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Praying the Way Jesus Taught Us

June 29th, 2008

A sermon preached on June 29, 2008 based upon Matthew 6:7 - 15, entitled “Praying the Way Jesus Taught Us.”

This is a rarity for me.  I’m not preaching from the lectionary.   The Old Testament lesson assigned for this week was Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and after preaching last week on Abraham casting his other son, Ishmael, out into the wilderness, I didn’t want to go there again.  

After including the “reaffirmation of the baptismal covenant” in our worship service last Sunday, I got into a discussion Tuesday morning about words we say repetitively in worship.  Bob Keller pointed out that generally speaking in our congregation the only words we repeat from week to week are the Lord’s Prayer.

If truth be told, every week when I lead our children in this prayer, a part of my brain is still thinking about crowd control, and another part is concentrating on not blowing the words.  Consequently, I tend to race through the familiar words without any real attention to their meaning.  When I got away this past week for some relaxed biking and hiking with my two sons, I got to really praying the Lord’s prayer, and found it helpful in calling my spirit back home, so I decided that this is what I would preach on. 

The words come to us from Matthew’s Gospel in the section known as the Sermon on the Mount, three chapters in which Jesus instructs those who would follow him what it means to be a disciple.   It’s tough stuff, including such things as the necessity of loving one’s enemies. 

When Jesus turns his attention to prayer, he begins by specifically telling his disciples not to pray like the pagans who use an over abundance of words, in part to impress an audience, and in part to try and manipulate God.  Don’t be wordy, he says.  Begin with the assumption that God already knows what you need. 

Why then, we might ask, pray at all?  Praying as Jesus instructed us helps bring us back to where we need to be.

He said, when you pray, say, “Our father…”  The word translated here as Father is the Aramaic word “Abba”, which would be better translated “Daddy.”   It implies intimacy, tenderness; a father into whose lap you could climb, a father who would carry you home were you to fall asleep late at night on an outing.  (As such there is both masculine and feminine qualities in the divine nature — this source of all life — and we could just as easily speak of God as “mother,” or Mommy.)

Underlying this address is the simple, humble acknowledgement that in relation to God we all remain children — dependent, no matter how mature we think ourselves to be.  Whether we live, or whether we die, depends to a great extent upon the mercy of God. 

We pray “our” father because we aren’t in this thing called life alone.   We approach God with others, those who are conscious of their connection to God, as well as to those who have no clue, because God in truth is the father of us all, and yearns for all persons to embrace their connection to the divine. 

“Who art in heaven…”  At first glance, this may make it sound as though God were far away.  Not so.  Heaven isn’t far away; it is simply another dimension that we don’t normally have the capacity to perceive directly.   Heaven is as close as our breath.

But in declaring God’s residence in heaven, we remind ourselves that God is safe from human manipulation.   We human beings perpetually try to turn God into a golden calf here on earth that we can control, so that God comes to endorse our preferred product, whether that be country or race or religion or whatever.  God in heaven is safe from all such tampering.   God is God, and I am not.  My religion is not God.  My church is not God.  The Bible is not God.  We go on to pray, “Hallowed be thy name…” acknowledging the holy otherness of the One we are addressing.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  Life on this earth is not as God desires it to be.  We have this blessing and burden which is freedom, and we routinely abuse this freedom, and so there is much cruelty and injustice, there is greed and hard-heartedness, none of which is God’s desire for life on this earth.  Generally speaking, God’s will isn’t being followed.  On occasion, it is done partially, but never completely.  And so again, humility is required on our part, recognizing we’ve all fallen short. 

“Give us this day our daily bread.”  This petition brings us back to the present moment, to this day, when we are so prone to abandon this day in worry about days yet to come, or in obsession over days past.  Life is lived, if it is lived at all, in the present. 

This petition also implies the need to simplify our lifestyle — to  get clear about the difference between something we want, and something we truly need such as our daily bread.  It involves realizing that we will be just fine going without the commodities which the world tries to convince us we can’t live with out; that our “wants” are, in fact, an endless, bottomless pit that threatens to drag us down, down, down. 

To pray these words also invites us to a place of simple-hearted trust.  It is to enter into a child-like posture before the good Abba who will not withhold the gifts the beloved child truly needs.    My tendency, particularly when life becomes hurried and stressed, is to tighten up and do the Chicken Little routine.  In my experience, however, when I manage to keep my heart open with trust, I discover that good gifts tend to flow to me freely, easily, without great stress or strain. 

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive the trespasses against us.  And lead us not into temptation…”  Again, the words of this prayer lead us into humility, where we acknowledge how frail we are.   

Why have I not, as of yet, committed murder?   It is not because I am inherently better than people who have committed murder.  All of us have murderous thoughts and feelings.  My innocence in regard to acting upon these thoughts and feelings has a great deal to do with the fact that I haven’t been led into temptation deep enough where committing murder would be for me a serious consideration.  

“But deliver us from evil.”   By this we tend to mean, “Please God, don’t let me be on a plane when hijackers are on board.   Keep me safe from robbers and rapists and the like”; certainly, an understandable desire.  But it is unlikely Jesus had such things in mind when he told his disciples to pray these words.  Something deeper is implied here — the recognition of how easy it is for evil to take root in our own hearts. 

Last week we heard Jesus say, “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul…”   It is quite possible in the course of this life to lose our souls by having them overcome with evil.  It happens all the time.  Cruelty is done unto us, and we become cruel ourselves. 

On the recent HIV/AIDS retreat, I met an extraordinary woman with a beautiful, sweet spirit.  She was not infected herself with the virus; she had friends her were infected and wanted to develop an HIV ministry in her church in Jersey City.  In one of the small group times of sharing, I was privileged to hear her tell something of her personal story. 

She grew up on a Caribbean island.  For some reason her parents weren’t able to raise her, so she was raised instead by an aunt who truly was, in a certain sense, evil.  The aunt presented an image of godliness to the outside world — she was a “pillar” in her church — but within the walls of their home she practiced extreme cruelty, lashing into her niece whenever she revealed the least bit of personality, spontaneity, or joy. 

As she described her story, there were two things that struck me as remarkable.  First, she never confused the behavior of her church-going aunt with the true meaning of Christianity.   It was clear to her that Jesus and her aunt were headed in quite different directions. 

Some people hear “Heavenly Father”, and what comes to mind is their own earthly father who may have been sorely lacking in love and tenderness, and they can’t get past this image, which is understandable. 

Through the difficult years of her growing up, this woman had gotten to know Jesus through her church  — a Jesus who was warm and gentle-hearted; full of joy and compassion.  She knew she wanted to live with this Jesus; she wanted to be like this Jesus.  

But what struck me most about what this woman said was when she described coming to a point as a young woman where she looked deeply into herself and realized she didn’t like the person she was becoming in relation to her aunt.  She realized that part of her heart she was filled with hatred, bitterness and the need for revenge, and that this darkness was threatening to engulf her.  She realized that there was a very real danger of becoming evil herself in response to the evil of her aunt. 

She knew that she needed to put a safe distance between herself and her aunt, but she also realized that she had to consciously set about trying to forgive this woman — to let go of the hurts she was holding onto so tightly.  It was in some ways a life long journey, but she realized that if she didn’t set off on this journey with Jesus, the evil would consume her.  She saw that as the words of Jesus’ prayer imply, her capacity to claim her own forgiveness was tied directly to her capacity to forgive that which had been done to her. 

William Sloane Coffin said:  “If we hate the evil more than we love the good, than all we end up is damn good haters.”  

Frederck Buechner put it this way:

“To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.  The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Every Sunday when I lead us in the pastoral prayer, I pause for a moment, so that each of us can ask God to touch us in those places where the powers of darkness continue to hold us in bondage.   Part of what I’m inviting us to do at that moment is to go to the place where evil threatens to engulf us, and allow God to shine some grace in that dark place. 

If you look at every evil perpetrated on this earth, from the enormous evils of genocide, to the little evils of some quiet cruelty perpetrated at our work places, you will see that those committing these evils (and sometimes this includes ourselves) feel a sense of justification, because somewhere in their story there was evil done unto them.

Deliver us from evil, O Lord.   Save us from letting the evils done unto us become the justification for evils we would do to others. Save us from bitterness of heart and the loss of our souls. 

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.  Amen. 

 

 

 

Standing with Hagar in the Desert, Ready to Die

June 23rd, 2008

A sermon preached on June 22, 2008 based upon Genesis 21:8 - 21, Romans 6:1b - 11, and Matthew 10:24 - 39, entitled, “Standing with Hagar in the Desert, Ready to Die.”

I suspect that this story that David just read for us is not one that we know well.  As I listened to it this past week, however, I found it gripping, deeply poignant.  

We tend to filter Bible stories — to clean them up as we listen to them.  We know, for instance, that Abraham and Sarah are supposed to be the good guys, heroes of the faith, the mother and father of all the children of Israel.  But here they behave all too human. 

To review, Abraham and Sarah have responded to a call from God late in life to leave their homeland and go to a new land, where their offspring will be a great nation, more numerous than the stars, blessed to be a blessing.  They go on faith, despite the fact that they are quite old. 

The years pass.  They remain childless.  At one point, Sarah takes things into her own hands.  Despite God’s promise, she doubts she will ever be able to conceive.  Sarah decides to give Hagar, her slave girl to Abraham to sleep with, so that a child might come forth by Abraham’s seed.  A step child, Sarah figures, is better than no child. 

