this fruit, and you will be like God.” And the serpent is absolutely right, God confirms it at the end of the story, “They have become like one of us, like one of the heavenly court.”

The word “like” is very important! We are not God. But we are like God. Psalm 8 says that we are but a little lower than the angels.

At the center of who we are as human beings is the knowledge of good and evil. No, we don’t know it perfectly, we probably don’t even know it that well most of the time. But our life is one of knowing good and evil… and perpetrating good, and evil. We know the beauty of a child born. We know of the courageous fight for civil rights in this country. We know people who minister to people with AIDS, who visit the condemned on death row, who work every day for justice and peace. We know… And we know the horrors of war. We know there are places where women are beaten, and burned, governments who torture, places where children are forced to become child soldiers. And we know of lands where people strap explosives to themselves and walk into open air markets. We know good and evil. We sit with the newspaper or in front of the TV news and we eat the fruit of this tree every day.

At the end of the story, God kicks Adam and Eve from the garden, and stations an angel to stand guard so Adam and Eve don’t return. But why does God do that? Just to keep us from the good stuff? As I’ve said, Kushner suggests that this is a case of Paradise Outgrown… But I think there’s more. Notice what God gives as the rationale for expelling them from Eden…

They know good and evil now. And now, if they eat from the tree of life, they will live forever.

And I can’t let that happen.

The images of good are all fine and good, but those images of evil will be with them forever… Every bit of pain in the world, every act of violence, every horror of war, every cruel word, will be theirs to behold for all eternity.

Maybe God’s not punishing them by keeping Adam and Eve from the tree of life. Maybe it’s a mercy, not to live forever with the knowledge of good and evil!

—–

An alternative interpretation, for you to ponder in your own heart.

And so how do we sort through the various interpretations of this story?

Well, the original sin stuff got attached to this story because for many years, centuries really, theologians fixed on pride as the fundamental human flaw. We want to be our own gods. We think we know best for our lives. We don’t need God. We can forge our own path.

I would suggest that for people who struggle with pride, the traditional interpretation has much to offer.

But not everyone struggles with pride. Recent voices in theology have lifted up the exact opposite as a fundamental sin that some struggle with mightily: the sin of self-denial and self-deprecation: “I don’t matter. I’m not worth anything. I’m not lovable. My needs come last. Everyone else is more important, more valuable.”

For someone who suffers from this thinking, can you see how the traditional interpretation would actually do more damage to their sense of self? (It also denigrates the God who created each of us in God’s image!)

And so, if you struggle with this sense of self-denial, maybe you are called to hear something new in this story—namely, that you have been created in the image of God, and that you have knowledge, wisdom, and experience, that are precious gifts from God, and are not to be denied, but are to be celebrated and shared.

And so, depending on where you fall on that spectrum, this story might nourish you differently. It is up to each of us, when confronted with a story containing complex meanings, to search our hearts, to pray for guidance, to wrestle with, confident that in that wrestling there can be a blessing.

Thanks be to God.

This sermon was inspired by Harold Kushner’s How Good Do We Have to Be?

Genesis 15:1-6

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

———————

Paul Jones remembers the day that he found faith—or perhaps I should say, the day faith found him.

By the time I heard the story, at a conference in Colorado, Paul Jones was a seminary trained theologian and ordained monk in the Trappist order. Over the course of his life he had lived in a tenement house among the poor of Kansas City, had taught seminary courses, and was currently one of the contributors to Weavings, a magazine of spirituality published by the Upper Room publishing house. He had the pedigree! But before all that, decades earlier in his young adulthood, he had a question. The question burned within him.

Is the resurrection true?

Have you ever found yourself wondering if it’s true, if it’s really true, if that crazy wonderful impossible thing could be true? During a time of spiritual darkness, or while squinting through the thick fog of grief, or even just while reading the morning paper and wading through the grim headlines. Have the powers of death really been defeated forever, despite what we see? Was this man Jesus really raised from the dead, despite what we know about human biology and our finite human bodies?

Did the question flit through your mind, only to be swatted away? Or did it linger—for hours, for days, for months? Maybe it lingers still.

When the question comes, do we dare to mutter it to someone else, or do we lock it up silently—for to give voice to that question would be to make it all too real, and after all, “I’ve been in the church my whole life,” or “I’m an elder,” or “I’m a pastor”—I’m in this Christian life too deep, won’t I look like a fool if I start questioning it now? It seems like Christianity is on the ropes these days… the number of people who identify themselves as “unaffiliated” has doubled since 1990, and the percentage of Christians in that same period, while still large, has declined 10%. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583 ) So if we, the steadfast practitioners of Christianity, start admitting to our doubts, isn’t the whole thing going to come crashing down?

Or maybe you don’t wrestle with the question at all. You feel certain that it’s not true, and that Christianity is nothing more than a nice club, an organization that teaches good values and ethical living, but the supernatural stuff? “C’mon, we’re past all that.”

If you have ever wrestled with that question, you are not alone. You share company with believers throughout the ages, including, it would seem, the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews. Actually, the book of Hebrews, many argue, is not merely a letter, but a sermon—a sermon to a group of second generation Christians who were beginning to wander away from the faith, disgruntled that the second coming hadn’t come yet. They expected Jesus to return quickly, and when he didn’t they asked, “Where is this messiah that was promised? Is the story even true? Is the resurrection true?”

And like a good preacher, the writer of Hebrews responds to this crisis with a profound little statement about faith, a statement that people would hopefully still be pondering to themselves on the way home from church or at Sunday brunch. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Which is a fancy way of saying, “Friends, you aren’t going to get proof. Faith is about potential—the God you put your faith in hasn’t finished the job yet, and you may never really see the end result in this lifetime. It’s hoped for, it’s unseen.”

And then the preacher of Hebrews goes on with this astounding list of pillars of the covenant community who lived out that faith. Noah, Moses, David, Samuel, and of course, today’s focus, Abraham. And throughout this litany of Old Testament heroes is woven the words, by faith… by faith… by faith, reminding the Hebrews and us that they didn’t do it alone, that Abraham didn’t do it alone, that God gave him the faith to go to the land that had been promised to him.

Where Abraham started, and where Paul Jones started, is a land without faith. Life is so radically different there that Abraham even has a different name. Remember, before Abraham was Abraham, he was Abram. And as far as Abram knows, there is no God, there is no covenant, there is no obedience to anything, and Abram has no sons or daughters.

It’s not a bad place, probably, the Land without Faith. It’s probably a very simple place to live, things are pretty black and white, you’re not beholden to anybody or much of anything.

But the problem with the Land without Faith, as Abram discovers, is that once God has invaded your life, once God has addressed you and given you a new name, you can’t stay.

You’ve got to emigrate. And so God presses a little compass into your palm, helps you on with your knapsack, and leads you into your new home, which is the Land of Faith, that in-between place, just as God led Abraham.

What kind of place is the Land of Faith? It’s not a bad place to live either, but unlike the place you came from, it is not simple. Things happen that don’t make a lot of sense.

In the old land, a geriatric couple without children is as good as dead.
In the new land, that same couple is told that their descendants will be more numerous than all the stars of the night sky.
In the old land, it’s the rules of the schoolyard; the biggest and the toughest always wins.
In the new land, a young boy, the baby of the family, can defeat a giant with a single stone between the eyes.
In the old land, if you’re successful it’s because you earned it, if you’re rich it’s because you deserve it more than that person over there, if there’s a rule for living it’s to look out for #1.
In the new land, people (interrupt a busy Saturday) get up early on a Sunday morning and make their way to a house of meeting, and dare to proclaim: our lives are not our own, everything we have is a gift, and if there’s a rule for living it’s to love one another even if we don’t like each other all the time.

That’s the Land of Faith.

That litany of biblical heroes sounds pretty amazing. “By faith, by faith, by faith.” But it can also seem very discomforting. What if God doesn’t speak so clearly to us? What if the faith we grew up with, the faith we have lived in for much of our lives, the faith of our parents, just doesn’t feel authentic anymore? What if we strongly suspect that maybe this is all there is—what we see?

Maybe we need to understand faith a little differently.

Gordon Atkinson is a pastor in Texas who blogs under the name “Real Live Preacher.” Here, in his words, is a story that speaks to me about a different kind of faith (http://highcallingblogs.com/blog/covenant-stories-our-first-funeral/2600/ )…

My wife met George Swisher at the hospital where she was working as a chaplain. George had AIDS and was in the hospital battling an infection of some kind. George was an avowed atheist. His father faithfully took the family to the Baptist Church on Sundays, but then he beat any idea of God out of George during the rest of the week. In George’s mind, his father, the beatings, and the Baptist Church were all rolled up together in a ball of painful memories. It’s not surprising that he hadn’t been in church for awhile.

