David Cameron's Sermons

Consolation - Psalm 148, Luke 2:22-38

2009-12-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there is a moment, a point in time,
where all the elements are present and things click into place.
Maybe it’s the moment you first lay eyes on someone –
and – click – you know, you just know this is the person you will marry.

Or maybe it’s the split second you complete a project, do something really well,
and – click – you realize this is my calling,
this is what I will do with my life.

You can’t predict this kind of moment. It just happens.
You could chalk it up to mere coincidence,
but if you are sensitive to the idea of God’s Spirit working in you,
if you do believe that you are part of something bigger than yourself,
then these moments of sudden awareness
are nothing less than God working God’s purpose out – in you and in me.

Simeon and Anna are two of those characters in the Scriptures
who take up little space in the story,
but the brief references we have to them make me want to know more.
Simeon, we’re told, had come to the realization through God’s Spirit
that he would not die before he saw the Lord’s Messiah.
Is that something he would keep to himself, I wonder?
Or is it the kind of thing he would tell over and over –
until all his friends had heard it a hundred times.

Can’t you see him at the Men’s Lunch on Thursdays waiting for an opportunity
to slip into conversation yet again how the Holy Spirit had revealed to him
that he would see the Savior before he died.
We all have our favorite stories, why should he be any different?

And Anna…what was she like?
Married seven years and a widow for eighty-four.
Did she still wear her wedding ring?
Was she literally in the temple every time the doors opened?
Did she have a daughter who tried to get her interested in other things -
Going to yard sales? Playing Canasta?

We tend to attribute supernatural abilities to people we find in the Bible,
imagining them to be more alert to God’s plans than we could ever be.
They’re in the Bible, after all!
But could it be that Simeon and Anna’s ability to see in Jesus something extraordinary
had to do not so much with extra special supernatural powers
but simply with their WILLINGNESS to see?
Their DESIRE to see?

Something clicked into place for Simeon and Anna when they saw Mary and Joseph
offering their sacrifices in the temple,
lifting up their son, their first born, to dedicate him to God
Was it because they had some kind of divine ESP?
Could it be that they recognized God’s savior
because they EXPECTED to see God’s savior?
Simeon and Anna both lived in a state of expectation.
They knew the story of God’s covenant with God’s people inside and out
and they knew God wasn’t finished yet.

As it was, Simeon and Anna didn’t have it so bad as Jews living in Jerusalem.
The Roman presence was annoying
but they had free access to the temple.
And, let’s face it, they were old.
Simeon may have been as old as 53!
What difference did it make to them if Israel ever found her consolation?
What did it matter to them if God’s Messiah ever came?

But it DID matter because Simeon and Anna saw themselves, they saw their lives,
not as individual tracks running parallel
but as part of a complex web of relationships reaching back into the past,
back to Abraham and Sarah
and reaching forward into the future,
forward to a time when there would be no artificial barriers
separating any of God’s children,
forward to a time when both Jews and Gentiles
would worship God together.

They knew they would never see the end of Salvation history
BUT they expected to see God’s hand at work – day by day,
and they expected to be part of the process.

Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the temple
and for both Simeon and Anna there was this moment where it all clicked,
a moment where it all came together and they knew
there was something special there in their midst.

Luke says they recognized something special in Jesus,
and that’s part of it, sure, but I wonder….
I wonder if they didn’t also recognize something special about Mary and Joseph, too.

I don’t mean the angelic visitations
or the circumstances surrounding Jesus birth.
I mean their presence there in the temple,
their full involvement in their religious tradition,
their example as poor but proud parents who have come
to dedicate their son to God.

And maybe it wasn’t just Mary and Joseph that Simeon and Anna noticed,
but the whole picture – the priests in the temple,
the other devout people gathered there to worship God,
to offer their prayers for the fulfillment of God’s plan for God’s creation.
Maybe it was the community of faith gathered around the baby boy
that gave Simeon and Anna a new sense of hope for the future,
a feeling that in this faith community
God truly could do wonderful things through this one child.

We have the privilege this morning of observing the sacrament of baptism
as we welcome Tyler Gregory Fahy into God’s family.
While it is our usual practice to encourage parents to have their child baptized
in the particular church where they are active,
the Session took into consideration Tyler’s special situation.

Tyler is Carolyn and Greg Frahm’s grandson.
Carolyn and Greg are relatively new members of this congregation,
but they have quickly become active in the church’s life.
Tyler is part of a military family.
His parents, Megan and Nat, live in Eastern North Carolina
and Nat just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
They are waiting for new orders, so they are somewhat betwixt and between.

In a few moments Megan and Nat will present Tyler to be baptized
so you old people, listen up!
You young people, take notice!
This is the kind of moment where things can click into place,
the kind of moment where we expect God’s Holy Spirit to be especially active.

All indications are that Tyler is not God’s Messiah come again,
but his little life still represents the power of great potential.
We see this potential not only in his small self,
but also in those who take seriously their responsibility to introduce him to God’s love.
There are his parents, Nat and Megan, who will shoulder the larger share
of this responsibility,
but clearly they can’t do it alone. No parent can.
His sisters will help, his grandparents, too.

And then there are the rest of us.
We won’t have the opportunity to have much of a direct influence on Tyler,
but we’ll still be his family of faith in the larger sense.
Anytime we love a child, or support a parent,
we’ll be doing it on Tyler’s behalf.

But more than that, most of us are old.
If Tyler grows up to do something that benefits all humankind
most of us won’t see it. Most of us won’t benefit from it.
Most of us probably can’t even imagine the new things Tyler might do,
but neither could Simeon and Anna’s contemporaries
imagine a time when there would be no barrier in worship
between Jews and Gentiles.

The point is, even though we can’t SEE the future,
we are part of the future – part of Tyler’s future.
When we baptize him in a few moments
implied in the promise we make to him and his parents
is that we will care about his future.
We will do everything in our power to lay the groundwork for his future
so that God will be able to accomplish great things
through him and his generation and in generations to come.

All of this doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing for Tyler,
Simeon was looking for consolation in Jesus, but it was a funny sort of consolation he found.
When he looked at the innocence and purity of the baby before him
he knew the world into which Jesus had been born
was not nearly so innocent or pure.
He probably wished he could have bitten his tongue off rather than say it,
but he was honest about the feeling of foreboding he had
concerning Jesus’ ultimate fate.

Still, it was consolation just the same;
consolation found not in only Jesus’ potential,
but in his parents, the temple and the family of God
who cared enough to welcome the new baby boy into the fold
and launch him into God’s future.

What I Want for Christmas - Philippians 4:8-14

2009-12-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

Philippians 4:8- 14

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress.

This homily was written for the Longest Night Service, a contemplative service that focuses on the more somber mood of the season for some.

There’s one question I dread every year about this time:
“What do you want for Christmas?”
It used to be easy.
“I want a Tonka truck and a set of dinosaurs to go with my army men.”
Or when I got older: “I want an eight-track tape deck and Neil Diamond’s greatest hits.”
Now I don’t know.
Sometimes it feels like I want the moon.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve already got everything I could ever need.

What do I want for Christmas?
I want time to count the stars in the winter sky.
I want to be with people who like me.
Most of all, I want to be like Paul – content – content in whatever circumstance,
content with what I have, content to rely on God’s strength in all circumstances.

There are so many unspoken rules that go with Christmas –
expectations, real or imagined, put on us by others, put on us by ourselves.
There are sweet feelings we associate with Christmas, but maybe bitter ones, too;
and memories that sustain us, but maybe also memories that tie us in knots.
Add all that to a relentless 24 hour news cycle
peppering us with one tragedy after another
shrill commercials on TV demanding that we buy more,
harsh rhetoric spewed between Republicans and Democrats -
it’s no wonder the season can be so hard to face.
I’d hazard to guess that none of us want for Christmas a pounding head, watery eyes,
and a churning gut.
What we want is peace.
And sometimes, let’s face it, SOMETIMES it seems like best way to find peace
is to curl up in a ball with the shades drawn.
But Paul sees it differently.

In Paul’s eyes, God’s peace is not achieved by passive retreat.
God’s peace is gained through maintaining an intense, active focus
on those things that are honorable, just, and worthy of praise.
This isn’t just the power of positive thinking,
It is also the practice of intentionally turning away,
turning away from what is destructive or corrupt or sordid,
turning away from those things
and then making a point then to notice the elements in our lives –
large or small – that bring light instead of darkness.

When it comes to what I want for Christmas,
what I really want is an experience that has the ring of authenticity.
I want the knowledge of something true,
and I want to feel a divine vibration that hums
in my sternum, my patella, and my sacroiliac!

That kind of gift can’t be had by curling up in a ball.
I think Paul would say it can only be had by choosing to be the very thing we want.
If I want authenticity, I need to drop the pretense.
If I want truth, I’ve got to stop running away from it.
If I want to be touched by something beyond myself, I have to open up, not ball up.

All this AND, I need to be willing to be with others and let others be with me -
Paul says it best when he says to his friend in Philippi,
“It was kind of you to share my distress.”

The best gift of Christmas, I think, is the gift of creativity,
of finding ways look at the season with fresh eyes.
Fresh eyes like those of the little boy who was tapped to play the inn keeper
in the church’s Christmas pageant one year.
He was eight years old, but he was new to the story of Emmanuel, God with us,
He’d grown up thinking the Christmas story was about a boy who wanted a BB gun.
But from the start he had compassion for Mary and Joseph, the weary parents-to-be.
He felt the drama of their arrival in a town packed to the gills with other travelers.
And he was distressed by the one line he had to say,
“I’m sorry,” the line went, “There is no room in the inn.”
“I can’t just turn them away,” he said.
But the director of the play was a stickler for tradition.
She wouldn’t hear of any changes.

When the day of the performance came the characters took their places.
It was going very well. Marks were hit, lines remembered,
Mary and Joseph looked the part.
When they came to the inn and rapped on the cardboard door,
The innkeeper opened it wide.
Joseph held up his head as, in a loud voice, he requested a room
noting that his wife was great with child.
Mary kept her eyes cast down. She didn’t say a thing.

The innkeeper took it all in, cleared his throat and said his one line perfectly,
“I’m sorry, there is no room in the inn.”
There was a pause. He started to close the door. Joseph started to turn away.
But then, unwilling to let it end this way the innkeeper turned back and said,
“Aw, what the heck, I’ve got no rooms but won’t you at least come in for a drink!”

What do you want for Christmas?

Magnify - Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39-55

2009-12-13T18:36:00.000-08:00

As a child one of my favorite things was the magnifying glass
my parents kept in their desk drawer.
I was allowed to play with it as long as I was careful.
I’m thinking now of the years before I learned
that you could focus the rays of the sun with a magnifying glass
and start a major fire.

There was a cartoon of that era featuring a detective dog
modeled loosely on Sherlock Holmes
with the stereotypical deerstalker cap, overcoat,
and a large magnifying glass he carried around looking for clues.
I was that detective, magnifying smudges to look for fingerprints,
examining crumbs under the table,
and, when off duty, down on my knees
looking at various beetles and stink bugs close up.

I don’t know how magnifying lenses work exactly.
I remember studying the properties of light in a physics class long ago,
but if I ever understood it, I’ve forgotten.
I’m content to just call it one of the wonders of science.
It is a wonder – taking something small and making it big;
using the properties of something as basic as light
to make visible that which is invisible,
to bring front and center that which is obscure.
I’m fascinated with magnification,
so when, in Luke’s first chapter, Mary says to Elizabeth,
“My soul MAGNIFIES the Lord,” I sit up and take notice.

Relying on Christmas carols and Hallmark cards as my sources,
I have always assumed that Mary was a peasant girl,
one low-born in her society to parents of modest means.
There is no basis in the biblical account for this assumption,
but there is also no reason to believe that her family was wealthy
or high up on the social ladder.
All indications are that she was just an ordinary young woman
from an ordinary family
living in an ordinary town outside of Nazareth.

Being an ordinary young woman in an ordinary town,
I think it’s safe to assume that Mary became engaged to Joseph in the usual way.
It would have been an arranged marriage following the usual protocol
with a representative of Joseph’s family petitioning a representative of Mary’s family
to begin negotiations.
These negotiations would involve how much Mary’s family would pay Joseph’s family.
This payment would be more if there was some perceived flaw in Mary’s suitability
or less if her reputation was intact and her family respected in the community.
Joseph’s reputation would also enter into the discussion.
Was he a catch? Could he support her?

As the story goes, God’s angel appeared to Mary and announced God’s intention
to use Mary as the conduit through which God would enter the world in human form.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
Crazier still is Mary’s response to this pronouncement. It’s so…well…ordinary.
She showed fear, that much we know, because the angel said, “Be not afraid.”
She showed incredulity, too. “How can this be?” She asked the angel,
“For I am still a virgin.”
But what she said next…it’s so ORDINARY,
which, of course, considering the circumstances makes it EXTRAORDINARY.
She tells the angel, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord,
let it be with me according to your word.” Just that. Nothing more.

So, let’s recap.
An ordinary young woman, in an obscure little town,
is engaged to an ordinary man in the customary way.
There’s no reason in the world that anyone beyond her family should notice Mary.
No indication that she is destined for anything but the usual daily struggle for survival
working long, hard days with the occasional moments of rest or recreation.

But God has other plans for her.
She becomes pregnant.
Joseph is a standup guy, who plans to dissolve their arrangement quietly
until God’s angel gets to him as well.
Probably to avoid undue scrutiny by the neighbors,
Mary makes an extended visit to her cousin Elizabeth,
who has her own blessed birth to consider.
Elizabeth greets her with the kind of delight only another woman feeling blessed by God
could express.
That’s when Mary can’t keep it in any longer.
Like a Broadway musical there is a meaningful pause
and then she breaks into song.
And what’s the first thing she sings?
“My soul magnifies the Lord….”
“My soul magnifies the Lord….”
Mary is so astounded by the turn of events in her life,
she is so flabbergasted by the fact that God has literally and figuratively
“enlarged” her
that in turn she holds a magnifying glass up to God.

In case there is any doubt, she wants to make it clearly visible to anyone watching
that what is happening in her and through her is God’s doing.
God owes her no privilege, no reward,
yet there she is
on a marvelous, scary, incredible journey, with God at the wheel.

Mary’s vision of God, the image she magnifies and projects
is of a God who does not favor the wealthy
or give special perqs to the well connected
or butter up the pompous and the proud.
Her vision is expansive, all-encompassing, and uplifting –
Through her lens God appears mighty large indeed.

How different that is from what we often see.
Instead of a magnifying glass, we and others act like we’re looking at God
through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars
Instead of magnifying God, we reduce God.
Instead of our vision becoming broader and brighter,
it becomes more narrow and filled with shadows.

So we pay attention to the negative, overlooking the positive.
We obsess about what we don’t have instead of what we do have.
We conduct ourselves like perpetual referees,
ever vigilant for the smallest infractions on the part of others,
yet expecting our own infractions to be overlooked.
Or maybe that’s just me.

I’ve had a painful reminder this past week of how easy it is
to reduce instead of magnify the goodness in life.
Because, unlike Mary, I allowed my soul to reduce instead of magnify
in a very public way right here in this room,
I need to also try to rectify the situation right here, in public.

Last week I opened my sermon with a memory of a Christmas party I attended
at the home of friends in the town where I grew up.
In my description of the party I used literary license,
embellishing the situation for cheap effect.
What I said was mean in the most literal sense of the word – petty, small-minded.
To top it off, I even used the family’s real names.

As you probably know, I post my sermons on the church website.
Unbeknownst to me, someone actually reads them.
Cyberspace has no secrets and someone notified the family mentioned
that my sermon was out there.
They read it and were rightfully hurt and angry.
Fortunately, they thought enough of me to let me know it.

This week has been a week of deep self-examination.
It is not my practice to be so cavalier with the facts.
Certainly it is not my practice to say hurtful things about someone in public.
So why this time? Why this family?
They are a family well known in the town where they live –
civic minded, generous, and loving.
Children and grandchildren are all talented
and in general make the world a better place.

I have had to come to terms this week with a deep-seated, long dormant envy of them.
I wasn’t consciously aware of it, but I’m pretty sure that is what made me
narrow and darken my vision of this family instead of magnify and brighten them.
I realize that when I was growing up
I envied their talent, their poise, their apparent ease
at making their way through the world.
This long dormant envy rose up and got the better of me.

I have made my apology to this family,
and they have been gracious in accepting it.
It’s a hard lesson, but one I hope will stick with me.
And Mary is a good role model for me to follow.

She was an ordinary young woman caught up in extraordinary circumstances
who rose above the social ostracism she must have faced
as an unwed mother-to-be.
She was magnified by God in a most extraordinary way,
She did not narrow her vision, did not allow it to become clouded
with envy or arrogance or self-promotion.
Instead, she enlarged, she brightened, she magnified the Lord,
and, in so doing, managed to magnify all those around her as well.

Bigger Than a Baby - Jeremiah 33:12-16, Luke 21:25-36

2009-12-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

Being a follower of Jesus is hard.
I don’t mean that in the way some of you may think I mean it.

If you grew up in the Bible Belt
following Jesus was hard because it meant staying away from the “sins of the flesh.”
things like smoking, drinking, dancing, playing cards, going to movies, carousing…
Or maybe you think following Jesus is hard because you have read your Bible
and you hear it telling you to give up all your worldly possessions
and live among the poor;
or to join mass demonstrations against the war machine
or to commit your life to missionary service in a third world country.

Following Jesus is hard, but avoiding sins of the flesh
or choosing to forego the “American Dream” for a life of activism and service
isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m saying something different.
I’m saying that following Jesus is hard because it requires us to live our lives
as though everything we do is being filmed in front of a Green Screen.

Green screen technology is a technique used in producing movie special effects
where actors have to say their lines and go through their motions
as though they are, for example, being chased by a dinosaur
or falling fifty feet into the mouth of an active volcano.
They do their acting in front of a large green screen,
and only later is the dinosaur or the volcano edited into the scene.
When acting in front of a green screen, the actors have to really stretch their imagination.
Everything they do when they’re on the set
has to be done within the limitations of that particular moment
BUT while holding that moment in tension
with a vision of the larger reality they have in their minds.

There is a story,
There’s an ending, too.
But the actors are only part of the process and their role is limited.
They contribute to the story, maybe even adlibbing along the way,
but they ultimately have to trust the director to bring it all together.

Following Jesus is like living our lives in front of a green screen.
The promise of the gospel is that in Jesus, the kingdom of God has come near.
The values of kingdom life – of justice and mercy and hospitality and peace
are operative, they are valid and true,
but they do not yet hold sway.
We catch glimpses of God’s kingdom among us
but these glimpses are fleeting.

So, when it comes to following Jesus, we have a story. We have an ending.
But, in the meantime, we are left to play our roles
within the limitations of each particular moment,
while still holding the ambiguity and confusion of each particular moment
in tension with the sure and certain vision of God’s promised reign.

In other words, if we are going to follow Jesus,
we have to ACT with kingdom values of courage and confidence and hope
even when we are standing knee deep in catastrophe.
If we are going to follow Jesus,
we have to INVEST in the kingdom commodities of forbearance and generosity and love
even when we are being hammered from all directions
by pettiness, greed and hate.
Now THAT’S hard. But that’s what the season of Advent is all about;
living between the already and the not yet.
These weeks before Christmas are definitely bigger than a baby.

When we read the words of the Prophet Jeremiah
we remember that they are written in a time of Jerusalem’s collapse.
The Babylonians have overrun the Holy City
taking the best and the brightest off to Babylon in exile leaving the city in shambles.
Judea’s kings had tried to stave off the invasion with tricky alliances.
They’d refused to believe Jeremiah’s dire warnings,
listening instead to their in-house prophets with their Polyanna propositions.
But all their political maneuverings and sunny denial has come to nothing.
It looks like the end of God’s experiment with God’s covenant people.
In Jeremiah’s words, “This place is waste.”

In front of the green screen, the actors’ faces are contorted with pain and disbelief.
They carry their possessions on their backs
passing through the city gate that now hangs crooked on one hinge.
Jeremiah fares no better than any of the rest of them.
He too is forced to leave Jerusalem,
to leave everything he’s ever known to go to a foreign place.
But Jeremiah is different from his fellow actors.
Because he is not only acting in the moment.
His perspective is not limited by what is happening around him.

He knows that God’s story is not through.
He knows that even through the present trial is devastating to the Jewish identity
God has a different ending in mind for God’s people.
Even while he is leaving Jerusalem to go to Babylon,
Jeremiah is singing of a future when they will once again return.
The wasteland will become a green pasture where all God’s sheep may grace.
The tiny green speck growing out of the still-smoldering stump
will slowly develop – into a twig, into a sapling, and finally, into a mighty tree.
Despite all evidence to the contrary,
The Lord’s righteousness will prevail and Jerusalem will finally live in safety.

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem,
Jesus gives HIS vision of what is to come.
We read of distress among the nations
and people fainting with fear and foreboding
and it sounds dreadful, like something we just as soon avoid.
But we have to remember that Jesus is speaking to people
who daily live under constant fear of the whims of Rome.
Their every move is scrutinized for even the slightest hint of rebellion.

We also have to remember that by the time Luke is writing his gospel
the temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed by Rome,
no stone left one on top of the other.
Jesus’ audience and Luke’s readers are both looking for deliverance.
Acting in front of their green screen their shoulders slump with exhaustion,
their heads hang in hopelessness.

Jesus acts as one among them, his every move dogged by those who want him dead.
But he is not limited only by the present.
With the threat of those who would kill him he holds in tension
the sure promise of God’s deliverance,
the certainty of the full expression of God’s kingdom drawing near.
Even though they are knee deep in catastrophe,
hammered on all sides by pettiness, greed and hate,
Jesus invites them to stand up straight and keep their heads up
so they too can catch a glimpse of God’s promised conclusion.

Following Jesus is hard.
It requires us to hold the reality of the particular moment in which we find ourselves,
difficult as it may be,
in tension with the glorious vision of God’s Kingdom fully realized.
It is not for the apathetic or the self-indulgent.
But what a difference it makes.

