text :: Exodus 17: 1 – 7

theme verse :: “Moses called the place Massah because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’”(Exodus 17:7)

Watching paint dry or grass grow were often sayings dropped when people were describing less-than-exciting experiences. Today’s culture supports immediate gratification and access to all you want whenever you want it. Such creates a culture of little patience. It’s insignificant when waiting in line perhaps but much more challenging when it comes to providing care for loved ones, raising children, or accomplishing long term goals. Currently, the world’s longest experiment leaves observers waiting around for something to happen only once every eight or nine years. How does that compare to God’s patience? How does practicing patience grow our own spirits?

opening :: 'Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing' (arr.S.DeFord) :: Greta Metzer, soprano sax; Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

reader :: Geoff Brewster
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

closing :: 'Seasons' (HillsongWorship) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

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

“Is the Lord among us or not?”  Boom!  That is such a mic drop question.  Is it rhetorical?  Was Moses asking it with a bit of an edge to him… a little frustrated that the people were down his neck about finding water?  “There’s your water, people. Ha!  Is the Lord among us or not?”  “Is the Lord among us or not?”  I think it’s truly a fair question to ask of us now, today… you and me, living amid various situations, wondering if God’s a part of the movement or lack thereof of our lives.  We may ask that question in the hard times… as if we’re testing our own trust of God – “Is the Lord among us or not?”  And maybe we ask it less when things are floating by relatively smoothly.  After all, do we really need God then?  Does it matter then if the Lord is among us or not?  Hmmm.  And here we all are, each at a different point of life, each one contemplating the biggest questions of life with different levels of interest; each of us suffering in some way and hopefully thriving in another.  Here we are all so very different and yet all so very much the same.

I’ve been on a bit of a Schlotzsky’s kick of late.  Do you do that?  Find a little place you like to eat and find yourself going back over and over?  Or maybe it’s Avocado toast or a certain cup of coffee or whatever it may be.  A friend of mine got me on this little Schlotzsky’s kick.  It’s not an obsession and I’m not getting any kick-backs from Schlotzsky’s for the name-drop here but I was taken by their cup which has this beautiful tapestry of humanity pictured on the side  – all shapes, colors and varieties with a message that says:  19 people:  That’s all we could pack into the handful of family-style tables and counter seats in our tiny shop on South Congress Street in Austin back in 1971. Everyone – hippies and politicians, artists and farmers – sat side-by-side.  We’ve always believed that whether it’s food or people, when you welcome all flavors, you get an experience to savor.  That’s our spirit of originality. GLAD YOU’RE HERE!  And of course, I’m always thinking about church. Here we are, all God’s children, making the journey on our own and together – wondering if God, or anyone else, is glad we’re here; curious if there is any real purpose for our existence.  I’d put your picture on a side of a cup if I could so that you might know I’m glad you’re here… not just in this sanctuary in this moment, but here in the world, eager, longing, yearning for a life that is full and meaningful.  A life that is whole.

WHOLENESS is our congregational star word, our focal word, in 2019.  That word rose from your prayer requests, your hopes and dreams, shared with our ministerial team late last fall.  We’re diving into that wondering directly this month with this series we’re calling, “(y)our whole life.”  I took a little good natured ribbing from some last week about this title – the parentheticals and double entrendre.  “Is anything straight forward, Briley?”  And I admit to having a little fun with titles, knowing everyone will look at even titles from varied perspectives. What is your way into the Gospel?  How do you see even a title from a spiritual perspective?  It was like one pastor who posted out on the sign along the street in front of the church.  “Next Sunday’s Sermon: “The Church Member I’d Most Like to Go to Hell.”  The church was packed next Sunday, everyone anxious to see who got under the pastor’s skin. Of course, the sermon was about one of the elderly church saints who the pastor wanted to send to hell to convert all those souls and draw them to the heavens.  People were disappointed. Everyone wants the dirt more than they want grace.

(y)our whole life.  The parenthesis around the ‘y’ give space for this to be an individual transformation even as the ‘our’ makes it a collective one.  This is always true.  We’re all interconnected.  One of us is transformed, all of us are affected.  One of us falls away, we all feel the impact. So that’s happening and the word ‘whole’ speaks to what it means to have a whole, fulfilling, peace-filled life and also can speak to the duration of our lives… something that will carry us not just for a while but for our whole lives.  So, we’re considering, in this five-week series, several virtues or characteristics or spiritual disciplines that may help us find wholeness in our lives.

Kevin launched us well last week with a look at courage.  And when we talked about the flow of the series, we initially questioned having “patience” as the follow up to courage.  After all, courage involves a certain “GO!” quality to it while patience has a certain “WAIT!” quality to it. It’s like that feeling of learning to drive a stick-shift.  You don’t quite get that shift down and your grinding it until you find it and the car just starts convulsing forward in this start-stop-start-stop sort of motion.  But our reality is often that we resist the courage to go because we know we’re not patient enough to wait, endure, suffer through the transformation of time and hardship that comes with letting go of something to imagine something more aligned with God’s passion for our lives.  And so, today, we sit a while with patience.

I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t feel like they could be a more patient person.  In fact, more than a couple of people this week, knowing this was our topic, joked about “So-and-so really needs to be there,” or “I’ll make sure I get my husband there this Sunday.”  It was all tongue-in-cheek fun but there’s some underlying truth… patience is not a natural inclination for most any of us.  It’s sort of like someone saying to me recently: “Being an adult is like folding a fitted sheet. No one really knows how to do it.”  If that’s true, then being patient is sort of like trying to put that same fitted sheet on the mattress… we seldom get it on there the right way on the first try. I swear I can hold it up, look it over, be confident in the direction it belongs on the bed and sure enough I’ve got it stretched the wrong way and I plead in my angst, “Is the Lord among us or not?!”  Kidding aside, I will say this:  Most of the deepest and profound moments of spiritual growth I’ve experienced in my life started with the thought or internal shout, “I don’t have time for this.”

And so we join such a spirited bunch of folks in the book of Exodus. They are in the throes of what many a scholar have called “the complaint narratives.”  By the time we’ve reached chapter 17, many of the preceding chapters include a great complaint.  The people have been oppressed and enslaved and Moses leads them through the parted sea into a free world but, as you can imagine, a whole new set of issues arise in such freedom.  But they’ve only been in the wilderness for about two and a half months … easy for me to say ‘only’ of course… but in chapter 14 they panic when the Egyptians are pursuing them and complain bitterly to Moses about why he brought them out there in the first place. He’s like, “Uh, remember where we came from?”  In chapter 15, it’s the water at Marah that they don’t like – too bitter. It was no Aquafina.  In chapter 16, it’s the lack of food and yet the provision of manna comes to sustain them but then the manna doesn’t taste so good, “thanks but no thanks.”  And now it’s thirst which is not something to squawk at, right?  Water is a necessity.  Jesus tells the disciples when they’ve said the people are hungry and thirsty, “You give them something to eat and drink.”  He says in Matthew 25, “When you take care of the least of these with the essentials of clothing and food and water, you’ve honored me.”  So, who are we to say, “Just be patient people and water will come eventually.”  It’s way easier to be patient when your needs are met and when you’re not the one who is stressed.  I mean, I was a much more patient parent before I had kids.

And, to look at this honestly, the notion of patience as passive waiting is a false conception often used by those with power or privilege to keep marginalized people under control.  We have another matter of sin to consider if we’re demanding patience of those being oppressed while all our needs are comfortably met.  Don’t confuse the virtue of patience we imagine today with a freedom to oppress another.  This is about our own heart work.  If the Latin root word of courage is heart, couple that with the root word of patience in Latin which means enduring suffering.  Have enough heart to endure the suffering – which collectively points us to compassion – the idea of having heart enough to endure the suffering of others.

Where the complaint narrative of the Israelites wandering the wilderness intersects our own complaint narratives is the hardening of the heart. Patience is about keeping our heart soft enough not to lose ourselves in the struggles of life. Impatience has been defined as an “inner restlessness… experiencing the moment as empty, useless, meaningless.  It is wanting to escape from the here and now as soon as possible.”[1]  Who of us hasn’t experienced that reality? Some of you are feeling this right now! When you get frustrated and impatient with some person or some situation or even some moment, don’t you know that feeling?  “This is a waste of time.  This moment is empty.  It’s useless!  It’s meaningless!” and you follow that emotional outburst with a “Get me out of here, now!”  This is where courage implores us not to give up.  It’s why Jacob won’t let go of the angel when they’re wrestling near the Jabbok.  Jacob has the angel in a headlock and yells, “I won’t let you go until I get a blessing out of this.”  Now Jacob walks away from that knock down drag out with a limp that he carries the rest of his life.  We all have some scars from things we have long endured… but it also takes that enduring patience … that courage to stay engaged… to find a later blessing, even if we don’t understand it all at the time. Maybe we can begin to understand patience as growing into a third way between the polar extremes of fight and flight.  In patience, we learn to abide … or be present in… each particular moment, finding it not empty after all but rather full of the grace of God.  Easier said than done.

Moses asking the people to be patient wasn’t going to make them be patient.  I mean, who becomes patient just because someone demands, “Be patient!”  Aren’t we typically more resentful at that point… or even ramp up our impatience?  “Calm Down?  You don’t tell me to calm down.”  No.  Patience isn’t an instant virtue any more than doing one sit up will give you instant six pack abs.  Tertullian, prolific Christian writer just a hundred years after Jesus walked the earth, says patience is tied closely to the virtue of love.  He reminds us that the first word used to describe love in Paul’s Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 is patience.  It’s something we work at. And, like love, it’s worth it.  I’ve never met someone who doesn’t admire the patience of another.  When we witness someone being patient, we admire it.  When we witness someone blowing up or losing their cool, we don’t admire that spirit nearly as much. We all long for the gift of patience but we seldom want to work at it.  But if it is something we truly, ultimately want, we have to put in the practice now to reap its full gift later in life.  A father with kids now grown recently said, “I guarantee you’re going to want to be respected by your adult children.”  It’s not a given.  Such respect is earned.  What we’re doing now is building that opportunity… or not.  Don’t harden your heart… no matter what suffering you are currently enduring.  Stay steady. Stay open. Allow others to come alongside of you and be willing to come alongside another in their time of suffering. That is the gift of patience.  “Is the Lord among us or not?”  We may answer that question to others by our patient presence.

Tertullian says we work on bodily patience as well as spiritual patience.  He says by denying ourselves the lusts of the flesh by maintaining a simple diet and drink and fasting for example, we prepare our bodies for times when we are subjected to persecution, including prison and martyrdom which were very real threats in his time.  We’re not good at denying ourselves every pleasure which the practice of such convenience makes us less and less patient as individual’s and as a society.  It’s why the “door close” button is the most pressed in any elevator.  We want to quicken what is, on average, only a two-second wait.  It’s why if we’ll learn to discipline our now cravings, we’ll be more equipped to serve more faithfully even in the lean years. It’s Dave Ramsey’s, “Live like no one else so you can live like no one else.”

All well and good, Briley, but we’re thirsty!  We’re suffering!  And I understand. I succumb to stresses in my life at times and don’t always practice patience well.  But a hardened heart is what we seek to avoid.  It’s why Chris Smith and John Pattison wrote a book called, “Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus.”  They say, “Patience can hold us together when other forces conspire to rip us asunder.  The forces of fragmentation often emerge through the sufferings of others – including financial difficulties; addiction to pornography; infidelity; the alienation of members based on economics, race, age, sexual orientation and so on; and fears that lead to divisive behaviors like gossip and power grabbing. In those difficult times, it’s natural for us to want to fix these struggles from a distance or to run from them altogether. But we learn patience by immersion, journeying faithfully alongside those who are suffering. It’s easy, for example, to lob advice or judgment when a friend’s marriage is falling apart. It’s more complex, and more demanding, to sit down with the couple, to listen, to work slowly and conversationally toward healing, to celebrate reconciliation or to grieve a divorce.”[2]

It seems our quest for wholeness does not include an avoidance of suffering or always taking the easy road.  It’s the courage to risk, to engage, to invest the time and energy into relationships, and the patience to be present with ourselves, one another, and with our Maker as we make our way to experiencing the blessing.  Sheri Dew wrote a book whose title captured me first. It’s called, “If Life Were Easy, It Wouldn’t be Hard:  And Other Reassuring Truths.”  Sounds like something Yogi Berra might have written.  But she challenges us as people of faith:  “If you’re serious about sanctification… (which is a churchy word but essentially means becoming holy – we might say, “If you’re serious about growing in your faith, becoming more like Jesus…” ) she says, “You can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance and your patience.” It’s not a matter of if but when and how often.

What are you doing with your inner-restlessness?  I know it’s a struggle.  I heard someone say, “I can’t wait to go to bed tonight and stay up thinking about all the things I can’t control.”  Impatience with our circumstances fuels our anxiety and I know that is a real struggle for many of us. But what if we could gain some quiet space each day, even a few minutes to start, where we work at patience…. Where we find the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.  “Do we believe the Lord is among us or not?”

Moses – found his way to Mt. Sinai and with his trusty staff that had served him through many a pinch… and even just the day to day steps of his living, is told by God to strike the rock in just a certain way and find the flow of water for the people to drink.  I have this image of Moses holding a Heinz ketchup bottle unable to get anything out of the bottle. He’s pounding on the bottom of the bottle and hitting it harder and harder all the time… and I picture God saying, “No, Moses.  Just tip the bottle like so and tap on that little mark on the side of the bottle and watch it flow.”  We live with a squeeze bottle faith – we want access to what we want when we want it but life is more often like that glass ketchup bottle. We bang around impatiently and live constantly frustrated that things don’t flow our way.

I gave a gentleman a ride this week. We’ll call him Bernie.  He came into the church a bit panicked about a place he needed to be and quickly.  As circumstances played out, I decided to take this new friend to where he needed to be.  On our way to the car and every second of our ten-minute drive, he filled the space with the story of his life…. Hundred miles a minute.  And, at least a dozen times he prefaced what he said next with “Pardon my French but…”  Now, I took two years of French in high school and I promise you, nothing he said was French.  He was eight months clean, however, holding down a job longer than ever before in his life and trying to do the right things.  He said, “You know, I’ve had much greater struggle since I’ve been doing all the right things than I ever did when I was doing all the wrong things.” You may know that feeling.  But he looked at me and smiled before he got out of my car after telling me all of this and said, “But I believe God’s gonna do something with my life yet.”  He shut the door and all I could hear was that pesky question of Moses: “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Bernie and I have very different lives and he speaks way more French than I do… but at least in that moment, we both seemed to believe in the slow work of God. His patience that day may have gotten him a ride.  My patience afforded me some perspective that I really needed in that moment without even knowing it.  That’s the gift of patience. Tertullian says it like this…

“Patience fortifies faith; is the pilot of peace; assists charity; establishes humility; waits long for repentance; sets her seal on confession; rules the flesh; preserves the sprit; bridles the tongue; restrains the hand; tramples temptations under foot; drives away scandals; … consoles the poor; teaches the rich moderation; overstrains not the weak; exhausts not the strong; is the delight of the believer.”

Whether you’re at home or church, Schlotzsky’s or some stuck place in your life… I pray that patience will be a developing companion.  It is a friend that will help us always to answer the question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” with a soft-heart and affirmative “Yes. The Lord is with us; now and forever.” Amen.

[1] From Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill and Douglas Morrison’s book, “Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life.” Utilized here as shared in “Slow Church.”  See next reference.[2] Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus.  C. Christopher Smith & John Pattison.  IVP Books. 2014.  This quote as well as the quotes from Tertullian come from this book within the chapter entitled, “Patience: Entering into the Suffering of Others.”

text : Luke 4:21-30

theme verse : “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.” (Luke 4:28)

The major themes of 2018, according to those who study the frequency of cultural conversation, include immigration, the #MeToo movement, possible Russian interference in the 2016 election and –fake news. The idea of fake news refers to published information intentionally designed to mislead. Fake news has many names: “propaganda,” “misinformation,” “yellowjournalism,” “libel” and even “lies.” Yet recently, some people have broadened the concept of “fake news” to mean any reports or political news that they don’t like —regardless of the veracity of the information. Then, not only the news but the source of the news is attacked.It’s a new version of “kill the messenger.”While this exploded on the scene in a broad way last year, the cry of “fake news” has a much longer history. Just ask Jesus. How are we to decipher ‘fake news’ from the Good News?

anthem : 'To Love Our God' (M.Hayes) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader : Kaye Nofziger
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : 'Guiding Light' (Mumford&Sons) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

offertory : 'Amazing Grace' (arr.J.Althouse) :: Todd Maxwell, vocal & Susie Monger Daugherty, piano

There was a lively family debate in the car one night this week.  My daughter was talking about YouTuber’s – essentially people who have their own YouTube channel and post videos on their YouTube channel for a living.  Morgan was arguing how much money you could make as YouTuber commenting that every day she learns of another billionaire YouTuber.  Taking this all in, my seven-year-old son, Hayes, blatantly shouts out “Fake!”  I had never heard that retort from him before.  I interjected to clarify Hayes’ comment which he quickly said, “Fake news, Dad.  There’s no way there’s a new billionaire YouTuber every day.”  Beyond the debate itself, I was taken by Hayes’ use of “Fake!” as a comeback. It totally affirmed what I’ve been reading of late.  According to those who study the frequency of cultural conversation, the major themes of 2018 included immigration, the #MeToo movement, foreign interference in American elections and fake news.  The idea of fake news, of course, refers to published information intentionally designed to mislead.  We know it by other names including propaganda, misinformation, yellow journalism, libel and even flat out lies.  This has been a long-standing point of contention.

“The 1796 presidential race between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was notorious for smear tactics carried out by the newspapers of the day.  Jefferson’s supporters let it be known that Adams wanted to be king of the United States by trying to marry off one of his sons to a daughter of English King George III, a move blocked by George Washington who intervened just in time to stop it, or so the story goes. The political conversation remained riddled with false facts, with newspapers reporting, for example, that if Jefferson were president, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced,” that the country would be “soaked with blood, and the nation dark with crimes.” Political parties owned newspapers in those days. There was no independent media.”[1]

While this has clearly been an issue for some time, it seems we’ve ramped up the cry of fake news of late, broadening the concept to refer to any reports or political news that we don’t like regardless of the veracity of the information.  And, we’re all over each other about everything and immediately discount anything that doesn’t fit with our current and embedded ideologies which just makes life much easier I suppose.  I don’t have to listen any more to any one else and to end any dialogue, my seven-year-old can yell, “Fake!” and the conversation is over. This is problematic on multiple levels and is driving us further and further apart. It’s what Science Mike calls our latest addiction as a culture – “OUTRAGE.” We’re addicted to outrage and that addiction is being fueled like never before.  Jesus had his own experience of being accused of ‘fake news’ centuries ago and I wonder what guidance we can glean through his experience that may be an important guiding light for us during this incredible time and place that we find ourselves doing life together.

The story in Dr. Luke’s account is fascinating. Jesus had recently submitted himself to baptism. That is remarkable in itself and a message for another day.  Jesus stood in line with others who John was baptizing so that “he also” might be baptized.  Fred Craddock says those two words, “he also,” “Jesus also” may be the most important two words in scripture.  Why would the sinless one need to repent and be baptized?  It’s an expression of astonishing humility and solidarity.  Just imagine. In Jesus, God comes alongside of us, even to the point of joining us in a rite of passage like baptism.  May his act humble us with the reminder that arrogance has no place in Christian discipleship.  If Jesus undergoes this rite of conversion, how much more should we live humble, unpretentious lives of conversion?  So… Jesus is baptized, and he enters the wilderness for forty days to get his heart and soul ready for the ministry ahead.  Spiritual boot camp full of temptation and heartache and loneliness and discipline.  His time blows away any reality show challenge that we’ll watch for hours on end.  That trial complete, the “devil retreating temporarily to wait for a more opportune time,” what does Jesus do next?  He goes home. Takes a shower probably – it’s been forty days after all. He goes to the Coney Islander or whatever that place is that he has a hankering for like a college student come home for winter break. But then what?  He goes to his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath… “as was his custom.”  Given what we know about Jesus and his departure from the orthodoxy of his youth, there must have been many things with which he radically disagreed and that grated on him as he went to worship.  Yet Jesus went, as was his custom, to honor his love of God and to worship with his community.

He was given the scroll to read from the scriptures in worship.  The church folks had been proud of Jesus.  They had raised him and encouraged him in his studies.  It was a treat to have him home and to hear him read the scripture. He reads from Isaiah 61:1-2 (his source) and he offers this news: 

It’s a good a reliable source for that community.  But is it fake news?  Interesting.  If you compare Jesus’ rendition of those two verses of the prophet with what Isaiah actually offers, you’ll see that Jesus stopped short of reading the full passage which contains the line “to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.”  That seems a significant omission. He omits the piece about vengeance.  Jesus then sits down – which didn’t mean he was done, it meant that he was really just getting started.  Rabbi’s sat to teach.  What Jesus offers next is a bomb:  “Today,” he says, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  It seems to be that the parts of Isaiah that he named was sort of the mission statement of his movement of faith. Leaving out the vengeance part, perhaps, means that is not a part of his movement.  The congregation seems to be okay with this at first… in fact, they all seem to look over smiling at Mary who was recording her son’s talk on her iPhone to share with the family later.  They were all proud.  Their own hometown boy is going to do well and it seems they all may benefit from this.  It’s like the neighbor kid that used to TP your yard once a month and wore earbuds all the time so as to never make human contact with you walks into your pre-op room as your surgeon for the day with his Harvard Medical Degree on the wall behind you.  “Isn’t that Joe’s kid?  You know the ornery neighbor kid?”  All of that seems okay, especially as they assume that if Jesus is the Messiah they’ve all waited for their whole lives, knowing him personally and his family should surely bring about some special benefits for them.  It’s not fake news if it benefits you, right?

Methodist pastor, Jacob Lynn[2], says we often respond in this same way. Like most places in Scripture, we find elements of truth about ourselves in people portrayed negatively — like the Nazarene congregation of this text. We welcome Scripture that affirms us, our mindset and our beliefs. We tend to discount, discredit and dissent when confronted with texts with which we disagree. And if we disagree, we’re prone to toss it into the “fake news” pile. Do I allow Jesus to stretch and push my thinking, beliefs and faith, or do I prefer to throw the things with which I disagree off the cliff as the synagogue that raised him will soon attempt to do with Jesus himself?”

Jesus squashes their enthusiasm when he declares that “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”  They’ve maybe just tilted their heads at this point, a tad confused, but Jesus presses forward alluding to two biblical stories that would have been very familiar to them.  The first is a reference to a great famine which God sent the prophet Elijah to a starving gentile widow rather than a starving Hebrew widow.  That irked ‘em a bit.  Why wouldn’t he take a casserole to Mabel –one of the home-centered women in the church instead of that immigrant lady that nobody knows anyway? Several have crossed their arms over their chest by now. Jesus digs a little deeper telling a second story involving the prophet Elisha and his healing ministry with the gentile military officer, Naaman, who had leprosy.  Elisha, apparently, was not sent to heal any of Israel’s lepers. The point is sinking in and not settling well.  Even though Jesus wore a Nazareth High letter jacket in high school and the synagogue scholarshiped Jesus to go to church camp in the summers, they would have no special claim on his powers.  I wonder if Jesus thought he’d be received better than this.  A read of the room quickly tells the story however.  This wasn’t going to end well.

Someone shouts, “Fake news!” and a mob mentality takes over.  The congregation runs Jesus out of the synagogue to a nearby cliff and they’re poking and prodding him to the cliff’s edge. It’s hard to go back in for the church potluck after a moment like this. But they’re so angry and a Snicker’s bar isn’t going to calm anyone down.

Scottish historian Charles Mackay wrote in a work entitled, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds: He also concluded that people are more prone to believe the “Wondrously False” than the “Wondrously True.”  “Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder and meets the intruder’s welcome.”[3]  Jesus had intruded on their embedded theology and the mob mentality consumed them.  Most any leader who has revolutionized any thought or understanding has been met with such venom.  John Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement, as an ordained priest for the Church of England, pressed in his preaching that followers of Jesus might actually attempt to live like Jesus every day.  He was passionate about this message and his journal entries say on such-and-such date he preached at such-and-such church and was thrown out and told never to come back.  Entry after entry.[4]

We tend to not do well with challenging thought. We’d much rather deem it “fake” and burn anyone or anything that suggests otherwise. One of my colleagues from Missouri shared something from a book he was reading that said, “Old Believers in Russia resisted attempts to modernize Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  Some locked themselves in monasteries in the late seventeenth century and burned them to the ground, perishing in the flames, rather than submit to the liturgical changes.” Wild! My friend added, “Sorta takes the “we’ve never done it that way before” to a whole different level.”  Even the guy who came late to synagogue for worship wearing a t-shirt that said, “Sorry I’m late. I didn’t want to come.” Even that guy joined in on the rage of the mob. We are addicted to outrage.

Why they didn’t go ahead and finish Jesus off is unclear.  Did Mary’s friends look at Mary’s tears and have compassion enough to convince the angriest among them to let Jesus go?  Was Jesus allusive enough with moves like Barry Sanders to wiggle his way out of the crowd?  Did the crowd part and Jesus silently walk through the middle of them slowly nodding his head in sad acceptance of the rejection of his own people?  We don’t know for sure.  But we know he goes on his way. The crowd surely starts the gossip grind around town saying, “Jesus is a fake.”  “He’s certainly not one of us.”  This is a real struggle for us too.  If we’re honest and think that our personal take on Jesus is the absolute right and only take on Jesus, we’ve probably got some spiritual work to do ourselves.  If Jesus’ existence and teaching doesn’t challenge us to expand our understanding and push some of the boundaries of our comfort, we’re probably missing something ourselves. The congregation wasn’t outraged or even angry with Jesus until he said that other people, totally different from them, were just as important to God as they were.

The basic ask of Jesus is simply, “Follow me.”  It’s not memorize a doctrine or add on to our lives the parts of his way that benefit us most, leaving the rest behind.  It’s “Follow me.”  And you and I have to decide how we’ll do that.  How do we filter through any particular agenda to walk that path right behind Jesus?  How do you measure your followership?  Is it your creed or your steps?  Jesus says, “Follow.” We have become obsessed with what Christians believe rather than how Christians live. The prominent tab on most churches websites is “What we Believe” but might be more helpful to have a tab that says, “How we Live.”  Jesus was disruptive, trying to invite people into a new way of life.  They were counting laws and Jesus was saying, “Love God with all you have and your neighbor as yourself.” Is that your measurement?  When you watch the news or hear an opinion or see life happen before your eyes, do you jump on the mob mentality or do you ask how, in this situation, might you exhibit your love of God and neighbor?  Or what did Jesus say was fulfilled in their hearing that day?  That the poor would experience good news, captives would be released, the blind would see, the oppressed would go free, and the year of the Lord would be proclaimed.  The only thing he added to that word was that there would be no favoritism toward Israel in the delivery of the ministries cited above. His life was for everyone.

What do I hope for us today?  I hope that we’ll clear through all the layers of anger and division that we’re holding and truly listen to each other again… and for the Spirit of God.  That we might get in step with Jesus who is walking through an angry mob but doesn’t lash back… he simply goes about healing the world.  Take an honest review of your motives and your measuring sticks about what it is to follow Jesus. Somehow, it seems, the guiding light of our faith is finding the joy in that fact that Jesus’ love is expansive … more so than we could ever imagine.  His is a love that will always be a struggle for us to practice because we have some natural inclination to benefit ourselves first, our friends second, our “sides” next and don’t seem to have any love left for those beyond that.

A friend shared a book with me called Unified,  written by a black senator, Tim Scott, and white congressman, Trey Gowdy, who say that we’ve got to stretch ourselves to create unlikely friendships in order to make room for the creation of a unified vision, purpose or melody.  While we need legislative change and need to press those in power to do right by all Americans, they note that we clearly aren’t getting anywhere with loyalty to labels above all else.  Tim and Trey note the limitations and struggle for legislative remedies right now.  You certainly don’t have to buy all they say (or what anyone says) to find common agreement.  What stuck with me was this word: “We believe the firmest foundation for positive change is found with individuals in relationship with one another. Laws are external. Relationships are internal. Policies make you have to. Relationships make you want to. Relationships contain the power necessary to change the course of history, and the delicate, personal touch needed to change the trajectory of a single life.”[5]  Jesus went straight to the relationship and, by example, said, “Follow me.”  If your faith is one that bears Christ’s name, it must expand beyond the immediate ‘what’s in it for me’ to include, ‘what’s in it for all?’  And maybe we reset our current tendencies to dismiss each other with a single word, “Fake!” and say instead, “Okay… I’ll start with him, or her, or them.  I’ll care about them first and foremost before I write them off.”

I want to be more like Jesus… and I continually learn that becoming more like Jesus will cost me something of my own comfort.  But I believe in his way… even when it cuts the grain of our current time and culture and popular thought.  It is the truth of one church leader who said, “Following Jesus makes your life better and will make you better at life.”  It’s why we need to lose the chip on our shoulders and be less concerned with sides and more concerned with where following Jesus actually leads us.  Brian McLaren asks this important question,  “What would it mean for Christians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs, but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion, that makes amends for its mistakes and is dedicated to beloved community for all?”[6]  If Jesus pulled out the scroll and read it aloud to us today and then sat to teach, saying, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” how would you respond?  I have to hope we’d ask Jesus to say more, show more, instead of yelling, “Fake!” and running him into the Arkansas River.

And, what’s best?  I have to believe some of those people there in the crowd that day came around to a new understanding and were among those who ultimately heeded Jesus call of “Follow me.”  I believe and hope in that because that means there’s a chance for me yet too… a chance for me to grow, to heal, to advocate, to be forgiven, to serve, to love, to follow, to be more like Jesus.  And that there’s room for even one like me?  Well, that’s not fake news… that’s the Good News of Jesus Christ for all of us.

[1] James W. Cortada, “How new is ‘fake news’?” Oxford University Press Blog, March 23, 2017.[2] Rector First UMC, Rector, Arkansas.
[3] Maureen Dowd, “Going mad in herds,” The New York Times, August 21, 2010.
[4] Also shared by Jacob Lynn, Rector First UMC, Rector, Arkansas.
[5] Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Country.  Tim Scott & Trey Gowdy. Tyndale House Publishers. 2018.
[6] The Great Spiritual Migration.  Brian McLaren. The Crown Publishing Group. 2016.

text : 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

theme verse : “Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.” (1 Corinthians 15:36)

27,339. That’s the number of Starbucks in the world... for now. The world is enamored with a pricey cup of coffee, free wifi and a chance to people watch from a sidewalk patio. A new movement, albeit otherwise focused, is forming in the world of sidewalk cafes. They’recalled Death Cafés. It sounds macabre. It’s not part of the Goth culture. It’s not a fringe gaming movement for those fixated on darkness and the netherworld. A Death Café is agathering point for discussions about death. In a death-defying culture, it’s important to understand death so that we can begin to appreciate the reality of life to which death is but a portal.Isthere a guiding light to be found even in the darkness of death?

opening : 'Take My Life' (C.Tomlin arr) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

reader : Sally Kelley
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

anthem : 'Joy in the Morning' (Sleeth) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

I’m guessing all of you woke up this morning excited to get to worship today.  I hope so, anyway.  And I’m guessing as that smile spanned your face when you woke up and realized it’s Sunday and you get to come to church that your first thought was, “I sure hope the sermon’s about death today!” Anyone?  No?  That surprises me.  Not really, I guess. Death’s not anyone’s favorite subject unless you’re talking zombies or sci-fi stuff or getting ready to watch Law & Order – people seem drawn to death then.  But otherwise, you probably envision a number of other more uplifting topics you’d prefer to discuss this morning… like five simple tips to achieve your New Year’s Resolutions.  Someone shared with me the easiest way to do that this week by sharing this 

Maybe that’s how to get us to actually talk about death – discovering how to avoid it altogether.  Would you believe, however, that the trend is actually moving the other direction?  It’s true. They’re called Death Cafes and the movement is growing.

