A Deeper Faith and Stronger Spirit

All Things Are Possible

2009-11-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

John 11:1-16, 32-44

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?...’

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

What do you think? Was it possible for Jesus to raise a dead guy? Many people would say no, but if the answer is no, then what is the line between what is and isn’t possible in life? No one ever defines it, unless they are saying that the only things that are possible are those things that comply to the known laws of physics. But the funny thing about that about the known laws of physics is that they keep changing. So was it possible for Jesus to break the known laws of physics?

What’s possible and not possible? And if we declare events like this one to be impossible, then what are we to make of an experience a friend of mine had years ago? I met Terry when I was working as an associate pastor. She had moved to the Murrysville area from Wisconsin. Like me she had a master in social work and had worked as a therapist. She also was a woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother. All her life she wanted to raise children, but because of a disease she caught early in her adulthood, she only had one healthy ovary on the right side of her body and one healthy fallopian tube on the other. If you know anything about biology, you know that there is no way that an egg can travel across the body cavity to the other side. Her only option was in vitro fertilization, especially since her husband was against adopting children.

Tracy went through a number of treatments over the years at a cost of thousands of dollars. Every single one of them was a failure. Eventually, the doctors told her that nothing would work and that she had to face the facts that she just wasn’t going to get pregnant and have children. This devastated Tracy. She didn’t know what to do. She struggled through her disappointment. She and I had prayed for her to able to have children, but nothing seemed to work. After the decision to end the treatments, she just didn’t talk much about having children.

Then one day she walked into my office with a big ear-to-ear grin. I asked her what had happened, and she said, “I’m two months pregnant!” I said to her, “But I thought you quit the in vitros.” She said, “I did. This was a natural pregnancy.” I then asked her what had happened. This is the part that continues to inspire me.

She told me that about two-and-a-half months earlier she was going through a funk of depression over the failures of the in vitro treatments, and she was crying. She kept wondering why God wouldn’t let her have children. As she wondered this, she prayed, “Lord, you know how much I want to be a mother. You know how much I’ve wanted this my whole life. It doesn’t look like it is going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. So, Lord, I give you my life. If it is your will that I become a mother, I will become the best mother I can be. If not, I will serve you the best I can in whatever I do. All I want to do is to be yours, so I will follow you and serve you whatever you do.” Two weeks later she was pregnant.

Terry said that she was convinced that she became pregnant because she had surrendered to God. Her miracle happened because of her surrender. Seven months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Two years later, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy.

So, was her experience possible, because it defied the laws of physics. I suppose the impossible can happen, and perhaps an egg somehow naturally found it’s way across the body cavity to the fallopian tube, but what is the likelihood of this happening, especially when doctors told her that things like this couldn’t happen.

What’s the line between what is and isn’t possible? Would you say that Rita Klaus crossed that line? For many years, Rita, who until recently lived in Cranberry Township, suffered from multiple sclerosis. She first noticed symptoms of the illness when she was a sister in a Roman Catholic order. She started to have strange sensations, such as periodically losing her sight, and numbness in her legs.

After undergoing a series of medical tests, the doctors came back with a frightening diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. Over the years, the symptoms gradually worsened, so much so that it interfered with her ability to remain a nun. She eventually left the convent and moved to Mars, Pennsylvania, becoming a teacher in the local public school system. For a while, her symptoms abated and she managed to live a relatively normal life.

Over the years Rita married and had children. Then her MS came back with a vengeance, eventually confining her to leg braces. As her symptoms increased, so did her bitterness as she sunk deeper into a pit of despair. Her despair crippled her faith to the point that God no longer mattered to her.

In the midst of her darkness, a light shined. A friend of hers, Marianne, who worked at St. Gregory’s School here in Zelienople, called one day and said, “Rita? Listen, there’s going to be a healing service over at St. Ferdinand’s next Wednesday evening—want to come?” Rita scoffed at her. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in healing; that stuff happened 2000 years ago… It’s a bunch of fakes!”

Marianne persisted and finally convinced Rita to come to the service. The service was on a Wednesday evening, and by the time they got there it was packed. The only seat available was in the front, which is exactly where Rita did not want to sit. An usher grabbed her and pulled her down the aisle, and placed her in a pew near the front. During the first hymn, everyone stood up to sing. Rita did too, but the metal of her braces slid on the floor, and she slowly started to slide under the pew in front of her. The people around her grabbed her and held her up. A person next to her held the hymnal in front of her face. She was humiliated and now the center of attention.

As the priests processed by, she heard a loud whisper from a priest behind her, saying “Wait, wait!” The procession stopped, turned around, and laid their hands on her and prayed. Then, something incredible happened. Suddenly she felt as though an ocean of peace was inundating her. This peace lasted for the rest of the evening, and it changed her whole outlook on life. She was a changed and transformed person. All the anger, bitterness, and despair had evaporated, and in its place were gratitude, love, and peace from God.

Rita had experienced a spiritual healing, yet her MS remained. Why would God heal her spiritually, but not physically? Rita didn’t ask this question. In fact, this spiritual healing was infinitely more important to her than any physical healing could have been. She told me, back when she spoke here at Calvin Church in 1997, that given the choice between a physical healing and a spiritual one, she would take the spiritual one every time. It allowed her to plunge back into life with faith, hope, love, and purpose.

Still, over the next few years her body declined even more. On the inside she felt a great sense of peace and harmony, but on the outside her body was slowly deteriorating. Eventually, she was forced into a wheelchair. She prayed to God, but surprisingly not for healing. Instead, she prayed for God’s grace to sustain her. Over the next few years, Rita devoted herself to Christ. She immersed herself in a variety of spiritual disciplines and practices, often in the hope that they would lead to physical healing. She took courses in scripture and theology at a local college. Still no physical healing.

One night, she went to bed and, as was her custom, spent quiet time with God. She had been doing this for the three years since her spiritual healing. She was praying the rosary when she heard a voice: “Why don’t you ask?” She looked around the room but could see no one. The television and radio were off, so the voice did not come from there. She knew in her heart that the voice was real. It was a gentle, almost pleading voice. She wondered what it was that she was supposed to ask for, and suddenly it came to her: she was to ask for healing. This was something she had never asked for. She had prayed about many things in the past, but not specifically for her own healing. The following words formed in her heart and came out of her mouth: “Mary, my mother, Queen of Peace,… please ask your Son to heal me in any way I need to be healed. I know your Son has said that if you have faith, and say to the mountains: move, that they will move. I believe. Please help my unbelief.”

She then fell asleep. The next morning she woke up, forgetting her experience from the night before. She had to hurry because she had overslept and was late for a class she was taking at LaRoche College. She drove herself in her specially equipped van. During the class something strange happened. It felt as though heat was surging from her feet through her legs, and across her whole body. She felt itchy all over, especially in her legs. Her toes were moving inside her shoes, which is something that hadn’t happened in years. She scratched her leg and could feel her fingernails. This was something she hadn’t felt so completely in years.

Driving home afterwards she pulled into her driveway and felt another sensation she hadn’t felt in years. She had to go to the bathroom. She stopped the van and hurriedly dragged her braced body, using her crutches, out of the door and onto the driveway. The braces locked in place, and she scissor-stepped across the driveway to the front door. In the bathroom, she unlocked her brace and looked down at her leg. For years her one leg had grown progressively shorter than the other as the kneecap moved to the inside of her knee. Now it was completely normal. She quickly took off her braces. Remembering the prayer from the night before, she thought to herself that if she was healed she should be able to walk up the stairs. With that, she launched up the stairs with a bound. She reached the top, let out a yelp of joy, and ran down them, out the front door, and into the driveway. She had been healed.

Since that day in 1986, Rita has never had a recurrence of her MS—even of minor symptoms. She travels the world over to tell others her story and also about God’s love. If you are interested in reading about Rita’s experiences, she published them in a book, Rita’s Story, by Paraclete Press.

So, was she really healed by God, or was it just some sort of coincidental event? Perhaps it was just some sort of spontaneous remission, although what do you do with all of the other things that she experienced—the feelings of peace, calm, and of spiritual healing? If you’re not sure what to do with this story, what would you make of Don Piper’s story.

Don Piper is a Baptist pastor who had an experience of healing and more in 1989. Piper had been at a large annual conference for Baptist pastors in Texas, hearing inspiring preachers and teachers. At its end he had two choices about which way to drive home. He could go right out of the Trinity Pines Conference Center, or left. Since he had always taken the left route, which was an eastern route driving down Highway 59, he decided to take a right, heading west down I-45. That decision changed the whole course of his life.

He hadn’t driven more than five miles when disaster hit. Driving along a narrow road with no shoulders, he looked in horror as an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer crossed the center line and headed right for him. The truck ran right over his car, then careened off to hit several other cars. Piper and his care were crushed. Within minutes fire engines, ambulances, and police cars were at the scene. They checked on everyone, and most of the victims suffered only minor injuries. Don Piper, on the other hand, was not okay. He was declared dead by the paramedics on the scene. He had no pulse, no signs of life at all. They checked him numerous times, but each time it was apparent that he was dead.

A massive traffic jam piled up behind the accident, and another pastor from the conference, Dick Onerecker, was in that jam. Wondering what was causing the traffic jam, he walked a half a mile to the scene. Seeing the damage, he went to a police officer and asked if he could help, telling him that he was a pastor. The officer told him that everyone except the man in the crushed car seemed okay. Onerecker, in that moment, felt called to pray for Don Piper, so he asked the trooper if he could. The trooper looked at him and said, “The man’s dead. There’s nothing left to pray for.” Onerecker asked again if he could pray for the dead man. Onerecker wasn’t even sure himself why he felt so compelled to pray for the dead man in the mangled car, but he persisted. The officer said, “Well, you know, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead, but I’ve go to tell you it’s an awful sight. He’s dead, and it’s really a mess under the tarp. Blood and glass are everywhere, and the body’s all mangled.” Dick insisted, so the officer consented.

The car was a mess, and Onerecker had to force his way up through the back of the hatchback. Stretching through the mangled steel as much as possible, he reached out to Don Piper’s body, managing to barely touch his left shoulder, and began to pray for Piper. As he prayed, he sang a number of hymns. This went on for five or ten minutes. As he sang “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” he heard someone else singing with him. Looking around for someone next to the car, he slowly realized that the voice he heard was Don Piper’s. Piper was alive. Scrambling out of the car, he quickly got the paramedics, who rushed to the scene, used the Jaws of Life to get Piper out, and rushed him to the hospital.

So, for those thirty minutes that Don Piper was apparently dead, what did he experience? According to him, he was taken to heaven. He says that he was dead and in heaven. He felt an incredible sense of peace and joy, and all around him were loved ones who had died before him, hugging him, laughing, and praising God. He saw so many people he had loved, and all were radiant with light. He said that there was no sense of time at all. It also felt more real than any experiences he had ever had in life. He felt absorbed in love. He also sensed God’s presence, although he didn’t see God. Everything was glowing with, as he says, “a dazzling intensity.” Human words couldn’t describe his experiences. He also heard the most amazingly beautiful music he had ever heard, and it seemed to be everywhere, and all of it seemed to be praising God. As he reflected later, “I was home; I was where I belonged. I wanted to be there more than I had ever wanted to be anywhere on earth. Tim had slipped away, and I was simply present in heaven. All worries, anxieties, and concerns vanished. I had no needs, and I felt perfect.”

There’s more to this story, but I’ll let you read it in his book, Thirty Minutes in Heaven. As he seemed ready to stay in heaven, something happened. There was a pause, and in that pause he heard another voice, one definitely not the heavenly ones. It was singing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” He became conscious in the car, hearing Onerecker singing, and aware that his hand was being held tightly.

It took more than a year for him to recover from the massive injuries he had sustained. He had one more interesting experience about a year later. He met Onerecker’s wife, and he told her how much it helped him to feel her husband’s hand clutching his while lying in the crumpled car. The wife said, “Dick wasn’t holding your hand. He couldn’t have. Think about it. Your hand was under the dashboard, and Dick could barely stretch to touch your shoulder.” Piper replied, “Then whose hand was it?” She smiled and said, “I think you know…”

So, did Don Piper really have this experience? What do we do with these experiences? I suppose we can dismiss them, but if do so we miss something important. We miss the fact that there’s so much more to this world than we can ever understand, so much more to God than we can ever comprehend. But here’s the reality, very little is possible for those with little faith, but for those with faith, all things are possible.

Amen.

Becoming a Great Servant

2009-10-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

There’s a television show that I love. I don’t watch it all the time, but it is one of the default shows I turn to if I can’t find a good movie or show on television. I love it not only because of its subject matter, but because of what it has taught me about life. The show is The Dog Whisperer, and it is on the National Geographic channel. I’m not sure what night it’s on, but the channel shows reruns constantly, which is how I catch it.

The gist of the show is this. Do you have a problem dog? Call the Dog Whisperer, and he’ll have the dog straightened out in 24 hours. The Dog Whisperer is a man named Cesar Milan, and he’s from Southern California. He gets called in to help with all sorts of problems: dogs who tinkle of on the floor when a stranger comes in the room; dogs that bark and growl and threaten little children; dogs that attack other dogs when they are taken on walks; and dogs that bite when people try to pet them.

What the Dog Whisperer teaches is that the basic problem with virtually every problem dog is the owner. Often the owner has not shown the dog that she or he is the alpha dog, which then confuses the dog and causes behavior problems. Milan says that healthy, happy dogs know their place and are happy to be part of a pack—human or canine—but the problem dogs tend to act out when they don’t know their place. When that happens they try to take charge in doglike ways, which means becoming violent towards anyone whom they sense is a threat to their dominance. Milan teaches that dogs are obsessed with one basic dynamic—dominance and submission.

His answer is to teach the owners to gently, but assertively, take charge. He teaches the owners how to take charge by showing them how to properly take dogs on a walk, how to show the dogs that they are safe, and that we humans are in charge. Ultimately with dogs, we either take charge, or they will try to take charge. They don’t understand life without dominance.

Watching The Dog Whisperer I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot of dog in us humans. Just like dogs we have a need for dominance. We have an ingrained need to be in control and in charge. We have a need to have others do our bidding, even if our bidding is to let us be in charge of the kitchen, the television remote, or our bedrooms. We’re like dogs. We need to know our place, and we love it if we can be “top dog.”

It shouldn’t surprise you that we’re like dogs, or any other animal for that matter, since we are animals. We have the same instinctual drives and urges that all animals do. But there’s one difference between animals and us. We are also spirit. We can rise above being merely animal. In fact, my definition of sin is not so much that sin is bad behavior as much as it is living life cut off from our spirit and God’s Spirit, resulting in our living like animals. Think about all those behaviors that we normally think of as sinful: lust, greed, gluttony, anger, or any of the other deadly sins. They are sins of our becoming more like animals, becoming consumed with animalistic obsessions—food, possessions, what other animals have and we don’t. The more our lives are lived in animalistic pursuits, the more sinful we become because we become cut off from God’s Spirit, who leads us to transcend our animal natures—to transcend the need for dominance.

This all goes into our passage for today because Jesus is teaching us to not be like dogs looking for dominance, but to be like Spirit looking to serve others. You see, to be truly spiritual means to be servants, not masters.

Paul Bailey discovered how spiritual servants can make all the difference in life because a servant changed his life. He stood on a stage in the hall of St. Ignatius Church in New York City, among 177 people who were graduating from the Ready, Willing, and Able program. Eighteen months earlier he was homeless, sleeping on a grate on 84th street, when George McDonald walked up to him. McDonald asked him if he would like a job and a place to live. Bailey skeptically said, “yes.” McDonald told him that he was part of a program that could help Bailey, if Bailey was serious. All Bailey had to do was to show up and be serious about changing his life.

McDonald had made it his life commitment to help people like Paul Bailey change their lives. Perhaps he was sensitive to the plight of the homeless because of his own home life. His parents divorced before he was one-year-old. He never really knew his father. Then his mother died when he was thirteen, meaning that he was left mostly under the care of a local Roman Catholic school and orphanage. It was there that he learned values that would guide his life, such as caring about the poor and the homeless.

Despite the influence of the church, he graduated from high school with a desire to mainly look after himself. After one year of college, he dropped out to work for McGregor Sportswear. He quickly rose up the ranks and became wealthy, eating out most nights in very expensive restaurants, partying at Club 21, and counting Joe Namath as one of his friends. Then something happened to spark a change in his thinking. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and his whole perspective changed. McDonald kept thinking about how the world’s priorities were skewed. The change wasn’t immediately apparent, but he increasingly thought more about the poor and the disadvantaged. He noticed the disparity when he would go out to dinner and spend $200, only to have to step around a homeless man lying on the sidewalk as he left the restaurant. It gnawed at him.

Trying to do something about the problem, he ran for Congress three times and lost all three times. Still, he had made valuable connections that would come in handy as he looked for ways to help the poor. Wanting to make a difference, he spent 700 straight nights handing out sandwiches to the poor, but still realized he needed to do more. Eventually he developed a vision. He would create a program to train the homeless to work, and to give them lives off the street. That’s how he came up with the idea for the Ready, Willing, and Able program. It’s also how he decided to start a charitable fund, the Doe Fund, that would reach out to the homeless. It got its name from a homeless woman, Mama Doe, who was locked out of Grand Central Station by police one night, a place she regularly slept in, and thus froze to death. McDonald. He recognized her from her picture in the paper, wearing a scarf he had given her three weeks before, while realizing that he had regularly given sandwiches to her.

Sparked by her death he found the drive to do something or the homeless. Since then he has committed his life to getting people off the streets and back into a responsible life. He found his life work as a servant, serving the poor, the hungry, and the homeless. He lived out our passage for today, not seeking greatness, but seeking to be a servant.

Unfortunately, too man people thing that to be a servant means being weak. What they don’t realize is that to become a servant like George McDonald requires tremendous courage. Becoming a servant doesn’t mean that you can’t be in charge. McDonald was in charge of his charity. The difference is that to be a servant means to be a master who cares about the welfare of those around her or him. It’s the CEO, president, vice president, office manager, sales manager, or store owner who cares as much about co-workers as she or he does about customers. It’s the coach, teacher, or scoutmaster who cares as much about the struggling kid as he or she does about the star kid. It’s the Christian who cares as much about the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the hurting, as she or he does about her or himself. It’s the Christian who listens to God and is willing to look for opportunities to serve at any moment in life. And you never know when the opportunity to serve will strike.

Joey learned about servanthood one day in class. He was in the third grade, and as he sat in class he realized that he had to go to the bathroom. But he was shy. He didn’t want to raise his hand and ask. So he held it. Then catastrophe hit. He couldn’t hold it any longer. Looking down he noticed wet pants and a puddle. He prayed: “God, please don’t let anyone see me. Please don’t let anyone see me.”

The teacher started walking toward him. If she noticed, she’d make a big deal about it, and the other kids would never let him forget. She moved closer. She was about to look at him. Then Suzie stood up, grabbed the fishbowl, and said to the teacher, “Can I feed the fish? Can I feed the fish?” As she moved the bowl toward the teacher, she tripped, and spilled the whole bowl onto Joey’s lap. He was drenched.

Everyone rushed to help Joey, and laughed at Suzie’s clumsiness. As the kids cleaned up the mess, the teacher took Joey to the gym to get him dry clothes. Later that day Joey saw Suzie on the bus, and timidly asked, “Did you do that on purpose?” Suzie smiled and said, “I peed in my pants once, too. I knew you needed me to help you.”

There are a lot of ways we can serve in life. We can do serve in big ways, and we can serve in small ways. I want you to reflect on your own life. Are you a servant in your life? In what ways? And in what ways may God be calling you to serve even more?

Amen.

Modern Marriage

2009-10-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Mark 10:1-12

Jesus left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

A number of years ago, perhaps six or seven, I paid a heartbreaking visit to a women’s shelter in the North Hills. I had been asked by a counselor at the shelter to come and talk with the women about the role of spirituality in overcoming abuse. I felt extremely privileged to be there because, frankly, men only rarely get to go to a women’s shelter. They are hidden and kept secret in order to protect the women from their abusive husbands and boyfriends.

My talk really focused on the idea that God was on their side, and that despite what they may think, God wants them to be whole and healthy, and not to be subject to chronic abuse. In discussions after our talk, they focused on something that had never occurred to me before. A number of them said that they had a hard time with their faith because one of the tactics that their husbands used to keep them in the relationship was the Bible, and specifically our passage for today. They said that because of passages like this one, they still felt incredibly guilty for leaving their relationships. They worried that God was angry with them and that if they didn’t go back they would be consigned to Hell. One woman said that she struggled with the idea that perhaps the abuse she received was God’s disciplining hand teaching her to be better, and that she was hit so often because she wasn’t trying hard enough to be good. I had a hard time convincing her and them that God wanted good for them, not bad. Some were hard to convince because they kept coming back to this passage.

Passages like the one for today are really difficult to deal with because they seem so hard and fast, so black and white. The rule is that you get married and you stay in the marriage no matter what, right? No excuses. No exceptions. What is hard about these passages is that they go against how the rest of the gospels portray Jesus. In the rest of the gospels we find Jesus leading with love and understanding first. He says things such as that the law was made for humans, not humans for the law.

He always seems to be on the side of people who were hurting, struggling, or who had been outcast because of the law. He loved and healed lepers and blind men who were told that their skin rash or blindness was a sign of God’s judgment. He loved and healed outcasts such as the Syro-Phoenician woman, the woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage, the Roman centurion, and more. How, then, could he be so judgmental and harsh to those who were divorced, especially those who were divorced through no fault of their own because their husbands had kicked them out? Are there really no valid reasons for divorce? What about people who are stuck in abusive marriages? What about people who are married to someone with an addiction who refuses to get help and is tearing apart the family? What about those who are married to chronically irresponsible spouses who waste away all the money, ignore the children, and carry with serial affairs?

Do you know what the problem with this passage is? The problem is that it was spoken to address a particular problem that existed in Jesus’ day, but not so much in our day. On the surface this passage seems fairly straightforward, but the conditions Jesus was speaking to really don’t exist in our day-and-age. Let me take you back a few thousand years and I think you’ll see what I mean.

The fact was that Jesus wasn’t trying to outlaw divorce as much as he was trying to protect families. To understand what I mean you have to appreciate the dynamics of marriage in Jesus’ day. To begin with, women weren’t free like they are today. Back then women were considered to be pretty much like chattel—as property of their fathers’ until they became property of their husbands. Husbands had all the rights, women almost none. Women were considered to be a step above slaves.

If a man were to divorce his wife, there was little to stop him. In fact, the understanding of divorce in Jewish culture was based on Deuteronomy 24:1, which said, “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house.” The Sadducees limited the number of “objectionable” reasons for divorcing, but not the Pharisees (and it was the Pharisees who asked Jesus about divorce in our passage). The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus by getting him to give an answer that would get him in hot water with the Sadducees, the Pharisees, or both. For the Pharisees, divorce was a fairly simple matter. They gave wide latitude in determining what was objectionable. A man could divorce his wife for a variety of reasons ranging from adultery, to her quarrelling too much, to her speaking in too loud a voice in the marketplace, to her getting old and a bit ugly. Now, what could a woman divorce her husband for? Adultery, and she had to prove it. He didn’t have to prove it of her, but she did of him.

So, let’s go back to why Jesus said what he did. He was trying to protect women from being cast out. When these women were divorced, there was nothing for them. Often their families would not take them back because of the stigma of divorce, so what was left was a life of prostitution or one of being a virtual slave. Jesus was saying to these Pharisees, “Look, I’m not going to give you a way out. Live according to your commitments. You’ve promised to give a good life to your wife. Honor that. Don’t be looking for someone prettier or better, love what you have.” I don’t think he was even thinking about abused women or about people who are stuck in destructive marriages. He was thinking about the condition the Pharisees presented him, which was the rampant disregard for marriage that many Pharisee men had. He also knew that Jewish culture was being influenced by Roman culture, where it was not uncommon for a person to be married and divorced up to eight times in a life.

So, with all this under consideration, what is the Christian view regarding marriage? Is all divorce wrong? Should people stay together no matter what? Actually, I think that’s the wrong question. Certainly God doesn’t want us to stay in marriages that are unhealthy and that kill life rather than give life. I don’t think that marriage is so important that God would rather have us be abused, neglected, and harmed, all for the sake of keeping a marriage intact. The fact is that sometimes lives are made healthier by divorce, especially when there is abuse, neglect, chronic addiction, and the like. Sometimes the only way to protect life is to get divorced. And the truth is that God will work with what we have. I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about divorce. I’m clear that some people divorce out of convenience or lack of commitment, and that’s a tragedy because their immaturity often leads them to become serial divorcers.

I think the better question to ask is what God wants in our marriages. Divorces will happen, and I don’t believe that if you have been divorced that God will abandon you, nor do I believe that God wants you to be lonely and alone for the rest of your life. But I think there’s a larger point here. What God ultimately wants is healthy families, and healthy families generally come from healthy marriages. For me the modern Christian question isn’t whether divorced allowed. It’s how to keep divorce from happening.

The issue for us today is that we face so many stresses on marriages today that didn’t exist in Jesus’ day. For the past twenty years the statistics are that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. That means that whenever I do a wedding, half of them will end in divorce. That also means that 50% of all children are growing up in single parent or stepparent homes. The result of all these divorces is that we have a generation reaching, or in, young adulthood who are scared of making a commitment to marriage because they are afraid of failure. They’ve witnessed the pain that comes with divorce, and have a hard time following through with commitments as a result. I resonate with them because I grew up in a divorced household, and I know that I have to try extra hard to stay committed.

Do you know what’s even more tragic? The answer most people have to their fear of commitment is to simply not get married. They move in together and therefore believe they are protecting themselves from the pain of divorce. Unfortunately, the break up rate is actually higher than the divorce rate after ten years (57% to 30%, according to a Columbia University study). And those who get married after having lived together have an astonishing 80% divorce rate. The question for us is not so much about how do we avoid divorce, but how do we keep our marriages intact? So, with this in mind, what I want to give three tips to those of you who are married, and those of you who want to be married.

1. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about us: The fact is that we live in a very narcissistic culture in which most people are constantly thinking of themselves first and only. Today far too many people enter marriages asking, “What can this person give and do for me?” That’s simple immaturity. It’s normal for people to have that attitude when they are dating. No one dates another at first, asking, “Gee, how can I be all about her or him?” We ask, “What does that person do for me?” We like how the other person makes me feel. We become infatuated with her or him because of what she or he brings to me.

Over time, though, we need to give up our focus on ourselves. And we need to give up our focus on just what the other wants. The question we need to ask is, “What is right for us.” Good marriages are based on us, not you or me. That doesn’t mean that good relationships are perfect. We all slip into a me- or you-focus. But the best marriages are sacrificial in the sense that I am willing to give up what I want, you are willing to give up what you want, in order for us to do whatever makes us healthy.

I’ve noticed over the years that unhealthy marriages have one or both spouses who keep the focus only on themselves. In fact, when I put on my marital therapist hat, I notice something about my ability as a counselor. When I work with couples where both really want to make the marriage work, I am the greatest counselor in the world. When I work with couples were just one really doesn’t care about the marriage anymore and is only meeting with me to put down one more mark on the checklist of things to do in order to get divorced, I’m the worst counselor in the world. The point is that marriages in which the couple takes us seriously usually turn out to be healthy marriages. Marriages in which one or both merely take me or you seriously end up in divorce.

2. We’re # 1: If jobs, kids, house, money, sports, friends, or anything else becomes more important than the marriage, the marriage is lost. This happens all the time. At first our marriages are the most important part of our lives. Then work starts to get in the way. Then we have kids, and they begin to come first. Perhaps our friends also become more important than the marriage, as do sports, hunting, shopping, or anything else.

The fact is that families are only as healthy as the marriages at their center. Do you want to have healthy kids? Start with working on your marriage. If the bond between husband and wife is strong, then the children will be more likely to be healthy physically, mentally, relationally, and spiritually. What does it mean to make your marriage #1? It means making your relationship with your spouse more important than your work, your friends, sports, activities, and even your kids. I’m not saying that you should neglect your kids. Only that by making your relationship #1, you actually help your children.

So what does that mean on a practical level? Well, one thing I often tell spouses when they come for counseling is that they should make going out on dates a priority. And by going out on dates I don’t mean getting together with friends, or going to a movie where you sit next to each other but watch a screen for two hours. A date is where you go and do something fun together and talk—not about kids or work, but about life and your relationship. You’d be surprised at how many couples struggle to go out and just talk. The point, though, is that if your relationship is #1, your family will be healthy.

3. God is Love: This is an aspect of marriage that far too many people neglect. When you got married, did you notice that you not only made a promise to each other, but you also made a covenant with God? What that means is that you made a promise to God to put God at the center, which also means that you recognized that you can’t love without God.

I don’t know what you make of that last comment, but I’m speaking out of the first letter of John, who says in 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In other words, if you want to find more love in your life, find more God. The more open we are to God, the more open we are to love. Conversely, the more closed off we are to God, the more closed off we are to love. So, whether you sense this or not, just by going to church each week you make your marriage better. Each time you pray, you make your marriage better. How? By becoming more tied into God, who not only is the source of all love, but who is love, we enhance our marriages.

Amen.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Do Beliefs Matter?

2009-09-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Mark 9:33-50
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
‘For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’

Back in the middle of the 19th century, there was a well-known bishop who was traveling through the South Pacific on his way to visit Christian missionaries in Austrailia. One the way, his ship stopped at a small island to take on supplies. Walking around the island, he began to ask the villagers if they believed in Jesus Christ.

Three native men responded “yes.” They said in broken English, “Years ago, a man come to island. Teach us about Jesus. We followers now. Jesus very great.” The bishop, interested in their faith, asked them, “So, when you pray, what do you say?” They responded, “We say to God, ‘You are Three. We are three. Have mercy on us.’”

