5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

February 5, 2012

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Selling Out or Standing Strong?”

Text:    1 Corinthians 9:22b – “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

Scripture Lessons:       Mark 1:29-39

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Prayer for Illumination:  God of mercy, you promised never to break your covenant with us.  Amid all the changing words of our generation, speak your eternal Word that does not change.  Then may we respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient lives; through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Some headlines from the last couple of days…

• “Driver said brakes failed”
• “Carjack suspect spotted on Facebook”
• “Teen accused of branding classmate”
• “Russia, China veto resolution aimed at Syrian violence”
• “Civilian deaths rise in Afghanistan”
• “Lance Armstrong doping case dropped”
• “Hundreds of dolphins stranded on Cape Cod”
• “Tens of thousands rally against Putin”
• “Woman uses Bible verses to ward off attacker”

To be sure, there occasionally are headlines to balance off ones like these.  Again, some recent ones:

• “Nebraska bill would let references say nice things”
• “Homeless center opens in Kearney”
• “Super Bowl XLVI gears up”
• “Snow, storm should taper off”

I know that we need to be informed about events in the world.  I also know that there are a lot of sad, bad things that happen.  Still, wouldn’t it be nice not to be inundated by bad news so much of the time?  Wouldn’t it be nice to hear good news more often?

I’ve long been impressed by the fact that, in the Greek of the New Testament, the word which we translate as “Gospel,” literally means “the good news.”  Good news is what people ought to experience at church.  Good news ought to be the thing for which the Christian Faith is known.  Good news ought to be in our hearts and on our lips when we’re out in the world that is filled with people hungry for something other than the routine, dreary news that too often fills our daily existence.  So two questions come to my mind.  First, what’s “good” about the gospel?  Second, how do people learn about this good news that we so handily proclaim?

The Gospel is good news because it’s the story of the Creator of the world lovingly forming creation and creatures alike.  It’s the story of a Creator who would come to look for two people who took a wrong turn and made a wrong decision, yet who sought them out, not to punish them mercilessly, but to remind them that life is not without its proper limits and boundaries, and to remind them that, regardless of the decision they made, they were deeply loved, and would always be cared for.

The Gospel is good news because it’s the story of a God who continues to come to us, down throughout history, and speak through other folks, just like us, to call us back to God, back to love, back to justice, back to fairness, back to peace, back to harmony with God, each other, and the creation itself.

The Gospel is good news because it tells us that God speaking to us, and even speaking through us, was not enough.  Divine love was too large and too deep to be confined to mere words, important as those are.  So the Gospel tells us about the biggest, most wonderful, and almost unimaginable story that God came to us… not just to be with us, but to actually become one of us!  How did St. John put it in his retelling of the Gospel account:  “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  It wasn’t enough for God to know about us from an external, passively objective perspective.  God loved us so much that the Creator became the created, Word became flesh, Jesus came as God in human form, in human flesh.  Good news, indeed, yes?

The Gospel is good news because it lays out for us the promise that what we see here around us, what we experience here each day, is not the end.  The promise is of life beyond this life… a life that will be lived in God’s presence.  The promise is that this world of ours, broken as it so often is, will be made whole again, will be redeemed, along with us.  The end of our lives and the end of creation itself will be a happy ending… happy because it will consist of an existence fully within the embrace of God’s presence, of God’s grace, of God’s never-ending love.  Good news yet again, yes?

The Gospel really is about good news!  So how is it that people learn of such good news?  It used to be that all we had to do as Christians to share the good news is open our church doors.  People would come to church.  In fact, people would flock to church!  I remember the movie, A Man Called Peter, which was a biographical account of the late Rev. Dr. Peter Marshall.  Marshall had come to this country from Scotland, attended seminary at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, and ultimately ended up serving as the pastor of the prestigious New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.  He also was appointed twice as the Chaplain to the United States Senate.  In the movie, it showed how people in the 1950’s would absolutely pack the New York Avenue Church.  Still, people came, wanting to hear the Gospel, the good news.  So the church set up loud speakers on the outside of the building, and people would stand outside listening to Dr. Marshall’s sermon.  Now, to be honest, there is a part of me that feels a bit intimidated by this image, a part of me that feels woefully inadequate since no congregation I’ve served has had to put speakers on the outside of the building to accommodate the hungry hoard of people longing to hear some good news from the church and its preacher!  However, I quickly get over those feelings.  Times have changed.  21^st century America is decidedly not like 1950’s America!  So it’s not enough any longer just to assume that all we need to do to share good news with our neighbors is open the doors of our church.  How do we share the good news of God’s love in Jesus to the society in which we live?

We share the good news of the Gospel by the things we say and talk about with people we know – at home, with our neighbors, at school, at work, while shopping.  We, who are recipients of God’s good news given freely to us, can tell others about why our faith means so much to us.  When was the last time you shared your faith with someone else?  I know… we Presbyterians traditionally are not much for talking about our faith; we’d rather put our faith into action.  I’ll get to that in a minute, but just as words are no substitute for actions, actions are no substitute for words.  People need to know why we do the things we do in the name of Christ!  Over the years, I’ve heard two questions that are great motivators to help us think about and then talk about our faith:

1. When did God become more than just a name to you?
2. Where have you seen God at work in your life?

The first question I often use in Inquirers’ Classes for people thinking about joining our church.  The second question I used during last fall’s Confirmation Class.  Both questions help people begin to be able to articulate something about their faith in Christ, and to share that in ways that are genuine and heart-felt without being “preachy.”  So, how long has it been since you’re shared your faith with someone else?

In our Epistle lesson this morning, Paul writes to the Corinthian believers about the effort he put into sharing the good news about Jesus with people within that congregation and in that city.  Both the community and the church struggled with differences of belief, opinion, and practice that caused divisions.  Paul addressed those divisions, and then talked about his own endeavors to bridge the divides and share the gospel with everyone.  And so he wrote the verse that is the text this morning:   “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”  Now, in our particular case in this nation, those words might make it seem that the Apostle was running for President, willing to do and say whatever it takes to get elected to office!

So was Paul “Selling Out or Standing Strong” in the faith?  St. Paul was many things, but wishy-washy was not one of them!  Paul was talking about how hard he tried to connect with people where they were so that he could, with genuineness and sincerity, share the good news of the gospel by the things he said and by the things he did.  Eric Barreto, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in, appropriately enough, St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote these comments:

“Becoming ‘all things to all people’ does not require losing one’s self. Instead, he describes a radical way of life in which he walks alongside all kinds of people in order to draw them to God… real strength is drawing alongside the weak and walking with them.”[1]

Who have you “walked alongside” of recently… being for them a friend, a compassionate listener, someone who could offer a prayer as genuinely as offering a smile, someone who could share experiences of personal faith as naturally and easily as drawing your next breath?

Paul wrote:  “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”  You can make a difference in someone’s life by sharing with them something of the faith you hold so dear.  You can make a difference in someone’s life by standing strong alongside of them when they have difficulty standing at all.  You can make a difference in someone’s life by demonstrating acts of compassion and caring, sharing the love and grace of God as you do that.  You can make a difference, by sharing that which is truly good news with others !  Thanks be to God!  AMEN!

