text :: John 1:1-14

theme verse :: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Preeminent American food writer, M.F.K. Fisher once said, “People ask me: why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do? The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.” We are a hungry people – hungry for spirit and truth and also sandwiches. The mystery of the flesh-embodied spirit confounds us. Paul struggled with a thorn in his flesh. Leprosy was among the unclean flesh designations which had significant implications for community. God, however, Creator of all things, longed to connect to humanity in the flesh – thus he put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. How do we live in this flesh? How can we see it as gift, holy and beloved, a vessel for transformation and wholeness?

anthem :: 'In the Garden' (arr.S.Reinhart) : Christina Maxwell, vocal; Susie Monger Daugherty, piano

reader :: Geoff Brewster
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

closing :: 'Remembrance' (HillsongWorship) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Katie Herbert, lead vocal

John 1:1-14
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. ⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹ The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Most of us don’t like talking about our bodies. In fact, if someone talks too much about their body we start feeling uncomfortable. Some of you are already uncomfortable with the first two sentences of this sermon. “Where is Briley going with this?” Lord only knows. Bodies are weird, you know… with their toes and navels and spleens and all. I get the discomfort. I grew up in a very modest household. We didn’t talk much about our bodies and we certainly kept them adequately covered. It’s not that I was taught that the body was bad. We were just… modest.  But much of religious history discouraged any glorification of the body.  Barbara Brown Taylor, who has inspired this series with her work, An Altar in the World has a theory about how this teaching took shape in the church.

“Although Jesus was a Jew,” she writes, “many of his earliest interpreters were Greeks, who divided body and soul in ways that he did not. Descartes did not help matters by opposing nature and reason in his philosophy. Then along came the Protestant Reformation, with its deep suspicion of physical pleasure, followed by Freud’s dark insights into human sexuality. Add to that the modern scientific reduction of the body to biological matter, overlaid by Victoria’s Secret ads, and it is small wonder that so many of us are uncomfortable in our flesh.”[1]

And yet here we all sit this morning, our souls tucked away in this marvelous luggage… flesh, blood, bone, brain, heart. Our flesh is the vehicle that got us here today, that addressed our hygiene this morning, that held the door for another fleshy vessel to get his or her soul into this sanctuary moments ago. And of all the differences we have in our lives, our skin that covers our vessels may be the thing that makes us most similar. Preeminent American food writer M.F.K. Fisher once said, “People ask me: why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do? The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.” We are a hungry people – hungry for spirit and truth and also sandwiches.

For all of the theological mystery we find in scripture, perhaps as prominent, if not more so, are the matters of the flesh. Paul struggled with a thorn in his flesh. Leprosy was among the unclean flesh designations which had significant implications for living in community… or not as it were. It was Jesus’ body that he presented as identifying proof to the disciples following the resurrection. He came back from death wearing skin. “Feel the nail holes in my hands and feet. Put your hands in my side.”  Jesus knew our bodies were as essential to our make up as our soul.  It’s why at the last supper, Jesus didn’t say, “Here’s something for you to think about when you get together after I’m gone.”  There were no words instituted that said, “When you discern this theological concept, remember me.”  He said, “This is my body.  This is my blood.  When you gather, do this… embody this… in remembrance of me.”  This gift was something so real, so tangible, that the disciples would not be able to intellectualize it… only receive; only embody. But… even respecting such a physical gift as a spiritual practice, everyone has their take on the value of the body.

Even scripture can find itself pushing multiple bodily agendas.  There’s the sentiment that says “This body is only a vessel,” as in, ‘it’s not all that critical to the faith’ and then there’s the opposite sentiment that says, “This is the only vessel you have,” as in, “The body is a temple and you better care for it with reverence.”  What are we to think about our bodies? We can’t shake them easily, so we might as well consider their value. Whether our bodies are sick or well, irregular or uniquely double jointed, able to grow a handle-bar mustache or… not … there comes a time when it is important for our very spiritual health to look in the mirror and say, “Here I am.  This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.” (Taylor) Could it be that our bodies are themselves, unique altars in the world?

The prologue, which opens the Gospel of John, is perhaps the most beautifully poetic piece of writing known to humanity. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And John weaves on this beautiful relationship of Word and foretelling and ultimately embodiment: “The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.”  Boom! Game changer. This is no ethereal concept any more. This is Jesus, wearing skin just like your neighbor, Norm, who wears cut-off jeans and socks with his crocks to mow the yard. Now we’re dealing with something real, tangible, and honestly unavoidable. You can avoid an idea or a concept – but you cannot avoid real-life, fleshy presence. You may not buy lemonade from the neighbor kid selling warm, half-full cups with a couple of unrecognizable floaties in the mix but you cannot pass her without giving thought to her effort, her dream, her physical presence. This is Jesus, God-made-flesh, in the mix of things… dealing with bullies and puberty and career day in high school. God would take on the practice of wearing skin.  And I couldn’t be more grateful because it gives meaning and purpose for our own bodies as well.

Jesus personalized our understanding of God. This incarnation made God relatable and Jesus told us fully-skinned stories so we might remember what truly matters.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his work, “The Man from Nazareth,” says,

“Jesus had a way of putting things that time does not wear out. He might have discussed neighborliness in the abstract, like a lawyer analyzing in terms of current practice. Had he done so, we probably should never have heard of it. Instead, he personified neighborliness in the good Samaritan, making him stand out in vivid contrast with the un-neighborly priest and Levite, so that not only did his contemporaries grasp his meaning, but we do also.”

Story after story – incarnation.  The sick, the outcast, the foreigner, the woman, the man, the old, the young. Skin-stories.  And those same incarnations walk the streets of Tulsa as they walked the streets of Jerusalem.  This is why Jesus said, “As we you do unto the least of these you do unto me.”  You can’t look past the flesh without seeing Jesus manifest before you.  The incarnation of God in the flesh of Jesus was God’s way of saying, “I want to really see you and I want you to really see me too.”  How often do you overlook this gift?  Stuff happens all around us every day that we miss for any number of reasons.  But truly seeing another is seeing Jesus.

Peter Lovenheim, a Cornell Law School educated journalist, took this to heart a couple of decades ago – this idea of incarnation that requires relationship and cannot be ignored.  It started with a tragedy. We pay greater attention to our flesh when we realize how fragile it can be.  The questions we ask about God in Sunday School rarely compare to the questions we ask while we’re in the hospital.  For Lovenheim, it was simply a walk in his suburban neighborhood outside of Rochester, New York.  A big commotion, television news crews and flashing lights.  Just a few houses down from his own, a man took his life and that of his wife.  Two little kids left to pick up the pieces.  Lovenheim was shocked and deeply saddened by the violence but almost more so realizing how little genuine community existed in his neighborhood.  He had waived at this family on occasion, even knew their first names but had no clue any trouble was brewing.  And this tragedy was not his fault of course, but he was perplexed, especially as a For Sale sign was propped up in the yard and life appeared to go on as usual.  He asked himself, “Do I live in a community or just in a house on a street surrounded by people whose lives are entirely separate?”  Maybe we’ve all asked ourselves these questions in moments like this but Lovenheim took it next level.  He asked his neighbors if he could sleep over in their homes.

Can you imagine?  What would you think if your neighbor whom you know very little or not at all came to your door, bags packed, ready to campout at your place?  It’s like the old Saturday Night Live skit where Matt Foley, a motivational speaker, grows weary of living in a van down by the river so he tries to move in with a family who has asked him to come give a pep talk to their teenagers.  But this is no SNL skit… this is real life stuff. Lovenheim’s daughter was terrified when she learned of what her dad was going to do… not concerned for his safety but for her social life.  She didn’t want her dad or her family to be “that neighbor” that everyone tries to avoid. Surprisingly enough, most agreed to his request to sleepover. He documented his experiences in his book, In the Neighborhood:  The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time.  This sleepover initiative revealed all sorts of things about his neighbors. One was a single mother, dying of breast cancer.  He and another neighbor he met through a previous sleepover worked together to help her. They installed a light over a dark, dangerous staircase in her home and Lovenheim met the woman’s daughter at the bus stop after school once a week. Other neighbors pitched in to help get her to doctor’s appointments and the grocery store. Another neighbor sleep over was with a man named Lou. Lovenheim described Lou as “a widower with a big belly who enjoys an afternoon cocktail, his dog and his local YMCA support group.”  Yet he often feels alone. Lou was one who always reached out to new people who moved into the neighborhood but… nobody ever reached back.[2]

God put on skin so that we might be reached in a new profound way by his love that we might also reach back to him and reach out to others.  If these bodies are altars – created by God for life and beauty and purpose – then our recognition of that gift in ourselves and others is worth the focused effort. Such focus can’t help but change our perspectives when we see ourselves and others in this way.  Even the old comic George Carlin had an idea to create world peace. He decided every person needed to be formally introduced to every other person in the world. “You look a person in the eye, shake hands, repeat their name and try to remember one physical characteristic,” he said.  His theory – you’d be less likely to want to fight them, disregard them, treat them as anything less than a unique gift to the world by the same Creator that breathed life into your own skin.  This is where we start to experience the grace and truth that John says is why Jesus came to us in the first place.

That grace and truth starts in your own soul – peering in the mirror at your flesh that holds your very spirit – and recognizing what you see as the altar that it is. I admit this is hard for me. I struggle to see my vessel as an altar to work out of and through to experience God in some holy way. But sometimes, my body can live a prayer far better than I can verbalize one. The day our announcement was released concerning our upcoming move to Columbia, Missouri, was a surreal sort of day. My emotions were close to the surface and it didn’t take much for those emotions to find their way to the outside of my skin from the corners of my eyes.  It was a full day of sharing and engaging folks and finding grace in these relationships of a decade that I have cherished more than anything. That evening, I went home and mowed the yard – it didn’t really need to be mowed that night but I mowed it anyway. There was something about the work of the body, my flesh active and sweating and focused on a task that was the most meaningful prayer I could muster at that time.  I could have ignored the spirit/body need to be a living altar in that moment. I could have simply accepted I was just mowing the yard.  Instead, I made it my prayer, an altar of sorts, to pray with my very flesh; a longing to feel connected to God that would hold my spirit in a place of love and grace. Each swath back and forth across the lawn held your names, your faces, our shared memories, our hopes, our hurts, our laughs, our spiritual growth.  And that engine bumbling to a stop when the last blade had been cut was my “Amen.”  May it be so, God.  “This is good work, this prayer. This is good prayer, this work.” (Taylor).  This is the practice of wearing skin and honoring its participation in the Holy.

My family has been sorting through this physical reality of moving our bodies from this place to another.  With so many of you, we’ve talked about our spirit’s connection that is an eternal one.  No matter the physical distance, the spirit remains intertwined. Such is a beautiful thing and we will cherish that forever. But our bodies have had its place in this season as well and it has been meaningful to think through the places our bodies have journeyed together. My son, Hayes, didn’t have a body at all until we moved here. I’ve held your new babies in the hospital and held hands of some when they breathed their last. No greater privilege. I’ve joined hands in marriage, placed bodies under the sacred waters of baptism and laid hands in prayer for those commissioned to serve. My body has lost church softball games and even won a few softball games with you… in the name of Jesus of course. I sat on the floor of the airport in Managua, Nicaragua with some bodies that weren’t feeling all that well. I’ve stood on the curb outside of the methadone clinic waiting for one who asked me to show up for accountabilities sake. Our bodies painted expanding church nurseries together and raised the light of Christ on Christmas Eve. I’m so grateful for the places our bodies have taken our spirits and our spirits have taken our bodies. When the church is described as the Body of Christ, this is surely what is meant.  We bring hands and feet and hearts together for the sake and in the hope that Christ is transforming us individually and collectively.  The incarnation we celebrate in Jesus is an ongoing celebration in us who carry on as his body in the world.  Our bodies led us here, to the edge of what our spirits may have imagined possible, and the Divine Spirit took us further yet – making us new, beloved, whole. 

As Barbara Brown Taylor so aptly names,

“The practice of wearing skin is so obvious that almost no one engages it as spiritual practice, yet here is a place to begin: with tears, aches, [hugs], goose[bumps], heat.  The body knows – not just the individual body, but the cathedral we make when we bend our bodies together over another as good as dead.  Doing that, we act out the one thing we know for sure:  it is God’s will that these bones live.”

That’s resurrection. That’s the mystery of our bodies and spirits being treasured creations of God almighty and therefore to be revered and treasured ourselves like an altar to God’s glory. Pay attention to where your body takes you this week. See your skin for what it is… holy, sacred, an altar to God’s greatest delight – your very being: body, mind and soul – given to honor one another and the very One who took on flesh that he may dwell among us, look us in the eye and claim us as his own.

[1] An Altar in the World. Barbara Brown Taylor. Harper One Publishing. 2009.  Any quotes from Taylor come from this work and each sermon in this series is inspired by different chapters of the book.  Her influence is scattered throughout this message and I am grateful for her insight and the vivid imagery of her writing.
[2] While there are many stories that cover Lovenheim’s work.  Here are two utilized for the message as first discovered via Homiletics Online:
– Howard, Jennifer. “Book review of In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time by Peter Lovenheim.” The Washington Post, April 18, 2010, B7.
– Wilson, Craig. “Where’ve all the neighbors gone? After a murder-suicide on his quiet street, Peter Lovenheim goes looking for answers.” USA Today, April 1, 2010, 7B. usatoday.com.

text :: Galatians 5:1, 13-25

theme verse :: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25)

When given a task to complete without any instruction, there are generally two responses. Some people are thrilled! They wouldn’t have pulled out the instructions anyway. Others are terrified. “I don’t even know where to start!” Truth be told, there are times in our lives when we’d really like more detail. We long for the voice of God to be crisp and clear about particular situations in our lives. What do we do when we need more details? Someone once said, “God doesn’t give us all the details because He trusts us.” We’ve all heard that we need to trust God more but does God really trust us? In this passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians, he names the fruits of the Spirit but when it comes to the greater details he simply says, “We live by the Spirit.”

anthem :: 'He's Always Been Faithful' (S.Groves) :: Ashley Pease, vocal; Susie Monger Daugherty, piano; Erica Parker, cello

special music :: 'So Will I (100 Billion Times)' (Hillsong) :: The Rising Band; Andrea Gross, lead vocal

reader :: Dan Pease
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

offertory :: Pam Lundy, piano

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. …
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. 14 For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. 16 Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.  

There are two kinds of people in this world – those who want all the details and those who want none of them.  That’s sort of a drastic dichotomy I suppose and life, in any matter, realistically exists on more of a spectrum than a clear cut, black or white reality. But you know this about people… and you likely know it about yourself. There are some who read every single line in the instruction manual about how to build something; how to use something. They probably even attempt to read the directions in French and Spanish just in case they missed something in the English. They want to know every detail and follow every rule and step with great precision. No sense in getting it wrong unnecessarily. And then on the other extreme – you’ve got the rebels – they don’t need no stinkin’ directions.  How hard can it be? Insert part “A” into slot “B” and you’ve got a masterpiece in front of you in no time.  Those remaining parts that you couldn’t figure out where they were supposed to go probably weren’t that important anyway.

I’ve seen this in plenty of psychological group-think experiments as well.  You get a room full of people, a couple of objects and minimal instruction about a task and then tell them to “Go!” “Do it!” “Create something.” “Build something.” Some are totally comfortable with the limited detail and in fact relish the freedom to not be so boxed in by the whole thing and others are immediately asking questions about where the boundaries are or how long they have or what else can they use to get this done.

I learned the hard way that sometimes the details are really important. The night I proposed to Carrie, I had this elaborate plan in place. It involved a fancy meal, a carriage ride, and a serenade downtown Indianapolis on the famous canal walk. We were in town visiting my parents who lived there at the time. Dad helped get my guitar into the right carriage downtown.  He cued the carriage driver to look for me at such and such time out front of the Eagle’s Nest restaurant.  I had an eagle call and everything ready to roll. I got this new suit – the only suit I owned at nineteen years old and was ready to implement the plan. All systems “go!” And Carrie had zero clue any of this was going to happen. My secret operation was apparently too secretive. I had not made mention to Carrie that she might want to dress up for our outing and so she had not packed anything but casual clothes for the trip to Indy. Didn’t matter to me what she wore – she looks great in everything. What’s the big deal?  That morning when we were talking about the evening, she said, “So what are you wearing tonight?” “I’m going to wear my suit,” I announced.  And the look of horror.  “Your suit? I didn’t bring anything nice to wear.”  I thought in that moment that this might not pan out well for me in the end. She ended up borrowing a dress from my sister and she looked fantastic  – but – I came to realize that getting engaged in my sister’s dress would not have been her preference.  She still said “Yes!” and I have learned to always specify dress code – that is a detail I no longer miss.

The Apostle Paul had a characteristically practical mind.  All of his epistles that we find in scripture, even the ones where he’s soaring high in thought and theology, end on a practical note. To him, none of it really matters unless your theology can walk – it has to be livable or it was just a set of ideals. But – Paul’s theology often got him on the edge of trouble with any number of folks.  In this instance, his movement from the reign of the law to the reign of grace always made it possible for some to say, “Well if all restraints are lifted, I can do whatever I want.”  You’ve heard people say this when they’re trying to work out grace in their lives… or more often when they’re trying to work out grace for somebody else. You have surely wrestled with it yourself… I know I have.  It tends to be a “Yeah, grace, but..”  “Yeah, grace, but what about that thing, that rule, that behavior, that inclusion, that ethic, that …”.  Have you played that game?   “Grace,” some say, “means you throw out all the details.  Who needs ‘em?”  That’s not Paul’s intent of course.  But he’s found a new freedom in Christ and he’s willing to risk the backlash from the detail-people.

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” he says.  And imagine that freedom – Paul, a Pharisee giving up the 613 commands he spent his life learning, perfecting, upholding only to awaken to a new understanding that has far less detail – not making following any easier, but making it more relational. Rule keeping becomes transactional. Relationships are transformational. There was a guy named Tony who had a rigid upbringing in the faith –not unlike Paul’s run as a Pharisee. Tony was good at the rigidity – he was ‘killing it’ as the kids like to say which means he did it really well.  It all caught up with him, however, after many global encounters with people of all kinds. Those encounters changed the way he studied scripture, the way he prayed, the way he considered judgment and grace.  Honestly, he was burned and ultimately burned out. After a mercenary stint as a “hired gun in the army of God,” he was ready to just throw it all out. It was a bartender, of all people, who was hearing Tony out that had to stop him and say, “Tony – I see a God spark in you.  I don’t know what you are supposed to do with your life but take it from someone who knows regrets: don’t get out of the game. Leave that mercenary stuff behind, perhaps, but stay in and find another way to play.”  Tony looked at him and knew he was right.  “I don’t know how else to play,” Tony said, but he committed in his heart this prayer: “I will try to stay available to God. I will try to play in a different way.”[1]

This was Paul’s commitment too. He was navigating new territory. He went from a PowerPoint-able understanding of faith to a spiritual freedom that was much less containable. Can’t you imagine the days of struggle after he abandoned his post as a first-team Pharisee? Lots of haters on his Twitter feed. A wrestling with a new language and new understanding. Not nearly the details he was used to having. If you’ve ever had such a heart for God but led by the Spirit to radically alter your view of the faith, you know this journey.  And it can be exhausting. Sometimes you just need a nap. I preached an entire sermon on naps one time.

There was a story this week – long title but sort of says it all – “Teen and Cow Lose at State Fair, Take a Nap Together and Win Hearts of Millions Instead.”  Here’s the picture. Isn’t that something? Fifteen-year-old, Mitchell Miner and his cow, Audri, finished in fifth place out of seven at the Iowa State Fair despite their hard work and effort.  Exhausted, the duo took this nap together afterward. I hope Paul had a friend or a dog or a cow who, at the end of the day, he could just take a nap with… just be himself with… just find a comrade who knows he gave it all up and is trying this new thing with all his being because what he has come most deeply to believe about God. Paul doesn’t have all the details… but he’s trying to piece this life of faith in Christ together the best he can.

In this famous word from Galatians, he’s trying to sort some of that out.  It is, in part, his response to the criticism that he’s just winging it now that he’s dumped all the laws he kept for so long.  “Live freely!” he says, “animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.”  And what is wrapped up in that motivation is the single commandment that holds all the others: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The critique is instant. “But what about this!” we protest.  “What about that!” we shout in contempt. Paul’s retort is surely, “First of all… that was in the law and later Jesus’ word as priority, not mine. You can take it up with him if you’ve got a problem with it. And Second of all – have you mastered loving your neighbor as yourself or do you still have some work to do in that regard.”  “Well,” we huff and puff – “but those people are just wrong.”  “I know it’s sticky,” Paul says, “but this is the work we are called to.  And your freedom in this thing is not a free-for-all.”  Paul goes into a list of things he names as choices and behaviors that are “obviously” no result of living the Spirit life. Bible compliers call this list the “Works of the Flesh.”  The Message version of the Bible really lays these out bluntly.

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods, magic-show religions; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.” And he concludes, “I could go on.”

Paul is saying, just because the details of Spirit living may be fewer, the heart of it is just as disciplined if not more so. Even what he names in these works of the flesh are not clear directives or ultra-clear details about what to eat, what not to eat, etc, etc, down to the nth degree of detail.  But look, he seems to say, if we’re going to live by the Spirit, then we’ve got to be guided by the Spirit who will surely help us live a life that honors this greatest commandment of loving God and neighbor with the best we have. Does that make you nervous?  Do you want a little more detail in your religion than that?

I’ve been holding onto a quote of late that’s speaking into my life.  It’s a simple word but its implications are full.  It’s simply this: “God doesn’t give us all the details because God trusts us.”  We are quick to say, “Trust God,” but seldom have I had the courage to think, “God is trusting me.” When we get our driver’s permit, we kind of like mom or dad sitting in the passenger seat, or even that Driver’s Ed instructor, who is constantly saying, “Go there.  Don’t do that.  Steer this way.  10 and 2.”  All the detail.  But at some point, the instruction lessens and the trust takes over.

