A Voice in the Crowd

Talking Heads

2009-06-09T13:59:00.007-04:00

My essay on the financial crisis was published at "Call and Response," the blog of Faith & Leadership, a resource website from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. Click here to read on the Faith & Leadership website, or read the unedited version below.

As the financial crisis continues to unfold, all eyes are trained squarely on cable news networks for updates and analysis. In fact, watching cable news and discussing the Dow Jones Industrial Average has become a chief point of common experience for Americans. What they find in that common experience is a shotgun approach of short, shallow stories. Because pain and panic sell, those are the common themes in broadcasts.
The turn of attention away from traditional points of civic discourse--churches or the town square--is typically described as a matter of demand. The argument is that people increasingly expect to be able to get news at any time and to see personality-driven analysis of that news. They want that analysis to come from politically-identifiable biases, for which "fair and balanced" has become helpful shorthand.
The issue is actually one of supply, and it should be of grave concern to churches and related institutions. In a world of short, shallow stories, truth is lost.
The coverage of retention bonuses paid to AIG executives is a fantastic and sad example. In March of 2008, as the first hints of financial problems at AIG emerged, but long in advance of widespread concern about the economy, executives at the insurance giant started to look for opportunities in stronger companies. In order to stem the tide of departures, AIG promised bonus payouts to a group of key executives: people who were responsible for millions of dollars of income that would help balance the company's losses from what we now know to be dangerous investments. The bonuses kept employees who were key to slowing the company's downfall who could have easily moved on to greener pastures. When those bonuses became due a year later, that story was not nearly as interesting as a differently cast version in which the bonuses were coming from taxpayers to line the pockets of evil market manipulators who caused economic catastrophe. There's an old saw that the truth is easier to tell than a lie, but it's also easier to find evil than good, and evil sells, so why bother seeking the good?
A world that does not know how to listen to a more considered discussion is a dangerous place for Christianity. The truth that binds churches in Christian mission is not a short or shallow story. Following one who ignored gossip and public relations implications to mingle with criminals and prostitutes means that we need to be able to tease out careful distinctions, to look beyond the scope of a few days or a few hours in a news cycle and to historical causes and trends. We need to consider the good in people that the press is willing to label villains and to be honest about the sin in people who are lauded as heroes. Theology is not a simple matter, and throughout history, our churches have said "yes, but," as we augment public discussion. That is exactly the kind of approach the world needs, and if we do not exercise those muscles in this financial crisis, theology will have moved even further from the field of sources contributing to public dialogue.
The church needs to broaden its infrastructure for discourse to include not only theological matters, but also the most complex stories of the day. If the changing economic landscape of the world forces us into change, it should be a broadening of mission and aggressive building of relationships across disciplines so that we have the resources to engage the most complex issues of the day. The church's natural focus on the people and organizations affected by recession is predictable and important, but we need to spend energy struggling to understand the causes too. To say, "I have no idea what credit default swaps are, and so they must be bad and the people who wrote them must be evil," is an intellectually lazy approach, and Christianity is not an intellectually lazy faith.
This is a time when the connections between churches become more valuable, as the complexity of the issues requires sharing the burden of education to dig into the complexities of our new reality. But those complexities are ones that we can master, and the endeavor is one we must undertake to preserve the kinds of rigor and relationships that theological discussion requires. If the church could supply sources of information again, we will move back to the intersection of public discourse. If we form the infrastructure for engaging this kind of economic complexity, our ability to effect positive change is multiplied, and the next crisis may be averted.

Building Lighthouses

2008-07-03T16:26:00.004-04:00

An essay of mine was posted at Theolog (the blog of the Christian Century) today. The full version follows:

With the growth of our family from two to three people, travel to the grocery store, not to mention another country, has become challenging, so I watch PBS's Rick Steves Europe on a regular basis to get my travel fix. In a recent episode, he told me about a remote corner of Ireland called "Hook Head" (Google Map). In the fifth or sixth century--who's really counting when you get that far back?--a monk named Dubhan led a group to this peninsula, which juts out in a strategic position protecting the Waterford harbor, and set up a monastery. They soon noticed the bodies of sailors who had perished against the rocky coastline washing up on their pristine beach, and took time away from their monastic calling to set up a beacon. They operated the beacon for the next thousand years, give or take a few. Rick's Irish tour guide says:
The monks came here for solitude and to save souls. It would have been their original task, I suppose, but they ended up saving lives. It probably became a bigger goal for them rather than saving souls.
I'm not sure I buy that theory. Saving lives was a logical and essential part of saving souls and not a separate goal at all. But the point remains: in the pursuit of their callings, they learned a whole other trade and devoted themselves to generations of tending a lighthouse. Were they any less true to their chief calling for that effort? It seems clear to me tending a lighthouse was the only way they could be true to their calling: they pursued God to a rocky coast and found a bunch of dead sailors. God occasionally speaks clearly.

Today we want clergy to professionalize and focus on their vocation as ministers without needing to earn an income through other commitments. Economists talk about "comparative advantage": the principal that individuals and their societies benefit when each person does those things for which they are best skilled. Our churches' ministers have extensive theological training that means they have a comparative advantage when preaching and providing pastoral case as opposed to, say, tending a lighthouse.
Focus on our own advantages holds a danger though: in an increasingly professionalized and specialized world, how will clergy and laity relate to each other? Dubhan's monks understood the basic challenges of life as a sailor, and they worked at meeting needs on the way to building relationships. Can my minister understand the challenges for folks in all sorts of jobs who wear micro-specialties as badges of honor?

What if instead of one more preaching institute class or an extra meeting of the committee for the realignment of the Northeastern section of the Southern district, my minister went with me to a basic estate planning seminar? Or with one of my friends to a lesson planning meeting at the middle school? Or to a job site for an
afternoon with a general contractor? What if we decided to be radical and develop positions for interested new clergy in settings that enabled them to attend a year of graduate school in another discipline in the same way that foreign missionaries study the language of their host country? Clergy would not suddenly start building lighthouses, but they might have a better perspective on some of the dark places and bright spots in the world of their congregations.

What lighthouses do we need to build at the corner of our church property? Where will we find people to do the building?

The Extras of Faith

2008-04-23T21:54:00.004-04:00

The good folks at Theolog, the blog of the Christian Century, posted an essay of mine today. The full essay, which was edited for length on Theolog, follows in its unedited form.

In response to the overwhelming emotion and responsibility of holding my newborn child a few moments after his birth recently, I did something that I do far too rarely for a Christian, not to mention a seminary graduate and former minister: I prayed. Frankly, it wasn't a very creative prayer. I gave thanks for the love my son's mother and I share and for the strength and grace to show that love to him with some tiny portion of the expertise my own parents have demonstrated throughout my life. He was soon back in his mother's arms, with my prayer rather unartfully ended, when my thoughts turned to the things my wife and I will teach our son.
When I hear about public schools having to cut out offerings in the arts and languages because of finances or in order to teach to a test, my deep sadness is mitigated by my likely arrogant reasoning that I can teach my child about the arts pretty effectively, and even if his education from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon is geared toward a narrow measure of achievement to the detriment of creative thought and cultural awareness, he will hear his mother play the trumpet and his
father sing, and he will see our enthusiasm for travel, and he will turn out just fine.
But the "three 'R's" and even the arts are not the most important things we have to teach. When I was overwhelmed with emotion and responsibility, I prayed, and that's what I want him to do too; raising our son as a Christian and a member of our congregation has never been questioned. After that first prayer, though, I started to wonder more actively about the division of labor in his Christian education.
Just as my local schools struggle with how to teach children in ways that will lead to positive evaluations of the school (and the student), my local church and thousands of others like it struggle with how to teach and inspire faith to and in children in ways that insure their ability to face the tests and struggles of life. Of course I want my child to learn that God loves him, and that God created him and everything around him, and that God's son Jesus saved him from the tyrrany of fear and death and injected unstoppable hope into this world just like I want him to learn verb conjugation, American history, and long division. Those things are the building blocks of his faith and secular education, respectively. But what about the arts and culture of church? Just as in schools, where end-of-grade testing looms and scares parents and teachers into abandoning the richness of those subjects outside the "core," in churches a pervasive "siege" mentality and even intimidation at the beauties of tradition convince us to throw out complexity under the label of superfluity and to focus on the basics. In our churches, the theory doesn't stop with children: simplicity is the order of the day.
My arrogant reasoning applies here too. I can teach him to read music so that he can sing centuries worth of hymns from a shared book, and I can teach him that his best friend's Presbyterian church is historically different than his Methodist church without falling into a trap of superiority. I can walk him around a cathedral in Europe and tell him the names and purposes of the various worship spaces, and I can tell him about bowing beside the processional cross and why people fight about whether to have a national flag in the sanctuary. I can give him many of the ingredients for a richer faith.
But church is not about my child being better prepared. My Christian identity requires that I am just as concerned about the richness of the faith of my son's peers too, and so my prayer turns into a challenge -- a calling.
And then I wonder, don't I have the same sort of obligation to seek richness for other children's non-religious education?

Visit over at Theolog and join the conversation. Thanks!

Funny Clergy

2008-02-18T17:00:00.000-05:00

John Dart of the Christian Century posted on Theolog (the Christian Century's blog) about jokes in sermons, and I offered a comment. Click here for the post and all comments.

The End of the Trail

2007-05-11T15:40:00.000-04:00

When I was in high school, a dear friend who was a couple of years older took a year off of college to through-hike the Appalachian Trail with a friend of his. This was no quick decision: he prepared for months, equipped himself properly, and set off with lots of encouragement from his family and friends. We sent care packages, some people went to meet him at towns along the trail, and we followed his progress with pride and enthusiasm.

And then one day, long before we expected him to finish, I heard he was coming home. Pretty quickly after he returned, he sent out a letter that explained the change in plans. He had started hiking to gain perspective and to better understand himself and the world around him. Though I am not writing this nearly as elegantly as he did, he described the increasing awareness he felt that being with and sharing the love of his family and friends was what he longed for--that need revealed itself as he tried to learn about himself--and so coming home made a lot more sense than staying on the trail just to prove something to others by reaching an artificial goal of hiking distance.

I was disappointed. I thought he had quit, simply put, and I didn't think quitting was an appropriate choice in the middle of a great journey. I tried to be supportive and I was also glad to have him back home, so he may be surprised when and if he reads these words, but I just didn't know how to process his decision to stop the journey.

I have thought a lot about his decision and his letter over the past year, as I am stopping a journey of my own before most people would consider it completed. Nearly eight years ago, on June 30, 1999, I declared my candidacy for the United Methodist ministry. I was certified as a candidate by the church, I went to seminary, I served a hospital and a church through field education opportunities, was commissioned as a probationary deacon, preached sermons, conducted weddings, taught classes, and visited hospitals. My ministry was clearly a little different, though: my first appointment was as a law student at Wake Forest University. The vision shared by the Board of Ordained Ministry, our then-serving Bishop, and me was that I would work as a lawyer following graduation and be engaged in ministry through local churches by interpreting the calling of social justice for our church's professionals, by bringing the best wisdom of the church and the legal profession to bear to resolve conflict, and generally by bringing my professional skills along with me in ministry with people and organizations in the community for whom laws and regulations provide barriers to the ministry and service God calls them to do.

During my second year of law school, I sent a procedural request to the new bishop of my conference, and he replied that he did not see how I could ever be appointed in ministry as a lawyer and refused my request that we meet to discuss how my calling matched the needs of the church and the world. That brought into sharp relief a pattern of obstacles I had faced because my ministry was so different from the archetype of the local church pastor. As I understand it, because the United Methodist Church tries so hard to staff its many churches with qualified pastors--a challenging undertaking from the perspective of both the churches and the pastors--there is not a lot of energy left over for creativity in the cases of ministers who will not meet the need for parish ministers but rather will serve the church in different ways. Whatever the case, I realized that I lacked the energy to overcome all of the obstacles in my way. I still believe that I am called to the professional ministry, but perhaps God's time for that calling has not yet arrived. I find myself enjoying a fantastic job in the legal profession, which has welcomed me and encouraged me more than I could have imagined (and in which I have consistently benefited from interest in and enthusiasm about my ministry), and I look forward to continuing to teach and offer leadership as a lay person in my congregation. Toward that end, I returned my license to practice ministry and my certificate of clergy membership in the conference to my district superintendent this week and asked to be discontinued from the ordination process. The bishop has issued an interim change of appointment to return me to lay status as a member of my local Methodist congregation.

Of course, there is a sense of loss. I deeply miss preaching, but I remember that I got to preach in one of the most loving and supportive congregations in the Methodist "connexion." I loved conducting weddings and talking with couples about the challenges and rewards of Christian marriage, but I got to do several weddings, one of them in just about the neatest setting you could imagine. I enjoyed ministry as part of a professional medical team and as part of a thriving institution, but I learned at the best and I incorporate what I learned every day in my law practice. I felt fulfilled when teaching bible studies and classes on church history, but I've had great groups already, taught with phenomenal scholars, and there will surely be more of that in my future. I won't get to go to Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska any more, but I'll still get to go to the Lake and won't have to avoid the gaggles of conference delegates!

I would imagine that lots of people are going to react the way I did when I got my friend's letter about leaving the Appalachian Trail. This journey does seem to have ended rather early. I take that as nothing but a compliment, because any disappointment must arise out of faith in me as a minister, and that means a lot to me. My friend's decision to leave the trail was wise and mature--it was certainly the right decision--and I hope this one is too.

What I learned at Duke Divinity School, UNC Hospitals, Union Grove United Methodist Church, Wake Forest University, and Centenary United Methodist Church is that we serve God best when we educate ourselves about the scriptures we read, the tradition in which our faith finds its home, and the experience of those who have lived the faith in this exciting world and then apply our own creativity as a way of interpreting God's gifts to us for the benefit of all God's people. I have done that in a way that leaves me outside the church's current paradigm for ministry. Hopefully I also do it in a way that encourages others to be part of the life of the church and to love her--and love God through her--as much as I do.

My plan is to leave this blog up for the foreseeable future, and I am considering beginning a more typical blogging pattern instead of just posting the manuscript from the rare (certainly about to be more rare) chance I get to preach. I'd be interested in your feedback about that (because though hundreds of you visit this blog every week, I don't have much idea who you are), which I hope you'll leave in the form of a comment to this post.

Echoing Voices

2007-04-25T07:53:00.000-04:00

The Christian Century recently featured a fantastic article on plagiarism by preachers. My immediate response to that article was shaped by an interesting observation: the SiteMeter I use to track visits to this website shows a clear increase in the number and length of visits when one of the scripture passages on which I have preached comes around in the cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. There is roughly a 400% increase in the number of visits when one of my sermons matches that week's text, and the length of individual visits goes up significantly (in other words, people are reading, not just clicking on the site and then navigating away after realizing that it's full of sermons rather than interesting reading).

For a long time, when I wrote a sermon, I first read two or three by preachers I admired and then set about writing my own. I wouldn't try to find sermons on the same topic; I was just reading theirs for the tone and use of language. It would sink in for me as I read their prose, and then I liked the way I used words better when I started doing my own writing. I suspect some people who visit this blog on those lectionary-indicated weeks are doing something similar. I also suspect some people are ripping off parts of sermons, though as much as I care about academic integrity, this really doesn't bother me as far as the violation of my own rights goes. I suppose it would be nicer if those people would invite me to come to their church in person and preach my own sermon, but because I realize that's usually not workable, I take the occasional use of my material as the same kind of compliment that an invitation to preach somewhere would be. I should be clear that to my disappointment I have not found my text used on the web without attribution, so I have no evidence that any plagiarism has occurred from my site, and in fact I remain convinced that the occasional person who comes here with that motive decides if people received my sermons without rioting then their efforts would certainly be appreciated.

As Jason Byassee hints on the Century's blog, I am afraid that some of the plagiarism that occurs is due to laziness, and preaching is not the hardest thing about being a minister, so if a preacher is too lazy to preach, then I wonder what else is being overlooked in that church. My greater fear, and that expressed by Long in his article (linked above), is that some preachers may use text from others because they don't feel like they're good enough. That's distressing. Just in case you happen by here because you're looking for sermon material because you don't think your own material is good enough, then go ahead and use this material in whatever way you think appropriate. But, if you're not plagued by the laziness Byassee and I fear and are willing to work to do better, then let this be a reminder to you that plenty of resources for this exist. E-mail me and we'll talk about what they might be.

For anyone who cared enough to steal, thanks--it means a lot to me.

Go, But Don't Tell It (Matthew 2:1-12)

2006-12-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

Epiphany (C)
Providence United Methodist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina

1In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, “Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” 7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Matthew 2:1-12 NRSV

Number 251

I have a friend who says that evangelism means telling people about Jesus until they start to listen, telling them some more about Jesus until they get bored and come up with songs to sing, and then telling them still more about Jesus until they start giving you money to be quiet, and then you have a church. Joking aside, the real meat of being Christians is sharing and living Christ's teaching, and that means telling the story of Christ quite a lot. That's the natural thing to do after greeting the newborn King. Open your hymnals to about 200 and start flipping through: they talk about the coming of Christ. Then, at 217, Jesus is born. At 219 we figure out that "This, This is Christ the King," all "Good Christian Friends Rejoice" at 224, the Faithful Come at 234, Heaven and Nature Sing at 246, and then at 251, when we can't hold in the joy any longer, we go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born. Telling it on the mountain is what we do.

In Matthew's version of the story, the very first people led to Christ are the wise men. They come from a long way away. In a gospel that takes great care to describe Jesus as the Jewish messiah, the first visitors are gentiles. They are astronomers, who use their training and skill to interpret a sign from God—a fantastic marriage of science and miracle—and they come to the house where Joseph and Mary and Jesus are living. And they meet God.

The tradition of Christmas gifts has a rocky start: they give Jesus, perhaps a couple of years old by now, several presents that would not qualify as nontoxic educational gifts of the sort we give two year olds these days. They paid the baby homage, which did him about as much good as the frankincense, but changed the lives of the wise men forever. They had met their Lord and King. We know what is supposed to happen next. We just looked through the hymnal. You hear about Jesus, you figure out he is the messiah, you come to his side, you sing with heaven above and nature below of the great joy you feel, and then you go tell it on the mountain. But the wise men... these people who you might even call the first Christians... they get it wrong. They go from Jesus's side and crawl home around the outskirts of Jerusalem. They do not tell anyone.

Keeping the Story

If ever there were characters in the Bible with whom we could identify, it is the wise men. They are gentiles, like us. They are reasonably educated, like us. They are observant and aware of the world around them, like we try to be. The wise men didn't necessarily know about the scriptural prophecies of the messiah, but they followed a star, and it led them to the light of our lives: Jesus Christ. The hopes and fears of all the years and all the nations are met in thee tonight. We read this scripture on Epiphany, as we consider the recognition of God in our world, because we learn through the magi that Jesus is part of God's message to the whole world. But now we find ourselves back at the puzzle again. The magi didn't spread the message any further.

Some of you are saying to yourselves, "I thought he had given up on that theme. Where can you go with this? They were warned in a dream to go home a different way. They weren't bad evangelists: God told them not to tell anyone about what they had seen." Maybe so, but isn't that strange all on its own?

Let's be a little less quaint. What happens in the Christmas story is that a new kingdom begins to break in to this world. The wise men get an icy reception in Jerusalem—not just from Herod but also from the people of the city—because there is one king of the Jews already and that situation is tenuous enough as it is. There is most certainly not room for a second king. The wise men asked for the child who was born as King, but they asked this question of Herod, who was barely born a Jew, much less a king. This puppet governor had to balance the demands of Rome with the demands of "his" people, who he clearly didn't understand very well. He had to bring in mid-level managers to find out what Jewish scripture said. He was happy to claim to be a Jew for political purposes, but he didn't have any time to actually read the Bible. Imagine such a hypocrite; using religion for political purposes like that.

Since Herod's "I'm a Jew just like you all" gag had worked reasonably well on the people of Judea, he tries a similarly complex ploy on the wise men. "Why don't you guys go find this kid and then come back and tell me where he is so that I can ki... er... worship him. Yeah, worship him. And give him presents. I got some things in the closet back there I'm anxious to regift. I'll give him a great sweater and some slippers." One is almost surprised the wise men needed a vision to know coming back by Herod's place was a bad plan.

Following Wise Men

Let us—most of us people who have met Christ and who live in a world that, taken as a whole, doesn't seem to really get the message—let us follow the wise men. They meet Christ and praise him, and as they leave the child, they see themselves as stewards of his story.

The wise men seem to be just a little foolish when it comes to Herod's veneer of feigned interest in worshipping his new rival, so they might have reasonably thought that what made the most sense was to go back to Herod and tell him about Jesus so that he too could share their joy. Even if they sensed the danger, they might have figured that since it was so inspiring to be in the presence of Christ, Herod would change his violent mind and worship along with them. They could easily have fallen into the trap of thinking that if they could just get the civil king to share the faith, everything would be better.

But they don't share the story, and sometimes, neither should we. We are stewards of Christ's messsage, and while of course it is essential that we share the gospel, louder is not always better. "Any publicity is good publicity," the marketing specialists tell us. It's easy to think that the more exposure our faith gets, the better. And if we have to put it in the hands of people with mixed motives in order to get that exposure, well then, just think of what this could do for church attendance and forget the ethical problem! When we have to sacrifice the clarity and challenge of our message in order to get someone to ally with us—when the spreading of the gospel depends on someone with his own mixed motives—then we have role models. The wise men didn't take the quickest opportunity to share the gospel. They went home and shared their experience among themselves.

O Christmas Tree

Recently there was a story about Christmas trees in the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. I've been to the Seattle airport, and I'm here to tell you that it looks roughly like every other commercial airport. There is one vaguely interesting common area with shops that sell things that seem like a good idea but which you will never use again for 200% of retail value, and three or four aiport versions of chain restaurants. It has nice windows for watching the planes, I remember, and a bunch of rocking chairs, which idea I allege they stole from Charlotte. Apparently someone put up fourteen Christmas trees in the central terminal just past the security gates, probably to remind people who were emptying their pockets and trying to explain why they had four ounces of shampoo and their toothpaste was not in a clear plastic bag that it was Christmas time and their travel to see family or friends was worth whatever hassle they encountered.

A perfectly reasonable Jewish rabbi asked them to put up menorahs along with the Christmas trees. This caused a predictable media focus on the airport, and when some overly zealous attorney—couldn't you just tell there was going to be a lawyer in this story—was interviewed, he suggested that a lawsuit might force the airport to comply with the rabbi's request. The airport, far too smart to get involved in a lawsuit about religion, just took down the Christmas trees. Why bother? It's not like someone was going to walk through the airport and suddenly not be in a hurry or treat everyone nicely because they saw a Christmas tree anyway.

Nothing amazing about the story yet, but then Christians started writing in and calling the radio, raising quite a commotion because the Christmas trees were being taken down. They fussed about the secularization of the holiday and wanted those trees back up. If some of you are getting a little bored with me, I invite you to reach down and pick up the Bible in your pew shelf and raise your hand when you find a reference to a Christmas tree. Christmas trees have exactly nothing to do with the meaning of Christmas. We didn't have them at all until relatively recently, and our faith does not live or die because of how many Chirstmas trees show up in December, but there we are, screaming because there aren't any more Christmas trees in the airport. When we go to the airport authority or the courthouse or the shopping mall and ask them to help us spread our symbols and tell our story, we lose control of the story in little pieces that add up to disaster. Soon we're not comfortable asking questions because we might accidentally look foolish in the midst of all the attention we've garnered for ourselves. Soon we're willing not to talk about peace quite so much and concentrate on messages that have less to do with our faith but which sell better.

Strange Story

The world is just as ready to use our faith for other ends as Herod was ready to seek out the baby Jesus and increase his own power a little by killing the Christ. The wise men had an enviable position. As the first stewards, they got some clear guidance: it was not time for God's message to be shared just yet. We, on the other hand, hear quite a lot that the point of being a Christian is better numbers, more people hearing the Word, as if the strength of God can be measured by how many people have fish symbols next to the flag sticker on the back of their cars.

Today we celebrate the epiphany of our Lord into our world. It is a strange story. No way around that. If what we really want is for everyone to listen—for this story to get a good hearing in the public square, and for the symbols that remind us of it to find their ways into airports and train stations and the White House—then we're going to have to tone it down. My God is not interested in a toned-down faith. To do so is to betray the child we just found.

The Epiphany happens right here at this table. It is a strange story too, this table. But we come here, bringing the one gift those wise men were too foolish to offer—ourselves—and we meet our Lord. And then we go home.

The wise men don't tell the story, and they disappear from the story we know, but surely not from God's watchful eye. They didn't trust the powers that ruled the world they knew with the new story they had learned, but that doesn't mean they quit being interested in it themselves. You can imagine that their lives were never the same again, and that they yearned to talk about what they had seen and understand how God was working through this newborn child.

Communion

Thank God that we discover Jesus here, and not on our own. Thank God that as he sends himself into our world, he has sent us also a church in which to learn and share the story. Of course it is our job to share the gospel, but here in God's house we learn to share the Gospel on God's terms, and not merely in those ways we think will get us the best hearing. This story that shapes our faith and our lives, it is far too great and grand to need help from people seeking their own power or bouying their own standing. And yet the poem reminds us that the story does thrive when told through our greatest gifts:

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

It's not always about going to tell it on the mountain. Sometimes it's about doing something harder than telling. Sometimes it's about living together. You can eat any old meal to give yourself the energy to go tell it on the mountain. To live together with each other and with this newborn King we've discovered—to be stewards of the story of Christ—we must eat at the table set by the king.

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith and take this holy sacrament to your comfort...

And may your life never be the same again.

Speak to Us (Luke 10:38-42) [Prayer]

2006-11-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

The Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost (B)
Scripture from the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost (C)
Pastoral Prayer
Centenary United Methodist Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

38Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." 41But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Luke 10:38-42 NRSV

Dear Lord and God, Father, Son, and Spirit:

We come into your house to worship this morning buffeted by a newly cold wind and surrounded by swirling, rapidly browning leaves, and the signs of the season call our minds away to things to come. It's almost Thanksgiving: What will I cook? At whose house will we gather? Will we all get along this year? Will I be able to bear the newly empty chair at our table? And the mall already has its Christmas decorations up. Where will I find the perfect gift? Do I need a present for the neighbors this year? Will our house look pretty enough?

We have come into your house this morning, but our minds are scattered. Perhaps it is not the holidays but rather the chatter of our everyday lives that seem to move so fast the weekend comes as a surprise, not to mention the holidays. We have nearly limitless capacity to convince ourselves that our tasks, our plans, our intentions, are all good and essential to the continued turning of the earth. We have come into your house this morning; make this be a place where the rushing and the worrying stop, or at least get held off for a while; help us to come and sit at your feet and listen to what you are saying.

Speak to us about pain. We are experts at hiding our pain, but you set a different model: you shared your agony with us so that we may never know such deep pain ourselves. When we touch the scars on your hands, we know that you understand when we hurt. Help us to know the pain of those around us, and to share that which cripples us too, so that in fellowship our pain will get just a little easier.

Speak to us about teaching. Dedicated teachers, no matter their profession and whether in church or public life or middle school, are the only people who ever really change this world. So help us to hear you through those who would teach us. And give us strength to shape the lessons we teach by our lives every day to your Way, your Truth, your Life.

Speak to us about the change in the air; remind us that a new ruling party, new legislative goals, and new rumors of elections to come do not upset or fulfill your will for your world, but rather remind us that regardless of who leads us on earth, we can choose how faithful we will be as your people.

Speak to us about poverty, and speak to us about plenty. You spoke about money often while on earth: speak to us about it again now, for we spend too much of our energy on that particular worry. For some of us, it is a struggle to feed and clothe our families; others of us, with basic needs met, worry about other things: succeeding in business, securing an education, saving for those educations and for retirement. Either way, the pressures we face leave us worried and distracted about many things. Speak to us: there is need of only one thing.

Speak to us about love. During your life on earth you taught that the law and the prophets all had one goal: to help us love you. And you told us that we would achieve that goal best by loving each other. We yearn for laws to follow, or at least interpret; for rules to obey, or at least to impose on others. But share with us the good news that your kingdom breaks into this world with limitless grace, and with your grace make us bold enough to love one another, just as we are loved by the one in whose name we pray: Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and Spirit, one God, now and for evermore. Amen.

I Just Wanna Be a Sheep (John 10:11-18)

2006-05-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

The Fourth Sunday of Easter (B)
Informal Worship Service
Centenary United Methodist Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
John 10:11-18 NRSV

I was blind and now I see…

All of the Gospels have miracle stories, including healings, but they are usually relatively simple affairs. Amazing, but simple. Jesus meets a sick person, he asks if the sick person has faith, and then says, “you are healed.” In John’s gospel, though, healings become the foundation for an extended theological discussion. In the ninth chapter, Jesus encounters a man who has never been able to see. His disciples wanted to know whose fault the blindness was, but Jesus wanted to set about the work of healing rather than the game of blaming. He made a paste for the man’s eyes, told him to wash it out, and the man could see.

If ever there was a community that could gossip, it’s us, so it will come as no big surprise that a few days later, everyone was talking about the blind man who now could see. They had trouble believing that the same person they had identified as “that blind guy” for all those years could now see; they don’t even seem to know his name, and indeed neither do we. The church council quizzed him. “Who healed you? How did he do it?”

Have you ever heard the joke about the teacher who asked a troubling student, “are you ignorant or just apathetic?” and the student replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care?” With different reasons, that’s essentially what the no-longer-blind man said. “All I know is I used to be blind and now I can see. I think Jesus is a prophet. After all, he harnessed God’s power, and God is not at the beck and call of sinners” (cf. John 9:10-33 The Message). The church council, upset that this man was being smart with them and that Jesus healed him on Sunday, which was clearly tacky, began to fear for their authority.

