Streams in the Desert

The Day Before Obama

2008-11-03T08:36:00.003-05:00

Some words ought to be said before tomorrow's election. It will be good to remember in years to come how deadening this moment in history was and what dreams we harbored for a new day.

Nobody's thinking very clearly right now. Some of the most sensible people I know are spouting off the most ridiculous things under the influence of blogs and pundits. I am the same. I compulsively check the polls for any signs of weakening. I know more about the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska than the people living there. But none of this knowledge has made me any wiser. It's just making me more stupid. Real debate on the issues we face has to wait until we're all sober again. Tomorrow.

So what do this election represent for me?
1) It's hard to overstate what a waste these last 8 years have been. A criminal waste. Following the atacks of 9/11 we had the opportunity for a truly deeper dialogue with the world and a deeper understanding of who we were in the post-Cold War world. A skillful leader could have used the occasion to expand our national conversation and introduce a new kind of American presence in the middle East. What if we had flooded the Middle East with new Western-style universities instead of troops? What if we had begun a radical program of energy self-sufficiency that helped the planet and choked off the petrodollars that fund radical Isalmic movements? What if we had not simplified the world into good and evil and had not answered every doubt with a synonym for 'resolve'?

Right and left were both equally guilty of falling back on old answers in the face of new questions. Which makes Obama's unique ability to choose reflection over reaction so attractive. If he wins I think the defining moment of his rise will be seen as his impromptu speech on race following the Jeremiah Wright flap this spring. It was so unexpected and so thoughtful - free of cliche and cant - that it reminded us of what we were hungering for. We didn't even know how much we needed it until we heard it. At that moment Obama began to be the person we could trust to be the difference we needed.

2) Our standing in the world has fallen so far that anyone else in the position of president will see it rise, but the change Obama will bring is immeasurably different. I sense that the rest of the world wants to believe in the idea of America. They, no less than we, want to believe that this is a land where 'the new' is always being born. That there is a dynamism that leads to ever-new rounds of self-renewal. Where things considered impossible only a few years before can be possible. Not only we, but the rest of the world will believe that again if Obama is elected. We say that it's the issues that matter, but the person does as well and who Obama is matters as much as anything he proposes to do.

3) I pray that this election will put to death a certain strain of Christian thinking that has turned very ugly. The people I have been most disappointed in have been Christians who have been willing to say all manner of evil against Obama for who knows what purpose. To the extent that American Christianity harbors old feelings of racism, xenophobia and fear it needs to die. Too many people assume that the Church is the last refuge for those who hold notions of American purity. They assume the Church is an ally in preserving the status quo and supporting the way things are or used to be. If only we could be about the way things should be in God's eyes.

Why do I say this? Persistent emails and whisper campaigns within the church identifying Obama as a Muslim and in league with terrorists. Denigration of his Christian beliefs as evidence that he is insincere. Faxes I have received saying that I should condemn Obama from the pulpit for his advocacy of child sacrifice and an expansion of partial-birth abortions. The fact that I now need to say that Obama supports neither of those is evidence of how far we have fallen.

There is tremendous fear among people on the right. I have heard folks say in all sincerity that that they believe Obama is the anti-Christ. But I pray for a breath following this election tomorrow - a deep breath in which the Church can exhale all the hatred and fear. Then we can all repent for our heretical belief that the future is really in Obama's hands and begin to reclaim the notion that God is, after all, at the helm. And so we are free to follow our hopes, and challenge Obama when he needs challenging and support him when he needs supporting.

Breathe deeply the air of that new morning which is to come.

Coldplay - The Perfect Soundtrack for the End of the Empire

2008-10-13T13:07:00.005-04:00

I'm feeling a curious sense of liberation as the world economy comes crashing down around us. Something tells me that beneath the veneer that has constituted our American empire, there has been a truth waiting to be told - a freedom longing to be lived that has been dying of deadly thirst. I have felt it in my soul and have made the typical American mistake of thinking that it is all about me. Perhaps the hunger within for freedom and truth and community is the canary in the coal mine, signaling a greater menace in the land.

So how great is it that Coldplay is the soundtrack to the end of Empire? Viva la Vida is the catchiest tune about global decline I have ever heard. And there in the chorus are the words: "For some reason I can not explain/ Once you know there was never, never an honest word/ That was when I ruled the world."

Will we speak some honest word now to finally say that the emperor has no clothes, that our cheap energy- and equity-supported lifestyles have been plastic, that our longing for intimacy is not something to be buried beneath irony but lived? Bring on the Coldplay.

Hope Like a Marshmallow

2008-04-24T22:39:00.002-04:00

No, it's not a collection of druids, just Bishops Palmer and Huie and the worship leaders opening the 2008 General Conference. But check out that table. Now that's the most impressive thing I've seen from the first news stories coming out of Fort Worth. It's the roots of a tree and its made from wood from the Gulfside Assembly Center in Waveland, Mississippi which was totally destroyed by Katrina. Better yet, the table is placed right in the middle of the gathered assembly.

Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, (a Perkins grad), preached at the opening worship yesterday and emphasized hope. She noted that in our everyday lingo hope is in danger of becoming a “marshmallow word. It sounds soft. It looks sweet and appealing. Get it close to the fire, and hope melts off the stick and drips on the ground.” Huie argued that resurrection hope is different. As Paul noted, it is "sure confidence of a future reality."

Today the agenda was filled with presentations. Bishop Bruce Ough gave the Episcopal Address and focused on the bishops' "Seven Vision Pathways," which sounds like an odd cross between Thomas Merton and an Eastern mystical tradition. Numbers are in at this year's conference. The general agencies presented the Four Provocative Propositions and Lovett Weems issued a widely-distributed document before the conference entitled Ten Provocative Questions on the state of the church. We'll see if any of them catch on.

As to the substance of Ough's remarks, I'm still waiting on the transcripts but the news report indicates that it was a kind of best practices report on what's working in transforming churches. The visions are closely tied in with the four areas of focus: developing young clergy leaders, beginning and reviving local churches, combatting poverty and embarking on a global health initiative.

The Laity Address by Lyn Powell of the North Georgia Conference stuck to very traditional themes of making disciples by personal evangelism. I did like the way it appears Powell talked about every member having a personal ministry, but, again, I'm waiting on transcripts to hear more.

New this year was a Young People's Address featuring six young people from around the world. The language in this address, at least from the portions available, seemed fresher than other addresses. I'm very glad to see this emphasis and very glad that the General Conference is giving this first-day billing.

Otherwise the day seems to have been filled with calls for unity and an end to fighting over intractable social issues questions. We'll see if that holds.

Thanks to United Methodist News Service for the work they're doing. All quotes above are from them.

Finally - there were liturgical dancers in the opening worship at the Fort Worth Convention Center last night and it reminded me of when I danced with the bishops in worship there in the early 1990s. While I was in seminary there was a great gathering on vital congregations held in Fort Worth and our church in Dallas was asked to do a liturgical dance for the closing worship. We practiced for two months ahead of time - a group of 8 of us ranging in age from teenagers to 70-year-olds. I was the only guy.

But the night itself was magic. It ended with a steel drum band playing "Amen" and the bishops leading a huge conga line that stretched throughout the center. The Spirit was moving and as a young person going into ministry in the United Methodist Church I felt that everything was possible. I pray for the same Spirit this week.

Return to Origins

2008-04-23T23:22:00.001-04:00

It seems only right that this blog, which began four years ago as a place to offer commentary on General Conference, should be revisited as the delegates gather in Fort Worth to revise "The Book," (seen here as it vacationed recently on Assateague Island.) When we last left our happy elected global crew they were not so happy, ending their time together in Pittsburgh with broken chalices and the hint of a broken connection. I despaired and have despaired since that the General Conference had become a place that did not look like the church I know. And I have wondered if conferencing is still possible or relevant in this new age.

So now we gather again for some answers. The dynamics have not changed much in four years. Most of the cast of characters is the same, though some fire-in-the-belly conservatives have died in the interim and the global church, particularly in Africa, will be more heavily represented. Thematically we will see more emphasis on new church starts, though it remains to be seen how that will be envisioned and funded. It also is not clear whether we can turn this aging ship into a mission vehicle once more. The Holy Spirit has used more unlikely vessels, but we are in need of far more than a paradigm shift.

Some predictions: We will not change our language on homosexuality, though we will become less connectional as the General Conference reaffirms the decision of the Judicial Council that allows pastors to determine membership qualifications. We will not make any substantive changes that would simplify and clarify our theology and practice of ordination. We will end the practice of guaranteed appointments. There will be a revolt on apportionments and the quadrennial budget will be slashed from the increase that is recommended. We will approve a new hymnal committee. We will approve the Four Provocative Propositions that will set the major themes of the coming quadrennium including new churches, young clergy development, health and poverty initiatives. And finally, we will agree to be less strident and less earnest in the coming four years. (A guy can dream, can't he?)

My prayers are with our folks in Fort Worth. As I have come to know them more these past four years I have not loved them less. It is a strange and wonderful thing to be a United Methodist. I would feel homeless were it not for this connection. So I pray that some good may come and that we will be surprised. A steady diet of Tex-Mex in the Stockyards might do us all a world of good.

In Praise of Cities

2007-04-15T23:38:00.000-04:00

Boston. Who knew? Seen here from atop the Bunker Hill Monument, it only hints at its charms. We came, we saw, we walked the Freedom Trail. It was a blast.

At the State House we were adopted by a kindly, legislatorial-looking gentleman and his staffer who happily showed us around the place including the House and Senate chambers. He was obviously very comfortable with the whole place. Standing on the floor of the House I asked our benefactor if he was, in fact, a representative. He laughed and said, "No, I used to be." Now he's a lobbyist. A sign of where true access lies. He probably represents a trade group for asbestos-using whale-killers, but we appreciated the hospitality.

But the real point of this post (besides signalling a resurrection of sorts for this blog): to praise those apostles of urban living of the past two decades. It would have been very easy to write off cities as a sad failure at the end of the 1970s. New York City was broke and depressing. Every major city was suffering an inner core meltdown. Suburbia was winning and exurbia was clearly on the horizon.

But driving through the Northeast over Spring Break this week I was amazed at how much good city living is out there to be had. People have not given up on the urban dream. It's not exactly affordable yet, but surely one of the success stories of our times has to be the return of the city. So I'll give a nod to Rudy Guliani, despite my reservations about his politics, and to all those mayors and New Urbanists who saw a future in the heart of the city.

Baccalaureate

2005-05-21T22:25:00.000-04:00

The Baccalaureate service is always a high, holy moment of the Wesley Foundation year. As I deliver my last Baccalureate sermon as Wesley Foundation director, I give thanks for all the students who have blessed this place and my life over the last seven years.

And now...Vera and Grayson, Part IV:

Trusting the Hurricane

Acts 3:1-10 [NRSV]
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o'clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.
But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.
Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.
All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

The voice on the television was clear. “What you need is the new Triple Cheddar Monster Thick Burger Deluxe with Bacon.” As the deep, urgent voice spoke the camera lovingly panned a huge, dripping cheeseburger that looked like it was just asking to be caught up in a steroids scandal. “What you need is a visit to Hardee’s.”

Gabriella threw a wadded piece of paper at the screen. “No,” she said, “What I need is some help with these stupid quadratic equations! What Einstein thought these up?”

Vera looked over at her friend. “Wasn’t it Einstein?”

“Very funny, Vera. Very funny.”

Gabby and Vera were sitting in the Cavalier Laundrette in Charlottesville trying to multitask their way to the end of their first year at UVA. While their clothes were spinning in the noisy, hot dryers and the TV blared overhead, they were poring over books and notes and trying to pretend to be ready for the next morning’s exam. Even though they could have used the laundry rooms at the dorms, they felt more like the strong, independent women they were when they got to get off grounds. So they lugged their clothes and books over to the Laundromat.

“What I need is a break,” said Vera. “I think if I spend one more minute trying to understand Shakespeare I’m going to lose my capacity for coherent thought.” She looked down at her notes scribbled on a hundred little pieces of paper and index cards. “This is out of control, Gabby.”

Gabby looked down at her own collection of numbers and formulas. “Tell me about it. But hey, looks like load number 76 is done.” She jumped up and walked over to a dryer that was just spinning to a halt.

Just then the door of the Laundromat flew open and a young man ran in, out of breath and with a wild look in his eye. He scanned the room quickly and when he saw Vera he ran to her and plopped down in the seat right beside her. “So, Vera, are you ready for a break?”

Vera smiled. It was Grayson. They had met during the first month of school when Grayson was playing Frisbee golf on the Lawn and nailed her in the head while trying to make a par two off of Homer’s butt. Since then he had been her muse and prophet with his free spirited ways and disarming questions. Grayson had a way of appearing just when Vera needed him to. In a year when so many things had changed for Vera, when she had been challenged in so many different ways, Grayson was her touchstone for understanding what was real. He was also becoming her boyfriend, though neither one of them had yet said that aloud or broached the DTR conversation (“Defining the Relationship”).

“How did you know, Grayson? I just told Gabby that I needed a break.”

“Excellent! Do you remember how I tried to get you to bungee jump off the Rotunda last month?”

Vera was nervous. “Grayson…”

“Chill out, Vera. I still haven’t found the right bungee cords for that. But I did find somebody who can get us on to the upper balconies around the Lawn. Are you interested?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cool. Well, meet me in front of Pavilion VIII at midnight.”

“Grayson?”

“Yes?”

“Will I be facing an honor trial after this?”

“No way, Vera. Trespassing charges at the most. Oh, and by the way, I need to collect for the plane tickets soon.”

“Right. Grayson…I don’t know about that. Is it too late to get your money back because my folks are really freaking out about this beach week trip.”

“Vera! You have got to go! You’re headed back to that strange little place you call home for 13 weeks. You’re going to work at an Eckerd’s and become a slave of the establishment. You’ve got to take this week before you go. Gabby’s going. Ike’s going. Beebo and Nimrod.”

“Yeah, Grayson…no, see I want to go. I think it will be great. But remind me again why we’re going to Nicaragua?”

“Vera, everybody’s going to Nicaragua these days.”

“No, they’re not, Grayson. They’re going to the Outer Banks.”

“Yeah, sure. NOW they’re going to the Outer Banks, but after they hear about our week at Puerto Cabeza de Cabra, it will be da bomb.”

“Grayson, you are not going to get 21st century people to go to this place if you keep saying da bomb. Nobody says that anymore.”