A man went flying with his 18-year-old son who had recently obtained his pilot’s license. It was a two-seater, Beaver seaplane, designed to take off and land in the water.  They were flying over a small body of water up in the thick of towering Canadian mountains.  They wondered if it the pond nestled in the basin between these mountains was sizeable enough to land the plane. The father, a seasoned pilot himself who had landed in this water only once himself, sat in the passenger seat and simply trusted the training of his son.  His boy had never landed in this tight of quarters before but he’d had all the training and landed hundreds of times in more open waters. The father said, “When Adam entered the canyon, I didn’t say anting.  When we started descending into the canyon, I didn’t say anything. When he made his turn at the wide spot at the end of the lake, he nailed it. I didn’t say anything.  As we made the final descent toward the lake, Adam threw the yoke forward. We were still fifty feet off the water when he flew past where I had previously landed. I didn’t say anything. Adam landed the plane like a boss and we came to a stop. Adam had flown into that canyon as an eighteen-year-old, but when the Beaver touched down on the water he looked thirty-five. I looked like I was a hundred and twenty. The whole time all of this was happening, I was thinking this: Land. The. Plane.”  What the dad said next was telling: “God isn’t always leading us to the safest route forward but to the one where we’ll grow the most.”  His dad had already told him all he knew about doing this.  He didn’t need any more instructions; he just needed to see that his dad believed in him enough to let him do it. He didn’t need more words or to know what they meant in Greek or Hebrew.  He just needed the opportunity.[2]

Paul is saying this is true about our freedom in Christ. Building a relationship of trust with Christ is a relationship of want-to’s not have to’s. The best marriages and partnerships are ones that are want-to and get-to, not have-to oriented. These come with less details but deeper connections.  Do you trust your connection with God?  We’ve all probably made that stretch of wishing God would just shout, audibly, the solution to our concerns, the answer to our prayers, the right moves in connection to our greatest questions about what’s next… seeking that extra nudge of confidence from God.  While we’re waiting for God to say something, God may be waiting on us to do something.  Sometimes God speaks to us the loudest on the way. There is trust involved in this connection.  God knows what truth and experience we’ve gleaned over time. God has seen us when we’ve succeeded and been there when we’ve failed.  What may seem like God’s silence, may more readily be God’s silent nod like a whisper saying, “You’ve got this.”  This lack of detail doesn’t remove all the risks… but that is the nature of trust. God knows without risk, we can’t grow. We don’t tend to grow in seasons of comfort but rather in seasons of challenge. This stillness is God’s quiet confidence.  Sometimes even our tiny shuffle forward, God is right there saying, “I love you. You’re enough. You’ve got this…” just like your parent was the first time they let go of the bike you were learning to ride without training wheels. What big idea do you have that you’ve not pursued because you didn’t know if it would work? Where have you feared rejection, so you stayed put? What final details have you been waiting on before trusting God with your “Yes?” What if God is right beside you, confident that you know all you need to know and simply whispering, “Land the plane.”

If you expect any fruit in your life, you’ve got to plant the seeds. You’ve got to put yourself out there a bit in faith. You’ve got to risk a bit on what it means to love God and love your neighbor.  You’ve got to use your freedom in Christ to cultivate trust and hope and possibility.  When we do, Paul says that our lives will start to reflect such a trust like fruit growing in an orchard. He calls them the fruits of the Spirit.  You’ll start to find you have a growing capacity to love others.  You’ll find a joy that holds you steady where your pursuit of happiness was fleeting and all over the map. You’ll be grounded in peace, grow in your patience and be more inclined to acts of kindness. Generosity will flow more naturally. Your faithfulness and gentleness will increase. Discipline and self-control will be growing gifts in your life. “You live by the Spirit,” Paul says, “and the Spirit will guide.”

Maslow’s “Law of the Instrument” says, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The law that Paul knew forward and backward was much like a hammer and everything was clearly a nail. You just used your hammer on everything. But freedom in Christ calls for us to add new perspectives and tools and ways of being that rely much more on trust than detailed instruction.  What are you hammering right now that may need a different approach?  It’s not a question of wanting all the details or wishing for none of them.  It’s a matter of trusting God with the details and being faithful in what we already know about love.  Live in that Spirit and the Spirit will guide… and that will be all the detail you’ll really ever need.

[1] Neighbors and Wise Men. Tony Kriz.  Thomas Nelson Publishing. 2012.
[2] Everybody Always. Bob Goff. Thomas Nelson Publishing. 2018. Chapter 14 – Land the Plane – was most influential in this message.  The story and following theological consideration concerning trust and ‘details’ are inspired by Goff’s work in this chapter.

text :: Hebrews 10:19-25

theme verse :: “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds…” (Hebrews 10:24)

60TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION On March 22, 1959, a courageous few gathered imagining what it would mean for them to be Christ’s Church at 55th and Harvard in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sixty years later, we are living out of that courageous vision and pondering the next sixty years. As we stand on the shoulders of those who planted faith in this fertile soil, we ponder still how we might encourage one another into the ways of love and good deeds. Join us on Pentecost Sunday, June 9, 2019, as we celebrate 60 years as a faith family! Worship will hold nostalgic moments from that first worship gathering six decades ago including a message bearing the same title as the first message preached at HACC, “Christ’s Church.”

introit :: 'My Feet Are On the Rock' (I Am They) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

anthem :: 'A Lord-Built House' (R.Lentz) : Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader :: Bob Flint (chair, board of Elders)
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley (lead pastor, since 2009)

communion :: 'Living Hope' (Phil Wickham) : The Rising Band

offertory :: 'You Raise Me Up' (D.Foster) : Kelly Ford, tenor; Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

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.

I was walking in Memphis early last week, walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale as it were.  Carrie and our two oldest kids were with us, walking the street in awe of the lights and saxophonist wailing the blues and a young man doing a flip over five tourists standing in the middle of Beale Street.  When we were walking back to our car, parked several blocks away, a man approached us extending a hand first to me saying, “My name is Sylvester and I’m not gonna mug you.”  I didn’t think he was but I’m guess I’m glad he cleared that up ahead of time.  Sylvester was an army vet.  “I’m a Ranger,” he said. “I jumped out of planes.” he says to my son as both of their eyes got big. He’s helping the homeless of Memphis these days.  Sylvester had a lot of good advice for my kids – listening to their parents was one of my favorites.  He asked Dane if we had taken him to the National Civil Rights Museum[1] there in town.  We had. And it was powerful. After fist bumping each member of the family knowing we cared enough to visit the museum, he hugged me and said to my kids, “I’m glad. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so many made it possible for your dad and me to stand here, arm in arm as brothers today.” Just as quickly as he appeared, Sylvester departed.

The museum is an experience indeed.  One of the most moving images for me was standing on the bus with Rosa Parks sitting in a seat she was told to relinquish. December 1, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake’s order to relinquish her seat in the ‘colored section’ to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. It’s hard to even say the words. Her arrest for civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, an important passage forward in the movement for civil rights. What really captured my spirit when I turned in that direction was to see my daughter sitting behind Ms. Parks. I had this immediate imagery flash in my soul of timelessness, of unity, of the power of one woman’s act leading the way for my own daughter, a young woman now, on the same bus moving forward a spirit of equality… of hope, peace, and love.

This same imagery carried me home and into this beautiful occasion of our 60^th anniversary as the Body of Christ outpost known as Harvard Avenue Christian Church.  Just three and a half years after Rosa Parks made her stand by staying seated, The Tulsa Area Mission Board of Christian Churches helped secure a young, Harvard University and Phillips Theological Seminary trained minister named Robert Travis Peake and his wife, Harriet, to launch this very congregation on the far southern outskirts of the city of Tulsa.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the country.  The last musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein “The Sound of Music” opened on Broadway even as the year held ‘The Day the Music Died’ as Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash. Fidel Castro came to power. Mattel released the Barbie Doll. Simon Cowell was born. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet. Alaska became the 49^th State, Hawaii the 50^th. The first known human with HIV dies in Congo.[2]  Life and all its joy and turmoil were coming and going much as it does today.

And on this little property in South Tulsa, the HACC bus was being boarded with the courageous vision that the city could find healing and hope and people could find meaning in becoming authentic disciples of Jesus the Christ. 108 signed the Charter – Nancy Wells and Jim Cobbs among those still active today.  We’re honored to have David and Nancy Peake in the house today as well – who along with brother, Stephen, were the first PKs of HACC (that’s ‘preacher’s kids’ for those scoring at home). While we celebrate our origin today fittingly on Pentecost Sunday – the day recognized as the birth of the church and the infusion of the Holy Spirit into the Jesus movement – our first service was held on Palm Sunday in 1959.  You can see in the bulletin a number of carryovers from that first service that we are celebrating in today’s service.  Among those are the title of this sermon, entitled, Christ’s Church. What I would give to have a copy of Dr. Peake’s sermon that morning. I’m sure it had all the thrill of first things… new starts… the possibilities are endless.  I’m sure he highlighted Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the donkey – an act that ushered in the sacrificial commitment of Jesus and also those first followers to be the Church, the very presence of God in the world. I’m sure his was a message of all this church could be as a mission outpost in Tulsa. But as Henry Ford was known to say, “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.”  They would need people on the bus who were willing to bring forward their gifts – their time and talents and skills and passions to get the wheels of this bus going round and round.

This has always been true. The early church bus needed the same kind of riders too… and these churches were popping up all over the place. The letter to the Hebrews was one such letter designed to spur each other on toward the growing good of the movement. The writer put forth the first goal which was simple but not always easy: stay in the presence of Christ. When you’re living your life or building a church, the many daily tasks required to move around this world or move an agenda forward often get bumped to the top of the list. We can neglect simply being in the presence of God as task number one. It is a given that we all live in two worlds – this world of space and time and the world of eternal things – the question has long been – can we live in the intersection of the two?  Worship grounds us in this way and worship at this church has long nourished many a soul. 546 people presented themselves before this community to profess faith in Jesus and be baptized in 60 years. Would you raise your hand if you are one of those?  I love standing with folks in the middle of Peake Commons where the old baptistery used to be.  There’s a look that comes over their faces as they say, “I was baptized in this very spot so many years ago.”

Bob Peake set an early tone for an intellectual and straight forward message in worship. To be clear and certain you got the point, he finished each sermon with “In summation and conclusion…” before letting you know what you should hold on to moving into the week.  In fact, on his last Sunday after thirty years of ministry, the congregation had t-shirts made to commemorate the day, everyone wearing one that said in big letters across the front: “In summation and conclusion.”  I am grateful for the preaching foundation he set, followed by Rev. Don Lanier and others who carried deep value in not neglecting to meet for worship, hear the Word of God, and imagine a new world together. The Table, always open to all, grounded us too.  As told by Mary Maddox and Nancy Wells, “One Sunday morning, without fanfare or drama, two new Elders were at the communion table… two women, Shirley Stark and Joyce McNickle. Nothing was announced in advance. Joyce and Shirley simply appeared as though it was totally natural and normal and performed their duties admirably well. We can thank Bob Peake for his encouragement and help initiating this fine, most inclusive, ahead-of-its-time and leading-the-way tradition.” I’m grateful for their sharing. Legend also shares that these were the first two women elders in the city of Tulsa. I’m so glad they were on the HACC bus. People of all kinds have come to and presided over this Table ever since.

Music filled this bus marvelously through the years as well. It was the encouragement of Elizabeth Palmieri of a young man in the Children’s Choir to sing a solo that launched the voice that fills these rafters still… one Todd Maxwell.  His first solo, Away in a Manger, rocked the house. You raised him well, friends. So many voices have lent themselves to God through our choirs and bands and handbells.  Think of the music that has filled this bus through the years!  Bill Gilpin spanned four decades at least in the choir.  I can still hear his voice in my heart singing, “Ain’t but one train on this track, runs to heaven and right back.”  He’s up there with Harry Smithline and Paul Noble and Judy Burnham just cracking up the angel choir, don’t you think?

The Gilpins got on the bus in those early years along with the likes of the Southard and Wheeler families. Jo Ann Gilpin surely had her CDL to drive this bus as she was a force.  Entering the early pre-fab building on this property in those first years, she was unsettled by all of the broken crayons there for the kids to use. Who can color Jesus sheets with broken crayons?  Really. That was quickly resolved. Jo Ann became a lead in children and youth education and a huge proponent of Vacation Bible School. In fact, the VBS just completed at HACC this week was sponsored with memorial gifts made in Jo Ann’s honor. Jo Ann’s legacy not only spans the earth but extends to Mars and beyond. I’m so glad they all got on this bus. Jo Ann and others put education on the forefront – which is part of what led those like Bill Queen, Susan Payne, and Darlene Martinez to find their way to seminary.

And our wealth and long run of Bible teachers like Dan Strong and Oliver Howard illuminated the Scriptures with heart, intelligence, depth and the reverent care unmatched by any I know. HACC has kept people hungry for the faith. And Daryl Southard?  He got this idea of not neglecting to worship together as the Hebrew writer names for us.  Daryl was always giving me a new book to read – “Here’s how the brain works… Enjoy.”  “Here’s a book about the history of Oklahoma. Enjoy.”  “Here’s a book about the trends of church growth. Enjoy.”  He told me early on with some concern about the need for the church to grow significantly or risk downward decline: “Research says if we can make it to 400 in worship,” he’d say, “ we’ll have strength enough to press forward the mission with strength.” God has provided that growth and I know Daryl who’s in the resurrection now, is smiling that grin you can picture even now – in between fixing a few things up there I’m sure.

It is why we keep getting together week after week as that early church letter suggests. You cannot be a Christian in isolation as hard as we may try. It’s not the way the Body of Christ is designed to flow.  The Body needs all its parts so it can work. There are always some who don’t want to talk about their faith (“It’s personal. I can go it alone.”), but when we authentically get on board with Jesus, it naturally shows. Someone said it well: “the discipleship kills the secrecy or the secrecy kills the discipleship.”  The early church had much on the line to gather – at that time, they risked their physical safety.  For us, the greatest risk may be reaching a state of apathy.  Showing up again and again… even in those moments when it’s more of a struggle to show… encourages others on the bus to stay at it too. Pentecost, if anything, says, “Don’t miss it… you never know how the Spirit will move that day.”  How can we spur one another on to love and good deeds if we don’t show up?

I get an email about once every other week or so from another HACC bus rider – our beloved Mary Noble. It’s amazing, I know.  Mary joined the resurrection more than a year ago now but these emails keep coming and do you know what they say?  One simple message; three simple words: “Don’t miss it.”  It’s generally followed by a link that I’ve never opened. People say to me, “It’s SPAM you know.”  And maybe so.  But I prefer to think it’s from Mary.  I hear Mary’s voice. I see Mary’s deep brown eyes peering into my soul saying with that wise and philosophical Tulsa twang, “Don’t miss it, Mark.” That’s the key today, in my opinion.  God’s calling forward to us: “Don’t miss it, HACC.”

You boarded this bus today – some of you have for years – and I’m so grateful my kids have the likes of you sitting in front of them.  They love this church. It is all they have known but they love it. And do you know how hard it is for Preachers’ Kids to love the church? I think this love comes because the people on this bus truly encourage each other. The Hebrew writer says it plainly, clearly, and emphatically – “encourage one another… and all the more as that day is approaching.”  We live in a time where discouragement seems to be the general tone of the day.  It’s me against you… us against them… red against blue… and sometimes red against orange in these parts.  We don’t get it all right here all the time.  And we’re up front and honest about that.  In fact, that is one of the most encouraging parts of this bus ride we’ve shared for sixty years. We’re not the perfect church. But this I know… we are among the very few places I’ve ever experienced that can hold together our differences in loving understanding.  When some are apt to discourage, harm, hurt, curse, shun, or otherwise – we encourage each other all the more. I think the world could use a little all-the-more these days, don’t you?  That’s why our bus door remains open to all who will board yet.  And when they do, I know you’ll not say, “Seat taken.”  You’ll scoot over, scoot back, stand up – give the seat of honor to the oppressed or the least of these – you’ll make room because the saints of this church did so for you. That cloud of witnesses hold stories that drive us forward still.

We’ve sat behind James McFarland who carried a torch for Outreach and serving our community in extraordinary ways. My very first day on the job we got a call at the office that James was in the hospital. We were in the midst of our first ever staff meeting and the eyes around the table got big.  “Oh no… James.”  This was big news I could tell. I just knew James McFarland was going to be a giant of a man.  As I got into the ER and pulled back that curtain expecting to see Saint James – larger than life – all I could see where these tiny feet at the end of a hospital bed. James simply says, “Welcome to Tulsa!”  Tiny feet. Huge shoes to fill. From Harriet Peake’s passion to James and onward, you’re filling shoes of service by hosting homeless families in this place, making room for children during a school lock-out even as you marched to the capitol with our teachers. You’ve embraced a remote village in Nicaragua and embraced a single child in our own city who just needed someone to know their name and read with them.

I’ve named many today… these saints of the Harvard Avenue bus… and there are countless more.  We’ve sat behind the likes of Alma Elliott, Phil Ryan, Greg Entwistle, Gladys O’Connor and Kieth Phillips.  Carrie Shirley and Russ Vanderslice and Don Farrior. Barbara Peters, Chester Cadieux, Lloyd Christensen, and Gearl McLaughlin.  Dorcas Merriman, Craig Crockett, Jim Rosenlieb and Sally Sitler. Charles Gilmore, Gene Mauk, Jerry Dodson, Julie Gilles and Barbara Simmons.  Joyce Johnson, Lou Ann Jensen, Joe Wells, Ted and Helen Michie. We’ve sat behind Polly Bennett who could pray, “Dear Jesus,” better than any I’ve ever known. You can name the saints who rode this bus through the years too.  In fact, I want you to – because I can’t name them all. Would you choose a name or two or three… a saint of this movement of faith who rode this bus with us along the way and when I count to three, I just want you to say that name or two or three out loud. Ready?  One, two, three…

And so is the blessing of sixty years. The names added to the name above all names, Jesus the Christ – the Rock of this church… the Way of our past, present and future… the hope for all who will join us yet.  Thank you, Harvard Avenue Christian Church, for sharing this ride.  In summation and conclusion… “Don’t miss it!” Bring your all.  Your presence matters in this church… in Christ’s church. For there’s a young woman on the bus today… an eager boy… a new-to-the-faith seeker… a doubting mid-lifer… a twice burned recovering Christian… a seasoned saint reflecting on the meaning of their lives… someone is sitting behind you on this bus wondering why this matters to you… what your faith is prompting you to do now.

Where will this bus go in the next decade? Let’s follow the lead of that eager Spirit that has led us this far.  That’s what Pentecost is all about.  Happy Birthday church.  May the wheels on the bus keep going round and round and round and round.  Amen!

[1] https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/
[2] http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1959.html

text :: Galatians 3: 23 - 29

theme verse :: "But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith." (Gal 3:25-26)

It's race weekend in Indianapolis - Motorsports' crown event. It's truly an amazing thing - the history, the hype, and the hope that something new will be witnessed. In this letter to Galatians, Paul is trying to work out the history, the hype, and the hope of the faith now that the faith of Christ has opened a future to the masses. It is our tendency to struggle with this freedom offered to us in Christ and focus on the rights and wrongs, ins and outs, tasks and checklists. Have you settled into the freedom of your faith? What will you do now that faith has come?

offertory :: 'God of Our Fathers' (G.W.Warren/arr. T.Smith & D.Hustad) : Susie Monger Daugherty, organ + Marilyn Rhodes, piano

opening :: 'My Hallelujah' (B.&K.Torwalt) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Katie Herbert, lead vocal

reader :: Ashley Gibson
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

anthem :: 'If My People' (J.Owens) : Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

special music :: 'Cornerstone' (Hillsong) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

Galatians 3: 23 – 29
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, heirs according to the promise.

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing is taking place today in Indianapolis – our home for the nine years prior to our move to Tulsa. The 103^rd running of the Indy 500 will see thirty-three race cars go 230 miles per hour in circles for a few hours. Some 350,000 spectators will be on hand for the race.  It’s a crazy deal. Living there for nine years, I never once attended the race. Sundays were a bit of a problem for me, you know. We were on the northeast side of the city but the western part of the city nearest the Speedway shut down. Churches couldn’t have worship – though they usually rented parking spaces which could fund their church budgets for the year. I did go to Carb Day one time – which is not an anti-Atkins all-protein diet or anything – the Carb is short for Carburetion Day. Carb Day is the final session where teams can tune their carburetors in conditions similar to those that might be encountered on race day. The name has remained even though no qualified car has used a carburetor since 1963.[1]  I remember sitting in the metal bleachers in an area mostly by myself.  The roar of those empty metal bleachers and its vibrations when a car would zoom past is surely why when my kids holler at me from across the room I respond, “What?” So loud!  The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.  The whole goal of competitions such as this are winning of course. Which car is faster?  Which driver is better?  Who can hold their bladder the longest?  The history, the hype, and the hope are in full glory today.

There’s a new movie coming out later this year starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale called Ford vs. Ferrari.[2] It tells the true story of the battle for racing legacies between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II… particularly the efforts of the Ford team to defeat the domination of Ferrari in the world’s oldest active sports car endurance race, The 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. French sounds so sophisticated. In Nascar-ese (of which I’m more comfortable), it’s called “That Long Race in Lee Manns.” Just kidding. Along with the Indy 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix, Le Mans rounds out the Triple Crown of Motorsport. Where was I?  The movie. Yes. Henry Ford II tried to buy out Enzo Ferrari but when Enzo walked away from negotiations, Ford set his sights on defeating Enzo at his own game in 1966.  He needed a car that could achieve speeds of 200 mph (which had not been done before at this time) but also reliable enough to survive the grueling 24-hour race.  The car had to be fast yet able to handle switching gears over 9,000 times and drive 3,000 miles.  He had ten months to assemble such a car.  He built the Ford GT40.[3]  You’ll have to watch the movie, I guess (or do a quick Google search) to find out who won.  (Matt Damon always wins, right?).  Bottom line – whether Indy or Le Mans – we spend so much of our lives trying to win. Nadia Bolz Weber quickly brings this sentiment into our theology as well.  She said simply, “We all want to know who we’re better than.” It’s the curse of evolution in some ways – this survival of the fittest notion that we’ll only last, we’ll only matter, we’re only valuable if we’re better than everyone else – and sometimes we’ll settle for being better than at least some-body else. “At least I wasn’t last,” we’ll say. But… alas… someone was.  Where does that leave them?

The Apostle Paul had a competitive spirit about him. It was part of what made him so good at what he did and also part of what made him annoying at times.  It is said, you know, that our greatest strengths or qualities are often also our greatest drawbacks or weaknesses.  Paul, self-proclaimed “Greatest of All the Pharisees” and “Jesus hater” had let it all go when he encountered Christ and discovered a new freedom in his life that he had never thought possible before.  Leaving his legalism for this new freedom in Christ, however, didn’t mean that he left all of his personality behind.  He was still competitive… driven to share this new vision and invite others into the freedom he had come to know. And he just couldn’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to do the same.  I think he wrestled with his own history, the hype of his public ministry, and his hope to see the Way of Christ become the way of the world.

Paul’s letter to the Galatian church had a lot of this wrapped up in it. “We all want to know who we’re better than.”  Many times, when we get our hands on religion, we are tempted to turn it into an instrument for controlling others – putting them or keeping them “in their place.”  It’s little wonder you know so many people who have a church experience they left behind saying, “I got out of there… and now I’m free.” Our tendency bends toward control. Paul was all about this in his role as Pharisee.  It was a life of coercion from the outside – not a setting free from the inside. Some of Paul’s early travels brought him through Galatia to establish churches. This letter follows in a few years as Paul’s a little peeved that the church is re-introducing some old ways and patterns of religious rules and regulations. These strong-arm tactics were the very things he had found freedom from himself and believed Jesus came to release as well.

