It seems like only yesterday                       6/6/10

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Wow… this is it… the last one.  Where did the time go?  It seems like only yesterday that I started this assignment.  But then, it seems like only yesterday that I walked out of the Naval Reserve Center down at Capital Park on a sunny Sunday in August of 1982.  I was wearing tropical khakis with gold oak leaves on the collar and slipped away during the drill weekend to worship here for the first time.  George Bland was the minister and the service was in the chapel.  He asked if any visitors wanted to introduce themselves and I stood up to say that my name was Virg Bozeman and that I had just transferred into town from a tour of duty in Lebanon.  I had asked around about Congregational Churches and especially ones with good choirs.  Folks had recommended South Parish and I was looking forward to joining.  It seems like only yesterday that I met Margaret Godfrey and her husband Dick and all the other members of the choir.  It seems like only yesterday that I was singing duets with Kathy Kinney in the choir loft.  It seems like only yesterday that Ben and Katie were born.  It seems like only yesterday that my fourteen year old son Virg came to visit from Hawaii and I talked him into staying and going to school here and then I talked him into joining the church choir with me.  It seems like only yesterday that I was working for the Maine House democrats and met this incredibly bright and extremely funny young woman named Rachel Hancock from North Dakota in a Prodigy online chat room during my lunch break and the light immediately came back on in my life brighter than ever.  But all that wasn’t just yesterday.  It has all slowly unfolded over 28 years.  And when I look back over those 28 years, most of the key events in my life have had something to do with South Parish… or more accurately, South Parish has had something to do with most of the key events in my life.  Marriage… divorce… remarriage… career changes… children being born… old friends dying… new friends arriving.  South Parish has been a part of those key events because I have chosen to make South Parish an integral part of my life.  You all are my extended family. 

Now I have sung in our choir for all of my years here, and most of my longest and dearest friendships have been with choir members.  People used to complain that we acted like a clique, and they were right.  We did and we still do.  And for a long time, I used to define my relationship with this church solely in terms of my participation in our choir.  But back in 1992, we had a minister named Jim O’Brien who departed and our church council president at the time, Dick Billings, asked me to be on the search committee to find Jim’s replacement.  The committee members picked me to be their chair and, it was in that role that I was first asked to lead worship here.  The church council thought that I could stand up and, in the midst of a sermon, I could update the congregation on the ongoing efforts of the committee.  I had always been very comfortable as a public speaker.  I’d acted in theatrical and musical productions while I was in high school and in college, and, as a naval officer, I had to speak in front of groups of sailors all the time and get my point across.  But none of that was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ from a pulpit in a church.  I was unsure as to how I would feel about giving a sermon, but I found that I liked it.  And, it seemed that every time I preached, people would give me positive feedback.  Every time I preached, someone would say, “You missed your calling”.  And then, after the search for John Zehring had finished and the search committee disbanded, I was still asked from time to time to fill in on a Sunday when John was out of town.  And I would jump at the chance… and someone would say, “You missed your calling”.  And each time I preached, I also found my own faith deepening and my beliefs clarifying.  And then Bruce Forbes resigned unexpectedly, and Dick Kimball pulled me aside and told me that I would be a perfect interim minister… and I spent about three weeks thinking about it and praying about it.  And then I wrote the deacons a letter and I asked them to consider me for the position.  And they did.  And then they asked me to do it.  And two years ago, two days shy of two years ago actually, I stepped in to this pulpit as your pastor.  As I told the kids earlier, it was fifty years exactly to the day from when I received THIS Bible on youth Sunday back at the First Congregational Church in my hometown of Moline Illinois, so giving our youngsters THEIR first Bibles this morning was extra poignant. 

This has been, without a doubt, the most gratifying and heartwarming “job” I have ever had.  I know that I did not accomplish all that I had hoped to accomplish when I began, but I also know that we did accomplish a fairly extensive list of stuff together.  We brought some new members into the church.  We had a great class of young people who studied for their confirmation and who are now full-fledged members of our congregation.  There were some weddings… there were some funerals… there were some baptisms.  It was a sobering awesome honor to be allowed to perform the sacraments of our faith for you and with you.  I am so glad that I can preside over one more communion service this morning.  We have filled this sanctuary with music, whether it was sacred or secular.  The Suzuki School amazed us on several occasions and we partnered with them to raise nearly fifteen hundred dollars for Haiti relief.  Jay Zoller showed us just how magnificent that Hook organ really is with his performances every Sunday as well as his several recitals.  I am so glad that we all have been exposed to the extraordinary quality of his musicianship.  And I cannot let this moment pass without expressing to you all what an utter joy it has been to have my son and namesake as our choir director. 

You know… when I was in the Navy, my father got to see me do what I was really really good at doing only once.  He flew out to San Francisco from Moline, Illinois and spent a long weekend with me.  I was Operations Officer on the USS Wichita at the time and “The Witch” had what is called a “dependent’s day cruise” where the ship goes out to sea for one day and all the wives and children of the ship’s crew are invited along so that they can see what their loved one DID when he was gone.  Well… I asked my Dad to come out and go on that cruise with me.  I was the senior bridge watch stander and he got to watch me take the deck and the conn and maneuver the big ship away from the dock, back out into San Francisco Bay, steam under the Oakland Bay Bridge, take a left turn around Alcatraz and head out under the Golden Gate into the Pacific.  Once at sea, we did all sorts of maneuvers and drills to the delight of the dependents and then, late in the afternoon, I took the deck and the conn once again and brought the big old girl back into port.  My Dad was really impressed with me.  He understood, I think for the first time, that I was not just his son, but a capable and talented man in my own right.  And, as I said, my Dad saw me do that once… for one brief, golden afternoon.  I, on the other hand, have had the opportunity to watch MY son do what he is really really good at doing twice a week every week.  Thursday evening choir practices and Sunday morning worship services.  I stifle back tears of joy and pride every single week when I listen to that choir, and when I go back up to the choir loft and get to have my son direct the choir that I am one voice of. 

You all have NO idea just how fortunate you are that Jay and Virgil and that choir are making the beautiful music that they make each and every week for you.  I have heard that Jane MacIntyre’s husband, Tim is planning on joining the choir and that will be wonderful.  I would make one last plug to the rest of you to consider giving the choir a try.  It is more fun than you can imagine being a part of something that makes music as lovely as that.  Music has always been the key that unlocked the door to God for me… if singing hymns sometimes causes a lump in YOUR throat, consider joining the choir … please.  You’ll be amazed at how good you will sound under young Virg’s tutelage, and you will be amazed at how close to God you can feel when you are truly making a joyful noise to His name. 

I will miss singing in that choir more than you can imagine.  I will miss leading worship and preaching the good news of Jesus Christ from this pulpit more than you can imagine.  But the canon of ethics for ministry requires that I leave South Parish so that Jane may come in and immediately start gaining your acceptance and your trust and immediately start developing the sort of pastoral relationship with each one of you that will be necessary for the success of her ministry and of this church.  But before I go, I would like to share with you a few of my hopes for this church going forward:

 I hope that you all quit hiding your light under a bushel, quit keeping South Parish a secret, quit avoiding asking your friends and co-workers and neighbors to join you in worship here.  We need more posteriors in pews and we can’t expect them to start coming here just because our steeple is so tall.  You can’t appreciate the music or the windows from the OUTSIDE.  Once people come IN here ONCE, you know that many of them will come back and that is what we need.

I hope that many more of you actually DO consider joining our choir.  The repertoire of music we have is really remarkable.  There are SO many beautiful and inspirational anthems that our choir could sing if we had just a few more voices.  We have a solid and substantial soprano section, a slightly smaller, but equally talented alto section, and we have one tenor and one bass.  That would suggest that some of you men should step up and at least give it a try.  Choir members are a clique of really cool people and you could become one of them by just showing up some Thursday evening at 6:30 and giving it a try.  I guarantee that, if you did, you’d love it.

I hope that many more of you join Steve and Sue Gayne, Craig and Mary Hitchings, Elaine Brann, Beverly Dale, Bob and Paula Dodge, Joline Frecker, Penny Higgins, Chad Arms and all the rest of the kitchen gang in maintaining and enhancing the vitality of our monthly public suppers.  They are, without doubt, THE most important thing that this church does.  Worshipping Jesus in this beautiful sanctuary is a good thing, but it does little to push the good news of Jesus out into the community.  If more of you took the time to be a part of those monthly public suppers, by cooking or serving, or washing dishes, or just by showing up and sharing a meal with the people from our community who really count on that meal as a part of their plan to make it through the week… if you sat with them and talked to them and warmly invited them to join us for worship the next morning, we could begin to turn this church into the vibrant hub of this community’s spiritual life that it certainly could become and by all rights should become.

I hope that you seriously begin discussions around becoming an open and affirming congregation.  The gay lesbian transgendered community needs the healing gospel of Jesus Christ just like everyone else does.  Becoming designated as ONA will tell every gay lesbian and transgendered Christian and seeker in our area that we welcome them and want them to join us on our shared faith journey.

I hope that you all can completely and forever put aside whatever petty differences keep you from truly loving one another as equal children of God.  What we share as chosen children and followers of Jesus is so much more important than what might otherwise separate us.  Love one another.  That is how the rest of the world will know we are Christians… by our love for one another.  Don‘t forget that.

And I hope that you eagerly and warmly welcome Jane and Tim MacIntyre into your midst.  Show them just how warm and welcoming and hospitable South Parish can be.  Make them feel at home.  Make them bless the day that they decided to apply for this position.  And you all bless the day you called her.  I am certain you are bound for greatness together.

And let me close by saying that I will forever be in your debt, that you will all forever be held close and dear to my heart.  This has been, without a doubt, the most wonderful “job” I have ever had in my life.  Serving as your pastor for these past two years has been the greatest honor that I could ever expect to have in life.  Thank you all again for giving me this wonderful opportunity.  Words cannot begin to express the depth of my gratitude.   Amen.

Pentecost by the Numbers   5/23/10

Today is Pentecost.  We’ve got the red stuff out... we’re havin’ a party.  I have entitled this sermon Pentecost by the Numbers.  I think you’ll figure out why.  That first Pentecost was a very busy day in the life of the young church and today is a busy day in the life of THIS church what with the annual meeting immediately following the service.  The actual account of the mysterious events on that first Pentecost occurs in the beginning of the Book of Acts, as Dan Petersen just read for you.   The lectionary passage – which is what Dan read - is traditionally the first twenty-one verses of the second chapter, but I want to start a bit before that, back at the fifteenth verse of the first chapter… read the eleven verses that precede the lectionary passage and go on through for twenty verses beyond where Dan stopped because I find this longer passage really wonderful and I think it needs to be shared in its entirety.  So again… let me begin in the first chapter of the Book of Acts… the disciples and followers of Jesus have now come back to Jerusalem from the Galilee as Jesus had directed them to… and the story picks up:

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about one hundred twenty persons) – and I want to stop right there and ask you all if that number is as amazing to you as it is to me?  One hundred and twenty believers...  after three years of preaching up and down the holy land, after feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, after making the blind see and the lame to walk, after raising the dead back to life, after all those events, those miracles, those sermons chronicled in the four gospels, Jesus Christ, the Son of God himself had only been able to get one hundred and twenty people to believe in him… one hundred and twenty people.  That is only slightly more than the number of folks that came out to hear OUR new minister last month.  And this is Jesus Christ we are talking about.  Wow.  Anyhow… back to the passage from Acts.  Peter stood up and said to them, ¹⁶“Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus— ¹⁷for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” ¹⁸(Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. ¹⁹This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)  Let me stop just for a minute and point out that this version in Acts has Judas buying this field with the money he got for betraying Jesus and suggests that he fell over in this field in such a way that his intestines burst out and he died.  In the Gospel of Matthew, however, it states that Judas hanged himself after returning the money to the Temple authorities, who then used the money to buy that same field… but back to Peter’s speech to the followers of Jesus:   ²⁰“For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his homestead become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; and ‘Let another take his position of overseer.’ ²¹So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, ²²beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” ²³So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. ²⁴Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen ²⁵to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” ²⁶And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

And here is where the traditional Pentecost reading begins:  When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” And I want to point out how much different that first instance of “speaking in tongues” was to what happens today in many Pentecostal Churches.  When people “speak in tongues” today, they speak in languages that no one listening can understand.  Their spoken words do nothing to spread the content of the gospel to anyone, but those listening can certainly be amazed and impressed and moved by the fervent spirituality of the speaker... just not be able to understand the meaning of the words.  On that first Pentecost, the small band of followers was speaking in languages that everyone in the crowd could understand.  They were not trying to impress anyone with their spirituality, but rather they were trying to explain the gospel to those visitors to Jerusalem who did not speak their native language.  The Holy Spirit let them do that…it helped them to communicate.  And, not only were those listening able to understand, they WERE impressed AND moved.  The passage continues:  ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are drunk with new wine.”

¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ And that is where the lectionary reading for today ends, but I am going to read on for about twenty MORE verses… “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— ²³this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. ²⁴But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. ²⁵For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; ²⁶therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. ²⁷For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. ²⁸You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ ²⁹“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. ³⁰Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. ³¹Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ ³²This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. ³³Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. ³⁴For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, ³⁵until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ ³⁶Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

³⁷Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

And, just like the beginning of that passage from Acts starts with an incredible number, it ends with an incredible number.  Think about it… Jesus himself had been able to only convert one hundred and twenty believers in three years of ministry, but his little band of disciples, with the help of the Holy Spirit, converted three thousand in one glorious day.  When the Holy Spirit moves through us and in us, amazing things can and do happen.  That’s the message of Pentecost.  That’s the marvelous thing about this faith of ours… the power of the Holy Spirit.  And it can’t be some fairy tale.  There have been enough examples throughout history, enough examples in our own church family and in our own lives that the existence of the Holy Spirit cannot reasonably be denied. 

I pray that all of us should always be ready to have the Holy Spirit come upon us and into us and work through us.  I pray that days as spirit filled as that first Pentecost will be coming soon to South Parish under the loving and compassionate ordained leadership of Reverend Jane MacIntyre and the dedicated and able lay leadership of Bob Dodge, our incoming church council and all the newly constituted boards and committees.  I pray that South Parish will be moved by that mighty wind to do mighty and glorious things in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

Jailhouse Rock     (Acts 16:16-34)                                               16 May 2010

Today, I want to credit Reverend Frank Ramirez who is currently pastor at Everett Church of the Brethren in Everett, Pennsylvania and a fairly well known and prolific Christian writer.  I found some really wonderful analysis of today’s passage from Acts that Reverend Ramirez had written and I have relied upon it extensively in this sermon this morning.

Do you remember the old folk tune that went something like this?  

“The bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain -To see what he could see.   And all that he could see, and all that he could see, was the other side of the mountain, the other side of the mountain The other side of the mountain was all that he could see!”

Maybe the only thing you can see from a high place is the other side of that high place, but still, the view can be worth it. I have stood on the top of the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the view is unbelievable.  My daughter Katie recently bungee jumped from Bloukran’s Bridge in South Africa, the highest place on earth that people bungee jump from.  So…take a moment to think of the highest spot you've stood on, and the farthest distance you've seen. Maybe you've taken a trip to Chicago and had a look from the top of the Sear's Tower. Maybe you've been to Mount Whitney, or Pike's Peak, or Katahdin, and huffed and puffed to the top, and got a look around. Whatever that highest spot was, just take a moment, right now, close your eyes, and think about it. Think about what you saw. Just take a moment.  Have you thought about it? Then turn to your neighbor and tell that neighbor where that spot was and what you saw. (pause for discussions)  I hope you saw something worth seeing. Being high up can be a good thing, because we get a great perspective.   Perspective is something you can learn from looking over a great distance, but perspective is also something you learn from looking out over a great deal of time, or a great deal of experience. For instance, as the years go by we hopefully learn perspective! Things never stand still. They go uphill and downhill. Triumph is followed by disaster, but fortunately, the opposite is true as well. As Rudyard Kipling said, in his poem "IF" -

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.

Think about that: Triumph and disaster. Both of them are imposters. Neither one has the last word.  Earlier in the book of Acts, there is a story about how Paul had known triumph in his successful defense at the Council of Jerusalem, where the elders had decided he was indeed called by the Holy Spirit to take the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, and that converts did not need to first become Jews in order to then become Christians.  But then there had been disaster when Paul and his longtime companion, Barnabas, split up when they argued over the faithfulness of Mark, who had left an earlier missionary tour before it was completed. The great duo was in disarray, but that disaster led to more triumph, as both men took the gospel to new places.  Triumph continued as we discussed last week when Paul obeyed the message he received in a dream to travel into Europe for the first time. The trip to Philippi resulted in the conversion of Lydia – the first European Christian - and the founding of at least two house churches.  The conversion of Lydia and her household was a great success! But then today we hear of a series of events that seemed to put that success in jeopardy, which continues this pattern of triumph and disaster that is the recurring theme of the early church’s evangelical efforts.  