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

January 29, 2012

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Monotheists?”

Text:    1 Corinthians 8:6a – “…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist…”

Scripture Lessons:       Psalm 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-6

Prayer for Illumination:  God our helper, by your Holy Spirit, open our minds, that as the Scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may be led into your truth and taught your will, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

When I was in high school, I occasionally dated a good friend of mine:  Naomi Hershman.  In case there’s any doubt, a girl named Naomi, and her brother named Joshua, were Jewish.  Their dad, Maurice, was the rabbi in Joliet, Illinois, the town where Naomi and I grew up.  Naomi and I never got serious, which is probably why her parents somehow determined that I was the only Gentile boy that she could date more than three times.

I was at Naomi’s house one evening.  We were studying for one of the classes we had together.  Josh was away at college.  Rabbi and Mrs. Hershman were at some community event at which the rabbi was the featured speaker.  Shortly before they were to arrive home, the phone rang.  It was immediately obvious that it was Naomi’s dad on the other end of the phone.  After a couple of minutes, I heard Naomi say, “Well, just a second.  I’ll ask him.”  “Steve,” she said to me, “Dad and Mom are on their way home, and they thought they’d pick up a pizza for us.  What kind of pizza do you like?”  Without thinking, I looked straight in the eyes of this rabbi’s daughter and said, “Sausage and mushroom would be great.”  I saw the look of panic on Naomi’s face as she frantically tried to cover the mouthpiece of the phone, as if the words I’d spoken somehow were traveling through space at an exceptionally slow speed so that she could block them from her father’s hearing!  It immediately dawned on me that here I was, sitting in a kosher Jewish home, ordering something that came from a pig!  I then got a panicky look on my face, and my mind instantaneously went through the list of things that were kosher and not.  Any pizza with meat would not be fine, since you cannot mix meat and dairy in the same dish.  I was trying to remember if there were any vegetables that, for whatever reason, were not considered kosher, but I couldn’t be sure.  So I finally just blurted out, “Cheese!  I love cheese pizza!”  She relayed the message, hung up the phone, and I apologized profusely to Naomi.  When her folks got home, however, not a word about my theological faux pas was mentioned.  It was not until years later, after I had finished high school, college, seminary, and had been ordained, that I was back in Joliet and stopped to visit the rabbi, that he laughed as he told me that he, of course, had heard what I had ordered, and he was on the other end of the phone crying, he had been laughing so hard.  He kept seeing this goyim ordering sausage in his very kosher home, and it cracked him up!  We laughed together about that.

I had been visiting Rabbi Hershman that particular time because I was taking the youth group from the church I served on a mission trip to Chicago.  We lived in a small community in central Illinois, and, although there were a handful of Jewish families in town, there was no synagogue.  All of my Gentile kids had never been to a synagogue, and I thought the trip to Chicago would be the perfect opportunity to take a side trip to Joliet, get a tour of a synagogue, and visit with that wise, old rabbi whom I admired so much.

Judaism has a deep, rich heritage of faith, customs, and symbols.  One of the things you will find on any Jewish home where the residents hold their faith or heritage dear is a mezuzah fastened to the doorpost of the main entrance to the house.  A mezuzah is a decorative holder within which is a rolled piece of parchment.  On the parchment, written in Hebrew, are several key verses from the Hebrew Bible… what we call the Old Testament.  The first and most prominent part of these verses is from the 6^th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy:

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד׃

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” or “the Lord our God is one Lord.”  This is the foundational verse that has shaped Jewish theology from its inception.  There is no god but God!  The Old Testament prophet Elijah defeated the priests of the so-called god, Baal, in order to prove to the people that Baal was an imaginative figment of people’s imagination:  not a god at all.  Again and again prophets and judges and monarchs of ancient Israel reminded the people that  they were children of the only true God, that to God they belonged, that to God they owed their allegiance and their life.

The New Testament springs from their theological conviction in only one God:  a concept known as monotheism.  Jesus, when asked to summarize which of all of the commandments in the Bible and Jewish tradition was most important began his answer by quoting the verse from Deuteronomy 6 that immediately follows the one I just quoted:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with your entire being.”  All of the listeners would have known, of course, that that followed the great affirmation of Judaism’s tenacious belief that there is only one God.

Islam also vehemently affirms that there is only one God.  They great cry of Muslims is “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet!”  We consider that Islam, together with Judaism and our own Christian faith, form the triumvirate of monotheistic religions in the world.  We also, of course, are linked together by our common heritage which we all trace back to Abraham.  Now our Jewish and Muslim neighbors in our world acknowledge what we claim, but they really have a hard time that people who affirm their belief in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit really worship only one God.  It sounds like three to them… and understandably so.  Down through the last two millennia, Christians have had a hard time trying to pin down exactly how we can believe in one God whom we profess to experience as triune.  Nevertheless, we would dogmatically affirm our adherence to the same monotheistic belief as Jews and Muslims.

St. Paul, in our text this morning from the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, made this Christian affirmation at the beginnings of our faith tradition:  “…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist…” (8:6a, emphasis added).  Why did he need to attest to that core belief of our faith?  Perhaps he needed to assure Jewish listeners that we were in the same tradition as they, despite our affirmation that we fully experience God in and through Jesus Christ, and in the working of the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps he needed to assure Gentile listeners that the so-called Greek and Roman gods were not gods at all… that there really was one God only, and it is through Jesus that we have come to know this God.  But perhaps there was another reason he needed to affirm that.  Indeed, that is why I believe Old Testament faith leaders kept insistently repeating the refrain that there is only one God – no others.  Perhaps, just perhaps, they all knew the human tendency to engage in idolatry, placing other things, other beliefs, other people, other ideas above our allegiance to God.

Last fall in the Confirmation Class, one of the things we did was read through a wonderful little book that the Presbyterian Church produced:  The Study Catechism, Confirmation Version.[1]  As with any document called a “catechism,” this book attempts to teach the Christian faith through a series of questions and answers.  After some introductory Q’s and A’s, The Study Catechism tackles questions of faith that arise from the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer.  As we read through and studied the questions and answers about the first two of the Ten Commandments – “you shall have no other gods before me,” and “you shall not make for yourself an idol” – I asked the students if there were other gods in our world.  They thought for a few moments, and then we had this wonderful discussion.  We realized that, although there is only one God, we live as if other things were “gods” in our lives.  The catechism asks what we learn from the second commandment.  This is the answer that we spent a long time discussing in class:

“First, when I treat anything other than God as though it were God, I make it an idol.  Second, when I assume that my own interests are more important than anything else, I make them into idols, and in effect I also make an idol of myself.” (Question 73)

That was a sobering discussion in class.  It still is a sobering concept upon which I sometimes reflect for my own life, for my own actions in the ministries to which God has entrusted me.  What in my life do I make an idol?  To what do I give my priorities and my allegiances?

