Marginalia

Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion

2012-01-29T10:30:00.000-05:00

Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion
January 29, 2012
Franktown United Methodist Church

Jesus was sitting down at a table at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. Now there's something you don't see every day. Does it surprise you to hear that about Jesus? Jesus was sitting at a table to eat a meal with some Pharisees. That's a little disturbing, isn't it? I mean Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about Pharisees. You remember that he's the one who said, "Woe unto you Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against people. Woe unto you, Pharisees, you devour the houses of widows! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27 KJV) You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33 KJV)" Other than that, I don't see any reason why this scene seems strange.

But there he is. Jesus and the Pharisees. Sitting around the table sharing a meal. And somebody gets a little too exuberant in the crowd. Somebody is overcome by the sight of these two parties together. This person thinks its a sign that bipartisanship is going to break out. Maybe he's had a little too much wine. At any rate, this guy yells out, "How happy are those who will sit down to feast at the kingdom of God!"

Jesus hears the man. Who couldn't? He yelled it out. But he doesn't say, "Yeah, it's going to be great." And he doesn't call him out by saying, "Hey, don't get your hopes up just because I'm breaking bread with these whited sepulchres." No, he responds with a parable, the point of which seems to be that the table is open, but you've got to want to come.

A man had a feast, a great feast. And he invited people to come. But everyone had an excuse for why they couldn't come. "Oh, you know I just bought some property and I've got to go look after it." Oh, you know, I just got married." "Oh, you know, I just bought some cows." They wouldn't come. So the man sends his servants out in the streets of the town to invite the poor, the lame, the outcasts. And they come, but there is still more room. So he sends them out into the countryside to gather whomever they can. But he is most disturbed with those who wouldn't come. Those who were invited initially will not taste the meal.

Today we're continuing our Branded series. We've been looking at things that mark us as Christians and we spent two weeks looking at baptism. Next week we'll begin to talk about ministry and the various forms of ministry God's people get involved in. But last week and this week we are talking about communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist.

Last week I spent a lot of time interacting with John Wesley's sermon, "The Duty of Constant Communion." Wesley laid out the case for why we ought to come to the table. Why we ought not to neglect Jesus' command to 'do this to remember me." But today I want to talk about what our part in communion is. The meal is God's gift. But what we do with it is something else. And Jesus' story about the feast makes it clear that we can accept the invitation or not.

I mentioned last week that I had put out a question on Facebook asking for people to give me their reflections on communion and I shared one last week. Other people wrote about the great appreciation they have for the meal. Margaret Holland wrote to say that "It reminds me that God is the host of the party and all are invited to eat, reflect, and pray." It remind me of that guy at the feast. It's a party. Everyone is invited.

Skeeter Armstrong said, "For me it is a means of grace that allows us to put aside our differences and gather around the tables as the family of God knowing that, no matter how sinful we are or feel, that all is forgiven and we can begin again to become more Christ-like." It's a time to begin again. To confess our sins. To reconcile with one another. To become more Christ-like.

Debbie Bridges said something similar. She said, God's "grace and calming is transmitted to my body and soul telling me yet again - try to be, to do, to work harder and you will be a better Christian." Grace that leads to action.

There is an ethical side to communion. It is a party and it frees us and then it moves us be something for the world. Last week we talked about coming to the table, but today I want to talk about what it means to leave the table.

The other scripture that we have for today is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians. Some people will talk about this passage as the place where Paul lays out a 'theology' of communion. But really Paul is not doing that. Paul assumes that the Corinthians know what communion is. He's just trying to straighten out their practice of it. Because...as we mentioned last week...the Corinthians were taking communion unworthily.

Last week we talked about how some people will use this passage as an excuse not to receive communion because they are afraid they are not worthy to receive it. Wesley responded in his sermon that the problem for the Corinthians is not that they were unworthy. Wesley takes that as a given. We're all unworthy. The problem was the manner in which they received communion. The Corinthians, he said, were "taking the holy Sacrament in such a rude and disorderly way that one was 'hungry, and another drunken.'"*

But it was more than just a rowdy party. The community was neglecting its form, what it was supposed to look like. One New Testament scholar, Peter Lampe, says that the early Christian practice of communion was probably something akin to a potluck dinner. People would bring food and share what they had. But the problem was that the richer Corinthians, who had more food to bring, were not waiting for others before breaking into the food. So people were going hungry while others were getting out of hand.** What kind of community was this?

So Paul reminds them what the dinner is all about. He reminds them that the origin of the meal was in Christ's last meal with the disciples. Jesus was thinking about his death on the cross when he told them, "This is my body." He was thinking about his death when he said, "This is my blood." So now, Paul says, "This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26 GNT)

You proclaim the Lord's death. Now there is an undeniable joy when we come to this table. We are tasting heaven. We are experiencing communion with the saints. We are entering the kingdom of heaven. We should be shouting, with that guy in the Pharisee's house, "Happy are those who feast in the kingdom of God!" But we are proclaiming Jesus' death. Our connection is not only with the risen Christ who will bring all things to final victory, but also with the Christ who knew the suffering of this world and who stood by the weak. As Paul says at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, "I proclaim Christ, and him crucified."

So the way that we eat this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. And how we live as people who share this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. As Lampe says:
"In the Eucharist, the death of Jesus Christ is not made present and 'proclaimed' (11:26) only by the sacramental acts of breaking bread and of drinking wine from one cup. In the Eucharist, Christ's death is not proclaimed only by the liturgical words that accompany the sacramental acts. No, in the Eucharist, Christ's death is also proclaimed and made present by means of our giving ourselves up to others. Our love for others represents Christ's death to other human beings. Only by actively loving and caring for others does the participant in the Eucharist 'proclaim' Christ's death as something that happened for others."***

That's why I say that perhaps the most important part of communion is what happens when you leave this table. If we only come to this table to be reminded of what God has done for us...if I only come to be reminded of what God has done for me...then I have not gone far enough. This is where the Branded series takes a very important turn. While we receive God's claim on our lives...while we respond and accept God's claim on our lives...our journey does not end there. Unless we then turn out to the world and express with our own lives the other-directed love of God, then we have turned the gospel into a pat on the back, a massage at the spa, and a cozy spot by the fire. The gospel took Jesus to fishing boats and sick people. The gospel led him to sit at the table and to eat meals with Pharisees.

It's not wrong that its our neediness that leads us to church or to God. We all have deep needs. We may come to find that they're not needs worth having, as Will Willimon said, but we do have them and they open us up to God. But if the only reason we keep coming to church is to have our own needs cradled and cuddled, then we have not truly been broken open by God. We are not proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. We are simply proclaiming our continuing need to be at the center.

The first step in gospel healing is to know that we are loved. That is absolutely true. For many of us, this is the greatest breakthrough we have to make. But that healing is only effective if we learn how to love ourselves. To have the opportunity to love another person and to love God is to become truly human. Communion opens us up so that we can go on to love.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of a remarkable woman in this sanctuary. Laura Dennis was a huge part of the life of this congregation. She was a giant, even though she only stood so high. She was a leader because she knew how to love. She loved her family. She loved her church. And she loved the world. As I mentioned in the service yesterday, she was pushing UNICEF boxes just a few years ago. She was making a list of needs for residents at Heritage Hall even when she was one of those residents.

Laura Dennis is at this table. She is able to shout today, "How happy are those who feast at the table in the kingdom of God!" But she can do that because she ate at this table in the not-quite kingdom of God and was nourished on the food that Jesus provides.

So come to the table. Let it remind you who you are. Let it form you into a servant of Christ. So that you can proclaim Christ's death and Christ's power and Christ's love. Thanks be to God.

*John Wesley, "The Duty of Constant Communion," in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion by Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2006], pp. 67-68.
**Peter Lampe, "The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross," Interpretation magazine, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, Jan. 1994, p. 41. I am grateful to Brooke Willson for putting me onto this investigation with his observations on 1 Corinthians 11.
***ibid., p. 45

Branded: The Duty of Constant Communion

2012-01-22T11:27:00.000-05:00

So here we are in week 3 of our new worship series - entitled "Branded." In this series we are talking about the things that brand Christians as a distinctive people. Things that Christians do that nobody else does and that Christians all do - whether we are United Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, or Catholics.

We spent the last two weeks talking about baptism - what it means that God claims us from before we are born. What it means that we claim the God who claims us. What it means that "You will die" to sin when you go through the waters of baptism. And what it means to walk with Christ as a baptized sinner.

Today, though, I want to turn for two weeks to something we spent a lot of time on last year as we came out of Lent. I want to talk about communion. Now I realize that we are walking on some sensitive ground here because last year we moved from a practice of having communion on first Sundays and special Sundays to having communion just about every Sunday. And it may have been one of the biggest changes to worship that has happened here in a long, long time.

Last May, after we had been having communion for about 6 months, I asked for some responses. Many of those responses were very appreciative. “It has changed my experience of worship,” one person said. I guess that could go either way!

“I realized that it didn’t become less special but more special when we had communion every week,” said another.

Somebody else said, “For all the doctrines, dogmas, liturgies and allegories associated with Christianity, only communion is a true connection to the presence of Jesus.”

And then there's this one - “Surprisingly it has made communion more precious and helps me to remember every day we should be thankful for God’s grace – noticing the ordinary and not taking anything or anyone for granted. I love it!”

But it wasn't all this way. Some folks said that they didn't like having it every Sunday. For some it just didn't feel right. It felt less special. They worried that other parts of the service, like the sermon, might get less attention because of time concerns. They liked the rhythm of communion once a month and felt like the words of the ritual might become too familiar, too rote, too mechanical. For some it dredged up old questions about what the clergy are here for. What exactly is Alex doing up there at the table? Why are he and Peter the only ones who break the bread? And what kind of innovation was this? Were we becoming Episcopalian? Or Catholic? How many other United Methodist churches are doing this?

I'll be honest - not a whole lot, even though our denomination as a whole has encouraged the practice of weekly communion. In 2004 we adopted an official study as United Methodists entitled This Holy Mystery which, for the first time, set down our understanding of communion. It encourages churches to move in this direction.

But we are not doing this because the United Methodist Church says to. We are not doing this because I say we have to. I want to revisit this because our feelings and questions about communion are very important. And I don't want to discount any negative feelings about the way we are doing communion because they say that something significant is going on. Something we value is being touched on. And I don't want to use fancy theology to convince you that you shouldn't feel the way that you do - or that you should. I do want you, however, to pay attention to those feelings and questions and give them serious examination.

And who better to do serious examination of our souls than John Wesley?

Now John Wesley is an important figure for Methodists because he was really the first one of us. He was a preacher, a writer, a campus minister, and a world-class organizer. When people threw the slur at him that he had a method for everything, he took it as a compliment, and when they went on to call him a Methodist, he took that as the name for his new movement.

It was a movement, not a church. Wesley was an Anglican priest in 18th century England. His father was an Anglican priest. He saw what he was doing as a renewal movement for his church, which was spiritually dead and morally bankrupt. But he gave his blessing to the American Methodists forming their own church after the American Revolution. And after he died, the British Methodists formed their own denomination, too.

O.K., O.K. - but what did John Wesley believe about communion? Well, he believed that we have a duty of constant communion. Not frequent communion. Not once a month communion. Not high holy days communion. He was a stickler for constant communion. And why did he believe that? Because Jesus said, in the gospel reading which we had from Luke for today, as he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, that his followers should "do this in remembrance of me." Do we have some hand motions for this?

Now remember this, because what I'm going to do now is to give you some pieces from John Wesley's sermon entitled, "The Duty of Constant Communion," and let you see how he thought about this question, because you will see that the issues have not really changed. But the theme that runs through the whole sermon is "Do this in remembrance of me."

The sermon starts with this paragraph and it's a bad opening paragraph because it's the best paragraph in the whole sermon. You really shouldn't show off your best stuff in the first paragraph. But that's what he does and what he says is:
"'Do this in remembrance of me.' It is no wonder that men who have no fear of God should never think of doing this. But it is strange that it should be neglected by any that do fear God and desire to save their souls; yet nothing is more common. One reason why many neglect it is, they are so much afraid of 'eating and drinking unworthily,' that they never think how much greater the danger is when they do not eat or drink it at all.'*

There are two scripture references here. One is Jesus' command from the gospel. The other is a quote from 1 Corinthians in which Paul warned the Corinthians about their conduct at the communion table. That command about "eating and drinking unworthily" gets used sometimes as a reason for not taking communion. But we'll get to that.

Harry Kennon, who is a retired pastor in our conference, quoted this on Facebook this week when I asked for some responses about communion and he said, "Ironically, some seem afraid of grace and forgiveness more than sin." Wow.

So John Wesley goes on to look at what this command to "Do this in remembrance of me" looks like. First he looks at why we should do this. And his first reason is a good one - because Jesus commands it. And secondly, he says, the mercy we experience in communion is good for us. That mercy is forgiveness of our sins and nourishment and strengthening of our souls. Why would we not want that?

Thirdly, it lets us leave our sins behind so that we are free to move on to perfection. Fourthly, the ancient Christians did it and the whole Church did it for many centuries - four times a week at least plus holy days. In fact the early church had a rule against coming to prayers and not taking communion. Fifthly, the Gospels and Paul's letters show that the practice was not just a show, but an outward sign of an invisible grace. Something really happens in communion. Something inside us.

So there are all sorts of good reasons to receive communion, not least of which is the command to "do this in remembrance of me."

Then Wesley gets into the objections to constant communion. In the first objection he imagines a person saying, "Yeah, but where does it say that I should do this constantly?" Wesley thinks this is a slippery slope. If we get into the business of determining when to selectively apply the commands of God we will have all sorts of excuses. We can say, for instance, "Well, yes, God commands me to take care of my parents but I did that once." If we have the opportunity to obey God's commands we should do that whenever we have the opportunity.

So there is the duty aspect of this thing. But there is also the mercy aspect of this thing. If God is handing out grace and mercy, why would you take advantage of it? God wants us to be happy, God knows that we can't be truly happy using our own means, so God gives us these means. Why would you refuse that offer of grace? And then Wesley goes back to his main theme - But even if you didn't get anything from it, it's still a command from God.

"O.K., O.K., but let's go back to that passage in 1 Corinthians where it says, 'whoever eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation upon themselves.' I'm not worthy so I won't go forward."

Wesley, in effect, says to this objection, "You are always going to be unworthy, so if you are never going to reach out and receive God's mercy because you are unworthy, how will you ever be saved? Unworthiness goes with the territory when you are human beings. And on top of that - the command is to "Do this in remembrance of me" and so what you are saying is that you are going to disobey God's command because of your unworthiness which only makes you more unworthy. And on top of all this, Paul is not saying that unworthy people shouldn't go to communion. He is saying that when people go to communion they should not eat and drink unworthily. The problem was that the early Christians were getting rowdy and drunk at the communion meal. That is not an issue in most churches today.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I have fallen into some sin lately or committed some crime?"" Well, you should repent, but don't add to your sin by failing to come to receive grace.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I'm too busy to properly prepare to come to communion. What if my business prevents me from doing the self-examination and soul-searching I ought to do?" Wesley says, if you're too busy to do the work of your soul you are "unpreparing" yourself for heaven. Don't act like it takes an act of congress to get ready for communion. This is the way he puts it: "No business can hinder you from this, unless it be such as hinders you from being in a state of salvation. If you resolve and design to follow Christ, you are fit to approach the Lord's table. If you do not design this, you are only fit for the table and company of devils."

Now we get to the big objection - "Well, I don't want to take communication too often because it may 'abate my reverence' for it." 'Abate my reverence' for it is 18th century language for 'it will get to be rote and I may not get that feeling I like to get.

Wesley goes back to his theme - The command says, "Do this is in remembrance of me," not "Do this in remembrance of me unless it abates your reverence."

"But I've been going to communion constantly and I'm not experiencing the benefits I expected." I bet you can guess Wesley's response. Even if you don't experience any benefits, God commands it. And even if you don't feel it, on some unfelt level you are receiving the benefits of grace even if your don't yet see the effects. God may yet give you eyes to see what all this constant communion will bring.

Now, I admit that Wesley can be a little rigid. You can come out of a sermon like this and think that the one line summary of it is something like, "What part of 'Do this in remembrance of me' don't you understand?"

But here's why I think Wesley and Jesus ought to be heard: Because like every good mystery they have to be lived to be understood. You can't explain what parenthood is all about until you've gone through childbirth or colic or nightmares or potty training or adolescence or graduation. You can't explain what love is after the first kiss or the wedding vows or the many years of companionship and trials. You can't explain what a calling is like or a profession. You can throw words at it, but you just have to give yourself to it.

I get the nervousness about communion. I really do. I feel it myself. When I stand here I want to feel the immense mystery of it all. I don't want to let it just pass by. And does my mind sometimes wander as come back to the old familiar words that I can say in my sleep? It does. Do I sometimes feel unworthy to stand here in this place and say these words? Often. But one of the most powerful things I have even done as a pastor is to take a loaf of bread and to break it and to see your faces through the broken halves of bread. To share that bread with you. To receive that bread from you. To know that the life of Christ which was poured out for you and for me is present in some way that goes far beyond me and what's going on with me that day.

In my sermons on communion last year I said this, but I'll close with these words again today. I preside at this table so that you can preside at every other table in this whole, blessed, God-hungry world. I preside here to remind you that you dare not neglect God's presence out there. You come here because Jesus' commands you, but you go there because Jesus' commands you, too.

Your behavior out there is a testimony to what this bread here means. Don't forget that people are hungry for bread, hungry for grace, hungry for love, hungry for justice, hungry for a new day and they don't know where to find it, but you have been to the table. You know where the bread is. And you know how to give it. Don't you forget that this bread is a promise of what God is doing in this world.

You don't need an advanced degree or the bishop's hands on your head to break a loaf of bread. But unless you're feeding regularly at a table where you are reminded that the bread you hold is heaven on earth, then you will start to lose the ability to see that every other morsel of food you take in your hands is a sign of grace. My calling tells me to feed people in the name of Jesus, so that you can feed people in the name of Jesus until the kingdom comes. And the duty we respond in eating here is constant. Just like the love that brought us here. Constant. Thanks be to God.

*All quotations from Wesley's sermon are from the reprint in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion, Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2005], pp. 65-70.

Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?

2012-01-15T00:30:00.000-05:00

Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?
Franktown UMC
January 15, 2011

Last weekend I was with the youth in Ocean City for a big retreat. It was great fun. The Renners were very gracious in offering us their condo. The weather was great. We saw some great bands. And we learned some sign language.

Reggie Kapps was the main speaker. Very dynamic. Very funny. Very powerful. And in one of his sessions he was telling the story of Genesis chapter 3 - the Adam and Eve story in which God tells them - "If you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die." Reggie really wanted to emphasize this point, so he kept saying, "You will die." He got us to say it with him. "You will die."

After repeating it a few times he looked over at the sign language interpreter who was up on the stage for the whole session and he saw that she had been repeating it right along with us - "You will die." So he got us to do the sign language with her. "You will die." Try it with me - "You...will...die." We've been doing it around the house all week. Somebody does something we don't like - "You will die."

It's a good place for us to start this morning because today we're going to continue our "Branded" series and we're going to talk about baptism again and the first thing that I have to say is - "You will die." Wow. Really?

Now just a refresher on what this series is all about and why we're calling it "Branded." I talked about wearing my cowboy boots as I was praying about this and some of you were singing the theme song to the old Chuck Connors TV show last week when you heard the title: "Branded. Scorned as the one who ran. What do you do when you're branded and you know you're a man?" In the TV show Connors plays a disgraced cavalry soldier who is branded with the label of being a coward. His saber is broken in two and he carries that broken saber as a symbol of what others have come to think of him.

Some of you know what it's like to be marked like that. To have other people label you and to treat you as that label instead of as a person. Maybe you've been through a divorce and you've felt like that has marked you. After the sermon last week, somebody told me that that's how she had felt following her divorce - like some scarlet 'D' was marked on her for all to see.

What we talked about last week, however, was how the brand of our baptism marks us in the most important way. It shows us how God claims us. How God reveals to us the reality of who we are. How it gives us our identity. I showed the clip from the movie Toy Story in which Buzz Lightyear discovers that he is not a space ranger but a toy and how that was a crushing blow to his self-image. Then he looked at his foot and there was his owner's name - Andy - written right there on his boot. Then last Sunday night, Lena Gonzalez came to Bible Study and showed us that she had written 'God' on the bottom of her boot. Baptism reminds us that God has a claim on us and the love of God in baptism is a gift that gives us our identity.

Today, though, I want to talk about what it means for us to claim that gift. Why is it important that we accept the gift of baptism and what do we do with it? And the reason it is important is because - "You will die."

Let's start with another movie, though. In thinking about branding, I started to think about the ways that we brand ourselves. So I asked for some tattoo stories...

[Video clip]

Tattoos are not really about putting something on our skin. Tattoos are really about something going on inside of us. They are about an inward journey. Sometimes those journeys are about remembrance and desire and a reaching for something more. Sometimes, though, those journeys are just about pain. They're about drawing blood and letting the world see what is going on. When young people cut themselves it is often about a sense that they are not right...that the world is not right...that there is so much brokenness and hurt that they have to give it some kind of physical expression. When all we see is pain, the voice we hear is the one that says, "You will die."

So let us hear a new word from Paul. We read from Paul's letter to the Romans this morning. And Paul has a hopeful word. Did you hear it? Paul does not say, "You will die." No, what Paul says is, "You are dead." Doesn't that sound hopeful?

Paul is writing to the new Christian churches because they are all trying to get their minds wrapped around what believing in Jesus means. They didn't have youth rallies and a lot of hymns or even a New Testament to tell them about Jesus. So they often got it wrong. Especially the grace side of things. Surely we have to do something to earn God's love. Surely there is a step we have to take to get God's grace.

Paul says, 'No.' What we have, on our side of the equation, is nothing like merit. Nothing like faithfulness. Nothing we can show that gives us a claim on God's love. What we have...what is ours to offer...is brokenness and sin. And what is the fruit of sin? What does sin merit from God? Condemnation. Rejection. Repudiation. God is great. God is good. God is righteous. God is holy. God doesn't have any truck with sin. God doesn't fool around with ungodliness. That's why it's called ungodliness. And we live in an ungodly world and we lead ungodly lives. So what should we expect from God? "You will die." And what does God give us? "Jesus loves you." God gives us grace.

So when Paul says this, the immediate response is - O.K. We sin and God gives us grace. And God's grace is sufficient to cover every sin. So that means the more sin there is the more opportunity God has to offer grace. So why don't we sin more so God has more opportunity to be God? Makes sense doesn't it?

That's how Paul begins this sixth chapter of Romans - with this question hanging in the air. And his response is "Me genoito!," which is Greek for "Are you crazy?" Once you know that sin equals death you can't go back to believing that it's a harmless thing. I mean, you can. There are plenty of baptized Christians who have gone astray. Some of them are named you and me. But when we do that we are not in our right minds. Being baptized in Christ, we have been exposed to the news about who we really are and what the world really is. We have been immersed in grace. When we sin we're just being stupid - putting our fingers in our ears and pretending that God doesn't care.

We can make God out to be the big, bad authority figure when we do that. We can say, "God doesn't want us to have any fun. God is just sitting there with a willow switch waiting to whack us when we do something God doesn't like." But the reality is God is standing there watching us beat ourselves with willow switches when we sin. We can blame God, but it's always been the case that we do the greatest damage to ourselves.