It was early this past Thursday morning.
Son Will and I were out for an early morning ride through the mountains of NC.
We stopped at a Bojangles restaurant, the only place open for breakfast,
and as we ate I was watching CNN on an overhead television.
They did a story on the benevolent work of Nnamdi Asomugha,
a star cornerback on the Oakland Raiders football team.
Asomugha is Nigerian by descent, but he was born and raised in Los Angeles
and he is one of those occasional people who come along
and view wealth as a responsibility more than a privilege.
His favorite projects have to do with encouraging at-risk children
to go to college.

This particular story has to do with Asomugha’s response to an earlier CNN story
that featured a young African American high school student, Kenneth Chancey.
Kenneth and his younger sister live with their father at the Union Rescue Mission
and have to walk past drug addicts and mentally ill women and men
through the stench and the refuse every day to get to school.
Kenneth’s classmates don’t know he is homeless.
He is a star running back on the football team,
and has been named best overall academic student.
He hopes to go to Harvard and become a physician.
Asomugha saw Kenneth’s story and has reached out to help him.
Through his foundation he will make sure Kenneth has support to succeed.

Kenneth and his father and his sister
are acting in front of the green screen of their life
surrounded by the misery of Skid Row. That is their particular circumstance.
But like Nnamdi Asomugha, Kenneth is somehow able to hold in tension a vision
of a future with a different outcome than his present circumstance would suggest.

In one scene in the CNN report on Asomugha’s benevolent outreach
Nnamdi and Kenneth go to the roof of a tall building next to the Union Mission Shelter.
Nnamdi says, “If you look down you can see the Mission.”
On cue, the camera pans down
and focuses on the milling people shouting, pushing each other, huddling in fear.
“Yes,” said Kenneth, “But I make a point when I’m up here to keep my head up.
That way I can see the whole city.
That’s the view I choose.

“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near.””

What Sort of King - 2 Samuel 23:1-7, John 18:33-37

2009-11-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

When the American Revolution was over
and the colonies had won their independence
King George, III of England reportedly asked the American painter Benjamin West
what General George Washington would do next.
When learning that Washington intended to resign his commission
swear allegiance to a civilian government
and go back to his farm
the British King said, “If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Washington did go back to farming,
despite encouragement from some of his subordinate military commanders
to seize the opportunity to become a king himself.
And when he later returned as our nation’s first President,
he refused to serve more than two terms in office,
choosing to relinquish power instead of exploit it.

We don’t want a king – it is against our national DNA –
BUT it would be nice for somebody to be in charge,
somebody to marshal the troops and lead an army into battle if need be -
whatever it takes to keep us safe.
We don’t want a king,
but we do want somebody we can look to who exudes confidence
and carries himself with a bit of a swagger,
somebody who has the pluck and chutzpa you and I may lack.
We don’t want a king.
Or maybe we do.
It’s for sure we don’t want a tyrant keeping us under his thumb
but it would be nice to have someone to do our worrying for us,
someone to tell us right from wrong, good from bad,
someone who could eliminate by royal decree
all the uncertainty that lurks around every corner..

Come to think of it, we MIGHT want a king,
so when Pontius Pilate, Roman Governor of all Judea, asks Jesus his question
we stop what we’re doing and lean in to listen to what Jesus will answer.
We lean in to listen because rumor has it Jesus might be a king,
but frankly, as he stands before Pilate, he’s not doing too well.

In the twenty-four hours prior to his appearance before Pilate,
Jesus has been arrested without a fight,
he’s been interrogated by the high priest Caiaphas,
he’s been held prisoner overnight
and he’s been roughed up by Roman guards looking for a little sport.
So when Pilate looks down at Jesus, his lip bleeding, his right eye nearly swollen shut,
it’s not without a touch of irony in his voice that he asks,
“So, you are a king?”

Pilate needs to know the answer to that question in a most literal way
for a very pragmatic reason.
He’s heard the charge that some of the Jews are calling Jesus king.
If he was looking out his office window in the Antonia fortress
Pilate could have seen Jesus riding a donkey through the city gate,
could have heard people shouting, “Hosanna in the highest.”

An attempted insurrection is the last thing Pilate needs
with the city crowded with pilgrims.
The week of Passover is a security nightmare,
so even though Pilate can see through the transparent scheme
of the Scribes and Pharisees who clamor for Jesus’ arrest,
even though he senses that Jesus poses no threat,
he can’t ignore the possibility that Jesus is secretly gathering an army
to challenge the authority of the Emperor and the right of Roman rule.

So, you are a king?
If by some miracle it was David standing there,
Pilate wouldn’t have to ask.
If by divine fulfillment of Israel’s wildest hopes David had been physically reborn
there would have been no question.
For one thing, David would not be under arrest.
If he was standing before Pilate it would have been with a fighting force
of armed men ready to do battle.
David may have had his sensitive side, playing the lyre, singing psalms,
but he was a warrior to the core and the only instrument he showed his enemies
was an iron rod, the shaft of his spear.

David was a conventional king, the kind Pilate was worried about.
Jesus was not.
This is what Jesus meant when he said,
“If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting.”
As it is, the only military command Jesus ever made was to Peter the day before
when he told Peter to put his sword away.

When Pilate asks Jesus, “So, you are a king?”
Jesus turns the tables and puts Pilate on trial. “You say that I am a king.”
He doesn’t say “No,” but he doesn’t say, “Yes,” either.
He leaves it up to Pilate to decide.
It’s clear that Jesus is not a king in the way Pilate means,
yet he claims a kingdom, nonetheless,
a kingdom marked not by violence or by domination but by truth.

“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus tells Pilate.
“My followers do not fight.”
“I came to testify to the truth.”
Pilate hasn’t a clue what Jesus is talking about,
but he visibly relaxes, assured Jesus is no threat to the iron grip of Rome.
In a world-weary voice Pilate then breathes out another question.
“What is truth?” he asks, confident he already knows the answer.

Pilate, the politician, knows from experience that truth is whatever the Emperor says it is.
John’s readers know different.
John’s readers know that truth has been staring Pilate in the face the whole time.
They know that Jesus is the Word made flesh,
the revelation of God to the world.
He is the one who is about to be lifted up,
the one who will draw all things to himself
the one who will be enthroned as the greatest power in the universe.1

If we are ambivalent about a king, it’s for good reason.
It’s in our DNA not to trust kings.
Yet in uncertain times we are like the Israelites who came to Samuel clamoring for a king,
demanding that God give them someone to fight their battles,
to keep them safe from all the uncertainties swirling around them.
Despite the warning from Samuel that a king would take their sons and daughters,
would take their crops and livestock,
would ultimately take them and press them into his service,
they were willing to trade it all for just a tiny scrap of unqualified security.

We would never install a throne in the White House,
but we have our royalty just the same.
We tolerate king-sized bonuses at Goldman Sachs
because as much as we rail against them
we’ve bought the line that they are the kings of Wall Street,
and without them we’ll never return to economic prosperity.
We treat sports heroes like royalty
asking them to lead our team into battle and secure for us the victory.
And despite that unfortunate little stint in prison,
we still elevate Martha Stewart as Queen of the Domestic Arts
and lean on her heavily to help us create the perfect holiday table.

If the concept of “King” still leaves us ambivalent
maybe it’s because we know we should be following Jesus,
continue to make Pilate’s mistake instead.
We continue to admire conventional power
and strive for someone else’s idea of perfection,
not quite able to bring ourselves to accept gospel truth
that blesses the meek and the makers of peace.
We get impatient with paradox, with salvation delayed
forgetting that suffering love carries no whip
and that drawing all things to oneself can take awhile.

This Thursday we will celebrate another Thanksgiving.
Our Kings will take the field and fight for touchdowns and extra points.
The Caucasian among us will perpetuate the myth of benevolent Pilgrims
choosing to ignore the less-than-flattering Native American side of the story.
Some of us will labor under the stress of trying to create the perfect meal
and the idyllic family moment,
and exhaust ourselves in the process.
Others of us will lower the window shades and sink into lonely depression
dwelling on what we once had or what never has been.

But this is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the Christian Year,
the day we lift up the craziest notion and hope beyond hope that it’s true.
Today we hold out for ourselves the vision
that the humbled man who stood before Pilate is, in fact, our Risen Lord,
that the one who was tortured between thieves reigns in glory now.
He will not fight our battles for us, but he will go into battle by our side
as long as our fight is just and right by gospel standards.
He will not give us a crystal ball to show us the future,
but he does assure us that the future is under his control.
And this Thursday he will not keep you from overcooking the turkey,
he will not make your team win,
he will not send balloons or pull up the window shades.

But he will be your king.
He will hold you in the hollow of his hand.

_______________
1 I am indebted to Leonard Beechy’s article in the November 17 issue of The Christian
Century under “Living the Word” for November 22, 2009, p. 20 for the general outline
and content of this sermon.

Always Something New - 1 Samuel 1:4-20, Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25

2009-11-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

From time to time I teach a parenting class over at Rockfish River Elementary School.
Without fail, I can always count on someone in the class bringing up the issue
of how quickly young children change.
I remember that feeling as a young parent:
just when you think you’ve learned to predict your child’s behavior
and mastered the care of your child’s needs
the little rascal goes and does something different!

That compliant, happy little snuggle bug has a second birthday
and suddenly turns into a prickly force of defiance whose only word is “NO!”
That self-confident, curious, hard working seventh grader
has a summer growth spurt and suddenly becomes clumsy, sullen and lethargic.
Parents all feel tested to the limits by these changes
and can be seen late at night, leaning hard against the kitchen counter,
shaking their heads and muttering, “It’s always something new.”

As daunting a task as change can be for a parent,
none of us would prefer the alternative.
Sure, we’d like some stages to last a little longer,
but in our hearts we all know that when it comes to child development,
something new is usually a good thing.
When things STOP changing, that’s when we’re in trouble.
When days and weeks and months and years go buy and there is NOTHING new,
that’s when life becomes almost unbearable.
In the story of Samuel, Hannah’s life has become almost unbearable.
She would LOVE to have the problems of parenthood
but in a culture where women are valued only for their ability to bear children,
she has none.
She shares her husband with a second wife, Penninah,
who is never NOT pregnant
and who parades her fertility in front of Hannah whenever she can.

That Elkanah loves Hannah best may have taken away the sting at first,
but over time it has lost it’s power to distract her from her perceived inadequacy.
The women in my lectionary study group all agree
that Elkanah wins the prize for the “Most Clueless Man in the Bible”
with his statement, “Why are you sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

Compounding Hannah’s private despair is the fact that
she’s living in a time of general stagnation and distraction in Israel.
The chosen people of God are not really a nation at this point.
They are a loose confederation of tribes who have been scrapping
to gain a toe-hold in their Promised Land.
It is a time referred to in the Bible as the time of the Judges,
charismatic men and women who gain power from time to time
by either strength or wisdom
and whose leadership extends only so far as they can effectively rally the troops
for battle against one of the many tribes who are native to the area.

Abraham’s covenant with God to be the father of a nation who will be a light to all nations
has faded into the distant past.
The shared victory over slavery in Egypt
and the unifying passion of Moses has long since evaporated.
The book of Judges ends with this telling assessment,
“All the people did what was right in their own eyes.” (J udges 21:25)

This is a time before the first temple, before Jerusalem.
The center of worship is further north in Shiloh.
Eli is the chief priest but things have become so stagnant for him
that he’s become as apathetic as the ones he serves
performing his priestly rituals, just going through the motions.
It’s been a long, long time since anything new has presented itself;
a long time since he has been genuinely surprised.

Can you imagine such a predicament?
Maybe you’ve been through such a time or are going through such a time now.
Maybe it’s a job you’ve long since outgrown,
or a marriage that’s been on automatic pilot for years.
Maybe you’ve become stagnant in your faith development.
You’ve settled into a pattern, a routine that hasn’t varied
and you’ve insulated yourself.
You’ve insulated yourself against trying anything different.
That way you can’t fail.
You’ve insulated yourself against entertaining any new ideas.
That way you can’t be disappointed or make any mistakes.
As a result, there’s nothing new in your life.
Sure, it may be easy this way, there’s no challenge, no doubts to struggle with.
But is “easy” what we’re really after here?

Hannah and Elkanah go to Shiloh as a part of their dutiful religious observance,
probably part of their usual routine.
There Eli makes the ritual sacrifices on their behalf.
But Hannah decides that the routine is no longer acceptable.
She can’t go on any longer with things as they are.
She takes advantage of their proximity to the temple
and she presents herself before the altar of God
to pray like she’s never prayed before.

That the old priest Eli has drifted so far from a genuine experience of God
is evident by virtue of the fact that he is perplexed by the sight of Hannah praying.
He’s forgotten what genuine, heart-felt prayer looks like.
He thinks she’s had too much to drink.
But she assures him that she is pure in her motivation,
and he sees that she’s the real thing and gives her a blessing of peace.
Jaded as he is, it’s done old Eli some good
to warm up in the glow of Hannah’s faithful devotion.

It’s always something new.
When it comes to children, that’s a challenge.
When it comes to life, it’s what we hope for.
It is so easy to become complacent,
to go for the lowest common denominator,
to do just enough to get by.
But for a life of faithful obedience to Jesus,
stagnation is not an option.
It goes against everything Jesus stands for.

The author of Hebrews underlines in bold strokes
the notion that Jesus is our ticket out of complacency and stagnation.

The author reminds his readers that under the old system
the priests would stand at the alter day after day,
and time after time after time they would offer sacrifices for the peoples’ sins.
But it was a mindless, meaningless task.
All this repetitive sacrifice accomplished
was to highlight how stuck they were in their sinfulness.

But Jesus came and offered something new.
He made the lasting sacrifice.
He reconciled us to God once and for all.
He scrubbed us clean in our baptism,
pulled back the curtain on forgiveness,
and cleared the way for us to approach God’s throne of grace.

But the author of Hebrews doesn’t leave his readers there.
Having affirmed God’s action on our behalf,
he then completes the thought by underscoring our need to respond to God’s action
with actions of our own.
“Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,” he writes,
not neglecting to meet together but encouraging one another in the faith.”

Today we honor and remember our veterans,
women and men who by draft or by choice have devoted themselves
to the service of our military.
To some it’s a calling. To some it’s an adventure. To some it’s a job.
Though engaging in combat is the quickest way to promotion in the military
I’ve met enough military people to know that they are typically the last ones
who want to go to war.

They more than the rest of us understand that there is no glory in battle.
They know that the mere existence of a standing army
is a testament to the reality of human sinfulness.

Though war may sometimes be necessary,
and those who fight may fight with courage and nobility,
there is nothing noble about war itself.
It is the clearest example we have of a lack of imagination.
It is the ultimate sign of stagnation, of stuck thinking,
of an unwillingness to consider something new.

Nine months after Hannah’s fervent prayer Samuel was born.
Though the gift of a son was what she’d longed for,
Hannah recognized that Samuel’s birth was bigger than her desire alone.
She recognized that his birth heralded something new God was doing,
not just for her, but for her people as well.
so she dedicated him to God and put him in a place
where he could be a part of God’s new thing.

Since the dawn of human existence we have learned very effectively
how to provoke one another to war.
It’s the easiest thing in the world. But is easy what we’re after…really?
Wouldn’t it be something, though,
if we, like Hanna became fed up with doing things the same old way,
responding in the same old ways,
capitulating to the same old arguments about how things can never change.
What if instead of doing the same old thing provoking one another to war,
we did the new thing instead. What if we prayed?
And what if we provoked one another to love and good deeds?
What if we finally provoked one another to peace?

A Sparkle of Generosity - Lev. 19:9-10, Ruth 2:1-16, Mark 12:38-44

2009-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

In the late 1950’s, DC Comics introduced its readers to Bizarro World.
It was a cube shaped planet inhabited by opposites of DC Comic super heroes
like Batman, and Superman, and the Green Lantern.
Not only that, the preferred attitudes and personality traits of Bizarro world inhabitants
were the opposite of what we would call normal.
Stupid was smart, ugly was beautiful, and greed was good.
If you were kidnapped from your home on earth and transported to Bizarro world
you wouldn’t know who were the villains and who were the heroes.
You wouldn’t be able to trust your own eyes or ears.
Everything would seem backwards and upside down.

Those who heard Jesus teaching in the temple that day
must have thought they had been transported to Bizarro World.
He sat right there and told them the most backward, upside down thing.
“Beware the Scribes,” he said.
“What?”
“Beware the Scribes.”
You can see the wheels turning in his listeners’ heads,
wondering why he would say such a thing.
The Scribes were pillars of the community.
The Scribes were the good guys, the ones who really knew God’s law.
The Scribes had it all – wealth, respect, reputation.
You could tell they were important by the robes they wore,
by the long prayers they said.
But Jesus insisted on following that Bizzaro train of thought.
“Beware the Scribes,” he said.
“The ones who like to put on their fine robes and be bowed to in the shopping mall
and have front row seats in the Synagogue
and sit at the head table at banquets.”
Because even while they’re saying those long prayers of theirs,
they are, at the same time, signing the foreclosure notice on the homes of widows.

You see, if a woman’s husband died she was not deemed qualified to manage the estate.
So a religious leader with an impeccable reputation,
a Scribe,
would be appointed trustee of the dead man’s property.
That Scribe would charge the dead man’s estate a management fee
and, believe it or not, the Scribes would take advantage of the situation,
and siphon off more and more of the surviving widow’s property.

No one had the nerve to object to this, certainly not the powerless widow,
because it was always done in the name of God and for the good of the Temple.
Everyone in Jerusalem assumed that was just the way it was.
Everyone was conditioned not to question the status quo,
EVEN the widows whose livelihood was being consumed.

Mark tells us that on that last day Jesus taught in the Temple,
that last day before the precipitous tumble of events leading to his crucifixion,
Jesus sat down in the Temple opposite the Treasury,
a position Mark’s readers would immediately recognize as a position of judgment.
There Jesus watched as the people paraded up to the keeper of the Temple coffers
and made their contribution,
each donation called out aloud for all to hear.
The wealthy walked up with their entourage,
grinning broadly at those gathered,
making grand sweeping gestures to make sure they had everyone’s attention.
As they came forward each subsequent gift would be greater than the last,
causing the onlookers to gasp or even applaud the generosity of the giver.
You can bet the Scribes were there to offer the biggest contributors
an invitation to the club for dinner that evening,
or maybe two tickets to the chariot races on Sunday.
But then came the widow, that confounding widow.

The bare facts of the story are clear enough.
The woman shuffled forward and gave two of the tiniest coins there were in that day.
What she put in wouldn’t buy a lemon drop.
It wouldn’t buy a single thread in one of those fancy robes the Scribes wore.
You can imagine the snickers and the scornful looks she got
from the wealthier people gathered there
as her meager offering was made public by the money collector.
But Jesus spoke up, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more
than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;
but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

The question comes when we try to sort out this poor widow’s motivation
for giving the Temple coffers her last little coins.
For the longest time, commentators have seen her gift as a supreme act of devotion,
and they have made her a model of generosity to be trotted out on Commitment Sunday
to shame everyone into pledging generously to the church budget.
“THEY gave out of their excess, but SHE gave sacrificially!”
Doesn’t that just make you want to write the church a big old check!
The trouble is, making the widow a model of pious generosity
doesn’t fit with the context of the passage.
Jesus has just accused the Scribes of devouring widow’s houses,
and now Mark has introduced into the story one such widow.
Revealing the widow’s offering of all she has
is not meant to hold her up as a shining example,
It is meant to denounce the greedy, morally bankrupt practices of the Scribes
that have created her desperate predicament!

As a judgment against the Scribes,
some now see the widow’s offering as an act of defiance.
They imagine her storming up to the collector’s money chest
and angrily throwing in her two tiny coins
as a way of saying, “There! That’s it! You got what you wanted!
Now you’ve got it all!”
That’s a satisfying image in one way,
but I think it’s more a Hollywood version
than an accurate estimate of what really happened.

More troubling in my mind than a defiant widow who, in her frustration and anger,
throws in her last two coins in this world,
is a widow who quietly acquiesces to the Scribes’ corrupt authority and gives readily,
not out of pious devotion to God, but out of unquestioning acceptance
of the Scribes authority, despite their obvious corruption.
Even though it may mean the end of her,
she, like everyone else, just goes along, not uttering a peep in protest,
because that’s just the way it is.

In his book, “Deer Hunting with Jesus,”
Joe Bageant, a journalist from Winchester, VA,
tries to describe the mindset of the working poor in his hometown.1
As he describes them, I am reminded of this widow,
who does what she has been convinced is the right thing to do,
and, in doing the right thing, only manages to prop up the very ones
who have driven her into poverty.

Bageant is talking about the man who bags his groceries,
the woman who stocks the shelves,
the janitor who cleans up after them all.
He pulls no punches in pointing out that they are in many ways their own worst enemies.
Bageant writes here mostly about the white working poor,
those hard-headed descendents of Scots-Irish immigrants
who see receiving help from others as a sign of weakness
and who do not value education,
the one thing that might get them out of poverty.

But the many challenges as the working poor put in their own way
are nothing compared to the barriers erected by their own society.
Bageant cites conservatives who shamelessly manipulate the working poor
by playing on their frustrations and fears,
and also liberals who have not clue what makes them tick
and quickly dismisses them as ignorant red-necks.
No one, in Bageant’s view has a monopoly here.
In his view, Democrats and Republicans are equal opportunity exploiters.

The people who heard Jesus denounce the Scribes in the temple that day
must have thought he had traveled to them from Bizarro World.
What was he thinking?
But Jesus knew that he was the one talking sense
to a society that itself had turned upside down and backwards.
They were the ones who were doing the opposite of what God intended
learning, as they had, to turn a blind eye to the injustice that infected every aspect of
their society, even the holy Temple and those who supported it.

In the very foundation of the Jewish law there is provision for the poor,
compassion for the outcast and the stranger in their midst.
Leviticus is very explicit in it’s instruction to leave part of the harvest in the fields
for the poor to glean.
In the beautiful little story of Ruth, Boaz is our example of a man who has prospered
yet has not forgotten his responsibilities to the poor.
As Ruth showed mercy and kindness to Naomi,
so Boaz, in a sparkle of generosity, showed mercy and kindness to Ruth.