So… as we heard earlier, after the conversion of Lydia, Paul was continuing to evangelize in Philippi. He and Silas were plagued by a slave woman who followed them, continually spouting prophetic gibberish, which her handlers interpreted for money. She was their big moneymaker. As the woman followed Paul and Silas, she cried out on many occasions, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation". “Most High God” was the Gentile name for the God of the Hebrews. Evidently this heckling began to annoy Paul, and when he had finally had enough, he turned and, without any fanfare, promptly healed this woman of her demon.  Unfortunately, this was not necessarily seen as a good thing from her owner’s perspective, because suddenly she stopped babbling and was worthless to them.  Religion is one thing when it's good for business, but religion that destroys a person's cash flow is another thing entirely.

Certainly, Paul at this point has run into a great brick wall - that place where Christianity meets economics, and where many Christians turn tail and run. The gospel has a cost, and it isn't just a case of going without chocolate or scotch once in a while. If we are truly to bring in God's kingdom, if we are going to live by the rules of the kingdom even when the world makes it really hard to do so, we have to be prepared for the fact that we have to make hard economic choices if we are Christians.   Like, for example, asking the jeweler, when we're preparing to buy those diamond earrings , if these are conflict diamonds we're buying, diamonds that are cheap because oppressors have tormented those who have opposed them so they can run rampant with the diamond trade in their country and use their ill gotten proceeds to further terrorize and enslave people.  If Christians don't ask the tough questions like these, diamond dealers will continue to buy precious stones without asking questions of their own.  Another example:  a couple of years ago the National Council of Churches spearheaded a boycott of Taco Bell in order to secure better wages for migrant workers who pick tomatoes used in that restaurant chain. When Christians banded together to support the boycott, the folks at Taco Bell felt the economic pinch and the workers ended up getting the raise they deserved.  We hear on occasions that major store chains are buying clothes from sweat shops. Christians have to challenge the buyers for these stores.  And when celebrities put their names on clothing lines without checking the source of those clothes, we need to call them to account as well.  Wal-Mart may mean low prices, but are we sure that their treatment of their workforce and their suppliers really warrants us continuing to do business there? Those are many ways we can practically put our faith into action and move the gospel out of the sanctuary and into the real world.

 In today’s reading, we see how the world reacts fast when threatened by the economics of the Lord’s kingdom. Because the slave's owner's profits were destroyed by the healing, they spread false rumors about Paul and Silas, which led to a brutal beating and arrest. Even though Paul and Silas were attacked, and had done nothing wrong, they were blamed for causing civil unrest and thrown in jail.  So what happened next? What does this drama unfolding in the Book of Acts teach us about God’s spirit in the world?   Instead of squelching the church movement, the missionaries' jail term led to the foundation of another house church!   

 In the ancient world, jails were sometimes free enterprise affairs, where the jailer operated the facility for a profit. The jailer's own life might be forfeited, however, if the prisoners escaped.   We hear today that, while the Philippian jailer slept, a miraculous earthquake caused the shackles to fall off the prisoners and the doors swung open. Waking up to find the convicts loose, the jailer began to despair, and rightly so. He assumed all his prisoners had bolted and that he would be held responsible with his life for their escape. He was so distraught that heprepared to kill himself. Paul and Silas assured him, however, that everyone was still inside the prison. What happened next was that the prisoners and jailer started to see each other as people and not adversaries, and when that happens, church happens.

 This is jailhouse rock with a vengeance:  one earthquake, two prisoners, and a whole family of changed lives. And who knows where it ended?  Spreading the good news wasn’t just the job of Paul and Silas… everyone who hears and believes needs to testify to it.  If the jailer became saved, and then kept his mouth shut and never told anyone, how does THAT move the gospel forward?  There's no telling what this redeemed world can become once we all get into the act.  

It's easy for people to look at other people as statistics devoid of any humanity. It is easy to categorize a person as a store clerk, a librarian, a police officer, a bureaucrat at the unemployment office, an IRS agent, a prisoner, a jailer, or a homeless person. The key is to stop looking past one another and to see each other face-to-face and know each other simply as people… as children of God each equally deserving of God’s love, and our own love.   Authorities and people in power like the jailer can be outsiders just as much as the forsaken are. But those far off are now brought near. That's the deal God has made through this new covenant. Church is where you find it… down at the riverside, or in the jail, or in the neighborhood, or around the tables in the parish hall on a cold and rainy Saturday night sharing a meal.

Were Paul and Silas fools for singing hymns in prison? Hardly. They might have been killed, and if they had, the Spirit would have used their martyrdom for the growth of the church.  The history of the Christian church is full of stories just like that. One famous example is the story of a man named Dirk Willems, who was an Anabaptist in Holland in the 16^th Century.  WIllems had been imprisoned for his religious beliefs but he was able to escape from prison and ran across the ice to freedom. However, the man chasing him was heavier than WIllems was and fell through that ice and would have drowned had not Willems turned back to save him. This led to his recapture and his eventual execution by Church authorities by being burned at the stake. Willems has been held up by Christians as an example of the way that the love of Jesus trumps everything - even concerns for our own safety.   That's the point of Easter, and the Easter season, when you come down to it. It's not simply a trick, a dog and pony show, a magic act. Jesus is not raised from the dead to amaze and entertain us, but to transform us, to change the way we look at the world, and each other.

The book of Acts follows the early church as people are changed, as racial barriers and gender barriers are knocked down, as the economic hierarchies are upended and rearranged.   The book of Acts set the example we are to follow.  The book of Acts is filled with ordinary people, just like you and me, being exposed to the gospel and filled with the Holy Spirit and going on to do extraordinary things.    The book of Acts is not about Peter or Paul or Barnabas or Lydia or the Jailer. It's about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how it moves through the world. And that story isn't over. It's still unfolding. And we’ve all got a part.  Our next stop is Pentecost. The Spirit still lives among us. Easter season may be over next Sunday on the church calendar, but it's never really over among believers. 

The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see. It's worth it to climb with that bear and get a look around, to see what God has in store. We'll see the other side of that mountain all right - it's the mountain of the Lord and it's the kingdom of heaven we'll see, and the world that is so changed that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow. The Philippians learned that, because Paul not only wrote those words to them, he also lived those words, changing the lives of a rich woman like Lydia, a slave girl, and an outcast like the jailer. It didn't matter. Red and yellow, black and white, we all are precious in God's sight. Jesus loves all of us little children of the world.  That really DOES rock.  Amen.

Christian Women Breaking New Ground                              9 May 2010

I am not entirely sure that this congregation has fully realized the momentous nature of the events that took place here two weeks ago.  South Parish is the oldest church in Maine’s capital city.  South Parish has been an integral part of this community’s religious and social fabric for 217 years.  South Parish has been the home church of senators and congressmen, of cabinet secretaries and presidential candidates.  South Parish has been the home to journalists and businessmen and shop owners and authors and musicians for over two centuries, dating back to before Maine was even Maine… back before the Missouri compromise of 1820 when Maine entered the union as a free state counterbalancing the admission of Missouri as a slave state.  South Parish has been a force for all that is good and right and just for a long long time and, throughout that illustrious history, we have been led from this pulpit by a long succession of MEN.  Two Sundays ago, we changed all that.  Two Sundays ago, we made history by calling this historic church’s first woman minister.  That’s a big deal.  That, in and of itself, IS historic.

Now… that’s not to say that we haven’t had many great women lay leaders, because we have.  Our outgoing church council president, Pat Doten is a fine example, and her predecessor Penny Higgins is another.  Women have exerted power and influence over this congregation for as long as I have been here, and our history is replete with examples of other great women leaders going all the way back to Paulina Weston, who told Benjamin Tappan that she would be ground to powder before she allowed the men of this church to dictate whether she and her school girl sewing circle would dance in her living room.  It goes back to Elenor Glew, who died this past February at the age of 97 and who we will memorialize in this sanctuary on June 4^th. Elenor had been a member of South Parish longer than anyone, joining in the summer of 1919.  She made her presence known in the Guild, and on the Altar Committee, and on the Trustees, and, for that matter, probably every other church committee over those many years.  Our Diaconate today - nearly all women - has been brilliantly and faithfully led by Elizabeth Bailey for several years and her leadership, and their diligence has been invaluable to me during my interim ministry.  I could, on this Mother’s Day, spend all my time this morning continuing to recount the devoted, faithful leadership of South Parish women past and present, but I won’t.  So… to the rest of you women leaders, if I have failed to note your extraordinary contributions individually, please know that I hold your service dear to my heart. 

It is no coincidence that we are talking about women today, on Mother’s Day.  I am not sure whether the creators of the universal lectionary took Mother’s Day into account when they divvied up the scripture, but, either way, the reading from Acts illustrates the important role that women have been playing in the church of Jesus Christ since the very beginning. And it is no coincidence that I spent a lot of time this past week reading, digesting, and incorporating the analysis of that passage by another powerful UCC woman preacher, the Rev. Kate Huey.

In this morning’s reading, Paul, Silas and Timothy were in Derbe, a town in what is now the eastern portion of Turkey.  They had planned to head further east into Asia Minor towards the area known as Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to do so.  That’s what Acts says, but we don’t get any detail as to how that actually happened.  Instead, they headed to a town called Troas, on the banks of the Aegean Sea.  During the night Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia urging him to come there and help them.  When Paul woke up, he concluded that the meaning of that vision was that God was telling him to abandon his plans and, instead go to Macedonia. 

As an aside:  How often do we think we have our path in life all planned out when God nudges us in a new direction?  That certainly happened to me two years ago, that’s for sure.  Being the interim minister of this church had never been part of MY life’s plan, but apparently, God had other plans for me.  And now, two years later, I cannot imagine how diminished my life would have been had I not listened to God’s whisper in MY dreams and acted on them…  back to the story. 

So… they got on a boat and headed to Macedonia.  It really isn’t THAT far away.  The seaport of Neapolis is only about 120 miles from Troas… but Troas was in Asia Minor and Neapolis, in Macedonia was in Europe.  Christianity was about to jump to a whole new continent.  Paul, Silas and Timothy got off the boat in the port city of Neapolis and headed inland to the city of Philippi.  And there is an excellent chance that, even though he doesn’t name himself, the author of Luke and Acts may have been along with Paul for this part of the journey.  As we heard earlier, Acts 16:11,12 reads, “From Troas, WE put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis.  From there, WE traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia.”  That sounds like Luke was part of the gang. Samothrace, by the way, was a relatively small island in the middle of the Aegean Sea not too far from Neapolis.  

If there is something of the unexpected in Paul’s decision to take Silas, Timothy, and probably Luke with him and go to Europe rather than Asia, there is also something of the unexpected in the identity of the most unlikely candidate for First Christian Convert in Europe: a Gentile, and a woman at that.   Lydia seems to prompt all sorts of speculation on the part of biblical commentators. Some think she had children and even a husband, along with her servants, all of whom she brought to baptism (whether they wanted it or not, we might wonder). Others say she was single, and still others say she may have been a former slave, but most agree she was now wealthy, and used to dealing (literally) with wealthy people, who were the only ones able and permitted to wear the purple cloth she sold. We're used to hearing in the Bible that powerful men made decisions for their households, but does it strike our ears differently when a woman does so? And how ironic is it that European Christianity has long prevented women from being leaders in the church, when the first European Christian was a Gentile woman? Again, there is something of the unexpected for us in this text.

Reading only the lectionary passage, however, keeps us from hearing that this period in the ministry of Paul is actually "framed" by this woman, Lydia. The first part of the frame is set when Paul and Silas go looking for devout Jews to whom they might preach the good news of Jesus Christ, and they wait until the Sabbath when they're sure to find an audience among those gathered in prayer. Is there even a synagogue there? We aren’t told, but probably not.  Instead, they head out of town and down to the riverbank where, they must have been told, local Jews gathered to pray.  And sure enough, when they get to the riverbank, they find a group of folks ready to pray and listen for a Word from God. It seems, again, that these devout, open-hearted people, thanks to God at work in their midst, are women, which somehow doesn't surprise us in a book written by Luke. However, the ironic note is hit again: people outside the gate, people on the edge or the fringe of social acceptance, people who are not traditionally given a voice or a place in the life of organized religion, are often most open and, perhaps, most in need of good news.

The audience may be unexpected, but so is Paul's behavior: it is nothing less than astonishing that Paul the Pharisee should sit to teach a group of women, which reminds us how significantly Paul had changed, because he was now disregarding the Pharisaic prohibitions against talking with women about questions of faith.  

If Jesus came, as he had said, to proclaim good news and the year of the Lord's favor, and we carry this good news, like Paul, to new continents and new places, wouldn't those on the fringes, those outside the gates, be hungry to hear what we have to say? And could it also be that God has surprises in store for us about who's gonna be included in the circle of God's grace, and who is poised to participate in a conversion of faith and become integral members of THIS church?

It's also significant that Lydia has been prepared by her participation in the faith of Israel: It is not accidental that both here and elsewhere those who prove to be Paul's most receptive listeners are Jews, in that they are most aware of God's nature as a Being of compassion and justice, and they are most aware of God's gracious expectations for humankind.  Lydia, Acts tells us, was "a worshiper of God", a term which meant she was a Gentile who was studying Judaism, and who believed in Yahweh.  Lydia had already been drawn to the God of Israel, and was, therefore receptive to hearing how God was working in the world because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

“Lydia the Unlikely” is a "frame" for this story because it is her house, now a house church, that provides a haven for Paul after his imprisonment in Philippi which marks the end of this particular missionary adventure to Europe and which happens later in this chapter beyond the scope of the lectionary reading for today. Oddly, while Lydia's whole household was baptized with her, she's not described later as the leader of the house church; while she was obviously a "somebody" in her business dealings and her household, she still slips from view as a leader in the early church… but the church at Philippi undoubtedly grew from and around Lydia and her household of faith. The church at Philippi was the recipient of Paul's beautiful letter of joy where he told them "make my joy complete" (2:2) and "Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice" (4:4). So… whether we gather in houses, or in church buildings, or in "places of prayer" out on the edge of things, or down by the banks of the river, we should examine whether we have opened our hearts to those least likely men AND women among us who are drawn to our midst to hear the good news… we should ensure that we try to make their joy complete. 

And on Mother’s Day, and every day, we should rejoice in the faithfulness and the strength and stamina and tolerance shown to us by Lydia, and by a multitude of women of this church, from the days of Paulina Weston all the way to this new dawning era of Jane MacIntyre.  We have much to learn from her teaching, and, I predict, she will lead this little church, sitting on the banks of the Kennebec River, to a greater understanding of OUR faith and a more effective ministry in OUR community and in OUR world.  Please – all of you - plan on actively participating in that joy-filled and adventurous journey of faith.  Amen.

“They will know we are Christians by our love”    2 May 2010

Well… Last Sunday was a pretty remarkable day here in the sanctuary of South Parish Congregational Church… but you all probably only know part of the story.  Last Sunday, we did indeed get a glimpse of the future as we listened to, and then called Jane MacIntyre to be our next settled pastor.  It was a joy filled moment, and it filled me with a great deal of hope for what we can accomplish as a congregation.  Jane’s sermon about the passage from the tenth chapter of John where Jesus explains who is and who is NOT called to be members of His flock was inspiring and motivating.  Today’s scripture readings from Acts and from the thirteenth chapter of John give us even more inspiration, and guidance.  And I will dissect them in a moment. 

Before I get to that, however, I want to just say a little bit about what ELSE happened in this sanctuary last Sunday.  After the last South Parish member had left the Marge Grover Room… after Jane and Tim MacIntrye had headed off back to Massachusetts to begin preparations to move here and begin her ministry, our church was invaded by another group of believers.  A few blocks from here, at the corner of Summer and Winthrop streets, sits the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Augusta.  It is a relatively tiny little building with a very modest little sanctuary.  It is so tiny that it wasn’t big enough to hold the event that they all had last Sunday so they rented our sanctuary and our parish hall because of its size.  The Unitarian Universalist congregation installed Reverend Carie Johnsen as THEIR settled pastor and those Unitarians… even though they are a fairly low key and informal in their worship practices… they really make a big deal about installing ministers.  This sanctuary was FULL… full of their church members… full of Unitarian Universalist clergy from all over New England… full of clergy representing many other faiths – Christian protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, Hindus.  There was a sacred dance troupe; there was a thirty-voice choir; there was a string ensemble; their church school class played a role as well and there were close to thirty children in that group.  I was really impressed.  I participated in the service and actually opened the whole thing with welcoming remarks.  I noted that it was a big day for women in the ministry here in Augusta and I told the folks that we had just called OUR first woman minister earlier that morning.  When I said that, applause filled our sanctuary and I had to wait for it to subside before I could continue speaking.  I should also note that there were at least three families in THEIR congregation that used to be members of OUR congregation.  And I don’t remember those folks being quite as raucously, joyously exuberant in their worship when they were here as they showed last Sunday in their new congregation.  And I pondered all of that… and I tried to put it in context with the two readings from Acts and John that Mary read to you earlier this morning.