So how about it?  Are we really, really “Monotheists?”  Are you a monotheist?  Your life can, and should be, filled with important people… yet you can still keep God as the most important.  You can, and should, spend your time doing important things… yet you can still keep living in God’s ways as your highest priority.  You can, and should, financially support many worthwhile causes, causes that do good in the world… yet you can still demonstrate your allegiance to God first in the ways in which you spend your money.  You can do lots of things on Sunday morning, which has become an increasingly scheduled time for children as well as for adults, with sports especially… yet you can still demonstrate the value of putting God first by coming to worship with this community of faith, as you all are doing right now.

The Apostle wrote:  “…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist…”  May our lives, our priorities, and the ways we spend our money and our time, reflect what we so easily profess with our lips.  AMEN!

2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

January 15, 2012

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Where do we hear a word from the Lord?”

Text:    1 Samuel 3:1b – “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”

Scripture Lessons:       John 1:43-51

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Prayer for Illumination:  God of mercy, you promised never to break your covenant with us.  Amid all the changing words of our generation, speak your eternal Word that does not change.  Then may we respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient lives; through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Several years ago, my parents told me about a wonderful tape they had received from friends.  It was called, simply, “Vermont Humor,” and was told by someone with the wonderful and dry wit for which New Englanders are renowned.  My folks’ favorite story was about a Vermont farmer who was the last person in his part of the county, by decades, to get a telephone put in his house.  He finally relented after years of pressure from friends, neighbors, bankers, and his family.  One day, the story goes, a friend was visiting.  As they sat in the front room, the phone began to ring.  It rang . . . and the farmer kept talking.  It rang . . . and the conversation continued.  It rang . . . and, in exasperation, the friend incredulously asked, “Aren’t you going to answer the phone?”  “Don’t think so,” drolled the farmer.  “Seems to me that the phone was put in for my convenience!”

My parents told me that story.  They told it several times, in fact.  I got tired of hearing that story, they told it so often.  They would just start, and I was tempted to say, “I know.  The farmer said, ‘the phone was put in for my convenience. . . . Yes,” I would say, “it’s a great story!”

One day, I called my folks.  Dad answered the phone.  “How are you,” I inquired.  “Well, I’m fine, and Mom is better now.”  “Better,” I asked.  “What happened?”  “Well,” Dad said, “she fell down two days ago and broke her collarbone.”  “Goodness,” I said.  “How ever did that happen?”  “It seems,” my Dad began, hesitatingly, “that the phone rang, and we were both running to answer it, and, well, we ran into each other, and she fell down.”  I was speechless!  I finally said, “Wait a minute!  You were running to answer the phone?  Is this the same Dad whose favorite story is about the Vermonter who had a phone put in for his convenience?  Dad, you are 75 years old, and neither you nor Mom have to run to answer the phone anymore!”  “Well,” he embarrassingly said, “we might have missed something!”

In our Old Testament lesson this morning, the boy, Samuel, might well have missed something if the priest, Eli, hadn’t finally figured out what might be going on during what must have been a long, frustrating night.  I’m sure that, initially, Eli thought it must have been a case of indigestion.  Or maybe it was a case of those dreaded “things that go ‘bump’ in the night” that kept bringing the boy, Samuel, back again and again, disturbing Eli’s attempts at slumber.  Or perhaps it was just a series of bad dreams that the boy was having.  Whatever the cause, Eli was growing increasingly tired:  both from his interrupted sleep, and from Samuel’s incessant insisting that the old priest was calling him.  “Go back and go to bed,” he kept telling the boy.

And then it seemed like a light bulb went off in the old man’s mind.  Just when he was about to really let the boy have it for coming in and waking him up one more time, something seemed to awaken Eli’s spirit.  Perhaps, he thought, it is God who is trying to get the boy’s attention.  “Go back to bed, Samuel,” Eli told him the third time Eli came to him.  “Only this time, if you hear the voice calling your name again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’”  Sure enough, the old man was right.  It was God who was calling Samuel into the service of the kingdom.  What he thought was just a young boy’s dreams came to be embodied in the last of the judges of Israel, the prophet who anointed the nation’s first two kings, Saul and David.  God was doing a mighty thing, and needed the boy, Samuel, for divine purposes.  And so the Word of the Lord came to Samuel, and spoke clearly, and Samuel listened and followed.

What seems most interesting to me about this Old Testament passage, however, is not just the back and forth of Samuel running to Eli in the middle of the night because he heard a Voice speaking a word to him.  What strikes me is the very first verse of the lesson, which set the context for the wonder of what was happening, and might explain why Eli seemed to be so dense that he just didn’t catch on what was really occurring that night so many centuries ago.  Here’s how the context got set up in this story:  “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”  The Hebrew word which is translated as “word” also can mean “to promise, to command, to converse, to sing,” as well as having several other connotations.  And the Hebrew word which is translated as “visions” also could be translated as “divine communication” or “revelatory word.”  Reading this verse makes me think that this was a sad time, barren, devoid of any vibrant sense of spirituality.  And yet… and yet… is our day any different?  I mean, who among us this morning has actually heard God speak a word to us, to our family, to our church, to our nation, to our world?  I think that there is a lot that God might have to say to us, a lot that we certainly need to hear from the Lord.  But the question really must be, “Where do we hear a word from the Lord?”  How does God speak to us today?  Does God speak to us today?  Is God still strangely silent, or are we perhaps missing something?

I believe that God speaks to us today, and let me give you some examples of how I sense God speaking to us words that we need to hear in our day, for our time.

I believe that God sometimes speaks a word to us through the voices of people who dare to speak the truth to our world, who seem to have a keen insight into what is going on and what should be going on.  God speaks a word to us through people like Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, who believed that Jesus calls us to care for those who are poor by entering into voluntary poverty yourself and living with those most in need.  God speaks a word to us through people like Mother Theresa, who believed that she saw God in the faces and the lives of those most left out, those most castigated by their society, living among them and tending to their most basic needs.  God speaks a word to us through people like St. Benedict, the father of contemporary monastics, who believed that one of the founding principles of Christianity was hospitality, that we welcome people into our lives and into our midst and treat them as if they were Christ.  God speaks a word to us through people like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday our nation remembers tomorrow.

It is difficult for me to comprehend that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 83 years old today!  I oftentimes wonder, around this time of year, how things would be different in our society if Dr. King had been alive these past 44 years.  In what ways would the shape and the fabric and the color of our communities and our society have changed?  What struggles would we have gone through that we have not faced yet, or what struggles would have been different?  To be sure, Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a faultless individual.  However, one thing he did well, and he did with conviction.  He spoke words that gave shape, substance, and definition to the dreams that he carried for us and for our country.