“Right, so you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m going. I’ll bring you the check at midnight. Pavilion VIII. I’ll bring some bail money for you, too.”

“Awesome. Thanks, Vera. You’re da bo…you’re great.” And with that Grayson bounced back out of the Laundromat while Vera smiled.

Vera was right about her parents. They did freak out when they learned about Nicaragua. On the plane ride down she wondered again why she had agreed to this crazy trip. She didn’t even know any Spanish! Her 200-level French was not going to help her here.

What she hadn’t anticipated was how everything seemed to change for her after her last exam. The semester had felt like a huge steamroller bearing down her so that she had to keep running every second to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t much room to think about the summer, her parents, the beach trip, or even how she was feeling. But as she turned in her last blue book and walked out of New Cabell Hall, a strange mixture of relief and apprehension settled in.

She was definitely feeling better with the steamroller fading into the distance behind her. Whatever grade she got on that Russian History exam, it wasn’t going to be bad enough to sink her semester. But in the pit of her stomach she also felt a sense of foreboding and instability that she hadn’t had since her first days at UVA when she was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming to school here at all. Back then her mom was having health issues and her old friends were back in Mattaponi, seemingly doing fine without her. But as she had learned to embrace the roller-coaster ride of college life, that feeling had passed. Now that she was going back to Mattaponi, it was coming back.

Gabby, who was sitting next to her on the plane, noticed that Vera was a little preoccupied. “Hey, Lady, what’s up?”

“Gabby, do you know what you’re going to do when you grow up?”

“Hey, what’s to say I’m not grown up already?”

“O.K., yeah, but I mean, what next? After UVA.”

“No clue, Vera. But you’re not supposed to answer my question with a question. Lets’ try again. Hey, Lady, what’s up? (Here’s the part where you say, ‘Thanks for asking, Gabby. I’m looking worried and unsettled because…’)”

Vera smiled. “Because…because, Gabby, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I mean in Mattaponi I never thought about it. I never had much of a goal besides going to college. When classes are going it’s easy--I’m a student. But here I am going to another country and I’m going to hand over my passport and they’re going to say, “Welcome, Vera Allen,” and I don’t know who that is!”

“So, it’s about going to another country…”

“No, Gabby it has nothing to do with another country. I don’t know who Vera Allen is in the United States! I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m headed. I don’t know who or what to trust. I don’t know who God wants me to be. And it feels like freedom, but it also feels like really scary.”

“Vera,” Gabby said. “Before you take on life, the universe and everything, just try enjoying one day on the beach. Can you promise me that?”

But even that didn’t work out. They landed without incident in a small, one runway airport at the edge of a vast jungle. The customs official hardly glanced at Vera’s passport as she walked through. It was a little disconcerting to see how easy it was to get it, but a little bit thrilling, too.

The group boarded a taxi to head to the hotel where they were staying. Well, I say taxi, but it was really more like the bed of a pick-up truck. In fact, it was the bed of a pick-up truck with rough wooden benches fixed over each wheel base. Only the word ‘Taxi’ written across the pick-up gate gave away what it was. Ten of them squeezed together with their stuff for the short ride.

Nicaragua is a desperately poor country and Puerto Cabeza de Cabra (Port Goathead) showed the effects of the poverty. Their hotel was a collection of cinderblock cabanas with one wall of each consisting of a bamboo screen facing the Pacific that could be pulled back. A larger cinderblock building with a timber roof behind these cabanas served as the office, restaurant, and local health clinic. It was the most substantial building in a very small city. A friendly, elderly couple had showed them their rooms and then left them there.

Grayson looked at the modest digs and immediately pronounced them “Awesome!”, but no one else was ready to make that claim. The students threw their bags down and headed straight for the beach. It was warm and wonderful--very different from the oddly cold spring they had left behind in Virginia. A stiff wind was blowing off of the ocean and the setting sun was soon obscured by a raft of dark, billowy clouds on the horizon. Before dark the atmosphere was as unsettled as Vera felt.

When Vera called home a little while later to let her parents know that they had made it safely, they had some more unsettling news. They had been watching the Weather Channel and they talked about a hurricane headed straight for Central America. “Dad, are you sure? It’s too early for a hurricane, isn’t it? It’s only May.”

“It’s very unusual, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the screen right now, Vera.”

By noon the next day things had turned even more ominous. Though the local weather reports said that the main storm would hit north of them, the hurricane was large enough that it was going to cause some major problems in Puerto Cabeza de Cabra. Rain began to fall in the early afternoon and the winds became fierce. The hotel evacuated all of the guests to the main building where there were few windows.

Around sunset the electricity went out. When Vera peeked out at the ocean it was seething and tossing huge waves at the cabanas they had left. Somehow the thought of it encroaching on them in the dark was even worse.

She leaned up against a wall as one of the hotel owners handed her an oil lamp. In its flickering light she could see Grayson walking toward her. He put his back up against the wall beside her and slid down into a sitting position, just as he had done dozens of times before when she was studying in the hallway at Bonnycastle.

“So…want to play some cards?”

“No, Grayson. Thanks, but I just don’t think I could concentrate.”

“So, I guess bungee jumping off the roof of…”

“Don’t even try it, Grayson. It’s lame.”

Grayson looked away for a minute, pretending to be interested in a joke Ike was telling Beebo across the room. When he turned back to Vera he said, “You know, hurricanes are great.”

“Grayson…”

“No, really. It’s true. I took this Environmental Science course last semester and we talked about how they are one of the most efficient forms of heat transfer from the tropics to other areas.”

Vera looked mildly interested so Grayson kept going. “You see, the tropics get way more solar energy than they need and all that excess energy gets stored in the ocean water. Currents take some of it away, but hurricanes are like the bullet trains of heat transfer. They just take all that energy and chug straight on up to the northern hemisphere. It’s da bomb…I mean, it’s pretty nifty.”

“O.K., Grayson, I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t think you even took an Environmental Science class last fall. But hurricanes are not ‘pretty nifty.’ They’re big and scary and they knock lots of stuff down while they’re transferring heat so efficiently. So if that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I still hear the wind. I’m sitting in here in the dark wondering if the roof is going to blow off, and I think the whole world is coming apart around me. I need something more substantial than a stupid lecture to make me feel better.”

“What do you need, Vera?”

“I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to pray. I don’t know. What do you need?”

“Vera,” Grayson said, “Look at me.”

Vera turned her head to look into Grayson’s green eyes. He held her face in his hands as he had done once before in the time she had known him. The lamp cast strange shadows around his face, but he seemed remarkably calm. “Vera,” he said, “I don’t have a way to get you out or to take you home or to tell you that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why we’re here. But I do have this to give you. You are God’s child. You need to trust the hurricane, and you need to dance.”

Dance? Dance? How ridiculous the words sounded in the middle of a hurricane! The world was blowing away around them. Vera’s life was an absolute uncertainty. She didn’t even know why she was in this odd little corner of the world. But strangely, Grayson’s words were enough. The character of the wind changed. It was no longer fierce and menacing, but mighty and musical. The huddled forms of people gathered around faltering lamps didn’t seem like helpless, small lights in the dark; they were people finding strength in each other. Even the darkness did not seem dark but somehow comforting. And within herself, Vera felt the deep, dark questions that absorbed her on the plane, melting into insignificance. Dancing. Yes, that’s just what should be done.

But before she was able to consider what this meant. There was a ferocious gale and the building shook and the simple timber roof shuddered and then lifted up into the air, floating away into the night skylike Dorothy‘s house in the Wizard of Oz. Suddenly rain poured in on them and the winds howled overhead. It was terrifying and yet amazing. Most of the oil lamps blew out immediately.

Then an old woman staggered to the center of the room and looked up at the raging heavens above her. She gestured to an old man to join her. Vera recognized them from check-in the day before. It was the owners of the hotel who had now lost everything. Or so it seemed. The old woman and the old man looked at one another and as if they had been practicing for this moment for some time, they began to raise their hands into the air and then to stomp their feet and then to shout in a loud voice and then, o my, and then to dance.

Vera looked over at Grayson, who was sitting, shocked, against the wall. She said to him, “Grayson, look at me.” He looked. “Grayson, it’s time to dance.”

They joined the couple in the middle of the room in a dance that was at the same time primitive and glorious. As they danced the winds began to die down. The rains came to an end. The clouds parted to reveal a sky full of diamonds and a crescent moon. The rebuilding had already begun, and for Vera it was as if she had taken her first step. There were many things yet to do, many questions yet to answer. But she no longer needed a passport to tell her who she was. She was a child of God.

I don’t know if a hurricane is the best metaphor for this time of transition, but I know it feels that way sometimes. The Wesley community is a transient community that is graced for awhile by amazing students who come and live here so fully that we can’t remember a time when they ever weren’t here. David, April, Rachel, Joel, Will, Gardner, Susie, Gin, Missy--you have all be that kind of presence, though you might not have realized it.

When you go it feels like a mighty wind has blown through here, until…until we get e-mails, letters, and news from your new settings for life and work and know that you are being a blessing in a new place…until we get a new group of folks with new gifts to form a new community here…until we see you again at a reunion or a wedding or a visit back to Charlottesville.

If it feels like that for us, how much more of a hurricane it must be for you in the transition! Nothing seems stable. Nothing seems sure. Will I have what I need? Will I have people around me to assure me that I’m loved? Will I feel God’s presence in this new time? This year, as I move, I’m asking those same questions with you.

But we have old stories to tell us what it should be like. In the early Church, shortly after Jesus’ resurrection and the huge transition and tumult that the disciples went through…Soon after the hurricane that was Pentecost, Peter and John confronted a man who had not been able to walk since birth. He lived an entirely passive live, being carried to the Temple each day to receive gifts from passers-by. When Peter and John see him, that’s how he is--sitting and asking for alms.

Peter is not content to toss him a coin. He doesn’t even have a coin to toss. He tells the man, “Look at us.” And the man does, expecting to get something from them. But Peter says, “I don’t have what you think you need or what you’ve come to expect. But I do have this: In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”

This man is not content to walk, though. He has not moved on his own since birth, so his first move away from passivity, his first act, is to praise God and to dance.

As we go out into the world, fellow transition-ers, let’s never accept complacency when God gives us choreography. I don’t have much to give to you tonight, but I do have this: You are a child of God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, don’t just walk; dance with me. Thanks be to God.

The Unknown God

2005-05-01T22:34:00.000-04:00

Zion United Methodist Church
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Acts 17:22-31
Then, standing up in the middle of the Areopagus, Paul said, "Brothers and sisters of Athens, I see how very religious you are in every way possible. For in passing through the city and observing your altars, I also found a shrine on which it was inscribed, 'To the Unknown God.' Now that Unknown One that you worship is the one I proclaim to you.
"The God who made the universe and everything that is in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines built by human hands and does not need to be served by human hands, as if God needed anything, but rather he gives to all life and breath and everything. He made from one all the nations of humanity living upon all the face of the earth, fixing their appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling place, so that they would seek out God and perhaps even grope their way toward God and stumble upon God, though really God is not far from every single one of us. For in God we live and move and are, just as some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
"Now since we are offspring of God, we should not suppose that this is a god made of silver, gold or precious stone, a thing crafted by human skill and a reflection of a human being, to be a likeness. Therefore while God overlooked the unknowingness of these times, now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because God has fixed a day on which to have the inhabited world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, bringing faith to all by the one resurrected from the dead."

About eight years ago I went back to school. It was a silly thing to do. I mean, I already had my college degree. I’d been off the seminary. But somewhere along the line I developed an addiction to school and eight years ago I entered UVA one more time to get a degree in, of all things, philosophical theology. Philosophical theology is a scary thing to get a degree in. Theology alone is bad enough, but when you throw in philosophy on top of theology, well, what you get is a combination that will give you a million-dollar vocabulary of big, long words and an area of expertise that will qualify you teach some of the most unpopular courses in seminary.

But some of us are called to that. We actually like to sit in coffee shops and discuss the meaning of life. We like to get in huge, raging arguments about how Hegel’s dialectic is nothing more than a revision of Augustine’s notion of fragmented time. We can’t believe that someone would actually take Descartes seriously in this day and age. And sometimes we wonder if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about. That’s what philosophical theologians do, and for five years, while I was serving a church and being campus minister and being a father, that’s how I spent my spare time. I finally gave it up but there is a part of me that really loves philosophy.

Which means that were I living in ancient Greece back in the time of the Apostle Paul, I would probably have been one of those folks hanging out at the Areopagus, the philosopher’s hill outside of Athens. The book of Acts describes the scene very well. Paul was traveling through Greece, you see, preaching about Christ. He’s been running into resistance at every step along the way because, you know, Paul is a troublemaker. When he goes with Silas to the synagogue in Thessalonika and tries to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah, they get some converts among their fellow Jews, but they also stir up a lynch mob and they have to be whisked out of town under cover. When the mob finds out Paul’s gone, they say, “This man is turning the world upside down! Saying Jesus is a king. Who ever heard of such?”

Paul and Silas start preaching at Beroea in the synagogue and things are going all right there until the Thessalonika folks hear where they’ve gone and they bring the lynch mob on over to Beroea, too. There are riots and threats and everyone is in an uproar. So they have to slip Paul out of town again and they say, “Now where can we send Paul where he won’t cause any trouble? I know, how about Athens? They’re all very philosophical down there and everybody knows that philosophers don’t riot. Let’s send him there.”

So that’s how Paul ends up in Athens, but he’s not happy with what he sees. He’s walking around town and sees idols here and altars there. There’s a shrine to Athena and Apollo and Ares and Zeus. There’s the Parthenon. Athens is your one-stop shop for religious life—kind of like the Wal-Mart of the gods. But nothing about Christ. So he goes to the synagogue, but he also goes to the marketplace and hangs with the philosophers because that’s where all the cool people in Athens hang out. In Charlottesville on the Downtown Mall, to be cool you have to be a Goth and dress in black and pierce your nose in thirteen places. In Athens, you go to the market and discuss the latest release from Epicureus. It’s one of the only places in the history of the world where it was hip to be a philosopher. This is why I would have been there. The market in Athens was like my coffee shop--the Mudhouse.

The Bible says they were hanging out in the market there, the Epicureans and the Stoics, and they were kind of intrigued by Paul. They don’t get all worked up by Paul like the folks in Thessalonika did. They just say, “What is this guy babbling on about? I can’t understand it so it must be good stuff. Let’s take him up to the Areopagus and find out what’s going on here.”