Today is commitment Sunday, the day we intentionally consider
how we will choose to give ourselves to God in the coming year.
We hope you will pledge your time and your energy and also your money.

There is no Church Tax to pay, no guilt to labor under, no one looking over your shoulder
to see how “faithful” you are.
If you choose to give, give as Boaz gave, out of gratitude to God for all God has given.
Give out of recognition of the interconnectedness we share with all of God’s children.
Give with a sparkle of generosity and an attitude of joy.

1Bageant, Joe, Deer Hunting with Jesus, New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2007

Choose Well - Ruth 1:1-18, Mark 12:28-31

2009-11-01T15:00:00.002-08:00

Every day we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
and it is important to choose well.

At Columbia Seminary this past week I met a young man from Hungary.
Though he wasn’t even born until Soviet influence had begun to wane
he knew the stories of what it was like for the church under communist rule.
He told me that the Communists kept the churches open for appearances sake
but they appointed their own priests.
And though no one was barred from attending worship,
there was always a man in a black suit seated in the back
taking the names of those who came
Those who chose to practice their faith would be out of a job the next day.

Every day we have choices about how we live out our faith,
and sometimes it’s the seemingly small choices that can have the most lasting effect.

The book of Judges ends with a pessimistic assessment of Israel’s prospects
under the inter-tribal rivalry and haphazard leadership that marked the era.
But Ruth, the book after Judges,
ends with the foreshadowing of the coming King, the great one, David himself.
David, in fact, is a descendent of Ruth, the main character in the story.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Before the birth, before the king, a choice has to be made.
It may seem at first like a small choice,
an unimportant choice made by a seemingly unimportant woman.
But sometimes a seemingly small choice make a huge difference.

The choice Naomi’s husband Elimelech makes to leave Bethlehem and travel to Moab
to find food for his family seems like a no-brainer.
But there is a touch of irony in the fact that Elimelech leaves Bethlehem,
(the very name of the city means “House of Bread”)
and travels to Moab in the East across the Jordan River;
Moab, one of Israel’s many enemies;
Moab, whose women Israelite men are expressly forbidden by God to marry.
Desperate times, though, call for desperate measures.

In a nutshell, Naomi and Elimelech have two sons.
Elimelech dies.
The two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, defy the Deuteronomic law
and marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.
Ten years later, Mahlon and Chilion die.
This leaves three women, one Israelite and two Moabites.
Three women, grieving great loss
and without male protection in a male dominated culture.

But then the rain falls in Bethlehem, the grain grows and the harvest once again ripens.
The wind shifts and word drifts in on the wind that the famine in Bethlehem is over.
Given her bitter grief over the loss of her husband and her two sons,
it’s remarkable that Naomi credits God for the end of the famine in Bethlehem.
She has been a foreigner in a foreign land for too long.
It’s time to go home and cast herself on the mercy
of whatever family she’s got left there.
What Naomi DIDN’T need was two extra mouths to feed.
In her commentary on Ruth, Katharine Sakenfeld notes that Naomi is in survival mode.
No matter what affection she may have toward them,
Naomi doesn’t need to feel responsible for her sons’ widows.
SHE may be able to see beyond the fact that Orpah and Ruth are Moabites,
but she knows her clan-conscious tribe won’t be so welcoming of foreigners.
Naomi is going to need all the goodwill she can get from her Judean relatives
and Orpah and Ruth are likely to be liabilities for her more than assets.

Then there’s the other thing.
Naomi feels cursed by God.
She has lost so much and she wonders what she could have possibly done
to deserve the loss and grief that has enveloped her like a heavy, coarse blanket,
smothering her, taking from her sometimes even the capacity to breathe.
Why should two innocent women be further struck by lightening
just because they happen to be standing under Naomi’s private storm cloud?

What Naomi has to say to her daughters-in-law makes sense.
“Go back to your Mother’s house,” she tells them.
“And God be merciful to you.”
Though it pains her, Orpah is obedient and follows Naomi’s direction.
Nobody can blame her for that.
But Ruth? Ruth is a different story.

Naomi orders Ruth to go home.
Ruth has a choice to make and there is a context for that choice
The cards seem stacked against her.
She had a husband but he died. In ten years of marriage she had no children
putting her in the category of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth
a category the Bible calls “barren.”
In a culture that defines a woman through her husband
and by the number of children she bears, Ruth has nothing.
Nothing, that is, but loyalty. Nothing but endurance.
Nothing but affection. Nothing but hope.

Naomi wants only to survive, but Ruth is more interested in thriving.
Naomi can’t see beyond her bitterness,
so it falls to Ruth to live into the moment,
to embody the gracious giving of a God she’s only beginning to know.

So Ruth offers to Naomi a remarkable gift.
She offers her what in Hebrew is called Hesed.
In English it’s translated “kindness” but it’s so much more than that.
It’s mercy, it’s peace, it’s steadfastness, it’s commitment. It’s a gift.

“Where you go, I will go,” Ruth vows. “Where you lodge I will lodge.”
Easy enough. But then she adds,
“Your people shall be my people, your God my God.”
This passage is often used in weddings
and every time I read that part about “Your people will be my people”
The two who stand before me always give a nervous little laugh.
They know that’s a tall order!
But Ruth isn’t just saying, “I’ll try to put up with you’re crazy family.
She’s saying, “I not only will go with you
but I will subject myself to certain rejection by your people as a foreigner.”

To top it off Ruth even vows, “Where you die, I will die.”
Naomi is older than Ruth and will likely die first.
Then what.
Even though Ruth will always be a foreigner in Bethlehem,
she is promising not to go back home to Moab
even after Naomi is no longer around.
She’s putting everything on the line.
She’s in it for the long haul.
This is more than duty, Ruth is telling her.
This is more than affection.
This is Hesed. This is steadfastness. This is my covenant. This is my choice.

The Scribe comes to Jesus and asks,
“What is the most important of God’s commandments?”
Jesus replies, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
The second most important commandment is this,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Everyday we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
choices about whether or not we will take advantage of the opportunities we have
to offer Hesed to our neighbor.

This past week I was at Columbia Seminary studying the sacraments,
thinking about how to make the sacraments more vivid in our worship here.
The faculty made themselves available to the six of us who were on campus
and I scheduled a meeting with two of the women faculty
who specialize in the theology of worship.

I don’t mind telling you, I was nervous.
I was afraid I wouldn’t know enough to carry on a conversation with these women.
I was intimidated by their credentials and feeling ill prepared.
When I emailed Dr. Long and Dr. Moore-Keish to confirm our meeting,
Dr. Long wrote back and said she would try to be there,
but that her mother-in-law was near death and she may be called away.

We met for an hour and both professors were there
and they couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful.
At the end of the hour I asked about Dr. Long’s Mother-in-law.
Her face clouded and she said, “She doesn’t look like herself anymore.”
Her voice caught as she spoke and a tear came to her eye.

Now, I tell you this not to hold myself up for any great prize,
but as an example of how powerful it can be if you stay alert to opportunities
to offer even a small gesture of mercy and peace and compassion
when the context calls for it.
These opportunities happen all the time and they usually fly right by me!
But this time the Spirit moved me to ask Dr. Long her mother-in-law’s name.
She said, “Her name is Belle.”
I suggested we might have a prayer for Belle before we left.
I mean, they’re theology professors! They’re not going to say “No!”
So we held hands, these highly intelligent theology professors and me,
and I offered a prayer for Belle and for Dr. Long and for her husband.
When I finished, Dr. Long’s tears were spilling over.
She paused, caught her breath, and said,
“That’s the first time in all of this that anybody’s prayed for me.”
* * *

“Love God, love neighbor.”
That’s it? That’s it!
It is so simple, yet so profound.
In God’s realm it’s not about the grand gesture or the flashy show.
It’s not about the big production or the once in a lifetime opportunity.
It’s about mercy, and peace, and steadfastness and covenant.
It’s about trusting the process when the road gets narrow,
staying on coarse when the light gets dim.
It’s about careful consideration of what and who is most important in your life.
It’s about recognizing all God has given us
and about being generous in our gifts to God and others.

Though our lives we are given the opportunity to be a source of Hesed to others,
to be fiercely devoted to those around us,
even when the economy tanks and familiar institutions crumble.
God gives us the choice and even the strength to follow through with the choice.
but ultimately the choice is ours.
It is important to choose well.

2009-11-01T15:00:00.001-08:00

Choose Well
Ruth 1:1-18
Mark 12:28-31

Every day we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
and it is important to choose well.

At Columbia Seminary this past week I met a young man from Hungary.
Though he wasn’t even born until Soviet influence had begun to wane
he knew the stories of what it was like for the church under communist rule.
He told me that the Communists kept the churches open for appearances sake
but they appointed their own priests.
And though no one was barred from attending worship,
there was always a man in a black suit seated in the back
taking the names of those who came
Those who chose to practice their faith would be out of a job the next day.

Every day we have choices about how we live out our faith,
and sometimes it’s the seemingly small choices that can have the most lasting effect.

The book of Judges ends with a pessimistic assessment of Israel’s prospects
under the inter-tribal rivalry and haphazard leadership that marked the era.
But Ruth, the book after Judges,
ends with the foreshadowing of the coming King, the great one, David himself.
David, in fact, is a descendent of Ruth, the main character in the story.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Before the birth, before the king, a choice has to be made.
It may seem at first like a small choice,
an unimportant choice made by a seemingly unimportant woman.
But sometimes a seemingly small choice make a huge difference.

The choice Naomi’s husband Elimelech makes to leave Bethlehem and travel to Moab
to find food for his family seems like a no-brainer.
But there is a touch of irony in the fact that Elimelech leaves Bethlehem,
(the very name of the city means “House of Bread”)
and travels to Moab in the East across the Jordan River;
Moab, one of Israel’s many enemies;
Moab, whose women Israelite men are expressly forbidden by God to marry.
Desperate times, though, call for desperate measures.

In a nutshell, Naomi and Elimelech have two sons.
Elimelech dies.
The two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, defy the Deuteronomic law
and marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.
Ten years later, Mahlon and Chilion die.
This leaves three women, one Israelite and two Moabites.
Three women, grieving great loss
and without male protection in a male dominated culture.

But then the rain falls in Bethlehem, the grain grows and the harvest once again ripens.
The wind shifts and word drifts in on the wind that the famine in Bethlehem is over.
Given her bitter grief over the loss of her husband and her two sons,
it’s remarkable that Naomi credits God for the end of the famine in Bethlehem.
She has been a foreigner in a foreign land for too long.
It’s time to go home and cast herself on the mercy
of whatever family she’s got left there.
What Naomi DIDN’T need was two extra mouths to feed.
In her commentary on Ruth, Katharine Sakenfeld notes that Naomi is in survival mode.
No matter what affection she may have toward them,
Naomi doesn’t need to feel responsible for her sons’ widows.
SHE may be able to see beyond the fact that Orpah and Ruth are Moabites,
but she knows her clan-conscious tribe won’t be so welcoming of foreigners.
Naomi is going to need all the goodwill she can get from her Judean relatives
and Orpah and Ruth are likely to be liabilities for her more than assets.

Then there’s the other thing.
Naomi feels cursed by God.
She has lost so much and she wonders what she could have possibly done
to deserve the loss and grief that has enveloped her like a heavy, coarse blanket,
smothering her, taking from her sometimes even the capacity to breathe.
Why should two innocent women be further struck by lightening
just because they happen to be standing under Naomi’s private storm cloud?

What Naomi has to say to her daughters-in-law makes sense.
“Go back to your Mother’s house,” she tells them.
“And God be merciful to you.”
Though it pains her, Orpah is obedient and follows Naomi’s direction.
Nobody can blame her for that.
But Ruth? Ruth is a different story.

Naomi orders Ruth to go home.
Ruth has a choice to make and there is a context for that choice
The cards seem stacked against her.
She had a husband but he died. In ten years of marriage she had no children
putting her in the category of Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth
a category the Bible calls “barren.”
In a culture that defines a woman through her husband
and by the number of children she bears, Ruth has nothing.
Nothing, that is, but loyalty. Nothing but endurance.
Nothing but affection. Nothing but hope.

Naomi wants only to survive, but Ruth is more interested in thriving.
Naomi can’t see beyond her bitterness,
so it falls to Ruth to live into the moment,
to embody the gracious giving of a God she’s only beginning to know.

So Ruth offers to Naomi a remarkable gift.
She offers her what in Hebrew is called Hesed.
In English it’s translated “kindness” but it’s so much more than that.
It’s mercy, it’s peace, it’s steadfastness, it’s commitment. It’s a gift.

“Where you go, I will go,” Ruth vows. “Where you lodge I will lodge.”
Easy enough. But then she adds,
“Your people shall be my people, your God my God.”
This passage is often used in weddings
and every time I read that part about “Your people will be my people”
The two who stand before me always give a nervous little laugh.
They know that’s a tall order!
But Ruth isn’t just saying, “I’ll try to put up with you’re crazy family.
She’s saying, “I not only will go with you
but I will subject myself to certain rejection by your people as a foreigner.”

To top it off Ruth even vows, “Where you die, I will die.”
Naomi is older than Ruth and will likely die first.
Then what.
Even though Ruth will always be a foreigner in Bethlehem,
she is promising not to go back home to Moab
even after Naomi is no longer around.
She’s putting everything on the line.
She’s in it for the long haul.
This is more than duty, Ruth is telling her.
This is more than affection.
This is Hesed. This is steadfastness. This is my covenant. This is my choice.

The Scribe comes to Jesus and asks,
“What is the most important of God’s commandments?”
Jesus replies, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
The second most important commandment is this,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Everyday we have choices to make about how we live out our faith,
choices about whether or not we will take advantage of the opportunities we have
to offer Hesed to our neighbor.

This past week I was at Columbia Seminary studying the sacraments,
thinking about how to make the sacraments more vivid in our worship here.
The faculty made themselves available to the six of us who were on campus
and I scheduled a meeting with two of the women faculty
who specialize in the theology of worship.

I don’t mind telling you, I was nervous.
I was afraid I wouldn’t know enough to carry on a conversation with these women.
I was intimidated by their credentials and feeling ill prepared.
When I emailed Dr. Long and Dr. Moore-Keish to confirm our meeting,
Dr. Long wrote back and said she would try to be there,
but that her mother-in-law was near death and she may be called away.

We met for an hour and both professors were there
and they couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful.
At the end of the hour I asked about Dr. Long’s Mother-in-law.
Her face clouded and she said, “She doesn’t look like herself anymore.”
Her voice caught as she spoke and a tear came to her eye.

Now, I tell you this not to hold myself up for any great prize,
but as an example of how powerful it can be if you stay alert to opportunities
to offer even a small gesture of mercy and peace and compassion
when the context calls for it.
These opportunities happen all the time and they usually fly right by me!
But this time the Spirit moved me to ask Dr. Long her mother-in-law’s name.
She said, “Her name is Belle.”
I suggested we might have a prayer for Belle before we left.
I mean, they’re theology professors! They’re not going to say “No!”
So we held hands, these highly intelligent theology professors and me,
and I offered a prayer for Belle and for Dr. Long and for her husband.
When I finished, Dr. Long’s tears were spilling over.
She paused, caught her breath, and said,
“That’s the first time in all of this that anybody’s prayed for me.”
* * *

“Love God, love neighbor.”
That’s it? That’s it!
It is so simple, yet so profound.
In God’s realm it’s not about the grand gesture or the flashy show.
It’s not about the big production or the once in a lifetime opportunity.
It’s about mercy, and peace, and steadfastness and covenant.
It’s about trusting the process when the road gets narrow,
staying on coarse when the light gets dim.
It’s about careful consideration of what and who is most important in your life.
It’s about recognizing all God has given us
and about being generous in our gifts to God and others.

Though our lives we are given the opportunity to be a source of Hesed to others,
to be fiercely devoted to those around us,
even when the economy tanks and familiar institutions crumble.
God gives us the choice and even the strength to follow through with the choice.
but ultimately the choice is ours.
It is important to choose well.

How Not to Write a Resume Job 38:1-7, Hebrews 4:14-5:10

2009-10-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

Unemployment in the U.S. is nearing 10%.
Whatever the reasons for this, it’s a hard time to be looking for work.
The first step to finding a job is to write yourself a good resume.
Some people are better at this than others.
The trick is learning how to put the proper spin on your qualifications and experience.
For example, you want to put, “I’m a fast learner.”
You don’t want to put, “I backed up the fork lift without looking where I was going.
I’ll never do THAT again!”
You want to put, “I’m known for running a tight ship,”
not, “I’m such a nag I was voted ‘Most likely to annoy,’ by my colleagues.”
You want to put, “I was the sales leader last quarter.”
But you may not want to reveal that what you were selling
was chocolate bars to raise money for your son’s band uniform.

The whole point of a resume is to focus on your strengths,
not to LIE necessarily, just to try to show yourself in the best light possible.
After all, if we were to tell the whole truth who would hire us?
“I pad my expense account every chance I get.”
“I will not hesitate to stab a colleague in the back if it gets me a promotion.”
“I spend fifteen minutes of every hour
checking my fantasy football stats on the internet.”
“I get bored easily.”

In classic theological terms, when it comes to the workplace,
or any other place for that matter,
we are sinners.
It’s one of those things we all have in common.
We are experts in our inhumanity –
choosing comfort over integrity,
choosing war over peace.

This isn’t a modern phenomenon.
It’s been going on for a long time.
The whole book of Job is one author’s attempt
to understand the question of sin
and why bad things happen to seemingly “good” people.
Job suffers one calamity after another
and his friends try to convince him that his misfortune is God’s punishment for sin.
Job, however, protests that he is innocent
and that a righteous God would not punish an innocent man.
So Job stands before God and asks, “Why?”
And God answers Job’s question with another question saying,
“Who are you to question me?”
When it comes to sin the author of Job says,
there are no answers.

When we read the sermon we call the letter to the Hebrews
it’s clear that the church to whom the sermon is addressed is struggling
with their own obedience.
They’re suffering from a sagging spirit.
They seem to have a problem with motivation.
Their hands are drooping, their knees are weak.
They’ve even started neglecting meeting together for worship.
They’re tired of being different,
tired of holding themselves to a higher standard,
tired of trying to resist the temptations that assault them daily,
tired of failing.
Reading between the lines,
it appears that they have started to question if they’ve made the right choice
in choosing to hire Jesus as their savior.
They’re wondering if the self-denial is worth it.
They’re wondering if their life together as a community of faith really means anything.
They’re starting to question if the abuse they suffer from being different
has any lasting benefit.

You know how that is – right?
If you grew up in church you remember getting dressed in those uncomfortable clothes
and pulling out of your driveway to go sit in Sunday school
while your friends zipped up and down the street on their bikes, free as birds.
You’re all too aware of the times you’ve wanted to hurt somebody,
to exact your revenge swiftly, bring your enemies to their knees,
and yet because you are a follower of Jesus you’ve done your best to stuff it down,
swallow the anger, absorb the hurt.
You know what’s its like watching people pass you on the career ladder
because they’re willing to play ball with the boss,
while you stew in your sauce of Christian ethics.

Like the Christians to whom Hebrews was written we hired Jesus as our savior
because he seemed the one most likely to get us out of our predicament.
We know we have this problem with sin
and he seemed the one who could make that problem go away.
Maybe you initially chose to hire Jesus as your savior
on the recommendation of a friend,
His references were good.
His pedigree seemed impeccable.
His resume was full of action words and bullet points.
But, honestly, are you happy with his job performance?
What if you were decide that today his contract is up?
You know there are many other candidates vying for the job.
Would you rehire him?
In this day and age is he still what you’re looking for?
Or should you cut him loose and look for something different?

If we’re going to hire someone other than Jesus to be our savior, who should it be?
How about John Rambo? That’s a thought.
He’s the fictional muscle bound tough guy who lives by the code that might makes right.
He’s appealing because he’s able to see the world in black and white.
There are good guys and bad guys in Rambo’s world,
and they’re easy to tell apart.
There’s no gray area. No ambiguity. If you’re not for me, you’re against me.
Rambo would definitely keep us safe.

Who can we hire to be our savior if not Jesus?
Maybe we should hire our Mother as our savior.
After all, in Mother’s eyes we can do no wrong.
Mother will give us nothing but nurturing love and acceptance no matter what.
If we mess up we can blame it on someone else.
If we run up debts Mother will pay them off for us.
We would be free of all responsibility if Mother was by our side.
Mother would definitely keep us comfortable.

Who can we hire to be our savior if not Jesus?
Maybe Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy Corporation
could be our savior. We could hire him.
He’s getting up there in years, but he’s still got that Playboy spirit.
If Hugh Hefner was our savior,
the first thing he would do would be to tell us to lighten up!
Pleasure is the key, he would say, and the pursuit of pleasure our ultimate concern.
He would tell us not to sweat the small stuff.
He would tell us not to sweat period!
Effort is for chumps.
Self-indulgence is the answer.
Hugh Hefner would surely keep us feeling good!

We’re in the market for a savior. Should Jesus’ be rehired
or should we look for another.
The original readers of Hebrews had to make that very decision.
Sagging, dispirited, world-weary – could Jesus still be the one
to make them hope again.
Did he still have the substance that would help them get their second wind?

The truth is, by modern standards Jesus’ resume is lacking.
He doesn’t offer safety, or comfort, or pleasure.
He hasn’t maximized any stake-holder’s profitability,
or streamlined any corporation’s functionality.
His one start-up effort was severely undercapitalized from the beginning
and the franchise is limping along at best.
He IS qualified as a high priest, the author claims
but even those qualifications come not from the established Ivy League line of Levi.
but through the unaccredited, mysterious line of Melchizedek.

Jesus’ primary qualification it seems is his acquaintance with weakness;
that and his sensitivity to God’s calling.