Paul does come on a bit strong.  Galatians three opens with “You crazy Galatians!  Did someone put a hex on you?  Have you taken a leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives.”  (Tell us how you really feel, Paul.) He’s trying to differentiate the idea that we can perfect our faith through our own striving while it is only gift through Jesus Christ that we actually find wholeness. He even points back to Abraham – the father of their faith – saying, “Remember Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.”  He asks all of these rhetorical questions saying, “Isn’t it obvious then that heirs of Abraham are actually those who live by faith, not by his own efforts?” And this is our struggle too.  It’s our struggle for wanting to know who we are better than.  How else do we measure our spiritual progress?  I’ve got to be better than another for me to do so. 

Runners will teach you to pick someone in the race who is up ahead of you as a target; pass him or her, and then pick out the next person.  The underground racing community calls those “Kills” even.  “How many kills did you get?”  Crazy right?  I must say, I am generally the one getting killed in those races. I’ve had very few kills. But we do this with faith.  What does that person believe about baptism? “Ehnt!”  Wrong. Kill. I’m better. You may have your own list which may include social issues or doctrinal quandaries. We can get so lost in those battles.  To what end other than setting our own measurements so we know who we’re better than.  Boom. You’re bad. I’m good.  But as someone recently said, “Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.”

Paul is saying, “I get it, Galatians.  I was so caught up in that myself. But now that faith has come… it’s a whole new world.”  I can’t get that Heavy D tune out of my head with this title: “Now that faith has come what are we gonna do… with it?”  It’s not easy.  I’ll admit to falling into the trap more than I’d like of comparative faith… of doing over being… of judgment over grace.  And some of this is the way we grow and learn. Walter Brueggemann says that

“The Torah, or the first five books, correspond to the good and necessary “first half of life.” This is the period in which the people of Israel were given their identity through law, tradition, structure, certitude, group ritual, clarity and chosen-ness. It’s helpful and easiest for children if they can begin in this way. Ideally, you first learn you are beloved by being mirrored in the loving gaze of your parents and those around you. You realize you are special, and life is good — and thus you feel “safe.” Loving people help you form a healthy ego structure and boundaries.”

But moving along in the text we encounter the Prophets.  Brueggemann says

“The Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures then introduce the necessary suffering, “stumbling stones” and failures that initiate you into the second half of life. Prophetic thinking is the capacity for healthy self-criticism, the ability to recognize your own dark side, as the prophets did for Israel. …The leaven of self-criticism, added to the certainty of your own specialness, will allow you to move to the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Wisdom Literature. … Here you discover the language of mystery and paradox. This is what the second half of life is supposed to feel like. You are strong enough now to hold together contradictions in yourself, others and the universe.”

This is what Richard Rohr calls the “classic pattern of spiritual transformation: ‘order-disorder-reorder.’ Paul calls it “the foolishness of the cross.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).[4]

This pattern is all over our lives: Order, disorder, re-order.  We find some structure, we perfect it to some degree, it fails us, and then we re-build around some new understanding.  Rohr calls this the two halves of life.  David Brooks calls this the two mountains.  The first mountain is all about us succeeding, climbing, becoming better-than but life proves at some point that this only leads to emptiness.  Thus, we begin climbing the second mountain – the one where we are not the star – a climb we make with the wisdom of experience, with the peace of not having to do all the winning (and thereby creating losers); one that is other-centered  valuing relationship over being right and grounded in a force greater than ourselves – Jesus for we of the Christian faith. It’s a freeing thing that we are slow to receive.  But Paul has caught a glimpse – a glimpse so bright it blinded him for a while. Now that faith has come, he’s got a whole new outlook. What about you?

I was fascinated with a word Frederick Buechner offered about the danger of principles.  Naturally, I thought principles were a good thing… and I think they are… don’t get me wrong.  But listen to this perspective.  He writes,

“Principles are what people have instead of God.  To be a Christian means, among other things, to be willing, if necessary, to sacrifice even your highest principles for God’s or your neighbor’s sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there’s no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child. Jesus didn’t forgive his executioners on principle, but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them. Principle is an even duller word than religion. See also idolatry.”[5]

Whoa.  We’ve often allowed principles to answer our “Who are we better than?” quizzes.  Paul says, “Stop it!”  And then he just loses his mind.  He’s gone this far, I guess.  Why not?  He gets radical.  He says, “Once you choose Christ, you’ve chosen Christ. And in Christ, we choose each other too.” How’s that, Paul?  “I’ll tell you how,” he says. “In Christ 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.”

Jesus was so awesome at this… and he’s rubbed off some on Paul here… and Peter when Peter stretches a hand to the unclean Gentiles and last week when we remembered Philip’s reach to Earl the eunuch.  It’s all just wide open now and I get it… that can be a scary thing.  It’s a little uncomfortable when the group doesn’t look just like you or think just like you and you certainly don’t want people in the group that haven’t put in the work like you have. Its human competitiveness that makes it a real struggle and that works its way into my own bones sometimes.

Author Bob Goff did a crazy thing.  He put his personal cell phone number in the back of his book, “Love Does” which sold like a million copies.  His goal is to not let any call go to voicemail.  Can you imagine?  He fields dozens of calls a day. “Try it for a week,” he says. “Loving people the way Jesus did means living a life filled with constant interruptions. Take the calls.”  Oh my. Bob said there’s one kid who calls him every three weeks and cusses at him.  Bob’s a lawyer and felt like he’s heard it all before but this kids got some new ones. Before he hangs up, Bob always says, “I’ll always take your call.” He figures he’s playing some stress-relieving role in this kids’ life.  Bob has the young man tagged on caller ID as “Vulgar Kid” because he needs to brace himself each time before he answers his call.  “Is it fair he says mean things to me?” Bob asks.  “Of course not. But here’s what’s changing me: I don’t want what’s fair anymore. I want to be like Jesus. It’s a distinction worth making.”  What I love most is that line, “Here’s what’s changing me…”.  I wonder how readily we could identify that faith-check piece ourselves. “Here’s what’s changing me these days.”  Who are you making room for?  Who are you trying to understand better?  How are you looking for Christ in the places and people you’ve previously written off? If you made your own list of “There is no this group or that group; this person or that person…”  Who would make your list today? If that list has never changed for you or me, I wonder if we’re doing it right.

Pauline worshiped with us on Easter Sunday.  She wasn’t the only one!, but her story came to light this week in a way that has me reflecting on our community with gratitude.  Pauline was an Amity intern at Eisenhower International School next door for about four months last year.  She was assigned to Tulsa following her graduation from a college in France with an education degree. Pauline stayed with one of our marvelous HACC families during her stay and they become instant family.  She landed in London next to work on her master’s in education and while on a two-month break, her Tulsa family invited her to come back for a visit and she did. In her four months in Tulsa last year, she never came to church though she was always welcome and invited by her host family. She grew up Roman Catholic but was rejected by the church and much of her family when she revealed her sexual orientation as a gay woman. She hadn’t stepped foot in a church for the last eight years. On this most recent visit, her Tulsa mom said, “Hey – why don’t you come with us to worship on Easter.”  She politely declined but agreed to check out our website and give us a look and listen that way.  As Easter Sunday approached, however, Pauline asked if it would be awkward to be the only French lesbian with tattoos and a nose ring present for Easter.  Her Tulsa mom laughed and told her she wouldn’t be the only one with any of those realities except, perhaps, her uniqueness as a citizen of France. So. She. Came. Eight years without a foot in the church. Easter Sunday. She came!  Asking what she thought after the service, she said, “It was surprising.  I was surprised by the contemporary music. I’m surprised that I didn’t ‘burn’ and that nobody there told me I was going to burn.”  And that afternoon, she skyped her Roman Catholic grandmother with whom she has a tight bond.  Pauline said, “I went to church!”  And her grandmother responded, “Look!  I told you that you wouldn’t burn!”

After eight years, friends, that may be no small victory… especially if all you’ve ever been told is that you’re gonna burn. Can you imagine? There were no more labels, just church. One in Christ. It’s an interesting possibility don’t you think?  One of our church leaders was bagging sand at Bixby High School this past week as the community rallied to help preserve the school from all the flooding.  One of the school janitors asked our HACC leader if he could join a few of them at her house to move some things upstairs and off they went.  There was no longer janitor and parent-of-student, just neighbors helping neighbors.

Dan Threlkeld posted a picture this week of Tulsa’s chief meteorologists. It’s a humorous shot and he pokes a little fun at the competitive nature of ratings and all – but he added a line of deep respect for his colleagues and a passion they all share to do their best to keep Tulsa safe. There is no Channel 8 or 2 or 6.  There are no longer competitors in Christ, only companions.

I had dinner with a friend last week whom I only officially met last year but there’s a connection that runs way deeper.  His mom was my Sunday School teacher when I was a kid. I worked for his dad the summer after my Senior year. And sitting with him, talking about the little town we both grew up in though two decades apart, spending time on the same farms, in the same back parking lot of Ben Franklin’s when cruising the strip in high school, bring baptized in the same tub, and seeing his folks in his facial expressions and in his voice, I was moved. There’s somehow no longer generations and distance, but in Christ there’s an inexplicable oneness and community.

So what, right? We just want to sit and watch cars go around in circles some times.  And so we do. And we cheer on our teams and our hopes and our people and there’s space for all of that.  But in Christ… when we’re really in Christ… in that zone… this need to know who we’re better than? It just drifts away. It’s you and me and they and we… it’s us and them coming together… joint heirs according to the promise.  And many will scoff.  Many will say it can’t be.  But I know you and I know Jesus.  And I think there’s a chance this oneness-in-Christ-thing could become The Greatest Spectacle in Faith.

[1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/05/indy-500-2019-carb-day-concerts-schedule-practice-pit-stop
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_v._Ferrari
[3] Brandt, Eric. “Here’s what we know about the upcoming Ford vs. Ferrari Le Mans movie.” The Drive, June 21, 2018, thedrive.com. Ciferri, Luca. “Story reveals why Enzo Ferrari said no to Ford.” Automotive News, August 31, 1998. autonews.com.
[4] Richard Rohr, “Human development in Scripture,” Center for Action and Contemplation Website, Daily Meditation for March 26, 2018; adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
[5] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith (Zondervan, 2009), 323.

text :: Acts 9: 36 - 43

theme verse :: "Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity." (Acts 9:36)

Dorcas, a disciple of Jesus, was "devoted to good works and acts of charity." The actual expression in the original language is more closely, "She was full of good works." The Greek word often refers to those who are "full of the Holy Spirit." The miracle of this story is often seen as the resuscitation of her life by Peter, but perhaps more poignantly, was that Dorcas got right back to doing the things her life was full of. What are you full of? How is that fullness pouring out of your life? (Acts 9:36-43)

prayer song :: 'Holy Spirit (You Are Welcome Here)' (B.J.Torwalt & K.Torwalt) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

special music :: 'Cover the Earth' (K.Jobe & C.Carnes) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

reader :: Bob Flint
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

anthem :: 'I Have Felt the Hand of God' (C.Courtney) : Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

offertory :: 'Ave Maria' (R.Schubert) : Todd Maxwell, vocal & Susie Monger Daugherty, piano

Acts 9:36-43
Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. ³⁷ At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. ³⁸ Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” ³⁹ So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. ⁴⁰ Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. ⁴¹ He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. ⁴² This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. ⁴³ Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

We had the rare joy last weekend of having both my mother and my mother-in-law in town.  They had made the trip from Missouri to see our daughter, Morgan, in the Bixby Middle School production of Footloose. It was a marvelous show and brought back all the feels for me as I enjoyed being in school musicals back in the day. I laughed with my mom as we remembered each role I had played and all the shows she took in over the years… always with joy. She’d laugh and shout and clap at all the right times whether it was the first performance of Guys and Dolls I was in or the twelfth. Mom has always been my biggest fan and I’ll admit it has always been sweet to have her in my corner.  She and dad left for home on Saturday but my mother-in-law was with us in worship last Sunday. She sat right near the front with Carolyn Buchan (who has always been so kind to my mother-in-law who also happens to be named Carolyne).  At the end of my sermon at The Rising, I heard this loud, “Amen!” shouted from the congregation. You have this immediate sense of, “Okay – someone’s convicted today – the Spirit’s really working it today,” but of course, you quickly realize it’s your mother-in-law.  I could have cracked fortune cookies and read fortunes all morning and she would have shouted, “Amen!” after every one.  Many moms have a way of seeing the best in their kids.

My wife, Carrie, often gets a little excited when we’re in the stands watching our own kids do whatever their thing is in that moment.  She’s still learning the rules of baseball but not knowing all of the details hasn’t stopped her from throwing herself into play after play.  Hayes is seven and his team is figuring out all the ins and outs of the rules of baseball themselves.  A play will develop and Carrie’s hooting and hollering, “Get ‘em!” “Throw it!” “Hold it!” “Tag him!” and sometimes she’ll offer her advice without knowing for sure if that’s a legal move. She’ll yell “Get him!” and then whisper to me, “Can he do that?” and I’ll just slowly shake my head from side to side.  Nonetheless, I love the passion of a mother for her kids.  I suspect that there’s no greater love on this side of heaven than a mother has for her children and also no greater heartbreak.

I’ve been with those becoming mothers for the first time and held with them that deep awe and wonder of this new bundle in their life.  The connection is beyond explanation but they have an immeasurable depth of love for this being they’ve only just met. I’ve sat with mothers who’ve decided their child has strayed so far they don’t know if they’ll ever come back. I’ve sat with grown mothers caring for their own aging mother – sometimes pulling out their own hair in the process, sometimes stroking their ailing mother’s hair as she surely did for them when they were little.  It’s a unique relationship – no other like it to be sure.  One could never calculate the hours and soul poured into mothering well and so we seldom do. But when we’ve received such care and guidance – selfless and steady – we grieve it when it’s gone.

We meet a woman today named Dorcas – Tabitha in English.  It means “gazelle.” Not sure if that was the inspiration of her own parents when she was born or if she embodied such graceful and elegant movement in her life.  A dancer perhaps… or hurdler. Who knows? But…here she is.  She’s the first woman in the book of Acts specifically named as a disciple and she is beloved.  Acts says, “She was devoted to good works and charity.” The actual expression of this phrase in Greek is more closely, “She was full of it!”  It was often a way people referred to being full of the Holy Spirit. Dorcas was full of it… and her death hit the community hard.

Rachel Held Evans[1] may be a name you’ve heard – and maybe not. She’s written a number of honest books about her journey in faith. Every year of middle school she was awarded “Best Christian Attitude” at her Christian school so she felt pretty full of it, herself. An over-achiever of the faith. But she had so many questions that easy, pat answers and Christian clichés just wouldn’t satisfy.  She was in a church culture, however, that didn’t welcome the questions. “Memorize the standard answers and be satisfied with them,” was the sentiment.  But she believed the Christ mystery held so much more.

As she wrote of the breadth and width and height of God’s love in Christ and the extraordinary grace of Jesus some said she went too far.  She didn’t understand the fear.

“Perhaps we’re afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of hand,” she said.  “Well, guess what? It already has. Grace got out of hand the moment the God of the universe hung on a Roman cross and with outstretched hands looked out upon those who had hung him there and declared, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Grace has been out of hand for more than two thousand years now. We best get used to it.”

She would write these kinds of things. She imagined a church that was full of it. She dreamed:

“Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.” And her faith was tested. But she also said: “I am a Christian because the story of Jesus is still the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”

Rachel died this past week. 37 years old. Got the flu… had a reaction to the antibiotics. And gone. She and her husband Dan have two young kids – ages 3 and 1.  And so many are grieving.  I was with forty young ministers this week, leading them in retreat, and a number of them carried her books and held them in their grief, testimony to her impact, as if to say: “This is what she did.  This is what we have. This mattered so much to my faith.”  And there was grief.

This is the spirit of the room in our story from Acts today. Dorcas has died. And the people are grieving. For she was full of it… good works and acts of charity.  She made things for the widows in particular – a forgotten contingent of society – for whom Jesus instructed to give care.  Word was that Peter wasn’t far away.  Word was also out that he’d done some healing and worked some miracles and it was worth a shot.  Jewish tradition was to have the body prepared and buried by sundown, so time was of the essence.  They cared for Dorcas’ body but took her upstairs (in a cold room as some translations say) and sent an entourage after Peter. This is a sweet maneuver of the faith movement in this town.

And we’ve all known that saint who we longed to hold onto… full of the spirit… so influential in our lives.  It’s worth asking ourselves, “What are we full of?”  You’ve got to be careful with your answer, but it is worth a thought.  What is your spirit full of that the world would so miss if you weren’t here?  Do you know?  If you don’t, perhaps we need to think more intentionally about what we’re cultivating in our lives. Theologian Dallas Willard says,

“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.”

Full of it. And this just isn’t the big stuff… it’s the daily stuff.

Dorcas stands…

“for all those unsung heroines who have got on with what they can do best and have done it to the glory of God. Had it not been for Peter’s, she might never have made it into the pages of the New Testament, and we have to assume that there were dozens in the early years, and thousands in later years, who, like her, lived their lives in faith and hope, bearing the sorrows of life no doubt as well as celebrating its joys, and finding in the small acts of service to others a fulfillment of the gospel within their own sphere, using traditional skills to the glory of God. [N.T. Wright points out that…] Luke is right to draw our eyes down to the small-scale and immediate, in case we should ever forget that these are the people who form the heart of the church. [Their gifts to the whole go uncelebrated too often.] But when you have the pleasure of meeting a Dorcas, you greet them as what they are, the beating heart of the people of God.”[2]

Last Sunday was a beautiful expression of church.  One of our most seasoned couples had an issue at home and were introduced to one of our youngest couples of the church who went with them to help them with that issue… never met each other… came back knowing each other and remembering fully what it meant to be church.  A greeter, took a first timer all the way into the Life Center which was full of youth and youth leaders and our community and our new friend looked intimidated until our greeter connected her with one of our people sitting close by who, as it turns out, she had known for years… and the joy?  Church, my friends. Church.  And the youth sponsors interviewed by two of our sharp high schoolers spilling the beans about why they serve and how it transforms their lives as much as it does for our young people.  Church. And a young man… a high schooler… new to our community, steps up into the lectern and opens his mouth to belt out a song of the soul.  My view was through the supportive admiration of our choir who beamed with pride for his courage and willingness to share his gift… church.  A new couple, after worship… cooked a Cinco de Mayo dinner for our fourteen Family Promise guests so that they might feel loved and celebrated and a part.  Church.  This is what Dorcas was all about… unsung… but hero nonetheless.

So Peter is sought: “Come quickly,” they say.  And whether Peter knew Dorcas or knew those who summoned him to come or he was simply moved to move… he does.  And it’s a ten mile hike so we’re not talking a three-minute ride to St. Francis Hospital in his Ford F-150 Raptor… I see Peter driving a big truck, you know?  Peter goes and as he climbs the stairs of this home, it is lined with widows who hold in their hands the legacy of this woman who touched their lives… steady and faithful.  No pressure, Peter.  So he clears the room.  And I’m not sure how it really happens from there.  We get a little bit from the text but let’s remember – Peter did not go to med school.  He was a fisherman of all things.  Sure he could pull a hook and clean a fish but this was a little different.  He knelt and prayed. He doesn’t want to walk back down those stairs by those widows simply shrugging his shoulders, “Ma’am; ma’am. ‘Scuse me, ma’am. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”  He’s praying, “Lord, Lord, please.”  And after his prayer… which may or may not have done the trick, he simply says, “Tabs? Get up.”  She opens her eyes.  He extends a hand. And finally… my favorite line and his greatest relief: “He presented her to them alive.”  Isn’t that all Jesus wants?  That we might be presented alive to the world – full of it – vibrant and active and doing our part for the kingdom.

Just imagine that’s the line for you today as the doors of this sanctuary are opened and you’re released back into the wild: “He presented her to the world, fully alive.”  “He presented him to the world, vibrant, active, serving as only he uniquely could.” That’s church. That’s why we’re here.  To catch another glimpse. To fill up with the Spirit again. To get back out there and be church for real.  We don’t always catch it the first time around… or the second… or even a dozen years into it. But don’t quit calling for it.  Don’t settle that it will never come for you. You never know when it’s gonna take.

There’s a great healing story (Mark 8) where Jesus heals a guy’s eyesight twice.  After Jesus’ first try, he asked the man, “What can you see?”  The man told Jesus, “I see people but they look like trees walking around.”  Jesus tries again and says, “What about now?”  It was only after the second time that the man could see things the way they really were. First attempts like first impressions can be great but many times we need that second touch, that second look, another try.  This happens in the faith too. Many have bumped into Jesus along the way but it didn’t stick. It’s not a failure or anything any more than Jesus’ first attempt at the guys eyes was but God does long for us to be real about how we’re being transformed.

Bob Goff, lawyer, author, honorary counsel for the Republic of Uganda to the United States, says about this very biblical story:

“I’ll level with you; if I were the blind guy in the story, I would have been tempted to lie to Jesus after the first touch and tell him I was healed. You know, just so Jesus wouldn’t look bad.”  He says, “but what Jesus is looking for are honest answers about what’s really going on in our lives, not a bunch of spin.  If the guy without sight had faked it and said he could see everything just fine after the first touch, he wouldn’t have been actually healed.”

We don’t get to know how life always works.  Sometimes, the miracles of God may happen in stages. You see a little more the next time and the next time and after the next grace, the next study, the next prayer, the next worship service, the next time you tear a little piece of bread from that common loaf.  Even though we’ve been touched by God, we still don’t see people for who they are until something more happens in us. Goff says, “It’s not trees we confuse them for; it’s opinions and positions, social issues and status, titles and accomplishments and behaviors.”[3]  We won’t always get answers for these mysteries.  Sometimes when we ask for an answer, God sends us a companion.

Has that happened to you?  You’re struggling with an issue or you’re unsure of your faith or your childhood doctrine that has more holes than you’re now comfortable with – and then someone comes alongside and you can’t explain it but you just know that person is full of it – full of spirit – full of perspective and experience and wisdom and faith.  It’s a prayer to see again and maybe that’s why mom got you to church today, who knows?  Our stories are always unfolding and we can’t predict it all.

Just look at Dorcas. The text never says what happens to Dorcas next.  Did she go on a speaking tour – “Come hear the woman who was raised!” — Maybe she cashed in on her new fame and became an illusionist on one of the side roads off the Branson strip.  I mean, she’s got some notoriety now.  The text even says, “many came to faith because of her.” But you know what I think?  I think she made some more tunics for widows that had been forgotten.  I think she did the tasks that many wouldn’t notice… she folded the bulletins for worship and cleaned up the communion cups after. She laughed about her second life joking, “I’m only 3 years old.  I’m only 7.” However long she lived the second time around. You start to count time differently once you’ve been raised… once you start to see life more clearly.  I think she oozed of the Holy Spirit and encouraged the others like a doting mother.  I think she was beautiful.  I think she was full of it.  May that also be said of us.