The bishop was indignant. What ignorance. What blasphemy! This was no way for Christians to pray. He said to the natives, “This way of praying is against God. Let me teach you how to pray properly.” So, he spent the next few days teaching them the words to the Lord’s Prayer. It was difficult work, but slowly they memorized the prayer. His last act on the island was proudly standing on the gangplank, hearing them recite the prayer.

Six months later, the bishop was sailing home, and as his ship sailed by that beautiful South Pacific island at night, he thought back with pride to his work with the three natives. He wondered how they were doing, and if they truly appreciated his work with them. As he looked across the water to the island, he noticed a small point of light coming toward the ship. As he continued to look, the light got closer and closer, and it was moving fairly quickly. Soon he noticed that it wasn’t just one light, but three. As it drew even closer, he noticed that the lights were three lamps being held by aloft the three natives as they ran at incredible speeds across the top of the water. Soon the three natives were standing on the surface of the water along side of the ship. Everyone was stunned.

They shouted up and said, “Bishop, Bishop! We see your boat sail by. We so ashamed. We forget beautiful prayer you teach us. We know we bad Christians. Please teach us again how to pray.” The bishop looked down at them and said with a smile, “When you pray, say ‘You are Three, we are three. Have mercy on us.’”

I love this story because it gets right to the heart of real Christian faith. Basically what it tells us is that to be a Christian is really very simple. It’s a matter of being the right way in our heart, mind, and soul. Let me explain this a bit more.

I think that the heart of Christianity isn’t so much a question of what you believe, or what you do, but who you are. I’m not saying that what you do doesn’t matter, nor that what you believe doesn’t matter. They do. But they matter only to the extent that what you believe and do shapes who you are. God isn’t so much taking note of what we do and believe. What God takes note of is our core. Are we people of love, compassion, grace, peace, and light at our cores, and how are these reflected in our acts and beliefs.

So often in Christianity we get everything reversed. We emphasize aspects of faith that are secondary, making them primary. Let me show you what I mean. Do you recognize the term “works righteousness?” Works righteousness is something that Jesus struggled against, and it was at the heart of the Reformation—the time when the Protestant churches broke away from the Catholic church during the 16th century. The idea behind works righteousness is that in order to get into heaven we have to do enough good deeds to merit inclusion. It’s as though God keeps a big tally sheet of good and bad deeds that we’ve done, and the good deeds have to outweigh the bad ones in order for us to be saved. The Catholic Church, at the time of the Reformation, was fully ensconced in a works righteousness approach to faith. In fact, they used it to pay for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica Rome.

The church declared that giving money to the building of St. Peter’s (what they called “indulgences”) would have the power to release individuals early from Purgatory, getting them to Heaven sooner. So periodically a bishop from the Vatican would travel to a European city in a cart loaded with small, rolled-up documents bound by a red ribbon and embossed with the papal seal. When you gave money to the building of St. Peter’s, you would be given the document certifying your early release from Purgatory. This is works righteousness, and belief in it still exists today when people say that what matters most is how often we go to church, how often we give to charity, and how often we do acts of charity.

So what’s wrong with the idea of works righteousness? Aren’t good deeds good? What’s wrong is that works righteousness goes against what scripture says. Paul, in the third chapter of Romans, tells us that it’s not our deeds that get us into Heaven, it’s God’s grace. In other words, God saves us as a gift out of love. We don’t get in because we merit getting in. We get in because God wants us there. God wants to save us. When we have faith in God, we accept the gift of grace and Heaven. It’s not the goodness of our works that get us in. In fact, Paul points out that our deeds really can’t be considered good, since even the best deeds have some measure of self-interest in them—especially if we are only doing them to get into heaven. That’s the most selfish reason of all. Salvation isn’t a gift that’s merited. It’s just received.

There’s another form of “righteousness” that goes right along with works righteousness, and it’s the one that afflicts Protestants. Works righteousness is still an issue for the Catholic Church, despite the fact that the Catholic Church’s beliefs are much more like Protestant beliefs on this issue. The Protestant version of works righteousness is something I call “beliefs righteousness.” Beliefs righteousness is the idea that we are saved by virtue of having the right beliefs about God, Jesus, Scripture, and the like. You see people caught in the grips of beliefs righteousness who believe that things such as memorizing the Bible, being expert at Christian theology, and knowing what needs to be known to be saved have the power to save us. Many Protestants ignore the idea that grace and salvation are gifts, and act as though it is the purity of our beliefs that save us. They make the same mistake that those caught in works righteousness do: thinking that it’s up to us, when really it’s all up to God.

The bishop in our story was both a beliefs and works righteousness slave. The three men may have been ignorant of Christian works and beliefs, but they had the right hearts—hearts that allowed them to accept the gift of grace from God in a way that transformed them. You see, what makes us righteous is where our heart and soul are.

Okay, so if it doesn’t matter so much what we do and what we believe, then why is it so important for Christians to believe what we believe, and to do what we do? The answer is that Christian teachings shape our minds, hearts, and souls. Acts of love shape our hearts, minds, and souls, as well as those of others. Christian teachings and acts have the power to deepen our relationship with God and others. Ultimately the goal of Christianity is our relationship with God, and what better way to build that relationship than to be like children with God? This is what God wants of us. God wants us to be God’s adult, mature, loving, and compassionate children.

This gets right to the heart of my vision of Christianity. I believe that we are called to be a community that shapes people to become more open to and responsive to God in all areas of life. We are called to be Christ-bearers and love sharers, not gatekeepers who determine who deserves to be in God’s kingdom and who doesn’t.

What does it means to be a Christian? I believe that it means to be exactly like what Jesus described in our passage. Jesus says, “’Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’’ What he is saying here he says even more clearly Matthew’s gospel: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

We are called to be like children in our faith, in our works, and in our beliefs. Think about the way children are. They don’t spend hours debating weighty matters as we do. They play. They don’t sit around wondering how they can get to heaven. They play. To be like a child as a Christian means to live a life of play, laughter, and joy. That doesn’t mean going out and getting drunk all the time, spending all our time gambling, or engaging in what can often be called “adult fun.” I’m talking about real play where we can enjoy life with others. You hear this sense of play in the deepest Christian words, ones such as love, grace, joy, hope, faith, and peace. We can learn a lot from watching children.

My daughter, Erin, taught me about being a Christian child the other day. Erin and her sister, Shea, both run cross-country. And last Monday they had a meet with two other schools, although Erin didn’t run because she and I had been sick on Monday and Tuesday. So we sat and watched.

I don’t know how many of you have ever been to a cross-country meet, but it’s a bit of a strange event for parents. You rush to get your children to the meet, and once you get there, everyone hangs out waiting for the time when everyone’s there and the coaches can take the kids on a walk-through, which takes about forty minutes as they walk the two-mile course. Then the varsity team lines up, boys first, girls second, and they run. That takes about another 35 minutes. Then the junior varsity lines up—boys first, girls second. So, by the time my daughters are ready to run, I’ve been sitting there for about an hour-and-a-half. Usually I take work and work on something while I’m waiting. Then the girls line up, and I, as a parent, walk over there and shout out, “Go Erin, go Shea!” I also shout out for some of their friends like Abbie and Bailey. In twenty seconds they disappear into the woods. And then all us parents go back to sitting and waiting.

About eighteen minutes later the first kids show up, and so we start looking for our kids. At about twenty minutes I see my kids running to the finish line. So I shout out “Go Shea, you can do it! Go Erin, you’re almost there!” Then they cross the finish line. By this point, I’ve been there for two hours or more, and I’ve spent a total of thirty seconds cheering my kids and other kids. It’s not like a soccer game where you cheer for an hour.

What’s also hard is that I don’t really know any of the other parents. Being the Protestant parent of children in a Catholic school, I don’t know the parents through church and other activities. So I sort of stand around a bit, feeling like the odd man out. It’s not their fault. I’m not necessarily going out of my way to meet them. So I do work and read while I’m waiting.

Erin taught me something the other day, though, about my attitude, and perhaps the attitude of all us adults. I told her that watching the meets is kind of boring for us parents, so I said to bring books and games, which she did. That only amused her for thirty minutes. Then she told me, “I’m bored!” For the next fifteen minutes I heard, “I’m bored. I’m bored. I’m bored.” I told her that there’s not much I could do. She noticed some younger children, children that she didn’t know very well, and she asked me if she could hang out with them. I said, “Sure, but remember that you are getting over being sick. I don’t want you running around.” So, for the next hour-and-a-half, Erin hung out with those kids, playing games, chatting, and sharing snacks. I sat by myself and did work. Erin played, I worked. Erin laughed, I worked. Erin got along, I worked. Now the truth is that I had a lot to do (believe it or not, we pastors do a lot in-between sermons), but I also realized that Erin had something I didn’t: an ability to overcome differences through prayer. She had that childlike faith that Jesus talked about. She had the ability to get along with others, and not to get hung up on whether or not the other believed what she believed, had the same values she had, or even had the same faith she had.

This ability to live a life of faith-filled love, laughter, and play is so essential to the Christian life, and I think it’s something we miss so much in modern life. I will give credit, though, to this church. Do you remember back in 2005, when Diana Butler-Bass and her assistant, Joseph Stewart-Sicking, spent time with us to research us and other like churches for what eventually became her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us? They were studying churches like ours that were growing, not because we were doing all contemporary worship, but because they were emphasizing spirituality, prayer, and listening to God. They said that they noticed something very unique about our church, which stood out in comparison to other churches. She noticed how easily we laugh in this church. They said that they saw it in worship whenever something didn’t work and we laughed about it. They saw it in our session meetings. Joe said that when he sat in on our session meeting, he heard us have a very intensive discussion about something, and he thought, “Okay, here’s where we’ll see them start to fight.” At the most intense moment, someone on the session said something funny. Then someone else joined in. Pretty soon, all of us were cracking jokes for five minutes. Then we jumped back into the discussion and had it resolved in fifteen minutes. What I love about this church is that we play.

I think that this is what God calls us to. Our beliefs matter. Our works matter. But not to the extent that our love and laughter matter.

Amen.

Conspiracy and Conflict

2009-09-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

James 3:1-12
September 13, 2009

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

I don’t know about you, but I really like conspiracy movies. I’m not sure what it is about them, but I love them. Whenever any come on television, I’m glued.

I do have a favorite one, although I haven’t seen it in over fifteen years. It is a movie called Capricorn One. It’s about three astronauts who are scheduled to fly to Mars for the first landing on Mars. One of the astronauts is O. J. Simpson, back in the day when we thought he was okay. As the countdown begins, the astronauts are put into a sleeker, more modern version of the Apollo moon mission capsule. The countdown continues to the final 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,… lift off! You see the rocket lifting off on televisions across the country. Then we see the astronauts in the capsule. They are looking at each other bewildered because nothing is happening. Their rocket is still sitting on the launch pad. Then the door opens and the three are ushered out.

They are told that there is a problem with the rocket. Eventually they are taken out into the desert where they are placed in a makeshift filming studio that looks exactly like the surface of Mars. They are told that the government couldn’t afford a real Mars mission trip, so they are to fake it for he sake of the country.

After complying for a while, the astronauts eventually rebel. At that point they are threatened with death. Meanwhile, the public is told that they all died in a fiery explosion on Mars. The three astronauts escape into the desert and are hunted by government agents in black helicopters. One-by-one they are killed until the last one finally makes it to civilization and tells the world he is alive. The conspiracy is revealed.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved conspiracy films, novels, and theories. For instance, I like History Channel conspiracy documentaries on the assassination of JFK, shows on the conspiracies of secret societies and government agencies, and even cover-ups of UFO sightings. Now, to be honest, I rarely believe any of them, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like watching them, especially if I’m folding laundry. Conspiracy makes for great entertainment, which is good because we are bombarded nowadays by conspiracy. I spent about 15 minutes on Saturday afternoon listing all the recent popular films that have conspiracies at their core. Here’s my list:

Eagle Eye
Star Wars: Phantom Menace Attack of the Clones Revenge of the Sith
The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum
JFK, No Way Out the X-Files movies
Enemy of the State Conspiracy Theory The Manchurian Candidate Syriana Clear and Present Danger The Da Vinci Code Angels and Demons and even,… Harry Potter

What’s our obsession with conspiracies? Obviously I find them entertaining, but there’s something more here. Our culture is obsessed with conspiracies. Think about all the conspiracies theories people in our culture believe in. Again, I spent about fifteen minutes thinking about conspiracy theories, and here’s what I came up with:

The Assassinations of JFK by either the Russians, the Cubans, or the CIA. The assassination of RFK by the FBI or the Mafia. The assassination of Martin Luther King either by the FBI or the KKK. The assassination of Malcom X by either the FBI or the Muslim Nation (the FBI is popular among conspiracy theorists, as is the CIA). The faking of the 1969 Moon Landing. The secret plot for Jewish World Domination, which is based on the book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Nixon cover-up, which, well… actually was a conspiracy. The New World Order, which through the United Nations is planning on taking over the world. The Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University, which has had a number of U.S. presidents and other powerful figures as their members. The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy cited by Hillary Clinton. The suicide of Vince Foster, an aide to President Clinton, who was said to have really been killed by Clinton or his minions back in the 1990s. In fact, there is a whole conspiracy theory about what is called “The Clinton Body Count,” which is a suspicion that Bill Clinton killed or had killed 50 to 60 people who stood in the way of his becoming president. The Freemasons, which I believe is the next conspiracy target of Dan Brown’s new novel (Brown is the author of the The DaVinci Code). The 9/11 conspiracy, which says that 9/11 either was orchestrated by the Jews to get the world to hate Muslims, or by the Bush Administration for their own nefarious reasons. There’s the whole Obama birther conspiracy, the belief that he was really born in Kenya and faked his U.S. birth certificate. A recent one I’ve heard is that Obama is hiding his college transcripts from the public for some sinister reason. There is also a conspiracy theory surrounding the digital television conversion. The theory is that the converter boxes and the new digital televisions have secret cameras integrated in them so that we can be watched (so make sure you don’t dress in front of your television, or Big Brother will see you naked).

I look around at our culture, and I’m now wondering if our collective love of conspiracies is infecting our souls. I’m wondering if all this belief in conspiracy is leading to our increase in conflict. The fact is that nowadays, especially in the political arena, people constantly see diabolical reasons behind every idea. I think this has an eroding effect in which people don’t trust each other because we suspect everyone of having hidden, evil motives. The result is that nobody trusts anyone else, at least on a large scale, and it is leading to a tremendous amount of conflict. Everyone is right, and everyone else is wrong. And we are a culture in severe conflict.

This conflict has even infected our churches. It’s amazing nowadays how many on the right see a liberal conspiracy in the offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to erode the morality and belief in Christ, and how many on the left see an evangelical conspiracy to destroy our denomination for their own purposes.

Everywhere I look I see conflict, and it’s leading to the point where treating others with disdain is becoming more acceptable. Because we see others who disagree with us as less than us, it gives us permission to treat them with disdain. Here’s the thing that gets me: We say we’re a Christian nation, but where’s the evidence? It certainly isn’t in how we treat each other. I suppose many of us measure our Christianity based on thinking that we believe the right things or do the right things, but how we behave towards others is the real outward mark of our faith, and I look at the behavior of Americans, and much of it is embarrassing. I hear Barney Frank, a congressman from Massachusetts, say to a protester at a town hall meeting (who herself ignorantly asked, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?"), "On what planet do you spend most of your time?... Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table." Then, a few weeks later, Joe Wilson, a congressman from South Carolina, during a speech by President Obama, yells out, “You lie!” And his apologies are less than convincing.

This stuff is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Whether we are talking about Serena Williams’ treatment of a line judge in the finals of the U.S. Open, or Kanye West’s protest at the Video Music Awards, there’s an incivility that it ripping apart the culture. I believe that what sparks a lot of this conspiracy and conflict is talk radio, the internet, and the media. The funny thing is that I hear so much that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, but I have to tell you that I don’t see it. And there’s a good reason. Fox News, who often who promotes the “media-is-liberal” talk, is more popular than the other cable news channels combined. That makes them a large part of the mainstream media. Consider also that in this city, and many others, right-wing talk radio dominates the ratings. That makes them the mainstream media. I do believe the mainstream media is biased, but not as much politically as in another way. Their politics go all over the map, but they all share a common bias, which is that they are all biased toward conflict. The mainstream media, the radio, and the Internet love conflict. They can’t get enough. If a leading figure gave a tremendous speech about any topic, but said in the middle of it something critical of another, that’s the part the media would focus on.

This raises a significant problem for us Christians. We love conflict, but at the same time we are called to something more. So many of us Christians have terrible behavior in the way we treat others on scales large and small. They excuse their behavior by saying that because they are right, and they are only speaking truth, they can act that way. For a Christian, even being right doesn’t excuse poor behavior. And the behavior of Christians right and left is actually hurting our brand. Take a look at this recent research by the Barna Group, an evangelical polling organization. They polled a sample of 16-29 year-old non-Christians, and here’s what they found:
• 91% say we are antihomosexual
• 87% say we are judgmental
• 85% say we are hypocritical
• 78% say we are old-fashioned
• 75% say we are too involved in politics
• 72% say we are out of touch with reality
• 70% say we are insensitive to others

I find these statistics appalling. I realize that much of what sparks those beliefs are not the kinds of actions folks from our church engage in, but we are still lumped in with them.

We Christians are called not only to a standard of belief, but especially to one of behavior that rises above the conflict of today. I want you to look at scripture and see what it tells us about how we are to treat others, especially those with whom we disagree. Read our passage above, and listen to what James says about the power of the tongue. Or look in Matthew’s gospel at what Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”

Read what Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In his Letter to the Philippians he says, “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” What if we took these passages seriously not only on a personal level, but in our country? What if we made these beliefs the mark of being a Christian nation?

So how do we get to this better standard of behavior? I think the answer is found in the writings of a Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber. Back in 1923 he wrote a small, groundbreaking book titled I and Thou. In it he stated that the problem with much of human life comes through how we regard each other. He says that when we use a word like “thou” (which is an old English word used to call another “you” in a very personal, intimate way), we are using a word that says “I care about you.” He says that God looks upon each of us a “thou,” and hopes that we will look upon God as “Thou.” When we see ourselves as “I” and another as “thou,” we bind ourselves in a respectful, caring relationship. Regarding others as a “thou” removes conflict and enhances love.

The problem is that we only rarely look at others as “thou.” Instead, we look upon others as a “she,” “he,” “they,” or “it,” meaning that we consider others to be of lesser value or as an object. To consider another as a “she” or “he” means to consider another to be distant and of less importance. When we consider another as an “it,” we consider that person to be almost as nothing. For Buber, the answer to our conflict is to work personally to consider others in the same way God considers them—as a “thou.” We see them as a “thou” even if we disagree with them. This is a key to breaking the cycle of conflict, at least in our lives.

My point here hasn’t been just to blast right-wing talk radio, left-wing blogging, and all your favorite media sources. My point is to remind all of us that we have a higher calling, one that extends beyond the agendas of the media. We have a calling to listen, to be careful in how we speak, to build up. And to get there we have to make a decision to root our thinking and our behavior in Christian values, not the culture’s values.

So, with that, I have a question for you to ponder: What’s the foundation of your behavior? Is it Christianity or something else?

Amen.

What Good Is Faith without Deeds?

2009-09-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

James 2:1-17
September 4, 2009

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, also said, ‘You shall not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

A number of years ago, in the small Southern town of Shively, there used to be two main churches, the Shively Christian Church and the Shively Baptist Church. Both churches were very active in the community, both attracted a large number of people from the community, and both agreed on one thing: that the other church was the wrong church.

One August Saturday morning the youth pastor of the Shively Christian Church gathered the youth members together for a “What Would Jesus Do?” day. He split them up into five groups, giving them a charge to go out and do what Jesus might do to help others for at least two hours. He used John 13 as a guide, which is the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. So off the youth went to act as Jesus for a day.

When they returned, they told their stories. The first group found an elderly man in their congregation and trimmed his bushes and raked his yard for two hours. The second bought and shared ice cream treats with the residents of a retirement community in town. The third group visited hospitalized church members. The fourth group went around the community and sang Christmas carols to homebound members, causing one woman to declare that this was the warmest Christmas she could remember.

When the fifth group started to tell the others what they had done, the youth group let out a massive groan. They had gone to the pastor of the hated Shively Baptist Church and asked the pastor how they could help his church. He told them that there was a widow in the congregation who needed help with her yard. So they went and did her yard work for two hours. When they finished, the woman thanked them profusely and said, “You’ve confirmed what I’ve always believed. That the youth of the Shively Baptist Church are the best around, and so much better than those of the Shively Christian Church!”

After hearing that, the youth pastor said, “Well, I hope you straightened her out and told her that you were from the Shively Christian Church.” The youth said, “No. We didn’t really think it mattered” (adapted from “It Really Didn’t Matter,” by Charles Colson, found in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 1997).

Looking at each group, what do you think their motivation was for doing a good deed? Do you think they did they good deeds because that’s what was expected? Their parents expected it, the youth pastor expected it, perhaps even God expected it. So maybe they did their deeds merely to meet others’ expectations. Or do you think they did their good deeds because that’s what everyone else was doing? Peer pressure is an powerful thing. Perhaps most were doing good deeds to fit in. Do you think they did their good deeds to get in their “good deed hours” as a way of eventually getting into heaven? A lot of people seem to think that we need to live our lives filling out a “good deed timecard” that we can hand to St. Peter or St. Paul, or whomever is staffing the pearly gates when we die. We think that if we get enough good deeds on the timecard, we’ll be let in. So, what do you think the motivation was of the last group? Personally, I think that they are motivated because they were living la vida Diego.

What’s living la vida Diego? It’s Spanish for “living the life of James.” What does that mean? It means living life the way James spells it out in our passage. He says, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” The last group let their deeds flow from their faith. What makes the story compelling is that somewhere deep inside we know that the last group had the right motivation.

James, in saying to us that our faith has to be demonstrated in our deeds, is really just building on what Paul taught. Unfortunately, a problem arises when we compare what James and Paul said about faith and deeds. A lot of people say that Paul and James were at odds. Their belief in this comes from reading what Paul said in Romans 3:28, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” Many Christians read this and think that what Paul is saying is that we are saved not by our deeds, but by our faith, or at least by grace that we receive through our faith. In fact, he is saying that, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about what we do. They misunderstand what Paul is saying and so say that our deeds are empty, and that all that matters is the quality of our faith. They say this because they only hear one-half of the story. James gives the other half. I think he would agree with Paul, but then he would say that if we truly have faith it would be reflected in our deeds. The reason? True faith isn’t content to remain internal. It wants to flow through life, and it does so by sharing God’s love in tangible deeds.

Paul and James are really saying the same thing. They are saying what John Calvin taught: good deeds are a response, not a responsibility or a commodity. Dwell on that sentence for a bit: good deeds are a response, not a responsibility or a commodity. What does this mean? It means first that truly good deeds aren’t a commodity, something we do to purchase something else. Many people believe that we should do good deeds in order to get into heaven. That’s treating deeds like a commodity with the thought that if we do enough good deeds we can purchase entrance into heaven. Both James and Paul would recoil at that idea. Both believed that faith-based deeds are not done to purchase any kind of reward, whether that may be entrance to getting into heaven, or getting someone to do something good for us.

Good deeds also aren’t a responsibility. What that means is that the true Christian doesn’t do good deeds simply because we are told to do so and because someone has told us that this is what responsible Christians do. We do them for another reason. We do them as a response to God’s grace. In other words, the more mature we become, the more we recognize how much grace God’s blessed us in our lives. We recognize that even if our lives our tough, God created us, gave us life, gave us friends and family, and has given us opportunities to share in God’s blessings. Good deeds become a response to this grace—a way of saying “thank you” to God and to share so much of what we’ve had with others.

Here’s what I think: deeds that aren’t motivated by faith are really just selfish deeds, but faith that doesn’t lead to selfless deeds is really just empty faith. This is the crux of Christianity. Don’t say you’re a Christian. Show me that you’re a Christian. Don’t say that you have faith. Show that you have faith. What are your acts of faith? What are your acts of love?

The whole question is this. You say you’re a good Christian? Where’s the evidence? This whole discussion reminds me so much of a story I heard years ago. There was a man, many years ago, who was known as “Starfish Man.” Why? Because every morning he walked along the same five-mile strip of beach, and as he walked he would pick up the starfish that had been washed ashore the previous night and throw them back into the ocean. Eventually he became infamous. One day, a reporter showed up on the beach to interview him. She asked him questions about his life, his work, and more. Finally, she asked him why he cared so much about throwing starfish back into the ocean. He said that he did it because he didn’t like to see starfish suffer. She responded, “Yeah, but don’t you know it really doesn’t make a difference because the starfish will just be washed ashore the next night?” He smiled at her, reached down, picked up a starfish, and threw it Frisbee-style back into the sea. Then he said, “Made a difference to that one, didn’t it?”

The Starfish man presented us with a model. It’s not so much a matter of how good our deed is. What matters is the love and faith behind it. I think James and Paul present us with a paradox related to this story: It’s not so much what you do as it is why you do it; and It’s not so much why you do it as that you do it. What this means is that the moment you get caught up with whether what you do matters, let it go and just act out of faith and love. But the moment you get caught up in saying that you have faith and love and that’s enough, you need to let your faith free and do something good.

We are called to have a deep faith, but also one that is manifested in our deeds. Here are some questions I want you to reflect on:

To what extent is your life filled with good, caring, loving, giving, compassionate deeds?
To what extent do you base your deeds on responding to God’s good deeds in your life?
To what extent is your life a conduit of grace so that God’s goodness can flow through you?

Amen.

The Bread of Life

2009-08-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

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John 6:35-51
August 16, 2009

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

Back in December of 1946, a businessman named Stuart Luhan checked into the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Luhan regularly made trips there, and his custom was to get a room on the 10th floor so that he could be away from the street noises. Settling in for the night he looked forward to a good night’s rest before doing business the next day. So off he went to sleep.

Sometime in the early morning hours he woke up and saw a red glow out the window. Something was wrong. He heard a commotion outside his door and opened it to find the hallway thick with black smoke. Shutting the door he began to panic. He opened the window to see if there was a way down, but looking down from ten stories only increased his panic. What should he do? He couldn’t go into the hallway, and he couldn’t jump. Not knowing what else to do he retreated to the center of his room and tried to practice something he had been doing every morning for years, which is to calm himself and pray.

Seeking God’s help he said, “God, I put myself into your care and keeping. Let your presence be my fortress. I await your instructions on how to get out of this crisis.” He felt calm, despite the fact that the other voices in the hotel were becoming more frantic. Soon, he sensed a voice, a presence, telling him to calmly get dressed. Then he was to make a rope out of the sheets, blanket, and bedspread. He was getting ready to tie it to the center post on the window and throw the rope down, but from the same presence he sensed, “No. Not yet. Trust me.” He waited. Panic clutched at him, trying to get him to give in, but he stayed calm. After what seemed like forever he sensed the voice saying, “Now! Put the rope out the window and climb out.” As he did, Luhan recited words from the psalms: “God is my life and my salvation. I shall not fear. God is my life and salvation. I shall not fear.”

Climbing down he only reached the eighth floor. There was nowhere to go. Then he saw a fireman extending his ladder to the eighth floor, but it was too far away. Climbing up the ladder, the fireman saw Luhan, signaled him, and swung a rope hanging from the window above. He swung it once, and Luhan missed. Again he swung it, but it was just out of his reach. Finally a third time he swung it, and Luhan caught it. Twisting it around his right hand, he let go of his homemade rope and swung to the fireman, who caught him. Looking back he noticed that his homemade rope had caught fire and was now falling toward the earth. Luhan realized that if he had gone out too soon, he would have hung there to the point at which he couldn’t hold on any longer. He would have died. If he had waited, his own rope would have burned, causing him to fall and die. The timing was absolutely perfect.

I don’t know what you make of a story like this, but I think it explains a lot about what Jesus tried to say in our passage. When you hear him refer to himself as the “bread of life,” what does that term mean to you? Is it just something that you hear me say when I’m doing the words of institution during communion? Does it mean something more? To me it means that when we let Christ into our lives, he comes alive within us.

Jesus was trying to teach the people of the time an insight that they weren’t ready for. He was teaching that he could come alive in each and every one of us, if we choose to let him. He got into a lot of trouble for saying that he was the bread of life. He got into trouble because the Jews didn’t understand what he meant, and because they knew that he was somehow saying that God was in him and working through him. That was blasphemy. Also, they knew Mary and Joseph. They wondered how Jesus could say that he was from God if it was apparent who his parents were.

What they failed to understand, and what many modern Christians and non-Christians fail to comprehend, is that both in our passage and throughout all of John’s Gospel, Jesus was trying to teach people a whole new way of seeing our relationship with God. I didn’t understand this new way of seeing God and Christ until I read a book by the Quaker mystic, Thomas Kelly, in 1990. Reading this quote opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing Christ. Until then I had always seen God as distant and in heaven, and Jesus as distant and in the past. But Kelly opened me to the possibility that I could find Jesus somewhere else. He said, “Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.”

What he is saying is that we don’t find Christ merely in the past and in scripture. We find Christ in our hearts, in our souls, and that we can live a life that allows that life of Christ, that presence, to grow within us. He is saying that Christ is within us, but that we have to take the initiative to let him come alive.

Stuart Luhan experience that bread of life within. I’ve also experienced how openness to Jesus can be like the bread of life within us. I think I’ve told this story before, but I truly experienced Christ within when it came to writing and publishing my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. I had a dramatic experience of Christ at work. The book has to do with my whole vision for how to do church, a vision based on creating a church grounded in prayer that teaches members how to learn to rely on God’s guidance both in the church and in our personal lives. I felt called to write this book before I came to Calvin Church—for over nine years—but I always sensed that the timing wasn’t right.

Even though I had the vision for writing the book, I also knew that I wasn’t ready to do so until I had been here at Calvin Church for a while. So every year for five years I would pray and ask God if was time. At least three times a year I prayed, and each time I sensed God saying, “not yet.” So I wrote other books on the spiritual life, books such as Paradoxes for Living and Discovering the Narrow Path.