Now the Areopagus was the place to go for philosophical debate. You know how if you really want to know what’s going on in town you go to the beauty parlor or the barbershop, well, in Athens if you really want some good philosophy talk, you go to the Areopagus. They get Paul up there and they say, “Would you please enlighten us as to the implications of your Jesus theory for ethical and eschatological exploration? We’re very interested to know what you’re talking about.” (That’s my loose translation.)

So Paul’s got center stage and he could cause a lot of trouble, but instead he talks like a philosopher. Paul is good at this, you know. In another places in the Bible he says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law…so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” [1 Co. 9:20-22, NRSV]

Paul is becoming one of them and he starts out with some sarcasm that they don’t get.
What he actually says is, “I have noticed that you people are a very religious people.” Well, they are not religious people. They may have a lot of religious stuff hanging around, but it has not made them passionate about God or about their lives. At least the people in the synagogues cared enough about their faith to know that Paul was turning their world upside down. These folks were content to say, “Hmmm. How very interesting.” and let Paul go on his merry way. So, Paul is pulling their leg a little bit here.

He says, “I have noticed that you are very religious in every possible way, because as I’ve walked around I have seen shrines to all sorts of different gods. I even saw an altar to the Unknown God.” You see, the Athenians were trying to cover all of the bases and just in case they missed a god somewhere along the way, they had constructed an insurance altar. But this is the altar Paul is going to use to make his point.

“I have an important announcement for you, Athenian philosophers,” Paul says. “The Unknown God is the one I am proclaiming.” And then he proceeds to talk about how God is the one who created the heavens and the earth. This is a God who created all things out of one, who gave life and breath to everyone, who fixed the order of time and place, who created a means for people in the world to discover God. All of these things would have sounded very reasonable to these philosophers because that’s the kind of god they spent their time talking about. And Paul even quotes some of their own poets and philosophers as he talks. “Your people have said that it is in God that we live and move and have our being, right? They said, ‘We, too, are God’s offspring.’ Well, I am telling you that a God like that isn’t like an altar made of gold or silver. A God like that doesn’t need to worshiped with an idol or an image. A God like that doesn’t need anything we might have to offer.

“But if we are God’s children, then we are called to turn back towards the one who made us and God has given us the means to do that through a person whom God appointed to judge us all, a person raised from the dead, a person named Christ.”

The resurrection language turned off some of the philosophers but the rest of them nodded their heads and said, “Very good. We’ll talk about this more later on.” Because that’s what philosophers do. They plan for another session at the coffee shop. But some of them did a very un-philosopher-like thing. Some of them followed Paul. We have the names of two of them—a man named Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris. I like to think that if I had been there, I would have followed Paul, too.

So what does this mean for the rest of the world which doesn’t like philosophy? What could this passage mean for us in an age where Tom Bodett from the Motel 6 commercials is the closest thing we’ve got to a public philosopher? What could it mean for people who couldn’t care less about the debate about whether the universe is one or many? Better yet, what could it mean for us, a people who sometimes treat our churches as if they are shrines to an unknown God?

Oh, there’s the rub. Because you see, I think that we are sometimes to content with an unknown God. We don’t have altars made of stone with an inscription to the unknown God, but some of us are content to lock God away in a church building and only go to visit that God on Easter and Christmas. Some of us are content to leave this God in church when we go out into the world and we are content to let other gods direct our actions and our decisions about politics and behavior and caring for those in need. What does God have to say about this? I don’t know. God’s up there in the Church or over there in that closed Bible, but there’s an ad on the TV that I hear twenty times a day, there’s Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Phil, there’s Ozzy Osbourne on MTV—they are offering me some models. Maybe I’ll listen to them.

We’ve got our own Unknown God, you know, and the sad thing for us is that it is the God of Jesus Christ! And so we can’t get our minds clear about how to live our lives, how to govern our cities, how to elect our officials, how to treat other people, how to manage our relationships, how to control our addictions, how to look for healing, how to hang on to hope, how to give as we ought to give, how to love as we ought to love, how to dream as we ought to dream, because we have forgotten the one who has given us life. We haven’t spent enough time in this Biblical story to let it be our story. We haven’t encountered the God who is closer to us that we are to ourselves. The greatest irony in our whole, God-forgetful world is that the God whom we say we so desperately want to meet--the God who gave us life, who breathed that life into us, who loved and nurtured us, and who calls us each by our own unique and irreplaceable name—this God is the one in whom we already live and move before we even realize it. We are like fish swimming and swimming and madly searching for the ocean when it is already all around us.

Oh, we’ve got an Unknown God all right, but this God is not unknown to us because God hasn’t revealed God’s own self to us yet. God has been revealed and it has happened in Jesus Christ. As Christians this is the story that we keep telling to remind ourselves of who we are. Jesus showed that the way to life was open to every person—not just the Jews, though it is for them—not just the Greeks, though it is for them, too—not just to the blacks, though it is for them—not just to the whites, though it is for them—not just to the Americans—not just to the Iraqis—not just to the Israelis—not just to the Palestinians—not just to the poor—not just to the forgotten—not just to the Hokies—not just to the Cavaliers—Jesus opened the door to knowing God to every person, tribe and race. That’s a message for us to proclaim in every language that we know. Whether our audience is a roomful of overly reflective philosophers or the newborn child at our side, we are called to reflect the God we know in Jesus Christ.

I was in Cokesbury recently—the United Methodist bookstore in Richmond. Cokesbury is a wonder to me because it has a little bit of everything. I was looking for a Bible and there were Bibles of every kind—leather-bound, hardback, and paperback---red, black, white and maroon—women’s, men’s, youth, and children—King James, New International and New Revised Standard Version—so many choices. But none of those Bibles, not a single one will transform a life unless it is opened and read and shared and loved. When Paul talked to the philosophers about their unknown god, he knew that his words alone would not change their lives and their minds. It was only when folks like Dionysius and Damaris decided to follow him that the journey was begun.

Our spiritual journey is not a matter of placing God in this sanctuary and going to visit when the time seems right. Our journey towards God begins when we follow Christ into the world, serving and loving and inviting the people out there to discover the truth that we know through the story of Jesus—that the unknown god is none other than the God who made the universe including you and me. That’s a God worth knowing as much as God knows us. Thanks be to God.

Community

2005-04-17T21:37:00.000-04:00

At a time when community is the topic of conversation at the Wesley Foundation...guess what comes along in the lectionary?

This is a 3rd UVA-Mattaponi Story. Previous entries can be found in the September and December 2004 archives.

Claiming My Family
April 17, 2005
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Acts 2:42-47 (NRSV)
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Grayson was lobbying Vera hard as they walked the gauntlet to class at New Cabell. He neatly sidestepped a perky third-year trying to hand him a flyer advertising Gamma Upsilon Mu’s Backward 5K run for Dyslexia Relief and managed to politely refuse brownies from the Bring Back Pete Gillen Student Coalition, all while never taking his eyes off of his friend.

“Vera, you have got to change your plans! Whatever you are doing it cannot be as awesome as bungee jumping off of the Rotunda. We’re going to be like legends around here. They’ll name a secret society after us. Come on!”

Vera liked Grayson. She really did. She wasn’t yet sure whether she liked him in that way, but it was beginning to look more likely. Ever since he had accidentally hit her in the head with a Frisbee as he was aiming for Homer’s butt on the Lawn last fall, they had been friends. She had even gone along with him on some of his wild ideas such as the Advent Rally at the Bodo’s on the Corner. She might even have been tempted to join him in this stunt, life-threatening though it seemed to be. But she was otherwise engaged this weekend and she couldn’t change her plans.

“Grayson, get a grip. You think people are going to pay attention to this stunt with all the folks streaking down the Lawn at 2:30 in the morning? They probably won’t even notice.”

“Vera, are you suggesting we have to bungee naked?”

“Nooooo. No. Ewwww. Definitely no. No, what I’m saying is that the Advent Rally was inspired. Attaching super rubber bands to Mr. Jefferson’s masterpiece and flinging yourself off is just…”

Grayson finished her sentence for her, “Stupid?”

“I was going for lame but stupid will do. No, Grayson. I can’t change my plans for this weekend. I volunteered to organize it.”

“You’re 19 years old, Vera. You should not be organizing a family reunion. Why are you even going to a family reunion? Don’t you have an Aunt Gertrude to take care of that?”

Vera had a pained expression on her face. “Well, Aunt Gertrude has been under the weather lately.”

Grayson was stunned. “You mean you actually have an Aunt Gertrude?”

“No, I don’t, but I…Look, I have to get to class. My T.A. will be ask me to sketch out the entire Soviet-era economic planning system if I’m late for discussion again. I’ll talk to you later, Grayson.”

“Well, all I have to say is…’Boing.’” And with that he turned down the first staircase, taking four steps at a time and singing, “The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber. Their bottoms are made out of springs.” He disappeared before he got to the “bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun” section. Vera just shook her head and smiled.

In the middle of the Intro to Russian History discussion section she found her mind wandering back to the family reunion. Why was she going? Why did she care enough that she volunteered to organize this year’s edition? “I mean, after all,” she thought, “it’s not like my family is made up of solid citizens.”

In her mind she saw last year’s reunion. Cousin Millie arriving drunk and slipping on a runaway Swedish meatball. Strange Cousin Melvin with the blank stare and the waist-length beard and unkempt hair. Harold and Justine, who were related to her she knew not how, who insisted on fighting very publicly and very noisily right behind the dessert table intimidating all the folks who wanted to be sure to sample Grandma Kelly’s chocolate pecan cake. Uncle Dalrymple’s sad ankle twist in the middle of the pick-up softball game that caused him to unleash a string of curses that sent her 9-year-old cousin Trudy crying back to her mother.

All things had actually happened and each one had been a source of embarrassment for Vera. But that wasn’t all that she remembered. She remembered the way her Aunt Dovey hugged her with the smell of Neutrogena and lilac. She remembered sitting with her Great Uncle Jim as he told her about her mother’s father, who was long dead, but who evidently had the same interesting nervous habit as her mother. When her mother was nervous she had noticed that she would cross her arms and rock slowly back and forth on her heels while whistling softly. Now she knew that was a trait Grandpa Johnson had had, too.

Most of all she remembered the feel of being in a room of 80-odd people (with odd being the operative word) and sensing that she belonged. Without question, she was accepted and loved and teased mercilessly. She could deny them, but the Johnsons would never deny her. So when the time came for determining who would organize the next year’s festivities, Vera was as surprised as everyone else to see that she had raised her hand first.

That night Vera was sitting in the hallway of Bonnycastle dorm trying to pretend to be interested in an Econ textbook. Her roommate had gone to sleep early (who goes to sleep at 1:30?) and she had retreated to the hallway, which wasn’t too noisy for a Thursday night. After only ten minutes of striking the reading pose she felt someone lean up against the cinderblock wall beside her and slowly slide down to a seated position.

“Grayson, I’m still not doing it.”

“O.K., O.K. I get it. I was having trouble finding the cords anyway. No bungee this weekend. A chance for immortality lost, but hey, you’ve got things to do.”

Vera gave him a stare and a smile. “Right. I’ve got important things to do.”

Grayson announced in his best Cartoon Network voice, “Vera Allen…saving the world one corn pudding at a time.” He switched back to his normal Grayson voice. “They do serve corn pudding at your family reunion, don’t they? It wouldn’t be a family reunion without corn pudding.”

“Oh, it’s there all right. Right next to Aunt Dovey’s collard greens.”

“Now we’re talking,” said Grayson. “But why Vera, why? You’re going to leave me for greens and your weird family?”

“I don’t know, Grayson. It’s just important to me. I…I’m part of this family.”

“Yes, but you’re bound to be far more interesting than them. Didn’t you tell me that your cousin was a pig farmer?”

“Yes, I did, Grayson. And he’s one of the most interesting people I know.”

“O come on, Vera. You’re just going out of obligation. They’re just your flesh and blood.”

“No, they’re not.”

“What do you mean, ‘They’re not.’?”

“They’re not my flesh and blood.”

“I thought you said this was your family.”

“They are. They’re just not…Grayson, I’m adopted.”

“No way.”

“Yes, way. My birth mother gave me up for adoption when I was one and my folks got me soon thereafter. I’m really not theirs by birth.”

“That’s fascinating. Do you know anything about your mom…I mean, your birth mom?”

“Not much. I have a note she wrote that tells what sorts of major diseases my birth family had…mainly diabetes…but other than that, no. But I did think about her a lot in high school. There were lots of times when I was ready to run away from home and go find her.”

“So what’s the deal with the family reunion then? Are you…overcompensating?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am. There were a lot of years when I went to the family reunion and I would sit in a chair in the corner of the room beside my Cousin Gretchen and we would just suffer through every moment. I mean we laughed at the floral polyester dresses, at the stupid wide ties, at the way my uncles talked, at the way my mother rocked back and forth on her heels whistling because she was nervous…You name it. We hated being there. I hated being there. And I kept saying to myself, ‘I am so glad I have an out. I’m so glad I’m not really one of them.’

“But then last year I was sitting there eating collard greens and I thought to myself, ‘Nobody real eats collard greens. My family is so the backwoods hillbilly thing when it comes to food.’ But you know what? I like collard greens. And then I thought, ‘Dang! I am a Johnson.’

“Now I wouldn’t have chosen this family. There were too many things weird…too many of them going wrong for me to claim them as mine. But, heck, why did they choose me? They didn’t have to. And sometimes I can be a little strange and hard to get along with myself.”

Grayson nodded. “A little?”

“Shut up, Grayson.”

“But Vera, it’s one thing to accept them. You don’t have to organize a reunion because of that.”

“Yeah, but Grayson, see, that’s the thing. I think I do. This may not be the family I would have chosen, but they claimed me and last year I realized…”

“Over the collard greens?”

“Yes, over the collard greens. I realized that I am so glad they did that. And when I accepted that, I accepted them. Even Uncle Dalrymple with the mouth like a sailor. Even Cousin Melvin the catatonic misfit. They are my people. They are all my people. So I want to do something for my family.”

“That’s cool,” said Grayson coolly.

“Oh, Grayson. You don’t get it, do you?”

“Well, I just don’t see how it can be more interesting than bungee jumping off the Rotunda.”