And then we find ourselves at today’s scripture passage, where Jesus begins to explain how he is different than those naysayers who had settled into their prestigious leadership positions. “I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus says, and the shepherd “puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He’s only in it for the money. The sheep don’t matter to him” (John 10:11-13 The Message).

For the shepherd, the flock of sheep is the family business. He wants to protect the sheep because they are the way his children will have work to do and put food on the table for generations; it’s no mere job to him. A hired hand is more concerned with his own wellbeing than with whether or not the shepherd’s kids get to take over the flock one day. In the same way, Jesus’ horizon is much longer than the even best church leader; he is willing to make sacrifices in the present—even of his own life—in order for the good of his flock and his mission, which lasts for all time.

Inheriting the family business

Jesus’ sacrifice was risky to say the least. If we carry the “family business” analogy a little farther, we see how small were the chances of his sacrifice reaching very far into the future: two-thirds of family business fail to survive the pass to the next generation. A little rough division tells us that we are about 80 generations removed from Jesus—about nine of those generations represent the life of Methodism—and so the business is chugging along better than could reasonably be expected.

Why do you think it is that so many family businesses fail? Once the person who started it all is gone, the children disagree about who should control the business. They argue about who should get what salary and who should get to pass control onto their own children one day. Someone inevitably wants to leave the business and do something else, but they almost always want to take their share of things with them, crippling the operation they leave behind. Pretty soon the family and the business collapse under the weight of individuals’ concerns for themselves.

Falling Apart

Jesus was shrewd, and he knew about these challenges to the mission he would leave behind. The gospel writer John understood too, and he highlights the things that could cause failure. After Jesus healed the blind man, the church leaders had trouble figuring out how to understand what had happened. John writes, “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’” The gospel writer then observes why these leaders were eventually going to fail: it wasn’t because they had trouble believing or because they were critical, or even because they missed the point of the healing, but rather their failure would derive from the fact that “they were divided” (John 9:16 NRSV).

In Jesus’ illustration using the sheep, he says that the hired hand doesn’t truly care for the sheep and so if a wolf comes along, the hired hand will run away. But what does the wolf do? We all know what a wolf does to sheep. It eats them. All the more important, then, that Jesus doesn’t say the threat is that the wolf will kill the sheep, but rather that the wolf will take and scatter the sheep (John 10:12). Jesus’ mission—the church—does not fail when a part of it dies, but when a part of it is separated from the rest.

Jesus goes farther than just illustrating his desire to keep the flock of the church together. We easily fall into the trap of thinking that the point of being church is maintenance—to keep each other happy and to keep a steady budget going, and grow our numbers at the same rate as the church down the street, but Jesus has bigger goals. “You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen,” he says. “I need to gather and bring them, too. They’ll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd" (John 10:16 The Message). This is where Jesus’ radicalism gets a little scary and we usually try to tone down what he’s really saying. There are other people who are his sheep now, who are just as important and just as close to him as we are, and he wants to bring his flocks together into one. We will almost certainly have to change a little bit ourselves in order for Jesus’ people to be brought together into one flock with one Shepherd. God’s vision is of one flock, and any division in God’s church is unfaithful.

The Church uses lots of different words when it celebrates communion, but the traditional liturgy—the words shared the most by the many cultures and denominations and congregations that gather in Christ’s name—say, “By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world, until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet" (United Methodist Book of Worship, 38). When Jesus shared the first Lord’s Supper, he said that we should do it until our very lives become a remembrance of him, and so we ask that when we share the sacrament now, it joins us in communion—in the deepest kind of community—with all of God’s people, whether they are in our flock or not.

There’s a children’s song I learned up in the Tennessee mountains one summer years ago. The words are not overly complex or even poetic, though there are some catchy rhymes and the chance to make animal noises:

I just wanna be a sheep—baa;
I just wanna be a sheep—baa;
I just wanna be a sheep—baa;
I just wanna be a sheep—baa;

Of course, being a sheep excludes some other possibilities, and so we also need to be clear about what we don’t want to be.

I don’t wanna be a Pharisee;
I don’t wanna be a Pharisee;
‘Cause they’re not fair, you see;
I don’t wanna be a Pharisee;

The song continues, “I don’t wanna be a Saducee, / ‘Cause they’re so sad, you see,” and, finally, “I don’t wanna be a hypocrite, / ‘Cause they’re not hip with it.” “I just wanna be a sheep—baa.”

This is a children’s song in part because no self-respecting adult would stand up in front of a group of people and go “baa,” but also for the same reason “Jesus loves me” is a children’s song. It sounds too simple, and frankly grownups feel a little silly claiming either that Jesus loves us and we know it because that’s what the Bible says or that what we really want to be more than anything else is a sheep. Baa. Deep down we know that being a sheep is a lot harder than the song makes it out to be. Avoiding the pitfalls in the song—not being fair, being sad, and not, well, being hip with it—is the easy part. If we’re going to be sheep, we also have to stay with the flock and come wherever the shepherd calls us.

If we think the grass looks greener on the hill to the south and the flock is going to the north, then it’s too bad—we go to the north. If we think we’d like a different kind of grass better, we still stay with the others: if we split off it won’t really matter what we eat because we’re done for anyway. If we think the flock’s way of processing into the pasture is intimidating or overly showy, then we might want to bring it up with the other sheep, but at the end of the day, what’s important is that we’re together.

So how are we doing with the family business? There are several hundred Christian denominations in the United States, and we fail to have successful discussions about what our theology means and how we can find common points. Some churches claim to rise above this mix by being “nondenominational,” but that really means they are split not only from other churches, but also from the history of our faith. More often than not we blow the chance for meaningful connections by dismissing the differences: “churches are all basically the same.” The Episcopal and the United Methodist churches are both in grave danger of splitting over views about homosexuality, which is no better a reason to divide than disagreeing about whether Jesus should have healed on the sabbath. We all have the freedom to decide what we believe about things, but we’re the stewards of the family business—the church—and the evidence is overwhelming that division leads to failure.

The Good News

Of course the gospel—the good news for us today—is that, in the end, the family business analogy fails. The church is not like a family business because the founder remains: the Good Shepherd still leads his sheep. And the sheep know his voice and can follow, but sometimes the hired hands—those who help the shepherd lead the flock—decide that it’s in their best interest to stray, and a few sheep follow them, and when a wolf comes up, the sheep might scatter further without their leader, because this is an awfully big flock and you can’t always spot the shepherd up at the front of the pack. The hired hand might have good reasons: he thinks another pasture is safer, or the sheep might like a different kind of grass, and we have an overwhelming capacity to convince ourselves that we’re doing the right thing when we have such goals, but when the flock is divided, this communion table doesn’t mean what it is supposed to. When we try to do things our own way, even if it’s for admirable reasons, our prayer that we will be one in the Spirit, one in Christ, and one with each other becomes vanity.

I just wanna be a sheep. Baa. I just wanna hang out with the other sheep, do our best to spot the shepherd and follow the tones of his voice, and stick together. Amen.

Religion and Freedom

2006-02-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

Semester at Centenary
Centenary United Methodist Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Semester at Centenary is a Sunday morning academy-type lecture series for adults of all ages. For information about Spring 2006 offerings, click here.
Religion and Freedom is a four-part series outlining the meanings of freedom in theology and politics and tracing the development of individual, congregational, and denominational freedom of faith and practice.

Class Recordings

Semester at Centenary classes are recorded by Centenary United Methodist Church. Go to the Semester at Centenary page on the church's website to see a list of available lectures or click below for a Religion and Freedom lecture recording.

February 12: Theological Freedom
February 19: Freedom Within the Church
February 26: Freedom of Belief and Practice (video version available below)
March 5: Church and State in American Life (not recorded)

Google Video is also hosting video recordings of the series, which include the audio recordings above as well as a low-resolution version of the PowerPoint slideshow used in the presentation.

Class Summaries

February 12: Theological Freedom

The word freedom conjures up images of flags and fireworks, but it also has a theological meaning regarding our ability to act as we choose in God's world. Are there bounds to our freedom? How is freedom connected with sin? This is the starting place for understanding connections between patriotism in a free society and our faith.

February 19: Freedom Within the Church

While focus is often placed on church and state issues, more conflict is created by tension regarding the beliefs and excercises within churches: which hymns do we sing; do we believe the Bible is literally true; do we have a flad in the sanctuary; and which baptisms will we recognize? Churches handle these questions differently, and our own denomination is a great case study because despite relatively rigid doctrine, it is regarded as a theologically flexible and open church.

February 26: Freedom of Belief and Practice

We have a gut feeling about the separation of church and state, but the development and meaning of freedom of religion in our society is far more rich than a clean-cut "wall of separation" implies. We'll look at the original concept of separation and talk about the current trends in constitutional law.

March 5: Church and State in American Life

Special Guest: The Rev. Dr. James M. Dunn
Professor of Christianity and Public Policy
Wake Forest University Divinity School

Dr. Dunn has spent much of his professional life on the front lines of the effort to secure the separation of church and state, and he will talk from his considerable experience about the vested interest of the faithful in protecting religious freedoms for all and discuss the ways increased connections between religious conservatives and political leaders affect those freedoms.

Clashing Calendars (Luke 2:41-52)

2005-12-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

Power Lunch is an informal service offered to church and community members, especially those who work nearby, at which they can get a meal and listen to an informal message. In keeping with the service, this message was delivered without a formal reading of the scripture (hence the retelling within the text) and without a manuscript, so this represents the message as prepared though not necessarily exactly as delivered.

The Fourth Day of Christmas (NCL)
Power Lunch (Wednesday meal and message)
Centenary United Methodist Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Parenting Jesus

My wife and I said goodbye yesterday to my in-laws, who were visiting with us for Christmas. Before they left, my mother-in-law, as has become her yet-subtle habit, mentioned that a Christmas celebration would be more fun with grandchildren around. We do think some about parenthood, but following the Christmas story is enough to make you want to avoid it. Jesus was definitely not the child Mary and Joseph expected.

You might have heard before that there are gospels--stories of the life of Jesus--that did not make it into the Bible. It's not that these are necessarily bad books or that the church was trying to hide them, but over time they were not used as much and the church determined that they were not part of God's inspired Word. They are still interesting reading. One of them, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, describes Jesus as having changed quite a lot from the meek and mild baby. Apparently another boy in the neighborhood was running down the street and knocked up against Jesus' shoulder, so Jesus zapped him dead. The people in the community started to complain: "why did Mary and Joseph bring this strange child into our midst," and Jesus struck them blind. Joseph approaches Jesus to punish him with his hands cupped over his ears (we don't know why, except maybe that Joseph figured the kid died and the neighbors got blinded so he needed to protect himself as much as possible), and Jesus sends him away, saying "trouble me no more, Father."

I love to watch the Simpsons. I used to be a little embarrassed about that, but I've since decided it's about the best source of critique of modern American religion, so I'll admit it proudly now. They did a Christmas episode this past week, and the Simpsons characters acted out the story of the birth of Christ. Marge Simpson played Mary as the stereotypical Jewish mother, and when the angel announces to her that the child to be born within her will be the savior of the nations, she replies, "but not a doctor?" The frustrated angel argues that he will heal many people, but Marge says "still, no diploma to hang on the wall?"

Many of the stories about the challenges and surprises of parenting Jesus are not issues you and I would ever have to deal with as parents, but one story from Jesus' childhood sounds very familiar to anyone who has had children (or been a child, for that matter). It takes place in the second chapter of Luke (Luke 2:41-52)--we're not even past the chapter in which Jesus is born yet, though at this point he's about twelve years old. Mary and Joseph take Jesus along in the caravan of their extended family to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. They went through the motions of the festival and probably spent some time in the temple, and then when it was over they gathered with their family again to leave. They didn't see Jesus but figured he was playing with some of his cousins and surely he was somewhere along in the group. At the end of the day, though, they still hadn't seen him. "Where is Jesus? It's dinner time, and he never misses a meal." When they figured out what had happened, they turned around and traveled the day's journey back to Jerusalem. They found Jesus in the temple with the priests and elders, learning and asking questions. The teachers were impressed with him because he asked such wonderful questions and showed such understanding of what they were saying, and I'm pretty impressed because I tried to run away once and my parents found me in about 10 minutes: this is a skilled kid. But Mary was not impressed at all. "Child, why did you do this to your mother?" And Jesus answers back--he even sounds a little bratty in this response--"didn't you know I would be in my Father's house?" Jesus was clearly not the child parents typically expect.

We can whisper to each other about our amazement that Mary and Joseph would leave their child behind for a whole day before realizing the mistake, but the fact is we do the same thing every year. As our year progresses, we get through Thanksgiving and then tolerate Advent, which seems to be mostly about shopping, and somehow find ourselves at the manger on Christmas Eve. We enjoy the fellowship and joy of Christmas, and then we move on, heading back to our "real" lives, leaving Jesus behind at the festival.

Two Calendars

Much of our confusion comes from the differences and conflicts between the calendar of the Church and the calendar by which most of us order our lives. Christmas comes in December--the end of the year for us--but is close to the beginning of the Church year.

Exactly how Christmas ended up on December 25 is not certain; there are a few stories, and probably parts of each of them are the real reason for the holiday's dating. One of my favorite stories for its logic and simplicity is that the day was dated by medieval historians who determined the death of Jesus to have been on March 25, around AD 30. They reasoned--and this may sound a little strange, but approach history with charity; this is the way their logic worked--that since Jesus was sent by God and lived a full and perfect life as intended by God, he must have lived a whole number of years. Thus, his life began on March 25. Well, we don't celebrate Christmas in the Spring, but on that day the church historically celebrates the Annunciation, or the announcement to Mary that Jesus was going to be born. This was Jesus' conception, and at this time life was thought to begin at conception. The historians further assumed that Jesus, being perfect, would have had a complete gestation period of nine months, making December 25 the day of his birth.

Another theory, which probably has more to do with the truth, is that the early church, knowing that exactly what date Jesus was born had little theological significance, decided to place important days of the church calendar near events or celebrations that would make them easier to understand. Christmas, under this theory, was placed near the Winter solstice. I don't know a lot about astronomy, so if you know that I'm getting it wrong, you should feel free not to interrupt me because most people don't know and will believe whatever I say. At the autumnal equinox, on September 21, the day and night are the same length. Over the next three months, as we move toward the Winter solstice, the days get shorter and the nights get longer until we reach the shortest day of the year on the solstice itself. It is into this world--the darkest our world gets--that we celebrate the birth of Christ, whose life is light to us. It makes good sense: just as the night is getting unbearably long, we remember that darkness never overcomes light, and after we celebrate the birth of Christ, the world gets brighter.

In the Christian calendar, this is close to the beginning. The church year starts on the first Sunday of Advent, which, this year and many years, was the Sunday after Thanksgiving (that's not how it's dated, obviously, but it usually works out that way). Advent is a season of anticipation and preparation for the coming of Christ. Christmas Day marks the beginning of the Christmas festival, which lasts for twelve days--the annoying song is actually born in the tradition of the church. Though we and other churches sometimes have a "birthday party" for Jesus, which is useful because it helps children begin to build a relationship with Jesus and understand something of what the day means, Christmas is not a birthday. Birthdays are about remembering the day of our birth, but each Christmas Jesus is born into our lives anew; it is more than just commemoration. And then, on January 6, we celebrate Epiphany, when we remember the arrival of the wise men, we recognize Christ as King, and we anticipate his coming in final glory when the Kingdom of God is realized upon the earth. What a wonderful way to start the year: anticipating, receiving, and recognizing the gift of Christ.

In our calendar, though, Christmas is an ending. It is a point toward which we work in a frenzy, and New Year's Day is more than anything a revelry in relief and self-indulgence before a return to normalcy. After the whole HallowThanksMas (term coined by Greg Jones in Christian Century, December 22, 1999) season, by New Years', we're done. The well-intentioned among us make new years' resolutions, but they are almost always self-serving: "I'm going to lose twenty-five pounds this year," "I'm going to spend money more responsibly," or "I'm going to start an exercise routine."

Starting with Advent

What if instead, we started with Advent? What if we identified the beginning of our year as the first Sunday of Advent, anticipating the coming of the King? Perhaps we would be a little more content to leave the celebration of Christmas to the festival itself rather than singing and hearing Christmas music in November. More importantly, perhaps Advent would seem less like a chaotic rush if we knew we were going to have all twelve days of Christmas to celebrate when the time came. We would move from anticipation to a time of joy as we receive again the gift of Christmas, and then, Epiphany would provide a time not only for recognizing the kingship of Christ, but also for considering the ways we can live lives that acknowledge that kingship in the year we began by anticipating his coming.

Is it merely a semantic difference? Is there no practical effect to when the year begins? I'm not willing to believe that. It is surely more powerful to begin something with mystery and wonder than with New Year's Eve, on which nothing magical happens, except that we get to turn over another page on the calendar. Perhaps the good things about Christmas would then inform our goals and our focus for the year: being with others, giving, and child-like joy.

A Christmas carol that's hardly ever sung any more warns us that it won't be easy. Actually, this isn't a Christmas carol but a hymn for the feast of St. Stephen, which takes place on December 26. Stephen was the first deacon of the church, and thus he has significance for me because I am a member of the order of deacons. He is called a martyr because he died as a witness to the victory of Jesus Christ. You already recognize him when you hang a wreath on your door: Stephen's name means "wreath" in Greek, and so that is a symbol of his commitment to faith and the enduring victory of Christ, even in the face of an unwelcoming world. The hymn describes the difficulty of taking a different path this winter:

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay 'round about,
Deep and crisp and even:
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath'ring winter fuel.
"Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know'st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes' fountain."
"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pinelogs hither:
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither."
Page and monarch, forth they went,
Forth they went together:
Through the rude wind's wild lament,
And the bitter weather.
"Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how;
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, good my page;
Tread thou in them boldly:
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."
In his master's steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dented;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
Words by J. M. Neale (1818-66)

The world is set up to support the typical celebration of Christmas. The stores have sales, the city puts up decorations, and friends all have parties. But the world is also set up for us to leave Jesus behind at the festival and go back to our normal lives; to ground a new year in a "back to normal" attitude facilitated by New Year's Day. Staying at the festival with Jesus would require forging a different path, and might likely feel quite cold, but the master walks ahead of us, printing the snow ahead of us for warmth and guidance where it is least expected.

What if we were to start our new year at advent? What if we were to begin by anticipating, receiving, and recognizing Christ as King, and then to shape our years around that good news? "What if" indeed.

Thirsting in a Flood (Exodus 17:1-7)

2005-09-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost (A)
Heritage and Homecoming Sunday
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

1From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Exodus 17:1-7 nrsv

Prayer

Behold a broken world, we pray,
where want and war increase,
and grant us, Lord, in this our day,
the ancient dream of peace….
Bring, Lord, your better world to birth,
your kingdom, love’s domain,
where peace with God, and peace on earth,
and peace eternal reign.
Timothy Dudley-Smith, “Behold a Broken World”
United Methodist Hymnal, 426.

Flooded with hospitality?

When Rich and I talked about this service about a month ago, I asked lots of not terribly important questions: what is the lectionary scripture, what color stole should I bring, are there were going to be dumplings at lunch afterwards. Then we talked about what was happening at church and he told me about the success of renovations next door, about how much better the interns have been since I left, and he told me of a growing focus on hospitality. Hospitality? At first, that made about as much sense to me as Duke focusing on gothic architecture or A. L. Stanback focusing on teaching students. Hospitality is so much a part of what Union Grove is all about, and this church already does such a good job of welcoming people, that focusing on hospitality at first sounded redundant.

There is a lot of focus on hospitality around us. When I checked my e-mail one day last week, I had messages from Delta Airlines, US Airways, Independence Air, Hilton, and Choice Hotels all telling me that they wanted to welcome me on board or in their hotels. This happens every week, and a couple months ago Hilton even tried to convince me that my life depended on their hospitality: “Take me someplace that will renew my marriage,” the e-mail read, “take me to the Hilton” or something very similar; you’ll be glad to know I don’t keep these messages very long so I wasn’t able to check it to get the wording exactly right. Billboard after billboard on our way from Winston-Salem this morning advertised inexpensive places to rest and exciting things to do. Tourism is quickly becoming this state’s most important industry, and we call the vast, if loosely organized, system of hotels and entertainment the “hospitality industry.”

So much hospitality around… is there a good reason for us to focus on it here? Of course there is, because if the water’s salty, you can thirst in the middle of a flood.

Surely none of us has been able to avoid the tragic images of Louisiana, Mississippi, and now eastern Texas. In New Orleans especially, as levies break and inadequate storm walls are dwarfed by the power of the sea, water has flooded, been pushed back, and then flooded again the once-lively old city. News stories during the first weekend after Katrina chronicled the barbaric conditions and the violence that erupted as people reacted to hunger, darkness, and thirst. Over and over the story was told: in the middle of the worst flood event in our nation’s history, there was no water to drink. If water would come out of the faucet, which is still doesn’t in much of the city, then it had to be boiled before drinking. Canned food drives all over the country also collected bottled water in an effort to begin to quench the thirst of a whole region even as it stood on the brink of drowning.

The sad irony of sending water to New Orleans might have struck you too, but the reasons that was necessary were graphic and wrenching as we saw pictures of rescuers boating through floodwaters polluted by trash and cherished possessions; lost clothes, lost loves, lost dreams. If the water is salty and polluted, you can thirst in the middle of a flood.

If there is a flood of hospitality in this world, then it is at least a little salty and not the kind of welcome that people really need. Hospitality may roll easily off the tongues of hotel executives and advertisers, but when Union Grove says hospitality, it means something different. Not just providing a place for the community to meet, although that will no doubt continue to happen. Not just serving meals to people, although I’m sure we’ll keep doing that. Not just receiving visitors gladly, although no faithful church could fail in that area. Here hospitality means something far deeper. This is a place where a person may come to find a home in the fullest sense of that word: a place where the deepest needs of the heart and spirit are met: fellowship, love, a family in which to serve and to meet God.

Sharing the Wealth

In our scripture lesson, we find people thirsting without any sight of water, drinkable or otherwise. The Israelites, freshly freed from slavery, criticize their leader for not supplying water to them. Moses passes the buck, telling them they shouldn’t test the Lord. The people look at each other with eyebrows raised: “who’s testing the Lord? You brought us out here to the desert; where’s our water?” Moses appeals directly to God, who tells him to go ahead of the people and strike the rock at Horeb. God makes water come forth from the rock. Moses and the elders see this miracle, and then they must have had some new and very practical fears.

Many people felt the urge or even the need to help after Katrina struck, but so chaotic was the aftermath of that storm that victims reacted violently to medical evacuation helicopters and people bringing food and resources. Would you have wanted to be the first person to walk into the New Orleans convention center carrying a plat of water? The Bible is not interested in the miracle of the water from the rock and Horeb as a lesson in crowd control, but rather as a lesson of the faithfulness and power of God, so we don’t find out how the elders managed the crowd at this sought-after fountain. There’s no reason to suspect that it would have been orderly, however. The water was not coming from a convoy of tractor-trailers, which is tenuous enough when you haven’t had anything to drink in days, but rather from a rock in the middle of the desert. How long was this unlikely water supply going to last? Do you think people lined up quietly or rushed as soon as they heard the news to fill up with water and then perhaps came sneaking back to top off their thirst? Perhaps some of the elders suggested to Moses the wisdom of keeping the people away from the rock and somehow rationing the supply out to the tribes of Israel. But that doesn’t appear to be what happened. Somehow the people got the water God squeezed for them out of a rock in the desert.

Overrunning Hospitality

The mothers and fathers of this church began its life with great faith, to be sure. They met for a time as a loose fellowship group, but nearly 160 years ago they decided that they didn’t just want to enjoy each other’s fellowship, but in fact to constitute a church. That very decision was the first act of hospitality for this congregation: deciding to be more than a gathering of a few people, but rather to be a gathering in the name of Christ. This must have been the biggest group of people between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough at the time; an outpost of Orange County life. I’ll bet not even Friday afternoon bike riders made it out here in the 1850s. When they decided for us to be a church, they knew that meant welcoming new people, but we find ourselves in a time when there are far more people to welcome.

When I was here as an intern I talked some about the fact that nobody at Duke believed me when I talked about this church. Sociologists of the church tell us that a congregation the size of Union Grove with a history as an effective chapel to two or three families is supposed to be uncomfortable when it begins to attract new members by virtue of expansion in the neighboring community. Union Grove actually facilitated expansion by selling adjacent land and building a new building that could be a center of activity for the community. The sociologists go on to say that churches with the statistics of this one are not supposed to be interested in new programs, but rather in maintaining familiar worship and having the occasional pastoral visit. Union Grove conducts several small groups a week, Disciple Bible studies, prison outreach programs, fellowship meals, music programs, and supports and trains new ministers through its connection to Duke Divinity School, a service for which I am particularly grateful. Sociologists try to explain how churches function, and they give us lots of important information, but this church seems to have done an uncommonly good job of looking to scripture rather than sociologists to shape itself through its sixteen decades.

The elders of this church found something exciting—a special connection as a group of neighbors and friends—just as Moses and the elders of Israel saw the miracle of water coming from the rock. They didn’t look around and worry about what might happen if they shared the news; they made themselves a church and became a community for others. Ten years ago the leaders of this church found themselves holding 120 acres of land that they could have used as a buffer zone to maintain the status quo, but instead they chose to welcome people into this community that we all love and to create a place for all the people who make their way to Union Grove to live and worship. Faced with the exciting gift of a wonderful resource, this church has over and again and in more different ways than I could list recognized that these gifts come from God, and with God’s people they should be shared.

A community that uses the gospel to shape itself reads our epistle lesson today and sees not just pretty prose, but a mission statement:

1If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:1-4 nrsv

Shaped that way, we are a truly Christian church: one which welcomes others and creates a place for them. Hospitality indeed. We find ourselves not overrun, but, if we welcome with faithful courage, graced with exactly the right number of people to hear the gospel and eat the food and share the love and raise the children and build the buildings and sing the songs and tell the stories of this church.

Whoever Comes

That’s wonderful, and it is hospitality.

So why on earth would we focus on hospitality? There are lots of people trying to offer hospitality out in the world, and we’ve been doing a pretty good job of it already. Because if the water’s salty, you can thirst in a flood. And a bottle of water, hospitable though it is, does not quench thirst. Only a hearty welcome to a place where living water runs clear really quenches thirst. Living water runs in this sanctuary.

Put another way, the gospel doesn’t tell us to be hospitable. It tells us to live lives of radical hospitality. The water we have, the clothes we have, the food we have, the friendships we all have: they are gifts from God, exactly as miraculous as water streaming out of a rock in the desert. And we cannot be content to offer them to whichever people in the crowd happen to see us clumped over here and wander by to see what’s happening. The gospel calls us to engage the people we meet and to tell them about this place.

For me, this is where the deal-making begins. This is where I begin to tell God that when I live my life as a generally good person, avoiding lying, cheating, stealing, when I am a charitable person, and when I don’t to anything hurtful, then I am providing a Christian example and people will, upon seeing that example, want to learn about my faith. This is where I tell God that people choose to worship with similar looking people. This is where I tell God that it’s really not acceptable for me to talk openly about religion or explain what’s important to me without clear permission.

In our gospel lesson today (Matthew 21:23-27) the chief priests and elders attempted to corner Jesus by asking him the source of his authority, knowing that if he answered “nobody in particular” then he would look weak and if he answered “God” then he would look crazy. Jesus quickly turned the tables on them and asked them a similarly cornering question. I have a hunch that, if I listen and challenge myself to hear God’s will, my deal-making is not at all impressive to God.

I have lots of ways to explain why my church and I are not hospitable, and they are all about me keeping my hospitality from being too radical, lest I find myself surrounded by new people with new needs that I do not know how to meet comfortably.

The Hard Way Out

One of the biggest theological themes of our faith for me, and one about which I have preached from this pulpit many times before, is the way that Jesus often seems to be offering the easy way out of life’s challenges by telling us we don’t have to follow rules when in fact he demands that we live lives of prayer and spiritual purpose that create far higher standards than the strictest laws. The uniting theme of hospitality has a similar edge. At first, I thought Union Grove had taken the easy way out because this is a quite hospitable place already. But, in fact, the radical hospitality to which the gospel calls us is a dramatic and difficult undertaking.

What might that level of hospitality look like here? Does it mean a more personal, lay-driven form of evangelism in the community that greets everyone who moves within a few miles of the church? Does it mean creating housing for working poor families that need to escape the trap of high rents in Chapel Hill in order to save up for a down payment on a home? Does it mean doing the theological task of dialogue about the faith with people that the church tends to treat as sinners? Does it mean creating a place for recreation that looks like God’s kingdom, bringing together kids of all different backgrounds to play soccer and baseball on the field out back?

The Israelites called out in the desert, like each one of us has at some point in our lives, for the most basic needs. For them it was water in a land that had none. For us, more often than not, it is for true hospitality in a world that typically offers a shallow imitation. Moses listened to God and struck a rock at Horeb, and out came the water they needed. Somehow we felt a tugging within ourselves and we came to this place or came back to this place, and we found here a fountain of fellowship and spirit and love. Moses turned around and told the people what had happened so that they all could quench their thirst, and so too must we turn to the tides of people who need the riches of this place.

The radical hospitality that the gospel demands of us is challenging in ways we are not well exercised to handle, but we have the mothers and fathers of this congregation who have shown us how to be church. We have the prayers and the occasional cherished presence of people for whom today is a homecoming. We have the blessings of the legacies of our saints, and a wealth of hope from energetic youth and a serendipitous location. It turns out the very riches that the world needs for us to share are the ones which make it possible for us to face the challenge of sharing.