He is, we’re told, well versed in every test, every trial, every temptation that besets us,
yet, through it all, he is without sin.
He is without sin.

We’ll big deal! He’s God, right?
He can put on the cape, fire up his X-ray vision, leap a tall building with a single bound.
Of course he’s without sin, he’s GOD!
No.
The author of Hebrews wants us to know that Jesus is without sin because he’s HUMAN.
He is “human” in the fullest expression of that word.
He is human as God created us all to be human:
- subject to weakness, assaulted by temptation, beset by uncertainty
and yet he endured the sufferings without compromising his humanity.

As my former preaching professor Tom Long writes,
“It was Jesus who walked, as the high priest, into the great sanctuary
and, on behalf of us all, placed himself into the offering plate,
the one thing God truly desires: a human being fully alive.”1

If we’re honest with ourselves,
we can never have a truthful resume that doesn’t include sin.
But if we continue to employ Jesus as our savior
then we also have the right to include the one thing that makes all the difference.
Human. Like Jesus, we are human.
With God’s help, may our humanity toward one another
be the qualification that defines us.

1 Long, Thomas G., What God Wants, Christian Century, (March 21, 2006, p. 19.)

A Beautiful Gift Sometimes Broken Mark 10:1-12

2009-10-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

It’s reported that there’s a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas (where else!)
where you can get married without leaving the comfort of your rental car.1
I guess McDonalds next door gets all the catering gigs.
It’s a sweet deal.

This, of course, is an extreme case of the marriage industry run amok;
a clear demonstration that nothing is so sacred
that it cannot be decisively rendered insipid and trite.
It’s the good old American profit motive at work.
“And what of it?” Many would ask.
When it comes to the law it makes no difference if you’re married
by an Elvis impersonator or by the Archbishop of Canterbury,
as long as they’ve been licensed by the appropriate government authority.
That’s one way to look at it.

It’s with a question concerning the legality of divorce
that the Pharisees try once again to trip Jesus up
as he and his disciples make their way to Jerusalem.
The question of divorce was a hot topic in Jesus’ day,
a point of heated debate between the two dominant rabbinic schools of thought.2
The Shammai school said it was only by reason of adultery
that a man could divorce his wife.
The Hillel school, however, interpreted the law more broadly,
saying that a man could divorce his wife if she shamed him in any way
including spoiling his supper.
Given adequate grounds,
a divorce could be granted if a man simply wrote down,
“I am not her husband and she is not my wife,” gave her a copy,
showed her the door and administered a little shove on the way out.

“What do you say, Jesus? Concerning divorce, what does the law allow?”
The Pharisees ask this of him
snickering all the while at their own cleverness.
“We’ve got him this time, boys!” one of them whispers.
Silly Pharisees.

“Is divorce allowed?” the Pharisees ask.
Legalities, that’s the sandbox they want to play in.
Rule book stuff.
An “Is not! Is too!” kind of dialogue.
The Pharisees come up to Jesus and they want to talk about marriage like it’s a game,
a wickedly clever device for tripping him up and making him look foolish.
In the process they take this most sacred of covenants
and turn it into a drive-through spectacle, Las Vegas style.
Not only that,
they also want to take the heart stopping, flesh ripping, soul crushing pain of divorce
and make it a mere topic for debate.
But Jesus will have none of it!

They talk in terms of what is allowed by law.
Jesus responds by raising the stakes.
He asks them “What did Moses command?”
Rocked back on their heels they answer,
“Moses said a man simply had to write out a certificate of divorce and that makes it so.”
Jesus looks them in the eyes and says,
“Moses told you that because he already knew you wouldn’t have
the intellectual or emotional capacity for anything more complicated than that.”
Then Jesus says, “But let’s take it above and beyond this nitpicking about what is lawful,
what is ALLOWED.
Let’s talk instead about what God intends marriage to be.”

In one deft move, Jesus sidesteps the Pharisee’s pitiful little trap
and he draws them into a much deeper consideration.
What was God’s intention when God created human beings?
God’s intention at creation was that a woman and a man would be equal,
partners in this great experiment we call life,
both made in God’s image and beloved.
God created two, the Bible says, because it’s not good to be alone
and marriage is the name we give to the process of two people choosing
to go beyond the act of just keeping each other company.

Marriage is choosing to look each other in the eye and say, “I promise.”
“I promise you, I covenant with you to love you and uphold you and be your champion.
I covenant with you that I will not abandon you when you get sick
or kick you to the curb when you no longer amuse me.
I covenant with you to synchronize my step with your step
and to allow you to synchronize your step with mine
and to always have your back.”

Jesus went on to say that when two people marry, they become one flesh,
their skin and bone and muscle and blood intertwines and intermingles.
You can’t write out a certificate of divorce and make that not so.
You can’t just decide you’re bored and hit the rewind button.
The moment you make a covenant,
it is as though your chemical composition changes.
There is no way to return to a pre-covenant state.
“What God has joined together, let no one separate.”

If Mark’s account stopped there this passage would be so much easier.
But following the typical formula in Mark’s gospel,
Jesus and his disciples leave the Pharisees stuttering,
they leave the crowds clamoring,
and they retreat inside a house where the teaching continues
in a more private, intimate way.

Still not clear what Jesus’ answer was concerning divorce,
the disciples press him to explain further.
Jesus doesn’t mince words.
“If a man divorces his wife and marries another he commits adultery against her.
If a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

For the longest time, the church took this saying as a clear prohibition
against remarriage after divorce.
Because of these two sentences, divorce, in the past, has been a stigma,
a blot on one’s spiritual resume no amount of Clorox could bleach out.
But that understanding comes from focusing exclusively on the word “adultery”
and forgetting that covenant-making is the centerpiece of the table God sets
and just because I may spill the milk,
and put my elbow in the butter dish,
doesn’t mean I’m no longer invited to sit and eat
and experience the joy of companionship and the fellowship of God.
Saying that there is no possibility of remarriage after divorce
is basically to say, “You’ve got one shot buddy!
Mess this one up and that’s it, you’re done.”
But that sentiment goes against the broad sweep of salvation history.
Through out scripture going all the way back to Abraham
God’s covenant people have time and time again broken their covenant promises.
And time and time again, God has forgiven and reclaimed and redeemed his people.

You and I both know that when two people come together in marriage
sometimes even the caterer knows it’s a mistake;
a bad idea from the very beginning.
And sometimes, both partners mean well,
but one or maybe both haven’t the maturity or the emotional constitution
to weather the rigors of married life.
That’s usually because nobody tells us that the primary reason for marriage
is not pleasure but growth.

It was 31 years ago that Scott Peck wrote his best seller, “The Road Less Traveled.”3
It was all the rage at the time.
I remember nothing about the book except one vignette he tells
about going to see his spiritual advisor, a nun,
and complaining to her about his marriage.
“It’s over, I think.” he told the Sister. “We’re having a tough go of it.”
The old nun replied, “How nice for you.”
Thinking the old bat couldn’t hear well, he repeated himself,
“No, you don’t understand, my marriage is on the rocks.”
The nun replied, “And I said, ‘How nice for you’.”

He didn’t like it, but he understood what she was trying to say.
“Marriage is for the grind,” he writes.
It wears away at my ego, my selfishness, my belief that I am the center of the world
Like sand and water grinding against a stone,
until the sharp edges are worn down, and the surface is polished,
and I become what God created me to be –
in relationship.
Marriage isn’t the only way to learn how to be in relationship
or to grow into my created potential,
but it might be the best way.

Those of you who have been through divorce understand that, legal categories aside,
it is never a “no fault” proposition.”
Somewhere along the way there is human failure to account for.
Maybe it was the decision to marry in the first place.
Maybe you let the fantasy of something better out there run away with you.
Maybe your fear of your own mortality made you panic.
I’m not trying to generate blame, just make an observation,
and if you’ve not yet considered you were anything but innocent in a failed marriage
there’s still work to be done.

“Those whom God has joined together let no one separate.”
When a covenant has been made it can’t be unmade.
Divorce is never clean,
No matter how relieved you may be, you will always bear the mark of it
you will suffer wounds and wounds leave scars.

If you choose to remarry then, Jesus says, the new relationship you enter
is adulterated by the mark, by the scar left by the broken covenant.
There’s no return to the pre-covenant condition, no matter how you may wish it so.
But you are not cut off from the table of grace.
You are not banished from the kingdom of God.
Forgiveness is yours for the asking.
There is no reason to curse God and die.

Marriage is a gift.
Sometimes we mishandle, neglect, and even break the gifts God gives us.
But even if we do break a gift, even a really important gift like marriage,
God doesn’t suspend all gift-giving activity.
God in fact has shown a consistent willingness when it comes to us
to go over and beyond even when we seem determined to sink below and lag behind.
I, for one, am grateful for it.

________________________
1Century Marks, The Christian Century, October 6, 2009, p. 9.

2 Stoffregen, Brian P. Exegetical Notes at Crossmark Mark 10.2-16  Proper 22 - Year B
http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark10x2.htm

3 Peck, M. Scot, The Road Less Traveled, New York: Simon and Shuster, 1978.

Symptomatic Mark 9:30-58, James 5:13-16

2009-09-27T03:28:00.000-07:00

Astrid Thoenig from Parsippany, NJ rose and went to work as always this past Thursday.
But it wasn’t just any other day.
It was her 100th birthday.
I read the story of her celebration on my Yahoo! News page Friday morning
as I went to check my email.
There was a photograph of a smiling Astrid
that gave credence to her statement, “I don’t feel old and I don’t think old!”
But what made this more than just another birthday story
was her statement that though she was born in 1909,
she has no memories at all of her life before 1918.
Her first memory is of a day in 1918 when she was nine, and she came downstairs
to find two coffins in her living room, one for her sister and one for her father,
who had died just one hour apart from the flu pandemic that raged through that year.

The H1N1 flu virus is making the rounds this year,
and we’ve received public service announcements
about what symptoms to look for and what to do if you think you have it
and how to cover your mouth with your elbow when you sneeze
instead of sneezing into your hand.
The troubling aspect of H1N1 is that it affects the young and the healthy
and it’s going to be wide spread.
The good news is that it is apparently nowhere near as virulent
as the strain ninety years ago that wiped all memory from Astrid Thoenig’s 9 yr. old mind.
Symptoms are what we rely on to let us know there’s something wrong,
something that’s thrown the system out of equilibrium.
Physical symptoms like fever, achy-ness, hacking cough
are useful cues that tell us we may have the flu and need to isolate ourselves.
But symptoms don’t just have to be physical.
They can be emotional, as well, even behavioral.
And the malady to which they point may have nothing to do with any virus.
You’ve seen it. A friend snarls at you for no reason.
Your teenager slams the door.
You get to the end of the day and though you’re physically fit as a fiddle,
you’re find yourself exhausted.

These are symptoms,
caused not by a physical illness, but a disruption in emotional equilibrium.
The friend snarls because his company is laying off workers
and he may be next.
The door slams not because your teenager is mad at you,
but because she’s afraid she messed up on a big chemistry test.
You think back and realize that you’re exhausted
because you got an upsetting phone call early that morning
and you’ve been tense all day.

Physical symptoms are often straightforward and sometimes even easy to treat.
Other kinds of symptoms can be more elusive .
In the ninth chapter of Mark Jesus’ disciples are showing signs of disequilibrium,
symptoms not of flu or a respiratory infection,
but of an unsettled spirit, a psyche that’s slipped a cog.
It causes them to act in ways unbecoming a disciple
and Jesus, like an ER doctor with cardiac paddles, has to shock them back into rhythm.
The disciples’ problem isn’t hard to diagnose.
Chapter nine in Mark’s account of Jesus’ story
marks a major turning point.
Through the first eight chapters Mark recounts Jesus’ ministry in Gallilee,
teaching with authority, healing the sick and disabled,
easily standing his ground against those who oppose him.
Like love-sick suitors looking for a mate
the disciples have been comparing Jesus to their mental checklist of the ideal Messiah
and one by one they’ve ticked off every item on their list.
He’s the one, they conclude,
the one who will restore God’s covenant people to their rightful place of power.

At the end of chapter eight, however, Jesus throws them a curve.
He says something strange about being killed and then rising from the dead
and when Peter chides him for bringing everybody down
Jesus rebukes Peter, even calls him the Devil in disguise.
But then in chapter nine
Jesus takes his core group, Peter, James and John up the mountain
and they have a vision of him in shimmering white, talking to Moses and Elijah,
which only confirms their notion that he’s God’s chosen one.
But THEN they come down the mountain
and he says it again…that stuff about dying and rising.
You see the problem.

In the disciples’ eyes their teacher, their rock has suddenly become unsteady.
Their invincible leader seems to be coming unglued.
Their clear path to glory has suddenly become shrouded in thick fog
and indications are there may be a cliff ahead.

This is when the disciples become symptomatic.
They start acting out in visible ways the inner turmoil they’re beginning to feel.
Last week we read about how they started arguing among themselves
about which of them was the greatest,
which of them was more deserving of a place of honor in Jesus’ administration.
Today we read about how they took offense at someone
who was bringing mental and physical healing to people
and doing it in Jesus’ name no less.

The disciples have become symptomatic.
Because Jesus has spit in their soup and challenged their fantasy,
because his journey to the cross doesn’t match their expectations.
They have become unbalanced. They are acting out.
Clearly an intervention is called for. Their symptoms cannot go untreated.
So Jesus goes to work.

First, in reference to the man doing good works in Jesus’ name,
Jesus quietly says, “Let him be. Don’t stop him.
If he is identifying his good works with my name that can’t be a bad thing.”
“If anyone is handing out cold drinks to thirsty people in my name,
we should be celebrating.”
But then Jesus pulls out the cardiac paddles and cranks up the power.
It’s time to shock.

He starts talking about offending body parts and self-amputation.
With graphic language and over-the-top hyperbole,
he launches into a speech on the dangers of acting out,
on the need for his disciples to get over themselves and pull it together.
They are the ones who are setting the example for others
and they need to take care not to be the cause of stumbling
for anyone else who may be looking to follow Jesus.
The word “stumble” is translated from the Greek word, “scandalizo.”
It’s where we get our word, “scandalize.”
And the Greek word originally comes from the word used to describe
the trigger on a trap.

So, in other words, Jesus is saying, “Don’t let yourself be the reason
someone else gets ensnared or tangled up, distracted or lost.”
“You may be unsettled. You may have doubts. You may not have all the answers.
but this is no time to be self-indulgent.
This is no time to lose sight of the big picture.
This IS the time to put the needs of others ahead of your own needs.”

After he’s shocked them with his exaggeration,
Jesus puts the paddles down, lays his hand on their shoulders one by one,
looks them in the eye and says, “Everyone will be salted with fire.”
“Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Huh?
There’s no getting around it. These are not easy words to understand.
Most scholars believe they hearken back to the second chapter of Leviticus
which says “Do not let the salt of the covenant of your God
be lacking from your cereal offering.”

Salt was a precious commodity used to preserve and flavor food.
It was a symbol of God’s covenant with Israel.
It seems that Jesus is thinking of sacrificial offering when he says this,
and the kind of behavior that honors the covenant God has made with God’s people.
“Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another,”
seems to mean something like,
“Don’t let your symptoms run away with you.
Pay attention to what you’re feeling and how you’re acting
and think about whether your behavior reflects your relationship with God.
If your behavior does not lead to peace,
then maybe it’s time to treat the symptoms.”

Astrid Thoenig has lived 100 years
and in those 100 years she has seen incredible advances
and she has endured every hardship from economic depression to nuclear threat.
I suppose every generation thinks it has it hard,
that it is the axle around which the wheel of history turns.
We seem to currently have more than our share of stressors –
a bum economy, terrorist threats, political polarization, global warming, a flu epidemic.
Suffering these ills, we have allowed ourselves as a nation to become symptomatic,
to indulge our disappointments, to give into our fear, to get panicky and vulgar
and petulant and polarized.

We who follow Jesus, however, have neither the luxury of being symptomatic,
nor do we have the need.
As followers of Jesus, as those who have been baptized into the covenant of grace,
we already have the cure for whatever ails us.
The letter of James puts it very succinctly.
“Are any among you suffering? They should pray.”

As followers of Jesus, people are watching us to see how we will act in this time.
They may not even know they’re watching, but they are watching.
They are watching and they are asking themselves,
does following Jesus make any difference? How will we answer that?
Will we follow the crowd and indulge our anxiety or will we find strength in prayer?
Will we be symptomatic or will we have salt in ourselves -
have salt in ourselves, trust in God’s covenant, and be at peace with one another?

The Star at the Bottom Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-18

2009-09-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

It’s no mere coincidence that the very first story in the Bible has to do with shame.
Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, their eyes are opened,
they perceive their nakedness, and they are ashamed.
Shame haunts our dreams, it governs our impulses,
I would say shame and the fear of being exposed drives us in most all we do.
Shame manifests itself in feelings of unworthiness.
Therefore it is the primary wedge between us and God who counts us intrinsically worthy,
the wedge that Jesus came to remove.

Perhaps because of the Garden of Eden,
our sexuality has become the seat of much of our sense of shame.
When I was in the seventh grade, health class was mandatory
and it was team taught by Miss Caruthers, the girls’ gym teacher
and Mr. Byrd, the football coach.
When we came to the unit on “human reproduction” the boys and girls split up.

In my mind, I imagine that the girls probably sat in a circle and held hands,
offering comfort and support to one another
as together they explored a sensitive and wonderful topic.

That’s not how it was with the boys.
The first day, we boys slouched into our assigned room, slumped in our chairs,
and whispered crude comments and entertained forbidden fantasies
while Mr. Byrd, a bulldog looking man with a gold chain around his neck
drew a simple diagram of the female reproductive system on the blackboard.

After a few minutes Mr. Byrd turned, faced his class, and growled,
“Alright you meatheads, I’m going to tell you this once.
The only stupid question is the question you don’t ask.”
That was easy for him to say, of course.
He was a grown up. Grown ups knew all there was to know about sex.
But we were seventh grade boys.

We only PRETENDED to know all there was to know about sex.
In reality, of course, the gaps in our knowledge were wide.
What we did know was a cross between the embellished boasting of older brothers,
furtive glimpses at illicit “girlie” magazines
and the shared ignorance gleaned from late-night conversations on camp outs.

Who in that congregation of cracking voices and sweating armpits
was going to ask a question and suffer the shame
of being exposed in his ignorance in front of all the others?
Certainly not me!

I somehow survived adolescence,
and I managed to learn the basics of human reproduction,
but it’s still hard to ask questions sometimes.
Especially when I’m in a competitive environment and I want to perform well,
or a gathering of peers who seem more informed than I.
What if I say something stupid?
Maybe I don’t really belong.
What if everyone finds out just how inadequate I am?

As Mark tells the story, it was just this kind of situation the disciples faced
that day long ago as they sat with Jesus in Capernaum.
For the second time, in Mark’s account,
Jesus had made a prediction filled with foreboding,
a prediction that he would be betrayed into the hands of the enemy and killed.
Mark says that as Jesus and his disciples made their way through Galilee
Jesus spoke to them of his impending betrayal and death
“but they did not understand what he was saying to them
and they were afraid to ask.”

They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.
I can see why they didn’t understand. But why were they afraid to ask?
Did they think he’d tell them something they didn’t really want to know?
Or were they afraid to ask because each thought he was the only one who didn’t get it;
that it must make sense to everyone else
and anyone who asked for clarification would be exposed as a fraud and put to shame.

“They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”
If you are not sure of your place in a relationship, you will be afraid to ask.
If you are not confident that you are accepted and acceptable, you’ll be afraid to ask.

But, if you have taken to heart the promise of a covenant-making God,
if you have rested in the shade of God’s healing, affirming grace,
if you have centered your identity in what theologian Paul Tillich called
“the Ground of All Being,” you may still be confused,
you may still be befuddled,
you may still not understand, but you will not be afraid to ask.

In the shelter of the source of all power and all wisdom there are no stupid questions.
In the economy of God’s realm where everything we really need is abundantly given
there is no lack of cover.
In the post-incarnation creation where Jesus is the new Adam
through whom we are reconciled to God
there is no cause for shame anymore.

The disciples didn’t understand that there was nothing they couldn’t ask Jesus.
So, they began to engage in the activity we all engage in
when shame starts nipping at our heels.
They started trying to manufacture self-worth by elevating their social status.
They argued amongst themselves about who was the greatest,
about who Jesus liked the best,
about who was more deserving of a plum assignment
when Jesus came into power.

That’s what we do when we don’t have both feet firmly planted
in the rich, fertile soil of God’s unconditional love.
We try to push our way up the pecking order, bully our way to the front of the line.
We throw a bigger party than the last party our neighbor threw.
Sometimes the shame is so embedded in our psyche that we act out our shame in horrible, destructive ways.
But sometimes we try to beat back the shame by being the best church worker
or the best charity fundraiser
or the most valuable volunteer
all wonderful things except when the odor of desperation betrays us.

When they got to Capernaum Jesus asked the disciples what they’d been discussing.
That’s when all that shame just piled up and spilled over
and they couldn’t even speak because of it.
Recognizing what had them all choked up,
Jesus took a little child, hugged him close and said,
“See this child?”
“Yes, we see the child.”
“See this child? This child who in our culture is a non-person, a non-entity,
not an outcast, but just a nobody until he comes of age?”
“We SEE the CHILD.”

Jesus basically said, If you are going to continue to follow me,
you must become this child.
It’s not a threat, just an observation.

If you are going to continue to identify yourself as my follower,
you will HAVE to let go of this idea that you are shameful somehow,
let go of this idea that your social status or your position or your lack thereof
can make you any more or any less valuable in God’s eyes.

If you are going to stay part of my team,
you are going to have to find your footing in nothing more and nothing less
than the simple fact that you are a child of God.

Don’t misunderstand.
You can still be grounded in your identity as a child of God
and, at the same time, gain a sense of satisfaction from great accomplishment.
You can still be a follower of Jesus
and, at the same time, hold a position of power in government.
And you can certainly consider yourself Christian
and, at the same time, contribute substantially to your church,
chair non-profit fundraisers,
and throw great parties.