“It’s not…” Vera stopped for a second. “Grayson, do you remember what the church looked like in Acts?” Grayson was usually the one playing preacher, but Vera turned the tables on him for a change. “The first church was made up of all kinds of people. You know at Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes and the disciples start speaking in a hundred different languages and the people who hear them, who are from all around the world, are so amazed that they drop everything and get baptized. Three thousand people the first day. And they start this new community where everybody is sharing meals together, sharing possessions with each other, helping out other people. And what they’re doing together is so amazing and so attractive that other people are just drawn to them.

“None of those people had much in common before that. None of them could say that they belonged to the community. But Peter tells them the promise is for them and they get baptized and then everything is different. They didn’t have a home, but now they have one. And when they know that they have a home and community and brothers and sisters…man, what they can do!”

“So, Vera,” Grayson said, “You’re telling me that your family is Pentecostal?”

Vera laughed. “Yeah. I guess they kinda are.”

“O.K. so let me come, too. I’ll be good. I won’t laugh at Cousin Marvin.”

“It’s Melvin and No,” Vera said. “Maybe one day I’ll inflict my family on you, but not this weekend. You get your own family. But I’ll be back in time for church Sunday. How about I meet you there?”

Vera’s family reunion didn’t go quite as she had planned. There was too much dessert and not enough salads, but nobody seemed to complain. She forgot to bring the bats and balls for the softball game, but somebody had a Nerf football and they played that instead. Uncle Dalrymple twisted his ankle again and had to be taken to the PrimaCare Center, where he cursed out a nurse. While he was being tended to Vera and her mom watched from the sidelines, both of them with their arms crossed, rocking back and forth on their heels and whistling quietly. When Vera caught herself she stopped immediately but then smiled.

Even with all the disruptions, everyone said it was the best family reunion yet. They all gave a lot of credit to Vera. And the best part of the day for her was when H.L. Johnson, the oldest member of the clan at age 93, tottered over to her and said, “Vera, there could not be a better Johnson than you.”

Vera grabbed him by the arm and walked him over to a place where they could sit and talk. As she did she said, “Grandpa H.L., we’re quite a family, aren’t we?” And at that moment Cousin Millie slipped on a Swedish meatball.

Jesus says, “Before you claimed me, I claimed you. And I made you a part of a family. It’s yours whether you want it or not. But if you love them, you’ll love me. And if you love them, you’ll love the world.” Thanks be to God.

Truthtelling

2005-04-10T13:10:00.000-04:00

To Tell The Truth
April 10, 2005
Trinity United Methodist Church, Orange, VA

Acts 2:14a, 22-32 (NRSV)
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”
Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”
So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

I’ve always had trouble with the truth. Forrest knows this. He threatened to change the title of my sermon this morning and put up on the sign out front, “To Tell the Truth…For a Change.”
But the problem is not that I don’t TELL the truth. The problem is that I sometimes find the truth hard to believe. And I think a lot of you agree with me.

For instance, I always find that it’s easier for me to preach on Good Friday rather than Easter. I always have. I know preachers are supposed to like Easter sermons. The crowd’s usually pretty good. The sanctuary’s beautiful…full of lilies and great music. The church I was in on Easter Sunday this year even sang the Hallelujah chorus. But Easter is about a hard truth. The hard truth is that God is overturning the world. Defeat is becoming victory. The weak are becoming powerful. The sick are being healed. Life is winning out over death.

That’s Easter. It’s hard because it is so different from the way we think the world works. Good Friday knows this. Good Friday seems to say that all the proverbs are right. “No good deed goes unpunished. Might DOES make right. Nice guys finish last. The only sure things are death and taxes.” When Jesus dies on the cross it seems to be an ending we can understand. We’ve seen it all too often. A charismatic leader. A noble cause. Some great teachings. And in the end -- tragedy and death. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis. Abraham Lincoln. Yitzak Rabin. Mahatma Gandhi. We know that scene. We can relate to that truth. Good Friday we can do. But Easter?

The truth is, to quote Jack Nicholson, that we can’t handle the truth. We’re more comfortable with lies. The world does not tell us the truth about who we are. The T.V. does not tell us the truth about who we are. People magazine does not tell us the truth about who we are. Even the Wall Street Journal doesn’t tell us the truth about who we are. But they are very effective in keeping us distracted with comfortable lies.

If death really is the end of the story then at least we can be distracted by what celebrities are up to. At least we can pretend that pop culture means something. At least we can anesthetize ourselves with fluff. But the Easter truth is that all the lies of this world can be exposed…we can be revealed for the fragile human creatures that we are…we can recognize how often we fail and how far we can fall…we can know the truth about ourselves and the world and it is still good news.

That’s what the apostle Peter is up to in the scripture passage we read from Acts this morning. You remember Peter, I hope. He’s got a great back story. Peter’s name means ‘rock’ but he turned out to pretty unstable as Jesus was headed to the cross. He walked on water, literally. Got right out of the boat and walked across the lake towards Jesus. He was doing great, too, until he realized what how foolish it was to get out of a perfectly good boat and he ended up all wet. Peter was the first to say to Jesus, “You are the Messiah!” and also the first to tell Jesus he’d gotten it all wrong when Jesus told the disciples about the crucifixion. Peter said, “Lord, even if everyone else should fall away, I will never desert you.” But he didn’t even make it till the cock crowed the next morning before denying Jesus three times. Yeah, THAT Peter. He knows what Good Friday truth looks like.

But Peter is also one of the first ones to tell the truth about Easter. This sermon we have from him in the book of Acts is the first sermon ever preached about the resurrection. Peter and the other disciples are in Jerusalem where they just received the Holy Spirit and it has caused a ruckus. They’re in a very public place where people from all over the known world are passing by. The Spirit descends like fire and they start glorifying God in a multitude of languages, much to the amazement of those around. All heaven is breaking loose and who is going to explain what’s going on to the curious crowds. Why, Peter, of course.

So he stands up and says, “It’s all because of Jesus. It’s all because of Jesus. Do you remember Jesus of Nazareth, friends? Do you remember how he walked among us and did great wonders and signs? Do you remember how powerfully God used him while he was alive? Do you remember how you killed him…how you handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion? Do you remember how he died?”

This is the Good Friday part of the sermon. Yes, we remember how he got our hopes up. Yes, we remember how we turned against him when he didn’t live up to our expectations. Yes, we remember how he died. That’s how all these things turn out. But Peter isn’t finished.

“Well, friends, God will not let death get in the way of revealing the truth. God raised this Jesus from the dead. Now if you go look in the tomb of the greatest king Israel has ever known…if you go look for the bones of old King David, they are around her. But if you go looking for the bones of Jesus, you’re going to be sadly disappointed, because Jesus is alive. God raised Jesus from the dead. We are the witnesses. And this changes everything because Jesus is now the Risen Lord.”

Peter found a way to the Easter truth. But it’s a hard truth to claim because it is so out of our realm of expectation. Jesus as a great teacher, a great example, a great man. O.K. But Jesus as Risen Lord. I’m from Missouri…show me. We want to be witnesses. We want to be Thomas checking out the wound in Jesus’ hands and side--making sure it really happened, because if it didn’t, we don’t want to give up the Good Friday stuff. We don’t want to give up the comfortable
lies. We don’t want to…change.

An Episcopalian friend of mine was sharing the story of how one of his colleagues went down to become the new priest at a church in southwest Virginia. In his first week there he did something he probably should not have done…he rearranged all the furnishings in the chancel area. You don’t do that for your first Sunday. But he did is and sure enough there were some very upset people going out the door. One woman, who was particularly angry, came up to him as he was greeting people on the way out and said to him, “If Jesus Christ saw what you did to the front of this church he’d be rolling over in his grave.” The truth is hard. We have trouble with the truth.

My preaching professor from seminary, Zan Holmes, tells the story of his dog, Brownie. He lived in a small house in Dallas and they used to keep Brownie chained to a pole in the backyard of the house and every afternoon when he got home he would go to the back stoop and say hello to the dog.

Well, the dog would get so excited that he would run to the length of his chain and then run round and round in circles. He had been doing this for so long that the he had worn a path in the grass at the length of his chain.

Zan says that one day he came home, went to the back door and looked out, and Brownie, for some reason, was not chained up. Zan said hello as usual and the dog ran towards him…until he got to that path. When he got to where the chain usually stopped him, he stopped anyway and started to run in that same circle even though he was free.

That’s what it’s like when the stories you tell yourself about the world and about yourself are lies. After awhile you don’t even need the chain. The chain is in your head and you end up running in the same tired circles. Anybody want to say “Amen” to that?

You have these stories in your head. I know you do. I’ve got them, too. These are the stories that tell us that the most interesting thing we have to say about the world or about our lives is that they are enslaved to death and destruction and dissolution and sin and there’s nothing we can do about it. These are the stories that tell us that we are all, everyone of us, messed up in some way, so we might as well accept that we are messed up, learn to live with our neuroses and bad habits and make the best of it. What’s the use in believing that we could be anything better than we are?

You see how destructive these stories are. When they get in our head they begin to determine our lives and soon we forget that the truth, the Easter truth, is so much different.

When Peter tells this story to the crowd gathered around him, they are stunned. All he has done is share a witness to life and suddenly the relationship between them has changed. Before he started speaking some of the crowd thought he was drunk. They didn’t know what to make of the disciples. Now, they call them brothers. And not only do they call them brothers, they ask them for guidance. Peter finishes his sermon and they say, “Brothers, what should we do?”

What should we do? We’ve got a Bible Study going at the Wesley Foundation right now called Hard Sayings of the Bible. We designed it so that we would not do what often happens in Bible studies. We discuss a text, say “Isn’t that interesting?” and wait until next week. We end each session of this Bible study with a question, “O.K., we’ve heard a difficult truth. What are we going to do about it?” That’s the question these folks hearing Peter have. What are we going to do about it?

Peter’s answer is clear. “Repent. Turn around. The first thing to do when you’ve dug yourself into a hole is to stop digging. Turn around and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Be baptized into a story that will help you really understand who you are. When you don’t know what to cling to, cling to this. This water can tell you who you are. This water claims you. This God we know in Jesus Christ accepts you. Loves you. Washes you clean. And when you know that you are accepted you will receive the same Spirit.”

Peter has just accused them of crucifying Jesus. He has not let them off the hook in describing what they had done and who they are. But he goes on with a promise. “The promise,” he says, “is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away.” You remember the story of the prodigal son…the boy who goes off to a far country and squanders his inheritance and comes crawling back to his home. While he is still far away, his father runs to meet him. “The promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom God calls. And God calls everyone.” All you have to realize is that the truth is meant for you.

We have trouble with the truth. I have trouble with the truth. Weakness, woundedness, weariness. These things we know. Redemption, renewal, resurrection. They’re harder. Those things we desire in the deepest depths of our souls, but we seldom let our souls call out for them. If we did, who knows what we’d be?

But maybe we do know. If we let ourselves believe in Easter we would have to give up the tapes in our heads. If we let ourselves believe in Easter we would have to stop believing that we are the worst thing we’ve ever done. If we let ourselves believe in Easter we would have to give up the failures and give up the excuses. We’d have to stop living like life has a quantity and start living like it has a quality. We’d have to accept that love is stronger than death. We’d have to start acting as if we are free instead of chained to our sins and bad habits. We’d have to start loving the person in front of us as if they were God in the flesh. We’d have to start treating the world around us as something beloved by God. We’d have to say that we are children who are heirs to a promise. We’d have to say that we are children of God.

The truth is that this truth is too great for us. We can’t believe it. We can’t make ourselves claim it. It has to be given to us. And that’s why, when Peter’s listeners demand to know “What should we do?” Peter commands them with a passive verb…repent, yes, an active verb…but then…be baptized. Be baptized. Receive the gift that has been waiting for you since the beginning of time. Receive God’s love. And then watch out. God will do incredible things with you.

Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer of the 16th century, was plagued by doubts and fears. He was often discouraged. But to confront his weaknesses he began each day by dipping a finger into a bowl of water and putting it to his forehead and saying, “I am baptized.” Whatever else I am, I am claimed by God. And I am ready for what God will do with me today.

Brothers and sisters, are you ready for what God will do with you today? Can you handle the truth? Because the truth is life. Thanks be to God.

Pondering Palm Sunday

2005-03-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

Sunday night at the Wesley Foundation:

Uncomfortably Seated

Matthew 21:1-17 [NRSV]
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, 'The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately. "

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?"

The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.

He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers." The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"

Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?"

He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

Today I’m going to let you in on one of those great controversies in biblical interpretation. It’s one of those debates that those of us who like to see what goes on behind the scenes in the high-powered world of interpretation, or hermeneutics, as its known in the academy, love to talk about. The question is this, “How did Jesus ride two animals into Jerusalem?”

Now that may not sound like much of an issue to you, but let me tell you, there’s more to this exegetical controversy than meets the eye, or the rear end. It all hinges on the interpretation of an obscure verse in the prophet Zechariah. First, you have to find Zechariah, which is located near the end of the writings we often call the Old Testament. That would be the left-hand side of your Bible, although, since the Old Testament is much longer than the New, its probably still past the halfway point in your Bible. But that’s only if you don’t have the Apocrypha stuck in the middle of yours. Or the end. See how technical this biblical interpretation business can be?

Anyway, you find Zechariah and you look up chapter 9 verse 9 and you find yourself in the middle of a long passage in which God is promising to restore the people of Israel after a long period of exile and suffering at the hands of brutal oppressors. Tyre, with all its wealth, will be stripped of its gold and silver and laid waste. Ashkelon will see it and be afraid. Gaza will writhe in anguish. The hopes of Ekron will wither, a mongrel people will settle in Ashdod, the pride of Philistia shall be at an end, Hadrach…in your face. It’s just a long litany of how God will redeem the people. They had known nothing but defeat and despair. They had no home, no peace, and no security. But these were the people God remembered.

The prophet Zechariah says, “God is coming to you. You had kings long ago, kings like David and Solomon who made Jerusalem a great city. Now your king will be God. And this is what Zechariah says in verse 9--”Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” A king coming into the city to take his throne on the back of an animal of labor. It had happened once before. When Solomon became king? They led him into the city on a mule with people shouting and playing music and yelling, “Long live King Solomon!”

Now we’re reading this story about Jesus entering Jerusalem in the same way. You can imagine the people who had heard these stories all of their lives might have been thinking, “Is this another king? Is Jesus another Solomon? Is this God coming to live among us again and finally bringing the day long-promised when other nations will be brought low and God’s people remembered once more?