[1] https://rachelheldevans.com/
[2] N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (SPCK. 2008), 154-55.
[3] This paragraph’s quotes and interpretation from Everybody Always by Bob Goff.  (Thomas Nelson Publishing. Colorado Springs. 2018.)

text :: John 20: 14 - 20

theme verse :: “…Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” (John 20:20b)

In each of the gospel accounts, the women are the first to learn of the resurrection, first to see and hear the risen Lord, and first to be charged with the task to ‘go and tell’. And in those same moments, they are not taken at their word. The rejoicing comes only after someone has spoken up to verify their proclamation. It is the Sunday after Easter. Were we here last week? Were we there – for the supper, the cross, the waiting, and the joy? And if we were … can anyone else tell?

meditation :: 'How Beautiful' (T.Paris/arr.L.Larson) : Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

reader :: Scott Booren
preaching :: Rev Courtney Richards

reponse :: 'Here' (K.Jobe) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Andrea Gross, vocal

John 20: 14 – 20
¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

¹⁹ When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

You’ve probably heard it said that you shouldn’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry.

Well, it’s probably also true that you shouldn’t preach when you’re mad.

But just like I break the grocery store rule all the time, I’m about to break the preaching rule too. Because I am mad today. And broken hearted. And really, if we’re NOT preaching mad and broken-hearted a good deal of the time these days, we just aren’t paying attention. And we sure aren’t following Jesus.

How is it possible – HOW is it POSSIBLE – that I’m standing in this pulpit again, after another mass shooting? I’ve preached the Sunday after Sandy Hook. And the Sunday after Charleston. I’ve stood at the communion table, or led you in prayer, the Sunday after the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Sunday after the Tree of Life Synagogue murders, the Sunday after the shooting at the mosque in Christchurch, last week after the bombing of the Easter services in Sri Lanka, and now after the synagogue in San Diego.

I am mad, and I am broken-hearted, because here we are again.

I was already writing this sermon a little bit mad, and a little bit broken hearted because I want more for us that to forget already that it wasn’t just Easter last Sunday … it is still Easter. But we heard the choir sing, and maybe remember something the preacher said, but that was all the way back on Sunday and we have moved on. And that’s a little heart-breaking.

And I was already a little bit broken hearted because as I read and selected a scripture for this morning, this first Sunday after Easter, I noticed again that – again – a woman had a story to tell and no one listened to her. And we can show the cartoon again from last week:

‘So ladies, thanks for being the first to witness and report the resurrection, and we’ll take it from here.’

And we remember that it got a big laugh last week. And I can tell you that as that cartoon made its way around social media in the week leading up to Easter, my male colleagues of all stripes shared it with a ‘Hey, y’all, this might be us.’ lightness … and my female colleagues shared it with much heavier hearts, for all of the times it’s ever been true. Which is – still – almost all the time. Which is a story we keep trying to tell, and we wonder if anyone is listening.

And as I look at the text today, and heard it just now, amid the echoes of the white supremacist gunshots that rang out less than 24 hours ago in a synagogue community gathered at Passover, my heart breaks over five words in this scripture: “for fear of the Jews”. The doors to the place where the disciples had gathered was locked for fear of the Jews.

This is where my Bible 101 scholars will recall that translation is tricky … and troublesome. Our English translations have often used ‘the Jews’ right here, when what we mean is the very small and select group of religious and political, temple and government, authorities of the day, who were terrified of and therefore threatened by the work and the very presence of Jesus in the world. But we have said ‘the Jews’ were out to get the followers of Jesus. And we forget that the disciples were – that Jesus was – Jewish in the first place. And we have let that fear remain our translation, in big ways.

We have let our fear cloud our faith. And we HAVE to say that out loud. We have let our fear cloud our faith. We have let our fear hold us back. We have let our fear lead our leaders. We have let our fear shape our children. We have let our fear govern our policymaking. We have let our fear cloud our faith, and have its way, and here we are again.

We have to call a thing what it is – we have to name the fear, we have to name the sin of hatred, the sin of racism, the sin of anti-Semitism, the sin of white supremacy. We have to name the fear that is clouding our faith, so that we can reclaim our faith’s power, and put that power – and our trust – in the right place.

* * * * *

And so here we are, stepping into Eastertide … the cross is still draped in white and gold, in this season that moves us from the empty tomb at Easter all the way to the Spirit’s fire at Pentecost … here we are taking the time to hear a bit about the resurrection again. That IS the idea of the Lord’s Day after all – each Sunday is to be a mini-Easter, a small repeat and re-enactment of the story, the wonder, the meaning of a Savior’s power over death. Each Sunday, we are to remember that Christ is not on the cross, Christ is not in the tomb, Christ is Risen. Risen indeed!

Here is Mary Magdalene, in the garden, discovering and proclaiming that very thing. While it was still dark, arriving at the tomb, finding it empty, Mary is convinced that the body of her Lord, this one she loves, has been stolen. What other answer could there be?

And with his first words to her, Jesus repeats the words he had actually used in calling the first disciples (earlier in this same gospel; cf 1:38): Who are you looking for? For the writer of this gospel, a primary task of discipleship is simply looking for Jesus. Who are you looking for? Come and see, he says to the first followers. Mary, it’s me, he says to her in the garden.

That’s all it takes. She is lost, crying, afraid … and then this man she has mistaken for the gardener calls her by name. Mary. And that is when she knows it’s him. That’s all it takes. As in an earlier chapter of John, the shepherd knows the sheep, and the sheep know the shepherd’s voice: Being known by her Lord, Mary is fully known. Period.

When we call something what it is … when we name it, we reclaim it. Jesus names Mary, and she is his again. Through her tears, her grief, her fear … he calls her name, and she is his. As the late Dr Gail O’Day pointed out: 

All four Gospels agree on one vital detail about Easter morning: in the early morning hours, when it was still dark, women went to Jesus’ tomb. The specifics of that early morning visit vary from Gospel to Gospel [how many women were at the tomb, who greeted them at the tomb, how they responded to what they saw and heard], but the presence of the women is a constant. As with the women’s vigil at Jesus’ crucifixion, the tradition does not speculate about this further display of faithfulness by the women. It simply accepts it as an essential part of the story of the resurrection.[1]

When we call something what it is, we claim its power and that power can change the world.

Mary discovers the Risen Christ, and following his instruction, goes to tell the disciples. This very first preacher, Mary, says ‘I have seen the Lord!’ An entire sermon in five words. ‘I have seen the Lord!’ She takes her place in the story – I have seen – and she calls him who he is, and acknowledges the power he has shown – I have seen the Lord.

And then? Nothing. There is no recorded response from the disciples. Huh.

They need Jesus to actually show up – this mysterious thing where Jesus came and stood among them. And they see his hands and his side. And THEN they rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Dr Karoline Lewis jumps past today’s passage and points to the end of this gospel to show how important this personal aspect is in the gospel of John:

“But these are written so that you may believe…”

[These words in the final verses] are a summary of the purpose of scripture, the purpose of preaching, the purpose of Easter preaching. Not written for your information, not written for your understanding, not written to affirm or build up your theological house of cards. No — so that you may believe….

Belief in John is never a noun, but always a verb, and believing in Jesus is to be in relationship with Jesus. …

the believing is not creedal but relational.

Resurrection preaching is this kind of preaching; preaching that doesn’t have as its goal the guarantee of life after death; preaching that doesn’t try to convince people to confess that which is, if we are honest, rather un-confessable; preaching that doesn’t insist on some “done deal” by God; but preaching that promises a relationship with God that not even death can bring to an end.

Our lives exist in, are known through, and defined by broken relationships.[2] 

So when we are where we are … when we have let our fear cloud our faith … when we are sitting mad and broken-hearted … Jesus asks Who are you looking for? Jesus calls us by name. Jesus comes and stands among us.

At Good Friday, we sing ‘Were You There?’ –
when they crucified my Lord, when they nailed him to the tree,
when they pierced him in the side, when they heard his mother’s cry,
when they laid him in the tomb,
were you there.

And here we are a week after Easter, a week after music and preaching and overflow crowds, and we already have to ask WERE you there? WERE you? And if you were … would anyone else know?

We have to call a thing what it is.

We have to pay attention to who’s where.

We have to put the power in the right place.

We have to name and reclaim what fear wants to take away from us.

If we were there at Easter, can anyone really tell?

Are we more willing to listen – to others, to our neighbors, to women, to people of color, to those of other faiths – when they say ‘This is what happened to me.’ If we were there at Easter, are we more willing to listen because of it?

Are we more able to care – for the one we don’t understand, the one we don’t agree with, the one who can’t give us anything in return. If we were there at Easter, are we more able to care because of it?

Are we more committed to the work of the gospel – the good news, for all people, without reservation, with full hope, with willing hands, with grateful hearts? If we were there at Easter, are we more committed to the work of the gospel, even once the flowers and choirs and overflows of Easter have passed?

Dr Lisa Davison, a frequent teacher and good friend of this congregation, offered this always-timely word again this year:

Jesus’ influence on the lives of his followers was so powerful that, even after his death, it continued to be palpable. Whenever they gathered together and remembered what he had taught them, it was as if Jesus was there with them. It was those experiences that confirmed for them that their lives had been changed and they could not return to where they were before meeting Jesus. This new understanding transformed those ordinary, cowardly, often bumbling first apostles into eloquent preachers, risking their lives, and doing extraordinary acts. They proclaimed boldly that there was hope in the tombs of despair. With their words and actions, they made it known that those who believed they had silenced Jesus’ radical message of inclusivity were wrong, that love was stronger than hatred, and that God’s “yes” to life was louder than humanity’s “no”.

The resurrection experiences of the early disciples caused them to say, “Jesus lives!” That is what is at the root of Christianity, not apparitions, empty tombs, or resuscitated bodies. In the days, weeks, and years after that first morning, the followers of Jesus struggled to find words to articulate what they were experiencing. They began to say that Jesus was alive again in the world, and in a very real way, he was. He was alive inside those who had experienced Jesus as a call into new life, even a new way of being. Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, and that first core of believers walked into a life of empowering resurrection.

We are most like those first believers, when we realize that the power of the resurrection is more about life than the afterlife; when we gain the courage to act in ways that create the possibilities for resurrection in the lives of others and in our own. We keep Jesus alive in our words and actions as we live in ways that reveal to all the world the Gospel of God’s love.[3]

You shouldn’t grocery shop hungry. And you shouldn’t preach mad.

But if we were there at Easter, then we believe – we know – we hear our names and we are in the very presence of the living Christ … if we were there at Easter, then we know that Jesus takes our mad, takes our broken-hearted, takes all of who we are, calls it by name, and reclaims it as his own, giving us the power that can only be found in relationship with him.

Rev Dr Emilie Townes, currently dean at Vanderbilt Divinity School, says that naming our sin, confronting what is wrong, and pursuing true faithfulness

… requires that we be willing to confront – to face together. To take the risk of learning about the weak spots and places we need to work on as well as the riches within us … to face our own lack of understanding, the stereotypes we have within us, our unwillingness to change, our comfort with the status quo. It also means that we draw on our faith, the ability we have to hope, our unwillingness to let go of loving, and our accepting responsibility to do justice. … We are the harvest, we are each other’s tomorrows, todays, and yesterdays.[4]

If we were here at Easter, we know that in claiming the tradition of those who were first to see, to hear, and to proclaim: in each service last week, women were asked to read the gospel story – the good news of the resurrection.

If we were here today, we heard in this sermon only women scholars and preachers quoted for their insights and wisdom.[5]

WERE you there, when we found the empty tomb?

Will it matter?

Mary of Magdala has said, ‘I have seen the Lord!’

The question remains: Have we?

[1] Gail O’Day, The Women’s Bible Commentary (Newsom & Ringe, eds.; Westminster/John Knox 1992), p300-301.
[2] Karoline Lewis, Dear Working Preacher, ‘Resurrection is Relationship’, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4576, March 27 2016.
[3] Lisa Davison, from a Facebook post 4-23-19, originally 4-23-17, referencing one of her own earlier sermons.
[4] Emilie R. Townes, originally in Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, ‘Washed in the Grace of God,’ (Continuum, 1995), p61, cited in Religion Women Revolution (Alvaro & Messina, eds; publisher year), p5.
[5] In addition to the scholars and preachers quoted/cited, I am indebted for broader understanding and inspiration: Nyasha Junior (An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation); Alyce McKenzie (‘Locked In and Locked Out’, on patheos.com Progressive Christian page); and Amy-Jill Levine (The Jewish Annotated New Testament).

A series of readings and choral works, updating the traditional service of darkness, marking the solemn importance of the cross, and Good Friday.

As the readings move us through the order of events in the crucifixion, most are followed by the extinguishing of a candle - 14 candles in all. In the audio, you'll hear a small clunk following a reading; that is the progressive darkening of the table, and the mood.

{See 'transcript' for the order of service and participants.}

Prelude – Ave Verum Corpus (W.A.Mozart)

Greeting – Courtney Richards

*O Sacred Head, Now Wounded (arr.D.Hamilton)

A Bidding Prayer – Mark Briley

The Solemn Reproaches of the Cross – Courtney Richards, Scott Booren

*How Deep the Father’s Love for Us (S.Townend) – Brian Wilson, Ashley Pease, Andi Gross

The religious leaders conspire against Jesus – Andy McMillan

Judas plots with the authorities to deliver Jesus – Morgan Briley

Jesus tells his disciples where to celebrate the Paschal meal – Scott Booren

Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him – Darita Huckabee

Jesus recites the Words of Institution – Terrance Revis

*Nothing But the Blood (arr.C.Courtney)

Jesus tells his disciples that they will all desert him – Barbara Crider

In Gethsemane the disciples fall asleep – Mary Magee

*A Lenten Love Song (H.Kemp) – Bet Wallace

Jesus is betrayed by Judas and then is seized by the Roman soldiers – Darita Huckabee

Jesus’ trial begins in the court of the high priest Caiaphas – Sam Robson

Peter denies having any knowledge of Jesus – Barbara Crider

*Lamb of God (J.Reim) – Ron Lee, Marla Patterson, Christina Maxwell, Todd Maxwell

Jesus is put in custody of Pontius Pilate – Andy McMillan

 Jesus is put on the stand before Pontius Pilate – Mary Magee

 The crowd shouts, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ – Terrance Revis

*Crucify Him! (H.Hopson)

 The Roman soldiers mock Jesus, proclaiming, ‘Hail, King of the Jews’ – Morgan Briley

Jesus is crucified – Sam Robson

*Were You There? (R.Manuel) – Kelly Ford

Jesus breathes his last breath – Mark Briley

*Jesus Paid It All (arr.R.Sterling)

The curtain of the temple is torn, the earth shakes – Kevin Howe

* The Earthquake (H.Hopson) – Susie Monger Daugherty

*When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (arr.G.Martin)

Dismissal – Mark Briley

*Christ We Do All Adore Thee (T.Dubois)

• The congregation leaves in silence and darkness.

text :: Luke 19: 28 - 40

theme verse :: “They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’” (Luke 19:34)

"Discernment is truly a gift from God, but not one dropped from the skies fully formed. It is a gift cultivated by a prayerful life and the search for self-knowledge.”(Ernest Larkin). There was a lot of discernment going on that first “Palm Sunday.” Everyone close to the Jesus movement knew a big moment was in front of them. Were they ready? Were they committed? If they watched the ‘game film’ of the Palm Parade on Tuesday, would they have wondered if they should have gone about the whole thing differently? The discernment of Jesus was clear. The question for us? Will we cheer or will we curse? How will we recognize and respond to the presence of God?

anthem :: 'Processional and Hymn for Palm Sunday' (arr.C.Courtney) : Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director; Quinn Daniel, soloist

special music :: 'Remembrance' (HillsongWorship) : The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Katie Herbert, lead vocal

reader :: Hollie Hawkins
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

offertory :: 'The Holy City' (S.Adams) : Kelly Ford, tenor; Susie Monger Daugherty, piano

Luke 19:28-40
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹ When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, ³⁰ saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹ If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” ³² So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. ³³ As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” ³⁴ They said, “The Lord needs it.” ³⁵ Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. ³⁶ As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. ³⁷ As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, ³⁸ saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”  ³⁹ Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” ⁴⁰ He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Time is a funny and amazing thing. We often wonder if we have enough of it; what we’ll do with the time we actually do have; and if we’ve wasted too much of it on things that don’t matter. Our instant society hasn’t helped much with this matter of time. We’re attached to our devices and have allowed them to serve as our brains for the most part. And what once seemed like a speedy booting up of our internet access with that crazy AOL sound that was made when it was launching now has us laughing at the thought of its lag… and, we’re more frustrated than ever if our high-speed internet isn’t firing on all cylinders. What we certainly don’t have time for is getting locked out of our devices.  The agony!  You get, what, like three chances to input the right password to unlock most devices before it goes on full lock down assuming your device has been stolen.  Every wrong entry generally means a longer time you have to wait before you can try the password again. If I mess up the first two times, I’m uber careful about getting the right combo or letters and numbers into that box to avoid the lock-out.  We don’t have time for a lock-out! You can imagine, then, the agony Evan Osnos experienced this week when he discovered he was locked out of his iPad.  His three-year-old son had unknowingly (or was it?) typed in wrong combos of letters and numbers an unfathomable about of times.  When his dad picked up his iPad to use it, he discovered the horrifying message saying that his device was disabled.  Here’s the kicker.  It read“Try again in 25,536,442 minutes.” That means Osnos’ iPad will not be unlockable until the year 2067.[1]  Tweeting for help on another device, he got responses like, “Time travel seems to be your best bet.”  Another suggested he “reboot his 3-year-old.”  Osnos has obtained the attention of the people at Apple and they’re trying to help him though he may not be able to retrieve all of his data. The option of waiting, 48 years, however, is something, he says, “I’m just not willing to do.”  Can you blame him?

Spending time. Wasting time. Not giving the time of day to that thing or that other request or that purpose that is just not your calling anymore.  What are you doing with your time?  Are you stuck in the past?  Are you forever daydreaming about the future?  Is the present moment paralyzing or are you ready to act, move, do that thing, live that purpose, finally force the issue?

It’s Palm Sunday, my friends.  A point in this sacred season of Lent where time is on our minds for all is set in motion… Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, even Easter, loom closely on the horizon… but none of it is set in motion without the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem which we recognize today. It was time. In three years of ministry, Jesus is oft to say, “It’s not yet the time…” and “Don’t talk about this widely just yet…” but today signifies the Palm Sunday password was the entry to a whole new reality.  And Jesus, while peacefully done, forces the issue that has every party asking, “Is this the time?” And it was.  It was time for Jesus.  It was time for those who were ready to pounce on Jesus.  All was coming together.  It was Passover time, of course, so the city was buzzing with activity as people were making all of the arrangements for their celebrations. Jesus had discerned this was the time indeed.

As our Sacred Rhythms series is nearing its climax, we’re considering the gift of discernment today; thinking about timing and choices and decisions.  Ernest Larkin says “Discernment is truly a gift from God, but not one dropped from the skies fully formed.  It is a gift cultivated by a prayerful life and the search for self-knowledge.” Discernment becomes a habit – a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life. Honed and practiced, we begin to develop an intuitive sense of God’s heart.  Ruth Haley Barton calls this ‘becoming familiar with God’s voice – the tone, quality and content – just as we become familiar with the voice of a human being we know well. [In that recognition], we are able to grasp the answers to several key questions: “Who is God for me in the moment? Where is God at work, continuing to unfold his love and redemption?  Who am I most authentically in response?”[2]  Jesus has never been locked out of his access to the very heart of God. Never. They are One. And he longs for that Oneness for all of us too. Discernment is that quest, to the best of our imperfect abilities, to be at One with the heart of God – in our decisions and in our relationships. We would do well to ask Barton’s three questions as we move about the world.  Jesus has discerned that the movement is now and thus embarks the events that make Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday before it ever had a title.

In fact, the day would have been more like our Monday’s than anything else. Sunday was not the Sabbath or holy day like Sunday is for us.  The Sabbath, for our Jewish friends, is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. So their Sunday would be more like a Monday-ish kind of day… Just another manic Monday, right?  We even use the day as a downer saying, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays,” which means you’re grumpy. And people are grumpy on Mondays.  I was driving my daughter to school last Monday and there’s construction on the only road into the school and so people were having to merge into one lane.  It was ironic that this SUV in front of me had this huge sticker on the back glass. It was a huge cross that had the words above it, “Jesus Saves.”  It was like such a big statement.  But that SUV refused to let anyone merge in front of them. The sticker may have more accurately said: “Jesus saves but I ain’t Jesus and you ain’t mergin.” Not the greatest witness, you know? Anyway… Monday’s, as the first day of the work week, symbolize the business of life continuing – life moving forward, getting back at the routine. The Monday drag.  “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” sang the Carpenters. Now the Type-A personalities are all down for Mondays – a day to attack whatever needs to be done.  Get things cranked up again.  Whatever the case… and it would be a bit different with the Passover celebration coming that week… but Jesus perches himself at the mountain of Olives and sets the plan in motion – sending two of the disciples into the village to pick up a colt for his entry to the city. His instruction to them, should anybody be suspicious of their nabbing of this colt, is to simply say, “The Lord needs it.”  That’s a password that I would think gets you locked out of most places.  When’s the last time you’ve tried it?  But, as far as the text itself goes, we have no hesitation from the disciples that this isn’t a good plan. Their discernment is grounded in this trust of Jesus to be who he says he is and he hasn’t let them down yet.

Trust can’t be forced.  Discernment can’t be forced.  It is always a gift. We can learn to find ways of opening ourselves to it.  There’s no formula or method but it’s a way of being with a decision in God’s presence and allowing God to guide our knowing. Barton suggests there are three crucial beliefs in the practice of discernment.  The first is belief in the goodness of God. May seem like a straight-outta-Sunday-School-lesson but let’s be honest, many of us have trouble really believing in the goodness of God when it comes to our personal decisions.  Generally, sure.  God is good. For you? Of course. For your stuff?  God is great. Just trust.  But my stuff?  Ooo… not so sure… making that leap, having what Barton calls interior freedom – a state of wide-openness to God – relinquishing whatever might keep me from choosing for God what I want God to do for me – that’s a greater challenge. We will always hold ourselves back from being fully open to knowing the will of God until we reach a place of accepting that there’s no ‘catch,’ no limit to the goodness of God.  In Process Theology, this is the idea of trusting that God has the next best option before us every step of the way. It’s not a once and for all – made the choice and I’m fallen for good or that the path is never afforded me again.  God always has the next good thing primed for our choosing. This is comforting when you’re in a pinch.  When you feel life is spiraling out of control and you can’t see clearly the way ahead.  Believe in the goodness of God. Trust that the next right thing is all that we need to focus on in those moments. Do the next right thing.