The key is to examine yourself and decide if you are doing these things
out of a desperate attempt to cover your sense of shame and prove yourself worthy
or if you do what you do out of a great sense of joy and gratitude
for God’s passionate love for you and each person.

Yesterday we remembered and gave thanks for the life of Monty Purviance.
I said yesterday that Monty is just the man I think of when I read today’s passage
from the letter of James and his description of heavenly wisdom. James writes:
“the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to
yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or
hypocrisy."
This kind of wisdom is just the opposite of shame.
That's why we can have a man like Monty who doesn't need to embarrass or bully anyone in order to feel worthy and loved.

Jewell-Ann Parton, a former member of this church and now pastor of Tabor Presbyterian
was telling me she was in Jonesboro, TN recently
looking at locally made crafts in a little shop there.
She said she saw in the shop an upside down Christmas tree
carved of wood and hanging on the wall.

She said it seemed too unusual at first, too odd,
but the more she looked at it, the more she liked it.
Jewell-Ann said, “I’ve never thought about it before,
but our regular tree with the wide base and the pointed top
reflects the way we usually look at the world.
The big, plain ornaments are down at the bottom where no one can see them,
and the star is at the top.

But the way Jesus sees things, if you want to be the star
you’ve got to be willing to be at the bottom..
There’s nothing shameful about it.
Nothing shameful at all
That’s just the way it is in God’s realm.”

Dear Prudence Proverbs 2:1-11, James 3:1-12

2009-09-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

The prosecutor approaches the witness stand
and in a voice dripping with sarcasm says to the accused,
“Have people always known you to be a sick, twisted psychopath
or is that a more recent development in your life journey?”
The defense attorney rises like he’s been shot out of a cannon,
“Your honor I object to this slanderous and highly prejudicial name-calling!”
With a look of pure innocence the prosecutor shrugs and says, “Withdrawn.”
“Objection sustained,” the judge proclaims and then looks at the jury and says,
“You will disregard the prosecutor’s comments.”

Withdrawn?
How do you withdraw a word once it’s spoken?
Disregard?
How do you disregard a word set loose in the world?

[Light a match]
James writes, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire”
It was a tiny match, or maybe a cigarette lighter carelessly or deliberately mishandled
that touched off the worst fire in the history of Los Angeles County
and two weeks after it started the so-called “Station Fire” still burns
having destroyed 78 homes, burned 250 square miles, and taken two lives.
Hard to imagine that just a tiny flame can be so destructive.
Hard to imagine, but as destructive, says the author of James,
is a word carelessly or deliberately misspoken.

“You lie.”
Those are two little words South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson
probably wishes he could have reeled back in the moment they were spoken.
He might now be a folk hero among some in his home district
but when Wilson blurted those words
in the middle of the President’s speech Wednesday
he ignited a firestorm of protest that, at last count,
has motivated contributions of over half a million dollars to his opponent.

“What’s the big deal?” some ask.
He was thinking the words.
What’s the difference between thinking and speaking?
At least he’s not a hypocrite who thinks one thing but says another!
But it is a big deal.
There is a difference.

The author of the letter to James
identifies himself simply as “a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
He’s writing to a community of faith who seem to have settled
into a passive form of Christianity.
They have committed the common error of disconnecting their faith from their daily life
and their identity as followers of Jesus isn’t reflected
in the way they conduct themselves.
They favor the rich and ignore the poor.
They make their plans without seeking God’s guidance.
They are beset by envy and selfish ambition.
AND, they are quarrelsome with one another,
letting loose their tongues without restraint
and with no appreciation for the power of a word.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Do children still chant that on the playground?
It seemed to be an effective response when I was growing up,
a way of putting a name-calling bully in his place,
but I’m not sure that’s still true.
Not when with the press of a cell phone “send” button
you can broadcast an insult to an entire student body at once!
Not when you can post a website devoted to ridicule and slander
that can be viewed not just in your neighborhood
but on the other side of the planet as well.
A parent’s gentle encouragement to “Just ignore it,”
doesn’t quite seem enough anymore.

“No one can tame the tongue,” James writes, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
He’s making his point through exaggeration, of course,
because, in fact, the tongue can be tamed.
Back when I did marriage counseling
I would hear that one or the other, sometimes both, partners,
would engage in the most awful name-calling during marital fights,
cursing a blue-streak, saying really mean things.
The excuse offered was always, “I get so angry I just can’t help it.”
That’s when I would ask “Do you ever get angry with your boss?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What does your boss do when you call him names or curse at him?”
“Oh, I never do that at work. I’d lose my job.”

If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times.
“If you haven’t anything nice to say,
don’t say anything at all.”
The witty writer Dorothy Parker had her own twist on this old saw.
She is quoted as saying,
“If you haven’t anything nice to say…come sit by me.”
One with an untamed tongue is often the life of the party,
entertaining the room with her acerbic wit at someone else’s expense.
But the act quickly grows thin.

The untamed tongue is the champion of what we call freedom of speech.
We value freedom of speech in this country as well we should.
But sometimes you hear political groups and journalists going on and on
as if freedom of speech is the only freedom that really means anything.
Those who value freedom of speech above all else
get their back up at any hint of restraint or attempts to censor speech for any reason.

I’m not saying freedom of speech is not important.
But for those who follow Jesus there is a much more important freedom,
a more important freedom that may even run counter to freedom of speech.
I’m talking about the freedom to love.

Freedom of speech is easy
It requires only that I exercise freedom FROM restraint.
I value the right to say what I want to say when I want to say it no matter who it hurts.
Freedom to love, however, is different.
Freedom to love requires an effort.
Freedom to love even requires that I exercise [GASP!] SELF-restraint
for the sake of another person.

How tempting it is to engage in gossip,
to indulge in rumor,
to make myself feel important by being the teller of secrets
or the author of witty ridicule.
How tempting it is to casually toss out offensive words just because you can
or to be the voice of easy anger tearing down with hate-filled words
and manipulating others with words drenched in fear.

We who follow Jesus are called to resist this temptation,
to exercise self-discipline,
to elevate ourselves with God’s help to a higher level of discourse.
The author of Proverbs calls this wisdom.
He says, “Wisdom comes through understanding,”
and understanding comes not through talking, but through listening to God.

I understand that I use my tongue as a weapon when I feel insecure.
I lash out and tear down or pass on the opportunity to build up
because I feel my position is so precarious,
that there’s not enough affirmation to go around.
But the author Proverbs tells me there is nothing to fear.
He seems to anticipate our world
where radio waves are jammed with hate-speech
and TV transmissions are filled with silly and vulgar speech
and wise speech, helpful speech, life giving speech
seems as illusive as Bigfoot.

He says, “If you truly seek wisdom, just keep looking. It’s there.
It’s not gaudy. It’s not loud.
And when you find it you’ll know it’s the genuine article.
And WHEN you find it you’ll be surprise at how comfortable you feel in your own skin,
how secure you feel, how serene, how truly free.
This is where the author uses that old fashioned word.
He says, “Then wisdom will come into your heart…
and prudence will watch over you….”

Prudence. That’s the word we’re looking for. Dear prudence.
It’s not a popular word. It’s where we get the word “prude.”
But I think it might be time to rehabilitate this word,
add it to our daily vocabulary.
Look it up and it means “wise or judicious in practical affairs,
discreet, circumspect, sober.”
I would suggest that maybe “prudence” is what we need most these days
not only in our speech, but in every aspect of our conduct.

I’m not advocating a return to uptight judgmentalism. Not at all.
But a little clear-eyed, loving, self-restraint surely would be nice.
Of course, I can’t expect to find this kind of prudence in others
until I begin to find it in myself.

Indiscriminate speech can destroy,
But don’t forget how a judicious word of encouragement or affirmation can build up.
Most of you here can think of a person who gave you an encouraging word
at just the right time and it made all the difference in your life.
[Light a match]
James was right. The tongue, like a small fire, can cause great destruction.
[Light a candle]
But James was also wrong. The tongue can be tamed.
A kind word, an encouraging word, a PRUDENT word
can be just the light we need to guide us in the dark.

The Power of a Crumb Mark 7:24-30

2009-09-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

Jerry stood, hands on hips, looking out the plate glass window of his café,
preparing himself for his early lunch crowd
He was yawning and arching backward stretching his spine
when he heard the front door jingle open.
He looked to see who it was and he couldn’t help giving a small sigh.

It was Anya.
She was dressed in the same faded print dress and yellow apron she wore every day.
There was no decoration on the apron other than a large pocket on the front.
She either washed the apron every evening or she had a closet full of them
because the one she wore was always spotless and starched.

Jerry watched her as she shuffled in wearing ancient slippers overrun at the heels
and a headscarf that covered her hair completely.
Some who saw Anya on a daily basis wondered if she even had hair.
They speculated that her head covering was a sign of obedience to Islam.
Others said, “No, it’s simply a head scarf
like all Eastern European women of a certain age wear.”

That she was Eastern European was itself speculation
because no one had ever heard Anya speak.
They only knew her name because, at Jerry’s insistence
she had written it on a napkin in shaky block letters.
“A-N-Y-A. Anya.”

Anya had shown up at the Restful Café the day it opened nearly ten years ago.
Despite not fitting in with the more white-collar downtown crowd
Jerry was determined to show no partiality
and he greeted her with the same friendly smile he gave all his customers.

She had nodded slightly when he greeted her
but then ducked her head, walking on past.
Jerry had been distracted by other customers streaming in, curious to try a new place,
and when he finally turned back toward his tables he was shocked to see Anya
stooping beside an empty booth picking up crumbs from the floor
and putting them in her large front apron pocket.

Nobody else seemed to take notice of the small woman
and just as he was going to go shoo her out the door
the delivery truck pulled up requiring his immediate attention.
As the delivery truck was leaving,
his cook came to him with a crisis.
When the cook’s crisis was resolved, his head waitress came to him in tears.
When the tears were dried the fan on his refrigeration unit started squealing
and on and on and on, one distraction after another,
until by the time he got back out to the dining area Anya was gone.

As he stood by the window, Jerry thought back over the years,
wondering how it was possible that Anya had been picking up crumbs under his tables
every day for all that time and no one had complained.
She had always been careful to wait until patrons had left a table before approaching it.
She made no noise whatsoever
and when there were no tables empty she sat on a chair in the corner
and became nearly invisible.

It was amazing how people seemed willing to accommodate this idiosyncrasy,
but, wasn’t that the atmosphere he was going for
when he named his establishment “The Restful Café?”
He WANTED it to be a place where people could lay their burdens at the door –
let go of grudges, prejudices, judgments, and any anxiety great or small
and for the time they were there just rest and enjoy a satisfying meal -
Jerry felt strongly that he had been blessed by God in so many ways,
and he simply wanted his café to be a blessing to others.

His main question about Anya was and always had been this…
What did she want with the crumbs?
What did she do with them?
Did she have a koi pond at home? A squirrel feeder?
Or was her odd habit the manifestation of some form
of compulsive mental disorder?
She was so strange, so foreign,
yet, somehow, after all these years,
she had become integral part of the character of the Restful Café.
Sometimes people would leave a little gift for her on the counter by the cash register,
a jar of homemade jam, perhaps, or a couple of tomatoes from their garden.
She accepted each gift with a humble bow, but still, she never said a word.

One day, when it was nearly closing time,
a long, black car with out-of-state license plates pulled into the parking lot.
Jerry watched as five large men wearing heavy rings and gold chains,
exited the car and came into the cafe.
The hostess greeted them at the door but they just pushed past her
and went to a table in the back where three old men – regulars – were drinking coffee.
The strangers stood and glowered until the old men got the message,
timidly getting up and moving to another table.
Jerry could sense the whole atmosphere in the café change
as the strangers laughed too loudly and made crude comments to his waitress.
Not a confrontational man by nature, Jerry was weighing in his mind
whether he should go over and speak to the men
or let it go and hope they would eat and leave quickly,
when he saw Anya approach the table.
Jerry couldn’t believe it. He mumbled a little prayer under his breath.

Contrary to what she had always done before,
Anya stooped right there beside the table where the men sat
and began picking up a few stray crumbs and putting them in her apron pocket.
“Go away, you mother of a rabid Chihuahua,” one man growled.
Anya acted as though she hadn’t heard.
Perturbed, the man said again, “You heard me, get out of here you mutt.”
Anya didn’t move.
Across the table, another man reached down and grabbed Anya by the collar,
jerking her roughly to a standing position.
He laughed cruelly and said, “Let’s see what this mongrel has in her pocket!” He grabbed the edge of the pocket and yanked downward,
violently ripping it away from the apron.

It was the strangest thing.
All day Anya had been putting crumbs into that apron pocket.
But when the pocket was torn away there was nothing there.
It was absolutely clean.
Jerry was frozen in place.
His mind willed him to intervene, but his feet felt nailed in place.
Anya looked at the man still holding the front flap of her apron pocket.
She looked at each man in turn around the table.
Then she smiled and she said in a clear, even voice,
“Even dogs deserve a few crumbs do they not?”

The next day, Anya didn’t come back to the Restful Café.
Despite her calm reaction to the stranger’s violent affront,
Jerry thought she must have been traumatized by the incident.
He would have sent her flowers and a card, but he had no idea where she lived.
She didn’t come back all that week or the next.
Her presence was missed.
People asked about her as they came and went.

One night about a month later, Jerry couldn’t sleep.
At one a.m. he lay on the couch flipping through the channels on his TV.
He came to C-Span and was just about to move on to the Home Shopping Network
when something caught his eye.
Actually, someONE caught his eye.

The setting was the United Nations assembly hall in New York City.
The caption said It was a ceremony that had been taped earlier that day.
Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General was at the podium
and beside him stood a petit woman in a simple gown and wearing a head scarf.
Jerry blinked and rubbed his eyes. Could it be?

The Secretary General was presenting a plaque to the woman and saying,
“We honor today Anya Bilinska for her untiring work on behalf of
her own people of Bosnia and for all who suffer hunger in the world.
She has taught us the power of not taking “No” for an answer
when it comes to standing up for a just cause.
She has taught us the power of individuals banding together for a common purpose.
She has taught us the power of even the smallest acts,
what she calls her “crumbs,” when they are done in love.

Anya received the plaque with characteristic humility,
stepped to the microphone and began to speak.
Jerry sat on his couch in the dark mesmerized by what he was watching.
She said, “It has taken me a lifetime to learn the power of a crumb.
For the longest time I, like most people,
thought that if you can’t have the whole loaf, why bother?
I would let myself be overwhelmed by enormous injustice
and think I, one little woman, could do nothing.
But one day at the window I watched a mother bird feeding her hatchlings.
I watched her as she brought breadcrumbs from a nearby feeder,
tirelessly making trip after trip.
And then, when she was spent, the father bird took over,
crumb after crumb after crumb after crumb until the hunger was satisfied.”

Anya continued, “Watching those loving parents a light came on in my head.
I realized that I can either be a victim of the prejudice of others,
be paralyzed by ignorance and intolerance and injustice,
or I can be like that mother bird,
taking it one crumb at a time,
trusting that God will somehow honor my efforts, tiny as they are.
It is a lesson even Jesus needed to be taught
by a stubborn woman, an outsider,
who would not rest until her daughter was made well.”

Anya finished her speech by saying, “Power does not come from the crumb itself.
Power comes from the context in which the crumb is created.
The crumbs I gather and give to the world
are created in the context of a restful place.
When people come to this place they leave their burdens at the door –
they let go of grudges, prejudices, judgments and anxieties great and small.
They come because they feel blessed by God
and want to be a blessing to others.
The crumbs created in this place are the remnants of a meal
shared by people who are not perfect, but who desire to be made perfect
if only for a single moment, one blessed moment, of holy communion.”

Jerry awoke on the couch, the remote control still in his hand,
the morning financial report in full swing on the TV.
The memory of what he had seen came flooding back
and he immediately went on line on his computer
to search the C-Span programming archives so he could watch it again.

But he couldn’t find it.
He tried all the possible avenues he could think of, but with no luck.
He even called the public relations office of the United Nations
but they had no record such a ceremony had ever taken place.
He went to his café and started to ask a customer if she’d seen it,
but then he realized how crazy it sounded.

Anya never returned to the Restful Café,
but Jerry never failed to look for her when he heard the front door jingle open,
and he never, ever, forgot the power of a crumb.

No Bubble Wrap Needed Psalm 84, Ephesians 6:10-20

2009-08-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

School’s in session and I wonder…
Is there anything more vulnerable than your five year old
standing at the bus stop on the first day of school
hair slicked down by mama’s last minute spit
left shoe already untied
Hanna Montana backpack sagging off her shoulders?
Oh my goodness!
Don’t you just want to put a football helmet on her head,
steel-toed boots on her feet,
and wrap her head to toe in about ten layers of bubble wrap –
anything to protect her from what you KNOW is out there.
And it doesn’t really get any better as they grow older, does it?

They get older but we still hurt for them.
There are cosmic powers of darkness out there!
Spiritual forces of evil!
Just spend a few minutes in a middle school cafeteria at lunch time
and you’ll see what I mean!
The wiles of the devil himself can come packaged in the prettiest little 13 yr. old girl.
All she has to do is roll her eyes, flip her hair,
and make a snide remark to her table mates about another girl’s choice of clothes.

There are dark forces out there.
The author of Ephesians writes about cosmic evil forces not of flesh and blood,
but in my experience, evil is usually much less mysterious and much more mundane.
In my experience, evil is perpetrated by ordinary people who are threatened by change
or who find their sense of power being challenged.
They may not set out to be evil or do evil things,
but when your perch is so high and precarious
or your status is so low already that you just can’t bear to lose any more
if something new comes along to challenge the way things are
the natural impulse is to fight change or new ideas any way you can;
even if that means fighting dirty.

The letter to the Ephesians is about something new.
That’s the whole reason the author has for writing –
to let his readers, the Christians in Ephesus and in the surrounding communities, know
that God has revealed in Christ a great mystery,
a great mystery that changes everything.
God has revealed through Jesus something pretty incredible:
that our hope lies not in our ability to ferret out what God is like,
but in God’s desire to make God’s self known;
that our hope lies not in our own striving,
but in God’s extravagant grace;
that our hope lies not in our pedigree as children of Abraham
but in God’s unconditional love.

That’s what we call “Good News!” right?
Well, yes.
Unless, of course, you’re someone who gets his power or makes his living
from guarding the secrets of salvation,
or manipulating the guilt of those around you,
or driving a wedge between groups and fanning the flames of fear and prejudice.
If people find out they can know God simply by looking at and listening to Jesus,
if they understand that God loves and forgives us even when we’re not perfect,
If they comprehend the incredible truth that Jesus has broken down the dividing wall;
that he is the keystone who holds all of God’s children together in unity,
Jew/Gentile/Muslim, black/whilte, male/female, gay/straight, Republican/Democrat then the jig’s up, the cover’s blown, the con game is exposed.

It’s a beautiful thing the author of Ephesians tells his readers in the first three chapters.
But about halfway through chapter four the writer changes course.
He shifts from talking in glowing terms about God’s gift to the church
and begins talking in very practical terms how the church is to respond.
He spells out for his readers the rather surprising and edgy implications
of God’s revelation in Jesus.

He writes that in gratitude to God, those who follow Jesus are to give up greed and lust,
and tell the truth for a change.
They’re to engage in honest work and share what they have with the needy.
And I don’t know how the author of Ephesians could expect anyone
to take part in a town hall meeting,
because he also admonishes his readers to “put away from you
all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander,
together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

Wow. What if we really WERE a Christian nation and we put THAT into practice….

But the author goes on to talk about family life.
In a patriarchal setting where wives counted little more than property,
the author gives a new vision for marriage based on the new life in Christ.
Instead of simply saying, “Wives be subject to your husbands,”
he first says to both husbands AND wives,
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
And instead of simply saying, “Children, do whatever your parents tell you,”
he also says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”
And instead of simply saying, “Slaves obey your masters,”
he also reminds masters that Jesus is the true master and he shows no partiality.
To him there is no slave, no master, but only brothers and sisters in the Lord.

All of this - the revelation of the mystery of God’s love and mercy through Jesus,
the implications this revelation has for a transformed life -
it all builds to a climax here in chapter six.
It’s a tall order for a tiny church struggling to keep a toe-hold.
How can they, the powerless, assert themselves in such a provocative way
in a setting that’s already hostile to them as it is?
How can they live a transformed life
when it will mean calling attention to themselves, putting themselves at risk?

The author anticipates excuses from his readers,
protests of helplessness in the face of all the forces arrayed against them.
But he will brook no excuse.
The strength of God’s power is theirs to claim.
What more do they need?

In chapter 6, the author resorts to a common militaristic image of body armor
that his audience would see on Roman soldiers daily,
but in a nose-tweaking twist, he reinvents the image in a most non-militaristic way. He appropriates the common parts of armor – belt, breastplate, shield –
but he assigns them uncommon values: truth, righteousness, faith.
As a result, the armor, usually a symbol of self-reliance,
is transformed into a symbol of utter dependence on God.

The author pulls no punches.
He doesn’t sugar coat the reality that God's grace has enemies;
that God's justice has a bounty on its head;
that God's peace is marked for attempted demolition.
He doesn’t try to hide the fact that we are known by our associations,
and when we hobnob with known forgivers and peace-mongers
we must expect a strong reaction
from those who traffic in accusations and innuendo.

We’re vulnerable enough just standing there waiting for the bus.
We’re vulnerable enough just minding our own business, eating our lunch.
We’re vulnerable enough just trying to stay employed or secure in retirement.
But when we add on top of the natural vulnerability we all have
the deliberate repudiation in Jesus’ name of those powerful forces
that would manipulate us, or undermine us, or divide us,
then we’ve got to know, we’re going to feel some heat.

The impulse when under threat is to hunker down, to dig a hole, to build higher walls.
The impulse is to lash out in violence, or engage in deception, or look out for #1.
The impulse is to forget about God and rely on my own ingenuity to save me.
But those impulses are wrong.
When we fight fire with fire, everyone gets burned.
If we exchange an eye for an eye, the whole world goes blind.