One afternoon George was in a sleepy, drug-induced state and thought he saw Jesus standing at the foot of his hospital bed. He shook his head a few times and the vision of Jesus faded. About that time my wife walked into the room and announced that she was a chaplain. Normally George would have thrown her out, but the Jesus vision had spooked him a bit, so he let her stay. She did not push God talk on him. The two talked about life, laughed, and ended up becoming friends. I met George at a sandwich shop to talk, and in that conversation he confessed that he would like to come to church, but he felt it was a problem that he did not believe in God. I asked him why he wanted to come to church if he didn’t believe in God. He told me he remembered the hymns they sang in church when he was a boy. He thought he would like to hear that music again before he died.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, come to church. People come to church for all sorts of reasons. Just sit there and sing hymns. You don’t have to do anything else. We won’t bother you or try to get you to convert or join or anything.” George was there the next Sunday, wearing jeans, black tennis shoes, a plaid flannel shirt, and suspenders. He sat in church, closed his eyes during the hymns, and sang along. He had a beautiful baritone voice, and within a few weeks, people were sitting near George so they could hear him sing.

I don’t have time to tell you how George became a Christian, and I don’t remember in any case. We never asked him. We just let him sing on Sundays and come to church picnics and be with us. We became his adopted family, you might say. One day George pulled me aside and said, “I think I’m ready to be baptized and become a Christian.”

“Really?” I said. I was surprised. “What happened?”

He scratched his beard. “Well, I don’t know for sure if there is a God. I still kind of doubt it, to be honest. But I started praying. I’ve been calling God ‘Dad.’ You know, like, ‘Hey Dad, can I talk to you for a moment?’ Do you think that’s okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “God, Dad, Father, Creator, Abba, whatever.”

After he was baptized, George’s act of service for the church was to stay after worship and pick up the hymnals. This he did with absolute faithfulness every Sunday. When it came time to elect deacons, I said we should vote for people who are servants of the church. I guess people immediately thought of George because he was always picking up the hymnals. So when half the ballots came back with George’s name on them, George became a deacon. He was completely shocked by this and kept saying, “Are you sure it was ME they wanted? There’s not some other George is there?”

It is safe to say that George was beloved by all of us. His approaching death had given him a sense of peace. He had lost any idea that he was going to get a lot done in his life. He was happy to come on Sundays and sing and put away the hymnals. How can you not love a guy like that?

But the inevitable finally happened. This was before the current AIDS drugs became so effective. …I got the call about 3 o’clock one morning.

And so we had our first funeral. It was a cold and cloudy day. George had a few family members there. Covenant people made up most of the audience. We had the whole service at the graveside. I cannot remember a single thing I said. Not one word. Which is fine, because I doubt anyone else does either. What we do remember is that George gave himself to God with an extraordinary act of faith. He prayed to God and put his life in God’s hands without even knowing that God existed. That, my friends, is faith.

We hear that litany of heroes… by faith, by faith, by faith… and we think that faith is all about believing a certain way. But there are two definitions of faith. One is belief, conviction, the head stuff. But the other definition of faith is more like faithfulness… commitment… action. You may not have much faith up here (in your head), but you can have faithfulness here (hands) and here (in your feet) in the way you walk on the earth. And that commitment is faith.

This is what Paul Jones realized as he struggled with whether the resurrection was true. (Source: 1996 Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference.)

The story goes that Paul was drinking a cup of coffee one morning and reading his Bible, and he stumbled across Revelation 21… the vision of the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth—a place of no more crying or pain or even death itself. It’s the final destination. You might recognize that city in today’s passage from Hebrews—it’s the city that God the architect is building and planning. And he raised his coffee cup and said, “I’ll drink to that… and I’ll live for that.”

And as he read about the New Jerusalem that morning, Paul Jones suddenly knew that the question to live his life by was not, “Is the resurrection true?” but “What if it is?”

So Paul Jones’s conversion story was my favorite kind not a grand vision from God, but a decision, to live his life “as if,” to live in dedication to God and God’s vision for a new heaven and a new earth, even if he couldn’t prove it, even if it may never happen. To let faith be about faithfulness, more than just belief.

But, in the midst of living “as if,” sometimes the nagging questions come back.

Is it really true? Is there really a God?

Here’s what Paul Jones said about the “how do you know” question:
“I must stand before you today and say, I don’t know. Nor do you. But I have made a decision to gamble my life in commitment to that dream of the New Jerusalem.”

“And,” he went on, “If there is a God, and I pray to God that there is a God—
then my life will be a co-creator with God of that vision of the New Jerusalem.
And if there is no God, my life will be an undying protest against the non-existence of God.”

It’s a gamble. It’s a protest. It’s a risk.

What would it mean for you to pitch a tent in the Land of Faith, of Faithfulness?

Here’s the rest of the George’s story, from Gordon Atkinson:

George did not have many possessions. He left me a book and a rock. The rock was one he had gathered from our land. He kept this rock because he knew that he would not live long enough to see our church building there.

Two years later I asked the man who was building the rock facing of our church if he could put George’s rock into the church wall. He put it on the backside of the church, down low, right outside one of the Sunday school windows. I took a black marker and wrote “George’s Rock” on it. Every two our three years the wind and rain erase the ink, so I write it again.

It is still there today. A tender reminder of the power of faith and faithfulness.

May we all be so faithful.

July 19, 2009

Mark 6: 30-32, 45-46

——————–

Anyone here need a break?  If not, I suspect it’s because you’ve had one.  On Monday the Washington Post carried a long article on the West Wing’s “grueling schedules and bleary eyes”.  When the White House mess opens at 7:00 a.m. a line of staffers who have already been at the office for over an hour are waiting for breakfast.  When the mess closes at 8:00 p.m., staffers are grabbing dinner before heading back to the office for a conference call or another meeting.  Near the end the report noted, “the staff is beginning to take a few breaks”.

Even Jesus needed a break, and he knew the disciples did.  So much was going on with and around them they hardly had time to eat.  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile”, he said.

I knew an attorney who claimed never to have had a vacation.  I felt bad for him until I realized he was bragging not complaining.  Then I told him it was a sin.  Everybody needs to get away.

Reading newsletters from several churches I discovered that a common type of pastors’ columns was letting people know how busy they are.  Just reading about what pastors had been doing in the past week or month made me tired.  When I do self care workshops for pastors I remind them that on the seventh day God rested.  If God rested, who do they think they are not to rest?

When people report being “on the run”, I think, What are you running from? and What are you running to?  Some people are on the run because of their own unrealistic expectations of themselves.  In early December a parishioner asked “Why do I think that before Christmas I have to get everything done that I haven’t done all year long?”

In this era of global warming I miss those 18 and 20 inches of snow we used to get, as reminders that almost all of us are non essential personnel.  It seems that God thought we needed a reminder every week.  The Sabbath is not only about going to church.  It’s about doing nothing to justify your existence.  It’s about remembering that as important as you are to God, the world can go on without you.

Some people are on the run because of other people’s expectations, real or imagined.  A teenager brings home a report card with four A’s and one C.  The parent responds, “I like those A’s, but I know you can do better than that C”.  Does the but cancel the affirmation?  If I receive an affirmation or a compliment followed by a but I buckle my seat belt and duck.

A young woman goes to college thousands of miles from her family.  After a difficult year and mediocre grades her father picks her up at the airport and says, “I am so disappointed in you”.  How long will it take her to get out from under that shadow, if ever?

Shia LaBeouf, of box office fame, thinks that an actor’s life is dependent on other people’s opinions.  He says that most actors on most days don’t think they’re worthy.  “I have no idea where this insecurity comes from but it’s a God sized hole.  If I knew, I’d fill it, and I’d be on my way.”

Well, Shia, what if that God sized hole is a God shaped vacuum that can be filled by nothing but God?

The antidote to exhaustion is not a vacation, as helpful as those are (and I’ve already told you that I think it’s a sin not to have them).  The antidote to exhaustion is worship, worth-ship, centering your life in God and organizing your other priorities accordingly.  Functionally speaking, your God is that around which you organize your life.

After Jesus sent the disciples on to Bethsaida he went up the mountain, not to take a nap but to pray.  He was about being grounded and centered.