Stephen Dobyns wrote a poem on the Garden of Eden story that ends with the line: "Kicked out, kicked out. Who could believe that lie? We'd begged him for a chance to make it on our own."* Dobyns is playing with the notion that perhaps being kicked out of the garden is not the best explanation for what happened. We can push the blame off on God, but it's really we who want to try to make it own, apart from God's grace.

But here's the thing that's most amusing. Dead people don't have the power to harm God and when we sin we are dead. Do you remember that this was the good news? It's not that "You will die." The truth is "You are dead."

Romans chapter 6 verse 1 - "What then should we say? Are we to persist in sin in order that grace may increase? Me genoito! Are you crazy? We are dead to sin - how can we still live in it? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized to death?" You were baptized to death. You gave your life to Jesus, he sucked you under the waters of baptism, you drowned, you died. I know it seems all sweetness and light when we take a baby in those beautiful white gowns and douse him with water...when we lay hands on her head...but when we give that baby to Jesus...we are baptizing her to death.

Jesus did not come to walk the earth so that we could keep on playing our pretend games. Jesus did not go to the cross so that we could mess around like life doesn't matter. Jesus didn't put on a crown of thorns so that we could fritter away our potential on things that do not last. Jesus came to baptize broken people to death.

The poet Franz Wright was baptized as an adult after facing down many demons in his life. In his poem "Baptism," he writes about how the broken person he was is dead:
I drowned him
and he's not coming back. Look
he has a new life
a new name
now
which no one knows except
the one who gave it.**
This is the good news - that we are dead, but, look, "he has a new life, a new name now, which no one knows except the one who gave it."

Paul's way of putting this is that we were buried with Christ through baptism into his death so that we also might walk in newness of life, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. You were baptized to death so that you can walk in newness of life. You were baptized to death so that you can live.

Then Paul says in verse 5, "If, being united with him, we are dead"...that word 'united' there is an agricultural term. "Sumphutoi" is the word. It's what you say when you're planting seeds together in the ground. They are "sumphutoi." That are united in death. The seeds go down into the earth and you cover them up and you think that they're gone for good. But something happens down there in the earth. Some mysterious power brings something forth from those dead, inert seeds. Some new life raises up from the grave. Some new shoots begin to spring up. Some new growth breaks through the earth. Something green is growing.

And it doesn't happen all at once. It's not a full grown plant. It's got a lot of growth ahead of it. It will have to brave the wind and the heat. It will have good days and bad days. It will still have to depend on having the nutrients it needs. The water it needs. The sun it needs. But those seeds that were dead. They are alive. And there is no more miraculous thing on earth than when dead things come back alive.

If you are baptized into Jesus, you are dead. Maybe you forgot that. Maybe you're acting like a zombie and wandering around in some sort of half-life where you forgot that you are dead and then all of your actions have the character of sin. But you have been baptized to death so that you can truly live. The grace that claimed you is yours for the having. You are fearfully and wonderfully made and the Love that made you is waiting for you to claim it. The evil of this world...the sin in your life...has no power over this Love.

Every day that you are alive you have this Love - not because you earned it, but because God gives it. But every day you have this Love, you have the opportunity to live it. You are branded. Thanks be to God.

*from a Facebook post by Mary Karr, 14 Dec 2011. She goes on to say, "Talk about hubris. The human arrogance of projecting onto the place where we imagine God sits all our own fear, malice, dread and loathing."
**"Baptism," Franz Wright, in Walking to Martha's Vineyard [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2003], pp. 44-45.

Branded - The Side Effects of Baptism

2012-01-08T22:48:00.001-05:00

Today we begin a new worship series and I want to spend a minute explaining what it's all about. One of my favorite questions for Bible study is: If I took this Bible passage seriously, what would I have to change about the way I'm living? I use the question with groups, too, and I used it last month in the Advent Bible Study. We were talking about what it meant to live intentionally as a Christian and I asked, "If we took this seriously what would we have to change?" And someone asked, "Does that mean you don't think we are taking it seriously?"

The answer to that question is, "Yes. I don't think we have the least interest in taking God seriously." If we took God and the Bible seriously things would look different. People would behave differently. We would not be disconnected from the poor. We would not let ideologies or political stances or media narratives prevent us from seeing what is really going on around us. There would be more humility and less hostility. There would be more compassion and less callousness to life around us - human, animal and plants. We would embrace joyfully the life we know through Jesus instead of living anxiously the lives we try to create for ourselves. No, we don't take this God thing seriously.

So what keeps us connected to this story? What is it that Christians can do to re-form their lives, to re-connect their stories to the biblical story? So I started praying about that. I was wearing my cowboy boots when I was praying about this and I started thinking about this Sunday. Baptism of the Lord Sunday. What do our baptisms mean? And I looked down at my cowboy boots and started one of my periodic day dreams. Every so often I like to imagine that I could head out to West Texas and ride the ranges with a big herd of Longhorns. There I am under that great big Texas sky riding my trusty horse, Augustine. (Hey, you have your dreams and I have mine.) I pull out my harmonica and start playing and stop long enough to yodel and then sing, "Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam..." That's when I look down and see the brand on my cattle - the Rocking J. And that's how this series was born.

Branded! That's what we are brothers and sisters. If you have been baptized in Christ you are branded. And that brand is unique to us in the church. Nobody else goes out there claiming to be baptized. When you join the military they give you dog tags and uniforms and specialized training. When you go to college they give you school colors to wear and a silly school song to sing. When you become a Christian you are branded by being baptized. And your distinctive act is the meal of communion. And you become a minister. Those are the things that make Christians unique and that bind them together. So we're going to spend these weeks between Epiphany and Lent looking at Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry to see why they even make a difference and what it would mean to take them seriously.

To get into baptism today though, I want to introduce you to Naama Margolese. Naama is an 8-year-old girl, born in Chicago but who has immigrated to Israel. She is an Orthodox Jew and you can see from her picture that she is dressed in long sleeves and in a long skirt, the kind of modest dress that Orthodox Jews have long promoted.

Naama made the news last week because when she was on the way to her Orthodox Jewish school a group of people began to spit on her. They called her a prostitute, only they used much more vulgar language than that. And cameras caught her crying as she ran from the bullies who were attacking her just because she was going to school.

Now let me tell you who the bullies were. They were grown men. They were members of an even more conservative Jewish group who believed that the dress code for the school where Naama attends was too liberal. This group, guided by their religious beliefs, goes out every day to yell at little girls and to tell them that they are worthless, sinful, and faithless. They call 8-year-old girls prostitutes.

I'm not singling this faith group out. There are people in every world religion who do terrible things in the name of God. We hear stories in Afghanistan about the abuse of women and Christians that makes our blood boil. Within Christianity it happens and it's why, for many people who have not grown up in the church, the first word that comes to mind when you ask them about who Christians are is 'judgmental.'

But here's what this story reveals - religion becomes dangerous when it obscures the reality right in front of us. When we can no longer see the people right in front of us for who they really are because we have some misguided interpretation of what God demands, we can do monstrous things. And there have been major protests in Israel this week because of this incident.

Here is what I want to say - and really this is the whole point of this sermon. If you don't get anything else, this is it - God is fed up with our lies about the world and about ourselves. God is all about reality and telling the truth about who we are and and what the world is. And the way God shows us that truth is through baptism.

Baptism is where the gospel of Mark starts. We spent a lot of time in the weeks leading up to Christmas talking about John the Baptizer. Mark tells us that people went to him to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. There were rituals of cleansing and washing with Judaism, but John seemed to offer something more democratic. It wasn't just the priests being washed before they went into the holy precincts of the Temple. Everyone was coming to him. "The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem." That's a pretty successful ministry for a guy who wore camel skins and ate grasshoppers.

Jesus' baptism seems different again, though. John had said that he was coming. He said he was a servant to Jesus. Said he wasn't even worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He also said, "I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Water was good for getting off the dirt that was already on you. But transformation required something more. The Holy Spirit was about fire and combustibility. And fire is about chemical reactions - reducing things to their simplest elements. Jesus' baptism was not just about forgiveness. It was about identity - about who we are when you get right down to the core. About reality.

That's clear even in Jesus' own baptism. He comes down from Galilee to begin his public ministry and John sends him under the waters of the Jordan River just like he had done with all those Jerusalemites and Judeans. But when Jesus came up out of those waters something different happened. John looked up and he saw the skies split wide open and a dove descending from heaven - it was the Spirit! And a voice came from heaven and said, "You are my Son, whom I love. I am pleased, well-pleased with you."

Now, we don't know for whose benefit this voice came forth. Did Jesus really need to know that he was God's Son? Since Jesus was God and therefore didn't haven't the problem of sin that we all have, did he really need to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins? We're not even sure that anybody else but Jesus heard this. Other gospels suggest that they did. But Mark reports this as a proclamation to Jesus. "You are my Son. I love you. I am well-pleased with you." Even if nobody else heard it, Jesus could not have been under any illusions about who he was after this. God, in this baptism, is all about reality. And Jesus goes off from here to the wilderness to face down the devil.

You might be saying at this point - OK. Jesus was baptized. I was baptized, too. Maybe your folks got you the font when you were a baby because Grandma Jean insisted. Maybe you had a powerful experience at a revival and a visiting evangelist dunked you in the river. Maybe you've never been baptized. I don't know what your experience was. But the question you may be asking is: What difference does it make? Maybe you don't stay up late thinking about your baptism. Maybe it hardly ever crosses your mind. Is baptism even really necessary? I mean, after all, it's just water isn't it?

Now your preacher is on dangerous ground. Because what if I say, "Oh, no. It's not just water. It is a means of grace instituted by God and commanded by Jesus. If there is anything that is necessary for salvation, it is baptism. And if you have not been up here to get yourself wet then you are bound for hell." What if I said that?

Well, you know the consequence of that. You immediately start thinking of exceptional circumstances. I know of a woman who was a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital. And if she knew that a child had parents who weren't religious, and especially if the baby had life-threatening symptoms, she would go around in the dark of night baptizing babies in the nursery because she did not want those children to end up in limbo or worse.

Or maybe you think - what if I'm out in the desert and I'm crawling along dying of thirst. There's no water for a hundred miles. And I'm not a Christian but I think I'm going to die and I'm converted by a talking cactus and but there is no way for me to be baptized with water. What then, huh? Huh? [I have got to stop wearing cowboy boots when I do my sermon prep.]

These are ridiculous scenarios - even though theologians through the ages have tried to deal with just these situations. When the whole baptismal thing gets reduced to some physical mechanism where the right minister says the right words with the right water - then we have made baptism into something it is not.

But, OK, let's go back to your question. "It's just water, isn't it?" What if I say, "Yes. You're right. It's just water. It's really just kind of a traditional thing that we do but really the important thing is that you change your life and live better for God." What a travesty! Do you realize what we've done then? If I say that, then what I'm saying is that there is no grace in your salvation. I'm saying that it's all about you and what you do and how well you do it and how sincerely you mean it. If you get it right then we can say that this baptism with water thing was effective.

But that is a lie. The whole problem with this messed up world that we live in is that we believe it's all about us. When we get moralistic and judgmental it's because we think we've got it and the other guy or gal doesn't. We can feel superior because we did it and they didn't. When we get depressed and self-loathing because we know we have messed up we fall into the trap the other way and we still think it's all about us and what we didn't do.

The whole point of baptism, though, is to show us that our salvation, our identity, our reality is not something we create. Did you hear where we began the scripture reading this morning? That first reading. From Genesis. There's water. It's dark. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There are way too many days when I wake up and say, in the beginning I created every good and and every bad thing that I associate with myself. And those are the days when I am an arrogant unbeliever who may give lip service to God but who really believes that he is the source of all life.

Do you hear where I am going with all this? Baptism matters because we are a forgetful people. Baptism is necessary because we need a God who can save us from ourselves. Baptism is necessary because God wants to give it to us. Laurence Stookey, a professor at Wesley Seminary says, "In short, we are oblivious to the identity we have been given by our Creator. God, aware of our malady and of our inability to effect a cure (or even recognize the impairment), acts to reveal our true identity to us."* And how does this happen? Through baptism.

Is it necessary? Well, how well do you think we do at remembering our identity without it? The theologian Gerhard Forde says, "To use the analogy of love, one might say that baptism has about the same necessity as that of a lover's kiss. That is certainly not a legal necessity! If it is, love has already flown. But if the lover were asked, 'Is this really necessary?' what could the answer possibly be? Most likely one would reply that the question was ridiculous! What sort of necessity is behind an unconditional gift?"**

One of the hardest things for us to accept is that baptism is a gift. It is given because God wants to give it. Jesus told his disciples in the Great Commission to "Go into all the world making disciples and baptizing them." Baptism exists, not because we need a mechanism to express our faithfulness to God, but because God wants a way to bless the world.

O.K., but if God is letting me know who I really am...if God is able to tell me through baptism what I'm really like...then how can that be a good thing? Because who I am is a pretty broken thing.

Someone posted this picture on Facebook this week. It's a picture of a girl with her dog and it's such a wholesome picture. But the words say, "Wishing your pets could talk is fun until you remember all the things you've ever done in front of your pets." That's the danger, isn't it? My cat Whiskers knows me better than any person because I am totally unguarded in front of her. And if she could talk...

So if God knows us as we are - how can God still offer us grace in baptism? What do we do about the problem of sin?

Isaiah 49:16 talks about a branding. Speaking to the people of God in exile, God says, "Look, I have inscribed your name on the palms of my hands." Think about that for a minute. Your name is inscribed, branded into the palms of God's hands. It's a metaphor, of course. God doesn't look like a human being. God doesn't have features like a human being. God doesn't have hands to be branded.

Except God does. God's hands gripped Mary's finger in a Bethlehem stable. God's hands rubbed the wood in Joseph's carpenter shop. God's hands touched lepers and little children. God's hands broke bread. God's hands were pierced by nails. And in the piercing of those hands, God took on the sins of the world. God accepted the brokenness of the world. And when they pierced his side, it was not just blood, but water that flowed forth. Water that reminds us that we may be sinners, but that is not all that we are. Born through water, born again through the Spirit, we are free to be who we really are - children of God.

In the movie Avatar there are these ridiculous blue creatures called Na'Vi. But they greet each other with the phrase, "I see you." It's not just a visual thing like, "Hey, I see you over there." It's a recognition of the real essence of the person. "I see you. I know you. I encounter something holy in you. I am with you." It's just what God says to Moses from the burning bush. "I know the suffering of my people in Egypt," he told Moses. And that Hebrew word for 'know' has the character of experience. "I see the suffering of my people. I know the suffering of my people. I experience the suffering of my people."

Do you think the world sees Naama Margolese? Do you think the religious people who shout epithets at her and cause her tears can see who she is?

Do you think the world sees you? Do you think the sin and the hurt and the grief and shame and the burdens of your life are all that others see? Is it all that you see?

Because the God who moves across the face of the waters sees Naama and loves her. The God who descended in the form of a dove sees you and this whole sin-blasted world. And what does God say when God sees you? "You are my child, whom I love. With you I am well-pleased." How do you respond to a gift like that? Thanks be to God.

*Baptism: Christ's Act in the Church, Laurence Hull Stookey [Abingdon: Nashville, 1982], p. 13.
**"Something to Believe: A Theological Perspective on Infant Baptism," Gerhard O. Forde, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, Vol. XLVII No. 3, July 1993, pp. 231.

The Waiting Game

2011-12-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

The Waiting GameDecember 4, 2011Franktown United Methodist ChurchHave I ever told you the story of Big Jake? Victor Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church, tells the story kind of like this:Imagine an old West Texas town. One day a horse wanders in carrying a battered cowboy slumped over his saddle. The townsfolk rush toward the man just in time to hear him utter his final words: "Big Jake is comin'." With that his body went limp.Needless to say the townspeople started to get ready. They locked up the children in their houses. They barred the doors to their businesses and covered the windows in their homes. They crawled behind tables as their lips moved in inaudible prayer. And before long they heard the clap, clap of a horse’s hooves. They peered out the window and out on Main Street here came the biggest, meanest-looking cowboy they'd ever seen in their lives. The guy was seven feet tall, riding a black horse, with a rifle, two six guns and bandoleers criss-crossing his chest. He has an ugly scar along his jaw, one glass eye, and lips curled into a cruel sneer.He stopped in front of the saloon and tied up his horse and as he walked through the swinging doors, he tore them off at their hinges. He brought his fist down on the bar and yelled, “Whiskey!” With that he grabbed a bottle from the bartender’s hand and polished it off in a single gulp. The bartender said, "Well, h-h-how ‘bout another one?" to which the big cowpoke said, "You crazy? I’ve got to get out of here. Big Jake is comin’.”*You might imagine John the Baptist a little like that cowboy. Not that he was a whiskey-drinking, gun-toting giant. He wasn't any of those things. But he was somebody he caught your attention. Like the Old Testament prophets we read about - Jeremiah, Elijah, and Ezekiel and others - John was known for disturbing the peace. He wandered around the desert places, wearing clothes made out of camel skin with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. And, you know, none of these things would make him a fashion icon in our time, but they wouldn't have been all that strange to people who grew up with stories of Jeremiah and his ilk. You expect your prophets to look a little strange. What was remarkable was that people went out to see him. They went to the deserts to see John. They thought maybe he was the one they had been waiting for. But like the cowboy in the story, John said, "No. It's not me. Somebody more powerful than I am is coming. I'm not worthy to even untie the thong of his sandal" - the lowliest role that a servant could have.The people were waiting for a Messiah, but what they expected was someone seven-feet-tall and armed to the teeth. What they expected was a cataclysmic confrontation. But what John wanted to prepare them for was a savior who was not just going to challenge the enemies of God's people, but also challenge God's people themselves.In the Disciple Bible Study that meets on Sunday evenings we have been studying those Old Testament prophets and what we have discovered week after week is a really consistent message. The people of Israel and Judah are facing threats from foreign powers - Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt. They are hopelessly outmatched by these greater powers. It looks like the end is near. They are praying for God to deliver them. They look to the prophets and what do they say?Invariably the prophets say, "You have brought this on yourself. God has told you how to live and you ignored what God said. God said to care for the poor and you holed up in ivory palaces and ignored them. God told you to love only God - the one, true God of Israel and you worshipped other gods. God told you to give justice to the people in the gate where the legal cases are decided and you tipped the balance in favor of the well-connected. Why are you now surprised that things are going badly?"That's not all the prophets say, though. They talk about doom but they also talk about hope. They talk about a day of restoration that will come. It's almost like God is saying that even the worst thing that could happen to the people, and which will happen to the people, is not powerful enough to end the story of God's presence with the people. Big Jake is coming. Something greater than destruction is coming.Last week we saw how Jesus warned his followers about the things that would accompany his return to earth. We talked about the destruction and the division and the persecutions that would come and we wondered about Jesus' saying that that generation would not pass away before all these things happened. We wondered because that generation did pass away and we are still here. Still waiting.We're not the first to wonder. When Peter was writing his epistles to a group of Christians late in the first century AD, they were wondering, too. Why had Jesus not come yet? They had been looking forward to his return. When was it going to happen?In the passage we read this morning from 2 Peter, just before that section it says that people were beginning to ask, "Where is his promised return? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:4 NET) But the writer goes on to say, "The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because [God] does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9 NET)Our time doesn't work like God's time. We get moment after moment in a sequence so there is a sense of space between this moment and some time down the road. But God, who dwells outside of time, in eternity, doesn't experience things like that. "A thousand ages in God's sight are like an evening past," to quote an old hymn. But it's not even like that. No evenings pass for God. Everything is eternally present for God. And this passage from 2 Peter tells us that in the eternal present of God there is something more powerful than punishment and destruction. God is not just sitting around waiting to zap us for our misdeeds. "God is patient not wanting any to perish." And that shows us that along with God's justice we also get God's love.Now if love is the thing that really matters. If love is the engine that the universe runs on, then some extraordinary things happen. There can be destruction and fire and all the heavens may melt away. That's what 2 Peter says and that's what science tells us earth's final destiny is - it will be swallowed up by the sun some billions of years in the future. But that's not the last word over us.If love is the most powerful thing in the universe then the consequence of our sin is not to make us forever unacceptable to God. Jesus came into the world so that our sin would not have the power to end our relationship with God. When we repent God is quick to forgive, because Jesus lays bare our lives before God, lays bare our every weakness, every failure, every blemish and God says through Jesus, "Come to me. I love you even in your broken condition. I love you just as you are because I know who you can be."If love is the thing we are waiting for, then it is a sign that God will not accept our despair and our hopelessness. These are consequences of not being able to see as God sees. God knows what our destiny is - we are meant for God - every one is meant for God. And God waits on us to accept that we have been accepted by God and to repent, to turn around, to let go of our junk and to walk with Jesus.If love is what God is really all about, and it is, then it is also a sign that God will not ultimately accept even God's own despair over this broken world. God weeps at the tragedies of war and poverty and neglect. God weeps when children die of AIDS. God weeps when people turn to hate-filled philosophies instead of towards life. God weeps when religion is perverted to be an instrument for death. But God's weeping is not the last word.What's the last word? It's born in a manger. It's been whispering in the wind since the dawn of creation. It's been spoken through the prophets. But at Christmas the last word became flesh. The curtain was drawn back on the greatest mystery of creation. And suddenly what God has been up to all along was laid bare before all who had eyes to see. Some got angels in a neighboring field to tell them the news. Some got a star to call them across eastern deserts to let them know. And what we get is the story.John the Baptist would say that your sin is unacceptable. Your despair is unacceptable. Your belief that you are eternally unacceptable is unacceptable. Because no matter what you have done or what has been done to you, you cannot escape the God whose name is love.Psalm 139 has a section where the psalmist talks about fleeing from God and finding that no place he could go would take him from God's pursuing love. "If I were to say, 'Certainly the darkness will cover me,and the light will turn to night all around me,' even the darkness is not too dark for you to see, and the night is as bright as day; darkness and light are the same to you." (Psalm 139:11, 12 NET)"Darkness and light are the same to you." God sees in the darkness. God knows who we are. And God loves us anyway. Thanks be to God.*Dr. Victor Pentz, "The Baby that Rocked the World," Peachtree Presbyterian Church website, 30 Nov 2008, http://www.peachtreepres.org/downloads/sermons/20081130sermon.pdf. Accessed 3 Dec 2011.