God struck a rock in the desert and we got to drink. Our thirsts will not be fully quenched on this earth, but now we find ourselves stewards of a great gift: praise God from whom all blessings flow, and may God give us strength to humble ourselves even as Christ did so that we might share his improbable gifts with all God’s people, who say with me now: Amen.

Faded Dreams on a Brilliant Cross (John 13:1-17)

2005-03-24T19:00:00.000-05:00

Maundy Thursday (A)
Providence United Methodist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina

1Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
12After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
John 13:1-17 NRSV

A faded cross

The temptation when I find myself before a group here at Providence is to attempt to elicit some laughter about not being able to come home again or perhaps a story about one of you changing my diapers. Jokes don’t feel quite right on Maundy Thursday before the table of the Lord. It is, though, an honor to be in this place that is my home, especially on this sacred night when we remember who we are in our failings and in our best moments.

During previous visits, many of you have complimented the cross I sometimes wear during worship, a ornate gift from a friend traveling in France. As I was gathering my vestments for this trip, I left that bright and beautiful cross in its place and instead went to a shadowbox frame beside my desk and pulled out the cross that this church gave me when I became an acolyte about 15 years ago. Its pewter finish is tarnished: its appearance not nearly so crisp as my memories of staring down at it during worship, losing myself in its intricate, crossing Celtic lines. Such is the mood of this night. We know that a cross is coming. And we know that it isn’t all about the bright and festive refrains of Easter. The chancel tonight resounds not with “Alleluia,” but with haunting words: “view the Lord of life arraigned; O the wormwood and the gall!”

Let us pray:

God, we shun not suffering, shame, or loss, but come together to learn of him who bore the cross. Nourish us, we pray, by his presence, and unite us in his love; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Methodist Worship Book, The Methodist Church
(Petersborough, England: Methodist Publishing House, 1999), 242 and
Noble, “Go to Dark Gethsemane” (choral octavo).

In the land of faded crosses

Thirty-five hundred miles away stand the ancient high crosses on which mine was modeled. The Celtic crosses of Ireland stand in cemeteries mostly, not marking specific graves, but standing in the midst of the church triumphant, their carvings rich in the symbolism and stories of the Bible. They were teaching tools as much as anything, because after all, what better place to teach someone what the church really believes than among the people who taught you? Our faith is one of tradition and history, and we do not dream up our faith alone in the woods, but among the witness and communion of the saints. Our faith is one of remembering. That’s what we do when we come to the table, but first we linger with another Christian who lived the gospel of our scripture tonight.

Those strong and beautiful, if faded, Celtic crosses that stand in Ireland have their place because of a man who prompted us last week to wear green, kiss Irish people, and, one of my friends bragged to me, eat green bagels. Like his feast day in our modern calendar, St. Patrick has become a cartoon. A couple of interesting legends float around about driving snakes out of Ireland, which he didn’t do, but mostly the spectacle of St. Patrick’s Day causes us Protestants to pat ourselves on the back for avoiding the recognition of historic saints in our worship. Surely such comical and secular days have no place in our calendar, we decide: what, after all, could a cartoon like St. Patrick teach us? In fact, Patrick was about as three-dimensional as people come, and he points quite clearly to much of the truth of this night if we stand with him.

Ireland was the farthest thing from anyone’s mind on the Welsh estate where Patrick grew up. By the time he was sixteen, he had strayed from the religious tradition of his grandfather, a priest, and spurned honest work in favor of carefree mischief with his friends. While “carefree” might not describe the life of most fifth century Welsh families, safety was a reasonable assumption: they lived within the bounds of the Roman Empire under the great Pax Romana. Patrick’s family no doubt tolerated his adolescence because they figured in their calm setting there would be plenty of time for him to hone his Latin skills and develop into a worthy successor for his father’s estate. But the peace of Rome was tattered here at the fringes of the empire, and Patrick was violently seized one afternoon from one of his father’s villas and sailed in chains the short trip across the Irish Sea (Cahill, 101-02, 106).

The Emerald Isle is now one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. Patrick’s Ireland, though, was outside the bounds of the Roman Empire. If he had focused on studies back at home long enough to see a map, over Ireland it would have read “here do be monsters,” for that which lay beyond the Roman Empire was the realm of chaos (Cahill, 108).

Patrick became the shepherd-slave of an Irish king. That might sound like not such a bad gig, but a fifth century Irish king was a chieftain at best, ruling with brute force over a small collection of farmers and shepherds. “Here do be monsters” was not terribly far from the truth. Patrick was stuck in his master’s fields, alone for months at a time. He was hungry and naked in a foreign land, and he could not adopt this land as his own, because he didn’t see other people often enough to learn the language very quickly. The sight of new people left him conflicted: he desperately needed human contact, but he had no words to speak with them (Cahill, 101).

Alone in the field, to pass the time as much as anything else, for he tells us that he didn’t then believe in God, Patrick began to pray. He prayed more and more, as often as two hundred times a day, he wrote later—and he was not prone to exaggerate. “The Spirit within [him] became ardent,” and he had energy to spare as he continued to make it through the six years of solitude and bondage. Patrick would eventually train under theologians in a French seminary, but he came to know God in the middle of Irish fields, and that would make all the difference in his life (St. Patrick).

After a vision in a dream, Patrick ran as a fugitive to a port deep in the South and found a ship that reluctantly agreed to take him. He escaped from slavery through more tribulations, finally to arrive back at home in Britain, where he tells us his family asked that after his dangerous travels, he should not leave them again, but should stay safe within the bounds of the Empire and their home (Cahill, 103-04).

With danger about

The strange contrast between siege and safety is common in scripture. Four hundred years before Patrick, the disciples might have had similar feelings. They found themselves in a room up off the busy street eating a Passover meal with Jesus. Like Patrick, they had faced quite enough adversity to know that their immediate peace was a perilous state and that danger was all too near: close enough even to reach into the room and steal away their precious friend, just as Patrick’s parents had seen him plucked from their villa in Wales.

Patrick came home with a relatively new faith, and the disciples too were still working out what it meant to be followers of Christ. They had hitched their lives to the promise of all that Jesus said and did, following him with enthusiasm, and now they found themselves in a strange place, as if they were foreigners in the midst of their closest friends. They had expected a king. They had expected a great battle. They had expected a revolution. Instead, they got a resigned carpenter; a meager offering of bread and wine; they got a surrender.

We know what comes next, so their sad state makes sense to us. But they were not finishing Lenten fasts. They were not piously thinking that it was good to be a little subdued in the days before Easter. Only Jesus and the one who would betray him could guess about Good Friday, much less Easter. The others should have been on a high. They walked beside their Lord into Jerusalem, showing that even without a mighty army and stallion, their Lord was King. But the strange kingship of Christ left them feeling out of place. Sometimes the destination isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The pain of loss

When Patrick finally made the difficult journey back to Britain, we can only assume that he was excited and relieved to see his family again. Those first hours back in his home must have felt exceedingly strange: for the first time in several years, he experienced safety, a full stomach, the love of family, the rest of sleep under a dry roof. This was the goal and dream in his mind for all those six years. But Patrick had grown up. He was no longer comfortable living by the kindness of his parents on their pastoral farm. He had become a traveler; he was a foreigner in his own home. That moment of realization might have been more painful than the torture of his solitude among flocks in Ireland. He was struck by the pain of one who has lost himself (Cahill, 105).

The disciples knew that pain: they had followed Christ, always thinking that at the next moment he would start to act like the king they knew him to be. And in the upper room, the hope surely must have fallen away. This was not the prelude to a great military victory. They had lost their chance to be part of the revolution of which they’d dreamed, even if they would spend the rest of the night vainly trying to make it happen themselves.

And we talk about all this because we know that pain too. The reason we don’t just skip from the trumpets of Palm Sunday to the trumpets of Easter is that sometimes you need an oboe and a violin. We know that pain too. Patrick looked around like I know you have before and he recognized what he saw, but it didn’t feel right. The shock of being back at home—of finally reaching the goal he thought would make him happy—startled him into looking at himself and seeing that his life did not resemble the hopes and dreams he had once quietly had for himself. We know that pain too. The disciples thought back to that afternoon when Jesus had performed miracles before the crowds and authorities without convincing a soul, they looked at themselves and their odd meal together and realized that this revolution was puttering: their hopes and dreams had died, and they had given up everything to be here: they had lost themselves.

In that moment of pain, Jesus did not apologize for where he had led them, and he certainly didn’t start acting like an earthly king for their benefit. He took a towel, poured water into a basin, and started to wash their feet. If their surroundings felt strange and the shock of Jesus’ humility felt painful before, then it’s understandable that this act left them completely incapacitated. Again, we know what comes next, so this seems sentimental and quaint to us, at least until we sit down and someone we admire and respect comes up, takes off our shoes, and starts washing things. Jesus took them to a strange and scary place—their way of understanding things was completely broken down. And then he finally started to build a calling for them again.

Our friend Patrick had scarcely settled back into his parents’ home—in fact his whole problem was that he couldn’t settle in there—when he began to have visions of the people of Ireland calling him back into their midst to help them in their suffering. Patrick would always feel strange in his homeland: he had missed years of education and he had been changed by life in the wild fields of Ireland (Cahill, 106). In order to find peace, he had to give up everything that the world around him called peace—the peace of Rome—and embrace the peace of the commandment of God. Can it be that the pain of a lost identity is what we need in order to embrace God’s will for us?

Jesus said to the disciples,

12b“Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
John 13:12b-15 NRSV

In the pain of their uncertainty and in the void of their vanished hopes and dreams, the disciples began to feel the rising tide of mission. It was one which required sacrifice, to be sure, but sacrifice of all that they had just found to be unimportant: their stature, their pride. But those things are often more difficult to give up.

When I’ve had that feeling of failure—the loss of hopes and dreams—it has been because I began to fear after some jarring event that I was not going to be successful. Not productive. Not accomplished. We are not called to be those things, says Henri Nouwen, but instead “we are called to be fruitful. …Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness” (Nouwen).

The disciples, and Patrick, and all of us, find ourselves staring up at this strange king who picks up children and makes no distinction between the rich and the poor around him. He speaks of the Kingdom and doesn’t point his fingers up the hill to the capital, but straight up toward heaven. We can worship in front of that image as often as we face it, but we can only really get it when we feel vulnerable and weak; when we see that our lives do not resemble the hopes and dreams we had for ourselves.

The Spirit reaches down to Patrick, who finds himself an alien in his home, and to the disciples who find themselves marching behind a king with a white flag, and to us, whenever we feel the pain of failure and of weakness, and brings us to the table. Jesus clarifies this business about foot-washing: “you shall love one another just as I have loved you.” It’s one of those tricky places where it sounds like Jesus is making things easier when he actually is raising the bar higher than we could clear on our own. “Just as I laid aside crowns and kingdoms, so shall you lay aside strength and human effort.” Andrew of Crete hears Jesus through the ages and understands:

It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ's feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours (Andrew).

Into a new calling

With the world as he understood it lost, Patrick went off to France to attend seminary. His education could only polish the true gift he brought with him as he went back to Ireland: his fruitfulness was the result of God using Patrick and his intimate connection to the language, the land, and the people of Ireland (Cahill, 107). Within his lifetime, Ireland had become a Christian land, not by force as in the Roman Empire, but by the spread of good news from tribe to tribe (Cahill, 109-10). Nobody but the Welsh boy who knew prosperity and slavery and chose to go back to the land of his slavery in order to find freedom could have made that happen.

The disciples had some rocky days yet to come, but even as the crucifixion darkened the earth before their eyes, they had the words of Christ from this night to reassure them that the darkness was but a cloud and the light would return. They had their new commandment, even as their faded dreams of earthly power and glory would hang on a rugged cross.

And finally, we too are left staring up at the king who washes feet, and perhaps tonight we are in a place to hear. He sets before us a table at which we join the communion of the disciples, of Patrick, of the saints of this church. When we’ve mourned our dreams, we come to this table to learn that that the success we thought would fill us is not our calling. Like Patrick, we know this world—we speak its language and know its people intimately—so think of the good we could do. We can look to his example as we try to find the pathway back home from this table. Patrick’s breastplate becomes our prayer:

I arise today:
in the might of heaven….
Eye of God for my foresight,
Ear of God for my hearing;
Word of God for my word... (St. Patrick)

We arise today from the pain of discovering that our lives don’t look the way we had hoped they might and that we have not managed to be exactly the people we hoped we would be, and with the bread of God for our life, we pin our faded dreams to a cross that faith tells us will soon shine with a whole different kind of glory. We listen for the calling that will fill us again. Send us, O God, to that place where only we can bear the fruit of your best dreams.

Works Cited and Resources for Further Reading

Thomas Cahill. How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1995.
Cahill traces the Christianization of Ireland, through which important texts and strains of philosophy were brought to the island from the Roman Empire and maintained in Ireland as the Roman Empire fell to be redistributed across Europe.
St. Patrick of Ireland. Confession. Image, 1998. Also available on the web.
Patrick tells his own story in sparse but penetrating terms. This work makes for intriguing comparison with St. Augustine's Confessions, as Cahill describes in the book above.
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Address at Yale University (March 30, 1995).
Andrew of Crete. Quoted in Oswald Chambers, "The Relinquished Life" in My Utmost for His Highest. Also available on the web.
St. Patrick of Ireland. "The Cry of the Deer" (St. Patrick's Breastplate).

Communing Home (Luke 22:14-23)

2004-11-21T19:00:00.000-05:00

Christ the King Sunday (NCL)
Evening Chapel Service
Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina

14When the hour came, he [reclined] at the table, and the apostles with him. 15He said to them, “[Oh, how ]I have [longed] to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; 18for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this [into] remembrance of me.” 20And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. 21But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. 22For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!” 23Then they began to ask one another which one of them it would be who would do this.
Luke 22:14-23 NRSV, ed. MTP

Contradictions

As you were hearing the scripture reading, you might have thought that it seemed a little odd. We’re here celebrating the fellowship that our youth have enjoyed through the years, spending time together in a setting of which communion is not a regular part, at almost exactly the wrong time of year to be remembering the week before Jesus’ death, and yet we hear the story of the Last Supper.

At least a little bit, it’s because communion is worth talking about more often than we do. It’s worth doing more often too, but I’m not hoping to convince anybody of that tonight. And it’s worth talking about when we can all focus. Most sermons that discuss communion take place right before communion. In fact, you might be craning your neck right now to see if there’s juice and bread sitting up here somewhere. You’re safe—they won’t let me do that. If you’re like me, in the middle of most communion sermons, you’ve already moved ahead in your mind. “I wonder what kind of bread we’ll get.” “I like the old days when they handed out cuplets and wafers; this new way feels like a drive-through window.” “I wish she’d hurry up and finish her sermon; communion takes for ever and we’ll definitely be late for lunch now.” It’s easy to get caught up in the traditionalism, and thus to miss the tradition. Details, our preferences, the way things used to be: they cloud our vision of the mission we have and the examples in our past of how to live out that calling.

Coming Home

If it’s true that you can’t go home again, then I think this is one of the reasons. As I think about this place and what it has meant to me and, indeed, my family over the past fifty years, it’s really tempting to think about the things that have changed. The little things that are the easiest to notice about a place but which don’t have all that much to do with what it’s really about. For a long time, I got annoyed as I drove past this church on my way to visit home from college, because it looked so different.

There used to be a magnolia tree about where I’m standing. Graham and I had serious conversations about chaining ourselves to it when they planned to cut it down, but we were pretty cynical teenagers, and we knew we’d end up losing. Graham gave up first as I remember.

We weren’t big fans of tearing down the Brown Building either. Surely the great traditions we enjoyed would disappear along with the building. I can still remember walking into UMYF one of my first times and seeing Jamie, who, in his long beard and shaggy hair, did not appear to be the kind of person my parents would want me to hang out with. The prejudice took about 42 seconds to get over. I also remember meeting Tanya, who was going to drive a group of us over to the Methodist Home to go caroling. She looked safe, but promptly drove me into a telephone pole. I could have been hurt, except that we were going 2 miles an hour and were still in the church parking lot. I remember having Sunday school in a basement room that also served as the storage room for rusty roll-away beds and folded-up mattresses whose purpose I can’t imagine now. Some memories are less attractive than others, but I wanted to remember all that and all the wonderful things in between. Traditionalism was very tempting. We saved wood from the Brown Building in part because it was our history, but also because it just didn’t seem possible to me that youth could be the same without at least a little of the building. Traditionalism is being worried about which building we meet in; tradition is meeting in a spirit of learning and growth.

The things we can usually name to define what a place means to us are the details that inevitably change. Whether you associate food around this church with my grandfather Grady, or Ducky, or Delores, the way it’s served has stayed the same. However the chicken is cooked, it feeds people who gather to enjoy each other and to serve together. Traditionalism is always wanting the chicken fried just so, because that’s the way we used to do it. Tradition is wanting to continue gathering in Christ’s name and sharing food together.

Shoes behind me

Coming home is not all about the small details. It’s about security too. I’ve been part of this church one way or another all my life. Once I entered middle school, I nominally became part of the youth group. But I wasn’t really invested until my first mission trip to the Appalachian mountains as part of the church’s Mountain TOP team. The main characters of that week are all here. Graham and I did a three-legged race together and we walked around like we each had one leg stuck in the same potato sack for the next two years. Jim Wollin, ever the model of Christian humility, shared with Tanya and me that he suspected we were united by the fact that we were perfect, and he chartered the Perfect Society, which despite all odds survived for several years. Graham didn’t get to join because he had an odd physical deformity—a huge indentation in his chest. Jamie didn’t get to join either because he convinced Graham to break open a glow-stick one night and pour it into the huge indentation in his chest and then run around our cabins like ET’s taller brother.

Fun memories, but, if I’m honest, details that don’t really matter very much, except to explain why it’s so much fun for all of us to be together here tonight. I learned on Wednesday night of that Mountain TOP week what it means to be church. Jim had to leave us to go to Statesville, where his father was about to die. I saw one of our friends crying soon after, and I just didn’t get it. I asked Tanya what was wrong—our friend didn’t even know Mr. Wollin. “But she knows Jim,” Tanya said, “and her grandfather died not too long ago.” “Oh.”

As the evening went on, I began to understand that I had reason to mourn too: I was losing my grandmother. During a worship service about an hour later, there was an invitation and prayer time, and as I knelt the weight of that loss came to me, and I began to cry. I didn’t want to draw attention, but I felt very comfortable as I checked out of the corner of my eye and saw a pair of sneakers not far behind me—Others were still praying too and I wasn’t alone. Actually, the shoes were Tanya’s, and we were the only two left at the front. She had stood behind me precisely so that I would not be alone. What more is church—our Christian tradition—than standing beside our brothers and sisters in the faith? That’s what we learned to do here.

Communion

Everybody likes feeling that kind of comfort and security. That’s communion. It’s the real reason behind most of that clamoring we do to have things stay the same. We like the idea of going back to a place and finding that sense of security that we remember; that is so absent in many parts of God’s world.

Perhaps the search for a lost sense of security was what drove the odd clamoring of the disciples in our scripture too: talking among themselves about who would betray Jesus, already breaking the communion he had just instituted.

When I think back to the details of my time as a youth in this church—not the things we did for one another, but the scenery and the comic relief, in tiny ways I am betraying the important things I learned here. To seek understanding of my faith. To serve other people as they present themselves, not as I choose them. To live in ways that support and challenge others rather than simply conforming. You can do those things in a Brown Building or in a rental house down the street; in a makeshift chapel in the Cumberland Mountains or in this chapel right here; under a magnolia tree outside or under whatever shelter you find.

Like it or not, our faith is not about going back home. Find me one person in the Bible who had a good homecoming experience. This church, and the youth group in particular, did not love and support us so we’d come back. We didn’t learn traditionalism here; we learned tradition.

Jaroslav Pelikan said “traditionalism is the dead faith of the living; tradition is the living faith of the dead.” We learned to draw life from the ages of Christian faith. We were not handed a faith that only works in this place or with these people.

Communing Home

A faith that tells you not to sit still, not to dream of the way things used to be but to seek out God’s work for us to do in the world must also provide some security. Even as Jesus and the disciples stood on the edge of the most significant events of human history, Jesus taught them how to bind themselves together in his life and his blood.

To different extents with each of us, this church gave us Bibles, taught us Sunday School, taught us to sing, confirmed us, led us into service, sent us off to college, and called us into ministry in God’s world.

Sure, Graham and Jamie and Tanya and I all made commitments as youth here that keep us thankful for this place and happy to get to return. But you made promises too. Communion doesn’t just pull back those who have left to the place they call home, but it draws you into our lives as well. When you celebrate communion here at Providence, part of what you promise is to continue what you’ve started, or rather what a group of people started 51 years minus eight days ago in Paul Ervin’s house down Sharon Lane, or rather what Jesus started in the upper room. A place in which people gather to learn, worship, fellowship, and serve, and then to follow God’s calling.

You never quite know when you’re doing it, either. Because I learned here to listen carefully for what God might say in my life, I heard a calling to ministry in a worship service up in Winston-Salem the summer before my senior year of college. I talked to the minister later about the words that had meant the most to me, and he said he didn’t really know whether he said them or not, but they weren’t written in his text. I think part of what happened is that God revealed to me the fullness of what many of you and others here at Providence had been telling me my whole life. Hundreds of quick comments, compliments on speaking, and nudges in the right direction. Not to mention Joe Hamby telling me that he’d never had a youth become a minister and he hoped I would keep him from being a complete failure. Hopefully he’s had some other youth become a real minister.

People ask me often too about my choice not to be a parish minister. All evidence provided here to the contrary, I am a decent preacher, I enjoy being with congregations of all sizes, and I truly miss having pastoral relationships with people that I enjoyed while serving a church. What I would hope for people to glean from me is that there are many avenues for ministry, and each one of us is called to one or the other. Or maybe two or three of the paths, as seems to be my problem. The statistics for people getting as far down the path to ordained ministry as I have are absolutely terrible. It’s a hard row, and impossible to navigate on one’s own. You can get people excited about that pretty easily, but it’s easy to forget that it’s equally difficult to become exactly the kind of teacher, or fundraiser, or salesperson, or designer, or banker that God calls us to be. Communion demands that we support one another and live in a way that teaches our youth what it means to be part of a tradition and a Christian community.

We do communion so that we grow into a memory of Christ that will shape our faith and our lives. It shapes our memories of each other too, so that when we think back fondly of this place, we don’t mutter about change, but rather celebrate faith and growth, and as you continue the life of this community, you don’t think too hard about the impressive statistics of this church, but rather pray for those who have left, eager to makes lives for ourselves in this world just like you taught us.

Returns & Exchanges (Colossians 3:12-17)

2003-12-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday of Christmas (C)
Asbury & Longtown United Methodist Churches
Hamptonville, North Carolina

41Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 49He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50But they did not understand what he said to them. 51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
52And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
Luke 2:41-52 NRSV
12As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:12-17 NRSV

Appearances

This year, my wife and I celebrated our first Christmas in our own home. It was exciting to have both our families come to our house and see the work we’ve done decorating and getting ready. I was amazed at the way the house we’ve lived in for six months now became home over the past couple of weeks.

One of the things we tried to do as we decorated our house and planned meals and bought gifts was to work at connecting those things with who we are. We gave gifts that came from this area—our hometown now—and we made our favorite foods for family meals. The theme continued when we decorated our house, too: we wanted it to represent who we are. As we’ve driven around town lately, I’ve looked at Christmas decorations on other houses with that thought in mind too, looking to see what decorations might show about the people who live in the house: are they especially festive and excited about Christmas with lighted bushes and ice-cycles on their porch, or do they want to focus on the birth of Christ with a nativity scene in the yard, or do they want to celebrate the heritage of this part of the state with a Moravian star?

Starting the New Year

Figuring out who we are is an important part of our job at this time of year. Nathan has probably mentioned over the last few weeks that Advent is the beginning of a new year in the church. The first Sunday of Advent, back on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, was the beginning of the church year. During the season of Advent, we learn about who God is. We wait and watch for the coming of God on Earth as a mighty king, and if we think hard about it, it’s still a little surprising now two thousand and three years later that God in fact comes as a vulnerable, impoverished infant.

Now, with the king born and God revealed in ways we could not possibly have expected, we have to figure out how to react. We’ve spent Advent anticipating God’s coming and learning who God is: now in response we have a chance to figure out who we will be. Just as being in a new house this year gave us a chance to think about new ways of reflecting who we are, receiving the Christ child at Christmas gives Christians a chance to rethink how they will live in God’s world.

That’s why we didn’t read a familiar Christmas story this morning. Today is the first Sunday of Christmas, but in its fullness the festival of Christ is not just about a baby born in a manger: it is about how Christ shapes who we are. Paul’s words in Colossians spell out for us what should make us unique: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

‘Tis the season for… meekness?

There’s not much about a modern Christmas that points to those qualities. I’d imagine that like me, many of you made a trip or two down to Winston-Salem to go to Hanes Mall this season in search of some good deals for Christmas gifts. As I drove near the mall early last week, I noticed at least two or three times the normal number of police cars on patrol, and saw five or six cars stopped and receiving tickets in the span of no more than twenty minutes. I heard later that the Winston-Salem police had increased their patrol in that area because of the Christmas rush. Apparently that area at this time of the year is one of the worst places in the state for aggressive driving. Somewhere the same Christ who cried in a manger two thousand years ago weeps that we celebrate his birthday by cutting off our neighbors in traffic and running red lights.

But now Christmas is over, as far as the shopping world is concerned. It’s the weekend after Christmas where everyone goes to the after-Christmas sales and returns the sweater that didn’t fit and the shoes that were the wrong color. Returning and exchanging presents has, for many people, become as big a part of Christmas as picking the perfect gift for someone else.

Finding the perfect gift for someone else carries a unique feeling of excitement. Not the excitement that you’re going to get something in return, but the knowledge that you’ve found something that your husband or mother or niece will really enjoy. I’ve never gotten that feeling when I exchanged a gift on the day after.

Some of you are bound to be thinking by now, “where did Nathan find this guy? He’s up there behind our pulpit, supposedly preaching the Word of God, and really just giving us a lecture on not returning Christmas gifts? What’s he want me to do with the pants that don’t reach my knees or the hat that swallows my whole face?” Of course there’s nothing particularly sinful about exchanging presents. I’m sure in fact that it’s morally correct to return something you’re not likely to use in favor of something that you will use. What I’m wondering is if the same things that lead us to return Christmas gifts sometimes lead us to treat people in ways that make us look quite different than Paul’s image of the identity we are to put on ourselves.

No returns on people

When you’re used to getting exactly the gift you want and to taking it back if it’s wrong, then other people can really ruin your day. I have never successfully exchanged an annoying relative, and I tried to return a rude store clerk one time, but the manager was worse. People do not come with a receipt, and there’s never a merchandise return label attached.

Teaching people how to live with each other is an important part of Colossians. Now that we set about the task of determining what it means to be Christians, part of our task is just learning to be in close quarters with other people as part of a spiritual community. And like your family, you have to love the people in your church. And, I might add, you’re part of a two-point charge, so you even have to love the people at {Asbury, Longtown}. And we’re part of the Methodist connexion, so we have to love people in churches all over the world. And we Methodists see ourselves in communion with Christians of many denominations, so it turns out we’re stuck with a pretty big group of people to love. “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” Paul wrote to the Colossians. In other words, interact with others in such a way that they see you love them. When you get right down to it, that might be the hardest thing God asks us to do, but God seems generally unconcerned with how difficult our callings are.

Loving people is a nice idea, and Paul’s words are beautiful as we would expect, but we need more concrete ways of thinking about them, because it’s too easy to accept the idea that we should love other people and to manage to never really do it except where it’s convenient.

Customers

A friend reminded me a recently that I wrote a letter to the editor of my college newspaper years ago complaining that they had said students were customers of the university. The view of the editors seemed to be that since students pay tuition, they are customers of a business which produces education and degrees. I suppose at some level that is correct, but it’s not the traditional conception of education at all, and it has dangerous effects. I’ve been around universities for quite a few years now, and I see a significant trend of students behaving as if the university community exists to serve them and complaints about what special favors they should get for all the money they pay as tuition.

I can’t help but believe that those same people will one day happen into the door of a church, perhaps one they saw advertised on TV, and assume that like other places that ask for money and advertise to get their attention, the church exists to provide services to them, the effective customers: education services, in some places daycare services, entertainment services, and perhaps in some warped way, salvation as the ultimate product.

There is a lot about our world that shapes us as consumers: people who are primarily concerned about what other people can do for us. But when Paul describes how we should clothe ourselves, he doesn’t tell us to put on the clothes of customers, but of servants: “clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Some of the strangest stories in the gospels will make a lot more sense if you look at Jesus’ life with the idea that when he saw other people, he imagined what he could do for them rather than what they could do for him.

Blessings in disguise

Our gospel lesson this morning, in which Mary and Joseph leave Jesus behind at the temple, is one of those fantastically human stories in the Bible. What parent hasn’t either worried that they might leave their child behind somewhere or actually done it? When Mary gets back to her son, her frustration and guilt both show through as she asks him, “child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” That frustration foreshadows the feelings of the faithful throughout the ages: Jesus was just not what she had expected. She had finally been able to be excited about giving birth to a son as she understood that it was the result of God’s choosing her and that her new family would not be torn apart by controversy. She might have even had some wonderful ideas about the things her child would do in the world, but he was very different than the child she had imagined having: the devoted son who grows up at a respectable pace, goes into the family business, and loves his mother. Instead she got a rather odd and aloof boy whose definition of a good time was to hang out with the ministers in the church.

The wishes we have for what other people will do for us are usually not very well-informed, and they’ll leave us frustrated with the people who should mean the most to us: upset because they don’t fit into our plan correctly. At Christmas, we can look to a struggling young mother with a handful of a son, or to a sweater that doesn’t quite fit, and we see the way we often feel about other people. But our job now that Christ had come is to figure out what Christians are so that we might figure out who we will be: his people, his church.

“Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” Paul asks of us. Beautiful words that lead us to search for ways we can be of service to others rather than to be quite so concerned with what they can do for us. We can’t return or exchange people, but part of God’s grace is the opportunity to work on ourselves and exchange the attitude of a customer for the attitude of a servant.

Stuck Together (Acts 4:32-35)

2003-04-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

The Second Sunday of Easter (B)
Boger City United Methodist Church
Lincolnton, North Carolina

32Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. 33With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
Acts 4:32-35 NRSV

Communal living

Sometimes the Bible makes you wonder why you joined church. If only you’d read today’s scripture first, you might have had some idea that people would all the time be asking you to give money and telling you how to spend what you had left. Like the small print in the newspaper, nobody reads Acts. But we should; Acts is our story, except that the most aggressive pledge drive we could imagine wouldn’t compare to today’s scripture.

Following this passage, we meet Ananias and Sapphira. You just know they’re going to be bad when you hear their names. Ananias sells a piece of property, so to fill the expectations of the church, he brings the proceeds to the community. But he keeps a little for himself (with his wife’s full knowledge, Luke is careful to note). Peter finds out, and the Holy Spirit fries them both on the spot. Really. It’s right there in the Bible.

Why such a drastic ending to the story? Not because Ananias and Sapphira chose to give less than everything to the church, but because they lied to God about what they had to give.

So what does the scripture mean for us? When we read about the early church and hear about common property and distribution by need, it sounds like communism. There are some distinct differences from communism—the members joined the community voluntarily, they participated in normal business activities outside the community, and they shared their resources with the poor. Still, though, I’ll bet none of you are ready to sell the house and move into the sanctuary here, and I’m certainly not either. We’re in good company. The main purpose for this communal life was care of the poor, and from Paul’s writings we know that the church did not continue in this communal pattern and came up with other mechanisms to care for the poor. During the whole history of the church, only a very few groups have ever tried to live communally. The obvious example in modern times are monastic communities, although their structures are changing as we speak. In this country most attempts at communal living have been among fringe groups like the Shakers and the Oneidaites and more recently groups of civil rights believers like those at Koinonia Farms in Americus, Georgia.

We shouldn’t dismiss something in the Bible just because it doesn’t happen any more. When we break from biblical norms, it should be with some fear and trepidation, and certainly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the context of the book of Acts, though, this passage is not there to tell us that we are supposed to live in communes. It’s main function is to show us how close the early church was. They were a tight-knit community to the point that they even shared all of their possessions with each other. They were all new in the faith, and the common excitement in the spirit and the promise of the coming Kingdom of God was sufficient to sustain them through the difficulties of living that close together.

Over time, the church has discerned that we do not need to live together and share goods in common. But we aren’t totally different from the early church of Acts either. We still try to care for the poor as one of our most important responsibilities, and our faith is still expressed in a church community.

Being Church

We don’t live communally any more, but this passage still has a lot to tell us about what it means to be the church. The scripture says first that “those who believed were of one heart and soul.” I led a Disciple Bible Study group this year, and one of the themes that kept coming up was that the covenant established through Jesus Christ meant that we no longer had to follow the huge number of laws found in the Old Testament, but that frequently the requirements of the new covenant were deeper:

43“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….
Matthew 5:43-44 NRSV

It’s a lot harder to really love your enemies than to follow a bunch of laws about what you can eat. In the same way, learning that we should be “of one heart and soul” should be considerably more daunting than the possibility of living in a commune. This means caring for each other on a much deeper level. Being the church is about having the heart and soul of our neighbors: loving each other as we love ourselves, and knowing that our souls are all tied up together so that if you aren’t right with God, I cannot be either.

In the central verse of the scripture, we learn that it is not living as a community that brings God’s favor on the early church, but rather what they do as a community:

33With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
Acts 4:33 NRSV

Because they had a unity of purpose and supported each other at such a deep level, they had great power to share the gospel, and through their life together and their proclamation of the gospel, they felt God’s grace.

Some parts of the communal living message are pretty important for us to hear too. The believers brought all that they had and “laid it at the apostles’ feet.” That challenges us all, laity and ministers alike. We as laity hear and are challenged to consider how much of ourselves we give to the church. Do we really shape our lives to the gospel and to this group of people were we have a promise of love and God’s Spirit rests with us? We as ministers are challenged to remember that people do bring a tremendous amount of themselves to the church and that we must be good stewards of the trust that is placed in the church through us.

Wrestling for a blessing

A lot of those communal groups I talked about earlier got that way because they read the story of Acts and were drawn to a compelling idea: they wanted to be part of something that had the grace and power of the early church. But we’ve read ahead a little bit. We know that there will be cost to living so close together. In the next verses, we learn about Ananias and Sapphira. Later on some of the earliest fights within the church will be caused the this communal system of sharing resources.

The great power and the presence of God’s grace in the early church is something that we all know in some way or another, else you wouldn’t keep coming back to this place. It shows through in our life together from time to time, and we can hardly be blamed for wanting more of it, but it turns out to be hard to get. To be that kind of church, we may not have to share all our possessions, but we do have to struggle with the temptations to look after ourselves first, to take care of our own house and leave our neighbors’ problems to our neighbors, and to build up treasures for ourselves here in the mothy, rusty world we call home.

To get the blessing of the grace and power the early church knew and to break through to the daybreak of God’s promise for the church, we have to wrestle with the strange notions of our independence all through the night.

After Easter

This time in our Christian calendar is about just that struggle. Our gospel lesson today was the story of Thomas, who has had the unfortunate label “doubting Thomas” ever since he had the gall to want to see proof of Jesus’ resurrection, as if all of us wouldn’t like to see some proof for ourselves. Thomas was not a person of questionable dedication. When Jesus wanted to go to Jerusalem to see Lazarus, the disciples were wary.

8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”
John 11:8 NRSV

It’s hard to tell exactly who they were concerned about. Jesus had not gotten a good reception there so might be in danger, but they hadn’t forgotten that they were going to be standing next to him, and stones thrown at Jesus might well strike them instead. But poor old doubting Thomas speaks up:

16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John 11:16 NRSV

The disciple who had been willing to follow Jesus to death had trouble believing that Jesus had come back from the dead. He was having trouble wrestling with the idea that faith could not always be grounded in individual experience. After Easter, faith is found in the community.

Having one heart and soul with the gathering of Christian disciples means that we can perceive the experience of the Holy Spirit in each other, and our faith can be nourished by the witness of our companions.

This is the first of six Sundays between Easter and Pentecost. This is the time when we wrestle with what it means to live in the presence of the risen Christ and we look for the coming of God’s grace through the Spirit. It is hard—nearly impossible—to get used to the idea of worshipping one who has died and risen again. To try to believe such a thing on our own might be hopeless. Thomas eventually got to put his fingers in Christ’s wounds and it became easy for him to believe. Far be it from me to say that such a thing will not happen for you. But until it does, we go through the struggle of living together—sharing each other’s heart and soul—so that we might have faith for others when they are weak and rest on the foundation of faith laid by those around us when we are weak ourselves.

The psalmist sings of this great blessing:

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! … It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.
Psalm 133:1, 3 NRSV

Life together is not easy, but the struggle to be the church is what completes the picture as God’s kingdom breaks into this world like morning after a long dark night.

I Will Sing (John 3:14-21)

2003-03-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Fourth Sunday in Lent (B)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
John 3:14-21 NRSV

Prayer for Courage

O Lord, open our eyes that we may see the needs of others;open our ears that we may hear their cries;open our hearts so that they need not be without succor; let us not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich. Show us where love and hope and faith are needed, and use us to bring them to those places. And so open our eyes and our ears that we may this coming day be able to do some work of peace for thee. Amen.
Alan Paton, South Africa, 20th cent., United Methodist Hymnal, p. 459

Sermon

When I was eleven, my family moved to a neighborhood that was across the street from a grocery store. That year, or maybe the next, I got permission to ride my bike up to the main street, down the sidewalk until I was directly opposite the store, walk my bike across the street when the traffic cleared, and ride into the shopping center. Let’s take some time to laugh at me a little bit. A normal kid would have scrounged up fifty cents, ridden to the store, bought a candy bar, and come home. You’ve known me for a year and a half: do you think I did what a normal kid would do? I figured out that if you bought a six-pack of candy bars—the existence of which my parents had kept hidden from me until this new stage of independence—then you paid much less for each one. And, there are actually coupons in the paper on Sundays for those six-packs. I further noticed that if I was discreet when I came back home, my parents wouldn’t know I had six candy bars in my room, and so the speed at which I ate them was completely up to me. Plain Hershey bars, which is what I always got, now make me a little sick to my stomach—they just quit looking appetizing somewhere along in there. The same thing happened with those candy canes with red, yellow, and blue stripes that are cherry-flavored instead of peppermint. One Christmas season, I got some of those. I can’t remember how many boxes, but I know I got more than one because, after all, they were only going to be available for a limited time, and who knows: I might have had a coupon for multiple boxes. One candy cane is nice, one dozen are quite satisfying. Two dozen could make you hate Christmas. I hid what I couldn’t finish somewhere in the back of the closet. It might still be there.

Why do I tell one more embarrassing story of my childhood as a nerd? Because scripture verses, apparently, are like Hershey bars and candy canes. Nice to hear, reassuring, maybe even inspiring at first, but if you hear John 3:16 enough times, your ears slowly become deadened to the beauty of the language and the comfort in its promise. You know the passage I’m talking about: the football verse. Evangelical Christians everywhere paint “John 3:16” in big, bold letters on poster-board and then hold up their signs when the TV camera gets near them at football and basketball games. I would be willing to bet, although of course betting is wrong, that either the citation “John 3:16” or the verse itself has been printed on more t-shirts than any other part of scripture. In fact, not only have the words of the verse become empty to me: they give me something like indigestion because when I hear them, I get the feeling somebody’s trying to convert me, and I have a hard time swallowing that.

This passage is often quoted as if it contains the entire Christian faith:

16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
John 3:16 NRSV

But there is more to our faith than belief in the saving power of faith in Christ—important as that is—and there is more to this passage than that one promise. Jesus continued speaking past the football verse:

17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
John 3:17-21 NRSV

It’s pretty hard to get the big picture about being a Christian from just a few verses of scripture, but we’d sure be getting a lot closer if we invited people to read on past verse 16 to Jesus’ explanation of how we respond to the promise of eternal life. Christ does not condemn people, he explains, but people condemn themselves because they turn inward and aren’t willing to trust anything outside themselves, including and especially God.

Maybe more often than we’d like to admit, we fit Jesus’ description of people who back away from the light because we don’t want anybody to see who we really are. The other kind of people he describes, the kind Jesus would prefer us to be, are not exactly who you might think. They aren’t the do-gooders of the world, and they might not even be the people wearing the t-shirts that say John 3:16. They might have never asked themselves, “what would Jesus do?” and they may not have ever bought anything from a Christian bookstore. “Those who do what is true,” Jesus said, and he didn’t mean the people who would pass any kind of test we have for what makes a good Christian, but rather those people who do as their hearts tell them—or, to use different words, people who try to live as God leads them. Those people come to the light, so that what they’ve done is not hidden and, even where they’ve done wrong, God and all of us can see that they’ve sought to do God’s will.

It takes a special kind of faith to know that because God sent his son not to condemn, but to save, what God demands of us is not that we do the right thing at every moment of every day, but rather that even when we have sinned, we open ourselves to God’s presence—to God’s light—so that people can see that we are living our lives for God and that God accepts that wonderful gift despite our failings, and fills in the gaps of our ability with the grace of Jesus Christ.

The closing hymn today talks about the response to God’s grace.

What wondrous love is this,
that caused the Lord of life
to lay aside his crown
for my soul, for my soul.
To God and to the Lamb
who is the great I AM,
while millions join the theme
I will sing, I will sing.
“What Wondrous Love is This,” United Methodist Hymnal, p. 292

And maybe, just as the poet spoke of singing to express the amazement and joy he felt at the gift of God’s grace, singing is good way to understand what the scripture is all about. Jesus wasn’t concerned that we live lives completely free of sin—at least not in this passage—but rather that we live our lives in the presence of God. Though people are often afraid to let others hear them singing, no human person sings without mistake. God’s expectation and the only thing we can ask of each other is that when we sing, we sing for God.

We could even look to John Wesley’s directions for singing and find suggestions for how to live what is true.

III. Live all of life. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find a blessing.
IV. Live with a good courage. Beware of living as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but live your life with strength. Be no more afraid of your life now, or more ashamed of its being seen, than when you did the deeds of Satan.
VIII. Above all, live spiritually. Have an eye to God in every thing you do. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you do, and see that your heart is not carried away with your achievements, but offered to God continually; so shall your living be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
Adapted from John Wesley, “Directions for Singing,”
United Methodist Hymnal, p. vii

We often talk about Lent as if it is all about being reserved, fasting from potato chips, and praying more often than usual. In fact what it is really about, and what hopefully all of those things would help us to do at least a little bit, is being more aware of God’s will for our lives. Whether you’re a child, a parent, a senior, a youth, a preacher, a singer, a truck driver, or a hermit, part of God’s will is that you live boldly. For

17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
John 3:17 NRSV

An older version of the Methodist Book of Worship said:

Grant to us the precious gift of faith, that we may know that the son of God is come, and may have power to overcome the worldand gain a blessed immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Methodist Book of Worship (1965) reprinted in United Methodist Book of Worship, §251

What Jesus wanted to be sure the people heard was that through faith they would have the freedom to act as they were led by the Spirit, and the “power to overcome the world,” which would tend to teach us to hold back the truest expressions of ourselves. We can’t love each other the way Christ intended without realizing that the son of God is come. We can’t live with the courage we need without knowing that we have gained a blessed immortality. We can’t do God’s true justice unless we have the power to overcome the world.

Jesus wanted us to live as God’s people. We seek God’s will, we share the good news of salvation with others, and, quite literally for Christ’s sake, we live and even sing boldly: illumined, warmed, and comforted by God’s light.

Closing Prayer

O God, rich in mercy, you so loved the world that, when we were dead in our sins, you sent your only Son for our deliverance. Lifted up from the earth, he is light and life; exalted upon the cross, he is truth and salvation. Raise us up with Christ that we may walk as children of light. We ask this through Christ, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, holy and mighty God, for ever and for ever. Amen.
The Methodist Worship Book, p. 536

Healing and Dealing (Mark 2:1-12)

2003-02-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Week Following the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (B)
Service of Word & Table, York Chapel
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

1When [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. 3Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7“Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 9Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? 10But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—11“I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” 12And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Mark 2:1-12 NRSV

Bart the faith healer

I remember very frequently during my childhood hearing my minister say from the pulpit that the best source of theology in popular culture was the cartoon Peanuts. Of course, within this highly trained theological community we all know that’s an irresponsible statement. Clearly the best source for theology in popular culture is the Simpsons.

In an episode entitled “Faith Off,” America’s favorite bald, yellow everyman Homer begins his celebration of homecoming weekend by setting a bucket of superglue over the dean’s door. Because deans are heroic, unstoppable figures, Homer ends up with the bucket on his own head. After the town doctor delivers the news that he can’t remove the bucket, Homer’s son Bart recklessly drills two holes through it so that he can see. Turns out he still can’t see too well, though, and while driving the family car he careens them into a ditch in front of Brother Faith’s Revival. Inside the tent, Brother Faith works his way around to Homer, and tries to remove the bucket, but finds that, and I quote, “Satan really jammed that thing on good.” Brother Faith enlists Bart as his “holy helper,” and Bart lays hands on Homer, exclaims under direction, “I have the power,” and the bucket comes off.

Lisa tries to explain that the “miracle” was actually just the result of the stage lights heating up the bucket, but it doesn’t matter: the bucket is gone and we’ve had our laugh.

Crazy

The Simpsons episode serves to suggest how we might react to today’s scripture if it hadn’t come out of the Bible. We have a word for stories like this. Crazy. It’s really pretty strange, when you think about it, that here in the context of worship, what you rightfully expect me to do over the next few minutes is sing the praises of four men who wrapped up their poor, paralyzed brother in his mat, dug through the mess of thatch covering some little house, and dropped him down next to a traveling evangelist who didn’t even know how to be a good traveling evangelist: where were his tent, fireworks, and theme song?

Don’t get me wrong—especially if you know someone on my Board of Ordained Ministry. I say some crazy stuff in sermons but it would be terrible to stand up here and rant about Jesus being a lousy evangelist. It’s our expectations that I mean to attack. As bad as it would be to insult Jesus’ evangelism skills, it is even more of an insult to his holy word when we read it with our minds so shut that we consider four men dropping their buddy through a roof to be business as usual in Bibleland. It is indeed something of a show, and it’s certainly one we’re intended to be watching.

Sins and sickness

All good seminarians know that Mark’s gospel moves quickly and urgently through the story of Jesus’ ministry, so we find ourselves at the beginning of chapter two and already he is a celebrity. By this time in their gospels, Matthew is introducing the wise men and Luke’s talking about a new tax plan, but Mark is telling us about how Jesus can’t get out any more because of the fans and now even his house is surrounded by people begging for a sermon. The siege reaches a new level when people start digging a hole through the roof. Jesus looks at the man who gets dropped through, is moved by the faith of his friends, and forgives him of his sin.

Now, it just so happens that there are scribes sitting around, waiting for Jesus to do something wrong. They see this occur and become righteously indignant that Jesus would be so brash as to forgive sins, which is, of course, God’s right alone. Forget for a moment, though, how mean the scribes are. Imagine yourself as one of the friends on the roof: you probably aren’t very happy either. “Gracious, man. Who cares if his sins are forgiven? We wanted you to heal him so he could walk!” Perhaps Jesus was so focused on the kingdom that it didn’t even occur to him to heal the man’s paralysis. Jesus healed the dangerous sickness that he saw: the sin in the man’s heart.

But immediately Jesus knows what’s happening—he perceives the growing annoyance in the roofers and the scribes—and he answers them all. Some were upset that he forgave sins, some were upset that he just talked about sins and didn’t do what they wanted. Jesus used the desires of the latter to quiet the complaints of the former. To the friends, “You wanted him to walk? He shall, but I hope one day you remember what I did first—it is far more important.” To the scribes, “You want proof that the forgiveness of sins was legitimate? Fine. I’ll heal his paralysis too and then you will have a visible sign that I can do both things.”

1% Healing

People have been struggling with the relationship between sin and sickness since the first good person died, but some of us have made an art out of ignoring the problem. The Simpsons is funny because it picks up on an image of traveling evangelists that we, the established church, love to hate—or at least love to relegate to the sidelines—from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham. Brother Faith is imaginary, but a woman called Everybody’s Sister was real. Aimee Semple McPherson traveled throughout the United States and her native Canada early in the twentieth century with the bright sights and sounds of the Salvation Army and the passion of Pentecostalism, preaching Christ as savior, healer, baptizer, and coming king (215). She used to try to explain that her services were 99% salvation and 1% healing, but the insistence fell on deaf ears (174). The healing, however little she wanted it to be of her ministry, was the part everyone talked about and clamored for. Sister based her preaching and healing on Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” If Christ could heal then, she reasoned, since he is present and unchanged today, he can do it now too. She found that people don’t change much over time either. During a trip to San Diego in 1921, so many people came to a prayer service that groups occupied every room in the arena, including a walk-in refrigerator, and spilled out to a nearby Lutheran church. One has to wonder about the relative effectiveness of prayer in a Lutheran church versus a walk-in refrigerator. Crowds found out where she was staying and came to the house with their prayer needs. She went to a hotel, but couldn’t leave without being stopped on the street by more people who wanted prayers (160).

For all those adoring fans, Sister Aimee had her critics as well. Even people who had supported the trailblazing evangelist Billy Sunday criticized Sister for saying that healing was a part of salvation: they feared, with some reason, that people who didn’t receive apparent healing would lose their faith (221).

Wholeness

I bet if Sister Aimee read Mark 2 with us, she would point to it as proof that healing was part of salvation. The two certainly appear to be tied up good in our text. But if not for the annoyance of the people around him, Jesus would have been done after he forgave the paralytic’s sins. Not because he didn’t believe that physical handicaps are difficult. Not because physical healing is harder to do—the scandal with the scribes was about the forgiving, not the healing: they’d seen healing before. Certainly not because the offering hadn’t been large enough or there wasn’t enough Spirit in the room. Jesus was spreading the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and he healed the sickness that was keeping the paralytic from that wholeness.

With a little scripture and a little imagination, we can come up with ideas about Jesus’ motivation, the scribes’ tactics, and the four friends’ annoyance at the whole episode. But we don’t get much description at all of the paralytic. We don’t even have a name: the only way we can refer to him is by a sickness Jesus didn’t even seem to care about at first. I’ve discovered looking back over my sermons that I make a lot out of our perspective as modern Christians: are we more like the critical scribes, or the faithful mat-dropping friends, or the paralyzed man who seeks healing for his legs and gets his life healed instead? There’s a different sermon in this odd little passage for each of those characters, and they’re all probably good sermons to hear, but you only came for one.

“Come down and meet us now”

As baptized Christians who have not yet reached perfection, we all find ourselves having received some measure of forgiveness—healing for a sickness we didn’t know we had at first—and still wanting more from the traveling Jewish evangelist. We’re sitting on the cold floor of a meager house, staring up at a God who knows us more deeply that we could have imagined—so deeply in fact that he sees right past what we thought to be our deepest desires. It doesn’t matter whether you approached Jesus yourself, or because you were failed by your legs or your will someone else had to drop you down next to him. He has pushed away the crowds and even added an open access through the roof, and set a table before us filled with what we need.

One way or another, we will see our way off the mat and we’ll walk out of the house through the crowd. Whether he will grant us physical healing, I cannot say. I can, though, be the prophet who says that God will strengthen us for our callings, so then

Come, let us use the grace divine, and all with one accord, in a perpetual covenant join ourselves to Christ the Lord; give up ourselves, through Jesus’ power, his name to glorify; and promise, in this sacred hour, for God to live and die.
Charles Wesley, “Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine,”
The United Methodist Hymnal, 606

Aimee Semple McPherson used to tell about an early experience in her life. She had severely injured her ankle and she had prayed with her friends about it, but it continued to swell and cause pain. She discerned that this required “no common case of healing, but a miracle.” She didn’t need group prayers: this called for “the faith which would say, ‘Rise and walk’” (83). Her husband invoked the Holy Spirit and used that very phrase: Sister and her newly healed ankle rose and walked through one of the most amazing stories of ministry in the face of opposition and the work of the Holy Spirit that we know how to tell.

Jesus looked down at the paralytic and sees you and me and knows that we don’t require a common case of healing, but a miracle. May we live into the miracle of Christ’s presence with us, and hear his urging to rise and walk and seal our lives in service to the kingdom of heaven.

Benediction

Think what you will about Aimee Semple McPherson and her revivals, but I know this: at the end of her services, she led the congregation in a rousing chorus of “God be with you till we meet again,” and they rose and walked out of that place still humming along and ready to serve God. I say to you, stand up and…

Go in peace. And as you go, know this:
By the power of God, you were created and brought into this world;
By the mercy of God, you have been sustained until this very moment;
And by the love of God, fully revealed in Jesus the Christ, you are being redeemed, now and forevermore.
Amen.
Benediction paraphrased from the Rev. Dr. Bill J. Leonard,
Dean of the Divinity School, Wake Forest University

References

Page numbers in text refer to Edith L. Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993).
See also Bill J. Leonard, Word of God Across the Ages: Using Christian History in Preaching (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 1991).

I Hear Voices (1 Samuel 3:1-4:1a)

2003-01-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Second Sunday After the Epiphany (B)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

3:1Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
2At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” 5and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. 6The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” 7Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” 11Then the Lord said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. 13For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”
15Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” 17Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” 18So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”
19As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. 21The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord. 4:1aAnd the word of Samuel came to all Israel.
1 Samuel 3:1-4:1a NRSV

Out of the silence

I couldn’t count how often I’ve heard that back in “Bible times” God spoke to people regularly, but now God doesn’t do that any more. When you read the stories of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, and hear about prophets and leaders talking to God and receiving clear instructions, it’s easy to fall into this notion that until a couple hundred years ago, God was downright chatty and very involved in things around earth, and then God kind of went into retirement lately, so we don’t hear from him much any more.

The fact is, though, that the scripture goes out of its way to tell us that even this far back, there was a time when God seemed distant from the people. Samuel was in training with God’s chosen priest and prophet Eli, but even in such good company, Samuel had never really “known” the Lord. Much like us, Samuel lived in a world where people weren’t used to hearing a calling from God, and so it never even struck him—a person with at least some informal theological training—that God might speak to him. He didn’t even really know how to listen, but out of the silence, with help from his blind old mentor, Samuel heard.

At least part of the message for us is that what makes the times when God seems chatty different from the times when it seems God must have retired is not how much God speaks, but how much we hear.

In holy places

Samuel does seem to have been one step ahead of us. While Eli was asleep in his room, Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, near the ark of the covenant: the Holy of Holies. Why would he be doing that? Surely there was a cot for him somewhere else.

There are any number of reasons. The scripture tells us that Samuel did not yet know the Lord; perhaps he didn’t realize how holy was the place he had picked to sleep. That’s pretty hard to believe, though. He was “ministering to the Lord under Eli,” so it stands to reason that he would have been observing the worship life of the temple for quite a while, and he would know that this inner sanctuary was the place of God’s special presence. Maybe he was scared. Foreign powers were threatening the well-being of Israel and the nation feared being conquered. Israel was upset at the system of spiritual leadership and was calling for a more powerful king. Maybe Samuel was worried about the course of his people and wanted to be close to God where he might be more protected.

Although it’s hard to say with an entirely straight face, the epistle lesson this week suggests that where we sleep is of significance: sleeping is an intimate act that involves great trust. Maybe Samuel slept in God’s presence because he was aching to know God. So then, how is he any different from us? Though young and old, we all would like to know God more closely. We’re not sleeping in the sanctuary, and I’m not suggesting anybody bring their sleeping bags next week, but to varying degrees we have all centered our lives in the church: this is where we come for the pivotal moments in our lives, we return for the beginning of each week, we break bread together, we share each other’s concerns and praises.

Once we hear

Believe it or not, I think we’re actually on the right track to hear God’s word for us. I think we could stand to use language of discernment a little more, and we could certainly get better at helping each other to hear God’s voice (after all, if not for Eli, Samuel might still be trying wandering around, trying to find the person who was speaking to him in the night). What happens, though, when we finally hear God’s voice?

From our scripture and the witness of the history of the church, it appears the first thing that will probably happen is that we’ll decide we don’t like what God’s voice has to say. God’s message almost always goes against the grain of the world—sometimes even of the church. Poor young Samuel was immediately set in opposition to his mentor when he heard God’s message of judgment against Eli for his failure to restrain his wayward sons. You can imagine that as he finished talking with God and lay back down, he was tying to think of ways that he could avoid telling the man who had trained him and cared for him that his time in God’s favor had ended. And let’s not forget either that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.” Samuel might have been worried about the reaction he would receive when he told people he heard voices at night, never mind what they were saying. Samuel went about his morning chores, opening the doors into the temple, a routine action that took on new significance on this particular morning now that Samuel had become a new mouthpiece for God’s word to the people.

Eli called out to Samuel, and the nervous new prophet answered the same way he had answered God: “here I am.” Eli reminded Samuel that it was not for him to decide which of God’s words got shared: he had to tell all that had been told to him. And so Samuel sheepishly told Eli of God’s word against him.

Here at the climax of the story, it’s pretty hard to believe what happens next. Eli gives up. If anyone else had come to him and said, “the Lord came to me in a dream last night and said your gig is up,” he would have protested. But Samuel was just the right person to deliver the message. Eli trusted him; even called to him as his son, which probably had something to do with Eli wishing his sons had been as good as Samuel, and then he never would have been in this trouble to start with. Eli had seen that Samuel had a good heart and a humble spirit, and he could see also how difficult this message was for Samuel to deliver, and he knew that it was God’s word.

Just the right message

God found exactly the right person to speak God’s message. That’s a pretty overwhelming thing to realize if you’ve received a message from God. The psalmists says

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord,
you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Psalm 139:1-5 NRSV

God knows each of us so intimately that he is able to choose exactly the right message for us to hear: one that we will be able to understand and one that the world will be able to understand when we speak it. We would probably try, like Samuel, to run from that special message, so God hems us in, behind and before, protecting us for the moment from the dangers around, and keeping us in one place so that we must listen. And then God’s hand is laid upon us in an act of comfort and command.

Greater things than these

In a world where privacy is valued so much and we aren’t used to other people knowing things about us that we didn’t share, the idea that God knows us so well that he can choose a message that only we can deliver to the world is pretty amazing. In the gospel passage today, Nathanael believed in Jesus because Jesus managed to see him while he was hidden under a fig tree. Jesus was amused:

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.”
John 1:50 NRSV

We are shocked by the power of a God who knows us when we think we are hidden, but that’s nothing. The amazing thing is not that God speaks to us. It is not even that God knows exactly which message we will be able to deliver to God’s world. The amazing thing is that God will strengthen us and stand with us as we share God’s message.

As Eli told Samuel, silence is not an option. Christians must carry God’s message into the world. The good news is that when we speak a prophetic message, we do so with the help of the Holy Spirit and the entire communion of the saints. Silence is not an option, but God’s promise is that failure will not be our end.

Pointing to the Light (John 1:6-8, 19-28)

2002-12-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Third Sunday of Advent (B)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
19This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” 21And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” 22Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23He said,
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as the prophet Isaiah said.
24Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” 26John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, 27the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” 28This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
John 1:6-8, 19-28 NRSV

The Posse

I can imagine John sitting by the side of the road, resting after sharing his message of preparation with a crowd nearby. He’s playing with the rope he wears as a belt, and he looks like he’s waiting. Up comes a determined group of ministers, probably wearing some sign of their office and looking very stern.