The author of Ephesians tells us that evil thrives on violence.
It feeds on fear and mistrust.
It flourishes in a soup of deceit and secrecy.
Conventional armor doesn’t stand a chance.

But the armor of God is different.
When you put on the armor of God you are admitting your powerlessness.
You are saying you are not strong enough or smart enough or quick enough
to defeat the attacks you are sure to get if you live a transformed life.
It feels like weakness,
but it is, in fact, the beginning of wisdom.
So, forget the football helmet. Forget the bubble wrap.
Just teach your five year old or your thirteen year old or your thirty year old
that all they need is God’s non-armor armor.
It’s God’s non-armor armor that will ensure our victory
through its transparency, mercy, peace
and an absolute trust in the dynamic interplay of God’s Spirit and God’s Word.

The Most Important Meal of the Day 2 Samuel 11:1-5, John 6:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21

2009-07-26T03:18:00.000-07:00

My mother was legendary for her concern for her family’s nutrition.
If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times,
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Each morning she would ask hopefully if I wanted her to scramble eggs for me.
Ungrateful, know-nothing scoundrel that I was, I would mumble, “No thanks”
and reach for the blueberry Pop-tarts instead.
It was a soul-killing concession for my mother to even have such rubbish in the house,
but it was all I would eat.
As I pushed the processed rectangles filled with the blue gooey substance
down into the toaster
her only consolation was to shake her head and speak through clenched teeth,
“There’s more nutrition in the cardboard box.”

I wish I could say my insanity ended with the Pop-tarts.
Truth is, I still have blind spots when it comes to what’s good for me.
I still have, in some areas of my life, an amazing capacity to reach for the wrong thing,
to go for what’s quick or easy or flashy or seductive
instead of what’s most nourishing.
I would sink into abject despair over this self-confessed idiocy except for one thing.
I’m clearly not alone. It’s not just me.
It’s part of our fallen state as sinful human beings
to be stupid about what’s good for us,
to be clueless about what is or is not going to provide the nourishment we need.
It’s funny, even though we often fail to see and then do what’s good for us,
We seem able to know exactly what other people should do.
Take King David, for example.
We can see that train wreck coming a mile away.

The big flashing warning sign that David is on a slippery slope
comes in the second sentence of chapter eleven in 2 Samuel.
It’s the Spring of the year, we’re told, a time Kings go to battle,
a time for finishing off the pesky Ammonites who have caused David such headaches.
But, we’re told…BUT…David remained at Jerusalem.

The story of David up until this point has been a story of ascendancy.
His combination of courage, faith, and political savvy, not to mention his good looks,
have kept him on a steady upward track.
He seems to have God on retainer and can do no wrong.
But here he is in Jerusalem pacing the palace rooftop
while his troops are off in battle.
Success has made him complacent.
He’s not fulfilling his job description.

From this point in David’s story
it’s hard to remember that before David the prophet Samuel
had originally told the people of Israel that having a king was a bad idea.
From the Exodus onward, the Israelites had been a loose confederation of tribes
trusting in God alone to lead them.
When the need arose, God had lifted up charismatic judges like Deborah and Gideon
to lead the people onward. All that was required was that the people have faith.
“You don’t want a king,” Samuel told them, “Kings are nothing but takers.
“We don’t care,” they responded. “Everybody else has a king!
Besides, if we had a king he could go out before us and fight our battles!”

Now, here David is, some years later, moping around on the rooftop.
He’s the king, but he’s not doing the king thing.
He’s ridden the gravy train to the top
and now he wants to change his contract, rest on his laurels.
He’s lost his focus, he feels a gnawing inside.
The late lunch didn’t do it for him. He’s still hungry for something.

In his little book of theological definitions called, Wishful Thinking,
Frederick Buechner defines “Lust” this way.
“Lust” he writes “is the hunger for salt in a man dying of thirst.”1
David is hungry, but he misreads terribly what it is that will satisfy that hunger.
He is hungry for a renewed sense of purpose in his life,
hungry for affirmation that what he has accomplished has meaning,
hungry for the deep friendship he had once with Jonathan
and hasn’t had since Jonathan’s tragic death.
Surrounded by Yes Men and flatterers,
David is lonely, and he’s hungry for sincerity most of all.
What he should choose is a good hearty breakfast of eggs and toast.
What he reaches for instead is Pop-tarts.
There’s more nutrition in the cardboard box.

I don’t have enough paper to list all the powerful people who have followed David’s lead:
politicians, preachers, sports heroes, movie stars.
Each a King in his own way, each chafing under the responsibility of power,
isolated in a bubble of their own making,
each one proving the Prophet Samuel right.
King’s are takers. They lust for what is not theirs.
and, yet, their extraordinary power gives them no special insight
into what is most nourishing for their body, mind and spirit.
Despite the consistent tendency for kings to let us down,
we the people are hungry for kings because we think that’s what WE need –
someone who will bear the responsibility for us,
someone who “will go out before us and fight our battles.”

The feeding of the multitude is one of the few stories of Jesus
that occurs in each of the four gospels.
It’s a bona fide miracle of the highest order,
a tangible expression of the spiritual truth
that Jesus cares about our nutrition,
that he will give us what we need to be nourished.
John is the only one of the gospel writers who mentions the boy with the bread and fish.
Of all those gathered there, he was the only one who thought about his nutrition.
Or, maybe he had a mother like mine!
Regardless, when the time came for Jesus to go to work
the little boy offered what he had. It wasn’t much, but in Jesus’ hands it was enough.

Jesus wanted his disciples to learn the lesson well
so he delegated to them the food distribution
and after all the people had eaten he made sure the leftovers weren’t wasted.
In case anybody misses the implication,
John adds the detail the there were TWELVE baskets of leftover bread.
Twelve - the symbolic number – the sign of God’s handiwork.

The people are hungry. They come to Jesus looking to be fed.
The disciples feel helpless in the face of such a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Jesus, in partnership with a child, uses the resources at hand
to give them the nourishment they need.
And it’s not just barely enough. It’s far more than enough.

What happens next would be funny if it wasn’t so poignant,
if we didn’t recognize ourselves in the story with such devastating clarity.
Jesus has just demonstrated with gentle power and quiet authority
that God cares about God’s people, both body and soul.
The people have eaten until they can’t eat any more.
They have seen God’s grace close up,
looked divine providence in the eye,
and what is their next move?
What response do they have to this miracle.

They skip the eggs and go straight for the Pop-tarts.
They grab for what’s flashy and familiar instead of what they really need.
They clamor to make Jesus their king.
We all know they didn’t want him to be their spiritual king
in the best sense of the word
As their ancestors had chosen a thousand years earlier,
they wanted somebody who would go out and fight their battles.
They wanted a convenient, free source of bread and fish
so that they didn’t have to harvest the wheat or mend the nets themselves.
Jesus offered them the real thing.
They went for the cardboard instead.

When the author of the letter to the Ephesians considers the nourishment
of the young Christians to whom he writes
his prayer for them is that they will be “filled with the fullness of God.”
He wants them to be well nourished by the things that truly satisfy:
the inner strength that comes from the Holy Spirit,
the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge.

We’re all looking for a sense of purpose.
We all long for meaning.
We all want most of all to feel that our lives count for something.
And we want to feel close to someone. To feel loved.

It’s not just kings who get it wrong.
We all have the capacity to make poor choices,
to lose our direction, to kid ourselves,
to convince ourselves that it will be OK just this once.
AND, we still succumb to the temptation from time to time
to put our trust in those who promise to go out and fight our battles for us.

It’s no sin to be hungry.
The problem comes when we choose how to fill that hunger.
If we listen only to commercials or pay attention only to our most persistent urges
well, chances are the choices we make will only leave us more hungry.
But, like John’s gospel says, if we go to where Jesus is
offer to him what we little we have to him with no strings attached
and sit down in groups with other hungry people
Jesus will feed us. Feed us and fill us. And it will be more than enough.
It’s the most important meal of the day.
______
1 Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC. HarperOne, 1993, p. 65

Peace House 2 Samuel 7:1-6, 11b-17, Ephesians 2:11-22

2009-07-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

When I was in college in the late 1970’s there was a group of students on campus
who were mad about missing Woodstock
and flower power and draft card burning and naked cavorting
and they made half-hearted protests about cafeteria food
and wrote occasional rambling letters to the editor against the “Establishment.”
They made a big deal about living together, male and female,
in a large, tumble-down house near campus.
To the dismay of their neighbors, they painted a huge psychedelic peace sign
across the front façade of the place
and with great self importance they dubbed their residence the “Peace House.”

They no doubt had big plans,
but as time passed the only thing I noticed as I walked by the Peace House
was that an occasional new bit of broken furniture would turn up in the front yard
or one of the residents would been seen on the front porch at two in the afternoon
looking bleary eyed and disheveled.
Sometimes I would hear a string of colorful obscenities through an open window.
The Peace House lasted about six months.
The final blow was when someone, a resident or visitor, no one was sure -
was stabbed in the arm with a steak knife and the police were called.
A “condemned property” notice was tacked on the front door a short while later. The Peace House.

The gospel of Luke records that as Jesus is making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem
he stops half-way down the Mount of Olives, looks at the Holy City across the way
and he weeps.
Jesus weeps over the city and he says
“If you had only recognized this day the things that make for peace.” (Luke 19:42).

“If you had only recognized this day the things that make for peace.”
The students who lived together in the Peace House
thought they knew the things that make for peace.
They figured enough idealism, good intentions, and cynical disregard for the status quo
was the perfect recipe for peace.
But they were blindsided by sneakier parts of themselves that they’d overlooked.

It turns out that good intentions are no match for selfishness and a big ego.
Those students were no more spoiled and self centered than the rest of us,
but no less so either.
That they failed in their experiment is not an indictment of them as human beings.
It’s simply a reminder to us all
that it is beyond the capacity of any of us all-too-mortal creatures
to build a house of peace on our own initiative using only our own resources.

King David got it in his head that he was going to build a house for God,
a house of worship, and glory, and peace.
Scholars quibble about David’s motivations.
Some say it is true devotion to God that stirred him to such an idea.
Others, however, see it as merely a political move,
a way of further claiming God’s approval of his regime
and solidifying his power base.

Whatever David’s motive, through the prophet Nathan God is clear in God’s response.
God reminds David that not only does God do God’s best work on the fly, in a tent,
but also that only God, not David, can build a house that has any hope of enduring.

It is to the topic of an enduring house, an everlasting house of peace,
that the author of Ephesians turns in chapter two of his letter.
There is a bone of contention in the Ephesian church;
a controversy over how Gentile Christians should mix with Jewish Christians -
the uncircumcised with the Children of Abraham.
Peter is the first apostle to realize that God has also given Gentiles
full access to the promises of God,
that in Christ there was no distinction between Jew and Gentile.
They were one in God’s eyes.
But it was one thing to speak of unity in the abstract.
It was quite another thing to talk of Gentiles and Jews
actually living and worshipping and serving together-
visiting in each other’s homes,
eating the same food from a common casserole dish.

The cosmopolitan port city of Ephesus was the center
for the worship of the Greek goddess Artemus
and it offered plenty of distractions and challenges to the fledgling church.
So anxiety would have run high for the early Christians there anyway,
but this issue of how to create a climate of peace
when the Jews and Gentiles had so many differences and historic antagonisms –
it must have been overwhelming.
How could they possibly solve such an intractable problem?

They couldn’t.
It wasn’t within their power.
They couldn’t paint a big peace sign on the front of the church, dust off their hands,
and say, “There, that does it.”
The author of Ephesians reminds them that JESUS is their peace.
WITHOUT him there is no chance.
WITH him, however, it’s a sure thing.
It may not be easy. It may take awhile. It may make them uncomfortable.
But with Jesus, IT…IS… A …SURE… THING.
HE will be the keystone that holds all the different stones together.
He will break down the hostility and will build them into a house of peace.

The easy application of this passage is to think of two obvious groups with historic hostility
like blacks and whites, or gays or straights, or “born-here’s” and “come-here’s”
and to note that just as with Gentiles and Jews,
Jesus is our peace. He has broken down the dividing walls
that he might create in himself one new humanity.

But I’ve been thinking that we have a more pressing division on our hands these days,
a more hostile situation that could really use some of that peace Jesus offers.
It’s not Republicans or Democrats
though it would be nice to get some peace on that one!

The hostility that has me in knots these days is the war going on in my own head.
It’s the two sides of my brain slugging it out over the current economic situation;
where we are and where we might be going.

One side of me is afraid that things will never be the same,
that my nest egg has cracked and all the kings horses, and all the kings men….
This side of me says, “I don’t care what anybody does,
just get my IRA and my Money Market Account off the respirator and out of ICU!

But the other side of me is afraid that things WILL be the same,
that we’ll go through all of this and just as quickly as we possibly can
get back to the point where we’re talking about shopping as our patriotic duty
and piling up debt as our God-given right.
I’m afraid that we’ll suddenly develop amnesia
and start to worship the Kings of Wall Street again
and turn up the stock report so we can’t hear the whimpers
of the estimated 16000 children who die of hunger-related causes EACH DAY.1

Last Monday Kai Ryssdal of the public radio program “Marketplace”
interviewed Gus Speth, a professor of Environmental Studies at Yale.2
Ryssdal talked about the place of consumption in our economy
and how conventional wisdom says more consumption is the fastest way to recovery.
Speth responded by reflecting on the nature of a healthy recovery.
Do we judge our well being by the number of things we own?
Or maybe our health should be gauged by the depth and number of
supportive, loving relationships we’re a part of.
Speth went on to say, “I hope we won’t recover. I hope we reinvent.”
He then said, “No politician can do this for us. They’ve got their hands full.
The changes we need have got to come from the bottom up,
from people like you and me who have a different kind of American Dream.”

The next morning, I heard another story, this time on Marketplace Report.3
It was about a $600 million residential, retail and office park called Ballpark Village
that had been planned for the site of the old St. Louis Cardinals baseball stadium.
But the largest tenant pulled out of the deal and the bond market collapsed.
Ground had been broken, but there was nothing there but a hole.

If you believe the hype, it was going to be the salvation of downtown St. Louis,
The brand new Busch stadium is right across the street
and the plan was to provide a place for people who come to the game
to shop and eat and spend their money.
In other words, to consume, to get the economy back on track.

But Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at UT San Antonio
says the delay if not the demise of the project may not be such a bad thing.
He says projects like this are going belly up across the country,
that they’ve become money pits for municipalities.
Besides, he notes that downtown St. Louis already
has an office vacancy rate of 20%

The interesting thing is that somebody has filled in the hole on the site
and has put in a community softball field.
Instead of a monument to consumption
the downtown residents now have a place to play, to exercise,
to come together as a community.
The mayor of St. Louis is disappointed not to get Ballpark Village off the ground,
but how interesting that there is a simple softball field across from that big new stadium.
It’s likely a right peaceful place to be on a summer evening,
probably draws players of different races,
fans of all ages.
It’s plausible to think
that it could even serve as the lynchpin for that downtown community’s life,
the lynchpin or the keystone.
If only we could recognize this day the things that make for peace.
__________
1 I googled the question “How many children die of hunger in the world each day” and found no primary sources listed, but of the
several sites that listed a number, 16,000 was the most conservative.
2 Marketplace, American Public Media. Monday, July 13, 2009 Taking Stock: Rethinking Consumerism.
3 Marketplace Report, American Public Media. Tuesday, July 14, 2009 A Softball Field is Better Than Nothing.

Lifted Up Mark 6:1-13, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

2009-07-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

“Are you sick and tired of being soft, frail, skinny, or flabby – only HALF ALIVE?”
“Are you tired of seeing the huskier fellows walking off with the best of everything?”
“I know just how you feel! Because I myself was once a 97 pound weakling.
But then I discovered a wonderful way to develop my body fast!
In no time at all I became ‘the world’s most perfectly developed man’.”

Whoever thought of featuring Charles Atlas body building ads in the back of comic books
was a genius.
That’s where ten year old boys like me would linger,
with flashlights in make-shift forts fashioned of blankets and dining room chairs
dreaming of getting strong enough to fend off the older boys who tormented us.
My tormentor was my older brother
and I fantasized about what I would do to him after just two weeks
of Charles Atlas’ program of dynamic tension,
him and all his sneering, acne-scarred friends.

I never ordered the free booklet.
What stopped me was the vision of my brother finding it –
And he WOULD find it - I couldn’t hide anything from him.
He would find it and he would wave it about in front of his friends,
ridiculing me in public without mercy.
In my mind, he was the champion of the neighborhood.
I, in my weakness, was lowly and despised.

Charles Atlas, an Italian immigrant whose birth name was Angelo Siciliano,
came to this country in 1905 at the age of 13.
It was a land of opportunity for him and his family, and he made the most of it.
It’s hard to imagine how many of those free pamphlets
he mailed out to boys and men like me,
boys and men like me who were tired of getting proverbial sand kicked in our faces,
who felt weak and longed for greater power in our lives.

Power is something we all long for – personal power, national power -
power for our race, our gender, our class – whatever it takes to get our share.
But conventional power, like happiness, is elusive.
Power, as we tend to think of power, is a commodity of diminishing returns.
The more power we amass, the more we cling to it.
The more we cling to it, the greater lengths we go to to protect it, even by force.
And, paradoxically, once we start resorting to force, our power is lost,
because force is the clearest sign there is that we’ve lost control
in every way that has meaning.

Two hundred thirty three years ago a group of disgruntled New World colonists
signed a document rejecting the tyranny of King George III
and asserting their desire to be self-governing.
The king sent troops to quash the rebellion.
At the moment he made that decision, the colonists won.
Had the French not jumped in on our side
we may not have won the first war, but that’s almost irrelevant.
Violence used in the service of power
is never a sign of strength, only temporary domination.
No matter how it played out, the days of King George III were numbered.

“Power” is a difficult concept to get a handle on.
This past week we’ve seen conventional assumptions about power turned upside down:
• Mark Sanford has shown us that even governors have to account for their whereabouts.
• Michael Jackson’s untimely death has demonstrated
that even massive talent and global fame aren’t enough
to make up for the debilitating effects of a distorted self image.
• As American troops pull back from Iraqi cities
and Iraqi citizens brazenly cheer their departure
we see that that even dominating firepower and noble intentions
can’t make everyone want to be on our side.

When John Calvin, the church Reformer whose birthday we celebrate today,
talked about total depravity as the human condition
I think he was speaking primarily about our inability as humans
to grasp the true concept of power.
Total depravity doesn’t mean that everything we do is bad.
It simply means that any good we do is from God.
And we seem to always have the impulse to leave God out of the equation,
to toot our own horn and take all the credit.

That was the original sin, after all.
It isn’t sex as Augustine tried to tell us.
It is our failure to accept that God is in charge,
that our power is limited,
and that our power is to be found in obedience to God,
not in grasping after the forbidden fruit that always seems out of reach.

The testimony of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments,
is that power is only God’s to grant.
And God’s power is always going to be found in the hands of an unlikely band of Jews
more than in the hands of Pharoah.
It is always going to be found in the hands of a shepherd with a slingshot
more than in the hands of a giant with a sword.
It is always going to be found in a humble teacher riding a donkey
more than in a mighty warrior riding a valiant steed.
God’s power is always going to be found in the one crucified
more than in those who do the crucifying.

Paul understood the upside down nature of power in God’s realm.
With the church in Corinth he ran smack into a group of Jewish Christian missionaries
who had come to Corinth in Paul’s absence
claiming to have a special hotline to God.
They were critical of Paul, they made fun of his stutter and the funny way he walked,
and they bragged that they had more spiritual power than Paul could ever dream of.
Paul could have kept quiet, but he feared for the church in Corinth.
He didn’t want this conceptual distortion to persist.
So he addressed the issue of power head on.

Paul was reluctant to tell of the supernatural vision he’d had,
the experience of being lifted up into God’s presence.
It would have made a great dramatic testimony on the religious channel
but as grateful as he was for the experience,
Paul had the spiritual maturity to know that such a vision was not a source of power
nor did it have the capacity to sustain over the long haul.
Paul knew that it was his struggle more than his success that gave him strength.
It was his suffering more than his comfort that gave him endurance.
It was his experience of unanswered prayer more than any blessing he could name
that was the source of his power – or better, the source of God’s power in him.

That’s the paradox of power in God’s realm.
The weaker we are, the less cluttered is the conduit
through which God can display God’s power in us.
The richer we are,
the higher the political office we hold,
the more military weapons we control,
and, yes, Charles Atlas, the more physical strength we possess –
the more clogged that conduit gets.

Jesus found that even familiarity can clog the conduit of God’s power.
Who would have thought that among his hometown family and friends
he would be able to accomplish so little.
But the conduit of power in Nazareth was stuffed tight with concern
about Jesus’ place on the social ladder.
He was the son of questionable parentage.
He was a child of the laboring class, a barely skilled craftsman
who was forbidden to even look someone of the upper class square in the eye.
Yet here he was, standing up to teach, and teaching with authority,
giving new, dynamic meaning to old worn out texts.
“Where’s he getting this stuff?” they asked.
What they really meant was, “Who does he think he is?”

That’s why, later, when Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to test their wings
he told them to pack lightly.
Keep it simple. Stay humble.
Accept the hospitality of those who welcome you
to remind you that none of us can go it alone.
And if anyone challenges you,
if anyone rejects you,
if anyone questions your right to be where you are doing what you’re doing
don’t get into a power struggle.
Don’t try to force yourself on them.
As Paul would say, “Power is made perfect in weakness.”
Just clean your sandals and move on.

Charles Atlas had such appeal because he tapped into our fear of being powerless;
our worry about coming across as a weakling.
He fed into that persistent myth that power has to do with brute strength
or a capacity to use violent force.
Charles knew like we know that there are plenty of people and things in this world
that conspire to bring us low:
Political opponents, physical and emotional bullies, enemies of the state,
isolation, disease, disability and death.
That’s why it’s so important for us to meet here in this place,
to meet here and share together the sacrament of communion.