If you’re like me, your first thought is, “What?!!? Death Cafes? That sounds terrible.”  Maybe the café part is the draw.  Sidewalk cafes are all the rage any more.  In 1971, a little place called Starbucks opened in Seattle.  Perhaps you’ve heard of it.  Last I checked, there are 27,339 Starbucks in the world.  They tend to open so quickly, a satirical cartoon announced that a new Starbucks was set to open in the bathroom of an existing Starbucks. We seem enamored with a pricey cup of coffee, free Wi-Fi and a chance to be around other people working, conversing, meeting, or simply walking down the sidewalk.  Howard Schultz, who created Starbucks as we know it, had this vision to create a Third Place for people to gather.  His thought was that most people have a home, a place of work, and then had need and room in their life for a Third Place.  He was determined to create such a place.  It was his version of Cheers because sometimes you wanna go?…   (Where everybody knows your name). There have been plenty of church growth books that have centered around Schultz’s creation of a third place.  But that’s for another day, another conversation.  We get it… Starbucks has succeeded.  But what is this Death Café nonsense?  It sounds so morbid or at least, very dark and sad.  The Death Café[1] began in England only nine years ago. It may sound like a place for the dying, but the opposite is actually the intent.  It’s designed to help people make the most out of their lives through a greater awareness of death.

There are now more than 900 regular Death Café events taking place in 19 countries across the world where people simply come together and talk about heavy topics over light refreshments.  I’ve learned that there’s a monthly Death Café gathering held here in our own city.[2]  Every meeting begins with cake and a question: “Why are you here?”  the unscripted discussion flows from that single question.  The cafes are not designed to be grief support groups though it is sometimes grief of such loss that brings people to the cafes initially.

It was certainly the case for Linda Potter.  In the span of four years, she lost a close aunt to brain cancer, her father to colon cancer and her nephew to drowning as the result of a seizure.  She started to channel her grief through her work as a retreat coach. Her driving question? “How do you want to live, knowing you are going to die?”  Linda heard about the Death Café movement on National Public Radio and she decided to lead one at her Presbyterian church in New York. She recruited participants from nearby colleges, one that offers a mortuary science major.  She has cultivated quite a strong following in the past four years of starting this movement in her area.  She’s been particularly amazed by the interest of Millennials.  She told about one occasion where a couple college students showed up for a Café.  They intended to leave at intermission but decided to stay after hearing the story of a Veteran with stage III cancer. They recognized they had much they could glean from listening to others, and sharing themselves, thoughts about death.  Potter said 

This sounds a lot like the Apostle Paul to me, who said in our focal passage for today, “Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”  The translation of this verse by one scholar and theologian reads, “I pity the fool who thinks death is the end game.” That scholar of course none other than… Mr. T.  Of course.  Paul was guiding a people in a faith-filled conversation.  We would do well to remember that.  He’s talking about things with these folks that no one really knows anything about.  He’s not teaching a science class.  He’s talking faith. He’s using the best of his human limitations with words and descriptions to describe something otherworldly.  It’s every preacher’s hindrance. We’re so limited.  You want to know about heaven and all I can tell you is a story about playing ping pong with my brother on New Year’s Day. I actually love this humbling quote by Barbara Brown Taylor that says 

I think this extends to our sense of insufficiency as witnesses of our Christian faith.  We think, “I don’t know what to say about my faith.  I don’t know how to influence others for Christ.”  But we are… every day, all the time.  How do we rise and fall?  How do we handle defeat?  How do we respond to suffering? Our own as well as the suffering of others?  This all matters.

So… here’s Paul writing this letter of course, but let’s imagine it as though he is giving his best shot at hosting a Death Café where people are saying, “Okay… so there’s a resurrection of the body. Great. But what kind of body will it be?”  It’s like people are putting in requests… “If I could, I’d prefer my resurrected body look like one of the Hemsworth Brothers or Idris Elba or whoever your body ideal is these days.” Pauly Shore. Everyone’s different. The Apostle Paul says, “No, no, no.  It’s not like that. How can I say this?”  He says, “I can’t draw you a diagram or show you a picture. Hmmm. There.” (and he points to a tree in the background). “Where did that tree come from?” “Lowes!” some smart aleck yells from the crowd.  There’s always at least one.  Undeterred, Paul says, “It started as a simple seed; something so innocent and seemingly insignificant.  In fact, it serves little purpose if any until it’s planted.  And when it’s planted, it dies. But it rises again, and it does so with a very different kind of body from that of which it was sown.”  Despite its dissolution and difference, it is the same seed. Paul is saying the same is true of us. Though dissolved by death and changed by resurrection, the essence of our soul is the same… only now we are prepared for the new life for which we were resurrected – to bask in the presence of Christ forever.  This is an other-worldly conversation about the afterlife in some ways but it no less applies to our daily living.

My homiletics professor, Rev. Dr. Dan Moseley, came to an understanding that for any spiritual growth to occur, something has to die… that death may be some level of comfort, some embedded belief from our childhood, some sacrifice of material wealth or some significant loss.  Your resolution to get in better physical shape doesn’t come without a loss of calories, a shift in your day to prioritize exercise, etc.  Remember, discipline is just deciding between what you want now and what you want most.  Your spiritual health is the same.  It’s not simply an add on.  It only improves with loss and sacrifice and shift in priorities.  Something has to die in order to be resurrected.  Author Jonathan Martin says 

“But,” we protest, “I don’t want to go through those losses to experience the gains.”  I get that. Nobody sets out intentionally to “learn from their mistakes.”  But it’s the falling and rising again cycle that ultimately creates a tree when we can only see the seed.

David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book Art and Fear tell the story of a ceramics teacher who divided the class into two groups – one group would be graded on how much they created in the designated time, while the other group would be graded on the quality of the one work they made.  In the end, it was the “quantity” group that ended up producing the works of most quality.  That surprised me at first. But here’s why they concluded such was the case.  “While the ‘quantity’ group was busy churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.” Rob Bell noted this story and said, “This isn’t true just for ceramics students.”  He said, “When I’m meeting with my counselor and I use words like “mistake” or “failure” or “waste,” he stops me.  He then reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a sign and holds it up so I can read it – again.  “The God who wastes nothing.”  Bell adds, “Now it’s absolutely necessary for us to own and name and claim and make amends for our failures and mistakes and sins and wrongs where others are concerned.  But to stop there is tragic. It isn’t just a failure, a mistake, a sin, a wrong… it’s also an opportunity… to grow, expand, evolve, learn.”[3]  Paul seems to be saying the same thing about death and seeds.  Do you see the seeds in your pocket as simply idle seeds or do you think to yourself, “I’ve got a pocket full of trees.”  If we don’t plant the seeds, we’ll never know.

Paul of course is focused on this resurrection body.  He suggests that in life there is an ongoing progression or development.  In the earthly life, we are one with Adam – which literally translates “human.”  We have the aches and pains and death associated with these flawed and limited shells of ours. But in Christ, we become one with him… a spiritual body that shares in his eternal life… in his very being. Paul says simply of this death and resurrection, “It will be stunning.”  There is a hope in this narrative that our decaying and disjointed and broken-down vessels will be renewed in such a freeing way.  But we’re created to have life and life abundantly now.  And it’s a new year and you’re dreaming big about all 2019 can be.  How can death be a guiding light?  A healthy approach to death always prompts a greater sense of what our lives can be.

Art and Chip Sansom have a comic strip that I’m not really all that familiar with called “The Born Loser.”  I did see this one, however, that shows a mother leaning over the back of her husband’s chair, where he rests with his young son sitting on his lap.  “Have you ever had a near-death experience, Pop?” asks the son.  “Can’t say I have, my boy,” replied the father. Whereupon the mother intrudes: “The question is, has he ever had a near-life experience?”  This is what we’re after, yes?  We want to live now.  We want to be “in Christ” now… alive… active in the kingdom work of God now, not just in heaven.  To do so will take courage and great intention.  It will help us to get a grip on death… not fear it but keep it all in healthy perspective.  Given that research suggests the death rate of humans is still hovering right at 100%, we’re all going to face it.  The Death Café movement is saying, “In the face of that reality, how will you live?”  Sometimes, it helps to notice the people around you who have gone through significant changes in their lives who seem to have an energy and vitality for living.  Call them.  Set up a time to get together.  Ask them to tell you about their losses.  They are generally gracious to speak about them… and often can bring care and healing to them even as they help the rest of us keep loss and change, transition and even death in its most helpful place of perspective.

When musician  Warren Zevon appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman shortly after finding out he had cancer, Letterman asked him, “From your perspective, do you know something about life… that maybe I don’t know?” Zevon answered, “I know how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.” There is something in your life right now… something you’re struggling with, wrestling with, concerned about, maybe down right fearful of.  How can getting some perspective on that very matter, grant you a new opportunity to see it as a seed… one day producing something bigger and greater than you can possibly see from this vantage point?  How can talking about those matters… even the fear of death itself… bring about a new possibility for life?  Jon Underwood, the British Web Designer and self-named “Death Entrepreneur” who started the Death Café phenomenon along with his mother, a psychotherapist who helped facilitate says, “When people sit down to talk about death, the pretense kind of falls away, and people talk very openly and authentically.  And… they say things in front of strangers which are really profound and beautiful.”

[4]
How will you commit to doing that this year?  It may come with our willingness to talk about our hopes and fears; to get a perspective of death that doesn’t keep us from living our lives in Christ that puts out hope and joy and potential into the world.  Paul closes this Death Café he’s hosting by saying, “It all boils down to this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”  Our physical bodies are only intended to carry us so far as they kindly, or not so kindly, remind us of on a regular basis. Our spirits, however, are getting prepared for an other-worldly reality.  Our intentionality around that preparation may make a world of difference in the perspective and joy we can appreciate and experience in the here and now so that even, in a death, we can claim the guiding light of Christ as our next move forward. Sow the seeds. There are beautiful trees just waiting to be planted.

So… if someone asks you later today about what the sermon was about, what will you say? Was it about death or was it about life?  Well… it’s a matter of perspective and, as always, I guess that’s up to you.

[1] The primary source of Death Café information shared throughout this message came from the following work:  Newquist, Gusti Linnea. “The Death Café phenomenon: Millennials are dying to talk about dying.” Presbyterians Today, April/May 2018, 22-23.  A second source can be found here: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173808940/death-cafes-breathe-life-into-conversations-about-dying
[2] https://www.thegriefcenter.org/services/death-cafe/
[3] The story about Bayles and Orland’s experiment with ceramic students and Bell’s follow up come from “Drops Like Stars.”  Rob Bell. Pg. 112-113. HarperOne Publishing. New York. 2009.[4] From Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly.

text :: Matthew 13: 45-46

theme verse :: “On finding a pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Mt 13:46)

As we enter a time when millions of people will make resolutions for the New Year, we are met with a parable that Jesus tells about a merchant who is resolved to acquire a pearl of great value. What sort of pearl could possibly be worthy of such commitment? What will it take to obtain the object of his desire? What will we uncover that may inform our own resolutions in the year ahead?

opening :: 'The First Noel' : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

reader :: Keenan Barnard
preaching :: Rev Kevin Howe

closing :: 'I Wonder As I Wander' :: Kelly Ford, tenor; Billie Kay Sawyer, piano

Matthew 13: 45 – 46
⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶ on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

The presents have been opened, the wrapping paper is in the garbage bin, and even though we are only halfway through the Christmas season, our eyes are now fixed on the New Year ahead. At the stroke of midnight tomorrow, fireworks and confetti, will give way to the mystery that is the year 2019. Can you believe it!? I will serve as your kind reminder that if you have yet to make a New Year’s resolutions, this would be the time. It’s estimated that some 40% of Americans will make at least one resolution,¹ and many of these goals will likely follow the perennial trends of wanting to eat a little healthier, work out more frequently, save money, or spend more time with friends and family. Personally, I would love to do all those things. And I love the idea that as we approach each New Year, that we would commit to changing an undesired behavior, taking on a personal goal, or otherwise improving our lives. But like so many of our other so-called commitments, New Year’s resolutions are far easier said than done. One study suggests that only 8% of people will achieve their goal.²

There are, of course, many factors that play into our success (or lack thereof)—our planning and preparation, the right level of accountability and encouragement, an acknowledgement about the power of our habits—but all of this has me thinking about another question entirely—one that I think precedes all of these considerations when making our New year’s resolutions. It is a simple question, but quite powerful. And it often gets overlooked because we’re in the thick of our living and speeding so quickly towards January 1 that we forget to slow down and ask it. So, since we’ve committed to being present here this morning, and since you have the expectation I have about 10 more minutes of your focus to wrap this thing up, I’ll ask that question now: What is truly worthy of our resolve? What is truly worthy of our commitment; our investment of time and the life force we have to give in the days and months ahead? What is worthy of our resolution?

When it came to Jesus, he was all-in on the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven as it is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew. For all the other things we uncover in the biblical narrative, the main content of Jesus’ preaching was centered on the kingdom of heaven; what it’s like when God’s in charge. And what I think it truly interesting, is that as sold as Jesus was on this kingdom—God’s reign on earth—he hardly ever spoke about it in direct ways. Instead, he choose to teach in parables, these analogous stories that compare the kingdom to all sorts of other things. Many of the parable are childhood favorites and are recalled with a certain amount of familiarity, like the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. But that familiarity that can sometimes be a barrier to us in understanding the mysteries about kingdom of god that are contained within these stories. For example, we may be able to rattle of some of these parables without considering just how bizarre—even disturbing—they truly are. Jesus seems to find nothing odd about comparing God’s ways to a mixed bag of questionable characters: an unjust judge, a cruel king, a tipsy slave owner, unfair employer—these are just a few of the roles in these scripts.³ For speaking about matters of faith, they certainly don’t appear refined and pious on the surface. These stories are radical and mysterious. But then, again, the Kingdom of God is a radical and mysterious concept in this world. And it’s safe to say that we don’t as well with mystery as we do with facts.

Still Jesus was resolved to usher in this mysterious kingdom, and believed it was worthy of our commitments, and so it is important that we engage these parables with an open-mind and a vulnerable heart, praying that they would reveal to us some wisdom we might come to live by. The scripture we hear read this morning is one such parable and it is unceremoniously dropped into the Gospel of Matthew. With no introduction at all it simply says, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Now what could that mean? ⁴

Perhaps, after all the Christmas shopping, you identify first with the merchant. And if that’s the case, maybe it means that we who claim to love God and God’s reign better be ready to pay full price for this treasure. Bargain shoppers beware, this find will require making a complete sacrifice. No room for half-commitment, here. If you truly desire this kingdom it’s going to cost you. What you ask? Well…everything. But then again, you sense that this treasure is worth the expense. After all, you’ve been on the market for something that would bring you true satisfaction. And despite receiving all the gifts on your Christmas wish list, and your fresh, new winter look, you have yet to find something that brings you sustained joy. You paid for many things, some that you liked, others you bought out of fear of what others might think of you if you didn’t. But this treasured find, this is different. You know it’s the find of a lifetime. And you are resolved to acquire it. So you clear out your savings accounts and you mortgaged everything you’ve got to purchase this pearl. And you’re down to the loose change in your pocket (didn’t we say this was going to require a complete commitment?)…and would you believe it, you have exactly enough! And at long last, you have attained what you sought. And as you hold your prize, marveling at its beauty, you realize that all that time and effort it took was worth it. This treasure would have been cheap at twice the cost and it is yours, and joy is yours! Go in peace.

Is that what it means? Or maybe we hear something else about the kingdom of God in this story. Let’s consider it again. Maybe we are not the merchant in this story. Who is looking for these pearls anyway? What if God was searching? God was looking all over for pearls. Would you believe it? You know, crossing though wooded forests and scaling tall mountains. Swimming through oceans of stars; searching across space and time; inspecting the small, secret places that only God knows. The beauty of the prize was compelling. God is—did you know—a great lover of pearls.

But God now has found something—a pearl, yes, but not just any pearl. One unique in all of space and time. Extraordinary. This one is a treasure, beautifully and wonderfully made. And God should know. After all, God made you, you pearl of surpassing value. You see, God made you, then lost you for a while. But God has sought you out and found you again, and now God must have you regardless of the cost. But God is completely resolved to claim you, God already has—we gathered just this Monday evening to remember again, God’s only begotten son was born into the world that we might know we are claimed beloved by God beyond measure.

Maybe this, too, is what the kingdom of God looks like? I dare to say there are powerful truths in both scenarios. And there is more to this kingdom than we would ever have time to uncover fully, much less in Sunday morning worship services. For the kingdom of God is, after all, a mystery. But it’s a beautiful one—one worthy of our pursuit. It is worthy of our time and energy, our thoughts and actions, our talents and treasures. One worthy of praying for: that God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I wonder if you would consider making a resolution in this New Year to seek out the kingdom of God in some way. Maybe it’s a commitment to read the parables of Jesus. Maybe it’s to engage in service to your neighbors; to see how that opens you to glimpses of God’s reign. Or maybe it’s the resolution to connect more deeply to Christ’s church as we strive to be a paradigm of what it’s like when God’s in charge.

Today, I have a Christmas gift to you each of you: two precious minutes of quiet. A sacred space in a distracting holiday season to pray about your commitments in the year ahead. And Take these next two minutes, if would, to be with God in prayer.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Friends, however the weeks and months ahead unfold, may we strive to seek first the kingdom of God. And when we fall short of our aims and goals, I pray that you come to know deeply that our God has found you to be worthy of whatever cost and God is resolved to claim you. Thanks be to God! Amen.

¹  Dan Diamond, ^“Just 8% of People Achieve Their New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s How They Do It.” Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/01/01/just-8-of-people-achieve-their-new-years-resolutions-heres-how-they-did-it/#432232b1596b. January 1, 2013.

² Ibid.

³ Capon, Robert. Kingdom, Grace, Judgement: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. William B Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI. 2002. p. 1.

⁴ Matthew 13:45-46

text :: Luke 2: 1 - 20

theme verse :: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host…” (Luke 2:13)

Sometimes standing isn’t possible. It is often pain or sadness or exhaustion that “takes your legs out from under you.” Sometimes it’s prayer that drives us to our knees – a position of humility and vulnerability. And yet, sometimes, we cannot stand for our sense of awe is too great. O Holy Night invites us all to “fall our knees,” that we might hear the angel voices and, with wide eyes, see the Divine night come to us again. Christ is born! Anything is possible!

preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

* * * * *

'God With Us' (All Sons & Daughters) :: The Rising Band
'Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy)' :: The Rising Band & Congregation
'Some Children See Him' (Johnson) :: Avenue a capella ensemble
'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen' (Johnson) :: Avenue
'We Have A Savior' (Hillsong) :: The Rising Band
'O Holy Night (O Night Divine)' (Rend Collective) :: The Rising Band
'Silent Night' (Gruber/Mohr) :: The Rising Band & Congregation

Luke 2:1-20
2 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

⁸ In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹ to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
* * * * *
And. Here. We. Are.  Christmas Eve. Can you believe it?  You are literally here… like a dot on the Directory Map at the Mall. I’m so glad you’re here.  I love this night. It really paints a beautiful picture of Christmas.  It’s full of friends and family come home.  There’s a light chill in the air and soon a candlelit room that can’t help but leave you hopeful.  There are many traditions associated with this night.  It’s a bit predictable in that way but there’s always a magical surprise or two as well.  Last year, I was pictured with some of the Phillips clan right after service who decided the baby Jesus needed to be announced with a little flair.
Isn’t that fun?

Something else happened last Christmas Eve that was not necessarily extraordinary to most but created a marvelous happenstance tradition for me and my middle son, Dane. The Brileys always have two vehicles here on Christmas Eve as I come early and stay late and Carrie and the kids come on their own.  The last couple of years, however, Dane has stayed late with me so we can ride home together. We park down the road a bit so that we don’t take up a parking spot in our lot for all of you who will be joining us. This makes for a nice, still-humming-silent-night stroll from the building to find our car was everyone has departed.  This has meant we walked past the pedestrian bridge that spanned over Harvard Avenue.  And with that wrap around ramp to get to the top, what kid wouldn’t want to run up there at night on Christmas Eve.  So… Dane and I have run up the ramp, stood in the middle of the bridge looking back at the church – now dark and silent with few, if any cars, driving underneath us.  We just stand there for a while, marveling at the events we just celebrated at the church, giving thanks for the gift of Christ, the mystery and miracle of it all. After the frenzied activity of the weeks leading to that celebrated moment, a silent moment with my son on that bridge was as sweet a moment of worship as I had come to know.  But… as you know if you’ve been around here a while at all, that pedestrian bridge was torn down just a couple of weeks ago after standing for nearly five decades. I’ll admit that my first thought when I learned the news was that I’d miss standing on that bridge with my son on Christmas Eve. Which prompted my second thought: “Where are we going to stand this year, to look back at the church, to marvel again at a holy and sacred night? How am I supposed to see Christmas now? As I was pondering that very thing, it led me to the question of Christmas Eve I’d like you to consider tonight. Where do you stand when you can no longer stand where you used to stand?  

This was now a bigger question than physically standing on a pedestrian bridge on Christmas Eve.  For you, this may be a disorienting Christmas.  Things are different this year. You are different this year.  The story of Christ never changes but we do so it hits us differently every year. The events and shifts and relationships and experiences and questions and mysteries and all that you’ve encountered since last Christmas shapes the way you approach this Christmas.  It changes your perspective.  You can no longer stand where you used to stand when it comes to looking at Christmas. You may be here… in this space on Christmas Eve but you may feel like you’re a million miles from Christmas.  I saw this picture recently taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.  It’s the first ever picture of Earth from Mars and included the helpful Mall Directory note: “You are here.”  It is an image capturing a remarkable reality.  “You are here.”  A dot. 34 million miles away from a camera that fellow humans landed on another planet.  As marvelous as that is, it may represent in another way how you’re feeling about Christmas this year – distanced, small, unable to make out many of the details.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph felt a bit like that too.  They were on board with the game plan but who’s kidding who, there had to be some sense of pain and smallness to the whole thing too. They had no perspective other than the immediate. Christmas didn’t hold any of the tradition for them that it holds for us.  It was just the culmination of an unexpected promise with threats of exile from their family and community and death from the empire who was threatened by the word that a new King was coming.  Mary and Joe were surely both asking themselves the question, “Where do you stand when you can no longer stand where you used to stand?”  Everything was upended.  This was new territory. Joe wasn’t having a cigar out behind the stable.  They weren’t taking holy family selfies and snapchatting them out to their friends. They were probably just trying to survive that first Christmas.  Can you relate?  You’re sorting through the loss… the absence… the heartache.  It’s impossible to stand where you once stood in relation to Christmas.  Too much has changed and you’re just trying to get through it. Where do you stand when you can no longer stand where you used to stand?

The Shepherds had an entirely different set of concerns when it comes to where they stood with Christmas.  They’re on the hillside watching the flock as best they can.  As they’re downing a 5-hour Energy Drink to stay on their game, they’re blindsided by an angel choir which was not a typical occurrence on the night shift. The Shepherds were afraid.  The angel laid out for them what had occurred in Bethlehem and as much as they wanted to deny what they had experienced, they couldn’t shake the fact that it did.  They could no longer see the world the same way they did the day before. This news of a Messiah born in their neck of the woods – whether they wanted to believe it or not – was now on their radar and they would have to wrestle with such a reality.  Maybe you’re like the Shepherds.  You’re minding your own business in the world, getting’ yours, focused on the drive of the culture, the need to succeed, or just working the daily grind from 9-5 or even the night shift.  From where you stand, Christmas is of no significance. Who needs it? In fact, the only religion that interests you is religious satire that is good for a laugh.  One of my favorites of late was this artwork that says,  “As for me and my house, we will serve tacos.”  Book, chapter and verse?  Salsa 24:7. It’s easier to keep our spirit’s thirst at bay by laughing off faith as nothing more than a crutch for the weak. But then… the grind grows weary.  And money isn’t satisfying you the way you thought it would… and you’re maturing and something has shifted, maybe even a little bit, where the things you thought would fill you just don’t fill the void. There’s an emptiness… and for every hypocritical Christian you know that you can point to as reason you don’t do religion, there’s a spiritual desire in you to get closer to this Jesus – who without all the fanfare we put around religion – is really intriguing to you.  As much as you’d like to just bah humbug the whole thing, you’ve got this nudge in you that longs to confess (if even internally) … “I need something more.  I need God.”  You decide your cultural stance in life can’t be the end game to it all.  Where do you stand when you can no longer stand where you used to stand?

Whether we are forced by circumstances out of our control to get a different view of Christmas this year or we’re spiritually churning in a way that won’t allow us to move through another Christmas with a business as usual mentality… here. we. are. … seeking, wondering.  How will we stand with Christmas now?  Sometimes, when it comes to such a holy moment, we shouldn’t stand at all. That beautiful Christmas song that has been our focus this Advent season offers that very advice.  “Fall on your knees.  Hear the angel voices.  For on this night divine, Christ is born.”  Have you slowed your roll at all this season… to simply get on your knees and worship the Lord?  Have you celebrated the fact that you are not God and you don’t have to be?  Have you marveled at the wonders of what it means to be here, alive, seeking meaning and wholeness and purpose?  Sometimes, you have to position your life, even your very body, differently so that you can see that God is here and you are not alone. Sometimes you can’t understand where you stand until you’re not standing at all.

As I was starting college, I moved an hour from home and was looking to room with my older brother, Matt, at the Gatehouse Apartments in Columbia, Missouri.  It was not the nicest accommodations by any means and we didn’t have much stuff to make the place all that homey.  But… I was going to be out on my own for the first time, sorting out this new phase of my life.  No way things could look the same as they did before.  Life was moving on and I was going to have to decide how I would move along with it. The very first night I stayed in the apartment was before I had moved in.  It was just a scouting trip. I had come down to stay the night and look for a job that would support me while I was a student. Somebody had to pay the rent and buy the cans of tuna and generic cereal that fed us most meals. My brother was actually not going to be home that first night so I was going to be there alone.  That was okay but also left me with some of those uncertain feelings about being by myself in a strange place.  Not having my stuff there and Matt being gone, I went to lay down in his bed for the night.  When my head hit the pillow, I opened my eyes and behold, just a few inches from my face, was the windowsill that projected several inches out from the wall.  I was glad I hadn’t hit my head. It was a little tight. The bug light outside of the window brought enough light into the room through the broken blinds that I could tell there was something written on the underside of the windowsill.  In big letters, it simply read, “Matt was here.”  I shook my head a bit, and maybe even chuckled out loud.  You’ve seen that sort of thing on trees or picnic tables in the park or at a rustic camp cabin where kids stay for a week in the summer and leave their mark on the walls as proof of their experience.  But I laughed at the thought of my twenty-year old brother laying there in bed one night, grabbing a pen and scribbling the words, “Matt was here.”  As strange as it may seem… as simple as those three words were… it was the most beautiful gift to my soul in that moment.  My brother, whom I loved and admired and fought with and who had fought for me through all those years was strangely there with me.  I never would have seen that standing up.  Until I laid down, I could not sense his presence.

Sometimes, we have to put ourselves in position to receive the gift and reminder that we are not alone. Maybe falling on our knees this night is the humbling experience we need to receive Christmas as the gift it is intended to be.  When you approach the manger, you can’t really stand tall, towering over the innocence of the baby. There’s not much connection in that posture.  It’s mostly an obligatory viewing from a distance.  But when you fall on your knees next to that manger and you come close to Jesus, you can see things much clearer.  In fact, if you look close enough in that manger, you can surely read carved into the side of that wooden animal trough the words, “God is here.”

Where do you stand when you can no longer stand where you used to stand?  When it comes to Christmas, maybe you don’t stand at all.  You fall on your knees.

CHRISTMAS IN TUNE V
A Rising Worship Concert

‘What A Savior’ (Shelly E. Johnson)

‘Angels We Have Heard On High’ (Chris Tomlin)
‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’ (needtobreathe)

Pastoral Prayer

‘Just Another Christmas’ (Laura Story)
‘Hope is Alive’ (Ellie Holcomb)
‘Why Does God Have To Look So Human’ (Waterdeep)
‘Mvmt II, Begin and Never Cease’ (The Oh Hellos)

‘I Wonder As I Wander’

‘Join the Angels’ (Matthew West)
Sending Forth

THE RISING BAND

Mark Bleikamp
Tim Conner
Andrea Gross
D’Ann Hargrove
Katie Herbert
Sarah Herbert
Phil King
Nathan Wilson

Isaac Herbert – The Rising Band Leader

Tom Jurena – audio engineer

The Blue Christmas service is an annual evening of worship where space is created where it's okay to say 'This season is hard.' Whether carrying grief into this holiday; or dealing with loss of a job, relationship, self-confidence, or direction; or sitting in uncertain health in your own life or one you care about; or simply just 'not there' with the twinkling lights and brightly-sung carols ... this is a service for quiet, slowness, honesty ... and hope.

The sound in the recording varies a little, trying to catch voices that are singing a capella from the back of the worship space, and including readers and worship leaders using various microphones along the way. (There is also a little mic glitch somewhere along the way; thanks for listening around that.)

We have left some quiet moments and much of the music just as it was offered, so that any who listen might capture the full experience of the litany, prayer, message, and mood.

Blessings to you, wherever you are, in this season.

Acts 27: 13 – 20
¹³ When a moderate south wind began to blow, they thought they could achieve their purpose; so they weighed anchor and began to sail past Crete, close to the shore. ¹⁴ But soon a violent wind, called the northeaster, rushed down from Crete. ¹⁵ Since the ship was caught and could not be turned head-on into the wind, we gave way to it and were driven. ¹⁶ By running under the lee of a small island called Cauda we were scarcely able to get the ship’s boat under control. ¹⁷ After hoisting it up they took measures to undergird the ship; then, fearing that they would run on the Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and so were driven. ¹⁸ We were being pounded by the storm so violently that on the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard, ¹⁹ and on the third day with their own hands they threw the ship’s tackle overboard. ²⁰ When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest raged, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.

There are moments when the ship is going down and you can’t see beyond the immediacy of the struggle at hand. How could you?  There is simply adrenaline that drives you from task to task.  It’s survival and any thought about your usual routine – your morning coffee with two creams and one Splenda, taking the dog on a walk, choosing the shoes that best match the outfit are of no consequence.  It is chaos at its full… and nothing feels more unsettled in such a time than your spirit. Perhaps you know this feeling… perhaps you know it better than you’d like.  Maybe that feeling is what brought you here tonight. I know it wasn’t easy to lace up the shoes and find your way here. This is not a service you stumble into by accident.  You come with ready awareness of the power of the storm.  I cannot, nor anyone else, name the pain as you can feel it.  You feel it in your bones… the loss, the layoff, the addiction, the brokenness, the departure, the depression, the betrayal, the anguish, the heartbreak. And Christmas is coming, and you can’t imagine having to listen to “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” one more time.  It’s a strange feeling that keeps popping up in your soul.

Jonathan Martin wrote a memoir entitled, “How to Survive a Shipwreck,” subtitled, “Help is on the Way and Love is Already Here.”[1] It has influenced my thoughts shared tonight significantly.  At 36 years old, he saw his life crumbling… his marriage dissolved, his public career in ministry ended.  He said, “Everyone else around me seemed alive enough, and even moving on with their lives, except for me – I was in a cover band, wearing my old clothes, playing the greatest hits of a man who had long since departed. I was shipwrecked.  I could not go back to the life I had before but felt incapable of stepping into a new one.”  He said, “it’s like wherever you are right now – you don’t know how to really be here. Like you don’t know how to own being in a broken place.”  We name that here tonight… maybe not out loud… maybe only from a scream deep in our souls that never breaks the sound barrier of the surface of our lips but that knows there is pain and we’re trying to work through it.  Poet Ann Weems named this Yesterday’s Pain.