But I told you there was a controversy over the interpretation. All of this big picture stuff is very interesting and it sure adds a lot of drama to what is happening on this Palm Sunday, but the controversial part is, “How many animals will God be riding when God ends up in Jerusalem?” I mean, Zechariah says, “Behold the king riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” In the King James Version it says, “…riding upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.” Is it just a donkey, or is it a donkey AND a colt? You can read the Hebrew either way. It could be two animals, or it could be traditional Hebrew poetry which says something one way and then intensifies it by saying it another way. “God is coming on a lowly donkey, yea, even on the offspring of a donkey.”

Now we’ve got ourselves a biblical controversy. It’s such a good one that it has been going on for at least two thousand years, because when the gospel writers got around to telling the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem they all remembered this verse from Zechariah and they all wanted their readers to hear its echoes in their gospels. And eyewitness accounts aren’t very specific, so in John, Jesus rides a donkey. In Mark, Jesus rides a colt. And in Matthew, the version we read today, Jesus rides both. It must have been a very uncomfortable ride.

Which is O.K. because this is a very uncomfortable scene as we begin the story of Jesus’ passion and death in Holy Week. None of us sit too easily in our seats. Because we know, don’t we, that the cheers of Palm Sunday turn to jeers all too quickly. We know, don’t we, that crowds no less than individuals can be mistaken in their judgment. We know, don’t we, that even though Jesus understands the symbolism and the purpose and God’s intentions for us and for the world, we don’t and we are still as mystified by the sight of a ruler on a donkey or two as any in that crowd may have been. It’s a very uncomfortable ride to the cross.

And what about all those people surrounding him on the way. Those blind folks and disabled who had been seeking him out at every stop along the journey. He had just healed two blind men in Jericho before the parade into the city. They started the cheering by calling him the “Son of David!” That’s what you call a Messiah. The crowds hadn’t gotten it at that point. They had turned to the men and told them to “Shut up! Can’t you see we’re busy here trying to figure this Jesus out? But, no, I guess you can’t see, can you?” But, O, they could. And they did. And they started the procession and when Jesus entered the city one of the first things he did was to heal some more. The blind and the weak…they see. They know.

The disciples? Well, bless their hearts, the elevator doesn’t quite run all the way to the top with them. At this point they’re still unaware of what this journey will require of them, still unsure of what their position will be, even though Jesus has told them time and time again that it has something to do with a cross. After his most recent prophecy of what was to happen in Jerusalem, (mocking, flogging, crucifixion, death), two of them immediately requested seats with him in glory. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Jesus had said. They don’t. I see them walking beside Jesus into the city, their faces a strange mix of fear, exhilaration, and total, blissful incomprehension.

I see the chief priests and scribes, the defenders of the status quo, the ones who are so much like me and maybe you. The ones who see the amazing things that Jesus is doing and who sense that they have so much to lose. They can’t leave the shackles of their position long enough to understand that Jesus has come to free them, too. They can’t see the money tables upset in the temple as anything other than lost income and bad behavior. And what they really can’t stand, what grates on their nerves the most, the thing that brings them to Jesus on his first day in the city, is the way the children respond.

It seems the children have taken to this word, “Hosanna.” It’s a fun word. And in the language of the Temple it is a word of praise for God. But what it means, strictly speaking, is “Help. Help us, we pray you. Save us, we pray you.” It is a cry for help, salvation, and release and it is being directed toward a traveling itinerant from Galilee. How is HE going to help the children? What if HE connects with them? What if the future does not belong to us? What will we do if we lose the children?

Jesus doesn’t make it any easier for the chief priests and scribes. When they complain about the children he says, “Don’t you know what the scriptures say? God prepares praise even in the mouths of nursing babies. Maybe you should listen. And with that he turns and leaves town for the night.

And now I wonder what it was like for those children on the day of the parade. We sense the impending disaster. We see the looming cross. We read the mixed emotions on the faces of the adults. We shudder at what is to come. Or we make an ass of ourselves by counting the donkeys Jesus is riding, whistling in the dark. We don’t want to let this story get too close. We don’t want to jump headlong into the mosh pit. We don’t want to commit ourselves too much to this story that interrupts every story we might want to tell about the way the world works.

But children have no inhibitions. I know. I live with two of them. They have no sense about these things. When the circus comes to town, they get excited. When they hate something, like Brussels sprouts…they really hate it with something approaching total disgust and loathing. But when they love something…man, when they love something like horses or video games or grandma or you…there is no holding back. They really love you.

They’re pretty naïve that way. They don’t know how to hold back a part of themselves to guard against disappointment. They don’t know that things can’t be different because they’ve always been this way and so they dream big and hope large. They throw caution to the wind. They shoot for the moon. They put all of their eggs into one basket. They shout, they giggle, they laugh, they believe.

And there they are waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!” along with scribes, soldiers and sinners. There they are welcoming Jesus to town. There they are getting caught up in the excitement, the passion, the thrill of it all. They may not understand the importance or meaning of this word they’re shouting, but they know that Jesus means something new and different. They know that Jesus does amazing things. And they know that he annoys the folks who are trying to keep everything under control, and I think they like that about him.

You know when Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion,” came out last year, we were told not to take children. And that was good advice. It was a brutal film. But we shouldn’t shield children from this week, because they know what is important about it. The part of us that remains childlike knows what is important about this week. It interrupts all the other ways we can describe what’s going on in the world to tell us something new. And its dark and there’s death, but there’s passion and there’s life and there’s ritual and pageantry and deep, deep symbolism.
And most of all, as kids can tell you, in the middle of it all is God, still trying to get us to hear a word of hope in the midst of all our tragic narratives. There is God saying, “I will not leave you alone. I will not let Ashkelon and Ashdod stand at the end of the day. O daughter Zion, peace is coming to your house and your land. God is coming to your house and your land. God is coming to Charlottesville and UVA. God is coming to you.”

On one mount or two, it really makes no difference. If the sight of a king straddling two donkeys like a center ring performer can make you come to the circus, let it be so. Because what you come to see will be more than a tale to be told at a safe distance. It’s really a tale about you.

Won’t you come say “Hosanna!” with me this week? There’s a palm branch for you, too. Thanks be to God.

Wesley Goes to Prison

2005-02-27T22:18:00.000-05:00

Sunday at the Women's Prison...one of the holiest places you can go to worship...

Crossing the Line to Live
Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center

John 4:7-14
A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me something to drink.” For his disciples had entered the city in order to buy food.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask from me, a Samaritan woman, something to drink?” For the Jews did not have dealings with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered, saying to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is the one saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would ask him and he would give you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not have a bucket and the well is deep. Where, then, do you have the living water? You aren’t more prominent than our ancestor Jacob, are you, who gave us this well and who himself drank from it along with his children and animals?”

Jesus answered, saying to her, “Everyone who drink from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water which I shall give to them will not be thirsty ever again. Rather the water which I will give them will become in them a fountain of water spring up into eternal life.”

Then the woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water in order that may not thirst nor come here to draw.”

He said to her, “Go away, call your husband, and come back here.”

The woman answered, saying to him, “I do not have a husband.”

Jesus said to her, “It is well that you say, ‘I do not have a husband,’ for the five men you have had and the one you now have are not your husband. This you have said is true.”

The woman said to him, “Lord, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship.”

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, that the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know; for salvation is from the Jews; but the hours is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah comes, the one called Christ. When he comes, he will disclose all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking to you.”

Well, it is a great honor to be with you here tonight, my sisters. It is a great honor to be sharing in this worship and to be offering a word that I pray will be a word from God.

Now I’ve got about 17 minutes to share this word with you. They told me in preparing for this service that the Holy Spirit IS allowed in the Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center. The Holy Spirit IS allowed in this service and I sure saw that in your choir and in your singing. But the Holy Spirit only has 17 minutes to use me and so I want to get right to it. I have one thing to say to you this evening and if your mind wanders over the next 17 minutes or you start to doze off, I want you to remember this one thing. The one thing I want to say tonight is, “When you can see the truth, you can really live.” When you see the truth, you can really live.

What do I mean by that? My preaching professor in seminary was named Zan Holmes and he used to tell the story about his dog. Brownie. Now he lived in a house with a very small backyard and they used to keep Brownie on a chain tied to a pole in the middle of the yard. And every afternoon when Zan came home from work he’d go to his backdoor and yell out to the dog. And when Brownie saw Zan she had a little routine. The dog would run out to the length of that chain and when it pulled her tight she’d start running around the yard in a circle at the length of the chain. That’s how she showed her excitement when anybody in the family came out to see her. And she had done this so much that she wore a path in a circle at the length of that chain.

Well, one day, Zan says, he came home and somebody had forgotten to chain Brownie to the pole. And when he came to the door he stood there and yelled out to the dog and she came running towards him…until she got to the point where the chain usually stopped her. And then, even without the chain, she started to run in a circle on that same tired path she had worn. Brownie was free, but she didn’t know it. So she kept on running in a circle. If Brownie had been able to see the truth about herself and her situation, she could really begin to live.

Anybody want to raise your hand if you’ve got some tired circles you’re running in? I’ve got them. There are lots of old habits and bad tapes running in our heads. There are lots of ways we tell ourselves lies about what’s really going on. Lies about who we are and about what the world is like. Let me tell you, you don’t have to be in a place like this to be imprisoned. And you don’t have to wait ‘til you get out until you’re free.

Jesus knew something about this. Jesus knew that we human beings are capable of telling all kinds of lies about ourselves and of living with all kinds of walls we didn’t need to construct. We don’t know the truth; we can’t see the truth, and so we don’t know how to really live.

Did you hear this story from the gospels today? It’s a wild story. Jesus is traveling through Samaria with his disciples. Now that doesn’t sound strange to us and it wasn’t strange for Jews to pass through Samaria on their way between Jerusalem and Galilee, but we don’t hear it in the same way unless we make ourselves listen differently.

Jesus and his disciples were Jews and Jews and Samaritans did not get along. The Jews thought of the Samaritans as a corrupted people because they had intermarried with foreigners. They wouldn’t share the same drinking or eating vessels. Samaritan women were considered ritually unclean and so Jewish men made an extra effort not to touch or be touched by them. Jews and Samaritans claimed the same God but each thought the others were heretics who worshipped in the wrong place and the wrong way. Jews and Samaritans were related but there was very bad blood between them, which makes this story pretty unusual.

So anyway, Jesus sends the disciples on into a village to get some food and he stops by a well, which just happens to be the well used by his ancestor Jacob. Jacob was an ancestor for the Jews and the Samaritans and the well was named for him, even though Jacob probably never drew water from the well. That would have been a job for Rachel or Leah, his wives. Back in the day, that’s who drew the water…the women. It’s not a great job, either. The well is not convenient. It’s outside of town. You have to carry a large earthenware jar and probably put it on your head to carry it back. It’s a hot job and it has to be done every day whether you feel like it or not because you just can’t live without water. And so the women got the job. No, it wasn’t fair. But those were the times. And you know, even speaking as a man, it’s kind of still unfair.

So Jesus is sitting there by the well alone when a Samaritan woman comes to draw water. Now as a Jew and as a man this is where Jesus should have moved away or where the woman should have moved away, but neither one of them plays the game that was expected of them. They’re going to play another game.

Jesus says to this woman, “Give me something to drink.”

She recognizes that he’s breaking the rules by asking her to do this, so she calls him on it. She says, “You’re a Jew! You’re asking me, a Samaritan woman, to give you something to drink?” That sounds like a “No, get your own water” to me.

But Jesus wants to get her into a conversation so he says, “If you knew the gift of God and if you knew who was asking you for water, you’d ask him and he would give you living water.” Well, this is the invitation to a game. The woman begins to suspect that this conversation might not be about the well anymore. What Jesus is saying is, “Let’s have a conversation and this is how the game will work. I ask you for water and you respond by asking me for living water.”

This woman decides that she will play the game and she starts by teasing Jesus. “You know, that well’s pretty deep,” she says. “You don’t have a bucket,” she says. “It’s going to be awfully hard for you to give me living water. Are you a better man than Jacob who dug this well?”

Jesus probably smiled then, but then he said, “Everybody who drinks this water is going to get thirsty again. This water I’m talking about becomes a fountain in the person who receives it and they will never be thirsty again.”

Well, you know this sounds pretty good to the woman. No more thirst. No more trips to the well. She probably forgot for a minute that Jesus was talking about something besides the water in the well because she says, “O.K., give me this water.”

Now Jesus turns the tables on her. He says, “Go away, tell your husband, and come back.” It’s almost like he’s saying he doesn’t want to play this little game anymore. If he was really concerned about the appropriate way to talk to her, he would have called her husband in the first place. If Jesus was going to have any contact with this woman, it should have been through her husband.

But he’s not trying to end this conversation. He’s not trying to change the rules. He wants to start talking about the truth. He’s not going to talk about the well anymore. He wants to talk about her.

And she’s ready. She admits right up front, “I don’t have a husband.” That the truth. She seems to be living with a man and seems to have had relationships in the past with men who were not husbands but she’s not going to hide this from Jesus. In fact, Jesus seems to know all about her. He praises her for telling the truth.

And when it’s clear who she is, she wants to get clear about who Jesus is, so she starts asking the questions. She asks him if he is a prophet and asks him about religious questions and asks him if he is the Messiah and then Jesus tells her what he has not told anybody else to this point. When the woman asks, “Are you the Messiah, the Christ, the one we’ve been waiting for?” He says, “I am. The one speaking to you. I am.”

When Jesus says this the disciples walk up and maybe they heard what he said, but they couldn’t listen to it right then because they were so disturbed by what they were seeing. Jesus was talking with a woman, a Samaritan woman? There may have been truth in the air, but they couldn’t hear it. But the woman knew. And she left her water jug behind and ran into the city. Now that she had seen the truth, she was ready to really live.

That’s a strange story. It really is. The conversation that Jesus and the woman have is really strange and I’m not sure I follow it. But in the course of the conversation truth is told. The woman finds a person who can tell her and help her admit who she truly is. And the woman sees Jesus for who he truly is. The truth is told. The woman is a person looking for living water and Jesus has come to tell the good news that the living water is here.

Do you know what it’s like to live with a lot of lies? Do you know what it’s like to be told over and over who you are? Some people live with some very hurtful things that others tell them or that they tell themselves. Have you ever been called worthless, hopeless, irredeemable, incapable, incorrigible, incompetent or incurable? Have you ever thought of yourself as valueless, insignificant, useless, or used up?