Barton’s second foundational building block of the discernment process is the belief that love is our primary calling. You ask yourself this question: “Which choice enables me to keep following God into love.”  There may be other factors to consider, of course, but the deepest one will always be, “What does love call for in this situation? What would love do?”  Love is such an inconvenience sometimes, isn’t it?  It challenges our self-centeredness.  It makes us vulnerable.  It’s risky. There’re no guarantees. But if we fail to ask this question of ourselves in Christian discernment, then we miss the whole point of the Christian life in the first place. I think industry has skewed some of this “love” question for us.  Love has been materialized or industrialized to an extent that it has become a commodity.  Seth Godin noted this very thing about art.  He said,

“Art has been around for a really long time. Music has been around for a really long time. Painting and sculpture and plays have been around for a really long time.  But it’s only in the last fifty years that there’s been an industry… they call it the music industry, the movie industry… that’s new … It used to be, you didn’t become an artist to become rich, you became an artist because you had an idea to share, because you had an emotion to share.”[3]

These mixed motives throw us off in the discernment process.

The disciples going after this “Lord-needs-it” colt surely had some conversation on the way to the village.  ‘This is it,” one said to the other. “Yep. He’s gonna be king!”  “Fer shure.”  “And we’ll always be able to say we were the ones who got the wheels that he rode into his coronation on.” I don’t know.  They probably sorted through their own motives and concerns, wonderings and selfish ambitions.  Who knows?  This purity of love question about following God into love is an important component of discernment. Jesus is clear at this point.  Question one: “Is God good?”  No doubt. Question two: “What’s love’s next move?” Clarity. He’s going to enter the main arena and demonstrate what love looks like.  It’s time. Which opens us to the third, and final, building block of discernment Barton which shares the belief that “God communicates with us through the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is given to help us know the demands of love in our situation.”

This spiritual confirmation starts with a prayer of indifference. That’s a counterintuitive thought… indifference is the worst, right?  Luke-warmness is nauseating.  That’s scriptural.  But this prayer of indifference is such a Zen moment of clarity and openness in the presence of God.  In this case it means, “I am indifferent to anything but God’s will.”  I want God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.  In such a space I become capable of relinquishing whatever might keep me from choosing for love.  Jesus prays, “Your will be done, God.”  Final word. That’s clarity.  Teenage Mary, the would-be-mother-of-Jesus, demonstrates this courage when most of us worried about who snap chatted whom and what color of bands to get in our braces. She’s told there’s a calling on her life to walk this pregnant road and she’s such a baller.  She says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38).  No wonder Jesus had such strength.  No wonder, as he stood on that mount and imagined entering Jerusalem, that he was clear about his direction.

This is so hard, don’t you think?  I do.  To come to a place of indifference on such weighty choices?  Barton says, however, “Until we have come to a place of indifference, any prayer for wisdom may well be something akin to a rigged election.”  What do you, what do I, need to set aside in order to be open to what God wants?  We may struggle to get to such a spiritual place.  And when such is the case, “All we can say to God is, “I know I am not indifferent. I know there is still something in me that is clinging to my own agenda.  If I am to become indifferent, you will have to do it in me.” (Barton).  Such a period of waiting to follow can be challenging but can also feel deeply right in our bones – right where we need to be.  Like the prophet Jeremiah who wanted to quit prophesying but couldn’t shut it up even in his bones, and Jesus who stood to enter the city, marching toward his crucifixion, there is something like that in all of us – something so essential to who we are and who God made us to be that we cannot set it aside without imploding.  What is that for you?  What is that calling? What is that risk?  What is that truth?  And what. are. you. going. to. do. about. it?

The-Lord-needs-it password works.  The colt is released to carry Jesus into the city, the disciples do that thing where you interlock your fingers so he can step up into their hands and be hoisted onto the colt and they’re off. The case of the Monday’s crowd awakened, and the celebration was on.  People rushed out to see! Business people pulled off their expensive suit jackets and threw them in the streets ahead of the colt carrying Jesus as sign of respect. A trio of trumpet players, moved from their open cases collecting coins for playing New Orleans’s style jazz, stood and blared, “All Glory, Laud and Honor!” No mutes. Full blast. The crowds grew in their chanting and it was deafening. The religious folks were concerned about the ruckus as there were additional Roman military folk on hand to keep things under control. The Romans didn’t need much reason to get forceful with people and nothing ruins a good Passover Party like a riot. The Pharisees tried to get in earshot of Jesus, yelling, “Jesus – seriously – this is a problem. You’re gonna ruin Passover for all of us. Get your disciples under control.” But Jesus knows the time has come… and there’s nothing more to be done than step into his full calling of love.  Jesus hollers back, perhaps with a knowing shrug, “If they keep quiet, the stones would do the cheering for them.”

And so it is.  The launch of this most holy of holy weeks. Are you up for it?  What prayers do you need to pray?  What time do you need to set aside? What discernment will you do to determine your next steps?  How will you recognize and respond to the very presence of God?  May we begin with a prayer… the words of Thomas Merton, to guide us into the mystery of this moment, of this week, of the greatest decisions of our lives.  Let us pray…

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  and I hope I have that desire in everything I am doing…”[4]

Amen and amen.

[1] https://www.techtimes.com/articles/241182/20190409/kid-locks-his-dad-ipad-until-2067-after-spamming-it-with-wrong-passwords.htm
[2] Sacred Rhythms. Ruth Haley Barton.  IVP Books. 2006.  Her influence is evident in this message as well as in the formation of the entire series.  This quote as well as the structure surrounding the three building blocks of discernment are found in her work.
[3] From an interview in the documentary, PressPausePlay 2011.
[4] From Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude” as shared in Barton’s Sacred Rhythms.

text :: Exodus 19: 1 - 8

theme verse :: "Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’” (1 Kings 19:5b)

Civilizations have long valued and cared for the mystery that is the human body. The Christian practice of honoring the body is, as Stephanie Paulsell notes, “born of the confidence that our bodies are made in the image of God’s own goodness.” The complexities of physical health meet every single one of us; sometimes in similar ways, at other times in
altogether opposite ways. However, as Paulsell also points out, “It is through our bodies that we participate in God’s activity in the world.” At the prompting of an angel, Elijah’s physical health became necessary to sustain his spiritual calling. It seems paying attention to our bodies can steady a sacred rhythm that will help God transform the world
through our physical vessels.

anthem :: 'The Old Rugged Cross' (V.Wright) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader :: Geoff Brewster
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

special music :: 'Empires' (HillsongUnited) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

1 Kings 19:1-8
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. ² Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” ³ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. ⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

According to the World Nap Organization – yes there is such a thing – nearly 40% of nappers feel guilty for indulging in a little shut-eye.  Maybe we feel guilty because we see napping as weakness.  Maybe we feel guilty napping because there is so much to be done… how could we be so selfish as to take a nap? It may be why one person said, “Taking naps sounds so childish.  I prefer to call them ‘horizontal life pauses.’”  Whatever you got to do, right?  We forty percenters have our reasons for the guilt, I suppose.  But the sixty percenters remind us how great naps can be! Our staff was swapping ‘nap memes’ this week for fun as we broke open this conversation at our staff meeting.  One said, “Yeah, there’s a nap for that.” Naps are the original life hack.  Sad?  There’s a nap for that.  Tired?  There’s a nap for that. Angry?  There’s a nap for that. Isn’t that true?

There was an American business man who went on vacation to another country and came across a local fisherman who was unloading his fishing boat.  “How long it take you to catch those fish?” the businessman inquired?  “Only a little while,” the fisherman said.  The American was incredulous.  “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more?  Plenty of day left!”  Fisherman said he could but didn’t see the point.  He said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and in the afternoon take a siesta with my wife Maria. I have a full life.” The businessman tried to lay out for him a business plan on a napkin, showing him how if he caught more fish he could expand the business, buy more boats, hire other fishermen, eventually make millions. “Millions?” the fisherman asked, “Then what?” The American replied, “That’s the best part. You could retire. Sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, and take siestas with your wife.”  Does that sound about right?  We are culturally driven to push and push and push ourselves and then push a little more regardless of any cost to our bodies and our spirits. And I’m not arguing for a poor work ethic here.  I’m just acknowledging that when our bodies are not synced well with our spirits, both will suffer.

It may be why the most appropriate meme of the morning was also shared by our staff team.

Never underestimate the spiritual power of a nap and a snack.

This is the very passage we ponder this morning as we’re about midway through our Lenten series entitled Sacred Rhythms, inspired by Ruth Haley Barton’s book by the same title. Today?  Flesh-and-blood spirituality – the consideration of our bodies as holy vessels that carry some very unique essence of the character of God.

Elijah was certainly one of those very unique humans – a prophet celebrated by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.  “He’s kind of a big deal,” as some are prone to say.  He shows up in the Hebrew Bible – what we generally call the Old Testament or First Testament – in the book of 1^st Kings.  Now, 1^st Kings represents a forever struggle that is as rampant today as it was back then.  This idea of sovereignty – of authority, power, control – theologians have wrestled with it for years – “Is God in total control?  Does free will alter sovereignty?  Are we partners?  Do we have agency or is it all pre-destined anyway and makes no matter what we do?”  Plenty of arguments over coffee tables and dinner tables and boardroom tables and even communion tables.  God’s sovereignty is one of the most difficult things for people of faith to live out in everyday routines.  From our personal daily affairs to the direction of the cosmos – how do we trust that God not only ‘is’ but also is leading us somewhere?

A couple of authors (among other things), Don Miller and Bob Goff were hosting a leader’s retreat.  It was sort of loosely scheduled to the point that on the second day, Bob asked, Don, “What are we doing next?” Bob’s a total Seven on the Enneagram for any of our Enneagram Class students out there – always up for the next adventure – who needs a schedule, right?  What fun is that?  But Don answers his question saying, “Oh, I thought we’d just let them have 3-4 hours of free time.”  Bob says, “Don… people want to be led somewhere.”  So they decided to load up the group on a boat and ride out to this majestic waterfall and asked some leading questions given their setting and it blew them all away.[1]  Just a little guidance.  A little leadership. While there’s a place for downtime and all of that… when it comes to our faith… don’t we want to be led somewhere?  Herein lies the struggle.  Who do we trust to lead?  God?  Or the rest of us?  And how… do… we… know what’s what?  Elijah was down for this battle over God’s sovereignty and the others being raised as opposing gods themselves.

This is part of our faith ancestor’s history – the Hebrew Kings which begin in the books of Samuel.  This story shares that it was not God’s idea that the Hebrews have a king… but here we are. And it never worked out that well.  Five hundred years and more than forty kings, there wasn’t much evidence that they they got anywhere all that effectively.  A few bright spots – like David and Hezekiah and Josiah – but even then the brightness was pretty dim.  No matter our best intentions, humanity’s ability to lead often caroms into realms of destruction of some kind.  1^st and 2^nd Kings are, as Eugene Peterson claims, “a relentless five-hundred-year documentation proving that the Hebrew demand of God to “have a king” was about the worst thing they could have asked for.”  But… as he goes on to note…

“In the midst of the incredible mess these kings are making of God’s purposes, God continues to work toward the peaceable kingdom and uses us in the work.”  God doesn’t discard us or detour around us but says, “Come on.  We’ll redeem this yet.”  God’s purposes, then, get worked out in confrontation and revelation, in judgment and salvation, but they are worked out. God’s rule is not imposed or forced, making every man and woman conform to justice and truth and righteousness, but it is worked within them… much of the time invisible and unnoticed but always patiently and resolutely there.”[2]

So in this book of Kings, we have God processing a way through, carrying out life through some of the most unlikely and uncooperative people who have ever lived. If nothing else, this should give us some hope today as well. Elijah enters the picture a couple of chapters ahead of our text for today.  Not much fanfare in the introduction.  One version simply says, “And then this happened:  Elijah the Tishbite, from among the settlers of Gilead, confronted Ahab…” and he drops a prophecy about a long drought coming.  How would you like your introduction for all of history to be, “And then this happened…”  What happens next is some amazing moments of miracles and healing and survival and Elijah coming to a place of battle against the opposing communities who worshiped Baal – not the Hebrew God, Yahweh.  You may have heard this story of the great test – Elijah on his own versus huge group of Baal followers.  The contest?  Whose God would respond to the call for fire?  Again – we don’t seem to do all that well talking to each other – we’d just rather have winner-take-all contests.  So here we go; the my-God-can-beat-up-your-God contest.  The short of it?  The Baal prophets try first and no matter what they try, they can’t call down fire on their sacrificial ox.  Elijah, feeling confident, has his altar all fixed up and drenched with water… water logging the whole thing for the powerful effect.  He does a few card tricks to entertain the crowd while the people were drenching his wood pile.  And then it was time and he prayed that God might show up in a big way and the whole thing erupts in flames and the crowd goes wild!  But, being upstaged, the opponents were ready to fight now and its this huge massacre and Elijah “wins” if you want to call it that and he gets out of Dodge knowing he’s now a wanted man and will most likely be hunted down and killed.  This finally leads us to the nap and snacks.

Elijah has been on the run.  His adrenaline has crashed, and he’s exhausted and, to be honest, he’s just tired of it all.  He feels alone.  Nobody else cares.  Everybody else quit the committee and he’s been left doing all the work.  Do you know this frustration?  So Elijah finds a broom tree.  We wondered at staff meeting what a broom tree looks like.  This is what we found first. Then, this. The text says, “a solitary broom tree.”  He’s the last lonely prophet and so his greatest affinity is this lonely, solitary broom tree. Elijah is just going off: “God, kill me now. I’m done.”  We all have surely felt this way… and often when our bodies are exhausted… it’s why Sabbath keeping and care of our bodies and rest are not just “good ideas,” they are essential to our wellbeing. Our spirits will not be well if we can’t do our best to care for our bodies. Now… I know our bodies betray us sometimes… from no doing of our own, we are stricken with disease or injury and we have struggles that are out of our power to heal.  It’s part of the amazing mystery that is our flesh and bones. How are these fleshy suits somehow vessels where God’s spirit is planted to do some meaningful work?  And why is it that we are so abusive and hateful to our own bodies and the bodies of others?  We reach moments where we have claimed that male bodies are more important than female bodies or straight bodies are more important than gay bodies or white bodies are more important than bodies of a deeper hue.

Ozola Hughes, grandmother of a ministerial colleague of mine, died this week – “98 years young,” she said.  My friend posted a picture of her Gigi’ beautifully brown hands. I couldn’t help but think of what those hands and her very body have experienced in the last 98 years.  A black woman, born in 1921, raised in the South, without the same rights as others because of her body.  And yet… this Spirit that expressed through her granddaughter – whose black body leads a multi-racial Disciples church in Dallas – says, “We are happy to wait on the Lord…” as she affirms the word of the prophet Isaiah.[3]  How do we exist well, at home even, in our bodies, friends?  The Christian practice of honoring our bodies (even when we must claim the sin of our history and our present of not honoring everyone’s bodies) is born of the confidence that our bodies are made in the image of God’s own goodness – in diverse and marvelous ways. And if this is so, caring for our bodies is indeed a spiritual practice.

When there’s not a “check engine light” flashing, we may ignore our body in favor of other “more spiritual” endeavors but loving our bodies – caring for our bodies – is as spiritual an endeavor as any.  Ruth Haley Barton gave this growing thought and ultimately said, “I grew more and more curious about what it might look like to glorify God in my body.”[4]  She, like most of us, can surely recall moments of gratitude for the particular body we were given and moments when we wished mightily for a different one.  Our culture will be the first to tell us that our vessels aren’t good enough. Culturally we have an excessive and misdirected focus on the “perfect” body and we couple that with disturbing levels of irreverence regarding human sexuality – all of which makes it more difficult to know how to relate to the body in a spiritual way.  But Biblically – the body is a place where the presence of God can be known and experienced.  Jesus put on flesh, lived and thrived and struggled and died… but also says, “This is my body, given for you.” Flesh and blood spirituality… body and spirit… both gift. Neglect of the body is the neglect of spirit and may lead to Elijah’s inclination in exhaustion to say, “Done. God, I’m done.  Take me out.”

This scene is truly the inspiration of the Snickers commercials about people being desperately grumpy when they’re hangry.  “I want to die!” he shouts, and an angel shows up and says, “Eat this and take a nap.” The result when his body gets some rest and nourishment? His perspective changes.  The angel of God essentially says, “Take care of your body… you’ve got a long journey ahead of you and you won’t make it otherwise.”  Interesting enough, it wasn’t until he attended to his body that he was able to hear what God wanted of him.  In our own ways, we need to move from ignoring or despising our bodies and allow them to become an ally in the reorientation of our internal and external lives. We seem to be more able to trick our minds for a while… but our bodies tend to not let us slide by without consequence. Wholeness is our congregational star word this year.  God created us for wholeness. That spiritual wholeness includes collaboration with our bodies. Feel your body… how does it want you to pray?  How is it leading you to serve?  How does it call you to connect with your spirit?

Our bodies are beautiful in their being and their purpose.  It is our bodies that allowed us to be the Body of Christ all over this city yesterday as we served in a congregational day of service called, “In Christ’s Name.” Our bodies allowed us to embody hope and move about… from Pastor’s Class students and their elder Faith Partners to families and Sunday School classes putting together Street Survival kits, detailing the Family Promise Van, church kitchen deep cleans and engaging partner ministries in the city.  That is embodied prayer.  At some point, we move beyond the vanity of our bodies to the glory of our bodies.

My grandfather always used to laugh when the great-grands who had barely discovered their fingers and their voices would pinch the back of his hand and say, “Old skin.”  He just smiled and laughed and enjoyed their marveling.  They weren’t judging or recommending new skin cream… they were just connecting bodies and souls with one whose lap might as well have been the throne of God to them.  At some point we, as Richard Rohr says, “enjoy the moon itself instead of fighting over whose finger points to it most accurately, quickly, or definitively.”[5]  Just look at that moon. Wow.  We chased the moon the other night — “That’s a blood moon,” the kids said from the back seat.  We couldn’t quite see it so we chased it… down the side roads, past the grove of trees until we found a clearing and there it was in all its glory. Our bodies, standing, marveling at the universe… simply a part of the greater picture of God’s cosmos. There is a knowing… a deep knowing… that vanity can’t contain. I don’t need your body any more or your image or your glory… God has settled in my very vessel… and it’s good. God even said, “It’s very good.”

Look.  Bodies climb cliffs and dunk basketballs.  Bodies move paint brushes and write poems.  Bodies run marathons and embrace friends.  Bodies lend a helping hand and wipe tears of loved ones.  Bodies help strangers across the street and stir ingredients to make wedding cakes.  Bodies are baptized in water and deliver babies.  Bodies even breathe into other bodies that aren’t breathing and that breathless body breathes again.  At some point, we come to know that we all have bodies – unique and beautiful and colorful – and despite any difference we see in our bodies, we are, as one writer said, “equally naked underneath our clothes.”  That may not feel like a whole lot of knowing but even this little bit of honesty and vulnerability gives us a strange, peaceful, kinship.  Every body needs rest and nutrition, exercise and connection and… as we learn from Elijah… every body needs all of that in order to best hear what God has to say to us.  So… love your vessel. Have a little grace for your vessel and the vessels of others; take a nap and have a snack… God is waiting for a word with you.

[1] A story as told by Donald Miller on his Building a StoryBrand podcast.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/building-storybrand-donald-miller-clarify-your-message/id1092751338?mt=2
[2] From the introduction to 1^st King’s as found in The Message.  Eugene Peterson. NavPress. 2002.
[3] Rev. Virzola Law is the Senior Pastor of Northway Christian Church in Dallas, TX.  www.northwaychristian.org
[4] Sacred Rhythms. Ruth Haley Barton.  IVP Books. 2006.  Her influence is evident in this message as well as in the formation of the entire series.
[5] From “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.”  Richard Rohr. Jossey-Bass Publishing. San Francisco.  2011.

text :: 1 Samuel 3: 1 – 10

theme verse :: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

Do you read Scripture primarily for information or transformation? Do you imagine it as a text book or a love letter? There is room for both realities, of course, but in creating a sacred rhythm between God and follower of God, it is good to consider what it means to savor the Scriptures. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love.” What is your relationship with our holy text? What could God open to you if you opened the Bible in a whole new way?

anthem :: 'More Holiness Give Me' (R.Staheli) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader :: Dan Pease
preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

offertory :: 'Thy Word' (M.W.Smith) :: Andrea Gross, Kelly Ford, Susie Monger Daugherty

1 Samuel 3:1-10
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. ² At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; ³ the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. ⁴ Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” ⁵ and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. ⁶ The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” ⁷ Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. ⁸ The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. ⁹ Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. ¹⁰ Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

The church elder got up to read the scripture chosen for the day and the young teenage boy selected to sing the refrain nervously stepped to the lectern and sang, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  I can remember it vividly.  It was pure and holy and sacred.  I remember being in Vacation Bible School as a young child learning to sing, “The B-I-B-L-E, yes that’s the book for me.  I stand alone on the word of God, the B-I-B-L-E!”  I remember when I first came to serve among you here in Tulsa, it was the practice of the elder reading the scripture to approach the Communion Table which set up high on the Chancel, to lift the biggest Bible you’ve ever seen and carry it over to the pulpit and spread wide it’s pages to be read before the congregation.  It could have been read in many other ways but this visual was designed to say, “Look at this!  Hold your breath for a moment!  Something holy is about to be shared.”

I love the Bible. It is the book that has been in my life longer than any other book.  From my picture Bible, to the one I received at my baptism to the one I received when I graduated from high school to the one my parents gave me at my ordination… the Bible has always been an essential part of my existence. It’s just a book, right?  Pages run through a printing press, bound, and many shipped out of China to the ends of the world.  China! The very country where the book itself has been banned at various points in her history. I’ve been to that very printing press in Nanjing. It is impressive.  They had a running ticker  of how many Bibles they had printed… tick, tick, tick.  Amazing! Some six billion copies of the Bible have been sold.  Harry Potter has only 400 million copies sold, coming in third place. Nine out of ten American households own a Bible – the average American household has three. The YOUversion Bible App[1] has already been installed over 365 million times on unique devices all over the world – 1,880 Bible versions in 1,288 languages — for free… and without advertising.  Isn’t that something?  I’ve heard Craig Groeschel, the LifeChurch founder whose church created the Bible App tell the story about how it happened.  The short of it was a teenager had slipped into the office where a team was having some conversation and was like, “Uh, it would be super easy to make an app.”  “Really?” they said. “Uh, yeah.”  And just like that… he did and the world is reading the Bible again… a new generation… a new time, place, medium, village, language.  Why tell you all of this?  Because it is simply amazing to me.  The reach. The impact. There is something beyond the words of the pages that transforms life like nothing else seemingly does.

Rev. Meghan Larissa Good, a millennial Mennonite pastor speaks to this power.