King spoke the word when, in December of 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, he took the leadership of the bus boycott in that community, thus breaking those first laws of segregation and sharpening the focus of the nation upon the plight of African-Americans.  King spoke the word when, in a speech in July 1962 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. he enumerated for our country the principles of non-violence to which he would adhere in his struggle.  King spoke the word in April 1963 when he wrote a moving letter from a jail cell to eight prominent liberal clergymen in Birmingham, Alabama about the Christian case for justice.  King spoke the word when he stood before a half a million people on that hot, August day in 1963 to tell the nation about the Dream he had.  King spoke the word when he came back from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964 to be a part of the Selma march.  King spoke the word when he preached his “Christmas Sermon on Peace,” reminding our world that all of us are interrelated.  King spoke the word when he went back to Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968, on what turned out to be the eve of his assassination, to help the plight of African-American sanitation workers, when he held forth his vision of the Promised Land for all of us to see.  On these and so many other situations, Dr. King spoke a word that was loud, and clear, and that we needed – and still need – to hear.  The word of the Lord comes through people such as him.

But God does not just speak a word through the famous people, the well-known people, the renowned and well-connected people of our world.  God sometimes speaks a word through a family member:  a loving father, a wise grandmother, an insightful child.  God sometimes speaks a word through a Sunday School teacher, a youth group advisor, a teaching elder or ruling elder in the church, a deacon who stops to visit a homebound church member.  God sometimes speaks a word through the compassionate actions of a congregation in support of a mission project that has special needs.  God sometimes speaks a word through individuals who were elected to help discern possibilities for our future as a congregation… possibilities which we continue to explore and strive to enact in concrete and specific ways.  God sometimes speaks a word when a congregation demonstrates compassion to their pastor when medical treatments developed complications that no one saw coming… as you all did to me.  Trust me; I heard a word from the Lord through your prayers, through your generosity, through your cards, through your welcome last Sunday when I was able to be back in worship for the first time in two months!  You all were the vehicles for a word from the Lord that I needed so much to hear… and I will never forget all that you have done, and still do, for Caroline and me.

From our text this morning, it seems that the people in our Old Testament lesson apparently rarely heard God’s word, rarely perceived God’s presence in their lives.  How about us?  Is God still strangely silent, or are we perhaps missing something?  “Where do we hear a word from the Lord?”  A word from the Lord comes to us, again and again, in ways that are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle… through individuals that are sometimes well known, sometimes obscure… in circumstances where God sometimes might be expected, sometimes might be a surprise.  It took the old priest, Eli, three tries before he finally began to sense that maybe God had a word to say to the young boy, Samuel.  Nevertheless, he finally got it… and so did Samuel.  God still has a word to say to us today, and however many attempts it might take us to perceive what that word from the Lord might be, the important thing is that we listen… we listen… we keep listening.

In the name of the God who comes to us, and who still has a word to speak.  AMEN!

I never have believed that things happen to us because there is some life lesson that we need to learn or there is something we did for which suffering needs to be a part of the atoning process.  That’s precisely what the Old Testament character, Job, learned in all of his suffering.  He never discovered why his suffering occurred, but he learned why it didn’t happen.  He was assured that he wasn’t suffering because he somehow had something to learn or that there was something that he did from which he needed to repent!  That having been said, however, there certainly are some things that I have learned while being forced to be still and quiet and in social isolation.  What are some of those things?

I learned what it is like to feel helpless and dependent.  And, in what surely would not be a surprise to anyone reading this, I didn’t like that one little bit!  I am used to being capable, helpful, dependable, and in charge of much that goes on around me. During this time, I have had to learn to let other people do things for me because I could not do them.  In particular, my wife, Caroline, has been invaluable in much of what has gone on in my life these past several weeks, and still goes on.  I don’t know what I would have done without her willingness to take care of me in ways that neither of us envisioned would ever be needed.

I learned, and am still learning, how to receive.  I am a giver by nature and by vocation.  I feel comfortable in that role.  Giving comes naturally to me.  Receiving, however, does not come naturally to me!  Both the Session’s and the Presbytery’s decisions to continue my salary during my extended medical leave were incredibly generous, and I have worked to get over feeling “guilty” about not “earning” my pay.  The congregation has given to me in so many beautiful and meaningful ways, with the wonderful, kind notes and cards that people have written.  Plus, to have received the two booklets in which so many of you indicated you would be holding me in prayer during all the closing days of Advent was humbling.  When I got those, I told Caroline, “I don’t know what to do with such an expression of love and grace.”  She said, “Sure you do.”  I knew intellectually about such grace that you all showed me, but I had to learn to incorporate that in my deepest being.  I’m still learning.

I learned that to speak of God always being with us is more than just sound theology.  This journey for me has been about the spirit almost as much as about the body.  In his book Spiritual Journals, the late Fr. Henri Nouwen wrote this:

“God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles bur moving towards the house of peace and joy.  This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation:  we are not alone on our journey.  The God of love who gave us life sent us his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.”

I still am learning to be aware of God’s nearness each moment… and I depend upon that in my recovery.

I do not have the words adequately to express my heartfelt thanks to God… to my family… to you all, who are my church family.  Perhaps I might also have to learn that just saying “thank you” sometimes will have to suffice.

Blessings and peace,

Steve

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32^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

November 6, 2011

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“An Intentional Life”

Text:    Joshua 24:15 – “…choose this day whom you will serve; as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Scripture Lessons:       Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Matthew 25:1-13

Prayer for Illumination:  Almighty God, in you are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  Open our eyes that we may see the wonders of your Word; and give us grace that we may clearly understand and freely choose the way of your wisdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

One of our church members came up to me a few weeks ago and told me about a story that her sister had forwarded to her in an email.  She said, “You know, I don’t forward emails, and I don’t like receiving forwards.  But my sister’s story was an exception.  I laughed so hard when I read it. I thought I’d forward it to you if you don’t mind.” I smiled and told her that would be great. I feel the same way about most forwards, but I always can use a good laugh. The next day I got this story…

Last week, I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist. I noticed his DDS diploma on the wall, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago.  Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on, way back then?

Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate.

After he examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended South Boston High School.

“Yes. Yes, I did. I’m a mustang,” he gleamed with pride.

“When did you graduate?” I asked.

He answered, “In 1969. Why do you ask?”

“You were in my class!” I exclaimed.

He looked at me closely. Then, that ugly, old, bald, wrinkled faced, gray-haired, decrepit, no good bum asked, “Really?  What did you teach?”

Ouch!  Of course, the hilarity of this notwithstanding, the fictional woman in this story had a choice to make, didn’t she?  If this really happened – and, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear someone tell me that it really did happen to them! – the woman could have just laughed off the dentist’s comment, and reconnected with someone who, decades earlier, she’d had warm feelings toward.  She had a choice to make; she missed an opportunity.

Here’s another story – again fictional, but again one that I know has happened, in one form or another – about someone who had a choice to make…

The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.  Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready.  As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.

“I love it!” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“But Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room …. just wait.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied.  “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.  Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged… it’s how I arrange my mind.  I already decided to love it.  It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up.”

Now that’s the kind of life choice I want to make… every day… about everything that comes my way!  Don’t you?

We get choices to make every day.  Well, the truth of the matter is, we do make choices about everything, every day.  You’ve heard the saying, I’m sure, that not to decide is to decide.  We all make choices about everything that comes our way.  We can’t always control what those things are that happen to us; but we always have a choice in how we respond to the happenings in our lives.  The key is to make those choices intentionally… to live “An Intentional Life.”