First… let’s talk about this reading from Acts where Peter explains his actions regarding preaching to the Gentiles. As we know, in the very beginning, all of Jesus’ followers were devout Jews and there was a belief that Jesus was a JEWISH Messiah sent to save JEWS and that gentiles need not listen to the good news… that gentiles were not welcomed.  But Peter had been visiting in Caesarea and a whole bunch of gentiles had heard him and had been filled with the Holy Spirit and had begun speaking in tongues and praising God.  When Peter got back to Jerusalem, the apostles there had heard of this and were upset about it.  And what does Peter say in response to their criticism?

“Three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

And with that, Christianity leapt from the Jewish world to the rest of the world.  It became a religion of INCLUSION and not of EXCLUSION.  Earlier, in Caesarea, Peter had said the following as also recorded in the Book of Acts:

 ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’   

That says everyone…everyone who believes in him.  Not just Jews, but everyone. It’s not an exclusive club, but an inclusive club.   You don’t have to buy into the dogma… you don’t have to buy into the specific canons of a specific theology… you just have to believe in Jesus.  I wonder if the people who decide to stay away from church… from our church… know that, and believe that and believe that WE ALL honestly believe that as well?  What is the motto of the UCC?  “That they may all be ONE.”  Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could let everyone out there KNOW just how warm and welcoming we really are, or at least really want to be?  How would we do that? 

In today’s reading from John, Jesus tells us how. The scene is John’s version of the Last Supper.  This version does not have any breaking bread or drinking wine… it has Jesus lovingly and humbly washing the feet of his disciples.  After he does that, he talks to them in a jam packed narrative that bespeaks the urgency of the situation and Jesus’ desire to give them as detailed a set of final instructions as he can.  And the portion of that narrative that we read today ends with this:   “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  

And we know that his disciples did not fully understand the meaning of that until AFTER Gethsemane, until AFTER Golgotha, until AFTER the empty tomb, until AFTER the Ascension, until AFTER Pentecost… but they DID finally get it.  Jesus wasn’t just telling them to love one another.  He was telling them to love one another IN THE SAME WAY THAT HE LOVED THEM.  And clearly, the way Jesus loves folks is a lot different than the way love is normally portrayed or considered.  My unwitting mentor, the Scottish biblical scholar William Barclay, has a brief dissertation about the ways that Jesus loves that I would like to summarize for you.  Barclay suggests that Jesus loved his disciples in four distinct ways that should serve as templates for us to measure our own ability to love the people we encounter in this world today. 

Barclay says that Jesus first loved his disciples selflessly.  And we all must admit that, try as we may, there will always remain an element of self in the noblest of human love.  We are always thinking, deep down in the back of our minds, what will this love do for ME?  Jesus never thought about himself that way.  His one desire was to give himself and all he had for those he loved. 

Jesus loved his disciples sacrificially.  There was no limit to what his love would give or where it would go.  If loving his disciples meant the cross, Jesus was prepared to go there.  We certainly expect love to bring us pleasure and happiness.  How many of us enter into love with an unquestioning willingness to endure pain?  Loving others the way Jesus loved may very well require us to bear the cross in sacrifice for others.

Jesus loved his disciples understandingly.  Jesus knew his disciples fully and completely… he knew their strengths and he knew their weaknesses and he still loved them, warts and all.  Who among us loves like that?  We sometimes say that love is blind, but that is not so.  Love that is blind can end in nothing but bitter disillusionment.  Real love is open-eyed.  It loves, not what it imagines the other to be or hopes the other to be, but what the other really is.  The heart of Jesus is big enough to love us just the way we are, and if we are to follow his commandment, we must strive to love one another just as understandingly as he loves us.

Finally, Jesus loved his disciples forgivingly.  Look what happened… look what Jesus predicted would happen.  Peter denied him three times.  All of them were to forsake him in his hour of need.  During the period he walked among them, they never took the time to really understand him.  They were blind and insensitive and selfish and petty, and in the end they were all craven cowards.  But Jesus did not hold any of that against them.  There was no failure that he could not forgive.  How many of us even attempt to operate in the mode of continuous perpetual forgiveness?  How many of us forgive lots of folks for lots of little things but adamantly refuse to forgive others of what we perceive to be unforgiveable sins against us?  In Christ, there is no such thing as an unforgiveable sin.  If we are going to try to love one another the way that Jesus loves us, we will need to figure out a way to forgive even the formerly unforgiveable.

Love one another selflessly, sacrificially, understandingly and forgivingly.  Those are, of course, overwhelmingly difficult to fully accomplish, but they are not impossible to approach.  Trying to love one another the way Jesus loves us is our hallmark.  It is what we should strive for.  And if we take the ideology out of it, if we take the complex nuanced theology out of it, if we take the exclusivity out of it, and just love one another, we can show the world what a warm and welcoming place this can really be.  I believe that if we ramped up the love in this congregation, that would cause the joy to rise up and cascade out of here and that would make a ruckus that would be heard throughout this community and would draw the curious and interested into our midst, where they would feel our love and figure out how nice a bunch of folks can be who are working for the gospel in the world.  The old hymn said, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love.  They will know we are Christians by our love.”  I think it is high time we get in the habit of doing just that.  Amen

Power of the Holy Spirit                      04/11/09

Each and every year, during the season of Eastertide – those seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost – we read from the Book of Acts about the very beginnings of the church.  I intentionally expanded the reading from Acts this morning by ten verses because I think that those ten added verses are really critical to our own understanding of the validity of the Gospel.  The reading from the lectionary is a great story.  It shows Peter and the apostles standing firm in front of the Sanhedrin.  It shows them perfectly willing to face death for preaching the Gospel even in the face of strict orders from the authorities to cease.  Peter says, “We must obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead- whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.  God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.  We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”  And that is where the lectionary reading stops.  But what follows is so special, I couldn’t let it go by without sharing it with you and talking about it with you.  In those ten verses that I added on this morning, we are introduced to Gamaliel.  He is not one of the BIG names of the New Testament, but he does play an interesting role in the advancement of the evangelism of the early church.  His first appearance is here in this chapter, but he shows up again as the teacher of Saul, who we know better as Paul.  The Talmud lists Gamaliel as one of the greatest of all rabbinical teachers and as the leader of the Sanhedrin.  Christian tradition also holds him in high regard.  Gamaliel is a saint in the Catholic Church and his remains are buried in the cathedral at Pisa, Italy. Christian tradition holds that Gamaliel was an early convert to Christianity but kept his conversion secret so that he might remain on the Sanhedrin and thus be able to positively influence the way the Jewish leaders dealt with early Christian evangelical efforts.  I think that his inspired cautionary advice to the Sanhedrin as related in this morning’s reading was critical to the early life of the church.  It is hard to imagine the Christian church today if Peter and all the early apostles were put to death immediately after Pentecost.  How could the church have survived if all of the leadership had been snuffed out before the efforts to spread the Gospel had even begun?  Peter stands before the Sanhedrin and basically renounces their authority over the apostles. The Sanhedrin are ready to execute them all, and Gamaliel steps in and asks that the apostles be taken out of the room for a bit while he takes his one shot at getting the Sanhedrin to reconsider.  He reminds them of other MEN who had stood up to the Sanhedrin and claimed to be somebody special.  He reminded them that they all had their brief moments in the sun, and they all had succeeded in garnering some degree of support and following in the community, but that they had all fizzled out and their attempts to discredit the Sanhedrin had all failed.  He then said, “Therefore, in this present case, I advise you:  Leave these men alone!  Let them go!  For if this Gospel of theirs is of human origin, it will fail. But if it IS from God, you will not be able to stop these men, you will only find yourselves fighting against God”.  And it worked.  Gamaliel did indeed persuade the Sanhedrin to spare the lives of the early apostles and thus saved the early church from a loss so devastating, one cannot imagine it being able to survive in its aftermath. Now… we know that all of the early apostles were eventually martyred for their faith, but not until they had gotten the whole thing MOVING.   

What WAS it about those early apostles and disciples of Jesus that could inspire such learned men as Gamaliel to come to their aid?  I think that when Jesus breathes on you and gives you the Holy Spirit, you can do amazing things in his name.  Gamaliel obviously saw something different in Peter and the apostles.  He obviously was touched by their power and their grace.  And his argument is just as strong today as it was then.  If this whole Good News of Jesus Christ business was really just a sham made up by men, it would have failed centuries ago.  But it IS from God, and there is no stopping it.  We can try to ignore it, or run away from it, but we are only fighting against God and that can never work in our favor. Gamaliel was right.  He felt the power that emanated from those apostles infused with the Holy Spirit.  He knew that their good news was not from men, but from God. 

In the Gospel reading this morning, we see Jesus appearing to his disciples inside the locked room.  Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." 

Can you imagine being one of those disciples in that room as Jesus materialized amongst them.  I don’t know about you, but I would imagine that I might have mixed emotions… and the first one would be that I would be nervous that Jesus would give me one huge tongue lashing.  “Where WERE you guys when I needed you?  Why did you run away instead of defend me?  Why did you deny me three times before the cock crowed? Weren’t you listening to a thing I had been telling you for all those months?  What kind of disciples are you guys, anyway?”   But Jesus did not get angry with them at all.  He simply said “Peace be with you” and he breathed the Holy Spirit into them… right there…in that locked room in Bethany.

And even though Thomas gets a bad rap for not believing his pals when they tell him about what he missed… you have to empathize with him, don’t you?  Would YOU believe that story if someone told it to YOU?  I know I’d want some proof.  I know I’d want to see the nail holes in his hands and see the wound on his side.  And when, a week later, Jesus reappeared in that same room, and Thomas was there, it didn’t take him long to realize that this was the risen Christ… and Thomas, in that room, is the very first person to ever unequivocally declare the DIVINITY of Jesus.  He said, “My Lord and my GOD”... not my messiah, or my savior, but my GOD.  Bingo.  Thomas might have had his doubts early on, but once he got it, he got it.  And the power of the Holy Spirit breathed into the apostles in that locked room in Bethany was profound…and is profound to this day. 

Look back to the reading from Acts as to what sort of power those apostles displayed.  All over Jerusalem, people were captivated by their first hand stories of life with Jesus and of the incredible marvelous resurrection of Jesus… of the divinity of Jesus and of the grace that followed and engulfed all who believed in his resurrection. I would have loved to be among that group of early Christians… I can imagine that the power and enlightened presence of the apostles was nearly as awe inspiring as the power and presence of Jesus himself.  These men had had the Son of God actually breathe the Holy Spirit into their bodies.  These men had been personally empowered by the very real presence of the Risen Son of God.  Like I said… listening to them would have been nearly as awe inspiring as listening to Jesus… nearly.  And the people who they told would be nearly as awe inspiring as they were… nearly. And those folks told folks who told folks who told folks who told folks who eventually told you and me.  You’d  think that, if that Holy Spirit had been passed on from person to person to person over all those centuries, that it would have been diluted a bit, wouldn’t you?  If Jesus’ input into this process of Christianity were limited to the stuff he had been able to accomplish during life, and then for the brief time he had on earth after his resurrection and before his ascension, you could imagine that there would be no way that the fervor and intensity could have been maintained over all those years.  He said that he said that she said that he said that she said that they said that he said running out for two millennia loses SOME of its pithy relevance, doesn’t it?  And THAT leads me to believe that Jesus has been personally involved at numerous points along that path. 

I can well imagine that many of you here have either felt the eerie presence of Jesus in your lives personally, or have known someone who glowed with a divine fire so bright that there could be no doubt that they personally had had the Holy Spirit blown into them by the risen Jesus.   Last year, on the Sunday after Easter, I talked about three such people in my life and I want to share that story again with all of you.  One of the three people was Pope John Paul II, who I saw at midnight mass at St. Peter’s in Rome on Christmas Eve, 1984. I was sitting three seats from the center aisle, and as he walked by, the air tingled and crackled as if lightning had just struck.  He literally gave off light.  That was only a brief little moment but it has stuck with me for over a quarter of a century.  The other two I have witnessed more often.  One of them is the daughter of the other one of them and that daughter is still alive today – and she is the mother of my lifelong best friend, a fellow named Bill Mellish who has worshipped in this sanctuary and sung with our choir on a couple of different occasions.  Both his mother and his grandmother were the children of and spouses of ministers, and both of those ladies were literally luminous.  Bill’s mom still is.  Bill’s dad was my minister from the time I was six years old until I graduated from college, and he remains my favorite minister among all the ones I have ever had….but he is a guy…and a Dad… and a father figure… and a man’s man… and he preaches wonderful and insightful sermons that always make me think, but he doesn’t glow like his wife does or his mother-in-law did.  I KNOW, without either of those women ever actually telling me, that they had personally experienced the risen Jesus and that he personally had breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and into them.

An example… one day in the fall of 1980, I was on the USS Wichita, a large replenishment ship operating in the Indian Ocean… I can’t remember exactly what time it was… near dusk… we were headed south to Diego Garcia from the Straits of Hormuz to pick up “stuff” for the task force that operated in the northern Arabian Sea during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  We met a small Navy destroyer headed north and that ship radioed over and asked if we had any milk or canned soda on board and we did so we arranged a brief “vertical replenishment of opportunity” as it was called.  We would send our onboard helicopter over to their ship as we passed by one another and drop off a pallet of milk and soda and some other foodstuffs that they needed and we had in stock.  Unfortunately, the evolution went terribly awry.  As the helicopter took off from our flight deck aft, it hit its nose into the water and, after a valiant effort by the crew to get the aircraft back in the air and flying again, it came back around to attempt an emergency landing. The nose area, weakened by the earlier impact with the water, began to disintegrate, and, in an act of bravery that saved the entire flight deck crew, but cost the lives of the helicopter crew, the pilot nosed the struggling aircraft over the port side of the flight deck and into the water where it completely exploded upon impact.  I was standing on the port bridge wing when the crash occurred and a piece of the rotor blade, about two feet long and one foot wide came flying from the crash site directly over my head, and landed all the way up on the forecastle.  The giant piece of a blade, like a big spinning knife, missed decapitating me by less than three feet.  At exactly that same moment, on the other side of the world, at a nursing home in Massachusetts, my friend Bill’s grandmother awoke early in the morning and called her grandson to report that she KNEW that something terrible had almost happened to me and that they should both pray for my safety.  She was plugged in. Just like the apostles in the readings this morning, she could give testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. Just like the group gathered in the closed room in Bethany, Jesus had imparted his peace unto and into her.  Just like those early Christians, she was bathed in “great grace”.  She radiated it in a visible and palpable way.  So does her daughter.  So did Pope John Paul II.  They are special, but they are hardly unique. 

Gamaliel was right, you know.  This Gospel stuff is way too powerful to have been thought up by mortal men.  The grace that radiated from the apostles convinced Gamaliel.  And that grace is alive and moving among us today.  For I believe that saints and modern day apostles live in our midst.  I believe that Jesus reaches out and touches people today and breathes the Holy Spirit into them and charges them with reaching out and touching us.  I also believe that when they DO touch us, they pass on a little bit of that grace to us, and, while we may not be bathed with “great grace” like they are or like the early apostles were… we may not appear luminous and charged with electricity like they are, nonetheless, we can pass on the story of our encounters with them to others…we can, in some small way, share that testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ… and do our small part to spread the good news about him forward out into the world.  We can pass it along.  We can reach out and touch others.  We can do that.  And we all ought to.  Amen.

 

Happy Easter!                                   04/04/10

Happy Easter, everyone!  Easter is quite the holiday, isn’t it?  I don’t think we’ve had this many people in our sanctuary since Christmas Eve – the other biggie on the Christian calendar.  Think about all the celebrations that go on around Easter.  Millions of people gathered earlier this morning in St. Peter’s Square in Rome to listen to the Pope give his Easter message.  Tens of thousands of pilgrims filled Jerusalem today as the passion of Jesus’ final days was reenacted on the very streets where it all first happened.  Closer to home, hundreds of lucky children from the Washington, DC area get to roam around the White House lawn looking for Easter Eggs.  Stores all over our town have been selling Easter decorations and candy for weeks and weeks now.  How many of us are wearing clothing that was purchased for this occasion?  Most of us put on fancier than normal Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes for Easter Sunday.  Most of us have family gatherings of some sort today… either we have a fancy brunch after church, or a big ham dinner later on this afternoon.  Easter is such a gala happy holiday in every sense.  But it wasn’t really a gala happy holiday on that FIRST Easter Sunday morning, was it?