“Hardest to pin down is the naked power of the book itself,” she says. “Millennia of readers testify that those who listen carefully find themselves addressed by a voice beyond the page that somehow penetrates and breaks things open. God, in some strange and unique way, actually talks here; and where God starts talking, chains are broken, wounds are healed, and whole worlds are upended.”[2]

So there’s that. But… we also know such power can be destructive.  Many a war and tremendous violence have been conducted on somebody’s word that the “Bible told them so.”  When the Hebrew writer says in Chapter four, “Indeed, the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow…” some have used the Bible for that very purpose – to slice and dice and harm and exterminate whole communities or races of people or to draw castles around their own holy understanding that leaves little room for anyone else to get across the mote to share the joy of being on the inside. The murder in Christchurch, New Zealand, is shuddering… there is no place in any Holy Book that can justify such hatred and violence.  Only deranged extremists of our faith and that of others have felt justified in such slaughter. It is not the peace which our Muslim, Jewish, and Christian siblings promote.

One way we can stride in this direction for peace is to encounter God in Scripture in a way that brings life and hope to all… not death or fear.  I want you to think about your engagement with scripture.  Maybe it’s always been a part of your life.  Maybe you’ve given it little thought and have just chalked it up to a weird collection of stories that don’t have anything to say to us today.  I wonder how you approach the Bible. Do you read Scripture primarily for information or transformation?  Do you imagine it as a text book or a love letter?  There is room for multiple realities, of course, but in creating a sacred rhythm between God and follower of God, it is good to consider what it means to savor the Scriptures. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, What could God open to you if you opened the Bible in a whole new way? That’s what we’re after today.

Scott Allender recently referred to these two Harvard psychiatrists who stated quite starkly the following: Ouch.  We are the most over-informed, under-reflective civilization in human history.  Whoa.  Information is more accessible than ever.  And we may eat it but we certainly are bypassing the chewing and digestive processes.  My son Dane reminds our family of this every time we eat. He reminds me of his great-grandma Briley who always took an additional twenty/thirty minutes to eat her meal after the rest of us were done. Dane is the same way.  And we’ll wait and he’ll say, “I’m just savoring my food, guys.”  And like our information, we hardly have the patience to savor anything anymore. When’s the last time you savored Scripture?  And if you are reading… are you just trying to get through it… to reach some reading plan goal?

Think about Luke 6 where Jesus talks about loving our enemies as a true mark of the Christian faith.[3] We’ve heard it before perhaps and we’ve got somewhere else to be soon so we just plow on through that chapter so we can check it off the list.  But if you’re reading relationally or for spiritual transformation, you might only choose 6-8 verses and approach it with no other agenda than listening and deepening your intimacy with God.  How does it feel when you read Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies.”  Feel it.  Wonder about it.  And maybe you’ll start feeling some discomfort and a fist rising up from your gut that says, “I don’t this so!  I’m not okay with that!”  It surprises you because you were feeling all spiritual trying to do your daily scripture reading and now you’re just feeling all judgy (which we may be prone to do).  But feel it a bit and ponder, “What in my life is pressed against what Jesus is saying here?”  What may be revealed is that under my piety, there’s a part of me that doesn’t feel all that loving right now.  In fact, I’m harboring some anger against someone who’s hurt me. I thought I had let that go but clearly its still there under my skin. What does this awareness on this particular day tell me about where I am not like Christ?  Am I being transformed into a more loving person? Now… instead of just buzzing through the words, “Love your enemies,” – God and I are getting somewhere – some level of intimacy that may just change me in some deep way.  This is how we were meant to read the Bible… not in quest of sound bites to back up our political leanings… but to engage the very Word of God… who is Christ himself… that we might be transformed.  After all, this is the Bible’s bold hypothesis: “It’s a grand leap of faith – that there never was any closed cosmic system from which God could be barred or into which God has to break as a stranger… God is closer than the world ever dared to imagine.”

Rev. Good reminds us that “The early Christians believed the Bible was rightly read when it led to contemplation of, and participation in, nothing less than Jesus himself.  This means we don’t just read Scripture – we read through Scripture like a window.”  I think we have come to fear Scripture… a sense that we can’t understand it or that we should be more familiar with it or that we’ll not use it well and so we give up on the engagement.  Ah… but don’t do that, my friends.  Pick it up again, as if for the first time, to savor it a bit at a time… listening for what God may be saying to you now.  While the text may be the same, your life changes day after day and therefore your encounter will be different time and time again.

I appreciated a friend who’s taking our Enneagram class on Wednesday nights who was struggling a bit to decipher what Number or personality type he may be.  He said almost soberly, “I’ve been through some hard things and I’m not sure I’m the same now as I was back then.”  Life does throw us some tough curveballs. Life is hard and we make choices and things happen that are out of our control and we wonder, “Who am I now?”  And scripture can be a companion in a wholly new way.  Those sacred texts are most effective not when we read them but when they read us.  The more we can loosen some of our preconceived ideas or fundamental perceptions about what the text says or means and encounter it in a fresh way – the more we can see our lives in the new-thing-view that God may be doing in our lives now.

It’s why I picked, perhaps, an obscure text to speak about encountering God through scripture because the story of young Samuel doesn’t have anything to do with him engaging his sacred text, the Torah.  Not at all.  He’s just available.  And if we could start with availability, we’d be well ahead of the game.  Little Sam was living in a spiritually dry time… “The word of the Lord was rare in those days,” says the text. There was corruption and greed and bad stuff happening and it was just a spiritually dry time.  But Sam was living in the Temple as was Eli the priest.  And one night, Sam was dreaming perhaps when he hears his name called, “Samuel! Samuel!”  He jumps out of bed and runs into Eli’s room hollering, “Here I am?”  What do you need?”  Now Eli’s up in years a bit.  His bed time ritual takes some time with the Ben Gay and the whole bit and he’s tired.  And this whipper snapper comes running in and waking him up.  “Beat it, kid!  It wasn’t me.”  Sam goes back to bed but that voice again, “Samuel! Samuel!”  And the boy shoots back into Eli’s room: “Yeah!  I hear you calling me.  Here I am!”  And Eli says, “You’re killin’ me Smalls.  I’m not yelling for you… get in bed. Now!”  And Sam dips his head and climbs back onto his bunk.  And I’ll be darned if Sam doesn’t hear his name called again.  This time, he’s got to be thinking, “The old man has lost his marbles!”  What else can he do but go see what Eli needs.  “Hey there, sir.  I heard you call my name and I’m back… please don’t yell at me.”   And Eli, realizing like a parent does when something is truly up with their kid, he says to young Sam, “My boy, I see what’s happening here. The Lord is looking for some available ears.  Go back to bed and when you hear your name called, respond by saying: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  Don’t you think the kid is a bit wide-eyed now?  We don’t pick that up in the story but I’d sort of be like, “Uh… will you come with me?  And can I have a drink of water… and maybe a snack?”  Anything from having to go back to bed. But Sam drags his blankey back to his room. He lays down and pulls the covers all the way up over the tip of his nose and stars at the ceiling… and waits.  And lo and behold, the voice comes again: “Samuel!”  Big gulp.  What was I supposed to say?  Oh yes. “Uh… speak, Lord, for your servant is all ears.”

That’s availability.  That’s what we’re looking for.  That’s the approach I’m suggesting we have when we approach the Bible.  I don’t want to coerce you or manipulate you or brow beat you with Scripture.  It’s too beautiful for that.  I want you to encounter the living God and be willing to say, “Speak to me, Lord, I’m available and listening.”

There was an acronym floating around for a while… because Christians love themselves some acronyms, right?  F.R.O.G. – forever rely on God. W.W.J.D. – What would Jesus do. We love ‘em, don’t we?  There was one for the B.I.B.L.E. – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Cute, right?  And I get the sentiment.  It’s a pithy statement and, at one point, maybe something I expected of the Bible myself – “sort of like a Roomba owner’s manual, only for the human soul.”

Rev. Good spoke of this too.  She said,

“If the primary purpose of the Bible were to efficiently convey the most basic, universally relevant knowledge necessary to maintain a well-ordered life, most of us would expect a very different kind of book.  We’d want a little more quick-reference-index, a little less poetry; a little more guidance on romance and dating, a little less detail on how to build a giant ark without power tools.”  She says, but “this is no fairy-tale or snow-globe world.  The Bible tells the story of what is.  It’s the true story of a world where hearing is imperfect, where motives are mixed, where evil exists, where bias lingers, where good intentions can go wildly astray.  And where God persists in showing up.”

If God persists on showing up then maybe I should too.  For that’s where we meet the Word; the Word who is Christ himself.  The Word that existed before words existed.  Kayla McClurg continues that sentiment…

“The Word that longs to quiet the storms within and among us, light up our darkness, stir our complacency, bring us back fully to ourselves. The Word longs to be in conversation with us; not get our opinions on every subject, be impressed by our clarity and wit, but just hang out with us, dwell among us. The Word has come to teach us our mother tongue, our native language — the language of compassion and fearless encounter, the language of love.”[4]

Yes. Available. Encounter. Thank you, God.

How do you know God is calling?  Even the idea of God calling you to do something feels so strange and like a call on your Smart Phone from an unidentified number – you’re not inclined to answer.  There’s so many voices wanting to yank you into their sphere of influence.  How do you know?  E. Stanley Jones… missionary to India called this a “traffic jam of wills.”  He was a bright young man in his early 20’s and everyone wanted a piece of him.  His alma mater said, “We believe God is calling you to teach here.”  His friend wrote him a letter, “I believe God is calling you to evangelistic work here in the States.”  His denomination tells him, “We believe God is calling you to the mission field in India.” He felt called to India and served his whole life there. He remembers having this open conversation with Gandhi one day saying, “How can we make Christianity more natural here in India… more available to people who may be interested?” and Gandhi roughly says, “Christians should first seek to live more like Christ.”[5]

That’s always the challenge, right?  We may be quick to say, “The Bible says…” but until we can show, “This is how Christ lives,” many won’t be inspired to crack open the Scriptures at all. The old adage, “You may be the only Bible some will ever read,” applies well here.  Information alone just makes us arrogant if it doesn’t filter down through the clay to the roots of our souls where real, humble transformation takes place.  Pastor Courtney is offering a Bible 101 course on Tuesday nights starting very soon.  A brother in our very church and I are praying for clarity on the possibility of a Bible study on the Book of Acts for which we need some leadership to rise. Maybe these are calls of God on your life?  Who knows?

Sometimes, when you’re struggling to hear the call of God, you’ve just got to make a new effort.  Make a start at something.  See if any traction is gained. Starting is always a sign of hope.  Every time I get dressed to go out for a run, I’m hopeful that, even if I’m slow, my getting out there; trying something; making my legs available to what could lead to the transformation of my cardiovascular system, is hope.  Making any beginning is stating the belief that a good outcome is possible.  When we sense God calling us to make a beginning, at whatever that may be, it’s important to not let discouragers or opponents or distractions turn us away. What is waiting for a start in your life?  What have you been wrestling with, wondering if God may be giving you a nudge?  Have you tested it?  Do you need some training for it?  Have you sought the wisdom of scripture to simply make yourself available to God within the words of our holy text?

I was in third grade. My father, who was also my pastor, taught me a word from John 3:16 – again the number one scripture written on hairy chests of shirtless men at football games for decades now – isn’t it crazy where scripture shows up?  You probably know this word.  “For God so loved the world that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” My dad invited me to put my own name in that text where the word “world” was.  “For God so loved Mark…”  Now the sentence doesn’t read correctly if you don’t alter any of the rest but I can’t remember how we handled that.  But that first part?  Can’t shake it. Can’t forget it.  “For God so loved Mark…”  Really?  “And you can do that?” I asked.  “You can put other people’s names in there too?”  “Until you cover the whole world, son.”  I want to be available to that kind of God.  That kind of love. That’s an encounter that can change the world.  So, I’m listening, God. And maybe you’ll listen too… you know, for your name to be called?  May we, like young Samuel, be ready to respond 

[1] www.youversion.com
[2] Meghan Larissa Good. The Bible Unwrapped:  Making Sense of Scripture Today. Herald Press. Harrisonburg, VA. 2018. This quote as well as other places where Rev. Good is named in this message come from this book.
[3] Sacred Rhythms. Ruth Haley Barton.  IVP Books. 2006.  Her influence is evident in this message as well as in the formation of the entire series.  This paragraph about approach to scripture reading is an example she shares in this book.
[4] Kayla McClurg, comments on John 1:1-18 for January 4, 2016. inwardoutward.org.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQHIjCLcF6o

text :: Mark 10: 46 - 52

theme verse :: “Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51a)

Richard Rohr says, "A good journey begins with knowing where we are and being willing to go someplace else." The sacred season of Lent always affords us such an opportunity. What is your deepest spiritual desire? Do you long for more? The movement from desire to discipline is important. This forty-day journey to Easter invites us to be honest with God, and ourselves, about our sin and our hope, about our shortcomings and our holy longings. On Ash Wednesday, it begins with a cry for mercy and a commitment to follow Jesus on the way.

reader :: Rev Courtney Richards

anthem :: 'Offertory' (J.N.Beck) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

preaching :: Rev Mark Briley

during the imposing of ashes :: 'Desire' (Ryan Adams) :: Isaac Herbert & Andrea Gross

Mark 10: 46 – 52
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. ⁴⁷ When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹ Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” ⁵⁰ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹ Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher,^[a] let me see again.” ⁵² Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

“There are moments in our lives when we cry out [if even] inwardly, ‘I don’t care what anyone else says; there has to be more to the Christian life than this!’”  Maybe you’ve been in such a space before.  Maybe you’re in such a life space now.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve grown up in the church, are new to the faith, or somewhere in between, we are all prone to such a pondering at some point.  Ruth Haley Barton, who authored the book, Sacred Rhythms[1], which will supply important guidance to our series this Lent, admitted this very feeling even as she was pastoring a church.  She called it CFS (Christian fatigue syndrome).  The more she refused to acknowledge this longing for more, the deeper and wider the emptiness became. She said, “It nearly swallowed me whole.”  It was a time when she couldn’t begin to fathom what Jesus meant when he said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).  In that season of her life, she said, “I was cynical at best.”  Do you understand this feeling?

Some of this has to do with our sense that we can manufacture spirituality.  We can work at it, yes, and at some point, our desire for more must lead to our discipline for more or we’re not giving God our best effort toward that transformational reality.  However, spiritual transformation is full of mystery.  The Greek word for this process translates into metamorphosis in English, like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly.  It’s hard to imagine that the caterpillar has much cognitive understanding about the process or the end product of the whole thing.  Caterpillars don’t sit around with their colleagues in the break room saying, “Thinking of cocooning this weekend. I’ve prayed it through. It’s time.” They don’t do that, right? But… there’s something in the deepest essence of that little squirmy creature that says, “It is time” and so the caterpillar obeys this deep inner urge to enter the transformative process. Giving ourselves over to our own spiritual transformation is just like this mystery. We find ourselves on the edge of something that we internally long for but something we cannot do for ourselves.  We can only put ourselves in position… making ourselves available… and trusting God to work within us.

This is surely, in part, what has led you here tonight.  Sure there’s the, “Well I’m singing in the choir,” or “The whole Youth Group had to come,” or you thought there would be snacks.  I know there are always many factors that go into getting us to any place and any given time.  But since you’re here, I have to believe that even some part of you is longing for more… longing to understand and to be understood… longing to be more even as you long to be accepted as you are… longing to find control over yourself even as all seems chaotic and out of control all around you.  But you’re here in this sanctuary on this first day of the season of Lent so why not make the investment in your soul.  Richard Rohr says, Lent is a sacred season that always affords us such an opportunity if we are willing.  Where are you willing to go?  Where are you willing to grow?  What is your deepest spiritual desire?  Do you long for more?  The movement from desire to discipline is important and so tonight… in what may be the most straightforward and honest night of any church night, is a perfect place to own where we are and be willing to go someplace else.

Why is this night so honest?  For starters, the mark of the cross in ash on our foreheads is the very humbling reminder of our mortality.  We’re all going to die.  The science around death still offers the research that the human mortality rate still hovers around 100%.  They’re even teaching this in schools you know?  I still remember my daughter coming home from school one day last year announcing, “It’s official!  My classmates and I are going to live until we’re 127.”  Perhaps… but even still, that 128^th year is not promised.  Death is real. We deny it. Ignore it. Or assume it’s for others. But it takes little to remind us that it looms near.  Now, of course, there are stories of facing and defeating death that help build our sense that we can overcome death on our own.  A man attacked by a mountain lion while on a run, wrestles and kills it with his bare hands. Death defied… at least for the runner. Two elementary aged sisters wander from home, get lost, and rely on their 4-H skills to survive for a couple of days in the wilderness. Amazing!

Or maybe you heard Jeremy Taylor’s survival story this week.  An adventurer, Jeremy and his dog, Ally, love to explore the wild mountains of Oregon and ventured out on such an expedition a couple of weeks ago. Heavy snow set in and ultimately trapped he and Ally in their car without a phone or any way of finding freedom.  For the next five days, this man and his dog survived by starting the car once in a while to supply a little heat and eating the only thing he found in his car that put any calories into their bodies at all.  Wait for it?  Taco Bell sauce packets. That’s it!  Five days!  Taylor said after being found and rescued by a snowmobiler, “Taco Bell fire sauce saves lives!”  Thankfully, these stories all ended well but we know many more do not. And this man’s escape of death doesn’t give him a pass altogether.  He’ll face death again. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”  Accepting our mortality is part of what this night is about. When the ash is placed on our foreheads in the shape of a cross later tonight, we’ll hear it said 

It sets the tone for this season in a way only death can.  Yes, at the end of all of this, we’ll celebrate Easter… the resurrection… life eternal… but how can we really appreciate it if we don’t recognize that death comes first. We often think of this spiritually as a death to self.  Giving up our way for the way of transformation… like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon trusting that the remodel of its very being is worth the submission of self to the process.  There’s got to be more, right?  There’s got to be more.  While this longing and desire is often bittersweet as it means there’s some hard work ahead, it also is the very thing that reminds us that we are alive in ways we truly and ultimately want to be alive.  When was the last time you felt a longing for healing and fundamental change groaning within you?  Do you know where you are?  Do you know where your spirit is?  Are you willing to go someplace else?  That’s the question of this night. Very specifically the question is this:  What do you want?

This is not a new or mysterious question, but it is a transformative one… one that Jesus asked of people often. “What do you want?” he would ask.  “What do you want me to do for you?”  This is the question asked in the scriptural passage you heard read just a bit ago.  The story of Bartimaeus – Blind Bartimaeus as he was often called… which is rude but also a reality that he had struggled with presumably for a long time. We don’t know how long Bartimaeus spent begging by the side of the road, but it had clearly become something he was known for.  We become known for the things we do as well which tragically begins to define us in ways God would never define us. Be careful about projecting such definitions onto others and even onto your own life.  Bart heard the buzz that this Jesus would be passing by and he wants to see more than anything else – physically see of course but there is a greater spiritual depth to his desire as well.  He wants the healing to cover his mind, body and spirit.  He wants to be transformed.

It was a noisy and crowded day in the city and Jesus was such a popular teacher the crowds around him always made it tough for everyone to get close to him. To get his attention, Bartimaeus was going to have to dig deep.  We live in a different time and place but we feel that same press.  The crowds around us, the attachments to our phones, the noise in our heads even, are trying to push us out… keep us away from truly feeling our lives… and we have to dig deep, even on nights like tonight, to put ourselves out there and say, “This is important.  I need this.”  The moment comes and Bartimaeus cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  And as Jesus so often does throughout the biblical narrative, he hears the voice of the one who honestly cries out. He stops, finds his way to ensure that Bartimaeus stands in front of him, face to face.  The need seems obvious, perhaps, but Jesus never assumes.  He says, “What do you want me to do for you?”  What is your desire? This is such a tender place to be.  Bart has taken the big gulp and put himself out there this far. “I know you don’t know me all that well, Teacher, and I don’t know you that well either… but I’d really like to see again.”

If I asked you what you want… what would you say?  We might start with a surface thing here or there.  My son might say, a “G-wagon” or a “McLaren” or something like that. But when Jesus stands before you and asks, “What do you really want?” you know what he means… and you feel what he means too.  Ruth Haley Barton says,

“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.”

How bad do you want it?  Desire, at some point, must give way to discipline for any transformation to be realized.

I was running through my neighborhood Monday night… it was freezing outside… but I’m trying to run a bit again and you’ve got to dig deep against everything else pressing in your life, or in your own body, that’s saying, “Nah. Not tonight. You’re good. Take the night off.”  So I’m running.  Slow and shivering… but I’m doing it. As I’m heading into one of the many cul-de-sacs in the neighborhood, I see a couple of garbage cans out in the middle of the street and a man standing in front of a car near those same garbage cans.  “What in the world?” I thought to myself.  And the man is now standing in front of the car, not facing the car but facing the same direction the car is facing, and he has his arms out in front of him like he’s pretend driving… sort of like a kid who spreads his arms pretending to fly like Superman.  Now I’m slow, remember, and we’re on a cul-de-sac so I’m getting to watch this for a good little while without obviously having to stop and stare in astonishment of what was going on.  The man’s intensity is growing… and his frustration… and it’s freezing outside!  What I begin to realize is that this is surely the man’s teenage daughter in the car and she’s going to try to parallel park this beast between those two garbage cans. And no matter how hard the dad shows the motions and is pretending to drive from outside of the car, she’s got to try to land this boat between the cans on her own – which dad did not space too generously in my opinion.  And sure enough, just as I turn the corner to make my way on down the road, “Bam!”  She takes the back garbage can out hard and dad has his hands now on the back of his head.  I wanted to circle back around… this was getting good.  But I pressed on.  I wondered if he set the garbage can back up to try again.  I wondered how long they kept after it. She wanted to pass that drivers test I’m sure. And dad surely had his own motivations.  How bad do you want it?  This spiritual quest that we share… this hope that something will click… that the depths of our souls will be moved and transformed and more in touch with God… is something that we must desire enough to arrange our life around.  Barton makes clear that such desire is a catalytic element of the spiritual life.  If you’ve been waiting for someone to flat out ask you, “What is it you want?” then consider tonight that ask.

Bartimaeus faces every past moment of his life in that present moment face-to-face with Jesus.  “Bart, what do you want me to do for you?”  “I want to see.” And he sees with his eyes what he saw first in his spirit… Jesus.  And the text says next, “Bartimaeus followed him on the way.”  That moment changed everything.  Yes, it was not a one-time commitment.  Bart had new challenges now that his life was different. Seeing brought about opportunities and challenges that he didn’t have before.  And what seemingly saved his life didn’t mean he wouldn’t struggle again.  Like Jeremy Taylor who survived a week on Taco Bell fire sauce and Lazarus who Jesus resurrected from the dead, Bartimaeus was still mortal and would face death again. Your first commitment or your renewed commitment tonight will be met with a new challenge each day to your resolve and desire to want it still and want it more. It is a constant yielding of self to God and an acknowledgment we will mark tonight that must be acknowledged again and again. And yielding is trickier than you think.