When Hagar conceives and becomes heavy with child, she can’t help but look with contempt at old Sarah with her barren womb.  In this culture, as in many throughout history, the sole purpose given to women was to bear sons, and Hagar has succeeded where Sarah has failed, and she cannot resist the temptation to look down upon the woman who has lorded over her as her master. 

Sarah recognizes the contempt in Hagar’s eyes, mirroring probably the contempt she feels for herself as one who cannot conceive.  She complains to her husband Abraham, he tells his wife to do what ever she wishes, and so Sarah beats Hagar, who flees into the wilderness.  There an angel calls her back to Abraham’s household.

Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, Abraham’s first born son, who proceeds to grow up in the household of Abraham and Sarah.   Years pass, but still Sarah remains barren. 

And then one day angels come to visit Abraham, and as Sarah listens in on their conversation, they announce to Abraham that within a year, the promise will be fulfilled:  Sarah will give birth to a son.  Sarah thinks this is so foolish that she laughs out loud, and when nine months later the child is born, she names the boy Isaac, which means “laughter.” 

In those days a family would hold a party on the day in which a baby was weaned from her mother, sort of like the parties often held these days when a child is baptized.  During the course of the party, Ishmael, a boy now of about 12, is playing with his little baby half-brother, making him laugh out loud, and seeing this, and perhaps suffering from post-partum depression, Sarah’s heart turns cold.  Ishmael will not cut into her son’s inheritance — no way!  She commands Abraham to send the boy and his mother away.  

Abraham feels badly about this, but he gives in to his wife in her rage, and early the next morning he sends Hagar and their boy off into the wilderness with nothing but a loaf of bread and canteen of water. 

In the hot sun of the wilderness their water soon runs out.  “Momma, I’m thirsty.   Momma, I need something to drink.”  Hagar has nothing to give her son.  Her despair is too heavy.   She leaves her dying son under the shade of a bush, and goes off far enough where she won’t suffer the sight of his slow death.  She is ready to die herself.  There is nothing to live for — no hope.

It is a powerful image:  Hagar in such deep darkness and despair, ready to die.   She represents all the poor mothers of starving children in the world, but there are ways in which she can identify with her as well.  If we are honest, there have been points in our lives where we felt something of Hagar’s utter hopelessness, even as it is not so hard to identify with the depression, the jealousy and pettiness of Sarah, or for that matter, the cowardice of Abraham. 

Hagar is ready to die, but suddenly, grace shows up.  An angel of the Lord alerts Hagar to the presence of a well of fresh water in the wilderness.  The angel assures her that her life does in fact have a good future, full of hope. 

Not a single sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s attention.  Every hair is counted.  No one is lost.  Though there is much that may well be against us, including dark and destructive powers within our own selves, there is One who is for us, from who’s love no power in heaven or on earth can separate us.  

We began our worship this morning with the words of the Apostle Paul reminding us of the meaning of our baptism.  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4)

To a large degree, we have lost the power of the Biblical imagery of baptism.  We associate it with beautiful little children so full of life, receiving a few drops of water on their brow.  We forget that baptism is about death.

When we are baptized into Christ, we stand with poor Hagar in the barren wilderness, ready to die.

In the early Church, the power of the imagery couldn’t be missed.  The adults who were to undergo baptism were taken at night into a dark crypt, where, stripped naked, they were led into at pool of water in order to experience drowning.  Three times they would be plunged backwards into the water, signifying the three days Jesus’ body lay in the tomb. 

In 4th century Jerusalem, a Christian described the meaning of the experience this way:  “By this action, you died and you were born, and for you the saving water was at once a grave and the womb of a mother.”

The well of fresh water appears to Hagar in the wilderness.  A basin of water appears before us, as we too reach the point of despair.

Perhaps the meaning of baptism would be brought home to us more directly if instead of this baptismal font we were to place a coffin, or at least, an urn for our ashes. 

I find myself thinking of all the coffins and urns that I have seen over the years resting on this altar, containing the earthly remains of people I have loved from this church family, who reached that day in which there was no more hope for them here on earth, requiring the great letting go.  Their hope was in heaven, with Jesus who had preceded them in making the journey through death.

And I realize that in all likelihood, one day on this very altar, my coffin, if not my urn, will rest.  

My baptism tells me that in a certain sense, I have already died — that is, my little, old self — me ego — into which I invest so much significance.  God desires that a much larger kind of life live within me, one that cannot ever die.  Stubbornly, however, I’ve been trying throughout my life to resuscitate my little, old self back to life. 

My baptism reminds me, as Paul said, that “our old self was crucified with (Jesus.)”

We must undergo a kind of ego death in the course of lives in order that the full meaning of our baptisms can take root within us — so that resurrection life can become a reality for us. 
Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and author of some immensely popular books about human development and spirituality, converted to Christianity in his middle years, undergoing the rite of baptism.  He wrote these words regarding what it means to approach baptism: 

“Certainly it is understandable that we should not want to die before our time, no matter what promises Jesus might hold out to us.  Still, as a wise priest said to me when I was dragging my feet over becoming baptized:  `We all have to die sooner or later; why not get on with it?’”

Sing with me, if you will the first and last verses of the great hymn, “Abide with Me.”

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.  When other helpers  fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me. 

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes; shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.  Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. 

(At this point, standing before the baptismal font, we read together the liturgy for Congregational Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant.)

Reaching Out: A Father’s Day Sermon by Bob Keller

June 23rd, 2008

A sermon preached by Bob Keller on June 15, 2008 (Father’s Day) based upon Genesis 18: 1 - 15

Connie came home from choir practice last Thursday and told me a little story.
Somehow the subject that I was going to preach today came up.  Jack attends the Tuesday morning men’s breakfast.  Usually at those breakfast gatherings, we discuss the scriptures for the coming Sunday.  This is especially true if I’m preaching – I’m searching for sermon ideas.
Well, Jack said, and I had to agree with him, “He’s got nothin’. I don’t know where he can go with those scripture readings.”
My special concern was that it will be father’s day.  How in the world do these scriptures tie in to Father’s Day?
But with God all things are possible.  So let’s take a look at today’s scripture and see if you agree with me.
The first thing we learn from today’s scripture is to be hospitable
Our message starts in the heat of the day.  Abraham is seated at the entrance to his tent.  This was yet another “stopping off” point for the wandering Abraham.  It was in the desert, a place where afternoon temperatures frequently reach 110 degrees.  Work was usually done early or late in the day.  The afternoon was for rest.

Yet Abraham saw three men standing nearby.  He hurried from his tent to greet the visitors.  Hurried?  Abraham was 99 years old!  Yet the scripture says he “hurried” and when he greeted the strangers, he bowed low. Only servants bowed.  Yet, here was Abraham, probably appearing much older than the visitors, bowing before them as a servant would.  Didn’t Jesus ask us to serve one another many years later?
Then he asked that water be brought that the visitors might wash their feet and then rest underneath the trees.  Can you imagine how refreshing that would have been?  You’re on the hot desert with nothing but sandals for shoes and a cool basin of water is provided for your feet, not to mention the welcoming shade of a tree to sit under.  Abraham’s humility is on display here.
Then Abraham offers something to eat.  And this isn’t just a burrito and a Slurpee from the Kwickee Mart!  Abraham “hurried” into the tent and tells his wife Sarah “Quick”,  get some flour and make bread for our guests.  You heard the word “seah” in the reading  Three seahs of flour would have been a bit more than 50 pounds!  Then he ran to the herd to select a calf.  And not just a calf, but a tender, choice calf that it could be prepared for his guests.  He also provided cheese and milk.

So, imagine, you’re at a restaurant – a party of three, and 50 pounds of bread and 50 pounds of veal, not to mention cheese and milk are laid out before you.
And did Abraham join them?  No, he stood by under a tree while they ate.
Abraham welcomed his guests, he refreshed them, he offered them rest, he gave them energy for the road ahead and he stood by waiting to serve them further.
Is this instruction on how we should treat our children, our parents, guests to our church, people we work with, people we meet and greet every day?

Then the story reminds us of Abraham’s faithfulness.

The visitors ask for Sarah, Abraham’s wife.  When he tells the visitors that Sarah is in the tent, the Lord said – now here is the first time in the story that we learn that Abraham’s guest is really the Lord God – “I’ll be back next year and your wife, Sarah, will have a son.”

Sarah heard this and laughed.  She said, “Sure, now that I am worn out and my husband is old, now will I have that pleasure?”
We have to turn back for a moment to the preceding chapter of Genesis.  Here God changes Abraham’s name from Abram.  Abram – exalted father in Hebrew – to Abraham – father of many.  This was in fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham that he would be the father of God’s nations.

Sarah had also undergone a name change.  God instructed Abraham to no longer call her Sarai, but Sarah which means princess in Hebrew, for she would be the mother of nations and kings of peoples would come from her.

Abraham believed God and he walked before God and kept his end of the covenant with faith like a child has in his Father.  Sarah – not so much.

Sarah believed God, too, but she got a little impatient.  I think she really wanted to believe that from Abraham and herself would spring God’s nations, but she wasn’t willing to see things through in God’s time.

Can any of us relate to that?  We live in an “instant gratification” society.  “I want it now” is so often heard in stores that you’d almost think it was being played over the Muzak system.  Sarah was no different.

Sarah had a maidservant named Hagar, an Egyptian woman.  She encouraged Abraham to sleep with Hagar so that God’s promise might be fulfilled.  Abraham obliged and Ishmael was born.  Also in Genesis chapter 17 we find Abraham laughing at the prospect of him and Sarah having a child together.  And for the same reason – he thinks they are too old.  He is 99 and Sarah is 90.  In fact, Abraham pleads with God that Ishmael might live under God’s blessing.