I’m here to tell you tonight, in the name of the Jesus who sat by that well with the Samaritan woman, that all of those words are lies. The truth about us, about any of us, is that we do fall and we do fail. We do mess up and we do sin. But it is not true that we are condemned to be labeled by the worst things we have ever done. It is not true that we are beyond God’s reach, beyond God’s touch, beyond God’s love. It is not true that Jesus will pass you by.

It IS true that Jesus will come and sit by the well with you. It IS true that Jesus will stand by you. It IS true that Jesus will transform you. And whatever lies the world may throw at you then…whatever sick thoughts continue to plague you then...whatever lingering wounds continue to fester, you can then say, “Lies, you have no power over me anymore. I was lost but now I’m found. I was sick but now I’m healed. I was dead but now I’m alive because I know the truth about the world and about me. I know that God did not come to condemn the world and to condemn me, but God came to save the world and save me. God is not standing over me waiting for me to fall. God is standing WITH me helping me to get back on my feet.”

I’m a Methodist and we Methodists talk a lot about grace. Grace is God’s love freely given to all God’s children and there is no way to put yourself outside of God’s grace. When you wake up in the morning, God’s grace is there. When you hurt your neighbor, God’s grace is there. When you sink into despair, God’s grace is there. What you need to realize is that God is not waiting for something to happen so that God can accept you. God is expecting something to happen because God has already accepted you. When you see the truth, then you can really live.

One more story, because my 17 minutes is going to up soon. You know the story of Harriet Tubman? Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Maryland in the early 1800s. She escaped slavery and went to live in the north, but she kept coming back. She kept coming back to the South because she knew there were people there who needed to be free.

On dark nights she would bring them across into freedom. And when she did it she would carry a big rifle along with her. She never used it, but she used it to remind the slaves that there was no going back. Once they realized they could be free, there was no going back to what they had been before. Once they knew the truth about who they could be--free people, she was not going to let them go back to being slaves.

Harriet Tubman said, "I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

The first step in getting free is to realize that you are a slave, that you need something beyond yourself to get free. To get free you have to admit the truth, and the truth is that God is waiting with living water to baptize you into a new life. Jesus is waiting by the well. It’s time to tell some truth. Whatever you have been, you don’t have to be any longer. Because the truth is that you are a child of God. May God bless you, my sisters.

Thanks be to God.

High Comedy

2005-02-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

There Was a Person and Then There Was This Person
Antioch Baptist Church
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Romans 5:12-19
Therefore, just as sin came into the created order through one person, and death through sin, and thus death spread to every person because all have sinned--for sin was in the created order before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Even so, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the same manner as the transgressions of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the transgression, for if, through the transgression of one, many died, the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, has been given , overflowing for the many.

And the free gift is not like what came of the one man’s sin. For the judgment of the one is condemnation, but the free gift leads to the removal of guilt following many trespasses.

For if death rules through that one, through one person’s trespass, those who take hold of the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness will rule in life through the one person, Jesus Christ.

Therefore, now, as all people are led to judgment through one person’s trespass, so also one person’s act of justification leads to righteousness and life for all people. For just as the many were made sinners by the one man’s disobedience, so also the many will be made righteous by the obedience of one.

Comedy is built on the idea that the misfortunes of someone else, worked out in a play or a movie or a camp skit, can help us safely deal with our own sense that all is not right with the world or with us. Slapstick comedy? Somebody slips on a banana peel or gets hit in the head with a ball and we know we wouldn’t want it to happen to us because the person on screen or on stage looks so ridiculous, but we laugh because we know that we HAVE looked that ridiculous from time to time. Situation comedies? They work because they take a situation which can seem overwhelming in real life and they can work it out with humor and perhaps a little truth telling.

So it’s not surprising that one of the most anticipated releases for the Valentine’s Day weekend is “Hitch.” This is the story of a date director, played by Will Smith, who tries to help men clean themselves up and hide their true selves so that they can be attractive to women and potentially get a date. Kevin James plays the oaf who can’t do anything right. He’s a slob, he’s clumsy, he says the wrong thing at the wrong time. In short…he’s like a lot of us are some of the time…maybe even most of the time…he’s not perfect. And I take it from the look of the movie trailer that even the super hip date director eventually falls for a girl and becomes as clumsy and tongue-tied as all the people he is trying to help.

We laugh at situations like this because, even when they’re outlandish, they have a way of hitting close to home. We can do two things with the truth--we can laugh or we can cry.
Paul, who wrote the letter to Romans that we read earlier, had a way of speaking the uncomfortable truth about who we are. This letter starts out as a real downer. Paul sends his greetings along to the Christians in Rome, says that he wants to visit them there, and then, before he even gets around to asking about the weather, he launches into a long litany of how God’s wrath was going to poured out on all the people. He talks about idol worship, sexual immorality, greed, murder, malice, envy, gossiping, strife, disobeying parents…before the end you expect him to throw in being late in returning your library books! You can just imagine the Romans nodding their heads as he mentions the big sins…murder? O.K., I haven’t done that. Greed? Think I’m doing alright with that. Strife? Uh-oh. By the end no one could imagine that they had been good enough to escape God’s wrath.

That’s just the point for Paul. He had done many of the things he condemned himself and in his old life he had been the one who was charged with enforcing the Jewish law! Paul knew that none of the people he was writing to could hold themselves up as blameless in the face of this and he wanted to get their attention. The book starts by saying that if you think you’re good enough to be perfect by your own power, think again!

The problem is not new. It’s not new for us and it wasn’t new for the Roman Christians. We have known for millennia that something is not right with the world and that something is not right with our lives. When hundreds of thousands of people are put at risk of starvation and death in the Sudan because of corrupt government policies and international bickering over what constitutes genocide, something is not right. When our children study how we overcame segregation in Virginia and see that it still exists in their lunchrooms and in the worlds their parents live in, something is not right. When we fail a friend, or neglect our bodies, or ignore the needs of our soul, or distract ourselves into thinking that being busy is an acceptable substitute for being right, in all of these cases, something is not right. When we think too much of ourselves or too little, something is not right.

Paul knew that. Paul knew that we live with a sneaking suspicion that damnation may be what we deserve. Paul knew that there are some things we just can’t seem to let go of no matter how hard we try. Sin is not just an option we can take or leave. It’s in our DNA.

The image Paul used to talk about this was the figure of Adam. “Sin, he said, “came into the world in the person of Adam.” (Eve gets off the hook in this retelling of the story, but that’s only fair since she has taken most of the blame in most of the other retellings). “And with sin came death and death has been with us ever since. Even when we didn’t know what sin was, because it’s only the law that brings the awareness of sin, even then it had it’s effect. It’s not transmitted by any means we can tell. But it is a part of all of our lives and when we sense that all is not right we know its effects.

“There was this person,” Paul says, “whose name was Adam, but there was also this person, whose name was Jesus and because of him all the terrors of God’s wrath that I talked about in chapter one are not our inheritance.” The good news in Paul’s bad news is that God has interrupted the cycle that leads from sin to death. The merry-go-round that we have all experienced that takes us right back to the same old pains, same old wounds, same old guilt, over and over, again and again, does not have to be the final word. That cycle only works if the thing that the universe runs on is God’s wrath, which determines that we are eternally guilty.

There is a different force at work in the universe, Paul says. It’s more powerful. It’s love.
How do we know that it’s love that makes the world go ‘round? Because we’ve seen it. We’ve lived with it. We’ve touched it. We’ve watched it die with us and for us. The love that interrupts the merry-go-round, that shortchanges the wages of sin, that redeems us from our failures, that heals our wounds, that opens the door to new life, is the love we’ve known in Jesus. And God did not wait until we “got it” and lived up to our end of the love connection before coming to us. God did not wait until we proved ourselves worthy. While we were still sinners, Paul says, Christ came and died for us. You probably didn’t even notice it, but while we were living, God was reconciling us to God’s own self. When someone asks you when you were saved, you can say, “I remember it well. It was a Friday on a hill outside of Jerusalem.” When did God make the move toward us? Before we could ever imagine making the move toward God.

What Paul is saying is that the most powerful thing we have to say as Christians is the truth about ourselves and the world. But the truth is more than Jesus Christ came and therefore we can ignore the hurts and pains and sin of this world. The truth is deeper.

Which brings me back to comedy. A folk tale that deals in high comedy is the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Do you remember this story? In Hans Christian Anderson’s telling, an emperor, who always insists on being seen in the finest clothes and with all of the greatest trappings of wealth and power, hires two tailors to outfit him with a brand new set of clothes. The tailors are really scoundrels who convince the emperor that they will make him a set of clothes that will seem invisible to all those who are too stupid or incompetent to appreciate its quality. Of course the emperor is intrigued and he gives the tailors two bags of gold to begin work.

The tailors come back with the invisible clothes and the emperor panics because he can’t see the cloth or feel it. But he doesn’t want to seem stupid or incompetent so he pretends that he does see it. And since the emperor has said that HE sees the cloth, all the people in his court also admire the non-existent clothes. They didn’t want to be thought of as stupid or incompetent either.

The people in the kingdom have heard of this marvelous cloth and they want to see it, so the emperor agrees to parade through the streets wearing his new clothes. A page followed behind holding the invisible train of his robe. All of the people along the way join in the delusion by complimenting the emperor’s choice of cloth and the splendor of his garments. But a little boy sees the ruler pass and says simply, “The emperor is naked.” His father shushes him but others hear him and know that he has spoken the truth. Soon everyone is saying, “The emperor has no clothes.” And the emperor went home very embarrassed indeed. That is comedy. By telling the truth, the child had exposed the king and all his subjects for who they truly were and a dangerous fiction had been punctured. And the truth is about more than just the emperor. We recognize ourselves and the fictions we cling to in that story as well.

What Paul wants to tell us in Romans is high comedy. Paul wants to tell the truth, too. Paul wants to expose the lies by which we all live. Paul wants to tell us that the pretensions we live under are dangerous. Paul also wants to tell us that the despair we are prone to is also unfounded. Because if there is one thing truer than the fact that we are all sinners deserving of condemnation it is that we are loved by God and seen through the lens of Jesus Christ.

Why do we preachers talk so much about Jesus? It’s not just that Jesus is a good example. Yes, that’s true, but there are many good people whose lives we could imitate and what Jesus did in his life and death and resurrection was unique. “What would Jesus do?” may be a helpful question but it’s not the basic question. The basic question is “What IS Jesus doing?”

Jesus is reconciling the world to God. Jesus is healing the sick. Jesus is comforting the grieving. Jesus is walking with the weak. Jesus is empowering the poor. Jesus is lifting up the lonely. Jesus is challenging the rich. Jesus is confronting the hard-hearted. Jesus is raising the dead, welcoming the children, feeding the hungry. Jesus is opening the door to a new realm and a new reign where death has lost its sting and sin has lost its power.

We know this because the work of Christ did not end with his death on a cross in 1st century Palestine. The work of Christ continues wherever people are confronting the bad news of the world with the good news of God’s love. The work of Christ continues when we lift up his story, the story of Jesus, and say that Jesus changes everything. Not because there are no other stories to tell, but because in this story we hear the truth. And the truth is that we are Adam’s but we are also God’s children.

One last story. I once worked as a youth coordinator at a church-run community center in West Dallas. It was the inner city and there were days when I was overwhelmed by the poverty and despair I saw all around me. One day I went to visit the probation officer for one of the youth I was working with. I told the officer the name of the teenager, Timothy, and he nodded his head. “Oh, yes. He’s been abandoned to the streets by his family. He’s one of those we call a ‘throwaway.’”

I’ve lost track of Timothy. I don’t know what the end of his story will be, but I do know that a lot of those youth got a new identity and a new vision for what they could be because of the presence of the church and people who cared in their lives. Today kids from that community center are going on to college and coming back to work with other kids. And there is a new program called Project Transformation which started there and which we have started here in Charlottesville with children who could end up the same way. None of them is a throwaway. Not one child of God is a throwaway.

Now I don’t know what you need to hear today. Maybe you need to hear that the truth about you and the world is that you can’t do it on your own. You can’t make your way to perfection under your own power. You need to hear that you have the same limits that every child of the first human parents has. Then you can hear about the grace that saves us anyway.

Or maybe you need to hear that you and the world are not, cannot be, and will never be a throwaway in God’s eyes. You are more, much more, than the worst thing you have ever done. And even though there are old wounds and persistent problems that plague your life, this cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Despite the fact that this world is not the best world we can imagine...Despite the fact that we are not the best selves we can hope for…despite, despite, despite…God has come among us. God has lived among us. God has opened the door to a new day. And God invites us to grab hold of the abundance of grace, the free gift we have been given that was revealed in Jesus.

Comedy helps us laugh at the characters who are so close to who we truly are. They bumble and stumble and fall and say things they can’t ever fully understand the meaning of. And so do we. And God laughs because God knows that the ending will be a good one. Thanks be to God.

In Praise of Fuzziness

2005-01-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday night at the Wesley Foundation...6 PM...it feels like home.

In the Fuzzy Zone
January 30, 2005
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Matthew 5:1-12 [NRSV]
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

No doubt you know who Gwen Stefani is. (Get it? No Doubt? Gwen Stefani?) In case you don’t, Gwen Stefani is rock music’s IT girl. After years of fronting for the band No Doubt she has finally gone solo, but she has really overshadowed everyone else in the band for a long time. She’s got the looks, the fashion, the voice, the ‘tude. Gwen Stefani is everything we expect a rock star to be.

But Gwen Stefani is worried. I read an interview with her the other day and she says she doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. She doesn’t feel like she can keep doing the rock ‘n’ roll goddess thing forever even though she’s been doing it since she was 18. And she has this nagging sense that she’s not living in reality.

Well, you might think that’s natural when you spend your life making videos dressed as Alice-in-Wonderland, but there’s more to it than that. The way Gwen talks about it it’s as if she has left her self behind and doesn’t know what she’s going to find when she goes back home when the tour comes to an end. She’s counting on children to bring her back. She says, “As a famous person you think how you're gonna end it, get away and have a normal life. I imagine my children are going to save me from my vanity and be my passion and fill whatever fears I have of the amazing time I'm having right now being gone.” “The fears I have of the amazing time I’m having right now being gone.” Gwen Stefani is the IT girl and she has a gnawing suspicion that the lights are on (bright) but she’s not at home.

Here’s a much more mundane scene--my basement. The hottest thing appearing in my basement these days is a video game called “Animal Crossing.” Anybody ever see this game? Joel and Rachel are big fans of “Animal Crossing.” In this game you are a little guy or girl wandering about a town populated by animals who live in stylish little cabins and who seem to have an endless supply of errands that need to be run. There is a post office where you can mail your new friends or other players notes. There is a stream where you can fish, a museum where you can take treasures you’ve found, and a train station where you can ride the rails to the next town, which looks just like the one you left.