The Lectionary reading for Easter morning this year is from the Gospel of Luke, but let’s take the time to review how all the Gospels cover the event.  First, in Matthew:

¹After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.  ²There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.  ⁵The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."  ⁸So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

We hear fear and confusion on Easter morning in Matthew’s Gospel.

Here is the story from Mark… the first eight verses of the 16^th and last chapter of his gospel:

Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. ² Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. ³ And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” ⁴ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large. ⁵ And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.
⁶ But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. ⁷ But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”
⁸ So they went out quickly^[a] and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

From Mark we hear fear, amazement, confusion and SILENCE.  And there is strong consensus among biblical scholars that that Mark 16:9-20 were added well into the second century.  Most scholars believe that the last words in the original version of the Gospel of Mark were “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”    SILENCE and FEAR.

John’s Gospel says:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ²So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"  ³So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)  ¹⁰Then the disciples went back to their homes, ¹¹but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹²and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  ¹³They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"  "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." ¹⁴At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.  ¹⁵"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"  Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."  ¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Mary."  She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).  ¹⁷Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "¹⁸Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Disciples leaving an empty tomb in dejected disbelief according to John’s gospel… only Mary Magdalene stays around long enough to be confronted by the risen Jesus and she is so grief-stricken she doesn’t even recognize him.

And then there is today’s reading from Luke that Scott read earlier:

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. ⁵In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ⁷'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " ⁸Then they remembered his words.  ⁹When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. ¹⁰It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. ¹²Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Disbelief, wonderment, confusion, fright on Easter morning according to Luke.  Wow.  Those four versions make you want to dress up in your fancy clothes and go have an Easter egg hunt, don’t they?

Seriously… what are we to think of these four different versions of the first Easter morning, and what are we to think when we try to place these accounts alongside the exuberant celebration that Easter has now become for Christians all over the world?  Well… Here is what I think about that:  I think Easter only becomes a joyous event when we look BACK on it through the lens of his following appearances to his disciples and others… when we look BACK through the lens of the Pentecost and the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit… when we look BACK through the lens of centuries of evangelism and conversion and faith… but that FIRST Easter morning was not something that those who experienced it would have  characterized as joyful or happy or, in any way a cause for celebration. 

Aren’t we lucky, then?  Aren’t we lucky that we KNOW who moved the stone?  Aren’t we lucky that we know what happened to Jesus after he descended into Hell?  Aren’t we lucky we understand what the empty tomb really means?  Aren’t we lucky that we have a clue what Jesus was talking about all along? It is certainly clear that his early disciples were clueless about what the Kingdom of God really meant. They were clueless about how Jesus could be executed as a common criminal and still become King of the Jews – and King of all of us.  There can be no doubt that he gave them all plenty of hints as to what was going to happen to him.  He predicted his death - and his subsequent resurrection - multiple times in each Gospel accounting.  He tried over and over again to explain to his followers what the future had in store, what the Kingdom of God really was all about… but, as faithful and devoted as the disciples were, they did not seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer when confronted with the empty tomb on that first Easter morning.  We see it coming… it comes every year at this time… we make our Lenten journey… we deny ourselves chocolates… we put an extra something in the collection plate…we read the Bible a bit more…we think about the life of Jesus… we contemplate his final days… we attend Holy Week services… we listen to the mournful readings of the Tenebrae… and then, we wake up on Easter morning knowing how it all turns out.  We’ve all seen this movie before.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we haven’t.  Try to put yourself in the sandals of Peter, or Mary Magdalene… on that first Easter morning.  Try to imagine you were one of the disciples that first Easter morning and you were one of the ones who either went to the tomb for the purpose of tending to the corpse of Jesus or were one of those who found out about the missing corpse of Jesus from one of those who did go there.  Try to imagine just how confused, and frightened, and dejected you might have been.  Think this Easter morning about that small band of Jesus’ followers on that FIRST Easter morning… and then… and THEN… say a prayer thanking God for THEM…thanking Jesus for having the incredible wisdom to pick THEM and to inspire THEM.  We, as Christians today, owe that small band of frightened followers from that first Easter morning an immeasurable debt. When you think about it, there wouldn’t BE ANY Christians today if it were not for THEM.  Somehow they were able to rise above all that fear and all that confusion, pick themselves up and GO back to Galilee as they had been directed to do…and there they DID confront the risen Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where he cooked them breakfast and explained things to them… and then they DID come back to Jerusalem and they WERE infused with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and they DID fan out from the Holy Lands and spread the good news of Jesus Christ through the centuries that followed from Jerusalem to every corner of the globe… all the way here to Augusta, Maine today.  Their message rings out loud and clear across time – from that first Easter morning all the way to THIS Easter morning:  Jesus was conceived by God.  Jesus was born.   Jesus was baptized. Jesus walked among us.  Jesus taught.  Jesus healed.  Jesus was betrayed. Jesus was crucified.  Jesus was laid in the tomb.  Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven.  Jesus lives today in each one of our hearts.  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Happy Easter!  Happy Easter, everyone!  Amen.

Palm Sunday Expectations                          3/28/10

Palm Sunday… and we heard the classic story of the ride into Jerusalem this morning…. or did we?  Actually, Luke’s version is missing a few key elements.  In the other three Gospels, Jesus rides on a donkey, just like in Luke… but in the other three gospels, large crowds of ordinary people line the road into Jerusalem cheering and spreading palm fronds on the road in front of him.  There are no palms in Luke.  Actually, there are no crowds of cheering people in Luke’s version either. Luke says that some people spread their cloaks on the road, but they were strangely silent in his account.  Luke then goes on to say that, “As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”  Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”   Luke says, “the whole multitude of the disciples”… the only ones praising God in THIS version of the Palm Sunday events were disciples.  It is a minor point, perhaps, but one worth noting, I think.

 I also want to take a moment and point out a very interesting juxtaposition that occurs in the Gospel of Luke.   At the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, in his account of the BIRTH of Jesus, he has angels from heaven saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” …  angels proclaiming “Peace on Earth”.  And here, as we near the END of Luke’s Gospel, he has mortals – disciples - saying “Peace in Heaven”.  Interesting.    At the beginning of his life, the angels are proclaiming that he will bring peace with him to the earth, perhaps… and near the end of his stay here on earth, his disciples are proclaiming that peace will be coming to heaven… which basically says that Jesus brings peace along with him wherever he goes.  Well… there’s no surprise there.  And those disciples are proclaiming that he is “the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”  King… now that’s a pretty big word.  That is a word that is bound to incite all sorts of folks, but it does not really come as a total surprise to the authorities in Jerusalem.   Jesus has made quite a reputation by this point in his career... he had, just a few days before, actually raised a dead man back to life… The miracle with Lazarus was not some cheap parlor trick…that was not merely getting some shill in the audience to throw away his crutches and appear to be able to walk again…that was not some guy claiming to be able to see when before he was - quote – blind – unquote (wink wink)… this was actually bringing a man four days dead and in the tomb back to life!  News of that event spread fast. Jesus entered Jerusalem with this parade and immediately started drawing big crowds with the controversial things he said and did.  Clearly, the crowds had heard all about Jesus and they were excited to see this miracle worker – this magician.  The rapt audience was ready to believe in the Messiah if they could only witness one or two of those fancy miracles they had heard about.  Well… at least part of the audience was interested in miracles… another part of the audience was excited about something else… they were excited about revolution… revolution was in the air, no doubt. 

Let’s take a moment to review the historical events that were still fresh when Jesus rode into town.   On that first Palm Sunday, revolution had been brewing in Israel for years. In the year 63BC, the Roman General Pompeii conquered Israel and the Israelites became unwilling subjects of the Roman Empire, after having been a free people for well over three hundred years.  That was a bitter pill to swallow, no doubt.  History records that the Jews in Israel did not acquiesce meekly to Roman rule. Routinely, the Israelites rioted against the Romans.  In 6AD, a Pharisee named Zadok led a major uprising and the Romans punished him and 2000 of his followers in a mass execution, by crucifixion, and their crosses were lined up for miles on the major roadway leading out of Jerusalem.  Can you imagine, say, the West River Road from Augusta to Waterville lined with crosses holding the dying bodies of central Mainers who had rebelled against some tyrannical occupying force from the Bronx or some other alien nation? How well would that sit with all of us? 

Revolution was in the air.  Miracles were in the news.  A large part of the Passover multitude gathered in Jerusalem was made up of angry Jews desperately seeking a new charismatic leader who would ignite a revolution against the hated Romans.  Another large part was made up of religious Jews desperately seeking the promised Messiah.  Both of these groups converged in Jerusalem for that week and swirled around Jesus… one group expecting a religious Houdini who could raise the dead and heal the sick, and the other group expecting a powerful magnetic, inspirational charismatic military-political leader.

And what did they get?  Who arrived to enter into Jerusalem to the sights and sounds of their tumultuous accolade?  A simple Galilean carpenter riding on the back of a little donkey… not a magnificent leader riding atop a lunging white stallion… just a guy on a donkey who was seemingly not all that impressed by all that commotion.  The donkey is important, however, and yet another example of just how well acquainted Jesus was with the writings of all the Israelite prophets.  Zechariah, one of the prophets of the Old Testament, wrote during the period toward the end of the Babylonian exile, the repatriation to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple.  The main theme of his writing was that God was still working and planned to live again with His people in Jerusalem.  He would save them from their enemies and cleanse them from their sin.  The ninth verse of the ninth chapter of his prophesy says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout, daughter of Jerusalem.  See your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  And true to the prophesy of Zechariah, Jesus rode his donkey gently and quietly into Jerusalem, despite the commotion around him. If you read the narrative in the Gospels of Matthew alongside Luke one of Jesus’ first stops on his final visit to Jerusalem is to the temple where he casts out the money changers and the merchants.  It’s sort of humorous, almost… if you read the version in Mark, however, it says that, “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple.  He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.”  How anti-climactic is that???  Here we have this big procession into the Holy City during the height of the Passover celebration, and all the crowd gets is some carpenter on a donkey who doesn’t say all that much to them that day… he rides into Jerusalem on this little donkey… goes to the temple… looks around at everything,  and then leaves.  Big deal!  What sort of a King is this guy, anyway?

What sort of a King is this guy, anyway?  He certainly didn’t LOOK like a king.  He wore a simple homespun robe and some sandals... not fancy silks and satins.  He rode on a donkey or walked on foot… he didn’t have some fancy stallion or chariot or fancy litter carried by slaves.  He didn’t live in a palace with a bunch of servants and handmaidens… he roamed around Israel and Judea staying with friends, or sleeping out under the stars.   He didn’t dine with other royalty eating fancy food in fancy dining halls, but rather chose to eat simple peasant food with small groups of friends, sinners, prostitutes, lepers and tax collectors.

What sort of a king is this guy, anyway? He didn’t DO the sorts of things that kings do.  He actually had spent many years working as a carpenter, making things like chairs and tables and oxen yokes for folks in his village of Nazareth.  Kings sure don’t do that sort of thing.  He washed the feet of his friends!  Most kings we can think of would consider that a degrading sort of activity clearly beneath their royal stature.  What kind of king tries to get his subjects to love him?  What kind of king is it that, like a rejected father, goes out and waits at the fence for his unworthy, sinful, failure of a son to come back to him and kills the fatted calf and rejoices when he does? What kind of king searches for his lost subjects like a shepherd searches for his lost sheep?

What sort of king is this guy, anyway?  Clearly, he was not the sort of King that the Jews in Jerusalem were looking for on that first Palm Sunday.  Even though Jesus did an amazing amount of teaching in that last week, he did it in an atmosphere where the positive buzz quickly subsided and was incrementally replaced with antipathy and distrust.  He may have entered like a King in the midst of an adoring crowd on Palm Sunday, but five days later, that same adoring crowd asked Pontius Pilate to free Barabbas so that Jesus could be nailed to a cross for his sins. Little did they know, he actually would go willingly to that cross in order to die for their sins… for OUR sins. 

So… what sort of king is this guy, Jesus, anyway?  What sort of a king is he to US?  Are we sitting here this morning timidly waving our palm fronds secretly wondering whether Jesus will live up to our expectations of what our king should be?  I would suggest that the better question might be, whether we are living up to His expectations as to what sort of faithful followers and subjects WE might be.  We all may half heartedly, absentmindedly wave our palm fronds this morning, and, while I can’t imagine that any of us will be calling for his crucifixion on Friday in lieu of Barabbas, many of us might not really pay all that much attention or really care all THAT much one way or the other. 

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week.  We ought not to wave our palm fronds and sing Hosanna this morning and then, put Christ out of our minds until next Sunday when we can all come back dressed in our finest and joyfully, gleefully, happily celebrate his resurrection and then share some after worship fellowship with all those folks we haven’t seen since Christmas Eve.  Holy Week is here, and I suggest that we all ought to spend this next week thinking about what happened in the days that followed that first Palm Sunday.  Let’s all see if we can spend a little time reading our Bibles and thinking about the many parables that Jesus told us during those final days.  Let’s all try to take the time to think about the confrontations with authorities that happened during those final days.  Let’s all try to spend a little time thinking about the Upper Room and that Last Supper.   Please give some serious thought to joining us here on Maundy Thursday evening at 7PM for the joint service with Old South. 

Let’s all try to take the time this week to think about Gethsemane.  Let’s all try to take the time this week to think about Golgotha.   Let’s all try to take the time this week to think about the tomb, and then, if we do that, next Sunday, we will be able to really contemplate all of that in the context of the empty tomb that will await us then.  Spend some time with Jesus this week.  Listen to Jesus this week.  Walk with Jesus this week.  This is what Lent has been leading us up to all along.  This is where our Lenten journeys have been taking us.  Be really ready for Easter next Sunday.  Don’t stop short.  Finish this.  Amen.

 

Glorious Extravagance                  3/21/10

The anointing of Jesus.  As I often do, I need to thank Kate Huey, from the UCC’s national staff, as well as William Barclay, the famous Scottish theologian… studying their analysis this week really helped me make sense of this pivotal event in the final days of Jesus’ life.

This is a story that is contained in all four Gospels in one form or another.  The stories aren’t always exactly the same… and the identities of the woman doing the anointing are not always exactly the same, but the basic premise is fairly constant throughout all four accounts.  Jesus is dining with friends and disciples and a woman comes in and anoints his head with expensive perfume.  In three of the four versions, some of the folks there at the dinner are upset at the extravagance of this gesture and wonder if there is not some better way to utilize those resources for the good of the people… the poor people in particular.  In Luke, the dinner takes place in a Pharisee’s house and the anger is from the Pharisee and not because of the cost, but because the woman is a sinner.  But basically, the story is pretty much the same across all four Gospels. 

And it has some interesting themes and ideas running through it that are worthy of our further examination.  The first thing we might do is ask ourselves just how extravagant this act really was.  Nard is what the Gospel says that Lazarus and Martha’s sister Mary used to anoint Jesus.  The accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Mark say that the nard was poured over Jesus’ head, while this morning’s reading from John indicates that Mary poured it over his feet, but in each account, it was a full jar of the stuff.  So…what exactly IS nard?  Well… nard is a perfume made from the root of the spikenard plant, and that plant is a member of the Valerian family.  Nard came from India along the trade routes and was VERY expensive.  The gospel accounts indicate that Judas valued the jar of nard at 300 denarii.  A common worker who performed manual labor back in those days was paid one denarius for one day’s work.  Therefore, this jar of nard was worth a year’s salary.  Assuming bare minimum wage, that jar of perfume would cost over fourteen thousand dollars in today’s economy.  That really IS extravagant, isn’t it?  Here we have Jesus, just six days before his final Passover… on his way to Jerusalem… on his way to Golgotha… and here is Mary,the sister of Martha, and the sister of Lazarus, who had been dead and buried in the tomb for four days before Jesus raised him back to life… and Mary somehow gets her hands on this fourteen thousand dollar jar of perfume and breaks it and pours the entire contents on Jesus’ feet.  Fourteen thousand dollars… a year’s wages… three hundred denarii… poured out on his FEET.  By anyone’s measure,  that is extravagant. 