An Advent of Biblical Proportions

2011-11-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

I had been in Jerusalem for two days. The adrenaline that had been powering me through the jet lag was beginning to wear off. But I was determined to keep up my schedule. Just before I went to bed at the hotel I looked at the map to plan a morning run. Our hotel was on the west side of the Old City and I saw that if I ran around to the east side of the city and crossed the bridge across the Kidron Valley I would find myself in Gethsemane - the place where Jesus prayed on the night of his betrayal.Our schedule was full so if I was going to do this I had to get up at 5 am for a 5:30 run. But when the alarm went off at 5 am I groaned. I hit the button and briefly considered skipping the run and going to sleep. But then I heard Jesus' voice. That happened a lot in Jerusalem. I kept hearing Jesus say things. Like when I was running up the Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus had taken to the cross, and it was steeper than anything I had run on the Eastern Shore, and I was considering walking a little bit, and I heard a voice saying, "What would Jesus do?"But this was not the Via Dolorosa; it was the Garden of Gethsemane I wanted to go to. And what did Jesus say to Peter, James & John when he came back from praying there and found them sleeping? "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" That's what I heard. So I got my lazy self out of bed and went running.It was dark at 5:30. The street lamps put splotches of fluorescent light on the sidewalks and pavement. Dogs barked. A rooster crowed down in the valley. Along the street in front of the south walls of the Old City Hassidic Jews lined up to catch buses to work. Around the east side Muslim workers did the same thing. Bells rang in the Christian quarter to call people to prayer. A recorded voice sang out the call to prayer from the minarets. In some ways it was like every other city in the world. In other ways it was like no other place.When I got to southeast corner of the walls the sun was just starting to peek over the Mount of Olives. The first morning I went running it shocked me to get to this point because I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by graves. Along the walls was a large Arab cemetery with graves right up to the walls below the Temple of the Rock. They even covered the entrance to the Golden Gate - an ancient gate that has been closed up for centuries now. Down below me in the Kidron Valley was a Christian cemetery and across the valley, all along the southern base of the Mount of Olives was a huge Jewish cemetery.Now why are all these people buried in the same area? The prophet Zechariah, in chapter 14, tells of a time when the Lord would come to vindicate the people against all their enemies. And Zechariah clearly says that God's feet will be on the Mount of Olives and the mountain will split in half to create a valley through which the people besieged in Jerusalem will escape (Zech 14:4). So the Jewish Messianic belief has centered on this notion that when the Messiah comes he will appear first on the Mount of Olives and that closed up gate, the Golden Gate, will open. To be buried on the Mount of Olives is to be in the front row for the day of the Lord's salvation.Muslim beliefs about the end of times also have a role for Jerusalem as a place of judgment. But as I heard the story, there is a defensive reason for the graves. No Jewish messiah would dare to touch dead bodies and to risk becoming unclean, so the graves are meant to block the Golden Gate. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but there are lots of stories in Jerusalem.Then there are the Christians. And what is it that we expect? Christians have traditionally looked to the east as the direction from which Jesus will return in the clouds to claim the chosen people. Most old churches are oriented toward the east. And if you're in Jerusalem, the sun comes up in the east over the Mount of Olives. So to be buried near the Mount of Olives, again, is to be in the front rows for the return of our Messiah.Why am I telling you this story on the first day of Advent? Because this is that strange season of the year. Time gets muddled. Expectations are all mixed up. Music in the malls has been proclaiming a baby in a manger since the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving disappeared in a Black Friday avalanche. The ABC Family TV network is proclaiming the 25 days of Christmas ending on December 25 instead of the traditional 12 days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day. Santa Claus is already getting overexposed. Our credit cards are already maxed out. Cats living with dogs. It's all mixed up.Even in our scripture readings it's all mixed up. We come expecting angel choirs and shepherds in the fields and Isaiah tells us about dried up leaves and broken pottery. We want to sing 'joy to the world' and 'peace on earth,' but Jesus tells us to stay awake because the heavens are going to shake and the earth is going to quake and something dreadful is going to happen before the coming Day of the Lord. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, persecutions, family divisions. Happy holidays!Advent must be something we didn't expect. Advent must be more than just a rehearsal of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Advent must be about a day we didn't expect, but maybe we should. Advent on the Mount of Olives is about a time yet to come when even death is not the end of the story. There are thousands of dead people waiting at the Golden Gate for one more chapter in this story. So maybe we ought to be looking for more than just a good deal during this season. Maybe we ought to expect an advent of biblical proportions.The 13th chapter of Mark's gospel, which we read from this morning, has always troubled Christians. It comes near the end of the gospel as Jesus is preparing for his arrest and crucifixion. His disciples are trying to get a handle on how this all going to go down. They're in awe of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the opening verses of this chapter they sound like tourists. "Teacher, look at these buildings! Look at these stones!"Jesus is not impressed. "These will all be torn down," he tells the disciples. "Not one stone will be left upon another." Then he goes on to describe for them the tribulations that are to come. Disturbances of the earth and of the heavens. Persecutions for his followers. Conflicts that will lead to death and destruction. Horrible things. "Pray that it may not come in the winter," he said.Then Jesus concludes his warnings with this line that we have been puzzling over ever since. After saying that no one, not even Jesus, knows when the end will come, when he will appear over the Mount of Olives with his angels to gather the chosen from the ends of the earth, he says, "This generation will not pass away before these things come to pass."Now to hear this in 33 AD is one thing. And that generation did not pass away before many of those things did take place. The city was destroyed. The holy site of the Temple was desecrated with pagan worship. There were wars and rumors of wars. There was death and destruction and persecution. By 70 AD Jerusalem was a wasteland. But that generation did pass away and still Christians waited. And each new generation has waited. Maybe it will come when Rome falls. Maybe it will happen when we get to the year 1000. Maybe the year 2000. Maybe on in May of 2011. No, we miscalculated. Maybe it's October. Everyone who has ever made a prediction about the end of time in their lifetime has been wrong. Unless we missed something dramatic.So what could that mean? Well, maybe "this generation" doesn't mean a specific strata of time, but a kind of people. A kind of people who are less than holy, but who need a savior. A kind of people who know struggles and trials. A kind of people who thirst for a word from God. In God's time, maybe we are of the same generation of those disciples because we are the same kind of people.And what does Jesus tell such a people? To stay awake. To be ready. To be alert. How hard is that? Well, in chapter 13 Jesus tells the disciples to be alert and in chapter 14 he asks three of them, "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" It's harder than it looks to stay awake.Staying awake means living your life in expectation. It's an active expectation. We don't wait for Jesus by putting our lives on hold and neglecting the world around us because, really, what does it matter if Jesus is coming again? No, to have an Advent of biblical proportions means to be know that everything we do every day, every moment is invested with meaning and importance.You think you're living your life and yours alone? You think nobody else should care what you are doing because really, it's nobody's business? Your business is my business. I can't live your life for you, but I can tell you that it matters how you treat other people. It matters how you manage the resources that have been given to you - your time, your money, your talents and gifts. It matters how you direct your life and what you give yourself to. It matters because there is a time at the end of time when our lives are exposed for what they are - a day of judgment. But it also matters because if the message of Jesus has transformed our lives and we are expecting the coming kingdom, our lives in the here and now ought to be infused with glimpses of that kingdom - "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven."This season is a hard one. It's hard to keep. It's hard to hold yourself in a creative tension between what is now and what is to come. It's also hard because so many of us have so many things going on within us during the holidays. It's not always soft lights and warm memories. In our minds and our hearts are memories of past hurts that grow more painful at the holidays. Ways we have been wronged or slighted or neglected or abused. Loved ones that we have lost and that we miss more acutely at the holidays. Rough places that feel rougher. Hard times that feel harder.But keep alert. Keep watch. Don't hit the snooze bar until Christmas. Because you are not alone in this season. God has things for you to do and things for you to receive. And we have things to do together as a people waiting for Christ to come. Thanks be to God.

When the King Has Got Your Back

2011-11-20T12:16:00.000-05:00

Paul was a pain in the rear end. Yes, I'm talking about the Apostle Paul. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who is credited as the author of the book of Ephesians which we read this morning. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who was knocked off his donkey by a blinding revelation of Jesus, who started churches all over Asia Minor and Greece, who wrote the letters that formed the nucleus of our New Testament. That Paul was a pain in the rear end.If you don't believe me just ask the other disciples. I mean, they had been with Jesus. They had travelled with Jesus. They had seen the arrest and the trial and the death and the resurrection. If anybody knew Jesus, they knew Jesus. Paul had not been there. In fact, Paul had been trained as a Pharisee. Paul had been standing by when Stephen, a deacon in the new Church, was stoned to death. Paul was holding the cloaks of the people throwing the stones. He was a coat clerk at the first Christian martyrdom. He persecuted Christians.Then he got converted and you know that there is nothing more annoying than a new convert. They think they know it all. They think nobody ever had an experience like theirs. And they want to tell you how you've got it wrong. Even if you're one of the original twelve disciples!That's what it was like with Paul. He was not from Jerusalem. He had been born up in what is now Turkey. A tentmaker by trade, but trained in the traditions of the Jewish law. Then he had that conversion experience on the Damascus Road and he suddenly saw something that the original group of disciples was having difficulty acknowledging. Paul could see that Jesus of Nazareth was not just a Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the whole world. If it was good news for the Jews it was also good news for the Greeks, the Romans, the Cretes, and the Gauls. It was a hard thing for good Jews to hear. Peter had to have a vision from heaven to tell him that it was OK to go baptize a Roman centurian named Cornelius and his family. But it was just obvious to Paul.So they finally had a conference in Jerusalem somewhere around 50 AD, some 17 years after Jesus' crucifixion. Paul met with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who had become a leader of the Jerusalem church. You can read about it in Acts chapter 15. The Jerusalem Council was tense. There were many Christians in Jerusalem who still believed that Jewish rites like circumcision would be required even for new converts. But Paul was convinced that God would not burden new Christians with unnecessary rules. In the end they agreed to endorse Paul's mission and they sent him out with some representatives from their group.Things were still tense though and about 8 years later Paul had to come back. Simon Montefiore describes the scene in his new book, Jerusalem: A Biography:By now James and the elders in Jerusalem disapproved of Paul. They had known the real Jesus, yet Paul insisted: "I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now is not my life but the life Christ lives in me." He claimed, "I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body." James, that respected holy man, accused him of rejecting Judaism. Even Paul could not ignore Jesus' own brother.*So he came back to Jerusalem and went to the Temple with James to pray as a Jew. In the process he created such an uproar that he was arrested. When he demanded a trial as a Roman citizen he was shipped off to Rome. There, according to tradition, he was executed. But what he did before dying was to open the door for all of us to follow. The Church that was born at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon all those Jews gathered from all those nations would now go to all those nations with good news for everyone.I think it's kind of comforting to know that the early Church had its fights and conflicts, too. And I think it's kind of comforting to know that God can work through people like Paul, who was a pain in the rear end for the people around him. Paul could see what others had a hard time seeing - that Jesus was the King and that changed everything.We live with so many flawed kings and queens these days. We have always lived with so many flawed rulers. They are vulnerable to corruption, hopelessly weak or dangerously dictatorial, too enslaved to public opinion or too unmoved by it. We need our leaders to be the best we have to offer but they always turn out to be...human.So what was so compelling about Paul's vision of Jesus that made him such a pain? The passage from Ephesians gives us a glimpse. Verse 15 of chapter 1 says, and I'm reading from the New English translation here, "For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you when I remember you in my prayers." Paul is writing to a community that has caught the vision, that has seen Jesus for who he was. Paul is giving thanks as he starts and he is encouraging this community.The next verse he starts laying out what he is praying for on behalf of these new Christians, "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him, – since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength." So what is he saying here? He wants them to burn like he is burning. He wants them to get the big picture because it is so easy to get swallowed up in the day to day. He wants them to see with the "eyes of their heart" and not just with their physical eyes. Because you know what you see when you just look with your physical eyes? You see a world that is falling apart. You see life as a slow progression of loss and disintegration. You see disease winning. You see poverty winning. You see injustice winning. You see the powers and principalities getting a chokehold on our institutions. You see your bad habits and your addictions and your wounds and your failures and your sin beginning to define your life. And that is not the truth. What do we sing in that praise song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see you." That's the prayer Paul has here for the Ephesians. He wants them to see a greater reality breaking into this one.There's more though. He goes on...and I hate to say it but Paul, in addition to being a pain is also a difficult writer to comprehend...he gets too excited and just starts piling on the clauses...but he goes on to say that he wants them to know "the hope of Jesus' calling" - that he wants them to know that their reality starts in Jesus' calling them to be a set apart people. They have a particular mission on earth and that is to be witnesses to hope. They are to be hope. So that's one thing he wants to remind them of.Secondly, he wants them to know "the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints." Christians aren't known for their great wealth in this world. Joel Osteen not withstanding, the primary witness to Christ is the message of sacrifice and service. Right living is the mark of the Christian. The wealth Paul is talking about is in the people - the saints - who have responded to Jesus' call and who are now living in the wealth of God's kingdom.The Crystal Cathedral in California, this great marvel of glass and architecture, was sold this week because the ministry that built it failed. This week we sent 127 shoeboxes with the good news of Jesus around the world and we distributed 267 bags of food to people in our community. I believe God appreciates beauty but when it is disconnected from the needs of the world, where is our true wealth. Paul wants us to see it ahead of us.Finally, Paul wants the Ephesians to know "the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe." They may be poor and persecuted. They may be on the margins of the society. But the Christians Paul was talking to, like us, should never believe that they have no power. If God could raise Jesus from the dead in this world, God can do greater things yet.So when we believe that all our good efforts have come to naught. When we believe that bad things will always happen to good people. When we believe that we can't make a difference or that things have always been this way and always will be. When we believe these things we make the mistake of believing we have no power. But God knows that King has got our back.Paul has talked about the past, present and future. He has talked about our calling in the past that has set us on a different journey. He has talked about the riches of the saints in glory who tell us about our destiny. And he has talked about the power that God exhibits in the here and now to be what God knows we can be.One thing great kings and queens can do is to inspire us to be like them. How else do you explain the thousands of Elvis impersonators in this world? Everybody wants to be the King. But King Jesus came to us in a very particular way. His life revealed that the way of kingship was through humility. The way of glory came through suffering. The way of community was through love. And only through death with a crown made of thorns on his head could he then take his place at the right hand of God.We are getting ready to enter a very special season of the year. In a lot of ways it's our season. The world is putting on bright lights and its shiny best because we have a message of light and life. The world is celebrating because we have told the world there is a reason to celebrate.But we will also be challenged. We will be challenged by the messages we hear to spend too much, to do too much, to eat too much, and to listen for God too little. Don't forget who you are. You were called by the King. You are meant for the King. And the King has got your back. Thanks be to God.*Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011], p. 212 (electronic edition)

What We Shall Be

2011-11-06T21:15:00.000-05:00

Last week was Halloween and if you came out to our Harvest Party at the church last Monday night you would have seen a great collection of costumes. I saw people dressed up as pirates and cowboys, a flower in a pot, Mario from the video games, and Sawyer came as a Northampton County Sheriff's Deputy. It was really great. But what I have been trying to figure out is why we are so fascinated these days with zombies.

In Norfolk they had a huge zombie night in Ghent where people came dressed as zombies and, I don't know, I guess they chased each other slowly around the city. It seems like everywhere you look these days there are movies and TV shows and events where zombies are the star of the show.
I'm sure there's some great cultural point to be made about all this. What is it about where we are as a society right now that makes zombies our favorite scary creatures? Is it because the economy is in such bad shape that we like to envision our fears as a slumping, lumbering zombie? Is it a sign of our guilt over things we have done in the past - a symbol for the debt crisis where the things we thought were long gone are coming back to haunt us because we still haven't paid for them? I don't know. Maybe some of us just like gory movies and there's plenty of gore in zombie movies.

Or maybe there's some image of us in those zombies. Maybe we feel like zombies. Maybe we're feeling a little disconnected from life. Not quite dead but not fully alive either. Maybe we're hungry for life, hungry for something we can't even name. And because we are so bad at imagining that that hunger could lead us to something beautiful and life-giving we imagine that the only future for us is ugly and disturbing. Maybe we're the zombies. Or maybe that's just me.

The first letter of John in the New Testament is a short little book. It was written to Christians near the end of the first century and it imagines a world of conflict - the children of light versus...zombies...no, actually the antichrists. Now, I need to be clear about who the antichrists were. These are not some strange, supernatural creatures. Antichrist is the term the letter-writer was using to describe the false teachers who had taken the gospel message and perverted it - teaching things that were contrary to what Christ taught - antichristian teachings. Chapter 2 verse 19 tells us that, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us." (NET). And who is an antichrist? Verse 22 tells us that the antichrist is "the person who denies the Father and the Son."

The letter-writer reminds us that we should expect false teachings, especially as the second coming of Christ comes near. We should expect that there will be some who will try to present some other picture of God and Jesus. But what is the promise that we have been given that the antichrists want to deny? Verse 25 says: "Now this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life." (NET) It is eternal life that sets Christians apart.

And how do we hold on that promise? By remaining in Christ, remaining in the light, and by doing the things that Jesus told us to do. "The one who says he or she resides in God ought to walk just as Jesus walked" - verse 6 - loving their fellow Christians, trusting in the forgiveness of our sins, and expecting Christ's coming again.

When we talk about saints, as we do today on this All Saints Day, one of the things that marks them is the way that they are able to focus on exactly these things when it seems that all the world is coming apart around them. I think about my colleague in ministry, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who I talk about in my new Advent book. Kathleen went into West Dallas, which was a difficult place, to begin a difficult ministry as pastor of a new church in an old, abandoned United Methodist Church. She was a single woman and she was determined to live in the neighborhood even though everybody around her told her that the toll would be too great. And it was hard but Kathleen said, “When it’s not convenient, when it costs us and we still take the time to listen to another’s heart and we love deeply, hope emerges.” So she did. And her church grew, mostly with young kids and poor folks.

Then she got a diagnosis of cancer at a very young age. Three years ago she died. But until her last week she was preaching at her new church, welcoming people at her home and asking them how they were.
People like Kathleen are remarkable because, when the world closes in on them and they are experiencing pain and discouragement, they keep their eyes focused on another place. The natural things, when we are experiencing illness or grief or loss is to let the horizon of our world shrink to the limits of our pain. We become captive to the thing that is happening to us. We define ourselves by what we can't do. But saints have a bigger vision.

The verses from 1 John that we actually read today tell us that the thing that defines Christians is not that they are better than the rest of the world. Not that they are immune from the pains of this world. The thing that defines them is that they know they are children of God. Their identity is secure. It doesn't flap around in the wind. It is secure. So as a Christian I know that whatever label others want to put on me - victim, outcast, old, weak, ugly, fat, scrawny, sick, loser, incapable, unable, unwanted - whatever label others want to put on me - none of those things define who I am. Because I am a child of God whose life is in Christ. And because of that I can love and look at the world with new eyes.

"See what sort of love the Father has given to us," 1 John chapter 3 says, "that we should be called God’s children – and indeed we are!...The world does not know us: because it did not know him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is." What we will be has not yet been revealed - but we know this - that we will not be zombies - we will be like Jesus. Seeing Jesus, just as he is, we will be like Jesus.

We've got a lot of things to celebrate as we remember today the names of those who have gone before us. The moments when grace pervaded the space between us and that other person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things don't die because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."

But the saints don't die because they now have their eyes fixed on Jesus. Even in this life our eyes can be fixed on Jesus. It's one of the reasons Paul could call the Christians he wrote to "the saints assembled" in Rome or Ephesus or wherever they were. We are saints, not because we are holy in ourselves, but because we have our hope in the one who is holy and who can make us whole.

So what are you doing to get ready for the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven? Have you put your confidence in the one who shines in light? Or you lumbering and shuffling along in darkness and death? Are you focused on all that you have lost or are you trusting in the promise that what lies ahead makes all that we are going through now look like a dim shadow?

I don't put down this life. It is where we get a foretaste of what love is all about. It's where we get to live in love and fellowship with others. It's where we know the touch of our mother's lips on our forehead. It's where we know the smell of a meal at our grandmother's table. It's where we feel the strength of our fathers, the wisdom of our grandfathers, the thrill of a lover's kiss. It's where we experience the deep, warm rumble of a cat's purr, the eager, panting energy of a dog, and the soaring wonder of an eagle high above us. There is a lot that is good about this world. And the promise is better. It only gets better from here.

What shall we be? I don't know for sure, but we have a glimpse when we see what the saints see. So go out to love. Thanks be to God.

Moses, the Mountain & the Land

2011-10-23T22:47:00.001-04:00

What was it like up on that mountain? Old Moses at 120 climbing up to the top of Mount Nebo, 4,000 feet above the Dead Sea that lay at the foot of the mountain. But Moses was used to climbing mountains. He was on a mountain when God came and spoke to him from the burning bush. He was on a mountain when God came in clouds and delivered the Ten Commandments and the Law to him. And the scripture says that even now, at 120, his eyes were not dim and his vigor was not gone. Like the 100-year-old marathoner who finished that race in Canada a few weeks ago, Moses was fit right to the end.But this was the end. He was climbing his last mountain. He knew it was the end. The whole book of Deuteronomy is the record of his farewell addresses to the people of Israel because he knew he was going. After resisting the call to go back to Egypt to liberate these people from slavery, after confronting Pharaoh with signs and wonders on behalf of these people, after enduring the grumblings and hostility of these people through forty years in the desert, after interceding on behalf of these people before God -- after all this the people were going on into the Promised Land and Moses was staying behind.He climbed up Mount Nebo, across the Jordan River from the land of Canaan. It's a high spot. A great spot from which to see the whole of the Jordan River valley and the hill country of Canaan. You can't see all the way to the Mediterranean from there, but God gives Moses a special vision and allows him to see that far and from the northern extent of the future Israel to the southern deserts. It's a little like another scene in the Bible when God gives Abraham a vision from a high place after her has split from his nephew Lot. In Genesis chapter 13 it tells us that God told Abraham to raise his eyes and look to the north and the south, the east and the west. "All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever," God says. When Moses comes along, it is still an unfulfilled promise but God repeats it: "This is the land I sore to Abraham, Isaac & Jacob. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over to it."Moses knew the moment was coming. Knew, somehow, that he would not be going over the Jordan into the land. But it is still a hard thing for us to hear. Even Moses, who surely did more than anyone to work on behalf of his people, to bring this about, couldn't cross over to the other side.You know the first five books of the Bible are looked at as a special section of the Bible by Jews and Christians. It's called the Pentateuch - the Five Books and they are the foundational story for everything else that comes in the Hebrew Scriptures. But the Pentateuch doesn't end with Israel in the Promised Land. It ends with a vision that is incomplete.For Israel it will always be a little incomplete. O, there will be high moments. David and Solomon will build a great city out of Jerusalem and the united kingdom will briefly shine as the great fulfillment of Israel's dream of being a nation like other nations. But that kingdom will split into two. Other powers will threaten. The people will forget the law and the words of Moses. They will turn to other gods. They will forget where they came from. The kingdoms will fall. The land will be occupied by other powers. And to this day, even though there is once again an independent Israel in the land, the promise seems incomplete.So maybe it's not so strange that Deuteronomy ends here. It's where we still live - with a vision of promise and yet, 'not yet.'Moses, the servant of God, dies there in Moab. Moses is buried there in an unmarked grave. The Bible is even unclear about who buried him. The Hebrew text says that is was God. God, who covered Moses with a hand in the cleft of a rock to prevent him from being killed by God's glory passing by, now covers him with earth in a place no one knows. And he will not appear again until Jesus is with him on another mountain at his transfiguration.It's not the end of the story, though, because there is Joshua. God did not leave the people without a leader. Moses laid his hands on Joshua and he carried on and led the people into the land, into their future.So here we are. And I wonder if Moses could see as far as Franktown - to see what God would do. Here we are 3000+ years later and who could have imagined that the name of Moses would still be on our lips? But I don't want you just to remember Moses - I want you to be Moses.There are a lot of discouraging things in this world. This week I read about the closing of the last Christian church in Afghanistan. The last one. They're closing because to be a Christian in that country is to be marked for intimidation, bombings, and death. In Iran, a Christian pastor, Yosef Nadarkhani, was sentenced to death last month for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. In Bethlehem, the place of Jesus' birth, 86% of the population was Christian in 1915. Today, in the West Bank, Christians make up only 1.7% of the whole population. Again it is intimidation and violence from gangs and government policy and economic strangulation from the ongoing conflicts.These things are to be expected. Jesus told us that suffering would come to the church. Jesus said that persecutions would happen because of him. These things are to be expected but they should not be accepted. I long for a renewed Christian witness in the Middle East. The Middle East needs Christians and the people of the land need Jesus.I long for the same things here. Our disappointments may be different. People may not be dying because of their faith here. Thanks be to God. But churches are dying because we have lost the vision from the mountaintop. We have given in to our despair. We have forgotten the promises of God. We have forgotten who we are. And so we are formed by the morality of reality TV. We get our identity from brand name consumer items. We have such limited expectations of who we can be that we let advertisements and the illusion of the lottery fill the void.Moses' eyes had not gone dim but ours have. Moses' vigor had not diminished but ours has. We tell ourselves the story of how the church has lost its way rather than the story of how the church reveals the Way. We lament the fact that there are no more Moseses and forget that all the wisdom given to Moses was passed on to Joshua and through others to us. What we need we have been given. And what the world needs is for us to give away what we have been given.Let me tell you about another mountaintop. On the West Bank, the area loosely run by the Palestinian Authority, across the Jordan River from Moses' Mount Nebo, there is a mountain where I went on my recent trip. From the top of this mountain you get a feel for what a small place Israel is. When we looked north we could see all the way to the edge of the Galilee. When we looked south we could see the outskirts of Jerusalem. When we looked west we could see ships coming into the Mediterranean port of Ashdod and the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv.What could you do with such a mountaintop? If you were committed to violence against Israel you could certainly put missiles on top of it and hit just about anywhere in the country. But I was there with a man named Bashar Masri and he wants to build a city on that mountain. Not just any city. He wants to build the biggest city on the West Bank - a place where 40,000 people can come to live and work.It is the biggest development project in Palestinian history. It will create 8,000 to 10,000 jobs during construction. It will cost about $1 billion. All for a place that is modeled after Reston, Virginia. He wants to draw people looking for affordable housing and who are looking for a normal life when everything around them is not normal.When he told his staff that, for his last project, he wanted to build a city, they immediately started to list out reasons why it couldn't be done. The Israeli government wouldn't cooperate. The Palestinian government wouldn't cooperate. How were they going to get water up on the mountain? How were they going to get access through the security zones? How would they keep militants out? How could they find investors? They listed 102 obstacles.After three hours of this, Masri said, "O.K., let's call these challenges and get to work." And they did and now that list of 102 has come down to three. They have begun construction. They have advertised the first 2,000 units and they have already oversold them.If somebody can stand on top of a mountain in the West Bank and see a city, why can't we see what God is doing in our land? Why can't we declare that a new day is coming? And why can't we believe that all the obstacles we can list are really challenges waiting to be overcome through the power of the Holy Spirit?What is 'not yet' here that God has given you to see? How do you keep yourself close to that vision? God has not stopped helping the people dream dreams. So don't stop listening for that new day coming. Thanks be to God.