Then in January of 2003 I prayed, and I was surprised to I sense that God was saying “yes.” It was a strange moment because for all those previous years I had kept hearing in my heart, “not yet.” When I finally sensed God saying “yes” I had to keep coming back to God over the next few weeks to make sure that it wasn’t just me saying yes. By the way, I often hear God speaking to me, but not in a loud, audible voice. Generally I sense God speaking to me deep in my soul, through gentle tuggings or impressions. I’ve also learned to test that voice over time because I’m very aware of how easy it is to substitute my own desires for what God wants. Anyway, over the course of the next year I wrote the book, and throughout the writing actively sensed God’s hand on my shoulder, and almost, at times, God’s voice whispering in my ear. I wrote the book, having no idea who would publish it. I finished writing the book in late January of 2004.

A week after finishing it, I received a telephone call in my office at the church. On the line was an editor, Beth Gaede, from The Alban Institute, an organization devoted to helping congregations become healthier. Beth had heard from someone else that I had some interesting ideas about another topic, and wanted to know if I was interested in turning those ideas into a book. I told her that those ideas were more suitable for an article, not a whole book. Pausing, I figured that I might as well as tell her about the book I had just written. I told her that I had just written another book on another topic, a book titled Becoming the Blessed Church. I asked her if she was interested in hearing about it. She said yes, so I described the book.

When I finished describing the book to Beth, I heard nothing but silence on the other end. After almost ten seconds of silence, ten seconds during which I was wondering, “Wow, she must hate the idea,” she said, “Sorry for the silence. I just had chills go up my spine and I’m shaking a little bit. I just got out of a meeting with our director of publishing an hour ago. We had been talking about how we needed to change the direction of our books and move away from books on church growth and conflict management, and into books on bringing spirituality in to the church. We then outlined a particular book that we felt we needed to find someone to write. The problem is that we didn’t know who to ask. For the last fifteen minutes you’ve been describing the very book that we had outlined. And you’ve already written it!”

We are told that we are what we eat. If we eat crap we’ll feel like crap. If we eat what’s good, we’ll feel good. What Jesus teaches is similar. If our spiritual life is crap, our life will be crap. But if we are open to Christ in our hearts, Christ’s life will work through us to make a difference in the world. What he’s talking about is a life where wonderful things happen simply because we are open to them. He’s talking about a life full of coincidences, of providences.

I see this stuff happening all over the place in this church. Let me give you an example of this kind of providential grace here at Calvin Church. A number of years ago we were in the process of trying to put together a church website. The problem was that we really didn’t have anyone in the congregation who could do it, and we also didn’t have much money to spend on it. So we decided to wait and trust that God would provide.

A few months after deciding this, a new member of Calvin Church, Kathy Yaeger, approached me and said, “Graham, for the first time in twenty years I’m not working. And I noticed that you do not have a website for the church. Would you mind if I started one?” Of course I said an immediate and enthusiastic, “Yes, please. I’ll get you whatever you need.”

A year later, Kathy got a job and said to me, “I think I need to step down from managing the website. I seem to have less and less time with my new job.” Again, we decided to pray and see what God would do. About two days later, Jack Haubach approached me. He had joined the church in the previous year. He said, “Graham, I was wondering if it would be possible for me help out on the website. I just finished a class on website design, and I’d love to tinker with our website. I don’t want to get in Kathy’s way or step on her toes, but I’d love to at least share some of my ideas with her.” I laughed and said to Jack, ‘Well, as God would have it, Kathy can’t do the website any longer. How would you like to just take over the whole thing?” And Jack did.

About a year-and-a-half ago Jack moved to South Carolina, but before he did David Sloat came forward and said that he would like to help with the website. Today Jack still helps from South Carolina, even though he’s involved in another church now, but David runs most of the site.

The point is that when we are open to Christ at work within us, whether within us as individuals or as a church, wonderful things happen. And this is true not just for people in regards to the church, but for every walk of life. It all starts with wanting Christ to awaken in us, and then wanting to do Christ’s will in whatever we do. For example, I think this applies to work. Very few of us work in careers that don’t serve God in one way or another. The question is whether we can turn what we do into service to God, and let Christ become incarnated in our work. I don’t mean that we should proselytize. I’m talking about taking a prayerful approach to work where we simply ask Christ to guide us, bless us, and take care of us in whatever we do.

There’s a wonderful life ready to grow in us, but to let it grow we have to make a choice by asking, will I awaken the slumbering Christ within me? Will I let that Divine light within shine through me? Will I let a peace live in my soul by letting Christ live in my soul?

Amen.

The Perils of Anger

2009-08-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

Click Here to Listen to This Sermon

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 9, 2009

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Do you remember how Andy Warhol once said that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame? How are you doing on your 15 minutes? I had part of mine back in 1981 when I was televised on ESPN. I was a senior in college, and was playing on my college’s varsity lacrosse team. We were playing the North Carolina State University in a game that was being televised across the country by ESPN.

We were so excited about playing on national television, even if national television meant that only three people in Arizona, two in Montana, ten in California, and six in Massachusetts were watching. Hey, it was still nationally televised, and I even had some classmates from high school tell me that they saw the game on television the next day in Arizona. Over the years a few others told me that they saw me, too.

In the game, we were playing a North Carolina State team that we had beaten the previous two years, so we were pretty confident that we could beat them. We came out pumped up, ready to show a national audience what we could do. We were playing so well that,… well,… at halftime we were losing something like 10 to 3. In other words, we were terrible. We weren’t playing as a team, but as a bunch of individuals running around without purpose. What would you expect the coach to do in situation like this one? When the Steelers are playing poorly, what do you hope the coach will do to get them playing better? Most of us want the coach to get angry and yell at the players, hoping to motivate them to play better. That’s exactly what our coach did.

He came into the locker room at halftime and, gesturing wildly, yelled at us. He threw a water bottle. He overturned a table. He blistered us up and down, telling us that we were playing like a bunch of high schoolers. We were stunned. The real question is what did his tantrum do to us. Did it motivate us to play better? I can tell you this: we stormed out of that locker room, onto the field, and promptly managed to play even worse in the second half, eventually losing 23 to 11. The game wasn’t that close. By the fourth quarter the other team was putting in the second team. My one chance on a national stage, and it was completely embarrassing.

I learned a lot about anger in that game. I learned that sometimes anger gets you what you want, but if you’re not careful it also kills what you cherish. Looking back at that game, what we really needed was for the coach to come in at halftime and to calmly point to the three things we could do to improve. He needed to tell us that we weren’t out of it, but that we could overcome the deficit by doing this, this, and this. The funny thing is that normally that’s what the coach would have done. He rarely yelled us like that in a game. Practices? Now that’s a different thing, but in games he mainly stayed calm. The point, though, is that his anger and tantrum didn’t help. In fact, I think they stripped us of all of our confidence. We were worse after his tirade that we were before.

We all get angry at times, and we all act out of anger at times, but does that make our anger helpful? The apostle Paul realized that anger can be helpful, but often at a high cost. Anger is very much like vinegar. In small doses is can add flavor and spice things up. Think about an angry comedian or an angry song. They can be fun, but only in small doses. Think about how a small dose of anger can give us a bit more focus and help us accomplish a task. A small amount of anger can help us, but the more anger we pour into our lives, the more it makes life bitter, acidic, and corrosive, just as too much vinegar does.

A little bit of anger can motivate us to solve problems, but over time too much anger corrodes relationships, workplaces, families, and eventually the soul. If you want to understand why anger makes people bitter and corrodes relationships, you have to start with what really causes anger. When you get angry about something, do you know why? Anger is a biological, emotional reaction to threats. We’re built biologically to get angry when something or someone threatens us. We get angry when someone threatens to, or does, steal something from us. We get angry when someone tells us something that we don’t want to hear. We get angry when someone denigrates, diminishes, or dismisses us. We are built to get angry whenever someone hurts us. We are built to lash out when someone says or does something to upset us. The reaction of anger is biological, built on all sorts of hormones that kick in whenever we feel threatened.

This gets to the heart of why anger can be helpful, and why it can also cause people to become bitter and corrosive when they act too often on their anger. The more we give in to anger, the more we live as subjects of our bodies, rather than of our minds or spirits. You see, the goal of Christian spirituality is to free us from becoming slaves to our bodies by allowing us instead to be guided by our spirits and by God. Too often we live as slaves to our bodies, rather than letting our bodies be guided by our spirits.

C.S. Lewis was right. We are amphibians who live simultaneously in the physical and spiritual realms. And like amphibians who begin life underwater, but are eventually meant to live in the world of open air, we are born as physical beings, as animals, who are meant to rise above our physicality to live as embodied spirits. Over the course of life we are called to mature in a way that lets the spiritual guide the physical.

Now, I am not saying that you should never get angry. It isn’t a question of whether or not you get angry. It’s all a question of what you do with your anger. Paul says, “Be angry but do not sin.” He’s saying that there are times when anger is appropriate. It’s normal, for instance, to get angry with children when they do something wrong, or refuse to follow our guidance. We are charged with helping them to grow up, to learn responsibility, and to guide them on how to live. Flashes of anger tell them that what we are saying is important. The problem is that too much anger with our kids can become oppressive. We shut them down. And it can lead us to become abusive.

Also, anger in the workplace can be good in very, very small flashes, as long as the anger is focused on how to get people to work better together. The problem is that too often we have bosses, co-workers, or others in the workplace for whom anger is a permanent condition. People like that kill initiative and creativity. They kill productivity. They kill people’s spirits.

There are also times when the Spirit guides us to be angry. There are times when it is appropriate to be angry for God when we see injustice. It is appropriate to be angry when we see someone being mistreated. It is appropriate to be angry when we see the poor and hungry ignored. It is appropriate to be angry when we see abuse. Jesus modeled this anger when he went into the Temple, overturned tables, and shouted that we shall not turn God’s Temple into a marketplace.

The problem is that too often anger can control us, and when it does it ends up tearing life down rather than building it up. That’s what happened when our coach yelled at us. I see the same thing happening right now regarding the healthcare debate. Everyone on both sides of the debate are so angry that they are no longer building up a system, but tearing each other down to the extent that they very well could stop the efforts at both health care reform and universal health care. I see the same kind of anger tearing apart marriages and families. When couples become permanently angry at each other, it corrodes the marriage, sometimes to the point at which it can’t be saved.

Paul’s whole point is that we need to focus our lives on what builds up, not what tears down. Over time uncontrolled anger tears down. So what do we do to overcome anger? Well, I have three basic rules to letting go of anger:

1. Build a peaceful center: too often we have a tumultuous center. We aren’t centered in our lives because we let everything around us control us—our schedules, our tasks, our expectations, our demands,… everything. Part of letting go of anger means becoming more centered, mentally and spiritually, in a way that enables us to let things go. We do this by simply slowing down and creating space for God in our lives. In fact, that’s part of what Sunday worship is meant to do. It is meant to slow us down for at least one hour a week so that we can have a center. Of course, too often we feel we are too busy for this.

2. Put things into perspective: Another reason we get so angry is that we blow things out of proportion. We turn things that are relatively minor into major mountains that overwhelm us. If we are getting angry a lot, are we are guilty of taking things out of perspective.

3. Pray: Regular prayer overcomes anger, both by putting us into a more spiritual state before we get angry, and by helping us when we get angry. Regular prayer centers us, but praying when we are angry short-circuits anger. Try it. Next time you find yourself getting overly angry, take a breath, slow down, and pray. It makes a difference.

Let me close with a story that captures all of this. A number of years ago there was a young woman named Julie who was just plain angry. I’m not sure why. It might have had something to do with her parents’ messy divorce when she was twelve, and her father’s aloofness. Whatever the reason, she tended to get angry at people very quickly and easily.

She seemed to lack a sense of focus throughout her life, which eventually caused her to drop out of high school. With no diploma and an angry attitude, it was hard for her to both get and hold a job. She struggled. Eventually her father managed to get her a job at a local hardware store with an old classmate of his, a man named Frank. It was a match made in Hell. Frank was an angry man who tended to treat his workers terribly, which was why he always seemed to be looking for new clerks. He and Julie clashed from the moment she came into the hardware store.

The very first day she asked him what time he wanted her to come to work. He held up one hand, spreading his fingers out. The problem is that he had lost his pinky and ring finger many years before. So she didn’t know whether he meant be at work at 3 p.m. or 5 p.m. for an evening shift. With an irritated voice, she asked, “What does that mean? 3 or 5?” Frank lashed back: “It’s obvious!” Then he walked away. Julie visibly rolled her eyes and cursed Frank under her breath.

Still, they worked together for over a year. She stayed because she didn’t know if she could find another job. He kept her because he didn’t want to look once again for a new worker. Both were miserable. In fact, Julie noticed that whenever she drove to work her stomach would swish and swirl around, intensifying as she got closer to the store. It was becoming unbearable. She also felt that she had no one to talk with about it. Her father and mother wouldn’t understand her quitting a good job. Her friends were mostly away at college. She felt trapped.

Everything began to change one day as she was driving to work. Her stomach was flittering around as normal, but a thought came to her mind: Pray for Frank. The thought wouldn’t go away. So turning off the radio she started to pray for Frank. It was uncomfortable because she was not a churchgoer, nor had been since she was a little child. But she prayed for him the whole way to work. She noticed her stomach calmed a bit as she did so.

Frank was as miserable as normal that day, but whenever Julie started to curse him under her breath, she stopped said a short prayer: “God, if you are there, be with Frank.” For a week she prayed for Frank every morning on the way to work. Eventually she started praying for him on the way home. Every morning and evening she would pray for him. Slowly she noticed a difference. Frank seemed to be getting nicer, even if was only in small ways.

One day Frank stopped Julie in one of the aisles and said, “Julie, I need to say something to you. I know I’m not the nicest man in the world, and I haven’t treated you very well. I wish I were different. I had to start working at age twelve, and while everyone else was playing with friends, I was always working to help support my family. I never really learned how to get along with people. And I resented never getting to play, to have fun, and to be normal. So I started taking it out on others. I’ve done that to you, and I’m sorry.” Julie was stunned. What just happened?

Over then ensuing months, Frank changed toward her. She changed toward him. Slowly they became something like friends, teasing and kidding each other, acting almost like father and daughter. As this happened, Julie noticed that that the reservoir of rage within her was evaporating. She was actually becoming something that looked like,… I don’t know,… happy. And she kept praying, even joining a church.

A few years later Frank died. He had never been married or had children. When his will was read, Julie was shocked. He had left everything, the store and his house, to her with a note saying that she was his family. And it all happened because Julie made a decision to pray.

So, what do you do with your anger?

Amen.

Unity in Humility

2009-08-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Click Here to Listen to This Sermon

Ephesians 4:1-16
August 2, 2009

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,  ‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;  he gave gifts to his people.’  (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

I’ve been fascinated and irritated this week by an incident that took place last week. It’s captured the attention of all the news media, so if you’ve missed it, it probably means that you just haven’t been paying attention to the news—which may be a good thing. The incident I’m talking about is something I’m calling Gates-gate. Of course no one else is calling it that, but I’m hoping that it catches on ☺.

Basically, here’s what happened. Upon coming home from a long trip overseas, Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, an African-American, found that he could not open the front door of his house. He asked the driver of the airport car to help him, but neither could get it open. Gates went around to the back, entered the back door, and came to the front. With him pulling from the inside, and the driver pushing from the outside, they finally managed to get the door open.

Meanwhile, a neighbor called the police to say that two men looked like they were breaking into the house. The Cambridge police dispatched a patrol car. The story gets muddled after this, but from what I can piece together, Sgt. Crowley, the responding officer, asked Gates what he was doing. Gates said that he was the owner of the house, and then explained what happened. Crowley asked for his identification. Gates became upset, explaining that it was his house. Crowley asked him to step onto the porch, which Gates refused to do, asserting again that it was his house and that he didn’t have to step outside. Eventually, Gates did get his identification, but he was irate and accusatory toward the officer. According to him, he believed that he was being racially profiled, and that if he were white he would not have been treated that way. Eventually, Sgt. Crowley arrested him for disorderly conduct.

The incident sparked opinions from people supporting either Gates or Crowley. Many considered Gates to have been treated fairly, and saw the incidence not as a case of racism, but as a case of a man acting irrationally and uncooperatively. Others saw this as a clear case of racism.

Unfortunately, President Obama inserted himself into the issue by saying that Sgt. Crowley had acted “stupidly,” thus magnifying the incident greatly. He tried to apologize, but by then many supporting Crowley were sniping at Obama. Eventually, he decided to have what has since been called a “Beer Summit,” bringing Crowley, Gates, and himself together at the White House to talk about the incident.

My focus here isn’t on whether or not the incident was a case of racism. I have another agenda that I’ll get to in a bit. Still, the first thing everyone latches onto is issue of racism because of the nature of the event. Personally, I don’t think the officer was racist. I think he was doing his job, and from everything I’ve read it appears that he was acting fairly professionally. Now, I can’t say the same thing for another police officer, a Boston police office named Justin Barrett. In response to a Boston Globe opinion piece that said the incident was a racist incident, Barrett sent an e-mail to the paper and to friends stating, among other things, that had he "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent noncompliance." He referred to Gates several times as a jungle monkey. When confronted with his comments, he vehemently defended himself, saying that he wasn’t racist. Yeah, right!

As I mentioned before, I don’t think Crowley was racist, but when an African-American says that she or he has been the victim of racism or racial profiling, we need to be sensitive to it. What many of us whites don’t appreciate enough is that when you experiences racism your whole life, you become overly sensitive to it, to the point where non-racist events feel racist. I learned this through my best friend from high school.

His name is Ty, and he is African-American. Even though he has always had an ability to let bigoted comments and acts roll off his back, I’ve been with him a number of times when he experience active racism. To his credit, he always dealt with it better than me. He has always been incredibly dignified. I remember in high school that occasionally other students would tell him inappropriate black jokes, almost as a way of being cool, that they could say a black joke to someone who is black. Ty would always smile, but not react much other than that. The first overt racist incident I experienced with him came in 1984. I had been living in Roanoke, Virginia, and I needed help moving my stuff from Roanoke back to this area. So we drove down to Roanoke to rent a U-Haul and drive back. I had made reservations for our night there in a small, mom-and-pop mote that I had stayed in before. When I made the reservations, I had asked if I could stay in a room I had stayed in before. The owner said, “Why sure. We have almost nobody staying here this weekend. You can have whatever room you want.”

Late in the afternoon of that day we pulled in, Ty in the passenger seat and me driving. The owner came to our car window, and I said, “I’m Graham Standish, and I have a reservation.” She said, “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.” I told her that I had a reservation, and she said, “We are all booked up.” I was stunned. How could she mess up the reservation? I argued with her a bit, and then it dawned on me. The reason she had no room was because of Ty. So I decided to explore this a bit. “What about next week, do you have an opening then?” “I’m sorry, we are all booked up,” she replied. “What about next month?” “We are all booked up.” Finally, I turned to Ty and said, “Sorry, Sweetie, looks like we have to go somewhere else.” I figured that as long as she was being a bigot and a racist, I should double her bigotry by letting her think that we were gay. It helped that I had long hair, an earring in my ear, and cut off sleeves on my t-shirt. We found a Holiday Inn and stayed there, but the incident has always bothered me. Ty and I used to kid about it, saying to each other, “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.” But the fact is that what she did was plain wrong.

Now, perhaps you think these kinds of things only happen in the South. Back in 1987, I helped Ty move into an apartment in Penn Hills. As we were moving stuff into the house, a group of about six or seven white men stared at us from across the street with their arms crossed. I said to Ty, “This isn’t good.” He said, “It’s okay. You get used to it.” A few days after moving in, the landlord called him and told him that a mistake had been made, and that he had to move out. This wasn’t the only time. Over the years it happened two more times when Ty, who by then had a family, had to move out of apartments after moving in. Once was in Coraopolis. I don’t remember where the other place was. Eventually after one of them he actually sued the landlord. What would it be like for us if we were told to move out of places once we moved in because of the color of our skin?

Ty works for USAirways, and he has said that over the years he has received nasty, racist notes in his box at work. They are always anonymous. I learned from him that we whites are often ignorant of what it is like to grow up African-American. When you grow up experiencing racism and bigotry, it becomes hard to tell what is and isn’t racist. As I said before, I don’t think that Sgt. Crowley was acting in a racist way, but I am also sensitive to Professor Gates. Just as a child of abuse will recoil anytime a hand is raised, even when someone is just brushing aside a hair, to grow up experiencing racism means to grow up not knowing when whites are acting normally or racially. To be gentle and humble, as Paul teaches in our passage, is to be sensitive to the experiences of others.

Even though I’ve just talked about racism, that isn’t really the aspect of the incident that intrigued me. What intrigued me was how the controversy progressed so that every step created more controversy. As the Beer Summit was being prepared, Congressman Richard Neal of Massachusetts complained about the beer choices. President Obama was going to drink Bud Light. Sgt. Crowley wanted a Beck’s beer. Gates wanted Red Stripe. Neal was outraged. Since the incident took place outside of Boston, they should be drinking a Boston beer such as Samuel Adams, not beers owned by European corporations.

Then the Republican National Committee Co-Chairman, Jan Larimer, complained that the beer summit was taking place at all. She said that with all the problems with the economy, health-care, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama shouldn’t be drinking beer with anyone. Now, you’re free to think what you want about the issue, but one thing is certain: it reveals how easy it is for Christians to ignore Paul.

Go back to our passage for this morning. Paul offers a completely different vision for dealing with controversies like this one. Here’s what he says: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Wow! What an alternative vision. Instead of being offended, sure that the other is wrong and we are right, Paul calls on us to respond to others with humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. What a difference.

What if everyone in the incident had acted that way from the start? What if Crowley had acted that way, not just acting professionally, but lovingly understanding the outrage of Gates? What if Gates had acted with humility and patience to Crowley, understanding that he was doing a difficult, and often terrifying. job of keeping people like him safe? What if Obama had acted with humility and patience, bearing with both Gates (a friend of his) and Crowley? What if all the critics from one side or the other had responded with humility, gentleness, and unity, recognizing both sides, rather than jumping in on one side or the other? What if Congressman Neal had reacted by saying that he was just glad there was an act of humility, gentleness, and unity on the part of everyone in the Beer Summit, regardless of the beer? What if Jan Larimer, a Presbyterian elder in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, had responded with gentleness and humility, praising any effort to “maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?” What if we reacted to all controversies in the way Paul calls on us to act?

Paul has a challenge for us in life. Basically Paul is inviting us to respond to controversy with humility, a humility that leads to unity. Ironically, the person who taught me the true meaning of humility wasn’t a Christian, although he wanted to become one. Mahatma Gandhi, who lived a life of humility, patience, gentleness, seeking to maintain unity of the Spirit, lived what Paul taught. Gandhi wasn’t a Christian, although he tried to become one. He was very much influenced by the New Testament, especially the Sermon on the Mount. When he started his career as a lawyer in South Africa in the early years of the 20th century, he decided to go to a Christian church. He entered, sat down in a back pew, and waited to experience Christ. Soon a firm hand was placed on his shoulder, and he was escorted to the door. The white ushers told him that there were other churches for his kind, and that he wasn’t welcome there. That did it for Gandhi. He couldn’t reconcile the message of unity he found in the New Testament with the bigotry he experienced in that church.

Still, Gandhi lived as Paul taught. There was one particular incident, recreated in the 1982 film, Gandhi, that brought home what Paul taught. It was in the middle stages of the Indian struggle for independence from the British Empire. Gandhi had just been released from prison for leading a non-violent movement to stymie the British. He had become something of a national hero for standing up to the British. He had been invited to a meeting of members of the Indian National Congress at the home of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who eventually would become the first president of Pakistan. Also in attendance was Jawaharlal Nehru, who would eventually become the first prime minister of India. Other powerful Indian figures were in attendance. They were gathered to talk about what the next step toward Indian independence would be.

Each of these men, having grown up in wealthy families, were atop the Indian caste system, a rigid system in which everyone belonged to a certain strata of society, never to move up or down. Servants were among the lowest in the system. Surprisingly, Gandhi came to the meeting wearing a sarong and a loincloth, the clothing of outcasts and servants. As they talked about what to do next, Jinnah proposed stepping up violent, terrorist acts. Others weren’t so sure. Gandhi offered his view. They should engage in active, non-violent resistance in a way that would paralyze the British. His way, though, would be a spiritual resistance. They would call on all Indian people to engage in a day of prayer and fasting, praying for Indian independence. Of course, with everyone praying and fasting, there would be no police, postal service, transportation, or manufacturing. For one day the British Empire in India would be paralyzed.

Gandhi was calling on everyone to act in a humble, gentle, and unifying way. As if to underscore his idea, he walked up to a servant with coffee and tea, took the tray from him, and began to serve the others. This was shocking! Men of power and wealth did not serve. But Gandhi was giving them an example of humility. He was showing them literally what would be required of them. That they become humble, gentle, and patient as leaders, and in that way unifying India. He was embodying our passage. And it worked. India shut down for a day, and the British were petrified. Eventually, this non-violent way led to Indian independence.

Paul offers a radical vision of how to live life. It is the way of humility. Do you want to know the quickest way to find unity with others? It comes from humility. It comes from refusing to see ourselves as better than others, and by refusing to act as thought we are better than others. It comes through a willingness to serve others. It comes through humility, gentleness, and patience. And it leads to God.

Amen.

Food for All

2009-07-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

John 6:1-14
July 26, 2009

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

I recently read a very good book that I probably won’t recommend to too many people. The book is titled, Jesus Interrupted, by Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina. It is a very, very good book in terms of talking about a topic that many Christians shy away from. It’s a book about the contradictions of the Bible, about dealing with passages, parables, and stories that contradict each other. For people who really understand the Bible, it’s a very good book. The problem is that for people who don’t know the Bible very well, nor how to understand these contradictions, the book can diminish faith. The reason is that Ehrman is an atheist. Imagine that, an atheist biblical scholar. Being an atheist, he interprets these contradictions in a way that causes those inexperienced with the Bible to lose faith in the Bible.

What makes the book good is that it is sophisticated in its arguments, but simple in its writing. Being an atheist allows him to look at the Bible in an honest way that many Christians won’t. He bases his writings on what is called the historical-critical method. This method of understanding the Bible is nothing new. It arose out of German biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century, and it has grown in its use ever since. Most credible biblical scholars are experts in this method. It is a way of looking at scripture in a way similar to how historians research history, and how literary scholars research literature. The point of this method is to get away from reading scripture to hear only what we want to hear, and to read it more in light of what it actually says.

So, to read scripture in this way means letting go of the focus most of us have when we read the Bible, which is to ask, “What is God saying to me through this passage?” Instead, we read it and ask, “What was going on when this passage was written? What was going on nationally, socially, culturally, and historically? Who wrote the passage and what was he or she hoping to say—what was his or her agenda? Who was the author writing to, and what problems were they facing?” The method is a wonderful for getting to the heart of what the passage is saying, but it has a darker side. It is an ultra-rationalist way of reading scripture, and in the process of being moved to a more rational perspective, people can lose their sense of awe and reverence.

I know this happens to a lot of people when they go to seminary, where the historical-critical method is taught. A common complaint among many seminary students is that they lose their faith because of it, and then have to try to reconstruct it afterwards.

Now, why am I mentioning this book? I’m mentioning it because our passage for today is one that perplexes scholars like Ehrman, and those who use the historical-critical method. The fact is that it doesn’t fit easily into historical-critical formulas for deciding whether or not a biblical event really happened. Determining whether or not an event occurred is a concern for many of these scholars. They believe that some biblical events may be fabrications created to sway people to a particular point of view. As a result, they develop semi-scientific formulas for deciding whether or not an event really took place.

One of those formulas is a simple one that determines the probability of that a gospel event occurred. For example, if an event appears in only one gospel, then there is only a 25% chance that it occurred. If it appears in two, 50%. Three, 75%. Four, 100%. So, for example, according to these scholars the virgin birth only has a 50% probability of having occurred because it appears in only two gospels—Matthew and Luke.

What I find to be a problem with this way of deciding the veracity of biblical events is that it discounts the possibility that a writer of a particular gospel has to pick and choose what to include based on the audience. Think about this for yourself. If you are telling the story of someone’s life, with the hope that it will inspire your audience, what events will you include and leave out? You only have so much room. A fantastic story might inspire one group, but not another. So, you would tend to cite those events that resonate in your audience. I think that this may have taken place with the gospel writers.

For instance, Matthew was writing to Jews who care about the fulfillment of prophecy, and the virgin birth is a fulfillment of prophecy. Luke was writing to Gentile Christians who had previously been part of religions, such as the Greek or Persian ones, that had myths about great kings being born of virgins. For their audiences, the virgin birth was important. Mark was writing to Roman Jews who probably didn’t care so much about a virgin birth. So he left it out. John bypassed the virgin birth in favor of a deeper understanding of Jesus, which is that he already was at the beginning of creation. I believe in the virgin birth, but I also believe that it wasn‘t then, nor now, a crucial belief for belief in Christ. I don’t need the virgin birth for my faith, but some people do. I can still believe it happened, even if it isn’t as influential. Apparently Mark and John agree with me.

The other formula has to do with rational likelihood. Ehrman has another term for it, but let’s leave it at this term here. Basically, this formula registers the likelihood of something happening according to how well it corresponds with rational conclusions. So, for Ehrman, many miracles aren’t rationally likely. He would say that if a miracle appears in only one gospel and isn’t rationally likely, then it probably didn’t happen.

So, here’s the issue: this passage confuses scholars today. It also confuses pastors and laity, and it even confused people back in the early church. Did it really happen, and if it did, why would Jesus waste a miracle on feeding people when they probably could have gotten food on their own?