Another interesting divergence in the various Gospel accounts of the anointing of Jesus is a very bold prediction made by Jesus that did NOT come true.  In two of the Gospel accounts of this incident, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whenever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her”.   That has not happened.  This woman – called a sinner in Luke, referred to simply as an unnamed woman in Matthew and Mark, and identified as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus in John – this woman has not gone down as a New Testament superstar.  She is a passing footnote, a bit player in this Passion Play, a walk-on part in the last week of the drama that was Jesus’ life.

So… have we missed something?  Is this little display of extravagance really all that important?  I actually think it might be.  Let’s put the scene into context a bit:  This anointing at Bethany, the home of Lazarus, isn't just a nice little story in the middle of John's Gospel. It's set at the turning point of that Gospel, literally and figuratively. Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem instead of remaining a popular but mysterious and elusive troublemaker in the outlands, out of the reach of the religious authorities and the Roman Empire. His raising of Lazarus from the dead, just a few verses before this passage, in chapter 11, has set into motion the wheels of the machinery that will kill him in just a few more days. The high priest and the Pharisees hear the reports – from eyewitnesses – that this Jesus has really outdone himself this time – not just curing a leper or driving out a demon but bringing back to life a man who had been in the tomb four long days. When the word spreads that Jesus has brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead – such a sign, such a promise of what was to come – the religious leaders panic. We've got to put a stop to this, they must have said – people will believe in him, and that will provoke the powers that be – the Romans – to come in and destroy our holy places and our nation. "So," the Gospel of John says in the preceding chapter, "from that day on they planned to put him to death."

Right in the midst of all of this anxiety, plotting, and threat, or perhaps in spite of it, Jesus' friends, Martha the earnest, hard-working hostess and her brother Lazarus, fresh from the tomb, and her sister Mary, the passionate and extravagant one, decide to throw a dinner party. That's right. It's time to have a party, they say. And who can blame them? I mean,  Lazarus hadn’t been just sort of dead or metaphorically dead, like the Prodigal Son last week – "This son of mine was dead, and come back to life" kind of dead – Lazarus was dead dead... really dead…  dead long enough to cause a stench.  If Lazarus has died in Munchkin Land in the Land of Oz, the coroner no doubt would have proclaimed as he did about the Wicked Witch, “As coroner, I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead; he's really, most sincerely dead!”  

He had been dead long enough to bring the whole family and the town and his good friend Jesus together in grief – but not long enough to deter Jesus and the power of life and love, even if the consequences of all this is Jesus' own death. Today's beautiful story of extravagant love, Mary's anointing of Jesus with expensive perfume, is set in Bethany, just on the edge of Jerusalem…Jerusalem, days away from being the site of an offering of love, the most extravagant offering of all… one that would make the jar of nard seem inconsequential.

So the family of Lazarus gathers to honor and to try to thank Jesus, and to celebrate the restoration of their loved one. Still, at this party, death is all around, even here, at a party with friends, in a home that should feel safe. Lazarus sits and talks with his friend, Jesus, who will soon be laid in a tomb himself.  Jesus knows he's a marked man. The establishment is coming after him. He knows his days are numbered, and everyone else at the party must suspect it, too.  All around them is the smell and the feel of death.  Things are tense, and you know what happens when people get tense and anxious…they start picking at one another, criticizing one another, counting the cost of everything, losing sight of the big picture and missing the point. They– we – tighten up, worry, maybe even strike out at one another. It happens.

But not with Mary. Not Mary the passionate one, the one who loves Jesus with her whole heart, loves to sit at his feet and listen to him.  That Mary was full of love and gratitude and very little inhibition. No, Mary doesn't let anything hold her back, and more than anyone else – even the guys who have been following Jesus all this time, hearing his words, watching him in action - even more than these, Mary sees the big picture.  She recognizes who Jesus really is, and what lies ahead for him, and she acts on it. She does things not acceptable in polite company in that culture and time: she unbinds her hair, loosens it as women did only for their husbands; she pours expensive balm on the feet of Jesus, and Mary touches Jesus even though she's a single woman – not appropriate… and then she wipes his feet with her hair. That is just shocking and shameless!  Just as Jesus began his ministry with an extravagance of excellent wine at the wedding feast in Qana, so his ministry comes to a close here in an extravagance of expensive ointment, a passionate display of love and caring that even the woman who offers it does not fully understand.

And even though John makes it clear that the objections of Judas are not sincere but only a ploy to disguise his own ongoing embezzlement of funds from the ministry’s coffers, his objections do have an element of realistic pragmatic truth to them.  We can understand them. Three hundred denarii is a lot of money.  There WERE a lot of poor folks who could be substantively helped with that sort of cash.  Fourteen thousand dollars would fund a lot of public suppers in our parish hall, wouldn’t it? It is difficult, at times, to imagine that Jesus would approve of us wasting fourteen thousand dollars on a jar of perfume to pour over someone’s feet.  But then, this wasn’t just anyone’s feet… and this wasn’t just any party… and this wasn’t just any week.   

An interesting parallel presents itself in John’s gospel.  In John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus does not take bread and break it and share it with his disciples… Jesus does not pour wine and pass it around and tell his disciples that this bread and this wine are his body and blood, broken for them.  In John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus gets up and ties a towel around himself, pours water in a basin and washes the disciples' feet. That is what he wants his followers to do, but he doesn't just tell them, he shows them, too. Do as I say, he says, AND do as I do. Mary seems to anticipate that lesson beautifully; acting from her heart, responding to all that Jesus has been in her life. 

We should not be bothered by the apparent extravagance of Mary’s actions here.  Instead, we should think about how extravagant sharing, extravagant giving, from deep in our hearts, is PRECISELY how Jesus wants us to treat our fellow travelers in life.  When we really love someone, when we give from the heart, we never really count the cost.  When we love someone, we want to give them, not just stuff – even really expensive stuff – we want them to know how we really feel about them… we want them to know how much we care about them and how important their happiness is to us.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the last expensive jar of nard on the shelf, if breaking it open and showering our loved ones with it really gets them to understand just how much we love them, then we do it without a moment’s hesitation, don’t we?  We don’t bother to compute the cost of our commitment, because real love is not like that.  That’s the kind of love Jesus has for us.  That is the kind of love that Jesus wants us to have for HIM and for everyone else as well.  Being extravagant in our giving…being extravagant in our expressions of affection and caring for our fellow men and women in our lives and in our communities is a GOOD thing.  Sure… we could sell the jar of nard and fill a lot of empty tummies with the proceeds… or we could give extravagantly, and fill the hearts of a handful of people who themselves would be so moved and empowered by that gift, that they would spread the good news of Jesus Christ all over town… all over the world.

We are in the home stretch.  Jesus is now on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  Next Sunday he will enter the city on a carpet of palm fronds with adoring crowds crying “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”  Our Lenten journey is coming to an end.  May our hearts be filled to overflowing with extravagant love throughout this season, and every season.  Amen

The Elder Brother            3/14/10

Today’s scripture reading about the prodigal son is really familiar to all of us.  I think it is probably the most widely read of all of Jesus’ fifty-seven parables.  It is interesting to note that this parable starts at the 11^th verse of the 15^th chapter of Luke, but if you’ll check out the bulletin, you’ll notice that the reading starts with the first three verses of that chapter and then jumps ahead to the 11^th verse.  The first three verses are:

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable”

 What is contained in verse 4 through 10 that is conveniently left out of the reading?  Well… the answer is: two more parables.  In verses 4 through 7 Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep, and in verses 8 through 10, he tells the parable of the lost coin.  After these two parables set the stage, he then and only then tells the much better known parable of the lost or prodigal son.  As you may recall, the lost sheep parable basically says that the good shepherd will leave his ninety-nine sheep in open county and goes off in search of one lost sheep and rejoices with his neighbors when he finds it.  The parable of the lost coin is similar…  the woman has ten silver coins, loses one, and searches for it until she finds it, and SHE also rejoices with her neighbors when she finds it.  The lessons of these two parables are similar:  heaven rejoices when one sinner repents and finds his way home.  Unlike those two parables where Jesus tells the Pharisees and the scribes the lessons contained in them, he does NOT end the parable of the prodigal son with any such summary for their benefit. 

There are other factors which make this parable of the prodigal son qualitatively different than the two preceding parables.  First off:  in the case of the lost coin and the lost sheep, the people who lost the sheep and the coin are the people who actively search and then find what they have lost.  In the case of the first two stories, the coin is inanimate and the sheep is incapable of thoughtful discernment, but in the prodigal son’s case, it seems clear that the ONLY reason that the young son decided to return was that he was hungry and had no desire to continue cleaning up after pigs.  He didn’t seem to have any real change of heart, only distaste for his diminished circumstances.  I honestly don’t think he expected to be greeted by his father with anything like the homecoming extravaganza he received.  Unlike the first two stories, in the case of the prodigal son, the father does not DO anything to go find his son, even though it is clear from the passage that he and his older son are both well aware of what the younger son had been up to.  They both knew what he had been doing, and one can only assume that if they knew WHAT he had been doing, they knew WHERE he had been doing it… but nonetheless, the father did nothing proactively to bring his son back home.

 Prodigal is a word that I will bet not many of you know the actual definition of.  I will readily admit that I had the wrong idea all these years.  I always thought that prodigal meant someone who had gotten lost but had a change of heart.  Actually, the definition for the word prodigal from Webster’s is:   “characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure, lavish, recklessly spendthrift.”  Now clearly, the son had indeed BEEN prodigal in the way he had squandered his inheritance, but, “prodigal” could also be used to describe the father in the way that HE responded when the son returned, couldn’t it?  

In preparing for this morning, my studies took me into some interesting side journeys.  I actually found myself learning about estate and inheritance customs in early Israel.  Back then, as was the case throughout most of history, being the first born son entitled you to all sorts of perks that your younger siblings did not enjoy.  In terms of what is basically ancient Hebrew probate law, the oldest son could automatically claim two thirds of the entire estate of his father.  All the other heirs divvied up the remaining one third.  Knowing that, the younger son in today’s parable clearly figured out that he would always play second banana to his older brother.  He obviously wanted nothing to do with that and asked his father for HIS share early…even before the death of the father.  That was pretty unusual, to say the least.  And, as we read this parable, it becomes clear that the father’s estate was not kept in a bank vault somewhere, but was property.  He had land, and when his younger son asked for his share, the father gave him, in all probability, a third of his real estate holdings.  That is not something you can get back in a bull market.  Once the land is gone, it is gone.  And once the young son got his chunk of property, HE promptly liquidated it and used the proceeds to live the high life.  And when he left, he left his father and his older brother to carry on with significantly diminished assets.  Knowing that makes the reaction of the father upon his younger son’s shameful return even more striking.   Knowing that makes the reaction of the older brother all that much more understandable.  I mean, the story starts out by stating that a father has TWO sons, and then, the elder son is completely forgotten until the very end, but his reaction is critical to this parable, I think.

To review… as the elder brother is coming in from the fields after a hard day’s work, he hears a big celebration taking place and he's puzzled. He stops a servant and asks him what all the music is about. The servant responds: "Oh, haven't you heard. It’s your brother. He's not dead after all, he's alive and your father is having a grand homecoming party for him." I can see him as he turns his face toward home his face rankled with anger. The closer he gets the redder his face and his jaw begins to tighten. His father meets him at the door and reads the look on his face. The elder brother vehemently protests the inequity and the extravagances.   Then the father pleads with him to come in, and there the story ends.

But let’s put the telling of the parable of the prodigal son in context.  The scene starts with Jesus hanging out with publicans and sinners-the riff raff of the streets.  And the Pharisees were greatly troubled with the fact that He spent so much time with all of these irresponsible unclean, less than pious people. Observant Jews of that day wouldn't be caught dead in the home of some of the people Jesus was palling around with.  So they asked him about it. Why do you always associate with these sinful people? Jesus responded by telling these three stories in a row-there was a lost coin, there was a lost sheep, there was a lost boy. Now, these Pharisees could understand who Jesus was talking about when he told these stories. Obviously, he was talking about all of those sinful people – these lost people - he had been associating with. But then Jesus throws them this curve ball-he said but there is someone else in the story. And that someone else is an older brother. He never left the father's home and went to the far country. He stayed at home and did the all the right things. Well, those Pharisees knew who Jesus was talking about then as well. He was talking about them. They were the ones who had never left home and besmirched the family name. But Jesus was telling them that, just like the elder brother, they didn't quite understand that they too were just like the prodigal son and in need of redemptive love. They didn't really understand that the Father loved them too.

The older brother is the bad guy in most interpretations… but, when you look at the parable, Jesus never portrayed him as bad.  Actually, the story’s implications show a great deal of positive attributes about him.  For example, I think that we can truthfully say that the elder brother was a hard worker. Even when the party was going on late in the evening he was just coming in from the fields.  He was a fairly well off… he was the sole heir to his father’s estate, after all, even if that estate was somewhat diminished by the actions of his younger brother, but apparently he had a strong work ethic.

American churches are full of older brothers and older sisters just like that. Whenever other folks are partying, you can be sure that they are at a trustee’s meeting or a deacon’s meeting or a mission board meeting or a Christian education meeting instead… you know they are leading a girl scout troop or a boy scout troop or they are at choir practice or they are in the parish hall kitchen preparing a meal. You can always count on them; they are always there.  And the truth of the matter is that most of the worthy causes in America today could not be carried on if it were not for the elder brothers and sisters in society acting just like the elder brother did in today’s parable.  Indeed, there is much good that can be said about the elder brother. He is earnest; he's sincere; he's a hard worker.    And most members of churches today are exactly like him. That is, not too many of us have been saved from the skid rows of life. Not too many of us can look back upon a lurid past. The sad part of is, although we are like the elder brother in that we have never really completely wasted our lives, we are also like him in three other ways. Many of us don't see, first of all, how unforgiving we actually are. Secondly, we don't see this unforgiving behavior of ours as prodigal – wasteful - behavior for which we need forgiveness. And third, we don't seem to realize just how much the Father loves us too.

There have been a lot of elder brothers and sisters in the history of the church. There was St. Teresa of Avila, for example, who lived in the 16th century. She never left the Father's home. She went into a convent at an early age and developed a life of self-discipline that would fill anyone with awe. She spent hours a day in prayer. One day, when she was in her mid 40's, she was entering the chapel to pray as she did every day. And as she entered she noticed a picture, a picture that had been on the walls for years. It was a picture of Jesus being scourged prior to the crucifixion.  And suddenly the realization came to her that Christ had been scourged for her.  And those who have studied her life say that this was the great turning point. She had stayed at home in the Father's house. She had done the right thing. But she had never really acknowledged before that the Christ who had been whipped had been whipped for her.  And there was joy in heaven that day-not over a soul returning from wild living but for a soul returning from the fields after a hard day’s work and finally getting it…  finally understanding the depth of the love that God felt for HER individually. 

Methodists certainly know about the elder brother, because their very own John Wesley – the founder of their denomination - was the best of them. He was so earnest, so “methodical” about his devotional life that people called him a Methodist and the name stuck. But it wasn’t until he was 35 years old, that Wesley experienced God in such a way that he was able to write: "I suddenly felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that Christ had died for my sins, even mine and had saved me from the law of sin and death."  Wesley had never gone to the far country. Wesley had never sown his wild oats.  Wesley had never squandered his inheritance.  Wesley had never been reduced to cleaning the stalls of pigs.  But Wesley needed to know how much God loved him too. He needed to feel some excitement about his religion. He needed a homecoming party.

Not many of us have lived our lives like the prodigal son… most of us have lived lives like the elder brother.  Most of us have approached our faith and the work of the church with a sense of diligence, and a sense of duty, and a sense of righteousness.  Maybe we should consider the fact that, even if we have never strayed far away from the Father’s house, we might still allow ourselves the luxury of basking in his love for us, nonetheless.  Maybe we might allow ourselves the opportunity to be filled with the JOY that comes from knowing that we are – each one of us – beloved children of God. 

Lent continues.  We follow Jesus to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, to the garden tomb, to heaven… and we should know, as we walk with Him, that He loves each one of us and is SO glad we decided to join Him on the journey.  Amen.

Come on in now…. Dinner’s ready”                        7 March 2010

We really have two different literary styles displayed this morning in the Old and New Testament passages that Rachel read.  The passage from Luke is written, like the other synoptic gospels, as an informative, historical, chronological, prose narrative. The passage from Isaiah, on the other hand, is really a lot more like poetry.  And the two passages are laid out on the page in just those ways.  Luke reads from margin to margin in a series of declarative sentences that relatively dispassionately tell a story.  Isaiah is laid out like a poem, because that is what it is, and that is how it is to be read, and that is how it is to be understood.