But the major task of your life in Animal Crossing is to collect things and decorate your own stylish little cabin (which can quickly grow to a substantial house if you’re good at the game). To do this you earn bells, which are the currency of the land, and take them to Tom Nook’s store to buy things like carpet and wall coverings and furniture and knick-knacks. In Tom Nook’s store you can even buy the “executive’s toy,” that thing which consists of five steel balls suspended from strings and when you take one and bang it into the end of the others physics takes hold and merriment ensues.

This is what children’s entertainment has come to. You mimic the worst trivialities of the real world in order to pass the time. In a land with no culture, no churches, and no schools, what do people do? They busy themselves by filling up space with manufactured knick-knacks! The world will not end in fire or ice, it will end in an overstuffed chair watching an “executive’s toy” click-clack away the last fading seconds of our pitiful lives.

My house in the game, by the way, is a wreck since I don’t have the patience to organize it correctly. Otherwise, though, it is sweet.

What do Gwen Stefani and Animal Crossing have in common? They both make clear that the things we assume to be markers of success or contentment in the end seem empty and hollow. They may even lead us to fear that something essential about ourselves is being neglected, that we are somehow disconnected from something more meaningful and more substantial than bricks and mortar and limousines and awards ceremonies. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever wondered if the ideals of college life or working life were tissue thin and ultimately deceptive? Do you fear the amazing time you’re having while you’re gone?

This is not meant to be a downer sermon. I don’t want to make it sound like fun is not fun or that you ought to have some anxiety where there is none. Or maybe I do. I think we need some wise words to lead us forward. I think we need someone who can point us toward a word of truth and reality. And that someone, surprising as it might sound coming from me, is George W. Bush.

In his inaugural address the other day, President Bush made many appeals to freedom and liberty as the ideals that should guide us. But he also said something that really captured my attention. As he talked about building character in individuals he said, “That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the sermon on the mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people.”

Now I have no idea what that means. I assume that in that paragraph there was an appeal to his conservative base, a half-hearted defense of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ standards, a gesture toward family values and a grand sweep to include Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the influences on our nation’s founders. What I thought was really interesting was that the text he chose to represent Christianity’s highest ideals was the Sermon on the Mount.

And I don’t disagree. The Sermon on the Mount is Christ’s most distinctive collection of teachings. It is rhetorically grand and mixes simple statements with profound insights. A nation built on these ideals would truly stand out from the rest of the world. But it is not our nation and it is not many of us.

Here are some of the things the Sermon on the Mount says: "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.” That’s a standard we have not lived up to on either a personal or national level.

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” One of our speakers at the United Nations Seminar said that this sort of instruction is found in no other religion of the world. It is distinctly Christian and distinctly un-American.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…Do not judge, so that you may not be judged…Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Are these the values and expectations we grew up with? The Sermon on the Mount makes a warm, fuzzy reference point in a civic speech, but it sticks in our throat when we try to speak these words and if we try to live them?

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beattitudes, the blessings which we read in our service tonight. Here Jesus takes his disciples up a hillside away from the crowds who could easily have deluded the disciples into believing that what they were called to be a part of us was a mass, popular crusade. When they looked at the people they could say, “This is not some sideshow. This is a movement! Look at all the people. We must be doing something right. We must be saying something that makes sense. You go, Jesus!”

But Jesus takes them aside and says, “No, it’s not like that. You think this makes us successful. Let me tell you a little bit about God’s standards. It’s not about feeling full, it’s about feeling empty. It’s about meekness and mourning. It’s about poverty of spirit and purity of heart. It’s about hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It’s about mercy and peace. And for you, even for you, it’s about persecution because when you really hear what I’m saying, you will not have crowds coming to celebrate your name. You will have nations who do not understand and powers that do not want to listen.”

With the beatitudes Jesus seems to say that we have lived too long in the bright lights of the city. We have become seduced by values that now seem wise and rational. We can call ‘war’ peace and no one will flinch. We can call ‘oppression’ freedom. We can call ‘neglect’ charity. We can leave a whole generation of children behind and say that we lost none.

And it’s no different in the depths of our souls. We can say we care for others, but can’t get over ourselves. We can say that the competition at UVA is healthy when we know it causes us to question ourselves and to mistreat others. We can say we don’t care about making a fortune, but we wouldn’t mind. We can say that sin is an old-fashioned word when our own limitations and delusions stare us right in the face every morning.

What Jesus says in the Beattitudes is that if you are frustrated in figuring out how to make it into this equation…if you can’t find yourself in one of these blessed categories, “poor in spirit, mourning, meek, peacemaker, persecuted,” then perhaps you are still too seduced. These words are not meant to be comforting. They are meant to be disturbing. They are not meant to be a pat on the back, they are meant to be a kick in the rear. God is not waiting in the world we have created for ourselves. If God were there we would have already found her. God is waiting in the world and home we have left behind…in the world which operates according to standards that make no sense unless we live with them everyday.

And even then…If the charge to love my enemies and not to worry about tomorrow ever becomes an easy thing to hear, the Sermon on the Mount will have lost its power. Something has to the stick and Jesus has always got to be frustrating.

So God gives us the Church and one another to share this troubling story. God knows we can’t do it alone. And so we have Lent and small groups and worship and Bible study and all the means of grace that accompany the Christian people through the ages.

Tonight at Coffee and Theology we are going to be talking about Martin Buber, who was a twentieth-century Jewish thinker who felt that God could be discovered in dialogue. His most famous writing was “I and Thou” and in it he talks about how our normal interaction with the world is instrumental. I see the world as a collection of “Its” - things which I can more or less comprehend and which I don’t have to interact with as if they have a claim on me. I can pick up my spoon at breakfast and it usually doesn’t talk back. I don’t think about my spoon very often. We can even start to treat other people that way. This is the mail carrier, that’s the bus driver. Even in our most comfortable relationships we fall into a pattern.

But when we call something “Thou” we say something more intimate. A “Thou” has an impact on me. It troubles my easy definitions. When I have a long talk with a person I thought I knew, what I thought I knew about them and about me changes. They rise above the level of my previous understandings. They become a “Thou” and it is no accident that this is also the most common reference to God in old translations of the Bible. “Thou hast made us.” In the true encounter with others and the world we sense the eternal source of others and the world. We sense God. But we have to get our understandings messed up first. Things have to get fuzzy.

And that’s what I want to invite you into as we approach this season of Lent--the fuzzy zone. You are bright, beautiful, wonderful people who are doing amazing things every day. You will change the world. But if you fear that in this amazing time you have left something behind, you are right. Jesus wants to get your world fuzzy so that you can get something back that is priceless. Yourself. Thanks be to God.

Blue Christmas

2004-12-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

But Advent should definitely remain purple. Bah! This liturgical innovation that thinks we need a new color for the season is just the sort of creeping Chrismon-tree-ish addition that makes me long for simplicity and the good old days when we said our confessions and claimed to be worms and we were proud of it. Humbug!

Now that I got that out of my system...here's the Sunday afternoon and evening offering from the Wesleys...

Picking Up The Pieces
December 12, 2004
Wesley Memorial UMC & Wesley Foundation at UVA

Advent is all about stories that don’t seem to work. On the first Sundays of the season we remember the words of the prophets of Ancient Israel who looked around at the sorry state of the people, people living in exile, poverty and corruption, who looked around and said, “It shall not always be this way. A new day is coming. A new time of hope, peace, and possibility will arise. God’s new reign will come.”

Christians hear in these words an echo of their own hopes that centered on Jesus Christ. In Jesus, what God intends for the world becomes clear, comes among us, and inaugurates a new age. But the story doesn’t end there. Violence, death, despair, disappointment and injustice continue. The new day beyond our old days is still “yet to come.” So we tell this incomplete story in Advent…a story that doesn’t seem to work. We don’t just look back, we look ahead--to the time when all the pieces of the story fall in place--to the time when God will indeed make all things new.

Advent is a time to tell this incomplete story but we rarely give it time. Advent offers silence, music in a minor key, deep mystery, deep, rich hues of blue and purple. Advent recognizes that all is not right with the world, but below the surface and above it all, God is at work renewing us and the world.

But Advent gives way too quickly to Christmas. The commercial sales cycle refuses to even acknowledge that Advent exists. As the Thanksgiving displays come down (or even before) the music goes straight to joy and warm sentimentality. There are stars and shouts and winter wonderlands. Wal-mart knows nothing of waiting and watching and wilderness. Even in church we are tempted to downplay the prelude in favor of the finale. Our insistence on telling Advent stories seems so counter-cultural. We want to skip ahead to the joy, too.

But presumably you are here today because you know how necessary Advent is. Our Christmas experiences are not celebrations of uncompromised joy. Mixed in are grief and loss, conflict and confusion, doubt and despair. We come to this season feeling a little out-of-synch, a bit out-of-step, out-of-place, and more than a little annoyed at the pristine giddiness that sometimes filters into the season. There is more texture to our Christmas time.

One of my most powerful Christmas memories is of a time of great stress. It was early December and I was helping my mother decorate the tree. I must have been about 8 years old. Somehow my mother had managed to maintain the illusion that this was a normal Christmas when it was anything but. My youngest sister had just been born about a month before and my father was in the hospital with a mysterious illness that the doctors could not figure out. My mom was home alone with three kids and she was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.

It was working. Somehow I did not pick up on the import of all these events until Mom handed me an ornament--one with some special sentimental meaning--for me to hang on the tree. Then she just broke down in tears. I think it was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry. And suddenly, though she was holding me very tightly in a hug, the earth seemed to shift beneath my feet. I did not feel that this was a normal Christmas anymore. I wondered about scary things that I had not wondered about before in my eight years of life.

All of us have stories that are less than perfect. One of the qualities of our human existence is the collection of broken narratives that constitute our lives. It is hard to share in the joy of Christmas when we are keenly aware of the brokenness. So we keep telling stories. In Advent we keep telling stories. Because in God’s economy all the broken pieces are sorted out. All the tangled storylines are straightened out. And what we cannot see in the midst of our most despairing moments--that God is with us and that God is reconciling all things to God’s own self--is made clear.

Last Thursday at our Advent service here I shared the following story from Elie Wiesel:
When the great Rabbi Israel Baalshem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: "Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayers." And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient." It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and that must be sufficient." And it was sufficient. God made humankind because God loves stories.

Thus Advent Begins

2004-12-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

A Mattaponi tale for a Sunday night at the Wesley. For the backstory, read the archived blog entry for September 5, 2004. Enjoy...

Stultifying

Isaiah 11:1-10 (NRSV)
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples;
the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Vera was knocking out her twenty-first minute on the Stairmaster at the AFC. She chose one overlooking the pool because it made her feel better to watch other people doing something repetitive and seemingly pointless. If she was going to climb forty flights of stairs and stay in one place, other people ought to have to swim a mile and get out in the same place they left.

By now the Stairmaster was part of her weekly routine. Three times a week--Monday, Wednesday and Friday--she would get out of her French class at New Cabell, walk over and drop off her stuff at her dorm room in Bonnycastle and then head for the gym. She wasn’t as good about the Tuesday-Thursday routine, but she did manage to run sometimes.

So much had changed for her since she got to UVA in August. Back then she was uncertain about everything. Didn’t know if she wanted to be here. Didn’t know if she would be able to keep up her relationship with her boyfriend who was going to Christopher Newport. Didn’t know if her mother, who was having heart episodes, would be all right. Didn’t know if she could handle the classes. But now…

The lights lit up on the Stairmaster screen and told her it was time to get off. She stopped and let the pedals gently lower her to the floor. She grabbed her towel and turned away from the machine only to be knocked backwards by a guy rushing by wearing a navy blue T-shirt that read “I ran the Hopeless Case 10K: No prizes ‘cause we know you won‘t finish.” Grayson.

“Seems like you're always running into me, Grayson,” Vera said with both amusement and irritation.

“Guess you’re lucky, huh, Vera?”

“If you consider multiple injuries ‘lucky.’”

Vera had met Grayson on grounds when he hit her in the head with a Frisbee while playing a round of golf. The brief encounter had been the start of a pretty good friendship that had hints of romance, but neither of them was talking about it. The biggest evidence of a budding relationship was the way Vera quickly bounced back from the news that Justin, the Christopher Newport boyfriend, had found someone else. Gabriella, Vera’s best friend, thought she had taken it a little too well.

“So, Grayson, are you going home for Thanksgiving?” It was two days before the break.

“I’m going for a couple of days. Mom’s going to be there alone because Dad’s…well, you know. He’s still in Iraq.”

“Heard anything from him?”

“Nothing much. But I have heard from him, which is good. They’ve got him working out a new security plan for the convoy route through Baghdad. At least that’s what it sounds like.”

“Are you worried?”

“Nah. He’s been around awhile. He can take care of himself.” Vera was staring right at him. “O.K. You got me. Heck, yeah, I’m worried. They call that RPG Alley for all the grenades and mortars that get fired at convoys, but it doesn’t do any good to worry.” He looked off at a line of students waiting to get on treadmills. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I’m going back to Mattaponi, but I don’t think I want to. The place is so…I don’t know. So not where I want to be these days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s an irony-deprived zone.”

“I’m in the E-school. You’ll have to explain that one, humanities girl.”

“Irony-deprived. You know. People say things and they actually mean them.”

“That’s radical.”

“Well, yes…but, no. Grayson, in Mattaponi they don’t do humor. When my folks want a big night they go shopping at the Wal-Mart in Urbanna and if they want to really do it up they’ll buy a lottery ticket on the way home. It’s nice and all, but it’s just a little…”

Grayson tried to help her out, “Stultifying?”

“Yeah. Stultifying.”

“Gotcha. But I remember when you didn’t want to leave there. You must have liked something about it.”

Vera looked down at her t-shirt which read “Mattaponi High School: Class of 2004.” “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Hey, are you coming back on Sunday?”

“Yeah, probably around 3. Why?”“Cool! You can make our Advent rally!”

“Grayson, you’re going to have a rally for Advent.”

“Yeah! Isn’t that awesome?” Vera shook her head. Grayson was always doing something wild.

“A few of us decided that if we really wanted to do Advent right we needed to gather at a place that helped us remember what the season is all about.”