So, if you need a break, make a plan to go away to a deserted place by yourself with those you love.  Put it on your calendar if you want it to happen.  Otherwise people will show up needing you.  When you go, for God’s sake and your sake, don’t take your laptop and your Blackberry.  I’m giving you a papal dispensation, albeit a Protestant one.  If you come back rested, a vacation is what you needed.

If, when you return, you’re still out of gas, exhausted, what you need is the wholeness that comes from worship, a proper worth-ship, ordering your life in God.

In her recent An Altar in the World Barbara Brown Taylor titles her chapter on the Sabbath, “The Practice of Saying No”.  By the way, do you know that no is a complete sentence?  (Anne Lamott).

Where are the green pastures and still waters for you?  Where might you get your soul restored?  Arcadia National Park, Burke Lake trail, the labyrinth, the sound of the ocean, the view from the mountain, Beethoven’s ninth?

MaryAnn has the radical idea that it could be in the thing we most do in Northern Virginia other than work, driving.  Heaven help us all.  On second thought, it does keep you humble, driving.  And the deadliest of the seven deadly sins is hubris.  Maybe that’s the beginning of a theology on driving.

I’m often asked by someone I haven’t seen in a while, “Have you been busy?”  I’ve told you about the bumper sticker: “Jesus is Coming.  Look busy”.  Busy is easy, but it’s not a virtue.

The better question for your spiritual health is, have you been still, as in “Be still and know that God is God”.

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Job 38:1-11
——————
Many of you asked me this spring whether there would be a sermon series this summer like the Harry Potter one and the Children’s Lit one. And as you can see, I decided not to do one. I gave it a lot of thought, and nothing really felt authentic for this time and place. And I didn’t want it to be forced, so I decided to let it go… and yet as I prepared to preach this week, I realized that today’s text is in a similar vein with the sermon I preached a few weeks ago. So maybe there is a bit of a series here, just with a three-week gap! I’m not sure what I’m going to share today is part II of that other sermon so much as a dialogue partner with it. Both of them deal with that basic question of why there is suffering in the world. Just from different angles.

Today we look at the 38th chapter of Job, and before we read the text, I need to tell you what’s happened up to this point.

Job is an upright and blameless man who loved God and worshiped God and turned away from evil. He also lived a prosperous life both economically and emotionally, with a wife, many children, and friends and associates. That’s the “once upon a time,” and he was well on his way to “happily ever after.”

Job’s troubles start from a conversation between God and Satan. God is bragging about Job’s righteousness to the heavenly court, and Satan (ha-satan, the Accuser, who is a member of that court) says, “Of course Job’s righteous. Of course he loves you. You’ve given him everything he could ever hope for! Financial security, loving wife and family, good health… Let me tell ya, you take that all away, and he will curse you to your face.”

And God says, “You’ve got yourself a wager. Bring it on.”

Yes… it started with a bet.

First it’s Job’s oxen—slaughtered. Then his sheep, donkeys, camels, his livelihood—massacred.

Then it’s his sons and daughters—destroyed, in a freak windstorm that tears the house right out of its foundations and collapses it on their heads while they are eating dinner.

Finally it’s Job’s health. He is stricken with sores from his head to his toes, until he is himself a walking wound, his external pain a mirror for the agony of his soul.

His friends come and sit with him on the ash-heap for seven days in silence. They see his suffering and don’t try to explain, they are simply there to comfort him, not with words, but with their presence.

But over time, they just can’t help themselves. The bulk of the book of Job is made up of passionate debates between Job and his friends about the nature of God and of suffering. The friends seem almost desperate to make some meaning out of it.

“You must have sinned in order for this to make any sense at all,” they say. “It must be your fault. Just deal with it, move on, repent.  Tell God you’re sorry! Clearly, you were not as faithful as you thought.  If you were, you would not be sitting here today.”

Through it all Job remains resolute. “I hold fast [to] my righteousness and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.” (27:6) I haven’t done anything wrong, Job says, and even if I have, this amount of suffering is totally out of proportion to it. I’m not the one who needs to answer for myself; it’s God who needs to answer.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “the patience of Job.” I actually don’t think Job is all that patient! He does not bear this tolerantly and good-naturedly. He continues to insist on an accounting from God. He is wrestling with God as surely as Jacob wrestled with the angel back in the book of Genesis.

Well, the arguments build, Job’s questions pick up speed, Job’s demands that God answer for this “crushing unfairness” grow more and more intense until finally in the midst of this whirlwind, God speaks:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

8‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
9when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
11and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?

A friend of mine wrote recently about this passage:

It almost has a Disney-like quality.  I envision a very small person walking up to a huge, huge dark door in the dead of night.  He reaches to knock, but before his hand reaches the door a voice calls out, Who goes there?  What do you want?  Who has the courage to dare to confront me here?
(Chris Tuttle, a member of The Well preaching group)

Another commentator has compared God’s response to a lion turning around and roaring at a flea perched on its back! (Barbara Brown Taylor)

I remember doing a study with a group here about the lament psalms. I read some of those psalms in which people are like Job, demanding an accounting of why God has forsaken them, shaking their fist at God and saying “Answer me God, Answer me!” I remember reading one of those, stopping for a reaction, and a woman in the group drew herself up in her chair, looked at me and said, “That psalmist sure knows how to sass. If that were my son talking to me that way, I’d smack him.”

Well that’s a very traditional reading of God, isn’t it? God is so great and so good and we are so insignificant and so… flea-like. But what if that’s not the whole story?

Consider: this is the God that Job has been following and worshiping for much of his life. The God who has been with him in all things. Consider that Satan says “Job will curse you…” but Job doesn’t. He never does. He laments. He cries out. He demands that God answer—and that is an act of faith!

Consider also that Job says, incredibly, after everything that’s happened, “I know that my redeemer lives… and I will see him.” (Job 19:25)

A God of fear does not inspire this kind of honesty.
A lion who roars at the flea on its back does not inspires this kind of devotion.

So what kind of God is this?

Job may be a flea compared to the awesome power of God. But a God who comes stomping out of the whirlwind to shame a suffering man for not having been there at the beginning of the world is not a God I’m interested in worshiping. And it’s not the God we meet in the gospel of Mark. Jesus stands up and says “be still” to the storm for no other reason than that his friends are about to drown and they’re scared. And he asks them, “Why are you afraid?”

Just about every parent out there has his or her “because I said so” moments with children. And you know what? We all say we won’t do it. But sometimes we just have to say, “Because I’m the parent and you’re not and I know better and that’s the end of the discussion.”  But it’s not very satisfying. Because we know that a relationship built solely on “because I said so” is not the kind of relationship that nurtures strong and competent kids. And a relationship between God and God’s people built solely on “because I’m God” will not lead to the abundant life that Jesus promises.

No, we may have an incomplete picture of God here.

Listen again, and take note of what God is actually describing here. God is talking about boundaries and limits:
I laid the foundation of the earth
I determined its measurements.
I stretched the line upon it. (God prepared a place for us)
Who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? (God delighted in creation!)

Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?— (God tamed the chaos)
I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”? (God set boundaries)

This is the God who places limits on the chaos…
Who draws boundaries.
Who measures out the foundations of the world with holy precision.
Who swaddles the sea with a garment of clouds
Who looks into the eye of the storm and says, “Here is where you stop. You will go no further.”

We’re so buffeted about by the whirlwind that maybe we’ve missed what God is really saying here: “I make the whirlwinds cease.” Do you see it? God isn’t railing at Job. God is saying, “I am more powerful than the chaos!”

In her latest book about the spiritual life, Barbara Brown Taylor has a chapter entitled “The Practice of Feeling Pain.” It’s a gutsy thing to write about because it’s tricky to suggest that pain has a spiritual dimension or purpose. We live in a culture that peddles all kinds of products, drugs and mindsets that seek to numb pain. And we never want to give idea that we should seek out pain, that pain is God’s true will and way for us. Yet it’s undeniable that profound insights come within painful experiences.

Once, when I was confined to bed for the better part of a week, I spent hours watching the sunlight that came through the slats of my wooden blinds move down the white wall of my bedroom. First thing in the morning it made honey-colored rectangles with soft edges. By 10:00 a.m. the wall was striped with bands of light as straight as rulers. By noon they looked more like the rungs of a ladder, dappled with leaves from the winged elm outside my window. By 2:00 the light had lost most of its character, as the sun moved over the roof of the house and left the front yard in deepening shadow.