In doing research for this morning, I read up about Isaiah and the book named after him.  And again, Kate Huey, of the UCC staff, acted like a big flashlight for me, illuminating the scriptures.  As it turns out, scholars now doubt whether one man wrote the entire book of Isaiah… most now think that the REAL Isaiah probably wrote the first 39 chapters and then, after his death, two or more of his protégés continued with chapters 40 through 66.  Those latter chapters are often referred to as the Book of Comfort and were supposedly aimed at an audience of Jews, recently taken into exile in Babylon.   I, for one, am not all that concerned about WHO exactly wrote those poems way back eight centuries before Jesus.  I AM concerned….no, concerned is not the right word… I am moved by their beauty and their message, regardless of their initial intended audience.   The author or authors of the book of Isaiah spend the first 39 chapters writing poetic, yet scathing warnings to the people of Judah to give up their foolish ways and return to God.  And in the second part, the message is really one of hope.    Today's passage from Isaiah offers us, in nine short verses, what might be described as the real red meat of the biblical message, that being that  God loves us, no matter what, and reaches out to us especially in the worst of times, making promises that are not just theoretical.  God promises the things that we most yearn for, deep in our hearts, the very basics of life: homecoming when we're lost or far away, a rich feast when we're hungry, flowing fresh water to satisfy our thirst, and a community of hope when we long for meaning in our lives – something greater than ourselves, wherein and whereby we might be a blessing to the whole world. Oh, and there’s another thing:  this wonderful feast is free.  There is no price for admission, and everyone (even people you would never expect) will be invited to the party.  Underneath and through this message runs a deep and tender compassion for the human predicament, an inherent understanding of our habit of getting entangled in ways and habits that cut us off from the source of what we need most, or worse, being taken captive seemingly against our will by forces beyond our control, like commercialism, materialism, sexism, and generationally passed on baseless prejudices and bigotry, to name a few.    

Given that Isaiah (or someone writing under his name) was writing this to the captives in Babylon, it is clear that he is well aware that the people ARE hungry for a message of hope, a message that promises an end to that captivity and a different way of life, back home, where they can be who they are called to be, and faithful to the God who has made an everlasting covenant with them.  Isaiah knows that even the mention of the great King David's name will stir the people's memory, bringing them almost subconsciously back to a time when Israel was great and glorious.  Here, however, he adds that THIS time, as God renews the covenant, it is going to be extended beyond just one king or dynasty and even beyond just one people, for the chosen people will be a light to ALL the nations, bringing that message and that light to people they have never known or even heard of before.   Isaiah is saying that God is not just the God of Israel, but the God of all people, and it isn’t just the nation of Israel or Judah that needs to worry about God meting out justice in uncomfortable ways, it’s every nation on earth, from then on.It is interesting that this poem takes the form of something akin to a street vendor’s call and less like some divine directive.

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come; buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

When I think of his original audience, and their hunger for good news, it reminds me of summers back in Illinois when my brother and my two sisters and I would be running around chasing one another in our large back yard high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi… the sun would be low in the western sky, turning the river to gold… lunch seemed like a lifetime ago… my father would be grilling a big steak on the charcoal grill… my mother, in the kitchen preparing the rest of the meal:  corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, maybe baked potatoes and a pitcher of cool iced tea.  Our playing would be going along full tilt until Mom yelled out at us from the patio, “Come on in now…. Dinner’s ready”.  This wasn’t a command… it was music to our ears… it was welcome, overdue good news.

Or maybe, we could envision Isaiah as one of those ladies with the hot plates at Hannaford’s offering us samples of new products.  We have other things on our minds… we’ve got a shopping list to work through, pay for and get home before the ice cream starts to melt.  Their sales pitch has got to be so enticing it gets us to alter our agendas and put the tasting of that new cheese or sausage at the top of our list. 

Isaiah, however, is calling us to a much bigger change in our agenda.  Isaiah is saying that "God is trying to tell us something.”  We may have settled so comfortably into a routine and worldview that keeps us so busy and distracted that we've lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can't name those feelings on our own.  The exiled Jews in Babylonian captivity were given bread by their captors, yet Isaiah offered them a different bread.   Might we all be captives, somehow, in a different, capitalistic, materialistic, opportunistic empire of greed and unbridled self- interest and might we need some different bread ourselves?  It is interesting, if you think about it, what an important part bread – manna – food has always played in the fabric of our faith.  From daily manna from heaven in the desert for the wandering and hungry Israelites, allthe way to the Eucharistic elements we will share later this morning.  Last evening we gathered round the round tables in the parish hall and shared a simple meal of beans, just as we will gather round this table in a moment to share yet another simple meal together.  Food is not just food in these instances, but a metaphor … the same metaphor that Isaiah uses as he nudges us to reexamine what we get out of our relationship with God and what we put in as well… nudges us to contemplate just how comfortable we have become as nominal Christians exiled  in this capitalistic, self-centered empire. 

But it’s not all that bad, is it?   This culture, after all, has improved the life experience of women and children, paid more - but nowhere near enough - attention to civil rights, struggled with bigotry, and raised the standard of living of a huge percentage of the population.  So while we speak of exile and empire as something that surrounds us, we might focus also upon our won inward excess: the difference between what we want and what we need, and beyond that, far more than we could ever enjoy but think that we need.  In that pursuit, we may very well BE captive and may very well BE in need of the liberating word from Isaiah the poet.

The reading from Isaiah closes with, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”   

That verse reminds us that we can never begin to understand let alone attempt to anticipate God's "plan".  Kurt Vonnegut once said, "If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand” and that seems particularly appropriate.   And yet we feel fairly certain that homesickness, hunger, and heartfelt yearning are not part of that plan. But maybe we need to be a little hungry, a little homesick, not for "what does not satisfy," but for God and for the gifts of God so that when God does call us in from the backyard for dinner, we drop what we’re doing and put HIM at the top of our agendas. And maybe we need to be confronted with the hunger of others, from time to time, to help us see our role in this Christian endeavor more clearly.

Preacher and theologian Timothy Shapiro claims that, “Hope is preceded by longing,” and reassures us that “Seeking God does not require skill, status, security, smarts, steadfastness, or any number of other positive attributes. Only one thing is required: thirst. God does use human need to draw folks closer to one another and to move them closer to God's kingdom. This is not to say that God somehow causes lack, creates gaps in human experience as a way to make people need salvation. It is more that God provides potential responses to need that pull people closer together.”   We were recently reminded of our unity – in both religious and secular settings – in our responses to the suffering of the people of Haiti. And we're reminded that, as a Lenten community, even in the midst of our sober introspection, we need to continue to be a place of welcome, of nourishment, and of life.   After all, we never know if there may be any exiles that might be coming home this Sunday, hungry and thirsty, and longing for a warm and welcoming community of faith in which to put down roots.

While I have spent my time this morning talking about the reading from Isaiah, I really can’t get away without mentioning the passage from Luke.   Isaiah calls us home… Isaiah calls us to the table to share bread amongst ourselves and with all the peoples of this earth.  In Luke, however, there is a little caveat… and that caveat comes in the form of a parable… the parable of the fig tree contained in the last four verses of today’s reading.  Hear it again:  “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

God knows we are hungry.  He knows we are homesick.  He calls us home.  He wants us to hear that call and COME home… but he wants us to be fruitful when we get there.  He wants us to be productive members of his church.  This parable seems to say that while God is more than willing to feed us and to tend to us, and to care for us, he wants something in return.  This parable says that, while God may indeed give us a second chance and a third chance and even a fourth of fifth or even fiftieth chance, at some point, if we are not fruitful, he is not going to spend a whole lot more time and effort on us.  I don’t KNOW how many times God has called ME home that I have not heeded or even heard… I don’t KNOW how many times God has tended to me like the barren fig tree in the parable and I was completely unaware of the attention he was paying to me.  I can imagine that many of you might be in the same situation.  I would suggest that we all pray that that last time wasn’t the last time.  Or better yet, perhaps we should all ACT like that last time WAS the last time, and realize that we might not ever get any more loads of heavenly fertilizer and that today is the day when we had better start producing some figs.  Today is the day we had better HEAR him when he calls us to his table.  Today is the day when we start being fruitful… start being better… start being more loving and more tolerant and more aware of the whole world full of people who are hungry for what God wants US to feed them.  Think about THAT on your Lenten Journey.  Amen

The Pharisee’s warning                                2/28/10

Wow…last Sunday was a blast. I had such a great time, I forgot all about getting a group of folks together after the service to move the pulpit back.  Oops.  Luckily, we were able to find enough folks who came early to get this monster lugged back over here.  Speaking of last Sunday, if you were here, you’ll know that the topic of my sermon was dancing in church.  And we had wonderful dancing, that’s for sure.  One dance was choreographed to interpret the gospel reading from Luke that talked about Jesus spending forty days and forty nights alone, fasting in the desert and being continually tempted by the Devil.  That was the perfect, and the traditional passage to mark the first Sunday in our Lenten journey.  So… in retrospect, I guess I wish I could have found a way to incorporate that passage into a sermon about dancing… so, as an alternative, I want to back up a bit and just say a few things about that passage before moving on to today’s readings. 

When you stop and think about it, the story of Jesus’ temptation is really unique.  Remember, he is alone out there… no entourage.  Who then, recorded what happened out there?  Who told the gospel authors of Matthew, Mark AND Luke what happened out there in the desert?  How could they know what sort of things the Devil tempted Jesus with?  The answer is, of course, that Jesus himself told them.  Jesus himself related the events in the desert to his disciples.  Every other gospel vignette about Jesus is basically someone writing down what they heard Jesus say in front of groups of people of varying numbers… but these temptations in the desert are not really recollections of what someone thought they heard Jesus say, but Jesus’ own account of what happened out there between him and the Devil… and the evidence of Jesus’ overpowering will and intense focus and commitment could not be any stronger.  How many of us could resist the Devil if he offered us the guaranteed winning number to Powerball?  If really offered unimaginable wealth and power, how many of us would refuse it?  How many of us would honestly say, “Gosh Mr. Satan…thanks, but no thanks.  I admit that it would really cool to be whisked away in my private jet to my villa on the French Riviera for the weekend, but I really need to be in the kitchen of the parish hall to cook food for 175 poor hungry folks from the neighborhood”?  We use the phrase, colloquially, “Get thee behind me Satan”, but would any of us REALLY say it if we were offered the sorts of enticements Jesus was offered out there alone in the desert?  I dunno.  Thinking about this really sacred piece of scripture made me think about those sorts of questions… and I would suggest that you might think about them as well… that sort of contemplation is really one of our primary assignments during Lent.  And…that’s enough about temptation.

 Let’s move on, shall we, and talk about this week’s interesting encounter on the road to Jerusalem.  I think I have previously mentioned a website run by the UCC called SAMUEL.  SAMUEL is an acronym for Scripture And Mission - UCC Electronic Library.  Every week, SAMUEL provides analysis of that Sunday’s scripture passage and this week’s was written by a wonderful minister on the UCC staff named Kate Huey.  Her analysis of today’s scripture reading from Luke about this moment on the road was very enlightening to me as I got myself ready to write this sermon.

The first thing that I find interesting about this encounter on the road to Jerusalem is the way that Luke portrays the Pharisees.  Most of the time, we are led to think that the Pharisees were a uniformly unpleasant group of folks.  The Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus’ late night meeting with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, but the synoptic gospels are all pretty clear that the Pharisees were not exactly big boosters of Jesus and his ministry.  But here, we have some of them coming to see Jesus during his journey to Jerusalem, and they warn him that Herod – Herod Antipas that is – wants to kill him.  Pharisees going out of their way to warn Jesus certainly does not fit with our preconceived notion, does it?  It is so easy to demonize them and assume that they were all standing squarely against the ministry of Jesus, but today’s little vignette shows us otherwise. 

In his analysis of this passage from his seminal work, the Daily Bible Study Series, the Scotsman William Barclay even goes so far as to explain in great detail how Jews of that era did not see the Pharisees as a uniformly unpleasant lot, but had divided the Pharisees into seven different, somewhat humorous, MOSTLY derogatory categories: 1.) Shoulder Pharisees, who wore their good deeds on their shoulders so everyone could see them; 2.)Wait-a-little Pharisees, who could always find a good excuse to put off a good deed until tomorrow; 3.) Bruised and Bleeding Pharisees… truly pious Jews could not be seen talking to women in public, but these Pharisees went so far as to not even LOOK at women on the street… they would shut their eyes when a woman approached and, therefore knocked into walls and houses bruising themselves.. and they displayed these bruises as a proof of their piety; 4.) Hump backed Pharisees… who walked bent over double in false cringing, obsequious humility like Uriah Heep from Dickens’ David Copperfield;  5.)Ever-reckoning Pharisees who were always reckoning their good deeds and striking a balance sheet of profit and loss with God;  6.) Timid Pharisees who lived in constant fear of the wrath of God; and finally 7.) God Loving Pharisees who lived their lives in true faith and humble and sincere charity.  Clearly, it was a group of this last brand of Pharisees that confronted Jesus on the road and warned him about Herod’s intentions.  But Jesus wasn’t intimidated or daunted in the least.  He called Herod a “fox” and told the Pharisees to go back and tell him that he was headed to Jerusalem to drive out demons and heal people and he had every intention of getting there.  His strength and courage in the face of Herod is pretty amazing. 

Barclay has a brief anecdote which illustrates that sort of courage.  In the time of Henry VIII, there was a bishop by the name of Hugh Latimer.  Latimer was initially opposed to Henry’s separating the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church.  He was imprisoned for these beliefs but, after Henry’s death was exonerated, only to be burned at the stake by Henry’s daughter Queen Mary I upon her ascension to the throne.  He is revered as one of three Oxford dons to be martyred during the reign of “Bloody Mary”.  He was burned together with another bishop, Nicolas Ridley, and, as the executioners were about to light the deadly bonfire, Latimer said, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”  But I digress.  Back before he was initially imprisoned by Henry VIII, he was preaching one Sunday in Westminster Abbey and the King was in the congregation.  From the pulpit, Latimer loudly remarked, “Latimer!  Latimer!  Latimer!  Be careful of what you say… the King of England is here.”  Then he went on to say, “Latimer!  Latimer!  Latimer!  Be careful of what you say… the King of KINGS is here.”  Latimer was strong and brave and was not worried about offending Henry the VIII… he worked for a higher, more powerful King. That was strength of faith in action. Latimer was emulating Jesus.   In this passage today, Jesus tells the Pharisees that he takes his orders from God and he would not modify his agenda to escape the wrath of any EARTHLY King.   Jesus is a strong and courageous leader.  That is one of the lessons to be learned here.

And then, after telling the Pharisees that he ain’t afraid of no fox, Jesus says something that I find really complex and multi-layered.  There is more than initially meets the eye in this one verse:  “Oh Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing”.  The first thing that comes to my attention is the implication that Jesus had tried on numerous previous occasions to gather the chicks of Jerusalem under his wings.  I think that that implication underscores the fact that the Gospels are really nothing more than a highlight reel of the ministry of Jesus.  The Gospels do not recount numerous visits by Jesus to Jerusalem, but it seems clear that he DID go there numerous times.  And that one verse is a wonderful juxtaposition with the first part of the reading.  Telling the Pharisees he won’t be intimidated by Herod shows the strength of Jesus, and this verse which immediately follows shows the incredible gentleness of Jesus.  The image that Jesus evokes here - that of a mother hen who protects her chicks – is very unusual in that it portrays the feminine side of God.  And the metaphor is poignant and evocative.  Actually, Jesus' firm resolve to face what lies ahead in Jerusalem is the same kind of fierce devotion that any mother feels.  He is going to take on the authorities, whether represented by Herod or the finicky spirit of Jerusalem, by moving toward the conflict rather than away.  He's the mother hen who will pursue her child through thick and thin, through good school days and bad, through stupid moves and violent outbursts; he's the mother hen who folds the covers down on the bed and puffs up the pillow, at the same time saying, “Don't let me ever catch you doing that again” - offering judgment and mercy simultaneously. 

Kate Huey related a wonderful anecdote that drove the point home to me.  Supposedly… after a farmyard fire somewhere in the Midwest, the people cleaning up afterwards found a dead hen, scorched and blackened lying on the ground, but when they lifted the hen, they found live chicks sheltered under her wings. She had quite literally given her life to save them.  It is a vivid and violent parallel of what Jesus declared he longed to do for Jerusalem and, by implication, for all Israel… and what we now know he actually DID do for not only all of Jerusalem and all of Israel, but for all of us as well.   That is the other side of Jesus that this morning’s scripture reading reveals to us:  not only a brave, courageous man with a mission who would not be distracted from it regardless of the personal danger such dedication created… but also a gentle, caring, loving parent who would willingly – even eagerly – lay down his life for the good of his children. 