In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one
Yesterday’s Pain
Some of us walk in Advent
tethered to our unresolved yesterdays
the pain still stabbing
the hurt still throbbing.
It’s not that we don’t know better;
it’s just that we can’t stand up anymore by ourselves.
On the way to Bethlehem, will you give us a hand?[2]

On the way to Bethlehem, will you give us a hand?  My God, what a request?  That may be what we’re seeking this night. Just a compassionate hand stretched in our direction. Ann Weems was a Presbyterian elder and poet now among the stars as part of the resurrection. She wrote those words and titled it Yesterday’s Pain… and she knew such pain well.  Her son, Todd, was murdered on his 21^st birthday. It was a pain that was always with her in some way as you can imagine. Her friend Walt Brueggemann once ventured a question to her which he said she did not need to answer if she didn’t want to.  The question was one from our scriptures of one who knew great sorrow but directed to Ann, “Will Rachel finally be comforted?” Ann reflected silently for some time and finally responded, “Not until God wipes away every tear from our eyes” in reference to the promise found in Revelation.[3] There is a sadness that never fully leaves us.  It is, in part, what makes an Ann Weems poem an Ann Weems poem. She didn’t write as one who knew no pain. Quite the opposite. She described the practice of writing for her as “a spiritual exercise; a form of prayer in which one can imagine what might be and in the writing help it become true.” If you were to be comforted tonight… in the form of writing what peace and healing might look like for you, what would you write?  It is not a re-do of the past as we are not afforded such opportunity. We grieve yesterday’s pain but also write a preferred future on our way to Bethlehem… and wonder if there might be a hand stretched our way to imagine new life in a new season.

The Apostle Paul is a prisoner on a ship, headed to have a face-to-face with the Emperor of Rome. The storm I described earlier is shared in Acts 27 – “We were being pounded by the storm so violently…”  All that held their lives together was getting tossed and turned and crashed upon by so much that was out of their control.  The 276 on board started to throw cargo and weight overboard… longing to lighten the load, stay afloat, but verse twenty sort of says it all.  “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest raged, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.”  And that may be where we are. We’ve tried to power through.  We’ve tried all the standard maneuvers in the manual — praying and reading and looking for that magic word to hold on to… a word that makes us feel less abandoned.

At the point of yesterday’s pain, whatever that may be for you and me, was also a sense that we could not conceive of our lives without that ship.  That ship on which I ate and drank and laughed and cried, sailed and struggled was so connected to me that it felt like it was me. How can I live without that person?  How can I live without that job?  How can I live without that relationship?  How can I live without that house?  How can I live without my dignity?  How can I live without my good reputation?  How can I live without the euphoria centered around my addiction?  The storm hits and it really feels like all is lost. And not even a compassionate hand outstretched seems helpful in the moment because of the depths of the sadness or the guilt or the fear.  “No sun and stars for many days and the hope of being saved was at last abandoned.”

In 2013, Robert Redford starred in a movie called All is Lost; a story of a man lost at sea. He was not only the star but arguably the best supporting actor as well – he was the only person cast in the movie.  Redford is a seasoned actor of course but he really didn’t have more than two lines to memorize in the whole film.  One actor. Two lines. Lots of time abandoned at sea on a raft as his ship had sunk. Jonathan Martin, who I mentioned before, watched this movie when his world was imploding.  He said, “I didn’t go into a movie theater; I went into a metaphor.”  Martin didn’t know how else to describe his situation other than being lost at sea.  He was watching his life on the big screen in this lonely, one-man movie. Redford’s character, battered by his circumstance battles the elements alone… a speck of a human against the unending mystery of the sea.  Two shots of the film really sliced through Martin as he watched this play out on the big screen.  “The first was as the camera pans up slowly from the tiny raft he now occupied.  The camera shot just keeps rising until the perspective crawls over you of just how small he is against the expansiveness of the ocean.  The second shot is essentially the same shot but from the bottom of the raft as the camera descends lower and lower into the ocean, slowly, until not only do you see the tiny raft from the opposite depth but you also see a school of sharks swimming beneath him, undetected by the protagonist.”  And with no dialogue, not even with a volleyball named Wilson like Tom Hanks had in Cast Away, it is sort of a dark and lonely reality.  No sun or stars for days…  all hope of being saved abandoned.

But what Redford’s character would discover, as would the Apostle Paul and the other 276 passengers on his ship following these terrible storms was this:  They were still there. They still existed.  What do you do when you feel all is lost and yet you’re still here?  An angel visited Paul one night on that storm-tossed ship… stretched out a compassionate arm and said, “You’ll get through this storm.”  After fourteen days at sea with a battered ship on its way down, Paul takes this outstretched arm as courage enough to try something different the next morning.  He urges everyone on the ship to find some new courage too.  “We’re gonna make it,” he says. Before daybreak on the fifteenth day, Paul says, “We haven’t eaten for fourteen days… but today we’re gonna eat.”  Can you remember the first time after the funeral, or after the loss or the separation or whatever yesterday’s pain is for you, after that time when you could not bear to eat or drink, that the pangs of hunger overwhelmed you?  It’s a strange feeling as part of you feels baffled by having such feelings … betrayed by that animal part of you that still wanted food after such a thing.  And then there was a particular taste you longed for, even at some level desired.  Or there was a time when you started to dream again, despite yourself.  There is still a kind of music you hear that stirs within you an unspeakable longing.  There is still an ache, not just for all that is lost, but to see and know and be seen and known still, to explore and imagine and create. You are still alive.

Jonathan Martin says “that ache is God’s fingerprint.  The stirring to create, to love, to live, to give of yourself when there is no self-left to give – this comes from the Spirit.  You were created in the image of God. Before you knew anyone or did anything, everything was in you necessary to live at home in divine love.”  However deeply buried that image may seem to you now, it is the deepest part of you that knows how to be perfectly loved by your Creator. And such is an outstretched arm tonight.

Paul urged his fellow passengers suffering in the storm to take some food. “It will help you survive.”  And here are the words in Acts that describe that very moment: “After Paul had said this, he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat.”  Does that sound familiar?  When we’re hurting and feeling hopeless or abandoned, people often try to offer us an explanation or rationale about the personal hurricane we’ve been living in.  But when people offer us an explanation, God simply offers us a Eucharist.

So much of the world you have known is no more. Things have certainly changed. But if there is any truth in any of this faith stuff at all, the shipwreck that threatened to destroy you utterly may be the thing that saves you yet. It may not drown you; it may transfigure you.  And whatever we gained from the person or the ship that was lost isn’t finished either.  In our new desires for a preferred future, those memories spur us on with new strength.  Carrie and I went down that rabbit trail the other night as we were trying to find a couple of pictures from our childhood.  Along the way, we went through old scrap books, wedding photos, and shoe boxes of pictures and news clippings and the night turned into what is best described as the chest at the end of grandma’s bed – memories full of artifacts and memorabilia that tell the stories of who we are and why we have become who we are. There was nostalgia and some sadness but also a reminder of those in our lives now numbered among the stars whose greatest joy would be to see us thrive forward.  Sometimes when we begin to eat again, others will eat too just as Paul discovered on the ship. “As much as you may feel like you have lost yourself, your presence in this world is enough for somebody else to feel found.”

Ann Weems wrote a later word that says: “Into the silent night, as we make our weary way, we know not where; just when the night becomes its darkest and we cannot see our path; just then is when the angels rush in, their hands full of stars.” Paul and all of his shipmates survived.  The ship ran into the reef well out from the shoreline, but some swam in; others held a piece of the ship for a time as they floated their way to shore, others stretched out an arm to pull another through. They didn’t recognize the land… it was new territory… but there was life to be had still… and they would find new strength in this new day to step forward.

I admit that I haven’t seen the Redford movie, All is Lost. But I did search for the final scene, curious how it all turns out.  Spoiler alert… chance for you to put on your earmuffs if you don’t want to hear the ending.  After all attempt at survival has been tried and weathered and fought through, Redford’s raft is set ablaze and as he floats in the water watching the blaze in silence, he resigns himself to sinking and begins such a descent into the depths of the sea… until… until a pinprick of light above, a rescue boat’s search light.  He begins swimming to the light and as he nears the top and just mere seconds before the movie concludes with a cut to a black screen, an outstretched hand penetrates the water locking arms with Redford.  The only other character in the movie, is an outstretched hand from above.

Maybe that is your reach tonight…. toward the eucharist… toward the arm outstretched and reaching for you.  This is the God named Emmanuel that we lift up this season… not a God that exists in ideas or theories but a God that is found in dirt-floor reality; found in the vulnerability of a manger with the stench of manure, teaching us how to be human by relying on God, leaning on each other. As Martin says, “God is only found on the cross, with his insides exposed, leaking out to the world for the sake of its healing.”

We’re all on our way to Bethlehem.  “Will you give us a hand?” is the question.  Such is the promise of Christ.  Such is the gift of waiting in Advent.  Such is the returning joy of the grasp of a compassionate arm… and ultimately… the return of strength to hold another as we have been held.  That is my prayer for you tonight…

[1] How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help is on the Way and Love is Already Here.  Jonathan Martin.  Zondervan. 2016.  As noted throughout the message, Martin’s book informed this message significantly.
[2] From Weems book, “Kneeling in Bethlehem.” 1980. Westminster Press.
[3] https://www.pcusa.org/news/2016/3/22/ann-weems-presbyterian-poet-laureate-dies-age-81/

text : Jeremiah 33:14-16

theme verse : “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” (Jeremiah 33:15)

Do you ever feel like you’re tripping your way to the end of the year? In a season of division and strife in the nation, it seems many are just flat out exhausted. The rush to Christmas adds its own cultural expectations and pressures, choking out the hope of something new; something beautiful. But then… a mouthpiece of God, the prophet Jeremiah, says, “Surely the day is coming.” Surely? What day? A day where hopes and promises are fulfilled. Somehow with faith, even in the middle of the chaotic mess of life, a weary world must find a way to rejoice.

offertory : 'Ave Maria' (F.Schubert) :: Kathy Radd, cello & Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

anthem : 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' (arr.Rouse) :: Chancel Choir - Kelly Ford, director; Kathy Radd, cello

reader : Scott Booren
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : '42' (M.Mumford) :: The Rising Band - Isaac Herbert, leader

It’s an event for everyone. Christmas, that is.  It says so as the header of Luke, chapter two, verse eight. An event for everyone.[1]  Do you know that part of the story?  Sheepherders camping in the neighborhood were having an average night on the job when a ‘Marty-McFly-in-a-DeLorean-Back-to-the-Future’ like moment blazed around them. It was God’s Glory, the name of the heavenly angel acapella ensemble. The second soprano of the group says, ‘Pick your jaws up off the ground – a joyful event meant for everyone, worldwide, has just occurred.  Up the road in Bethlehem, a baby is born that will transform the world.’  The group proceeded to sing a couple of Pentatonix arrangements of Christmas carols and the sheepherders agreed that they had never had a better night at work. The angels took off, so the sheepherders huddled up and talked it over.  ‘We’ve got to go, right?  To see this kid? After all, she said this is an event for everyone.’  They left, running into town, past the billboard that says, “Home of King David,” turning right at the Waffle House, around the karaoke bar to the other edge of town where the star was evident overhead. Yep.  The kid was inside. Seeing was believing.  It was true.  The sheepherders chatted up the parents a bit, commented on the sheep stock of that particular stable, and bowed before that baby saying, ‘It’s better than even they said it would be. We’ll keep tabs on you, kid. You’ll do amazing things.’ They left more hopeful than they’ve been in a long time and let loose on their way home, praising God for everything they had experienced.

That’s where we’re headed my friends.  In twenty-two days, we’re going to join those sheepherders in this praise-fest. That’s our hope. That’s the event that changed the world… and it’s for everyone.  Even you. Even me. I had to start with the hope story today so we can remember where we’re headed, even as I know it might seem a bit premature.

You’re not there yet.  You may be far from that hope today. You may feel like life is collapsing around you and you can’t see beyond the collapse.  There was a story this week of a guy who had … how would you say … “just one of those days” at work. The video making the rounds this week was simply called, “Cleanup in aisle two. And three. And four. And five.”[2]  Just take a look.

Is that not just the worst? My first concern was for the driver of the forklift of course.  The warehouse is unidentified {{ed.note: The video page gives info, but it is disputed by commenters. So goes the internet.}}, but the driver apparently made it out of the rubble okay.  Have you ever had a day like that? Maybe your life kind of feels like that right now.  Just a series of collapses that have left you hopeless, angry, hurt and completely confused.  You’re just trying to get through the next thing, the next day, the next mandatory event in your life.

Marguerite Higgins was a correspondent during the Korean conflict. One bitter winter’s day, she began interviewing a muddy Marine who had just returned from a grueling battle. As he opened a tin can of C-rations and began eating, Higgins said to the young man, “If I could give you anything in the world you wanted, what would you ask for?”  The Marine thought for a moment and then said, “Give me tomorrow.”[3]  When life is so thick and brutal and difficult, sometimes that’s all we can ask for.  On this first Sunday of Advent, Hope Sunday as it were, such is the promise of the prophets.

The prophet Jeremiah is our companion today.  And he’s a good one.  That guy wrote what he lived and lived what he wrote. Some people are good writers but can’t live up to the story they can write.  Others live a good story but can’t write it all that well.  Writing or living, Jeremiah was the same guy which is totally refreshing. He also tends to be the prophet of choice when we find ourselves living through a difficult season. When you’re crawling through pain or setback or heartache or injustice, you want somebody trustworthy in the mix with you… someone authentic who’s been there… someone who can help you know what to think about, how to pray, how to take another step forward. We live in a disruptive time but it is not exactly unprecedented.  Jeremiah was living through one of the most troublesome periods in Hebrew history… the decades leading up to the fall of Jerusalem and into the Babylonian exile. Essentially, everything that could go wrong did and Jeremiah slogged his way through it.  His every thought subjected to questioning; his every feeling ridiculed… and he lived through it with an underlying pulse of hope that God was moving still. If you feel smashed by your circumstances; if you’re grasping with all you have; trying to hold on to a stubborn illusion or collapsed system of belief, hang on tight – Jeremiah is a companion you want to make room for in the front seat of your mid-sized, and aging, SUV, or whatever moves you around your life these days. He’s the first of our biblical friends who is going to help get us to that event that is for everyone on Christmas Eve. Make some room in your spirit this morning for that thrill of hope to come in… to rejoice, even if you’re weary. It will be worth it.

A THRILL OF HOPE is the theme of our new sermon series – a line you may recognize from one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time, O Holy Night.  The story of the song itself is quite remarkable and controversial – which will come out more throughout the series.  The lyrics were written by an unchurched, hardly religious French poet and the music by a man of Jewish ancestry who never celebrated Christmas, nor the baby proclaimed as the Son of God.  But at that first Christmas Mass in 1847, O Holy Night (Minuit Chretiens) was offered in worship, it’s beauty only surpassed by the gift of Christ himself.  The French church fell in love with the song until news later broke that it was written by a Jewish man and an unchurched Charlie.  The church banned the song and it was suppressed for more than a decade but… it had already captured the souls of so many, it was bound to re-emerge.[4]  More about that next week.

Today, we hone in on the line:  a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.  How does a weary world rejoice?  What is it in your spirit that when you were rubbing your eyes in bed this morning wondering about going through the required routine of getting ready to get here today that pushed you over the edge when a large part of you would have preferred to roll over and try to sleep off the weariness… rest away the struggle, the confrontation that seems to be a leading thrust in your life?  If nothing else, I commend you for that alone – that you planted your feet on the floor and get to God’s house to worship today.  It does matter that we do this. It may not seem like it always but when you step back for some perspective, it can blow you away.  And I’ll tell you this: You can’t buy back consistent presence.  You miss practice, you don’t grow that day.  You miss a work out, you don’t get that endurance building session back.  You miss worship or a chance to serve or a small group commitment, your reservoir misses getting replenished that day.  Your hope doesn’t get refueled. Sometimes we don’t realize we missed it, or valued it that much, until the chaos hits and we’re ‘running on E.’ 

I caught a beautiful glimpse of this at our Ministry Leadership Team meeting this past week.  It is a time when twenty of our church leaders that you elected to serve in leadership get together and share how their piece of the mission is building us toward God’s goals for our church.  Any one of those stories by itself may seem simple enough, maybe even inconsequential in comparison to the greatest story ever told – the story of Jesus Christ… until… you lay them on top of one another and you start to see hope embodied – stories of a child who claimed the faith in a tangible way by choosing a partner for a school project that no one else would choose, why?  Because of something her spirit was gleaning consistently in Sunday school.  Talk of budget for donuts – what does that have to do with Jesus – but then… yes… someone new to the church signed up to pick up, cut up, and serve the donuts because “Everybody comes over for donuts and I knew I could meet new people and get connected that way.” A can donated on Souperbowl Sunday or a box of Kleenex donated for our partners in education may not seem like much until our Outreach leaders present a snapshot of our gifts to make our city better, stronger… to see people more dignified and loved as Christ calls us to love.  It amounts to $126,334 on top of weeks of hosting students during the Spring walk-out and housing neighbors without home for weeks at a time and serving meals at the Day Center and building Habitat Homes. Sunday School Classes and small groups will supply gifts to children in need this month and the list goes on and on.  At that very meeting this last week – there were tears as these stories were told… tears of transformation… tears falling as leaders realized their contribution to the whole mattered, as their spirits had been transformed in saying “Yes” to lead and serve. They were tears of hope that flowed because of one’s consistent sacrifice of self, of time, of showing up again and again because it all adds up to an amazing and transformative whole.

Never discount your contribution to this hope.  Hope is a compounding interest investment.  It is, perhaps, the cost and sacrifice of that investment that leads a weary world to rejoice.  We’re not in it alone. We’re a part of something greater than ourselves.  Working hard for something meaningful is always worth rejoicing in the end. And every bit contributes to the whole.  It is why President George H.W. Bush, even after commanding the world’s mightiest military, once said, “I got more of a kick out of being one of the founders of the YMCA in Midland, Texas back in 1952 than almost anything I’ve done.”[5]  It’s that consistent presence, never overlooking the calling and value of the moment’s contribution as part of the compounding hope of the world.

The quest for hope won’t always come easy or without injustice trying to hinder its progress. There was a school message board at a school my friend’s kid attends that shared this message:

Isn’t that the truth?  Jeremiah was living squarely in the middle of that truth.  He offers this word of prophecy that those pursuers of faith have been unable to ignore. “The days are surely coming,” he begins.  And that’s almost enough hope for me right there.  The days are surely coming.  Surely coming.  What days?  Jeremiah goes on to tell us… “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.”  That promise, to the house of Israel and the house of Judah – coming through King David’s lineage, would be a righteous branch to be born, sprout, grow and bring about justice and right relationship to the world.  Surely that day will come… says THE LORD.  That’s enough for me to hang my faith on.  It’s not always clear or easy to do so… sometimes my windshield to the world is covered in dirt and my wiper fluid is empty.  But I believe in the long game of this life… of the long arc that bends toward justice… that ends in the eternal and beautiful, loving presence of God.  I believe surely that day will come… even when I can’t see how given the current circumstances of my life or that of the world. A branch will rise… new life will come out of the broken and burned down realities of our lives.

Maybe you’ve seen the images of new plants that finally spring up from forest floors that have been decimated by wildfires.  A case of the surelys – surely new life will rise again.  Or this image that was sent my way recently. 

“Fell years ago. Never gave up.” 

Surely the days are coming. Surely. Surely the days when the promises of God will come to pass; when justice will be executed and there will be righteousness in the land.  This does not refer to self-righteousness – that’s a problem of our perspective.  The righteousness the prophet speaks of is God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness is all about right relationship. To be in right relationship with the people around us, we search for the image of God in each and every person. That means such an image is within you right now… and uniquely so.  It also means it’s in the person sitting next to you, or a few rows back, or in the cubicle next to you at work, or your neighbor who sees the world differently than you do. In the black, brown and white, in rich, middle class and poor, in the young, on-the-verge of mid-life crisis, and old, in the immigrant and native-born.  The branch that sprouted into a Savior came for right-relationship with every one of those people which means… our hope is tied up in their hope; your hope overlays my hope and mine, yours.  And that overlay can surely, surely, bring about a day of right relationship with all people. This will not likely magically happen one day by sudden surprise but by your daily prayer, “Give me tomorrow,” and then in such a tomorrow, the sharing of your hope with somebody else and them sharing their hope with you.  In that overlap, hope takes a step in the world toward right relationship. Practice this enough and you start looking for these opportunities over mere survival.

A close friend shared vulnerably this week that she remembered a time, during what was a very difficult childhood, that she didn’t have any concept of hope. Zero. None. She didn’t go to church. There was no hope message being offered around her. The pain was always close to the surface which meant the mantra was ‘Simply survive.’  Hope had no roots in her soul.  But later, faith… later church… later someone who cared enough to hope alongside of her… now she sees the world through hope, not survival.  This can surely come for all of us, my friends.  Like a branch that springs up in the rubble, hope can be planted and spring forward.  A weary world can begin to rejoice when we’re telling hope stories.  Sharing in that meeting of church leaders this week, hope stories were being told by every member of that team and the stories were lifting the very mood of the room one by one.  They were bringing souls through tears to triumph.  I wrote a single note on the paper in front of me that night: “Tell your hope story first.”  There are plenty of stories being told every day, all around us, that are not hope stories. You want to change the environment of your home or your workplace or your relationships with your extended family and friends? … Start telling your hope story first. Game changer. I promise. And you’ve got one. I promise you that too.

Folk rock band Mumford and Sons[6] has a new album out.  One of the tracks is called 42.  Part of the lyric says, “Where do I turn to when there’s no choice to make? And how do I presume when there’s so much at stake? I was so sure of it all… but what if I need you in my darkest hour? And what if it turns out there is no other? If this is our last hope we would see a sign, oh, we would see a sign.”  If this is our last hope, we would see a sign. The prophet says that sprouting branch is hope of the surely day… the day when the promise is fulfilled… when the love of God consumes one and all… where right relationship overrides pre-occupying self-righteousness… where hope is the lead story of the world, not buried, back page news. Find it in you now and start telling it, living it, and learning the hopes of others.  That’s really the story of Advent.  And you’re here today to start the season on the right foot.  You choose how it will go moving forward.  Henri Nouwen [7] tells us that

“Advent does not lead to nervous tension stemming from expectation of something spectacular about to happen. On the contrary, it leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing me to realize that he for whom I am waiting has already arrived and speaks to me in the silence of my heart.  Just as a mother feels the child grow in her and is not surprised on the day of the birth, but joyfully receives the one she learned to know during her waiting, so Jesus can be born in my life slowly and steadily and be received as the one I learned to know while waiting.”

It is underway… Can you sense it? That which already was underway even if we didn’t claim it or recognize it.  But now we do. Tell your hope story first and tell if often. When we come to the big moment in a few weeks, we can, like those first sheepherders, lead the way forward so that even a weary world might begin to rejoice.  We can be part of that… and do you know what it will feel like?  The thrill of hope.

[1] This header is worded as “An Event for Everyone” in Eugene Peterson’s “The Message.”  The background to Jeremiah’s value as prophet on the following page was also utilized from this resource in Peterson’s intro to Jeremiah.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pni9ZDUzOIw
[3] The work of Higgins is noted in many places, including this story.  I utilized it as found in the animating resources section of the periodical resource, “Homiletics.”  Timothy Merrill, Senior Editor.
[4] https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/movies/the-nativity-story/the-amazing-story-of-o-holy-night.aspx.  This story is shared in many places.  This link is one that supported the background.
[5] As shared on Facebook in Barack Obama’s tribute to Bush’s passing.
[6] www.mumfordandsons.com
[7] Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (Crown, 2013).

text : Acts 20:17-24

theme verse : "I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received form the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.” (Acts 20:24)

We all know that shrilling sound called “feedback” that is experienced when a live microphone gets too close to the speakers from which it is propelling sound. What if we looked at feedback as in ‘feeding back’ or ‘giving forward’ from our abundance into the glory of God and the needs of the world? We can surely name at least one person whom we would deem generous; one who has given forward with grace. In remembering that person, we may describe him or her with a quote paraphrased by friend, Mary Magee: “They opened their hearts to help others and they helped others to open their hearts.” Wouldn’t we all like to be such a person? The Apostle Paul leaves this same idea with the Elders of Ephesus in this passage from Acts. Paul has poured his life into this ministry. May we also make the same commitment saying, “I will give forward.”

Gratitude Statement : “I will give forward.”

Open Mic testimony : Bob Lynch

special music : 'Build My Life' (C.Nockels) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

reader : Hollie Hawkins
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

anthem : 'Let Me Fly' (arr. DeCormie) :: Avenue a capella ensemble; Barry Epperley, director

Mark Twain said that if he’d had more time, he would have said less.  Quite a self-reflection don’t you think?  Do you ever reflect this way on your own life?  We do tend to be our own worst critic.  Our own self-feedback may not always be the healthiest.  The truth is, we may not be great at receiving feedback from others either.  We call it constructive criticism but often that’s just the veil of judgment.  Even so, feedback is important if we’re going to grow, change, shift, adapt, improve, succeed.  In many ways, we’ve become oversensitive to receiving feedback.  Representative-elect, Dan Crenshaw, of the 2^nd District in Texas and former Navy Seal officer,  lost his right eye to an improvised explosive device while serving our country.  He continued to serve even after that injury.  Most recently he was mocked on Saturday Night Live as Pete Davidson made fun of several politicians.  Many were outraged.  Crenshaw, a Navy Seal who had experienced the chaos and injury (of all kinds) of war had been through harder things than a comic’s mockery.  Crenshaw was invited onto SNL  the following week where he and Davidson did a bit together, bridging the difference in a light-hearted way, honoring veterans who have served faithfully and sharing a need to forgive, heal and move forward together.  Crenshaw said, “I try hard not to offend others and try even harder not to be offended.” Not bad advice and maybe some helpful feedback for you and me to remember.

Feedback.  Are you up for some today?  This sort of advice may be what you first think of when it comes to feedback.  Certainly, as we in the throes of this Open Mic series, feedback has a technological connotation. If you get a microphone turned up too loud or in front of the wrong speaker or amplifier, a deafening screech has been known to be sounded.  A ‘hot mic’ we might say when that ear-piercing sound is made. Nothing pleasant about it whatsoever. But we’re not really talking about that kind of feedback today either though we are playing on that idea given the nature of our series.  Instead, I’m taking some liberties with the two words that are the basis of the word feedback. Feed and back. In this series on gratitude, I’m wondering how we’ve been fed – our minds, our stomachs, our souls – and how, in turn, we might feed back.

With the gratitude for all we are, all we’ve experienced, all we have, how will we feed back – how might we give back to God, to our neighbors, to the church?  Someone surely comes to mind when you think of a person who has done this well, faithfully, with deep gratitude.  Our own Mary Magee, member of our Stewardship Team responsible for this current series and campaign, described those generous people in a beautiful way.  She said, “They opened their hearts to help others and they helped others to open their hearts.”  That’s this feeding back we’re hoping to embody as people of faith.  The Apostle Paul had the same hopes for the early churches he helped start.  What an exciting season in the life of the church.  Talk about grass-roots.  Jesus is resurrected and now it’s game on.  Life was forever different and the likes of Paul stepped into the role of church planter, ministry entrepreneur, creator of the community of faith designed to contain the hopes of the world.

The passage from Acts that is our focus today is Paul’s farewell to many he nurtured along the way.  These were people with whom he shed blood, sweat, and tears for the sake of the Gospel.  They believed in it so.  They were moved by Jesus.  They were committed to the cause.  And they gave everything they had to propel the church into the future.  Paul knew the infection of the world was not far away.  He lived among the pain every day.  Through the entire motif of this pericope from Acts, runs this dominant feeling of an affection as deep as the heart itself.  That feeling should be in every church for when love dies in any church the work of Christ cannot do other than wither.

Daniel Grothe, pastor in Colorado and friend of a friend, wrote of this love-amid-the-pain-of-life this week.  He said, “One of my friends is walking through the Valley of the Shadow. As I was listening to him share his heart this morning, and when the appropriate amount of silence had settled over us, this came out of me:  “You have permission to live the most difficult days of your life in the safety of our presence.”  Grothe said, “That is the summary of Christian community.  We all need that permission from each other, permission to be where we are.”[1]  This is love run deep.  This is church.  After giving the first part of his adulthood to the persecution of the church, Paul had given the second part of his adulthood to building the loving Body of Christ.  You can imagine Paul’s turn to Jerusalem at this point was bittersweet. He was with his people. They built love.  They had some great pot luck dinners and built a few Habitat Houses.  And the baptisms… the BAPTISMS!  My, people were coming to faith left and right. Why would he leave?  And beyond being comfortable, he knew he was risking it all to leave.  He would not be received well in Jerusalem. In fact, he says it well in this loving farewell to his posse: “There is another urgency before me now.  I feel compelled to go to Jerusalem.  I’m completely in the dark about what will happen when I get there. I do know that it won’t be any picnic, for the Holy Spirit has let me know repeatedly and clearly that there are hard times and imprisonment ahead. But that matters little.  What matters most to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God.”

He couldn’t settle to just stay and be fed and enjoy the high life of faith in that community.  He was called to give forward… to feed back from the enormity of the meal he’d feasted on with those Christians.  If you read forward a way you see the beauty of Paul’s send off.  Listen to the words: “Then Paul went down on his knees, all of them kneeling with him, and prayed.  And then a river of tears.  Much clinging to Paul, not wanting to let him go.  They knew they would never see him again – he had told them quite plainly. The pain cut deep.  Then, bravely, they walked him down to the ship.”  Parting is such sweet sorrow. His friends probably went into town after seeing Paul off and rented a Rage Room for an hour.  (You heard about those? Rage Rooms. It’s a BYOB situation – bring your own breakables.  You rent a room for an hour or so, bring your breakables and then just smash all your stuff.  That’s it.  Tulsa’s first Rage Room opened in August near 51^st and Mingo.  It’s called Smash Something.[2]  You can break anything from an Xbox to a smart phone.  “It’s fun to break stuff,” said the owner.  “There’s a lot of stress and anger in the world.  It’s nice to have a way to blow off some steam.”  Cost is $15-30 per session.  But I digress.)

Paul departs.  He is grateful for what he’s shared with that Christian community, but his course is forward. He’s got to share forward that gratitude with more who are seeking faith.  He must keep feeding back.  What is your course forward?  How are you feeding back, giving of yourself to the faith that has given you new life?  Are you giving forward?  A friend said to me this week, “I always prayed I could live well enough until my kids were adults.  But then I made it and realized I couldn’t stop there.  Now I’ve got grandkids to care about.”  In this life of faith, there is no end-game.  It’s the course. The journey.  The faithful next step to a new view where the next faithful step can be seen more clearly.  This is Paul’s sentiment – “I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord… to testify to the good news of God’s grace.”  When you find that truest meaning of your life… that deepest conviction of your purpose… it must lead you forward.  And such a path can only be taken with gratitude. Are you on such a path?

Much of the time we are either distracted by the chaos around us or unintentional in our attention to God’s guidance.  But don’t give up when you can’t feel it on the inside.  Daniel Grothe noted this about the long journey we’re on.  “The life of faith is the life where the saints learn to play the long game with each other.  If we do it right,” he says, “the seasons of bottoming out in grief and overwhelming despair do not have to be seen as final but can be seen as stops along the way.” The biblical greats wobbled and fell and had moments of complacency, but they didn’t stay there.  They rose.  They re-focused.  They saw the course forward – and typically only when they remembered gratitude; when they recalled where they had been and who Christ had become for them.  They couldn’t help themselves but to press forward and give faithfully. They opened their hearts to help others and then helped others to open their hearts.  Isn’t this what we are about as a church family?  I don’t know about you, but I hear a lot of stories from the world that are designed to discourage us.  They are designed to create fear and a push to create an isolated life where you’re skeptical of your neighbor and always bowl alone. But then I speak to you… I run into you… I meet with you… I pray with you… I give of my time and talent and resource alongside of you and a wholly other life story emerges.  A life with pain, sure, but a life that is pushing forward with purpose; a life that is singing a song that is worth getting stuck in your soul. Can you hear that soul song now?  Is it in you?  It’s glorious.  It’s glorious, in part, because of the pain.

In his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami reflects on why runners spend so much time and energy on long distance runs like some of our folks running the Route 66 Marathon downtown right now.  He says, “It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get a feeling, through this process, of really being alive.”[3] Paul was surely a runner – he used race imagery so often.  But he knew he had to keep running.  He couldn’t rest on his laurels.  He couldn’t grow complacent.  He was only really alive when he was gratefully living out the call on his life.