In our Old Testament lesson this morning, the people of Israel were at a crossroads.  This is from the sixth book of the Bible:  the book of Joshua.  Joshua, you might remember, was the protégé of Moses.  The first book of the Bible, Genesis, begins with general prehistory stories, and then it focuses in on the sojourns of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and then Jacob’s children.  The next four books of the Bible contain stories about the time of the Exodus… when God, through Moses, led the people of Israel out of their time of slavery in Egypt, and then into and through the desert wilderness.  When the book of Joshua begins, Moses has died, and the people finally cross into their ancestral homeland.  They have settled into the land by the time of our lesson, and Joshua calls everyone together to talk about what will happen next.

The people’s long sojourn has been completed.  The nation has gone through the transition from being slaves, to being semi-nomadic peoples, to now being a people settled onto farms and into more permanent, small communities.  They now have to look at the long haul, at the proverbial big picture.  They now are tasked with forming their own, new identity as a people.  Who will they become? How will they live? What will be their priorities? How will they build a new self-identity? How will they govern themselves? They faced tons of questions as they moved into this new phase, and Joshua wanted to address his people as they stood at this crossroads.  He told them that they had a choice to make in all that they faced.  And their choice would be based on who they were going to worship, on where their ultimate allegiance laid.

Joshua told the people stories about two rivers.  In the distant past, their ancestors lived beyond the Tigris and Euphrates river system, when Abraham and Sarah lived in what is now contemporary Iraq.  There the people worshiped the gods of the culture… but they learned about a new God, the Lord of all creation, and came to worship our God.  Then, in the not so distant past, the people lived beyond the Nile River in Egypt.  There, and even at least on one occasion during the Exodus, the people worshiped the gods of that culture… even while remembering that the true God was leading them, loving them, guiding them.  Now the people stood in a new place, at a new time.  Joshua said, in essence, “You can worship other gods if you choose.  You have worshiped other gods before, of course… and some of you still do now.  But it’s time to decide.  You have a choice to make about who you will worship, to whom you will give allegiance.”  So, he ended by saying, “…choose this day whom you will serve; as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

A few weeks ago in our Confirmation Class, as we were studying the Ten Commandments, I asked the students if we have other “gods” that we worship.  It didn’t take long for them to realize that, even though we don’t refer to “other gods,” there are other things in our world and in our lives to whom we give allegiance… and those things to which we give our allegiance, our time, our energy, our focus, our money… those things are, in a very real sense, our cultural and personal gods.  And so, we have choices to make.

One choice we make is in how we spend our time.  Time is the new commodity in our busy culture.  Interestingly, there’s a new movie that’s just been released that explores that very issue.  How do we spend our time?  How do we help our children not get overscheduled?  How can we as a congregation offer programs and activities that are meaningful to our spiritual life and not just another on our “to-do” lists each week?  I don’t have the answer to our societal problems with hectic calendars that are too full.  But I do know that we have choices to make each day about how we spend our time.  How do you spend yours?  You have a choice to make.

As a congregation, we’ll be beginning our annual budget-building process and financial commitment campaign within the next week and following.  Here, as in other places, we have choices to make, don’t we?  Our choices as a congregation are about what staffing we need and what we can afford, and how we will be responsible stewards of the money that each of us entrusts to the care of our church.  As individuals and families, we have a choice to make about how much to pledge and give to the church next year.  As with time, so it is with money – the supply is limited, the needs are great.  A colleague of mine once began a sermon on stewardship with these words:  “This sermon is going to be about money. You have it. The Church needs it. You know what to do.”  She joked about just stopping there, but, needless to say, went on.  But the crux of the sermon was already stated, and it’s as true for us as it was for that congregation.  “Money.  You have it. The Church needs it. You know what to do.” What will you do?  You have a choice to make.

Choices.  We all have choices to make in life.  Some of us have the opportunity to grow old; all of us get to choose how we will approach life as we age.  Most of us have hard things that happen to us in life; all of us get to choose how we respond to the challenges and trials that come our way.  Some of us have busy schedules; all of us get to choose how we spend our time.  Some of us have money problems; all of us get to choose what we do with whatever financial resources we have.  So what choices about living will you make as you grow older each day?  What choices will you make about how to respond to things that will come your way today and tomorrow? What choices will you make about how you’re going to spend your afternoon and evening today, and what you will do when you get out of bed tomorrow morning?  What choices will you make about how you spend your money, and, specifically, about what you will give to our church the rest of this year and into the next?  We all make choices each day, each moment, about everything.  The key is to make choices that are consistent with our beliefs and our priorities, so that we might live, before God, “An Intentional Life.”  AMEN!

31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time

All Saints Sunday

October 30, 2011

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Blessings”

Text:    Psalm 34:8 – “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.”

Scripture Lessons:       Psalm 34:1-10, 22

Revelation 7:9-17

Prayer for Illumination:  Prepare our hearts, O God, to accept your Word.  Silence in us any voice but your own, that, hearing, we may also obey your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

For a long time now, I’ve loved to bake breads… all kinds of breads.  Some people think that bread-baking is intimidating, incredibly complicated, and very difficult.  Nothing could be farther from the truth!  All it takes is some basic ingredients and time.  Now, of course baking bread is incredibly easy if you have a bread machine.  Although I’ve never used one, my understanding is that you dump in a whole bunch of ingredients, set the machine, let it do its thing, and, voila, you have bread.  I try hard not to be a bread-making, purist snob, but I really prefer making bread the old-fashioned way:  mix the ingredients in a certain order, knead the dough (which, by the way, I’ve found to be amazingly cheap therapy!), let it set, knead it some more, roll it out, let it set some more, and bake it.  As I said, all you really need is basic ingredients and time.

I like baking all kinds of breads:  various flavors of loaf breads, sweet breads, muffins, biscuits, or rolls.  One of our family traditions for major, holiday meals includes Caroline’s grandmother’s recipe for what they always called “refrigerator rolls.”  These are delicious dinner rolls!  I often take the responsibility for baking these.  And, by the way, they are called “refrigerator rolls” because you can mix the ingredients in advance and then keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to one week, until you’re ready to finish them off and bake them.  Again, as with most breads, these are simple to make.  You take the ingredients – sugar, shortening, butter, or oil, water, flour, salt, eggs, and yeast – mix them all together properly, roll the resultant dough into a ball, let it rise, roll it out, cut the rolls to size, let them rise again, and bake.  To roll the dough, you might use a rolling pin, but you also could use a large can, or anything similar.  To cut the rolls to size, you might use a cookie cutter, but you also could use a glass, or a cup, or about anything round that’s the size you want to make them.  As I said, this is said, baking bread is not intimidating; it’s not rocket science!  Anyhow, when baked for only 8-10 minutes, you have warm, fresh rolls.  Delicious!