About 6:45 every school day morning, I drive my daughter to school. And I’m not the only one. Other people, I have learned, do this too… drive their kids to school. So many do, in fact, that traffic is always a problem… especially as the main bridge across the river to the school is down to one lane of traffic either way… lots of yielding.  Additionally, I count nine intersections for which I must negotiate who’s turn it is to yield… and to get back home my math says that’s eighteen separate opportunities to yield every morning of my life.  But you know what happens with this yielding stuff, right?  We stop. And then the motion game starts.  You give that little wave, “You go.  Go ahead.”  And you inch a bit and they inch a bit and motion back the universal, “It’s okay. You go. Go ahead.”  And we both wait… but we wait just long enough to decide we’ll go which only and always happens at the exact same time they’ve also decided that you are yielding to them and they’ll go ahead.  So then you both stop again and instead of just going on, I start back with the nod and hand motion, “You go.”  And after 18 intersections every morning to and from school, I’m about done with yielding you know?  And with all of this time I’ve been giving to my own mortality thinking about tonight, I’m sort of like, “Forget all of this polite yielding nonsense.  I’m going to go sometime… maybe it’s just my time.” And I’m inclined to just plow right through.  But the discipline of yielding to God must start with our desire and follow with our discipline.

You up for it?  The season of Lent is about yielding to Christ and putting in the focused effort.  It starts with recognizing our mortality in our quest to discover life that is truly life.  If you’re in that place of searching for something more… may you know this night is for you.  “A good journey begins with knowing where we are and being willing to go someplace else.”  The path is set to get in touch with the sacred rhythm the season affords.  Will you go with us?  Tonight, we cry for mercy.  Then, like Bartimaeus, we follow Jesus on the way to transformation.

[1] Sacred Rhythms. Ruth Haley Barton.  IVP Books. 2006.  Her influence is evident in this message as well as in the formation of the entire series.

text : Matthew 14: 13 - 21

theme verse : “Jesus said, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’" (Mt 14:16)

Upon welcoming guests in their home, many say, “We practice an open fridge policy –please help yourself!” Some have taken this hospitality to the next level. In some neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, you might pass a small café and see a refrigerator sitting up against the store wall. Over the fridge is a sign, which reads, "Take freely, only what you need."People walk up to that fridge, open the door, take what they need and walk away. They call them solidarity fridgesor social fridges.One café owner with a social fridge outside of his business said he was tired of so much food being wasted and other foraging through the dumpster later. Why not share freely and preserve dignity at the same time? Jesus was deeply interested in sharing resources. As his followers, we would do well to follow suit. On ‘Week of Compassion’ Sunday, imagine with us how compassion not only brings dignity to others but makes us more whole in the process.

anthem : 'Be Still' (M.McDonald) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director

reader : Abby Langenheim
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : 'Remembrance' (HillsongWorship) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Katie Herbert, lead vocal

Matthew 14: 13 – 21
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴ When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵ When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷ They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸ And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹ Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰ And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹ And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Sharing is such an elementary concept. It’s one of the first ideas we struggle with as a kid.  “Mine” is a word we learn far earlier than “Ours.”  The Dalai Lama wrapped up a lecture leaving some time for questions. A member of the audience asked him if he could offer an answer to the problem of world hunger.  He simply responded: “Sharing.” Sharing is apparently, as they say, “Not rocket science.”  We practice an open fridge policy at our house.  If you come into our home, it won’t be long before we stipulate the policy.  It’s the mi casa es su casa idea for your fridge. My fridge is your fridge.  Whatever’s in there is up for grabs. Please help yourself. Just check the date on the cottage cheese first. You probably do this as well. But some are taking this hospitality to the next level.  In some neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, you might pass a small café and see a refrigerator sitting up against the outside wall of the store. Over the fridge is a sign which reads, “Take freely, only what you need.”  People walk up to that fridge, open the door, take what they need and walk away.  I call this an open fridge policy. They call them solidarity fridges or social fridges.[1] One café owner with a social fridge outside of his business said he was tired of so much food being wasted, thrown away and others foraging through the dumpster shortly after. “Why not share freely and preserve dignity at the same time?” he thought.  These open fridge policies are catching on in other countries as well – Saudi Arabia, Spain and India among them. Jesus was deeply interested in compassionately sharing resources. As his followers, we would do well to follow suit. Today we continue our series entitled, (y)our WHOLE Life and share our special offering with Week of Compassion.  As we focus on the gift of compassion, let’s imagine together how compassion not only brings dignity to others but makes our own lives more whole in the process.

When it comes to sharing, it often starts with a little perspective about what we have. How often have you opened the fridge and stared blankly at its contents – often full of food – but you think to yourself, or maybe say out loud:  “We don’t have anything to eat!” The disciples of Jesus do this very thing in our in-road to the miracle of sharing today. First, the back story… Jesus has been teaching people out in the country… outside the city limits; off Route B, down the dirt road that’s great for muddin’ when it rains.  Quite a crowd had gathered and the afternoon just slipped by like one of those magical days when you just seem to lose track of time. Time to spare, however, was going to cost these people something significant.  These were working class folks who knew a tough life. They worked the arid land under the sun without SPF 50 sun block. Kids worked alongside their folks – not always in the fields; sometimes in trade shops – working in the shadows of the oppression of Rome and living shortened lives due to the tough conditions.  All to say it means something that these people have followed Jesus out to this place.

But then Jesus gets a text from Peter. It’s about John the Baptist; the cousin of Jesus. He’s been murdered. Floored by the news, Jesus runs, scattered in thought, heart-racing, grief pouring out his pores from the epicenter of the explosion that occurred in his soul.  He sprints to the edge of the lake, jumps on a Sea-Doo and goes full throttle toward what surely seems to be the end of the world where his eye meets the horizon in the distance. You know this same grief I am almost certain.  None of us are immune from the pain of such loss.  But that crowd knows the Sea-Doo will run out of gas at some point and they want to be there when it does. So they make their way on foot around the lake to see if they can eventually catch up to him.  This certainly says something about their experience with Jesus. He was worth following. Considering the size of Galilee, this “Where’s Waldo” hunt of Jesus was no easy task.  But… “I’ll be darned,” Jesus must have uttered under his breath as he pulled up to a new shore, seeing the crowd there waiting for him.  And, so the text says, “He had compassion for them.”  The root word of compassion indicates this is a guttural response; something he feels deep in his gut. It’s the same utterance of Jesus that the elders of our church chose as the scripture to put outside of our building to welcome any and all who would find their way through our doors:  “Come unto me, all you who labor and I will give you rest.”  Compassion.

Now, this story is the only miracle story found in all four of our Gospels. It’s a biggie! But by Matthew’s account, we don’t know what Jesus said to these people who had followed him to this new deserted place.  It may be that he didn’t say much at all. But Jesus and these people were connected with a shared and common desire – they both needed consolation and encouragement. It may be, in part, that the grief Jesus was experiencing was what propelled him to have compassion for these people. Sometimes healing comes to us as we share what we have to bring healing to others.  Matthew’s account says simply, “He healed their sick.”  Maybe Jesus pulled out an old sermon (they teach you to always carry a sermon around in your back pocket just in case), but Matthew just says, “He healed their sick.”  He didn’t ask any to sign a doctrinal statement or make a pledge.  He didn’t tell them to “check with the Baptist church across the street” or ask where they stood on a divisive political issue. Even Jesus could not shift his aunt’s political beliefs over Facebook. And, it seems to me, when we’ve been hit hard by grief, we see another’s humanity more so than the labels we tend to see otherwise. Out of his compassion, Jesus gave of himself what he had to make somebody’s pain and struggle less so.

Poet Carol Lynn Pearson notes something similar about giving compassionately from the gut…how it helps others and helps her own spirit in the giving.  She writes about being a blood donor:

“I love giving blood.  Sometimes I walk in off the street when no one has even asked and roll up my sleeve.  I love lying on the table watching my blood flow through the scarlet tube to fill the little bag that bears no address. I love the mystery of its destination. It runs as easily to child or woman or man, black or white, Californian or Asian, Methodist, Mormon, Muslim or Jew.  Rain does too. Rivers do. I think God does. We do not.  Our suspicious egos clot on the journey from “us” to “them.” So I give blood to practice flowing, never knowing where it’s going and glad.”[2]

She, like Jesus, shares what she has because she can. What do you have to share because you can?

The backdrop of this story, the grief of Jesus, his healing of the sick, all leads up to the end of this long day when we reach the part of the story most people tend to remember. One Grand Slam Breakfast from Denny’s feeds the whole crowd.  The disciples do what we probably would do.  They’re tired too… Jesus took off on the SeaDoo and they were probably like, “Um kay?” Did they have to funnel along with the crowd to find him again? Had they not earned at least a private boat for the entourage? The sun was sinking and they were surely exhausted and hungry themselves. But Jesus is just healing one after another and they may have felt like they needed to rescue him for his own good from the demands of the crowd. So a few of them make the approach on behalf of the group. “Well, Jesus. We were thinking you should send these people on their way… it’s late and the Taco Tuesday special runs out in about forty-five minutes.”  But Jesus is laser focused… his compassion either has him working in overdrive or he’s prepping to teach his core team to be resourceful. If this movement was to move beyond Jesus at some point, these disciples were going to have to figure some of this sharing and serving and compassion stuff out.

Jesus says back, “You guys get them something to eat.” Nothing but blank stares.  It’s not even comical at this point. The disciples are hangry, you know?  But one of them plays along, “Jesus, a year’s salary couldn’t buy happy meals for everybody here.”  Jesus knows a moment is coming so he rubs the mud from his thumbs on his pants as he’s just given sight to another impaired seeker. “Whatayou got, guys?” Holding a boxed lunch, the disciple says, “Fish and chips for two.”  Jesus looks up and scans the crowd – 5,000 men the text says along with women and children who, by golly we’re going to count so what, maybe 15-20 thousand. Jesus just smiles looking back at his frustrated disciples, “Got any tarder sauce?  Give it to me.”  And what happens next is what happens at this communion table every week – one loaf that feeds the whole crowd.  Jesus does the same thing in that moment as he does in the upper room with the disciples when he instituted the Lord’s Supper. It’s that same four-fold formula:  “Take, Bless, Break, Give.”  It reads just like this: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.”  Take. Bless. Break. Give.

As the story winds up, the food is passed, everyone eats and there are twelve baskets left.  The Greek may translate better, “Twelve lunch pails,” remain which I think is awesome.  To me, this is symbolic of each one of the twelve disciples getting schooled in sharing. Jesus packs up the leftovers in twelve lunch pails – and I like to picture kids lunch pails like Star Wars themed or WWE Wrestling or something.  I see Jesus giving a lunch pail to each disciple saying, “Don’t forget what we’re capable of together.  Here’s your starter kit for the next miracle you’ll work again tomorrow.”  They thought they had nothing.  Jesus says, “Bring to me what you got.” And my, oh my…

It’s a good reminder that we need to take stock ourselves, asking the question, “What do I have to share?”  You have five apples, give away three. Compassion starts in sharing what we already have in abundance. It may be apples or computers or an afternoon a week to tutor a child who has no adult that takes interest in their education.  It may be carpentry skills or child-care abilities or an interest in teaching English as a Second Language.  It might be preparing a meal for our Family Promise families.  If you step in this way every day you begin to see that such a lifestyle is a way of achieving the balance between your own personal abundance and the world’s pressing needs. In time, this way of life becomes a part of you – like exercise for some or Sudoku puzzles for others.  You just know that a part of your daily effort on this planet is to balance your abundance with the need of another.  We might call this compassionship.  I was with a group of ministers a few years ago on retreat in Arizona and met Martin for the first time.  He had only been speaking English for a couple of years but was working hard to learn it well.  As he led a devotion in a broken accent, he came across the word companionship but he pronounced it compassionship.  It was my new favorite word.  Imagine building relationships that you can call compassionships. You share your abundance. They share their abundance. Everyone gets better.

Jesus was healing his own grief-stricken spirit as he healed the bodies of the sick. He was teaching the disciples to grow their vision, to share what they had, to grow in faith.  Everyone was winning here. This is what happens when we let the Good News be the Good News that it is intended to be. We don’t save it for ourselves feeling there isn’t enough to go around. We share. Jen Hatmaker, a provocative writer who moved from the benefits of suburban privilege to choosing to live more closely to those in greater need, “Yes. If the Good News of Jesus is not also true for a poor, single, Christian mom in Haiti, then it’s not true.”  If it’s not true for our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters who’ve been looking for some to come with their lunch pails to multiply the healing still needed in that land, then it’s no good for us either.  If it’s not true for the person sitting in this space today who has been burned again and again by the church who’s thinking, “This is my final try with this church thing” then it’s not true.

I just completed my four years of service representing our church on the Week of Compassion[3] Advisory Committee.  Nearly three years ago now, I traveled with the committee to China to visit some of our mission partners there.  Now I’m from a tiny, rural, northern Missouri town (if you didn’t pick that up from the dirt road muddin’ comment earlier in the sermon) and honestly never imagined going to China in my lifetime. But it was a deeply powerful experience to visit Christian orphanages and Seminaries and care homes for the elderly, schools for children with special needs and other programs for which we shared compassionships or partnerships.  In the middle of the trip, we ended up in the middle of nowhere China… I mean we were in deep at this point. We entered a little village called “Red Flower” in English.  We were greeted by a little church choir who sang to us wearing their brand new choir robes of which they were so proud.  And we met a saint of the church, a beautiful woman of 102 years, who had never met a foreigner before.  She smiled and clapped as their choir sang and as we offered a spontaneous song back to them too. She held my face in her hands and offered me a blessing. I wonder if she’s celebrating 105 years soon or if she’s joined the resurrection.  If the Good News isn’t true for her, it’s not true for me. That woman loved her some Jesus.

But what really struck me was when we ventured out to the edge of that village into a field, the hillside if you will, and stopped among the crops and, particularly, this orchard of fruit trees that a Week of Compassion partner organization had helped the community plant and tend which multiplied the income of their village exponentially.  I stood in that field arms wide open; my mind flashing with all that we had seen of Week of Compassion’s impact and thought back to the last special offering we shared at HACC for this ministry earlier that year.  I remembered Carrie and I praying over the gift we would give and wondering how it could possibly make a dent in the great needs of the world. But our gift along with yours made for the largest special offering to Week of Compassion of any congregation in the United States and Canada that year.  Can you believe that Harvard Avenue Christian Church?  And then there I was, arm around a saint of China, arms around a Chinese orphan, arms around a huge class of seminarians, and now arms open wide in a field where our small gifts, in the hands of Jesus, were changing the world – saying, “We believe the Gospel is good news for everyone.” Maybe it’s an open fridge.  Maybe it’s an open heart.  What will you share? When we’re partners, it’s just a balance of giving and receiving as there is need. Sometimes these partners are people we’ll never meet and never know but we give financially and there is a wholeness that comes in the giving.  Sometimes, however, partners become brothers, sisters – and we carry each other. Give your gifts. Give yourself. Sharing is a beautiful thing.

[1] Kassam, Ashifa. “The solidarity fridge: Spanish town’s cool way to cut food waste.” theguardian.com. June 25, 2015. I discovered this source via Homiletics in their coverage of this Matthean text in a message, “Solidarity Feeding.” Their commentary on the text also contributed to this message. A second source includes “Social fridges’ open in Argentina as poverty rises.” todayonline.com. May 11, 2016.
[2] This particular word was shared via a friend on Face Book.  To learn more about Pearson, visit http://carollynnpearson.com/
[3] www.weekofcompassion.org

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

text : Luke 1:68-79

theme verse : “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us…” (Luke 1:78)

PEACE SUNDAY. The Christian liturgical year has long pointed us toward peace on the second Sunday of Advent. Peace really deserves more than one focal Sunday but we’ll light that Peace Candle and find as much warmth and challenge in its flame as we can get. There is, after all, always great need for oppressions to cease and chains to be broken. Those lines may hold familiarity. After a decade of banishment by the French Catholic Church for its connection to controversy, 'O Holy Night' was discovered by an American writer and Abolitionist advocate, John Sullivan Dwight. He was drawn to the songs call for justice and peace. Does that line beckon us forward still? Are there chains yet to be broken?

special music : 'Glory (Let There Be Peace)' (M.Maher) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

reading : Todd Maxwell
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

anthem : 'No Eye Had Seen' (M.W.Smith) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director; Greta Metzer, soprano sax

duet : 'Alone With You' / 'Man After Your Own Heart' (arr.Rhodes) :: Ashley Pease, Kelly Ford; Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano; Greta Metzer, soprano sax

Luke 1:68-79
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us
that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Chains shall he break. It’s quite an image all by itself don’t you think? Chains are so restrictive. Tight. Life-draining. Oppressive. You can go this far but not a bit further.  It’s like a dog that wears a circular dirt path in the grass around the tree at the outer limits of the chains reach. It’s sad. It’s certainly not freeing.  Hayes, our youngest son, took our dog, Taylor, for a little walk recently.  He unknowingly clipped her leash onto her dog tag instead of her collar loop which is designed to withstand her mighty tug.  The dog tag was not nearly as strong and it wasn’t far into the walk that she busted free. In dramatic fashion, the leash snapped, the dog tag flew into the air and she took off as Zac Brown Band’s song, “Free” played from the heavens.  “Just as free… free as we’ll ever be!”  The hunt was on and we did wind up together again.  Part of me was concerned for her and for Hayes but a deep-down part of me felt joy in the freedom Taylor claimed for even a short time.  Don’t you long for that feeling sometimes?  Total freedom.  It’s the sentiment of a friend who says to Carrie and me the other night as we were driving home following a great dinner, “The only thing better would be if we just kept driving…”  It was the gleam of freedom in his eye – the joy of the adventure, unencumbered by the responsibilities of every waking, adulting moment. Chains shall he break.  Take a deep breath, would you?  And now exhale…. that’s what it feels like when the chains of our lives are broken.  That’s a moment of peace.  That’s what we seek from a Savior, whose Advent – whose very arrival — is what we hold before us in this season.

Peace doesn’t come easy.  It’s long been the global wish shared at pageants and the like for years.  “If I had one wish it would be for world peace.” It’s a grand and noble wish. Bono, front man for U2, named one of their albums,  “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” What a title – and what a challenge to imagine how you would go about such a thing.  But Bono admitted concerning the grandness of the title, “Actually I was talking about my father Bob. He was the atomic bomb in question.”[1]  Dismantling bombs in search of world peace is an overwhelming premise when such diffusing of said bombs often refer to the Bobs in our lives or even to the inward struggles we hold in our own spirits.  How can I imagine a peaceful world when there is such turmoil in my own very being?  Oh we’ve got some inner chains that need breaking, don’t we.

Jeremiah brought the prophecy of hope last week as we launched this Advent sermon series.  Today, Zechariah brings the prophecy of peace.  Do you know his story?  Zechariah was a priest – married to Elizabeth.  Sweet and steady couple up in years by now.  Served faithfully in the church.  On his selected day to enter the sanctuary to offer incense – which was a deep privilege that you didn’t get to do all that often as many a priest wanted a turn – Zechariah had an encounter with an angel.  Because this act was one each priest handled alone while the people waited outside praying, it was a one-on-one situation which, as you could guess, brought a little anxiety to Zechariah.  The angel, Gabriel, says to Zechariah, “Pssst… yeah, you, I’ve got some news for you.  You’re gonna be a daddy!”  “Uhhh, come again there Gabe?”  “Yes,” he says, “You and Elizabeth will be parents just like you’ve longed to be.  And the kid is going to be something.  Here, Zechariah, cut into this cake.”  “Why?” “Just do it – everybody’s doing it – it’s called a gender reveal party.”  Zechariah cuts into the cake and looks at the angel befuddled.  “It’s blue.”  “That’s right,” says the angel.  “Name him John – American parents will name their kids after him centuries from now – he’s got a big life ahead of him.”  “Hold the phone here, angel.  Me and Beth. Pregnant.  Have you seen me?  Have you seen her?”  (He quickly followed with “Don’t tell her I said that.”)  Gabriel knew this had blown Zechariah’s mind and that he probably needed some quiet time to process it all so he Harry Potter’s the priest: “Mute.”  And Zechariah doesn’t utter another word until it’s time to sign John’s birth certificate at the hospital. The first words he speaks are the ones you’ve heard read this morning.  It is the prophecy of his son’s life whose wrestling name will later be, “the Baptist” for his role in baptizing so many in preparation of receiving the Messiah who was to come – who turned out to be Jesus, John’s cousin – convenient!

Zechariah had a great vision for his son. As devout Jews hoped and longed for the day when the Messiah, God’s anointed king, would come, most of them also believed a forerunner would precede him to prepare the way.  It was a commonly held thought that Elijah would return to play such a role but Zechariah says, “John’s the one.”  I wonder sometimes what kind of role our own belief in our children plays in them rising to the occasion of their lives – surpassing what is seemingly their greatest potential.  I can picture Zechariah and Elizabeth chatting after putting John to bed after a particularly challenging night where their son was in rare and difficult form – “Well… still think he’s the one?”  Somehow, an unwavering humble confidence encourages John forward into his life’s vocation.  In life, God is always working in all things to bring Christ to light.  Don’t downplay the moments you spend today, or tomorrow or on a Thursday afternoon as inconsequential to bringing about the kingdom of God.  In all things, God is preparing a way.  You may not feel like such is the case when you’re running about your day.  Between appointments and responsibilities and the things we give our lives to managing on a daily basis, I often feel like I’ve allotted only a very small segment of each day to improving my spirit. And when I step back and try to imagine how such little time can add up to get me to some space of enlightenment, I can get discouraged.  Sitting at a stoplight I’ll ask myself, “Am I forever living an unfinished life?”