It’s hard to understand this miracle until you do something that Ehrman says we should do. Don’t focus so much on the actual event, but on what the writer is trying to say through writing about the event. Ehrman’s absolutely right about that. You see, the author of John’s Gospel wants to teach us about Jesus through the telling of the event, and to do so he uses lots of symbols in the passage.

Let me start by giving you some background to the passage. First, the event took place in the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had been teaching in the city of Capernaum, and was now tired and retreating to the north-central part of the lake where the Jordan River empties into it. Capernaum is surrounded by arid land, but the area where Jesus went to, Bethsaida Julius, was off of a delta of the river, and so it was lush and green. He went by boat, a four-mile trip, but those following him walked, which was a nine-mile trip. By the time they got to Jesus, they were very tired. Also, most of those gathered around him had been on a pilgrimage south to Jerusalem, so to follow Jesus meant that they were backtracking nine miles. What does that say about them? That they were passionate about hearing what Jesus had to say.

John tells us the story, but in doing so he loads the story full of numerical symbols that the readers of his gospel would have gotten immediately, but that we don’t get today. Let me take you through the symbols. First, there were 5000 people gathered. Was that the exact number of people? Probably not. I don’t think any of the disciples went around counting. Instead, there were probably somewhere between 3000 and 7000. But the number given matters because it says something about the nature of the miracle and of Jesus.

First, we have to start with the number 5 in the 5000. The number 5 always symbolizes sacrifice that leads to receiving God’s grace. For example, how many wounds did Jesus suffer on the cross? Five—two on the hands, two on the feet, and one in the side. So what the number 5 tells us is that the people gathering around Jesus were making a sacrifice by being there. Five is then multiplied by 1000, which is 10x10x10, or 103. Why is that significant of 1000? The number 10 symbolizes God’s complete work on earth, hence the Ten Commandments. The fact that it is ten to the third power means that God is involved. The number three always stands for God, as in the Trinity. Thus, 1000 indicates that God is actively doing something complete in this place. So, reading the numerical symbology of the passage, the people heard 5000, and they immediately thought, “Wow! These people made a sacrifice because of their passion, and as a result they received God’s grace and became God’s people.

Next, we move to the two fish and the five barley loaves. That equals seven pieces of food to start with. The number 7 always stands for God’s perfection being accomplished on earth. It is the addition of two other significant numbers: 3 and 4. As mentioned above, three always stands for God, but four stands for the earth—the four corners of the earth (people back then believed there were literally four corners) and the four seasons. Thus, we’ve learned that earth was created in seven days, which means that God (3) was shaping the earth (4). When the people heard that there were seven pieces of food, they understood immediately that Jesus was about to create something amazing with that food. But there was more there than just the numbers. The fact that he started with two fish caught from the Sea of Galilee and five barley loaves said that he was with the common people. This was common food, not the food of the wealthy. It said that Jesus is one with the common folk. That was really important to John because he was most likely writing to Gentile Christians living in the areas north of the Sea of Galilee. He was saying that Jesus was one among them.

Then we move onto the scraps that were left over. How many were there? Twelve. What’s the significance of twelve? It’s the multiplication of 3x4, which symbolizes God’s influence and the multiplication of God’s work on earth. Thus, you have 12 tribes of Israel and 12 disciples. When they read that twelve baskets of scraps were left over, they knew that this meant that God’s grace was so abundant that God’s grace overflows when it works in the world.

So, summing all this up, what lessons do we have to learn from it? First, the passage teaches us that God wants to feed us not only spiritually, but also physically and mentally, but we have to have the passion to seek God out and receive it. Second, there is grace in abundance for anyone who wants it and is ready for it. It won’t run out. Third, if we are willing to sacrifice for our faith great things happen. Finally, and I don’t want to lost this in this concept, miracles do happen to those who have faith. They really do, but to experience them we have to first be open to them.

Let me close with a story that captures the last point. You’ve heard me talk before about Corrie ten Boom, a woman who brought a deep faith and prayerfulness into her experiences in a German concentration camp during World War II. She had been captured as a member of the Dutch resistance in 1944 after being caught hiding Jews. At first she was put into a prison camp, but then she was eventually transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Conditions in the camp were horrendous. Not only did they sleep on hard palates, stacked against each other, but the straw they slept on was full of filth and fleas. Their food was barely enough to keep them alive. Somehow, though, they had managed to smuggle into the barracks a small vial of davitamon, or a daily vitamin supplement. Corrie and her sister first used the vial for themselves, but as people learned of it, they shared it. Each morning a crowd would gather around them. One-by-one they came forward, put out their tongue, and one drop of the davitamon would be dropped on their tongue. This went on for weeks. The vial never ran out. How many drops in a small vial do you think there would be? 100? 200? They should have run out after several days, but each morning the same people came forward, and drops were placed on their tongues. Corrie expected each drop to be the last, but every time she tipped the bottle the applicator would let out one drop.

At one point Corrie tried to figure out how much liquid was left in the bottle. She held it up to the light, but the bottle was too dark. Her sister, Betsie, told her to quit trying to figure out the miracle and to just accept it.

Several weeks later, one of the fellow prisoners in their barracks walked in carrying a large sack. She said, “Look what I managed to get out of the infirmary!” They looked into the sack and saw a thousands of vitamin pills. They agreed that they would begin taking them as soon as the vial of davitamon ran out. The next morning they tipped the bottle for the first person, and it was dry. The vial had finally run out. But the next miracle was being given other vitamins.

The point of our passage is both simple and complex. The complex message has to do with numbers and the rest, but the simple message is this: miracles do happen, they can happen to you, and all you have to do is to have a passionate faith that opens you to grace.

Amen.

Abolishing the Law

2009-07-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcised’ by those who are called ‘the circumcised’—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

I’m going to divulge a long-kept secret this morning—one that I’m not even sure my wife knows. Back in January of 1986, for one evening, I had a modeling career. It only lasted that one night, but for that night I was a model. I modeled bright green and pink Benneton sweaters and scarves.

I had been asked by a friend of my sister-in-law to be part of a fashion show at Schenley Park ice rink in Pittsburgh. I don’t think I was asked so much for my looks as I was for my skating ability. So on that cold evening I went to the ice rink, put on my Benneton clothes, and proceeded to do a skating dance routine in which I skated around with eight girls, ranging from 11 to 14 years old, as we danced to a song called “Crush on You,” by the disco group The Jets. It was a completely embarrassing evening, especially since none of those girls had anything remotely like a crush on me. You could read their embarrassment on their faces as they skated around me. That’s probably why I’ve kept this my little secret until now.

I think that the woman who put me in the show was a bit embarrassed for me, so to make it up to me she invited me out one evening to meet a friend of hers, an artist, who was very, very pretty. So, we met that evening at a restaurant in Shadyside, and were having a good time until somehow the conversation turned to the problem of gangs and whether people naturally know right from wrong and good from evil. She was adamant: “People know right from wrong from birth. So anyone caught doing wrong should be severely punished because its their fault.” Having been trained as a counselor, I took a different tack, telling her that I thought concepts like right and wrong, and good and evil, had to be taught—that how we are raised often determines the extent to which we know the difference. She got very angry with me: “No! We are born knowing right from wrong. Criminals and gang members all know that what they are doing is wrong.” I responded, “But what about the kid who is born to a drug dealer who is taught from childhood that dealing drugs is right?” She hit her hand against the table, BLAM, and said, “No, they know the difference.” Suffice to say that we never really clicked after that.

So what do you think? Do people automatically know right from wrong, good from evil, God’s way from our way? Do we know by birth, or do we have to be taught? I think the answer may be that both are true. We may have a natural ability to tell right from wrong, good from evil, God’s way from our way, but it also needs to shaped and brought out of us. In fact, teaching right from wrong, good from evil, God’s way from our way is a large part of both parenting and churching.

If you are, or have been, a parent, think about what a significant part of your parenting consists of: “No, you can’t do that. It’s wrong! No! You can’t push your brother down the stairs! Stop that! It’s not right to steal toys from your sister. You need to behave when we go to Grandma’s house. Stop fighting! Stop hitting! Stop yelling!” Do you recognize these sentences? Have you uttered them yourselves? They are part of our parental task of teaching children right from wrong, good from evil, God’s way from our way. Our churches have a similar task. A lot of what we do is to teach the differences between right and wrong, good and evil, God’s way from our way.

One of Paul’s points from this morning’s passage is that we have to learn to cultivate this ability to distinguish between how God wants us to live and how we want to live. And his main point in our passage is that in the process of learning to distinguish between the two, the old ways of following the law had failed

Listen again to what Paul said: “[Christ] has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two.” Do you recognize how radical a statement that is? What Paul said goes completely against what many, many Christians believe. Think about it for a moment. What do many Christians say that we base our faith on, other than faith in Christ? What are the rules of our faith? The Ten Commandments? If you said that, you’d be right. Many Christians say that following the law is one of our major duties in obeying Christ. Why else do these Christians care so much about the issue of whether or not the Ten Commandments should be posted in courthouses? To them Christianity is based on the law. So, what do you make of the fact of Paul saying that Jesus had abolished the law? What does he mean that Jesus has abolished the law?

Now, if you are a particularly astute Bible reader, you also are now forming another question: “Isn’t what Paul said in direct contrast to what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17?” Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

We’ve got a biblical problem here. Paul and Jesus seem to be at odds. In this corner is Paul, saying that Jesus has gotten rid of the law. In the other corner we have Jesus, who tells us that he has come not to abolish, but to fulfill, the law. Do we just assume that because Jesus is a greater authority that he wins this fight?

Actually, I think both Jesus and Paul were trying to get across the same message, but they were speaking from different sides of the same coin. Both were saying that when left to our own devices, we do not live the way God wants us to live. We do not follow the law properly, and as a result we do not live the way God wants us to live. Jesus is saying that the law was meant to unite us with God in a way that God’s life flows through us, but that the people’s following the law had failed to do that. He had come to fulfill the purpose of the law, which was to unite humans and God. Paul went further. He was saying that the law had actually become an impediment to this union because through the law the Jews had lost their connection with God. They had become so obsessed with figuring out how to apply the law to the minutiae of life that they had forgotten God. Modern Christians do this, too. We can become so obsessed with running to the Bible for guidance that we forget to look to God for guidance. We can become so biblically focused that we lose sight of God. Both Paul and Jesus were trying to say that there was another way, a way modeled by Jesus and taught by Paul.

This way is the way of listening to the voice of Christ within us, and to the guidance of the Holy Spirit all around us. Think about how Jesus lived. Although he periodically quoted scripture, he most often acted after having discerned the Father’s will in prayer. He even said that the law was made for humans, not humans for the law. What he meant is that too many Jews were turning the law into a false god, and as a result were no longer allowing the law to guide them to the real God. He wanted us to have a direct connection with God so that this living relationship could guide us. He was guiding people to prayer, and to listen to God’s voice within, which always acts in accordance with the ultimate purposes of the law.

The Quaker writer, Thomas Kelly, wrote about following the voice of God when he said, “Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.” What he is saying here is very close to what I believe Paul was getting at. We no longer need the law because through Christ’s incarnation in our hearts the law becomes written on our hearts. The law isn’t done away with. The law is fulfilled even more deeply as we connect with God.

That does not mean that we get rid of the law or don’t need to learn it. What it means is that we are now able to pay attention to Christ speaking within us, and the Spirit speaking around us, to gain a sense of what is right and wrong, good and evil, God’s way versus our way.

Today many people see religion as being just a collection of moral dos and don’ts, all with the purpose of getting us into heaven. They like rules and law, as well as the clarity that they bring, so they try to turn Christianity into a religion of either following the law of scripture or the rules of the church. But that’s not the faith that Paul or Jesus taught. They taught a faith in which we attune ourselves to God, much like a radio, in which our task is to tune ourselves in to God’s frequency, and live out of that. Under this idea, our main task is to allow our lives to be filled with God’s Spirit so that we can live according to God’s will in everything.

Let me close by giving you an example of what I mean. During the week after the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, a small unit of American soldiers pushed through the French countryside. They were an advance team tasked with discovering the whereabouts of the German lines, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. As they pushed forward, they got into a small skirmish, and one of their members was killed.

Knowing that they had to push forward quickly, they looked for somewhere to bury him. Eventually they found a church with a graveyard, and asked the priest if they could bury their comrade there. The priest said yes, but then asked whether the soldier had been baptized a Roman Catholic. The soldiers didn’t know. The priest then said, “I’m sorry, but unless he was Catholic, we can’t bury him in our graveyard.”

Not knowing what else to do, the dejected soldiers asked if they could bury him on the other side of the fence surrounding the graveyard. The priest told them that they could. So they spent the evening burying their friend, leaving a small dirt mound on top. They then walked a short ways away to find a safe place to sleep.

The next morning they got up early in order to push forward, but before doing so they walked to the graveyard to say good-bye to their fallen comrade. When they got there, they couldn’t find the grave. As hard as they looked all they could see was smooth grass. It was as though no grave had never even been dug. What happened to their friend’s grave? Was this some sort of miracle? Were they in the wrong place?

As they stood perplexed, the priest walked out to join them. They asked the priest what had happened to their friend’s grave. He said, “I struggled all night with my decision to keep him out of our cemetery. It bothered me, and I couldn’t sleep. How could I keep out a man who had given his life to release all of us from the German evil? I knew that I didn’t have the strength to uncover his body, move it, and then dig a new grave, so I did the next best thing. I spent the night digging out and moving the fence so that your friend could now be in the cemetery.

This is a priest who was tuned into God. He had at first followed the rules—good rules if you are a Catholic. But he recognized that these were not God’s rules. So, he fulfilled the rules by changing the them. He listened to God, to the voice of Christ within, and that made all the difference.

To abolish the law doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t learn it. What it means is that there is another way to access what the law was intended to do, but couldn’t. We discover the meaning of the law when we become people of prayer who seek and follow the voice of Christ in our hearts, minds, and souls.

Amen.

Would You Rather Lose Your Head or Your Faith?

2009-07-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

Mark 6:14-29
King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’
For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee.
When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’ Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’ The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

What would you be willing to die for? Would you be willing to die for your country? A lot of people today say they would. How about for family—your children, your parents, your brothers and sisters? What about for your friends? In thinking about what you’d be willing to die for, how high would your faith rank? Would you be willing to die for your faith?

Compared to the tests of faith that the original Christians faced, our faith doesn’t get tested that much anymore—at least not to the point of death. There have been periods throughout history where people had to make a severe choice—give up their lives or give up their faith. In fact, the early Christians often had to make that choice. The fact is that for the first 300 years of the Christian faith, the faithful constantly faced a choice between their livelihoods, or their lives, and their faith.

The persecution of Christians wasn’t consistent for all 300 years. There were periods in which the worst persecution Christians faced was the ridicule of others, but there were other periods in which they were killed out of prejudice and for pleasure. What seemed to determine the level of persecution was the degree to which the reigning emperor of the time wanted the people of the Roman Empire to worship them as gods. Those who wanted to be worshiped tended to persecute Christians heavily, while those who didn’t care tended to let the Christians be. Why? Because the one thing that marked the Christians is that many (not all, but many) refused to worship the emperor. Often emperor worship consisted of going to the local temple or magistrate office once a year, and either bowing down before an image of the emperor or paying a monetary tribute. Out of all the religions, Christians gained a reputation for refusing to bow or pay. The Jews normally would have gained a similar reputation, but they were actually given dispensation by most emperors to not have to fulfill the requirement. When Christians refused to worship, they were persecuted.

The worst of all the persecutors was the emperor Nero, who was pretty much of a nut-job in general. Nero had grand designs to rebuild Rome in his own image, including tearing down many popular sites in order to build a magnificent palace to himself. When much of Rome burned, which Nero probably ordered to pave the way for his building projects, he blamed the Christians.

The most popular excuse for persecuting Christians was that Christians were cannibals. That sound ridiculous to us today, but you can easily understand how they could misrepresent Christian faith. What they would say is that the Christians had saved the body of this Jesus fellow, and that on Sundays they would break off pieces of his body and eat it, and then drink his saved blood. For the Romans this rumor justified their persecution of Christians, which included letting them be eaten by lions for sport in the coliseums.

One Christian, who experienced this kind of persecution, was a man named Genesius. He is remembered today in the Catholic Church as St. Genesius. He is the patron saint of actors, comedians, lawyers, stenographers, and torture victims. Genesius had gained a reputation as a comedic actor in the court of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Whenever Diocletian was feeling particularly bored or melancholy, he would call for Genesius and ask him to act out the emperor’s favorite play. It was a comedic take on the Christian sacrament of baptism. Genesius would start by looking very sad and despondent. Another actor, dressed as a priest, would invite him to be baptized. Then several actors would throw Genesius into a large vat of water and dunk him. Genesius would emerge sputtering and making all sorts of noises, at which the emperor would howl in laughter. He would be dunked over and over again, much to the emperor’s delight.

What the emperor didn’t know was that for some time Genesius had been learning more about the Christian faith, and he was becoming sympathetic to it. One particular day, when Diocletian asked for the play, Genesius started out with his mopey act, and then was thrown into the vat. But as he emerged he refused to sputter. He stood there, looking straight ahead. The emperor told him to do his act, but Genesius refused. He declared himself to be a Christian, at which the emperor told him that if he did not do the act, he would have Genesius’ legs broken. Genesius refused again. He was taken away and put in dungeon, where his legs were broken. Still Genesius refused to comply. This, by the way, is where we get the phrase in the theater, “break a leg,” before performances. It means that actors should be true to themselves when they act, just as Genesius had been. Eventually Genesius faced a choice: act or be killed. He refused to do the act, and he was beheaded. He faced the choice between his faith and his life, and he chose his faith.

John the Baptist faced the same kind of choice as Genesius. Why did John get beheaded? For a very simple reason: he ticked off king Herod. You know of Herod. He’s the guy who sings, “So if you are the Christ, oh the great Jesus Christ, prove to me that you’re divine. Change my water into wine” in the play, Jesus Christ, Superstar. Herod was the king of the region around Galilee and Judea, the area surrounding Jerusalem. The Roman Empire had a very weird arrangement in which while they had governors of provinces and regions, yet within some of them they still had kings, who were part figurehead, part ruler. These kings could raise armies and invoke laws, but they had to stay submissive to the Roman Caesar and the governor.

Herod was an incredibly self-indulgent man who was known for his lavish parties and bizarre behavior. John made him angry by criticizing him for his lifestyle, especially his marriage. What was wrong with Herod’s marriage? This is a bit complicated, but bear with me. To understand it helps to start with Herod’s father, Herod the Great who was descended from the generals who divvied up the Greek empire after Alexander the Great’s death. Herod was called “the Great” because of all the building projects he did, but he was anything but great. In fact, he was petty and paranoid. To get an appreciation of the complexities of Herod’s family life, it helps to look at the chart below of Herod’s marriages and sons:

Herod the Great was married five times, and had seven sons. Three of them, Antipater, Alexander, and Aristobulous, he had killed because he was paranoid that they wanted to take power from him. The Herod from our passage was Herod Antipas, his son from his fourth wife. Here’s where it all gets confusing.

Herod Antipas’ half-brother, Herod Philip, lived in Rome and had a wife named Herodius. Herodius was the daughter of Herod Philip’s other half-brother, Aristoblus. Therefore, Herod Philip had married his niece. The two of them had a daughter, who in our passage is also called Herodius, but elsewhere in the Bible is called Salome. As if marrying a niece wasn’t bad enough, Herod Antipas lusted after Herodius. He schemed and plotted to wrest her away from his brother. To do so, he divorced his own wife. He then convinced Herodius to divorce Herod Philip and marry him. This is what John criticized. In effect, Herod Antipas not only was divorced for no reason, which was against Jewish law, and married his brother’s wife, which was against Jewish law, but he also married his niece, which was against Jewish law, and became stepfather to his niece. And John the Baptist had the temerity to criticize Herod for it. So Herod imprisoned John and eventually had him killed because of the scheme between Herodius and Salome in our passgae. As a side note, Herod’s other brother, Philip the Tetrarch, married Salome, thus becoming her grand-uncle, step-uncle, and husband all at the same time. The Herod family definitely put the “fun” in dysfunctional.

The point of the passage is that John looked at this situation and criticized Herod and his family. He wantd Herod to be a better ruler, and to be one who lived more according to the biblical law that Herod said that he followed, as a Jew. Herodius, who felt pangs of triple-guilt, couldn’t handle the criticism, and demanded that John be killed. John could easily have saved his life by going back on his criticism, but he chose his faith over his life. He was speaking God’s judgment against Herod, Herodius, and their family, and he would not go back.

Herod did get his comeuppance in the end, though. His divorced wife’s father, Aristus the king of the Nabateans, decided to attack Herod to get his revenge. Herod raised an army to defend himself, was defeated, and had to get Rome to bail him out. Later, when Agrippa was made a king, Herod complained to the Roman emperor about it, at the insistence of Herodius, hoping to gain more power. Instead, the emperor Caligula stripped him of title, property, and wealth, and Herod ended up dying a poor man in southern France.

Getting back to our passage, what is it that allowed John to choose faith over life? For John it was very simple: He saw the world as filled with God. He didn’t separate life like we do, seeing sacred and secular worlds. He only saw the sacred, and wanted to serve God in all of life. As a result, he lived life in a way that filled it with God.

How do you see the world? How do you live in the world? What would you be willing to give up your life for? Where would God rank in that list?

Amen.

Are We Healed Yet?

2009-06-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

Mark 5.21-43
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

What do you make of stories like this one in the Bible? Do you believe they are true? Do you think they’re false? These are two of the more unbelievable stories of the gospels. In fact, they’ve caused Christians, and especially biblical scholars, fits over the years. Some scholars say that because they defy the laws of nature, they can’t possibly be true. Others insist that they are true, and the evidence of their truth is that they defy the laws of nature, showing that Jesus was someone completely different from other great religious figures.

What do you think about these stories and about Jesus’ miracles in general? Did they really occur? Were they lies written by people with a religious agenda? Were they misunderstandings of what really happened? Were they just something of Jesus’ day? What you believe about them actually may determine, to a great extent, what kind of miracles are possible in your life. It’s not that if you don’t believe in the possibility of miracles that God punishes you by withholding miracles from your life. It’s more basic than that. God doesn’t withhold miracles from our lives. We withhold them. The possibility may be all around us, but our lack of belief turns us off to them.

I think it’s much like having a cell phone. Do you own a cell phone? If you do, are you able to receive phone calls on it? Unless there’s a problem with the phone the answer is yes. Now, what if you owned a cell phone and refused to believe it could receive phone calls, and so left it off? And what if others continually told you that you could receive calls, but you disbelieved and never turned on the phone? From your experience you would be convinced that you were right because you’d never receive a call. But that doesn’t make you right. It just makes you closed to possibility. God’s miracles are much like the miracle of the cell phone. Radio waves carrying phone calls move through the air all around us, but if we don’t have phones to receive them, or if we refuse to ever turn them on because we don’t believe in them, we become like people who refuse to believe in the possibility of miracles. What we believe determines what we experience.

The story of our passage, of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a hemorrhage, shows this. Both stories are stories of people who perhaps shouldn’t have believed, but because they did they had healing experiences. Take the woman with the hemorrhage. We don’t appreciate what this woman went through. She had gone through twelve years of having a constant period. Imagine that today. What would it be like for you as a woman to bleed constantly for twelve years? While this illness would have been terrible for any woman today, for this woman it was many times worse. You see, back in Jesus’ day, women were considered unclean during their period. During that time they were not allowed to prepare food, touch their husbands, children, or anyone else. They were not allowed to be in close contact with others. They were set apart. Imagine being set apart and shunned for twelve straight years. That’s twelve straight years of never hugging touching your husband, child, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and more. How do you maintain a marriage, raise children, and have friends under those conditions? It meant eating by herself for twelve straight years. It meant never being able to shop in the market place for fear of touching someone else. It meant twelve years of being ostracized for something she couldn’t help.

Imagine what she would have had to do just to touch Jesus’ cloak. She would have had to crawl on the ground so that no one would see her, all the time trying her best not to touch anyone else and make her or him unclean. She would have had to stretch around the feet of the disciples, who were acting like bodyguards, protecting Jesus’ back. There was a tremendous amount of indignity that she would have had to overcome to touch Jesus’ hem as she crawled through the dirt and grimy feet. Yet she believed. She reached out and touched Jesus’ cloak, and Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

Jairus also had to overcome disbelief. Jairus was the ruler of the synagogue, which means that he had the most important position in the synagogue. He was not the rabbi, who was responsible for teaching and preaching. The synagogue ruler was responsible for organizing everything from picking the rabbi, to choosing the music, to orchestrating the rituals, to leading the congregation in decision-making. Everyone looked to him for leadership. For him to ask Jesus to heal his daughter, despite Jesus’ reputation for being a law-breaker because of his healing on the Sabbath, would have certainly stirred the gossip and threatened Jairus’ leadership. Jairus had every reason to doubt and shun Jesus. But he didn’t. He might have had doubts, but he overcame them and begged Jesus to heal his daughter. According to scripture, Jesus didn’t heal her, but when she died Jesus raised her from the dead. He, his daughter, and the hemorrhaging woman experienced miracles because they believed.

So what gets in the way of our praying for miracles? Even when we believe, what keeps us from praying for healing, for changes in our lives, and great things to take place? I think that a major part of it is that too many of us have a realistic view of life. Wait,… shouldn’t we have a realistic view of life? What I mean is that we have a view of life rooted in what humans see as “realistic.” This view is based on conventional human thinking, perhaps based on science and philosophy, but a kind of thinking that denies the possibility of anything that isn’t humanly “realistic.”

What the Bible teaches us is a spiritual view of life. This is a view that is open to possibility, that’s open to healing, and that’s open to miracles. It’s also my view, and not just because the Bible says so. I tend to be much more skeptical than that. I believe because of my experiences. The Bible opened me to the possibility of having those experiences, but it was my experiences that sealed my belief.

I had some experiences before I came to Calvin Church. My first experience of personal healing came in 1990, when I was an associate pastor. Some members of our youth group and I had been talking about healing, and I kept thinking about the power of healing and whether it was a possibility. Then one very cold, snowy winter night I woke up with a completely stuffed nose. I realized that I had no decongestants or nasal sprays in my apartment, but I didn’t want to get out of my nice, warm bed. What to do? I remembered our conversations about healing and decided to try healing prayer. So I held out my hand and asked God to fill it with healing power. Then I touched my nose and prayed for God to open it. An amazing thing happened. My nasal passages cleared within seconds. If that had happened to you, what would your reaction have been? Mine was that I immediately became afraid. Isn’t that odd? I had a healing experience, and it scared me. I think that sometimes direct experiences of God are scary. It’s one thing to believe in God who seems distant. It’s another to experience God first-hand doing something miraculous. My whole body got the shakes, and pretty soon my nose started to clog up again. I then got out of bed, got into my car, and went to a 7/11 to get some nasal spray. But the experience stayed with me. It’s one of the reasons I really believe in the power of healing prayer.

I have been further convinced of the power of healing prayer through members of this church. For instance, I spoke about Jo Jones several weeks ago in a sermon, talking about how strong her faith was. That faith extended to her prayer life. When I first met her in 1996, she had cancerous tumors in her neck. I had asked her what her treatment was. She said that she was combining alternative medicine, radiation treatments, and prayer. She used to walk around with a jug of green juices—pear, apple, grape, and others—that she would drink at regular intervals. She also prayed diligently every day. She was about to undergo radiation treatments, and was told that if they were successful her tumors would slowly start to shrink within six weeks. She started the treatments, and after two weeks they were discontinued because her tumors had shrunk completely. Over the ensuing years she was diagnosed with brain tumors. She combined prayer with here regular medical treatments, and in all cases her tumors were killed. She ended up dying from the tumors, but only because the dead matter put pressure on her brain, causing her body to slowly atrophy. Still, prayer definitely had an impact on her illness. Perhaps you can look at her death as proof that miracles don’t happen, but I don’t think that would be fair. Eventually we all die, but she managed to eke out extra years through prayer that might not have been otherwise possible.

I’ve also seen the same kind of impact on prayer on other members of our church. LaRue Craig, who died two years ago, told me that whenever she visited the doctor she would chant and pray on the way while driving. She was convinced that the combination dramatically reduced her blood pressure. Betty Alexander, who died this past year, also believed in healing prayer, and it led her to be a cancer survivor from breast and bone cancer for over twenty years.

Also, back in March of 2005 I told the church in a sermon about Judy Kerkovich’s experiences. Here’s what I said, “One of our members, Judy Kerkovich, has experienced God’s healing. Judy was diagnosed with lymphoma six years ago. The doctor had told her that the lymphoma was a slow-moving one, but that it would get progressively worse. The cancer would grow, and in three years she would experience the symptoms of the cancer as it progressed. She had a choice of whether to start chemotherapy right away, in the hopes that it would slow the progression, or wait for three years and have chemotherapy then. Either way it was her choice. Judy decided to wait. But she also decided to make prayer part of her treatment. She prayed for herself, and regularly has met with our prayer ministers. Here we are six years later and Judy still isn’t on chemotherapy. She has met regularly with her doctor, and the doctor has told her that he has no explanation for what is going on, but that she should keep doing what she is doing. At one point he told her, ‘Whatever church you are going to, keep going.’” Judy still prays with one of our prayer ministers once a week, and her lymphoma still hasn’t progressed. It has stumped her doctors, but not me. I know that God is a big part of her health.

Even though I believe in the connection between healing and prayer, I also believe in more than this. I believe that if we are willing to bring prayer into every part of life, we can experience miracles big and small helping us throughout our days. For instance, I believe that in our work lives, family lives, and lives in general God is willing to help us if we are willing to pray.

Let me give you an example of this in an experience my daughter, Shea, and I had last week. It was her birthday, and for a present we got her and her sister, Erin, new bicycles. Erin’s bicycle turned out to be okay, but Shea’s was just too heavy, and when we rode she couldn’t keep up. So we went back to the store to trade it in for another one. The problem was that Shea couldn’t decide between two bikes. One was a boy’s bike in blue, her favorite color, that was light. But it also had skull stickers on it,… not the kind of symbols you want as a girl. The other bike was a girl’s bike, but it was not as light. She couldn’t figure out which bike to get, and was paralyzed by her indecision.