This may sound boring to you, but it was not. It was beautiful. It was reassuring. It gave me a place outside myself to go. I did not have to do anything to make the light change… If I didn’t not like the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change. If I loved the way the light looked at a given moment, I knew it would change. Paying attention to it, I lost my will to control it. Watching it, I became patient. Letting it be, I became well. (An Altar in the World, pp. 172-3)

Make no mistake, those patterns of light were whisperings from God, saying, “I drew the foundations of the world. I make the sun to sweep across the sky day after day.”

When you’re in the midst of a hard time, sometimes what gets you through that dark night is knowing nothing more than the reliable truth that tomorrow morning the sun is going to rise over that horizon and bathe the world in light.

I learned in seminary that there are three kinds of sermons:
Go sermon: those great calls to mission, to stewardship, our response to the gospel—cheerleader sermons!
Yes sermon: sermons about the unbridled grace of God, who is for us, and who can be against us
But there are also No sermons: these deal with what is not allowed, what cannot stand (injustice, oppression, fear, death)… and unbridled chaos does not stand, there is a limit to it, it does end, it is not ultimate, and that is what the resurrection is about, that death has been defeated, somehow, forever.

Vaclav Havel, the writer and former president of the Czech Republic, has said this: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
I’ve thought a lot about that quote, and what I think he’s hinting at is that there is a coherence to things.

Now we can’t take this too far. Suffering is very real and it’s not a neat and tidy thing. Job goes on to have more children at the end of the story, but make no mistake, the children he lost are not coming back. Job doesn’t get his questions answered, exactly, but he is satisfied somehow, I believe because he gets to see some of that coherence. God goes on from here to give Job glimpses of all of the creatures of the earth, creatures that God delights in, creatures that make up this wondrous creation, that has its own sort of order to it, however messy that order might seem to us.

We all see that coherence in different ways. Job got to see the big picture—the entirety of this creation that God loves. Barbara Brown Taylor saw it in the constant steadfast shifting of the sunlight in her room. I’ve seen it—living through the experience of having my father die suddenly just days before my daughter was born, it was hard, but there was also an undercurrent of “this is how it has always been, this is how it is, death, and life, tumbling along together.” Arrangements are currently being made for Jack Stephenson’s memorial service during this, our Vacation Bible School week. It is entirely possible that here in this meeting house, memorial flowers will share space with banners and scripture memory verses, that in one breath we will celebrate the end of his life and in the next we will be ministering to the budding young lives in this community. And there is something deeply right about that.

Here is the scripture again. Hear it in a different voice, not dripping with righteous anger, but infused with love and grace. See if there is any comfort in it:
4‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6On what were its bases sunk,   or who laid its cornerstone
7when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
8‘Or who shut in the sea with doors   when it burst out from the womb?—
9when I made the clouds its garment,   and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10and prescribed bounds for it,   and set bars and doors,
11and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?

…‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ 39He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid?

July 5, 2009

II Corinthians 12:2-10

——————-

I suspect no one in this room has a literal thorn in the flesh.  I remember having one under a nail and in so deep I couldn’t dislodge it.  I probably prayed as in O M G, but I also found my way to an ER where a doctor removed it for me.  Some thorns you can pull out.  Others someone else can pull out.  Still others have to be surgically removed.

As for figurative thorns in the flesh, some can be talked out in talk therapy.  Testimony has it that some can be prayed away.  Still others you have to live with the rest of your life.

Obviously it was the latter kind that the Apostle Paul reports. He tried to pray it away: “three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me…”  But that wasn’t going to happen.

As with the frequent references to unnamed enemies in the Psalms, Paul’s thorn in the flesh gives us a fill in the blank.  Some have speculated that it was a physical ailment or impairment – epilepsy, migraines, a speech impediment or vision loss.  I suppose it could have been what we now know as Parkinson’s or some other neurological affliction.

Other chronic diseases such as lupus, MS, fibromyalgia, diabetes are possible guesses.  I have a special place in my heart for people with chronic conditions.  Following surgery I once had pain so severe I couldn’t read, but I knew the pain would go away in a couple of weeks.  Acute is one thing. Day after day and year after year is quite another thing.  “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but…”  What a big but people with chronic afflictions are given.  I take my hat off to those who have one.

Some have speculated that Paul’s thorn in the flesh may have been an emotional or mental burden.  In the previous chapter he speaks of sleepless nights and “daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.”  Read II Corinthians in its entirety and you will see why.  The church was a mess.  No “all things in decency and in order” for that church.

One commentator guessed that Paul’s thorn was chronic depression.  Following my sermon last month one person understandably took issue with a statement I made about there not being enough miracles to go around.  I had been referring to chronic disorders, particularly bipolar disorders.

Most people who suffer with depression get well, but the miracles to hope for in bipolar disorder are acceptance and effective medical management, as well as compassionate care from loved ones and professionals.

Paul’s thorn in the flesh could have been spiritual, not that there is anything that is not spiritual.  Perhaps a recurring temptation, such as hubris was it.  “To keep me from being too elated.” Maybe his thorn helped keep him humble.  Given his credentials, competence and confidence, Paul needed some help on that one.  Besides, so far as we know he didn’t have a wife.

My friend Ton Brunkow, a United Methodist pastor, came home after the service disappointed that he had disappointed the Whites because he had acknowledged the Black’s 50th anniversary and hadn’t announced the White’s 40th anniversary the previous Sunday (because he didn’t know about it).  Tom’s wife said, “Tom, you disappoint someone every Sunday.”

Another possibility regarding Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a person or group or persons.  Have you ever had a person who was a thorn in your side?  One take on “a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated” is someone who thought he was a heretic or an imposter.  Never Call Them Jerks, but I guess you can call them “a messenger of Satan.

Have you ever been a thorn in someone else’s side?  I remember a parishioner who from time to time on the way out of the service would mildly complain about something we (usually I) hadn’t done.  One Sunday she upped the ante, adding, “I guess you and I don’t see eye to eye on lot of things.”  A few months later I learned that she and her family were attending another church.  One way to rid yourself of a thorn in your side is to move away.  Before you do or just after you probably do well to learn something from the thorn.

I have a book written by a Jewish therapist called Thank You For Being Such A Pain.  He thinks that everyone who is difficult for him has something to teach him.

The context for the thorn in the flesh vision is a controversy in the Corinthian church over Paul’s authenticity and authority.  It seems they had at least four parties.  Paul had his followers.  Others claimed the eloquent Apollos as their man. Some looked to Peter.  Still others claimed only Christ.

Apparently some wanna bes were claiming superior religious experience.  Paul refers to “super apostles” who report visions and revelations, which moves him to report his vision saying, “I will not boast except of my weaknesses.”

The late Bill Coffin said that when people join a church they should not be asked so much about their successes as about what they have suffered.  Not that suffering defines us, but it gives us a track record.  Pastors are sometimes able to refer parishioners in a particular crisis to others who have experienced a similar crisis.

Anne Lamott says that God answers prayer in four ways: yes, no, not now, and you’ve got to be kidding. Most sermons on prayer are in the vein of “whatever you ask in my name believing you will receive.”  Maybe, but sometimes all you get is silence, more silence, then “my grace is sufficient.”

Usually grace means unmerited favor, the love you get even if you don’t deserve it.  Here in the context of weakness it means strength for living, living gracefully whatever the circumstances, whatever it takes to get you through whatever it is you have to endure.

On A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor advertises Powdermilk Biscuits, which are tasty and expeditious and make shy people get up and do what needs to be done.

Bob Little has a wonderful story about having a heart attack alone in a hotel room far from home.  He managed to crawl to the phone and dial 911.  Help soon came, but Bob was looking for Jesus.  “Where’s Jesus?”  Then he realized that Jesus was there in the EMTs.

Grace sufficient is not about self help.  No platitudes here about positive thinking or possibility thinking, looking in every cloud for the silver lining, saying everything happens for a reason.

Grace sufficient is not about being stronger.  It’s about owning your weakness, in which God’s strength is made perfect.  “I will boast all the more of my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

So we gather at the table to receive a power beyond our own.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

June 21, 2009

John 9

—————–

If you could ask God any question, what would it be?

Of all the mysteries in all the world, what would you bring to God to be opened up and explained?

My guess is that a fair number of you would ask some question about how a loving and just God can allow the profound suffering in our world. The proverbial “why bad things happen to good people” question. It is the sticking point, the stumbling block, the point past which the skeptical cannot go… even for those of us in the church it remains a profound mystery.