Well, the rolls are usually delicious!  There was one time when I went through all of the process to make these rolls.  Your mouth begins to water as the smell of the baking rolls fills the entire house.  By the time the warm rolls are on the table with the rest of the meal, you are ready to eat them… trust me!  We all sat down at the table, gave thanks for the blessings of the meal, the time together, and each other, and dug in.  We all split open the warm rolls and slathered them with butter.  We all bit into the rolls, eyes closed in ecstatic anticipation, and almost spit out the bites that each of us had taken!  Something definitely was not right.  After my taste buds had gotten over the shock of that first bite, I gingerly took a second bite… and I immediately realized what had gone wrong.  It seems I had forgotten to put in the salt!  Such a small thing… just 1 tablespoon of salt in a recipe with almost 7 cups of dry ingredients and some 3 cups of liquids!  Barring that one experience, however, I think my rolls always turned out wonderfully delicious.  When you have the right ingredients present in the right amounts, the taste is out of this world.

In our Old Testament lesson this morning from the 34^th Psalm, the author talks about taste.  Do you remember that?  The author invites us, urges us, with the words:  “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.”  This refers, however, to a deeper quality of tasting… to taste, not just with the senses of smell and sight and taste, but to taste with one’s entire being… to take in, in this case, the goodness and wonder and blessings of the Lord.  The word in Hebrew, in fact, has connotations of discovering something by experience, to notice, and to learn.  What the psalmist is saying to us is this… God is here, with us.  God’s goodness and love, wonder and blessings, are offered to us in lavish abundance.  So come… taste… dive in… experience the goodness and blessings of God in your deepest being!  Taste and savor those blessings from God.

And just what are those blessings from God?  The psalmist lists several…

• God actually listens to us when we pray.
• Moreover, God answers our prayers.
• God delivers us from the paralyzing effects of fear.
• In God’s presence, we need never feel shame.
• God’s angel “encamps” – isn’t that a wonderful image? – around God’s beloved children.
• We will “lack no good thing,” the author writes to us.

Love… wonder… grace… blessings in abundance.  And all we need to do is step up to the table and take a big bite of beautiful, bountiful blessings!

Blessings abound in our lives.  Even when things are tough, when bad news seems pervasive, when fear grips our hearts, when the future appears gloomy at best, God continues to bless us with love and grace, strength and hope, perspective and peace.  My Dad, who was a wise man, said to me a year or so before he died at the age of 91, “My life has been good.  It’s not always been easy, but it’s been good.”  Dad knew that, even in the bleakest times, God was present… blessings were offered… angels encamped around him… and he was never alone.

We are never alone.  To be sure, God is always with us, but so are other people.  Other people help make up the blessings that are in our lives from our God who loves us so much… and not just people who are alive now.  People who have gone before us also are “Blessings” in our lives.  Don’t you find that to be true?

My Grandma was one of the “Blessings” in my life.  There was never a time in my life that I wasn’t aware that Grandma – my Mom’s mom – loved me, and loved me unconditionally.  Probably to my sisters’ chagrin, Grandma doted on me… or so it seemed.  Of course, she maybe had the same knack that my Dad had of making each of his grandchildren feel that they were his favorite!  I certainly felt that I was Grandma’s favorite.  Grandma Kirkham has been gone now for almost 23 years, yet she still remains one of the “Blessings” in my life.

Bill Jellema was an elder in the First Presbyterian Church in Joliet, Illinois, which was my home church when I was growing up.  I got to know Bill when he was one of our High School Youth Group advisors.  Bill had gifts of organization and administration that made things function smoothly in the group.  However, he also had the gift of being a good listener and a wise counselor.  Teen years are years of angst, when physical and emotional changes take heavy tolls.  Young people are richly blessed if they have even only one adult in their lives who will listen compassionately, and who will speak sparingly but wisely.   It turns out that I was the first member of First Pres. that went into the pastoral ministry, and, after I did, some seven or eight other people became ordained ministers.  The congregation had a reunion of sorts one Sunday many years ago, and invited all of us back to the church to lead in the worship services.  As we all sat around over a meal with the pastors and some of the other church leaders, we were asked, “How come so many of you went into the ministry at about the same time?”  Some of us talked about our experiences in youth programs.  Some talked about being in the strong music program the church had.  Some talked about participating in different service projects.  Some talked about the meaningful worship services.  Interestingly, not one of us mentioned a pastor who was particularly influential!  That’s a humbling realization for me, believe me!  But all of us talked about the influence of Bill Jellema in our faith journeys.  Bill was one of the “Blessings” in my life… and in the lives of so many.

In the Church’s liturgical calendar – which our children are learning now during this educational rotation – today is a celebration of All Saints’ Day, which is November 1.  Our New Testament lesson painted a portrait, in St. John’s words, of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”  These were the saints who were gathered in the presence of God, who sang their thanks to the Lord for all of the “Blessings” that had filled their lives here, and much more so in heaven.  These saints also are “Blessings” in our lives.  Remembering the saints who have touched and shaped, molded and enriched our lives, is a part of the many “Blessings” with which God has showered love and grace on us.  My Grandma and Bill Jellema are two of the many saints who have been “Blessings” to me… who still are.  Who are the saints who have been “Blessings” for you?  Who are the saints that have invited you to taste, to savor, to experience, to drink in God’s love and grace into your life?  For whom might you be a saint who is part of another’s “Blessings?”  That’s something to ponder, isn’t it?

God’s “Blessings” abound.  God’s “Blessings” enrich our lives.  God’s “Blessings” satisfy our deepest hungers in life.  God’s “Blessings” fill us.  God’s “Blessings” give us perspective in the rough times.  God’s “Blessings” cross time and space in order to reach us.  God’s “Blessings” include those we love, those we have loved, those we will love.  God’s “Blessings” abound!  So, taste… see the goodness of the Lord!  AMEN!

30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

October 30, 2011

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“The Foundations”

Text:     Matthew 22:40 – “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Scripture Lessons:        Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17

Matthew 22:34-40

Prayer for Illumination:  Living God, help us so to hear your holy Word that we may truly understand; that, understanding, we may believe, and, believing, we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honor and glory in all that we do; through Christ our Lord.   Amen.

I had been serving the last congregation before here about two years or so.  One Sunday morning, a woman and her son were first-time guests in our worship service.  After the service, I went to meet them, and discovered that the woman, whose name was Ruth, spoke only Spanish.  Her son, Pablo, spoke English fairly well, and was about 12 years old.  I introduced myself, told them I was glad they were here, and invited them to come back.  Lo and behold, they did come back… the next Sunday, and the next Sunday, and the Sunday after that.  After a few weeks of regular attendance, I asked if I could visit them to talk about the church.  A few evenings later, I went to Ruth’s home, carrying my old, beat-up, English-Spanish paperback dictionary.  Pablo greeted me, with his portable, hand-held, electronic bilingual dictionary in hand.  Already I was outclassed!  I had taken two years of Spanish in high school, so I was just barely feeling my way around a language that I hardly remembered.  Communication barriers notwithstanding, Ruth, Pablo, and I had a wonderful visit.  When I asked Ruth why she kept coming to our worship services even though she could neither speak nor understand English, she told me that our services were exactamente like the worship services in her home church in their small village in central Mexico.