I told her what I often do when I can’t decide. I told her that when I can’t decide I ask God to guide me, and that whenever I do God always seems to answer. I could tell that she wasn’t buying what I said, so I continued: “Shea, you don’t have to say it out loud. All you have to do is to ask God to tell you which bike is the better one for you.” She got very quiet. Then, before she could say a word, the manager came around the corner and said, “The blue bike is much lighter and would probably be a better fit.” Her prayer was answered. But what to do about those skull stickers? We had an answer. We went do Dick’s Sporting Goods and found Steelers stickers, which we stuck over the skulls. Now she has a wonderful blue, Steelers bike.

I believe that if you pray, God answers. You may not always get the answer you want, but with prayer there’s always the possibility of miracles great and small. If you pray for healing, is there a guarantee that you’ll be healed? Nothing is guaranteed. God works as God works. Sometimes when we pray for physical healing, God gives us spiritual, mental, or relational healing. Sometimes God gives us physical healing. What we have to remember is that God has God’s own purposes, and at some point even death fits that purpose.

Ultimately this is the point: miracles do happen, but we have to be open to them to experience them. The question for you to reflect on is this: how open are you?

Amen.

Can You See What's Truly Great?

2009-06-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

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

As I read our passage for this week, I kept thinking about an experience Erin and Shea, my daughters, and I had about a year ago. We had been visiting my parents in Sewickley, where I grew up, and after visiting I realized that I hadn’t thawed anything for dinner. Many of you who have families where both parents work go through this a lot. You forget to pull something out of the freezer to thaw in the morning, and so five o’clock rolls around and you don’t know what to do for dinner. That happens to us frequently.

On this particular evening we decided to drop into a small fish and poultry store in Sewickley on the way home to get some salmon. As I was chatting with the shop owner, a man walked in behind us and stood waiting in line. He was a bit taller than me, perhaps 6’4”, and he waited patiently. He even smiled at the antics of my 9 year-old twins as they shoved each other back and forth, and generally ignored my commands to settle down. The girls were oblivious to him as they made enough ruckus that I had to eventually separate them and make each one stand in a different part of the store.

The owner of the shop gave me my salmon, said good-bye, and out we walked. I then looked at the girls and said, “Man, you guys were so busy playing that you didn’t even see who was behind you.” “What?” they said. “Who was it? Was it someone famous?” I said, “Yeah, pretty famous. That guy behind you was Mario Lemieux.” “No!” they said. “Can we go back in and look at him?” I said to them, “No, but you can go back in and buy some chips for a snack, but you aren’t allowed to stare or bother him.” So back in we went to buy some chips and to let nine year-old twins snatch furtive glances at Mario Lemieux.

You know, the funny thing is that Erin and Shea probably should have recognized him. I’ve shown him to them on television a number of times. I’ve had them watch bits of specials about him, so they know what he looks like. And for our family, recognizing hockey players is part of our DNA. You wouldn’t know this, but my father was one of the original owners of the Penguins back in 1967. He also was a part owner in the early 1970s. We grew up with hockey, and I played it all through junior and senior high school. For Standishes in general, hockey is part of our collective DNA.

So, why couldn’t the girls recognize him face-to-face? Simply put, they weren’t looking for greatness. They were looking to play. Sometimes greatness is in our midst, and we miss it because we just aren’t paying attention.

About thirteen years ago I had different experience with greatness. I was visiting my cousins in Concord, Massachusetts, and my cousin, Peter, asked if I wanted to ride a bike around Concord to see the sights. So we tooled around the town, seeing the interesting buildings, graveyards, and the river. And then he asked if I wanted to ride down to Walden Pond. “Really?” I said. “We can ride there? Is far?” “No, only about two miles outside of town.”

I don’t know if Walden Pond holds much significance for you, but it does for me. Henry David Thoreau wrote about it in his masterpiece book, Walden. His book was heavily influential to Americans back in the mid-nineteenth Century. He wrote in the book about how, in 1845, he had decided that civilization was corrupting his soul. He wanted to get back to living a simple life in nature so that he could “suck the marrow” out of life. He saw a life in nature as a vital life. And so he decided to spend a year living on the shores of Walden Pond, a mystical place surrounded by nature. In his book, he wrote about his experiences there and how they transformed him.

I read the book in my twenties and resonated with it. So, you can imagine that the idea of riding out to that great, mystical place stirred my soul. My imagination was firing on all cylinders. I was expecting to find some pristine mountain lake, much like what we might find in Alaska. What I found instead was a medium-sized pond where hundreds of people were swimming, walking, and milling about. I was really surprised. I was disappointed because I expected to find something else, but I was also disappointed because I realized that even in Thoreau’s time it was never as pristine as he let on. The pond is barely outside of the town of Concord, taking maybe twenty to thirty minutes to walk. His hut was right next to a walking path that went between Concord and the next town. In other words, he wasn’t living away from civilization. Civilization walked right by his door many times a day. When I told my cousin how disappointed I was, he said, “And I’ve also heard that his mother used to walk by all the time and bring him lunch and dinner. She lived only a little ways away.”

I had expected Walden Pond to be such a great spiritual place. It turned out to be only okay.

How do you tell if something or someone is really great? So often greatness is in our midst, but we miss it. Perhaps we miss it because we are too busy doing other things. Perhaps we miss it because what we think of as truly great really isn’t. Or perhaps we miss it because we think greatness is captured by worldly abilities, and miss the spiritual nature of true greatness.

As great as he was, the prophet Samuel struggled with finding greatness in the story from scripture this morning. He was sent by God to find a new king for Israel. Saul, the first king, had disappointed God. God had called Saul to be a king for all the people. Instead, Saul was becoming more and more a king for himself. He was amassing and abusing power. So God went looking for another to be king.

Samuel was sent to Bethlehem to find a man named Jesse, for one of his sons was ordained to be the next king of Israel. Samuel invited Jesse and his sons to a sacrifice and a meal, and there he began to test Jesse’s sons to see which one of them was the new king. He started with the one who was the most obvious candidate: Eliab. This young man was strong, brave, and clearly a man ready to be king. Standing before Eliab, God said, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” So, Samuel went onto the next candidate, Abinadab. He was a fine candidate, but he wasn’t the king, either. Eight more times Samuel surveyed Jesse’s sons, but none had the greatness God was looking for. You can imagine Samuel’s frustration. He had been sent to find the new king, and all the candidates were rejected by God. Why would God send him here to fail? In frustration, Samuel asks Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” Jesse says that he has another, but surely this young boy of perhaps 12 couldn’t be the new king. He was the runt of the litter. He was so small and insignificant that Jesse didn’t even bother to include him in the meal with Samuel. This runt was David. David was brought before Samuel, and God said, “this is my king, anoint him with oil.”

Even after David was anointed king, he didn’t seem great. Sure, he killed Goliath, which truly was great since all the supposedly great Jewish warriors were too afraid to fight Goliath. But after that act of greatness, Saul became jealous and wanted to kill David. So David was forced to live for twelve years as an outlaw in the desert, living in caves along with a band of followers. Yet David remained spiritually great throughout it all, which one particular incident reminds us.

There was a point at which Saul went with an army to track down and kill David in the desert. One night, Saul was asleep in his encampment in a cave. David snuck in, and standing over Saul with a spear, plunged the spear into the dirt beside Saul’s body. It was a message: “I could have killed you, but I followed God’s will instead, and I remain God’s and your servant.” David’s greatness was measured through his heart and soul, which led him to acts of faith and mercy. When he became king, he became revered because he ruled based on God’s will, not his own. And even when he strayed, he saw the error of his ways, confessed, repented, and went back to serving God. Psalm 51, a psalm of confession, is evidence of that, since it was written in response to his sin regarding Bathsheba and Uriah. Even in his sin, David maintained a sense of true greatness.

You know, the funny thing about true greatness is that it isn’t necessarily measured in great feats, as wonderful as they can be. True greatness is always measured in heart and soul. For example, I really admire the athletic greatness of Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre Fluery, Ben Rothlesberger, Hines Ward, Troy Palomalu, Hines Ward, and so many others. But I also recognize that their greatness is in the material world. I have no idea how well their greatness translates into the spiritual world, nor do I know if their spiritual ability matches their athletic accomplishments, yet I do know that it is in the spiritual realm that true greatness is measured.

I’ve love reading great inspiring books like Walden, but I also know that many of the books that we consider great may not be considered great from a spiritual perspective. It’s from that perspective that real greatness is measured. Real greatness is based on entirely different criteria. Real greatness is measured by God’s criteria

Karen Cramer, one of our members who was on the nominating committee that brought me to Calvin Church, once said to me that no one famous ever came from Zelienople. I got her point, which is that Zelienople is a great place to live, but it’s not the kind of place that produces great athletes, actors, musicians, politicians, or celebrities. Unfortunately, I beg to differ with her, and I think she’d agree with my differing. What I disagree with is that since I’ve been here at Calvin Church I’ve met many famous people from Zelienople. It’s just that they were famous in God’s realm, not ours.

I can name a number of people whom I truly believe were well-known and great in God’s realm while they were alive, but who may not have been well-known or considered great in the earthly realm. I’m thinking about people like Jo Jones, who was one of our members when I first came to Calvin Church. Jo was a bright, shining star. She was a woman who helped get the Zelienople Nursery School started, and eventually brought it here to Calvin Church. She was a woman of deep prayer and love, and nothing demonstrates that more than one of my last experiences with her.

About a month before she died, I visited her at home. She had suffered from cancerous tumors in her neck and brain for a number of years, always managing, thought a combination of conventional medicine, alternative medicine, and prayer, to become free of cancer. Eventually a tumor grew along the side of her brain. Radiation killed the tumor, but the pressure of the tumor eventually compromised the ability of her brain to function normally. In my last visit with her, Jo really couldn’t speak, and I’m not sure she even knew who I was, although she sensed that she knew me. I was sitting with her, and she motioned me to give my hands to her. She took my hands, picked up some hand lotion beside her, squirted a big glob into my hand, and then started rubbing lotion into both of my hands. I knew immediately what she was doing. She could barely think or communicate, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t love. If the only way to show love was to rub lotion into my hands, well that was what she was going to do. Her greatness was her love of God and others, and nothing was going to stop her ability to love. That’s true greatness.

I’ve met other spiritually famous people since I’ve been here—people such as Bill Uhl, John McMillen, Corrine Henderson, Dick Anderson (my predecessor as pastor here), LaRue Craig, Betty Alexander, and so many, many more. I still see great and famous people here in this church every Sunday, and it’s a privilege to be in their midst.

So how is true fame and greatness measured? Our passage gives a great example in David. Let me just share three qualities that I think are part of true greatness. First there is humility, which doesn’t mean being weak-kneed and easily pushed around. Humility is a spiritual virtue, which literally means having a willingness to be unimportant and to do what’s necessary for God. Humility means having the strength to say yes to God no matter what, and no to anything else that gets in the way of God’s will.

Second, there is commitment to God no matter what. David had this kind of commitment. It allowed him to patiently wait for God’s will to work throughout his life. It’s what caused him to stay his hand in killing Saul, even though doing so would have made his life and his rule easier. David knew who and what mattered, and he stayed committed to it, even in the face of pressures to take shortcuts.

Finally, David had courage. Courage is different from bravery. Courage is spiritual. It literally means to act out of the heart, which is the seat of the soul. To have courage means to be willing to do what God wants, even in the face of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. For instance, it means that if you are in school, having the courage to stand up for someone who is being picked on and bullied, even if it might make you picked on and bullied. In the workplace it means doing what’s ethical, even if it might get you fired. In the world it means being loving and caring and generous, even in the face of pressures to be selfish, self-focused, and self-protective.

Each and every one of us is called to greatness, and to a different kind of greatness from each other. The question is, will we strive to live in this kind of greatness?

Amen.

Fool for the Money

2009-05-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

There once was a woman who lived a spiteful life. She was just plain mean—a woman who had little care for anyone but herself. All her life she treated people spitefully. Those she saw beneath her she denigrated and treated shamefully. Those whom she believed to be above her she criticized and treated disdainfully, thinking that they were just snobs. And then she died.

She found herself in a large room without walls, and at the center was a man sitting at a desk. It was St. Peter. As she approached him, he welcomed her, pulled out a scroll, which was the scroll of her life, and read. As he read, he kept muttering: “Tsk, tsk. Oh my! Hmmmm. You really weren’t a very nice person, were you? Did you ever do anything caring for anyone in your whole life?” The woman thought for a while and said, “I gave a carrot to a beggar once.”

St. Peter said, “Well, then, the power of love in that small carrot will carry you to heaven.” Out of his pocket he pulled a golden carrot and gave it to her. As she held it in her hand, it began to float heavenward. Grasping the carrot, it slowly lifted her off the ground. Amazed by the power of the carrot, her eyes were transfixed on it as it lifted her. A man walking by saw her rising to heaven, and he grabbed the hem of her skirt. Soon, he was being lifted to heaven. Then another man grabbed the first man’s foot, and he too was rising. Soon, twenty people were rising to heaven on the power of the love in that one carrot.

After a while, the woman looked down and saw all the people rising to heaven with her. Brushing the first man’s hand off her hem, she yelled, “Off! All of you, off! This is my carrot!” Obsessed with getting rid of all the people, she let go of the carrot. And all came crashing down to earth. It’s amazing what one act of love can do. It’s equally amazing what a life of selfishness and greed can do.

So, when you die, how will you be judged by God, St. Peter, the angels, or whomever else is there to judge? When we die, what do you think matters most to God about our lives? Do you think that God cares most that we have a good heart? If your answer is yes, then what tangible evidence in our lives would show that our heart was good? What could we point to as evidence of our good heart that God would say, “Yes, you have been a good and faithful servant?” You see, it’s not enough just to have a good heart. We also have to have good actions.

Do you think that God cares most that we believed in God? Listening to people who’ve walked away from the church, I hear them say, “I expect to go to heaven. I believe in God.” Do you think that when we come face to face with God, and God asks, “What did you do with your life?” that our saying, “Well, I believed in you” is sufficient? To me that’s like our asking our son or daughter, “Were you good in school today,” and she or he replies, “Well, I believe in you.” Is that the kind of response God wants?

Do you think that God cares most about us doing good deeds? What if we did good deeds for the wrong reasons? What if we cared about others, but did so only so that when we could get to heaven when we die? Is God content with that?

Substitute yourself for the rich fool. How will God judge you?

Our passage for today is so central to what Jesus taught, yet it’s a lesson that modern Americans have a hard time with. We have a hard time with any teachings that seems to mix money with spirituality. We resist it, wanting to be spiritual while avoiding soiling our spirituality with crass talk about money. The problem is that Jesus talks about money a lot, and especially about what the relationship between money and faith is.

For instance, if you were going to guess how much of Jesus’ teachings deal with money and what we do with it, what would your guess be? Would it surprise you to know that he spends almost 40% of his time teaching about money? Let me share with you a couple of Jesus’ critical teachings. He says, “He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” The whole idea of his teaching here is stated so succinctly by one of the phrases of our capital campaign: not equal gifts, but equal sacrifices. Jesus is saying that it’s not so important how much we give, but how much we are willing to sacrifice for God.

Jesus also says in his Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He is very clearly saying that what we spend our money on, and what we give our money to, demonstrates the extent to which our heart is in Christ.

I always think about these passages whenever I hear people say that we are a Christian nation. If we are, I’m not sure we’re all that Christian. Why? Because I’m not sure how well our Capitalist culture fits with Jesus’ teachings. Now, before you sic Alan Greenspan and Dick Cheney on me for being un-American, hear me out.

I wanted to look at the connection between Capitalism and Christianity, so my first question was, what are the pillars of Capitalism? Well, I began my inquiry by looking the term “Capitalism” up on one of my favorite websites, Wikipedia. After reading fifteen pages of material on Capitalism, I distilled it down to this definition: Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of wealth, are privately owned for the purpose of generating profits through free trade, which allows for the accumulation of wealth and security.

So, what’s wrong with this idea? Nothing, if you only look at the positive side. The positive side is that capitalism allows for the production of so much that has benefitted all of humanity. It is a system that allows for great creativity, ingenuity, and the creation of things that make human life wonderful. Through it we get knowledge, technology, healthier food, greater medicine, and so much more that I, personally, love… like iPods. Whatever flaws Capitalism has, there is no other economic system that comes close to what Capitalism offers.

So, what’s wrong with it? A lot, if you look at Capitalism’s negatives. Unfortunately, Capitalism is also a system that gives rise to monumental selfishness, self-indulgence, greed, indifference toward the poor, and becoming like the woman in our story, who cared more about herself than about anyone else. I’m not here to lambast Capitalism so much as I want to make the point that as Christians we are called to more than Capitalism. I believe we can be Capitalistic Christians, but only if we balance our Capitalism with the pillars of Christianity. What are they? I believe that there are many, many pillars, but among them are faith, hope, love, kindness, generosity, and contentment. And I believe that it is the last one that leads to all the others. Let me finish with a story that captures this idea.

There was a man who spent his life complaining to God, and begging God for everything. Finally, God got sick of the man and told him, “Okay, I’ve had enough. I’m going to give you three wishes. After that, no more!” “Really?” the man replied. “I can get anything I want?” “Absolutely, but after that no more,” said God.

The man thought long and hard, and finally said to God, “Well, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but my wife has gotten to be a bit of an old hag. I mean, she nags me all the time and isn’t quite the looker she used to be. Do you think you can get rid of my wife?” God said, “No problem – wife’s gone.” With that, she died. The man felt a bit guilty for feeling so relieved at the death of his wife, but then he thought about how he could now find a much younger wife.

Over the next few days at the funeral home and the funeral, the man began to have second thoughts. So many people came up to him and extolled virtues of his dead wife that he began to realize what a good woman she was after all. “She did take care of me,” he said. “In fact, I miss her terribly.” He went back to God and said, “God, I hate to ask you this, but could I have my wife back again? She really wasn’t so bad after all.” “Absolutely,” God said. “Wish number two fulfilled. Only one more.”

The man didn’t know what to ask for his final wish. He consulted some friends. One said to him, “Ask for wealth. With money, you can do anything.” “What good is money without immortality,” said another. “Ask for immortality.” “What good is immortality without health,” said another. “Ask for good health.”

The man couldn’t decide. One year, two years, five years, ten years passed. Finally, God said to him, “Aren’t you ever going to ask for your final wish?” The man said, “God, I don’t know what to ask for. Could you tell me what to ask for?” God laughed and said, “Ask to be content with and appreciate everything in life. If you do this, everything else will take care of itself.” The man did this, and was happy for the rest of his life (from Anthony de Mello, Walking on Water).

When we learn to be content with what we have, and to appreciate it and be thankful, it is amazing how much we begin to sense God all around us. We see life as full of blessings instead of woes. We see life as full of God instead of misery. We see life as full or possibility instead of impediments. We see life as an opportunity to take what we have and share it with others.

So, let me end with a question. How is God going to judge you when you die?
As a rich fool, or as a foolish giver?

Amen.

What Is Your Foundation? What Is Your Fruit?

2009-05-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

Luke 6:43-49

No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.’

I’ve been in a reflective mood this past week. I think it was a combination of things that got me reflecting. It started with reading our passage for this morning. It continued as I watched the farmer next door to my house plow the field. My reflections continued after listening to the confirmation class read their statements of faith. Finally, I kept thinking about how all this relates to our capital campaign.

Let me start with the passage. When I read our passage for this morning, it seemed to go right to the heart of so much that plagues our world, our country, and our community. I look around and realize that so many people in our country and community live lives built on weak foundations, which leads them to produce bad fruit. I’ll get more into that idea a bit later. Our passage really drives home the point that if we are to live good lives that produce good fruit, we have to start with a good foundation. I look around our country today and wonder how good our collective foundations are, and how good the fruit we produce actually is.

This got me thinking about the farmer next door. Most of you probably don’t know where I live, but I live south of Zelienople next to a field that a farmer grows corn and, I think, oats. Last week he planted the corn, and this morning I got to see the short, green sprouts popping just above the dirt. What got me thinking as I watched him plow was how much time he spends preparing that field to produce corn and oats. He doesn’t just plow in the spring. It’s an all-year venture, and we know this personally because each time he prepares the foundation of the field, our property is permeated with the smell of manure.

All year round he comes by with a manure-spreader and spreads the manure from his dairy farm. When we first moved into our house, we were convinced that he timed his manure-spreading for when we had friends or family over ☺. Now we know that he spreads manure on one of his many fields at least once a week. He spreads it in hot weather, cold weather, dry weather, wet weather. It’s kind of a bummer when he spreads it on the snow because it changes the white blanket on the field to brown. Still, seeing it, I always imagine that spreading it on snow probably helps it get into the field better because when the snow melts it infuses the manure into the ground. The point is that the farmer prepares a foundation for his field all-year long. And he doesn’t let anything get in the way of it. The results are the fruits he yields in the corn and oats he grows. That foundation creates the conditions where healthy plants can grow and yield nourishing corn and oats. If he did little for the foundation, he would get little from the field.

How profound is that? It’s a metaphor for life, reminding us that the fruits we produce in our lives depend entirely upon the foundations we set. If we are committed to fertilizing our lives in good times and bad, up times and down, when we are busy and when we aren’t, then the fruit of our lives is good. But when we do nothing, why should it surprise us when the fruits of our lives turn bad.

I couldn’t help but apply this to our confirmation class that gave their statements of faith to the session the past two weeks. I realized that through this class we were preparing a foundation for these new adults, the confirmands, all year long. In fact, their participation in the confirmation class was a testimony to the foundations their parents had been setting throughout their lives. So many said that because their parents got them to church every Sunday, faith was a natural part of their lives. What they were saying was testimony to the importance of the battles all parents have with their children on Sunday mornings to get them to church. Every Sunday battle to get the kids to church lays a foundation for the future of their faith.

When these teens took part in the confirmation class, all 19 of them, we really pushed them to make a commitment and to make this class part of their foundation. For instance, we really pressed upon them that their commitment to the confirmation class and their faith had to be at least as important, if not more so, than their commitment to sports and school. We pushed them to let coaches and teachers know that because of their commitment to the class, they might miss some activities. The teachers also changed the class a bit to really get the teens to study the subjects in a way that asks, “How do you apply this to your lives?” We saw the fruits of the foundation set by the teachers and the parents in the statements of faith. They were incredible.

I wish I could go over each statement, but I don’t have enough time. What I can do is give you snippets. For instance, we had incredible statements articulated through songs, poems, power point presentations, and self-made dvds. We had one teen who created a shadow box that had in it his soccer uniform, a cross necklace, scripture and inspirational quotes, and pictures from his life. We had another who took a soccer ball and wrote on it his five favorite passages, and then he got the whole confirmation class to sign it. One of the most profound statements came from one teen who said, “When I started this class, I didn’t want to take it. I only joined the confirmation class because my father made me. He told me that when he went through is own confirmation class, he had an experience of God, and he wanted me to have the opportunity to have the same experience. So I took the class. And now that I’m done, I’m not joining the class because my dad is making me. I’m joining the class because I have experienced God in it, and I want to be part of this church where I can experience God.” Another confirmand was asked a question about the impact of his faith on his life. He said that it helped him last month when a group of peers pressured him to take drugs and he just walked away. There is the impact of a good foundation in terms of producing good fruit.

These statements of faith got me reflecting on our capital campaign. I began to realize that not only this capital campaign, but our two previous ones, were all about laying a foundation for the future harvest of fruits. As one person said to me recently, the sad thing about being a human church is that we never really quite get to see just how big of an impact we make on people’s lives. Our campaigns have always been about making an impact.

I’ve been here thirteen years, and I know that our efforts haven’t just been about making a difference in the present. They are about making a difference for the future. Actually, this laying of a foundation started even before I came here. In the several years prior to my coming, the church did some very unsexy, but important building improvements. They put a new roof on the sanctuary, which is actually a huge thing. They also renovated the kitchen and the fellowship hall, which had become very run down.

Despite those improvements, when I came to Calvin Presbyterian Church I almost didn’t because of the challenges it presented. During the period when I interviewed with the pastor nominating committee, I fell in love with the committee and the town, but I hadn’t actually seen the church. My interview took place in another church in the South Hills where I was teaching a class. I had a subsequent interview over lunch at one of the member’s house. When I came and saw the church for the first time, and looked at the condition it was in, I almost didn’t come. I remember driving away teary-eyed from the church and saying to my wife, “I don’t think I can go there. I’ll end up doing capital campaigns my whole time there, and I don’t want to do any capital campaigns.” You may not know this about me, but my least favorite part of ministry are these campaigns. But I also knew then, and know now, how important they are. Without them, churches can slowly decline to the point of dying.

Our first campaign was in 1998, and out of it we renovated the sanctuary, bought faith house, gave $33,000 to mission, and started an endowment fund. The sanctuary renovation was sorely needed. When I came here the sanctuary had dark maroon and badly wrinkled carpet. Instead of the extension on the left-hand side of the sanctuary where about 40 people sit on Sundays, we had an accordion door that opened into fellowship hall. When it was opened for extra seating on Christmas and Easter, it sucked the sound out of the sanctuary. The organ was in the center, and Bruce played it with his back to us, facing DeWayne, who played a small piano that was back-to-back with the organ. The lights in the sanctuary were a brownish yellow that gave the sanctuary a slightly brown tinge.

The renovations we did were both for the present and the future. We created a traditional look in our sanctuary, but did our best to put in the elements that would be present in any contemporary sanctuary, such as a sophisticated sound system, upgraded instruments, and bright lighting that could also be used for our plays. We built the Friendship Room extension onto the sanctuary that gave us more seating, but could also be closed off with sound panels, making it a much-needed meeting room. We did not have nearly as many in attendance on Sundays that we get now, and so, for the first three years after building it, those doors were almost always closed. Then, as we began to grow, we would open them more often. Now we’ve grown to the point at which they haven’t been closed in almost four or five years. Even back then we were building a foundation for the future of the church. We recognized that this church was going to have a big influence on people’s lives well into the future, and we had to have a sanctuary that accommodated it.

Our expansion and renovation in 2006 was similarly not just about the present. It was also about the future. I remember many expansion committee meetings in which the discussion were about how to do the construction in a quality way that would cause members in 2056 to say, “Wow, look at the quality of what they did back in 2006.” This future-focus was really embodied in something that was said to me by Bill Frank, chair of the expansion committee, as we were putting together plans for the offices. I looked at the specs for my office and said to Bill, “You know, all the wainscoating and woodwork are too nice for me. I don’t need anything that fancy.” Bill said, “I appreciate that, Graham, but this isn’t for you. This is for the pastor who succeeds you. We want the future pastor to like the office so much that she or he will want to come here.” That’s a future-focus, and that’s laying a foundation for the production of good fruit in the future.

Our present campaign is also about laying a foundation for the future. We are trying to eliminate debt so that we can move forward into the future debt-free, able to respond to any challenges that the future might hold. We have 22 years left on our mortgage, in which we pay approximately $80,000 per year. We can absorb that into our general budget, but it limits everything else we can do in the church. And what if a crisis hits in the future? What if something happens to me, or Bruce, or Toni, or Connie, or Steve. What if something happens in the community? That yearly mortgage payment can quickly become like a millstone, dragging down our ministry and negating the positive impact our new building has our lives and our community. This campaign is about freeing the church to respond to God’s call no matter what.

Ultimately, our campaigns, our ministry, and our mission are really about how we help people set a foundation for their lives in order to produce good fruit. And what we do is even more important today than it was fifty years ago. The culture has changed, and we have to respond to those changes. Do you know what the fastest growing religious group in this country today is? It is those who declare that they have no religious affiliation, and see themselves as either spiritual but not religious, or as agnostic or atheist. Here are the facts: fewer and fewer people are setting a spiritual foundation for their lives by making church part of that foundation. And don ‘t be fooled by those who say they are spiritual but not religious. By not being religious they are admitting that they do very little to practice their spirituality. Spirituality isn’t just about “feeling” spiritual. It’s about actively doing things that nurture spiritual maturity, such as prayer, study, reflection, service, worship, and living in community with those who also care about these things. This is what was so important about our confirmation class. To be spiritual means setting a foundation that nurtures the spirit. That’s what these teens did, and you can see it reflected in their statements of faith. It means making a commitment to God with others. It also means setting a foundation.

And here’s the fruit of that foundation. Do you know what the impact of church is on people’s lives? There have been a lot of studies in the past twenty years on church participation and its impact on life. Despite agnostics and atheists who will tell you that religion has a negative impact, they are 180º wrong. Here’s what research shows. If you go to church, you tend to be healthier and happier than those who don’t. You report more marital satisfaction than those who don’t. Now, you might be tempted to say that the reason is due to the fact that healthier and happier people go to church (as if that was a bad thing), but you’d still be wrong. Lots of studies have been done to control for factors such as this. What they show is that smokers who attend church are healthier than smokers who don’t. Overweight people who attend church are healthier than those who don’t. Church attenders with heart disease live longer than those who don’t attend church. There are literally hundreds of studies out there showing all this, which National Institutes of Health researcher, Dr. David Larson, chronicled years ago. In effect, what this says is that church lays a healthy foundation even for those who aren’t particularly healthy.

Why does all this matter? It matters because I’m calling all of us to root ourselves in our passage for this morning. What kind of foundations are we setting for our lives? What kind of fruits are we producing?

Amen.

God Is Love

2009-05-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

1 John 4:7-20

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

Before you start reading this sermon I want you do to something for me. If you have a CD of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, put on the song “All You Need Is Love” and listen to it. If you don’t have it, then go to your computer and google “All You Need Is Love.” If you can’t do that, then find some way to sit down and listen to the song. Think about the words of the song, and what they are telling you. Go ahead. Do it. Don’t be cynical, thinking that you don’t need to. Go and listen to the song, then come back to this sermon….