I think the question I would ask is kind of an offshoot to this question of bad things happening to good people. Now I understand that there is sorrow and pain in the world. And I can get my head around the idea that we live in an imperfect creation, a fallen creation, a world of cancer cells and aging bodies… and we live in a world of imperfect people, people who hurt one another and themselves, who cause one another all manner of suffering… I get all that. What I don’t get is why certain people seem to have more than their share of hardship. I can accept that there is sorrow in the world, I just don’t understand why it is not more evenly distributed!

That’s what I’d love to hear explained. That seems like a fair question. It seems reasonable, that if nothing else, a just and loving God could spread out the joy and the sorrow nice and even. Instead what we have are some people, who may experience some tough stuff but are basically untroubled, and others who just can’t seem to catch a break.

Do you know people like this? Maybe it’s not just a person, but a whole family system. While we feel the pain of that, it’s human nature to want to explain it, which means we can find ourselves looking for some cause. I have a friend who’s really bad about this! She’s a very caring person, but when she’s told that someone has died, she will cluck and sigh with sincere sympathy… and then the questions start. Well, did she smoke? What was his diet like? Did she have her seat belt on? … This is human nature, isn’t it? If we can make it the person’s fault, then that makes their hardship a little less scary for us. It’s sad, but at least there’s an explanation. We can be immune from it—Well, I don’t smoke. I take care of myself. I buckle up. I’ll be OK.

In the gospel of John, Jesus and his friends come across a man who has been blind since birth. And they, too, want to figure out the cause: Who sinned, that this man has been punished with blindness? Was it his parents? Was it himself? Why did this happen? Tell us. Underneath the question is an assumption that there’s actually a spiritual cause for his blindness, that the man was destined to suffer this fate, either through his own bad choices or the misfortune of being born to sinful parents. Even after he is cured of his blindness, people still don’t want to believe it’s him: This isn’t the man we used to see begging! this is some other man! the blind man was born in sin. He’s blind. Period. The world we glimpse in John’s gospel is one in which one’s destiny seems sealed, the die is cast, end of story.

Do we believe this? Is this the way the world works?

For those of us who have spent our lives in the church, it’s easy for some of us to dismiss ideas of luck and fate. Luck, destiny, fate—those aren’t really faith words. And yet we often use God language in much the same way. If a person walked away from a car accident unscathed, we rejoice that God delivered him… so was it God’s will that the other person didn’t make it out? If our family prospers financially, we proclaim God’s providence… but what about the people who are living paycheck to paycheck and are on the verge of losing their home? If after years of trying to have a baby, we are finally successful, we say that God has blessed us. What does that sound like to a couple that is despairing after years of infertility?

Too often we in the church have leaned on faith language that is simplistic… on words that may be a comfort to ourselves but are heartbreaking to others. I don’t think we mean any harm; in fact I know we don’t… but sometimes we can make God out to be the cosmic tooth fairy. I know I have been guilty of this as well. We hear Jesus in this story, saying, “This man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him,” and we think OK, I guess that’s the way God operates. But it just doesn’t sound like a loving God. As a hospital chaplain years ago, I met a man who had struggled with terrible chronic pain for thirty years. After spending the morning with him I walked back into the pastoral care office and shared my experience with a colleague, lamenting the decades of pain he has endured. My colleague listened soberly and responded, “Maybe he is here to teach you something.”

Maybe.

But boy, that’s a hefty price to pay for my personal edification.

I have a pastor friend who says that whenever she writes a sermon about God’s providence and healing, she imagines that she is preaching it to a sanctuary full of people who are struggling with a terminal illness. If her words still have integrity in front of that audience, then she can go ahead and preach them on a Sunday morning. …It’s not a bad trick, really, since last I checked, none of us are getting out of this thing alive!

So here we are in the midst of this story of Jesus’ healing, confronted with the question of how we understand and talk about God’s healing. How do we understand God’s will? We believe that God provides—so what does that mean for those who seem not to have been provided for? We believe God cares about us, but does God not also care for those who wait for years and years for healing to come, crying out How long, O Lord?

Perhaps a starting point is to stand in our own experience, say what we have seen, and leave it at that. We get in trouble when we try to speak for God, when we try to be definitive: Yes, this must have been God’s will, or No, this was not God’s will.

A friend of mine, a pastor in Baltimore, had a woman visit his church about a year ago. K had grown up with atheist parents—very decent people, ethical and loving, but non-believers. Despite this secular background, she always felt something was missing. K found her way to my friend Andrew’s church. She felt like she had come home.

One week later—she found herself in a doctor’s office. Perhaps we can picture her there, sitting on a squeaky leather couch, maybe staring disbelieving at the framed degrees on the wall as the doctor gave her the almost unbearable news… Brain cancer.

Well, the community has walked with K over the past incredible year. Even when she was not able to attend worship, she would download the sermons and listen to them, propped up in her hospital bed. My friend Andrew learned that K had grown to love the hymn “There is a Balm in Gilead,” and one week, when the congregation was scheduled to sing the hymn, he arranged for the sermon download to include the singing of the song. K called him, her voice choked with emotion, thanking him for that simple gift.

And a few weeks ago, my friend Andrew gathered with K’s friends and family, celebrating her life and witnessing to the resurrection. Her brother said before the service, “I bet this is the hardest thing you do.” And Andrew said, “No, this is one of the most meaningful things I am privileged to do - to give thanks for a life well lived and the love that never ends.”

Now… where is the healing in that? Where do you see God’s hand in that?

This story resonates on a lot of levels. But not in the same way for everyone. For some it seems a comfort to think of K finding her way into the arms of Christian community at such a critical time in her life. To others, who think of a life cut short, it just seems like a cruel joke of timing—that just when she would find a community of faith, a place where some piece of her clicked into place, that she would be taken away from them. To some it seems as random as God arranging for a man to be blind for years, decades maybe, just so Jesus could come along at the right time and use him as a demonstration of God’s great power. Where was God’s power when this person’s eyes were being formed in the womb?

No, we must be careful when scribbling God’s name in permanent marker over any of the events of the stories of our lives.

Barbara Brown Taylor, writing about answered prayer, said this recently:
“What sounds like an answer to one person sounds like silence to another. What seems like a providentially big fish to someone registers as blind luck with some one else. The meaning we give to what happens in our lives is our final, inviolable freedom. Only you can say whether God answered you. If you have any sense, you will ask someone with more experience than you to help you decide what the answer means, but even then the choice is yours.” (from An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith)

I’m guessing there are many of you who have experienced God’s healing and grace in profound ways. And it may have happened despite all the odds, despite people in similar circumstances whose stories did not end as fortunately as yours did.

And it’s hard to know what to do with that.

And I’m guessing there are some of you who are still waiting for healing, who didn’t get the storybook ending, who are still wrestling with God even though others are saying things like, “Aren’t you over that yet?” And yours is a valid story too. Both are worth telling.

This is what the man cured of his blindness does too. Everyone around him is trying to sweep him up into their own theological arguments. Who restored your eyesight? Is he a sinner? Does he follow Moses? Did he do this on the Sabbath? Who is the man? And again and again, he refuses to participate in their theologizing. The man says, “All I can tell you is that I once was blind but now I see.”

I think many of us are reluctant to speak about our faith and how we see God working in our lives because we think we have to figure it all out. The good news is, we don’t have to. The blind man offers a testimony: Here is what happened to me. I’m not going to try to explain it, I’m not going to draw any conclusions once and for all from it—I’m just going to tell you about this amazing thing that happened to me. And notice that the only one—the only one—who gets to say what God is up to in this story is Jesus, right at the beginning when Jesus says, God’s works will be revealed. Now, watch what I’m going to do.

In our journey toward healing and wholeness, let us not try to defend God. Let us simply share our stories. The stories themselves are healing. And the telling of our stories is healing! And I think it’s so powerful, and has such integrity, to let the stories speak for themselves, rather than marking up the story with lines and arrows pointing to God: God did this… God intended that… Here’s what God’s up to. Only God gets to know that.

Flannery O’Connor writes, “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”

Here’s a story… it’s from Shane Claiborne (from the radio program Speaking of Faith) about a married couple he knew [this is a quote from Shane; the story was paraphrased in the sermon]:

And they said, you know, ‘We were unable to have children as a married couple.’ And they were about 50 years old. And they said, ‘But then we were walking through our neighborhood and we met this woman who had found herself homeless and she was six months pregnant. And so we said, “My gosh, you know, you got, you can’t be on the streets.”‘ So they brought her back to their house and said, ‘You know, we’ll figure this out as we go.’ And they said, ‘If you want to have your child while you’re living here with us, we would love to be a part of that process because we’ve always wanted to have a kid,’ you know. And so, she did. She had her kid there, living in their home.