You may be familiar with the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City.  Some people refer to it as the “Cathedral of Saint John the Unfinished.”  It’s an impressive landmark in New York – 601 feet long and 124 feet high.  It features the longest Gothic nave in the United States and the largest rose window in the country as well.  10,000 pieces of glass.  Besides the sanctuary, there are seven chapels.  It’s an architectural beauty.  Construction began in 1892.  Worship and other ministries started taking place there in 1899.  The building wasn’t opened end-to-end until 1941 but even then, there was much work waiting to be completed. Over the years, the structure was plagued by financial woes, changes in building plans, wartime delays, engineering problems and in 2001, a destructive fire.  And so, today, 126 years to the month after the cornerstone was laid, this massive church is still sometimes dubbed, “Saint John the Unfinished.”  ‘Unfinished’ seems like such a downer of a word.  You never like when the idea is attached to your personal projects.  She didn’t finish the race.  His dissertation was never completed. The remodeling of your bathroom may not have begun as far back as 1892 but still, as you step around the unfinished tile every day and the counter-top-less sink area, it could be called “the john unfinished.”[2]

Maybe we’d prefer to refer to these projects, and ourselves, as works in progress. Zechariah’s prophecy is surely saying, “the faith is strong… the progress is coming… this is the time… this child is the one.” Stay the course. John would be one to help usher in the Prince of Peace. “John, my boy,” Zechariah says, “You will be a forerunner, preparing the ways of the Lord, giving knowledge of salvation to the people.”  It is like what Paul would say in Romans 10, “How can people call on the Lord if nobody tells them, shows them, or preaches Christ?”  At such a time, when Zechariah is dreaming over the crib of his son, people didn’t have a sense of what God was personally like.  The Greeks thought of a passionless God – one who looked on humanity with an unmoved detachment.  Not much help there.  The Jewish faith of that time had imagined a demanding God whose name was law had whose function was mostly judge.  But God in the flesh, in Jesus, came to tell that God was love and in staggered amazement people could only say, “We never knew that God was like that.”[3] The reality remains that many people today see God as detached or God as rule-enforcer or have been burned enough by religious hypocrisy that they also don’t know of a God of love and have given up on faith.  Maybe you know such a person.  Maybe you are such a person.  Jesus shows us a different way… and it’s on us to make that love known to those who can quickly and easily say, “I never knew God was like that.”  Chains he shall, he can, he will break, one oppressive link at a time.

This is, in part, the work-in-progress we experience in the quest for peace that we shouldn’t give up on when attempts at peace often feel like an unfinished project. I mentioned last week, a bit of the history of the song we love to break out this time of year, “O Holy Night.”[4]  The song is the inspiration behind this thrill of hope series.  The lyrics were written by an unchurched (and uninterested) French poet and musical score composed by a man of Jewish faith who never celebrated Christmas or the Messiah the words proclaimed.  Once these facts became public, it became a problem for church leaders who declared the song unfit for church services. Church leaders can be stubborn sometimes … like any leaders I suppose… and can turn on something incredibly beautiful when it doesn’t come from one of their own.  But only three weeks after it was penned, it was offered as the heart of The Christmas Mass in 1847.  Though the French church banned the song for a couple of decades, it’s beauty had already captured the hearts of too many.  And the leak was on. A reclusive American writer, John Sullivan Dwight, somehow came across the song and immediately was moved to introduce it to America.  Dwight was an ardent abolitionist and strongly identified with the lines of the third verse: “Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace.  Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother; and in his name all oppression shall cease.”  We sort of accept these words as norm… we don’t feel the sting (even though perhaps we should) … but remember the time.  1860’s in America – the Civil War.  Imagine being in a southern church on Christmas Eve and hearing “Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother… and in HIS name all oppression shall cease.”  Gulp.

Breaking chains to bring about peace doesn’t come without some conflict. And Zechariah says, “Forgiveness of sins” will be necessary in order to “guide our feet into the way of peace.”  Talk about unfinished work.  Forgiveness is a constant need. Forgiveness is not so much the remission of penalty as it is a restoration of relationship.  It doesn’t erase what has been but it forges forward with new respect. It is estrangement turned friendship.  Breaking chains means meeting each other with dignity even in our differences.  I’m sure, by now, you’ve seen this image  of 95-year-old war veteran and senator Bob Dole, with all his strength rise from his wheelchair to salute 94-year-old war veteran and past president George H.W. Bush.  Man, that was a moment.  And across the land, if but for a little while, there was a peace that focused on dignity and respect over poorly constructed spewed words of hate and division.  It shouldn’t take death for us to treat each other with dignity. To whom can you offer some dignity that you’ve been withholding of late?  What relationship can you restore?  Not easy, I know, but you can take a humble step if even the other person will not.  The staff team named Romans 12 in our Bible study last Monday. In it, Paul writes: “As far as it is up to you, be at peace with everyone.”  You’ve got some agency in this peace-work. Theologian Paul Tillich said, “Faith is the courage to accept acceptance.” Not a bad word for us on either side of the forgiveness equation.  In Christ, we are loved beyond measure and we are in turn called to love in that same way.  That’s a kind of love that breaks chains.

And it’s a commitment.  If you give yourself to Christ… to truly study his way of love and attempt its counter-cultural practices, it will frustrate you even as it transforms you.  Clive Staples Lewis used to say, “If you give Christ an inch, he’ll take it all.”  What do you have to give Christ of yourself today?  If you’re willing to give even a piece of yourself, he’ll start to break those chains and it will change the way you engage others too… which only brings about a greater peace in the world.  It will be hard work. You may feel like you’re trying to dismantle an atomic bomb.  But isn’t your spirit worth it?  Isn’t the relationship with your child or your friend or your colleague or even that person who is a total stranger to you but so loved by God worth the effort?  I heard a guy say this week that we so often see each other the way cows gaze at cars.[5]  A car drives by the pasture. The cow looks at it as it passes by.  But there’s nothing going on inside that cow.  Just chewing the cud and once passed, returns to feeding one of its four stomachs.  That’s not peace.  It may be easier but it’s not chain breaking.  The inch you give Christ today may be relinquishing your weapon of choice that is in direct objection to peace.  A friend said it to me this way, “If you’ve got your gun on you, you’re saying that option is not off the table.”  The thought was, “If you’re carrying hate in your heart, in your speech, in your actions … then hate is always a ready option for you.” Whatever your weapon is:  sarcasm, a grudge, a cutting word, dishonesty, whatever – could you take that option off the table… give it to Christ and see what he can do with that inch you’ve relinquished.  Maybe when it’s time for this morning’s offering, you think about that which you might offer to God today in that regard. What weapon will you relinquish?  Whatever that may be is certainly holding you back from living your best life, living into the vision that someone dreamed over your crib like Zechariah did John’s.

There are plenty of chains to be broken in our society… all the “isms” and “phobias” that keep us looking at each other like cow’s gaze at cars.  Societal, systemic sin remains rampant and an effort we as the collective of Christ need to be concerned with for if all oppression shall ever cease, we need to proclaim his name and break some chains. And we live in a time and culture that’s pretty worked up right now.  I’d like to ask us all to calm down, but my beloved colleague reminded me this week with this picture that So I won’t ask you to calm down. What I’ll ask you instead is to keep at your work in progress.   Do you know what that is?  Colleague and friend, Julian DeShazier,[6] posted these words that I share as a reminder: “There is a project you are working on, beyond your work.  It’s a YOU project, and I want to encourage you to stay on it.  As life happens, you’ll fall off the You Project.  Keep going. THAT is the project we need you to finish. We have plenty of content; we need excellent humans, and you are one of them.  Keep going.”

Can I invite you again to do something?  Take a deep breath. Now… release it. Lay down your hostility.  Lay down your pride.  Lay down any consuming greed.  Someone has a vision for your life… and it doesn’t include those things. You put those things down and you’ll find your hands, and your soul, are now open for something better. Pick up knowledge. Pick up salvation. Pick up freedom. Pick up forgiveness and mercy and let’s break some chains in Christ’s name.  And we’ll be “free… free as we’ll ever be.”

[1] https://www.u2.com/music/Albums/4068/How+To+Dismantle+An+Atomic+Bomb
[2] “Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.” Wikipedia. “History.” The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. www.stjohndivine.org. Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer for Homiletics and Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah utilized this piece about the Cathedral in a message entitled, “The God Who Completes.”
[3] Exegetical background as found in William Barclay’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke.  Westminster Press. 1975.
[4] https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/movies/the-nativity-story/the-amazing-story-of-o-holy-night.aspx
[5] As shared by Pete Rollins in an interview with Rob Bell:  https://robbell.com/portfolio/robcast/.  Episode 159.
[6] Rev. Julian DeShazier is Senior Pastor at University Church in Chicago.  http://universitychurchchicago.org/team/rev-julian-deshazier-senior-pastor/

text : Psalm 63: 1 - 8

theme verse : "Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." (Psalm 63:3)

You spend three months without your usual responsibilities, you learn a few things. You see different things, and you see things differently. Sabbath, sabbatical, rest, renewal. What it means, what it does, what it teaches - what you learn. After all that time and space, it's good to regather the sabbatical wanderings, wonderings, and lessons along the way.

anthem : 'Give Me Jesus' (arr. Ijames) :: Chancel Choir; Kelly Ford, director; Marla Patterson, soloist

reader : Roy Peters
preaching : Rev Courtney Richards

special music : 'So Will I' (HillsongUnited) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader; Andrea Gross, lead vocal

text : Proverbs 11:24-25

theme verse : “Some give freely, yet grow all the richer; others withhold what is due and only suffer want.” (Proverbs 11:24)

An old rap song from my youth included the line, 'You better check yourself before your wreck yourself.' While none of the other lines were memorable, that one has staying power. Against what do we measure the effectiveness of our lives? Some level of success? Some measure of kindness? A lifestyle of generosity? A man gave millions to establish a university in Texas. Several years later, he lost everything. Someone asked if he had regretted all he had given to the university. 'Regret it?' he said, 'That school is the only lasting thing I’ve done with my money. Had I not given that money, I would have lost it too.' So much of living a generous life involves loosening our grip on fear, security, and the sense of scarcity. Only then, might we experience the freedom of a life that is ‘growing all the richer.’

*Gratitude Statement: “I will relinquish control.”

Open Mic testimony : Andy McMillan

communion music : Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

offertory : Susie Monger-Daugherty, piano

reader : David Brock
preaching : Rev Mark Briley

special music : 'Gracefully Broken' (M.Redman) :: The Rising Band; Isaac Herbert, leader

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re happy and you know it then your face will surely show it. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.   

Well… okay then. Wasn’t sure how that would go.  We have some happy people in the house today.  We have some who maybe just humored the pastor and went along with the child-like experiment.  There may be a few of us who had no familiarity with the song and by the time we caught on it was over.  We have some who likely flat out refused – “I don’t participate in ridiculous clapping rituals.”  And honestly, it’s all okay.  In fact, I learned this week that whether we’re happy and we know it or not may be something we can’t fully control.  I’ve been reading some of Dr. Robert Emmons work in preparation for this series on gratitude.  Dr. Emmons is considered one of the top scientific experts on gratitude which is fascinating – the science of gratitude – have you ever thought about gratitude as a science?  Emmons notes that each person has a chronic or characteristic level of happiness. The research suggests that “people have happiness set-points to which they inevitably return following disruptive life events.  Getting that book published, moving to California, having the person of your dreams answer your personal ad, each of these may send the happiness meter right off the scale for a while but, in a few months, it will drift back to the set-point that is typical for that individual. What goes up must come down.”  Interesting.

It makes sense when you think about people in your life.  Some have a naturally happy disposition and others have been waking up on the grumpy side of the bed for a while it seems.  It’s a process of adaptation.  Humans are adaptation machines.  We take good things for granted and overcome obstacles that life throws our way only to return to the state of happiness that is natural for us.  You win the lottery?   A couple months later, you come down from the high to your happiness set-point.  You lose a job?  A few months later, you re-settle into that natural set point.  I was honestly a little discouraged by this; as if there is nothing we can do about it.  To strengthen this idea, Emmons says that 50% of our happiness is determined by our genetics.

But… that means we’ve got another 50% to consider, right?  (So, you’re saying there’s a chance.)  Turns out 10% of our happiness is determined by our circumstance. These are the things you can’t necessarily control.  Life that happens to you.  Emmons says humans mess up the happiness quotient by focusing on this 10%.  He says, “Most people are trying to improve their outside circumstances.  They want more money, a better car, a hotter body, a more beautiful spouse, a better job, and more.”  Research says we are seeking happiness in all the wrong places.  Why?  Because the remaining 40% of our happiness is determined by our behaviors… our intentional activities.  And as your pastor, I’m going to call these behaviors and intentional activities – spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices. The key to happiness lies not in changing our circumstances or changing our genetic makeup (which is frankly impossible) but in changing our behavior.  Focusing on our behavior is four times more powerful than considering our circumstances when it comes to increasing levels of happiness.  And do you know the number one behavior Dr. Emmons suggests improves happiness?  He’s not the Gratitude Guru for nothing, my friends. You guessed it.  Gratitude.  To take it one step further, improving behavior also tends to create better outside circumstances as well. Not always, as some things are clearly beyond our control, but there is some correlation. [1]

Why does this matter?  Because I want you to be happy?  Of course, I do.  But I also want us all to be growing in our spiritual health.  It is why we are focused on gratitude this month.  Practicing gratitude seems to be more than a good idea – but a reality of spiritual health. So, we’re tackling this honestly in this series called Open Mic.  Andy McMillan stepped to the Open Mic today to share his thoughts on gratitude and stewardship… it is always inspiring to hear our community speak up about these matters.  And we’re asking all of us to consider our own lives as an Open Mic.  You have a voice.  You practice a set of behaviors.  You have influence in your home or your place of work or in the circles of friends and people you move among every day.  What kind of impact are you making in those places?  What is your life saying to them?  And why does it matter as a person of faith?  We’re asking these important questions in this stewardship series even as we’re asking us to consider the nature of gratitude and how, in turn, we give of our time, talents, and resources to God.  Today’s title:  Open Mic:  Check one, two, three.

As a kid, there was nothing more fun than finding an open mic… you could make weird noises or yell loudly or beat box… it was just fascinating to hear your voice amplified.  Being a pastor’s kid, I often was around the church early (and late), before and after events would happen in the life of the church.  The sound guy would often send me up on the chancel before events and check the mics.  Loved it. “Mic check, one, two, three,” was the standard and I usually started with that before broadly expanding what I would test out on the microphones.  There was an old rap song from those days that included the line, “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”  It was actually more like, “Chick-chiggidy- check yo’self before you wreck yo’self.”  It was always worth a go when checking the mics. And while I can’t remember even a little bit of the rest of the song, that line has staying power.  It would heed a good warning to my spirit in times of need.  It was like the parental advice before going out, “Remember who you are.”  Same thing.  Check yourself before you wreck yourself.  You can get yourself in a bind pretty quickly if you’re not intentional about what you expect your life to be about.  There is plenty of scripture that can be of help in times of need but there’s nothing quite like the Proverbs to put you in check when you need it the most.

Some have described the Proverbs as the voice of that wise elderly person in your life who has been through it all and doesn’t have time to sugarcoat advice any more. The Proverbs cut to the chase.  Get right after what’s real and necessary and what can alter your behavior in a positive way.  The two short verses from Proverbs 11:24-25 get right to the point.  “Some give freely yet grow all the richer; others withhold what is due and only suffer want… a generous person will be enriched, those who help others will be helped.”  Boom.  Short and sweet. To the point.  Would you say that is true of your life?  In giving freely, do you grow more fulfilled?  In withholding, do you end up only wanting more? The writer says bluntly, you want to measure an effective life?  What do you give away?  How do you help others?  Are you more concerned with getting yours, being selfish, or living in gratitude and doing good for the world?  Seems pretty straightforward and I think most of us would say, at least in church, that we agree with the notion, “It is better to give than receive.”  But is that truly how we see success?  Or do we live as if control and power and money and more of it is what determines success?

There was a man who gave millions to establish a university in Texas.  Several years later, he lost everything.  Someone asked if he had regretted all he had given to the university.  “Regret it?” he said, “That school is the only lasting thing I’ve done with my money.  Had I not given that money, I would have lost it too.”  What have you given of yourself to… what place, what cause, what hope… that is about a lasting impact?  Gratitude is about living with open hands to the world.  When we clench our fists or hold tight to our possessions or our time or our gifts of ability to some cause to improve the world, we close the door on gratitude. We are, in turn, not changed for the better.  We’re not happier.  And we just get lost in the fear of scarcity. As if there’s not enough stuff to go around.  Not enough money.  Not enough, not enough, not enough.  How often is that our driving concern?

A friend shared with me this week his experience of the past weekend.  He wandered into an Estate Sale and was a bit taken aback by the whole experience.  People were rushing in to claim the material goods of another now deceased… a houseful of things that stood as a reminder of one’s property, possessions, personality and likes.  My friend stood back as others were aggressive in the hunt for steals and deals and a couple of those working the sale said in observance of the look on his face. “Look at him, he’s soaking it all in, creating a plan for what he wants to get.”  My friend, still a bit stunned by the whole thing, asks the two working the sale, “Did you know the person who lived here?”  “Uh, no,” they said.  “Do you know their name?”  “Um. No, guess I don’t… but they sure had some great stuff.”  We work hard to accumulate a life without taking much time to truly live a life.  Writer of proverbs is saying, “You want your world to expand?  Not with riches but with what truly is a rich life?  Then live generously.  Lead and make room for others to lead. Give and model for others what generosity looks like.  Loosen the grip on your possessions and see what that affords your spirit to possess anew.”  Sometimes, it is our comfort that makes us lose sight of the generous life.  We become consumed by mundane things that are not kingdom game changers.

In the movie Old School (not a pulpit-endorsement mind you) Will Ferrell plays a married, thirty-something-year-old suburban man who finds himself at a college party. When he’s offered a drink, he declines, saying, “I have a big day tomorrow.”  When he’s asked, “Doing what?” he responds, “Well, um… actually a pretty nice little Saturday.  We’re gonna go to Home Depot, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath & Beyond… I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll have enough time…”.  As you can imagine, not overly relatable to a college aged crowd but why do people who have seen this movie remember this line?  Will knows how to deliver a line, yes, but more than that, there’s something more going on than his trip to Home Depot on a Saturday.  The man in this movie is bored.

He has the life that is often portrayed as the ideal – a spouse, a house, a job, security, comfort, privilege, freedom – and yet it’s left him bored, numb, and in a low-grade state of despair.  His ‘success’ has actually served to distract him from just how deeply unsatisfied he is with his life.  Have you ever experienced this sort of life… or maybe know someone who has?  It can create a paralyzing indifference that comes from being too comfortable. What Rob Bell calls, “Death by wallpaper and flooring.”[2]  Happiness does not exist solely in wallpaper and flooring… even if you’re an interior designer.  Our behaviors have to move us beyond that comfort… over the edge of easy, comfortable, existence to a life that places gratitude, generosity, and difference-making as our top behaviors.

2018 has been a year of this sort of behavior at Harvard Avenue Christian Church. We’re growing as a church by most every measure.  At a gathering of those newer to the congregation last Sunday, there was an eagerness for Bible Study and understanding of our movement of faith known as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). A Bible 101 course and a series about who we are collectively as Disciples and who we are as disciples at Harvard Avenue will be new opportunities in 2019.  We had 448 people join us to worship God last Sunday morning.  I remember a decade ago being here on a Sunday morning with as few as 140 faithful.  Those are just numbers but they represent a hunger and passion for faith… to do something counter-cultural… to invest in the spirit.

During the state-wide teacher walk out this Spring, you rallied to be a host site for school children during those important two weeks. You made meals for teachers marching from Tulsa to the capitol and delivered them wherever the walk ended that particular night. You treated and cared for the educators of our own congregation that season… it was an inspiring time. In more recent weeks, 100 volunteers stepped forward to host homeless neighbors at the church for a week and we’ll do so again just before Christmas.  Ashley Pease created and hosted a Spotlight Theater Camp for kids this past summer that will surely grow in its second attempt next summer.  We experienced the gifts of that camp on Sunday Funday – one of the most joyous worship experiences I’ve ever been a part of – where 22 people stepped forward at the end of worship to profess faith in Jesus and join our congregation in the mission and vision we share. There were mission trips and fellowship gatherings and the world’s leading pickleball player present to lead a clinic at our church. As a church, we gave almost $30,000 in special offerings to Week of Compassion alone – a denominational ministry that is the first to respond to natural disaster needs in the world.  This week, leaders of Week of Compassion are coming to our church from around the country for their bi-annual meeting… to be on the turf of a congregation who has given more in special offerings to serve this ministry than any congregation in the United States and Canada for several years running. You have given freely, and we are growing in faith, in number, and in spirit because of it.

Kevin, Courtney and I were on a prayer and planning retreat a week ago with pages of prayer requests from you that we took humbly and intentionally before God in prayer. As you poured out your hearts, we poured out those requests before God and continued to find the word “wholeness” surface as a quest of our congregation. How can we be a movement for wholeness in our very fragmented world?  That seems to be the hunger of our community so we’re working to shape 2019 around that need and desire and I believe it will be a deeply meaningful journey… if you’re up for it.  If you’ll invest time and energy, spirit and resources to help us find God’s loving challenge and encouragement in faith.  If we all do our part… give our best… invest intentionally in the communal effort, I believe the transformation will not only be visible to us all, but it will be an inspiration to our city.

Carrie and I will be prayerfully completed our pledge card this week and bringing it to worship next week on Thanksgiving Sunday.  Will you join us in that?  Your pledge to the church helps determine our reach in 2019 – what programs we can offer, what new needs we can meet, what worship experiences, studies, retreats we can create, who we can serve more fully, what witness we can make in Tulsa and beyond.  You may think that your contribution of time, talent and resources isn’t as valuable as another’s, but I’ll politely disagree.  You give. You trust. You grow.

Chris Martin, lead singer of the band Coldplay once said: “I can’t dance like Usher. I can’t sing like Beyoncé. I can’t write songs like Elton John.  But we can do the best with what we’ve got. And so that’s what we do. We just go for it.”  What are you ready to go for?  How can you be grateful in a new way?  How can your generosity expand to a new level?  Proverbs says a generous person will be enriched.  Your 40% control over your behaviors may make all the difference.  Can you imagine your satisfaction – physically, emotionally, spiritually, improving by 40% next year?  We can, at minimum, take a step in that direction.  And practicing gratitude is the best place to start.

You know the story of the rich, young ruler.  A young man who came to Jesus asking, “How can I grow all the richer?”  He asked it by saying, “What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus said, “You saw the felt boards in Sunday School – follow the commandments, etc,”.  The man smiled, “Of course. Got it.  I’m good.”  But Jesus knew he was living with tight fists on his possessions.  So, Jesus challenges further, “Sell what you’ve got and give it to the poor.”  And the line that always pierces my heart flows next.  “The man turned from Jesus and walked away, sad, because he had so much great stuff.” (Perfect for a someday Estate Sale).  I don’t want to spend my life walking away sad. Do you?  It’s all about perspective.  And no one can do perspective for us.  We’ve got to do that spiritual work.  That’s the hard work of the 40% in the happiness quotient. But if I know you, Harvard Avenue Christian Church, I know you’re up for the work.  And I’m so grateful to be on the journey with you.  You are a people who live gratitude well.  I’m happy and I know it.  You?  Maybe worth one more shot…

If you’re grateful and you know it clap your hands. If you’re grateful and you know it clap your hands.  If you’re grateful and you know it then your life will surely show it. If you’re grateful and you know it, clap your hands.

[1] https://www.njlifehacks.com/thanks-robert-emmons-book-summary/  Info shared in this message concerning Emmons work are found at this link.
[2] This quote and the Old School reference found in Bell’s “Drops Like Stars.” Harper One. 2009. Pg 41-42.