It’s Thanksgiving Sunday. We’re counting blessings and living gratitude. I’m grateful for all who will make a pledge today to support the ministry we’ll share in 2019.  May our gifts be sign and symbol of our gratitude and our clarity of course – that we are pressing forward together, not out of obligation, but out of faith… out of commitment to the long game of the saints.  It speaks to the words of the Persian poet, Hafiz, who said, “Even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.”  Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.”  We have opportunity day after day, year after year to show the world what a grateful love like that can do.  We can light up the whole sky… the entirety of the earth… with the glory of Christ.  Your gifts matter.  So do mine. It’s our feed back… our gifts forward.  This is our time for we never know what time we have.

Kirk Cousins is the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings.  In front of his home, in between a few shrubs, stands a curious tower.  It’s about four feet tall, filled to the top with stones.  Inspired décor you ask?  Well… sort of.  “It’s there,” he says, “to remind me how brief life is and how important the time we have here is.”  Okay. But why the tower of stones?  “It’s a little morbid,” he admits, “but it’s a tool my Bible teacher taught me in high school.”  The stones were inspired by the Psalm his teacher shared with him that says, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  Cousins said, “It’s about making a deposit in people’s lives in a way that matters.”  We only have so many days.  The quarterback transformed that verse into a visual reminder: 720 stones.   He calculated what he considered a feasible number of years he had left given his health and history, measured that time in months and came up with 720 months left in his life Lord willing. “Every month I’m going to take out a stone,” he said, “put it in my pocket and think: ‘Once this month is over, this is gone. You can’t get it back.’”  Cousins was going to be intentional about how he spent the time he had left… wanting to stay the course of his faith, his call to live generously, in pursuit of his life’s purpose.  Carrying each stone reminds him to be less selfish and more giving to others because, in the end, he says, “It’s not going to be about what I did for myself, but what I did for others.”  So he pulls a stone and he asks the question, “What impact am I making, not only today, but for eternity?”[4]  This was Paul’s waking question.

And so, my friends… what is your waking question?  Does it have anything to do with feeding back; about giving forward?  It’s worth a thought.  It fact, it’s worth more than a thought.  It’s worth a life… lived open before God… free to pursue the dream of your calling in Christ.  Which leads us to finish with the same question that started this whole series in the first place.  Your life is an Open Mic… what will you say?

[1] A friend shared Grothe’s Face Book post with me this week which is what is quoted in this message.  Grothe is on staff at New Life Church in Colorado.  http://www.newlifechurch.org/staff
[2] https://www.smashsomethingtulsa.com/
[3] This piece was shared in Rob Bell’s “Drops Like Stars.”  Harper One. 2009. Pg. 46.
[4] http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25024166/minnesota-vikings-quarterback-kirk-cousins-confronts-mortality-stone-form

text : Luke 17:11-19

theme verse : “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” (Luke 17:15)

Researchers have noted that positive emotions wear off quickly.  Dr. Robert Emmons suggests that our emotional systems like newness.  They like novelty.  They like change.  We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new relationship, the new house doesn’t feel so new and exciting anymore.  Gratitude, however, makes us appreciate the value of something. Valuing something presses beyond emotion and allows us to extract more benefits from it without us taking it for granted.  Gratitude propels us to participate more fully in our lives.  We become more present to the small things, the moments of grace and beauty that we may have previously overlooked.  We become participants in the world, not simply spectators. Jesus once healed a group of ten people suffering with leprosy.  Only one felt value enough in the healing to stop, be present to the moment, and say thank you. He was alive in a new way.  If your life was a microphone and you tapped the top of it, would it be on?

*Gratitude Statement: “I will celebrate the present.”

Open Mic testimony : Staci Pennington

anthem : 'Total Praise' (R.Smallwood) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader : Kaye Nofziger
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : '10,000 Reasons' (M.Redman) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

offertory : 'Take A Little Time' (A.Crouch) :: Kelly Ford, tenor; Susie Monger-Daugherty, pianoo

October 31^st. Halloween found us last week. Did you see any interesting critters running around your neighborhood?  We had a gob in our neighborhood. Here are a couple that wound up in my house  … plus our dog, Taylor, that is, yes, wearing a jack-o-lantern skirt. We’re now that family.  You know, the one that dresses up their dog in human-like attire.  Do you see the terror on her face?  Trick or Treating must be among the cruelest, albeit exhilarating, experiences for dogs.  Every ring of the doorbell, results in this breathless sprint to the door, leaping up into the door windows, barking excessively at the largest turtles and dinosaurs she has ever laid eyes on.  By the time her blood pressure drops from one visit, the doorbell rings and we re-play the same thing all over again. All in all, good fun, however.  The candy is gluttonous. I do enjoy those tiny boxes of Milk Duds and a good Reese’s Cup. I saw this picture posted this week.  If you can’t read the text it says, “You’ve had 85 years to work at this, Reese’s. Figure it out…”  Of course, if you’re a veteran Reese’s fan, you know you never eat them right away. You put them in the freezer. Once frozen, they always peel off the paper clean and the joy is overflowing.  We found our way house to house in the neighborhood, a little chill and a rain surely contributed to me having zero voice when I woke up Thursday morning… still coming back bit by bit now.  Before it was gone, I was among the many parents who had the talk with their kids before getting started. “Be gracious, boys.  “Don’t be greedy.  Be kind and polite and engage our neighbors.”  And, of course, as every parent has done for generations, I closed with, “And when our neighbors give you something, what do you say?” THANK YOU!

Thank you is one of the first things we learn to say as humans. By far one of the most commonly used phrases in the English language. The average American says, “Thank you,” 2,000 times a year.  Research suggests, however, that more than half of the time, we don’t mean it. It is simply transitional speech – ending an encounter – more so than taking to heart the gratitude we are theoretically to feel in such a time. What is gratitude then?  Science even ways in on the matter.

Dr. Robert Emmons,[1] a leading scientific expert on gratitude, argues that there are two key parts to gratitude. First, gratitude is an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received. Second, we recognize that the source of this goodness is outside of ourselves. As people of faith, we point to God as our source of “every good and perfect gift” and that “all things work together for good” when God’s love is at the center of the effort. Gratitude.  How are you doing with gratitude these days?  Such will be the focus of our three-week stewardship series grounded in the practice of gratitude and filtered through this idea of the “Open Mic.”  I’m grateful for Staci’s testimony this morning and look forward to others that will follow in the next couple of weeks. The hope of this series is for you to think of your very life as an Open Mic.  You have a voice; you have a stage; you have an audience; no matter who you are.  If you’ve ever been a roadie for a band or set up a sound system for some event, there’s always that moment when you check all the wires to ensure they are properly connected, you turn up the volume to ensure the channel is open and live, and then you walk up to that mic, tap the top of it and say, “Is this thing on?” That’s what we want to know about your life, and mine, as part of this series – Is your life, you own personal open mic, is it on?  If so, what are you saying?  Is your voice focused on a judgmental rant?  Are you spewing challenge or encouragement?  What?  And perhaps most poignantly, are you a voice of gratitude in our polarized and hurting world?

Jesus had more than a few thoughts about what our lives should say to the world.  Gratitude was near the top.  On one occasion, as Jesus was making his way toward Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between Samaria and Galilee.  As he entered the village, ten men suffering from leprosy hollered at Jesus from a distance.  It was customary for them to keep their distance as those with leprosy were among those deemed, “unclean.” If you were considered unclean, you were exiled from your home, your family, the whole community. Levitical law prescribed this reality. “Don’t bring your issues and diseases to the rest of us!” sort of idea. While the distance was not always defined, at least one authority laid it down that the unclean person was responsible for knowing the direction of the wind.  If a healthy person was downwind from one considered unclean, the person with leprosy, in this case, would have to stand at least fifty yards away. Nothing could better show the utter isolation in which the “unclean” had to live.[2]

So here are ten who are with an unclean condition, tasked to be meteorologists in order to determine where they could exist, or not, at any given moment in relation to the community.  Presumably most of the ten are Jewish though we know at least one is said to be a foreigner, a Samaritan.  We know that the Jews and Samaritans avoided each other at all costs. They funded negative campaign ads against each other that were plastered all over television and social media. “That Samaritan stole the full-size candy bars out of his kid’s Halloween candy basket.  If he’ll steal from his own children, can you imagine what he’ll steal from the rest of us?” The comebacks were just the same, “He’s a left-handed guitar player with two first names – is that really the kind of guy we want making decisions about insurance in our county?”  You get the point. They didn’t get along. At all.  Yet in this band of ten, there was at least one Samaritan.  A common misfortune had broken down the racial and national barriers. In the common suffering of their leprosy, they had forgotten they were Jews and Samaritans and remembered only they were humans who were more alike than not. Surely one of the things that should draw all humanity together is a common need of God… whose very nature is love itself.  But… we are often too consumed with our own issues, needs, desires to stop long enough to see another as more like us than not.

I sat in my car one day this week, a friend in the passenger seat, out behind the church as we waited on another to join us. We had just learned of the death a close friend had experienced and we were mostly sitting in silence. Looking ahead of us at the playground however, there were tons of kids running and laughing and playing.  We just sort of sat there silently and took in the sight.  I finally broke the silence saying simply, “And the world plays on.”  You never know, as you move about your daily agenda, who’s life has come to a screeching halt. It never hurts to put ourselves in the shoes of another from time to time.  But for these ten?  Not many giving them the time of day.  Every day was a dead end… a screeching halt of a life.  Enter Jesus.

The ten holler at him, heaving a Hail Mary of “have mercy on us” from the fifty-yard line toward Jesus in hopes that the pass may somehow, miraculously, be completed.  It’s never worked to this point. But… Jesus “saw them.”  Those three words may be sermon enough for today.  Jesus saw them.  Who do you need to see?  Jesus saw them and with compassion says, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”  May seem like an odd thing to say to you and me but in that time, if a person with leprosy was fortunate enough to experience healing, that person was required to show him/herself to a priest. Only a priest could certify that a person was truly clean and therefore able to return to the community.  The ten take off for the temple but along the way, they are healed.  Presumably they all realize this at some point but only one of the ten has the thought pop into his soul – “I’m going back to Jesus!”  The other nine continue the beeline to the priest.  After all, that was the instruction they were given anyway. Just following orders. And… they couldn’t see their families or go to Whataburger until the priest cleared them to re-enter society as a clean human being. If you had found freedom after being shunned for years, what would you do?  There was one who went back.  Jesus is clear to say it is the Samaritan (you may read as the democrat or republican or Immigrant or Texan… whoever is not in your camp).  It is the Samaritan who goes back and throws himself at the feet of Jesus… the first person other than the other nine that he has been face to face with for who knows how long.

Gratitude just poured out of this man. The word may more accurately be worship. Jesus says, “Weren’t there ten of you?  Where are your friends?  Could they not sacrifice a few more minutes to give glory to God? No? Only you… the one least expected to do so.”  And the key to the whole thing Jesus says next, “Get up.  On your way. Your faith has made you well.”  Ten were healed.  Only one was deemed well.  What does that say to us?  Wellness is a matter of faith.  Being made well is a matter of the heart.  Gratitude seems to be the key… and not a flippant ‘thank you’ but a spiritual discipline… a life that led by gratitude. As the rock band Boston famously sang, “It’s more than a feeling.”

Researchers have noted that positive emotions wear off quickly. Dr. Emmons suggests that our emotional systems like newness.  They like novelty.  They like change.  We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new relationship, the new house doesn’t feel so new and exciting anymore.  Gratitude, however, makes us appreciate the value of something. Valuing something presses beyond emotion and allows us to extract more benefits from it without us taking it for granted.  Gratitude propels us to participate more fully in our lives.  We become more present to the small things, the moments of grace and beauty that we may have previously overlooked.  We become participants in the world, not simply spectators. According to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, this improved living, a state of wellness, is true whether you are a healthy college student or an older person with an incurable disease.  The study went down like this…

College students were asked to fill out a weekly report of five things for which they were grateful.  They listed things like “the generosity of friends” and “the Rolling Stones.” Another group, made up of adults with incurable diseases such as polio, were asked to write down a list of things that made them thankful.  At the same time, comparable groups were asked to count their hassles and frustrations instead.  They listed aggravations such as “hard to find parking” (isn’t’ that the worst?) and “finances depleting quickly.” Instead of focusing on how rich they were, members of these groups focused on their poverty.

You already know the results.  In the end, the grateful groups felt better about their lives and more optimistic about the future. The thankful college students exercised more, and the chronically ill adults who focused on blessings reported sleeping longer and waking up refreshed. The members of the grateful groups were also nicer to neighbors and more willing to help people with personal problems, leading the researchers to conclude that gratitude can serve as a “moral motivator.”[3]  “Your faith has made you well,” says Jesus to returning Samaritan. Jesus gives him a high five not so much for the faith that asked for healing, but for the faith that returned to give thanks. It’s a grateful faith, not a gimme faith, that saves us… that makes us well.  Eugene Peterson, now a week into the resurrection, said, “There is a great market for religious experience [or healing] in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”  Gratitude, not practiced as a discipline, puts us at risk of a life drowning in selfishness. We have to choose gratitude until we are grateful.  It’s a discipline.  You write it down.  You say it.  You think it. You feel it.  You breathe it. Eventually, gratitude becomes the lens through which you see the world. I was convicted the other day seeing this image of  Staff Sergeant Johnny Jones with his quote that reads, “People ask how I stay so positive after losing my legs.  I simply ask how they stay so negative with theirs.”[4]  I’m not one who is into comparisons because that just sets us up as competitors – “My sickness is worse than yours.  My life is harder than yours.  My bank account is not okay until it has more in it than yours.”  Comparative living is not generally helpful.  But when I experience positive people… who may not be healed but are well… I am inspired to practice gratitude more intentionally.  So often, however, when we get what we want, we never come back.  How often have we been the nine, instead of the one who comes back to praise God?

Bishop Michael Curry, most known for the sermon he gave and Harry and Meghan’s Royal Wedding this summer, was interviewed this week as he has a new book coming out entitled, “The Power of Love” which also just happens to be, arguably, the title of one the best songs from 1985, “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News.  Back to the Future soundtrack.  “The Power of love is a curious thing…” If I got that song stuck in your head, you’re welcome.  Enjoy!  But I digress.  Bishop Curry was first asked to respond to the words of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers who experienced eleven of his own being executed a week ago Saturday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.  The Rabbi quoted the Psalms, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But,” he added, “I want those eleven lives back.”  Curry noted that “When it hurts, it hurts and we need to own that.”  He spoke of the Jewish tradition that never allows a dead body of one of their own to be left alone.  He said, “We do it together.  We have to exist in the rituals of faith which were beta tested a long time ago.  Those disciplines hold us in the difficult seasons while God’s energy finds a way to be reinfused into the community.”

And then Bishop Curry spoke about wellness and gratitude saying, “Love is the only thing that will work. If you look at love only sentimentally, it may not work. But love, as Jesus demonstrates, seeks the wellness of others, even sometimes above my own need.  That kind of self-less living is the only thing that has ever changed anything for the good.  Think about it yourselves,” he continued. “Who are the people that actually made a difference in your life? They actually made a difference in your life not because they were doing something for themselves but because they actually cared about you.  Think about any kind of social change that has ever happened in human history. It has been people who have been thinking more about others than themselves.  Consider first responders – they don’t know who they’re going in to help. They do it because it’s selfless. Truth is, no good created and done by human beings has ever been done from the motivation of selfishness.  It has always been selfless service and giving… which is what love actually is.”

Curry closed the interview with this.  “Self-centeredness doesn’t work over the long haul.  If I live that way then I make myself the center of the universe. If I am the center of the universe then you’re on the periphery and ultimately expendable.  If we all live that way, we don’t have a society.  Democracy depends on that.  Human survival and life on this planet depends on our capacity to be unselfish and beings that give freely.  The miracle?  When we do that, we are actually blessed ourselves.”[5]

Until we practice gratitude… allowing it to become a part of us… we will never be well in the way Jesus proclaims the grateful Samaritan to be.  So today is ours… this moment at least, all we are promised. Will gratitude lead the way?  Do you want to be well?  Your life is an open mic.  The mic is yours.  What will you say?

* * * * * * *

[1] https://www.njlifehacks.com/thanks-robert-emmons-book-summary/. Dr. Emmons research and findings included in this message come from this source as well as others where he says similar things.

[2] Exegetical support found in William Barclay’s “Commentary on the Book of Luke.” Westminster Press. 1975.

[3] Brown, David. “Counting blessings is healthful.” The Washington Post, March 10, 2003, A11.

[4] I saw this quote and picture on a Facebook post of a friend some time ago. I do not know the original source.

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2kj-uvtN8

text : Matthew 13:24-30

theme verse : “…in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both grow together…” (Mt 13:29-30)

Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr points out that some Native Americans have a tradition of leaving a blemish in one corner of the rug they are weaving because they believe that’s where the spirit enters. I can relate to rugs. Can you? Sometimes, that corner of beautiful imperfection is the humbling entrance point of the Spirit of God. Were we not in the world, as harsh as it can be, perhaps we would not see God at work in our lives whatsoever. The serene nature of the kingdom of God as painted by Jesus, only comes through redemption of the hard stuff. In his parable about weeding the world’s garden, he says, “Let them grow together.” How can that possibly be healthy for the wheat? We may never fully see how such could be the case. This hard text may be more about what job is God's to do, and what is ours.

opening : 'Come As You Are' (Crowder) :: The Rising Band - Isaac Herbert, leader

anthem : 'How Great Thou Art' (arr.J.Raney) :: Handbell Choir - Andrew Dugan, director; Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

reader : Sally Kelley
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

solo : 'Meditation on Love & Acceptance' (Scholtes/Kaan/Beck/arr.S.Daugherty) :: Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

closing : 'Your First Day In Heaven' (S.Hamblen) :: Kelly Ford, Todd Maxwell, Ron Lee, Barry Epperley

Matthew 13: 24 – 30
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
*

“You can only be young once.  But you can always be immature.”  The words of columnist Dave Barry.  Barry also gave us a few other gems. He said, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’  Another? “Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.” And then this: “Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons.”[1]

Isn’t that the truth?  Weeds. It is almost impossible to keep them from growing… especially in the exact places you do not want them to grow. Some Southern Methodist University marching band students knew this all too well.  In 1999, while marching on the football field of their twin city rival, Texas Christian University, the band had mapped out, and faithfully executed, a plan to sow rye grass seed on the field in the shape of a large “M” – the band’s trademark formation.   You can see the results in this picture.  This set off a series of prank/counter-prank, between the two schools that ultimately had to come to a close before things got seriously dangerous. As to this initial stunt, many were amused.  TCU did blank the Mustangs of SMU that day 21-0.  The paper’s report had this to offer from TCU’s grass experts: “The annual rye will likely reappear next year, but will eventually fade out, much like SMU’s football program.”[2] Zing! They had to get a little dig in there. The weeds are always pretty resilient, aren’t they?  This has always been true, I suppose.  Maybe even in the Garden of Eden? A ponderance for another time.  Gardeners certainly have an opinion I’m sure.  And farmers have long known the trials of weeds as they often become a genuine concern of their livelihood.

Jesus knew this quite well and he also knew his audience.  He was sitting on the beach one day and a crowd gathered around him… which was not uncommon.  He started telling stories. One of those stories is the one you heard read this morning which we call, “The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat.”  Maybe Jesus had been in 4H as a kid, I’m not sure, but he offers this story about wheat knowing that wheat was a staple dietary and economic crop in that time.  Wheat was also one of the most susceptible of the staples of life and to mess with someone’s wheat crop was very serious business.  It was not uncommon at that time for rival landowners to mess with each other’s crops in hopes of increasing their own profits at the market. Greed is not a new concept. It was a common enough problem that Roman law specifically forbade the sowing of poisonous plants in another’s field.[3]  It turns out, via the investigative work of the folks at Ancestry.com that the rebels of that day would later send their descendants to SMU; particularly those with musical ability. The weed in question here is “darnel,” which, as I understand … and wait for it … is a kind of ryegrass that looked like wheat in its early stages of growth and could only be distinguished from wheat when the heads of the stalk were fully matured.

Servants and field workers normally weeded the fields in the spring, before the darnel became intertwined with the real wheat. But in the parable Jesus tells to the crowd gathered on the beach, Jesus says it was a rival enemy that snuck into the fields while everybody was sleeping and intentionally sowed the weeds among the wheat as the marching band played ‘Carry on My Wayward Son.’  As the story is told, by the time anyone could tell the weeds were present, they had already begun their work of binding themselves tightly to the stalks of wheat.  This was a problem as you can imagine.  It could be disastrous for the crop and could damage the reputation and livelihood of the landowner.  Nobody likes the nationwide recall to be traced back to their farm.  In any situation like this, people start pointing fingers.  “Didn’t you sow good seed, farmer?”  “Yes,” said the farmer.  “The very best.”  This wasn’t a mix up.  This was intentional.  The field workers rally and say, “We’ve got this.  We’ll get out there weeding today and take care of this problem.  And,” they said, “just wait until we find out who did this.”  Counter-prank planning already underway. The farmer knew, however, that there was greater potential for harm than good. Because the roots could also be intertwined, the real wheat could be destroyed in the process.  His instruction?  Let the weeds and wheat grow together.

And like every gardener in the house today who likely gasps at the thought, so did the hearers on the beach as Jesus told the story. “Let them grow together?”  What a crazy idea!  And truth be told, we’re not talking weeds and wheat anymore – we’re talking about you and me and every marching band that ever existed. Are we wheat?  Are we weeds? Oh my. We ponder this today as we continue our series we’re calling in, not of, but for.  A strange title, but a look at the old Christian cliché suggesting Christians are to be in the world, not of the world.  We are to exist in the world but not take on the unchristian like habits of the world. While we can easily use that notion to cast a wide judgment on others, we are trying to imagine how we might redeem that phrase recognizing we certainly exist in the world, that there are unhealthy characteristics in life that we’d rather not carry forward but we are certainly called to be advocates for the world that Jesus told us God so loves.  And while our inclination is for the church, and our world, to be neat and tidy like a freshly weeded flower bed, Jesus says, “Careful, careful, my friends.  Let them grow together.”

This just crosses the grain (pun not initially intended) of our very being, right?  We want to clean things up.  No need carrying on in the mess of things. It’s why I have a nice affinity with the field workers who say, “Let’s get after this mess and get it cleaned up.”  I struggle with this even at my own home.  I often cannot get focused on work I need to do at home until things are neat and tidied up around the house.  Things need to be in its place. The dirty dishes need to be tended to and the hot wheels cleared from the stairs.  Once those things are in order, then I can really get focused on the ministry task at hand. Do you know what I’m saying?  When it comes to the church, or your place of business, or the circles within which you move and breathe, you may feel that way too.  Clean up these rolls, this place, these people so we can really get after the good work. Much cleaner this way I admit.  Elijah felt this way.  If God was going to clean up the rolls of Israel, then Elijah stood before God and yelled, “I am the only one left.  The roll has been reduced to one; me, Elijah.  In fact,” Elijah continues, “if you kill me, you can just close the books and say it was all one big mess.”  Sometimes, in our desperation, it seems like weeding is our only option.

There was a video that went viral a few years ago of a church just north of here.  The pastor became super frustrated with his church and one Sunday he just started calling the people out by name in the middle of his sermon.  He berated them in front of everyone.  If someone snickered or made eye contact with the pastor, he called them out next.  It was a crazy and unfortunate sight.  At one point, he hollers, “If you all have a problem with me calling out these weeds, then Bessie and I will just pack up our little Ford Pinto and move on down the road and start our own church.”  Bessie wasn’t his wife’s actual name and I’ve changed the name of his vehicle to protect the identity of the car in question. Of the several different videos of this sermon online, more than four million people have watched it. Whoa!  It was unacceptable in my opinion and sort of a surreal moment, but I understand the desperation.  Church is hard.  It’s why one of my favorite stories, that I’ve told you several times and I’m sorry for that but it’s so true, fits here today.  A man was found on a deserted island after years of being lost.  When he was discovered, the rescuers found the man and three huts on the island.  They asked if the man was stranded alone to which he said, “Oh yes… for years now.” “Then why the three huts,” they asked him.  “Well,” he said. “This hut is where I live.  That hut is where I go to church.  And that other hut is where I used to go to church.”  We’ve all got a little thistle in us don’t we.  We try to hide that part more than we consider transforming it into grace. 

Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr points out that some Native Americans have a tradition of leaving a blemish in one corner of the rug they are weaving because they believe that’s where the spirit enters.  I can relate to rugs. Can you?  Sometimes, that corner of beautiful imperfection is the humbling entrance point of the Spirit of God. The world in which we live among the people with whom we live are a bunch of beautiful rugs with blemished corners.  And as painful and frustrating as those blemishes may be to us at times, that’s where the light gets in. That is often where we discover our need for God and community, forgiveness and transformation.  It’s where we find grace for ourselves and, if we’re self-aware, we find grace to share with others as well. Were we not in the world, as harsh as it can be, perhaps we would not see God at work in our lives whatsoever.  The serene nature of the kingdom of God as painted by Jesus, only comes through redemption of the hard stuff.

But… how do we save ourselves from the pain?  How do we not get so entangled in the weeds while we’re trying to grow our lives into a stalk of wheat that we don’t fall prey to greater temptation or sin or destruction of our own souls or that of another?  Fair questions worth wrestling with.  I don’t know, to be honest.  Jesus says, “Trust. Let them grow together.”  And so we do our best to do so.  I must say I think there are clearly times we need to protect ourselves from abuse and situations where we’re prone to thistle.  Laying down in the middle of the road because you trust God to protect you is not the idea here. Jesus says elsewhere, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Existing in an abusive situation because, well, he’s just a weed and I guess I have to put up with it is not what is being said here.  There is some nuance here I believe.

Even so, Jesus seems to suggest there are some things that are ours to do and some that belong to God. If you are busy policing everyone else’s life, you’re going to lose any influence you may have pretty quick.  Jesus is saying, it’s not up to you to manhandle the weeding… you don’t fully know how God’s spirit is moving in another person, in another situation.  We are to pour love into those people and into those situations, not cast judgment and condemn.    

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who was trained as a paleontologist and geologist – a fascinating combination.  He conceived the idea of the Omega Point – a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving.  He was often censored by the Catholic church for some of his views were deemed weeds in their perceived wheat fields, but he had some beautiful written work.  One is a prayer entitled, “Patient Trust” that fits beautifully into our wondering about weeding the world ourselves or waiting for God to do the harvesting work.

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”[4]

“Above all, trust the slow work of God.”  Those eight words alone are worth holding onto.  This is the opposite of how we are taught to live in our society.  Fast lane. Fast life. Fast food. Slim Fast (because who would buy into a weight loss program called Slim Slow?).  Eight-minute abs. I’m all for efficiency and productivity but I’m not so sure it is God’s ultimate priority.  So what, then?  Are we just supposed to do nothing?  Just watch as the weeds take over?  I think the spiritual discipline is to sow love into the field and trust the slow work of God to be about transformative work while we wait for the ultimate harvest.  What you think is a weed may soon wind up in a vase as a prized and beautiful center piece at your very own dinner table.  You just don’t know.  And… you never know when a weed will find its purpose.  Just look at kale – once a garnish you’d never imagine eating, now a super food! The harvest will come later and God will deal with that.  Waiting until harvest time allows the longest time for the greatest crop.

Darnel doesn’t grow as high as the stalks of wheat so it would be easy for the reapers to tell the difference when both the weed and the wheat have fully matured.  God will take care of all of that.  Aren’t you relieved?  It’s not your job.  What Jesus says throughout scripture is that we are to sow love in the meantime.  So practice backing off your first thought of judgment and imagine the slow work of God maturing that person or situation (even when, maybe especially when, that person maturing is you or that situation needing to marinate in grace is yours). Don’t lash back when another is spouting ugly rhetoric but trust the slow work of God to do the needed convicting in another’s heart. Ponder further ideas or people or situations that you’ve labeled weeds and find a way to pay closer attention, consider more deeply, reflect prayerfully, nurture in a new way – one that sows grace and love and hope.  Maybe your pride has gotten in the way.  Maybe you haven’t been able to forgive.  Maybe you just love to operate that weed whacker.  Maybe your spirit is less than teachable.  What would it take to imagine a different approach – to humble yourself; to listen more, talk less; to lead with grace instead of judgment?

Andy McMillan is a friend and member of our church.  He and his wife, Jennifer, have three beautiful daughters for which he coaches each one of their soccer teams – ‘Dad of the Year’ material here.  Andy’s mother passed away a couple of years ago now and he posted a beautiful story this week in connection to that great loss and has allowed me to share it with you this morning.  “I have this scrappy little African violet  that was part of a basket that Sharon and the PTA at my kids’ school sent for my mom’s memorial service (I was serving as treasurer at the time). For a couple of years, I’ve watered it, and I’ve looked at it thinking “I should really do something with that.” It just kept hanging in… a little water, a little light… and it puts out these beautiful, delicate blooms once in a while. Somewhere along the way, it became “mom’s violet” in the back of my head. It needs a better pot. It probably needs some fertilizer. It needs me to read up on how you take care of these beyond mild neglect. Somehow, it made it beyond a couple of years. Somehow so did I.”

This was just the most beautiful thing I’ve read in some time. Andy didn’t write it for that purpose.  He just took time to reflect and imagine and nurture and over the course of a couple of years, this poured out of him in such beautiful prose.  Grief not gone but redeemable.  Pain present, but a little water, a little light… and blooms find their way to show themselves vulnerable but radiant. A commitment to more… a little more education and understanding, a little more focused care… a little more hope can only enhance the memory, the relationship, the beauty. A trust in the slow work of God to reveal beauty in what could have otherwise, and easily, been discarded. 

My friends, you’ve got an African Violet in your life right now.  I’m not sure what or who it is but I have a feeling you do.  How might you learn more about that violet, embrace it further, nurture it more and discover a strength you never knew was there, was possible, or could be fruitful in any way? Our job is not to pull the weeds.  “Let them grow together,” Jesus says. “You do your part and trust me to bring it home.”

* * * * *
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Barry.  Searching for “Dave Barry” quotes led me to the ones shared here.
[2] https://www.tcu360.com/story/administrators-discourage-pranks-among-rivalry-schools-12285575/.  https://magazine.tcu.edu/spring-2000/growing-rivalry/
[3] Exegetical information concerning wheat/weed/darnel connection supported by the work of Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer of Homiletics Online.  Kaylor is also the Senior Minister of Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.
[4] From Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits by Michael Harter. Loyola Press. 2005.

text : Luke 14:15-24

theme verse : “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” (Luke 14:22)

The invitation comes. You cross-check calendars. She can attend. He’s got an appointment. Everyone is exhausted. The RSVP card stares back at you thinking, “What do you say?” You check the box next to “Regrets.” By many accounts, life is busier now than ever before but “Regrets” due to any given excuse is not new. Jesus offers a great parable on extending and accepting invitations and he leaves the story wondering like an RSVP card, “What do you say?” On this World Communion Sunday, when Christians spanning the globe will gather around the Lord’s Table, we ponder both sides of the invite. Will we accept the invitation? Will we extend that invitation far and wide? Word has it, there’s still room for more.

communion anthem : 'Remember Me' (D. Govener) :: Chancel Choir; Barry Epperley, guest director

reader : Giselle Chebny
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : 'Jesus Paid It All' (arr.K.Stanfill) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

offertory : 'Holy Manna' (arr.M.Hayes) :: Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

Luke 14:15-24
One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
*

Any Seinfeld fans in the house today?  A little test about your fandom.  Can any of you name the line that defined the 116^th episode of the show which aired on November 2, 1995?  Anyone?  It’s only four words but those words alone earned actor Larry Thomas an Emmy nomination for this guest role.  The line?  “No soup for you!”   Thomas’ character was known as “The Soup Nazi” which was also the name of the episode. The plot line follows Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer and their struggles to stay on the good side of Larry Thomas’ character so that they could enjoy his most delicious soup.  One false move, however, and The Soup Nazi held a forever grudge.  Try to order soup after crossing that line and you would receive that harsh, famous line, “No soup for you!”  Of Seinfeld’s run of nine seasons and 180 episodes, “The Soup Nazi” ranks second on the list of most popular episodes of the series.  Larry Thomas called it, “The easiest four days of work I ever did.”[1] Why so popular?  Funny, yes, but why?  Is it because we like the authority to deny another something they seek – even if it’s simply a bowl of delicious soup?  Perhaps.