It is part and parcel of our Lenten journey that we seek to emulate Christ and, in that endeavor as it regards the Christ of today’s reading, we will all, most likely, come up short.  Most likely, none of us will ever be faced with the dilemma of giving our lives to save others, and if we ever are…most likely, we will shy away from doing so.  That’s OK. Coming up short when being compared to Jesus is nothing new for any of us.  But as we continue on our Lenten journey, it is such a comforting and calming thing to KNOW that Jesus is here, in this world, being that brave and that gentle on our behalf.  Amen

Dancin’ at South Parish:  revisiting a brief history                             02/21/10

Hasn’t this been a fun service thus far?  I think that dance adds a wonderful, joyful component to worshipping God and I wonder why we don’t do it more often.  Last year, when we had Heather and her troupe of dancers perform during our worship service, it was the Sunday BEFORE Lent started, but I didn’t think any of you would be offended if we chose, rather than a somber Lenten theme, sacred dance instead and used it as an opportunity to affirm the pride we have in this next generation coming along, and to celebrate their talents, and the good fortune of the church to know that our future lies in their capable creative hands.  Last year, I did a sermon about dancing in church in general, and dancing here at South Parish in specific.  I have updated that sermon from last year and will give it again, if you all don’t mind.  Hearing no objections, I shall proceed. 

Last year I researched dancing and Christianity on the internet and found some very interesting information about how the church’s views on dance have weaved back and forth over the years. Clearly, if you read any of the Psalms, you will see that dance was an integral part of Jewish worship from the very dawn of time.  And I can tell you after spending two years in that neck of the woods, that Israelis of all ages still LOVE to dance and NEVER pass up a chance to do so.  Early Christian writings show that dance was also incorporated into worship from the very beginning and remained integral in Christian worship for the first four or five centuries.  It seems, however, that once we began to develop a leadership hierarchy, the Christian church began to slowly turn away from dancing.  At first, dancing as part of worship was OK, but the bishops did not participate… feeling it was somewhat plebian and beneath the dignity of their high office.  By the time of the reformation, we protestants were a relatively joyless bunch of folks and dance had completely disappeared from worship services altogether.  In fact, as the reformation ground on, and reformers and puritans and pilgrims left the shores of Europe and headed to other distant shores in order to practice their increasingly strict and unyielding brand of Christianity, they began to look upon dance – in any setting or venue – even in completely secular situations – to be less than pious.   Last year, Don Bailey alerted me to a book found in our own church archives which tells a very gripping and melodramatic story about how dancing nearly ripped this very congregation apart.  This book, entitled “Scenes in a Vestry” was written by Daniel C. Weston, an ancestor of current church member Hope Weston’s deceased husband Pete.  After I read the book, I was fascinated by the insights it provided into very prominent forefathers of our congregation.  Just to start out, for example, in the narthex, mounted right next to one another, are granite plaques commemorating Daniel Stone, who was our FIRST settled pastor, and Benjamin Tappan, who was our long-serving SECOND settled pastor.  By the accounts of Mr. Weston, those two men could not have BEEN any further apart in personality or theology and to have their plaques mounted so close together must have them both turning over in their graves.  And speaking of turning over in one’s grave… I am quite certain that this morning’s worship service has the skeletal remains of Reverend Tappan spinning like an airplane propeller in his coffin.  Let me explain:  If we are to believe Mr. Daniel C. Weston – and if he was anything like his descendent, Pete Weston, I see no reason why we shouldn’t – Daniel Stone was a guy who I think I would have really enjoyed getting to know.  Weston says – quote- That monastic rigor which, under the garb of superior sanctity, would denounce the innocent recreations of life, met with a constant rebuke from the pious and lamented Daniel Stone, the former pastor of this church.  Any attempts, also, to make religion consist in any affected plainness of dress obtained no countenance from this excellent man - unquote. 

Daniel Weston was not so kind to Reverend Tappan.  And the story that is told in “Scenes in a Vestry”, which I will relate to you in summary form, makes it quite clear WHY Daniel Weston and the rest of the Weston family had a less than charitable view of Benjamin Tappan.  The first mention of Tappan in that work is as follows:  Quote – Under Stone’s successor, the Rev. Benjamin Tappan, a new order of things was gradually introduced.  ULTRA in all his feelings and views, he soon gathered around him a clique of kindred sentiments; and there was commenced a regular encroachment upon the liberty wherewith Christ made his followers free – unquote.   

And that encroachment took some time.  Benjamin Tappan took over in 1811 and immediately instituted committees of examination for prospective new members and he made sure, that over the next quarter of a century,  only new members who shared his theology and who were personally loyal to him were allowed to join.  Then, in 1838, he made his big move.  He got the church to adopt a resolution that declared it to be the duty of church members to refrain from dancing entirely. We aren’t talking about sacred dance… we aren’t talking about dancing in the sanctuary or even dancing in the parish hall… Reverend Tappan got this church to pass a resolution telling church members that it was their duty to refrain from dancing anywhere at any time… ever.  I am pretty sure that this Benjamin Tappan and I would not have gotten along very well.  This resolution was not met with unanimous approval on the part of the congregation… several well established family patriarchs spoke out against it.  And many families blatantly ignored it, especially in their own family or close social gatherings.

Now, one of the more vocal critics of this resolution was Judge Nathan Weston, father of attorney Daniel Weston, author of the referenced book.  Nathan West had married Paulina, the daughter of Judge Cony, the man for whom Cony High School is named.  Paulina was a God fearing woman and the mother of Daniel and his sister Catherine and four other children.   Daniel, along with his sister Catherine, was a major protagonist in the drama that was to follow.  Catherine, by the way, married Frederick A. Fuller and was married to him at the time of the events that I will describe.  She was also the mother of Melville Weston Fuller born in 1833, just a young lad at the time of these events.  Melville Weston Fuller owned the very volume of his uncle’s book that resides in OUR library and signed it on the front piece at the age of 16 in 1849.  Melville Weston Fuller later went on to become the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1888 to 1910.  I have no doubt that the stirring accounts of his grandfather’s and uncle’s brilliant legal maneuverings as documented in this volume were at least somewhat responsible for his choice of careers, and, having delighted in the accounts of those legal maneuvers myself, I have no doubt that Chief Justice Fuller came by his brilliant legal mind quite naturally.  But let me get back to the story…

Now, Paulina was the regular host of a sewing society comprised of young girls between the ages of 10 and 15 who would meet twice a month to sew articles of clothing for charitable causes.  They would sew all morning and all afternoon, and then, in the evening, they would have a bit of recreation and they danced, and Catherine Fuller would play the piano and Daniel Weston, would play violin as accompaniment to these dances.  Now, Benjamin Tappan and his brother, E.S. Tappan, a curmudgeonly bachelor deacon, could not STAND the fact that Paulina was holding these “dance parties” in direct violation of the resolution passed by the church.  The Reverend dispatched his brother to the Weston home – conveniently during a time when the good Judge was away riding the circuit – and Deacon Tappan came to the Weston home one evening and confronted Paulina about how aggrieved he was that she would allow dancing to go on within her own home.  Paulina was, as I said, a God fearing woman and loved the Lord, and, in her heart of hearts, did NOT believe that there was anything un-Christian-like about dancing.  She was very polite to the Reverend’s brother, and explained that she certainly would never want to cause anyone in her congregation grief, but… and I quote her here… SHE WOULD BE GROUND TO POWDER BEFORE SHE WOULD BE DICTATED TO BY THE CHURCH.  You tell him, Paulina! 

So… Deacon Tappan fumed and blustered and stomped away… and went back and consulted with his brother and some inner circle advisors… and they all decided that they would deny Paulina, Catherine, and Daniel the right to take communion at South Parish until this matter could be resolved by a meeting of the church as a whole.  Their desires at that meeting were for the three defendants to humbly apologize to the entire congregation for going against the will of the church, and to promise that they would never do so again.  Then, and only then, would they be allowed to join the church around the Lord’s Table.  Well… when Judge Nathan Weston got back into town, he and his son Daniel, the brilliant attorney and author, decided that they would not take this lying down.  The rest of the book is dedicated to the story of their brilliant, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stop the Ultra’s at South Parish from dictating their extreme positions on dancing to others, and to prevent them from denying anyone access to communion for failing to agree to those positions.  In the end, Tappan’s forces prevailed and the Westons severed their association with South Parish and were welcomed into St. Mark’s Episcopal Church across the street.  They did not return to South Parish until sometime after Benjamin Tappan left, in 1849.   Daniel Weston does report that this controversy weakened Tappan’s autocratic hold on the congregation, however.  That is, at least, SOME good news.   I have no idea what sort of pastor Edwin Webb was – who was Tappan’s replacement, but, considering how effective Tappan had been at hand picking members of the congregation for his nearly 40 years in the pulpit, I can well imagine that there was not a lot of dancing going on at South Parish for quite some time… even though I can also well imagine that young men and women could always find the piano and violin playing dance tunes at the Weston home throughout those same years. 

I have not, I regret, dug deeply enough into our church’s history to know whether any sorts of dancing were sponsored by the church in our parish hall after it was constructed in 1888, but I DO know that Cony High School did use our Parish Hall for proms and dances at some points during the last century.  I have found no record of any dance being incorporated into worship but that does not mean that sacred dance was not used, only that I have not found any evidence thereof.  I know that Sammee Quong, whom many of you may remember, occasionally performed sacred dance here in our sanctuary, as a part of worship during Jim O’Brien’s and John Zehring’s ministries.  In the past year, we have had fiddle music and dance filling our parish hall, and we have had concerts here in the sanctuary, most notably Rick Charette last year where this room was filled to the brim with children hopping and jumping and wiggling with the joy of dance. And I know what we have done and will do this morning.  This is about JOY.  God wants us to live JOY-FILLED lives. 

This past Wednesday evening, we began our Lenten season with a joint service at Old South in Hallowell.  It was a quiet and reflective service.  Lent is indeed a time to reflect on the importance of Christ’s presence in our lives and to contemplate our commitment to this Christian path on which we walk.  And we will do another joint service with Old South here on April 1^st… which is Maundy Thursday… and that is also a quiet and reflective service, but I don’t believe the tenor of those services needs to darken our hearts throughout Lent.  Just because we are spending the next forty days contemplating Christ’s journey to the cross, does not mean that we should NOT also contemplate his resurrection and allow the joy of that event to infuse our lives. Christ wants us to see the joy in the world, and to create joy where none exists.  We are meant to be happy and joyful… that is what our creator WANTS for us.  We can certainly find joy in service.  We can find joy in feeding the hungry and caring for the sick and treating every forlorn soul as if he were our brother, as if he were Christ… we can do that… there is JOY in doing that… but, this morning should show us that there is real JOY to be found in worshipping God… There is JOY in dancing to the rhythms that God has embedded in our hearts.  There IS a time to dance.  There IS a time to dance… and that time is now.  Amen.

Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36)                   2/14/10

Transfiguration Sunday is a difficult one for me.  This strange event on the mountain top… always celebrated the Sunday before we begin our Lenten journeys… what is the significance of it?  What lesson should stay with us from this special Sunday and how should we best use that lesson in our lives?  Well… I did some reading on the internet about it.  I found some analysis done by a fellow named King Duncan who I have relied upon in the past when I was stuck on a passage.  Reverend Duncan helped me a great deal, but then, on Wednesday during our weekly lunchtime discussion, Reverend Susan Reisert, from Old South in Hallowell helped me even more.  What follows is what I have come up with after being strongly and gratefully influenced by those two insightful ministers.   

There is a modern day philosopher named William Irwin Thompson.  He has written several highly acclaimed books and volumes of poetry, none of which I have ever had the privilege – or the time or the opportunity - to read.  He has several websites devoted to compiling memorable quotes and King Duncan quoted one such passage in his article about the Transfiguration story in Luke.  The quote was:   "We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions...."

I loved that.  Rachel and I spent a day at the Vatican during our week in Rome in the spring of 2007, and while at the Vatican, we visited the Sistine Chapel along with hordes of other people.  Mere photographic depictions of Michelangelo’s work on that ceiling do not do it justice.  And certainly, photographs taken from before the dramatic decade- long restoration completed in 1994 don’t even come close to revealing the majesty of the work.  The thing that doesn’t really come through very well in photographs is the nearly 3-D illusion the work creates.  A character reaching out – and down – from the ceiling… down towards the viewer on the floor below, looks as if he can almost grab you.  Michelangelo made his hands twice as big as his feet so the exaggerated depth perception creates the feeling that all of the characters are bursting down, up,  and out of the ceiling… it is truly remarkable.  And the enormous SCALE of the work makes the quote from Thompson even more relevant and accurate.  A fly could not begin to understand the scope of what he was crawling over.  Even those humans on the floor below have a difficult time taking it all in.  And isn’t that true of many great piece of art that we have admired in galleries.  Sometimes we need to stand in front of them for extended periods of time before the artist’s intended vision begins to bubble up in our consciousness. 

Scripture passages are much the same way… and apparently, not just for those of us who are reading them, but, also for those folks living in them… case in point: the reading this morning.

Our lesson from Luke's gospel is like a series of four magnificent paintings – a verbal quadriptic, of sorts. The setting for each of the paintings is a mountaintop. In the first panel of the piece, we see Jesus and his inner circle of disciples - Peter, James and John.  Jesus is praying. The disciples are sleeping.

In the second panel, we see the result of Jesus' prayer. The appearance of his face is changed, and his clothes are as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appear with him. Peter and his companions, once asleep, are now fully awake. Peter is saying to Christ, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters - one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." Luke tells us that poor Peter does not even know what he was saying.

In the third panel a cloud has appeared and enveloped these men. The disciples, hidden by the cloud, are afraid. A voice is coming from the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him." 

In the final panel the voice is now silent, the cloud is gone and so are Moses and Elijah. Jesus and his three disciples are alone once more.  Jesus no longer glows white, but is returned to his normal appearance.  But there is a strange and mysterious look on the disciples' faces.  Luke tells us that they "kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen."

So… how shall we deal this morning with this memorable quadriptic from the Mount of the Transfiguration?  Shall we peruse the four panels briefly and marvel at the hand of the artist then move on to other notable paintings… move on to the Lenten series of vignettes…with no more thought as to what the artist is trying to say here in this mountaintop scene? Worse, shall we be like flies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel who see such works of art only as momentary resting places, but have no powers to discern their ultimate worth?   Or shall we look for some deeper meaning … some relevant truth about our lives and about our destinies that might be within these images?

I think there are a few important lessons to be learned from the mountaintop scenes we just described.  First of all, the four panels taken together say that there is more to reality than what we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell. This experience on the Mount of Transfiguration was no ordinary mountaintop experience.  It was not simply a matter of Peter, James and John being moved by the beauty of creation as we sometimes are in worship or in nature.  Oh, we cherish such experiences, no doubt, but what those fellows experienced on that mountaintop was something more… something beyond our ability to rationally explain or even experience.  The events portrayed in the scenes from the mountaintop transfiguration say to us that when we take the sum total of every beautiful and wonderful thing that we have ever experienced through our five senses… when we add up every good feeling we have ever had about friends, family, health and hope… when we include everything this world has to offer us for happiness, joy and peace… there is still more.   There is still more. There is a reality that science cannot measure, great philosophical minds cannot fathom, and high tech space probes cannot reach.  It is the realm of the spiritual. It is the reality of the living God.

Another lesson from these four panels:  There is more to living than dying.  Bob Dylan has a line in his song, “It’s alright Ma” that goes, “he not busy being born is busy dying.”  That line always makes me feel vaguely sad.  Just think about what desperate, sad, meaningless lives most people in our secular world live. It’s true.  We know it.  We can hear it in the rhetoric of debate that goes on about the great issues of our time. Never does that debate even touch upon ultimate values, the will of God, or eternal consequences. Why? Because most people live with the expectation that life really does end at the grave. Our whole attitude toward death has undergone a radical change in this brave, new world.   Reverend Duncan related a story from the Bush years in the White House that humorously illustrates this in a macabre sort of way.  President Bush received a letter inviting him to the funeral of a man described as "a hardworking, patriotic American." The man, however, wasn't dead. His family explained that he was hooked to a life-support machine, and they could pull the plug any time to suit the President’s schedule… death on demand… death with dignity.  For the Christian, however, there is another aspect to this. We believe that death has been defeated! There on the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples see Jesus and Moses and Elijah. How long had Moses and Elijah been dead at that point? Five hundred years, a thousand years?  Who cares?  In the spiritual realm there is no measure of time. "God is the God of the living," Jesus proclaimed. There is more to living than dying.