Listen to the Song

So, if all you need is love, why isn’t love more dominant in the world? Back when this song came out in 1967, there was such hope for the power of love. It was the “summer of love,” when the youth of the world thought that love was everywhere. So many thought that love would transform the world, but the summer of 1967 was followed by the summer of 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were shot, the Vietnam War escalated after the Tet Offensive, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, and violence erupted at the 1968 Democratic Convention. It’s as if the world could only handle so much love before it exploded back into violence. Since then, the world has descended into a period of pandemic violence. Guns, bombs, and arms have proliferated around the world. Violence in this country has increased, and although it has decreased compared to 1990s levels, it is clearly way over what the rates were before the 1960s.

Why doesn’t the world love more? What’s our problem? When I look around the world I don’t see much love. I see a lot of fear, a lot of violence, a lot of people acting out of selfishness and self-interest, and people thinking that the answer to the world’s problems is to “get them before they get me.” But I don’t see much love.

What all this really tells me is that despite the fact that the majority of the world’s people are religious, and that they proclaim their faith passionately, perhaps their openness to God is questionable. Why do I say this? Simply because of our passage. Remember what John said: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” If the test of knowing God is our ability to love, and our love is tested by our actions, then many religious people fail the test because we often promote agendas that have little love. I’m not trying to let the non-religious off the hook. I certainly don’t look around and see a greater preponderance of love among the non-religious. I see less among them than among the religious. It’s one thing to be religious. It’s another to be religious and to be open to God, and therefore to love.

What the Beatles sang may be true, that all we need is love, but what John wrote is even truer. If we are going to love, we have to start with our relationship with God because God is love. And the less God is in our lives, the less love is in our lives.

I don’t think it takes much mental energy to prove my point. Take a look at the world around us. Notice which people have the most love. What I’ve noticed is that the people who generally have the most love are also the people with the most God. Now, don’t think that I’m being biased or foolish here. I know that not all Christians are loving. There are many, many Christians who seem to lack a sense of love. But the question isn’t whether being religious somehow kills love. The question is the degree of love these people would have without religion and faith. Related to this, I’ve also noticed that there seems to be a definite lack of God among messed up people. I’ve spent most of my life as a counselor working with people who struggle in life. I’ve met very few messed up people who are deeply faithful, but I’ve met a lot of messed up people who have no faith, no religion, and little or no belief in God. Think about the people you know who are chronically messed up. How important a role does God play in their lives? Think about how much they care about God, and then reflect on how much love plays a role in their lives. A lack of love tends to reveal an overabundance of self-focus, and an overabundance of self-focus tends to reveal a lack of God-focus.

The people I know who are the most loving also tend to be the most God-ful. Let me give you an example of what I mean by telling you about one of my heroes, a man named Father Arseny. In his life he showed how both God and love could be alive, even in the Siberian gulags of the Soviet Union under Stalin. I spoke about Father Arseny back in December on the Sunday after Christmas, but since so few were in worship on that day, I thought I’d talk about him again this morning. I came across his name after giving a talk to about 250 Methodist pastors in North Carolina. During my talk I spoke about how God seems to work through coincidence (or providence), and how many people of faith experience God in this way. While sitting outside with several pastors during our lunch break, one of them said to me, “What you are saying reminds me of Father Arseny.”

I asked him who Father Arseny was. He said, “He’s an Orthodox priest who survived a Soviet Siberian gulag for 20 or more years. During that time he had an amazing faith and cared for others in the camp, transforming their lives and opening them to God.” As I often do when people suggest books to me, I wrote down the information and, when I got home, ordered the book. It took me a while to work through my stack of other books, but once I read this book I realized that this man may have been one of the truly great Christians of the 20th century. And he was a man others dismissed.

Father Arseny was originally an art scholar who became an Orthodox priest. He ended up being sentenced to the gulag after writing several articles about the importance of faith even among communists. In Stalinist Russia, where atheism was the official religion and Christians were persecuted aggressively, to write pro-Christian articles in public papers and magazines was to speak out politically against the government. During Stalin’s reign, Christians were considered to be the worst of all political agitators because belief in God was a threat to the supreme rule of Stalin. As a result, about 44,000 priests were killed during his reign, and over 150,000 monks and nuns. By the time Stalin died, only 200 priests remained alive serving in churches. Remember that statistic the next time someone says that Christianity is responsible for more deaths than anything else. Under Stalin’s atheistic reign, over 25 million people were killed, and millions of them for being Christian. A significant number of them died in the gulags.

The gulags were designed to kill people slowly and with a lot of pain. In the winter, the temperature generally hovered around -15 or -20, and dipping at times to -30. During the summer, the water from the frozen ground was released, making it extremely humid, creating an Eden for mosquitoes, which spread disease. Either way, the majority of people sent to the camps did not return.

The camps were filled with both political prisoners (often highly educated scholars, artists, and reporters) and common criminals (thieves, murderers, psychopath). Both had nothing but disdain for people who were religious. The atheistic political prisoners hated Christians because they saw religious people as being willfully stupid and superstitious. The criminals hated them because they hated anyone with a sense of morality. The result was that both groups treated Father Arseny with contempt and brutality. Yet Father Arseny always responded with love, even when they abused and beat him. And I don’t mean that he responded with a weak-kneed love, but with a genuine love. He was a man who cared about people, and often his love brought about miracles.

Father Arseny was easily dismissed by others, especially by those who were smart, powerful, or just wanted to fit in. But being dismissed by others never seemed to bother him. All he cared about was serving God. After he died in 1973, stories about him were collected from those who knew him either in the gulag or elsewhere. That’s what makes this book so fascinating. They tell the stories of Father Arseny from the perspective of those who were transformed by him.

I want to share one particular story with you this morning that was written by two people who were cared for by Father Arseny: Ivan Alexandrovich Sazikov and Alexander Pavlovich Avsenkov. Both were living in a barrack with Father Arseny, and both became deathly ill. There was no room for them in the medical building of the gulag, so they remained in the barrack, where they got no medical attention. Father Arseny took it upon himself to care for them. Arseny was responsible in the barracks for keeping the stoves lit while the men worked outside, breaking ice and chopping down trees for firewood, which were the only source of heat. Even at full-blast the stoves only heated the barracks to about 55 degrees.

Arseny carefully cared for them while both remained mostly delirious and oblivious to the care they were receiving. At one point Arseny decided to bring the stoves up full-blast, realizing that the two men were close to death and needed heat. When a guard came in and felt the heat, he beat Arseny for wasting state-owned wood. But Arseny continued to fill the stove with more and more wood.

One day, when Sazikov started to get better, he saw Arseny hovering over him, praying for Christ to heal him. Instead of thanking Arseny, Sazikov said to him, “What do you want from me with your God! What do you hope to get from me? You hope I will die so you can take my belongings. I have nothing, so don’t even try!” Father Arseny’s response? He carefully covered the man and tenderly gave him more to drink.

Another time, when Arseny was praying over Sazikov, Sazikov said to him, “Your praying, eh, priest? You pray to get forgiveness of your sins and this is why you help us! You’re afraid of God! Why’s that? Have you ever seen Him?” Arseny calmly said, “How could I not have seen him? He is here among us and unites you and me!... I see his presence. I see that your soul is black with sin, but there is room in it for light. Light will come to you, Sazikov, light and your Saint. Saint Seraphim of Sarov will not abandon you.” Sazikov screamed at him, yelling, “I’ll kill you, you silly priest, I’ll kill you—I don’t know how you know things. I hate the way you think.” The interesting thing, though, is that through Arseny’s love, Sazikov slowly became transformed, eventually becoming a Christian and remaining dear friends with Arseny for the rest of his life.

The other patient, Avsenkov, was more receptive to Arseny, but he was also stunned by Arseny’s love. He also became transformed by God through Father Arseny, especially after the following conversation. He said to Arseny, “You have a soul, I can see that, but I am a true Communist, while you serve your God; you are a priest. We have different points of view. In theory, I should be fighting you.” Avsenkov was a committed Communist. In fact, he was in the gulag for political reasons. He had been a judge in Moscow, defending the Communist regime of Stalin against all potential threats. He had sentenced thousands to the gulags. He ended up in the gulag himself only because a rising star wanted him out of the way so that he, himself, could become a powerful judge. False charges were fabricated against Avsenkov in order to take over his position, and so Avsenkov was sentenced to the gulags himself. Yet he remained a committed Communist.

Arseny responded, “Hey, dear friend. Why would you want to fight? You fought as much as you could and where did your ideology get you? It took you to this camp, which swallowed you! As far as I am concerned I had my faith in Christ out there in freedom and I have it here within myself. God is the same everywhere and helps everyone! I trust and believe that He will help you too!” He continued, “We have known each other for a long time. God brought us together a long time ago, and planned our meeting in this camp.”

Avsenkov replied, “What are you saying? How could I have known you?” Arseny calmly and lovingly said, “Oh yes, you know me, Alexander Pavlovich. In 1933 when Communism was trying to eradicate religion, hundreds of thousands of believers were exiled, hundreds of churches were closed and this is when, for the first time, I was sent away to camp on your instructions. In 1939, I was in your jurisdiction again. I wrote an article. As soon as it was published, you arrested me again and convicted me to be shot. But, thank you—you commuted the sentence to exile in camp. Since then I have been living in various camps and all along I’ve been expecting to see you. So finally we meet!” How would you respond to the judge who unjustly sentenced you to a gulag?

This is an amazing testimony to love, and how God is love. By loving Avsenkov, Arseny not only forgave him, but he opened Avsenkov to God’s presence everywhere. Like Sazikov, Avsenkov became a Christian and devoted his life to God and love.

You don’t have to be great to love. Father Arseny was not great in any worldly way. He was simply a man who knew that we need to love. To be like him you don’t have to be great. You just have to want to share God and love

Do you know what made Arseny so remarkable? He understood that the only thing that stands between us and love is us. He understood that God is love, and that each time he loved he was bearing Christ to another. He understood something that the Beatles didn’t. It may be true that all we need is love, but to live in that love we need God.

Amen.

Love Is a Sacrifice

2009-05-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

1 John 3:11-22

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

I had an experience several years ago that really caused me to stop and think. I don’t quite remember where I was, but I know that I was on vacation somewhere, walking with my daughters who were about 5 or 6 at the time. We were crossing a street after doing the “look-back-and-forth” bit. Suddenly, as we were crossing, a car came barreling toward us, and it was apparent that he didn’t see the stop sign in front of him, nor us. Without a thought, I immediately started walking rapidly toward his car with my arms outstretched as it sped toward me. Suddenly he stopped about three feet from me, waving his hands and mouthing, “Sorry!” If he hadn’t see me, I would have been hit by the car. There was a serious chance I could have been hurt or killed. What got me thinking was that in that moment—for that one moment—I had absolutely no self-concern. My kids were threatened, and something just took over my thinking. My concern was only for protecting them.

Do you know how rare a moment like this is, a moment in which we have absolutely no thoughts of self? In that moment I no longer existed. All that mattered was protecting Erin and Shea. I thought a lot about this moment afterwards because it was a moment of complete loss of self-concern. I guess that’s what happens when you really love someone. You become willing to sacrifice yourself, even if it is only for a moment.

Self-sacrifice isn’t something that comes easy to us Americans. We’ve always had a strange tension in this country between self-sacrifice and selfishness. We talk about sacrificing for our country and all that, but in many ways we are much more selfish than we are self-sacrificing.

The well-known sociologist, Robert Bellah, wrote about how much we struggle with selfishness and self-concern in his groundbreaking book, Habits of the Heart. He noted that there is a strong individualistic streak among Americans, one that goes back in our history to our roots in the Colonial period. He says that Americans tend to see themselves as individuals first, Americans second. Our primary identity is as individuals, even before we see ourselves as part of a family, a community, an ethnicity, or a nation. He says that as a result of our individualism, we tend to praise and idolize the individual over the community.

Do you want to see what he means? Take a look at the most popular television program in the country right now? What is it? American Idol. Think about the point of the show. It is to rise above all the others to become the lone, individual idol, admired and adored by everyone. Look at our movies. So often our films are about the individual rising up against all odds to overcome tragedy, difficulty, or evil. Although we love team sports, we idolize the individual players. This emphasis on the individual in all parts of life makes it very hard for us to also embrace self-sacrifice.

Where does this individualism come from? I think you can trace it right to the colonization of America. David Hackett Fischer, in his book, Albion’s Seed, talks the four primary migrations of colonists into America, and how they shaped American values. The first major migration was the Puritan migration into New England. They were a very community-oriented people. They believed that the individual, in order to serve God, should be willing to sacrifice him- or herself for the community and for God. Meanwhile, the Cavalier migration into the south had a different take on this. The Cavaliers were second and third sons of nobles from Southern England. They were privileged and believed in a hierarchy. They believed in a community, but community revolving around those at the top of the hierarchy comprised of nobles, then merchants, then servants, then slaves. All served the individual at the top. So they believed in community, but community focused on the top (can you see how American Idol almost reflects this belief?)

Meanwhile, there was another migration into Pennsylvania of Quakers, who, like the Puritans, were very community-oriented. They believed in sacrifice of self for God and others. They believed that a strong community created a holy place to live. Finally, there were the Scots-Irish, who settled first in our area of Western Pennsylvania, and then settled down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. They were the most individualistic of the lot. They originally came from the borderlands between Scotland and England, and were used to being attacked by the Scots and then the English. To survive they became very individualistic, believing only in the value of familial blood. When they migrated to America, they became the most individualistic of group of all, creating weak communities, preferring to live alone or with a small cadre of like-minded people. They did not believe much in self-sacrifice for others. What they did believe in was heading into the woods armed with a Bible and an axe, creating their own life and religion.

I believe that there’s a lesson in American religious colonization regarding self-sacrifice, individualism, and community. The most religious of the colonies, the Puritans and the Quakers, were always the most self-sacrificing. And they were the most prosperous. They understood that real Christianity is both communal and sacrificial, and it translated into the economic success of their communities. In contrast, the least successful areas of the country were those settled by the Scots-Irish, and even today they are the most impoverished areas of our country.

Basically, the American experience underscores our passage, which says that there is no greater love that binds people together than a love in which we are willing to lay down our lives for others. The willingness to put aside “my” concerns for “our” concerns makes all the difference in the world. Jesus taught this idea. Think about Jesus’ teachings and life. He taught that we should deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow him. He taught that we should share what we have with others. He taught that we should give to others sacrificially. And he lived it. He gave up his life on the cross for others.

You can also learn the lesson of self-sacrifice outside Christianity. You can find it in music. Think about the best music you know. It requires that the artist put aside her or his desire to be the star in order to work in harmony with others. Malcom Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, makes this exact point about the Beatles and what made them so great. He says that it’s not just raw talent that made them great. Instead, it was their two-year experience, playing at the “Top Ten Club” in Hamburg, Germany, for eight hours a day, seven days a week. They played and played and played together, all the while creating a harmony of thought, mind, and performance. By the time they returned to England, they were a completely different group. They had learned to sacrifice their egos for the music, which is saying a lot since they all had big egos, especially John and Paul. It was their willing to sacrifice self for the group that made the difference. What other group had that much time together to craft their music?

You can find the same kind of self-sacrifice in the life of a woman named Margaret. If you travel to the business district of New Orleans, you can find a statue of Margaret that was erected in 1888. It’s an odd statue, not like most statues you find in a city. Most statues in a city are of military, political, or financial men posed dramatically, showing their great deeds. This statue of Margaret is different. It has Margaret, an older, heavy-set woman in a crocheted sweater, hair in a bun, sitting on a chair with her arm around a small child standing next to her. The inscription on the base simply says, “Margaret.”

The statue is of Margaret Haughery, a woman who died in New Orleans in 1882. By the time she died, she had made a huge impact on the city. No one would have expected her to be remembered in marble when she was born in Ireland in 1814. At age six she migrated to America with her parents, settling in Maryland. Two years later, both parents died of influenza, leaving her an orphan. After a time in an orphanage, a Welsh couple adopted her. At age twenty-one she married and moved to New Orleans with her new husband. About a year or two later, both her husband and her infant child died of illness, leaving Margaret in poverty.

Eventually, she got a job washing and ironing clothes in a Catholic orphanage. It was there that she sensed her calling. One day she went to the head nun and committed her life to helping the orphanage financially. Saving as much as she could, she donated much of her salary back to the orphanage. With what she had saved she managed to purchase two cows and a small, wooden pushcart. She would rise very early in the morning and deliver milk to wealthy people and restaurants, often begging for leftover food so that she could give that to the orphans.

As her side business grew, she purchased more cows and hired people to deliver the milk. Out of her revenues she kept little for herself. She saved much of it, and gave much of the rest to the orphanage. As her business increased, she eventually sold it, and with the proceeds, both donated huge sums to the orphanage, helping them get completely out of debt. Then she bought a bakery. As the bakery business took off, she gave more money not only to the Catholic orphanage she had worked in years before, but also to Protestant and Jewish orphanages.

When she died in 1882, she left $30,000 to be shared with orphanages all over the city. By my best guess, that would be over $1 million in today’s dollars. All from a woman who could barely read or write, but who was willing to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others.

One of the keys to living a mature faith is that we have to be willing to sacrifice our interests for the good of others. That’s one of the reasons I really like one of the prominent phrases used by our fundraising consultants, RSI. They often say that we should give “not equal gifts, but equal sacrifices.” They understand that sacrifice opens life to the sacred. There are lots of ways we are called as Christians to sacrifice.

We are called to give time, money, and compassion to others.
How we vote is a sacrifice. When you vote, do you only vote your own interests, or do you vote the interests of others?
Are you only concerned with your rights, or are you concerned with the rights of others?
What causes beyond yourself are you committed to? To the church? To charity? To causes?

We are given a simple, but profound message in our passage for today: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” How are you laying your life down for others? And how is that leading you to live in God’s love?
Amen.

See It to Believe It, or Believe It to See It?

2009-04-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

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See It to Believe It, or Believe It to See It?
Luke 24:36-49
April 26, 2009

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really a puzzle person. A lot of people love puzzles, whether sudoku, crossword puzzles, word problems, and things like that. I like jigsaw puzzles, but that’s probably because they are more visual and less linear. I really don’t like linear puzzles. What I mean by that is that I just don’t’ resonate with the kind of logical progression that goes into these kinds of puzzles. They are linear in that you have to build one piece on another. My mind just doesn’t work that way. For whatever reason, I tend to be much better at seeing relationships between things as a whole, rather than looking at pieces.

As a result, I love optical illusions. You know what I’m talking about. I love pictures that look like one thing, but turn out also to be another. I’m fascinated with them. For instance, look at the illusion below:

For whatever reason, I’ve always loved this illusion. From one perspective it looks like an old woman looking down. From another it looks like a young woman with a feather in her hair, looking back and to the right.

How about this illusion? It’s a painting by Bev Doolittle titled “Pintos.” Her paintings are often of the western United States, and they often have optical illusions in them. Can you see the pintos in this picture?

Another favorite of mine is the one below that shows trees on a shoreline reflected in a lake or river:

What makes this picture so special? Flip it and you’ll see that what you thought was reality was actually the reflection. Finally, look at this one below. It’s a strange picture, but if you stare at it for thirty seconds, and then shut your eyes, you’ll slowly see the face of Jesus on the back of your eyelids.

You know what the key to seeing any of these things is? You have to be willing to believe in the possibility of seeing them in order to see them. With the first one, if you don’t believe that the other woman exists in the picture, then you probably won’t look for her. In the second, if you glance quickly, and don’t know to look for the pintos, you probably won’t see them. In the third, if you are unwilling to flip the page and look at the picture in another way, you won’t see reality. Finally, if you are unwilling to stare at the picture above and shut your eyes, you won’t see. You have to be willing to believe to see.

You now, in so many ways true faith is a matter of believing in order to see. The main problem of faith for so many people is that they want to see first, then believe. People want proof for everything before they are willing to accept. There’s something about modern Americans that make it hard for us to believe first and see later.

I think it has to do with the dominance of scientific thinking; a kind of thinking that is mainly a good kind of thinking. Scientific thinking has led to so many technological, medical, and industrial advances. Our economy, in many ways, is based on this kind of thinking. But when it comes to the life of faith, scientific thinking can kill faith. Scientific thinking is skeptical thinking. It says, “prove it first, then I’ll believe. Let me see it, then I’ll believe it.”

Scientific thinking kills faith because faith often requires belief in order to see. The kind of belief that leads to faith is related to the illusions above. The illusions above only reveal another reality once we are willing to look with belief. As long as we don’t believe, we also can’t see the deeper reality that God wants to reveal to us.

What’s ironic about scientific thinking is that even science understands at times that you have to believe in order to see. For instance, let’s take the problem of light. When light shines on our eyes, the reason we see the light is that small particles of light strike the rods and cones of our eyes, allowing us to see. So light is a collection of particles, right? It’s what scientists believed for a long time. Then a few pioneering scientists ran experiments and noticed that light moved in waves, much like electricity. I don’t mean waves of particles but electric waves. They noticed that under certain experimental conditions, light moved in waves. So, which is it? Is light a collection of particles, or is it a series of waves? It all depends on what you believe. You will see what you believe in when you run experiments. If you look for particles in your experiments, you’ll see particles. If you look for waves, you’ll find waves. If you look for both, you’ll find both. What you believe is what you’ll see, even scientifically.

When it comes to the life of faith, just like in much of physics, seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing. It all comes down to one simple question: What do you believe you see when you look at life around you? Do you see a Spirit-filled world, or just a world?

If you think like atheists and agnostics, then all you see is the world. The thing that bothers me about many atheists and agnostics isn’t that they don’t believe. What bothers me about many of them is that they believe in only what they see, and they believe that any who don’t share their limited view are somehow naïve and not too bright. Because they don’t believe what we believe, they can’t see what we see. Their response is to denigrate what we see by saying that we are only seeing what we believe. Well,… duh! So are they. They believe in a world absent of God, so that’s what they see. I’m able to see that world, too, if I shut off my belief. It’s just that I’m also able to see and experience more.

We still see what they see. They see a world of biology, chemistry, and physics. So do we. They see the world as it is. We see that world, too. There’s nothing that they see that we don’t. The difference is that we see more than they do, not less. We see what they see, but because we believe, we can also see the spiritual world permeating the physical world

The real difference is that we see a lot that they don’t see, because we believe. They can’t see because they don’t believe, and so their sight is limited. They certainly wouldn’t see what Tommy, an atheist, eventually saw once he believed.

Dr. John Powell, a professor of religion, originally got to know Tommy from a class he taught, titled “Theology and Faith.” Tommy was the kind of student that drives professors crazy. He was obviously bright, but also disruptive. Tommy was only taking the class because he had to take a religion class as part of his liberal arts education requirements. He didn’t believe, and so he figured that the class was pointless. He would sit in the back of the class, looking defiant. Often, when Dr. Powell made a point, Tommy would smirk, laugh, or say something snarky to the person sitting next to him, causing her or him to laugh. Powell began to really dislike Tommy, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to bring attention to Tommy’s antics, especially since so many people seemed to be engaged in the class.

On the day final papers were to be turned in, Tommy knocked on Powell’s door and handed him his final paper. He smirked a bit and said condescendingly, “Professor, do you think I’ll ever find God?” Powell just looked at Tommy in silence. As Tommy walked toward the door, Powell said, “No, Tommy, I don’t think you’ll ever find God. But God will find you.” Tommy paused, then walked out. Powell was relieved to be through with him.

Several years later, Powell heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. He often thought that he should contact Tommy, but life just kept getting in the way. Then one day he heard a knock on the door. It was Tommy, but he looked drastically different. Three years before he had been tall and robust, with long, black hair. He was now gaunt and thin, with tufts of scraggly hair on a mostly bald head. Tommy said, “Got a minute?”

Powell welcomed Tommy in, sat him down, and Tommy began to tell his story. He said, “You know, when I took your class I thought I knew everything. The whole time I was in college I thought I knew everything. When I graduated from college I was ready to make my mark. Then, one day, I found a lump in my groin. It turned out to be terminal cancer. I was devastated. It was then I turned to God. I begged God to care for me, to heal me, but nothing happened. I prayed and prayed, but nothing happened. It confirmed my thoughts: God wasn’t out there. But I still remembered something you once said in class: ‘The essential sadness of life is to have lived life without really having loved.’ I decided that even if God didn’t exist, I could love. So one evening, as my father read the paper, I asked to speak to him. I said to him, ‘Dad, I love you.’ He put down his paper, and he cried. We talked all night. I did the same with my mother, my sister, and with my friends. And then it happened. Remember what you said to me years ago when I turned in my final paper? You said that I wouldn’t find God, but God would find me. God found me in my love. The more I loved people, the more God found me. Now I experience God all around me everyday.”

Powell asked Tommy to come to his class and talk about his experiences. Tommy agreed. About a week before the class, though, Tommy called and said he was too sick to do it. But he did ask Dr. Powell to do him a favor. He said, “Tell the class about my story and about God finding me. Tell the world about me” (adapted from “Tell the World about Me,” by John Powell, in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 1997).

We’ve been invited to see a world of possibility that is all around us. This is what the whole idea of the kingdom of heaven is all about. The kingdom of heaven isn’t a realm we enter when we die. It’s a reality we can see, experience, and live in right now,… if we believe.

The real question is: do you believe enough to see?

Amen.

Does History Get in the Way of Faith?

2009-04-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

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1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Paul! That filthy, stinking liar! What do you make of a man who would willingly dupe all of those people in Corinth, and, by extension, all of us today? He had to be a liar, right? How else would you explain his preposterous claim that Jesus, after being horrifically crucified, was resurrected? How else to explain his claim that Jesus appeared to Peter, then to the eleven apostles, then to 500 people (many of whom were alive when Paul wrote to the Corinthians), then to Jesus’ brother James, then to the eleven apostles again, and then to Paul himself? Has to be a liar, right? Human logic says so. God can’t possibly be stronger than the rules of Creation that God created when God created Creation, right? God isn’t powerful enough to overcome the laws of the universe, right?

A lot of people must think Paul lied because Jesus’ resurrection is a huuuuge sticking point for them. Many of these people have no problem with Jesus as having been a great man, mystic, or prophet, but the idea that God could overcome the laws of physics to resurrect Jesus seems ridiculous to them. I certainly used to think this way, back when I was much more mature ☺. When I went into seminary I struggled with the resurrection. I had so many doubts. It took a long time before I was able to say, “You know, I’m not sure all these people would have been such fanatical followers of Jesus if he hadn’t been resurrected. If the resurrection was false, wouldn’t he be pretty much be as well-followed today as John the Baptist is, which is to say, not at all?”

The resurrection is a problem for many. For example, a number of years ago I received an e-mail from a visitor to Calvin Church after the Easter service. I had preached on Jesus’ resurrection during the service. The person asked me, in a very polite way, whether I really believed in the resurrection. I said that I did, and I explained why. The response I got back was that the person was disappointed in me because I had seemed like such an intelligent, open-minded person. How could I then be naïve enough to believe in the resurrection? As far as he was concerned, this was a major flaw in my thinking. Suffice to say that he didn’t come back to Calvin Church after that.

So why do so many of us modern people have a problem with Jesus’ resurrection? I have a theory. Simply put, I believe that modern history and science get in the way of truth. We are very sophisticated in our thinking today, but with that sophistication comes some blinders. The main blinder is that we have a tendency to compartmentalize both our thinking and truth. What I mean by that is that we have a tendency to continually compartmentalize truth into categories, and as a result we get caught up in constant either/or thinking. You can see this everywhere in our culture. For instance, we think in rigid compartments such as:
• Republican or Democrat
• Scientific truth or religious truth
• Biology vs. chemistry vs. psychology vs. physics vs. religion
• Black or white or Hispanic or Asian or something else
• Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist
• Atheist or Religious

We’re so used to thinking in compartments that we don’t even realize how much we do it. There is a huge advantage of thinking in this way. The advantage is that it allows to separate things into categories so that we understand detail so much better. Our compartmentalization has led to huge advances in science and technology, allowing us to become world leaders in science and technology. The downside is that it has decreased our understanding of life, God, and the universe beyond the universe.

We may be more sophisticated scientifically and technologically than the people of Jesus’ day, but they were much more sophisticated than us in their ability to see life as a whole and as holy. People of Jesus’ time didn’t compartmentalize. They weren’t stuck in either/or thinking, but could maintain a both/and mindset. The temptation is to think that in their naivety they just weren’t very logical. If we think that way, we aren’t very logical. Where do you think modern, western logic was created? It was created in Greece through the writings of great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Now think about the people Paul was writing to: the Corinthians. Where was Corinth? In Greece. These people understood logical thinking. But they also understood that logic only went so far, and that there were mysteries that transcend human logic. So, for example, they weren’t caught up in seeking only historical truth, a truth based on the truth of “what happened.” When they spoke about what happened historically, they combined it with myth as a way of also showing what God was doing in history. They weren’t just seeking historical truth. They also wanted theological truth. They wanted to tell what God was doing in history. They didn’t compartmentalize. They integrated. But we are stuck in compartmentalization.

Think about some of the ways we compartmentalize today. For example, we tend to see the world as divided into the secular and the sacred. Where is the sacred? In church on Sundays, right? Where’s the secular? Everywhere else at all other times. That’s not the way people of Jesus’ day, and especially the early Christians, saw they world. They saw this world as a God-permeated world. They understood that there is no place that isn’t also bursting with the sacred.

We also tend to divide heaven from earth. We see heaven as the place of God, and the earth as the place of humans. We think that we only enter heaven when we die. That is not how the ancients saw it. They understood that we can live in the kingdom of heaven here on earth. They believed that when we live a life that is open to God in every part, we can live simultaneously on earth and in the kingdom of heaven in this life. From their perspective, there’s no separation between heaven and earth unless we cut heaven off from earth.