Plagues and Passover

2011-09-04T06:30:00.000-04:00

When Israel was in Egypt’s land,

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt’s land;

Tell old Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Moses was a reluctant savior. Oh, once he had been a fiery youngradical. Back in the day when he worethe robes of the Egyptian royalty he snapped at injustice. One day when he was out among the Pharaoh’swork projects watching the overseers…probably wondering to himself how he couldreally be a Hebrew and stand by to watch his own people suffer. What did his mother whisper to him as henursed from her right under Pharaoh’s nose? What did his sister say to him about his destiny?

At any rate, as I said, one day Moseswas out and about and he saw one of the Egyptians overseers beating a Hebrewslave. And he was not reluctant to actthen. He was impulsive. He struck back. Hard. Killed that Egyptian and then worried about what he had done. Hid the body in the sand. Not such a great place to hide a deadbody. And sure enough his crime doesn’tstay covered up. But it’s not theEgyptians who know. It’s theHebrews. And they’re not grateful tohim.

The next day he’s out and now he seestwo Hebrews fighting with each other. And he confronts one man, who was clearly in the wrong. “Hey, why are you hitting your companion?”

The man turns on him. “Who made you a prince and judge overus? Are you going to kill me like youkilled that Egyptian?” That’s when Mosesknew the game was up. So he fled toMidian.

Years later he was out in the deserttending sheep, long removed from Egypt. He was married now. Had a newlife now. Wandered the wilderness withhis sheep. Not the brave younginstrument of justice. An aging man withdifferent priorities.

Then he saw the bush. That bush that burned but which was notconsumed. That bush that spoke with God’svoice. Told him to go to Egypt. Told him that God had experienced thesuffering of God’s people. A new day ofliberation was coming. And who was goingto proclaim this new day?

Go down, Moses!

But Moses was now a reluctant savior. He thought the people would not receive him. He thought the people would not receiveGod. He thought he didn’t have what ittook. He couldn’t speak good. Finally after God gave him God’s name, afterGod gave him two nifty tricks to do in front of Pharaoh – the stick into snaketrick and the leprous hand trick, after God told him, “I will be with you,Moses,” after God told him, “I will be with your mouth, Moses, and I’ll evengive you your brother, Aaron, as a mouthpiece”…finally Moses goes down toEgypt. A reluctant savior.

The showdown was wonderful. Moses & Aaron versus the most powerfulruler in the most powerful nation on earth. Aaron throws down the stick in front ofPharaoh and his servants. It becomes astick. But the magicians of Egypt werethere and with their secret arts they can do the same thing. They throw down their sticks. They become snakes. But Aaron’s snake eats up all the othersnakes. Pharaoh was unimpressed.

So the plagues begin. First there was the plague of water turned toblood. As Pharaoh went out to the Nile,that great river on which all life in Egypt depended, Moses struck the waterwith that same staff that had turned to a serpent and the river turned toblood. All the fish in the riverdied. The river stank. The people couldn’t drink from theriver. Some must have wondered what hadhappened to the Egyptian gods. To Khnum,the creator of water and life. To Hapi,the god of the Nile. To Osiris for whomthe Nile was his very bloodstream. ButPharaoh did not wonder. He turned hisback on Moses and went back to his palace and God hardened his heart.

Next there were frogs. Frogs in the beds. Frogs in the houses. Frogs in the ovens and the kneading bowls. People must have pleaded to Heket, theEgyptian goddess of childbirth whose symbol was the frog. But still they came. These cursed frogs. Pharaoh calls in Moses and Aaron and pleadsfor a respite. Moses prays to God andthe frogs die. They pile up piles of stinkingdead frogs. And Pharaoh hardened hisheart.

It kept on going. There were gnats and flies. Then the livestock died. Then boils broke out, even on the beasts. Hail. Locusts. Darkness. Even the great Egyptian gods of the sun, Amon-Re, Atum and Horus, couldnot prevent the darkness. Each time theplague would affect only the Egyptians, not the Hebrews. Each time Moses proclaimed the victory of theGod of the Hebrews. Usually Pharaohpleaded for relief, even promised at times to let the people go, but each timethe plague lifted, his heart would harden and the people remained slaves.

Through nine plagues this was thepattern. Then came the tenth. And the tenth was a horrible plague. At midnight on a certain night, the angel ofdeath would come to the house of all who lived in the land. And this angel of death would kill thefirstborn of every house.

Through all of this, God had had aspecial message for the Egyptians. NowGod had a message for the Hebrews, too. This night. This horrible nightwhen so much death would come to Egypt. This was the night that was going to mark thebeginning of a new life for the Hebrew people. It was a night they would remember even intheir calendar. It was now going to bethe first of all the months. And on thetenth day of that month from now on they were going to remember what they didon this night.

What did they do on this night when theangel of death was coming to every house in Egypt? They were to take a lamb. Each household was to take a lamb. A lamb without blemish. A year-old male in the prime of life. And on the fourteenth day of the month, justas the sun was setting in the west, the whole assembly would kill the lambs.

Imagine the Egyptians watching thisscene. All those Hebrew slavessimultaneously slaughtering a lamb. Thenthey took blood from the slaughter and painted the doorposts of their houses. They dressed for travel. Even though it was night, they dressed as ifthey were ready to leave. Their beltsfastened. Their sandals on theirfeet. Their walking sticks in theirhands. And they ate their roasted lambsin haste as if they were going to be called out at any minute.

Later that night, at midnight, thedestroyer came. And the firstborn ofEgypt were struck down, from the captive in the dungeon to the palace ofPharaoh. But when the destroyer came tothe houses of the Hebrews and saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, itpassed over their houses. The death thatcame to all Egypt did not come to them. Their firstborn were preserved.

Pharaoh called in Moses and Aaron in themiddle of that night. “Leave. Go. Serve Yahweh, your god. Take yourflocks and go.” The reluctant saviorwent back to tell his people that God had set them free.

O, there was more to come. Pharaoh had a change of heart one more time. There was the dramatic crossing of the RedSea. The drowning of Pharaoh’s army. The long journey in the wilderness. But a new day had come. And the Hebrews, who became the Israelites,were to remember this day on the fourteenth day of the first month of every newyear.

Why do we still tell this story? As Christians we don’t set aside thefourteenth day of the first month for Passover. We don’t even use the Jewish calendar. What happened to this commandment fromExodus?

It is still our story. And nowadays you hear it just about everyweek in this service. A least a hint ofit. When we come to the baptismal fontand give thanks over the water we remind God and ourselves that “when you sawyour people as slaves in Egypt, you led them to freedom through the sea.” When we come to the table we often hear inthe Great Thanksgiving those words, “you set us free from slavery to sin anddeath.” When we say these things weremember what God has done for God’speople and we count ourselves among those people that God has claimed and lovedand freed. We remember the Passover.

But as Christians we see it through neweyes. We count time differently becauseof one particular Passover when Jesus gathered with his disciples probably toeat this meal that is described in Exodus 12. Only now Jesus says something different aboutthe meal. We don’t slaughter lambsanymore because Jesus, who was the Lamb of God, laid down his life once forall. The sacrifice was made once forall.

It was a perfect lamb in the prime ofhis life. Jesus was sinless, in theprime of his life. Not a bone of it wasto be broken. At his crucifixion thegospel writers are careful to note that not a bone of Jesus’ body was broken. The lamb’s blood was to be sprinkled on thedoorposts so that its benefits could protect the inhabitants from death. Jesus’ blood is shed for us so that we canfind protection form wrath, forgiveness from our sins, and freedom from death.

Christians look back at this story ofthe Passover and they see Christ all over it. As First Corinthians 5:17 says, “Christ has become our Passover.” And we see a much bigger exodus for us everytime we come to this table. We rememberGod calling that reluctant savior Moses and leading a people to freedom fromslavery. But we also remember thatsavior who went all the way to the cross to lead us to a freedom that cannot betaken away from us.

All of life is wrapped up in this story. There is humor as we think about a landoverrun with frogs and Pharaoh playing his silly game of “You can go; no, wait,I lied.” There is wonder as we thinkabout the awesomeness of the plagues and the greatness of God. There is trauma and death and blood – the tragediesthat are part of all of our lives. Thereis sacrifice where the strong and the innocent die and those who are unworthycontinue on. And there is deep, deepmystery as we think that something as simple as gathering around a table andsharing a meal can somehow make real for us the kingdom of God.

Yesterday Suzanne and Rachel and I madea trip to Capron in Southampton County. We were picking up several pieces of furniturethat were part of Suzanne’s inheritance from her Aunt Augusta who died earlierthis year. Augusta was the last of hergeneration and the house seemed very empty and lonely as we left it for thelast time.

We stopped to eat in Franklin at theGolden Skillet. Rachel was notimpressed. It is a fast food restaurantthat has seen many better days. Even Iwondered how many extra layers of grease had been added to the walls andceilings in recent years. There wereflies.

Why did we go there? We went there because that’s where mygrandparents went to eat. They knew ithad great North Carolina-style barbecue. And it was one of my Grandma’s favorite places to go. So when I sit down in that place and eat it isa way for me to commune with the saints. And when I sat there with my wife and daughterI felt that deep, deep mystery of life and death and life beyond life continuing.

This table is where that happens forthis family. At this table we arereminded that whatever has a hold on us, whatever Pharaoh is holding us in hisgrip…his power is broken by the action of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ. Whatever temptation we have to linger inslavery is shown up for what it is – a failure to embrace life and the freedomGod gives us through God’s mighty works in Jesus.

So, let us all from bondage flee,

Let my people go!

And let us all in Christ be free,

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt’s land;

Tell old Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Intending Good

2011-08-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

All of us love a good transformation story. The troubled teenager who turns her life around and makes good. The man who is destructive to himself and others who confronts his issues and builds a new life. The rundown neighborhood filled with crime and broken windows that is redone and renewed. We live for those kind of stories.

So let me tell you the story of Joseph and his brothers, but let me warn you before we start that, if it's a story of transformation, it's an incomplete story. There is more reconciliation to be done.

It's a great story, though. The last chapters of the book of Genesis form one big cycle of stories around the figure of Joseph and it is a heck of a story. Even Andrew Lloyd Webber recognizes that. He turned it into a musical called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But one thing you might ask as you watch that play or as you read this story is - where is God? What is God up to in this story? The people in the story will sometimes try to interpret for us what God is up to, but they're not always reliable. So we need to be asking, what is God doing?

We're picking the story up in chapter 45 of Genesis, so if you want to follow along in your Bible or a pew Bible I invite you to turn there with me. But by the time we get to this chapter we're getting near the end of the story. So maybe we need a little recap on the characters in this story.

The father who is mentioned in this story is Jacob, also known as Israel because of a little wrestling match he had one night with a man whom he took to be God and who gave him that name. And what do we know about Jacob? He began his life in a struggle with his twin brother Esau. Tricked his brother out of his birthright and his father's blessing. Ran for his life after Esau threatened to kill him. Was blessed by God in a dream where he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven. Travelled to his mother's far-off homeland where he fell in love with the beautiful Rachel. Worked seven years for her and was tricked by his father-in-law into marrying Rachel's sister, Leah. Worked seven more years so that he could marry Rachel as well. Tricked his father-in-law out of the best of his flocks. Scurried back to Canaan where he had a tearful reunion with Esau and then had a very large family.

What do we know about Jacob's family? He had twelve sons and at least one daughter. He loved the children of his wife, Rachel, more than the sons of Leah, or the maidservants with whom he also had children. And he loved Joseph best of all. So much so that he gave Joseph a special coat to well - that fabled coat of many colors.

The relationship between Joseph and his brothers? What do we know about that? Not that good, right? The ten brothers who were older than Joseph hated him. He was daddy's favorite. He was a tattletale. He was arrogant. He had these dreams. Once he was out in the fields and he said to his brothers, "Hey, guys, I had a dream. In my dream we were out binding sheaves in the field and then, all of a sudden, my bundle of grain stood up and all of your bundles came and bowed down to it. What do you think that means?"

Another time he was out in the fields and he said to his eleven brothers, "Hey, guys, I had a dream. In my dream the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing to me. Weird, huh? What do you think it means?"

Well, what it meant was that the brothers were going to try to get rid of him. The next time he came out to the fields they made plans to do him in. They were going to kill him, but one of the brothers, Rueben, intervened and instead they stripped off his fancy coat and threw him in a pit. When some passing slave traders came by, they sold Joseph to them for twenty pieces of silver and went back home to Jacob with the sad tale of how Joseph had been eaten by wild animals.

They thought it was the end of the story, but it wasn't. Joseph ended up in Egypt as the slave to a high Egyptian official. Eventually he ended up as the right hand man to the king of Egypt himself, the Pharaoh. It was his ability to interpret dreams that got him into this position. He knew that a famine was coming to the land following seven years of plenty and he was given charge of a grain storage and distribution program.

It was the famine that brought the brothers back into Joseph's life. Jacob sends the brothers from Canaan to see if they can get some grain. He sends them all except Benjamin, who has now become the favorite since Joseph's loss.

The brothers go to Egypt and they appear before Joseph, but they don't recognize him because he is made up like a mighty Egyptian. Besides, they thought he was long gone. Joseph doesn't tell them it's him, either. He toys with them. Demands that one of them go back to Canaan and get Benjamin. Eventually settles for keeping one of them in prison while the rest go back.

They come back with Benjamin and Joseph still doesn't let on who he is. He sends them off again and puts his silver cup in one of their sacks of grain. Joseph gives them a little headstart, then sends a servant after them and accuses them of theft. They deny it, but, wouldn't you know it, the silver cup is found in the bag of Benjamin.

Benjamin is arrested and brought back. The brothers plead for Benjamin's life. They know their father will never survive the loss of another favorite son. One of the brothers offers himself as a replacement.

This is where we pick up the story today. Joseph has ratcheted up the anxiety so much that even he can't take it anymore. So verse one tells us that he could not restrain himself in front of all the people in the room. So he sends the other members of the court out. Joseph seems to be concerned with how this is going to look. He's concerned for his appearance. But he's not very successful because verse 2 tells us that the Egyptians could hear him wailing in the next room.

Now pay attention to a couple of things here as we read on. Pay attention to who cries and how many times Joseph refers to himself. Verse 3 is where he finally makes the big reveal. "I am Joseph," he says. "How is my father?"

At this point, he hasn't offered a big reunion. He hasn't said, "All is forgiven. Come on over and give me a hug." He has just laid the bombshell on them that he is Joseph. So the brothers don't answer. They are scared. They don't know what Joseph might do to them.

In verse 4 Joseph says, "Come over here." And they come. He's decreasing the distance between them. Not using his elevated status as a barrier. But he's still not telling them what he's going to do. In fact, he begins by reminding them that he is their brother and they sold him to the Egyptians. He's naming the wound. He's pointing to the act that has dominated all of their lives. The thing that needs to be healed.

In verse 5 he says, "Don't be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me into slavery." Joseph thinks he knows how they're feeling. But do we know that's how these brothers feel? We've seen how they are kind of protective of their father but not a whole lot of grief and self-loathing.

In verse 7 Joseph goes on to interpret the situation. "God sent me ahead to preserve our lives. God sent me to preserve your future." Verse 8: "You didn't sent me. God sent me and made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and a ruler over all Egypt." Three times he repeats it - God sent me. It's all about him. In fact, Joseph seems to deny that the brothers had any hand in this at all. The emphasis is on God and Joseph. Joseph is the object of God's favor. Joseph is the one who was the focus of those dreams he shared in the field with them so long ago. Now Joseph's dreams have come true. His brothers have come to bow down before him.

Then in verse 9 he uses his position to give the brothers a command. "Go back to my father and tell him that his son, Joseph, says, 'God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to live with me, you and your children and all of your possessions. I will support you through the famine.'" The brothers will be taken care of, but primarily because of Joseph's concern for his father.

Then by verse 14 he gets around to the hugs. He starts with Benjamin. No surprise. Then he turns to his brothers and weeps over them. But notice that the Bible never says whether they join in the weeping.

Now what do we say about a story like this. I love the stories from Genesis because they are so honest and they give us real people who act like the real people we know. They make big mistakes and they have big character flaws and despite all that they end up being claimed by God. That's hopeful for us.

There is reconciliation in this story, too. A dark chapter in this family's history is beginning to be closed. And when we see it played out on the stage or in retellings, this scene is lifted up as the happy ending.

But is there something missing here? It's an imperfect reunion, isn't it? Joseph gets a chance to be magnanimous and to embrace his brothers. He can find comfort in the dreams and visions that tell him that he stands within the realm of God's favor. But the brothers don't have that assurance. They can't be sure of any favor, not even their father's. What they desperately need is a blessing, a healing, a word, an act that will help them know that they too are recipients of grace.

The brothers kind of disappear in Joseph's story. As he tells it they don't even get credit for their sin. God is working it all out and it's not their crime but God's plan that sends Joseph to Egypt. If they don't get a chance to confess their sin and to own it, they don't have the chance for absolution and healing. We rejoice when we see people who have been estranged from each other embracing, but what we want even more is transformation.

You know from your own life how distorting sin can be. You know how it turns us in on ourselves...keeps us from living open, joyful lives...keeps us from experiencing the life God intends for us. Sin is the thing Jesus went to the cross for. Sin is the thing that God says 'No' to. Sin is the thing God did not create and the thing that God cannot tolerate in the restored creation. Sin is the one thing in the universe that is truly ours as human beings. It is an impossibility for God but it is all too real in our lives. How does God deal with sin?

One time a professor was going to share with his class an image for the atonement. The atonement is the word we use for talking about how God reconciles us with God through the cross. God reconciles us through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. The professor held up a glass and it was a dirty glass. Smudged and covered with dirt. He said, "This glass is us and the dirt on the glass is the sin that has marred our lives. God hates the sin of our lives. God's justice demands that it be dealt with."

The professor set the glass down on the table and held up a hammer. "This hammer is God's justice which will come down with full force on the sin of the world." He raised the hammer up over the glass and began to bring it down and at the last minute he put a metal pan between the hammer and the glass so that the pan took the force of the blow with a mighty crash. "That pan," the professor said, "is the self-giving love of God which interposes itself on our behalf, preventing us from getting what we deserve for the sin in our lives. It is Jesus' death on the cross."*

It's a dramatic image, but something is wrong with the way that story is told. The glass remains unchanged. It's still dirty. To extend the analogy, Jesus' death may give us a different status with God, but we are still not transformed. And what we desperately want to know is that we can be changed.

This is where Methodists want to talk about the power of God's sanctifying grace. God's justifying grace is powerful...amazing. It opens the door for all people to come before God boldly...to know that because of the work of Jesus Christ we can have a place in the reign of God. But there is more. Now that we have come in, we want to be changed.

So we open our lives to fellow Christians in small groups. We know that we can't see all the problems in our lives on our own. None of us is that self-aware. We need others who will listen to our struggles, ask us about our spiritual journey, support us in our failures, and confront us in our stubbornness. If you are not in a small group that does these things you are not yet fully immersed in Christian community. Talk to me and we'll hook you up.

Where is God in this story of Joseph? What is God up to? Joseph says that God is taking evil intent and using it for good. God is doing that. But something more happens in real reconciliation. God is not just redirecting events, God is transforming people. God is taking us sinners and restoring us to health.

We know this because we have seen God in Jesus Christ. In Jesus God was reconciling all the world to God's own self. That's what 2 Corinthians tells us. God became incarnate, became human, became one of us, so that we could see what true humanity looks like. And ultimately so that we could be truly human ourselves.

Ask yourself - is Joseph really the pinnacle of what humans can be? Or is there something more? Don't we want a deeper experience of transformation for ourselves and for the world?

Do you remember the story of Allison Jolly? The district ministry to migrant peoples here on the Shore grew up in an old gas station in Wachapreague named the Allison Jolly Casa de Esperanza. Allison Jolly was a young woman who was killed by a Mexican migrant worker here on the Shore. It was a horrible crime. It could have led to a lifetime of bitterness and hatred.

Allison's father was devastated. Who would have asked him to seek reconciliation with the man who killed his daughter? If he never reached out to the migrant community, who would have batted an eye?

But he did reach out. He wrote the man in prison and offered his forgiveness for what the murderer had done. He gave the building in Wachapreague to Carmen Colona for use as a food and clothes pantry for migrant peoples in our midst. He took the evil that had been done and sought out God's intent to make it good.

Don't tell me that reconciliation isn't a powerful thing. In our stumbling, imperfect reunions there is a distant echo in heaven where the reconciling God is still reaching out to us. We live with imperfection and we long for something more. We see our world wounded and scarred. We see our lives imprisoned by old wounds and bad habits. We see huge divides and rifts between us and those we would love.

But God...God sees brothers and sisters reunited, long lost children, prodigals even, returning home, orphans given new homes, and communities where all share in God's abundance. God sees the world as it should be and as it will be and as it already is, if we will open our hearts and eyes and hands to do the sanctifying work of grace. How good and pleasant it is when we dwell together in unity. Thanks be to God!

*Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr., Christian Doctrine, [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1968], p. 242-3. Story adapted.