But God insists that another child will be born, one to Abraham and Sarah, that will fulfill his promise, and his name will be Isaac, which in Hebrew, means laughter.
Abraham may have doubted God, but he took action anyway and as a sign of his faith in God’s covenant, everyone in his household, free and servant, himself and Ishmael included, were circumcised.

Abraham came to know that his guests included God himself, but Sarah was inside the tent.  How could she have known who the guests were?  So when she heard talk, yet again, of her, a barren woman, having a child at her age, she laughed.

The story is told of a woman in her late eighties that went to the doctor because she had a persistent case of hiccups.  A relatively new young doctor was assigned to care for her, which he did.
As the young doctor was walking down the hall, he met one of the older doctors just as screams echoed from the exam room of the old woman.  The older doctor quickly checked the chart and said to the young doctor, “She came in for a case of hiccups.  What treatment did you give her that she’s screaming so?”
“I told the nurse to tell her that I checked her tests and to tell her that she’s pregnant.  Bet she doesn’t have hiccups anymore.”

Just imagine a couple, aged 90 and 99, being told “There’s still time.  You’ll have a baby.”  God’s time, not our time.  That comes to us in verse 14.  God says to Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

Barbara Folsom tells the story of a young, new preacher walking with an older more seasoned preacher in the garden one day and he was feeling insecure about what God had for him to do. So he inquired of the older preacher. This older preacher walked up to a rose bush and then handed the young preacher a rosebud and told him to open it without tearing off any petals.
The young preacher looked in disbelief at the older preacher and was trying to figure out what a rosebud could possibly have to do with his wanting to know the will of God for his life and for his ministry.

Noticing the young preachers inability to unfold the rosebud while keeping it intact, the older preacher began to tell the following poem:
“It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God’s design;
But I cannot unfold the petals’
With these clumsy hands of mine.
The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not to such as I.
God opens this flower so sweetly,
When in my hands they fade and die.
If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God’s design,
Then how can I think I have wisdom
To unfold this life of mine.
So I will trust in him for his leading
Each moment of every day.
I will look to him for guidance
Each step of the pilgrim way.
The pathway that lies before me,
Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I’ll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.
Is anything too difficult for God?  The God we’re talking about here is the God that created all of this out of nothing.  But he didn’t create and move on.  He cared enough to stay around to guide us, care for us, to give us what we need when we need it, and to withhold our wants when it’s in our best interest.  He’s the God that comforts us in our sorrow, stays by us when we feel alone, laughs with us when we’re happy, cries with us when we’re sad, gives us courage when we’re in danger, strength when we feel weak and he gave us a pathway to eternal life with Him though His Son, Jesus.
So what does any of this have to do with Father’s Day?
Abraham, the father of nations, is an example for all of us, not just fathers, to follow.  Be hospitable.
Look at the front of your church bulletin when you get a chance.  Our church mission statement is there. It says, “In a hostile, hurting world we reach out…”
Let us always “reach out” to one another just as Abraham did to the three strangers.
And have faith.  Believe that nothing is too hard for God.  “For through Him all things are possible.”
A little girl asked her Daddy, “How big is God.”
Now how would you answer that one?  That’s not unlike asking how big is the sky or why is it blue..
Hard question for Dad.  But he wisely answered. “Just a little bigger than you need him to be.”
And there’s our answer.  Allow God to be big enough to take away your temptations.  To make you less desperate and less self-serving.  Be a little more than you need to be.  Be a little more hospitable.  Love a little more.  Give a little more time.  Be a little more forgiving.  Appreciate more the gifts that God has given you. 
As God is the perfect Father to all of us, let us strive to be better parents.  And if you’re not a parent, be a better example to those younger than yourself.  We always hear adults talk of the younger generation as if we had nothing to do with them being here.

 

Henry (A Short Play)

June 11th, 2008

 

 (Seated at a round table are five males of ascending age, preparing to play a card game. Henry 1, the youngest, is 8.  Henry 5 the oldest, is 77.  Henry 4 shuffles a deck of cards, hands it to Henry 5, who gives it to Henry 1 to cut. Henry 5 proceeds to deal out the entire deck.) 

Henry 5: The name of the game is “I doubt it.”

Henry 4: We always liked games.

Henry 5: Here’s how it works. We proceed around the circle, starting at my right (Henry 1). He will put cards face down on the center of the table, announcing to us one to four aces. If one of us doubts the truth of his claim, we say, “I doubt it,” turning the cards over. If the doubter was correct, the one passing off the cards has to pick up — all the cards in the pile. If the doubter was wrong, he must pick up all of the cards. The next person does the same with twos, and so on around the circle. The object of the game is to successfully get rid of all your cards. The one who does so, wins.

Understood?

Henry 1: When I was young, there were moments that would come to me when I would be alone in which everything would suddenly seem to be glowing. Like it was magical. I would look up at the clouds in the sky and imagine myself floating up there — it was like I could fly. I remember sitting on the back porch one time watching a storm blow in on a summer day. There was lightning. And thunder. I remember thinking, “This is so much better than t.v.” I said, “I am alive. Thank you, God.” (Henry 1 puts down two cards.)  Two aces.

 

Mom: Henry, come inside, Honey.

Henry 1: I want to stay, Mom.

Mom: No, Henry, it’s starting to lightning. Come inside where it’s safe, sweetheart.

 

Henry 2: Two aces, huh? Well, I’ll let it pass this time.

I hated eighth grade. It was all about fitting in, and I didn’t. I had discovered girls, but they hadn’t discovered me. I got picked on in gym class, and school generally sucked. The only good thing I remember from that whole year was in my reading and writing class. We had this assignment to write about some time when we had been happy. Generally I hated homework, but for some reason I got into this assignment. I wrote about watching the clouds as a little kid. My teacher, Mrs. Robbins, came up to me in the library.

 

Mrs. Robbins: (Heartfelt.) Henry, I just wanted to tell you; I think your essay about watching clouds when you were a kid just might be the most beautiful piece of writing I’ve ever read. You have a real gift.

 

Henry 2: Three twos.

Henry 3: You expect me to believe that?

Henry 2: Go ahead, doubt it. I dare you.

Henry 3: I’ll let it slide. (Pause.)  I started out as a journalism major in college. During the summer, I got a job with the local newspaper, working the night shift. Writing articles about the town council meetings at 3 a.m. wasn‘t my idea of a good time. Back at school, I switched to Finance, because somebody told me that’s where the money was.

After graduating I took a job with this big corporation. Found out I had a gift for selling my ideas to the guys upstairs. Ended up in charge of this major account. I was in the fast lane, leaving the competition behind.

 

Mr. Smith: Henry, my boy, this is nice work — very nice work indeed.

Henry 3: Thank you, sir.

Mr. Smith: I need a go-getter like yourself who’s not afraid to work as my right hand man. It would include a six figure salary. Think you could be that person, Henry?

Henry 3: I’m your man, Mr. Smith. (Mr. Smith gives thumbs up and departs, as Henry 3 watches. Henry places two cards down.)Two threes.

Henry 1: Horse manure.

Henry 3: Excuse me?

Henry 1: In other words, I doubt it. (Flips over Henry 3’s cards, which are exposed to be not what they were said to be. Henry 3 groans, and picks all the cards up.)Henry 4: In a blink of an eye, the years rolled by. I got married, bought a house, had a daughter, bought another, bigger house, and then a bigger house yet. Sent the daughter to private school. Turned 40, had an affair with my secretary, divorced my wife, married the secretary. Realized I‘d screwed everything up. My daughter helped me realize that.

 

Daughter: Dad, you are such a loser!

Henry 4: Excuse me?!

Daughter:  I said, you are such a loser!

Henry 4:  I got that the first time.

Daughter: Loser, loser, loser!!!

 

Henry 4: (Placing three cards face down on the table.)  Three losers — I mean “fours.”

Henry 2: I don’t doubt the “loser” part. It’s the “four” part I’m doubtful about, but I’ll let it slide.

Henry 4: Thanks, we losers need all the breaks we can get.

Henry 5:  So the marriage to the secretary fell apart too. My relationship with my daughter — well, I limped along with that as best I could. Sometimes I still think she considers me a loser, but she doesn’t mind my money.

I tried to retire twice, but couldn’t bear all the time on my hands.

Then one day I went for my yearly check up. The doctor found something he didn’t like. Sent me for more tests.

 

Doctor: I’m not going fool around with you, Henry. It’s not good. You have leukemia, if we fight it, you might have two more years. Otherwise, you’ve got three months, tops. (Henry 5 watches as the doctor exits.)Henry 5: What am I up to?

Henry 4: I just did fours, It’s your turn to do fives.

Henry 5: (Dropping his whole hand of cards face down on the tables.) Four fives then. I’m out. I win.

Henry 1: That’s not fair!

Henry 5: You got that right. (Gets up from the table, and goes to sit on the stage. Henry 1 comes and sits beside him. They stare off into the distance, as if contemplating the clouds.)Henry 1: Aren’t they something?

Henry 5: They really are.

Henry 1: I like to imagine I’m up there flying.

Henry 5: I know, I remember. (Pause.) Those dark clouds rolling in — they’re so magnificent. (Sound of thunder is heard.) Lightning. Did you see that?

Henry 1: Sure did.

Henry 5: You think it’s safe for us to be out here?

Henry 1: I do indeed.

(Curtain.)

Getting Dirty

June 9th, 2008

A sermon preached on June 8th, 2008 based upon Matthew 9:9 - 13, 18 - 26, entitled “Getting Dirty.”