After a few months, Ruth’s daughter, Miriam, moved to Woodstock to join them, followed by Ruth’s younger brother, Israel, and finally her older brother, David.  Miriam’s English was pretty good, Israel’s not as good, and David, like his sister, spoke no English at all.  Again, communication challenges notwithstanding, that family of five were in worship every Sunday, without fail.  Through a series of circumstances, our congregation began offering a worship service in Spanish every other Sunday.  I preached… and two things resulted from that.  First, my Spanish got much better!  Second, I still used incorrect words from time to time, with sometimes funny results.  I was visiting their home again one afternoon, and they offered me a sandwich.  They went into the kitchen and made sandwiches for everyone:  white bread, with bologna, and with jalapeños!  Trust me, you’ve never had a bologna sandwich on white bread until you’ve added jalapeños!  After lunch and visiting, I asked in Spanish if I could help in the kitchen.  At least, I thought that’s what I asked.  But when everyone laughed when I asked my question, I learned that instead of using the word for kitchen, which is cocina, I asked if I could help in la cochina… which means, “the pig.”  BIG difference, yes?  It was a reminder that, to communicate in a different language – well, in any language, really – you’ve got to know “The Foundations” of the language… the alphabet, the vocabulary, and the grammar.

That’s true in most anything, isn’t it?  If you don’t know “The Foundations” of something, how can you ever really accomplish anything?  Can you imagine the scientists with NASA during Apollo 13 if they didn’t know “The Foundations” of math, of physics, of space travel?  Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise would not have stood a chance of surviving and returning safely to earth if all of those scientists, as well as the astronauts themselves, didn’t have “The Foundations” down thoroughly!

Fifteen years ago or so, I was part of a weekly, ecumenical Bible study of local pastors.  We studied the lectionary texts for each Sunday, sharing our insights, scholarship, and thoughts about the passages that were coming up in the suggested lectionary readings for each Sunday’s worship service.  Our group had been together for quite some time, and there was a good sense of trust and communication between us all.  One week we were talking in general about things before beginning our study, and one of my Lutheran colleagues suddenly said, “I’ve got a question for you, Plank.  I know you well enough to know that you kind of understand bishops… not really, but kind of.  I kind of understand elders… not really, but kind of.  But what in the world is a ‘Stated Clerk’ of the Presbytery?”  I had just been telling them about having been elected as the Stated Clerk in that Presbytery.  I thought for a moment, and then, in what I perceive was a matter of inspiration, said, “Well, we Presbyterians never thought that Pharisees were all bad!”  Everyone howled, myself included.  But then I began to think more seriously about what I had said, and I continued.  “Somebody has to know the law, has to love the law, and has to understand the purpose of the law!  The problem that most of the Pharisees in the New Testament had was that they forgot the purpose of the law.”  Having had the privilege of serving as a Stated Clerk again here in our Presbytery, I still think that’s foundational.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus once again is having a verbal jousting match with a group of Pharisees.  One of them asks what, on the surface, appears to be a sincere question:  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (v. 36)  In reality, though, the man was out to lure Jesus into a legal trap, planning to embarrass Jesus in public, thereby humiliating him and taking away his ability to influence people’s lives in ways that most of the Pharisees thought were mistaken at best, revolutionary at worst.  You see, Jewish scholars had identified what they believed were 613 commandments in the Torah – the first five books of the Bible – that one needed to follow in order to be faithful to God.  The Pharisee was trying to bait Jesus into lifting up one of those 613 commandments, knowing that there were arguments and counterarguments surrounding each one of those.  Jesus, however, refused to be baited into a battle of intellectual wits.  Instead, Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6 and from Leviticus 19:

“³⁷(Jesus) said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’”

The word translated here as “hang” has deeper connotations.  One Greek lexicon made these translation observations:

“In a number of languages, dependency as in Mt 22.40 may be expressed as ‘to hang on’ or ‘to be tied together by’ or ‘only have meaning because of.’”[1]

In other words, Jesus said that those two verses – about loving God with our entire being, and loving our neighbor and ourselves – provide “The Foundations” for all of the rest of the commandments in Holy Scripture!  It is only because of those two commandments, Jesus was saying, that any of the other commandments make sense at all.  All the others derive their meaning and understanding based on these two.

These two commandments are “The Foundations.”  But they are not just the foundations of all of the commandments in the Bible – Old and New Testaments alike – but they also are foundations for our lives!  There are a lot of important things that are a part of our lives, yes?  What we choose to do for a living is important.  What we do in our retirement is important.  Going to school and doing our best each day is important.  How we spend our money is important.  How we spend our time is important.  There are lots of important things from which to choose each day.  However, the most important decision you face each day, each moment, is if all of the other things you do are based upon one of these two foundations… does something draw its meaning from your love for God, or does it find its expression through your love for others and yourself?  If it doesn’t meet one of those two tests, then you’re falling short.  Oh, sure, what you’re doing might be important… but it’s not foundational.

Does how you spend your money draw meaning from “The Foundations” of these two commandments?  Do you choose to spend your time based on “The Foundations” of loving God and others and yourself?  Do the things you are involved in – whether school or work or time with family or play time – find their basis in “The Foundations” of Jesus’ teaching here?  Does your involvement in the Church happen just because it’s the “right thing” to do, or does it spring from a heart steeped in “The Foundations” of love that are taught here?

You can make choices built on these foundations!  You can spend your money in ways consistent with these foundations!  You can nurture your relationships with your family, your friends, your classmates, your coworkers, based upon these foundational instructions about love!  You can live into your best self when saturated with the foundations of loving God each moment, and of loving others at every opportunity, and even of loving yourself as God created you to be and called you to serve!  You can do these things, and even more, because it is God who laid “The Foundations” of love from the very beginning, and who helps us continue to build on them day in and day out!

Thanks be to God!  AMEN!

29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

October 16, 2011

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Staying Centered”

Text:    Philippians 4:5 – “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near.”

Scripture Lessons:       Exodus 32:1-14

Philippians 4:1-9

Prayer for Illumination:  O God, by your Spirit tell us what we need to hear, and show us what we ought to do, to obey Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.

For five years in the 1980’s I was a volunteer chaplain with the local Fire Department.  A few people in the congregation I served were paramedics on the Department, and one was a member of the Department’s Board, and they began to call me to help when serious accidents and fires were experienced.  After a few months of this, I went and talked to the Chief, who happened also to be the town barber, about formalizing the relationship.  And so I began the Chaplain’s Division of that Department.

It was truly eye-opening to be in on the inner workings of a fire department.  Although this was a volunteer department, it was the largest volunteer department in the entire state of Illinois; we had two stations, probably twenty pieces of equipment, and about 70-80 firefighters and paramedics.  Oscar, the department Chief, was normally a fun, easy-going kind of guy… until he arrived on the scene of an accident or fire.  Such scenes, especially if it’s a multi-vehicle accident or a fully-involved fire, can be incredibly chaotic.  There are police cars on the scene… bystanders and onlookers… lots of traffic… the folks from our own department running back and forth taking care of whatever business they had to do.  There often were people shouting, victims crying in pain or in shock, fire officers shouting orders.  I admit that the first one or two scenes I was on, I was pretty overwhelmed, and it took me a while to get my bearings on what I needed to be doing, where I needed to be at the moment, and where I needed to stay out of the way of other responders.  As I got used to arriving at such scenes over those five years, however, I began to marvel more and more at Oscar.  That mild-mannered barber turned into a model of controlled efficiency.  There could be all kinds of sounds coming from all kinds of people and vehicles alike… folks running around all over the place… cars and traffic and injured people… and Oscar was the calm presence in the midst of the seeming chaos.  Oscar was the one that we all could depend on to know exactly what to do, when, and with whom.  Oscar coordinated the response care at every scene as if he were a choreographer directing a dance troupe on a stage.  We could always count on Oscar to keep us all centered and focused on what needed to be done.