And it was so amazing that they continued to live together and raise the child. And then, they said to this mother, they said, ‘Well, what are your dreams, you know? We’re getting to live out one of ours.’ And she said, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to nursing school.’ So they said, ‘Well, we will take care of your kid and help you financially if you want to go to nursing school,’ and so she did.

And I just went back to visit them and they’ve lived together for over 10 years. The woman who’s formerly homeless is a nurse. That little girl that she had is almost a teenager now. And the amazing thing is that the woman of that married couple now has multiple sclerosis and she’s dying, but she’s got a nurse living in her home with her, taking care of her when she dies.

…“All I can tell you is that I once was blind and now I see.”

It is testimony enough.

Thanks be to God.

June 14, 2009

Job 12:7-10

——————-

Yes, the earth’s is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof and the world and those who dwell therein! We are all connected on this planet earth like one big spider web.   And we are consumers, natural consumers, that is, we consume plants and animals to live - for our  nourishment; we cut trees and mine coal and ore for our homes, businesses work and pleasure.  The problem is consuming has gotten way out of hand!  Selfishness and greed have consumed our economy into bankruptcy!  We are suffering economically because of our consuming.

But to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us we need to move our attention, our lives to a sustainable consumption, or to use a better phrase coined by the Christian ecologist Edward Echlin in his book, Earth Spirituality – ‘sustainable sufficiency’.  We need to move our lives from a “no holds barred” attitude on consuming to a new perspective, where we as persons who, as our mission statement says,  are “becoming disciples” of Christ, are encouraged to pray for a heaven earthed – as Jesus taught us to pray - “In heaven as on earth.”  “In heaven on earth the material world is sustained, renewed and not exploited.  The consumers are just and discerning.”
George Herbert has written a poem called “Providence” which evokes such a sustainable world. Listen:
Bees work for man; and yet they never bruise
Their master’s flower, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever, and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.”

Sustainability means taking from the earth’s resources what is sufficient for today’s needs for all creatures, without compromising the ability of future generations, so all creatures can live with sustainable sufficiency, as Echlin says.

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you.” (Job 12:7)

The bee enters the flower takes what it needs to produce its product - honey; it does not destroy the flower in the process.  In fact bees are essential to the continuing propagation of our flowers, vegetables, and fruits.  They are pollinators.  Without them certain plants will not thrive.   — Bees are nature’s fertility specialists!

Do we like bees take just what we need to live without disturbing the balance of life?  Or do we overuse and disturb the balance of life?

Yes, we have been overfishing the Chesapeake Bay. Over fishing of crabs is major decline of Blue Crabs.

The Bay’s crab population was 791 million in 1990; in 2007 it was 260 million.
Overfishing of sharks – a top predator in the ocean may endanger the scallops.  With fewer sharks to devour them, the skates and rays have in creased along the East Coast – and they are gobbling up shellfish, particularly the Bay scallops.  Reducing key species – like sharks, affects as entire eco-system.

“Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you.”(Job 12:8)

Plants clean up our air; they take in our poisons and give us oxygen!  It is called photosynthesis – six molecules of water and six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar and six molecules of oxygen, which we can’t do without.  They make our breathing possible!  Wow!

Do we treat out trees and plants with respect knowing that our lives depend on them?  Do you know the connection between plants and health?  It is called botanical therapeutics.  Plants help keep the air clean!
I have a bad news and good news article.

Bad News first – yesterday’s news.  The cypress tree grown along our Southern coast, particularly along the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts are being cut down and shredded so our suburban homes can have cypress mulch!  The cypress trees are crying – because they are the buffer for the Gulf storms!  The protection for the coast is being taken away!

The Good News was an article this week in the POST about a community that saved land along the Potomac River– a 336 swath of hickory forest and waterfalls. It is one of the biggest land battles going on for over 30years!  Because one women responded to the notice “Public Notice of Hearing before the Planning Commission”  and raised her concern this pristine land is now Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, a scenic touch of wilderness in suburbia between the Capital Beltway and Route 193!

Pay attention to plants and animals, they CAN teach you.  Here are a few lessons I have thought of:

Dandelions are the greatest teacher of evangelism – let the wind of the spirit blow through you and like new dandelions the Word will be planted far and wide!! (your neighbors yard , down by the railroad tracks, the shopping mall medium, and the byways and  highways miles away!) spread the Word, like dandelion seeds in the wind!

Ants not only teach us about community working together with their incredible social organization and ability to readily modify their habitats as needed, but ants aerate the soil.  They remind us of the importance of working together and not going it alone.  They also remind us  that our lives need  spaces to breathe; we need air - the breath of the Spirit in the layers and layers of activities, projects and programs in our lives.  We need to aerate our lives with the Spirit.

Observing the crocus and the baobab tree of Kenya, teach us about hope.   The crocus often sticks its delicate little head up in the snow to remind us that even in the cold and harsh weather – hang on, spring is coming.  Do we have this kind of hope in our own lives when the depth of struggles or the darkness of anger, jealousy or envy get us down?

The huge baobab tree (and when I say huge – I mean I know it took thirteen of us with joined hands to encircle the baobab tree on the Kibwezi School grounds) is bare of leaves in the dry bush land that we see every July we are there.  BUT I am told that it blossoms, yes, blossoms just BEFORE the rains come.  Now that is a sign of hope and resurrection!  When all life seems dry and barren, it blossoms, then the rains come!  We need to remember the baobab in the living of our lives – when our Good Friday struggles of death of a loved one, loss of a job or friend, seem to overwhelm us, it is not the end; resurrection is coming!

“Ask the animals, they will teach you.”
“Ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you.”

The oyster has a message for all of us.  The oyster opens and closes its shell as it breathe.  Sometimes a parasite or a grain of sand will invade – an irritant, to say the least.  The oyster covers the irritant with a substance called nacre.  Over the years the irritating object is covered with enough layers of nacre that it forms a beautiful pearl!  Do you suppose that if we covered our irritants with enough love over the years that they too would become pearls.  I like to think that that is what God is doing with us, covering us with so much love that we are shaped into pearls, as Christ’s disciples!
“And the fish of the sea, they will tell you, and the birds of the air will declare to you.” (Job 12: 7 & Let us pay attention to the animals, the earth, the fish and the birds – let us pay attention to what they are telling us.

Two of the biggest threats to this beautiful planet earth God has given us are the abundance of our waste and the scarcity of water.  As the English Bishop James Jones illustrates in his book, Jesus and the Earth, “In Britain recently we had the extraordinary scenario of nuclear waste from one of our reactors in the northwest of England being shipped around the world via Japan only to return to be buried in one of the most beautiful parts of the country neat the Lake District.  It was a symbol of how our society is finding it increasingly difficult to handle the waste that it produces.  Landfills continue to grow in our country at a rapid rate..  There were 247 million tons of non-hazardous waste in 1990; by 2001 there were 409 million tons!  Virginia is second leading importer of waste in the country – 3,891,000 tons (Biocycle Magazine)
The other threat to our earth is water.  It is predicted that the next world war will be over water.  We know that about 70 percent of the earth is made up of water and less than one percent is fresh water, on which all terrestrial life depends.  It is therefore all the more serious when this comparatively small amount of water is polluted.  And we know that two million children die in our world every year from drinking contaminated water.

As persons becoming disciples of Christ  who pray at least every week that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” and as Christians who listen to the animal , and fish and birds and plants, let us think today of one thing we can do to earth heaven. – something that deals with both of these two problems of waste and water.  Let us examine our unnecessary water bottle and plastic use. (Now let me say up front that not all use of plastics and water bottles is bad.)

My first heightened awareness is when my husband Bob and I went to a Company Picnic in NJ.  The Company was Prudential.  There must have been 500 employees at this picnic and we were all given hard plastic plates, not flimsy ones, like this and hard plastic forks like this. – Then after a gourmet picnic meal, one by one everyone was  putting these plastic plates and forks and knives and spoon and cups into the garbage. They were used once! One time!!  They could have been used for my life time and never worn out, but we were throwing them away, because it is obviously more convenient.  I started multiplying in my head – think about all the other company picnics, family picnics, university picnics, church picnics – using plastic one time and throwing it away – imagine this huge pile of plastic waste!