To better understand this passage that David just read for us, there are a couple of things to be aware of. Judaism of the day was dominated by something referred to as the “Holiness Code”, a large portion of the book of Leviticus that stated that a Holy God requires a holy people, set apart, giving specific, rigid laws regarding just how God’s people were to live their lives separated from all that was unclean, all that was sinful. As God’s holy people were to be pure. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day followed this code with great determination.

In our story from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus breaks the rules of the holiness code three separate times. First, he eats with tax collectors and sinners — people who had unabashedly failed to keep clear of sin. Far from separating himself from these sinners, by sitting down to share a meal Jesus was loudly declaring them to be “MY people.“

Second, Jesus agrees to go to the home of a child who has died in order that he might touch the child‘s corpse. Dead bodies were considered unclean, and Leviticus declares that in touching a corpse a person is rendered unclean. Interestingly, unlike the Gospel writers Mark and Luke’s versions of this same story, Matthew presents the child as being dead from the very outset, thereby emphasizing Jesus’ determination to ignore the precepts of the holiness code

Third, a woman who has been hemorrhaging blood for 12 years approaches Jesus. In this condition the woman would have been considered unclean. She would have been prohibited from being out in public, let alone touching a Rabbi. In doing so she renders Jesus himself unclean. Jesus doesn’t rebuke the woman; in fact, he commends her faith, “My daughter, your faith has made you well.“ Nor does he drop everything to go and visit priest in order to follow the prescribed procedure for being made once more clean; instead he continues on to the house of the dead girl.

So what we have in this story is Jesus intentionally getting himself dirty.

In doing so, he redefines what it means to be “holy”. Holiness is no longer separating from others; instead, it now means living with compassion towards others. In fact, for Jesus, there is no “other”, there is only “one another.”

The lines blur for Jesus. Who are the sinners, and who are the righteous? Or in the language that Jesus himself introduces in the story, who are the sick, and who are the well? Who are the patients, and who is the physician?

Naomi Remen has a story in one of her books from her days as a young doctor in training working in the ward of New York City hospital that routinely cared for many extremely down and out people. She was required to give needles to patients in order to take blood samples and to establish pick lines. And as generally the case when one is first learning a new skill, she wasn’t very good at it. When someone gives a needle to a patient and doesn’t know what they’re doing, it ends up being a form of torture.

An older, warn-out looking man — a patient in the ward — gently came to her side as she was giving someone a needle to show her how to do it in a way that would minimize the pain. Naomi was grateful for the man’s guidance. For the better part of an hour the man stayed at her side as she went from patient to patient, coaching her how to locate the vein and tenderly insert the needle.

Naomi had assumed that the older man must be a professional nurse; how else would he have such skill? It was only later that she learned that the man was instead a drug addict whose expertise at giving injections had come from years of giving himself his heroin fix.

Later the man would die from an overdose.

Life is messy, and over time, life is humbling.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a great German pastor who, in contrast to a majority of his fellow Church leaders spoke out strongly against Hitler and the Nazis when they rose to power. Bonhoeffer took Jesus very, very seriously, and it was clear to him that where the Nazis were taking his country and what Jesus was about had nothing in common.

Initially, Bonhoeffer was a pacifist, recognizing what many Christians find it easy to overlook, which is that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus made it quite clear that a Christian isn’t to engage in violence, particularly in the evil of taking the sacred life of another human being, and that Jesus himself refrained from violence when the soldiers came for him.

Apparently though, Bonhoeffer reached a point where he concluded it wasn’t possible to remain sinless in such evil times. At some point, he got involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, to take life.

Evidently Bonhoeffer concluded that in the grave times he was facing, the concern for remaining personally clean and sin-free wasn’t faithful; that the time had come to get dirty and involve himself in a murder attempt, throwing himself on the mercy of God as a sinner standing in need of his grace.

The assassination attempt failed, and Bonhoeffer ended up in prison, where just a week before the end of the war, he was executed.

Life is messy. As we heard the Apostle Paul say last week, all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. We are in this thing called life together.

As Jesus neared Jerusalem where he would lay down his life, his disciples, the brothers James and John, approached him and asked for Jesus to do whatever they asked. What do you want me to do for you? he asked. We want you to make us your right and left hand men when you come into your power and glory. Jesus tells them they don’t know what they’re asking for, and that it isn’t his to give. The other disciples overhear the conservation and are outraged at James and John for their audacity. Probably, however, part of the reason they were so upset was the brothers were expressing a desire they weren’t honest enough to acknowledge in themselves. They, too, were looking for power and glory in following Jesus. (As CS Lewis said, if you want to know how proud you are, take note of how much it annoys you when others express their pride. Everybody’s pride is in competition.)

The wonderful part of this story for me is the fact that Jesus doesn’t toss James and John out on their ear after making this brash request which so clearly reveals that they just aren’t catching on to what he is all about. Even though their motivations for following him aren’t “pure”, he keeps them in his company. Eventually over time their motivations for following Jesus would become closer to what motivated Jesus himself, but it would require a major breaking of their lives, experienced most acutely when Jesus was arrested and crucified and they all ran for cover, to put them in touch with this deepr motivation.

I am comforted because I know that my motivations in becoming a minister weren’t exactly pure either. There were a lot of things that came into play thirty years ago in my sense of a “calling“, but one thing I only admitted to myself over time was that a significant part of why I wanted to be a minister was my perception that ministers were strong, whole people that weaker, broken people leaned on because of their strength and wholeness, and I desperately wanted to think of myself as strong and whole, because I realized on some level that I was in fact quite insecure, weak and broken. I figured that if I could become an ordained minister, if I could convincingly play the part — well then, that would mean I WAS strong and whole.

I remember when I was still a seminarian, I applied to be a part of a Clinical Pastoral Education program, an intensive training program in a hospital setting where part of the time was spent visiting patients in the role of chaplain, and the rest of the time was spent meeting with supervisors and fellow chaplains to reflect upon and learn from the experience. The program required a great deal of personal soul searching. I was drawn to the program because it played into my hero fantasies, with me playing the part of the brave chaplain coming to the aid of the sick hospital patients.

The application required writing essays that reflected on my emotional and spiritual development, and I figured I was good at that. I wrote about growing up in a home where my parents got divorced, and what I had learned about life from this pain. The application process also required an hour long interview with a seasoned chaplain. I went to this interview relatively confident, figuring I had done a good job with the essays.

To this day I can still remember a moment in that interview that occurred relatively early on. The old chaplain complimented me on the essays I had written. But then he went on to say, “You write, however, in such a way that suggests all the pain, all the struggle of your life is all in the past, as though you pretty much have it together now. But I’m wondering what causes you pain and struggle now, in the present?” And realizing that my pretense had been exposed, I felt this flood of panic come over me as this wise man gently pushed me to acknowledge the messy ongoing truth of my life. The rest of the interview is something of a blur; my main concern was for the hour to come to an end.

Later, as a young pastor in my first church, when my short-lived first marriage began to fall apart, my first thought was, “Well, if this does end up in divorce, I’ll have to leave the ministry. It will be too shameful, too embarrassing. Ministers are supposed to have their life together, and here, I can’t even manage to make my marriage work.“

I did end up getting divorced, and it wasn’t easy, but somewhere in the midst of it all the urge to flee lessoned, and gradually over time I became somewhat more real, and somewhat less concerned with what people thought about me. I stayed in the ministry.

And it’s a good thing, too. It fits me better now. I think I’ve been changed some in this process; that my motivations for being a minister, although not altogether purged of self-centeredness, do arise now out of a deeper, more authentic place than they did back then.

Nowadays I’m more inclined to see myself as one beggar telling other beggars where they can find food. Or one addict, telling other addicts, where they can find some help in practicing sobriety. One sin-sick person, telling other sin-sick people, where they can find the grace to keep on keeping on.

This past Friday evening through all day yesterday I was at the annual retreat our church sponsors for persons living with HIV/AIDS, serving as the spiritual director. Once again, the lines were blurred. On the surface, it might appear that what this was about an ordained minister, healthy and whole, condescending to help these poor, miserable souls plagued by the virus. To see it as such would be to totally misinterpret what happened there.

The folks who attended the retreat are heroes in my book. They know far more than I do about what it means to “walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death,” and they have a far more convincing testimony to the reality of the Good Shepherd who is leading them through. I am humbled by them.

Hard Truths to Swallow

June 1st, 2008

A sermon preached on June 1, 2008 based upon Romans 1:16 - 17; 3:22b - 28 and Psalm 46, entitled, “Hard Truths to Swallow.“  

There are two very big ideas being put forth by the Apostle Paul in the words we just heart from his letter to the Romans, both of which are at the heart of Christianity, and both of which can be mighty tough to swallow. 

The first is this:  We are all sinners.   We have all fallen short of the glory of God.   Which in turn means there really is NO distinction that can be made between people as to who are the “good people” and who are the “bad,” or even who is “better than” somebody else.  

If any of us were to stand in the direct presence of the Holy God, any notion we had been holding onto of being one of the “good guys” — one of the ones who have lived a good life as opposed to those who didn’t – any such notion would be absolutely obliterated.   We would suddenly and painfully become aware of the depths of our self-centeredness, the extraordinary lengths to which we had gone throughout our lives to try and make self-centered actions and beliefs seem like they weren’t self-centered. 

This is, as I said, tough stuff to swallow.  You can try as best you can to live by a moral law –  you know, follow the ten commandments and keep the golden rule –  but, Paul is saying, our best attempts at this will still fall way short of living the life for which we were created.   Which is to say that the power of what is called “sin” in our lives is so persistent, so subtle, that in the end, it will use our attempts to do good as an opportunity to slip in a more insidious kind of sin in the form of self-righteousness and a blindness to the destructive consequences of our self-righteousness. 