One of the few things that many of us will experience that is often near the chaos of an emergency response to a trauma scene is people at a wedding.  Now, I don’t mean to compare weddings to traffic accidents, but… So many times – too many times – tensions are high at weddings.  Family members who are estranged, and who otherwise can avoid being around each other, are once again in the same space together, and tensions abound.  Far too often, girls are filled with the expectations from the time they are little, that their wedding day will be “the perfect day.”  No day can ever possibly live up to such unrealistic expectations… and so, tensions erupt.  People are running around chaotically… finding flowers, mending zippers at the last minute, wondering why the aunt and uncle who always are late to anything couldn’t manage to break their pattern and actually get to the wedding on time!  One of my professional disappointments in myself over the years is that I have not been able to figure out a way to downplay all of the expectations about weddings so that people can just relax and enjoy an event filled with worship and wonder, love and family.  Alas, I have not found the key for that.  Perhaps that, too, is an unrealistic thing for which to hope.  In any case, what I can do at weddings, and strive my hardest to do, is to be that calming presence in the midst of chaos and tension… reminding people that God is present, that love will prevail, and that, no matter what else might happen or might fail to happen, the couple will be married by the end of the day, and nothing else really matters.  And so I strive to stay centered and focused myself, and hopefully that spills over onto others.

“Staying Centered” often is not an easy thing to do, is it?  It’s not always the chaos of accident scenes or of weddings with which we contend.  Our everyday lives are filled with stress.  There is that report due tomorrow, and you don’t see how you’ll get it done on time.  There are four people in the family that need to be at three different places, all within a half-hour of each other, and you have two cars.  You worked have all of your life, and you thought your house had a lot of value and that your investments were secure, but then we entered the last few years of economic downturn, and you’re not sure if you will be able to provide for your own needs for your remaining years, let alone leave money to your children and grandchildren as you had hoped and planned and wanted.  Yes, stress abounds.  And stress takes its toll, negatively impacting individuals’ mental, emotional, and physical health, and costing society for the increasing care and treatment of people affected by stress.

Yes, stress does abound in our society.  But it is not unique to our society, nor is it unique to our time.  Look at the stressful, chaotic scene in our Old Testament lesson this morning.  Moses had gone up on Mt. Sinai to commune with God, and, as we know from hindsight, he came down from that encounter carrying the Ten Commandments.  However, the Israelites didn’t have the historical vantage point that we enjoy.  All they knew was that they had been slaves in Egypt, they were on their way to their ancestral homeland, but now they were out in the middle of the wilderness desert, and Moses was gone… and who knew when or if he’d come back.  So they went to Moses’ brother, Aaron, put pressure on him, and he ended up telling them that he was going to use whatever gold they could bring him to make an idol of one of the gods from Egypt.  They brought him the gold, he made the idol, and then the people dealt with their stress as people often do today… they threw caution to the wind, and they drank too much and ate too much and partied with apparent abandon.  God told Moses, up on that mountain, that the Almighty was fed up with those ungrateful people and would bring disaster on them like they couldn’t imagine.  Interestingly, it was Moses, not God, who was the voice of reason, the centered and calming presence, urging divine restraint.  Now, there’s lots that could be explored about this passage, isn’t there?  But, for now, let’s leave it with the fact that there was someone “Staying Centered” in the midst of stress-induced chaos and pending tragedy.

In our New Testament lesson, the setting is drastically different, but St. Paul identifies stressors present in the congregation in Philippi.  At least two of the women leaders of the church were seriously at odds with each other, and the Apostle not only implores them in his letter to settle their tension-filled disagreement, but enlists the help of others in the church to assist the women to come to agreement and to be at peace.  Paul was concerned about the effects of public disagreement and dissension on the health of that congregation that he so obviously loved.  But Paul goes on to talk about ways in which we all can live healthy, stress-reduced lives, “Staying Centered” as we go through each day.  Here are the tips he suggests we follow.

Be grateful.  “Rejoice” is the word used in our translation.  The word in Greek also carries connotations of being glad, being thankful, offering warm welcome to someone else.  The word is used as a greeting, as in saying “good morning” in such a way that the person you’re greeting believes you really mean it!  Remember that, amidst everything else that happens in your day, you are a person who is richly and amazingly blessed.  So be grateful.

Be gentle.  Again, the Greek word here also can refer to being kind, being tolerant, and yielding.  I believe this is not only something that is in too-short supply in our contemporary society, as it apparently was in the ancient world of St. Paul. but it can make a huge difference in the lives of people that you encounter each day.  Treat others – “everyone,” the text says – with gentleness and compassion.  More than that, however, remember to be gentle with yourself.  Give yourself grace.

Don’t worry.  How’s that for some needed advice?  But how could Paul possibly have suggested – commanded? – that for us in our stress-filled society?  He wasn’t paving the way for Bobby McFerrin’s frustratingly simplistic, albeit catchy, song from 1988, Don’t Worry, Be Happy, as if worry was simply a switch that we can turn off at will.  No, the Apostle says we have reason not to worry in our lives.  The reason is that the Lord is near… right next to you… living deep within you.  But Paul not only says what we shouldn’t do – worry – but also gives us things we should do, which will help prevent worry from paralyzing and consuming us.  Remember to pray, consciously bringing your life and your situation to God in prayer… and he says to pray – here it is again! – with a spirit of gratitude.  After all, as Paul reminds us, “the Lord is near.”

Focus on the positive.  Paul is not some naïve idealist, living in some fantasy world where everything is rosy.  Not at all!  But Paul reminds us – he calls us – to not let our lives be frenzied with concern and stress about the challenges that are all around us each day.  No, remember that life is more than those challenges and stressors!  Remember those things in life and in others that are honorable, just, pure, pleasing, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.  Emulate the lives of those who go about “Staying Centered” themselves, and you’ll learn how to do it yourself.

Are you tired of living the rat race?  Are you tired of focusing on bad news?  Are you tired of a creeping, prevailing sense of despair about the world?  Are you tired of being tired?  Then these are the things you can do to keep focused, to maintain perspective, to reduce stress in your life and in your family’s lives, to live “Staying Centered” each day…  Be grateful.  Be gentle.  Don’t worry.  Focus on the positive.  And remember to pray… and, perhaps most of all, remember that Christ is near, each moment!

Thanks be to God!  AMEN!

“And these signs will accompany those who believe:  by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them…” (vv. 17-18)