“Who are you?” they ask. John knows why they’ve come. People have started to talk about him down in the big city, and the authorities sent this posse to intimidate him—the balance of power in Jerusalem was pretty strained, and the Jews didn’t want anyone talking about some new order of government the way John was. So, when our not-so-merry band of priestly thugs approaches, John cuts to the chase:

“Well, I’m not the messiah.” I love that answer. Next time I go to a new church and someone asks my name, I’m going to say, “Well, I’m not Jesus.” John understood what, or rather who, was coming, and so he was being entirely serious, but he didn’t sound that way to these guys from downtown. As far as they’re concerned, he just some crazy guy in the forest.

“You’re not the messiah? Oh, well then you must be the great prophet Elijah—no, wait—are you Moses?”

And the others join in, “hey, I’ve been wanting to ask you, Moses, what’s the deal with that law about blended fabric? I have this great wool/cotton blend sweater that I want to wear to temple.”

“No, guys, this isn’t Moses—it’s Jonah,” says one who noticed his simple clothes. “See, he looks like he just got out of the water and put on a bathrobe.”

And then finally, “you’re all wrong. He’s Cain. Look at the mark on his forehead,” as a particularly mean-looking member of the group strikes him.

Standing around him as he buckles over, the bullies ask, “so who are you really? Give us something to tell the bosses.”

“I am the one crying out in the wilderness,” John whispers in all the voice he can manage. “‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ just as Isaiah said.”

They left him lying there and went back to the city, joking as they went, each of them trying to hide from the others their uneasiness about what had just happened. Some of them had heard about this man teaching and baptizing people and had begun to wonder if perhaps he was the messiah, and as they approached, he had looked at them with piercing eyes and answered the question before they asked: “no, I am not the messiah.”

Eating crickets

John is a pretty strange figure, really, and so we don’t pay him much attention now. After all, his main job was announcing the coming of Jesus, and we already know about Jesus coming. We found out when we went to the mall in October and saw the decorations.

John doesn’t fit very well into the Christmas story because he isn’t cute and sweet like the baby Jesus, and he isn’t quaint like the manger or exotic like the wise men. He’s bizarre. Mark tells us a little about him:

6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.”
Mark 1:6 NRSV

The gospel writer John, not the same person as John the Baptist, looks past his strange appearance and describes the important part for us: John's duty:

6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
John 1:6-8 NRSV

It’s all about the light. John's job was to point forward to the coming of Christ.

Pointing to light

One of the gifts of the advent season is that as we wait and watch for the coming of Christ, we have some time to consider what his coming means, but I believe this scripture—and in different ways all of the scriptures we have read this morning—calls us to consider how we hear the good news about Christ. By my reckoning, John was the first Christian minister. He would also be the first Christian martyr: an unhappy dual designation for all of us who call ourselves ministers.

I’ve been thinking about the ministry quite a lot over the past couple of weeks in part because of news in the country and our community, and I imagine many of you have as well. Heather and I just returned from an anniversary trip to Boston, and everywhere we went, the issue came back to me. The first night we were there, we visited Trinity Church, just across Copley Square from the Boston Public Library, and I learned that it had been the parish served by Phillips Brooks in the late nineteenth century. Perhaps it was in the church’s offices, now nestled among skyscrapers, that Brooks wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The statues of him at the church demonstrate what a dear place he won in the hearts of his parishioners, and the fact that we still sing his hymn as one of our favorite Christmas carols demonstrates just how effectively he served as a herald of Christ. Trinity felt to us like a very dark church: the city soot had darkened the bricks of the building, and those modern office towers were blocking out the sunlight from the stained glass windows, but something of Brooks—or maybe something that he preached—was still in the building to be sure. The light of Christ was there, and it radiated from the place. Brooks and the ministers after him have been experts at pointing people to the light.

When we woke up the next morning, the city was glued to their television sets, learning about the resignation of the embattled Bernard Cardinal Law as Archbishop of Boston. Early that morning the Vatican had announced the Pope’s decision to accept his resignation, and most local stations displaced their regular schedules for continuing coverage until the afternoon. When the Boston Globe was delivered to our room yesterday morning, it included pages of coverage too, including the story of Cardinal Law’s career. It highlighted his work for civil rights, his sometimes unpopular stance for the traditional theology of the church, and his work forging relationships with Protestants and Jews. He pointed to the light in ways only he could, but we’ve all heard of his failings as an administrator when he got too caught up in protecting those who worked for him.

One of the last things we did before we left yesterday was visit the church served by a preacher I’ve heard several times at Duke and grown to respect very much. I’ve come to expect great and prophetic preaching from him, but sitting there in his church home, I was struck by how much others expect of him too. He should be as poetic as Phillips Brooks, as active in social causes as Cardinal Law, as caring and generous as Rich, as witty as yours truly. But no failings. Every minister, whether they serve the Old North Church where the signal lanterns were hung for Paul Revere or King’s Chapel, from which the gospel has been preached since 1688, Phillips Brooks’s Trinity Church or our own Union Grove, is doing his or her best to fulfill the legacy of John the Baptist: to cry out in a world that rarely hears such things, “Make straight the way of the Lord”; to testify to the light.

When torches fail

I’ve invoked some pretty powerful names: some because of their historical value, and some because of what they mean to us. Very few of us have any experience of Cardinal Law as a minister, for example. To us he is just a fallen prince of the Catholic Church, and for some, perhaps, he confirms suspicions that there are deep problems in the Catholic Church. Judging him is easy, because we don’t have any stake in his ministry or his life. When we think about a pastor closer to us who has fallen from his pedestal, we realize just how prone we are to connect the light to which they point with the ministers themselves. The gospel writer certainly understood this, very carefully saying that

[John the Baptist] was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
John 1:8 NRSV

Scripture talks about the beauty of the messengers of God, but we lose something vital and ask far too much of preachers when we focus on them rather than their message.

It’s a little scary for me as a young preacher to open up all these questions and then give you the honest truth: I don’t have any good answers to my own questions, and I suppose it’s quite possible that the way I’ve asked them doesn’t make a lot of sense to anyone else. I wouldn’t want to ask you to do something I cannot, and I certainly cannot easily forgive ministers who betray the trust placed in them by virtue of their office. We have very little practice—even those of us who are ministers—at considering the role ministers play in the church and in our lives. I know it probably isn’t what you think Advent is all about, but the story of John gives us a chance to do that.

Watching in prayer

We miss something when we skip right past the story of John and straight on to the message he preaches and the coming King whom he announces. Christ will certainly come, but there is work to do so that we might be prepared. Part of that is to make straight the pathway he will take into our world, our lives, our hearts. Part of it is to think about those who carry his message to us. The people who take our hands and point us toward the light.

A minister friend of mine was visiting from Winston-Salem last week and as we had lunch together, he jokingly told me that he’d gotten two clergy perks in one day: the plumber who had come to his house that morning to fix a leaking pipe had reduced his rate, and the mechanic who had finished work on his car had charged him only for parts: no labor. Every now and then, there’s a perk for ministers, but today they’re a lot more likely to encounter a gang on the road that doesn’t think much of what they do and beats them up like I imagined the gang doing to John, maybe not physically, but tragically just the same. This concept is not strange to you, either, because many of you have followed the calling for all Christians to be ministers, and lots of those have been disappointed or confused in the living out of that calling. If not, by the way, you’re not doing it right.

Ministers would do well to look to John for a model of ministry, and in fact many of the ideas built into our system of ministry are true to John's witness. We all would do well, though, to look to the posse sent after him for a model of how not to be God’s people. I’m pretty sure none of us have ever joined a mob and gone to beat somebody up. But have any of us ever tried to intimidate another? Judged based on the little bit that we know and not given someone time to explain themselves? Assumed a person had nothing to share with us based on their appearance, sex, race, age, or class? The scene our scripture recounts happens in little ways all the time, and we should linger with it, even though it’s disappointing and bizarre in the middle of our precious holiday season, so that it affects us.

As you watch for the coming of Christ, I beg you also to pray that his light might come in ways that will transform this world, and that God will give strength and all those other wonderful characteristics we talked about, to those who struggle to use feeble human lives to point toward the light.

Pop Quiz (Mark 13:24-37)

2002-12-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday of Advent (B)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

24“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
28“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Mark 13:24-37 NRSV

Helpful Confusion

During my last year at Wake Forest, the faculty considered ending the requirement that all students take a course in philosophy. Faculty members and even some students in the philosophy, religion, and other humanities departments spoke out in favor of continuing the requirement, which was easily the least popular of the required courses. Finally, though, it was a Math professor—not the typical supporter by any means—who gave the most convincing argument for keeping the course. He said that he could quite easily have gone through college taking only math and science courses, which he enjoyed and obviously was quite good at. But he took a chance and enrolled in a philosophy course, and found himself utterly confused. Doesn’t sound too great at first, but he appreciated the experience. He had been coasting along in school, doing what was asked of him but never thinking far past the next assignment. He reflected that it was a wonderful gift to learn relatively early that the subject area in which he was an expert only explained a little part of the world and to face something that his mind simply was not equipped to handle.

In today’s gospel text, we meet Jesus and the disciples just when the disciples were starting to feel like experts. They had heard Jesus teach for quite a while now, and they were getting excited about the new ideas he had and the new kingdom he told them about. Peter, James, John, and Andrew, who always knew the answers—they probably got beat up and had their collection plate money stolen during disciple recess—tried to show off that they were paying attention:

“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”
Mark 13:4 NRSV

“You’ve been talking about the new kingdom, Jesus; when is it coming?” they asked. And Jesus showed them that they only understood a tiny little part of his message. The text still speaks to us in much the same way, except I think we may be a little less excited about the scene Jesus describes at the coming of the kingdom.

Waiting and Hoping

This is the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of the Christian year; what a terrible way to start off, huh? The whole rest of the world is singing Christmas carols and putting up tinsel, and we’re sitting in here talking about fig tree leaves and masters coming home to slaves in the middle of the night. And the prayers, the liturgy for lighting the advent wreath, and the songs have all been about hope, and I’m talking about stars falling from heaven and the darkening of the sun. Where is the hope here?

The fact is, like the disciples, we only understand a tiny little part of the message. It’s all well and good for the Bible to talk about the coming of Christ, but it says right there in the Bible, “‘this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,’” and it’s hard for that to make a whole lot of sense to us. Lots of generations before us have read that and then proceeded to pass away, so the whole idea of waiting seems pretty ridiculous. You think maybe that’s why our whole society ignores Advent?

Advent is about waiting and hoping, but what for? We all act as if we don’t think anything will actually change on December 25th, and what thinking person would do any different? We believe that God is great and strong and good, but let’s get real. He’s not coming this month. Isaiah prophesied about people just like us when he prayed to God

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Isaiah 64:6b-7 NRSV

Since we don’t really think God is going to come, our faith has become light, unable to anchor us, and so we get blown off course. We’ve allowed Jesus’ talk about his second coming to whither into pretty images and we’ve given up waiting for his predictions to come true. So where is the hope for us?

Behind the Symbols

We have work to do first. We have to discover something to believe in, and you can’t believe in symbols for very long without being gravely disappointed. Neither Advent nor Christmas is about stars and trees and presents. I’m not going to ask you to give all those things up because I don’t want to give them up myself, I’m not sure it would be helpful, and you wouldn’t listen to me anyway. But let’s at least not make them important thing about the season. The great star in the East pointed to something, and so should our symbols. They point to nothing less than the

“‘…Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.”
Mark 13:26b NRSV

And here we reach our second major problem with Advent. Like Rich said in the newsletter this week, Advent has traditionally been a time when we remember the preparations for the coming of the Christ child two thousand years ago, and when we prepare ourselves for the second coming of the Christ. I’m willing to guess, though, that lots of people—probably not anyone here, but lots of people—would prefer that Christ not come again. It just doesn’t sound very pleasant. Jesus tells us there’s suffering, after which

24bThe sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Mark 13:24b-25 NRSV

Who really wants that to happen? This world may not be perfect, but we’ve gotten used to it. There’s the problem.

If you are comfortable in this world, then I encourage you to ignore Advent. Christmas is the holiday for you. Waiting and hoping are just not worthwhile, so jump to the fun stuff. Advent only makes sense if you want something else to hold on to. If you need to believe that as wonderful as the sun, the moon, and the stars may be, when they fall away it will be because a new, brighter, more perfect light has come and we no longer need those things.

Advent is a special time when we anticipate our favorite stories about Jesus’ birth, but if we do it right, it’s also a time when we look at ourselves and our world and decide that we shouldn’t be comfortable. We shouldn’t be comfortable that people are starving a stone’s throw away and that their starvation will last long past the holiday season when people are feeling generous with canned goods. We shouldn’t be comfortable that we stand on the brink of World War III—that’s right, you heard it here first—and our own neighbors worship the flag of one aggressor and the oil of another.

The alternative is to trust in the kind of king who gets born in a feeding trough, who teaches that people who trust in God should not be concerned about their status or well-being in this world, and who gets strung up on a cross for telling the truth to people who were completely comfortable with the world as they knew it.

If we could choose that alternative, then whatever you imagine as hope would pale in comparison to the power and the glory of the hope we would have that God would come this month. Our hope in the kingdom will not make us dreamy-eyed and nostalgic, but rather will be empowering. Because we hope and believe in the coming of Christ, we can work for a whole new order in the world where God’s commandments—human life, right worship, peace between God’s children—are our highest values. Where we see ourselves as slaves keeping Christ’s house in his absence, and preparing for his welcome return. The command to keep awake so that the master doesn’t find us asleep will be an easy one, just as it’s hard to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, because we will be so excited about what the morning will bring.

Puzzling Quiz

But the idea that the morning will bring anything new is still pretty foreign to us. I told you about the Math professor who argued to keep philosophy as a required course. He liked it because it taught him how to handle confusion. Philosophy largely confused me too, and it still does. I’ve gotten pretty good at nodding my head and smiling knowingly when my really smart friends refer to some philosopher at school to cover up for just how clueless I am. I do remember one lecture, though, when the professor told us about the pop quiz puzzle. There was probably a fancier name for it, but I’m doing good to remember the idea at all. It went something like this. On Friday, a teacher told his class that he was going to give a surprise quiz the following week. One clever student—we’ll call him Jamie—went home and thought about this pop quiz. He didn’t know the subject very well, and was upset that he was going to miss his whole weekend to study. Jamie tried to figure out what day the quiz might be. First, he noticed that it couldn’t be Friday, because if they got to Thursday and hadn’t had the quiz yet, then everyone would know it was on Friday, and the teacher had said it would be a surprise. Friday is out. Well, now the text couldn’t be on Thursday, because if they got to Wednesday with no quiz then everyone would know the quiz was on Thursday, because Friday was already ruled out. Thursday is out too. By the same logic, the test couldn’t be on Wednesday or Tuesday. That left Monday as the only possible day, so a test given that day wouldn’t be a surprise. Jamie figured out there was no way for the teacher to give a surprise pop quiz, so he spent his weekend playing with his friends, going to church and youth, and watching Monty Python movies. Anyone want to guess what happened? The teacher gave the quiz on Wednesday morning, Jamie was surprised, and he failed.

Did I tell this story just to embarrass Jamie? Certainly not, although that would have been a noble enough goal. We read Jesus’ prophecy about his second coming, especially the part about the present generation not passing away before all these things come to be, and we reason that since, as far as we understand, part of the prophecy was not true, we should just read this all as a nice set of symbols. That part about expecting the master to come home and keeping awake—we don’t really need to do that, because he hasn’t come back in the past two thousand years. The odds are pretty good he won’t come back this year either. Well, the odds were pretty good Jamie wouldn’t fail the pop quiz.

Gifts and Strength

There’s one other reason I think we’re often reluctant to prepare for the coming of Christ. I know that I, at least, am pretty concerned that I would fail his test. If the master’s not going to be happy with us slaves when he gets home, we might as well not even try, right? St. Paul knew a church not entirely different from us, and he assured them that they had what it takes to prepare for Christ’s coming, and he would encourage us as well:

4I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—6just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—7so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:4-9 NRSV

We sang at the beginning of the service about

Saints, before the altar bendingwatching long in hope and fear.
"Angels From the Realms of Glory" (Hymnal 220, v. 4)

The altar is before us. Here’s our chance to choose to eat a different kind of food, hope for a different kind of king, and watch for a different kind of world.

All Saints' Day Prayer

2002-11-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

All Saints' Sunday (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

O God, our rock, our fortress and our might,

Across the ages you have sent us more witnesses than we could recognize, more help than we could seek, and more of yourself than we have been able to love. We thank you especially today for the saints of our faith: those who have freed us to worship you, those who have revived our faith and spoken your calling to us, those who have taught us about the past that we might be prepared for the future, and those who have been Christ to us, listening, loving, teaching, and serving us.

Teach us to recognize the sources of wisdom, holiness, and love that you have sent us, whether we find them in the Bible, in history books, in our family stories, or next to us in the pew. Open to us the real, fleshy, complicated, and spirit-filled lives of your saints, so that we might see just enough of ourselves in them to realize that you call us too. Help us to find strength, inspiration, and challenge: in the story of Moses, a reluctant foreigner who spoke for you and challenged an oppressive government, in the protection of a scared mother, Hagar, who left all she knew to protect a child she had unwillingly borne. In the raw energy of Paul, a vocal opponent of the faith whose sight you had to take so that he might see. In the faith of a searching teacher and monk, Martin Luther, who learned that your salvation is a gift to us, not earned by anything we manage to do, and of a searching preacher, Martin Luther King, who reminded us again that all we are is a gift from you, and that to scorn anyone created in your image is to be unfaithful. Perhaps most importantly, God, teach us to see wisdom, holiness, and love in the lives closest to us. In a servant and supporter of the church who carries to the end of his life rich stories of who we are. In a mother who lived and died with strong faith, spending much of her energy near the end of her life getting her children to church, that they might learn to thank you for her life. In a gentleman of the type that seems to no longer exist who held a family together, and loved everyone you met, exactly like you taught.

When you, our creating, redeeming and sustaining God, seem to be distant from our needs, our pain, and our joy, your saints are all around us, and thus so are you. For the gift of their witness and your Word, for care from their hands and from yours, we thank you.

In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who lived here among your saints and sent the Holy Spirit to shape us all as servants of God, Amen.

At the Opening Day (Deuteronomy 34:1-12)

2002-10-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

Reformation Sunday
The Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

1Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, 2all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, 3the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. 4The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” 5Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. 6He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. 7Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. 8The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.
9Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.
10Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. 11He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, 12and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12 NRSV

Obituaries

The New York Times is famous for its obituaries. It is famous for lots of other things, to be sure, but the obituaries in the Times are always thoughtful and well-composed, truly honoring the person remembered rather than just recounting a couple of events and describing funeral services like most we see. This scripture might well have been a model for early obituary editors at the Times; it is the first and arguably the only obituary in the Bible. And it reads like the wonderful prose of the Times editors: “Moses, the servant of the Lord, died at the Lord’s command. … [Though he was very] old when he died[,] his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. … Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”

Not only is the text beautiful—it is remarkable. You might have noticed I changed a couple of words in one of those quotes just now. The scripture reads, “Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated.” My vision has long since been impaired; o, that God would grant that my vigor continue unabated through half of Moses’ one hundred twenty years! His age is the least of the author’s concern, though. Moses was unique among the prophets for the power and wonder of the miracles God sent him to perform, and he has the distinction of being the only prophet that God knew face to face. Moses lived a truly extraordinary life, and this is a fitting end for a truly wonderful man. Wait… what? No it’s not. The obituary comes right after God tells Moses, “You’re looking at the land I promised to Abraham and that you’ve been leading this nation of Israel towards for who knows how long now. You get to see it with your eyes, but you will not enter it.”

Sticks and stones

Why doesn’t Moses get to enter the promised land? Back a few pages in the Book of Numbers, buried among, well, a bunch of numbers, there’s a little story about the Israelites needing water. God tells Moses “go, speak to the rock, and water will spring forth.” So Moses gathers all the people at the rock, takes his staff, strikes the rock, and our pours the water. Did you catch what he did wrong? Later, as Moses sits over to the side chatting with Aaron, God speaks to him, “you struck the rock rather than speaking to it. You are unfaithful. For this sin, you shall not enter the promised land.”

Now, I have to tell you, it might make me a bad Christian, but I don’t have any problem with Moses hitting the stupid rock. Here’s why. First of all, right after the Israelites began wandering around in the desert, Moses asked God for water and God told him to go to this very same rock and strike it with his staff. If Moses disobeyed God, I think it had a lot more to do with remembering how the water came out the last time and just relying on habit than it did with lack of trust in God. Second, Moses shouldn’t really be held responsible for being a lousy prophet sometimes, because he told God he was going to be a lousy prophet when God called him, so God had fair warning that Moses was probably going to mess up.

But that’s not the way we’re supposed to read this scripture. To do that is to make Exodus the story of Moses. The fact is, though, it is the story of God and God’s people Israel. Moses is a main character, but the goal of the story is not for Moses to lead the people to happiness. The goal is for God to free God’s people so that they may worship the one God. Moses’ role is ended. Israel no longer needs the prophet who has led them through the desert and transmitted God’s law to them. They are finally looking at the promised land on the horizon, and they need a new kind of leader. The scripture isn’t about God being unfair to Moses—in fact, the scripture shows that God takes care of his servants—but rather it is about transition, change, and preparing for the future. As dawn breaks on the promised land and Israel peers over the hill at their future, Moses has completed the work that he can do for them, and while the laws he received and gave stay with Israel, to paraphrase our opening hymn, he “[flies] forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”

Pardon our dust

It’s easy to feel bad for Moses in this story, because we’ve felt a hint of it before. I can think of several current examples in my own life. When I leave the church to go home, I get on Interstate 40 and travel east 18 miles to our exit. That trip used to border on pleasant, because relatively few cars traveled it in the evenings, and it was 65 miles an hour the whole way. Now, there are barriers up on either side, frequently an evening lane closing, and at least five times as many cars as there were just a year ago. The signs tell me that this mess is my tax dollars at work and that the road will be wonderful when they’re finished. As if my grandchildren will live long enough to see them finish.

Or at Duke. The whole campus is one big construction zone this year. Parking is scarce because they decided to tear up a bunch of parking lots to build new buildings. The divinity school is building a new building of its own: finally we will have a larger worship space and more common areas. The projected completion date? One year after I leave. I could almost guarantee you that wherever I go next, there will be a construction project that will be completed just after my departure. It seems contrary to logic, but I’m almost positive there are more “pardon our dust” signs in the world than “welcome to our shiny new building” signs. Moses had put up with the dust, literally. Years wandering through the desert with a relatively pathetic and dense group of people, only to be whisked away from the action just as the project was about to be complete.

The progress of the whole

Why do the inconveniences in life bother us so much? For lots of different reasons, our world is more individual-centered than ever before. Maybe it’s because we can do so much on our own. I have to attend a meeting in Washington sometime this semester, so I’ve planned the entire trip—airline flight, bus transfer, subway tickets and routes, meeting, hotel room, and return trip—all on the internet, without ever talking to a person. It’s not only true in travel. So-called “Christian bookstores” are filled with self-help books so that you don’t have to bring your problems and questions to church—you can fix them in the comfort of your own home. I got a mailing from my political party recently trying to convince me to get a mail-in ballot so that I don’t have to go to the polling place with all those other people. I don’t even have to have a cashier at the grocery store any more: I can scan my items and bag them myself.

So it’s a whole lot easier for us to get frustrated when we are inconvenienced as individuals, or to feel sorry for Moses that he didn’t get to enter the promised land. The great irony is that we start to think God is unfair because he didn’t let Moses in, when if he wanted to be fair, he wouldn’t have let anyone from the nation of Israel in because they had been unfaithful at every opportunity. It turns out that God makes a lot more sense, or rather that God’s grace is a lot clearer to us, when we think about ourselves as part of a whole community. When we read this scripture as a community, we see that Moses is fading away, but the story is not about his death: it is about the arrival of Israel at the promised land and the promise of good leadership in the future from Joshua as they have had in the past from Moses.

It seems like Moses is getting cheated out of his reward, dying before entering the promised land. But maybe there is something holy and wonderful about his fate. Inscribed on the tombstone of American author Willa Cather is a line from one of her books: “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” That’s the key to Moses’ reward: only with a new leader in a new place could the promise to Israel be made “complete and great,” and it is a gift for Moses to be so intimately wrapped up in that future. Biblical interpreters make much over the fact that nobody knows where Moses is buried. The Israelites would surely have looked for his body, because they would have wanted to revere it, but God took it away, insuring that they would remember Moses, but properly revere only God. Don’t you think there’s a good chance that if Moses walked them into Canaan they would have worshipped him for it? And that if they had been able to carry his body along with them they would have worshipped it, attributing the power and grace that got them to the promised land to Moses rather than God? “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

Standing at the brink

Let’s stop treating the story like distant history. Let’s put ourselves right there next to Moses. Is getting to the promised land the most important thing for you? Do you feel the need to carry along all the habits you have now, to hold fast to all of your memories? Can you stand to leave the comfort of what you know? The people who have led you before, the places where you have felt God’s presence, the times when you have felt secure? Do you need the people you’ve helped to praise you for your leadership?

The hymn says

Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all who breathe away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.
Isaac Watts, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” (Hymnal 113)

We can hold fast to all our memories and to our sense of control over the world around us, and we can demand that our contributions be appreciated, but to do so is to hold on to the night. God calls us, at the opening of the new day, to let go. To let go of the things we think we know. To let go of the people we love. To let go of our need to benefit from what we have and to put it to use for God’s greater glory and the good of all God’s people in the church. To let go of whatever we think we deserve. To let ourselves “be dissolved into something complete and great”: God’s chosen people.

Dreaming (Genesis 37:1-11)

2002-08-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

1Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. 2This is the story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. 4But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
5Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.
9He had another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, “What kind of dream is this that you have had? Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?” 11So his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Genesis 37:1-11 NRSV

Jacob’s family

Two weeks ago, we talked about Jacob the prophetic wrestler. Jacob was a scam artist his whole life, but then finally began to look to God for guidance, and even to wrestle with God, just as he had wrestled with his brother and father and father-in-law before, to get a blessing. With his hip out of joint, he made his way to the promised land and had twelve kids. Do you feel sorry for the woman who went through twelve pregnancies? Remember it was actually four different wives, so they deserve our sympathy for several other reasons.

In a grand act of poetic justice, with his twelve children Jacob got exactly what he deserved: a bunch of mischievous rebels. First his sons tore apart a whole city full of people who had welcomed them and killed all the males present because the prince was in love with their sister. I’m so glad Heather’s brother likes me. Next, they turned inward, and focused all their mischief on their brother, Joseph.

Joseph turns out to be almost the opposite of his father. Jacob did some things that we knew to be wrong, but it was still clear that he was the hero of the story. Joseph never really does anything terribly wrong, but watching him makes you want to shake your head knowingly: “that boy’s gonna get himself beat up one of these days.” Joseph comes home from helping his brothers in the field one day and tells his father that the others are lazy. Doesn’t he know nothing good ever happens to tattle tales? Not only did his father receive the bad report from Joseph, which wasn’t going to make him the brothers’ favorite person anyway, but Jacob also had a beautiful robe made for Joseph. One has to wonder what Jacob was thinking. As conniving as he had been, he should have known better than to lavish praise on the brown-nosing child; he of all people should understand the power of brothers’ jealousy. Even a mischievous band of brothers like this one might have forgotten about their brother tattling on them, but Joseph was wearing around a visible reminder of their father’s preference for him. He was easy to hate.

Sharing a dream

And he made it even easier, because he tapped the brothers’ worst fears when he shared his crazy dreams. “We were out gathering wheat,” he shares enthusiastically, as if he expects them to be happy for him. “Your bundles gathered around my bundle and bowed down to it.” And the eleven gathered around him stared open-mouthed, like he had just told a terrible joke at comedy hour: “not only does our father think you’re better than us, but you do to!”

But Joseph isn’t done. “Wait, I’ve got another one!” This time the symbolism is even clearer: “I dreamed that the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me!” You really can’t blame his brothers for thinking of ways to get rid of him after that.

A few days later, Joseph, who lately has developed a dislike for outdoors work, is twiddling his thumbs at home, and along comes his father. It sounds like a pretty modern conversation from here on. “Your brothers are out in the fields. Why aren’t you with them?” Jacob probably knew full well why Joseph preferred to hang out alone.

“The other kids don’t like me, Dad. They hate me because I’m different.” This doesn’t make much sense to Jacob.

“Well, go on out and at least check on them; then you can come back and tell me how they’re doing.” Joseph had already proven his ability to report on his brothers, after all. He set off to find them, and they saw him in the distance as he approached. “Here comes this dreamer,” they sneered, with “dreamer” rolling off their tongues like it was a four-letter word. “Come now, let’s kill him.”

When Joseph becomes the hunted, he becomes our favorite character in the story; his sins of pride begin to fall away, and we fear, like his oldest brother Reuben, for Joseph’s life. He is not killed of course, but rather sold into slavery, and he ends up in Egypt. It is there that his gift for dreaming serves him best. He is able to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream and help Egypt prepare for the upcoming famine, which will also help him to rescue his own family from hunger to make a nice end to the story. But from where we are now, dreaming looks to be the worst thing Joseph did.

Wrestling with the future

It’s a little dangerous to try to learn from this story. What does it teach, really? Don’t have dreams? Don’t share dreams? Don’t sell your brother into slavery? If you’re thinking about that last one, then one sermon hasn’t got much hope of helping you. The story doesn’t tell us not to dream or even not to share our dreams, but it certainly gives us reason to be wary of the power of dreaming.