It’s World Communion Sunday today – which sounds rather prestigious doesn’t it?  Put “World” in front of anything and it just ups the magnitude of the whole thing. World’s Greatest Cup of Coffee. Ron Artest even changed his name to Meta World Peace.  World Communion Sunday was first recognized in 1933. Launched by the Presbyterians, other Christian traditions, like the Disciples of Christ, joined in the celebration as sign and symbol of unity in Christ and ecumenical cooperation. It is a day that celebrates an Open Table – one where Jesus remains the host and a wide invitation is cast to any and all who will share in the experience.  There is no Communion Nazi who will deny Christ’s welcome to this sacred meal.  While that may seem obvious to some, many a tradition have worked to restrict who can participate in communion and who cannot.  In fact, such denial was a key component in the origin of our denomination.

209 years ago and one week,  Alexander Campbell migrated to the United States, a Scots-Irish immigrant, with his family.  He and father, Thomas, would be two key founders of the movement that became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Coming out of the Presbyterian tradition, the Campbell’s wrestled with a number of the practices of the church.  One that stuck out more than most, perhaps, was the practice of communion. The church had created an elitist practice when it came to communion which essentially resulted in only the privileged wealthy being invited to share in communion.  Church leadership would give them tokens which had to be presented before receiving the elements.  No token – no communion for you.  The pivotal moment was captured in a poorly produced video I watched as a child, learning about our denomination.  It was a low budget production.  Tom Hanks did not play Alexander Campbell, okay?  But the point was clearly made.  Alexander Campbell is standing in line to receive communion, with great angst by what had become such a restrictive experience – not the freedom flowing, grace-filled salvific experience he believed was the first intention of Jesus.  And so, when Campbell reaches the front of the line, and with great drama of a made-for-tv movie, he slams his token down on the Table and walks away.   The music swells, the camera shot widens, and behold, something new was taking shape. That was the beginning moment of our denomination; a movement that would be defined by an Open Table where any and all were invited to share in the meal.  The invitation belongs to Christ, and is not merely our own.  This is why Disciples churches have communion at every worship service and why the Chalice is the symbol you’ll see on Disciples church signs.  The Table defines what we most deeply value – that the love of God, in Christ, is a wide invitation; open for any and all people who will come.  The invitation is yours today.  Will you come?  This I know, we don’t always come, even when we’re invited.

Sometimes we decide we’re too busy and utterly exhausted. Think about some of the invitations you’ve likely received. Even when the invitation arrives in the mail and you marvel at the picture of the graduate, or engaged couple, or bouncy house or high school classmates, you pause and sigh, wondering if can possibly go. You cross-check the family calendar.  She can attend.  He’s got an appointment. Could that be changed?  It’s the night before that other commitment and right on the heels of another one yet the smiling face on the front of the invite seems to say, “What do you say?” You pick up the pen and place it in the box marked, “Regrets” and “X” marks your reality. Legitimate excuse or not, you’re out.  Now, I want to say that “No.” is a complete sentence and should always be an acceptable answer when you’re trying to balance schedules and navigate your life and often the lives of others.  We can’t be everywhere for everything with everyone at all times.  But it’s a spirit check that may be most important in your “No.”  And this is why Jesus tells this story of the Great Banquet.

Jesus has just finished teaching this great word about humility and hospitality.  “Put your guests in the seat of honor,” he says. “Take the worst seat at the table for yourself and invite others to move up to the better seats.”  He offers the great line, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  Jesus also gets a little more preachy when he says, “Don’t just invite your friends and the wealthy folks who can return the favor.  Invite the poor and those who can’t repay you. Check your motives,” he says.  And then this parable about the Great Banquet follows, starting by one of the dinner guests who apparently didn’t get the point Jesus was trying to make.  “Ah,” the man says, “I can’t wait to eat the bread in the kingdom of God.”  I think Jesus blank stares the guy for a second, scanning the rolodex of his mind thinking, “Hmmm… how can I put this.”  What Jesus knows is this guy, probably a decent guy by any account – we don’t have any reason to believe otherwise – is holding a traditional view that Jesus was challenging.  What Jesus was just teaching him flew right over his head or, perhaps worse yet, the man just scoffed it off as nothing to take seriously.  The traditional Jewish view at the time was a particular picture of what would happen when God broke into history, ushering a new, golden day of the new age. The greatest picture was of the Messianic banquet.  A banquet where God would serve a feast to those who had a token, if you will.  The average, orthodox Jew would have never dreamed that gentiles and sinners would find a place at the feast of God.  Let this be a note we may consider ourselves.  About the time you feel like you have a corner on who’s in and who’s out and put yourself in some position of privilege, imagine Jesus giving that same blank stare thinking, “Hmmm… how can I put this.”  And… through the gift of time and preservation, we know how he put it:

A man threw a giant dinner party and sent out a wide invitation.  “Y’all come!” it said, and many thought they would. And because a group text or E-vite wasn’t available, the practice was for the party host to send out a servant on party day to round up the guests telling them that everything was ready.  As Jesus tells the story, the servant was met with a myriad of excuses. “I’ve got some new property,” the first person says, “and I’m going to go check it out. Sorry.”  The second excuse?  “I’ve got some new cattle, or the latest iPhone, or a snow mobile (or whatever new thing you might get that you are excited about) and I can’t get enough of it right now.  Send my regrets to the host.”  The third excuse is maybe the most honest of all.  As plainly as can be said: “I just got married and therefore I cannot come.”  Wife says we’re out.  Spouse has a thing.  Now for all you who use your spouse as your top excuse to get out of things, know that this was actually a Jewish mercy law.[2]  Newlyweds couldn’t be sent to the army or bothered to conduct any business for a year. They were simply to enjoy each other’s company for an entire year.  Can you imagine?  Sounds good to me!

Now, many of us understand full schedules and we regularly extend grace to each other when we can’t make it to everything but Jesus is getting at the spirit of things here from two sides.  The first?  Check your priorities.  That which gets your time, owns your spirit.  We’re all culpable in this at times and in various ways. Jesus is constantly inviting us into the kingdom life – not simply an invitation to attend but deeper than that – to be a participant in making a difference, growing in love and grace, seeing that someone else is uplifted because you cared enough to serve.  We all have our vices or choice excuses of the heart and we need to check those.

But today, we consider that second side.  The wide invitation of the host.  The servant brings all of these invites with the “Regrets” boxes checked and the party host says, “Well… I guess we’ll have to widen the invite list.  Take a second lap and invite these folks and those people and that group.”  The servant does so, returns and says, “We got a few but sir, there is still more room.”  “Alrighty then,” the host says. “Game on.  Every. single. person. Gets an invite,” like he was Oprah or something.  In so doing, Jesus does that thing he always seems to do with his stories.  He zings the inside crowd a bit – the excuses bit in this instance.  He presses your comfort zone a bit and then he finally just blows you away with something offensive like, “Invite your in-laws and enemies and people of other faith traditions or no faith tradition at all. Invite the people with the wrong political signs in their yard and the radical bumper stickers and even the telemarketers.” Jesus does this constantly.  Constantly!  And yet we continually position our Jesus in a way that benefits us most… or at least makes us most comfortable.

We do this with our politics right now in a big way.  Whatever our political flavor, we attempt to stuff Jesus into that same ballet box.  When I consider the behavior I see in our politicians and see the Christian community try to wiggle our way into justifying such language and action as something Jesus would endorse, my skin crawls. I know there are great political differences represented in this room and we all have our reasons for reaching those positions.  What I’m looking for most is some good character.  I want my children to look at the highest positions in the land and experience a voice of kindness and justice for all people, not mockery and bullying.  If there’s a process, then let the process play out. To mock anyone, regardless of your take on their claims, should not be praised, encouraged or rewarded.  Jesus, constantly came to the aid of the one without power to lift them up and restore their dignity.  This isn’t always convenient, particularly when we are one in the privileged position, but it is the way Jesus responded time and time again.  I confess that I have chosen a comfortable Jesus at times rather than the Jesus who pushes me to care more for the least of these, include those I’ve deemed unworthy, and speak up for those who are not being heard.  Whether we think our kids and grandkids are paying attention or not, I believe they are listening to you and me in this regard.  How do we truly imagine the voice of Jesus speaking into today’s toxic climate?  I can promise you that party line would not be his starting point. Dare I say it shouldn’t be ours either?

But now that I’ve made everyone in the room uncomfortable, I want you to imagine the people at the dinner table with Jesus when he tells them this story.  They were very uncomfortable. He didn’t tell it to get a big laugh or to entertain the company, he shared the story to jar their hearts and minds – to see that the kingdom he’s professing isn’t going to toe the line as we all might prefer. He tells the story to bring discomfort for it is often in such discomfort that we get real with ourselves about motive and preference and priority.  The Kingdom of God was not only for those who think like us, look like us, and vote like us.  It would not be an elitist club whatsoever. It would be a beautifully diverse community with an invitation that is spread wider day by day. It’s why we put zero restrictions on this Table as many are apt to do.  And I know it can get messy sometimes.  Would you believe that I get the most grief in ministry from people about such a wide invitation?  It’s as if the desire is to narrow God’s extravagant love – yes perhaps wide enough to “save a wretch like me” – but not all of those other wretches. Whether we want to or not, we end up memorizing what we do repeatedly. We imprint on our soul what we do over and over again.  It’s our factory’s wiring. And because we’re made this way, it’s a good idea to pick actions worth repeating.  Bob Goff says, “People who are turning into love do this.” As Jesus followers, we are to become love itself.  So often, we’ve memorized judgment instead.  What if we memorized grace?  Could we become grace?  Only way to find out is to practice… and if Jesus says anything with this story, he says… get the invitation out there… spread it wide… and be gracious to all even when they don’t see it the way you do. Our very Table breathes this message.

Writer Sara Miles, totally new to the church a couple of decades ago, remembers her very first communion.  It was a totally foreign experience.  She wandered into an Episcopal worship service in San Francisco even as she admits, “I had no idea what Episcopalian meant.” It sounded like a dietary preference more than anything.  “We sat down and stood up,” she said, “sang and sat down, waited and listened and stood up and sang, and it was all pretty peaceful and sort of interesting.  ‘Jesus invites everyone to his table,’ the woman announced, and we started moving up in a stately dance to the table in the rotunda.  It had some dishes on it, and a pottery goblet. And then we gathered around that table.  And there was more singing and standing, and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, saying “the body of Christ,” and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying, “the blood of Christ,” and then something outrageous and terrifying happened.  Jesus happened to me.”

Sara Miles couldn’t explain that first communion.[3]  The disconnect between what she thought was happening – eating a piece of bread and what she heard someone else say was happening – the piece of bread was the “body” of “Christ,” she noted this to be patently untrue or at best a metaphorical statement. The drink, clearly wasn’t blood; it was Angelica fortified wine, 18 percent alcohol, from a green screw-top bottle which she once saw when she peeked into the church kitchen.  It was all a bit ridiculous but she said, “All I knew was – God, named “Christ” or “Jesus,” was real – utterly short-circuiting my ability to do anything but cry.”  It was her first experience in worship.  Her first trip to the communion table. Her first taste of church. She was moved and thought she might give church another try.  She wondered if she should church shop a bit but said, “Any criticisms of St. Gregory’s may have been true but I was able to see, somehow, even from the beginning, that any church was going to be disappointing.  Wherever I went, I’d have problems as well as glorious epiphanies.  [And the most important line she says next] Wherever I went, I’d have to meet myself, and other people, if I wanted to get closer to God.”

She could have been denied the communion invitation.  She could have scoffed it off as something weird and ridiculous. She could have said, “These people are different from me and therefore have nothing to offer.”  But she received an authentic invitation to come to the banquet and do you know what she did because of that wide-open invitation?  She started a food pantry, which offers free, fresh groceries to 400 families each Friday, right around the altar at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco;  the very Table where she was humbly invited and received for the first time, the gift of encountering Jesus.  The Food Pantry builds community and empowers people to work together and share food with the neighborhood. There’s not much bureaucracy.  They don’t ask hungry people to fill out forms or prove that they are deserving.  “We’re strong on participation,” Miles says.  “Most of our volunteers are folks who came to get food and stayed to feed others. They welcome everyone to the table––disabled workers, retired grandparents, homeless gay teenagers, middle-aged cleaning ladies, long-time San Franciscans and new immigrant families from all over the world––and they invite everyone to pitch in.  Our volunteers speak a dozen different languages. Some are young and strong, some old and sick; some live in houses and some on the streets.  But at The Food Pantry, every Friday, we share the privilege of doing meaningful work together, and feeding our community.”[4]  How’s that for a wide invitation?

You, my friends, are also invited.  Whether today will be your first communion or you’ve teethed on this Table since childhood, somebody without knowing your every circumstance or failure or past or voting record said, “This is the Lord’s Table… the invitation is wide… and we’d be honored if you came.”  How could we be more present to this invitation?  How could we take the Spirit’s work in us most seriously?  How could we extend the same invite that’s come our way to someone else?  You can. You simply have to invite them. And when we’re faithful in that, you just never know what might happen.

Even The Soup Nazi changed his tune.  Larry Thomas hit the road seventeen years after the airing of the episode that made him famous. He used the character to promote soup kitchens for the homeless.  He drove the “Seinfeld Food Truck” across the country and handed out free soup along with Snapple, which was another Seinfeld-related item, to those in need.  Many were fed.  No one was turned away.[5]

You, too, have been invited.  No matter what you’ve done or who you are, there’s a place for you. My only request, and best I can tell, the only request Jesus makes?  Leave the excuses behind. Be present at the Table and cast a wide invitation for others to come too.
* * * * *

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soup_Nazi
[2] William Barclay.  Commentary on the Gospel of Luke.  Westminster Press. 1975.
[3] Story as shared in Sara Miles book, “Take this Bread.” Random House Inc. 2008.
[4] https://sara-miles.squarespace.com/the-food-pantry/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soup_Nazi

text : James 3:13-18

theme verse : “Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.” (James 3:13)

By any number of accounts, we see that our decisions and actions are having some detrimental effects on the world we call home. Called to live by the wisdom of God from above rather than by selfish ambition, how might we harvest peace on earth rather than that which comes from upsetting the balance of the environment?

anthem : 'Like A River In My Soul' (T.Osiek) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader : Abby Langenheim
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : 'Where Do the Children Play?' (Cat Stevens) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

offertory : 'Bless the Beasts and the Children' (B.DeVorzon) :: Susie Monger-Daugherty, vocal; Marilyn Rhodes

James 3: 13-16
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But 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. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
*

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard, novelist, poet, professor, wrote those words. Today, you rose and managed some sort of routine that may or may not have included shaving, a good (or even mediocre) cup of coffee, ironing your clothes, reading the paper, going for a run, politely suggesting your child get ready for church and he or she humbly and with utmost cooperation, did everything quietly upon being asked only once. Maybe, I noted, those were part of your routine.  Or maybe the morning was a complete and total chaotic blur of the nth degree and truth be told, you can’t hardly remember how you landed in the seat that’s holding you up in this very moment.  Someone condensed Dillard’s idea into a smaller category saying, “If how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, how we spend our mornings is how we spend our days.”  So – how are you spending your life these days?  If you could condense it all into an hour frame of time – maybe the hour proceeding your arrival at church this morning – as a core sample of your life, how are you feeling about things?  And maybe less your circumstances but more about your attitude, your inner calm, your spiritual center – how are things going there?

A friend once sent me this amusing, but all too true, word about our failed intentions: “My goal in 2018 is to accomplish all the goals I set in 2017 which I should have done in 2016 because I made a promise in 2015 which I planned in 2012.”  I seldom ask for an “Amen” or a plea for you to “raise your hand” if you resonate with what was just said but if you’ve ever struggled with failed, albeit good, intentions could you give me an “Amen?”  How ‘bout a raised hand?  Okay – so we’re not as different as we thought when you wondered about that person two rows in front of you and three seats over who seemed to be nailing their good intentions – you could tell just by the way they were sitting there.  But nope.  The struggle is real.

And someone in the house today, if prompted just the right way, would say to me, “We struggle to manage our lives because we only use 10% of our brains, AND… some of us aren’t choosing our best 10%.”  I’ve always wondered how true that is.  We only use 10% of our brains?  Hollywood cashed in on this notion a few years ago when they landed Bradley Cooper to star in the movie Limitless.  Cooper plays a writer who is struggling under the pressures we all face when he takes an experimental drug that opens the other 90% of his mind. Using 100% of his brain is a game changer.  He becomes the perfect version of himself. He’s more creative than he’s ever been.  He laser focused attention makes him keenly aware of everything that is happening around him.  Everything he’s ever read or seen is instantly organized in his mind and available for him to use in whatever way he needs.  When he takes these pills, he radiates and people are drawn to him.  He navigates complex business situations and has an uncanny ability to outguess the stock market which, in turns, makes him quite the financial success.  If that’s it, though, it makes for a boring movie, right?  There’s a wrinkle!  Bad guys want to get their hands on this magic drug and they’re taking out anybody who has it.  It’s an action-thriller with a bit of a twist at the end. (Not necessariliy pastor-endorsed.) What if we all could use 100% of our brains?  Would we be smarter?  More perfect?  Life more manageable?  Perhaps. But, here we are, floating around the 10% mark… or so we thought.  More and more scientists are leaving the 10% marker to the category of “old things we used to say.”  Better technology continually reveals that any mentally complex activity uses many areas of the brain and over the course of a day – just about every part of our brain is getting a work out.  But… we’re less interested in this sort of intelligence today.

We’re looking at the writing of James who challenges us to look for something beyond smarts… to be wise… something not simply earthbound but a spiritual wisdom. We’re considering such wisdom today in our Creationtide series because we believe that such wisdom not only pertains to our interactions with one another but also with every facet of creation. By any number of accounts, we see that our decisions and actions are having some detrimental effects on the world we call home. Called to live by the wisdom of God from above rather than by selfish ambition, how might we harvest peace on earth rather than that which comes from upsetting the balance of the environment?

Most scholars believe this James to be the brother of Jesus… which always makes his passion for the truth about Jesus more believable don’t you think?  I mean, what would it take for you to believe your brother was the Messiah?  Anyway, James becomes a significant leader in the Jesus movement in the early church.  He was very concerned with Christian behavior, particularly in the way the faith community reflected the ways of Jesus in their lives.  James seemed to identify a clear distinction between moments when the community seemed plugged into the wisdom of God and when they were caught up in their own selfish agendas.  James called this being double-minded.  Eugene Peterson puts this same passage in words that really make this clear in my estimation.  He says it like this:  It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom — it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.” There’s an arrogance here that James is describing.  The old comedian George Carlin (probably seldom quoted in church) once said, “Anybody who drives slower than you is an idiot.  Anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac.”  What is he saying?  We tend to think this way because we are our own barometer as if we are the ones who get to make the measuring sticks for all people and for all things. Peterson’s translation continues:  Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God, and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

And in this season of Creationtide, we broaden this respect, this dignity, this humbling honor to all of creation.  Because wisdom doesn’t isolate itself to one matter.  Wisdom finds a way to broaden its horizons to a larger picture. Wisdom says, “If we can create a robust community that lives right with God only if we do the hard work of getting along with each other,” then could we not create a more vibrant and peace-filled world if we did the hard work of getting along with all of creation?  If the Cosmic Christ, as we focused on last Sunday, is moving in and through all things, then isn’t it worth the hard work of honoring all things as beautiful, holy-designed, and intertwined with the peaceable kingdom of God?

Chief Seattle, the prophetic Native American voice of the nineteenth century, preached this better than most Christians of his day and of ours.  The United Methodist Book of Worship includes a prayer inspired by his prophetic wisdom.  Listen to his poetic inference into such wisdom…

Every part of this earth is sacred.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore,
Every mist in the dark woods,
Every clearing and humming insect is holy.
The rocky crest, the meadow, the beast and all the people,
All belong to the same family.
Teach your children that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.
We are part of the earth, and the earth is a part of us.
The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the air is precious,
For all of us share the same breath.
The wind that gave our grandparents breath also receives their last sigh.
The wind gave our children the spirit of life.
This we know, the earth does not belong to us,
We belong to the earth.
This we know, all things are connected.
Like the blood that unites one family, all things are connected.
Our God is the same God, whose compassion is equal for all.
For we did not weave the web of life.
We are merely a stranger in it.
Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.[1]

If we truly long for peace, the peace that wisdom brings, the peace harvest that James refers to, we must grow to a place where we can heed that last word from Chief Seattle: “Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”  This is often where our views of peace skew the growth of the kingdom of God.  James warns of this.  “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.”  Do any of us struggle with envy and selfish ambition?  Do we not even promote it as a society much of the time?  “Get yours!” we say.  Claw your way to the top. And we all value a little drive, right?  Passion!  Determination!  Grit!  I am most pleased with my kids when they give their best effort. Before they play a game or prep for a recital or event of some kind, I ask them, “What is the only thing you control?”  “My effort, Daddy.”  We expect each other to work hard; to long to be our best.  But earthly wisdom spoils this drive quickly into a tailspin of greed and me-first-living which is totally anti-kingdom of God.  Perhaps a little self-check for you and me this morning revolves around our definition of peace.

Priest and theologian, Thomas Merton, cuts to the quick in this word about peace.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was “peace” and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war….[2]

Yikes!  What a convicting word. If my quest for peace is only for myself, I’ve missed the mark.  And in fact, peace almost requires the “where two or three are gathered” notion of the presence of Christ.  Living within a wisdom that brings about a peace harvest is an ongoing conversion.  You cannot simply choose in this moment to operate out of such wisdom and assume it will guide your every moment.  But I will say this.  How you spend your moments is how you spend your life… just to narrow that Dillard thought a bit further. If your desired destination is the peaceable kingdom of God, then start moving in that direction.  You cannot, I cannot, we cannot obtain that all at once.  But we can commit together to move that way.  And it will require movement, not simple intention.  Intention never determines destination.  Direction always determines destination.  Taking steps toward the goal determines if you’ll get there far more than your good intentions concerning that same goal.  You’ve got to move toward it.

This wisdom we seek does not come in a single moment of conversion.  As Luke Timothy Johnson says, “It is slowly and painfully won through many conversions.”[3]  It’s worthy of inclusion in your morning prayers – “Convert me again today, O Lord.”  It’s not easy to abandon the double-mindedness that highly influences us in the world every day.  True story about a guy who called himself a “Bowery Bum.”  He wandered ‘drunk as a skunk’ (again his words) into a downtown mission in the city he was living.  We’ll call him Frank. He went to the mission for the free dinner but stayed for the service that followed.  The preacher offered an altar call and Frank found himself going forward where a counselor prayed with him.  Frank described the moment as the “big turnaround.”  The short of the story is that he goes on to recover and lives a productive life.  And while it seldom happens this immediately, Frank never had another drink of alcohol after that trip to the altar.  But… and here’s what we’re after in the story, Frank said, “My conversion was only a start.”  He felt that his sins had been forgiven, but in most ways, he was the same self-centered, profane, bigoted, uncaring person he’d been – except that now, he was attending worship services where he prayed and started listening for God.  One by one, Frank was open to the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance that prompted him to give up or rethink or do differently or take on if he was going to continue following Jesus.  A bit at a time he made those adjustments – more conversions if you will.  He never said he had “arrived,” but he had a sense of where – and toward whom – he was headed.[4]  Direction was determining his destination, no longer his intention alone.

The appropriation of wisdom that is from above is a lifelong event. This should not discourage us but animate us in the effort forward. We begin to see we can improve.  We can make a shift, if even a subtle one at first.  Our church staff team inspired me this week as they always do as we gathered as a team to pray, discuss the direction of our shared ministry this week and discern this very scripture that would move us toward today.  Their wisdom encouraged me to imagine steps forward.  One teammate said, “I had to learn as a parent that it was important to say the words to my kids, “I was wrong,” when I was wrong.”  Another noted the irony that we immediately call someone a flip flopper when they’ve changed their mind over time on something important.  “Do we not want leaders who are still learning and growing?” he asked? Another teammate described the nature of wisdom James describes as one that reminds us to listen to those who are suffering or oppressed as Jesus so often did.  My staffmate said, “The ones closest to the pain are often closest to the answer.”  Another said, “Regardless of your take on global warming, how can we not desire to take greater care of the planet that is taking care of us?”  We also laughed together when one staff member realized that the big box store for pets was not merely Pets Mart but in fact, Pet Smart.  Mind blown. It was as enlightening a moment as any other we shared that morning!

We are all on the way, taking another step in the direction of Christ. The more steps we commit together to take in that direction, the more that ultimate destination of a peaceable kingdom will come into view. It’s not easy.  It’s never easy.  But it’s so worth the effort.

Heading into this series on Creationtide, I got to have lunch with a friend who had just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime adventure through the Grand Canyon – rafting and camping along the way.  He’s been an ongoing processing partner the last few weeks as we’ve sifted through our relationship to the Creator and the Created Order.  He sent me a word this week that he’s allowing me to share with you today for which I am most grateful.  He wrote,

A final thought from the trip. Though our guide claimed he knew where we were, it was always approximately, and we never had much sense of our polar orientation or direction. There were occasional hints of East or West but they could, and often did swap places, creating a little confusion.  Only when we were flying back to the starting point were we able to look down and realize where we had been and what was going on. So, it is with the trip of life. We are born, and then are carried in the stream of time to the end of our trip. It takes us, we do not change it. We can fight it, but it’s far better to learn from it, and enjoy the experience. Luckily there is a brief moment of an Overview, and having seen it you understand everything. I believe Jesus saw it.

And, he added, a sense that perhaps, we just might come to see it too.  Wisdom.

Wisdom is harvesting peace. Close your eyes and hear clearly the characteristics James suggests will make us harvesters of such peace; that will begin to reveal to us the Great Overview of God. Wisdom is first pure.  Wisdom is peaceable.  Wisdom is gentle.  Wisdom is willing to yield.  Wisdom is full of mercy.  Wisdom bears good fruit. Wisdom is without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.  It’s almost harvest time.  Be a harvester of peace today, and tomorrow, and before you know it, you will have discovered the peace of Christ in your soul, in your family, your community, perhaps even among the entirety of Creation.

* * * * *

[1] The United Methodist Book of Worship (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1992), 425-26.
[2] Thomas Merton, “The Power of Nonviolence”
[3] Johnson, Luke Timothy. “James 3:13–4:10,” The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. XII. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998, 212.
[4] Version as shared by Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer of Homiletics. “Two Kinds of Smart.” September 2012.  This work influenced this message through the link to Johnson’s commentary and the connection to the movie, Limitless.

text:                Psalm 148

theme verse : “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, and they were created.” (Ps 148:5)

When one stops to consider the immensity of God’s creation, it can truly change our perspective and our living, even our understanding of worship. Turns out, worshiping God is not a solo gig for us humans. The Psalmist has sent out an invitation to the praise band, and you’ll be surprised who’s joining in the chorus.

anthem : 'I'm Gonna Sing When The Spirit Says Sing' (spiritual/arr.R.Shaw) :: Avenue; Barry Epperley, director

reader : Deborah Gist

preaching : Rev Kevin Howe

closing : 'Indescribable' (C.Tomlin) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, band leader

December 24^th, 1968. Apollo 8 has now become the first manned mission to orbit the moon. Their task is to record data about its terrain for subsequent missions, and on this special Christmas Eve, all is going according to plan. Entering into their fourth orbit, the spacecraft emerges from the far side of the lunar surface, when suddenly the crew’s attention is diverted from the task at hand—their eyes fixed instead now on what they see appearing over the alien horizon. Crew member, Bill Anders, turns his camera away from the moon and snaps a picture of what they’re witnessing—first in black and white—then again in color roll in what were the last precious moments of a short-lived event.

This

photo: Earthrise (William Anders, Lunar Module Pilot, Apollo 8)

is what they saw. The photograph, known as Earthrise, is humanity’s first color image looking back at the planet we call home. It was a perspective previous unseen, hidden from humanity’s eye, and once it was published, forever changed the way we see our context. Astronauts commonly speak of a cognitive shift in awareness after observing our planet from afar. This experience, which is referred to as the “overview effect” is described as a state of mental clarity about the bigger picture; a strangely compassionate and affectionate impulse towards everything that is bound to that tiny and fragile blue oasis hanging in the void of space.¹

Now, you and I may never experience the overview effect, but I bet you can recall a moment in your life where you were suddenly struck by a new way of seeing the world and your place in it. These moments of epiphany are sacred encounters. It’s as though we’re graced with new eyes to see the very things that we have seen our whole life, but as though we are encountering them again for the first time. As if they and we were a whole new creation.

I remain unconvinced that we can manufacture such experiences ourselves. They seem to happen to us. But I do believe that we can be awake to their possibility and we can position ourselves in such a way that we are more likely to receive them. This is, in part, what we seek to do as people of faith: to prepare ourselves to receive God’s call on our lives and be open to how to the Holy Spirit is moving in the world. It is why we have a liturgical calendar—why we return each year to certain themes in the story of our faith, revisiting these narratives in hopes that they might offer us newness of perspective and deepen our faith, as we allow the gospel message to unfold yet again in our lives.

sermon series, September 9 – 30

This week we are kicking off a liturgical season that is new to our community.  The Season of Creation, also called Creationtide, is dedicated to reflecting on God as the Creator and Sustainer of all life. And as with the other liturgical seasons that we observe, it is our hope that through our study, worship and prayer, Creationtide will open us to new perspective—perhaps even moments of epiphany—that will shape our living and deepen our worship of God.

Each Sunday, we gather here so that we can worship the Creator, and it’s our desire that our worship would be pleasing to the Lord. The writer of Psalm that we heard this morning, shares this same desire and has set out to create the ultimate chorus of praise to God. He’s searching to invite those voices that will show up to do so with true joy and exuberance, singers that are ready to offer unbridled affirmation of God. No one who’s had their arm twisted or emotions manipulated. No one who is bound by a hardened sense of obligation. No, this praise team will be filled with the enthusiastic and the zealous. Who is up for this type of worship? One of true affection. Who is worthy of the invitation to sing praises to the Lord? This is the Psalmist’s challenge and the scripture we heard this morning contains the guest list.

It is as if the psalmist starts at the furthest reaches of the universe—even beyond the limits of our understanding—and begins there. Angels and heavenly hosts—these mysterious figures have been invited to join the praise team. Next are the sun and the moon. Shinning stars. We smile to ourselves. Surely the psalmist is just being cute by making such an invitation—coming as though a child who might speak of water that singings and clouds that dance.

Next is everything in the sky and all that holds moisture in the sky. The things that would interest the local meteorologist. Next are the deep seas creatures—those oceanic giants that sparked fear and trembling in the ancient seafarers. The giant squid and blue whales and the other behemoths of the deep that few people have seen face-to-face, they follow the clouds and rain and stars into this symphony of praise to God. And what a strange choir the psalmist is arranging for us. You know, I can’t help but be a bit disappointed: not a single priest, pastor has been mentioned yet!

In fact, the next invites are given to things that aren’t even living—at least not as we understand them. Fire and hail. Snow and frost and the raging tempests that follow God’s commands. Here are all the forces both beautiful and horrific. The characters that move a soft rain over your garden and that which turns a forest into char and ash. The snow that creates wintry wonderlands and the winds that peel roofs off houses. Here are the elements—both gentle and harsh—that move the seasons —they, too, are invited to sing in the chorus that will honor God. What an odd event this is going to be!