Who's Going to Pull the Weeds?

2011-07-17T11:07:00.002-04:00

So last week we heard the story of the sower who went out to sow and who spread seed on every sort of soil – hard-packed soil, rocky soil, thorny soil and good soil. The sower, we decided, was a confident farmer, sure of a harvest. So confident that it didn’t matter where he threw those seeds, some of it was going to fall on good soil and produce a hundredfold.

What was that seed last week? The word of the kingdom. And what did we want to be? The fertile earth. Last week we were the soil. This week we are the seed.

It’s a little bit later in chapter 13 of Matthew now. Jesus is still telling parables – those confounding stories about everyday things that were clearly not about everyday things. And this time he is telling the story of the wheat and the tares.

Now, I call it that, the story of the wheat and the tares, but that’s because I grew up in a King James church where when you got to verse 25 it talked about tares. Does anyone have a King James Version? Verse 24 says: “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.” So Jesus is making a comparison here between the reign of God, which is unseen, and a man sowing good seed in his field, which you can see.

Then we read verse 25: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” While men slept…(presumably women slept, too, but this is the King James Version and we’ll switch back in a minute)…while men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. Tares! Oh, my goodness, what are tares? They’re what you use when you want to go up to the second floor of a building, right? You go up the tares. Or maybe you call them teps. I don’t know.

No, of course, I’m kidding. Tares are weeds. In fact, (I learned this yesterday), they are a specific kind of weed. They are probably darnel or vetches. And do you know what vetches are? They are people who don’t say ‘Thank you.’ Like when you hear someone called an ungrateful vetch. No, actually tares…vetches…are nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants that often appear in grain fields.*

So that’s how this parable got the name of the wheat and the tares. Some people these days want to call it the parable of the wheat and the weeds. But really, if we want to be scientific and politically correct about this, we should call it the parable of the wheat and the nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants.

Now this is a strange little story here. How many people remember hearing this parable before? Matthew is the only gospel that tells us this story. And, again, like in the other parable, the sower is a kind of strange farmer. He plants the field but he doesn’t want to de-vetch it. So what happens to your garden if you never go out and get rid of the tares? It gets overgrown in a hurry, right? So we weed our gardens, right?

Not this farmer. And worse yet, this farmer’s got enemies. And this is an enemy who keeps a bunch of vetch seeds in his shed so that he can sneak over to the neighbor’s garden in the middle of the night to sow the vetch in with the good seeds. Today, this would be the guy who sneaks over and TP’s your house. But back in the day, they sowed weeds.

So the servants see that there’s a problem in the fields. The farmer himself doesn’t seem to be too bothered about what’s going on out there. Hasn’t seen that there’s a vetch problem. But the slaves know and they go to the farmer and let’s see what they say. Look at verse 27. “Master, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? So where did the weeds come from?” Do you ever ask this question? I do. I go out and look at the tomatoes and I say, “Where did these weeds come from?” And right after that I ask, “Where did these mosquitoes come from?”

What’s the answer? Where did these weeds come from? “An enemy did this.” The farmer knows. He may not be watching the fields too closely, but he knows an enemy is out there. The enemy planted the weeds. The enemy sent the mosquitoes, too, I’m sure.

So what do the slaves want to do? They want to go pull them up. That’s a sensible thing. Get rid of the weeds that might be choking out the wheat. But what does the farmer say? In verse 30 he says, “No, let both grow together until the harvest and at the harvest time I will have the reapers collect the weeds first and burn them up while I gather the wheat into my storehouse.”

Now a couple of things here. First, the farmer. Why would he want to try this method? The text says that he’s concerned that pulling up the weeds would also uproot the wheat. So there’s an agricultural reason. But I think he’s also got the same attitude as the sower in the first parable. He’s confident. He knows there’s going to be enough grain at the harvest to take to the storehouse. There’s a plan for the weeds. They’re going to be taken care of. But meanwhile the enemy is not going to take up a minute of his time. The farmer knows what the end of the story is.

Secondly, the servants. What are they worried about? They want to know why the weeds are there and they want to know who’s going to get rid of it. So they are philosophers and then they’re pragmatists. Why is it here and who’s going to do something about it? But the farmer does not share their concern. He’s focused on the harvest which is, Jesus tells us, the kingdom of heaven.

Now let me tell you another story. It’s a true story. It happened 50 years ago. 1961. If you went around the South 50 years ago you would have seen a lot of signs that it was still a segregated society. Water fountains for whites and coloreds. Bathrooms for whites and coloreds. And bus stations with separate waiting rooms for whites and coloreds. That was the language and the practice of the day. But in 1960 the Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional, at least for interstate transportation. You couldn’t have separate waiting rooms based on race. But the ruling was not being enforced.

So a group of 13 people – African-American and European-American – black and white – trained in non-violence -- decided to test the ruling by taking a bus ride from Washington D.C. to New Orleans. Together. They called them Freedom Riders.

So they left on May 4 and they went to Richmond and Petersburg and Farmville and Lynchburg. No problems. Then they went through North Carolina to Charlotte. Into South Carolina and at Rock Hill they ran into the first resistance. A group of people met the bus at the station and beat up the riders as they got off the bus.

They kept going. They went to Atlanta, Georgia and they got threats. They went to Anniston, Alabama and on the outskirts of town a mob attacked the bus. They slashed the tires. They threw a firebomb into the bus. They blocked the doors to keep them from getting out when the flames took hold. A gas tank exploded and the crowd moved back from the bus just long enough for the people to get out. The crowd moved back in to beat them up. An undercover police officer fired a gun into the air and the crowd dispersed.

A second bus of Freedom Riders kept going. They came into Birmingham and another mob was waiting. They beat the riders again, paralyzing one of the riders for life. The police finally came and they arrested the riders, putting them in jail for what they said was their own safety. Then they took them over the border into Tennessee and dumped them off.

Another group of Freedom Riders came. They took the bus to Montgomery and again they were met by a mob that beat them up. It looked like the rides were going have to end.

On the night of May 21, a large crowd gathered at the Black First Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr. came to speak. Over a thousand people were in the church. Outside a few federal marshals had come in to surround the church, but there weren’t enough. As Dr. King preached the mob overturned cars and through rocks through the windows of the church. Tear gas started to seep into the church from outside where the police were trying to disperse the crowd. Dr. King told them that it wasn’t safe to leave the church, so they stayed in the church.

At 1 AM, Dr. King called Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, from the basement of the church. Kennedy was upset with him for causing trouble. Kennedy thought the Freedom Riders were giving the country a bad image. King told Kennedy that the world was changing. That African-Americans were changing. “I am different from my father,” he said. “I feel the need of being free now.”**

Now here’s why I’m telling this story. If the Freedom Riders had not been fired by their faith. If they had not been trained in nonviolence. If they had not been continually hearing the message that what they were about was the civil rights of black people. If they had not had a sense of justice. If they had not had their eyes on the prize. If they hadn’t known that God’s kingdom was coming. If they hadn’t believed that goodness was stronger than evil. If they hadn’t believed all these things, they might have gotten sidetracked.

They might have started to become obsessed with the crowds outside. They might have returned violence for violence. They might have given up in despair. They might have gone back home. But no, they were going to New Orleans. The original group was gone, but new riders came to take their place.

So two days later, another group of 27 riders – white and black – left Montgomery and they were singing as they rode out of town:
I’m taking a ride on the Greyhound bus line.
I’m riding the front seat to Jackson this time.
Hallelujah, I’m travelling:
Hallelujah, ain’t it fine?
Hallelujah, I’m traveling down Freedom’s main line.

When they reached the Greyhound bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, there were no mobs. They were not beaten. They were ushered into the white waiting room of the bus terminal. And then they were ushered into paddy wagons that took them to jail. At their trial the next day the judge turned around in his chair and faced the wall when their lawyer spoke in their defense. They were sentenced to sixty days in Parchman, the state penitentiary. Some of them were housed in death row.

It seems like another world now. It seems like far more than 50 years have passed. But the Freedom Riders saw the goal. And they rode the Greyhound bus into something a little more like the kingdom of heaven.

So what did Jesus say about this parable? When the crowds had left and they went back into the house, he explains the parable to the disciples. What do they call the parable? Look in verse 36. They call it the parable of the weeds in the field. They are just like the servants. They go straight to the weeds.

But Jesus goes through the whole parable and he says the sower is who? The Son of Humanity. Jesus himself. The field is what? The world. And the good seed are who? The children of the Kingdom. And the vetch – who are they? The children of the evil one.

Now immediately we get the message and what’s the first thing we want to ask? Am I a good seed or a weed? We want to know where we stand with God because we see where this is headed. The weeds end up on the fire. And later Jesus will say that those who don’t measure up will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There is a judgment on the way. And we want to know are we vetch who gnash or are we the wheat in the storehouse -- those who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God?

Scholars will tell you that the community of early Christians that Matthew was writing for was under a great deal of persecution from Jewish groups. In the midst of the conflict they would have heard this story as a word of hope. It might be bad now, Matthew seems to be saying, but in the end God will bring you home. In the meantime we must bear up in the struggles.

In our therapeutic culture we might say that there is wheat and tares in all of us. That’s even biblical. We are created with the all the potential of the good seed. But sin has entered the world and our lives, distorting us from what God intends us to be. So within each of us the struggle is ongoing and God has come to deal with the evil of the world and in us and to redeem our tarnished promise.

But let’s not make this too easy. There is much that God says an emphatic ‘no’ to in the world. It’s not always as overt as the mobs around the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. Sometimes the evil in the world slips in under cover of darkness. We need a purging fire to put to death all that keeps us from God. We need to come face to face with some things. We need to look in the mirror and see the callous heart that won’t let us love our neighbors. We need to see the fear that keeps us from doing what we know is right. We need to see the apathy that tells us the lie that we can’t make a difference. There’s a lot of things God says ‘no’ to.

John Wesley told his Methodist preachers that they should commit themselves to a disciplined lifestyle. That they should work diligently, teach the word, and never spend time triflingly. They should attend to their spiritual lives. They should read the scriptures. And they should do all these things, not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake. Not for fear of the fire, but for the integrity of their souls.

In the end, God knows the harvest will come. And God is not consumed with worry over where the evil in this world comes from or how it meets its end. What God is concerned about is the kingdom and what God wants is children who will not live their lives in fear of the fires of hell, but shining in the light of the kingdom that is to come. Not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake.

Keep your eyes on the prize, brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes on the prize. Thanks be to God.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_(leguminous_plant)
**Quoted in Harvard Sitkoff, King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, [Hill & Wang: New York, 2008], p. 77.

In Search of Fertile Earth

2011-07-10T10:43:00.000-04:00

There is a scene in the movie A Bug's Life when Flik, the rebellious, free-thinking ant, is trying to explain an important concept to Dot, one of the smaller ants in the colony. He picks up a rock and says, "Here, pretend - pretend that that's a seed."

"It's a rock," says Dot.

"Oh, I know it's a rock, I know. But let's just pretend for a minute that it's a seed, alright? We'll just use our imaginations. Now, now do you see our tree? Everything that made that giant tree is already contained inside this tiny little seed. All it needs is some time, a little bit of sunshine and rain, and voilá!"

"This rock will be a tree?"

"Seed to tree. You've gotta work with me, here. Alright? Okay. Now, y-you might not feel like you can do much now, but that's just because, well, you're not a tree yet. You just have to give yourself some time. You're still a seed."

"But it's a rock," Dot says.

"I know it's a rock!" Flik shouts. "Don't you think I know a rock when I see a rock? I've spent a lot of time around rocks!"

Dot responds, "You're weird, but I like you."*

Flik learned the dangers of using metaphors to explain deep philosophical concepts. But he stands in a long line of teachers. What you may not realize is that Flik was talking about Aristotle there in that conversation with Dot. He was trying to get Dot to see that the seed was a bundle of potential - that she was a bundle of potential. And even though she couldn't see it now, just like that seed, the makings of a great tree were right there inside her. I know, it was a rock.

Aristotle said roughly the same thing. The great Greek philosopher said that we know the reality of things, not by what we can see at the moment, but by what will become of them. Things, events, people, have a purpose, an end and we are being drawn toward that end. The ultimate reality of a seed is the fully-formed tree that will emerge from it. The ultimate reality of a person is the unfolding of all that potential that we all contain.

But you didn't come here today to hear about Aristotle. You came to hear about Jesus. And, lo, and behold, Jesus is telling a story about seeds.

Now it's not just a story, it's a parable, which is a story-like way of getting at a spiritual truth. It's the kind of thing that frustrated Jesus' followers to no end. I can relate to this because, you know, I'm kind of a storytelling preacher myself and some people do not like that way of preaching. They want to hear a point.

When I was growing up that was the dominant style of preaching - three points and poem. Just tick those points off. Maybe put a clever title on them. Make them rhyme or something. But I think I've successfully eliminated that style of preaching from my bag of tricks. No three point sermons here. Some people say I've got no points. I must be doing something right.

But Jesus was not a 3-points and a poem preacher either. He spoke in stories, parables. And his disciples questioned him about it. In fact if you look at verse 10 in chapter 13 of Matthew, (this is in the section we left out of the reading today), if you look there you will see the disciples taking Jesus aside and asking, "Why do you talk to the crowds in parables?"

Jesus answers in a kind of cryptic way, too. He talks about the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven and how they are not just revealed to anybody. But what he really seems to be doing is challenging the disciples and anybody else that might listen to work for a blessing - to work for the message. Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah who had that great vision of God filling the Temple and then being called to serve a people with unclean lips and then receiving this cryptic saying - "Listen and listen, but never understand! Look and look, but never perceive!"

In that passage it's almost like God is saying, "I don't want you to know what I'm saying. I don't know want you to understand what I'm doing." But Jesus is saying something a little bit different. In verse 15 he says, "This people's heart has grown coarse, their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes to see, their ears to hear, their heart to understand." What he has come to do is to open their ears and their eyes and their hearts. And Jesus appreciates a good student who will work to understand.

But what's unusual about this parable that Jesus tells is that this is one of those rare stories where he interprets what has been said. Usually he leaves it to the listener and on the second hearing, the third hearing, the sixty-second hearing you are still seeing new things in the passage. Actually I think that's true here, too.

A sower went out to sow. Who is this sower, by the way? Who do you think it is?

What's unusual about the way this sower goes about his planting?

He's broadcasting the seeds. He's throwing them here and there - on the path, on the rocks, in the weeds. Now what little I know about agriculture in Jesus' time tells me that it was not all that unusual for a farmer to just throw seeds on the ground. They did do some plowing. But they also would scatter seed. But I'm thinking that it would be pretty unusual not to try to get the seed at least onto the ground where it was likely to grow.

This sower is either very careless or very confident that he will get the harvest he wants, even if he scatters seed like a prodigal. I'm guessing that he is confident. He knows this seed is powerful. He knows what it can do.

By the way, what is this seed? What do we think it is?

Verse 19 calls it the "word of the kingdom." This is what Jesus came to spread - the news of the kingdom. Now is the kingdom of God dependent on whether or not we are faithful? No, the kingdom is coming no matter what. The kingdom is promised. The kingdom is assured. When Jesus begins his ministry, what does he say? Somebody read Matthew 4:17. The first thing Jesus says in his public ministry is, "Repent, because the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand."

So what this tells me is that God is not concerned that if the people don't respond the kingdom can't come. The kingdom is coming. What God wants is for people to respond and to live their lives differently because the kingdom of heaven is here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're still talking about seeds. So a sower, (who just might be God), goes out to sow seed, (which just might be the word of the kingdom), and where does the first batch of seed fall? On the edge of the path.

What's that? What is the path? Why wouldn't we want seed to fall there?

It's hard ground. It's unreceptive. It's a place where birds can come get it easily.

What is the path in us? Ever been in such a state that you couldn't even begin to hear God talking to you? What's that like? You get so engrained in your habits, so engrossed in yourself that you can't even hear. Can't even respond to God. Or maybe you get so used to thinking about the world in categories that have no regard to God that you can't hear any other kind of truth. There's that path. And the word comes and it never has a chance to grow in you.

But this sower is not concerned. The sower knows there's going to be a harvest. So he keeps sowing. And where does the seed fall next?

On patches of rock. Now I know they don't have such things here, but in other parts of the world they do have these things called rocks and they are persistent. I used to follow my dad around the garden every spring in that orange clay soil around Orange, Virginia when he would till and all these big rocks would come out of the ground. We swore they grew a new crop every year.

If you go up hiking in the mountains sometimes you'll come across a scraggly tree growing out of a big rock outcropping and if you look close there will be a little bit of soil - just enough for the tree to grow, but not enough for it grow big. Certainly not enough for a forest.

So what are the rocky places in our lives?

So when we don't have depth, when we don't ground ourselves in God. When we just live from moment to moment and never seek to do the work of prayer and listening for God. When we get excited on Sunday morning but forget about it all by Sunday afternoon. That's when the seed is falling in rocky ground.

But the sower is confident. The sower knows that this seed is powerful. He knows there's going to be a harvest. So he keeps sowing and now where does the seed fall?

In the thorns. In the weeds. In the place where it has to fight for what it needs to grow. What are the thorny patches in your life?

I don't know about you but I often feel like I'm in a thorny patch. We live in such a culture of distraction that is very easy to find ourselves flitting from one thing to another, never focused on God, never focused on the thing that makes for life. What are some of the names of the thorns in our life?

But the sower is confident. The sower knows there's going to be a harvest. And at last, where does the seed fall?

On fertile ground. Eastern Shore land. And from the seed comes an incredible harvest. A hundredfold even. And who is the fertile earth?

Jesus tells us in verse 23 of chapter 13 that it is the person who hears the word and understands. You are the fertile earth when you hear the word and let it grow in you.

So what have we learned in this story? That the kingdom of heaven is a persistent thing. It does not depend on the health of our spiritual lives. It does not depend on our efforts on its behalf. It can be despised, ignored, competed with, or tuned out, but it will still yield a harvest. The good news of Jesus is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And God is so confident of this that God does not parcel out the word of the kingdom like a scarce commodity. God spends it out like a drunken sailor.

But here's the question - the kingdom is at hand, but will you be its soil? Will you be receptive to the seed? Will you make space for it to take root in your life? Will you nurture that word within you? Will you repent and believe the good news of the kingdom?

It may seem that the world is godforsaken. It may seem that the work of God is small and irrelevant and decreasing. But that is only our perception - and Lord knows we see through a glass darkly. There is a life of fullness and richness and fertility and abundance all around us. Don't be deceived by the evening news. We are present at a feast. So why do we persist in the things that bring us only death? Why don't we let go of our small-mindedness and receive what God has to give? Thanks be to God.

*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120623/quotes

Rebekah's Choice

2011-07-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

Mary Karr was seven years old when her mother had “an episode.” She lived in a Gulf Coast oil town in Texas. It was 1961. At seven you don’t realize that things could be different than they are. You’re still learning what this wide, wonderful world is all about. But Mary Karr’s mother was having difficulties – a mental breakdown.

She was a smart woman. An artist. But also a struggling woman. So one night, while her daddy was out at a bar, Mary’s mama pulled her and her sister out onto the lawn of their small house and started piling up things. Things like her artwork and Mary’s springy hobby horse that she had started to outgrow. Things like their clothes. And she poured gasoline on the pile and it went up in flames. Mary huddled next to her sister and watched her metal horse start to melt.

Then her mom took Mary and her sister inside and sat them in the bedroom while she overturned the kitchen, pouring cutlery onto the floor. She came back into the bedroom and held a knife in the air over her children as she wailed, “Noooo.” Finally, before she did any harm to them, she called for help.

Mary Karr wrote about this episode in her memoir The Liar’s Club which won the National Book Award. She says:

I did know from that night forward that things in my house were Not Right, this despite the fact that the events I have described so far had few outward results. No one ever mentioned the night again. I don’t remember any subsequent home visits from any kind of social worker or concerned neighbor. Dr. Boudreaux seemed sometimes to minister to my health with an uncharacteristic tenderness. And neighbors dragged my sister and me to catechism classes and Vacation Bible School and to various hunting camps, never mentioning the fact that our family never reciprocated. I frequently showed up on doorsteps at suppertime; foraging, Daddy called it….But no one ever failed to hand me a plate, though everybody knew that I had plenty to eat at home, which wasn’t always true for the families I popped in on.

The night’s major consequences for me were internal. The fact that my house was Not Right metastasized into the notion that I myself was somehow Not Right, or that my survival in the world depended on my constant vigilance against various forms of Not-Rightness.[i]

You ever had that sense? You know, that maybe your house is Not Right. That maybe, somehow, because of that you are Not Right. That maybe you will only be able to survive in the world because of your constant efforts to fight off the Not-Rightness. There’s a lot that’s Not Right with the world.

But we don’t talk about such things at church, do we? Here it can seem that all families are perfect. Or maybe it’s like Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor’s fictional village in Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. We may be guilty of giving the impression that there is no room for the Not-Rightness of our lives. But when we speak truth we know that there is a lot that is Not Right.

The Bible knows this. The Bible speaks this. Even in stories like today where Isaac meets Rebekah and it seems like all is right with the world.

Isaac, however, has his own memories. He was the child of promise, born to Abraham and Sarah when they were both in their later years. His name meant “laughter,” one of God’s little jokes. For, you see, when his birth was announced by three heavenly visitors to Abraham and Sarah’s tent, Sarah began to laugh behind the tent flap. “How absurd! A baby at my age?” she thought. Abraham himself had fallen down on his face laughing at the news once before. But God had the last laugh. The child was born and his name was Laughter – Isaac.

Isaac was the only son of Abraham, whose name meant “father of many nations.” Except he was not the only son. He was certainly Sarah’s only son. Certainly the one God had tapped as the inheritor of the promise. But there was his half-brother Ishmael, born to Abraham’s servant, Hagar. There were the fights between Sarah and Hagar. There was the day when Abraham finally sent Hagar and the child, Ishmael, off into the wilderness. If God had not intervened then, they both would have died.

Then there was the day that Abraham got Isaac up early in the morning for a trip. On the donkey they took with them Isaac saw split wood. Signs that they might be making an offering. Two servants came along. For three days they traveled, Abraham looking always toward the mountains, like he was waiting for a sign. Abraham taking the lead, looking forward, silent. The boy Isaac following behind. The split wood rubbing together on the donkey’s flanks.

Three days they traveled and then Abraham stopped. He told the servants to stay. “The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” Abraham took the wood from the donkey and put in Isaac’s arms to carry. Abraham himself took a knife.

Isaac finally broke the silence. “Father?”

“Yes, my son.”

“We have flint and wood to make a fire. But where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

Did Abraham take a long time in answering? Or did he just tell it out? “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the offering.” And they kept on walking.

Abraham finally came to stop and built an altar. He took the wood from Isaac and laid it out on the altar. Then he took rope and he tied up his son Isaac and laid him out on the wood. He raised an infirm hand to the sky and in it Isaac could see the knife flashing in the desert sun, ready to come down upon him. Was it in his head? Was it from his father’s lips? Or was it from the very skies itself that the word came? A long “Noooooo.” It could not be that Isaac should end his days this way. God must provide another way. And there in a thicket was a ram caught by its horns. The ram became the sacrifice.

But what must the journey home have been like? Did Abraham tell his son about the command he heard from heaven? The command to offer his son, his only son, as a sacrifice? Did he tell the boy how he agonized over it? How he resisted it? How he argued with God like he had for the sake of the people of Sodom? Did he tell him that he knew all along that God would provide? That in the end, somehow, God would come through?