They also didn’t separate the ideal from the real. I hear so often people saying that religion is too idealistic, and that we have to live in real life. Neither the early Christians nor the Jews believed this. We can criticize the Sadducees and the Pharisees for a lot of things, but they did not separate the ideal from the real. They strove to bring the ideal and the real together. So did the early Christians, except in a different way. They weren’t focused on living out ideal laws in everyday life. They wanted to become open to God in everything, to let God become alive in them, so that God would allow the ideal to become real. As a result, they believed that Jesus was incarnated in everyone. They weren’t hung up on whether or not Jesus was resurrected so much as they were hung up on how to let the resurrected Christ become alive in them.

It wasn’t just the early church who believed this way. This way of seeing life has persisted throughout Christian history, but we have to constantly be reminded of this. For example, look at the words of St. Patrick’s great prayer, written in the 5th century. It conveys so much how the resurrected Christ can come alive in us today:
May Christ be with us,
Christ before us,
Christ in us,
Christ over us.
May your salvation, O Lord,
be always ours this day and forevermore….

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

If this doesn’t convey the idea of the resurrected Christ becoming alive in us, of heaven being united with the earthly, of the ideal becoming on with the real, and the sacred permeating the secular, I don’t know what does.

Patrick isn’t the only one who experienced the incarnation of the risen Christ in the world. George Ritchie also experienced this. I don’t know if you remember George Ritchie, but I’ve spoken of him before. His story is a remarkable one. Until he died in 2007, he was a prominent psychiatrist in Virginia and Alabama, gaining respect from colleagues around the country. But it was his experiences in the Army during World War II that gave him international renown. In 1941, when he was twenty years old, and a new recruit in the Army, he contracted pneumonia, which progressed to the point at which he died and was clinically dead for over twenty minutes. He had an experience in death in which he came face-to-face with Jesus, who then led him through an experience of hell, the future, and then of heaven. He wrote about these experiences in his book, Return from Tomorrow. This experience changed his life, leading him to live a life of love.

What I find really interesting about his story, and what connects with what I’m saying here, is what happened a few years later. He ended up being an Army medic in the follow-up operation to D-Day during World War II. At one point he was tending to a sergeant major named Jack, who had lost his leg by stepping on a land mine. Ritchie was amazed at how, when he visited him, Jack cared more about Ritchie than his own condition. Over the next few weeks Ritchie saw Jack caring for the other soldiers around him, even though he was hurt much worse than most of them. Ritchie also saw something strange about Jack. Jack’s face looked so familiar, but Ritchie couldn’t quite place him. Where had he seen him before? After a week or so he finally figured it out. The sergeant major seemed to have the same face as Jesus, even though their faces were completely different.

Months later Ritchie was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp to help the victims recover. He noticed one particular man, a Jew, who seemed to be in better health than the others, and who spent all his time helping the others. He discovered that this man had been in the camp longer than all the others, yet there was also something familiar about him. Again, Ritchie realized that this man, too, had the face of Jesus. Over time Ritchie discovered something else that was fascinating. If he chose to look with spiritual eyes, he could see the face of Jesus in people all around him: the concentration camp victims, the other soldiers and officers, the townspeople, and even in the German prisoners. He saw Jesus everywhere. He realized that Christ was incarnated in everyone and everything, and if he chose to look for Jesus in the faces all around him, he would see Jesus. What he discovered is very similar to something Mother Teresa used to say: that she saw the face of Jesus in the poor. She wasn’t just saying this. She meant it. She saw Jesus in the poor because she also understood what Paul was saying: Christ is everywhere. The point of all this is that we get so caught up in the question of whether or not Jesus was resurrected that we miss an even larger possibility, which is that Christ is incarnated in the world everywhere.

Let me close by opening you to possibilities this morning. Can you go beyond the more simplistic thinking to mystical thinking? We’ve all heard that Jesus died for our sins. I don’t have a problem with that belief, although I think there are other ways of understanding Jesus that take us waaaaay beyond this basic idea. Jesus not only died for our sin, but he died because of sin and forgave anyway. Jesus didn’t just die for sin. It was human sin that killed him. It was the sin of people who were religious but didn’t really want to hear God’s word and voice. So, in their sin, they killed him. And Jesus’ response: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Take a step even further. Jesus lived and was raised to break down barriers between God and us. The point of the resurrection was that God knew that there were barriers of misconception, guilt, and selfishness that separate us from God by causing us to cut God out of life. God wanted to overcome those barriers through Christ, so God broke down the barriers of sin and death through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. God showed us to that whatever barriers we think are there, they aren’t.

Go even further. Jesus was raised to let his Spirit enter and act through us. This is what we learn through the story of Pentecost. Jesus ascended into heaven and the Spirit of Christ descended into his followers. The Spirit became part of everyone who was open to it, and the Spirit still is part of us if we are open to it. The point is that Christ’s Spirit can become alive in us. Christ’s resurrection wasn’t just about forgiving sin. It was about opening us to the possibility of living with the Spirit, and letting the Spirit become alive in and through us.

Finally, Jesus was raised to unite us in body, mind, and soul with God. God wants to be united with us in everything and everyway. Jesus came to show us that way by saying that just as Christ is in us and we are in Christ, that the Father is in us and we are in the Father. There is a kind of divine union that’s possible with God.

The point is that when we get caught up in the question of the resurrection, we miss the possibility of everything else. Are you stuck in the debates, or are you able to open to what’s beyond the debates, to the truth that lives beyond history?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Thomas Merton

2009-04-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

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Psalm 46
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Psalm 131
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great
and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.

Why do so many Christians only form a deep faith after going through some sort of terrible pain, loss, or struggle? It’s a theme that I see so often throughout Christian history. I see it here at Calvin Church. For example, I look out in this congregation, and I see something very different from what most people might see by looking at our congregation. I think that some people would look around and think that everyone here has it all so together. They’d look at how you are dressed, how you stand, and how you talk, and they would conclude that this is a place for perfect people, not for those who are struggling and hurting.

When I look out at you, I see something very different. I don’t see perfect people. I see wounded people trying their best to let God in, people trying to let God lead them to better ways of living. I see people who have cancer, who suffer from depression, who are going through a divorce, or who are single parents raising children. I see people who have lost their jobs or are worried they may lose their jobs. I see people who struggle with addiction, a number of whom have gone through rehab. I see people who have children who are addicted—some who’ve gone through rehab four or five times, and others whose lives are spinning out of control leaving their parents powerless to stop the decline. I see people who have done things in their lives they are neither proud of, nor are willing to share with others. I see people whose parents have died, brothers or sisters have died, spouses have died, or children have died. I see people who struggle, but have a hope that God will lead them to better ways. I’ve pretty much described about 70% of you in my last few sentences. I see this much more as a hospital for sinners than as a country club for the perfect.

In a lot of ways you all are so much like the great Christians we’ve been talking about during Lent. For example, Benedict of Nursia, who is considered the father of the monastic movement, lived during a time in which the western Roman Empire was crumbling all around him, causing everyone to struggle in poverty. Hannah Whitall Smith wrote about faith despite the fact that her husband was a constant adulterer, leaving her to raise children by herself. John Calvin’s mother died when he was six, his father was austere and overbearing, and he was ill most of his life. Hannah Hurnard struggled with a speech impediment and other ailments most of her life. And St. Francis was imprisoned for a year in a dank cell, and suffered with tuberculosis as well as hepatitis and trachoma throughout his life. All had their struggles, and all sought God throughout their lives.

When I think about our star for today, Thomas Merton, I see a man who fits this profile of people of deep faith perfectly. And he shows us that no matter how much we struggle, we can find God if we are open enough.

Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915 to a New Zealand artist father, and an American Quaker mother. They moved to France because Merton’s father wanted his art to be inspired by the places of his favorite artists, such as Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh. Thomas Merton was bright and gifted from an early age, but he also had to struggle through a tremendously unstable childhood. Due to the outbreak of World War I in 1916, his family moved to Long Island, where he lived with his grandparents. About age six his mother died. His father then left for several years to travel throughout Europe, pursuing his art, and leaving Thomas and his younger brother, John Paul, to be raised by grandparents. You can imagine that Merton grew up feeling a bit lost.

When he was ten, his father came back to get him, and they moved to France, where Thomas lived for several years. These were inspiring years in which Thomas drank in the French joie de vivre. At age thirteen, Thomas and his father moved to London, and Thomas attended school there, quickly gaining a reputation as a bright, precocious student. Then his father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Soon afterwards, he died. Thomas was left feeling adrift.

He continued his schooling in Britain, and afterwards attended Cambridge University, one of the world’s great universities. Thomas never really settled in there. He spent as much time partying as he did studying, and after a year decided to take time off from school.

Never very religious, Thomas was pretty much an agnostic bordering on atheist. He didn’t think much about God. The seeds of change came when he spent several months in Rome, where he was exposed to some of the great churches and cathedrals. He had a special attraction to them, even if he didn’t think it was spiritual or religious. He would go into a cathedral and sit for hours, immersed in the silence and the atmosphere. He still didn’t think about God much, but he did think about the architecture and the impact it had on him, wondering why the stillness affected him so.

Soon it was decided that he would move back to the U.S. and attend Columbia University, studying literature and writing. At Columbia he had the opportunity to learn from some truly great professors, and he blossomed. It was also at this time that he secretly became a Roman Catholic. Despite his drinking and partying, he secretly attended mass every Sunday. Sometimes he would go with a hangover, but he went anyway. Then he decided to join the church, and secretly (from his friends, who were agnostics and proudly so) attended the catechism classes. Eventually he let everyone know that he had joined the church, and that the life of faith was important to him. His friends were dumbfounded. How could he, so bright and aware, be duped by the opiate of the masses? They were dumbfounded because many of them were Marxists. Merton himself became a communist for at least one party meeting. The meeting was devoted to a discussion of who didn’t attend the last meeting, and why. Merton realized that he couldn’t be a communist if this is all they cared about.

After graduation he got a job teaching literature at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, New York. While there he slowly sensed a calling to join a religious order—to become a monk or a friar. He even went so far as to approach the Franciscans at St. Bonaventure about entering the novitiate (a training program for monks-to-be). They initially accepted him. Then he got cold feet, worrying that he hadn’t come completely clean about his previous life. So he went back to the abbot and told him in detail everything about his life. You know the old joke about the man who gave his confession, and it turned the priest hair white? I think Merton’s story had that effect on the abbot. The abbot got back to Merton and told him that they no longer had space for him. Merton was crushed.

Speaking to friends, he was told about a Trappist monastery (part of the Cistercian order) in Gethsemane, Kentucky. So on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, and exactly 27 years before his death, Merton joined the Abbey of Gethsemane, becoming a novice, and then a monk.

In the monastery, Merton thrived. His abbot saw in him a unique gift for writing, and so encouraged Merton to write about his own spiritual life and insights. The first book he wrote was Seven Story Mountain, a memoir of his early life until his conversion. When it came out in the last 1940s, it changed many lives. This wasn’t the story of a saint. It was the story of an all-too-human man who lived as much of us have, yet who chose a life devoted to God. Over the course of 27 years, Merton wrote close to fifty books, many of which transformed Christianity. He was a monk who lived in silence in a small hermitage, spending his days praying, worshiping, and writing, and from a small abbey in Kentucky, Merton changed the Christian world.

During this time, churches of all denominations had become very functional. The focus had become on doing good deeds for Christ, going to church out of obligation, doing all the right things and looking like the right kind of people. Merton changed this by writing about the spiritual life—the importance of solitude, silence, prayer, personal reflection, discernment, and commitment to a life of spiritual growth. Many people have written about these things over the years, including me. But Merton was the first to really recover this focus on prayer and spirituality. He not only influenced other monks, nuns, friars, and sisters, but he influenced Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals. And he did it simply—by writing about his own personal struggles, while also sharing basic insights into life gleaned from time spent in prayer and contemplation.

Some of his greatest books are books such as The Wisdom of the Desert, Thoughts in Solitude, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Life and Holiness. He was criticized by many Protestants for being merely a “person of prayer” who wasn’t on the front lines of ministry. Yet his writings allowed those same Protestants to reconnect spiritually with God in the midst of ministries that they had pushed God out of.

Thomas Merton made his own life a spiritual laboratory of prayer, and out of that he shared with others what he had learned. Let me close out this sermon by sharing with you two of the greatest gifts he gave back to Christianity. He led Christians back to meditation and contemplative prayer.

What is meditation? For Christians it is reading scripture or spiritual writings in a slow, prayerful, reflective, and open way that opens us to what God has to say to us through them. When we meditate on a piece of writing (we can also meditate on nature, life, and events, but often Merton’s focus was on scripture) we read it slowly, and then mull it over, reflecting prayerfully on what it says to us about life, God, and ourselves. We think about what the writing means, how it calls us to change our lives, and how we are to apply these insights into our lives.

Contemplative prayer is different (it is similar to what the Buddhists call “meditation”). Contemplation means sitting in silence with God as we let go of thoughts, agendas, emotions, insights, concerns, anxieties, and everything else. We simply sit with God in openness and stillness. It is the embodiment of our passages for this morning, where we hear,
Be still, and know that I am God!...
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

Merton believed that it was in solitude and silence that we hear God most clearly. He believed that our lives developed a deeper connection with God when we stilled, calmed, and quieted our souls. What I want to do for the rest of this morning is to introduce you to some of his thoughts, and in the process lead you into meditation and contemplation. First, I want to share with you this quote, and I’d like you to meditate on it. It’s from his book, Thoughts in Solitude. Read it slowly and then spend time reflecting on what God is saying to you through it about your life:

To keep ourselves spiritually alive we must constantly renew our faith. We are like pilots of fog-bound steamers, peering into the gloom in front of us, listening for the sounds of other ships, and we can only reach our harbor if we keep alert. The spiritual life is, then, first of all a matter of keeping awake. We must not lose our sensitivity to spiritual inspirations. We must always be able to respond to the slightest warnings that speak, as though by hidden instinct, in the depth of the soul that is spiritually alive.
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Finally, I’d like you to experience a bit of contemplative prayer. Sit in a comfortable place with both feet on the floor, hands in lap, and everything else put aside. Let go of your thoughts, worries, and agendas. Let go of everything, including the need to experience God in this time. Just sit with God. Create space just to be with God and to let God in. Close out this sermon just sitting in silence, and as thoughts come, let them go. Close this sermon out just by being with God. Do it for just two minutes, and see what being still can do.

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Francis of Assisi

2009-03-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

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Matthew 6:25-34
March 29, 2009

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?” or "What will we drink?” or "What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Francis was two years away from death. He was in terrible pain and terrible health. He suffered from tuberculosis, malaria, possibly hepatitis, and he could barely see because of his trachoma—an eye infection that inflames the underside of the eyelids, causing tremendous pain and sensitivity when opened. He had devoted his life to serving God, and this was the thanks he got—to be in constant pain, an old man at only age 42. How would you respond if you were he? Would you be happy or bitter? He responded the only way he knew how. He started to write a song of praise to God.

You are probably familiar with the thoughts he wrote down, since his words were the basis of one of our best-known hymns, “All Creatures of Our God and King:”

All creatures of our God and King 
Lift up your voice and with us sing, 
Alleluia! Alleluia! 
Thou burning sun with golden beam, 
Thou silver moon with softer gleam!
O praise Him! O praise Him! 
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This famous song, which Francis called “Canticle to Brother Son,” expressed perfectly his faith. He wasn’t bitter. He was awe-struck. Despite his pain, illness, and suffering, he found joy throughout his life. His condition didn’t deter him. He was going to find God in everything, everywhere, and at every time.

When Francis died two years later, it became apparent that in twenty short years he had transformed Christianity. He died in his favorite little church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, which was only two miles from the little church where his mission all began, the church of San Damiano. After he died, thousands came to see his body, where they saw for the first time the marks that Francis had first received two years earlier, marks that he had tried desperately to hide from others—the stigmata.

Two years earlier he had awoken one morning to find holes pierced in his feet, hands, and side, just like Jesus. And these were wounds that never quite healed or went away. He was embarrassed by them, thinking that people would interpret them as signs of pride that he had given to himself to make himself seem special. To hide them he began to wear shoes rather than sandals, and wrapped bands of cloth around his hands. Soon after his death hundreds reported miracles and healings after praying in Francis’ name. Within two years, the pope, Gregory IX canonized Francis and made him saint, which was a rarity in a process that typically takes decades, generations, or even centuries to happen.

St. Francis was a remarkable man. He was born rich and strove to be poor so that he could serve the poor. He gave up life in grand house to live under the stars. He was a nobody who ended up transforming everybody, including bishops and three popes: innocent III, Honorius, & Gregory IX. He changed Christianity forever. This is not what anyone had expected of Francesco di Bernardone as a child, teen, or young adult. Let me tell you a bit about St. Francis.

Francis was born of a wealthy Italian merchant, Pietro di Bernardone and his French wife, Pica. He was born as Europe was beginning to emerge out of the Dark Ages. For almost 400 years Europe had been in a fugue. Then, as the beginnings of the Renaissance emerged, the feudal system started breaking down, and a middle class of merchants and craftsmen was emerging. Francis’ father was one of these merchants who was becoming very wealthy from the trade of cloth. The result was the Francis received one of the best educations of the time, learning to speak French and Latin, in addition to the medieval Italian and dialect of Assisi he already knew. Also, Francis was accustomed to traveling with his father around Europe purchasing fine fabrics, so he was becoming worldly for that age.

Francis was accustomed to a life of wealth. As he grew through his teenage years, he became best known for being a partier, spending much of his time drinking, playing cards, and chasing women. He was being groomed by his father to also become a cloth merchant. And Francis wasn’t half-bad at it, although his heart was only half in it.

His life changed as events in Europe changed. With the death of the emperor of Germany, who was also the emperor over most of Italy, a power vacuum arose. The small cities of Italy began to vie for power. Perugia, a small city fifteen miles from Assisi, and its traditional enemy, wanted to subdue Assisi under their authority. So the men of Assisi prepared for battle. The idea of battle for a valiant cause inspired Francis. He had heard wonderful tales of King Arthur and the knights of the round table, and Francis wanted to become one of these chivalrous knights. So off he rode to war, dressed from head-to-toe in mail-link armor, shield, sword, and adorned with a red tunic. From all accounts, Francis fought well but was eventually captured and thrown into the dungeons of Perugia, which were crafted from the dank, sewage-filled ancient catacombs of that city—a remnant of Roman times. Francis languished in prison for over a year. It was probably there that he caught tuberculosis. Normally the Perugians would have killed him along with the other captives, but his armor and tunic saved his life. The Perugians looked at its quality and realized that he was from wealth. They decided to ransom him to the Assisians, along with about fifteen other prisoners. It took almost a year to negotiate terms for their release.

When Francis was released, he was very ill, but also changed, although it took another year or more for the change in his soul to really take effect in his mind and body. On the outside he looked like he always had, and he acted like he always had, but away from everyone else he cultivated a secret life of devotion to God. It started with prayer. He began to pray, and even secreted away to some caves on Mt. Subasio, outside of Assisi, where, in solitude and silence, he sought God’s guidance.

Also, his attitude toward the poor, and especially toward lepers, changed. He had always feared the poor and been repulsed by lepers. The lepers of his day were secluded and were forced to wear gray rags from head-to-toe. When they begged, they could not come within 20 feet of another person, and would have to leave their bowls on the ground and step away. In addition, if they were traveling, they had to carry wooden clappers to clap as they walked, warning others that lepers were approaching. Francis was revolted at the sight of them, yet he now became fascinated with them.

On a particular trip to Rome, he decided that he wanted to know what it was like to be poor. So he traded clothes with a beggar, and spent three days in Rome begging on the street. When he returned home, he secretly took money and food and gave it to the lepers. Also, he spent time visiting a small, run-down church in the hills named San Damiano.

Still, on the outside Francis looked and acted like the old Francis. He was still the life of the party, dressed in fine clothes, surrounded by men and women. When another battle was ready to be waged between Assisi and Perugia, Francis signed on. On the eve of battle, Francis heard God’s voice in a dream saying to him, “Re-build my church.” He thought the voice was referring to San Damiano, so he promised to give to the church when he returned. The day the army was to set out, Francis heard the voice again while he was awake, asking him which is more important to serve, the master or the servant. Francis responded, “the master.” The voice responded, “Then why do you go out to serve the servants.” Francis interpreted this to mean that he was not to go battle, but was rebuild the church of San Damiano.

A few weeks later, while his father was traveling, Francis stole the inventory of cloth from his father’s warehouse, sold it, and took the gold to the priest of San Damiano. The priest didn’t trust that Francis was serious, so he refused the gold. Francis, not knowing what else to do, threw the sack of gold up onto a high windowsill, where it remained for months.

When his father returned, he was furious, and demanded that Francis return the money. Francis refused. His father then locked him into the basement for a month or more. His mother finally released him, and Francis returned to San Damiano to continue working on the church. Pietro, looking for help to recover his money and drive sense into his son, went to the local bishop, Bishop Guido (bishops at the time also had the authority act as judges where church and local issues intersected), asking for a trial to get his son to return the gold. Francis showed up for the trial and did something startling. He walked into the courtyard naked, put down his clothes in a pile before the bishop, placed the sack of gold atop it, and declared that he was no longer Francis, child of Pietro de Bernardone, but Francis, child of God. Despite the crowd’s shock, the bishop sensed that he was witnessing something special. He decided at that moment to support Francis in whatever he was planning to do. He recognized that this young man had become a man of deep faith and willingness to serve God.

From that moment onward, Francis lived life as a beggar. He begged each day for his food, trusting in God’s providence for his life. He devoted himself to the work of rebuilding the church of San Damiano. He also began to preach about God’s presence and love in the world. There was something different, something authentic, about Francis’ preaching. He not only preached a simple faith of trust in God and God’s love in the world, but he used everyday examples culled from everyday life. People felt like they were really hearing God’s word when Francis spoke.

Soon others were coming to him, asking if they could join him. Some were his partying friends, recognizing a call in their lives to join Francis, ome were strangers. Francis and his followers completed their work on San Damiano, and set about rebuilding another church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, about two miles away. In the meantime, Francis also dedicated himself to a ministry of caring for lepers, not only finding food for them, but tending to their wounds.

Slowly Francis’ fame spread. More and more men asked to be his followers, and even women approached him about starting an order based on his ministry. Francis approached the bishop and the pope, and asked if he could start an order based on his vision of living according to God’s providence and caring for the poor. He was granted permission, and so he created an order of friars for men, sisters for the women (under the guidance of Clare, who eventually became St. Clare of Assisi after her death), and a lay order for those committed to work and family life, but seeking to contribute to the work of Francis and his followers.

Francis lived a life of miracles. For example, there is a report that Francis, when dealing with a leper who had lost all hope in God, took water filled with herbs, and bathed the hands and body of the leper, while kissing the leper all over. Afterwards, the leper’s hands, feet, and face healed, and the disease no longer spread throughout his body. Francis is also said to have been able to talk with animals, especially birds, who followed him as he travelled. It is also said that at his death, a particular raven, which had become Francis’ companion, had followed the procession of Francis’ dead body from Santa Maria degli Angeli to San Damiano, before dying itself.

Francis was a man of peace, who believed that God wanted peace among all people. Thus, Francis sought to be a knight of peace, substituting faith for fighting. For instance, while Francis remained captivated with the vision of the Crusades his whole life, he sought a new Crusade of peace. Looking historically at his age, he was born around the time that Jerusalem fell back into the hands of the Muslims. Early in the 12th century, the Christians had captured the Holy Lands and held onto it for about eighty years. Then the Muslim sultan, Saladin, recaptured the Holy Lands. After he died, his brother, Al-Kamil, became sultan and ruler of the Muslim empire gathered under Saladin.

During the fifth Crusade of 1221,in which the Christians tried to recapture the Holy Lands through Egypt, Francis felt the call to join the forces. Being God’s knight, he believed in the power of conversion, and that he was called to convert the sultan of the Muslims, Al-Kamil. Francis landed in Egypt, joining the troops as they laid siege to the Egyptian city of Damietta, a city in the Nile Delta.

Francis tended to the hurt, sick, and wounded, and when the Crusader army suffered a massive defeat, saw his opportunity to convert the sultan. Accompanied by one of his followers, he walked out of the Crusader camp, across the battlefield, and toward the Muslim camp. He was immediately captured and almost killed on the spot. Looking at him more closely, the soldiers finally concluded that a man so simple, so prayerful, and so filthy was no threat to the Muslim army. They took him to Al-Kamil. For three days, Al-Kamil spoke with Francis, and even summoned his own theologians to engage in talks. Apparently he was much taken with Francis, and told Francis that he was inspired by his apparent holiness and faith. He also told Francis that despite Francis’ inspiring talk, that he could not become a Christian because he would lose both is position as sultan and his life. Francis was returned to the Crusader camp, but before he was, Al-Kamir gave Francis the right to walk through any Muslim lands to preach, without threat of beating, imprisonment, or execution.

After wandering the Holy Lands for a while, Francis returned to Assisi, where he returned to his ministry to the poor and sick. By this time Francis himself was terribly sick, and the tachoma, the disease of the eye that he probably got while in Egypt, progressed to the point that he could hardly see. Still, his infirmity did not prevent him from ministering. He became an inspired example not only for the Christians of his time, but even for us today. Francis helped Christianity recover its core and foundation of love of God and of God’s creation, the need to care for the poor and hurting, and the need to serve God in everything.

So what was it, specifically, that Francis emphasized. First, Francis rejected materialism, and emphasized a concern for the poor and creation. I’m not sure how Francis would consider our culture today. He would certainly look at our excesses and ask why we cared so little for the poor and the environment. Francis believed that we should care for all creation: animals, plants, and people. He did not see a distinction between them. He believed that God had blessed us all, and that we had an obligation to return thanks to God by caring for all creation.

Second, Francis believed in constant prayer, faith, and humility. He believed that God created us for a relationship with God, and that relationship of love could only be manifested through out constant prayer, willingness to act in faith in everything, and a humility that recognized the greatness of God and the smallness of us.

Finally, Francis believed that we all had a constant calling to restore the church, and the primacy of faith, to life. He believed that neglect of faith and the church destroyed the soul of the individual and of the world. He saw faith and worship as intricately linked. I believe that he would look at those today who say that they are spiritual but not religious as fooling themselves. He would say that a spirituality that is not practiced in worship and a community is self-indulgent and selfish. He believed that a thriving church could give rise to a thriving faith, and that at thriving faith could give rise to a thriving church.

Few people have had the impact Francis had in such a short life. Francis influenced thousands to put God first in an age of growing materialism. He restored the emphasis on concern for the poor by becoming poor. He restored an emphasis on prayer and service by living a life of prayer and service.

The question I’d like to leave you with is this: what can you learn from the life of St. Francis?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Hannah Hurnard

2009-03-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Listen to the Audio Version

Matthew 10:26-31
March 22, 2009

So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

I want to introduce you this morning to a woman who is, perhaps, one of the greatest Christians you’ve never heard of. As you know, during this season of Lent we have been offering a series on the “stars” of Christian faith. We’ve focused on stars such as Benedict of Nursia, considered the father of the monastic movement, Hannah Whitall Smith, a 19th century Quaker, and John Calvin, whom you should have heard of.

This morning I want to focus on a woman who came out of nowhere in the 1950s to write a book that has transformed millions. Her book, Hinds’ Feet on High Places, was The Shack of her age. If you haven’t heard of The Shack, it is a wonderful book that teaches about faith through the conversations between a broken man and God. The author of that book, William Young, came out of nowhere, as did Hannah Hurnard.

Looking at Hannah’s life, no one would have expected her to write a great book, especially a Christian one. You see, early in her life she struggled with Christianity and Christian faith. She was born in England in the beginning of the 20th century to Quaker parents. She grew up with a lot of phobias, as well as a stammer that embarrassed her throughout her life. Her parents had a strong faith, and were very active in their church, often going to worship services all day Sunday, as well as in mid-week. Hannah went to services with her, but she just didn’t feel the passion that others around her did. She was their fervor, and wished she had it, too, but she struggled with her faith.

Her struggles culminated in a long-lasting experience when she was 19. There was a weeklong revival taking place in the town of Keswick, and Hannah’s father wanted to spend all day, everyday, at the revival. Hannah just couldn’t stand the idea of doing nothing but church, all day, everyday. Church did nothing for her. She didn’t experience God in her life, and so worship had no impact. So she begged her father to not make her join them in the revival. Instead, her father negotiated an agreement: she would join him for worship in the morning and evening, and spend the rest of her day on her own.

Unexpectedly, she encountered God. Sitting in worship on evening, she kept looking at the fervor that others had in worship, and noticed the dullness she felt inside of herself. That bothered her because she felt like she was missing something. So she prayed to God that God would open her up to an experience of God. She went home, and not knowing the Bible at all, or where to start, she opened it at random and started reading. The story she read was of Elijah making a sacrifice to God on Mt. Horeb. Hannah realized that God was calling on her to sacrifice her heart, mind, and soul to God. And so she made a sacrifice, giving her hear to God, even if she didn’t know what that meant.

After doing so, she felt the first real sense of peace in her life. She felt called to reach out to others like her, to reach others who were afraid. So she committed her life to God. In 1932 she moved to what would become Israel, and was a missionary to the Jews for fifty years. Then, in 1955, she published her groundbreaking book about the transformation of faith that can lead us from being “much-afraid” of everything and living in fear, to becoming a person of faith who can do anything God calls us to do. The book was based on her experiences of transformation. What I want to do this morning is to share with you the story she wrote, which is about the transformation of the main character, Much-Afraid.

The story is an allegory. What that means is that it is written much like a fairy tale, with simple characters and a simple plot, but everything in it represents aspects of real life that are very complex—aspects that are so complex that they are hard to talk about in a more straightforward way. The fact that it is an allegory causes many people to miss the whole point of the story when they read it. It takes a willingness to look beyond the apparent to understand the power of allegories. Allegories require that people spend time reflecting deeply about what they’ve read. Unfortunately, we are in far too much of a hurry to read slowly. But if we do read slowly, it’s amazing what we can discover and discern.