John Calvin said that when we share the sacrament of communion together,
it is as though we who have been brought low are lifted up into heaven.
In this sacrament our weakness gives way to God’s power.
For these few moments we are made one in Christ
and we get a taste of the heavenly banquet
For these few moments we who are crippled and weak and distorted
reflect the golden glow of God’s presence
and become, by God’s grace, the most perfectly developed women and men.

Boundary Issues 2 Samuel 6:1-7, Mark 5:21-43

2009-06-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

Preacher – “The Lord be with you.”
Response – “And also with you.”
[By prior arrangement, the preacher’s cell phone rings. The preacher checks the caller I.D, holds up a finger to the congregation and says, “I’ve got to take this.” The preacher chats a few moments, then hangs up.]

There are some things you just don’t do… [Hold up cell phone]
some boundaries you just shouldn’t cross.
Sometimes these boundaries are tangible, physical –
that yellow tape the police put up around the scene of a crime,
a barbed wire fence marking off your neighbor’s pasture.
But other boundaries are invisible.
Most of the time these boundaries aren’t written down or even overtly articulated.
we just expect everyone to know where the line is.

Sometimes these invisible boundaries are culturally defined,
for example, how much personal space we give each other.
It’s not something you measure,
but you know when your personal space has been invaded,
when somebody gets just TOO close for comfort.

Sometimes boundaries are part of a social class consciousness.
Rules of dress, for example.
When I was a teenager, my mother let me know in no uncertain terms
that I was never to go without a shirt, no matter how hot it was,
unless I was at the beach, at the pool, or in my own back yard.
Where you live can be another class-conscious boundary.
The train may not have gone through your town for a hundred years
but you know what it means to live “on the wrong side of the tracks.”

Boundaries serve a function – they provide structure to social life.
But what happens when somebody comes along and ignores the social boundaries?
What happens when somebody comes along
and deliberately, WILLFULLY, crosses the line that good people just don’t cross?
I don’t mean wearing saggy britches where your underwear hangs out
or failing to cover your mouth when you sneeze in the buffet line…
I mean what happens when somebody comes along and does something so outrageous
that it makes your skin crawl;
it makes you question everything you’ve ever assumed about social order.
I’m talking…of course…about Jesus.

First of all, we shouldn’t act like we didn’t expect it.
Anybody who ends a story with, “The first shall be last, and the last first”
is bound to challenge the status quo.
Still, as boundaries go,
our story today makes the Great Wall of China look like gossamer thread.

Mark is anything but subtle.
First of all, he places this story of Jairus and the anonymous woman
in the context of extreme boundary crossing.
Remember last week that Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee
leaving behind the familiar Jewish side of the lake to go to the Gentile side.
The lake, itself, serves as a boundary between clean and unclean.
And now, as Mark begins this story, they’ve come back across to the Jewish side,
but there are still boundary issues to face,
lines to cross that will make them uncomfortable…to say the least!

The first line that gets crossed is a small one, but it sets the tone.
Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, elbows his way through the crowd
and falls at Jesus’ feet.
It’s not that unseemly for Jairus to bow at Jesus’ feet,
given that he’s asking Jesus to do him a significant favor.
But Mark makes a point of saying that Jairus “begged Jesus repeatedly”
to come heal his daughter.
The implication is that Jairus loses his composure, he gets all worked up,
he makes himself vulnerable to Jesus and exposes his neediness to the crowd.
Jesus agrees to go with Jairus, but on the way something happens.
In the crush of the crowd a woman comes up and touches Jesus –
touches Jesus and is healed.
That sounds simple. It is anything but.

Mark pulls no punches in letting us know
just how low on the social ladder this woman really is.
In a society that saw prosperity and health as a clear sign of God’s blessing
the poor woman has no hope.
For one thing, she’s a woman. That’s one strike against her right there.
For another thing, she has been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Twelve years of “woman trouble.”
She has been hemorrhaging twelve years and has endured many physicians.
Like millions in this country who lack adequate health insurance,
she has spent all she had on doctor bills and not only is she no better,
Mark tells us that she has actually gotten WORSE.

So here’s a woman who, because of her condition,
is not only considered unclean by Jewish law
but who out of respect for all acceptable social boundaries
should have segregated herself, should have stayed at home.
Here’s this woman, out in public, mixing in with a jostling crowd
a woman who has the temerity to reach out and TOUCH Jesus!

I don’t know how to convey to you just how nasty those around Jesus
would have seen that,
how far beyond the bounds of decency that would have seemed to them.
It would be like somebody picking their nose
and then reaching out to shake hands. Even WORSE!
And then Jesus, calm and self-possessed even in the crushing crowd,
feels the power go out of him, stops and asks, “Who touched me?”

Did you ever want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you?
Put on your Harry Potter cloak of invisibility and just slink away?
Here’s this woman who thought she was being inconspicuous,
who thought no one would notice her – not her, not nasty, despicable HER…
Here’s this woman – twelve years an outcast,
suddenly being drawn into the spotlight by Jesus himself.
She likely would have had a heart attack
if she hadn’t already felt in her body that she had been healed.
Even so, her trembling made the earth around her shake
as she collapsed at Jesus’ feet in fear.

I picture everyone in the crowd recoiling in horror from this woman.
Imagine the nicknames they had for her around town.
“Look everybody, here comes Bloody Mary.”
But when the crowd draws away, Jesus steps close.
He takes her by the hand, lifts her up, looks her in the eye and says,
“Daughter – DAUGHTER – daughter your faith has made you well.
Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

It is astounding the lines Jesus crossed here –
touching a woman who wasn’t a relative,
touching a woman who, in the eyes of everyone in town, had been cursed by God.
touching a woman whose physical ailment gave her a serious “ICK” factor.
But one of the most significant lines Jesus crossed
was that in allowing himself to be delayed from his original mission,
Jairus daughter, the seemingly more IMPORTANT daughter, died.

She died. While he was allowing himself to be distracted by some tramp, the little girl died.
But that opened an even greater door for Jesus.
It gave him just the opportunity he needed
to show the mocking mourners, the grieving father, and his awe-struck disciples
that even the greatest boundary of all – even death itself –
could not block the purposes of God.

Jesus ordered all the scornful mourners to take their mess outside.
He took Jairus and his wife, and Peter, James, and John into the little girl’s room.
She lay there, still as stone, mouth slack, the color drained from her face.
Death hung thick in the air, a heavy curtain drawn around her tiny frame.
But Jesus pushed it aside.
To him it was no more than a spider’s web and he brushed it aside.
For the second time that day he reached out and lifted up.
And the little girl, the important man’s daughter, the joy of his life
got up and walked around.
To make sure we don’t miss the connection,
Mark then adds the kicker.
He says, “She was twelve years of age.”

Do you get it? Twelve. The number twelve.
In the Bible it is THE number that symbolizes God’s agency,
the activity of God working God’s purpose out.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve disciples.
The woman in the street had been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Jairus’ daughter had been alive just that long.
And through Jesus, God used them both to overcome boundaries:
boundaries of purity, of social status, even the boundary of death itself:
just blasted those boundaries to kingdom come!

This is not to say that there should be no boundaries.
King David found that there are certain lines even a king shouldn’t cross.
For example, the Ark of the Covenant was not to be touched. Period.
Abinadab’s son Uzzah found that out the hard way
when, without thinking, he reached out to steady the ark when it shifted.
And later, David discovered that, king or no king,
you don’t go committing adultery with your loyal soldier’s wife.

In Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, two neighbors meet in an annual ritual
to repair the rock wall that serves as a boundary between their properties.
One neighbor cites conventional wisdom
that says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
The other, however, reflects to himself,
“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”1

In Ephesians the author writes of Jesus, “In his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (Eph. 2:14)
While there are boundaries that still give us some structure
and help us live together without being offensive or gross,
in Christ the boundaries that divide us have no place. No place at all.

________________
1 Frost, Robert, Mending Wall, North of Boston, 1915.

2009-04-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Birdy Blue and Her Fiddle
Zechariah13:7-9
Mark 14:31-52

Zipporah Blue was born on September 1, 1841,
the day before her parents boarded ship in Oban, Scotland
to sail with thirty of their neighbors from the island of Jura
to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.
Her father Angus Blue, the rare Presbyterian minister with a sense of humor,
told his bride Effie that he wanted to name their daughter Abishag
after the young woman in 2 Samuel
who was assigned to keep old King David warm in his old age.
“We can call her ‘Shaggy’,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up
as he fought hard to look serious.
They settled on “Zipporah,” after the wife of Moses,
but Effie put her foot down at the notion of calling her “Zippy.”
They called her “Birdy” instead,
Angus remembering from his studies that Zipporah means “little bird.”

It’s not that it wasn’t hard leaving their home,
but the fertile farmland of the sand hills of North Carolina
and the prosperous settlement of Scots already there eased the transition.
Birdy was a happy child, despite going a round with polio at age seven
that left one leg weakened.
She learned to play piano, a genteel instrument for a daughter of the manse,
but it was the fiddle that stirred her blood.
“The Devil’s instrument” was what some called it, “Not fit for Christian ears!”

But Birdy Blue was not one to listen much to the admonitions of gossipy women.
“Old magpies!” she called them,
and she cajoled “One-eye” Pete, the ancient caretaker of her father’s church
to give her secret lessons on his “squalk-box”
which is what he called his honey-colored fiddle.

Birdy Blue was not a classic beauty.
She had the angular features and deeply set eyes of her Scottish kin.
Taking after the Fergusons, her mother’s side,
streaks of gray began showing up in her hair before she was twelve
and she was fully gray by twenty.
But the spark in her eyes was a lightening flash and the music of her laugh
tickled the ears of young boys and old men and every eligible bachelor in between. On Saturdays, when the work was done,
she’d go with her father to the large tobacco shed at the railroad siding
where weary farmers and their families would gather at the end of a hard week.
“Birdy Blue has come to play,” they would cry
and they would pull over a crate for her to stand on.
When she tucked her fiddle up under her chin and her toe began to tap out the rhythm
to “Roslin Castle” or “Annie is My Darling”, even the grimmest soul couldn’t help smiling.

Independent in spirit and not shy in expressing her own opinions,
Birdy was her father’s “dear lass,”
the one who could light up his countenance like no other.
But her independence and strong will, not to mention her fiddle playing,
also proved a continuing source of consternation among the matriarchs
of the Cypress Creek Presbyterian Church congregation.
The men of the church governing council, the Session,
were completely charmed by Birdy and would have overlooked
what they called her “high spirits,” but their wives were of a different mind.
Under domestic pressure, the Session called Birdy before them
and forbade her to play the fiddle any more.
It broke her father’s heart to see her standing there,
knowing what it meant to her to play her music.
But he was proud of the way she resisted the temptation of defiance.
With humility she submitted to the Session’s authority and promised to play no more.

It wasn’t long after she received the Session’s instruction
that Angus Blue brought an ecclesiastical colleague around to meet his daughter. The Reverend Mr. McKeithan was twenty years Birdy’s senior,
a widower whose wife had died leaving five young children.
He needed a good, God-fearing woman to keep his home and raise his children.
Angus Blue couldn’t look his daughter in the eye
when he introduced the reed-thin Reverend McKeithan,
because he knew it was the end of a phase that both he and she would sorely miss,
but it was time she became a wife and took on wifely duties.

The spark left Birdy’s eyes in the ensuing years as she cared for her husband’s brood
and took on the burden of respectability befitting a minister’s wife.
She was without peer in showing hospitality, hosting the ladies of the church in her home,
and she never missed the chance to champion the needs of the poor.
As an anniversary gift, she sat for a photograph in the lace collar
her husband had given her for Christmas.
The photographer admonished her not to smile. He needn’t have worried.

Reverend McKeithan died of consumption on Christmas Day, 1882,
his children, now grown, all gathered around his bed.

Birdy kept up the house,
continuing her charity work at the Old Soldiers’ Home where she would often go
and play the beat up piano in the dining room
after the old men who lived there had their supper.
She found herself there on New Year’s Eve, 1899 – the eve of a new century.
Someone had brought in a bottle of Scotch whisky for the toasting,
and though it was not lady-like, and certainly not in accordance with church policy,
she joined the men at their urging in their toast to the New Year.

A new resident had moved in the week before,
a grizzled old gent with a flowing white beard.
He excused himself and went to his room.
When he returned he was carrying a fiddle and a horsehair bow.
He said, “I used to play this here box pretty fine
until the arthritis gripped me something fierce.
But I’d love to hear ‘Annie is My Darling’ one more time if anyone here can play it.”

Birdy looked at that old fiddle. She took it from the man and caressed the neck.
She smelled the resin and the horsehair
and she gingerly turned the tuning knobs as she carefully plucked the strings.
The old man’s face took on a hopeful cast
and others in the room who had been talking went silent.
As they looked at this gentle woman - nearly sixty, steel gray hair,
a woman they didn’t know well because she had always been timid around them –
they saw her begin to transform before their eyes.
Her back straightened, her shoulders squared, her pale face took on color.
She pulled the bow once across the strings, listened,
twisted a knob and then pulled again.

She looked at the men in the room and her eyes sparked.
Her toe began to tap.
She tucked the fiddle under her chin and said to herself
but loud enough for everyone to hear,
“Session be damned! Birdy Blue has come to play!”

When we read Mark’s account of the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion –
the drowsy indolence of Peter, James and John
Juda’s kiss of betrayal,
the final desertion by all of Jesus’ friends –
it’s hard to imagine a more complete and compact literary collection
of human failure and institutional blindness.
Mark is relentless in pointing out how no one,
not Jesus’ closest friends nor the most educated religious leaders of the day,
begins to understand Jesus or his mission.
In the final analysis, every single one of them
is either sleepy, back-stabbing, or running away.

It is small comfort to know that for 2000 years
even Jesus’ most passionate followers have been getting it wrong.
Birdy Blue is a character out of my imagination
but the Session of Cypress Presbyterian Church, the church of my ancestors,
really did issue an injunction at one time
against fiddle playing…and dancing…and games using cards or dice.

We who imagine ourselves the gatekeepers and guardians of orthodoxy
often do a great damage to the body of Christ
in our arrogance and fear and misguided faith,
but so do others of us on the opposite end of the spectrum
who are too lazy to stand for anything,
and are happy enough as long as their own private boat doesn’t get rocked.
No wonder fewer and fewer people want to bear the label of “Christian” these days.

But isn’t that the heart of the salvation story?
Isn’t that the core of Jesus’ work on our behalf?
We are bigots and boors, and gossips and goof-offs,
and hate-mongers and hypocrites, and shysters and stuffed-shirts,
and if left to ourselves we more often than not make a big mess of things,

But…BUT…there is grace in the world still.
And for all our failings, we hang to that grace by our fingernails,
remembering how, though Jesus predicted his disciples’ betrayal and abandonment,
he STILL sat at the table with them and broke bread as his body
and shared with them the cup as his blood.
And as dark as it was that night in the garden when they couldn’t keep their eyes open
and the authorities arrested him
and his friends fled.
As dark as it was, that wasn’t the end.

As dark as it is, there’s still music and laughter and good fellowship around the table.
As dark as it is, and as long as it takes,
because God is on our side there will come a time
when all of God’s children will start tapping out the rhythm.
We’ll tuck the fiddle under our chin and shout “We've come to play!”
Birdie Blue and all the rest who have endured what Zechariah calls the refiners fire,
all will be called by name by the Lord himself.
He will say, “They are my people!”
and we will say, “The LORD is our God!”

Bush League Ezekial 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34

2009-06-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
That’s a tough one.
“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
That’s kind of like saying, “With what can we compare a sunset?”
or “With what can we compare that feeling of first love?”

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?”
What’s a good analogy for God’s dream for God’s world?
I don’t know. Do you? Let me see…
God’s realm is…as big as a giant circus tent when you’re six years old
and you’re holding your Daddy’s hand and climbing the bleachers to find your seat
and your eyes are wide as saucers trying to take it all in.
God’s realm is…as colorful as the Aurora Borealis on a cold Minnesota night.
and you’re wrapped up in blankets, a steaming mug of cocoa warming your hands
and your heart’s about to burst from the beauty of it.
God’s kingdom, God’s realm, God’s dream for God’s world
It defies analogy, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.

The Prophet Ezekial used the analogy of one of the cedars of Lebanon,
the biggest tree he could imagine
to describe what he believed to be God’s coming glory.
The cedars of Lebanon were legendary for their size – 130 feet high, 8 feet in diameter.
They were long established symbols of majesty and grandeur
and Ezekiel borrowed the symbolism to fit his purpose.
In his vision, Ezekiel saw God take a tiny cutting from one of the mighty cedars
and plant that cutting on Mt. Zion in Israel.
And even though at the time Ezekiel was active as a prophet,
God’s people were being taken into exile in Babylon,
he still put forth the vision of a tiny sapling, transplanted in David’s city
that would one day stand so tall and strong,
that every kind of bird, that is, every other nation, would live in it’s shadow.

The Kingdom of God is like a lofty cedar,
straight, sturdy, enduring - growing from a twig into a mighty tree
that towers over every other tree.
That’s an analogy we can sink our teeth in;
the kind of triumphant imagery with which anyone would like to be identified.
It’s an image for the long haul,
an analogy for winners.

Across the country this month
thousands of high school seniors are walking across stages in cap and gown
reaching out to take their diploma and to shake the principal’s hand.
Many of those students are high achievers,
young men and women who have been on a steady, upward rise to success
from the moment they first sat in a sandbox.
They have had loving parents to read them bedtime stories,
creative teachers who knew how to captivate their imagination,
and a hearty breakfast to start each school day.

These students and their families have followed the rules.
They’ve done it right.
Their hard work has paid off.
THEY are like cedars – straight, sturdy, enduring.
There are no surprises. No surprises here.

That’s the way we like life, isn’t it? No surprises.
We like there to be rules, rules that, if followed, will lead us to success.
It’s the heart of our national mythology;
the whole “Founding Fathers” mystique;
the protestant work ethic and manifest destiny all rolled into one.
Like ancient Israel we in this country imagine ourselves to be God’s favorite.
We can easily adopt Ezekiel’s vision of the cedar as our own,
as the emblem of God’s blessing on us – strong, steadfast, immovable.
It suits us, especially the part about all other nations living in our shadow.

The problem Israel ran into with this image of the cedar
is that they forgot that it was an analogy of God’s strength, not their own.
They forgot that any steadfastness or endurance they showed
was not intrinsic to their nature, but a gracious gift from the Almighty.
They forgot that when other nations rested in their branches
it was their opportunity to serve, not to exploit.

It is precisely Israel’s tendency to forget,
to confuse their power and God’s power,
to get so lost in their dream for themselves
that they lose sight of God’s dream for God’s world
that is behind Jesus’ parables of the kingdom.

Only when we know the background of Ezekiel’s analogy of the giant cedar
can we see the humor in Jesus’ parables of God’s Kingdom.

“The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.”
OK, I’m with you so far. The small becomes great.
That which is tiny has big potential.
It’s like Ezekiel said, the twig grows into the giant cedar.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
tiny, barely visible, a speck.
But when it is sown upon the ground it grows up and becomes the greatest of all …
the greatest of all…
the greatest of all…SHRUBBERIES.
Not a giant cedar with sturdy trunk and evergreen crown.
A shrubbery. A bush. Not even a nice English boxwood or holly,
but an invasive species that no self-respecting gardener would ever plant on purpose.

Unlike the mighty cedar,
the mustard seed Jesus is talking about grows into an annual plant.
It grows up to six or eight feet, which, yes, considering the size of the seed it starts from
is quite impressive,
but the stem is hollow, the branches are weak,
and it lasts only one season before it dies.
Small birds may sit in its branches to snack off of the seeds.
They may scratch under its branches and make nests on the ground in its shade.
But it’s certainly no cedar tree, that’s for sure.

Do you get the joke?
With a nod to Ezekiel that no one in his audience could miss,
Jesus turns the image of God’s realm on its head.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. That’s it! That’s all!
It doesn’t look like much as a seed.
And the value of the bush it grows into isn’t judged by its sturdiness or its dominance.
Unlike Ezekiel’s analogy of the cedar,
For Jesus, God’s realm isn’t about predictable outcomes
or documented value or steady progress.
For Jesus, God’s realm is mysterious, and UNpredictable and full of surprises.

There are high school students graduating this year who have done everything right.
They have solid homes, good teachers, predictably bright futures.
They are the cedar trees.
But there are others graduating who are more mustard than cedar.
Their success was NOT guaranteed.
It’s a mystery for some why they’re walking across an auditorium stage at all
and not languishing in a prison cell or a pool hall somewhere.

In ninth grade, Cody Tipton of Erwin High School in Asheville, NC
was making money by selling the drug xanax to classmates.1
He certainly wasn’t studying algebra.
When he got busted he no doubt looked to his teachers and classmates
like nothing more than a noxious weed
Not a giant cedar, that’s for sure!
But something surprising and wholly unexpected happened to Cody.
Instead of getting into a cycle of revolving door prison sentences
Cody got a job at Bojangles and went back to school.
He’s been on the A/B honor roll ever since.

Giovanni McKnight lived without a father in a housing project in Miami.
That is, he lived there before losing even that and moving to a homeless shelter.
He was another insignificant speck, an anonymous child headed for disaster.
He bounced around to eight different schools before moving to Asheville
where he enrolled at Asheville High.
Again, against all the odds, a tiny seed was planted.
It was there somebody saw his athletic potential and got Giovanni on the track team.
He graduates this year with the school record in the 55 meter dash.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, Jesus says,
and it grows into a bush, not a cedar.
There’s a term you’re probably familiar with – it’s a term of derision,
meant to insult and demean.
It’s the term, “Bush league.”
It comes from the beginnings of organized baseball,
when big city teams had fancy ball fields surrounded by high walls.
Small town fields, however, were defined not by walls but by bushes.
Big city teams looked down on them.
They were “bush league.”