Or did they walk back down the mountain in a horrible silence? Did Isaac know that from this moment on he had now inherited the promise from a wild and holy God who was always going to leave him unsettled and always at risk? And how many nights did Isaac fall asleep with the vision of his father holding aloft a knife in his trembling hand over his trembling throat?

Did they ever tell Sarah? The Bible doesn’t say. Perhaps they did because the next thing that happens in the biblical story is that Sarah dies. She was 127 years old. But if she heard the tale of the sacrifice on the mountain it might surely have hastened her demise.

The almost-sacrifice of Isaac is told to us as a lesson in faith. Faith even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when it is affront to our reason and our heart. Abraham is blessed because of his faith that God would provide. But faith like this doesn’t lead to harmony or safety. It doesn’t make the story of God’s people a Pollyanna tale of good things happening to good people.

In fact, from this point on in Genesis, God does not intervene nearly as much into the lives of Abraham’s family members. There are prayers and promises, dreams and blessings that all remind us that God is there – but faith from here to the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3 is not lived out as a drama between an intervening God and an obedient people. Faith from here to the burning bush is ordinary people – even Not Right people – struggling to get by and to make sense of the world. And meanwhile the promise of God to make of Abraham and his descendents a great people is coming true. Which makes the time between the mountain of sacrifice and the mountain of the burning bush a good model for our times – as ordinary people like us – even Not Right people – struggle to get by and make sense of the world.

So where do we go from here? What happens to a family after a trauma like this? After Sarah dies, Abraham finds a suitable burial site for her. But he knows that he will follow soon behind. So he called his senior servant to his side and made him swear an oath. “Put your hand beneath my thigh and swear by God that you will get a wife for my son Isaac from our homeland.” They were living in a strange land. Though God had promised this land to them, they were just sojourners. So Abraham sent the servant back for a wife from his own people.

The servant gathered up ten camels for the long journey back to the old country. When he came to a well in that far land he got down off of his camels. He had them all kneel by the well. And he prayed a prayer to the God of his master, Abraham. He prayed that, when the young women of the town came out to get water, he would say to the right girl, “Lower your jug and give me a drink.” And she would answer, “Here is something for you and let me also water your camels.” A woman who would water your camels – now that would make a fitting wife for Isaac!

Well, you can guess what happened next. A girl came out to the well with a water jug on her shoulder. She was a stunning beauty. You can almost hear the servant thinking, “Let her be the one!” She lowered the jug into the well and drew up the water. The servant ran to he and said, “May I have a sip from your jug?”

“Yes, of course, drink,” she said. “And…[wait for it!]…I’ll get water for your camels, too.”

The man watched in awe as she dipped the jug ten more times for each of the thirsty camels. Then he pulled out gifts – a gold nose ring and two arm bracelets. He gave them to her. And because he was from the Eastern Shore he started to ask about her family. “Whose daughter are you? Is there room for us to come stay the night?”

Then the “aha!” moment as he learns that she is of the family of Abraham’s brother. Her brother, Laban, welcomes the servant in along with all of his camels and the other servants who were with him. They bring food to eat, but the servant won’t eat until he tells the whole tale. He ends by saying, “God has led me to your door to get a wife for my master’s son. Now, tell me what you are going to do.”

They respond by saying, “Yes, yes. This must be of God. Yes, yes. Of course, you must take Rebekah to be married to Isaac. But let her stay another ten days before you go.”

The servant resisted. He was ready to return. So they bring in Rebekah and we finally hear her speak. How she felt about the deal being made about her, we don’t know. But at this moment when she can make some sort of statement she chooses to go. “I’m ready to go,” she says.

So off they go, back to the strange land and there’s a little Hollywood moment as they arrive. Isaac is out in the field at the end of the day mediating. He sees camels coming across in the fading light of day. Rebekah looks up and sees Isaac, though she doesn’t know who he is. She slips down off the side of her camel. “Who is that man out in the field coming toward us?” she asks.

“That is my master,” says the servant.

She slips her veil over her face, according to the custom. And though the text doesn’t tell us this, I’m sure they ran in slow motion across the field until they met as the music rose to a high crescendo. Isaac took Rebekah as his wife and he loved her. The text does say that. The credits begin to roll.

Then there is the last line to the 24^th chapter of Genesis. The line that says, “So Isaac found comfort after his mother’s death.” And here’s the thing we need to hear in this passage: Love stories don’t take place in isolation. They take place in the midst of a hundred other things. They take place in the wake of a traumatic death. They take place as people move from their home. They take place in the midst of conflicted families. They take place with rich people and with servants. They take place for men and for women.

The story of Isaac and Rebekah can seem like a quaint little biblical interlude. But it happens in the shadow of so many things. It happens in the shadow of God’s promise that the stars of the heavens and the sand of the sea can’t begin to describe the bounty of the future. It happens in the shadow of children sent off into the desert to survive by their own wits and by the angel of God. It happens in the shadow of a knife in a trembling hand that means faith and risk.

The stories of Genesis that the Jewish people and now we in the Christian Church look back on are stories of trauma and drama. They remind us that we live on a knife’s edge. On one side of the cut is the danger of human choice – we always have this choice. The choice to say “Yes” to life. To be engaged in the world. To take on for ourselves the responsibility to act in this world as we believe God is calling us to act. We can’t shirk our role in this world.

On the other side of the cut is the promise of God’s presence. Even when it is unseen. Even when we are shackled by the traumas of the past and the things that have been done to us. Even when we can’t see God’s new day, God is already there in it, bringing it to new life.

And where do we see that in this story? In a girl with a water jug. In the receiving and giving of gifts. In the hospitality of strangers. And in Rebekah’s choice to say, “I’m ready to go.”

There’s a lot that’s Not Right about this world. You may believe there’s a lot that’s Not Right about you. You may believe that the only thing standing between you and damnation is an eternal struggle against the Not-Rightness of the world. But you’d be wrong. There’s also something terribly, terribly right with the universe. And God will not rest until all is made Right. Thanks be to God.

[i] Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club, [Penguin: New York, 1995], pp. 9-10.

A Love Song For All That Will Not Die

2011-06-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

A Love Song for All That Will Not Die
June 18, 2011
Virginia United Methodist Annual Conference

I went to the Eastern Shore in 2005 as a result of three things:
a mission trip with college students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA during a freakishly cold Spring Break
the appointment system
and my own big mouth, because it was on that mission trip, as I was sitting down to dinner at Camp Occohannock on the Bay with the then-District Superintendent Jim Hewitt, that I found myself saying, "If you have any openings here, I'd like to be considered."
Two weeks later the move was underway.

Like most things in my life in the Virginia Annual Conference, (and I've got a long history here), I didn't know what I was doing when I got into it. I had no clue what the move was going to involve for my family or for me. I didn't even really know what the Eastern Shore was like. Sometimes it doesn't even show up on maps. People think of it as the end of the earth. Starbucks hasn't even discovered this place yet and they are everywhere. When colleagues heard that the bishop was sending me there they said, "What did you do?"

But friends, let me tell you something, and as Christians you should know this. When somebody tells you that something is dead, be careful. When somebody tells you that that there is no life in this place, be careful because there might be an empty tomb. When somebody tells you that there's a valley of dry bones and a voice says, "Mortal, can these dry bones live?", be careful. When there's a people locked in slavery and a man by a burning bush says, "I can't take that word of freedom back to Egypt," be careful. When there's a promise with no heirs, don't laugh like Sarah behind the tent flap when the promise is repeated. Be careful because this God we proclaim is in the resurrection business.

A few months ago - on Groundhog Day to be exact - I was going back to the Shore across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel - that 17 mile link between Virginia Beach and the Shore. I had been visiting in the hospital across the bay. ("Across the bay" is a peculiar Shore expression. It's applied very loosely. From the perspective of the Shore, everything is "across the bay." Virginia Beach. Across the bay. Norfolk. Across the bay. California. Across the bay.)

At any rate, I had been across the bay and I rolled down the window to pay the toll attendant. That's when it hit me. It had been a long, cold winter. You remember those days? A long, cold winter and Groundhog Day was unusually warm. And when I put the window down it all came flooding in to me. There in the air were memories.

Somewhere in the air were camellias and I was immediately back in my grandmother's garden. Somewhere in the air was the salt breeze of an ocean that was shedding its winter coat. Somewhere in the air were creaking swing sets where I pushed our children on a spring day. Somewhere, I swear, there was rain evaporating from a car's hot engine hood. Somewhere in the air were spring days when I would get into my friend Billy Mack's green Datsun pick-up truck and we would skip school to go...well, there were a lot of things in that air. I could smell it.

With all of that rushing in, I suddenly felt glad to be the age that I was. All of that stuff was in the air for me because of my memory, because of the opportunity I had to live life in this creation for this long. And I wrote a poem, because that's what we do on the Eastern Shore. We are all poets. And the end of the poem said:
When at last
I replaced the glass between memory and me
I sighed a lament
for youth
Not that it was lost
but that the young
should be so immune to what was in the air
With no capacity to resurrect moments that have not yet been
they skim the surface of a shallow sea
It is for those with age to know
what ledges and depths these waters conceal
And to be occasionally
assaulted and affirmed
by all that will not die.

I have been a part of the Virginia Annual Conference for a long time. All of my life. For most of that time I have heard laments and moans, cries of panic and accusation, exhortation and recrimination - all because the United Methodist Church was dying. The United Methodist Church is dying. And I have seen the Revealing Christ campaign and Vision 2000 and All Things New and the Call to Action, all of them born out of the same sense that something fundamental is broken in our witness in the world and something fundamental needs to change because the United Methodist Church is dying.

I don't come tonight to challenge that. Something fundamental does need to change. God will call forth the people. God will continue to set the captive free. If we want to be part of that movement of God's Spirit in the world, we surely must make the United Methodist Church a willing and able instrument. I don't come to challenge the notion that we must change else we die. I come to sing a love song for all that will not die.

Tonight we gather to remember. As we read the names of the faithful servants of the church who have died in the last year, with each name, for some of us in this arena, a flood of memories will come back. These are people, ordinary people just like us, who gave themselves in service through the United Methodist Church because they believed that in doing so they were answering the call of God. As we recall them our minds will be drawn to their personalities, their quirks, their unique habits of dress or speech. We remember moments when we encountered them in very personal ways. The tables where we shared meals. The church meetings where we labored together. The worship services where we sang together. And through it all a grace that made them transparent - even in the flesh, even behind the frailties and the failings - they were sometimes transparent so that the love of God could shine through.

As the names are called I will remember. I will remember William A. Wright, Jr. as a man who never failed to ask me as a youth about how things were going at Trinity:Orange, my home church, which was one of his charges as Charlottesville District Superintendent. Carl Ulrich, who made such a huge transition in his life going from being a lawyer to a pastor - don't tell me God can't perform miracles - and who did it with such a deep thoughtfulness and concern for the church. Joseph T. Carson, Jr. who taught me that any challenge in ministry can be called an opportunity.

And I will remember Elmer A. Thompson, who was so unassuming. So quietly dedicated. So deeply self-aware. And who nurtured a generation of young people though the Youth Engaged in Service program, which produced so many great leaders in the church. When I was in the YES program working with children and seniors in the Highland Park area of Richmond, the letters and visits from Elmer put the Apostle Paul to shame. When I remember Elmer I know there are things that will not die as long as I live.

So many others. And each of them spent most of their ministry in service to a denomination that was told continually that it was becoming culturally irrelevant, that it was not what it used to be, not what it should be, that its future was imperiled and its present was a sign of failure. These servants spent most of their lives hearing this message.

And yet. And yet. These people, clergy and lay, touched lives. They called people to new life in Christ and people responded. They were the environment I grew up in. They instilled in others a sense that the roots of the Methodist movement still had vibrancy and vitality. They held up a vision of what the United Methodist Church could be. They created programs that helped new generations see the possibilities of a life that combines works of piety and works of mercy, spirituality and social justice, open hearts, open minds and open doors. They were not mired in a message of death. Oh, some days maybe. We all have them. But we are here today because they carried something from our past to this day.

When I see young people responding to the call. When I see new faith communities springing up in the unlikeliest of places. When I hear the gospel in the tongues of many different lands. When I see the United Methodist Church still alive in the imaginations of people, I know that God used these people to do something that will not die.

Let's return to the Gospel word from Matthew. What must Jesus' followers have heard when he sat down to teach on the mountain? He shared such strange things with them. Things that must have made no sense to them. Happy are those who mourn? What sort of beatitude is that in the face of death? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The world does not work like that, Jesus. Forgive those who sin against you. On and on this Sermon on the Mount goes with one incredible command following another.

Then, just as they must have been wondering, as once they did, "Who then can be saved?"...just as we begin to wonder, "Who then can do this following Jesus thing?"...Jesus begins a little section on the birds of the air and the lilies of the field interlaced with warnings about anxiety. It's like Bobby McFerrin shows up on the mountainside and begins to sing "Don't worry, be happy." Only there is something more going on here.

"Do not be worried about your life - what you will eat or what you will drink. Don't be worried about what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds, who do not sow. Who do not reap. Who do not gather crops into barns. (Those lazy birds.) And yet God feeds them.

"And look at the lilies. They don't work. They don't spin fabric. (Those lazy flowers.) And yet God clothes them like Solomon in all his glory.

"If God feeds birds. If God adorns the grass of the field which is alive today and is gone tomorrow. What are you worried about?"

It's not a call to laziness. It's not a call to be idle or detached from the world. It's not a call to blissful ignorance. It's a call to let go of the thing that kills. It's a call to let go of our fear.

Fear that God might not mean all those promises about the reign of God among us. Fear that maybe salvation, for myself and for the world, is really not about grace and faith but maybe it really does depend on my artfully-planned and well-executed program. Fear of failure. Doubt of self. Lack of trust. Suspicion of the stranger's knock at the door. Denial of hope. Dark thoughts that maybe death really does have the last word. As if the cross and empty tomb mean nothing to a world come of age, to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase.

"Forget how incredible it all sounds," Jesus says. "Disengage your disbelief and seek ye first the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and...you know the rest...all these things shall be added unto you. And don't worry about tomorrow...because tomorrow will care for itself."

I once heard the author and poet Mary Karr talk about her journey into writing. Karr came to her faith later in life through a very gritty path. She has won much acclaim and a National Book Award for her memoirs. Mary Karr said that a turning point for her in finding her voice was when she was talking to a priest. She was struggling with her writing. Struggling to know what to write. And the priest asked her, "Mary, what would you write if you weren't afraid?" What would you write if you weren't afraid? For Karr it was the beginning of becoming who she needed to become as a writer.

What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would our church do if we weren't afraid? How would we face down death if we were not afraid but seeking God?

I don't come tonight to deny the realities of this world that is captivated by death. But I do deny that those realities have the capacity to win the day. I learned that through the witness of so many faithful clergy and lay people who sought God and loved the world and passed it on. Some of them we are remembering tonight. And for all those family members who are here: we share in your grief but also in your gratitude for all that God has done in the lives of your loved ones.

We also share in a confidence that the love for God and the love of God that we knew through these servants is something that does not perish. The word they proclaimed in innumerable sermons. The moments when grace pervaded the space between them and another person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things do not perish because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."

We also share confidence that tomorrow is not worth our fear because tomorrow is assured. God has already been to tomorrow. The cross and the tomb show us the character of tomorrow. Jesus invites us toward tomorrow without anxiety because Jesus knows that the last word is not death.

So we stand - and we do stand - on tomorrow. It's in the air, just like all those memories. Tomorrow is in the air. It smells like camellias and it sounds like creaking children's swings. It is filled with the presence of God and with the voices of all those saints who sing God's praise. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't face it with fear. Your desire, your truest desire, is for God. And God is faithful.

I come tonight to sing a love song. A love song for this church which, despite itself sometimes, has sustained the faith and hope of people like you and me. A love song for these human servants who, despite themselves sometimes, embodied that faith and hope for people like you and me. I come tonight to sing a love song for all that will not die. Thanks be to God.

Life in the Spirit!

2011-06-12T11:39:00.001-04:00

Life in the Spirit
June 12, 2011
Franktown United Methodist Church

What if you threw a party and everybody came? I mean everybody. Earlier this month a teenaged girl named Thessa in Hamburg, Germany decided to have a party to celebrate her 16th birthday. So she did what many people do to announce a party these days, she put it on Facebook. Only when she did it, she forgot to check that the invitation was only for her friends - or the smaller group of her "friends" who were really her friends. (It's so confusing to know who your friends are these days.)

So her invitation to a small party became a public event. By the time she realized what she had done, 15,000 people had responded that they were coming. Thessa and her parents tried to get the word out that it was a mistake. They changed the settings on Facebook. But on the day of 1500 people showed up outside of her small house in Hamburg. They brought homemade cakes and they danced in the streets. They trampled fences and broke some glass. 100 police officers had to be called in to control the crowd. Neighbors were not happy. And Thessa and her parents were not even there. They went elsewhere to celebrate.*

But what if you threw a party and nobody showed up? What if the food was on the table, the drinks iced, the music on, the streamers up, and nobody showed? Something tells me that might be even worse.

Peter and I have been talking about the Holy Spirit for several weeks now and of course today, on Pentecost Sunday, we have to talk about the Holy Spirit. We have talked about how the Spirit inspires us to witness, how the Spirit gives us power to work in the world, how the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ. But maybe we haven't emphasized the most important thing about the Holy Spirit - the Spirit is what gets us to the party!

You might wonder what this Holy Spirit business is all about. After all, do we really need the Spirit when we've got Jesus? It's Jesus who came to liberate us from "slavery to sin and death." It's Jesus who took on the cross. It's Jesus who faced down the devil. It's Jesus who died on that cross and offered us forgiveness for sins. It's Jesus who rose again to show us the way to eternal life. What more is the Spirit going to add to that story?

The Spirit is going to put us into that story. To receive the Holy Spirit is to know that that thing that happened on Calvary? It happened to you. That reconciliation God offers to the world? It was for you. That love that runs the universe? It's here and it's yours and it is not meant to be sitting around unaccessed, unused, unappreciated, unknown. It is meant to be shouted from the rooftops and proclaimed throughout the world.

That's the point of this whole crazy Pentecost experience. You remember where we left the disciples last week. They were watching as Jesus ascended into heaven after promising them that the Holy Spirit would come upon them. Two angels show up and ask them why they are looking up in the skies when there was work to be done in the world.

So the disciples get to work and these early disciples were Methodists. Do you know how I know? They have a committee meeting to nominate a replacement for Judas and then they have gather together in one place for the Festival of Pentecost.

And the Spirit breaks out on them and there is the sound of violent, rushing wind, and there are tongues of fire and the whole place is an uproar. The disciples start speaking in other languages. People from all over the world are there and they hear the disciples praising God in their own languages. There were people there from Cappadocia and they hear the disciples speaking in Cappadocian. There were people from Egypt and they hear them speaking Egyptian. The Elamites say, "Hey, they're speaking Elamite." The Phrygians say, "Man, they are talking Phrygian!" The Romans heard Latin. The folks from Mesopotamia heard Mesopotamian. The people from Tangier heard someone say, "God will provide." It was craziness. But it was the Spirit.

It was not meant to be a private possession of the disciples. If all the Spirit was was a golden ticket for a select few to get into the kingdom, then it was not the Spirit at all. The Spirit was to be poured out onto all flesh. The Spirit was unleashed to sweep the whole of creation into the drama. The Spirit was let go to let us in on the great love affair going on in the life of the Trinity. The love of God poured out on Jesus and in Jesus didn't have to include us. God doesn't need humanity to be God. God didn't need to create us. God didn't need to reconcile us to God. God didn't need to send Jesus, but God wanted us. God wanted the glory of a creation that could learn to sing God's praise. God wanted you and God wanted you so much that God, the great "I am," went to the cross and stretched out his arms and said, "I am for you." And the Spirit...well, the Spirit...and I bet you have never heard this analogy before...the Spirit is like the invite button on Thessa from Hamburg's Facebook. The Spirit will not let this good news be a private party. What God did in Jesus Christ is meant to be a very public event.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth, who wrote in German back in the days when Germans did heavy theology instead of going to birthday parties uninvited...Karl Barth said that "the Son of God is the prototype of the sonship of believers." Jesus shows us the way and gives us the model of what it means to be children of God. "This Christ," Barth says, "the children of God have 'put on.' This child...can meet this Father, the holy God, as a child its father, nowhere else than at the place where the only-begotten Son of God bore and bore away his sins." In other words - it is at the cross where we meet God. From God's side of the equation, Jesus on the cross is the invitation being made to the whole world of forgiveness of sins and new life in the world. But if it stopped there - if the invitation were made and no one knew - if no one responded - how sad would that be? What we need from our side is a response. What need from our side is the opportunity to participate in what God is doing. "That," says Karl Barth, "is having the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit is being set together with Christ in that turn from death to life."**

So life in the Spirit doesn't just mean ecstatic experiences and speaking in tongues. Life in the Spirit means that the cross is not just a story about Jesus; it's a story about me. And it's not just a story that took place centuries ago in a long-lost culture. It's a story that takes place now in this culture.

And it is a story that is renewed in every new generation. When we put water on Tate's head this morning...and Dale's and Morgan's...when we did that we were saying that their lives are claimed. We are saying that the love of God that we saw in the cross of Jesus was meant for them. And when the confirmands answered those questions they were placing themselves in a story that may have begun a long time ago but that is never more alive than it is in this room right now. The Holy Spirit didn't swoop down for a visit one Pentecost and then leave the building. The Holy Spirit came to stay so that every new Christian can know that they have a place, a role, a connection to God. Not because he deserves it. Not because she has earned it. But because God, who has no need of us, has made a way for us and has loved us beyond measure.

One of my colleagues in ministry, Steve Rhodes, once told the story about his daughter's birthday party. When she was a young girl, probably 4 or 5, she had invited her friends over and she could hardly wait until the guests arrived. She stood at the window and put her face to the glass, expectant. When the first guest arrived she started jumping up and down. She ran out to the car and when here friend got out the two of them started jumping up and down together. They went back into the house and looked out the window. When the next guest arrived they ran outside and the three of them now started jumping up and down. And so it went until all the guests arrived.

Steve says, this must be what the kingdom of heaven is like. A place where we are expected with joy. A place where we are invited. A place where we are ushered in the door. And a place where all are welcomed in love.

This morning, in this place, we are tasting a little bit of heaven. So praise the Lord, who sends the Spirit to make us one. Thanks be to God.

*Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben, "Facebook Sweet 16 Party Goes Viral; 1500 guests show up", Yahoo News, 5 Jun 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110605/us_ac/8591449_facebook_sweet_16_party_invitation_goes_viral_1500_guests_show_up
**Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 [T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1936], p. 524.

Life in the Spirit: Now What?

2011-06-05T10:03:00.001-04:00

It was just about 150 years ago. Fort Sumter had fallen in Charleston Harbor. Virginia had just voted to secede from the United States. Everywhere there were signs of war – the American Civil War.

On May 23, 1861 – the very day that Virginia left the Union to join the Confederate States of America – three men got in a boat at Sewell’s Point in Norfolk and rowed across the James River to Hampton. Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend had been working on an artillery placement to bombard Fort Monroe, one of the last places in the South still under federal control.

Fort Monroe is still there today, looking a lot like it did 150 years ago. Big stone walls encircling 63 acres inside. And inside it on May 23 were brand new military units from the New England states under the command of Benjamin Butler – a Massachusetts politician and lawyer with nothing to distinguish himself as a military leader.[i]

The three men had been working to build up the Confederate defenses. As they rowed across the James, Baker, Mallory, and Townsend could probably hear the celebrations in Hampton. People out celebrating secession. But these men were not heading to the party. They were headed to the fort. They wanted to get into the only spot of land still under the control of the US government. Because Baker, Mallory, & Townsend were slaves and they hoped that whatever war was coming would be a war to free the slaves.