And lest we think Paul is imposing this idea onto Jesus, we find Jesus putting forth the very same idea in his little parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector going up to the Temple to pray, where the Pharisee who has worked very hard to keep the Law thinks himself so much better than the tax collector. 

So in a sense, what is being said here is that we can’t win.  No matter how hard we try, we are going to sin, we’re going to fall way short of the “glory of God.” 

Well, that certainly sounds like depressing and discouraging news that will end up leading us to hate ourselves.  

As I said, this is hard stuff to swallow. 

If this were the only idea being put forth here by Paul, we would indeed be well advised to avoid hearing it, even if it were true.  

But there is a second idea, which also, in itself, can be pretty tough to swallow, but which, in order to be fully appreciated, has to be taken hand in hand with the first idea. 

And it is this:  that in the end, “salvation,” which means “being made right with God” — “being at peace with God” –  isn’t based upon whether we succeed in living the life that God intended for us to live.  (Which is fortunate indeed, since, as we said no one comes close to truly succeeding in this regard.)  

What Paul is saying here is that salvation, in the end, is a gift.  It is “grace.”  It’s not something we can ever earn by successfully keeping the Law — by working hard to be good.

It’s a gift, pure and simple.  It is the mind-blowing good news that God truly cherishes us, chaotic mess though we may be, and that God forgives us, makes us right with God’s self, despite all the lengths to which we push God out of our lives and attempt to take over the center place ourselves.                                                

Now in order for this “salvation” to effects us experientially on a level that truly impacts our life, it requires that we receive the gift, and the receiving of the gift is what Paul refers to as “faith.”

For Paul, the discovery of this gift came when he encountered Jesus, and specifically the mystery of Jesus’ humiliating death on the cross.  For Paul, this is where the floodgates of grace open up.  It turned Paul’s view of the world upside down.  Up until that moment of amazing grace, the fact that Jesus had ended up on a cross like the lowest of the low was something shameful.  It was failure, it was defeat, it was humiliation.  Now, through the eyes of faith, Paul sees the death of Jesus on the cross as the very fountain of grace. 

Oftentimes the full meaning of the Gospel cannot penetrate us until life brings us to our knees.   This is how it happened for Paul, who had been the proud and self-righteous Pharisee until that moment he discovered that everything he had been about in his life had been barking up the wrong tree. 

This is also how it happened for Peter, who declared the night that Jesus was betrayed that though the other disciples might fall away, he never would, only to discover that very night just how very flawed he in fact was. 

And it’s how it happened for the founder of what became the Methodist Church, one John Wesley, who spent his early adult years busting his butt trying to live a superior, righteous life, only to make an absolute wreck of his life in the two years he spent in the colony of Georgia.   It was only then, a broken and humbled man, that at a prayer meeting on a street called Aldersgate, he could experience his heart strangely warmed, as the gift of God’s love penetrated the depths of his soul. 

And it’s the same truth discovered routinely in Alcoholics Anonymous, where people discover the truth that they have been avoiding and acknowledge their helplessness to fix the mess they’ve made of their lives. 

The thing abot life is that sooner or later it knocks us off our feet.  As the 46th psalm alludes to, inevitably there comes the time of serious trouble when the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, and the waters roar and foam, and we cannot help but tremble in our boots from the tumult of it all.

When this happens, there are basically two ways our life can play out.  We can end up bitter, hardened, cynical, and judgmental, which is another way of saying, we can lose our soul. 

The other way it can play out is that in time the truth to which Paul was alluding begins to make sense to us on a gut level.  We are humbled.  We discover ourselves loved despite confronting much that seems unlovable within us.   We become merciful in a way we could not be merciful before.   We shed our self-righteousness, and embrace the mercy of God. 
We find in God our refuge and strength, recognizing that our own strength wasn’t the refuge we had wanted to believe it was. 

The sacrament of holy communion which we are about to share together is all about these two hard to swallow truths.  We come to this table not because we have somehow earned the right.  Hardly.  We come to this table because there is a gift offered here that we have come to realize we need above all else.  
Psalm 46:1 - 3

God  is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
   though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

Passing Judgment: a sermon by Bob Keller

May 28th, 2008

A sermon preached by Bob Keller on May 25th, 2008, based upon 1 Corinthians 4:1 - 5, entitled “Passing Judgement.”

Earlier, David read to us from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth.

Why was the letter needed?

First, a little background about this fair city.  It was a large and very prosperous city established by the Greeks, and by the time Paul established the Christian Church there, it had been destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans.

Corinth was a seaport and a very important stop on East to West and West to East trade movement.  Its inhabitants were of many cultures and backgrounds, and, due to its location on the trading route, it was also a very prosperous city.  This wealth, as it often does today, left for idle time that was often spent doing things that were at best unseemly and at worst downright decadent!  In fact, Aristophanes coined a Greek verb that, translated, means to “act like a Corinthian,” a synonym for “to act with sexual immorality.”

Plays of the day often portrayed Corinthians as drunkards and reprobates.

Still, Corinth was where Paul took about a year and a half to build a Church.  He started by trying to convert the Jews, but later turned to the Corinthian Gentiles.  The Church was undoubtedly a reflection of the multi-cultural, and somewhat ‘seedy,’ diversity of Corinth.  But what better place to show the redeeming and transforming powers of Christ to the Roman world than by converting Corinth?

So now Paul is in Ephesus, setting up the Church there, and he gets a couple of letters that tell him “There’s Trouble (with a capital ‘T’), in Corinth.

Aside from the societal problems I’ve already mentioned, problems exist in the Church.  Paul’s letter could likely be applied to many churches today.  It’s a pretty interesting read.

The small section of the letter we read today has to do with the way church members are viewing their leaders.  One of the problems was that many church members were identifying themselves as followers of one or another of the leaders rather than as followers of Christ.

In some translations of Paul’s letter, he mentions two common vocations during his time as illustrations.
First, he uses the word “minister.” The Greek word is huperetes. In classical Greek, this word refers to an under-rower. Under-rowers man the oars of a ship below-decks.

Two things must be said about under-rowers. First, they work the oars in the belly of the ship. They do not know where the ship is going. They simply obey the direction of the Captain.

Secondly, under-rowers must work in harmony. If they do not work together, their efforts will be wasted, to say the least.

Christians are assigned the role of under-rowers. They propel the church forward. They are under the authority of our Lord. He gives the orders. But they must listen to the Captain, the Lord, and pull together.

The second word that Paul uses is “steward.” The steward is in charge of the administration of the house or estate. He administers the affairs of his master. He has authority over the master’s servants and makes crucial decisions. Ultimately, he is accountable to his master.

Paul chooses these two words to answer those that were holding him up as the responsible leader as well as those that criticized him for the seeming failure of the Church at Corinth.

This is really a pretty stiff rebuke from Paul for he basically tells them “I can’t even judge myself!  Why should I worry if you judge me?  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.  The Lord will be my judge.”

And that was my “AHA!” moment in preparing this message for today.

We spend a lot, probably way too much, of our time in judgment, don’t we?  We judge ourselves and we judge others and we allow others to judge us.

Is any of it valid?  Well, since the Lord will be our ultimate judge, the easy answer is “Yes and No.”

As we go through life, we judge ourselves.  Typically, that judge is the still, small voice called ‘conscience’ – or perhaps the angel on our shoulder that whispers “Nay – Nay” in our ear when we’re about to do something that we shouldn’t be doing.  That is stuff for the moment.  Judging ourselves calls for more and that’s self-evaluation.  We have to ask ourselves – not once a year or once a month, but continually – “How is my life squaring with what God wants from me and for me?”

Then there is “THEM.”  What will “THEY” say?  What will “THEY” think of me?  I confess that I worried a bit about that this morning when I was getting dressed.  I said, “I’m in the pulpit today.  If I wear my usual sneakers, blue jeans, shirt and sport coat, what will “THEY” say?  Should I show a bit of respect for “THEM,” and for this pulpit, and dress a little better than I usually do?

Paul addresses worship situations in this letter as well.  He also tells the church that it is important to keep in mind what others think of them.   Maybe I shouldn’t have read that far ahead, but I did tell you that this letter is a good read.

Should I have been concerned with how I dressed this morning?  I know to some of you it doesn’t matter.  Others may be thinking “Nice of him to put on a tie for today.”  Still others are thinking “I got up on a holiday weekend to come to church and the preacher didn’t even show up!”

The story is told of a man and his grandson traveling down the road, walking and leading a donkey. They met a man who said, “How foolish for you to be walking. One of you should be riding the donkey.” So the man put his grandson on the animal.

The next traveler they met frowned and said, “How dreadful for a strong boy to be riding while an old man walks.” So the boy climbed off the donkey and his grandfather climbed on.

The next person they met said, “I just can’t believe a grown man would ride and make a little boy walk.” So the man pulled the boy up and they rode the donkey together. That is, until they met another man who said, “I never saw anything so cruel in all my life — two human beings riding on one poor defenseless donkey!”

Down the road a ways, they met a couple of men. After they passed, one of the men turned to the other and said, “Did you ever before see two fools carrying a donkey?”

The point is: We can’t please everyone we meet.  But we do need to be considerate of how our actions and our words will affect other people.

And then there is the ultimate judgment that Paul wrote about – the judgment of God.