In Jesus’ own words, the Kingdom of God is Bush League.
To a world more enamored with cedars, this Kingdom looks pretty pathetic.
To a world that likes things simple, predictable, easily managed,
this bush league realm makes no sense. It’s downright offensive.
In a Cedar kind of world we get what only what we deserve, no more and no less,
and it’s all about maintaining dominance at all costs.
In a cedar kind of world you fight to keep things the way they are,
otherwise the tree topples over and then where are you?

But in Jesus’ bush league view of God’s Kingdom
there is always mystery and possibility and irrational hope.
Always a chance for a tiny seed to take root,
nobody deserves much, but that doesn’t stop God’s extravagant giving.
In Jesus’ bush league view of God’s Kingdom,
The least becomes great and the great may not last
and patience is a virtue because things are always changing.
In the bush league, God is in charge and we are God’s partners,
but only because that’s the way God wants it and who are we to argue.

With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?
With what, indeed.

_______
1 Students Jump Hurdles to Graduate, The Asheville Citizen Times, June 12, 2009.

Pops Got Skills Romans 8:22-27, Acts 2:1-21

2009-05-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

Some say that day of Pentecost recorded by Luke in The Acts of the Apostles
was the birthday of the Church.
I don’t buy it.
I think the birthday of the church was the day a human being first captured fire;
the first time some man or woman took a flame from a lightening strike
and used it to kindle a campfire
and invited others to gather around its heat and light.

Think of all that developed from that first campfire circle:
human imagination expressed through story and song,
governing councils that gave structure to civilization,
the first cooking classes!
That first fire circle became a focal point for life together
and life together is the heart of this entity we call “church.”

I admit, this is a pretty loose definition of “church,”
people gathered around a fire circle,
drawn there by a common need for light, for warmth, for community.
Pope Benedict surely wouldn’t accept it.
For him, church is strictly defined by apostolic succession –
the ability to trace ones origins back to the original apostles.

John Calvin, the chief reformer who laid the groundwork for Presbyterians,
also had his working definition of “church.”
He said that the church can be found “anywhere the word of God is faithfully preached
and the sacraments are rightly administered.”
That seems pretty simple until you realize that the words “faithfully” and “rightly”
leave a whole lot of room for interpretation
and a whole lot of room for internal bickering.

Go back to the very earliest churches.
They had at least one standard by which they identified a “church.”
In Paul’s letters a church is identified as any group where those gathered
acknowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Apostolic succession, word and sacraments, Jesus is Lord –
it’s not unreasonable to have some common standard
that serves to identify and set apart a group of believers;
some common trait to which we can point and say, “This is who we are,”
“This is what we mean when we say church.”

The impulse to organize is inborn in each of us.
The trouble is that part of our impulse to organize is our impulse to exclude;
an eagerness we have to draw lines and build walls,
the tendency to want to focus on who we are NOT
instead of who we ARE,
the tendency to forget that all any of us really want
is to satisfy that common hunger for light, for warmth, for community.

In chapter one of Luke’s account of the acts of the apostles
we find a very orderly process going on as the remaining eleven of Jesus’ twelve
choose a successor to replace Judas Iscariot, the betrayer.
but chapter two is anything but orderly.

Chapter two begins on the day of Pentecost, one of three annual festivals in Jerusalem. Pilgrims from all over the Middle East have come to Jerusalem to celebrate
the 50th day after the Passover and the consecration of the harvest.
It’s a tongue-tangling hodgepodge of nationalities in the city;
a regular United Nations summer camp,
and the disciples, stir crazy from waiting
for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised
are hanging out in some seedy hotel lounge drinking bad coffee and eating day old danishes.

Suddenly a breeze kicks up, scattering paper cups and napkins.
Matthew has to clamp down on his toupee to keep it from blowing off.
“Who turned the fan on,” Andrew shouts.
He has to shout because the roar of the wind is deafening
and the air is electrified making their hair stand on end.
Witnesses later would describe it
as though tongues of flame rested on each disciples head.
All they knew was that they saw light, and felt warmth, and experienced community.

They experienced community through the gift of sacred speech.
A crowd gathered and in that alphabet soup of nationalities represented
each reported being able to understand what the disciples were telling them –
stories of God’s deeds of power told in their own language
with a Galilean accent.

At some point the wind died down and the story-telling stopped
and, like you always do when something incredible happens,
you grab whoever’s closest and you begin comparing experiences.
Then you grab your cell phone and dial up whoever’s on your “Friends and Family” plan
and say, “You’ll never believe what just happened.”
And, sure enough, someone won’t believe it.
They’ll say something snide or catty like,
“Sounds like somebody’s been hittin’ the sauce a LITTLE early…”
Because, no matter what, some people just have to be skeptics.

That’s Peter’s cue.
Whatever you may have thought of Peter as the lights dimmed on the crucifixion
and he sat shivering in the dark, scared out of his wits
devastated by his triple denial of Jesus –
whatever you may have thought of THAT Peter,
you’ve got to realize that as Luke begins the story of Acts
the post-resurrection Peter is a changed man.
In fact, I would say that the rehabilitation of Peter in the gospel story
is one of the most powerful indicators of resurrection we have.

Peter emerges as the leader of the twelve
and on their behalf he addresses those gathered that day.
He begins his sermon with words from the prophet Joel,
words his audience is well familiar with.
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Peter may truly have believed that their experience marked
the beginning of an end that would come quickly,
an end that would come, in Joel’s words, with “blood, and fire, and smoky mist.”
In hindsight we understand that the gift of the Holy Spirit that day
was a sign, not of the end, but of the beginning of a new reality.

Until that point, the disciples couldn’t be sure
that Jesus’ life among them was not just an anomaly,
a holy blip on the radar screen that would last only as long
as they could, by their own efforts, keep his memory alive.
In other words, not very long.
Even their experience of the Resurrected Lord, as powerful as that was for them,
only had power for as long as they could keep it going.

But the gift of the Holy Spirit that day brought with it the assurance
that the toehold Jesus had gained for God’s realm on earth
was only the beginning of an everlasting shift of power.
Until then they could only hope that God was in control.
After that day, however, there was no question.
It’s not that the sun shown any brighter or people got nicer.
But with the Holy Spirit on the loose they could be assured
that no matter how menacing the forces of violence and fear and division loomed,
those forces were, in the end, no match
for the light, warmth, and community that are hallmarks of the Spirit.

I’ve mentioned this already, but please indulge me.
A couple of weeks ago I played a simple little pickup game of basketball
while visiting family in Louisville, KY.
Will and I were in a park shooting baskets when three high school-aged young men
came by and asked if they could shoot, too.
Then they asked if I wanted to play two-on-two.

I was reluctant to play because I had just been through physical therapy
to regain the full range of motion in my shoulders.
Up until then I hadn’t even been ABLE to play basketball for a long time.
I didn’t know if my body would still recognize the mental commands of basketball.
I was reluctant also because I realized I was older than the three of them put together -
them and their springy legs and flexible arms.

Thank goodness it was only a half-court game!
I was paired with the best of the three and I was happy for him to carry the offense.
As we played an African-American man in his late 30’s came up
leading two toddlers by the hands.
The three of them stopped to watch the four of us play.
When I would crouch in a defensive stance the father would yell,
“Uh oh! Pops is puttin’ on the defense!”
When I would jump for a rebound he would yell,
“Pops is goin’ up for that ball!”
And then once – once – when I took a pass, made a head fake,
and somehow, thank you JESUS, managed to lay the ball in the basket
without turning my ankle or breaking a hip,
the father of two yelled out, “Pop’s got skills!” “Pop’s got skills!”

It feels kind of silly talking about it now. But you have no idea how good that felt.
Or maybe you do. The sun shining. Sweat tricking down my back.
having somebody recognize my skills, “Pops” or no “Pops.”
That’s the gift of Pentecost, the gift of the Spirit doing its work.
When you’re happy to be alive in the company of fellow human beings;
feeling connected, with barriers of age and race broken down.
You know what Paul was talking about when he says that the whole creation
waits with eager anticipation,
GROANING in anticipation as we wait for adoption, for redemption,
for that time when it won’t be an occasional thing, a once-in-awhile kind of thing,
but a daily, hourly, moment by moment feeling
of Light. of Warmth. of Community. Church.

Like Trees Psalm 1, John 17:6-19

2009-05-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

I’m thinking of a poem that, because of its simple rhyme and meter,
makes it a favorite target for parody and ridicule.
But even so, I would bet it’s one of the most well-known and even beloved poems
in the English language.
The title is “Trees,” and it was written by Joyce Kilmer back in the early 20th century.
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear a nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain; who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.

It appears that the psalmist shares Kilmer’s reverence for trees,
using a tree in the very first psalm as a metaphor for a well-lived life.
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers.
But their delight is the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

When I think of trees I think of what I learned about trees in high school biology -
how each tree is a living system of roots and trunk and limbs and leaves.
how water is absorbed by the roots and carried up by the xylem tissue to the leaves.
And how sunlight and water combine in the leaves in a process called photosynthesis
to create nutrients that the phloem tissue then carries back down to the roots.
I remember how vital trees are to a healthy environment,
absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and giving off oxygen for us to breathe.
I remember how the roots of trees check erosion
and how the fruit of trees serve as food
and when the leaves and fruit fall to the ground,
it all decomposes into more nutrients that keep the cycle going.

Trees have been central to Biblical storytelling all the way back to the Tree of Life
in the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden.
So, when the psalmist uses a tree as a metaphor for a life well-lived,
it is with deep reverence and clear intent.
And the well-lived life is not judged by some arbitrary standard,
but by the standards of the Torah, the law,
the guidelines for living that are the gift of a gracious, life-giving God.

It’s no accident that the first psalm in the psalmist’s collection
is a psalm in praise of the Torah, the law of God.
The ancient Hebrews saw God’s hand in the created order of things
and believed that God had made the world for the benefit of human kind.
The Torah, the law, was the blueprint God provided
for getting the most out of God’s good gift.

There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about it.
Align yourself with God’s pattern and you will bear fruit.
Ignore God’s pattern and you will wither and die.
Plant yourself beside the streams of God’s mercy and
nothing will be able to move you.
Go your own way and, like chaff, you will dry up and blow away.

I hope that you have had someone in your life
who has provided for you a living example of what the psalmist is talking about;
someone with deep roots and expansive branches.
Some of you come from farm families.
Farmers get it.
Farmers understand that a fruitful, satisfying life is not a quick or a casual proposition
but that it requires daily discipline and a long-term investment.
Maybe you grew up on a farm and have an image of a parent or a grandparent,
hands calloused, face creased, pulling on boots before dawn
to start a new day.
When you were young you may have thought them hopelessly out of step with the world,
but now you understand that they just measured their step
by a more ancient, eternal beat.

It’s not just farmers who get it.
Maybe you have a friend who has lived years with chronic illness,
or a family in these tough economic times
who have had the rug pulled out from under them.
These people have every reason to complain,
but instead they see their situation as a learning experience
and somehow, with God’s help, find the strength to carry on.
Often these are the very people in our lives
who seem most content and fulfilled,
those who have learned to value relationships
and see beauty in the small things.

The testimony of the psalmist is that there is a design to life.
There is a basic blueprint that gives our lives constancy and security;
a blueprint we ignore at our peril.
God’s law is given as our guide,
it is our standard.
But let’s face it, we have problems with the concept of God’s law.

For one thing, we have this idea that God’s Law is an Old Testament concept
and that God’s grace, shown to us in Jesus, makes the law obsolete.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Jesus himself said, “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”
The problem Jesus faced was that God’s chosen ones had turned things upside down.
They had begun to see the law as a fence instead of a ladder;
as a tedious list of all that is forbidden rather than as the joyful expression
of all that is good and honorable and sacred.
Jesus came to remind us that the law is not the pin that bursts our bubble
but the scaffolding that gives our lives their strength and form.

The other problem we have with the concept of God’s law
is the temptation we ourselves have to use God’s law as a bludgeon,
our own convenient weapon against those things that scare us.
For example, scared of my own personal impulses and appetites
I use the law to make everyone else’s life as sterile and colorless as my own.
Scared that God might love someone else more than me
I use the law to create a narrow definition of who God finds acceptable,
a definition that, not surprisingly, fits only me.

We have this habit of looking at God’s law only in terms of what it prohibits.
Instead we should focus on what it allows.
It allows us to be honest instead of deceitful.
It allows us to be merciful instead of domineering.
It allows us to show hospitality to the stranger
instead of building the fence even higher.
Most of all,
God’s law allows us to have a vision of ourselves that is fully integrated,
heart, body, mind and spirit.
Like a tree whose trunk is supported with deep roots and nourished by green leaves, God’s law guides us to the place where our actions match our words
and our commitment is steadfast
and our faith is unwavering.

Eugene Peterson, a pastor and Christian author,
gets at the heart of an integrated life intertwined in God’s law
in a book he wrote called, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”1
In his book, Peterson makes the distinction between religious “tourists” on the one hand
and Christian “disciples” on the other.
“Tourists,” he writes, “understand religion as a visit to an attractive site
when they have sufficient leisure time to make the trip.”
They don’t want mundane details, just the high points,
and they’ll try anything – until something else comes along.

But disciples understand that faith is a commitment,
an apprenticeship to the Master, Jesus Christ.
Discipleship is a life-long learning process,
not where we accumulate information about God,
but where we learn skills of faithfulness that under gird our daily practice.

In our gospel lesson this morning,
Jesus is preparing his disciples for his imminent departure.
He allows them to overhear his prayer on their behalf.
Above all, he prays that they will be transformed, or “sanctified,” by God’s Word,
transformed to the point that they are fully integrated, heart, body, mind and spirit;
transformed to the point that they will be able to plant themselves
by streams of God’s mercy and be steadfast in the face of all the temptations
to go for the quick fix, the easy score, or the safe bet.
He doesn’t say so in so many words,
but he’s encouraging them to be like trees,
like the trees both the psalmist and Joyce Kilmer write about.

Joyce Kilmer was not only a poet, but he was a man of deep Christian faith,
and one who, when the time came, stepped forward to serve his country in WW I.2
He was, by all accounts, universally love by those whom he led
and he was one of those soldiers who did what soldiers are told never to do.
He volunteered – volunteered for the most hazardous duty.
His last duty was to lead a scouting party in search of an enemy machine gun post.
He was killed while on that mission by a sniper’s bullet.
Kilmer was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre medal of valor by France
and buried in an American cemetery in France.

Just because you serve your country in the military
doesn’t mean you are any more integrated in your life
or willing to commit yourself for the long haul
or more obedient to God’s law.
Neither our armed forces nor our churches for that matter
will ever be free of people with ulterior and selfish motives.

But on this Memorial Day Sunday we do honor those women and men
who have exhibited integrity in their leadership,
courage in their service,
and strength in their commitment.
We give thanks that they have born their fruit in its season.

1Peterson, Eugene, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000.

2 Hillis, John. Joyce Kilmer: A Bio-Bibliography. Master of Science (Library Science) Thesis. Catholic University of America. (Washington, DC: 1962).

At the Corner of Opportunity and Need John 15:1-8, Acts 8:26-40

2009-05-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

It’s Mother’s Day, so I want to give a nod to you mother’s out there
and also you mother-figures,
because, let’s face it, biological ties are sometimes a hindrance more than a help
and it’s those children who have a whole tapestry of positive relationships
with coaches and dance instructors and tutors and Sunday school teachers
who are able to be most resilient in the long run.

A child often chafes under the apparent impossibility of doing anything
that his mother doesn’t know about;
the old “eyes in the back of the head” phenomenon.
What children don’t fully understand is how intensely focused their mothers often are,
how totally immersed a mother can be in her child’s life.
Most of us are not aware of our own non-verbal body language –
the way we stand, the way we look when we’re nervous or feeling guilty.
But mothers could teach a graduate level course in body language
at least as it relates to their children.

We speak of a mother’s intuition,
but really that intuition is nothing more than the combination of motivation and passion:
the motivation to live up to the responsibility parenting requires
combined with a deep passion for her subject.
This combination of motivation and passion gives mothers a special insight,
a hypersensitivity,
a heightened awareness of where her opportunity as a parent
intersects with her child’s most pressing need.
Good mother’s often have that intuition, but not exclusively.
It’s not a quality found only in parents.
Take Philip for example.

There is a Philip listed among the original 12 disciples
but that Philip was from Bethsaida, a town on the shore of the sea of Galilee.
The Philip we meet in Acts is probably not that the same one.
The Philip in Acts is referred to as one of the Hellenists,
that is, a Jew, but a Jew who spoke Greek
as opposed to those who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic.
In other words, he was one of the Jews of the diaspora, an outsider, a mutt of sorts
who didn’t share the pure pedigree of a Palestinian Jew;
kind of like the difference between one who goes to the University of Virginia in Wise,
and one who actually lives his fourth year on Mr. Jefferson’s lawn
At any rate, maybe Philip was one of the crowd on the day of Pentecost
when God’s Holy Spririt was poured out on 3000 Jews
gathered in Jerusalem for the festival.
However it happened, he became a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

In chapter six of Acts, we’re told that Philip was chosen by church leaders
along with fellow Hellenist Stephen
to attend to the needs of widows and the poor in the early church
He was present when Stephen was stoned to death by leaders of the synagogue
who were threatened by Stephen’s skill as a debater on behalf
of those who followed Jesus of Nazareth.
Stephen’s death unleashed a flurry of persecutions,
and Jerusalem got pretty hot for the followers of Jesus.
So Philip went north to Samaria where the scripture tells us he preached to crowds.
He did mighty works in Jesus’ name which brought great joy to the people.
Not bad for an outsider.

When Peter and John, two of the original twelve, came up from the Jerusalem church
to verify the fruits of Philip’s labor,
Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit took that opportunity
to send Philip in an entirely new direction.
As Luke tells it, an angel of the Lord appeared to Philip and said,
“Get up and go toward the south, to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
Luke adds “This is a wilderness road,” just to make sure we don’t miss the implication.
Throughout the history of salvation,
God has done God’s most dramatic work in the wilderness.

“Go South – take the wilderness road.”
Now tell me, if you didn’t already know the story,
how would you expect Philip to react to that directive?
If it was me I’d stall. I’d pretend I didn’t hear.
I’d turn up the TV and hold a newspaper in front of my face.
Samaria has been good to Philip.
He’s packed them in,
felt the power of God’s presence,
done mighty works in Jesus’ name
and now he’s supposed to risk his neck, not to mention his success,
to travel some lonely, dangerous road to Gaza?
In Samaria he’s been filling John Paul Jones Arena,
and now he’s supposed to pick up and go to Wyngina?

If it was me I’d act like the signal was breaking up,
“Call back later,” I’d say, “I didn’t really catch that….”
But, fortunately for the church and especially the good people of Ethiopia,
Philip took a different tack.

Having felt the power of God’s love in his own life,
having experienced the peace of Christ, the embrace of God’s grace,
Philip had a passion for reaching out to those who had not yet had that experience.
He had the motivation to tell others, especially outsiders,
the good news of God’s acceptance
revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Like a mother watching over her child,
Philip was sensitive to the places where the opportunity to tell of God’s love
intersects with need to hear it
and when you have that kind sensitivity, you don’t have to wait very long
for such an intersection to occur.

Luke doesn’t give us a biographical sketch of the Ethiopian eunuch,
but, then, he tells us all we really need to know.
Being an Ethiopian, we assume the man was dark skinned.
Being a eunuch, we know that as a child someone set for him the course of his life
neutering him physically in order to make him fit to serve the queen
without being a threat to the Queen.
The main thing Luke seems to want us to know is that he was an outsider,
someone strange and exotic to the pedigreed Jews of Palestine.
In other words, just the kind of person to whom Philip could relate.

We tend to have this stereotype of Africa as a dark continent,
but tradition has it that there were Jews in Ethiopia dating back to Solomon’s reign
in the tenth century B.C.
originating from his liaison with the Queen of Sheba.
So here was a court official, probably a Jew, traveling in his fancy chariot,
headed back home to Ethiopia after worshipping in Jerusalem.
He’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, which is an important part of the story.

In the daily practice of Judaism eunuchs were seen as suspect.
they didn’t fit anyone’s definition of “normal.”
But in Isaiah we find a compassionate bit of pastoral care for eunuchs.
Isaiah writes that though they have no sons or daughters to carry on the family name,
God will give an everlasting name
to any eunuchs who “hold fast the covenant.”

In our bias against Africa we also tend to read this story
and marvel at the spiritual sensitivity and inclusiveness of Philip
reaching out to the Ethiopian.
What we fail to appreciate
is that the Ethiopian official was perhaps even more sensitive and inclusive.
The Ethiopian’s willingness to invite Philip into his chariot
was like US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
having his driver slow up on Pennsylvania Avenue to invite a hitchhiker aboard.
How do you do that
unless you also have a deep passion for God’s word
and a motivation to know all you can about your Creator?

The Ethiopian official hadn’t heard about the events in Jerusalem
surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus,
but his openness to God’s Word made him a willing listener.
Philip had no seminary degree
but his gratitude for the holy embrace he, an outsider, had felt
made him a willing guide.
Each man traveled that wilderness road in a spirit of openness
with a willingness to have their agenda interrupted,
with a powerful thirst to know more what God had in store for their life.
Each of them found his strength in what John’s gospel calls
the willingness to “abide” in God like a branch abides in the vine.
We give thanks for mothers today,
especially for those who have the motivation to be responsible parents
and the deep passion to be intimately involved in their children’s lives.
We who have had this kind of mother sometimes take it for granted.
Those who haven’t have this kind of mother
may not fully understand what they’ve missed.

Being a good parent or being a faithful follower of Jesus
each requires a willingness to be invested in the process:
heart, body, mind and spirit.
It requires the understanding that we are in this together,
that God’s design requires no one to walk alone.
It requires the ability to trust, that with God’s help
no challenge is too great
and no encounter is too insignificant.

Being a good parent or being a faithful follower of Jesus
means waking each day with an openness to the possibilities God has in store.
It means being adventurous enough to take the wilderness road when the Spirit so moves
and cultivating not just a willingness, but an eagerness
to live your life in such a way that it’s no accident, not a fluke
when you look at the signs and suddenly find yourself
at the corner of opportunity and need.