A  fifth grader  asked a professor of science — - What toxic substance is produced that is harmful to our health when a plastic material is burned?
Answer: Many plastics, particularly PVC when burned result in emissions of the deadly poison named dioxin. Dioxin is a toxic organic chemical that contains chlorine and is produced when chlorine and hydrocarbons are heated at high temperatures. To inhale dioxin or to be exposed anyway to its fumes can cause many deadly results. (Dr. Richard Barrans, Asst. Director of the PG Research Foundation Drien, II.)  Do you think maybe there is a connection with the rise of cancer diseases?

Now let me remind you of some of the facts about bottled water:

1-First bottled water cost a 1,000 times tap water.   Tap water is $.0015 a gallon and bottled water is $1.27 a gallon.

2- The water is not necessarily safer as often presumed.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has strict water quality standards for tap water, but the EPA does not oversee bottled water. The state Health Dept. of CA and PA did some testing and in fact found chemicals in many of the bottles tested.  Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina are tap water coming from places like Queens, NY and Jacksonville, FL with some additional treatment.

3- In the U.S. more than 30 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage or litter each year.  Most don’t get recycled.  I have read that the bottles take anywhere from 500 years to 1,000 years to decompose and they contribute to the vast plastic waste in rivers, lakes and oceans, which is harming wildlife.

4- The withdrawal of large quantities of water from springs and aquifers for bottling has depleted household wells in rural areas, damaged wetlands, and degraded lakes.

5- It takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.

6-  And what about the bottles themselves? Every year about 1.5 million tons of plastic go into manufacturing water bottles for the global market, using processes that release toxics such as nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene.

7-  And in the U.S. alone 1.5 million barrels of oil are consumed in making the bottles. Most bottles end up in landfills, adding to the landfill crisis.

Water and waste – environmental problems that we can do something about.

Maybe we need to ask the animals, the plants of the earth, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea what they think!

Amen? Amen!

May 31, 2009

Acts 2:  1–21

——–

INTRO TO SCRIPTURE:
The disciples you will remember were told by Jesus to wait and pray.  But as good Jews, living within twenty miles of Jerusalem, they were bound to attend the Jewish festival of Pentecost. Pentecost means “The fiftieth”, another name was the Feast of Weeks. It was so called because it fell on the 50th day, a week of weeks after the Passover. There were two major events it commemorated––one was the first barley harvest, so it was like a harvest festival. The other was the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. The disciples, along with people from all over that part of the world, gathered to celebrate this event.

READ SCRIPTURE:  Acts 2: 1–21

The situation was a summer conference during an evening lecture as minister author, Robert Fulghum tells it.

“It was raining buckets outside, and about fifty of us were doing serious business inside, talking about the war in Vietnam–agonizing over our impotence in the face of the horrors of that war.
Suddenly, a very wet, muddy young man burst into the rear of the hall.

“Help me, help me,” he cried. He was driving too fast, had missed a turn and spun off the road in the dark, and was himself thrown out onto the road because he was not wearing his seat belt. His pickup truck was hanging on the edge of a ravine. With his wife and child still in it, so scared they couldn’t move. “Help me, help me.”

As one body we rose and poured out of the hall, running into the rainy night behind the terrified young man. As one we grabbed onto the small truck and pulled it back from the edge, and as one we lifted the truck back onto the road and spun it around onto the shoulder for safety.

The mother and child were in shock, but otherwise uninjured. Tenderly, they were carried back to the conference grounds to someone’s room–dried off, wrapped in blankets, comforted. A doctor among us examined them. Warm tea we brewed. Mechanics in the group made sure the truck was in safe working order.

The young man admitted how foolish he had been, how sorry he was to have risked his life and the life of his family, and how deeply he felt our compassion. Within a couple of hours, the young man and his family were on the road again. He will never forget. Nor will those who helped.” (Robert Fulghum,  From Beginning to End (New York: Villard Books, 1995), pp. 239-240.)

In this Pentecost story, we know we are listening, as William Willimon puts it, “to the account of something strange, beyond the bounds of imagination, miraculous, inscrutable, an origin which, as far as Luke is concerned, was the only way one could ‘explain’ the existence of the church.”

What happened at Pentecost we really do not know, except that the disciples had an experience of the power of the Spirit flooding their beings in such a way they had never experienced before. Luke tells the story as if the disciples suddenly acquired the gift of speaking in foreign languages, but they each understood in their own language!    There were tongues like fire. (Remember John the Baptist said that Christ would “baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.”) These fiery tongues rested on each person and they were miraculously given the gift of speech in different languages so each understood the others. So we hear there the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the community, and the first fruit of that Spirit is proclamation––the proclamation of God’s “deeds of power” (NRSV, v. 11).

From the very beginning the community (the church) has proclaimed the great things God has done in Christ. As we proclaim Christ, we most authentically speak when we speak in Christ’s language, which is COMPASSION. Long before any of us become proficient with a language not our own such as Spanish, French, German, Swahili, we have access to the language all people understand, a language any of us can speak if we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit within: that is the language of COMPASSION AND LOVE––the language of Christ. It is a universal language of the Holy Spirit that binds us together as the church.

I keep a quote on my desk that says “Doctrine divides, service unites.” (I’m not sure, but I think it is attributive to Martin Luther.) “Doctrine divides; service unites.” How true! Think about it for a moment. Our doctrines of the Church––doctrines about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, sin, eschatology, and so forth––divide Christians into many separate camps. It was certainly true in the 16th century when we, the church split into many different denominations. This is also true for us in the Presbyterian Church; there are the Cumberland Presbyterians, the Evangelical Presbyterian, the Presbyterian Church of America–all who have split over different doctrines of the church. Some people in our mainline denomination––The Presbyterian Church (USA) fear today a possible split because there are different doctrines about the interpretation of scripture, primarily over the issue of whether self-affirming homosexuals can be ordained to church leadership. The seminary libraries are full of the nuances of these doctrines and the controversies that surround them.

However, the mission of compassion we do in Christ’s name brings us together, brings all Christians of all persuasions together. Houses for the poor can be built in five days in Pittsburgh., whole people’s can be saved from starvation in Darfur; many can be saved from death by medicines given for treatable diseases in Kibwezi. THE POWER OF THE CHURCH IS IN SPEAKING THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF CHRIST’S COMPASSION. This language is transforming.  It identifies us as the church! It IS our own native language!

There is a story we have heard before, but I think it is one of the best metaphors for the church. It is the story of an Olympics race getting ready to start. The announcer called the participants to the starting line, said the familiar “On your mark, get set,” and fired the gun. They all got off to a good start, but it wasn’t more than 20 yards out and one of the runners fell. The others saw him go down, and they all almost simultaneously stopped, turned around, went back, and picked up the fallen runner. They then all locked arms and went to the finish line together! It was a Special Olympics race. And it is a superb metaphor for the church!

The Church is the people of a loving God made known to us by, of all things, a Savior who cared and loved us enough to die for us. The Church is the people of that Savior, Jesus Christ. The Church is the people who speak the same language of compassion as Christ did. The Church is the people who care and go back to help a wounded companion in this race of life.

Maybe the runner stumbled because the runner is hard-hearted. Maybe he has decided he doesn’t want to run the race; that life is too hard, too much trouble, too painful, too complex, too full of ambiguities and he has closed his heart to any possibilities. He stumbled because he wanted to. So the Church goes back to pick him up and open up the vision to challenge him and point to the truth.

Maybe the person stumbled because the runner is faint-hearted. He wants to run but he is discouraged. He sees that he is not strong enough to face the temptation of his addictions, so he stumbles. The Church understands, goes back and picks him up and encourages him, is present to him, stays with him, affirms the small steps to wholeness.

Maybe the person who falls is not hard-hearted or faint-hearted but broken hearted, someone who wants to run but can’t. Truly he is wounded, deeply hurt; he is in pain over a broken marriage, a job lost, a death in the family, an illness. So the Church needs to pick him up and carry him for awhile. Like the good Samaritan who carries the hurt one for awhile, sees that his wounds are bound, that he gets what he needs to get well.

The Church is the people filled with the Holy Spirit, Christ’s Spirit, who speak Christ’s universal language of compassion and love, and who, in that compassion, lock arms with those who are wounded and have fallen.

No matter for what reason we have stumbled, or any brother or sister has stumbled, we as a community of the faith know we are empowered by the Spirit to lock arms and bring each other to the finish line! This is our call.