That’s not what northerners thought they were doing. There were some abolitionists, particularly in the northeast who thought there was no greater moral cause than getting rid of the institution of slavery. But they were in the minority. Even Abraham Lincoln, who eventually would produce the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t think that what he was doing was trying to free slaves. He was trying to limit the expansion of slavery into the west. He didn’t like what slavery was doing to the country, but he wasn’t about to stir up the great majority of the populace by declaring war on slavery.

But everybody knew, if only deep down, that the slavery question was tying the country in knots – that it was now splitting it apart. The seeds of the dilemma had been there in the founding documents. A free nation had written slavery into the constitution. And for decades the nation struggled to reconcile its ideals with its reality. Everyone knew, if only deep down, that something had to give. Baker, Mallory, & Townsend were risking being caught or sent back for whippings or worse because they believed that if something had to give, it ought to be now.

When the three slaves showed up at the fort they were let into the gates and the next day they were brought before that Massachusetts general who had just come to Fort Monroe one day before. He questioned them about where they had come from and what they had been doing. They gave him some very useful information about what the battery across the river looked like and where the Confederates were encamped.

The policy of the US government officially was to send fugitive slaves back to their owners, even if the states had seceded from the union. The South might not be recognizing US law, but the US government was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave act of 1850. And Butler was no radical abolitionist. At his previous post in Annapolis he had volunteered to put down any slave insurrections there.

Butler recognized, however, that something new was happening here. He was surrounded by hostile territory. These three men who had shown up at the door were giving him useful information. And the landscape was changing rapidly. He was still trying to get straight in his head what he ought to do when word came that a southern officer was on the causeway demanding the return of the three slaves. What was the general going to do? More on that in a minute.

The disciples were trying to choose a successor for Judas, the one who had betrayed Jesus. As they deliberated they had one criterion for who should be considered for the position in the circle of 12. Whoever it was had to be someone who was with Jesus from the time of his baptism by John until the day of his ascension [Acts 1:22]. Those two events were the marker events of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Which tells us that the ascension was a big deal, even though we don’t tend to emphasize it much.

I know the Ascension was important, though, and you know how? Once, when I was a youth, I went to a conference youth event called YACS – Youth Active in Christian Service – and we had it at a place known as Holy Land, USA. Holy Land, USA is closed now, but it’s hard for me to know how to describe it. It was created as a kind of low-budget theme park by a deeply committed Christian farmer in Bedford who decided to convert a hundred acres of his land into a scale model of the Holy Land so that people who couldn’t afford to go to the real Holy Land could go here. It also had a retreat house on it.

It was a very interesting place. They had the Dead Sea, which was a kind of muddy pool where cows bathed. You could see the Negev desert, which, unfortunately, was covered with trees. And you could see the Mount of Transfiguration, where high-voltage power lines crossed the summit, which gave the transfiguration a whole new meaning.

The Ascension, though, was very important at Holy Land, USA. You know how I know? Because every morning I woke up and looked out the window to see the Mount of Ascension. I knew it was the Mount of Ascension because it said so in letters that were 6 feet high made of stone blocks spread out all over the hillside. There was a sign, too, but it really didn’t need it. You couldn’t miss the Mount of Ascension because it was a big deal.

It is in the Bible, too. You might wonder why that is. What more does Jesus’ ascension into heaven add to the meaning of his resurrection? Well, I think there are two things that interest me here. One is that it’s an interesting kind of kingship that Jesus assumes by taking his seat at God’s right hand. You would expect the power to be there – in heaven – but Jesus emphasizes to the disciples, in the last words he ever says to them, that they will receive power with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has been with them for his earthly ministry and has done deeds of power. He has been with them for forty days following his resurrection. Now the power is going to come to them through the Holy Spirit.

The second thing that strikes me is that in this story Jesus calls his disciples to an open ministry – a ministry that is open to the world – beginning in Jerusalem, but expanding in ever-wider circles to the ends of the earth. The disciples are called to look beyond themselves to those outside – to create a new community from the diversity of all the people of the world, not just among their own group. This will be hard for them to understand. They will resist it. They won’t get why this important. But the Holy Spirit is going to bust up some walls.

The Holy Spirit is going to move like a wrecking ball and a lightning bolt through this community of disciples. What does that power look like? Pentecostals will tell you that the power of the Spirit includes speaking in tongues. There are some snake-handling churches out in Appalachia will tell you that that is the Holy Ghost power. But the thing that stands out here is that those who have the Holy Spirit become witnesses to Christ in the world. Read verse 8 of chapter one in Acts again. Jesus says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses.”

And that power is going to be open to the world. The disciples were called to be witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Only two verses earlier they disciples were asking about when Jesus would restore the Kingdom of Israel, but Jesus is more interested in the Kingdom of God. He calls the disciples to remove the blinders which prevented them from seeing anyone beyond their own nationality and creed. For them it was a call to take the risk of moving out to discover a world that was made up of Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free, Greeks and Romans, baysiders and seasiders, migrants and locals, born-heres and come-heres, Hokies and Cavaliers – look out! And it rocked their world.

Let me take you back to Benjamin Butler. Here he is riding out to meet a Southern officer who is demanding the return of the three escaped slaves who were being held in his fort. Butler didn’t have explicit instructions on what to do. The few instructions he did have were orders to send back fugitive slaves. He didn’t have any great love for abolition either. He thought abolitionists were disturbers of the general order. But old Benjamin Butler – who was a cranky, disagreeable man with more than a few character flaws – sensed that something had changed.

He met Major John Baytop Cary on the causeway and they rode their horses together through the farmland leading back to Hampton. Cary knew Butler from before the war and he said, “What do you mean to do with those [men]?”

“I intend to hold them.”

“What about your constitutional obligation to return them?”

“Virginia is now a foreign country,” was Butler’s reply. “I am under no constitutional obligation to a foreign country.”

Cary protested that the US had claimed Virginia could not legally secede from the union so if he was to be consistent he would have to return the slaves.”

“But you say you have seceded, so you cannot consistently claim them.” And then Butler, maybe on the spot, made a decision that changed the whole character of the war that was to come. There was a principle in war that property could be taken from an enemy if it could be used to help them in their fight. Such property was contraband. And since the South had claimed that slaves were property under the law, he would use that claim against them. Benjamin Butler said to Major Cary, “I shall hold these [men] as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”[ii]

Just like that, Butler had begun a new policy that meant the war was going to be about freedom for the slaves. The next day 8 more slaves showed up at Fort Monroe. The next day there were 47. Two days later they were arriving every hour. Over the next four years thousands upon thousands of people would get their first taste of freedom as contraband. And Butler, who was not a saint and who did not go to war to free the slaves, did just that.

What does the story of Baker, Mallory, & Townsend have to do with the Holy Spirit? I was reading this story in a book by Adam Goodheart called 1861 and it struck me that here was a man who grew up in a nation that was torn apart by an evil that no one could even talk about with a civil tongue. Just to mention the name of the institution of slavery was to invite such strong passions that no one dared do it in mixed company.

But by 1861, slavery was an evil that was ready to be unraveled. It was demanding to be unraveled. And no one, besides the abolitionists, was ready to pull on the thread. There was too much fear. Too many people believed that they didn’t have the power to do anything about it. And many, many more people were afraid of what it would mean to recognize the freedom, much less the equality, of black people in the United States. The power turned out to be right there in the decision of three men to seek freedom and in the spontaneous creativity of a man on a causeway to get it for them.

So is it that you are looking at and saying, “I can’t”? “I don’t have the power. I don’t trust the world beyond. I’ve got to hold on to what I’ve got. I can’t take a risk. Maybe Jesus has the power. But I don’t. I’ll pray for Jesus to take care of that problem. I’ll pray for Jesus to do something.”

The best scene in the Ascension story is when two men in white robes show up. They show up while the disciples are still watching Jesus ascend up into the skies. I think it was the Holy Spirit talking when they prodded those future apostles with a question. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven?” Surely it would have been the Spirit, the one who enlivens and enables us…us…to continue the work of Jesus and to preach the good news of life…surely it would have been the Spirit who would remind these disciples that if they were looking for Jesus they were looking in the wrong place. The next great adventure was in the age of the Church, the body of Christ – on earth. The power was given to them to be witnesses of unity and communion in a broken and divided world. The power was given to us. Thanks be to God.

[i] All of the material related to the story of the escaped slaves at Fort Monroe is taken from 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart, [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011], chapter 9.

[ii] Quotations from Goodheart.

Life in the Spirit: Untroubled Witness

2011-05-22T10:46:00.000-04:00

Her name was Emily. Well, actually her name wasn’t really Emily. The program I was listening to changed her name and her voice so that she wouldn’t be recognized. Emily, you see, is a witness.

Not like a courtroom witness. She wasn’t in the witness protection program or anything like that. She is a paid witness. A marketer paid to give testimonies on behalf of products like video games. But in order to give witness in a way that people will listen to her, she has to pretend to be somebody else.

Emily’s company pays her to create fake user profiles on social networking sites like Facebook. If you are in the Facebook world you know that the face you present you present to the world is on your profile page. If you want to you can post your birthday, your relationship status, your favorite quotes, favorite hobbies, favorite TV shows. And you can post a picture of yourself. And there you are.

Only when Emily posts for her work, she isn’t there. She is creating somebody who doesn’t exist. She uses a fake picture. She researches an area so that she can sound like she’s really from there. She tries to choose associations so that, if you live in the place she’s researching you might think, “Hey, I think I might have gone to school with that girl and she wants to be my friend and she lives in my area…sure, I’ll let her be one of my online friends.” Emily even makes sure to include a few typos in her profile just so you won’t think she’s not real. Which she isn’t. Because she’s really just an imposter posing as your friend so she can slip in references to how cool Call of Duty 15 is.

Only she is real. Emily herself is a real person. And she feels badly about how she’s making a living. She cannot show her true self even though she sometimes gets involved in the lives of the people she befriends. Once she got invited to a Thanksgiving dinner. “In a way that was sad,” she said, “because that was such a nice gesture to make to someone who they really didn’t know. They just wanted to know we had somewhere to spend Thanksgiving.”[i]

This is where we are today in our crazy world. Online marketers are hiring real people to be fake people online so that they can hype real products to real people who want their fake friends to be real friends. And these marketers are doing this because they know that people will trust people that they think they know over advertisements on TV or radio. They know that we are hungry for real witnesses in the world.

So what does that mean for the people of God who are struggling to be real witnesses? At this point you may think you’ve got the whole sermon figured out. You may be saying, “I know where Alex is going with this. I know what he’s going to do here. He’s going to take this example from the real world and say, ‘Look how terrible this is that poor Emily has to be a fake Facebook friend.’ And then he’s going to contrast that with being a witness for Jesus, which means that we have to be authentic and be our selves. Emily’s world – bad. Being yourself for Jesus – good.” You might be thinking that, but you’d be wrong. What I want to say is that, if you’re going to be a witness you’ve got to be somebody else.

Not that I think you’re not qualified for the job. You are. We are all God has to work with in this world. And not that I think you should go create a fake profile to start telling your friends about Jesus. That is bad. But the scripture lesson from Acts for today tells me that when you become a witness for Jesus, you’ve got to be somebody else.

We’ve been talking about the Holy Spirit for these last few weeks and we have looked at how the Spirit inspires new communities and transforms relationships – how the Spirit makes Jesus present in the midst of us. Today, though, I want to look at how the Spirit empowers us to be witnesses and to be somebody else.

The witness in the story from Acts is a man named Stephen. Stephen was a deacon in the church and evidently one of those early Gentile converts to Christianity. That’s important because to this point the Christians had been identified as a subset of the Jewish community. Christianity was branching out, though, and lots of new people were coming into the new church. The Spirit was doing this.

Stephen was just trying to be faithful to what Jesus and the Holy Spirit had done to them, but it got them in trouble. The leaders couldn’t stand it. Partly because Stephen was accusing them of not enforcing the law they were supposed to be upholding and partly because Stephen was claiming that he was standing in the long line of God’s prophets and they were standing in the long line of those who rejected the prophets. They were furious at Stephen and the Bible says they were grinding their teeth.

That’s where the lectionary reading for today picks up. Stephen is facing this angry mob of religious leaders and suddenly he has a vision. For the whole chapter before this he has been telling the story of Israel’s history and how God has continued to speak to the people in each new generation and called them to something new, from Abraham leaving his home to travel to a new land, to Joseph going to Egypt and saving his family, to Moses leading the people out of slavery, to David and Solomon. That’s where Israel had been, but now Stephen has a vision of where God’s people were going. He looks up into the heavens and he sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

Now this language is so familiar to people who have grown up in the Church that we just gloss right over this. It’s like Stephen starts quoting the Apostle’s Creed. “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and who shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.” But we forget what this image meant to the early Church and what it ought to mean to us.

It’s not just abstract language and a formulaic way of saying things. This was the vision that kept the persecuted Church alive in the midst of its darkest days. Not a therapeutic Christianity that talked about how Jesus is my best friend. Not a militant Christianity that talked about destruction. The image that the early Christians took with them was of God in glory and Jesus standing or seated at God’s right hand.

This goes beyond reason. It goes beyond history. The comfort that Stephen got when he faced the mob was a vision of God and Jesus. And this is what makes him so serene as they set out to kill him. He knows that it’s not about him anymore. He is a witness and he sees what the universe hangs on. It’s the love of the Trinity. That’s it. And having seen that love, his story suddenly becomes absorbed into Jesus’ story. It’s almost as if he’s becoming Jesus.

Listen to the story of his death and see if doesn’t sound like Jesus’ experience at the cross. When Stephen tells them about his vision, the crowd members stop their ears so that they don’t have to hear it. They cry out in a loud voice and they run at Stephen and grab him and drag him out of the city. They take up stones and they start to pelt Stephen with the stones, but even while he’s being beaten to death by these stones, Stephen kneels. It doesn’t seem to be the stones that make him kneel, he just kneels. He prays that God will not hold the sin of his murderers against them. Even as he dies, he wants them to know the beauty that he sees. Even as they give in to the evil that consumes them, he knows what they can be in God’s eyes.

When Stephen becomes a witness, he becomes somebody else. He becomes the one he’s proclaiming. And he doesn’t have to be deceitful about who he is. He doesn’t have to have anxiety about who he is or how he’ll be perceived. He’s an untroubled witness because his life is so transparent to Jesus that he becomes Jesus.

There’s one other character in this small story, though. He’s standing there as the crowd drags Stephen out for his execution. He’s watching with approval as they do the deed. They throw their cloaks at his feet – he’s the coat clerk for the first Christian martyrdom. It’s a young man who stands in for us. His name is Saul and later his name will be changed to Paul, the great apostle who will take the message of Jesus to the whole world.

He’s the one who gives me hope in this story. The crowds are too cruel and too possessed by their hatred for me to relate to. Stephen is too pious – I pray that I could respond as well to such a thing, but how many of us could? But Saul – there I see myself. Witnessing the worst that the world can do to assault truth and beauty and heaven itself, but still harboring the possibility of change.

Saul becomes the Apostle Paul by developing a relationship with the Jesus he had persecuted. Paul will spend days, months, years in prayer and seeking out Jesus. Paul will do the dirty, troublesome work of keeping Christian communities focused on who they are and why they exist. Paul will become a faint image, growing ever brighter, of the Jesus he proclaims.

That’s what Jesus asks of each one of us. Here’s the thing about Emily. She feels badly about what she’s doing because however realistic she makes her fake profile, she can never be authentic with the people she is trying to talk to. She can only be a deceiver. She may be able to have interactions with others that they value, but at the end of the day, she’s just engaged with them for one reason – to get them to buy a video game.

Witnesses for Jesus are not asked to be unreal. They are just asked to stay close to Jesus – to develop practices of prayer and Bible Study and small group accountability so that they can meet other people with the love of Jesus – as if they were Jesus. At first it will feel unnatural. That’s why Paul uses the image of putting on Christ – like a jacket that may not fit when we put it on. But eventually we grow into it. We start to think less from our anxieties and worries and more from our confidence that God can use even us. We stop letting sin distort our vision of who we are and we start to embody the love of the Trinity – the power of the Holy Spirit.

And one day we become somebody else – somebody made perfect by God’s love in Jesus Christ. It’s the work of sanctification – that grace-filled work that God does in us once we give our lives over to God’s love. And somehow people can see – even in us…even in us the Jesus we proclaim.

We may never have to suffer like Stephen. But we do face the choice of Saul. Are we going to stand by the coats and watch what the Holy Spirit is doing in the world? Or are we going to let it fill us? Who’ll be a witness for my Lord? Thanks be to God.

[i] Spark 148: CBC Radio, 15 May 2011.

Life in the Spirit: Promises, Promises

2011-05-08T11:38:00.000-04:00

Back in the days before my sister got married, she had some boyfriends who seemed to have no sense of direction. That's not a metaphor. I'm not saying they had no goals for their life. They just had a hard time getting from point A to point B. To be PC - they were GC - geographically challenged. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Most of us are at some point in our lives. I once went on a mission trip to Philadelphia with some college students and the biggest challenge for most of the work teams was getting back to our home base without going through New Jersey. It's a common problem.

These boyfriends, though, were exceptional. Once one of them left our home in Orange, in the central Virginia, headed to Maine. We had talked about how he should take Interstate 81 and he left with a lot of confidence. About four hours later we got a phone call from him saying, "I got on 81, but now I just passed a sign saying 'Welcome to Tennessee.' Should I be going to Tennessee?"

On another occasion, we were gathering in Pennsylvania at my aunt and uncle's house for Thanksgiving and this same boyfriend was due to meet us there. He ended up driving around and around within three miles of their house out in the country, never finding us. He was there, but he didn't know it. I hope that boy has got a GPS now.

I sometimes wonder if Jesus didn't know that we do some very similar things in our faith life. One of the most powerful parables he told was one that used a geographic metaphor. In the story of the prodigal son, the son takes his half of the inheritance and where does he head off for? A far country where where he blows the inheritance on loose living. Several months later, as he's out slopping pigs to keep body and soul together, he decides to go back to his father begging, but the father sees him, when? While he's still a long way off and runs to meet him. The story seems to say that there's a great distance to be overcome between God and us and that we've headed in the wrong direction. Like going to Tennessee when you're supposed to be going to Maine.

When I stop and think about it, though, the stories Jesus told and the story we read from Acts today all seem to be more like that boyfriend's second experience than the first. Because the point of Jesus' coming to live and breathe and walk and teach and die among us was to say that, even though we might feel like we're a long way from God, God is right here beside us and we didn't even know it. We're driving around and around and around and the driveway to Thanksgiving dinner is right there!

I've been reading a great new book on the theology of Julian of Norwich, a woman who lived in the 14th century but whose Christian writing is still popular today. It's the kind of book that you only pick up if you once were in a doctoral program in philosophical theology. But, hey, I was, and it's a great book.

Julian has a very interesting notion of sin and the distance between us and God. For her we would make a mistake if we focused on the prodigal son's loose living as the cause of his sin. That's what he believes. He thinks that he has lost any right to his father's love because of what he's done with his father's money. He still has the notion that his father will only love him if he lives up to a certain standard. In the vision of the son, all that love that has surrounded him from birth is hanging by a thread and as soon as he does something to show that he doesn't deserve his father's love, it will all be taken away. So he comes back to beg forgiveness and for a new relationship based not on love but on an economic bargain. I'll work for you, Dad, and you pay me like a servant.

The prodigal son gives himself way too much credit for being able to sever that relationship with the father. In Julian's eyes, the sinful tragedy is in the son's separation from the father. The separation is what causes him to forget who he is and to waste his wealth. The far country to which he goes might not be that far at all. But in the father's eyes, the son is still close to his heart. He only desires that the son turn around. He never stops loving that child. And the reunion at the end of the story - the party with the fatted calf - only shows how wrong the son's vision of his father was. That love didn't dangle from a thread. It was held fast from all eternity by the strongest rope. God's love is not offered to us on a thread.

Of course, the feeling of being far away is no worse whether you are two feet or three thousand miles from where you're supposed to be. Some of you will remember that lonesome old song that was popular some years back: "Lord, I'm one, Lord, I'm two, Lord, I'm three, Lord, I'm four. Lord, I'm five hundred miles away from home." It didn't matter how far it really was, it felt like a long way. Sometimes with God the distance can seem unbridgeable. The task of a good preacher, though, (and I'm not claiming to be one - just pointing out the job to be done), is to help us see that the gap has been bridged. Christ has bridged the gap through the cross and God is, in fact, closer to us than we are to ourselves. Like Dorothy discovering at the end of The Wizard of Oz that she had the power to go home all along and she didn't even know it.

There aren't any ruby slippers in the book of Acts, but I hear a few echoes of this same theme in Peter's sermon. You remember Peter. He's got a great back story. Peter's name means 'rock' but he turned out to be pretty unstable as Jesus headed to the cross. He walked on water, literally. Got right out of the boat and walked across the Sea of Galilee towards Jesus. He was doing great, too, until he realized how foolish it was to get out of a perfectly good boat and he took his eyes off Jesus and...splash. Peter was the first disciple to say to Jesus, "You are the Messiah!" and also the first to tell Jesus that he'd gotten it all wrong when Jesus told the disciples about the crucifixion. Peter said, "Lord, even if everyone else should fall away, I will never desert you." But he didn't even make it till the cock crow the next morning before denying Jesus three times. Yeah, THAT Peter.

Well, it seems that Jesus knew more about him than he knew about himself. Following the resurrection, the community recognized Peter as a leader and the sermon we got a piece of this morning was Peter's first. It came to the crowd gathered at Pentecost.

The disciples had all been gathered together in one place. Jerusalem was full of Jews who had gathered there for this important festival. Then all heaven broke loose and there were tongues of fire and speaking in tongues and wagging tongues wondering if the disciples were drunk - all kinds of tongues because the Holy Spirit had come into the place where they were staying. Remember the Holy Spirit? Somebody was doing a series on the Holy Spirit.

Peter is the one who gets up to explain that they are not drunk. "It's too early in the morning for that," he says. "No, let me tell you what this is really about. It's really about Jesus." Here's our first clue about this Holy Spirit. When it comes, it's not a new revelation. It's really about Jesus.

Peter goes on to preach an incredibly powerful sermon. It went something like this:
Do you remember Jesus of Nazareth, friends? (He calls them friends - brothers actually.) Do you remember how he walked among us and did great wonders and signs? Do you remember how powerfully God used him while he was alive? Do you remember how you killed him...how you handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion? Do you remember how he died?

Here's the place where you might expect a little fireworks from the crowd. You might not expect the crowd to react favorably to being told that they had killed the man Peter was calling God's Son - the Messiah. But Peter had called them brothers. He was not pushing them away. He was reminding them that they were still connected. The promise God had made with Israel from the beginning was still holding them and reminding them of who God was. God's love was not gone.

The crowd listening to Peter was stunned. They hadn't known what to make of these crazy Spirit-filled disciples. But now, they call the disciples brothers (and sisters, presumably). Not only do they call them brothers, but they ask them for guidance. "Brothers, what should we do?"

Peter answers, in effect, "Repent. Turn around. Be baptized in Jesus' name. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." And the Holy Spirit will let them know that this crooked, messed-up world has distorted their minds about who they were and what they desire. The Holy Spirit will point them back to Jesus who has defeated sin and death.