In my last sermon, I talked about Jacob wrestling with God and about the calling of our faith to wrestle grace out of even the darkest surroundings. To dream is to wrestle with the future: to let imagination or inspiration or a wonderful mix of both challenge the path that you have always assumed you would take.

It’s no surprise that Joseph was so comfortable with dreams—it was in his blood. He was driven by the same energy that caused his father to wrestle, and remember that Jacob had dreams of his own—a dream of a great ladder leading to heaven that marked the rededication of his life to God. If we acknowledge God as the source of dreams and dreaming, then it is a theme that runs throughout the Bible. God constantly challenges the paths that biblical characters assume they would take. Look at Moses, or Noah, or Jonah. And no small part of Jesus’ ministry was convincing us to dream of a new creation in which the kingdom of God would come in open and powerful ways on earth.

Dreaming makes you different

And yet there is a frightening power in dreams to expose us, and so our dreams many times remain closely guarded secrets. Feelings of guilt begin to seep in as we dream, because the forces of the world have taught us to be happy with what we have. Our society, and frequently our church, smiles on people who figure out the path that is ahead and prepare for it carefully. We teach each other to take the right courses in school, keep track of our spending, and save money for college or retirement or grocery shopping at the end of the week. Succeeding in life is all about preparing for the path we are to take in life.

“They hate me because I’m different,” Joseph said to his father in my imagined encounter, and of course he was right, because his brothers were interested only in keeping to their designated lot in life: tending the sheep out in the country. They were disgusted with Joseph the dreamer, who came up with grand ideas and was not content with the way things were. Of course, Joseph got sold into slavery in Egypt, where, if you’ve read ahead you know, he ended up in jail. Dreaming is dangerous. Is there a fine line between dreaming and living recklessly? Sure. But we don’t even approach the line. The Bible doesn’t exactly encourage careful living:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal…
Matthew 6:19 NRSV

I have a vested interest in this subject matter. As I consider my vocation and try to understand my calling, dreaming is the order of the day. Were I not able to see God as the source of my dreams about the future and to see my dreams as one way of understanding God’s calling, I would go insane trying to reconcile what I want with what I think God might want. Thanks to our sinful nature, not all of our dreams are in concert with God’s will by any means, and yet a certain connection exists.

But this is only half of dreaming, and while perhaps the less important half, it is also the less dangerous half.

Dreaming of the Kingdom

The better dreams are the ones that are forged in our hearts and minds for the good of all God’s people. Joseph’s work with the Pharaoh’s dream about the years of plenty and years of famine was more like this, but the best examples come from the preaching of Christ. He taught withdrawal from the path we have assumed our lives would take:

29b“Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, [Jesus said,] 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Mark 10:29-31 NRSV

If the words were not familiar, they would sound just crazy enough to be what we call a dream.

Walking on water

To dream is to wrestle with the future; to imagine a path in life—a world, even—that has been changed from what we might have expected. In Joseph’s dream and the Pharaoh’s, the world was revealed as dramatically different. Joseph was no longer one among twelve, but became the center of attention. What child with eleven siblings wouldn’t like that? And Pharaoh saw a world over which he did not have ultimate control, and began to open himself up to help from others and a tiny little bit of shared power.

I’ll leave it to you to dream of what might be different if we closed our eyes, maybe even went to sleep, and listened real hard to what the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can do as it takes on our version of reality. Not everything you dream will be for God’s purposes, of course, but you’ll know which is which, and if not, you could even be so bold as to share with this community for help in discerning what God might be speaking to and through you.

In my dreams, we could become as bold as Peter, who asked Jesus to call him out onto the water.

29b…Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Matthew 14:29b-30 NRSV

Jesus’ response? Jesus dared Peter to dream that the world really had changed: that walking on the water wasn’t just some parlor trick, but evidence that the coming of Christ had made even the most basic rules of gravity, sin, and death obsolete.

Maybe it was easy for the Israelites to be a dreaming people, because they were all the time wandering home. And dreaming seems a natural reaction for Jesus’ disciples, who were just beginning to understand Christ when he started talking about his death, and who heard his stories about the Kingdom of Heaven all day long. Dreaming is not so easy for us. We are relatively comfortable. We have what we need to get from day to day, we have places to live, and by God’s grace through this church even if nowhere else, we have people who care deeply for us.

Still, we must dream. It is dangerous, it makes us a little different, and it requires deep faith, but we must do it. In fact, we who call ourselves Christian should dream more than any other people, because to shy away from dreaming is to accept the world the way it is, and our Lord has never let us do that.

Wrestling (Genesis 32:22-31)

2002-07-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost (A - Pentecost 11)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

22[On] the same night [after he sent a gift ahead for Esau, Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.
Genesis 32:22-31 NRSV

Famous people in the family

In the fourth grade, the focus of my English class was public speaking. We had to give speeches on various topics until we were good at it, or at least until the thought of talking at the front of the room didn’t cause us to wet our pants or throw up. Both those things happened that year, but not to me, I’m glad to say. One of the assignments was to pick someone in your family and give an informative speech about their life. Although it wasn’t necessary, it was hinted that if there was anyone famous in our families, we should pick them. The goal was as much to get us to learn about our families as it was to produce a speech, and it worked on me: I asked my grandmother if there was anyone famous in our family and found out that my great-great-uncle had been the chief justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, which is not exactly famous in the common sense of the word, but fit the bill for a fourth grade speech. Since then, I’ve been intrigued by the connections between us. A young man named Bill, the judge’s nephew, formed a close friendship with the older man near the end of his life, and years later Bill befriended a much younger cousin—me—in much the same way at the end of his life. And soon after I began to visit Wake Forest and consider going to school there, I found a plaque bearing a quote from my uncle—a wonderful way to feel connected to a new place.

I really don’t know much bad about Uncle Wat, and I know about as much as anybody alive, so it’s possible that there wasn’t much bad about him. Even if there was, you know it wouldn’t be in the front of my thinking about the man, because that’s not the way we think about good people from the past. It works that way in families, and it certainly works that way in the Bible.

Consider Jacob. If ever there were a place that should feel connection to Jacob, it’s here. The words we use to begin every service, “surely the presence of the Lord is in this place,” are his words, uttered in awe after his dream of the ladder to heaven, and the words we use to close every service, “God be with you till we meet again,” are an echo of his covenant with his father-in-law Laban.

You might think about Jacob as the father of the nation of Israel, a faithful husband to his beloved Rachel, the kindly father who loved his son Joseph just a little too much, and maybe even the great-great-great-and-so-on grandfather of Jesus. Truth is, though, if Jacob were alive today he would fit well into the mafia or perhaps the esteemed profession of used car sales. Jacob was a first-class con-man, and his targets ranged from his father and mother to his brother and father-in-law. When he thought his brother might have been coming to get him, his first reaction was not to stand in front of his wives and children, protecting them, but rather to send them on ahead so maybe Esau would get tired of killing by the time he got to Jacob. Of course, you couldn’t really blame Esau for being mad; Jacob robbed the poor oaf of his birthright in a moment of weakness, and then stole his father’s blessing while the elder brother was out hunting his father’s last meal. On second thought, my apologies to the used-car dealers of the world for comparing them to Jacob.

As bad as Jacob seems, though, you’ve just got to love him. We know him too well not to. I’ve got a neighbor who I detest. He has two really big cars, and he appears to think himself more important than anyone else in our building, because he usually parks them in the middle of two parking places, as if his cars not getting dings is more important than someone else being able to park within a hundred yards of the door. I can’t stand the guy, and it’s because that’s all I know about him. He has kids that seem to really love him, and may be a wonderful husband and father, but I don’t know about that. I just know he parks like a self-centered… donkey. On the other end of the spectrum, I can admire my great uncle the judge, but I can’t love him, because I really don’t know enough about his life either: I know some of his struggles and pain and certainly some of his successes, but there’s no depth to my experience of him. Jacob is different. When you see so many different phases of a person’s life and read of the many sides of his personality, the mistakes, the triumphs, and the blessings and challenges he faced all chip away at you until you have to love the guy. He conned his brother and his father, but it was his mother’s idea both times, born of her jealousy and favoritism. He snuck away from his father-in-law, taking as much as his children and servants could carry, but his father-in-law had tricked Jacob several times—made him look like a boy scout, in fact—and turnabout is fair play. Jacob lived in fear that his brother would seek revenge, and just like you and me, received the blessing of God’s presence despite having done nothing to deserve it and giving God every reason to ignore him.

The opposite of love…

In our scripture, we find Jacob at the climax of his life, and the one place when he serves as a wonderful role-model to us. While Jacob is moving his family, he spends a night alone, and a stranger wrestles with him. It’s a little amazing that there is so little fanfare about this amazing event in the Bible. “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak,” the Bible reports, as if this is a perfectly normal occurrence. And, as is often the problem with Bible passages we hear a lot, the story doesn’t sound very remarkable to us either. But think for a minute. What is there that you care enough about to wrestle until morning? My family jumps to mind quickly, and knowing you all as well as I do, I bet you thought of family pretty fast too. But do you live your life in such a way that it’s obvious? Wrestling somebody all night sounds awfully hard, but so is living in such a way that the people around you never forget how much you love them.

But I’ve digressed. Jacob should serve as a model to us because we don’t wrestle enough. Last weekend, Heather and I traveled with her brother and his girlfriend up to Maryland. On the way, we met a friend of ours outside Washington, and after dinner, he offered to drive us into town, and we walked off our dinner on the mall, beginning at the base of the Washington Monument, walking past the Vietnam Memorial up to the Lincoln Memorial, and then back down the mall past the White House to our car. It feels a little magical to me to walk around all those famous places—to be a hundred yards from people I hear about on the news every day. I was struck that evening by the thought that if we were all lucky enough to visit Washington and walk through those buildings, there would be a lot less negativity about the government. And we all pretty much agreed that we would rather people hate the government than be apathetic about it. There are provisions in the Constitution for handling a government you hate, but there is no way to handle the hopelessness that results when most people just don’t care any more. “The opposite of love is not hate,” my brother-in-law quoted, “but apathy.”

Maybe it’s starting to sound like I’m encouraging you to visit Washington and write letters to our congressman, but this is an illustration, not the goal. I’m not very concerned with you wrestling the government. I’m concerned with you following Jacob’s example and wrestling with God.

“Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown”

One of the greatest hymns of the church is all but lost. Isaac Watts, who wrote “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” “Joy to the World,” and thirteen other hymns in our hymnal (as well as hundreds that are not printed there) said that Charles Wesley’s hymn “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” “was worth all the verses he himself had written” (John Wesley's Journal). Wesley’s poetry imagines the words of Jacob as he wrestled with the stranger in the night. Jacob’s energy and stamina are obvious, as are his loneliness:

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee;
with thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.
‘Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue
or touch the hollow of my thigh;
though every sinew be unstrung,
out of my arms thou shalt not fly;
wrestling I will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.
“Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown,” United Methodist Hymnal, 387.

It’s been a painful couple of weeks for us as a church. There are times when the world around us looks to be absent of God. I don’t mean that it is impossible to see God in tragedy, but the fact that tragedy exists has caused people to wrestle with God for centuries, wondering how it is that a God who is good and powerful can allow evil to persist in the world. There are at least three distinct ways to handle our confusion. We can utter clichés when tragedy occurs: “we shouldn’t be said—he’s in a better place,” and “God needed her more than us.” Most of those clichés are bad theology and insensitive to boot, but they provide some comfort because then we don’t have to wrestle with what has happened. My friend Bill Leonard tells a story about a youth conference he attended in the sixties. The pastor was talking about morality, sex, relationships, and faith—all of the best Sunday school topics. When he asked for questions, my friend reports,

“I bounded to my feet full of unlimited adolescent and evangelical zeal, both of which can kill you. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I find that if we just trust Jesus, and walk with him daily, God will take care of all of these moral issues.’ [The pastor] set his jaw, looked straight into my post-pubescent eyes and responded, ‘young man, everything I have said for the last hour was an attempt to avoid that kind of glib, simplistic Christianity.”
Bill J. Leonard, “Wrestling with strangers
(and anybody else who comes along),”
Wake Forest University Baccalaureate Sermon, 1999.

My friend learned to wrestle because humiliation is a great teacher.

We can also give up. During my first semester of college, I got to know a guy named Alex. He lived one floor below me in the dorm, and we had a small seminar class together. Our professor was really strange, so after class, a small group of us who lived in the same building would walk back, talking about what had happened, and many times getting to talk about other things too. I learned that Alex was Mormon, which didn’t mean a lot to me, except that I admired the faithfulness he showed by planning to take two years off after his second year of college to go on mission. He was one of the few people I met early on whom I immediately felt I could trust. One evening in October, we all got an e-mail from the university saying that he had been admitted to Baptist Hospital with meningitis, and the next night, he was dead. There was a strange silence in our building as people gathered in the lounges just to be together. In my head, I was silently wondering how God could let that happen, and then the silence was harshly broken. A crying girl tore through the lounge saying, “anyone who believes in God is just stupid—it’s all a nasty joke.” It horrified me. But inside, then of all times, I began to be sure that God was present, and that if I ever managed to wrestle long enough, I would understand. But that girl had given up, probably, I think, because nobody had ever told her it was OK to wrestle, and all she heard from Christians around her were clichés.

Those first two options are related, because both of them put us out of the reach of God. If we think we understand God so well that we can explain the great mysteries of life, then how will God ever get through to teach us? And if we’ve given up that God exists to teach at all, then we’ll certainly never hear, for God usually speaks in a still, small voice.

And then, of course, there is Jacob’s option. Anybody care to guess which one I’m in favor of? Our imperfect hero Jacob wrestled all night with the stranger, and just when he thought he was starting to win, a mere flick of the stranger’s wrist threw his hip out of joint. The stranger gave him a new name, which makes sense because Jacob had become a new person. No longer was he Jacob, the one who grips at the heel, trying to pull himself along at someone else’s expense. Now he was Israel, the one who wrestles with God. In Jewish tradition, to name something is to claim control over it and responsibility for it; Jacob may have wrestled with God, but it was all a way for God to show Jacob that he was loved and cared for by God.

And yet Jacob walked away from the experience with a limp. The promise of faith is not the easy life—far from it. Jacob got a blessing with his broken hip, and turns out to be the lucky one. Moses wrestled and died short of the promised land. Jonah wrestled and for his trouble, he got to live in the comfort of a fish’s gut for three days. John wrestled and got beheaded, Jesus wrestled and got a cross. A saint called Paul wrestled and got put in jail; a saint called King wrestled and went in and out of jails, only to be shot while trying to preach about God’s kingdom. Dare we say it? Polly wrestled, lived life the best way she knew, and got cancer.

With that litany of evidence, wrestling doesn’t sound like a very safe activity. But of course, the quality of your life and the strength of your faith is not judged based on how long you live, or even how many of life’s challenges you escape. How much you struggle is a much better yardstick; whether or not you have managed to hold on to God’s grace into the early hours of the morning. It is at our weakest moments when we manage to wrestle from life what we need to know, so that we, like Jacob can proclaim that we have learned God’s name, and God’s nature:

‘Tis Love! ‘Tis Love! Thou diedst for me,
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
pure Universal Love thou art:
to me, to all, thy mercies move—
thy nature, and thy name is Love.
“Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown,” United Methodist Hymnal, 387

Remember how we decided earlier that we are intimately connected with Jacob? We sing his song, and that’s all well and good. We also grab onto someone else’s heels every now and then, and none of us has gone through life without ever taking advantage of a situation, or taking a blessing while no one’s looking. But like Jacob, we all repent too. We see God’s glory when we least expect it, and we all have the chance to wrestle a blessing from life. In the dark of night, when loneliness chills us and weakness and fear keep us from dreaming, it is then that we must keep struggle with whatever or whoever comes along. And that is when grace will come, provided we hold on long enough.

Can't Win for Losin' (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30)

2002-07-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

16“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
17 ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
18For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 19the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
25At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 NRSV

Getting what you want

It was never flute playing for me. The only instrument I played as a child was the piano, and if someone had managed to get me to play in front of others, someone dancing would surely have stopped me. I remember wailing some, but it wasn’t exactly out of mourning. It was because I had done something wrong, gotten caught, and made to regret whatever I had done wrong.

I think modern images might make this clearer for us. I do remember wanting to play a game. I was pretty good at Monopoly; I had figured out a sure-fire strategy. Buy the whole first row of property, and one property of each other group on the board. That way, I could build tiny green plastic houses on that first row where the building cost was relatively low, jack up the rent for the other players, and rarely get caught paying high rent myself because I had blocked everyone else. Of course, given the luck of the dice, my strategy didn’t work every time; a lot of playing Monopoly is just tolerating the incredibly long time it takes to play. But hey, I was a kid and had plenty of time, and I enjoyed having my grimy hands on all that money, so I frequently tried to cajole my mother or grandmother into playing with me. Because, as I said, the game takes forever, it wasn’t too often that I was able to convince someone to start a game, and after we did, we’d never finish it in one sitting, so the board would sit on the dining room table, with my master plan suspended in favor of things that had to be done around the house, like eating and sleeping. I remember a couple of times that I finally gave up after a couple of days of “I don’t want to play right now, Matthew” and cleared away the board. Those were probably the times I thought I might lose.

Jesus said the generation of people who heard him are like that. It doesn’t have much to do with dancing or mourning, and certainly nothing to do with playing the flute. It’s about control: getting other people to behave the way we want them to, and on our schedule.

First one thing, then another

“Do you remember John the Baptist?” Jesus asks the crowd. “He came wearing a camel skin and eating bugs and tree sap. He didn’t hang out with other people so much, keeping mostly in the wilderness. You looked at him and said, ‘that guy is crazy!’ You might even say he was wailing, and no one would mourn.”

If you think about the story and close your eyes, perhaps you can almost see the men hearing him, and beginning to scratch their heads. “So what does the part about playing the flute mean?” And Jesus begins again: “I’ve been spending time with all kinds of people who you ignore. I went to a wedding and partied with them; I’ve been traveling among people teaching a little, but fellowshipping a lot and having a good time, and you look at me and criticize me for opposite of what John did. Talk about your tough crowds. God keeps reaching out to you, sending different kinds of messengers, but he can’t win for losing. John keeps to himself and you call him a recluse. I spend time with people and you complain that I should have picked different people. He barely ate or drank, and you said he must have been possessed. I eat and drink all the time and you complain that I’m a lazy drunk. What happens when you’re plowing the field? Do you try to pull the poor donkey both ways at the same time?”

Hidden things

And then he gets mad. He lists the cities where he has been with no success, saying that even the ancient city of Sodom, everybody’s favorite city to criticize, would have understood his teaching, and if they’d had the benefit of hearing Jesus, they would have known to be kind and generous to each other, and to especially value the lives of strangers, and they would still be there. Jesus says that the burned city of Sodom will have it easier come Judgment Day than those cities who heard and ignored his teaching.

I’ve got to wonder about those people watching and listening to him again. They might not understand exactly who he is, but they know he is powerful—he’s been doing miracles and wonderful things for a while now—and he’s getting pretty mad. When powerful people get mad, it makes for quite a show. But there are no fireworks. Instead Jesus seems to momentarily forget that there is a crowd around him, and he says a prayer. “I am grateful to you, Father, because you have sent me to those who trust rather than those who try to understand and control, because you knew that was best. No one will know me without having faith in you, and only I can reveal your fullness to people here.”

It’s strange, I think, that Jesus would complain about us being confused when it is God’s will that it be a difficult to understand. It reminds me of the pharaoh in the story of the Exodus: God hardened his heart and then punished him for being hard-hearted. After all, it is in our natures to seek to understand rather than to trust blindly. Or maybe that’s not what was happening. Maybe Jesus was just beginning to understand himself. This is still pretty early in the story of his life, so maybe something dawned on him as he was trying to tell the people they needed to quit trying to control everything and berating the cities who had not heard him. He realized that it is not God’s will for everyone to understand him, but rather for those who first trust in God.

A pastoral invitation

And then Jesus’ mood seems to change sharply. No longer is he the teacher talking about children in the marketplace: no longer the prophet criticizing the cities who won’t listen. Now he is the shepherd—the pastor—inviting people to him, to a place where they can begin to trust, and therefore know, God.

He senses each need that people have. “You are tired and carrying heavy burdens, sometimes on your backs, and sometimes on your hearts; come to me and I will give you rest. You are feeling confused and are trying to understand; take my yoke and I will guide you. I will teach you how to find life itself.”

The words of this invitation have become familiar with repetition. Actually they’ve become familiar by confusion as well: they sound much like the words of the poem by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I’m not real big on mixing Christianity and patriotism, because I think it usually makes a bad Christian and a bad patriot, but perhaps today more than any day it is worth considering that the best intentions we have to be a land of opportunity for all people are not that far off from Jesus’ invitation to us.

The comparison to the Lazarus poem is useful in another way too. We forget that the sonnet and Jesus’ invitation have something to do with us, albeit in very different ways. Our love of the Statue of Liberty as a symbol means that we should honor the promise she makes to welcome the “wretched refuse” that the ancient, honored lands of the earth send away through storms of poverty and hate. She doesn’t lift her torch for us, she lifts it for those who are still to come. That lovely poem gives us a job of love and hospitality.

And Jesus’ invitation? It wasn’t just issued to those within earshot. It isn’t only issued to those who have never heard of him. It applies to us too: people who have heard but who do not yet trust completely.

Tune our hearts

We still seek to understand before we are willing to trust God, and because understanding that way is impossible, this kind of half-faith leads to more stress and more weariness rather than rest for our souls. As we feel ourselves begin to wander back toward that natural state of questioning, that’s when the words of our final hymn fit the best:

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (1758)

If the source of our faith is God grace and our trust in God, then surely the source of our hope must be the assurance that Christ’s invitation will be open to us for as long as it takes. Our hearts may not be sealed, but we can keep on doing our best to “tune our hearts to sing [God’s] grace.”

John came, didn’t eat or drink, and we called him crazy. Jesus came, ate, drank, and took care of the people we wouldn’t look at. We called him a gluttonous drunk and criticized him for hanging out with lowlifes. It seems God can’t win for losing with us, but, lucky for us, God won’t let us lose for nothing.

A Two-Cubit Shower (Genesis 6:11-22)

2002-06-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Second Sunday After Pentecost (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. 13And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. 14Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. 18But I will
establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. 21Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
Genesis 6:11-22 NRSV

The two-cubit shower

Since a meeting with Rich earlier this week happened to be scheduled right after a visit by one of the suppliers for the new building, I got to witness a tiny little bit of the research that goes into a project like this, and then Rich and I walked through the building for a few minutes. We noticed a couple of little problems, like the sink that’s too long and the door handle that’s too high—the types of things that inevitably happen in the final stages of a building project—and then we went into the men’s bathroom. You might have heard already that the shower is perfectly located for one man in our church: James Davis. Not Jamie Davis, but three year-old James. It’s about thirty-six inches off the ground, or to use the measurement system from Noah’s ark, it’s about two cubits high. It won’t be hard to fix, but actually, it might be good preparation for some of us: we hear that our ASP teams are staying in an elementary school, so we might need to get used to showering while hunched over.

I wonder if, as Noah and his family did their final walk-through of the ark, they found anything really ridiculous: walls too close together, doors that don’t go anywhere, holding pens for wolves and sheep right next to each other; you get the idea. After all, God was very specific about the outside measurements of the ark, but far less clear about the finer details. There is a theme of building in the scriptures appointed for this Sunday, and it’s tempting for me to think about the church’s new building as we read them.

Houses on rock and sand

Jesus’ story about building might make you want to go and check our new fellowship hall’s foundation, especially if you know how much fill it’s sitting on. As he finished the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the gathered people that hearing what he had to say isn’t enough. You must act on what he says and build your life upon his words. Let me read Jesus’ words from the Cotton Patch Gospels:

That’s why the man who hears these words of mine and acts on them shall be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Down came the rain, up rose the floods, out lashed the winds. They all cut at that house, but it didn’t fall. It was on rock foundation.
And the man who hears these words of mine and fails to act on them shall be like an idiot who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods rose up, the winds lashed out. They all cut at that house, and it fell! And my, what a collapse!
When Jesus finished speaking, the people were simply amazed at his ideas, for he was teaching them like he knew what he was talking about. He didn’t sound like their preachers.
Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John…
(Clinton, New Jersey: New Win Publishing, 1970), 30-31.

It makes you want to rush home and put some cinderblock under your floor joists, doesn’t it? “Not really, preacher, because it’s pretty obvious Jesus isn’t talking about houses; he’s talking about faith. We get it already. If you have a strong faith and live right, everything will turn out right in the end.”

Behind the clichés

These stories get repeated a lot, and usually that’s the basic point. Have a strong faith and live right, and your house will stand up. Your life will be the one preserved through the flood. That doesn’t apply very well in real life. In fact, it sounds like perfect nonsense.

What happened to the wise man after his house stood up to the wind and water? He must have suffered at least a little damage, not to mention the fact that he watched the boards from his neighbor’s collapsed house float by his window, and he’s not sure his best friend made it. What happened when Noah parked the ark on a mountain and everyone got out? The rest of humankind was gone. The earth was destroyed, save for what they had in that stinking boat. Noah’s reaction was to grow some grapes, make wine, and get drunk, but who can really blame him? Go back and read the scripture again: his daughters didn’t get on that boat, and neither did all of the rest of the people he, his wife, and his sons’ families knew. If you look behind these clichés of faith standing up to the storms of evil, it isn’t hard to find real pain.

The Israelites knew that, but they sensed the presence of God, even in pain. I don’t believe that God causes pain, and I don’t think the Israelites believed that either. God enabled the flood, but it was because of the sinfulness of people, and in this story told by the Israelites, God didn’t destroy people who were known, but rather ended violence and corruption in the more abstract sense. We could argue about that a little, but one thing is for sure, they felt—as you and I often have—the comforting presence of God in the midst of their pain.

“Be still and know that I am God”

“God is our refuge and strength,” they sang,

…a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Psalm 46:1a, 1b-3 NRSV

Psalm 46, which we read together earlier in the service, calls God a mighty fortress: a refuge and help in time of trouble. If the right way to live is in an ark or a house built on rock, with strong shelter against the wind and rain of evil, then the psalm paints an image of what it’s like inside that shelter. It is God’s place. God is in the middle, and will not let this place be moved. There is an uproar outside, but God’s voice calms it. God is with us. Does God destroy? Yes. God breaks the bow, shatters the spear, and burns the guns. Be still, God says, so that you may know how great God is. The Lord is our refuge.

Here in the shelter

If my family wasn’t going to travel a few hundred miles this afternoon, I would have prayed for a mighty thunderstorm this morning, so that we could look outside, see the violence and danger of the world, and sense that we are in God’s sacred place. If there was a storm out there, from here in the shelter we could peer through the windows all the time, noticing the violence and evil in the world, living in fear that it might break through. Or we could turn our backs to the outside, bask in the glory of God’s presence, and forget that there is pain outside that causes people to lose hope because they haven’t found refuge in God. If we look outside all the time, we might lose our hope too, or we might forget that we belong in the presence of God. If we look inside all the time, ignoring the world, then we might start to think that God belongs to us rather than the other way around, and we will get so focused on ourselves that we’ll spend more time worrying about the two-cubit shower than all the people who have no clean water at all.

God doesn’t want us to do either. Even the ark had to land after forty days and nights—Noah still had 350 more years to live. And the wise man who built on the rock will surely come out after the storm has passed to help his neighbor rebuild. There is pain and evil even here at Union Grove, but we live together and bear pain together because of God’s promises to care for us. Part of the words Jesus said we had to not just hear, but base our very lives upon were the instructions to care for the sick and the poor; to live as people who are “not ashamed of the gospel,” but who know that “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith…” (Romans 1:16a-b). That message begs to be shared, and you can’t do that from inside the shelter.

Why must we bother? Look at the table. If ever there was doubt that God is with us in our struggles and our pain, then look to the table and remember the pain God suffered for us, losing and dying in one great tragedy, but at the same time, making the promise that is our foundation: that the world will never be drowned by its sin.

We are not saved for nothing. The familiar hymn reminds us.

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,
when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
by the living Word of God I shall prevail,
standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I cannot fall,
listening every moment to the Spirit’s call,
resting in my Savior as my all in all,
standing on the promises of God.
R. Kelso Carter, “Standing on the Promises”
The United Methodist Hymnal, 374.

The promises of God are our shelter and our foundation, but they also contain the Spirit’s call. Be still, and know your God. Be still, and hear the call of the Spirit:

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins,
and are in love and charity with your neighbors,
and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God,
and walking from henceforth in his holy ways:
Draw near with faith, and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort,
and make your humble confession to almighty God.
From “Service of Word and Table IV”
The United Methodist Book of Worship, 44.

Living Dangerously (Acts 7:55-60)

2002-04-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

55…[F]illed with the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56“Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.
Acts 7:55-60 NRSV

The first deacon

Let’s back up a little bit for “the rest of the story.” After Jesus left, the disciples formed the church into a community. They soon learned how difficult church administration can be. The way they reacted is no surprise, really. Of all the ministers I’ve met, I haven’t once heard “you know, I just love managing the church budget and taking care of the bills.” For the early Jerusalem church, which lived together in community, administration didn’t really mean taking care of money, although there were people who did that. The frustrating part of the leaders’ job was distributing food. All of the people put their resources into a pot and were given the food they needed, but because not all of the people were of the same race or even spoke the same language, there were some disagreements about how things were split. So the disciples formed a committee, proving that the early church was Methodist. Actually, they ordained a new order of leaders—deacons—to do the work of the church while the disciple leaders continued to lead the spiritual life of the group.