The language that we all hear and all are empowered to speak by the Holy Spirit is Christ’s language of COMPASSION. It is the fire of the church. That is why our hearts are enflamed when we see the blood running down a Pakistani child, or sees the listless faces of starving Sudanese children, or the grief stricken face of a mother looking for her child in the ruble of a suicide bomb explosion in Iraq. The language of compassion helps us to hear their voices in our own language. We understand their pain; our lives are connected by the power of the Spirit.

The language that we all hear and are empowered to speak by the Holy Spirit is Christ’s language of COMPASSION. This is why our hearts are warmed by the light of those teenagers from our church trekking down to D.C. early in the morning to feed the homeless, by the ones who spend Friday evenings putting together a puzzle with an emotionally hurting, by the ones who are writing cards of encouragement to those in pain, by the ones who take time to call and listen to the frustration and pain of another, by the ones taking clothing to ECHO, by those who tutor the children in Snacks & Backpacks,  by those who are repairing bikes for use in developing countries, by those who give generously of their time and money to proclaim Christ’s COMPASSION in word and deed. This is our own native language; this is the fire of the church!

The great philosopher theologian Teilhard deChardin has a wonderful quote: “Some day after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world human’s will have discovered fire!!!”

We have been given a glorious gift today–the Spirit of love and compassion. It is mysterious, strange, miraculous, inscrutable, but the only way to explain the existence of the Church. Let us open our lives and receive it joyously and live it triumphantly! Let us speak this language every day and all will understand and come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord!!  Amen.

May 17, 2009

John 15: 9-17

——–

I remember the playground recess years when I was 10, 11 years old.  There would be wonderful weather like this in Atlanta and we would choose up sides for a game of softball.  Of course, the two boys who were the best players were captains and then one by one they would call out the name of another classmate to be on their team: Bobby, Bill, Larry, Curt, Steve, Gary, Tommy, Ben, Beth  - Yes, I was the first girl chosen, even before all the guys were chosen!  Well, then I would feel sorry for all those who were chosen last – the meaning being you are NOT good players.

The junior high dance was a different matter.  Do you remember how we would stand clumped together – we girls on one side of the gym and the boys clumped together on the other side.  Then Sammy would bravely step out and come over to the girls. I certainly did not want to dance with Sammy, I was a foot taller, so some of the other girls and I would duck into the girls’ bathroom.  I did NOT want to be chosen!

Then there is reality TV where in shows like “Survivor” you get chosen (voted) off the island.  The others in the group literally choose you – not to be there!  Or on the show “Bachelorette” where there are twelve (or so - I don’t know how many) beautiful talented women waiting to be chosen to marry this gorgeous bachelor, and he chooses one by one who is to leave the show.  This week the American public is going to choose another American idol – will it be Adam or Chris?  What is your vote – who will you choose?

This choosing business gets very tricky. Sometimes you want to be chosen (you know the answer in biology class and you want to show off as such). Sometimes there is an extra project that needs to be done at work, but your plate is full and you do not want to be chosen to do it so you try to hide from being chosen.

Today in the scripture we hear “I chose you!”  Jesus is speaking to his disciples and all disciples down through the centuries, “I chose you.”

The disciples did not choose Jesus as a rabbi.  He initiated the search for them.  He called them from their fishing nets, from their tax tables, from their families.  For much of his ministry he taught, acted and modeled the way he expected all his followers to think and act.  In that sense, they had been apprentice-servants under his guidance.  Now they were being taken to a deeper level of relationship: friend.  “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” (v. 15)

Jesus wants his disciples/you to be His friend.  I choose you, Jesus says, to be my friend! Why? Jesus needed persons he could trust to carry out his mission, to continue his work.

Let’s look at some characteristics of friends here.

1.  All secrets are shared among friends.  You tell your best friend anything.  Right?  There is fidelity and trust with friends.  Jesus said, “All that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.” (v.15).  Friendship takes down all barriers.  He made known to the disciples “the godliness of God” which consists in the power to forgive, the acceptance of others who may even be hostile, and to love even the unlovable.

2. Friendship takes seriously what the friend takes seriously.  Here pointed out in today’s scripture is the command to love – “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Abide in my love.”  This is the kind of love that wills another’s good and bears the fruit of that love – that is what is important to Jesus!  Jesus wants to see the fruit of love – works of love that bear fruit that lasts!

Allison McMillan spoke about it in her sermon last week on Youth Sunday  - giving of self – singing at the nursing home and witnessing God’s grace enable a woman to sing and talk who had not spoke for months, not one word!  I witnessed the fruit of Jesus’ love in a documentary this week about Sister Cyril Mooney, an Irish Catholic Sister, who has spent fifty years in India and has taken 450,000 street children off the streets and educated them!  I experienced the fruit of Jesus’ love in the compassionate listening of an elder and a colleague.

Friendship takes seriously what the friend takes seriously. Jesus takes seriously loving other human beings as a way of life.  One confirmand said in her statement of faith that she is to live, love and forgive as Jesus did! Amen!

3.    Friendship costs, said Jesus.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.” (v.13).  It is the most explicit statement in the Gospel of what it means to love as Jesus loved!  I can think of no better story than the one I have told you before about the Vietnam platoon.  They were gathered in the jungle during this horrific battle, a grenade was thrown right in the midst of the group.  One soldier immediately dove on it!  He laid down his life for his friends.  Jesus did that for us; he was brutally nailed to the cross for us and for our salvation!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (I want you young people to know this name – pastor, teacher, theologian, writer) is an excellent example of one who knew what Jesus taught, took seriously the example of Jesus, and was willing to pay the cost of friendship.  He, as a Lutheran pastor could not let Hitler take over the church, the hearts and minds of the people.  He became a part of the resistance movement during World War II.  His obedience is an example to us.  On April 9, 1945, in a cold, dank cell in Flossenburg, a little town in southern Germany, two prison guards appeared at a cell and said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.”  From there they took him, stripped him and hung him to death, yet another victim of a Nazi atrocity - Exactly one month before Germany surrendered and ended the war.

Bonhoeffer came from a noble, educated and well-to-do German family.   He was a brilliant student who surprised his family by deciding to become a pastor.  And his death like this was one of disgrace for such a noble family.
Bonhoeffer went to his end reading the Bible and Plutarch.  During the period of his imprisonment, he was engaged in an intensive study of the Gospel of Mark, a Gospel that is all along a passion story that culminated with prisoner Jesus being led to the cross.  In a way, Bonhoeffer’s life and death embodies the Gospel of Mark.

Of course, Bonhoeffer could have not left for Germany.  He could have stayed at Union Seminary in New York and ended his days as an honored retired professor.  But he chose to get on a boat and head back to Germany to participate in the resistance movement against Hitler.  When he got on the boat to Germany, Bonhoeffer said that he was filled with a great sense of peace because he was obeying what he knew God wanted him to do.  In his book, Ethics, Bonhoeffer stressed the importance of obedience to Christ as the hallmark of truly Christian ethics.  In his life and death, Bonhoeffer did not just think about Christian ethics; he embodied Christian ethics!

It was interesting for me to find out something about the story of the judge who sentenced him.  His name was Arthur Forbeck. In the very last days of the war, Forbeck was ordered by Hitler to execute Bonhoeffer. Forbeck took a train toward Flossenburg and when the train stopped some 20k from the killing camp, the judge secured a bicycle and peddled the rest of the way, so eager was he to carry out the trial and execution of Bonhoeffer in obedience to Hitler’s command.

These two men were both Lutheran, both worshipped the same God, and had read many of the same books. How did they come to such vastly different conclusions?  One answer was that each of these men were following a different “savior” and obeying a different voice, aligning their lives to a different story.  (William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 37, No. 2 Year B May, 2009, p.35.)

Jesus chooses you to be his friend, someone he can trust, someone who knows all about his life, no secrets (You know all the secrets. There here in the Good Book.), someone who follows his command to love one another and someone who is willing to pay the cost for this love and friendship!  Becoming a Christian is not just lip service – it is embodiment!  It is producing fruit!

Jesus has chosen you; the question is – will you choose Jesus?
Will you choose to continue to learn all about Jesus?
Will you choose to love as he loved?
Will you choose to pray as he prayed?
Will you choose to forgive as he forgave?
Will you choose to be a healer as he healed?
Will you choose to give as he gave?
Will you choose Jesus’ way of life?

Jesus has chosen you! He is coming across the dance floor for YOU!  Are you going to meet him and join in the dance of your life, or are you going to duck into another room?

Jesus said, “I have said these things so my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” (v.11)  Amen!