Mountains and hills. Fruit trees and cedars. They are all given a place in the praise band. Mount Everest and Turkey Mountain (if you can really call it that), along with the trees in your neighborhood and the trees that hold monkeys and koalas in lands far away. They have received an invitation from the psalmist in a language that only mountains and trees know. They have a place in singing admiration to God.

the preacher’s favorite : the rock hyrax

Next is the largest group. Cattle and wild animals. Birds of the air and creeping things. Anything that might be kept on a farm. And the wilder things. Leopards, Orangutans, albatross, hedgehogs, toucans, dung beetles, kangaroos, penguins, grizzly bears, ostriches, iguanas and bees, and elephants, and roly-polies. Don’t forget the platypus and the rock hyrax.  And the list goes on. They are all invited by the psalmist to join in uninhibited praise to their Creator. But haven’t they always been praising – without pause -simply by being what God created them to be?

Well, at long last, we humans have made the list: Rulers, princes, kings, ambassadors; all those that have great power. But the list does not end there. Men and Women, young and old, rich and poor, all join in the chorus—lend yourselves to the melody—to a tune older than time; give in to the hymn of praise to the source of all songs.

So what are we to make of this bizarre choir, one that contains both cucumbers and canyons, tornados and starfish? As with any good poetry, with poet of this psalm has taken us places that other words do not have the power or agility to guide us to. The psalmist invites us to look at creation and its purpose again by painting a picture that inspires a sort of overview effect for those that dare to give it a fair consideration. And it’s a perspective that is critically needed in this day in age—in a time such as this, when our culture invites to be more self-obsessed than ever. To reflect endlessly on our goals and regrets, and the hurdles we haven’t jumped but need to. Precisely here, we need a poem to open our eyes wide to the bigger picture of the entire cosmic story. This created order does not exist to serve us and the song of God and scope of its galactic proportionality does not serve to lift us up as the star of the show. The song of the cosmos is for God. We are not the point. Sure, we have a unique role, but creation is not about humanity. It’s about the glory of God. And though we are invited into the symphony of praise to Lord, if we aren’t going to show up, then the song will go on. And it will be beautiful without us. That might sound harsh, and it might sound dismissive of the importance of each human being.

But I think the poetic vision of the psalmist actually brings us hope in the midst of such a tumultuous time, one where there seems to be more anxiety and fear than ever. A time where we easily get confused that our biography and our problems are the most momentous things going on simply because we are alive.

The Psalmist’s perspective puts our self-contrived worry and threats against a much larger, older, and more durable choir of praise that has been signing to God since before the first humans even kindled a fire. We need not form such dramatic importance around ourselves as partisan voters, or American, or even humans. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. This is not a solo performance. It’s a cosmic chorus of harmony, in which we are only one of many voices; a concert that started before you and I and will continue on after. We don’t have as much control as we may think. And once we surrender to that realization, we might just have more freedom to enjoy this precious life we’ve been given. To receive in gratitude the time we have to do our small part in singing God’s praise.

We are not the point. And our commitments shouldn’t make our livelihood or wellness the point. We are not the heroes of this life or the next. And because our lives are so quickly gone, we have a precious moment to sing out in praise to God with the unique voices that we are given.  Join in the chorus—lend yourselves to the melody—to a tune older than time. And maybe, your song will have more freedom and far less fear. Sing out the song of God’s creation.

* * * * *

¹ Julia Calderone, Something profound happens when astronauts see Earth from space for the first time. Tech Insider. <https://www.businessinsider.com/overview-effect-nasa-apollo8-perspective-awareness-space-2015-8> August 31, 2015

Everyone asks, “Why?” As children, we ask that one-word question in response to everything. We’re just discovering the world and it’s full of wondrous questions. As we age, experience deepens our why questions. Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why not me? What are your why questions about the hardest stuff we experience in life? Job knows this question well and companions us in our own wonderings of “Why?”

Opening: “18 Bullet Holes” (Waterdeep) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

Reader:

Preaching: Rev. Mark Briley

Offertory: “Beside Still Waters” (B. Hamblen) :: Dr. Barry Epperley, soloist; Susie Daugherty, pianist

Job 23:1-10

23 Then Job answered: ² “Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning. ³ Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! ⁴ I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. ⁵ I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. ⁶ Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. ⁷ There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. ⁸ “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; ⁹ on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. ¹⁰ But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.

The question is “Why?” The answer is… “I don’t know.”  Are you disappointed in me?  I admit to some disappointment in myself.  I thought that was what seminary was for. In my mind, it was called Answer School.  After all, if I was going to be a pastor of a church full of parishioners who had these questions about God and life and suffering … then I wanted to have the answers.  If I didn’t then what good would I be?  If you visit the doctor and she tells you, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” what do you do?  You go somewhere else. So, when faced with life’s biggest question – which is certainly the “Why?” question, I wanted to have the answer.  I wanted to turn to the answer key in the back of the book and say, “Of course. Got it. Here you go.  This is why your child has cancer.  This is why you lost your job after forty years.  This is why your husband stepped out on your marriage.  This is why the Holocaust went down. Boom. Another satisfied customer…?”  Do you know what I found?  Pat answers to life’s biggest tragedies and mysteries are not satisfying in the least. Life’s biggest “Why’s?” are weightier than that. I wonder “Why?” a lot.  Maybe you do too.  And I’ve started a little heavy today… if the Holocaust makes the first paragraph of the sermon, you know it’s serious.  But I do wonder why about more casual matters too.

I saw on the news this picture of a woman in a Chinese rail station.

“Why?” “What is she doing?” you ask?  She is riding through the security x-ray conveyor belt because she didn’t want to let go of her handbag. Why would she do that?  I don’t know but I’ve done some research and this is certainly not recommended.  A couple of days ago, the Doubletree Hotel close to the church was evacuated in the middle of the night due to smoke that had filled one floor of the building.  The radio DJ I was listening to that morning said there was a man who rushed out of the building to escape the smoke and was seen standing out front of the hotel in his underwear.  That’s understandable.  When you’re concerned for your life, you don’t always have time to get dressed or think about grabbing important things on your way out of the building.  But this guy did make sure he got out of the building with one item… so precious he didn’t even have to think about grabbing it in time of crisis. It was his automatic instinct. Not clothes, not his ID or necessary valuables; not even his wife and kids.  There he stood out front of the hotel, safely and in his underwear, arm around his… wait for it… golf clubs.  I ask “Why?” and some of you are thinking, “I totally understand,” and you’re ready to give him some kind of award.  I get that some of our “Why?” questions are not the same.  But the “Why, God?” question when it comes to suffering seems to be a question we all wonder about.

Stephen Fry, English comedian and actor known for his voice-over work in particular – reading all seven of the Harry Potter novels for audio books is a self-declared atheist.  He was once asked by an interviewer, “Suppose [all of this God business] is true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say?”  Fry responded: “Bone cancer in children; what’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault?” He then added a second question: “Why should I respect a God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?”  There was intense passion, if not pain, in his response.  That little segment of the interview was posted on YouTube and within days it was viewed over 5,000,000 times.  It’s now been viewed nearly 8,000,000 times.  The posted comments ranged from admiration to anger… some called him “spiritually blind.”  Fry later apologized for any offense but explained that he was merely saying things that many better thinkers than he had said over the centuries.[1]  And he’s right… and maybe more people have walked away from faith because the answers to such questions could not satisfy. “Why?” is the oldest question of all time.

Many date the book of Job as the earliest written book that we find in our Holy Scriptures.  And “Why?” is certainly the question of Job.  Whether you are Christian or Jewish or Muslim – all faiths who hold Job in high esteem and in their holy books – or you’ve never been much for religion of any kind, you’ve likely heard of Job. His story, while extreme in many ways, is every story any human has ever lived. It’s your story – maybe minus 14,000 sheep and some horrific tragedies but maybe not. You’ve been through some stuff.  Your life is not a stranger to suffering or tragedy or the unthinkable. Everybody is struggling with something.  Everybody is at some level unmanageable. I’m inspired every week when you show up again, not always put together, not always polished and shiny, but bruised, battered, bullied by life and yet here again wondering about grace and hope and resurrection.  Though it is not necessarily my place to say so, please allow me to say, “I’m proud of you.”  You all inspire me to get after it again and mine the mysteries of God for another week to see if we can’t find strength in each other’s persevering faith.  As we are in our fourth Sunday of wonderland, we’re turning to Job, another companion of faith who’s been through some stuff.

While we launch into the 23^rd chapter, let me give you a very brief recap of the story of Job to that point. God and Satan – literally the word for Adversary – have this debate about Job.  God says Job is an honest man with the utmost integrity – totally devoted to God; hates evil.  The kind of guy you want to be your kid’s teacher, your company’s CEO or and elder in your church. Satan snaps back, “Eh, he’s not so great – surely he’s not as good as you say.  Nobody’s motives are pure like that. He’ll crack when life gets tough.”  And so the story moves into this season when life does in fact get tough for Job… more than tough… downright horrific.  His farm, his sheep and camels and donkeys, his business – wiped out. He loses everything.  But he doesn’t curse God.  He’s still got his family. Until… Boom. Another tragedy – tornado wipes out his home taking all his kids in the destruction. His soul is distraught but… he doesn’t curse God. Then his health goes to pot. Oozing ulcers from head to toe. He scrapes the sores with a broken piece of pottery while sitting on the garbage can in what used to be his driveway, looking over the smoking ash pile of his former life.  His wife, equally suffering from such loss, suggests they just “Curse God and be done with it.”  Job won’t curse God but he certainly cries out cursing his circumstance: “Obliterate the day I was born. Blank out the night I was conceived! Let it be a black hole in space. May God above forget it ever happened. Erase it from the books! Rip the date off the calendar, delete it from the almanac!”[2] and he was just getting started.  Who could blame him?  I don’t. What’s worse, his friends then show up and say all of the cliché things that people say when they’re not going through what you are. They say the equivalents of “Everything happens for a reason,” and “God must have needed your children in heaven” (and, apparently, six thousand camels too).  Worse yet, they blame Job for what’s happened.  He caused it.  His sin surely resulted in such a punishment. And they start in with the “What you shoulda dones…”.

This happens more often than we’d like to admit. We find ourselves going through something – sick in the hospital, grieving the death of a friend, lost a job or a relationship, depressed or in a funk – people start showing up telling us exactly what is wrong with us and the remedy for fixing it.  Eugene Peterson says, “Sufferers attract fixers the way roadkill attracts vultures.”  And at first, we may be impressed that they bother with us at all and think, “Wow, they have an answer for everything.”  But how did they become such great experts on life?  They’ve got the spiritual diagnosis and prescription to boot.  It all sounds so hopeful but then we wonder why, after all their apparent compassion, we feel worse instead of better after they’ve said their piece to us?  Consider leaving the clichés and platitudes at home. Peterson also adds this: “Maybe instead of avoiding suffering, we should enter the suffering, participating insofar as we are able – entering the mystery and looking around for God. In other words,” he says, “we need to quit feeling sorry for people who suffer and instead look up to them, learn from them, and – if they will let us – join them in protest and prayer. Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.”  In this way, we don’t reduce life to a series of simple answers, we become an arm, locked at the elbow with another who is suffering, willing to hold them without any answers at all.  Author John Pavlovitz in his work, “A Bigger Table,” said it this way: “Imagine what it would look like… if we had no other agenda than walking alongside people sharing the view of God from where we stand, not needing them to see what we see, or believe what we believe, but to encounter Jesus in our very flesh.”[3]

Even losing his livelihood, his children, his health, and his friends, Job does not curse God but he’d sure like a reckoning with him.  This is where we encounter chapter 23 which is subtitled, “I’m completely in the Dark.”  You can say that again.  Been there?  The darkness can be so overwhelming. And Job goes looking for God in the dark. “I’ve driven all over this town,” he says – “East, west, north, south… nothing.”  Job believes if he could just get an audience with God, God would hear him out, understand his plight, and find him not-guilty of any wrongdoing thus restoring his life to the fullness he once believed it to be. He really just wants some answers.  And even when you read the whole book of Job, you’ll find that while God does eventually respond to Job, God never answers Job’s “Why?” question.

What do we do about the God who doesn’t answer?  Oh, that’s a big wonder, isn’t it? That’s the wonder that has led many to say forget about it. We come to faith thinking we’ll find a big electric blanket and instead we find a cross and a Savior who says, “I’ve picked up mine, won’t you join me by carrying yours?”  This is where our spiritual character is truly formed – much less so because of any achievement or even any of our conscious choices. Our spiritual character is formed most by what we endure and what is taken from us as painful as those experiences are. We don’t seek them out… we don’t pray for them to find us… we don’t seek pain unnecessarily… but the suffering of Christ gives meaning and purpose to our own sufferings as well.  I wonder if it is the task of the church to proclaim a word of grace that neither denies nor fixes the suffering of others but redeems it and offers it as hope to the world.  By these scars we are healed. That is hard to affirm and yet somehow has been my experience more and more in my life.

The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who was writing so much at the turn of the 20^th century said:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” [4] In some ways, this was true for Job.  While some pain will never go away, most of it lessens in time and what is left is what we have learned about ourselves, our family, our friends, and our God… in the process.

Job never gets the mystery fully uncovered.  In fact, God says to him at one point, “Where were you, Job, at the foundations of the earth?”  It was God’s way of saying, to paraphrase my friend Kevin Howe, “You’re on a need to know basis, Job, and some of this stuff you don’t need to know.”  Job says later in the book as he’s finding some new understanding about his life, “I admit it,” he says to God.  “I was the one babbling on about things far beyond me.  I made small talk about wonders way over my head.  You told me to listen and I didn’t listen.”  But… and here’s the key to the whole thing… “I admit,” he says, “that I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand.” What does this mean?  Job never got all of the answers to his “Why’s?” but what he did get was a relationship with God. And yes, there was the return to his life of children and livelihood which was awesome.  And… the return of animals – 1,000 donkeys, 6,000 camels, 14,000 sheep to be exact which, to me, sounds like a complete and total nightmare but Job was into it so good for him.  But what’s most?  Job’s newfound perspective. He was willing to trust God and live amid life’s questions and mysteries.  It was like a man that a pastor had been counseling over the years through lots of difficult circumstances.  There would often be some progress in dealing with the problems but then always a setback of some kind.  He just seemed overwhelmed by his life most of the time.  But one day, the man was different.  He had a smile on his face and a little bounce in his step and he said, “Pastor,” with this great sense of contentment, “I’ve been wanting to tell you some truly wonderful news.” “Please do,” the pastor said.  The man says, “I’ve just resigned as General Manager of the universe and it’s amazing how fast my resignation was accepted!”  Maybe we need to resign from similar positions ourselves.

Jesus doesn’t explain the why’s of suffering and pain and sickness and death.  Instead – he brings healing and hope. He doesn’t, as N.T. Wright says, “allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. Jesus allows evil to do its worst to him.  He exhausts it, drains its power and emerges with new life.”[5]  You can emerge from whatever pain you know right now.  I don’t know when or how or what that will look like exactly but I trust it.  I’ve seen it too often to say it can’t be done, transformed, repurposed in a beautiful way.

My family found our way to Chick-Fil-A one night.  Which night?  You can take your pick.  I’ll just say we’ve been there more than once.  We don’t typically end up at this particular location, however, as there is one closer to our house.  But there we were and the place looked nice – a different set-up than ours but that was cool.  What struck me was this big, long, tall table that did not look a thing like all the rest of the seats, tables and booths in the place. It truly stuck out. Could fit multiple families.  It was that big!  It was beautiful too. It seemed to go without question that our family would gather at that table with our little nugget meals and extra Chick-Fil-A sauce. We laughed and shared about our days and ate and enjoyed and communed and played “Would-you-rather” which is most always initiated by our youngest son, Hayes.  It was lovely. And I just kept thinking how much I loved that table – it just felt extra special to me.  When we got up to leave, I walked around the end of this huge table and discovered a small nameplate that had this inscription on it:

“This table was built by artisans from A Better Way Ministries. The materials used were salvaged from unwanted and abandoned homes.  The hands that built it belong to a person who also once felt unwanted and abandoned. Love, compassion and grace are powerful tools.”[6]  I’ll be darned.  The whole time we were there… I had no clue.  The redemption, the sturdy ability to hold even my weight, the beauty of suffering and rejection redeemed… right there; holding my food, my family, our laughter, our wonder, supporting my very being.  I don’t have all of the answers. “I don’t know” is often the best answer I’ve got.  But… I have no doubt – that was the Lord’s Table. And being at the Lord’s Table has held me together more than the certainty of any answer I’ve ever known.

Footnotes:

[1] Selby, Jenn. “Stephen Fry responds to Christian backlash after confronting God with ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?'” The Independent, February 6, 2015, independent.co.uk.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

[2] Scripture references used, like this one, come from Eugene Peterson’s The Message.  When Peterson is referenced, the source is the same from the Introduction to the Book of Job.

[3] A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community. John Pavlovitz. Westminster Press. 2017.

[4] Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet (reissued in Norton paperback, 2004).

[5] –N. T. Wright, Simply Good News (SPCK, 2015).

[6] www.abetterwayministries.com

Offertory: “What a Wonderful World” (G. Weiss) :: Kelly Ford, soloist; Susie Daugherty, pianist

Reader: Todd Maxwell

Preaching: Diana Booren

Offertory: “Hymns” (Arr. Maddux) :: Andi Gross, soloist; Susie Daugherty, pianist

Communion: “Rooftops” (Jesus Culture) :: The Rising Band; Andi Gross, soloist

Humans seem to be wired to seek out wonder.  Some travel to find it, some scuba dive, or mountain climb.  Some choose a career path that they hope will keep them on the edge of wonder, or some keep going back to the same places where they once felt some feeling of wonder.  We’re wired for it.  While the world is certainly full of wonders without our help, humans have made our own wonders as well for millennia.  It seems we like to push the limits of what can be created, understood, and experienced.   Most of us have heard about the 7 wonders of the world, but I’m guessing only a few of you could name many.  The classic seven wonders of the world, the official list from the 3^rd century, may not be what you expect.  They were all man-made and found mostly in and around the Mediterranean world.  The list included Colossus of Rhodes, Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (I’m sure we all got that one), Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.  The great pyramid is the only one still standing today, and only a few of these original 7 would likely still be considered wonders.  Our standard has perhaps changed a bit.  In fact, a Swiss company decided a few years ago that we needed a new list.  They set up an internet voting system and tens of millions of people voted on the new 7 Wonders of the World.  Many claim this was the largest international vote ever organized, but this decision about what are the most wonderful things was full of intrigue.  Organized by a little-known businessman and film-maker, the voting sparked vicious rivalries across the world and brought up old hurts.  The Vatican accused the organizers of ignoring Christian landmarks when selecting the choices, Jordan and Mexico launched national publicity campaigns to get citizens to vote for their country’s wonders, China took this opportunity to announce that they were still quite upset that the Great Wall had not been included on the original classic list, as it was around at that time.  Apparently they’d been holding that grudge for about 1700 years.  There were 21 original contenders for this new list that were narrowed down to the new seven wonders of the world…and since I know you’re now dying to know they are… The Great Wall of China. The Taj Mahal. Petra. The Colosseum. Christ the Redeemer.  Chichén Itzá and Machu Picchu.    And for nostalgia’s sake, they also made the great pyramids an honorary wonder.  Very thoughtful, I think; we don’t want any more centuries of hurt feelings.  So there you go, the seven, make that 8, wonders of the world.

These are all some of the most visited tourist attractions in the world.  There’s even an itinerary that allows you to visit all of them in 30 days.  Clearly there’s something about wonder, that draws us to it, if we let it.  Now, we can ignore it, of course, keep our heads down and go through life without much wonder at all.  But if we make space enough to let it in, we find that we yearn for wonder, mystery, things that take us beyond our normal existence.  Wonder invites us to the limit of what can be held or contained, or rationalized or explained.  It takes us to the edge of ourselves, of what we thought we knew opens up new horizons.  We’re made to seek out wonder, and we find that in those moments we often feel a little closer to God.  Afterall, God is the author of the wonders, even giving humans the potential to create our own.

As I first thought about the idea of wonder, I realized that I actually find myself starting questions with the phrase “I wonder…” quite a bit.  With a preschooler at home, I try make an effort to instill a sense of curiosity in her and often pose questions that encourage her to wonder, to predict what might happen or think about things in a new way.  But I’m not going to lie, it used to be easier.  There was a time not so long ago that it seemed nearly everything was a wonder to her.  I feel that slipping away, even as I work to hold onto it. I’m starting to have to bring my A game to show her something she finds truly fascinating, to get to that point where her eyes get wide.  I did succeed just a few weeks ago, though I just lucked into it.  I found a spot on the curb in our neighborhood that was literally crawling with roly polies.  There were hundreds of them.  I called her over and showed her and she exclaimed “Look at all the roly polies!  It’s a whole flock of them!”  Now, what is a group of roly polies if not a flock?  A herd?  A litter?  We heard last week that there are no mysteries, thanks to Google, but I challenge anyone to find out what the official term is for a large group of roly polies.

Why does it seem we lose the tendency to be filled with wonder as we age?  As though we’re born with an innate sense of wonder as we take in the world around us, and then it starts to fade.  Life gets busy, or hard, or who knows what.  Our ability to be caught up in wonder diminishes, only to be awakened for the really big moments, not the everyday ones.

There’s this concept in business and ministry that vision leaks.  When you cast a vision as a leader, you can imagine it as a bucket that is full to the top with this fresh, bubbling, life-giving vision and everybody’s feeling good.  And you might be tempted to think that once it’s out there everybody knows the vision, everybody’s on board and you’re ready to ride off into the sunset together with everyone knowing where we’re headed.  But the caution of this phrase, is that vision is something that has to be cast and recast again and again.  If it’s a bucket, it leaks.  The bucket has to be re-filled, otherwise, eventually, it disappears and we don’t see it anymore.  We slowly lose sight of it amidst our normal everyday tasks, the things that sneak up and steal our attention, the unexpected things that push themselves to the top of our to-do list without warning.  Before we know it, it just kind of vanished.

We can probably each think of instances when we’ve been overcome with a sense of wonder and you feel full to the brim of amazement…maybe gazing at some incredible vista, or a place that just makes you feel close to God, going on a retreat or mission trip or camp, or having some sort of mountaintop experience.  We can name these moments, but we can’t really recreate the sense we felt.  At the time it seemed that they would change everything, or at least change something.  They made you feel something different that shifted your framework, your perspective, and you were sure that things would not be the same after that.   Yet, often we find ourselves a few weeks after that moment, not all that different than we were before.  If vision leaks, wonder leaks too.  We easily lose sight of it.  Even if we visited all the wonders of the world, we couldn’t hold onto that feeling forever.  Think of the wonder of the world around us that God created.  It’s astounding.  Spiders weaving intricate webs, butterflies migrating across the globe.  We see these everyday wonders, but we don’t really see them.  What should be wonders become background.

Speaking of seeing things and not seeing things, scientists have recently discovered a new shape.  Now when my husband Scott told me this, he said, “I know what you’re thinking…it seemed like the shape thing would have been locked down a while ago.  Geometry is not exactly a cutting edge field at the moment.”  But no, the new shape has been named a Scutoid.  It’s been described as a column with one end loped off at an angle.   I’m sure you can picture it.  Luckily, we have an image.  Mathematicians had never conceived of this shape until recently.  But turns out, it’s everywhere.  Especially in living things.  It’s the shape cells take on as they bend.  Some go so far as to say that complex life on earth might have never emerged without this shape.  It’s in beetles, fruit flies, fish and all over humans.  And all this time, right in front of us, and we never saw it.

As much as wonder seems to leak, as much as we miss it, as quickly as we go back to business as usual after a wonder-filled moment, the tension is that we’re made to crave some sense of wonder.  We’re made to seek out things beyond ourselves, in the same sense that we’re made to seek out God.  Sure, we can ignore it, but when we give it a little opening, we’re drawn to those moments and places where we truly feel amazed.  And why wouldn’t we?  Jesus says, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”^[1]  Not just any life, but life filled with hope, possibility, joy, wonder.  And those instances of wonder, they bring us to the edge of ourselves, and draw us closer to the one who made all that is wonderful.  We’re made to seek out this abundant life that has been given to us.

In our scripture today Jesus invites the disciples to go up the mountain.  Up on this mountain the amazing happens.  The original “mountaintop experience” if you will.  Moses and Elijah appear, and Jesus’ face is changed and became dazzling white.  God speaks and it’s a whole big thing.

And then Peter, who always gets a bad rep, of course, pipes in.  But really, most of the time Peter says what we’re truly thinking, am I right?  We’re all like, oh Peter, come on…but seriously, what’s the answer to what he just asked.   And all Peter says is essentially, “hey Jesus, this is great!  Let’s stay here.”  I can imagine him thinking “Things are so clear here.  You know, these doubts I’ve been having about this whole following you thing, they’re gone up here.  And those problems facing us back down the mountain, those problems are nothing up here.  Let’s leave behind the long, dusty traveling from place to place, with nowhere to call home, let’s leave behind the press of the crowd day after day.   This is the kind of feeling I’ve been looking for, this is the kind of wonder-filled faith that I’ve hoped for.  How about we just stay and, you know, pitch some tents.”

When wonder finds us, sweeps us up in a moment where we recognize that we’re approaching something magnificent.  Those are the moments we want to bottle up and keep, the times we just want to stay and rest in what we’ve found, or what found us.  We want to be able to get right back to that feeling when things get difficult or boring or when we feel stuck.  But it’s hard to bottle wonder; wonder leaks.

Jesus doesn’t answer Peter.  Now, I feel like most people know that when one person in a group tosses out an idea, like hey, we should do this, and then no one says anything, the answer is no, we’re not gonna do that.  But I imagine Jesus hears Peter and kind of shakes his head, thinking of course we can’t stay.  Most of life isn’t going to be like this, boys, up here on the mountain, the bright lights and booming voices of God that drown out everything else vying for our attention.  No…we can’t stay and you guys are gonna have to learn how to live this life of faith at the bottom of the mountain–doubts, and dirty roads and all.  That’s where real life is more often than not.  In this life of discipleship there are more long journeys down dusty roads than there are mountaintops.

So what does that mean?  That we’re stuck living a mostly wonder-less life with a few special moments thrown in if you’re lucky, or in the right place at the right time?  And why did Jesus bring them up that mountain anyway?  I mean, it says at the end of the passage that afterwards they kept silent and told no one.  Did it even make a difference?

In that moment, the voice of God said, “this is my son, listen to him.” They can’t stay up there and God says they clearly have more to learn.   It’s interesting that this moment of the transfiguration wasn’t really the culmination of Jesus’ teaching or ministry.  It wasn’t the climax or the grand finale.  It was a moment, among many, kind of towards the middle, and then life as they know it goes on, at least for a while.

Still, the moment was certainly special, and Peter wants to pitch a tent and stay.  But he’s forgotten something; the voice saying “this is my son”   There’s already a tent.  “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”^[2]  The most literal translation of that Greek from the opening of John’s gospel is that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.  Among us, in our everyday mess and everyday wonder.  They don’t need to be on the mountain to have a life filled with wonder, because in Jesus, the wonder of God is walking right back down the mountain with them.  But it turns out that’s not an easy lesson for anyone to absorb; this idea there is as much wonder in the valleys as on the mountaintops.  Perhaps the reason for the reminder from God:  “listen to him.”

Jesus says, I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.  Not some imitation, but a magnificent, wonder-filled existence in relationship with the one who created you and all the wonders that might take your breath away.  Jesus spends a long time trying to help us see it, telling us about this wonder-kingdom, about this abundant life, how to see and live in the world the way God intended, this kingdom of God.  He talks about it nearly constantly.  But when we look for wonder, I think often we look for something different.  We’re looking for the transfiguration kind of moments to fill up our wonder-bucket, if you will.   But Jesus doesn’t point to mountaintops, vistas, flashy worship experiences, marvels of nature.  He talks about super everyday stuff: sheep, vineyards, money, weddings, families.  I think he talks about these things so much, because he knows our tendency to miss it, to look for a glimpse of the kingdom only on the mountaintops and to miss this wonder manifest all around us.

He points to so many things.  He says, look for it, this wonder-filled kingdom, when you see something like a seed, you know, something that starts off small, not that significant, but you’re just astounded by the way that it transforms and grows and bears fruit.  Look for it when you watch yeast that transforms simple things like flour and water into something as delicious as freshly baked bread.  Or when you have that feeling when you’ve lost something and you spend forever trying to find it and then finally, just when you’re about to give up, you find it and all is well.   Jesus points to those moments, saying focus on those, because that’s where you’ll see it.  That’s where you’ll find it.  Author Francis Spufford says, “this kingdom, Jesus seems to be saying, is something that can only be glimpsed in comparisons…yet the world glints and winks and shines everywhere with the possibility of it.”^[3]  Jesus never really mentions the transfiguration again, but he spends most of his ministry telling stories about the wonder of God and God’s kingdom, trying to help us grasp it, by talking about everyday life.  Not something that we have to travel the world to find, but the life right in front of us.  Wonder abounds, abundant life is all around. And perhaps this whole following Jesus thing, is learning how to see it.  Learning to see the glory of God, the gifts of God, the grace of God, this world of divine wonder that is right before us.  Because if we really saw the world that way and the people around us that way, it would change a lot of what we do, what we say, how we live.

The story today tells us that the disciples up on that mountain were weighed down by sleep.  Perhaps they were truly tired from a long journey, or perhaps they were not just honestly expecting anything especially wonderful to happen.  I mean, they do kind of seem to be surprised every time Jesus does something cool, don’t they?  You’d think the disciples would start to be ready for some amazing things to happen, waiting for it, after all, there had been a lot of miracles so far.  It’s kind of hard to believe that there are several mentions of the disciples being sleepy at critical moments in the gospels.  But maybe it’s not that hard to believe.  Would Jesus look at me and call me drowsy too?  Barely awake to all the grace and wonder that is right before me?  I’d like to think not always, but at times, absolutely.  You’d think we too would learn to look with eyes wide open just waiting for the next way for God to show up in little and big ways.  But too often, we don’t.  Doesn’t Jesus say something about that too?  “Having eyes, do you not see?”^[4] he asks in the gospels.  He quotes the Old Testament then asking that question of how we can manage to miss so very much.  “Having eyes, do you not see?”  What are those things that weigh us down?  What are the things that keep us from seeing?  Busyness?  Overcommitting?   Worry?  Perhaps the constant pull of technology in our pocket?  What are the things that make you unable to recognize the wonder and the gifts all around you each day?  Having eyes, what do we miss?  And how do we learn to see it?

Let’s come back to the scutoid for a minute.  Scientists have gone a long time without ever seeing or noticing this shape.  Microscopes have been around for hundreds of years.  They’ve looked at these cells for a long time, but never saw it.  It’s easy to walk through life drowsy, with eyes that don’t see.  Not expecting to find wonder except on the mountain top.  But this shape was actually discovered using computer models of cells in curved tissue.  They didn’t see the shape first; they predicted its existence.  So at first, it was totally theoretical.  And then, once they predicted that it might be there, they started seeing it everywhere.  It was almost hard to imagine how they could have missed it before.  Like when you’re thinking about a new car, and it seems like you’ve hardly ever seen it on the road, until you start thinking about it, and then all of a sudden you see 4 a day.   Sometimes it seems hard to find wonder going from one day to another, pick-ups, drop offs, laundry, meetings.  And maybe we won’t see it at first; our eyes might be out of practice.  But maybe the first step is to start expecting it.  To predict it. As we learn to seek the wonder of God all around us, perhaps the first step is a theoretical one, an experiment if you will, of training ourselves to expect to see it.  And once we start expecting to see it, we find that all of a sudden it’s everywhere.

That moment on the mountain served to wake up the disciples.  And we need moments like that sprinkled in to wake us up to the wonder all around us.  We need some mountaintops, some breathtaking vistas, some modern marvels of ingenuity. We need them to wake us up.  But we can’t rely on them. We can’t just bottle up the big faith moments and expect them to last through all the normal days.  Afterall, wonder leaks.  Instead, perhaps we need to train our minds and our hearts to expect this life to be full of wonder.  Start predicting it, trusting in the promise that abundant life is ours, here and now and see where it shows up.

For early Christians, following Jesus was called the Way.  Quakers simply call it “the Life.”   In that anything less than a life spent thankful for the wonder of God all around us is really no life at all.   The Life; earning to see it, to name it.  Noticing the wonder-filled moments when they happen in the middle of dishes and to-do lists.  Because the mountains and the oceans and the stars are certainly glorious, but so the relationships around us, sharing meals together, quiet summer nights, and discovering a flock of roly polies.