Finally, the message we need to take away from this passage is that we cannot stay on the mountaintop.  Many of us have had moments where our faith has been altered and enhanced in memorable and breathtaking ways.   Many of us have had encounters with Christ in our lives… in our prayers… in our dreams… and those encounters have deepened and softened and intensified our faith.  But we cannot merely sit still and bask in the warm glow of that encounter smiling smugly and secretly like the cat that ate the canary.  We cannot stop the journey, sit down on the mountaintop, build a little dwelling, a tabernacle, or a booth, and keep living and reliving our private little moment there alone with Jesus. That is what Peter wanted to do, but, as I told the children earlier, the mountaintop was not a stopping place, it was a starting place.

 Maybe there should be a fifth panel in the painting of the Transfiguration experience. It would show Jesus and these three disciples down from the mountain ministering to the needs of people.  Followers of Jesus like us who believe there is a spiritual realm and who believe that death has been defeated are not given the luxury of twiddling our thumbs and idly and inwardly reveling in those great truths. We are called to seek out the least and the lowest and minister to them in Jesus' name.   We are called to come down from our mountaintop moment and get to work.   That's the real test of every mountaintop experience, isn’t it? Does it actually motivate us to reach out to our neighbor?  Does it motivate us to reach down to the least among us? There is no staying on the mountaintop for those who love Jesus. He always calls us to go down into the valley.

How about you? How do you feel about these paintings that Luke has given us of Christ's transfiguration? Are you like the art critic who views them with cool detachment and moves on? Worse still, are you like a fly on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with no awareness that there is anything great here? Or are you ready to leave the mountain and head toward the valley?  Here we are, three days away from the start of our Lenten journey.  We will be following Jesus to Jerusalem, to Gethsemane, to Golgotha, to the garden tomb and ultimately to his victory over death on Easter morning.  At any point during this Lenten season, or any Lenten season, or any OTHER season, for that matter, you may very well have yourself a totally unexpected private mountaintop moment with Jesus.  I would suggest that you use it as a starting point, not a stopping point.  Let it be the beginning of your journey down into the valley, down into the midst of the mass of humanity needing to really see, hear, smell, taste and touch the impact of the Good News  of Jesus Christ in action.  That is the way to experience the true spiritual nature of your relationship with God… that is the way to know God beyond the input from your five senses.  That is the way to live a life that arcs out beyond the grave so instead of being busy dying, as Bob Dylan suggests, we can be busy living… living a life of purpose that will go on long after these earthly vessels we inhabit have turned to dust. 

And that is what I think about Transfiguration Sunday.  I hope that my thoughts today hold some relevance for you… and that they get us all ready to really follow Jesus down from the mountaintop, and all the way to heaven warmly rubbing up against all of humanity every single step of the way.  Amen.

Boatloads of Fish                             2/7/10

Today’s scripture reading from the Gospel of Luke provides yet another version of the events surrounding the calling of the first disciples.  Interestingly enough, the four gospels all have accounts of the story, but in the four gospels, there are three different versions.  In both Matthew and Mark, Jesus is walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and sees Peter and Andrew standing in the shallow water near the shore casting nets out into the water… in both of those gospel stories, he calls those two disciples who drop their nets and follow him.  Then, immediately thereafter, he comes about James and John, the sons of Zebedee, sitting in their boats working with their father and others who apparently are employees of Zebedee.  Jesus calls to them and those two leave their father and his apparently successful fishing business behind and follow Jesus. 

The Gospel of John tells a completely different story where Andrew and an unnamed disciple are already disciples of John the Baptist and, while walking with John the Baptist, see Jesus walking in the distance and John the Baptist tells them, “Look, the Lamb of God!” at which time they leave him and go following after Jesus.  After spending the afternoon talking with Jesus, Andrew goes and gets his brother, Peter, and brings him back. 

The reading from Luke today is much closer to the Matthew and Mark versions but there are significant differences, and some interesting nuances that we should briefly explore.  First off is the subtle, but significant difference in the economic status of Peter and Andrew.  In the Matthew and Mark versions of the story, these two brothers do not own a boat and are reduced to standing in the shallow water at the shoreline casting nets into the water.  They are inherently limited to only being able to catch those fish that swim in the shallow water very near the shore.  In the Luke version, they have a boat... and that is a BIG difference.   

In Matthew and Mark, it is James and John who have the boats – actually, it is their Dad, Zebedee who owns boats- plural- and has other hired men. And their fishing operation is separate and distinct from that of Peter and Andrew.  In Luke, the boat belongs to Peter and Andrew and James and John are their partners.

In Matthew and Mark, there are no crowds involved at all.  Jesus is shown walking along the shoreline by himself… encountering first Peter and Andrew standing in the water with their casting nets… and then coming upon James and John mending nets while sitting IN their father’s boats.  In Luke, Jesus is standing beside the lake and, even at this early stage in his ministry-before he’s gathered any disciples-he is already drawing big crowds.  He asks Peter if he can borrow his boat and uses it as a portable lectern and uses the wonderful amplifying qualities of water to help him be heard and seen by the large crowd gathered at the shore.  How many of you have ever been at a lakeside camp in Maine on a starry summer night and have been able to hear voices from other camps clear across the lake?  That same phenomenon acted as a natural public address system for Jesus as he taught the crowds.  In the Luke version, it is only after this teaching session was over, that Jesus directs Peter to put out into the deep water and put down the nets for a catch.  Peter complains at that guidance, but it is interesting how he phrases it.  Remember that in this version, Peter, Andrew, James AND John have never met Jesus before.  Jesus has come up to them at the end of their work day when they were supposedly all done and washing their nets and asks them to borrow the boat.  Then he preaches and teaches from that boat… the crowd apparently disperses, and Jesus then tells the fisherman brothers to head back out for more fish, and Peter says to him, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.”  After listening to Jesus preach one time from a borrowed boat, Peter calls Jesus “Master”.  That’s pretty remarkable in itself.   

It is also interesting to note that, not too long ago, there was an archeological discovery in Israel where they discovered and excavated a first century fishing boat from the waters of the Sea of Galilee.  It was a pretty big boat… it measured 26 ½ feet long from stem to stern, 8 ½ feel wide at the beam, and 4 ½ deep from keel to gunwale.  That’s a big boat by today’s standards.  And the “Sea” of Galilee is not really a sea, you know, but a lake, and not really all that big of a lake by Mainer’s standards.  Here in our state, Moosehead Lake covers an area of about 75 thousand acres.  The Sea of Galilee covers an area of just over 41 thousand acres… just a bit more than half as big.  Moosehead has a max depth of 75 meters and the Sea of Galilee has a max depth of only 43 meters… just a bit more than half as deep.  So it’s not much of a “sea”… not really that big of a lake, for that matter, and a boat that big on a body of water that small would not be an inconspicuous vessel, even now, let alone two millennia ago.   Imagine how many fish would fit in TWO of those boats.  When the size of the catch became apparent, Peter quickly figured out that the guy who he now referred to as “Master” was not only an inspiring teacher, but he was also a miracle worker.  And he said “Go away from me Lord (Lord, no less!), for I am a sinful man”… as he and his brother Andrew and his partners James and John stood there dumbfounded over the enormous piles of fish filling up their rather large boats.  And Jesus says to Peter:  “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  In the space of a few hours, Peter goes from first meeting this strange man, letting him borrow his boat, calling him “Master”, going back out and fishing again at his direction, calling him “Lord”… and then he and his brother, and two other brothers, abandon their boats, filled to overflowing with enough fish to make them rich men in the market place, and they leave EVERYTHING behind… right there on the shoreline… and they go follow Jesus.

That’s an amazing story, but, admit it… you have a tough time really relating to it, don’t you?  You have a tough time imagining yourself abandoning a boat full of fish – abandoning your livelihood, your family, your friends, your way of life and all the comfort and security that it affords you – and going off to who knows where following Jesus.  Most of us would choose to stay behind and continue to clean our nets as Zebedee and the other fishermen must have done.  But what if we can clean our nets… continue to do the work of our lives and yet, at the same time, live lives truer to the gospel, given more to God, being more faithful to the same Word that called Peter and his partners away? What if our lives could be transformed right where we are, with the people we love and know? Might our imaginations open us up to epiphanies all around us, wonders that challenge our expectations and present us with little encapsulated miracles?   After all, the last thing those tired fishermen were expecting was a showing of God's awesome power right there, at the end of another workday. 

Why can’t the same be said of our workdays - that they hold the possibility of seeing God's hand at work in our lives and all around us? Why should we be less than attentive to the possibility that Jesus might show up and surprise us at the end of our shift when we are headed home thinking of anything BUT a confrontation with Christ?   Even though we might not respond to that surprise by immediately and absolutely abandoning our full lives and our families and professions, we can still find our lives changed forever in very real ways by such an encounter.  Even though we might get up and go to work the next morning and, from all outward appearances, nothing would be different than the day before, but WE will know that something HAS changed… something HAS happened, and that day, and all the days that follow it, promises to be subtly yet fundamentally different than all the days that have gone before.  

Maybe a boat full of fish is not in your plans today or any day, but you know that those sorts of things happen to people.  You know of people who have been fundamentally changed by an encounter with Jesus.  You personally know people like that – we all do.  There are people in this congregation this morning that have been affected in just such a way.  So… the next time you have spent the day in a fruitless effort trying to catch fish, or do whatever it is that you do in your workaday world… and, when the quitting bell rings and you’re delighted to be leaving the office and heading back home… and, instead, you are confronted with a totally unexpected opportunity to see Christ looking out at you from the eyes of someone possibly less fortunate who really needs YOU to make THEIR problems more important than getting home in time for cocktail hour.  Remember that, when Jesus told Peter to go back out and try and catch more fish, Peter’s initial reaction might have been to complain, and state that he and his crew had already been at it for the whole night before and they had caught nothing…but then he added, “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets”.   Remember that, when Peter pulled nets full of fish back into his boat, he told Jesus, “Get away from me, for I am a sinful man!”  Remember that we are ALL sinful.  We ALL are heavily laden with the baggage accumulated throughout our lives of sin and faithlessness and backsliding.  Remember that Jesus has been figuratively filling people’s boats with fish for two millennia now… and we could be next.  We could be transformed by such an encounter and we should all be sure not to let such an opportunity pass us by.  Remember that, after Peter told Jesus to get away, Jesus responded by saying, “Do not be afraid.  From now on you will be catching people.”  Similarly, WE should not be afraid of letting Jesus catch us, and then letting him use us to catch others in his name.  That’s what Christians have been called to do from Peter all the way down to you and me… and it is, and has always been such a righteous calling.  Amen.

Love                01/31/10

I was torn this week.  The Gospel reading for this week is from Luke and is a continuation of the story from last week where Jesus is starting his ministry in the hometown synagogue by reading Isaiah and telling the local folks that HE is the living embodiment of the scriptural promise.  But this week also had that reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that is so iconic, so emblematic, that I couldn’t let it pass by.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

I can imagine that everyone here has heard that passage read at nearly every Christian wedding they have ever attended.  I know that, with only one exception, I have read it at all the weddings that I have performed over the past nineteen months.  It is all about love… and therefore is a seemingly perfect fit for such a romantic occasion as a wedding.  But Paul really wasn’t referring to that sort of romantic love at all when he wrote that letter.  By now, I am sure that we all have heard that, in Greek, there are three different words that mean love:  “eros”, or romantic love, “philia”, or brotherly love, and “agape”, or selfless love.  The early Greek texts of Paul’s letters use the word “agape” and not “eros” in this passage.  Well… there are many situations where the English language is found wanting when it comes to accurate translations of different language.  In Greek, three different words are used to distinguish different variants of love, where in English, additional adjectives are needed to modify the one word “love” to achieve those nuanced distinctions.  Perhaps the early Greeks, and the Apostle Paul, had “love” a bit more carefully defined than modern English speakers… Similarly, Eskimos have fifty different words for “snow”.  

I think that the limitations of the English language make understanding and accepting this passage in particular very problematic for many people.  When we hear the word “love, we naturally associate that word with candle light dinners, and valentines, and romantic walks on the beach, a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom… and then, when Jesus tells us we need to “love” everyone, that seems almost creepy, doesn’t it?  And here Paul is telling us how essential love is, what love is, how eternal and enduring it is, and how it towers over faith and hope as THE critical aspect of being a Christian.  If we narrow the scope of who gets to experience our love to only those people who we are romantically involved with, we miss the real message of Jesus as related by Paul.  And if we confine ourselves to the narrow English language definition of “love”, then spreading out beyond our loved ones to the rest of the human community seems uncomfortable and overly familiar.  We really need a word like “agape” in OUR language so that we can fully understand the direction of Jesus and the interpretation of that direction by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians… so that we can “agape” other men and women without feeling like violin music and a bottle of fine wine needs to accompany our feelings.  We need to be able to honestly and fervently care about the best interests of others without letting it seem mushy or maudlin or inappropriately romantic.

I guess I subconsciously differentiate the sorts of “love” I feel in my life.  My love for my wife is different than the love I have for my larger family circle.  And my “love” of my neighbors and those less fortunate than me is different still.   “Eros” for my wife, “philia” for my family, and “agape” for my neighbors.  And then, if we really want to confuse the subject even further, how do we categorize our love for God and for Jesus?  I think it is safe to assume that God’s love for us is quite “agape”-like… but, for me anyway, my love for the Lord is different.  I stand in awe of him.  I am profoundly grateful to him… but sometimes, it seems hard to try and compartmentalize it into one of those three categories.  And then, I think about what Paul wrote in today’s scripture reading.  I think about how love like Paul is talking about is patient and kind; not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. I think about how it does not insist on its own way; how it is devoid of irritation and resentment.  I think about how it wants no part of wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  I think about how it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. When you have that sort of “agape”-like love for the rest of humanity, love ceases to be merely some emotion that you feel, and starts to become something that you DO.  Love becomes an action verb. Putting the best interests of others really at the forefront of our lives is something that happens… something that moves us to action.. it doesn’t’ just color our feelings while we sit back and watch from the sidelines.  It is much more empathy driven action than sympathy driven heartfelt emotions. So… one might think that the triune God – father, son and holy ghost – does not need us to be putting HIS best interests at heart, does not need to be loved, even in an “agape” sort of way… but then one only needs to remember what Jesus said to Peter when, in the days after his crucifixion and resurrection, he reappeared to his disciples at the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee and cooked them breakfast over an open fire.   The incident is recorded in the very last chapter of the Gospel of John and the conversation went like this:

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.”

So… if we want to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind, the method for doing so is clearly spelled out for us by none other than Jesus himself.  Step out of our comfort zones, quit thinking about LOVE as a valentine and start thinking about it as a fulltime assignment from God.  Start thinking about LOVE as something that we DO to all of God’s lambs.  Tend to them, feed them, clothe them, talk with them, comfort them, don’t let them become invisible in our lives.  Care about them.  Put their better interests at the TOP of our priority list.  Don’t let moment after moment pass us by where we postpone our charity and our empathy and our “agape”-LOVE for those children of God living in our midst who live their lives in quiet desperation and who so easily and frequently disappear into the shadows of our world.  That’s how we can show Jesus we love him.  That is how we love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind. 

We can speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, we can have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, we can have all faith, so as to remove mountains, we can give away all our possessions, but if we think that, by doing all of that, we can somehow earn the right to avoid that poor fellow dressed in tattered clothes who looks like he hasn’t bathed in weeks, who has his hand out, who has a hole in his heart and whose eyes meet ours and silently hope for help and a connection, then we are kidding ourselves, and all our tongues and prophetic powers and understanding and faith  and even our charity means nothing.  If we can’t look that poor fellow in the eye and genuinely feel warmth and affection, if we can’t put his best interests at the top of our priority list, then we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals and we have MISSED the whole point of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

As children, we were inherently, simply, gracefully, honestly selfish and self centered.  And we never really figured out this whole loving God business.  But God has always had it figured out, and HE has known the content of OUR hearts from day one.  We have been fully known by God all our lives… and, even if we only know him in part now, we will know him fully at the last.  And we know that faith and hope and love abide… and we know that faith and hope are inward and passive concepts.  We can have faith in God and we can hope for peace and health and happiness… we can have faith and hope without getting up from our recliners in the living room.  We can have faith and hope without even getting out of bed… but we cannot honestly LOVE our neighbors – we can’t “agape” our neighbors – without ACTING out that love, without DOING that love, without GIVING that love.  We can’t tend sheep and feed lambs by merely thinking about it.  Faith and hope are important, but the greatest of these is Love…. this season and every season.     

Amen  

When was the last time you tried something for the first time?”                             01/24/10