Peter goes on: "And know that this promise is for your, and for your children, and for everybody who is far away from God." For everybody who is far away from God? This is not geography that Peter is talking about here. These were mostly Jesus listening in. They were in Jerusalem. They were at the supreme home base for God's people. The distance they had to travel was not the problem. They were far away because they didn't know who they were or whose they were. And that was the day that three thousand of them found out and they were baptized on the spot.

Ever felt far away from God? Ever felt like there was something you'd done that was going to keep you in the far country forever? Ever felt like you'd never feel like God's child again? Ever wonder what in the world it is that you're supposed to do? Yeah, me too.

Ever been on a long trip and think that you're never going to get there and then realize that you're already there? Now that's the stuff to live for.

The good news of Easter is not that the gap between us and God has gotten smaller because Christ rose from the dead. The good news of Easter is that we suddenly realize that the gap was never really there. We were far away, but God saw us in the distance and ran to meet us. God sees us in the distance, but how are we going to see God unless you repent, a word which means 'turn around,' and unless you believe the promise of your baptism. Repent, people. And believe the good news. Thanks be to God.

Tired of My Tears

2011-04-10T11:01:00.000-04:00

The other day I heard a heartbreaking story. Anthony Griffith, a stand-up comedian, was telling a group the story of what his life was like when he was breaking into show business in the early 1990s. It was recorded for a podcast called "The Moth," which gives people 12 minutes to share stories with a live audience. I listen to it every so often because I believe in the power of stories. Most of the stories are funny, poignant, forgettable, or just plain bad. There aren't many I'd recommend. But Anthony Griffith's story stopped me in my tracks.

As Griffith tells it, he was invited to go on the Johnny Carson show, which was the main way comics made it back in the day. For those too young to remember, Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show before Jay Leno or Conan. Griffith got the call at about the same time that he got the news that his 2-year-old daughter's cancer had recurred. So there was the hook. Listening to his story now, I was following these two tracks - one the story of a young man finding success in a field he felt called to, and the other the story of the same man struggling to walk with his daughter through a battle with cancer.

He talked about the struggle to make people laugh when all he wanted to do was cry. He talked about his managers who were telling him his humor was getting too dark. He talked about his daughter's failing health and worsening diagnosis. He talked about watching her small body struggle with chemotherapy. Finally he talked about her death.

It was the first time he had told the story publicly and his voice cracked several times. He broke down in tears. He said, "I had a plan to teach her to drive. I had a plan to send her to college. I had a plan to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. I didn't have a plan for this."

He consoled himself with a figure from the movies, Denzel Washington's police trainer in the movie Training Day. He heard Denzel's voice telling him, "Man up...You think you the only one losing kids, today? 25 kids walked in this cancer ward, only 5 walking out. This ain't no sitcom. It don't all wrap up all nice and tidy in 30 minutes. This is life. Welcome to the real world."*

It was a heartbreaking story. Well told, as if that matters. All it meant was that Anthony Griffith's ability to communicate meant we could feel his anger, his tears, and his pain even better. It was a heartbreaking story. And I believe in the power of stories.

Jesus stands face to face with Martha in the roadway to his friend Lazarus' tomb. Her sister Mary is the one who falls at his feet. Mary is the one who sat at Jesus' feet to listen as he talked. Mary is the one who anointed his head and wiped his feet dry with her hair. Martha stares him down.

"Lord, if you had been here...if you had been here, my brother would not have died." She struggles to keep it under control. She fights down her disappointment. (He waited two days more to come when he heard of Lazarus' sickness!) She fights down her pain. Fights back the tears. Holds on to the hope beyond hope. "Even now I I know that God will give you whatever you ask." Her brother may be dead, but she will still allow that Jesus may be the one. But still her brother will be dead.

"Your brother will rise again," Jesus says.

"I know. I know. At the resurrection. At the end of all things."

"Martha. I am the resurrection. I am the life. If a person believes in me, that person will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

We hear echoes as he talks. Jesus saying to a Samaritan woman, "I will give you water that will never run out." Jesus saying to a blind man, "I am the light of the world." Jesus saying to Nicodemus, "You can be, you must be, born anew."

It seems a cruel thing to say to Martha. She is standing in the road. Dust swirling. Mourners wailing. A grieving sister in the house. A dead brother in the tomb. Shouldn't Jesus be telling her something like Denzel? "Get yourself together woman! You think you're the only one losing someone today? This ain't no fantasy. This is real life. Welcome to the real world." But he doesn't say that. And she doesn't protest. She confesses. "Yes. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God." And she goes to get Mary.

Mary is the emotional one. She runs out of the house and the mourners follow her thinking she is off to the tomb to weep and she might need some help from their culturally appropriate, manufactured tears. But Mary doesn't go to the tomb. She goes to Jesus. And falls at his feet.

"Lord, if you had been here...if you had only been here." The story has not changed. The tears testify to the pain that will not go away, even in the presence of the Messiah.

"Where have you laid him?" The text says anger was rising in Jesus' spirit and he was troubled in himself.

"Come and see," they said. The same thing Philip, Jesus' disciple, had said to Nathaniel when he was telling him about Jesus. Nathaniel had asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" and Philip replied, "Come and see."

Come and see this body. Come and see the death. Come and see where all our fantasies bump up against the real world. This is the real world, Jesus.

And Jesus wept.

This is the point where I wept with Anthony Griffith, too. I've been there all too often with people whose faith has gone off a cliff. I've been there in the back of an ambulance to tell a couple that the children they fought to get out of a burning house have died. I've been there when marriages have failed. When the diagnosis is bad. When the job is lost. When the boyfriend bails. And what does God give us for times like these but tears?

Yesterday, I posted the topic for today's sermon on Facebook with the question: What makes you want to cry? And people posted replies. What makes me want to cry? People being hungry and not being able to feed their children. Congress. My friend's baby dying. Hatred, violence and suffering..especially the suffering of children. The New York Mets.

We are tired of our tears.

And the answer Denzel gives is to "Man up. This is the real world." That's not what I want to tell Anthony Griffith. I want to tell him that, yes, the pain is real. Yes, the suffering is real. Yes, the death is real. But that is not nearly enough to tell the story of this world.

If death is all there is to the real world then every story is a tragedy. Every tale I tell will end in woe. Every tear I shed is a wasted sign of a world with no God.

But that's not what our tears are and that's not what this world is. Those tears are for a broken world that hasn't yet reached the end of its long road. Those tears are prayers for God to break in on this world. Come, Lord Jesus, and stand before my tomb and let something happen.

I want to tell Anthony Griffith. Man up? Yes, the man is up. And the man is not going to tell you that your pain doesn't matter just because its mixed with the pain of a million others. The man is not going to say, "Stuff happens" and that's the end of it. The man is going to stand in front of the tomb and say, "Take off that stone."

The people will protest. "Lord, think of the stench."

"Take off that stone."

"He's been in there for four days."

"Lift off that stone."

They will lift off that stone. They will expect the worst. They will not expect life. They will not know what to do with it. They will not know how to handle it. They will not know what Jesus is saying when he says,

"Didn't I tell you that you would see the glory of God if you believe?"

They will not know what to think when he calls out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

They will not know who they are when they hear a rustling in the dark. They will not know where to run when they hear a shuffling in the tomb. They will not know what the world is coming to when a dead man sheds his wraps and walks once more.

I would weep with Anthony Griffith. I would not know what words could touch the pain. But eventually I would say that someone is standing outside his tomb. I would say to you, "Someone is standing outside your tomb." You know what it is. You know the places where you think even God can't go. You know the stones that seal those places off.

And you know who says to you, "Lift off that stone." You know who says to you, "Come out of that tomb." The man is up and he's waiting for you to meet the real world...the real world where saviors weep over the pain of the world and then say, "Wait, there's more."

I believe in the power of stories. Especially I believe in the gospel story. Because it shows that love wins the day. Death is defeated and God is here to stay. Thanks be to God.

*"Anthony Griffith: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times," www.themoth.org/podcast. Accessed April 9, 2011.

How Can I See Miracles?

2011-04-03T09:56:00.000-04:00

I don't know how to explain what it is that I saw. A few weeks ago I was out on Cedar Island. If you've been around me since then you're probably sick of hearing me talk about it. I was out on Cedar Island. It was a Friday. I'd just come off doing another funeral. It was a good funeral. Suzanne's aunt, Augusta, had died at the age of 98 and we had celebrated her life. Celebrated life in the face of death.

And the next day was Friday and it was a relatively warm day and the kayak was hanging there in the garage, staring me in the face every time I pulled the car in, and saying, "Alex, help me. Get me down from here. I need water. I need water." I could hear it.

So I got the kayak down and went over to Burton's Shore. It was a little breezy but the water was calm. The clouds were all drifting in a line that pointed straight across Burton's Bay to Cedar Island. So I waded into the chilly water, jumped in the kayak and paddled off.

When I got to the island I put my stuff down and I started running. I know I don't look like a runner, and I'm not. But the district superintendent in Richmond, Steve Jones, has challenged all the clergy in the conference to participate in the Richmond Marathon in November this year and I'm working on it. The worst part about running is the first two miles. After that, it's a really neat thing. I just wish I could start with mile 3.

So, anyway, I set out down the beach, and here's the critical thing - I left my glasses back with my stuff near the kayak. I don't like running with my glasses on, but the side effect of that is that I can't see very well. So as I ran I could see shapes and hear birds and the waves, but I couldn't get much detail. It was impressionist running.

I had run about as far as I had set out to run and was just about to turn back, but I knew that there was a boat beached on the island that ran aground during a storm last winter and I wanted to see it. So I ran a little bit further to see if I could see it and sure enough, around a bend in the island, there was the shape of the boat. So I kept running.

I was getting very close to the boat when I saw a shape over next to the small dunes. It looked to me like a mesh bag of potatoes and I thought, "How did a bag of potatoes get washed up on the shore?" So, like Moses on the mountain when he saw the bush burning without being consumed, I said to myself, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why a sack of potatoes has washed up on this beach."

So I ran up towards the dunes and as I did, the sack of potatoes moved. I was only about four feet away from it. It moved and looked up at me with these sad, black eyes. It was not a sack of potatoes. It was a seal.

I don't know who was more scared - me or the seal. It startled me more than anything. I jumped back and stared. It was about as big as a large child. Brown with black spots. Those mournful, puppy dog eyes. It was a long way from the surf but it started making its way there - pushing its fins into the sand and dragging itself forward, stopping every so often to catch its breath. I pulled out my phone to take a picture.

But here's the thing: even though I was only a few feet from it, I knew I was actually going to be able to see it better when I looked at the pictures I was taking. Even close up I was feeling the seal's presence more than seeing it in any detail. And it's hard for me to describe what I was feeling.

It was such a strange place on the beach. There was a boat on the land which should have been in the sea. Next to it was a cabin on stilts that was out in the water where it shouldn't be. Here was a seal from the Arctic and there was me. Did I belong?

I was sensing the seal's fear and my own sense of awe. I felt a kind of fellow-creature feeling for it - like we were both alike on this beach - God's own critters in a place we couldn't describe. And I felt a deep tremor within. It was the day of the earthquake in Japan. I felt like I was in the presence of something beyond me - something holy like that burning bush. It's such a strange thing to be a preacher sometimes - you can stare down death at a funeral one day and the next you can be totally undone by a seal. But you don't have to be a preacher to feel this. You can know that the world is more than you can say. That miracles are out there. You just have to be able to see them and with more than your eyes.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at a series of Jesus' close encounters with people. There was Nicodemus who came in the night. The Samaritan woman at the well. And today it's a blind man.

The healing part of this story is pretty straightforward. Jesus sees a blind man, walks up to him, and spits in the dirt. This is a scene you don't often see depicted in stained-glass windows - Jesus spitting in the dirt. But it's basic and graphic. Even more so in the dirt because the Greek word for spitting is ptuo. Which is the perfect word for spitting. Ptuo is the sound you make when you spit.

So Jesus comes to heal the blind man and ptuo right in the dirt. He reaches down and grabs some of this glop he's made in the dirt and he puts it on the eyes of the blind man. He tells him, "Go and bathe in the pool of Siloam." So the blind man leaves, the clay still on his face, and goes to dunk himself in the pool. When he returns, he can see. The healing is done. But it doesn't yet qualify as a miracle. The blind man has sight, but he's not yet a disciple.

Scene 2. Let's call this scene "The Curious Neighbors." The people who have lived with this man who was healed all their lives suddenly have a hard time identifying him. Some of the neighbors were saying, "It's him." Others were saying, "No, it just looks like him." And finally, the man gets tired of the guessing and says, "It's me." And the confused and curious people say, "Who did this and how?"

Listen to how the man answers. He doesn't make any claims for Jesus. Doesn't try to go beyond the facts. He simply says, "The man Jesus made mud and put it on my eyes and said, 'Go wash,' so I did, and look what happened."

We know, because the gospel of John tells us this from the very beginning, that Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus has told the disciples this before the healing even. But that was very uncomfortable for the neighbors, who weren't sure what to think. So they decided to take the man to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, to get an opinion.

Scene 3. We might call this the scene where the Pharisees become blind. Something happened to the Pharisees when they were training at Pharasaic Junior College or wherever it was they went to school. They got hung up on sin and started to see it everywhere. They were were convinced that they had clear answers to all the major questions and anyone who disagreed with them or acted differently was a sinner. They already had problems with Jesus because he had healed a man on the Sabbath, which qualified as a prohibited work for them - a sin. And guess what? The day that Jesus touched the blind man was...a Sabbath.

The Pharisees ask the man the same questions as the neighbors - who and how - and the man gives the same answer except that it's even simpler this time. He leaves out the spitting part and says, "He put mud on my eyes and I washed and I can see." This is enough to divide the Pharisees and they try to get beyond the disagreement by asking the man who he thinks Jesus is. And the man makes his first statement of belief. He goes beyond the bare facts and says, "He is a prophet."

This really disturbed the Pharisees so they decide to call in his parents, who are no help. The parents say, "He's a grown man. Ask him who this Jesus is."

So a third time they call him back and the man who was blind says, "Look, I've told you the story. What do you want to hear? You can sit here and figure out if Jesus is a sinner or not if you want to, but what I know is that I was blind and now I see. Now that's the story. Do you want to be his disciple, too?"

Now he's finally let it slip. He's a disciple. Jesus is not just a man. Not just a prophet that I can choose to follow or not. He is worthy of the man's faith, worthy of the man's witness and worthy of the man's life. He has now come to see clearly who Jesus is and who he is. The miracle has finally happened.

For this the Pharisees call him a sinner and they throw him out. They have become totally blind.

But there is one more interrogation for the man. Jesus now comes to him. "Do you believe in the Son of Humanity?" he asks.

"Who is he? Tell me so that I can believe in him." He is starting to sound like the woman at the well who asked, "Where is this living water?" and who talked of the Messiah. Just like in that conversation, Jesus says, "You are looking at him. The one speaking to you is the one."

The miraculous thing here is not that a healing happened. Like most miracles that are worth their salt the healing is only an opportunity to see the deeper miracle. The miraculous happens at a level that can't be accessed by facts or labels or expectations. It happens when you confront a reality that you've been desiring all your life. Miracles don't come to contradict our skepticism about the world - they come to confirm our hopes. They don't come to confound our minds, they come to dwell in our hearts.

So what does that tell us about how we see miracles? If you're a Pharisee you're not going to see a miracle because you've got too much invested in your rules and in a rigid worldview that is a closed system. Nothing gets into a Pharisee's world that he (and they were all 'he's) can't explain. Jesus won't be welcome in a Pharisee's heart.

If you're a fearful neighbor or a fearful parent you're not going to see a miracle because your fear is going to close you off from hope. Your fear will keep your world small. Your fear will determine the answer to every question because you will only allow yourself to believe what is acceptable. The parents of the blind man don't testify to who Jesus is because they knew they would be expelled from the synagogue if they professed him as Messiah.

So the miracle comes to the one who knows what darkness is like. Who knows what it's like to live on the margins and to be dependent on others for his very survival. The one who has been called a sinner just for being blind. The one who has been longing to see. This is the one who sees a miracle.

So what's keeping you from seeing a miracle in your life? Are you shut down by a closed system in your mind that thinks that nothing can be believed unless all the answers are provided ahead of time? Is there room in your heart, in your life, in your mind for something that you can't explain - something that feels less like facts and more like love?

Or are you shut down by fear? Fear of loss? Fear of the future? Fear of inadequacy? Fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Remember that perfect love casts out fear and that you cannot see the miracles right in front of you if you are in the grip of fear. But perfect love casts out fear.

What's keeping you from seeing a miracle in your life and what is keeping us from seeing a miracle in this world? We are not in touch with our deepest hopes and greatest desires. We lead with our defenses instead of our trust. And we suffer. Our neighbors suffer. Our world suffers.

Jesus and the blind man walked through the same land as the Pharisees and the fearful neighbors. But some saw miracles and others saw sin. What you see is not up to the Pharisees to decide for you. What you see is up to you. What the blind man saw is still here in front of us. In this very room. Remember what the angels say when they show up? Do not be afraid. For if you are not afraid and if you listen to God speaking in your heart - there are miracles. Thanks be to God.

John 9:1-41
Now as he was passing by he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?

Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This happened so that the works of God might be revealed in him. As long as the day lasts we must be about the work of the one who sent me. The night is coming when no one will be able to work. As long as I in the world, I am the light of the world."

Having said this, he spit on the ground and he made mud from the spittle and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the mud. He said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is translated 'Sent'). So he went, washed and came back seeing.

Then the neighbors and the ones who were used to seeing him around, (for he had been a beggar), said, "Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?" Others said, "This IS the same one." Others said, "It looks like him."

He said, "It's me."

So they said, "How were your eyes opened?"

He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes, saying to me, "Go to the pool at Siloam and wash.' So I went and washed and I could see."

They said to him, "Where is he?"

He said, "I don't know."

They brought the man who had been blind to the Pharisees. Now it was a sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees asked him again how we received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes and I washed and I can see."

Then some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God because he doesn't observe the sabbath." Others said, "How can a sinner do signs like this?" They were a divided group. So they spoke to the blind man again and said, "What have you got to say about him? He opened your eyes."

He said, "He is a prophet."

But the Jews would not believe this about him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they sent for the parent of the man who had gained his sight. They asked them, "Is this your son who you say was born blind? If so, how can he now see?"

His parents answered them, "We know that he is our son and that he was born blind. But we don't know how he can now see nor do we know who opened his eyes. He's a grown-up. Ask him. He can speak for himself." His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anybody who professed him as Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue. This was the reason his parents said, "He's a grown-up. Ask him."

So they called the man who had been blind for a second time and said to him, "Give God the glory instead. We know that this man is a sinner."

The man said, "I don't know if he is a sinner or not. The one thing I know is that I was blind and now I see."

They said to him, "Who did his to you? How did he open your eyes?"

He answered them, "I have already told you and you didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"

Then they went off on him and said, "You are that man's disciple. We are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don't know where this man comes from."

The man responded to them, "This is a wonder! You don't know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn't hear sinners but God does hear the one who fears God and does God's will. From the very beginning it's unheard of for someone to open the eyes of someone blind from birth. If this man weren't from God he wouldn't be able to do anything."

They answered him, "You were totally born in sin and you want to teach us?!" Then they threw him out.

When Jesus heard that they threw him out, he found him and said, "Do you believe in the Son of Humanity?"

The man replied and said, "Who is he, Lord? Tell me so that I can believe in him."

Jesus said to him, "You are looking at him. The one speaking with you is the one."

He said, "I believe, Lord." Then he worshipped him.

Jesus said then, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who can't see could see and those who see would become blind."

When they heard this, some of the Pharisees who were with him said, "We aren't blind are we?"

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you wouldn't have sin. But now that you claim to see, sin remains in you."

Book Review: The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town

2011-03-19T00:25:00.002-04:00

Searching for John's Jesus
A review of The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town
by Paul Louis Metzger

Paperback: Intervarsity Press, 2010

When an author compares the disciples at the Last Supper to a bunch of hobbits, it gets your attention. There were a lot of such attention-grabbing moments in Paul Metzger's new book, The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town. This is a book which references everything from Dirty Harry to McDonald's Filet-of-Fish sandwiches, all in the service of offering the message of the gospel of John to a contemporary world. The pop culture references were abundant. The evangelical mojo was working. Where, though, was John?

The Tolkien reference is a great case in point. As he discusses John 13, Metzger pulls in the hobbits to shed light on the transformational nature of Jesus' mission - taking people who thought they knew who they were and giving them a new identity.
Why does Tolkien choose a halfling--a hobbit--to bear the ring and not a warrior or a wizard? Because hobbits do not desire to rule the world. And most hobbits do not seek financial gain (except Bilbo's relatives, the Sackville-Bagginses, and we all know a few kin like them). Rather, they seek out fellowship and feasts and celebrations, kind of like Jesus. -- (p. 168)

So give me family feasts, foot washings, and farewell speeches with tax-collectors, zealots, fishermen and thunder's sons-turned-hobbits, as we leave the Shire all together. It's the only way to turn a he-man world upside down, as Jesus welcomes in his halfling kingdom made up of former he-men turned hobbits. -- (p. 171)

This is creative cross-pollination. It connects with an important cultural touchstone and speaks a language that will resonate with a people nurtured on Hollywood and You Tube fragments. It is combined with frequent hortatory language that lends the book a sermonic quality. There are countless places where we are told that "we should" or that "we must" do something as a response of faith. Metzger ties this to John by identifying the central message of the book as evangelical: "calling people to faith and confirming believers in faith" (21). But if the hobbits and other denizens of the book are surprising, the Jesus he points to is very familiar and perhaps more to be found in a particular strain of American evangelicalism than in the pages of John.

The Gospel of John is the first of the Resonate series of biblical commentaries, for which Metzger, a professor of Christian Theology at Multnomah Biblical Seminary, is the executive editor. The stated aim of the series is "to provide spiritual nourishment that is biblically and theologically orthodox and culturally significant" (12). Unlike traditional verse by verse commentaries, these volumes are intended to develop themes found in the biblical text in conversation with the culture.

It is good to keep this in mind because readers looking for traditional commentary material will be disappointed. Metzger does make some references to scholarly research into the gospel, but it is scant and usually confined to the endnotes. His approach is confessional and not at all cautious. He states at the front that he believes the apostle John, who was Jesus' disciple, wrote the book and also the other books credited to him. There is no discussion of a Johannine school, just as there are no extended excursuses on Greek philosophical influences or Greek translation issues. Metzger sees the gospel as all about proclaiming the Word and he wants his work to mirror that.

In the foreword, Leonard Sweet describes Metzger as inventing a "whole new genre of literature, a hybrid commentary where the best in biblical scholarship is coupled with theological reflection on the text that is accessible to the layperson" (10). This seems overly generous. Despite the many biblical citations in the book, John seems curiously absent from this commentary. We do not encounter the text in its strangeness nor with the expectation that we will discover a message that will surprise. Instead it is mediated (with novelty but sometimes tritely) through cultural references many contemporary people will know well and through traditional evangelical language that will strike many long-term Christians as boilerplate rhetoric.

At the end of each section what stays with the reader is a central image, like disciples as hobbits. But the strange and disturbing character of Jesus who haunts the gospel of John, with his cryptic language and mysterious actions, does not linger because, through Metzger's lens, he isn't much different from the illuminated Sallman painting of Jesus which hangs on the walls of so many Protestant churches throughout the land. I love hobbits. I just wish Metzger's Jesus was as intriguing.