When those mountaintop moments find us, it’s a gift.  It’s a time that wakes us up and reminds us that wonder is out there, it’s here, right on this earth, right in front of us, right beside us, should we choose to see.  It reminds us of our life of faith as wonder-seekers–looking for and pointing out the wonder-ful, this God of wonders in our midst.  But those mountaintop moments are the few moments to stir us from drowsiness, and spur us back into actively looking for the wonders of God all around us.  The mountaintops are not the goal; they’re the call.  Calling us back to this Way, this Life, this learning to see that God has indeed pitched a tent right in the middle of our wonder-ful world.  Having eyes, can we learn to see it?

Footnotes:

^[1] John 10:10

^[2] John 1:14

^[3] Francis Spufford, Unapologetic

^[4] Mark 8:18

Opening: “Celebration” (Kool and the Gang) :: The Sunday Funday Band; Kelly Ford, soloist; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Greta Metzer, sax; Rod Clark, trombone

Opening Hymn: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” (arr. Paul Baloche) :: The Sunday Funday Band; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Greta Metzer, sax; Rod Clark, trombone

Anthem: “Goodbye World, Goodbye” (Arr Linn) :: Barry Epperley, Kevin Howe, Todd Maxwell & Kelly Ford, soloists; Sunday Funday Band; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Greta Metzer, sax; Rod Clark, trombone

Reader: Doc Shannon

Preaching: Rev. Mark Briley

Meditation Music: Greta Metzer, sax; Susie Daugherty, pianist

Hymn of Invitation: “Blessed Assurance (My King is Coming)” (Arr. Matthew West) :: The Sunday Funday Band; Isaac Herbert, soloist; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Greta Metzer, sax; Rod Clark, trombone

Prelude: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” (Arr. Kingsmore) :: The Sunday Funday Band; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Greta Metzer, sax; Rod Clark, trombone

Hebrews 10:19-25

¹⁹ Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Sunday Funday!  I’ve never been to one of these before. Have you? How fun is this?  I think Kool and the Gang and barbershop quartets should be a part of every worship service. We need Fundays in our lives, don’t we? “Life is hard.”  How many times have you heard that statement?  It seems to be readily on the lips of most everyone. Why? Because we have all experienced it to be true.  Life is hard and… we were never promised that it wouldn’t be. It may be for precisely this reason that we need moments set aside to simply remind us to celebrate the very things that help us traverse life’s challenges:  faith, friends and fellowship. We are all about that today and I’m loving it!  And here we are, just coming off the big 30^th Anniversary of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and you’re all pumped up (or a little scared even though you can’t stop watching). I thought to myself this week amid all this hype, how do you start a Sunday Funday sermon?  I decided I was just going to go for it.  Puppies. I couldn’t think of anything more fun than puppies so I’m just going to throw this picture up on the screen and see what happens.

And all the puppy lovers of God said, “Awwwww.” This is actually the newest member of my family.  Her name is Taylor Rose.

We didn’t wake up last Saturday thinking, “Let’s get a dog today!” but how often does any given day turn out like you expected it would?  But this day threw us such a curve ball that I was afraid Tommy John surgery might be required. [baseball joke; my apologies]. Anyway – we were hanging at Fort Gibson lake for the day with some of our dear friends.  My wife Carrie was floating out in the lake on an inflatable turtle while the kids were jumping off the dock into the water over and over and over again. Out of nowhere, this little Dorkie (dachshund/yorkie mix) comes swimming out into the lake and jumps up on Carrie’s inflatable turtle.  Kids thought it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to them and they all played together for quite a while until it was time for a little boat ride.  The kids took this little pup down the path a bit to some folks who were near their own dock to see if she belonged to them. One thing leads to another and my youngest son comes running as fast as he can back my direction.  I couldn’t tell if he was terrified or if it was the best moment of his life.  His cheeks were flapping in the wind like a dog with its head hanging out of a speeding car’s window.  He shouts, “Dad, dad!  The owner is looking for a good family to take the pup home! Dad! Dad!”  I could tell he was wondering, “Are we a good family?  Do we qualify?” He followed that statement up quickly with these huge hand gestures to accompany his next shout: “No money!  No money!  Totally free!”  A couple of trips to Pet Smart and the Vet this week have proven otherwise but…  All to say, my kids are now dog owners for the very first time in their lives and I’m now that guy that collects stool samples in plastic sacks to drop at the Vet’s office.

While we’ve learned many a life lesson this past week as a family, I’ve been a bit stuck on Hayes’ pondering, “Are we a good family?” and I’ve been amazed by the advice that comes out of the woodwork from other dog owners – which I’ve appreciated but also found somewhat overwhelming.  People have hugged me with excitement finding out we added a dog to the family. It sort of felt like the time I professed my faith in Jesus and was baptized. People were that excited! “Must love dogs” is no joke for some. But then it’s the list of – “What are you feeding her?  Is she spayed? Are you going to puppy training school?” You need to do this, go there, choose that vet… all sort of like we’re church shopping and people are telling me how to be disciplined in my faith.  This new kingdom of dog ownership has me thinking again about what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God – and what it means to be a good family of faith. Is our church a good faith family?

The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that the amazing part of this life is to remember what God has done for us in Jesus and then living our lives as a response to that gift. This writer, who scholars note is a bit of a mystery as to who deserves to have their name on the work, is driven to help the Church focus on the pure simplicity of Jesus. We are prone to supplement and embellish with what we call religion but in so doing we often dilute the purity, clutter the simplicity of the love and grace of Christ. In the process, we become fussily or even anxiously religious and that’s not what we’re after.[1] When we find ourselves in such a state, it’s good to pray through this letter to the Hebrews again.  This particular passage we’re looking at today is a call to persevere – to not let the many things that tend to drag us down get in the way of being the Church – celebrating God’s gift in Christ, worshipping together, and encouraging one another not to lose sight of the simple joy that holds us together as a good faith family. What’s that simple joy?  The Hebrew writer says Jesus has carved a new path forward for us – one not lost in religion but freed in relationship.

We had a “Be Here” event at the home of Roy Peters last Monday night. These Be Here gatherings are for folks newer to the church who are thinking about membership and interested in meeting other folks in a similar boat.  Twenty-five folks signed up to come and all twenty-five showed up – a miracle in and of itself. It was a beautiful night of vulnerable storytelling and honest questions about who we are as a church – sort of the “Are we a good faith family?” test.  I got a beautiful note from someone who was there that said quite poignantly, “It is so good for the soul to take time, slow down and listen to other people’s stories and life journeys.  Those experiences help keep us grounded and empathetic and more able to connect with God’s love and His work in our lives.”  Yes!  I thought.  It was raw and real and the kind of sharing that builds connection.

We all want to be liked and accepted for who we truly are but seldom, it seems, do we slow down enough to present our authentic selves to each other.  Andy Stanley has noted that there is often a gap between who we really are and who others think we are. That gap represents the amount of space in which we have to pretend to be something we are not. Wouldn’t you rather not pretend?  The Church was never intended to be a community of stained glass perfection. The Church is to be a place where burdens are shared, wounds are healed, and all are encouraged toward love and good deeds in Christ’s name. How can such be done if we aren’t open and vulnerable with one another? The Hebrew writer invites us to get real, be real, and love each other and the world into its full and beautiful potential. That’s what we’re trying to do as a good faith family.

“So let’s do it,” the text says in the Message version of this passage. “Let’s do it – full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going.  God always keeps his word.  Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on to love and good deeds.”  I love the line about not avoiding worship [as has been the habit of some] he adds. There’s something about being together that matters.  Shane Ash, Chaplain and author says it like this: “Church attendance matters… and not for the growth of the organization itself… but more importantly, for the formation of the people.  Why?  Church is participation.  It is our submission into the body of Christ. It is part of our salvation… transforming us from the idolatry of self into worshipers of God.  Church is formation.  It is an identity.  It is practice.  It is a dress rehearsal of how to be Christian.  As we partake in sacrament, we are accepting the grace of God.  As we sing praise, we are aligning our minds and bodies in worship.  As we listen to the Scripture being read aloud, we are practicing hearing God speak.  As we anoint and pray, we are practicing a faith beyond our own reason.  As we fellowship, we are practicing hospitality.  Church is participation.  And being a Christian requires practice.  It is a discipline not an experience.  It requires apprenticeship in order to be lived.  To be a Christian requires the body of Christ… the Church.”[2]  Another writer said this about the process of good faith: “I witnessed how words become thoughts, and thoughts become beliefs, and beliefs become passions, and passions become the music by which we live.”[3]  Where do we pick up these words that become beliefs and passions and ultimately a symphony?  The news? Our friends? At work?  In the neighborhood?  At church?

We have choice in this reality.  Our choice should center around what we ultimately value. We tend to make choices about what we want right now more often than what we ultimately value. Human nature perhaps.  Ultimately, I value good health but that peach cobbler is something I just want right now! Our wants are fleeting though, often without much substance. Giving into each and every want over holding to what we value most typically ends with regret. Jesus, easily argued as one who shaped the world we live in more than anyone else – and I’m not just saying for Christians, but just as a revolutionary, said when it comes to values – the top is love – love of God and love of everyone other person on the planet who happens to be made in God’s loving image.  You may say, “Well that’s soft.”  Then there was this guy, the Apostle Paul, he was a big deal, ladder climber in his field – walk over anybody in his way.  But he flipped the script on his life and said the same thing as Jesus (who’s only call was to “Follow me.”) and Paul did.  In 1 Corinthians 13 he comes to the same value statement.  “Nothing else matters,” Paul says. “It’s all stuff for the junkyard except faith, hope and love and,” he says, “the greatest of these is… love.”  And you may say, “Yeah but what about this rule and that doctrine and those practices.”  That’s normal.  The Hebrew church was saying that very thing.  But what does the writer say, “Jesus changed the game, shifted the focus, made the access to God a relationship, not a religion.”  And I look at Jesus and I look at Paul and I think, they shaped the entire world on that idea.  Am I really going to fight about some of the other details?  Not that they aren’t important, right, but let’s keep some perspective.

I’ve done enough funerals in my life, attended a few as well, and I suppose you have too.  I’ve never reached that moment with a person or their family where these values – faith and love – weren’t tops on their list of what comes out as most central and important.  Even the ones where life was a real struggle and there was lots of tripping here and there along the way, the desired value was faith and love – what one gave away, not what one owned.  If that’s the value, then how do we work toward it?  We hold that in front of us over all that we want now so that value is most fully lived and experienced.  We don’t neglect to come together to worship as can easily become a practice but we stick in it together.  Your faith strengthens mine. Your story deepens mine.  Your vulnerability helps me not only know you more but helps me desire to be known more fully as well.  This is Church. Come as you are – anything less is intellectually dangerous and psychologically harmful. Only when we’re accepted in that way can we also say, “Now what?”  “Who can I be now?” Not hiding in shame. Not feeling fake about who we are.  We want to be a part of something, but we need it to be real – not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation. We want to feel a genuine desire to say, “Because I’m a part of this loving family, accepted and embraced, I can place my sights on love and faith that will carry me to the end with what I value most.”

This must be in place if we are realistically going to spur one another on to love and good deeds. We can’t make people do anything.  A parent of a teenager said this very thing to his son when the son was complaining about doing something his dad asked of him.  Dad said, “I can’t make you do anything.” The son thought this was the greatest news ever and freedom to get out of the things he didn’t want to do.  The dad says, “Totally true. Nobody can make anyone do anything. We can, however, make people not do something – that’s called prison,” he says. The son got the point. The truth is, if we want influence, we have to demonstrate some good self-leadership skills.  Everyone wants some authority it seems; power, a chance to make people do what they demand but there’s nothing ultimately valued in authority. Yes, you have to listen to your boss or your teacher or whatever and there’s a place for respect in that regard.  But life change comes from influence and influence does not come attached to authority.  If you’re going to have influence, you have to show up, be consistent, lead yourself well (the hardest person you’ll ever have to lead by the way). You want to witness to your faith, to the value of love, then you’ve got to live that example.  And if you do and I do and we do, our influence will expand exponentially. That’s when we find ourselves getting inventive about encouraging love and helping out, spurring one another on to our greatest potential.  And when we’re in that zone as a church – we’re a good faith family, making a difference in the lives of others.  There’s nothing more fun than that.  Every Sunday we gather is a chance to be new all over again.

Each spring we hold a Pastor’s Class for fifth graders and older which culminates, if the student so chooses, in baptism.  We have a great experiential season of learning about Jesus, who he is, what he teaches… we serve together, talk about Church and why it matters.  At the last class, I have a brief one-on-one time with each student to hear them express where they are with things, answer questions they have, see if they feel they want to be baptized. Every student has a different approach to that time – some are super quiet, others have a ton to say; each one marvelously unique. One student, this past season, walked down the long hallway in our administration wing to take his turn in the swivel chair across from my own. The students, awaiting their turn with me, remain in the conference room working on their part of the service they will lead later that afternoon.  And… as is the case of any good endeavor, snacks are involved.  Most leave their snacks in that room but this student came through my office door totally silent, dead pan look on his face, carrying an opened bag of potato chips in his hand.  I invited him to sit down across from me and I started in with my usual appreciation for his involvement in the class and the gifts he brought to the group.  He sat speechless with the occasional push of his right hand into that bag of chips with the slow raise to his mouth of that greasy goodness followed by the slow crunch of said chip in his mouth.  I would ask some questions and was fortunate a few times to get a small, vocal utterance of acknowledgment of the question.  I love this young man. A fun, witty and brilliant mind but he didn’t have much to say in this particular moment.  I finally got to the question about baptism and asked him, “What does baptism mean to you?”  His blank stare met my own and I decided I’d see if I could wait out the silence.  He was contemplating the question.  His gaze moved beyond and around me, the steady rhythm of chip to mouth the only thing breaking the stillness of the space we shared.  He finally rested his eyes on my own and he says rather casually but clearly with deep and reverent thought about baptism: “For me, it means a whole new start.” I just sat in that truth for a moment.  We didn’t break the holy silence until his hand rattled again in that sacred chip bag to find another gift which as he partook, became as much as anything could be, the gift of holy communion.  I had nothing more to say.  And the privilege of stirring those waters of baptism with him among the most holy of my life.

Are we a good faith family?  A place where people looking for a good home for their souls might settle in and call us theirs?  I think so.  And it has everything to do with our willingness to show up, be vulnerable, ask questions, sing the faith, pray the prayers, serve one another and urge each other on to love and the deeds that are spurred on by that very love. The real us is a mystery still being worked out day after day. Don’t take the journey for granted. Sunday Funday is one thing. Showing up to God and each other’s lives every day – well, for me, that means a whole new start again and again.  And this life? Well… I guest you could say, “It’s all that… and a bag of chips.”

Footnotes:

[1] A description as noted by Eugene Peterson in the “Introduction to Hebrews” found in The Message.

[2] I am unsure of the source of Ash’s quote here.  I discovered this piece from a friend’s Face Book post some time ago.

[3] Offered by Tony Kriz in his work, “Neighbors and Wise Men.” Thomas Nelson Publishing. 2012.

Most Christians can rattle off the little phrase “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” It’s been on enough bumper stickers that we seem to claim it. And it’s comforting when it comes to the sin that has tripped us up. It’s the sin of others that tend to make us forget this little passage. It’s no wonder, then, that 85% of non-Christians believe the Christians they know are hypocritical. The other 15% were just being polite. It is clear – when it comes to living our faith, trip we will. The question is, will we keep others down when they trip or will we offer a hand as a fellow tripper ourselves?

Anthem: “Shine On Us” (M.W. Smith) :: Marla Patterson, Bet Wallace, and Kelly Ford, vocalists; Billie Kay Sawyer, pianist

Reader: Kaye Nofziger

Preaching: Kevin Howe

Offertory: “Take My Life” (Arr. Courtney) :: Bet Wallace, soloist; Billie Kay Sawyer, pianist

Communion: “From the Inside Out” (Hillsong) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

“All Christians are hypocrites.” At least that is what I was told over an iced coffee during my sophomore year at college. But perhaps my friend was not unique in his thinking; maybe you have also heard that same assertion in one form or another. And for those of you who have not heard such declarations and won’t buy into such sweeping claims, you would be in agreement with a recent Barna poll, which shows that the church’s PR crisis is really not that bad: only 85% of non-Christians believe the Christians they know are hypocritical.1 And the other 15%, you say? I suspect they were just being polite.

Now, though such claims and findings are not entirely unexpected, they still put a church-goer like me on the defensive. Having been raised in the church, I can attest that beyond a handful of curmudgeons, most sanctuaries are filled with good, kind, and well-intentioned folk that, for the most part, are trying to practice what they preach (until someone sits in their pew seat). But here’s the thing: surely some form of hypocrisy is to be expected, right? Our ability to live up to the aspirational virtues that we claim as people of faith is impossible without spiritual empowerment. And then there’s that whole sin thing. Whether or not you believe that sin is inherent, it is certainly inevitable, and before you or I even wake up to the err of our ways, we are intricately involved in oppressive and death-dealing schemes towards ourselves and others. It is clear that when it comes to walking this journey of faith, we will trip up more often than we want or care to admit.

George Whitefield was a famed English evangelist in the 1700’s, who brought in massive crowds to hear his preaching. His ministry is celebrated as paramount in sparking a great revival in his country. Yet, Whitefield was not without his critics and he frequently receiving hate mail of one form or another. At one point, after reading a letter of personal attack chose to write this simple reply: “I thank you heartily for your letter. As for what you and my other enemies are saying against me, I know worse things about myself than you will ever say about me. With Love in Christ, George Whitefield.

We are destined to miss the mark from time to time and we know that more than anyone else. But I’m not so sure that this is only reason that we Christians get the bad rap. And I wonder whether this charge of hypocrisy also has something to do with the posture we chose to take towards other sojourners on life’s roadways. What is our stance in relationship to those outside of our ways of living and being? It is, of course, a well-documented truth that it is far easier to see the flaws in another, while turning a blind eye to our own struggles.

There was a married couple that relocated to a quiet lot in a mature neighborhood. And as they were eating their first breakfast together in their new residence, the wife glanced through the kitchen window and saw the next door neighbor hanging her wash out to dry. “Whoa, you seeing that laundry?” she asked her husband. “Sure doesn’t look clean—looks like she could use a lesson in washing. Probably needs better soap.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

For several weeks thereafter, every time the wife looked out the window, she repeated her observations about the neighbor’s dirty laundry…until one day, the couple sat down again to eat breakfast and the wife was surprised to see such clean and spotless laundry on the clothesline next door. “Look! I see our neighbor finally figured out how to wash her clothes correctly,” the wife said. “I wonder what she decided to do differently?” The husband sipped his coffee, then replied, “Oh, I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

We are, of course, rarely in a position to critique our neighbor’s behavior, first and foremost, because we have not addressed the stuff in our own living. Jesus says “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? (Luke 6:41) “Clean your windows, people!” And while there is a time and place for healthy admonishment, unless someone has invited you to be loving accountability for them, surely a posture of judgement is a quickest way to a one-star review as a Christian (and rightfully so).

But there is yet another posture that should warrant the faithful’s attention. And we see it in today’s passage from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, where he expresses concern for those in his faith community who are placing themselves on a sort spiritual pedestal in relation to others. Based on what they understood to be the merit of their spiritual achievements or practices, they have chosen to take a self-righteous stance regarding their spiritual prowess.

To be honest, this #winning attitude towards faith does not sounds a whole lot different than what we see in our own culture or may have even fallen victim to, ourselves, at times. In a society such as ours that is so anxiously obsessed with achievement—both to get ahead economically and as a sadistic way of defining the worth of people—it’s no wonder that the to-do list brand of faith is so alluring, with a promise of spirituality that is easily quantitative and reproducible; another something to get right. But as trying to get it right becomes the fixation in faith, this sort of practice in correct thoughts and actions can quickly become no more than behavioral monitoring, where behavior watchdogs are quick to criticize other people for their external missteps and fear the repercussions of their own blunders. Imagine with me a moment: congregations full of people who conceal their feelings and true struggles because they fear they will be ostracized. Does that image make you wonder sometimes if the church hasn’t had a hand in developing a climate that undermines the healing work of the gospel—the kind of work that can only come with though being forthright about who we are, and trusting a community with the demons we wrestle?

In the case of the church in Rome to which Paul was writing, I envision many good and well-intentioned folks within the faith community who had become obsessed with getting their faith practices right, so much so that their anxiety regarding orthodoxy and spiritual achievement had led to a “holier than thou” stance toward others who did not ascribe to their ways of living the faith.

But we read that the apostle questions the trajectory of such faith. Paul says “What’s the good in boasting? Every last one of us has tripped up in one way or another and ultimately fallen short of what God desires for us. And so where does that leave your proud, insider claims? Well, you can take them and this spiritual achievement stuff (as if you could somehow manufacture your own salvation) and you can scrap it,2 because our God is not playing that kind of game.”

It’s worth pointing out that this passage was a defining text in the protestant reformers’ understanding of what has come to be known as the doctrine of justification. We heard the word variations of the word justification used several times in the scripture reading and it’s a term that is used in the judicial realm to mean “acquitting,” or “making right.” When applied to faith, justification is referring to God’s gracious forgiveness of sins. And what Paul lays out here in this text is that it was accomplished and manifested in Jesus Christ as God’s free, unconditional, and unmerited acceptance of us in spite of our sin and alienation from God, from others, and ourselves.3 In short, in faith, there’s nothing to be achieved that can merit God’s grace; nothing any of us can do to get it right. Here, God does not respond to what we do; we simply respond to what God does. And God does grace, through the faith of Christ, as a gift freely given.”

Grace. It is as paramount to the understanding of our faith as any talk of sin and yet I’m not convinced we ever quite get our minds wrapped around it. Then again, I suppose it is not something that is to be conceptualized but experienced and demonstrated.

Charles Spurgeon and Joseph Parker were both powerful voices from the pulpit in London during the latter half of the 19th century. Spurgeon ran an orphanage as well, and on one occasion, Parker had commented on the poor condition of children who had been admitted to that orphanage. But what was reported to Spurgeon, was that Parker had criticized the orphanage itself. Well, Spurgeon has access to a pulpit, and he blasted Parker the following—the attack was printed in the newspapers and became the talk of the city. Naturally, people flocked to Parker’s church the next Sunday to hear what his rebuttal would be. He said the following: “I understand Dr. Spurgeon is not in his pulpit today, and this is the Sunday they use to take an offering for the orphanage. I suggest we take a love offering here instead.”

The crowd responded with enthusiasm and it is said that the ushers had to empty the collection plates three times (something for us to aspire to, right?). Later that week there was a knock at Parker’s study. It was Rev. Spurgeon, and he began right in, “You know Parker, you have practiced grace on me. You have given me not what I deserved, you have given me what I needed.”4

Wonder with me for a moment about what our relationships and interactions look like when God’s grace is at the helm. What is it look like—and feel like—when we are absorbing and practicing grace on ourselves and others? / Father Richard Rohr claims that when grace finally seeps in “our surprise and false shock at human brokenness is stolen [from us—after all, we are all destined to trip up] …and we are beyond being scandalized [but instead] are steeped into a scandalous compassion…”5

Could it be that grace would exchange our judgments and criticisms of ourselves and others for compassion? Could it be that grace would oust our boastings and egocentricities for humility? Could it be that grace would change the way we process our our own hypocrisy? And for those outside of our faith, who have felt judged or belittled by the church, is it possible that grace is what we can demonstrate?

Christianity doesn’t make us smarter, or happier, or righter, or better, than anyone else. But our faith realigns us with God and allows the Divine to do the mysterious work of untangling our twisted lives, so that we might demonstrate the power of grace. And rest assured that this world needs that grace—that you need that grace—more than ever. So here’s to a “Good Faith effort,” where God has put for the effort and we need but respond, for “We are now justified by His Grace as a gift through Jesus Christ, effective by faith.” Friends, I pray that the greater truth of God’s grace will unsettle you. I pray that grace of God would seep into each of us—that it will scandalize and shock us right out of our egocentricity and move us into compassion for ourselves and for those fellow travelers on life’s way. Because all of us are walking on this common ground: we will trip and stumble on our journey, and before that time where we can see clearly and know fully, we must walk humbly.

FOOTNOTES:

1 What Millennials Want When They Visit Church (https://www.barna.com/research/what-millennials-want-when-they-visit-church/)

2 Romans 3:27-30, modified from The Message, Eugene Peterson.

3 Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 236.

4 With thanks to the Rev. Laurie Lewis for sharing this illustration.

5 Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation. pp. 26-27

Romans 3:21-30
21 But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

Neighbor. The very word conjures up some image for us. It may be the sweet widowed woman who lived next door during our childhood. It might be the term used when you run into someone while on vacation whom you discover is from your hometown. “Neighbor!” we say. But what about the grocery cashier – is she your neighbor? What about the roofer working on another home in your subdivision? Jesus is more interested in neighboring as an act, not a noun or title. He tells a famed parable we’ve come to call ‘The Good Samaritan’. Three people are on a life path that passes someone in need. Only one neighbors well. Turns out, it’s not the one anyone would have guessed.

God & Country: “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee & America the Beautiful” :: Kelly Ford, soloist; Joe Metzer, trumpet; Bekah Stoops, trumpet; Greta Metzer, saxophone; Doug Styers, trombone; Ceth Barnett, trombone

Reader: Deborah Gist

Preaching: Mark Briley

Special Music: “Hold Us Together” (Matt Maher) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

Offertory: “If My People” (J. Owens) :: Kelly Ford, soloist; Susie Monger Daugherty, organist; Billie Kay Sawyer, pianist

Luke 10:25-37

²⁵ Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷ He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

²⁹ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰ Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹ Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³² So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Lee Greenwood grew up on the chicken farm of his maternal grandparents just outside of Sacramento, California.  He sang solos in his church as a kid and tried to make it in music as an adult by dealing at Black Jack tables in Vegas by day and singing by night. He wrote the country pop song, God Bless the U.S.A., in response to his feelings about the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 – a flight from New York City headed to Seoul, South Korea on September 1, 1983.  Greenwood said, “I wanted to write [that song] my whole life. When I got to that point, we were doing 300 days a year on the road, and we were on our fourth or fifth album. I called my producer, and I said I have a need to do this. I’ve always wanted to write a song about America, and I said we just need to be more united [as a people].”[1]  He went on to say the song basically wrote itself, just flowing out of his pride in being American.  Strangely, more than any other occasion, I remember that song most clearly while roller skating at the rink just at the edge of the little town where I grew up.  The rink was owned by the County Coroner who firmly believed that the rock ‘n’ roll and popular music of the day, when played backwards on a record player, had subliminal satanic messages. He refused to play most every song. So – you could imagine the limits of the DJ’s repertoire.  But “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” blared loudly from the rink’s tinny and less-than-ideal sound system. Other than the announcement that the once-a-night Couple’s Skate would take place during the next song – which made me more nervous than anything on skate night (should I ask someone to skate with me?  Will she ask me to skate with her?  Will we hold hands?  Will my hands be sweaty?) And… placing my quarter on the foosball table indicating that I had next game rights, it was a memory of that song, skating shoulders up through the spinning red, white, and blue lights listening to Lee Greenwood sing, “And I gladly stand up… [dun, na, na] next to you and defend her still today.  There ain’t no doubt, I love this land.  God bless the USA.”

I am a proud American. I am thankful to be an American citizen.  I am grateful to the many who have defended our country and created a space for me to grow up, pursue my dreams, and hold the beliefs of my own conviction.  We have gotten some important things right as a country over time.  And, like any group or system will, we’ve gotten some things wrong too. High ideals are often hard to uphold.  George Washington, in his farewell address following his second term of office as our first President, published his address in newspapers instead of addressing the legislative body or even a large crowd of people. He wanted the word to go directly to the people and so it did on September 19^th, 1796. Of the 6,000 words shared in his address, three of his most primary concerns?  Hyper partisanship, foreign wars, and excessive debt.[2]  Fascinating. Some things are a continuous struggle. It is right for us to be proud of our citizenship in this nation even as we must not become so comfortable in it that we forget God’s kingdom calls us to an even higher allegiance. Scripture reminds us that we are foreigners on the earth (Hebrews 11:13).  Even our founders end the Declaration of Independence with the words, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”  A firm reliance on the Divine and a mutual care for one another.  “And to the republic,” we pledge, “for which [our flag] stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is, in part, the struggle to which we don’t always rise to the occasion. My 7^th grade Social Studies teacher would also stand with hand over heart at school assemblies but finish the pledge by saying, “With liberty, and justice, for some people.”

We have, in some measure, come to imagine that the Fourth of July is all about allowing every American to stand alone, as a rugged individual – forgetting that Independence Day is about the independence of a nation, not a bunch of people looking after their own interests.  But what about our neighbors?  What about the stranger?  What about the other-siders who just make our lives so frustrating and difficult? This is not a unique issue we share in America, this is a human issue that is as old as time itself.  And Jesus, as Jesus always does, calls us to something higher – even when it’s difficult, time consuming and uncomfortable.

Our story of focus today, The Good Samaritan, is a familiar one to many who have grown up around Christianity.  Even many outside of the faith have heard of the Good Samaritan. Institutions in our country have put the name Samaritan on their buildings – hospitals in particular – including that same little town that raised me and taught me how to roller skate.  Macon, Missouri, middle of nowhere middle America or middle of anywhere, Planet Earth, names its hospital after this Samaritan Jesus speaks about parabolically 2,000 years ago.  The implication?  This story matters.  Its influence reaches far beyond national borders and across centuries. And… it has something to do with our responsibility for one another; even our dependence on each other.

The story is a good one.  You heard it again in its entirety this morning. An expert of the law approaches Jesus and says, “Teacher – what is my personal task to ensure my own salvation.” Jesus knows this guy is sharp.  He’s smart.  Probably graduated with honors from an ivy league law school. Jesus looks at the man’s wrist to confirm his assumption.  The lawyer is a strict orthodox Jew well versed in the law.  He was wearing a phylactery which is a little leather box worn around the wrist that held in it certain passages of scripture.[3]  Deuteronomy 6:4 for sure among them: “You will love the Lord your God.”  To that the scribes added Leviticus 19:18 which includes the bidding for one to love his neighbor as himself.  Jesus says, “You know the law.  It’s right there on your wrist. How do you interpret it?”  The lawyer rattles off both of those texts: “Love God with everything and love my neighbor as myself.”  “Ding, ding, ding!” Jesus says. “Do that and you’ll live.”  But that wasn’t enough for the lawyer.  You don’t rest your case that easily.  He comes back at Jesus with, “But just how would you define neighbor.”  The crowd ooo’d and ahhhh’d; the man a bit proud that he’s not blindly accepted the comeback of Jesus.

Jesus starts right in with this story – the one that we would later name Hospitals and organizations after. A guy was on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  This was a notoriously dangerous road.  The kind everyone knew to avoid when possible, especially at night, and never traveling by yourself.  Always reminds me of Anne Lamott saying, “My mind is like a bad neighborhood.  You never want to go in there by yourself.”  The elevation dropped by 3,600 feet in less than twenty miles. It was narrow, rocky, and had many twists and turns which made it a popular place for thieves to lure. The road was historically nicknamed, “The Red Way” or “The Bloody Way.”  So, this guy gets himself into his own mess by traveling a known road of trouble alone.  He’s attacked, stripped of his possessions and his dignity, beaten and abandoned.  This only sets the stage for the point of the story.  The lawyer, standing out there in the heat, was probably regretting his follow-up question.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.  Is there a point to this story?”