This Memorial Day weekend I’m reminded of the sacrifices of so many, so very many, men and women that have served our nation and provided the freedom and liberty that I have to stand here before you to proclaim God’s Word.  In so many countries today, this would have to be done in secret, if it could be done at all.

G. K. Chesterton, an English author that was very popular early in the 20th century, wrote that a true soldier is not one that hates that which is before him, but loves that which is behind him.

Many men and women, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, gave their lives in service to our great nation, to preserve “that which is behind them”, that which they loved.

As we remember them, can we also remember the One who gave us life to begin with?  Can we remember the sacrifice made by God giving his Son to die in our place?  Can we remember that when we face that final judgment that God will ask “Did you believe?  Did you believe that I loved you so much that I gave my Son to die in your place?  Did you love yourself and others as I loved you?

Again, from G. K. Chesterton:  “There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”  That road is our faith and traveling that road, through God’s word, is Jesus.

Can we remember our place in God’s kingdom?  Can we remember that when we have feelings of failure that God loves us and will help to pick us up and that maybe we’re being too hard on ourselves?  Can we remember that everything we do and say has an effect of those around us?  Can we remember that God will be our ultimate judge?

Made for Relationship

May 18th, 2008

A sermon preached on May 18, 2008 based upon Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a; 2Corinthians 13:11 - 13; and Matthew 28:16 - 20, on the occasion of the reaffirmation of wedding vows on 40^th anniversary of Michael and Anna Weiss, entitled, “Made for Relationship”.

When Anna and Michael asked me about the possibility of renewing their vows within the worship service itself, I said, “I’ve never done that before, but sure, why not? Sounds like a wonderful idea.” And I discovered, as is often the case, that when you listen to the Bible stories from new points of view, you hear them in interesting, new ways, which is exactly what happened when I listened this week from the perspective of thinking about wedding vows.

The lectionary for this Sunday included the first chapter of the Genesis, which most of us have heard it before.

Just for the record, so you’ll know where I’m coming from, I don’t take these creation stories literally, in the sense of this is how it all actually, historically happened. And these stories often talk about God in such a way that it’s easy to picture God as the old man with the white beard. I don’t think that’s so either, although it can be fun some times to picture God this way. I do, however, think there is truth in these stories. They invite us to ponder spiritual truth through the vehicle of our imagination.

Genesis 1 takes us back to a time before everything was, and there was nothing but darkness and chaos. You can think of God as being at that moment the ultimate single person. (You could say single “guy”, but you could just as easily say single “gal”, because the story tells us that when God made us in God’s image, God made us male and female, so God is both male and female.)

So the single life wasn’t so bad. Pretty calm. No troubles. Why did God want to go and stir everything up?

Driving to school this past week, my son Bobby with his capacity for deep thoughts began imagining what it would be like if there wasn’t anything at all. It gave him the willies. I think maybe nothingness gave God the willies too.

In one sense, God didn’t have to create anything since God is free to do whatever God chooses. In another sense though, God had to create. Since God is by nature good and creative, God’s creative goodness required the creation of good stuff. God wouldn’t be true to God’s self otherwise.

You could say that single guy/gal God needed an “other” to relate to. So God started off creating. First night and day, then earth and sky, then dry land and ocean, and then fish and birds and all the other animals.

Things were going pretty good. God was on a roll. Sometimes, though, you got to know when the time has come to back away from the table. Some will argue that God had reached that point. Evidently though, there was something about what God had created up until that point that although certainly good, simply wasn’t enough from God’s point of view.

Take ducks for instance. God could have created ducks and kicked up his heels and enjoyed those little fellas, and watch them do all those ducky things ducks do. The thing about ducks, though, is that they don’t really have any of what we could call “freedom.” God designed ducks to quack, to take to water — the whole duck routine — and there really isn’t any way a duck isn’t going to do those duck things. It’s called “instincts”, this programming. Ducks can’t help but do what they’ve been programmed to do.

And frankly, God found these purely-programmed creatures unsatisfying in terms of relationship.

So God moved on to God’s crowning creation: God made us human beings in God’s image and likeness, which is to say that we human beings have some measure of freedom that is like unto the freedom that God has. We have instincts, yes, but we also have this capacity to go beyond our instincts — to choose something other than what our instincts dictate to us.

Evidently once God created us human beings, God’s need to be in relationship was satisfied. It was very good, God declared. So God kicked up God’s heels and rested.

In a way what you have here in Genesis 1 is the first marriage. God gives up the single life in order to be wed to us human beings. There was no wedding — no ceremony.

Apparently God didn’t think that was necessary. God assumed everything was understood. So we just started off cohabitating.

God comes off a little naïve in that first marriage, not unlike us human beings in our human marriages. God doesn’t seem to realize what God has gotten God’s self into.

Now the most tangible, concrete expression of the freedom that distinguishes us from the ducks can be seen in every two year old child. It is that adorable capacity to say, “No.” “No!” “Ain’t gunna do what you want me to do.” “No’s” in relationship can be very, very frustrating, but the thing about the capacity to say “no” is that it makes the “yeses” all the more significant. Magnificent really.

In Genesis 2 we hear about what happened when the honeymoon was over. The human beings start exercising their capacity to say “No.“ The serpent shows up with what sounded like a better offer, and metaphorically speaking, the human beings start sleeping around.

It all goes down hill from there. You can almost hear God saying, “I should have left off after creating the ducks.” The next few chapters of Genesis read like the legal briefs put forth by God’s attorney in divorce court. It records the various ways that human beings were negligent in fulfilling their spousal responsibilities.

Finally God has had enough. “This was all a terrible mistake. What was I thinking? Good riddance to those trampy human beings.” God files for divorce. God’s temper gets pretty nasty, making it rain for 40 straight days.

But afterwards, you get the feeling that God feels bad about what God has done. The single life just won’t hack it for God. Being good, and by nature a lover, God needs to be in relationship, and not just with some instinct-driven duck, but with human being with our confounding capacity to say, “No.”

And so God tries again with the handful of human beings who have survived the flood. If you look up Genesis 9, what you will find there is the first wedding ceremony. This time around though, what was implicit is made explicit. God formally makes a covenant of marriage. God takes vows: “I’m gunna love you forever,” God declares. “I promise to never, ever destroy you.”

This time around God enters the marriage with more wisdom and realism. God now knows how absolutely infuriating we human beings can be. God knows that God will get angry, and be tempted once more to make those rains fall forever.

So God puts a signal in place to safeguard the relationship. When God feels tempted to start throwing things, when God starts getting those rain storms revved up, a rainbow will show up in the sky. Why? So that God will see the rainbow, and remind God’s self that, “Oh yeah, I promised never to do this again.” And God will put down the lightning bolts and go out and take a walk in order to cool down.

Interestingly, at that first wedding ceremony, God doesn’t even bother to require human beings to take vows. God seems to know we won’t keep them, so, let’s not even pretend that we will.

*****

Interestingly, back in the garden story, shortly before the honeymoon ended, God, recognizes that the solitary human being thus far created needs a flesh and blood companion, a helpmate, a partner. “It’s not good for the man to be alone.” The story in Genesis 2 arises from a separate tradition from the one in Genesis 1, and in this story, the animals get created after, not before human beings.

It’s a humorous scene. God creates the animals one by one and asks the human being, “Do you think this thing could be your help mate, your partner?” Lots of these creatures certainly appear capable of being fairly helpful: you know, the dog, for instance, or the cow, or the horse. But none of them have what it takes to be the man’s partner. The companion. The lover.

Finally the woman is made, and as the man’s equal, she is a worthy partner, because she, too, is free. Interestingly, it is the woman’s ability to say “No” which makes her capable of being the man’s partner. Unlike the animals, the woman is not under the man’s dominion. (Those religious traditions that say women are supposed to be submissive to men — what they’re essentially saying is that the man should have married a duck.)

****

So here we are. We weren’t made merely for ourselves, to exist in isolation. We were made for relationship: with God, and with one another. And relationships aren’t easy.

David read for us a lovely little scripture reading from the end of Paul’s two letters to the Corinthian Church, in which Paul encourages his readers to “agree with one another, live in peace… Greet one another with a holy kiss.” It’s easy to miss the fact that Paul is addressing people who have been at each other’s throats, saying “No” to one another a great deal.

In the end, it’s all about learning how to live in peace.

One important form that our lives sometimes get lived out in relationship is through marriages. Human marriages mirror that first marriage between God and human beings. There is the honeymoon period that draws the couple together in the first place, where the spouse is imagined to be the perfect partner, where all that is said between the couple is only “Yes, yes, yes!”

But eventually every honeymoon comes to an end. The “No’s” start showing up. “No! I don’t want to do what you want to do!” “No! I don’t see things the way you do!”

And along with the bombardment of “No’s” comes the clear implication that there is something wrong with us — something hard to live with, which inevitably has some truth to it.

Eventually comes the thought, “I’ve made some terrible mistake. What was I thinking?”

At this point, some marriages end up in divorce. Other couples stay together, but only in a kind of pretense of marriage, without any true love or life present.

Others plow on, finding the grace to pass through the more difficult times, discovering a deep sort of joy, learning essential lessons along the way regarding humility and the need to face one’s own very real flaws — one’s own sin and darkness. They move beyond the fairy tale and forge a much deeper, stronger kind of love than the enchantment that originally drew them together.

This morning we have celebrated one such marriage, that of Anna and Michael Wiess, forty years in. Thank you, Anna and Michael, for providing the rest of us with the example of your love and covenant faithfully kept. And thank you, God, for being here throughout, sustaining this love.

On that mountain in Galilee, Jesus promised, “I am with you always to the end of the age.” This is a promise we can trust.