When the disciples pitched this idea to the group, it was accepted with enthusiasm, and they quickly chose Stephen to be the first deacon. Before long, though, Stephen had some enemies. The Bible isn’t very specific about why these people didn’t like him, except to say that they had argued and Stephen came out on top. They reported to the Jewish authorities that he had been speaking blasphemy against Moses and God. Sound familiar?

When he appeared in front of the chief priest, Stephen told the story of Israel, and concluded by saying that the authorities had never received the prophets well, and that even now they refused to acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit in their midst. The Bible says that they became angry at Stephen and ground their teeth at him, like an animal backed into a corner. Stephen did nothing to defend himself, but rather looked into heaven, where he, a truly good servant of Christ, could see the glory of God in Jesus.

The crowd wasn’t going to receive him any better than all those prophets he had talked about as he told the story of Israel. It’s one of the most intriguing images of the Bible. They covered their ears and rushed at him, then pulled him outside the wall of the city and through stones at him. Stephen died a death worthy of his Lord: his last words were a plea of forgiveness for those who stoned him.

We’re doing the stoning

This story tells us our past: the first deacon, a church that was striving to live together despite its language differences and persecution from the governing authorities, and the rejection of a gifted servant and prophet. But it also tells us about the present. The tough thing is making peace with where we fit in the story. Stephen comes from the community of the church to face the crowd of mainstream society. It would be nice to think we’re the church from which he comes, but it doesn’t sound much like us. They all live together, they pool their money, and they were persecuted.

Then there’s the crowd. They represent mainstream culture. They have nice little homes that are a twenty-minute commute (walking, of course) to work. They live so as not to draw particular attention to themselves, and the radical kind of message that Stephen was bringing didn’t interest them at all. Of course we are all members of the church, but we are so rooted in popular culture, the media, and the market that we look a lot more like the crowd than the communal church of Acts.

Screaming and holding our ears

If Stephen were to speak up in our midst, what would happen? If he were to tell us of our history: how people have suffered through the ages so that the gospel might be proclaimed; how men and women have sacrificed so that we might be free to worship God as our tradition tells us; how people struggled in faith to build this very church. If he were to tell us that often we miss the point and that we refuse to see the radical message that the Holy Spirit offers, what would we do? The crowd in Jerusalem covered their ears and rushed to shut him up. We don’t have to cover our ears. Our world is loud enough now that Stephen could barely have made himself heard anyway. We have a sound-tracked life: music in cars, waiting rooms, and during stories of pain and violence on the news. Someone trying to get our attention would be hard to notice because the advertising industry is trying to buy our attention everywhere we look. There are ads on buses, highways, TV, radio, the internet, and even the back of the receipt from the grocery store. We’re way ahead of the crowd in Jerusalem. We don’t have to cover our ears when we hear dangerous truth. We’ve got our eyes and ears permanently stopped up.

What if we listened?

Though we are so completely surrounded by a society that even when it claims to be religious doesn’t look very much like something Jesus would have designed, there are times when the clouds part and let through a little of the glory of God that Stephen saw. There are times when we can hear the message through our clogged ears. What if we listened?

Do you remember when I read to you from the Cotton Patch Gospels one week—the Bible with a southern accent? It was written by a man named Clarence Jordan. He saw the glory of God and heard the calling of the Holy Spirit. He founded Koinonia Farms in South Georgia. Koinonia, which means fellowship for the common good, was a community much like the early church, intended to help the poorest farming families who were unable to make enough to pay rent on their land and provide for their families, much less to save anything. It was a distinctly Christian community, and it didn’t look anything like other farms. For one thing, there were black and white families living and working together, which upset many of the people around the farm. Although they had some moderate success at farming, for Jordan had taken care to learn as much as he could from sophisticated agriculturalists before starting, the crowd of the community saw them as the enemy. They were literally stoned: bricks were thrown through the windows of the farmhouse. They were figuratively stoned as well: other farms boycotted them, and supplies dried up because other farms threatened to withdraw their business from anyone who supplied Koinonia.

I don’t mean to say that in order to start acting like real Christians, then the first thing we would need to do is go start a communal farm. Some of you would probably be quite good at that, but you’d need a new intern for sure. I tell the story rather to be honest about the fact that if we are willing to really listen to God’s prophets and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, then we will become the targets of a world that doesn’t think much of the gospel message. At best, those who follow “the way, and the truth, and the life” will look odd. At worst, they will be stoned.

Our mighty fortress

The life of Christ sounds like a terribly lonely journey, with a destination that looks pretty unpleasant. It certainly was for Stephen. But he lived and died with incredible faith. He never stood on shaky ground but, as the psalmist says, took his refuge in God. Our psalm for today, the source of the words for “A Mighty Fortress,” tells us how to find the strength for this hard road:

1 In you, O LORD, I seek refuge;
do not let me ever be put to shame;
in your righteousness deliver me.
2 Incline your ear to me;
rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me,
a strong fortress to save me.
3 You are indeed my rock and my fortress;
for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,
4 take me out of the net that is hidden for me,
for you are my refuge.
5 Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.
14 … I trust in you, O LORD;
I say, “You are my God.”
15 My times are in your hand;
deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.
16 Let your face shine upon your servant;
save me in your steadfast love.
Psalm 31:1-5, 14-16 NRSV

For Stephen—and for us—there is support if we choose to hear the radical calling of the Holy Spirit and to live our life as servants of God.

Standing silently

Looking back to the story of the stoning, maybe we’re not the crowd after all. There is an easy-to-miss little detail in this story that just might be its key:

58Then they dragged [Stephen] out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Acts 7.58 NRSV, italics added

There on the sidelines was a boy named Saul, not yet old enough to be doing the stoning, stood to the side and watched, holding the coats of some of the men in the crowd like a corner attendant at a boxing match. Saul would certainly have his day as the persecutor, and he was at one time the greatest enemy of the church. But God placed him there on the sidelines for the occasion with good reason. He learned by watching Stephen who Jesus Christ was, and what it meant to follow him. When God spoke to him on the road to Damascus, he knew who this Jesus was who called him to service with rather than persecution of Christians.

Like Saul, we sit on the sidelines of the persecution of the saints by reading the Bible and hearing the witness of Christian history. In our spiritual youth, we have a decision to make. We can choose to become persecutors like those people we watch from the sidelines, or we can become witnesses. We can take up the dangerous life of the gospel, resting on the foundation of his Word and resting under the shelter of the Mighty Fortress. “‘Look,’ [Stephen] said. ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing a the right hand of God!’” Here’s your chance.

Into Remembrance (Luke 24:13-35)

2002-04-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Third Sunday of Easter (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not ind his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Luke 24:13-35 NRSV

Getting away

The disciples were heading to Emmaus. Where is Emmaus, you ask? Seven miles from Jerusalem. Why were they going to Emmaus? Because it’s seven miles from Jerusalem, and if you’re walking, that sounds like it’s far enough to get away from the misery and confusion of Jerusalem. Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers, says we all go there.

Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.
Frederick Buechner, Magnificent Defeat
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1985) 85

For me, Emmaus is music. I hear that the past couple of times I’ve played the organ in church, portions of the service have been a little loud. I’m learning to correct that, but you should have heard me when I was at Wake Forest. When something was really bothering me, I would go into the chapel at night, when nobody was left in the building, roll up the cover on the four keyboards of the massive organ console and select one of my custom settings, which ranged from loud to thunderous to “shake the building.” I was almost always playing hymns, and something about the audible power of the instrument and the enduring power of the words and music of the church made me confident of God’s rule in the world and soothed me.

Seven years ago this summer, my maternal grandmother died. My family had been camped out at the hospital for a couple of days, and I had driven separately that morning, so after our initial period of grieving together, my mother sent me home so that someone would be there to answer the phone and receive visitors. When I walked into the house, the emptiness was stifling. The hard questions began to flow through my head. What would life be like without my grandmother? Why does someone so kind and wonderful not get to live longer? Why did I ever allow an opportunity to see her to pass by? And so I sat at the piano, inherited from my grandmother’s aunt, played many times by my grandmother before arthritis made it impossible. I started to play, first sad songs and then more festive ones, because I needed to know that God was victorious, even though the death of the most godly person I knew made God look pretty weak.

An ignorant stranger

And that’s where Jesus found those two disciples: going to a place where they could sort through the pain of Christ’s death and the confusion of the rumors floating around that maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Jesus approached the disciples as a stranger, and his mood didn’t match their own, but rather he was informal and kind of chatty.

“What are y’all talking about?”

The disciples look at him, filled with several kinds of sadness, apparently also a little annoyed at the ignorance of this stranger.

“What hole did you just crawl out of? Everyone knows what’s been happening in Jerusalem.” And the disciple began to tell this stranger on the road about Jesus, his death, and the rumors of his resurrection.

Jesus rebuked them for being so reluctant to believe, and to prove his point, ran through all the scriptures, from Genesis through the Prophets, explaining how they pointed toward this very moment, and they listened, but didn’t hear him, and certainly, though they might have looked, didn’t see him.

As our strange trio of travelers approached their destination, Jesus, who always seemed to be several steps ahead of the disciples, walked on as if to continue his journey, not wanting to impose on the hospitality of the disciples or to force himself into their still-mourning hearts. But the disciples urged him to stay. I imagine a view of Jesus’ face before he turns back to them, a small smile breaking: his disciples were slow to believe, but at least they were kind to him—a stranger—and that was a lesson he had worked hard to teach.

You can’t nail him down

Now the scene changes. The strange traveler, their honored guest, has been given a spot at the head of the table. As they prepare to eat, he follows a formula that he has used before, and that we have been using in the church ever since: he took the bread, broke it, blessed it, and gave it to the disciples. That was what they needed.

When the disciples finally recognized Jesus, he disappeared. Why would he do that? Was it to convince the two disciples that he was Christ? No. They recognized him just before; there was no need for a trick to convince them. Was Jesus late for another appearance? I don’t think that’s it. The fact is that we aren’t told. We definitely learn something from his vanishing, though. You can’t nail Jesus down in one place any better than you can nail him up on a cross.

Surely the disciples would have wanted him to stay with them; they wanted to understand the mystery of his resurrection, they still had a couple questions about some of those stories he was famous for telling, and most of all, they wanted him to rest in their midst because there was something so wonderful and indescribable about him that filled the empty places within their hearts.

God is present with us and shall always be, but it seems we can only feel it when we don’t expect to and often we only recognize the feeling as we look backwards, like the disciples who remembered the burning in their hearts as he spoke to them. Maybe there’s a place for you where you’ve felt the hand of Jesus touch you before, but going back there again won’t necessarily bring the same old feelings. We can’t make God fit our schedule. So we search for ways to feel the presence of Christ and to celebrate him.

Into remembrance

During Lent, a group of us met each Monday night to study scriptures for the season. One night we read Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper, and talked about the phrase:

“Do this in remembrance of me.”
1 Corinthians 11:24c NRSV

I shared with the group that while the church has used that phrasing about as long as we’ve been reading the Bible in English, that’s not the most literal translation. The most literal translation is a little more awkward: “Do this into remembrance of me.” We talked about it some and decided that made sense to us. When we take the bread, give thanks to God, break it, and share it as disciples of Christ, we aren’t just doing something that reminds about Jesus. We are doing something that moves us into a different understanding of who we are, and makes us into people who can appreciate who Christ is.

As we come to the table and take the bread that Christ offers to us, let us do it into remembrance of him.

Benediction

As you go from this place, may Christ surprise you from his presence when it seems as if there is no hope, and may he feed your body and spirit so that you might share the good news of his work in the world. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

God's Glass Slipper (1 Samuel 16:1-13)

2002-03-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Fourth Sunday in Lent (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

1The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” 4Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
1 Samuel 16:1-13 NRSV

Give us a king!

When America was struggling for independence in the late 18th century, there were cries of release from tyranny. “No taxation without representation!” “Down with King George!” The new nation won its freedom, and before those cries had finished echoing into history, people wanted a leader they could identify with. They wanted a new king, and so the founding fathers worked diligently to create a government that met the people’s desire for a figurehead without leading them back into the same problems they had with the English king.

Israel made the same mistake, although were farther from the memory a king than the American colonists. Their last experience had been several generations ago, under the pharaoh in Egypt. During the Exodus, God guided them through Moses, and then through a series of prophets and judges. But now, the people of Israel told Samuel they wanted a king. “All of the other nations have one; why can’t we?” Samuel argued like a good parent. “It’s going to cost you in the long run. A king will take over your lives, controlling your children and your livestock, working you like slaves.” And the answer? I bet the parents in the room know. “But I want it!” So God granted Israel a king. Samuel got the job of anointing the king God chose.

The first was Saul, who was a good king. After he was nicely established, Samuel retired. What a nice fairy tale. But then God told Saul to destroy a particular nation, and being sensitive about the difficulties of the job, Saul decided to spare the life of the king of the destroyed nation. That was not in God’s instructions, so Samuel got the unpleasant job again—God used him to reject Saul.

Samuel was pretty upset, and understandably so. The people had told him they didn’t really like his leadership very much and wanted a king. He went and found them a king, and was just beginning to enjoy retirement when God told him to go back and reject that king. The scripture says he “grieve[d] over Saul.” But God wasn’t mourning—God was looking toward the next king, and he sent Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse.

Trying on the crown

You wouldn’t have to have read the Bible to know the story, because in modern culture Disney gets messages further than the church. When I got home from youth last week, Heather and I watched a little TV to wind down. The Wonderful World of Disney was featuring Cinderella. And there’s the story.

God tells Samuel he will let him know who the chosen person is, and sends him out. Samuel arrives at Jesse’s house. “Have you got some sons that you could line up for me? I’m supposed to anoint the next king.”

Jesse calls his oldest son, the one who would naturally be expected to have inherited something wonderful, as the oldest. Here is a twist that the fairy tale Cinderella doesn’t pick up—the oldest one is tall and handsome, no ugly step-brother. Samuel looks at him, figures this must be the one, and reaches his hand for the old horn of anointing oil. But the glass slipper doesn’t fit. God tells him this guy is just as rejected as Saul.

Jesse parades his other sons out, except for David, who is out back tending the sheep. Samuel doesn’t hear that God approves any of them. There stands the poor old prophet-turned-kingmaker, holding his horn of oil just like the duke standing in the wicked stepmother’s house, holding the glass slipper and unable to fit it on anyone’s foot. “Are all of your sons here?”

And Jesse, more than a little disappointed himself, because after all, he thought one of his sons might get to be king, says, “Just David, but he’s out back with the sheep.” It doesn’t even strike him that David might be the man Samuel is looking for, but Samuel asks to see him.

As someone goes to find David, the tension builds for us, because we know how this story works. There’s something about him being the youngest. And something about his family leaving him out back in the midst of all this excitement. And definitely something about him taking care of sheep. We know there is a special place in God’s heart for shepherds.

Sure enough, David is the right one. The slipper fits, so to speak. Samuel rubs the oil into his head, and David becomes the anointed one of God.

Quit just looking

It’s hard to read stories like this from our perspective, because we already know the ending. This youngest brother who’s tending the sheep out back is going to eventually be Israel’s greatest king. The Christian church has, since the birth of Christ, identified Christ in relation to David: “Hail to the Lord’s anointed,” we sing, “great David’s greater son.” If we read the scripture straight through without already knowing the story, we actually don’t know to expect that David is the chosen one, because though it fits with the types of hero stories we know, it didn’t fit with laws and expectations about siblings in ancient Israel. Maybe it’s because Cinderella and other stories are so familiar to us, and because we’ve heard of this guy David before, that when we read this story, we don’t understand why Samuel can’t see that David is the one.

And that’s really the problem: Samuel can’t see. This scripture is, in part, about the difference between looking and seeing. When God first speaks to Samuel he says something like, “forget about Saul. I have seen a new king for myself.” Samuel goes and looks at Jesse’s sons. He thinks he sees the first one—he thinks he knows who he is—but God corrects him. “You are looking at him, and he looks fine to you, but I have rejected him. You must see him the way I do: see into his heart.” When he finally gets down the line and sees David, it turns out he is handsome; he is good to see.

And so we look through these eyes of ours that are conditioned to Disney movies, and we chuckle at Samuel because he reminds us of that slightly absent-minded duke in the Cinderella story. And we look at Jesse and his other sons, and feel like they got what they deserve for hiding David out back. And we look at David and think he’s going to live happily every after, all the time proud of ourselves for seeing who was supposed to be king all along.

Blind to messiahs

But the story goes on. Is David the last person anointed by God? Surely not. The word that means “anointed one of God” is pretty familiar to us: messiah. In ancient Israel, there was an expectation that the anointed one of God, certainly when that one was also the king, would lead the nation on to military victory, and that expectation continued through the time of Christ.

We haven’t let go of it yet. We still want ours to be a victorious faith—why do you think God Bless America got sung so much more than the national anthem after September 11th? We know that there is great power in God, and we want it to be on our side, directed against our enemies. We look at our lives and consider our desires, and that’s what we want: to be strong and to win. But God says gently to us, as he said to Samuel, “You are looking at the surface. Do not just look there,” he might say. “See deeply into the inner need of your hearts.” It is there that we find we don’t need a strong, handsome, military king. We need for God to anoint a leader who will help us return to God.

Just as God saw for himself a new king in David, God saw his beloved son when he looked at Jesus Christ. Jesus isn’t the kind of messiah that will lead us on to military victory. The kind of king we would look for could take able-bodied people and march into battle. The king God sees for us takes the mournful, broken-hearted and makes them rejoice; he gives the humble poor faith. The deaf hear him, those who cannot speak sing praises to him, the blind see him, and the lame jump up in his presence for joy.

We would look for a king who can chart a path for us and lead us on with pomp and circumstance. God sees for us a king who is a shepherd, his rod and staff our comfort, and his cross before to guide us. So hail to the anointed King David and hail to the Lord’s anointed, great David’s greater son.

Isn't Fruit Healthy? (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

2002-02-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday in Lent (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

2:15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
3:1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 NRSV

Temptation

Since our scripture comes from Genesis this morning, it’s probably appropriate to talk about creation. When God created me, God looked upon the little version of me that would become the five-foot, eleven-inch tall man you see before you and decided to endow me with all the willpower normally invested in a weak-minded church mouse. I realize this most often when I’m trying to work. At school, I have the internet: every procrastinator’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time. At home, the distractions are endless. I frequently clean my desk when I’m supposed to be writing. If I have a lot of writing to do, I might clean the office. Come term-paper time, occasionally I even vacuum, which shows true desperation on my part.

Food is my other problem. Since I’ve been married it’s been a little easier, because I know Heather will see how much I’ve eaten and I’ll get in trouble. On the other hand, though, we’ve had ample stocks of sweet things in our house ever since our big day. We finished the wedding cake in time for Christmas candy. We finished Christmas candy, and you all pounded us, including wonderful Valentine’s candy. Since I got started on it early, we had almost finished Valentine’s candy and then Girl Scout Cookies came in. I ate a whole box of those new All-Abouts while I was procrastinating from writing this very sermon.

It’s Just Fruit

There are a few reasons my willpower doesn’t work very well on issues like procrastination and eating too many sweets. The main one is that those are not exactly commandment-level sins. If I never got anything done, that would be one thing. If I ate so much that it prevented me from serving God, that would be one thing, but hey, we’re just talking about a little self-indulgence.

Adam and Eve would have my problem too. “God put us in this garden here and told us we could eat anything! There was that thing about the tree in the middle, but I’m glad he warned us that we would die if we ate it. I don’t want to die. I haven’t gotten started living good.” And then along comes the serpent, the cleverest of all the creatures. How can we tell the serpent is the cleverest? Because he goes to the woman. Win over the man, and you’ve just got a man. Win over the woman, and you’ll have them both because the man will follow right on along.

Adam and Eve’s whole problem with the fruit is that God said it would kill them, so when the serpent assures them that they won’t die, there’s not much obstacle left in their heads. We’ve known the end of the story for so long that it’s hard to remember that they didn’t know how angry God could get yet. So they figure, hey, we were getting a little bored with all the other types of fruit in the world and, after all, fruit is healthy, right? This stuff shouldn’t be off limits, so we’re going to eat it anyway. Furthermore, the snake says we will be able to tell the difference between good and evil. Who knows what that even means, but it sounds like a good thing to know!

The Ends Justify the Means

We are good at figuring that even if something’s technically wrong, there’s a reason it’s OK to do. Maybe Adam and Eve figured that knowing the difference between good and evil was such a useful and important thing that it was worth breaking the only rule God gave them.

“The ends justify the means” is a frequent argument in our heads. “It’s OK to do something that’s not exactly right on my taxes,” we figure, “because I know how to spend money better than the government does.” Or maybe “it’s not wrong to take supplies from work, because they don’t pay me enough.”

This brings up a whole group of sins: the ones that look like they don’t hurt anybody, or the closely-related Robin Hood sins that look like they only hurt rich and powerful people who could stand to lose a little. Those must be the devil’s favorite ones, because when we manage to justify what we do, we sin twice: we do something wrong, and then we lie to ourselves and to God about whether it was wrong to begin with.

C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Screwtape Letters, in which he imagines months worth of correspondence between Screwtape, the undersecretary of a department in hell, to his nephew, Wormwood, who is working to encourage sin and evil in a human. The demon Screwtape writes to his nephew:

One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on [the] subject [of gluttony], so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of excess.
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 67

Just a little later in the letter, talking about a gluttonous woman, Screwtape says

If ever [God] introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, [the demon assigned to her] counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t mind what she eats herself but “does like to have nice things for her boy.”
Lewis, p. 68

A big part of the reason we have church is to keep an eye on each other so that we don’t get caught in the larger sins and that we continue to believe rightly. There are laws most of the big sins, and it’s usually hard to commit them in the open. Screwtape and his minions quit focusing on the big stuff, because we got a little to clever for that. They focus instead on things that don’t seem quite so bad to get their foot in the door of our lives, so that it’s not the big sins that cause us the problem, but the little, even more tempting ones that are so easy to justify.

More than Original Sin

I wonder sometimes why this story of temptation is in the Bible. It seems kind of silly. Obviously it was a rookie mistake by God, putting that one tree in the garden that we weren’t supposed to eat. Theologians talk a lot about original sin, the doctrine that says that because Adam and Eve sinned we all inherit a sinful nature, but I don’t think we need this story to understand that. They would’ve managed to sin pretty soon anyway. I think this story is about the forcefulness of sin, but also about the conniving we can do in our heads, or allow other people to do for us, to justify anything we want to do. In fact, as far as I can tell, just about any time we have to justify something to ourselves, it is sin.

I don’t have a problem with the big, commandment-level sins—the ones that I know are wrong and that anyone else could tell are wrong too. I have a problem with the ones that are much more common, like eating things I’m not supposed to and lying to cover up when I’ve made a mistake.

Sin and penitence are important themes that come up a lot as we begin the season of Lent. This isn’t necessarily supposed to be an entire season of feeling bad about the ways we have sinned, are sinning, and will sin in the future, but rather this is the season when we awaken to our sin. We can’t repent from what we haven’t even admitted to ourselves. There is a useful metaphor for the season in today’s scripture. The reaction to recognizing our sin is the same as it was for Adam and Eve: we will feel naked before God.

Temptation doesn’t stop when we recognize our sin: quickly, we’ll look for ways to cover up—to justify ourselves.

“Away with you, Satan!”

At the climax of our gospel lesson, Jesus faces similar temptation:

…the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if
you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan!
For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
Matthew 4:8-10 NRSV

Lent might be the time we figure out that at our worst, we even worship sin. But it is written, and Jesus tells us to “‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” That is a commandment. So much for all those little sins being insignificant.

May we stand in this season naked before God, recognizing our sin, but also the sacrifice of Christ for us, an undeserving people. May we not try to justify the wrong that we do, lest we sin again, but rather strive to return to God.

Seek His Face! (Psalm 27:7-14)

2002-01-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Third Sunday After the Epiphany (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
8 “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger,
you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
10 If my father and mother forsake me,
the Lord will take me up.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
12 Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they are breathing out violence.
13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27:7-14 NRSV

West Wing

When I was moving into the apartment where Heather and I now live, we talked some about whether we wanted to get cable TV or maybe even one of those tiny satellite dishes. We explored the options and decided that since neither one of us watched a whole lot of TV, we could get by with a plain old antenna. This fall we have realized the most significant cost: it’s harder to watch ACC basketball when you don’t have cable. Although TV isn’t very important to us, I at least have one terribly powerful vice. I must watch West Wing, the show about President Martin Sheen and his cast of quick-witted senior staff in the White House. Some of you share my vice: Jamie tried to end a meeting we were both at recently because he wanted to get home in time to see it. He gave me a knowing glance, but I wasn’t concerned at all; I have my VCR set to tape it every week just in case. I realized I might have a problem a couple of weeks ago when a professor tried to use an illustration from the show. He’s talking along about Methodism at the end of the 19th century and says that people with a certain view point were “like that press secretary on West Wing, what’s her name?” and he looked at the class for the answer. I said “C.J.,” but not very loudly. I was the only one who spoke, though, so he looked toward me: “what’s that?” “C.J. Craig,” I said, and then, intending to help him understand the initials I said, “Claudia Jean,” and was about to say that she’s played by Allison Janey, but I could tell people were looking at me funny for knowing her character’s whole name, so I dropped my voice without finishing my sentence.

A friend of mine helped me this week to put in perspective part of why I love West Wing so much: it portrays lives that are exciting and fast-paced; not the kind of life I would want to live, but the kind of life that’s fun to watch as fuel for dreams and as an image to hold in our heads as we trust the government to face its many difficult tasks in this age.

“Follow me…”

I have a fear that this is the way we treat the Bible sometimes. I need to explain that. It’s great to love the Bible and to have time set aside for reading and study that you try to protect in your schedule. It’s certainly OK to know character’s names and to follow the plot closely. It’s also easy, though, to feel pretty removed from the stories it tells.

That happens for me when I read this week’s gospel lesson. Jesus walks along the water and spots two brothers fishing. He calls to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Today that’s where the commercial would come, or worse yet, the words “to be continued…”: the moment of suspense, waiting for the fishermen’s response to this seemingly crazy man. Rather than a protracted consideration of the benefits of following Jesus, the Bible tells us “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” What a wonderful plot twist! Who would’ve guessed those fishermen would up and leave their net and whatever fish had been unlucky enough to get caught in that last casting and go follow this Jesus who just passed by? Exciting stuff: lives that are fun to watch, but we wouldn’t want to live like that.

Warming of the Heart

When I watch that story, or rather read it, I think I’m supposed to feel a connection with those disciples on a couple of levels. First, they were called to be Christians, as am I. It’s hard to see myself in their story, though, because there was no moment when I decided to be a Christian. I was baptized into the community of faith under a covenant my parents made on my behalf. I grew up and participated increasingly on my own in the life of the church, and one day, when I thought about it, I realized that I was a Christian. My family and the church had formed me, and the Christian faith in me was inseparable from who I am at the core of my being. There was never a time when Jesus was a stranger to me, as he was to Simon, Andrew, James, and John before that day at the lakeshore.

There’s another way I’m supposed to feel connected, I think. Traditionally, the apostles are associated with the elders of the church: the ordained ministry. I’m not an elder yet, but it is the order to which I am called and which I’m seeking by my education and candidacy in the church. My calling to the ministry didn’t come quite like that of those first four apostles, though.

Luckily, I know it doesn’t have to. You’ve probably heard the story of John Wesley’s reviving spiritual experience before: he was at a bible study on Aldersgate Street in London when he felt his heart strangely warmed. It didn’t happen for me in London, but rather on Fifth Street in Winston-Salem. At a worship service during a particularly moving sermon:

“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
Psalm 27:8a NRSV

And then the part that amazes me more sometimes, my response:

Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Psalm 27:8b NRSV

I didn’t know the 27th psalm of the top of my head, so I didn’t know to put those words to what I heard within, and I didn’t know to use its words to respond either, but the sentiment matches perfectly.

Reality Bible

You see, if the stories of the gospel can seem a little removed and impractical sometimes, sort of like a drama on TV, then the psalms can serve to connect us intimately with someone knows God but also knows the kinds of pressures and doubts we do. There are times when the psalms express anger, even anger at God. There are times when they express deep sadness, regret, faith, loneliness, hope, and joy. And the reason I think they can be so powerful for us is that they often incorporate many of those feelings at once. Thanksgiving with regret, loneliness with faith, sadness with hope; the combinations of feelings that make life difficult to navigate.

The psalms give us a sense that people have shared our lot in life; that others have had the same emotions we experience. But they challenge us too. There were not all that many people who had the opportunity to see Jesus standing in front of them in the flesh and to hear an invitation from him, but before he came, as we hear from the psalmist, and long after, as you heard from me and as you’ve experienced yourself, God still speaks. From deep inside, our hearts tell us that we are to seek the face of God, and we know the little voice is right, so we respond: “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”

So where’s the challenge? Seeking God’s face is no big deal. Certainly a lot easier than giving up your livelihood: leaving behind all those fish you caught, your family, and everything you know and following Jesus across Judea.

Actually, though, danger is even more eminent for someone who seeks God’s face. Do you remember the story of Moses on Mount Horeb?

18Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” 19And the Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” 21And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Exodus 33:18-23 NRSV

Moses has just received the promise that God will be with him and the people of Israel—strong evidence of God’s care for them—and he asks one final favor of God. “Show me your glory,” he prays. God reaffirms his commitment to Moses, but then says that no one can see his face—the essence of his glory and power—and live.

To seek the face of God is dangerous stuff, and yet the psalmist frames it for us so that we can see: it is our calling too. When we seek the face of God, we seek his glory and his powerful presence.

The Land of the Living

Does seeking the fact of God sound like a bit much to you? It can, especially when you know what happens to you if you find it. And, come on, let’s be serious. Are we really going to see the face of God anytime soon?