Jesus continues. “Luckily, a priest was coming down the road and notices the accosted man.”  The crowd imagines that the priest is going to stop and help.  “But,” Jesus says, “The Priest pretended to be on an important phone call and crossed over to the other side of the road and kept going.”  The priest knows the law – you touch a dead man and you’re ritually unclean for a week.  Maybe some other week he’d consider helping – but not this week.  He had important meetings, a wedding to officiate, and a Home Owner’s Association meeting to attend where he was to give a talk about the new ‘No Soliciting’ signs they were hoping to put at the entrance of the neighborhood.  The crowd stirs a bit.  “But,” Jesus continues, “not to worry.  A Levite also was coming by on his moped – 70 miles per gallon on that beast – can you imagine?”  That is pretty good, the crowd nodded. “The Levite also saw the injured man but the season premiere of Big Brother was coming on in just an hour and he forget to set his DVR.  Not to mention he had heard on the news of late that bandits were in the habit of using decoys in this sort of situation.  One would pretend to be hurt, you stop to help, and the others jump you. So no help from the Levite either.”

This story is getting way too long.  Can we wrap it up, Jesus?  Enter the Samaritan.  Well, shoot.  We know this can’t be the end of the story because he brought up this no-good Samaritan.  [Please feel free to substitute your own label for Samaritan:  no good ___________ (democrat, republican, Muslim, Rocky Mountain high, new age lovin’ hipster, habitual stop sign offender)].  You get the idea.  Jesus thinks of the person in the moment that the lawyer, and perhaps the crowd, would most quickly despise and see as a worthless, class-A jerk.  I know you can picture someone.  And what does Jesus do with that Samaritan?  By golly, he makes him the hero of the story.  And don’t forget, just one single chapter before in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is rejected by the people of a Samaritan village.  And still… Jesus, undeterred by a handful who rejected him, he places the villainized Samaritan as the hero of the story.  Unbelievable.  Some of the crowd surely already stormed off in disgust or held up a quick make shift protest sign, “Samaritans are Losers!” I don’t know. Probably something more creative than that.  And as Jesus most always does, he lays out the scenario and then asks you to make the judgment.  “Which of the three,” he says to the lawyer, “The priest, the Levite or the Samaritan, became the injured man’s neighbor?”

I’m sure the lawyer sorted through his mind quickly trying to come up with some reason why the answer could be A or B… but that darn Samaritan. That Samaritan carried the guy to safety, got him a burger from the newly branded iHOB, left his credit card with the clerk at the Holiday Inn Express saying, “Bill me for any room service the man needs.”  The lawyer may have texted his professor real quick or polled the audience so that he wasn’t alone in this foolish moment. Ultimately, he looks at Jesus and though he can’t even say the word, ‘Samaritan,’ he utters, “The one who treated him kindly.”  And if Jesus was holding a microphone, before dropping it then and there, he says, “Go and do likewise.”  Yeah, boy!  That’s such a sweet burn until you realize, “Oh, what does that mean for me?” I have to love my neighbor in that way too?  But wait.  And that question becomes our own.  “But who is my neighbor, Jesus?”  “I mean, I love the Samaritans!” we say.  After all, the only Samaritans I know are, well, this one good one in this story that my hometown named our hospital after.  But it’s not the Samaritan in Jesus’ version of the story for me.  It’s not the Samaritan in the version of Jesus’ story for you.  And we are not shortchanged these days to find people who might fall into the Samaritan category for us.  Friends – this political divide isn’t going to get better on its own.  The tensions are only going to escalate. And my hope, is that we, as Christians aligned with the highest calling of faith, will rise above the fray and set the tone for Samaritan-like servitude of neighbor.  It may be the only way our country will survive the hatred.  George Washington seemed to warn that hyper partisanship would lead to our downfall.

Many remember the assassination attempt made on the life of Ronald Reagan.  He survived the shooting but needed surgery.  As he was being wheeled into the operating room, he says to the surgeon who was walking alongside of the President’s gurney: “Doc, I hope you’re a republican.”  And this doctor, a well-known, liberal democrat said, “Mr. President, today we are all republicans.”  While still in recovery, the President not doing as well as the public was made to believe, he was visited in his hospital room by one of his greatest political adversaries, Tip O’Neill, democratic speaker of the house. O’Neill got on his knees, took the President’s hands, offered a prayer and then together they recited the 23^rd Psalm: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me.”  Reagan whispered, “Thanks for coming, Tip. It’s good to see you.”  O’Neill leaned in, kissed the President on the forehead and said, “I’ll let you rest.”

The Samaritan story and any story that rises above party lines are memorable for us – and we name hospitals and ministries after those people and those stories because there seems to be a citizenship of humanity, guided by the Divine, that values dignity, kindness, and care above difference or nationality. Those moments are what make me proud, not only to be American, but to be part of the human race.  And it shouldn’t take tragedy for us to practice loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Loving God with everything we are – the greatest commandment – demands that we follow the second that Jesus says is just as important – neighboring well.  Neighbor is to become less of a noun and more of a verb.  To neighbor. To Samaritan-up no matter what.  I heard this week that even at a showing of Mr. Roger’s “Won’t you be my neighbor” documentary, a politician was spit upon for basically showing up to theater.  “Which one do you think neighbored well?” Jesus asks.

You know, our culture seems to have a thing for worn and tethered American flags.  In May of last year, a 13-star American flag used in James Buchanan’s 1856 presidential candidacy run set an auction record when it sold to a Pennsylvania antique business for $275,000.[4]  Many historical flags often sell for more than twenty grand, particularly if they have fewer stars than the current version or are from before 1912 when the federal government standardized the design. When it comes to putting a value on old Old Glories, it’s better if the flag is showing its age, its usage, its ability to have survived the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air – a flag that was still there through the worst of times. It is to be a symbol of who we are at our best. I hope you celebrate well this week and share gratefully in a celebration of what it means to be a proud American neighbor.

But I also will remind you of another symbol that has also survived blood stains and sacrifice for the sake of freedom, liberty, equality, and Divine dependence; a symbol that we hang in this space as a reminder of our calling to carry its Way to our neighbors, no matter who are neighbors may be in any given moment; the cross of Christ, carrying love for you, for me, for the grocery store cashier, the roofer working on another home in your subdivision, a person who didn’t mark the same boxes you did at the polling site this past Tuesday.  When you’re standing before those people, remember, you’re staring into the face of Christ. And if you listen closely enough, you may hear him ask you, “Have you neighbored well?” Our response hinges not on the symbol we may point to itself but in our living into the kingdom for which it stands.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_the_U.S.A.

[2] The piece on Washington and later Reagan were gleaned from Rev. Dr. Glen Miles work for a message entitled, “Let Freedom Ring.”  Miles is the Senior Pastor at First Community Church in Columbus, Ohio. https://fcchurch.com/.  More about Washington’s address can be discovered at https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washingtons-farewell-address/, among other places.

[3] Exegetical support for this message found in William Barclay’s commentary, “The Gospel According to Luke.” Westminster Press. 1975.

[4] This motif about the American Flag was found in “The Republic for Which it Stands,” attributed to Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer of Homiletics Online and Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.

Many have said that a parent is only as content as their least contented child. Something in that sentiment reminds us that we are intertwined, one to another. On this Father’s Day, we celebrate the father figures in our lives and the call for us all to reach to the one who suffers, who is oppressed, who is left out and least contented, bringing them back to the family table. Only then, only together, are we sufficiently strong. Only then can our heart find God’s true contentment.

Opening: “Your Grace is Enough” (Matt Maher) :: The Rising Band; Kelly Ford, guest leader; Baron Ryan, guest pianist

Reader: Sally Kelley

Preaching: Mark Briley

Anthem: “Your Name” (Paul Baloche) :: The Rising Band; Kelly Ford, guest leader; Baron Ryan, guest pianist

Offertory: “Goodbye World, Goodbye” (arr. Linn) :: Barry Epperley, Kevin Howe, Todd Maxwell, & Kelly Ford

Mark 7:24-30

²⁴ From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵ but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸ But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Woolaroc is this throwback, magical kind of place grounded in Okie soil about an hour north of here.[1] It was land claimed by Frank Phillips, an oilman and financial tycoon.  He had an office in New York and this respite ground

Frank Phillips

near Bartlesville where he could escape the suit and enjoy the thrills of the Wild West.  The land touted great woods, lakes and rocks and so those three elements were thrown together to name the place, Woolaroc [Woods, lakes, rocks].  It’s worth a little drive north if you have some time some day.  Before Phillips made his millions, he was a barber in Creston, Iowa. My mom’s family farm is still just a few miles outside of Creston. I can almost bet the farm that my great-grandpa Birt got his haircut by Frank Phillips. Phillips was destined to succeed.  He said, “Barbering was a good trade for a young chap who wanted to see the country.  I put my tools in my pocket and wandered all over the West – Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. I finally came back to Creston, Iowa and bought out a shop, then all the shops in town. I became a Monopolist.”  He married into a banking family and his career skyrocketed from there, all before establishing this haven in northeastern Oklahoma.  In the late 1920’s, Phillips launched an annual reunion at Woolaroc called “Cow Thieves and Outlaws.”  Everyone was invited.  Everyone.  Cowboys, Indians, law enforcement, outlaws, everyone.  Prominent bankers, politicians and industrialists rubbed shoulders with real cowboys and a few desperadoes as well.  Phillips would invite his business associates from out east to come soak in the beauty and excitement of this culture totally foreign to their own. They would barbeque all day and celebrate the diversity of humanity. A freeze was put on any criminal warrants during the reunion. The legend grew that any outlaw who was still wanted by the law was to be given a 24-hour head start at the end of the festivities. One of the famous pictures of the event includes one particular outlaw and one particular officer of the law.  That very outlaw had been on the run from that very officer for the last three months.  Here they were in the same picture, enjoying the reunion.  But after the 24-hour freeze for the reunion and the outlaw’s traditional head start when the reunion finished, the chase resumed.

I was totally fascinated and amused by this idea that anyone would agree to suspend their differences and battles for a day to simply be humans at peace, even humans on one single team enjoying each other’s company. Can you imagine?  I wondered how that must feel.  I wondered if we might be able to give it a try… even this morning – suspending our disputes, disagreements, opposing views or beliefs, football college allegiances – to simply be human together for an hour. We’re at the mid-point of our Love (An)other sermon series where we’re trying to take seriously the demands of Jesus that we must love one another as he loved us. There are some days, my friends; some days where this struggle of Love, for Love… is tough.  But if we’re not willing to do it, nobody else will… and Jesus seems pretty clear about the prominence of the practice when it comes to the kingdom of God.  So my friends, consider this day a suspension of all conflicts, a reunion of cowboys and outlaws, sinners and saints, privileged and oppressed… a simple call to be humans walking together.

We crack open Mark’s gospel again today, as we did last week, to catch a glimpse of how this might work.[2]  It’s a crazy text.  I’ll just say that from the onset. Jesus has gotten the heck out of Dodge for a moment.  His public ministry was taxing and tiring and so he bolted out of the thick of all of that to the vicinity of Tyre, a Gentile territory.  He popped into a house there where he didn’t think anyone could find and bother him but before he could even set down his overnight bag, a woman had followed him in the house asking for him to do his healing thing for her daughter who was sick.  “Get in line, lady!” Jesus snaps back.  “The kids eat first and if there’s anything left, then, and only then, the dogs eat.”  Did Jesus just call the woman a dog?  Uh, yeah, he did. And every commentary you read offers some explanation, most of whom try to give Jesus an out on this one.  Some have said, “The Greek word for dog that Jesus uses means puppies so really he was just being playful with her.” Others say, “He was just testing her resolve to see if she’d back away or if her faith would persist.”  But could it be that Jesus was just caught in a human moment? I mean, he’s preached out, prayed out, and peopled out.  Could he just have snapped at her because he was tired and reacted out of his exhaustion?  I know he’s God made flesh but he’s also taken on the human experience.  If he was fully God, yet also fully human, his fully human-side has to come out sometimes.  I mean, do you think he could ring the horseshoe stake every time?  If you never had a chance to beat him at a game of horse, eventually nobody would ever play with him; and that’s no human experience to write home about. When he missed hitting the nail in the carpentry shop and smashed his thumb instead, do you think he shook it off or do you have grace enough, even for Jesus that he might have spouted out a word he once heard while riding in the back of the school bus as a kid?  He was burned out and burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.  I don’t personally feel the need to manipulate his words to try to make him look good when the words seem, well, unChristlike.  I leave room enough that Jesus maybe didn’t say the most compassionate thing here.

Who among us has never reacted in the best way to someone needing you for something; especially when you’re exhausted?  You’re trying to work from home and your kids are tapping your shoulder every two minutes, “Dad, I’m hungry.  Dad, can you get me a new battery?  Dad, I got the homemade slime stuck in my brother’s hair again [Slime after slime].”  Constant, constant, constant.  And maybe you’ve responded well the first four thousand times but you’re not getting anything done and you’re getting frustrated and finally that next shoulder tap comes and you say without even looking at them: “Are you kidding me!  No!  Figure it out yourself!  Give me a break!” But then you turn around and there is your child, a Hersey’s kiss in one hand, a handmade colored picture in the other – arms extended as a love offering to you.  “Dad, I just wanted you to know I love you.”  Oh, for the love.  Humans.  I’m a human, raised by humans.  And dads, our children need us to apologize to them when we’ve not done our best. As Richard Rohr notes, “Only mutual apology, healing, and forgiveness offer a sustainable future for humanity.  Otherwise, we are controlled by the past, individually and corporately.”  Don’t be too proud to apologize.  Don’t be too stubborn that when you get it wrong, you can’t turn around and make it right.

By the ordinary standards of the day, the Jewish Jesus should ignore this woman completely.  She’s a Gentile and Taylor Swift’s song, “Bad Blood” immediately begins playing whenever Jews and Gentiles were about to have an interaction.  It was considered improper on her part to approach a man to whom she was not related.  Jesus is tired and he’s got a vision for the direction of the ministry and in this moment, for whatever reason, he’s not ready to walk forward with her so he calls her a dog.  Dogs were not coveted, cute, Yorkies that were considered full members of the family. Dogs were scavengers, unclean, expendable. But the woman responds quickly and with sharp wit to turn his own phrase on him: “Sir, even the dogs get the crumbs that the kids sweep from the table.”  “Throw me a bone, Jesus, I’m just a broken mom whose daughter is sick.” And Jesus must have come to himself in that moment.  “You’re absolutely right,” Jesus implies.  In Matthew’s version, he says to her, “What great faith!”  And he surely thought back to what he just experienced before skipping town.  He had just come down the mountainside where he had fed 5,000 men plus women and children – he fed them all and was now momentarily withholding from a single person who is just as hungry to be seen and fed as the crowds he just served.  “Our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing.” (Bryan Stevenson).  When we can share our vulnerabilities and shortcomings with each other, we build our capacity for compassion.  And in this moment, Jesus realizes, “She’s right. We’re all in this together.”  And so he honors her even as he’s gleaned something important from this encounter. In so doing, everyone gets better.  Everyone finds healing. They walk together.

We all need these experiences to grow and learn. Sometimes we have to suspend our biases or anger or privilege long enough to learn from the Other. Humans need concrete and personal experiences to learn the ways of love.  As much as we’d like, we don’t learn to love through abstract philosophy or theology.  I can say it from this pulpit all day long but until I’m face to face with the Other, someone like the Syrophoenician woman, I’m never going to make love real to anyone, myself included… it’s just lifeless theory. This is why Jesus came to show God in human form – to reveal a face we could recognize and relate to.  If we really see someone in the fullness of their being, as one created in the image of God, we cannot help but treat them with kindness and compassion. And Jesus sees her, comes to himself, and says, “Yes. I see you.  I’ll be part of your healing.”  That’s so hard to do.  It’s easier for us to keep to ourselves.  We’ve got plenty of our own problems, right? And it doesn’t take a whole lot of life to be tossed in our face before our idealism fades and bitterness prevails (which just gives way to our inclination to be judgmental, pointing fingers and calling any news piece that causes us to have even a brief moment of reflection on whether or not our worldview can accommodate the information being presented, 100%, fake news).  Has your commitment to such an ideal faded?  I saw someone present this reality in a simple scenario.  She said, “In my 20’s I often said, “I will strive for goodness and peace in this troubled world.” High ideals.  Then she said, “In my 40’s I mostly say, “Every single chair is terrible.” And her back always hurts.  We lose heart which is quickly followed by the loss of will to attempt helping build the kingdom life at all. And so we point fingers, cast blame, and reject the Other.  But when all we’re willing to offer are excuses, God keeps offering a Eucharist.

Reflect with me very personally for just a moment.  I won’t ask you to raise a hand or answer out loud or anything like that.  I only ask that you be completely honest with yourself. How are you living right now?  Are you ‘living’ more excuses or eucharist right now?  Do you find more reason to keep those different from you at arm’s length than you do to extend the eucharist to them?  A friend told me after worship last week something she had heard a pastor say forty years ago that has remained as clear to her as anything else. The pastor said, “You have never locked eyes with someone who does not matter to God.”  Jesus locks eyes with this woman… and in so doing… he sees to her heart as God always sees.  A human, made in God’s image, beautiful and uniquely gifted, longing for connection, hoping someone might be willing to walk with her through the pain.

Don’t you want to be seen this way too?  I don’t think it’s a foreign request or experience.  I just want to be seen… not as a label… not by my clothing or my job title, or my marital status or my sins or my virtues – just seen and loved as a valuable soul.  Author, professor, pastor, fellow-human, Barbara Brown Taylor, wrote a book called Leaving Church, in part a description of her journey leaving the church as a pastor and becoming a parishioner herself. She was at a pool party hosted by a member of the church of which she was the pastor.  She felt the ache of being apart from the people there in ways she could not bear. She was the pastor; not a human, not a friend, not simply Barbara. She tells of sitting down with a couple in adjacent rocking chairs, an experience she was never able to enjoy because her [ministerial] priority was always to be with people who were in crisis.  She tells about laughing with them with corn stuck in her teeth. And then she writes this: “After my supper had settled I wandered down to the pool, where I watched swimming children splitting beams of underwater light with their bodies.  I had baptized many of them, and I loved seeing them all shrieking and paddling around together in one big pool. Suddenly to my right there was a deeper yell, the sound of scrambling feet on cement, and then a large plop as a fully clothed adult landed in the water. 

I stood back and watched the mayhem that ensued.  All around me, people were grabbing people and wrestling them toward the water.  The dark night air was full of pool spray and laughter.  The kids were going crazy.  Several people hunting for potential victims turned toward me, their faces lit with smiles.  When they saw who I was they turned away again so that I felt sad instead of glad. Whatever changes were occurring inside of me, I still looked waterproof to them.  Like the sick man in John’s gospel, who lay by the pool of Beth-zatha for thirty-eight years because he had no one to put him in when the water stirred up, I watched others plunging in ahead of me.  Then two strong hands grabbed my upper arms from behind, and before I knew it I was in the water, fully immersed and swimming in light.

I never found out who my savior was, but when I broke the surface [of the water], I looked around at all of those shining people with makeup running down their cheeks, with hair plastered to their heads, and I was so happy to be one of them.  If being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore.  I wanted to be human. I wanted to spit food and let snot run down my chin. I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that [I looked so undignified; so un-ministerial] in my wet clothes.  Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way.  The long wait had come to an end.  I was in the water at last.”[3]  That’s Baptism. She was human.

While it may have taken a second look, Jesus sees the Syrophoenician woman, human to human. To me, that’s why Mark and Matthew tell this story.  Not to tell another healing story, which is worthy of celebrating of course.  But this story is about his second take, his locking eyes with someone whom the culture said he didn’t have to give the time of day but whom God loved as much as anyone possibly could.   Who do you need to give a second look?  Maybe it’s your child whom you’ve written off as lost.  Maybe it’s your spouse or your co-worker or your neighbor or your friend who doesn’t vote for the right people.  I think of Julia Roberts character in the movie Notting Hill – an uber famous actress who meets an everyday, average Joe, falls in love with him and yet he has great difficulty seeing beyond her fame and the lime light.  She stands before the man she loves, played by Hugh Grant, and says with utter vulnerability, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”  This is the theme of so many biblical characters and, I’m guessing, it is played out in your life in some way on a daily basis. Young or old, male or female, and every other possible descriptive qualifier – wondering if someone will see you as human; as a partner, born in this time just as you, created to walk together and bring healing to the world.

This will require some effort, some discomfort, some suspension of our quest to differentiate.  Maybe it would help for you to wake up each day approaching the next 24-hours as a reunion of Cow Thieves and Outlaws – your very life a walking reunion where no matter where you go, everyone is welcome. Everyone is fed. Everyone walks together.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] www.woolaroc.org

[2] Exegetical commentary influencing this sermon found in William Barclay’s “The Gospel According to Mark”.  Westminster Press. 1975. And “Mark for Everyone” by Tom Wright. The University Press. Cambridge.  2002.

[3] Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. Barbara Brown Taylor.  HarperOne. 2007.

Love (an)other:Those People

Galatians 3:23-29

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ.
Our earliest memories likely include a sense of social identity. We belong to the family. We go to that church. We play on that team.Our parent works at that factory. We begin to shape those identities without giving it too much thought. It naturally creates a sense of 'my people' and everybody else. Those outside my group are 'the other.' Without intentional effort 'the other' can stay at arm's length, allowing us to form all sorts of ideas, opinions, and assumptions about who they are. Can 'those people' become 'my people?' Paul comes along and says, "those others? No such thing in Christ. We are one."

Special Music: “Open Up” (The Brilliance) :: The Rising
Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

Reader: Giselle Chebny

Preaching: Mark Briley

Anthem: “Deep River” (arr. Helvey) ) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly
Ford, director

Offertory: “We Will Stand” (R. Taff) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly
Ford, director

Galatians 3:23-29

23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring,[a] heirs according to the promise.

A friend posted something on the ‘social meeds’ the other day that not only made me laugh but made me desperate for the same power.  She wrote: “If I could have one superpower it would be the ability to plug in a USB correctly on the first try.”  It was a week that required a lot of energy – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. By the end of the week, I had practiced my time-proven tactic of emailing myself documents from one computer to another, from the office to my home, only to discover yesterday – when I needed my fail-proof system to come through more than ever – it failed me.  My back up plan, which would call for ample back-tracking and re-working of plan A, involved a USB port with which I struggled for dozens of seconds to get plugged into my computer – of course trying with great effort to force it in the wrong direction. I don’t think I’ve ever put one of those thumb drives in the right way on the first try; a super power indeed. It was just one of those days for me. You have those days too.  One minute, you’re in a tank top and flip flops, sweating in the garage on neighborhood garage sale day being asked if you’d take a quarter for something your son had marked for fifty cents and the next minute you’re in a suit, standing in the back of a sanctuary as a family tries to make sense of a complete and devastating loss in their lives. How do we move in and out of our days and make sense of all that we’re called upon to face?  “Here is the world,” Frederic Buechner writes; “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”  Don’t be afraid?  Okay. Thank you for that.  Next you’re going to tell me that the Bible says ‘Don’t be afraid’ 365 times, once for every day of the year.  Oh, it does say that? It does. And that’s nice.  It is. But sometimes we’re afraid. Sometimes it’s the weariness that gets us.  Or it’s the numbness of grief. Or it’s one more blow that puts us in that zone of unfixable, no-take-backs, sin-sick disrepair.  So I could say, “Well – don’t be afraid” on the 152nd day of the year but maybe what you’re really looking for isn’t a quip, or a spiritual nugget, or something that rings nicely on a bumper sticker.  I think, deep down, we come looking for Jesus. Not the doctrine battles. Not the political debates. Not the “God won’t give you more that you can handles…” Just Jesus; raw, pure, present, palpable, baptized in the Jordan, mud rubbed over my blind soul that I can see… Jesus.

I was with a man this week who pastored the same church for 39 years – as long as I’ve been alive, he walked with those people, dedicated babies, baptized teenagers, married, buried, sang, cried, laughed, preached and walked with them. That length of time – mostly unheard of. He’s eighteen months into retirement and honestly trying to figure out what that means.  I can imagine. He told me about one of his mentors, a man who served one congregation for more than forty years. That man, had etched into the sanctuary pulpit the words found in John 12: “We would see Jesus.”  It’s a turn of phrase that sounds a little odd but means, “Would you show us Jesus?” Almost a question though it sounds demanding.  Do you know that passage? Some Greeks, some outsiders, were in town and they found Philip and said, “Sir, we’d like to see Jesus.” This isn’t like going to Branson and saying you’d like to see Shoji Tabuchi.  They needed Jesus. Don’t we all? And Philip finds Andrew and says, “These guys want to see Jesus.”  And they go together to Jesus and say, “People are looking for you.” “Sir, we would see Jesus.”  For all that we are called to preach and teach and share with the world, let us not forget that simple, humble, request, “We would see Jesus.”  “Please… show us Jesus.”  This pastor etched those words into the top of the pulpit so he’d never forget why people got dressed, did their hair, and put on an air of hope – if even deathly afraid by all transpiring in their lives – to get to church that morning… they want to see Jesus.  They would see Jesus. But only if Philip told Andrew and Andrew told Philip and they told Jesus. Sometimes seeing Jesus involves us working together.

I pray today, we would see Jesus, and I’m going to need your help. We launch a new series today called Love (An)other.  It’s grounded in what Jesus says shortly after Andrew and Philip say these people are looking for him.  Jesus says to the disciples, “Love one another.  As I have loved you, you must also love one another.”  He doesn’t say it sure would be nice if you could get along.  He didn’t say, “Now, please be nice to your sister.”  He doesn’t say, “You all should really love one another.”  He says, “As I have loved you, you must love one another.”  Must?  Come on, now.  Can he really demand that of us?  But he does… and he actually says, all the laws of the prophets, every fortune cookie wisdom, every inspirational poster of a rock climber reaching for the next great hold, everything hinges on loving others as he loved us. But Jesus didn’t have to deal with Twitter and fake news and political ads and the people we have to put up with, right?  Anne Lamott’s quote always fits. She said, “You can be pretty sure that you created God in your own image if it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”  Doesn’t that just sting a little bit.  Barbara Brown Taylor says “the hardest spiritual work in the world is to love your neighbor as yourself – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.  All you have to do,” she says, “is recognize another you ‘out there’ – your other self in the world – for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself.  To become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to your self.” (1.) And so, we’re going to give this a shot over the next five weeks.  In a world where politics rule, where fear does so often consume, where difference builds walls higher than curiosity, we’re going to try to see Jesus and learn not just to love one another, but to love an Other, capital “O” because at “its most basic level,” Taylor reminds us that “the everyday practice of being with other people is the practice of loving the neighbor as the self.”  

We all start with some practice of this idea.  We all have people. Al Roker on Friday mornings will stand above the crowds gathered for the Today Show’s concert series.  He’ll shout, “My people! My people” and they all adoringly go wild.  We all have our people whom we clamor for and who clamor for us. From the moment we enter the scene on planet earth, we’ve got people.  These create and form our first social identities. We figure out who we belong to – that’s our family.  We go to that church.  We play on that team.  Our parent works at that factory.  We run with that particular click in high school.  We begin to shape those identities without giving it much thought.  It naturally creates a sense of ‘my people’ and everybody else.  Those outside of my group are ‘the other.”  Without intentional effort, the other can easily stay at arm’s length allowing us to form all sorts of ideas, opinions, and assumptions about who they are.  Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to have people.  It’s lovely to have your people – it gives us a home base; a place of comfort where we feel safe and loved.  But… it can also become the challenge to our ability to love an-Other – to love our neighbor as ourselves because, “I’ve got my people so why do I need those people?”  Not needing them then begins to turn into not liking them.  Not liking them turns into not seeing them as valuable to anything or anyone.  Not valuing them turns them into competition of what you perceive as your way, your resources, your experience.  Seeing them as competitors turns them into enemies. Turning them into enemies makes them a threat. Making them a threat leads to feelings of fear.  Where there is fear, there is not love. And where there is not love, there is not God. And so – in such a godless state, we write them off, will them ill, or simply shake our hands of any concern or thought that God might know them, love them or care about their well-being as much as we do for our own.  They can just go to hell. Which reminds me…

A colleague of mine is doing some research on the biblical accounts of heaven and hell – the words, what they mean, the concepts and ideologies.  In his research he discovered that “Of those who believe in an eternal place of torment called hell, less than one half of one percent believes they are going to go there.” (2.) So who is hell for?  Somebody else. Those people.  The Other.  Another colleague, the Rev. Beau Underwood, is reading a book called “Uncivil Agreement” by Lilliana Mason. I haven’t picked it up yet but it sounds interesting. The subtitle is “How Politics Became Our Identity.”  Given the hostile nature of the “My people” versus “Those People” present in today’s political climate, Beau’s trying to get some help as he navigates the congregation he pastors in the capital city of my home state that is sort of purple politically, not unlike we are at HACC.  The main thesis, he notes, “is that associating ourselves with groups causes us to act and see the world in certain ways, mainly privileging our own groups and going out of our way to disparage and harm out-groups.”  Nothing new there. But some of the studies revelations are fascinating…. and my friend notes one.  “Studies have shown that when we see members of our groups experiencing sadness, the parts of our brain associated with sadness are activated.  We become sad too, biochemically. When we see members of other groups feeling sad? Yeah, not the same response. The parts of our brain associated with positive emotions are activated instead.  Their sadness becomes our joy.” [This is why I just can’t control my happiness when the New England Patriot’s lose – and I feel terrible saying so but here’s the science to back my inability to not revel in their losing.]  This isn’t conscious. It is instinct. Science explains it as part of our evolutionary wiring. That makes sense, as sad as it may be. Beau makes this point: “Theologically, it is a healthy reminder of sin’s power over us.  And our need – instead of embracing our instinctual emotions and prejudices – to use our reason in reflecting on what we feel and naturally assume to make sure we are acting towards others in ways that intentionally align with our convictions rather than reflecting our basest natures.  We shouldn’t delight in the suffering of others. Especially when those others are created in the image of God. The fact that we do reveals how much sin can warp the image of God inside of us.” (3.)  And I might add; it’s hard to love our neighbor when we delight in their failings. It’s hard to love our neighbor when we’re more concerned about one’s political stripe, or color of skin, or religious affiliation when there is an act of violence than we are concerned or saddened by the reality that a person has been killed.  

It seems we may have to work extra hard to see those people as our people.  It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have close friends or cheer for your favorite team or feel bad about feeling at home in your own church or your own faith or at your own neighborhood block party.  But, if we’re going to imagine spiritual growth in our lives, we have to take this seriously and begin to see the Other for their beloved nature; their worth; their dignity.

I mentioned a piece from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book earlier – “An Altar in the World.”  She suggests, in that same work, that a good way to warm up to this love-an-Other reality is to focus on one of the human beings who usually sneaks right past you because they’re performing some mundane service –like scanning your groceries at your favorite grocery store.  Do you have a favorite grocery store? Someone dropped this word recently: “One day you’re not old and the next day you have a favorite grocery store.”  So there’s that.  But Taylor says to imagine for a moment the person scanning your groceries.  “Here is someone who exists even when he or she is not ringing up your groceries, as hard as that may be for us to imagine.”  She says, “She is someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother as well.  She has a home she returns to when she hangs up her apron there, a kitchen that smells of last night’s supper, a bed where she occasionally lies awake at night wrestling with her own demons and angels.”  Do you notice her?  Get on eye level with her?  Don’t make her a character in your own novel – those things create some of the problems we find with the Other because we presume too much.  But see her humanity. What would it mean to count her as one of your people? She’s certainly one of God’s beloved? If that’s an easy place to start then stretch it to someone else whom you’ve not counted as your people before and see what that opens for you. Jesus does this eye-to-eye thing with all kinds of people that were not part of his tribe: Roman centurions, Samaritan lepers, Syro-Phoenician women, hostile Judeans, slaves, rulers, twelve-year-old girls, powerful men, people who can be useful to him and people who cannot.  

The Apostle Paul learned this through some hard, spiritual warfare sort of realities.  He turned everything he believed, stood for, fought for on its head and started over when he encountered Christ.  He had his way, his people, and he not only hoped ‘those’ other people would lose the Superbowl, he was happy to execute them just for not being like him.  But he has his, “Sir, we would see Jesus” moment and that love-an-Other stuff wrecked him.  “You just got wrecked,” my kid will say.  Paul just got wrecked and now he was hanging with Gentiles and making eye contact with cashiers at Reasor’s and floored by the expansive nature of God’s love in Christ.  He pens that famous Galatians text that you’ve heard again today: “In Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.”  He recounts – “Man – my people were the law people – and that served us fo