Signs and Wonders

May 12th, 2008

A sermon preached on May 11, 2008, Pentecost Sunday (and also Mother’s Day), based upon Acts 2:1 - 21, (22 - 47), entitled “Signs and Wonders.”

Insofar as this is Mother’s Day as well as Pentecost, I begin this morning with a story I came across testifying to the reality of the spiritual realm that arises from the deep connection that exists between mothers and their children. A man writes:

“Back when I was five years old, I suffered a near-fatal accident. I lay between life and death for three full days. No one, including the doctors, knew if I would awaken from my comatose state or not. On night three, my weary mother finally left my bedside at the hospital and went home to get some sleep. About three that morning, while wide awake, she heard me calling to her from the hallway outside her bedroom. “I’m okay, mommy! Don’t worry.” The phone rang a few minutes later. It was my dad telling her that I had just awakened and was calling for her.” (found on internet)

There are countless others stories like this one.The next story I want to tell doesn’t involve mothers, but it also points speaks to the power of the Spirit. It’s a well-documented story that comes from the life of a Spanish explorer named Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. During the first half of the sixteenth century, De Vaca was shipwrecked and stranded on the what would become the coast of Texas. Fearing murder at the hands of hostile natives, he hid, along with two fellow survivors, in a pit they dug, where they spent several cold winter nights sleeping naked. They had lost everything, and yet mysteriously they underwent a remarkable transformation, emerging from that pit with spiritual power to heal. On their way westward, their fame spread ahead of them. The natives would bring their sick, and de Vaca and his friends would heal them, and they were thus able to travel unharmed. Eventually they made their way back to Mexico City, the seat of Spanish civilization in the New World, where there were doctors trained in the European techniques of the day. Here de Vaca evidently lost his power to heal, succumbing to the beliefs of his contemporaries regarding what was, and what wasn’t possible. (Larry Dossey, MD, Healing words, pp. 88-89)The most illuminating words about the nature of the Spirit were said by Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus, who had been drawn to Jesus by the “signs and wonders“ that were present in his ministry: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)  Like the wind, the Spirit is invisible, beyond our control, and mysterious. Sometimes you can see its effects, but the thing itself always remains invisible.

The Episcopal priest Alan Jones made a helpful observation when he said that the Spirit is most present at three open spaces in our lives. “In the unpredictable, in the place of risk and in those areas over which we have no control.”  De Vaca and his mates discovered themselves in a situation absolutely unpredictable, beyond their control, and full of risk when they were shipwrecked on the coast of Texas.

This also describes the situation in which the first small band of Christians found themselves in Jerusalem at the outset of the day of Pentecost. They had recently arrived in this big, strange city. Their leader had been brutally murdered, and they could be next. And then weird stuff started to happen.

Using poetic language to describe what is ultimately indescribable, the author of Acts tells how suddenly something like “tongues of fire” descended upon each of these open, empty believers, filling them with spiritual power that allowed them to do that which they shouldn’t have been able to do — various “signs and wonders,” including the capacity to speak directly to the thousands of pilgrims in Jerusalem that day from other nations who spoke different languages from those they themselves spoke. Peter stands up and quotes from the prophet Joel, who spoke of a day that would come when the Spirit would be poured out upon all people, bringing forth dreams and visions and prophecies. To many people present the “signs and wonders” taking place were undeniable — the kind of compelling stuff that makes a person stand up and pay attention — and by the end of the day the numbers of the believers had swelled from a few dozen to three thousand persons. At the end of the second chapter of Acts we read how signs and wonders were commonplace in this new community, and people were inspired to share everything they had.

We are told that there were some present that day who witnessed what others saw, but did not acknowledge that any “signs and wonders” were taking place. These skeptics interpreted what they were witnessing as just so much early morning drunkenness. Their view of the world wouldn’t allow them to acknowledge what was actually happening. They were the ones who were accustomed to being in control and liked being able to predict exactly what would happen next. They were the resident, establishment people accustomed to having their own language spoken. They had a lot to lose were they to accept the validity of what was happening in this subversive spiritual movement.

And so our story shows us that there are ways of looking at this world that block the movement of the Spirit — that keep people from recognizing the signs and wonders.

One major obstacle is presented by a world-view that simply refuses to acknowledge a spiritual reality beyond the physical, material realm. If something can’t be examined by scientists, then ispso, facto it doesn’t exist. This is the point of view that has increasingly dominated western culture over the last few centuries, ever since what was called the “Age of Enlightenment.”

Another world view that blocks the Spirit is a religious belief system that has become “fossilized”. Where once there was the Spirit, now there is only the stuff people created to try and contain the spirit. It involves becoming overly attached to an institution — to the status quo, which is unfortunately where spiritual movements all tend to end up. This resistance to the Spirit can take the form of fundamentalism, where the Spirit is evicted in deference to a set of rigid laws.

But the Spirit can also be blocked by a tired, worn-out, we’ve seen it all before form of religious belief (often found today in “mainline” churches), where God and the Spirit are relegated to the role of nothing more than the “original clockmaker,” who in the beginning got things rolling and then pretty much went on a permanent vacation.

Bono said that religion is what you are left with when the Spirit has left the building. In order for religious institutions to maintain order and hold onto their power it is necessary for them to take the attitude that everything God had to say back was said back in the “old days,” and yes, it can be very confusing trying to understand what God had to say back then, so that’s why you need us, the professionally trained leaders of the institution to explain it all to you.

I had a conversation with a couple of women this past week who described precisely this kind of experience in Bible study years ago that pretty much turned them off from Bible Study for years to come. The pastor leading the Bible study essentially said that the verses they were studying didn’t really mean what they seemed to be saying, and in order to understand what they were really saying it was necessary to have attended seminary like he did, and since these women had neither the time nor probably the intelligence to go to seminary like he did, they were better off keeping their noses out of the Bible and leaving its interpretation to him.

The description of the first Pentecost called to mind a fascinating book (“Under the Banner of Heaven”, by Jon Krakauer) I just finished reading on the history of the Mormons, a group I knew very little about prior to reading the book. At the risk of presenting myself as some kind of expert on Mormonism after reading one, assuredly, biased book, nonetheless I will plunge ahead to offer my take on this faith that is the fastest growing religion in the world.

It started off in the early 1800s with this charismatic personality, a young man named Joseph Smith living in New York State, who claimed to have received certain revelations directly from God. He shared his revelations with others, and along the way, various signs and wonders were experienced that got people to stand up and pay attention: further visions, dreams and prophecies that foretold coming events, miraculous healings — that sort of weird stuff. Similar to what happened at the first Pentecost, the number of Mormons grew so rapidly that within just a couple of years there were ten thousand of them who were generously sharing pretty much everything they had with one another.

Now as an outsider looking in, much of the belief system set forth by Joseph Smith on the basis of his revelations strikes me as downright wacky, including his assertion that one of the ancient tribes of Israel somehow migrated to America centuries before Columbus. Crazy stuff, (though I know that there are people who would say the same about things I believe.) I found myself asking, how could people believe this wacky stuff?

Beneath the wacky stuff, however, the most significant belief Joseph Smith put forth — the one I believe mattered most — was a simple but compelling conviction that God talks directly to people, right now. That revelations from God are not restricted to long ago Bible times, but that God continues to reveal God’s will to people in the present. That God is very much involved actively in the day-to-day affairs of humans. Joseph Smith’s movement invited people to stand tippy-toed together to watch for whatever surprising thing God would do next, to embrace the conditions that provide space for the Spirit to move — the unpredictable, the out of control, the risky. In doing so they opened the door to all kinds of spiritual phenomenon — signs and wonders — in a way similar to the sorts of experiences that people were having back in the earliest days of the Church. And where signs and wonders occur, people stand up and take notice.

So hear me out: in order for the Spirit to move, in a certain sense the specifics of a person’s beliefs doesn’t matter, as long as the person is open to the signs and wonders that originate from the invisible spiritual realm. Signs and wonders have occurred and continue to occur in various religious traditions throughout the world, from Native American Shamans to Mormons to Pentecostals to Hindus to whatever.

But here’s the irony regarding how religions work: those early Mormons were very impressed by the signs and wonders, which in turn led them to conclude that this weird stuff was evidence that the specifics of Joseph Smith’s wacky belief system were true. So as time passed, and the signs and wonders died down, the belief system became rigid, fossilized.

Thomas Acquinas, the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, spent his life thinking through the logical implications of the belief system of his Roman Catholic Church. He wrote thousands of pages of theology. Late in his life, however, Acquinas had some kind of mystical experience, a direct encounter with God and the power of the Spirit, which led him to give up writing, and to say that all he had written before was just “so much straw.” Having experienced directly the spiritual realm, he realized that no belief system could come any where close to capturing it.

So in one sense it doesn’t matter what we believe as long as we believe in a spiritual reality and the possibility of making contact with the Spirit. But in another sense, it is very important what we believe.

The Spirit is energy, and that energy can end up moving in destructive paths if it isn’t guided by Jesus. For instance, there are certain fundamentalist Mormons who believe that polygamy, and the oppression of women and children that it can breed, are essential parts of the belief system, divinely ordained by God. They also believe that God is racist, that non-white people are inherently inferior to white people. These are beliefs that have strayed far from Jesus.

Religious belief that encourages self-righteousness, that sets up walls that separate people, that encourage violence are not in tune with Jesus.

And so on that first Pentecost, the apostle Peter, after quoting for them the prophet Joel, proceeded to tell the gathered crowds about Jesus.