The psalmist thinks so. He closes his prayer:

13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27:12-14 NRSV

We’re probably not going to see the glory of god on a mountaintop like Moses, but we as a church believe that we shall see the face of God in the land of the living. We find our assurance in our Old Testament lesson and echoed in the gospel lesson for today:

2 The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
Isaiah 9:2 NRSV

This belief of ours takes great faith, especially when it is uttered just after the realization that there is violence all around. We must pray, then, for that faith, and for God to open the eyes of our hearts, so that we might see his glory in the world around us.

And what of that penalty for seeing the face of God? We are not excluded from it. When our eyes are opened, we may lose the life we know. Jesus explained as those disciples he called began to figure out the difficulty of their path:

25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their
life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:25 NRSV

So seek the face of God, in prayer and in the land of the living. It is a long path, but one on which we have the guidance of God’s son and all the saints.

…Be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27: 14b-c NRSV

Pastoral Prayer

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, your glory shows over all your works, and though it overwhelms us, it lights our path.

When violence rises up against us, our hearts shall not fear. There is much that is wrong in the world, and much that shakes our confidence, but in you, the source of our faithfulness, we will continue to trust.

We ask one thing of you: that we might live in your house all the days of our lives to behold your beauty and seek your truth. Hide us in your shelter and lift us up over everything that would weaken our spirit and destroy us. From the security of your care, allow us to worship you: to sing and make melody to you, O Lord.

Help us to hear your Spirit within us as it says, “Come, seek God’s face.” Do not hide your face from us; do not turn away and do not forsake us, for you are the God of our salvation.

Teach us your ways so that we might follow you, and open the eyes of our hearts, so that we might see your goodness in the land of the living.

We pray in the name of your son Jesus Christ, who calls us from the lakeshore to follow him, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

Back to the Grindstone (Matthew 2:13-23)

2001-12-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday of Christmas (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

13Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
16When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more.”
19When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20“Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 21Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
Matthew 2:13-23 NRSV

So this is Christmas

Welcome to Christmas. Does that sound a little strange? The world has started shifting back into its normal gears, and Hallmark is preparing Valentine’s Day displays while the Christmas cards nobody wanted are relegated to the clearance table.

Perhaps it’s a little clearer to me this year because the idea of waiting and anticipating was especially present for me during most of Advent, and Christmas came at the end of a unique and very special couple of weeks, including a wedding and honeymoon. On the morning after Christmas, my new wife and I got up, she went to work, and I sat in front of my computer, trying to think of ways to stall from writing a sermon, all the time trying to step carefully around the boxes of textbooks for the new semester on my floor. It was a rude reintroduction back into the world as I knew it before, and it didn’t take long for a feeling of routine to set in.

Maybe the transition seems a little more difficult too because there was something different about Christmas this year. Radio stations started playing Christmas music during Thanksgiving week, with explanations like, “in this troubled time, Lite 102.3 brings you some peace and joy with the sounds of the season.” I struggle with whether that’s a good thing. It seems like there’s no way the day could fulfill all of the expectations this hurting world placed upon it. Maybe it did provide some relief, though. The Bible passages we shared this month all pointed toward the coming of Christ, and like that music on the radio, got us looking ahead instead of backwards. Constant updates about action in Afghanistan that punctuated the news before had trouble getting through that screen of Christmas music. The relief was nice, but it seems to be over. According to the Christian calendar, which never matches up very well with the calendar the rest of the world uses, it is still Christmas, but even here in church the tone of the season isn’t stars and mangers, meek and mild this morning.

The holiday we share

Much of the way we understand Christmas comes from years of tradition, but not necessarily Christian tradition. The world doesn’t like Easter, but it’s the big deal for us. The world does seem to like Christmas, though. When Rich and I met earlier this week, he mentioned how amazing it is that the secular world has embraced a Christian holiday. The themes of peace and joy sound good, and the world co-ops them right into the mainstream.

In fact, Christmas becomes entirely about peace and joy. When we talk about the place of Jesus in the holiday, we use the peace and joy-filled narrative in the gospel of Luke:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed…. Mary … great with child… swaddling clothes… manger… no room... in the inn.
Selected from Luke 2:1-7 KJV

We all love that beautiful story, but compared with other things in the life of Jesus, it doesn’t get all that much press.

Christmas is little more than a footnote in the gospels according to Matthew and Mark, and is completely absent in John. One of the keys to reading the bible is reading it a book at a time and only reading the book you’re on. So let’s just read Matthew. Joseph found out Mary was going to have a baby, an angel told him to stay with her. Jesus is born in the second half of one verse at the end of chapter one. No stable, no manger.

But there were wise men. The wise men go to find Jesus by way of Herod, the political king of the Jews. Herod’s not real happy when someone asks him where his replacement, the new king, is being born, so he tries to enlist the wise men as spies. They do find Jesus, but go home a different way. Herod realizes his plan didn’t work out, so just to be sure he gets rid of this appointed king, he kills every male baby in Bethlehem. Warned by an angel, Joseph and Mary escape with their baby, only to come back after the all-clear is sounded, this time headed to Nazareth.

Thrust back into the real world

This part of the story doesn’t get told on Christmas Eve, and I’ve never seen it as part of a Christmas card representation of the wise men, but the violence in the story is not all bad. If Jesus had come into a world where the worst thing that happened was a full hotel, it would be much harder to understand him as part of our world. He didn’t, though. Jesus came into a world where people murder innocent children to preserve their power. Where parents have to flee their homes to protect their families. Not the world of nativity scenes, huh? It’s much more like the world of the evening news.

That comforts me. Even before Jesus could walk by himself, he was surrounded by the kind of stuff that scares us. He didn’t live a sheltered life. Even this world that has started swirling around us more quickly than we can understand is not completely different from the world in which Jesus lived, and he understands it. Strange that violence makes us feel more comfortable and more connected.

Has the world changed any?

I wonder how the wise men felt, though. They came all this way to greet a new king—a new day. They came with reverence, offering the nicest gifts they could find to bring. They didn’t find what they expected. If they had anticipated a baby, I doubt they would have brought jewelry and perfume. They arrived to be greeted by ultimate peace, and I think they were bright enough to understand that this child was more special than any king to date, and they were excited at what he would bring to the world. When they had soaked up as much holiness and wonder as they could, they exited the old barn, and right away had to think of a new way to go home to avoid the evil king Herod.

What a rude awakening. They must have been disappointed to return to the same old stuff just after Christmas, kind of like we are. The world doesn’t look any different, or at least not enough different. What was it that we were so excited about a couple of weeks ago?

More than twelve days

This is where it gets much more important that we identify with the wise men. We get a little distracted during December, but like them, we usually manage to get to the manger on Christmas Eve somehow or another. And being there, whether in worship, literally in a barn somewhere, or simply pausing to recognize in our hearts that the reason for this holiday doesn’t have anything to do with the mall—being there is important, don’t get me wrong—but it’s the day after Christmas, the week after, the month and year after that define how the holiday works for us.

Like the wise men, we find ourselves back in the same old world on December 26th, but it’s not really the same world, is it? Maybe our problem is that Christmas comes every year. The week before last, Heather and I saw a cartoon Christmas special on TV. We missed the beginning, so I’m not sure of the title, but there was an animated ornament who learned about the family tradition of Christmas. Whereas the other ornaments were kind of cranky, he was much more high-spirited, and even introduced himself in a kind of high-pitched voice, “My name is Noel, and I have a happiness.” He represented all of the wonder and joy of the day and the season, and all of the good, positive stuff that we associate with Christmas. After a long spring, summer, and fall in the attic, he got to come down in late December, get put up on the Christmas tree, and enjoy a wonderful week or so before being stuck back in the attic. For some of us, maybe, Christmas has lost that power to inspire. After several years, the children in this TV special had grown up, and one year the ornament didn’t get put up because the man and woman had lost the energy to worry with a tree. The ornament stayed in the attic through the abandonment of the house when the couple moved away, and didn’t see the light again until many years later when a new family brought the old box of ornaments down to supplement theirs on the tree. Our star ornament was the only one that made the cut, alive with his excitement about Christmas again. But he was brittle, and his hook separated from the body of the ornament, and it plummeted to the ground. The spirit of happiness and joy survived the fall, and was never constrained to the attic, or the glass body of the ornament at all for that matter.

The special is a little cheesy, perhaps, much like a lot of the Christmas specials that were on TV and a lot of the songs that got played on the radio this month, but I think something like that needs to happen to us. It isn’t easy to get Christmas right, because you kind of have to get broken in the world’s eyes. You have to quit worrying quite so much about the fuss over the 25th day of December, break out of the routine of it all, and remember the tiny baby on the other side of the world. Past that recognition, you have to be unafraid of sounding a little silly sometimes, which our TV star Christmas ornament definitely did, and you have to allow something of the holy event of Christ’s birth to change you for good. Not just the joy of the thing. You also need to hear the violence of the day; we know that Christ underwent suffering to save us, but we learn in today’s scripture that the children of Bethlehem underwent suffering just so he might live to the ripe old age of one. You need to hear the love of the day: wise men coming from far away to learn of this new and different king, and a mother and her husband abandoning all they know to flee for the safety of their child.

Christmas resists our understanding. I am sure of one thing though: if there’s any happiness associated with the holiday, for us Christians it must be on this side. Eagerness and anticipation color the weeks headed up to the day, but on the day itself, the world changes. We walk away from the manger and back into our routine like the wise men, but like them hopefully, we walk away with the knowledge that the world can’t be quite the same any more. Despite having seen Jesus, there is far more to be understood about him, and the energy and spirit of Christmas can carry us forward into that task. We must wrestle with what this all means and, as the hymn tells us

…our eyes at last shall see him
through his own redeeming love;
for that child so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heaven above
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.
Cecil Frances Alexander, “Once in Royal David’s City”

In the name of the Father, and of the newborn Son, and of the Holy Spirit who guides us in our seeking, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Father, Son, and Spirit, we come to you in prayer on this sixth day of Christmas, aware of your birth on earth, and seeking your presence with us. Our needs of healing and guidance were known to you before we even knew to voice them, and yet we lift our prayers to you here in your church as you asked us to do, and grateful for the chance to connect with you.

We remember a hurting world in this Christmas season. We talk about the warmth of the holiday, but we know that the cold, stark lives of many in the world are untouched by heat and warm food, to say nothing of the joy of Christmas.

We ask your care also for our community. We know that we are a blessed people, and we ask for you to help us see how we may carry your light to those around us. Take hold of us; like the old and difficult prayer says, we put ourselves fully into your hands. Put us to doing, put us to suffering, let us be employed for you, or laid aside for you, let us be full, let us be empty, let us have all things, let us have nothing. Help us to have faith so that we might with a willing heart give it all to your pleasure and disposal.

We pray for our families. May we see you in our Christmases and indeed in all of our days so that we might recognize the gift that our families and closest friends are to us. As we surrender ourselves to your will, surely we must change. We know that we are not perfect, but sometimes it is the hardest to change with the people who know us the best. As we celebrate the birth of your son on earth, may he also be born in new ways into our homes, that we might have the strength to be as you would have us to be.

And we pray for ourselves. In a world where the television and the internet bring us everything we could want to know, where everything is explained and interpreted for us, Christmas demands something more of us; it demands that we wrestle with the meaning of the arrival of you in flesh on earth, and it demands also our faith. Give us faith, and give us peace, for it is what we need in the deepest parts of our spirit.

We ask all these things and all that we do not know how to put into words in the name of your son Jesus Christ, born to Mary and Joseph, worshipped by the wise men, and whisked away to Egypt to return to Judea years later, to teach radical love and inclusion, and show us the way to pray by saying, “Our father….”

Sleepers Awake (Romans 13:11-14)

2001-12-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

The First Sunday of Advent (A)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

Prayer for Illumination

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Book of Common Prayer

Scripture Reading

11And this you have known, that this already is the moment for you to be raised up out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we began to believe. 12The night progressed and the day has begun to approach. Let us throw off then the work of darkness so that we can equip ourselves with the tools of light. 13As in the bright day let us walk around decently, not in feasting and drunkenness, not in the bedroom and in sensuality, not in competition and jealousy. 14But clothe yourselves with Lord Jesus Christ and put no attention into desire of the flesh.
Romans 13:11-14, new translation

Way too early

One of the things Heather and I have enjoyed doing together since we’ve been dating is riding in the car. I heard that snicker—I said “riding,” not “parking.” As our senior year of college was about to end, she invited me to spend the week with her aunt and uncle in Maryland. I was a little concerned that five and a half hours from Raleigh, where we started, was a long time to sit in the car, but I didn’t want to appear weak, so I enthusiastically accepted. Their house has since become one of my favorite places to be, and now we travel there once every few months. We both sit on the campus ministry board of directors in Winston-Salem and have lots of friends there, so we drive over for meetings once a month or so, and every now and then I visit my parents in Charlotte for the day. We are professional travelers. We compact trips well, because we make an unspoken competition out of who can go the longest without stopping. Getting gas is always an adventure: you could take Heather to the middle of nowhere, blindfold her, spin her around three times, and she could then point to the cheapest gas station within 10 miles, so we have established stops on every route we take. Thanksgiving conversation actually includes who found the cheapest gas on the way.

We took on our most significant journey together this Thanksgiving when our venue changed from Maryland to Michigan, a twelve hour drive. This is no big deal to Heather, because like I said, our marriage will graft me onto a great tradition of professional travelers, but I am still in the minor leagues, relatively speaking. Daunted by the thought of driving 800 miles in one day, I came up with what I thought was a wonderful idea. Rather than getting there late at night and just falling asleep, not doing anything but holding a steering wheel and a warm Dr. Pepper bottle for the entire day, I thought we should leave a little earlier, get up there in late afternoon, and relax a little while, enjoying the company of family before going to bed. I told Heather I was going to pick her up at 4:30 in the morning. I was smart enough to know that I was not just committing to drive to her apartment and greet her, but actually to pick her up out of the bed, carry her to the car, and close the door to go. We actually did it—we even got on the highway ten minutes ahead of schedule. The first hint of sun appeared around Pilot Mountain (north of Winston-Salem), Heather woke up just before we went through the tunnel into West Virginia, and we eventually arrived nearly an hour ahead of schedule, having eaten our lunch in the car and combined bathroom and gas stops.

The Bad News

I know you come to church to hear the good news, but you get some bad news today, except for those of you who are nurses or farmers and think it’s ridiculous that I was proud of waking up at 3:50. The bad news is that you have to get up that early to understand what Paul means in today’s scripture. You’ve got to see night turn into day, not just the last few seconds before the sun comes up: you’ve got to see the earth be born into a new day. What’s more, you’ve got to be up and moving around before it looks like it’s time. This text is about looking alive and anticipating what’s coming next. It’s not enough to be up early in Paul’s metaphor, or even to know that morning is coming soon. You’ve got to be dressed for the day to come.

The long wait for the sun

Rich told us last week that we were celebrating the last Sunday of the year: Christ the King Sunday. Today we begin Advent; it is the wee early morning of the year, contrary to the calendar we use outside church. It is still dark outside, but there is a glimmer of brightness at the horizon.

I told you when we were traveling the first hint of the sun appeared at Pilot Mountain. When that happened, I started thinking how wonderful it would be if the sun rose as I was driving through Fancy Gap, Virginia. It is a stretch of Interstate 77 some of you may be familiar with. If you look out, which is not actually a good idea to do while you’re driving, and the day is particularly clear, you can see for a hundred miles. From Virginia you can see way back down into North Carolina. So after that first hint of sun appeared, I kept craning my neck to look up at the sky, hoping the sun would wait just a little while longer, but actually quite sure it would come out too soon. I drove for another forty minutes, got to Fancy Gap, and while there was more light, still no sun. Heather had finally woken up and we were in West Virginia before it came out for good. Advent is like that, or should be like that, anyway. You can look at your calendar and see when December 25th is with no problem; I know—I’ve gotten to be an expert at counting down to a certain day in December myself. I wish deeply that Christmas was more like the sun rising—you can feel it coming, but it still manages to surprise you.

Getting dressed

If it were so, Paul’s words would make a little more sense for us. We know the day is coming, but we’re not sure exactly when. We’ve got to get dressed, or all of the sudden we might find ourselves exposed. That party dress you had on the night before won’t work. The Hawaiian shirt you were sporting at a bar in town? You don’t want the Son to see you in that. Even, Paul says, the basketball jersey you put on to go root for your favorite team will disappoint the Son. Even if it was a Duke jersey.

Of course, Paul is not really worried about the actual clothes, and Jesus wouldn’t love you any less if he was born into the world and looked up to find you wearing anything from fig leaves to Ann Taylor. Maybe Paul has noticed, though, that often clothes are related to activities, and often activities are related to the state of your heart and soul.

It is easy, especially for us now in a world that can cure such an incredible range of diseases and an increased life expectancy, for us to figure that we’ve got plenty of time until our reckoning comes, so we can live like we want, and get ourselves in order later. The thing about our God, though, is that God does not wait at the end of this long journey for us to arrive at our destination. God sends his son to run the race with us. And in Advent, we know that the Son is coming soon—there is even the beginnings of an unusual star in the sky that wasn’t there before—but it’s not clear exactly when that will happen.

Sleepers Awake

So now already is the moment for us to wake, for day is fast approaching. We need to be ready to sing the words of the old German hymn,

Zion hears the watchmen singing,
and in her heart new joy is springing.
She wakes, she rises from her gloom.
For her Lord comes down all-glorious,
the strong in grace, in truth victorious.
Her star’s arising light has come!
"Now come, O blessed one,
Lord Jesus, God’s own Son."
Philip Nicolai, tr. Catherine Winkworth, “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying”

Even if we do know exactly when Christmas is coming, we do not know the date when Christ will come again, and that is part of the mystery of faith which we celebrate at the table today. We come as a people clothed for the night, but we know that the Son is coming, and we want to waken into his Spirit, clothing ourselves in righteousness, so that when we comes, he will find us walking about in the right way.

So then,

Let us throw off then the work of darkness so that we can equip ourselves with the tools of light.
Romans 13:12b, new translation

Now is the time. Here, on this table and indeed in the life of this church, are the tools.

Don't Drink the Sand (Deuteronomy 8:7-18)

2001-11-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

Reading for Thanksgiving Day (A)
Introduction to Christian Preaching
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

7For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.
11Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” 18But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. 19If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 8:7-20 NRSV

At the brink of the promised land

The Church traditionally understands Deuteronomy as a speech by Moses to the people of Israel after a series of victories, and just before their entrance into the promised land. Old man Moses, gaunt and still a little raspy when he had to speak for a large gathering, probably looking a lot more like a stooped-over Morgan Freeman than like Charleton Heston, backs a little ways up a hill so that he can be seen, and gives his parting address.

“We are standing right at the brink of the promised land,” he says to a skeptical crowd. "Wonders await you that you can’t imagine: abundant water, fruit growing on every tree, and land that will yield food when you plant and riches when you dig. I’m scared for you, though, because I’ve noticed you have a nasty habit of forgetting God.

“Just before we crossed the Red Sea you started complaining that it would be easier to go back to Egypt, and barely had it begun flowing again before you were complaining about water and food, wishing you had died and not trusting God. Even when God gave you bread from heaven you wouldn’t trust that it would come again. And of course, we can’t forget how I found you worshipping a golden calf when I came down from the mountain where I received the covenant for you.

“God has been forgiving so far, but we must all realize that we stand at a new place, and we must think about how far we have been brought and how much has been given to us. If we forget, there is a cost we certainly cannot afford.”

“They don’t know the difference.”

Think about hearing that speech of Moses. Would it be appropriate for us to hear? Are we standing at the brink of the promised land, or are we living in it?

The American President is one of my favorite films. It features a heated debate between the president, Michael Douglas, and his senior domestic policy advisor, Michael J. Fox. Fox is trying to convince the president to be more aggressive, and he says with great passion:

[People] want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.

The president responds coolly,

People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty; they drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.

That’s always made me mad. The one fallacy in my favorite character in one of my favorite movies. Well, he does sleep with a lobbyist in the White House, but that’s another sermon. I’d never liked this interchange, because after all, I know the difference between sand and water. I think most of us do. As I started thinking about today’s text, though, I decided he might be right. Maybe we do drink the sand, not even realizing that there is a better alternative.

The key for us is realizing that this world is not the promised land. It sure sounds like it at times. If we decided to distribute it evenly, we would have plenty of just about everything we need. We’ve “eaten [our] fill and… built fine houses,” and, though certainly not as much as we might like, our “silver and gold is multiplied…” (Deut. 8:12-13). Without doubt, we have been richly blessed. In fact, we as middle- and upper-middle-class Americans have everything Moses described as being in the promised land. We have those things for which the Israelites thirsted.

Our thirst

But still, our desires are not quenched. That’s because we are essentially different from the Israelites, and have different needs. An enslaved people in a barren land thirst for freedom, water, food, and riches. We are not in any legal sense enslaved, we have plenty of water, this past week might have served as a reminder of both how much food means and how much we have, and if you want to see a display of riches, just hang out at the mall during the next month.

There are plenty of people around us who hunger for food, freedom, water, and riches. To ignore that would be a grave sin for sure, but to act as if we don’t need anything because we have those basic necessities would be quite like the sin Moses described.

Our wilderness

What would our promised land look like? We could dream the day away imagining. Diseases cured. The threat of terrorism a faded memory. Families made whole rather than torn apart. Christians being as radically inclusive as Christ was. A system of commerce that fulfills our needs rather than dictating our desires and diluting our passions.

You see we are in the wilderness. We have the food, land, and riches, but only in the wilderness would people be concerned about airplanes flying into buildings or, if you’ll go a step further with me, only in the wilderness would people be so concerned with getting everywhere fast that they feel crippled without worry- and hassle-free travel near the speed of sound. Only in the wilderness would we witness marriages and divorces of convenience. Only in the wilderness would we seek to exclude people who don’t fit the church mold. Jesus had lots of things to say about that.

We are not alone here in the wilderness, and we need to be thankful even here. As Moses speaks to the Israelites we hear what this time is all about for us:

14b[do not forget] the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good.
Deuteronomy 8:14b-16 NRSV

We are in the wilderness, and it surrounds us with all of its threats and perversions, but it does not overcome us. God leads us and provides for us. It ought to be even more clear to us that we must give thanks, because we don’t depend on leaky flint rocks and sweet-tasting insect dung that shows up every morning. Like the Israelites, we are always a little more comfortable with where we are now than with where we will be next, and so we sit here in the wilderness, fooled by the mirage that this is the promised land, and we drink the sand because we can’t seem to tell the difference.

Christ as our guide

For we who have mapped the whole world and even explored beyond the bounds of this planet, we can’t get into the promised land by battling a conventional enemy or even a “twenty-first” century military opponent. We can’t get in by crossing a man-made bridge or breaking through a wall.

Moses spoke to his people as they were perched on the brink of the promised land, and he speaks to us as we are perched on the brink of Advent. When we avoid the commercialism of the wilderness enough to recognize this as a season of waiting and watching, that becomes more real to us.

Like Moses, I want to issue a warning. We have a nasty habit of forgetting, but there’s no room for that. Now especially,

18…remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.
Deuteronomy 8:18 NRSV

We are standing at the brink, so I invite you to look through the trees here at the edge of the wilderness. Put down that water you have cupped in your hands, because it’s really sand that you’re about to drink. The fog is lifting—can you see it? By the Word of God, I can promise to you with the same certainty that Moses had that you may enter the promised land, and that it will be a land of wonders you can’t begin to imagine. Your guide will be a child, of whose coming we have heard, and he won’t let you drink the sand any longer, but will plunge you into water that gives true life.

Infinite Justice (Joel 2:23-32)

2001-10-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Reformation Sunday
The Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost (C)
Union Grove United Methodist Church
Hillsborough, North Carolina

23O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain in righteousness, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. 25I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. 26You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 27You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 28Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. 30I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 32Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those
whom the LORD calls.
Joel 2:23-32, adapt. by Achtemeier from NRSV

The defeated land

I think of West Virginia. I don’t mean the beautiful mountain landscapes you can see from the Scenic Overlook on the interstates. I mean the strip-mined tracts where once there was the top of a mountain and the ghost towns a few miles off the highway that have long since been abandoned by mining companies who owned everything in sight, and often carried on business as if they owned everyone in sight too. The swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter—a great army—and now there is not much left to make the defeated land inhabitable.

For us, language about a defeated land brings up some other images. Empty airport terminals on September 12 and 13. A family at home, sitting around the dining room table after a modest dinner, trying to figure out how to move forward since mom and dad both worked for Midway Airlines. My mail carrier just this Friday afternoon, driving into my apartment complex donning latex gloves and a mask. Another family half hoping to hear news about their daughter’s army unit in Afghanistan, and half hoping they don’t hear anything because, after all, no news is good news. Yet another family, closer than we’d like to admit, wondering if they should move out to the countryside to protect their children or trust that the United States won’t miss another military target in their town and hit them by mistake. Of course, we can also see in our minds the image of Manhattan, missing its most obvious landmark, covered in a misshapen dome of slowly thinning smoke. Sometimes the TV stations still show us pictures of ground zero, with twisted steel beams rising out of heaps of rubble that will never be recognized again. A defeated land to be sure.

An elusive promise

There is a promise somewhere in the midst of all this. We can’t quite get our finger on it just yet, but it’s there. And we strive to figure out how to get past this “defeated land” status as quickly as we can. The promise is a little clearer in Joel:

The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil…. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.
Joel 2:24, 26 NRSV

So let’s get there already! Feed us aplenty. Fill up those vats and threshing floors! Well, maybe that’s not exactly what we say, but certainly we yearn for something a little better. Why can’t God deliver on his promise?

That’s OK. History shows that God is usually kind of slow. We’ll just do it for him. The fact that the military decided to call the anti-terrorism effort Operation ENDURING FREEDOM instead of its first choice, Operation INFINITE JUSTICE, shows that they understand that words mean something, and that it might be a good idea to listen when religious leaders tell you to be really careful using especially powerful words like “infinite.” But the fact that they picked INFINITE JUSTICE as the name initially says something about our mindset regarding this war. We as a nation have accepted the idea that if we defeat terrorism, our land will stand blessed. The rains of good fortune will come, our economy will improve, and we will be repaid somehow for the suffering we’ve seen of late. We as a church haven’t put up a fight. Some in the church have debated about whether we should be a voice for peace or patriotism, but we haven’t voiced the message of scripture: it’s not our job to get justice in the fullest sense of the word.

I need to be very clear here. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be at war. I’m not saying America isn’t a great land—a land worth fighting for. My first reaction after the 11th was to search for a flag to put on my car, and boy, you should’ve seen me when I came out of a lecture where a professor railed against the government for its aggression. I wanted to have her deported. What I am saying is that we have to be very careful about where we place our trust, how we define justice, and that perhaps the church should be standing up and saying, “hey, our message hasn’t changed any. Our focus is still on God, and the promise of God’s kingdom.”

Victorious, but still defeated

I don’t know anyone who doubts that we will win this war. We’re going to destroy the Taliban. We’ll put something we think to be better in its place. We’re going to find Osama bin Laden, and somehow we will bring him to justice. My fear is that we might have begun to believe that our “defeated land” status will be over then.

My mail carrier won’t have to wear a mask and gloves. But that family worried about their daughter in Afghanistan? She’s one of the few American casualties. And the family where both parents work for Midway? One finds a job in another industry that doesn’t pay nearly as well, and their son has to drop out of college in his third year to help out. The Afghani family will be glad they decided to stay in town, where the relief effort is concentrated and where there aren’t many land mines to contend with, but certainty and security are still not even remote possibilities for them. Our striving is losing.

We in our own strength confide

The trouble with this state of the world is that we are tempted to trust in ourselves. In the gospel lesson we heard earlier, Jesus lays a wonderful little trap for people who do that. That’s right. A trap.

10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
Luke 18:10-13 NRSV

We read this story, about the proud, though clueless Pharisee and the pathetic tax collector, and we, being smart church people, anticipate the ending: “yep, that Pharisee might sound like he’s doing it right, but he’s wrong.” Pleased that we figured out the ending before we got there, we whisper to ourselves, “Thank you, God, that I am not like the Pharisee.” Oops. There we are, looking out of this little hole we just fell in, hoping nobody was around to hear us miss the point.

The parable is not just about being humble rather than proud, although that is important. It’s also about not trusting in ourselves. The Pharisee thought he could get himself exalted by his own actions. “I’m better than everyone else,” he says to God, “because I made myself so; I did all the right things.”

Call on the name of the LORD

We are not called to do all the right things. Joel, and later Jesus, and later Paul, says that what we need to do is call on the name of the Lord. Christians do not cry out for justice or revenge. We call on the name of the Lord. We have some images of that too, perhaps. A biblical figure, cowering in a corner, weeping softly for God to heal his troubles. Or, to be a little more contemporary, a TV evangelist putting his hands on the head of someone who has cancer and calling on the name of the Lord to heal them.

But that’s not how it looks in scripture to call on the name of the Lord. Throughout the Old Testament, it means to give thanks to God and to tell of what God has done and of who God is—to share faith. And there’s a promise there. We can’t quite get our fingers on it just yet, but it’s there (Achtemeier, 328)

Calling on the name of the Lord is going to make us a little different. For us, the focus can’t be on victory in Afghanistan, because we know that isn’t true victory. For us, the goal cannot be to restore the American way of life exactly as it was, because we know that we can’t fall back in to the global apathy in which this disaster found us. For us, this war will not defeat evil, for we know that

…his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.
Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," trans. Frederick H. Hedge

But we don’t have to tremble for evil either, because as people who believe in God’s kingdom, our lives fit into something a little bigger than this world.

When that last day comes, when we begin to see the coming of God Almighty’s kingdom, that’s when we will call on the name of the Lord yet again and be saved. Like Paul, we will say

17… the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. 18The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
2 Timothy 4:17-18 NRSV