The story begins with Much-Afraid, who lives in the Valley of Humiliation. This is a very real valley of life where people interact in ways that leave them feeling hurt by others. Much-Afraid feels very hurt in her life. Physically she is plagued by a crippled walk and speech impediment, both of which represent our own weak-kneed faith and sin. Much-afraid is like us. She lives her life in fear, worrying about the future, about the past, about what others think of her, and about the bad things that are always ready to tear her pitiful life apart. She is a member of the Fearing family, which represents the family of fears that always plagues us. Among those in her family are Craven Fear, Coward, Gloomy, Self-Pity, Pride, and Self-Loathing, all emotions that plague us. She is due to wed Craven Fear, and she knows that once she does she will live in the grips of fear for the rest of her life. How much is she like us? We all live in constant fear, even if it is a fear that we push aside. We are afraid of the future, of the economy, of our co-workers, our bosses, our families, of conflict, failure, and so much more. We are members of the family of Fearings.

What Much-Afraid wants more than anything else in life is to strike up enough courage to follow the Great Shepherd, who is Jesus, to the High Places where she can be transformed. The High Places stand for God’s kingdom, and inherent in it is the idea that when we truly begin living in God’s kingdom, it has the power to transform us, to reshape us so that we become people of love and grace. The High Places are the place of transformation, yet as much as she wants to go there, she is afraid. What if she follows and the Shepherd lets her down? What if she follows and good things don’t happen? How often have we asked similar questions? What if we commit our lives to God and God doesn’t come through?

She goes into a deep personal struggle with herself and her family. What should she do? Finally she does decide to set out to the High Places, trusting that the Good Shepherd will take care of her. But to do so she must undergo a mighty struggle between the pull of fear and faith. This is the spiritual struggle each and every one of us has in life. Will we give our lives to God in faith, or will we let our fear of the future, of God, of being disappointed, and of being considered weird pull us away from God? Much-Afraid decides to go in faith, but her faith is weak. She could pull way and go back to her Fearing family at a moment’s notice. Again, we are like that. Even when we act in faith, fear stalks us.

After a struggle with her family, who threaten to tie her up and force her to marry Craven Fear, she escapes and meets the Good Shepherd (Jesus). She has lots of expectations of the journey. Like many of us with an immature faith, we expect that the path the Shepherd leads us on will be easy. Many of us believe that the path of Christ should be a pleasurable one. Why not? We’ve given God our life? We believe in God, so shouldn’t God reward us by making life easier? That’s the way Much-Afraid thinks. She expects her life to get easier immediately. She imagines that now that she has committed herself to the Great Shepherd, all her problems will go away. The truth is that the path of spiritual transformation is difficult, and it never goes as we expect it to go. She expects an easy path from that moment on, but she is in for a surprise.

If we had written the book, I’m sure many of us would have a definite idea of where the path should lead. Perhaps she would be led to a pleasant path through meadows. Perhaps we would give her a nice, easy path with a gradual climb. Best of all, we might give her a path that leads to a tram, which would whisk her quickly to the top. That’s what we would script for ourselves. That’s not the path the Shepherd has for her or us.

While she can see clearly the straight path to the top, the Good Shepherd tells her that she must take the path to the left, which leads straight into a desert. Much-Afraid is crushed. That’s not right! How could God lead her into a desert? There must be some mistake. The Good Shepherd assures her that it is no mistake. The desert isn’t just a place in this book. The Bible constantly talks about the desert. In fact, most of the great figures of the Bible are led into the desert: Abraham, Isaac, Moses, the Israelites, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul. The desert is a mystical place in the Bible where we learn lessons we cannot learn anywhere else. The desert is also highly symbolic of life, of those times where we feel dry and lifeless, where we struggle to find joy, where life is difficult. But the desert also is full of transforming lessons. What do we learn in our deserts, in the experiences of life where we struggle and God seems absent?

First we learn that faith blooms in the desert and dies in a garden. This is almost always true. The people with the weakest faith are often the people with the easiest lives. The people with the deepest faith are often the ones who have gone through severe difficulties in life and have learned to trust in God despite these difficulties. Also, in the desert we learn to let go of stuff that doesn’t matter. We learn to trust God. We learn what’s important and what isn’t. When we live our lives in gardens, we learn to take everything for granted. Take time to reflect right now: what have your deserts been, and what did you learn in them?

Next, the Shepherd leads her out of the desert and onto Lonely Shores by the sea. This is a gloomy, rocky place where she is left alone to struggle with her feelings of loneliness and self-pity. Much-Afraid discovers that there is much to learn as we grapple with loneliness. First, we learn that we have to overcome self-pity if we are to grow spiritually. So many of us, when we struggle, pity ourselves. But when we are immersed in self-pity we also lose sight of God. Spiritually deep people learn that it is okay to be alone, because in solitude we learn who we area. We learn how not to be defined by other people. We learn that we become stronger in solitude, both in faith and in the ability to handle life’s turmoil. Again, take time to reflect: what have you learned in your struggles with loneliness?

Soon she is led out of the desert and away from the shores, and she is led to stand beneath sheer cliffs, which she is told she must climb. Looking at the cliff, and at her infirmities, she breaks down crying. How could she possibly overcome that obstacle? How could she, as crippled and disfigured as she was, possibly overcome that? Again, fear grips her. She has to struggle with her fear of what might be, and decide between faith and fear. When she finally decides to trust in the Shepherd. When she does, she is shown a path up the cliffs that she never saw on her own. Also, she is tied by a rope to companions who help her, pulling her forward and upward whenever she feels week. The climb is difficult, but not anything like what she anticipated. Soon she overcomes the cliff because of her trust in the Shepherd. Again, she learns lessons from her experiences.

For example, she learns that we cannot overcome steep obstacles by ourselves. But to discover this we have to overcome our fear of failure and of pain. When we accept God’s help, we can overcome anything. The question for you to reflect on is, are you willing to rely on God to overcome insurmountable obstacles?

Getting to the top of the cliff, she finds herself in a thick forest shrouded in fog. The path before her is obscured. In addition, there are storms along the way that scare her. Much of her time is spent sitting in a small cabin in the woods, dealing with boredom, but in the midst of it she finds comfort. Walking along the path, a path like the path of our own lives, which is unknowable, she learns trust. She learns the same lessons we have to learn if we are truly to follow Christ in our life path.

She learns what we learn in our shrouded forests, when we have to walk forward, not knowing what path lays ahead. She learns that we can’t always see that path ahead of us, no matter how much we might pray for clarity. She learns that we have to struggle with uncertainty and ambiguity in the spiritual life. Spiritually immature people think that growing spiritually means becoming more certain about God, life, and our place in it. Actually, growing spiritually often means we simply become more accustomed and comfortable with the ambiguities of life. She learns that we have to struggle with resentment and learn patience. Often we resent God for not making our paths clearer, for not giving us signs. The problem isn’t with God. It’s with us. We are so impatient. The question I’d like you to reflect on is, when your path in life is uncertain, are you willing to be patient and trust God?

Finally, Much-Afraid comes closer to the High Places. She can see them clearly now. She feels like she is finally out of the mists and deserts and shores. But then the Good Shepherd does something unexpected. Instead of sending her straight up, he points to a valley and tells her that the path leads through the valley. Much-Afraid is furious. How can he do this when she is so close? Is he just tormenting her on purpose? Is this all just a cruel joke? Once again she is forced to make a decision of faith—will she trust in the Shepherd, even though it seems like she is being led once again away from the High Places. He decides to trust and follow, and in the Valley she learns again.

She learns that even when we are following God, we may face troubles and difficulties. We may end up in depths of valleys of grief and pain. Just because we follow God doesn’t mean that life will be easy. People close to us will still die. We will still get ill. We may lose a job or get divorced. We may struggle with depression. Following God doesn’t take this stuff away, but it can transform it if we trust in God even though we walk through the darkest valleys. When you face loss in your life, are you willing to trust God to lead and heal you?

Her journey is nearer to the end than she believes. After coming out of the Valley, she is led to an altar, where the Shepherd tells her she is to sacrifice her false self, her fear, her Much-Afraid-ness, to him. She is afraid of the pain the altar entails, but she does it anyway, and the result is that she becomes transformed. She learns the paradox of Christ, which is that if we are willing to lose our lives, we save our lives. The question for you is, are you willing to sacrifice what you hold dear so that you can become someone much better, someone much greater, in God’s way?

She is transformed, and finally makes it to the High Places. And it is a wonderful place. She can see life from God’s perspective. She understands everything now. And she is given a new name: Grace and Glory. She is no longer crippled, but now has the feet of a deer that can jump from place to place with grace. She speaks clearly, especially about God and God’s love (this is a reference to Hannah Hurnard’s experience, who found that when she read from the Bible aloud, or spoke to people about God, she no longer had a stammer). She is transformed in ways that we would never expect, in ways that are even more wonderful than she imagined.

She also learns something important about making it to the High Places, about living in God’s kingdom. She learns that to live in the High Places means to leave them and to return to the Valley of Humiliation to serve the Shepherd. What this means for us is that the more we are willing to grow spiritually, the more we are called by God to share God’s love with a world stuck in pain. We become humble and learn that it’s what God wants that matters. And we learn God’s song, which is sung by water in the book. To be more precise, Grace and Glory notices that as the water flows from the springs on the mountaintops, and flows over massive waterfalls, rushing to the valleys below, it sings a song. Here’s what the water sings:

From the heights we leap and flow,
to the valleys down below.
Always answering to the call,
to the lowest place of all.

The lesson of the water is that the higher we go, the lower we are called to serve. She is sent back to serve those who are as she was: Much-Afraid. The question I want you to reflect on is this: are you willing to strive for a high spiritual life that leads you to live a life of serving others?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: John Calvin

2009-03-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Romans 9:16-26

So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call "my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call "beloved.' "And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people,' there they shall be called children of the living God."

Have you ever wondered why we are called “Calvin” Presbyterian Church? According to what I read in our records, we were given the name in the late 1950s. Before then we were the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church. We were given the name because in the 1950s we had a reunion of two Presbyterian denominations, which then put our church and Park Presbyterian Church in the same denomination. That meant we couldn’t be the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church, since there was another Presbyterian church in our denomination several blocks away. So the presbytery gave us a new name, and, voilá, we became Calvin United Presbyterian Church. When we had a reunion again of two more Presbyterian denominations in 1983, we became Calvin Presbyterian Church (USA).

Now, what you don’t know is that our name has bugged our music/youth director, Bruce Smith, for some time now ☺. He has told me repeatedly that we should not be named after dead white men. Of course, after I preached this sermon one of our members told me that perhaps we could wait 50 years and rename it the David Bruce Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church☺☺! At any rate, Bruce has lobbied hard to rename the church after our qualities, rather than after John Calvin.

I don’t us to debate Bruce’s thoughts this morning, but I did think that it might be worthwhile to talk about who this man is that we are named after. We are named after John Calvin. So, what was so special about him? You’ve heard of him, but do you know what he did and why he is so revered among Presbyterians and millions of others who are part of the Reformed tradition? In truth, learning about Calvin will tell you a lot about who we are and why we are the way we are.

Calvin is important because his ideas shaped much of the “Reformed” movement, which was a Christian movement begun in Switzerland in the middle of the 16th century, and that spread throughout the world. You probably don’t realize how many denominations emerged out of the Reformed movement. All Presbyterian churches are Reformed, as are churches that are part of the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church of America, the Christian Reformed Church, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the non-denominational evangelical movement, and so many more. The numbers of Reformed Christians worldwide rivals the Roman Catholic Church.

John Calvin was born in France in 1509, and his name was originally Jean Cauvin. He later Germanized the name to John Calvin after moving to Geneva, Switzerland. We tend to think of him as a contemporary of Martin Luther, the great German reformer, but he never actually met him and was 26 years younger. In many ways, Calvin was part of a second wave of reformers.

As a young boy his father wanted him to become a priest. His mother died when he was six years old, and so he grew up with a very strict and domineering father. Calvin became a chaplain in the cathedral of Noyon, France when he was around 13. That sounds awful young to us today, but when the life expectancy is only around 40, 13 doesn’t seem so old. As a chaplain he mainly did small tasks during the mass, but it also made him something of a semi-priest. In his late teens his father sent him to both the University of Paris and the University of Orleans so that he could study theology. As the reformation movement grew, and as things became much less stable in France in the religious world, Calvin’s father decided that his son should study law, not theology. Calvin, though, loved theology much more then law, and was especially taken with reading the Bible. His law studies helped him to develop a very disciplined and logical mind, which you can see reflected in his Institutes of Christian Religion, a massive volume that discussed everything from sin to grace to predestination to the structure of the church. Despite being trained as a lawyer, Calvin remained a theologian, even publishing theological books as a student.

Eventually, in the late 1520s, he quietly declared himself to be a Protestant, and decided to leave France. France had become a dangerous place for Protestants. Unlike Germany, where the king protected Protestants, or Switzerland, where the city-states of Geneva, Bern, Basel, and Zurich had declared themselves independent of the Roman Catholic Church, the king of France had instituted harsh repressions of Protestant activity, including the translation of the Bible into French. Violators could be persecuted, imprisoned, beaten, or even executed. Calvin set out to go to the city of Strasbourg, where he sensed there would be great openness to his ideas, but French soldiers blocked the way. Instead, he went to Geneva, a city of 10,000 on the end of Lake Geneva and near the border with France.

Calvin hated Geneva, and for the most part Geneva hated him. Having been ordained as a chaplain in France, it was logical for him to become a pastor, especially when you take into account his theological and biblical backgrounds. So Calvin became a pastor in Geneva, but it didn’t take long for Calvin to wear out his welcome. Calvin had very strong opinions, especially in writing. Face-to-face he was very accommodating, but in print and preaching he could be personally critical of those with whom he disagreed. The issue that tore apart his relationship with the Genevans had to do with communion. Calvin was adamant that communion should be celebrated every Sunday, and whenever the Word of God was preached. He believed that the tendency of the Swiss to have communion only periodically both went against scripture, and was done only because they saw weekly communion as “too Romish,” or too Catholic. Calvin didn’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, meaning that not everything the Roman Catholic Church did was to be considered evil. So he argued vociferously for weekly communion. The Genevans, in response, made life difficult for him as they criticized his preaching, theology, and personal habits.

Three years later he gladly accepted an invitation by the church in Strasbourg to become a pastor there. It was in Strasbourg that Calvin found an audience for his ideas. He was warmly accepted, and their acceptance of his ideas caused Christian reformers in Switzerland, Germany, and France to take notice. After three years there, the church in Geneva decided that all was forgiven, and asked him to return. Calvin was reluctant, but to him following God’s calling was much more important than doing only what he wanted. So he returned. He never quite fell in love with the Genevans, but he spent the rest of his life there. It was from Geneva that his fame really spread, and he influenced millions through his writings.

So what were the ideas that Calvin cared about, and that became central to his theology and faith—that became central to our theology and faith? Calvin had very definite opinions about church life and how the church should be structured. While I certainly could offer more detail on his ideas, his ideas about church life could be split into seven different areas.

First, Calvin believed strongly that the Roman Catholic Church of the time was no longer grounded in scripture and had substituted a thousand years of human tradition for it. He believed that in scripture, and especially in Paul’s letters, we can find clear guidance on how the church should be structured and what it should believe. For instance, he believed that everybody should have the right to read scripture for him- or herself, while the Catholic Church restricted that right for clergy and those in religious orders, and banned the translation of the Bible into common languages. Calvin also believed that the church had stopped being grounded in scripture, which is Divine authority, and had been ruled too much by the pope and the College of Cardinals, which were a human authority.

Second, he believed that the church needed to get back to being grounded in God’s Word. This sounds a lot like number one, but it’s a bit different. He believed that scripture, not the teachings of the church, should guide everyday life. He saw the Catholic Church’s teachings as being overly concerned with the preservation of the institution than with guiding people to God.

Third, he believed in equality between the clergy and the laity, and that the church should be a democracy, GROUNDED IN SCRIPTURE AND THE SPIRIT, in which clergy and laity lead people to live in God’s grace. So, he did not believe in a hierarchy in which popes, bishops, and clergy were above laity. He believed that clergy and laity were equal in faith, but that we had different tasks. Laity were to lead the church in practical matters. Clergy should lead the church in spiritual matters. And the two should work together to bring together the spiritual and the practical in the life of the church and daily life.

Fourth, he believed that the church should be a l’escole de Dieu, or a “school of God.” He saw that as being the church’s primary function, even through worship. He believed that religious, theological, and spiritual learning was a lifelong task, and that whenever a person says, “I’ve made it so I don’t need to learn anymore,” he or she is simply wrong. He did not believe that what we learn in church saves us. Salvation was in God’s hands. He believed that because we are saved, we should respond to God’s love and grace by learning all we can in order to draw closer to Christ , become more open to the Spirit, and discover how to serve God in life. If he were alive today, and witnessed so many people who believe themselves to be spiritual but not religious, he would probably be perplexed. He would wonder how people could expect to be self-taught in spiritual matters in much the way we would be perplexed with a person who claims to be the equivalent of a college graduate despite being self-taught. His question would be, “How do you learn about God without a place that teaches about God?”

The result of point number four leads to his beliefs about point number five, which is that pastors are primarily teachers and preachers, and pastoral visits should be focused on restoring people to a right relationship to God. You can see this belief reflected in the robe I wear each Sunday morning. My robe isn’t a liturgical robe like priests wear in the Roman Catholic or Episcopal traditions. It is an academic robe, much like what your professors in college wore on your graduation day. In fact, the three stripes on the sleeve of my robe are “doctor stripes,” which say that I’m a doctor. To be a doctor literally means to be a “teacher.” So my role, at its core, is to teach you. My task, according to Calvin, is to spend my days learning so that I can teach.

Sixth, Calvin believed in ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. Knowing that you don’t read Latin, let me translate: “the church reformed, always being reformed.” He believed that the church of his time had been transformed and reformed beyond the Roman Catholic Church, but that as Christians we have to always be open to continual reformation. In other words, there’s never a point at which the church is in the “right” place. It needs to adapt, change, and be transformed and reformed in light of cultural and historical changes. What does that mean on a practical level? It means that as a church we always have to change and adapt to how our culture changes. It’s the reason why Calvin Church has changed so much over the years. When we adapt what we do, we are literally following Calvin and becoming Calvin’s Presbyterian Church.

Finally, he believed that worship should revolve around teaching scripture and leading people to live lives in which they respond to God’s Word in every part of life. In other words, there’s a reason why I try, when I preach, to stay with what the passage for the day says, rather than just saying whatever I want. It is in being grounded in scripture that we become sure we aren’t just creating our own religious beliefs.

So, on a personal level, why should Calvin matter to us 500 years later? What does he have to teach us on a personal level, beyond what he says about church? There are four basic lessons we can get from Calvin that havve to do with how we live our lives:

Life is a labyrinth, and only God can lead us out. Calvin believed that life is incredibly confusing and complex, and that when we live it alone in our own way, we get lost. When we get lost, only Christ and the Spirit can lead us out. The answer to life’s labyrinth is to become open to God in everything so that God can lead us to live the right ways. Through a combination of prayer, scripture reading, and worship, we can discern God’s guidance and calling in life, and they can lead us to the right kind of life. Calvin believed that too many people ignore God, and it’s for that reason that their lives fall apart.
We need to give our hearts promptly and sincerely to God. Calvin believed that the way out of the labyrinth started with giving our hearts completely to God. This concept, which is so difficult to explain, was so central to Calvin that he drew a symbol for it and made this symbol his personal seal. You can see an example of it on the cover of this sermon, along with more contemporary versions.
Knowledge and experience of God go together. Calvin believed that the person who didn’t care about learning about God could not experience God. A disciplined program of learning, that includes reading scripture daily, is central to learning about God, discovering where God is working in life, and learning how to serve God. But Calvin didn’t just believe that scripture alone could teach us. We needed to read anything that teaches us about God (within limits) because that learning leads us to experience God, and we need to learn from people who know God.
We need to trust completely in God’s grace and mercy. I think that if Calvin were alive today, he would be confused by the question so many evangelical Christians ask others, which is “Are you saved?” He didn’t believe we could know for sure whether or not we are saved. Instead, he believed it’s all up to God, and our task in life is to simply trust in God’s goodness, grace, and mercy. He believed that God was a good God, and that God makes decisions based on love, so we don’t need to fear whether or not we are saved. Instead, we are to trust that we are saved, and to live our lives in response to God’s grace. As the apostle Paul said in our passage for this morning, “So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”

So, as we close on Calvin, let me pose four questions for you from John Calvin—questions that, depending on how you answer them, may determine how well you live your life:
1. To what extent do you let the Spirit and Christ lead you in life?
2. Have you given your heart to God?
3. How committed are you to learning about God?
4. To what extent do you trust God?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Benedict of Nursia

2009-03-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Listen to the Audio Version

Matthew 7:24-27

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!"

It’s too bad that most of us aren’t more into history. I used to find history to be a very boring subject, but in my adulthood I’ve found that history is incredibly helpful not only in terms of understanding the people of long ago, but also in understanding ourselves today. Much like a counselor looks into our past to understand our present, understanding history helps us to look into the past to both understand why we are the way we are. At the same time, it helps us to see what we may have lost in the process of becoming who we are.

During Lent, we will be doing a sermon series that digs into our Christian past to look at the history of Christian faith through the eyes of some of the greatest Christians of history. We are calling this series, Stars of the Faith. We want to really emphasize what great Christians of our past have to teach us about living lives of faith in the present.

The first star I want to focus on today is one whom I’m sure most of us have forgotten: Benedict of Nursia. We come by our memory lapse about Benedict honestly. As Protestants, I’m not sure that most people recognize Benedict’s greatness because his greatness lies in the fact that he started a movement that most of us see as either outmoded or irrelevant to modern Protestant faith. You see, Benedict is seen as the father of the monastic movement, and we Protestants don’t have much use for monastic life. We mostly see monks, nuns, and friars in one of two ways. Either we see them as being incredibly special, able to reach spiritual heights we can’t because we are too normal, or as being incredibly misguided, following a path that’s disconnected from real life. I think that if we take either view, we miss what Benedict has to teach us about faith and life.

To begin to understand Benedict, we have to start with Benedict’s times. Benedict was born in the small town of Nursia, which is about 100 miles east of Rome. He was born in 480, A.D., four years after the date that many people consider to be the “fall” of the Roman Empire, although to say that the Roman Empire ever “fell” is not quite true. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476, but the Eastern Roman Empire never really “fell.” It sort of merged in the 15th century into the Ottoman Empire when the whole region became Muslim and the last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, gave up the city of Constantinople. In 476, though, the last western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, gave up Rome to the Ostragoths, who were a Germanic tribe that attacked from the north. The whole period of the 4th and 5th centuries pretty much were a history of one Germanic tribe after another attacking the Italian peninsula and Rome. Many of the names we give to bad people today come from the names of those tribes, such as the Bar Bars (Barbarians), Huns, Vandals, Goths, and others.

During these times, the economy of the western Roman Empire plunged into disarray. Some people became incredibly rich, but many slipped into constant and abject poverty. In fact, the continual attacking of Rome and the Italian peninsula by the Franks and Gauls, into the 6th and 7th centuries, led Europe into the Dark Ages. Poverty gripped the region, and life expectancies plummeted. Benedict was born into the midst of that.

His father was wealthy, and being wealthy he sent Benedict to a school in Rome to be educated. What Benedict learned did not lead him to live a life of wealth. While in Rome he saw the ravages of a declining land. He saw moral standards fall apart as greed, lust, gambling, and selfishness took over. Having had enough of it, he renounced his own wealth and decided to become a Christian hermit, which was a growing movement at the time. He moved to the region of Subiaco, 60 miles to the east of Rome, and there moved into a cave, where he lived for three years as a hermit. He spent his time disciplining his life and devoting his days to prayer and the search for wisdom. He was actually following an old Christian tradition that started several centuries earlier in the deserts of Egypt, as hermits went into the desert, imitating Christ’s 40 days in the desert, to wrestle with their demons and to learn wisdom. Benedict wanted to be purged of his demons.

Over time, people discovered Benedict and began to seek him out for his wisdom. Eventually several of them approached him and asked him if he would start a monastery for them. Benedict reluctantly did so, but after a year the monks hated it and him. After years of living an austere life, he was too harsh on them. They had sought a life of prayer and wisdom. He gave them a life of austerity much like his own. The legend, which probably isn’t true, is that they tried to poison his wine in order to get rid of him, but when he said a prayer of blessing over it, the jug shattered, exposing their plan. At any rate, Benedict was happy to be free of the monastic life to return to life as a hermit. It didn’t last long.

Eventually others asked him to start another monastery, and having learned from his past experiences, he did so in a new way. The first monastery he built was at Monte Cassino, which still exists today, despite having been partly demolished during World War II at the Battle of Monte Cassino. From there he started eleven other monasteries. After his death, the movement he spawned continued, and several centuries later the Roman Catholic Church created the Benedictine Order.

So why should we care about all this? The history is mildly interesting, but how does this impact modern Christian life? Benedict matters because of what he can teach us. What made Benedict unique is that he did something for his monasteries that no abbot or leader did before him. He created a detailed rule that guided the details of the monastic life. Before him, monasteries took on the personalities of their leaders. They could be austere or opulent. They could be places of purity or corruption. Benedict wrote down 73 rules to guide monastic life. Looking at them, they are very detailed in some ways. But their impact is that they gave structure to monastic living, a structure that has helped monks and Christians for centuries to grow closer to God.

The Rule revolved around four basic issues: worship, prayer, commitment, and community. Benedict wanted the monks to have regular times of worship, and he wanted worship to have an order that opened them to God’s word and life. He wanted them to bring prayer into everything. He wanted them to become committed to a life for God in everything. He wanted them to have a stable communal life. Another aspect of “the Rule,” although not stated in it, is the motto of the Benedictine movement: ora et labora, or “prayer and work.” They believe that prayer and work should go side-by-side. Here is a list of all 73 rules for you to look at:

1. Different kinds of monks and their customs
2. The qualities of the abbot
3. The counsel of the brothers
4. The instruments of good works
5. Obedience
6. Silence
7. Humility
8. The Divine Office at night (Matins)
9. How many psalms are to be said in the Night Offices
10. How the Night Office is to be said in the summer
11. How Matins is to be celebrated on Sundays
12. Lauds--celebration
13. Lauds--ordinary days
14. Night Office on Saints’ Days
15. The seasons during which Alleluia is chanted
16. The Day Office
17. The number of psalms said in the Day Office
18. Psalms--order to be chanted
19. How the Office should be performed
20. Reverence at prayer
21. The deans of the monastery
22. How the monks are to sleep
23. Excommunication for faults
24. The measure of excommunication
25. Grave faults
26. Those who meet with the excommunicated without leave of the abbot
27. The abbot’s care of the excommunicated
28. Those who do not change their ways despite much correction
29. Readmittance of departed brothers
30. Correction of youths
31. The cellarer
32. Property and utensils
33. Private ownership by monks
34. The appointment of necessities
35. Weekly kitchen service
36. Sick brothers
37. Old men and children
38. The weekly reader
39. Food apportionment
40. Drink apportionment
41. Dining hours
42. No talk after Compline
43. Late-comers to the Divine Office and meals
44. How the excommunicated are to make satisfaction
45. Mistakes in the Oratory
46. Offenses in other matters
47. Sounding the Hours of the Divine Office
48. Daily manual labor
49. Observance of Lent
50. Brothers who work at a distance from the oratory or are traveling
51. Brothers who do not go far
52. The oratory of the monastery
53. The reception of guests
54. The receipt of letters and presents
55. Clothing and shoes
56. The abbot’s table
57. Artisans and craftsmen
58. The admission of new brothers
59. Sons of noblemen or of poor men offered to God’s service
60. Priest who would live in the monastery
61. Reception of pilgrim monks
62. Priests of the monastery
63. Rank in the monastery
64. Election of the abbot
65. Provost of the monastery
66. The Porter of the monastery
67. Brothers sent on a journey
68. When a brother is asked to do the impossible
69. No one shall presume to defend another in the monastery
70. No one is to presume to strike another
71. The brothers ought to obey one another
72. The good zeal monks should possess
73. All perfection is not herein attained

Looking at the list, you may not see all its significance, but you can see much of it. For instance, look at how much time is spent focusing on worship. Benedict thought that worship should be at the center of life. Is it for you? Also, look at how much attention he spends on food, drink, and living arrangements. He believed that monks should have a healthy diet, that they should have comfortable beds, and that there should be a connection between their spiritual and physical lives. Centuries later the movement became overly focused on austerity and suffering, but not under Benedict. He emphasized hospitality, sharing, compassion, forgiveness, zeal, and much more. His rule was focused on monastic living, but in a way that emphasized balance between work, prayer, learning, eating, rest, and service. What does it have to teach us who are not monks?

I believe that it teaches us how to live in difficult times. We are living in a time of absolute uncertainty with a brittle and shaky economy, two wars, the threat of terrorism, and fear of the future spreading all over the place. What are our foundations? Benedict’s rule brought stability in a time of crisis. What keeps us stable?

What are the rules of your life? How seriously do you take worshipping God? How important is prayer for you? How deep is your commitment to a life of faith—a life lived for God? To what extent do you live in community with others who also seek God? What’s the Rule for your life? Do you have one?

I want you to do something as you finish this sermon. Normally I get to do the thinking for you, but as we finish this sermon I want you to do the thinking for yourself. Take time to use the last page here to create your own rule. I’ve put down three questions for you to start the process. Is God calling you to create a rule for your life to counter our age of confusion?

Amen.

Setting a Rule for Life

List the areas of your life that seem chaotic or out of balance.

List what you can do to bring these areas more into balance.

On another sheet, write down a rule for your life.