Clarence Jordan formed a Christian community in the middle of the 20^th century in Georgia that was ahead of its time in terms of American culture, but downright old-fashioned in regard to replicating the radical equality that was present in that first Spirit-inspired, Jesus-centered Christian community. (It was Clarence Jordan who shepherded the man who started Habitat for Humanity.)

Clarence told a story (that I heard Tony Campolo tell) of a time he was invited to preach at a revival meeting at a little hillbilly church way out in the country. When he got there and stepped out into the pulpit, he was surprised to find a packed church with black and white folk all sitting together. This was, you recall, the south in the 1950s, well before the civil rights movement had gotten very far.

After the meeting was over, he asked the old hillbilly preacher how it had gotten this way. “What way?” the hillbilly preacher asked.

“You know, black and white folk together.”

“Oh, well, a few years back, the preacher, he died, and we didn’t have no preacher. So I said, ‘I’ll preach.’ And the deacons, they didn’t have nobody else to preach. So they let me.

“On my first Sunday, I got up in the pulpit, I opened up the Bible, and I came to the place where brother Paul says,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free, but you are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Galatians 3:28)

“And I preached it.

“After church was over, the deacons, they took me into a back room and told me they didn’t want to hear no more preaching like that.” “So what you’d do?” asked Clarence.“I fired them deacons! If the deacons aren’t going to deak, then fire fire em, for God‘s sake! Once I knew what bugged them, I kept after it. I preached that church down to three people. And then it began to grow. But it wasn’t me. It was the holy spirit.”

He evicted to fossilized belief system and created room for the Spirit to move.

Although we are a part of an institution that often clings to a fossilized system of belief, here at the Parsippany United Methodist Church we are trying to be faithful to Jesus, who declares that there’s always room in the circle. Who knows what surprising thing the Spirit will do next as the walls come tumbling down.

Blessing

May 5th, 2008

A sermon preached on May 4, 2008, based upon 24:44 -53, entitled “Blessing”. 

Years ago on a Sunday morning I was up early finishing off a sermon that involved encouraging people to inwardly, silently blessing people as we go out into the world.  I went to the bagel store to get a coffee and bagel, and, and while I was waiting, I thought to myself, “Jeff, you should try to practice what you preach.”  And so silently I said, “God bless this woman who is preparing my bagel.”  At precisely that moment the woman sneezed, thereby allowing me to say the words out loud.  God, I’m convinced, has a sense of humor.

When God brought forth creation, on the sixth day he made human beings in the likeness and image of God, and we are told that once God had made us, God blessed us.

When God called Abraham and Sarah to leave behind their homeland and to go into an unknown future, an unknown land, we are told that God blessed them, and that in that blessing they would be a blessing to all the world. 

Later we hear about Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s son,  lying on his death bed, blessing his son Jacob, shortly before Jacob leaves home to set out into the world. 

Twenty years later, on the night before that same Jacob returned home, he wrestled with the angel of the Lord, refusing to let go until the Lord blessed him, which he did.

And in this morning’s Gospel lesson we hear that the very last thing Jesus did before he departed to heaven was to raise his hands and bless his disciples. 

And so I am lead this morning to ponder what it means to “bless” someone. 

To bless someone is to intentionally seek to channel God’s love and grace to that person, that they may enter into the abundant life which God desires to give them.  In order to bless someone, it is necessary for us to be able to bring our whole selves and full attention into the present moment of the blessing.  You cannot bless someone if your heart and mind are divided. 

As such, the practice of blessing someone generally involves some kind of ritual.  Rituals doesn’t have magical powers, but they can aid us as we seek to bring our whole selves fully into the presence of God into order to be that open channel.  Jesus raised his hands as he blessed his disciples not because the blessing couldn’t take bless without him doing so; rather it was a ritual action that helped focus the attention of everyone involved. 

Is a blessing powerful?  Yes.  Is God’s love present apart from the blessing?  Of course.   But the act of blessing helps us tune into that love, to align ourselves with God’s love.

Rituals of blessing are particularly important at key times of transition in life, such as at birth, at marriage, in the midst of dying and death.  Generally speaking, Roman Catholics have a greater appreciation than we do of the role of ritual, as well as a wider array of established rituals to draw upon. 

But nothing says we can’t create our own rituals of blessing.  For instance, when you move into a new home, or start a new job, you could create your own ritual for blessing.  Set aside some unhurried time, perhaps inviting loved ones to join with you.  Be creative:  light candles, put on special music, create an altar to God’s glory, read scriptures, all for the sake of bringing your whole self before God in a desire to receive God’s blessing, and to bless the path before you.

In doing so we strengthen our desire and intention to live in harmony with God’s love, to live in the light rather than darkness, to provide space for God to dwell at the center of our lives. 

You could create a ritual of blessing if you have a child starting her first day of school, or a new year of school.  Or just before you set out on a vacation, to strengthen your openness to God’s love and guidance on that vacation. 

If you find yourself truly desiring to change a bad habit in your life, a ritual of blessing can help enormously to strengthen your resolve and to invite God and loved ones to support you and hold you accountable in your new way of living. 

In the act of blessing, we are often called to let go, to trust God.  When a child leaves home, for instance, the act of blessing that child entrusts her to God, assisting the parent in letting the child go so that she won’t be held back from fully thriving on her new journey.  This is, in essence, what Jesus did for his disciples, blessing them in his departure, that they might be free to move forward on their own rather than dwell in the past.

And there is a tremendous need for rituals of blessing in relation to dying and death.  So often in our society death isn’t faced directly.  It is not uncommon to have a person be dying, and neither the person nor their loved ones talk about the fact of their dying directly, and then all kinds of unfortunate things can happen.   For instance, the person may reach a point where they are ready to die, but the family isn’t ready to let the person go, and so the dying person continues to cling to life, a mere shell of themselves, in order  to accommodate the loved ones.

How many people die in this world without either first blessing the people they have shared this life with, or receiving the blessing of their loved ones?  How many people in this world are handicapped because they never really felt like they received their parents blessing, or, that never really gave their parents their blessing.

What about the opposite of blessing, which would be, of course, a curse. Curses show up frequently in the Old Testament.  There was said to be a curse brought upon the human race by the fall of Adam and Eve.  Sodom and Gomorrah, is cursed by God and brought to rubble. 

Is there power in curses as well?  Yes.  We can just as easily be a channel for  destruction and hate as we can channel God’s creativity and love. 

One of the most striking things about Jesus is that he forsook the practice of curses.  One time, Jesus was passing through a Samaritan village with his disciples, and the people there, acting out of the longstanding hostility between Samaritans and Jews, were inhospitable to Jesus.   In response to their rudeness, the disciples James and John, known as “the sons of thunder,” offered to call down lightning upon the village, like Sodom and Gomorrah of old.   Jesus rebuked them, clearly dismayed that the disciples simply weren’t catching on to his way.

“But I say to you, listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27)  And Jesus put his money where his mouth was when, dying on the cross, when if ever a person had a right to evoke a curse, Jesus certainly did,  and we read that he steadfastly refused to curse, asking instead forgiveness by God of those who had nailed him to the cross. 

The most challenging thing about following Jesus is his call to forsake cursing, which doesn’t mean using bad words, but rather giving up the practice of channeling revenge and hatred towards who wrong us. 

Blessings and curses appeared in the news two times this past week that caught my attention. 

There is a lovely song we Americans enjoy singing, “God bless America.”   Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the song was sung frequently, and the words proclaimed all over America, an understandable reaction to the deep sense of loss we shared as a nation. 

It is appropriate to ask God’s blessing on America.   There is a problem, however, when people seek to withhold that same blessing from other nations, and sometimes “God bless America” is proclaimed in that spirit.  I made a point following 9/11 to leave a message on my answering machine that said, “God bless America, and God bless the whole world,” because I think that is what Jesus would do. 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Barack Obama, was in the news again this past week defending some of controversial things he had said in the past in his sermons.  For instance, in a sermon shortly after 9/11, Rev. Wright asked  “God bless America?” He answered,  “No, God damn America!”  

Rev. Wright’s point involved his conviction that America is not without sin, which is a valid point, and not one I wish to get into here.  I think however that our instinct to be disturbed by such words coming from the mouth of a Christian pastor were correct, because, Jesus damns no one. 

The other piece of news came from the General Conference of our own United Methodist Church, which was held the past two weeks in Fort Worth Texas.  

Two people are drawn to one another in this life, and decide they want to live with one another for the rest of their lives, striving to love each other — to covenant themselves to one another in fidelity and faithfulness, to devote themselves to the hard work required to sustain a life-giving relationship over the long haul.  Knowing how difficult this can be, given the fact that we human beings tend to be by nature rather self-centered, they come together before the altar of God to look into one another’s eyes and bless one another in the presence of God and of the community that loves and supports them, to make holy vows to one another for which they seek the blessing of God, that God might be the central partner in strengthening them and holding them accountable to keeping this covenant.  We know how important a wedding ceremony can be in providing the ritual in which this blessing can take place. 

Unfortunately, the delegates at our General Conference once again voted to withhold this blessing if the two people who desire to come to the altar of God happen to be gay or lesbian. 

It distresses Jesus, I believe, the position taken by the majority of the delegates of our General Conference, but Jesus would not have me curse these delegates, rather, God bless these delegates.

I think it distressed Jesus when Pastor Wright said “God damn America,” even though I’m sure there are many, many things about America that God is distressed about, but I will not curse Rev. Wright, rather I will say, God bless Rev. Wright.

And I think that it distresses Jesus when certain church communions withhold the blessing of holy communion from those who are not their members, but Jesus would not have me curse such churches; rather, God bless these communions. 

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