“What is it about, Grayson? I have no clue. In Mattaponi T.P. Tolliver used to observe Advent by putting a 8-foot tall snowman on top of his double wide.”

“No, see, Vera that’s called jumping the gun. It’s not about jumping straight to Christmas. It’s about waiting, expectation, looking ahead to something that has been promised and is sure to come even though all the evidence is that it will never come.”

“So where are you meeting?”

“Bodo’s on the Corner. You have GOT to be there. It will be the rockin’est Advent rally you have EVER been to.”

“Grayson, I have never been to an Advent rally before.”“See?”

On the Friday after Thanksgiving Vera found herself staring at a shelf-full of plush possums. Multi-colored beanie baby possums, hand-stitched fabric possums, throw pillow possums, even a life sized foam rubber possum that hung from the shelf above. Any sort of fake possum you could imagine, Vera’s Aunt Dovey probably had it.

This was exactly the sort of stultification Vera had worried about when she came back home. Thanksgiving had been O.K., but then her mom and Aunt Dovey had taken off for Richmond to shop and left her to baby-sit her 9-year-old cousin, Trudy…all day. Aunt Dovey’s house was impossibly cushioned with overstuffed furniture and pillows in every room. Even the stuff she collected, like the possums, was plushy. If everything in the house had suddenly fallen to the floor in an earthquake, there would be no sound. Nothing would break. In fact, there was so much sound-absorbing material that you had to crank the TV up to 40 to hear it across the living room.

“Vera. You’re not listening to me. Am I doing it right?”

Vera turned away from the possums to the skinny, freckled girl with bright red hair in a ponytail. Trudy couldn’t help it if she lived in a place that looked like a mattress overrun warehouse. “I’m sorry, Trudy,” she said. “Start over. I’m listening now.”

“Well, it’s really just this verse I don’t get.” Trudy was practicing reading Isaiah because for the first time in her life she was going to be the lay reader at church on Sunday. She really wanted to get it right. So she had been practicing with Vera. “‘Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,’” she said, “’and faithfulness the belt around his loins.’ What are loins, Vera?”

Vera didn’t even bat an eye. “That would be his arms, Trudy.”

“But why would anybody wear a belt around their arms?”

“It was an Old Testament thing, Trudy. Kind of a fashion statement. Like big pants were back in the day.”

“Big pants?” Trudy stared.

“Man, I am really getting old,” Vera thought. “It was fun while it lasted, but I’m glad it’s over. Keep reading.”

“’The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them…’”

Vera found herself fading out as she listened. How could Trudy have turned out so cool growing up in this house? Her dad was a total loser. He used to beat up her Mom and her and then one day he took off with her mom’s best friend and half the checking account. But you’d never know it from looking at this beautiful kid and her sofa-house. She was so bright, so trusting, so…not ironic.

And here she was reading about this beautiful vision of a time when lions and lambs could get along and children could play with snakes and there wouldn’t be any more hurt or violence. It all seemed so unrealistic. How could you hear this passage about peace and take it seriously when desperate young men were firing grenades at Grayson’s dad in Iraq and innocent mothers were dying of AIDS in Africa? But the strangeness of the words didn’t seem to register with Trudy. Well, all the words except ‘loins.’ The rest Trudy could get into it. She liked thinking about a farm where lions and cows and goats could all get along.

When Trudy got to the end of her passage she wanted to watch her movie rental, Barbie’s Princess and the Pauper, for the third time but Vera had another idea. “Hey, Trudy. Let’s cruise on down to the B.P. and get some ice cream.”

As she said the words Vera was thinking in her head, “How lame is this? Cruise down to the B.P. and get some ice cream?! I wouldn’t go if I were her!”

But Trudy didn’t see anything lame about it. Her cousin from UVA was going to take her out. That was the coolest thing that could have happened all day. And B.P. was cheap entertainment.

On the way Vera caught Trudy looking at her. She didn’t say anything for a minute but finally turned and said playfully, “Trudy. You’re staring at me!”

Trudy giggled. “I like your hair clip.”

“Thanks.”

“I got three new ones the other day at Eckerd’s. A red one, a blue one and a purple one. One of them is shaped like a horse.”

“That sounds, great, Trudy.”

“Yeah. Monet’s got one just like it. She’s a friend at school.”

There was a brief minute of silence as Trudy and Vera both wondered what to say next. Johnson Furloines’ farm stretched out along the left side of the road. Some contented cows sat lazily in the growing shadows of the afternoon. A crow settled down on the fencepost next to one.

“Vera?”

“Yes, Trudy?”

“Is it hard being a college student?”

“It’s not too bad most days. There’s school work, like you have, and you have to study and write papers and stuff, but it’s not bad.”

“Is it fun?”

Vera looked at Trudy. She knew there were deep, dark questions lurking there in her mind. She knew there were things she had gone through already that Vera knew nothing about yet. But at this moment, with the orange afternoon sun on her face, she was heaven itself in a four-foot frame.

“Is it fun?” Vera said. “Today it definitely is.”

The Advent rally at Bodo’s was a rather small affair. Five people showed up and one of them was Grayson’s roommate who only stopped by because he lost his key and needed to borrow Grayson’s. Grayson stood up by the tree in the little courtyard there and began a little speech that attracted two more curious passers-by.

“Friends, neighbors, country-bros. Lend me your ears! We are here on this first day of a new year to give witness to the power of waiting.”

Grayson’s friend, Ike, interrupted, “Dude, it’s not new year’s. It’s the beginning of Advent.”

Grayson smiled. “Ike, it’s a new Christian year. We’re in like a totally different time zone from the rest of humanity.” He kept on with his sermon. “We are here because Bodo’s KNOWS the power of waiting. We are here because for eight years this place has been saying that, ‘Yes, you will have everything bagels. Yes, you will have honey pecan cream cheese. Yes, you will have warm, round, steamed goodness.’ Bodo’s will not disappoint. The world may look like hell, but God has not abandoned us. People may scoff and shake their heads and say why are those Christians so insistent on saying that a new day is coming. Can’t they just accept the way things are and get on with it like everybody else?

“And to these people I say, ‘No.’ Like bagels on the corner, God’s new day is coming. And like Bodo’s, which has locations on Preston and Emmet already, God’s new day is already among us. It may be dark, but the light shines in the darkness. We may face the evils of despair, depression, degradation, drudgery, and even stultification, but God has not forgotten us. The lion shall lie down with the lamb. The cow and the bear shall graze in the field together in an unnatural but wholly holy display of the new creation. We are here because we believe that all of this SHALL come to pass.”

At this cue Vera jumped up and took a large picture over to the plate glass of the Bodo’s window. It was a picture of a smiling, gap-toothed girl with long red hair in a ponytail. Vera ran her finger lovingly across the photo and then turned to say in a strong voice that cheered the others attending the Advent Rally, “All this SHALL come to pass, and a little child shall lead them.”

Thanks be to God.

I Believe in Life Before Death

2004-11-07T22:56:00.000-05:00

Sunday night at the Wesley Foundation on All Saints Sunday:

Heaven: It’s Not Just For The Afterlife Any More
November 6, 2004
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Ephesians 1:11-23
In whom also our lot has been cast, having been predestined according to the design of the one who accomplishes all things according to the purpose of his will so that we might be the first to hope in Christ unto the praise of his glory.
In whom also you, having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were marked by the Holy Spirit which was promised, who is the first installment of our salvation, for the redemption of property, for the praise of his glory.
For this reason, I, having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and of your love unto all the saints, I do not stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers in order that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, might give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you grow in knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of the glory of his inheritance among the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his strong might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him on his right in the heavenly places above all rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named, not only in this age but in that which is to come, and he put all things under his feet and him he made head over all the church, which is his body, the fullness of all things which have been filled.

Part One: Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace. I want to see my Savior’s face ‘cause heaven is a wonderful place.
Part Two: Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace. I want to see my Savior’s face ‘cause heaven is a wonderful place.
Part Three: I want to go there.

O.K., what I want to know is: How do you know that heaven is a wonderful place? How do you know that it’s filled with glory and grace? How do you know you’ll see your Savior’s face? And why do you want to go there?

Here’s my suspicion. I suspect that most of us are not too sure about heaven. When we think about it…if we think about it…we have images of pearly gates, fluffy clouds, harps, wings and halos, and unending monotony. Can you imagine what the Weather Channel is like in heaven? Sunny, breezy and 75 from now through eternity.

It’s like the old joke of the revival preacher who was whipping his congregation up into a frenzy. He yells out, “Do you want to go to heaven?” and there is a thunderous response, “Yes!”

“Everybody who wants to go to heaven, get up on your feet, let’s stand together.”

Everybody stands except for one old man in the back row. The preacher says, “Sir, you’re not standing. Don’t you want to go to heaven?”

The man says, “Yes I do, but I thought you were getting a bunch together to go right now and I’m not ready yet!”

We’re not ready yet. Heaven means having to face death first and we’re not ready to face death yet. We’re not ready for an afterlife. And if we don’t have any better vision of what heaven is like than clouds and harps, why should we be ready?

What if I told you that you have been horribly deceived about heaven? What if I told you that heaven is not a place up there that you only get to after shuffling off this mortal coil? What if it’s not what we think it is? What if you don’t have to wait for death to experience that kind of life? What if heaven is not just for the afterlife any more?

Well, perhaps you wouldn’t believe me. I mean, after all, some of you saw the latest election as a crushing defeat of firmly held hopes and convictions. Heaven right now? Popular TV wavers between Ashton Kutchner punking celebrities and Fear Factor putting people in tubs of cockroaches. Heaven right now? Professors assign pointless papers and bellyache about style and punctuation when they return them with a mediocre grade. Heaven right now? With faithless boyfriends, distant girlfriends, self-doubt and self-loathing, eating disorders and sleep deprivation, family members in the hospital, parents separating, cats living with dogs…heaven right now? We might have a weak glimmer of heaven if we pull out a win over Miami next Saturday, but most of the time…no, we don’t see it.

But I refuse to believe that heaven is simply a consolation prize for suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in a world that is far from heavenly and too often hellish. Too much evil has been done in the name of “pie in the sky by and by.” If heaven is only a reward for the dead, what does that say to the living? That it’s O.K. for innocent children to dire because they are guaranteed a starry crown? That the only conversion that really matters is the one on your deathbed because no matter how you live your life a few magic words can deliver you to a new white robe? That there are different standards for life on earth and life in the great hereafter? That earth is so far from heaven that even God can’t bridge the distance to tell us what is real about the world and about us…we just have to wait?

Ephesians says emphatically, “No,” to all of these things because, in fact, God has bridged the gap. God has come among us to tell us that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand and, in fact, in our midst already. Jesus came among us to remind us that, all evidence to the contrary, those who hear God’s voice really are wealthy, powerful and hopeful.

And all evidence is not to the contrary because we have other emissaries from the other side. There are other people who are secret agents for another reality, exhibiting through their lives a certain strange tendency to live and think differently. They’re just a little bit odd, these heavenly agents. They see a world defined by destruction and somehow live peace. They see lives marked by despair and somehow find hope. They know that the end of every human span is death but still believe that the end or purpose of every human person is life. You have to watch out for these secret agents because they are everywhere. They’re in this very room. We have a name for them. They’re saints.

Saints. Saints. You haven’t seen them, you say? The Pope has to name them, you say? They have to be officially registered with the International Saint Registry, you say?

See how good these secret agents are? None of that is true. Saints, as Paul knew when he was calling every Christian he knew a saint…saints are very ordinary people who allow their lives to be used as a faint image of heaven…who help us see the world through different eyes.

Like Harriet Moore, my 3rd grade teacher. She taught me what it meant to really write, not just to make letters. She can still recite verbatim a poem I wrote for her over thirty years ago. She encouraged me. She opened a window, I suddenly felt the breeze of another world and my world was different. Ms. Moore was an ordinary person, but definitely a saint.

Like John Nicolay, my profane and earthy neighbor who lived down the street from me in my last appointment. I was John’s pastor, but more than that he was my friend and the town curmudgeon. John is a university professor who rubbed lots of people the wrong way. Not the kind of person you’d expect for sainthood. But he asked deep, troubling questions and we did coffee and theology before there was Coffee and Theology on topics like God, death, holiness, and relationships. There was something transcendent about those conversations…something that changed the world as I saw it.

Shall I keep naming? Students like Sara Porter, Laura Martin and Molly Powell. Strange church members. Clergy colleagues who always seemed on the verge of leaving the pastorate and some who actually did. Secret agents all--and saints. You know them too. And sometimes you are them.
Ephesians directs us to see that what the saints get, they get from Jesus. Because Jesus has come among us and blazed a brilliant path through the material of our earthly existence--matter matters. Human beings can echo the music of heaven. This world, as flawed and imperfect as it often is, can sometimes look a little bit like the kingdom Jesus talks about.

Those times when the earth looks heavenly are not always in some pastoral setting overlooking the autumn leaves on the Blue Ridge Parkway or standing in awe on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Usually its through saints gathered together to share their lives. Like on a Thursday night when we eat together in this room. Like in a small church in Fort Yuma, California where we slept on the floor and fixed peanut butter sandwiches on a very alternative Spring Break. Or in more mundane moments like a late night study session or even with friends over a so-called meal at O-Hill.

Heaven looks a lot different than we have usually imagined. But it’s so much better. When the saints of God come together anything can happen because they know that Christ is present. And if anything is clear from the Bible story, it is that God is never content to let us alone.

Thanks be to God for saints and secret agents who reveal to us Christ so that we can believe in life before and after death.

From Blue States to the Blues

2004-11-04T22:13:00.000-05:00

How to heal the red-blue divide? Well, before I ask that let me add that I think the red-blue divide is not an especially helpful way to look at the political dynamics in our nation. Minority voters of all stripes are left out of the red-blue equation. It is not a simple division between Starbucks and Wal-mart. The black farmers who voted for Kerry in Clarksdale, Mississippi (which he took handily) are not a latte-sipping crew. The union households in Cuyahoga County, Ohio are not NPR fans. And the matrons of Highland Park in Dallas (the deep red zone) have no interest in NASCAR.

That said...how to heal the red-blue divide? How do we put progressive thought back in conversation with rural America? How do we create a common culture that is rooted in tradition but open to difference? Did such a culture ever exist? Yes...in the late 1970s I remember it.

"Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys." Outlaw country music was the soundtrack to a progressive movement in the heartland. Luckenbach, Texas is not a fictional place. It's a small town in the central Texas hill country where a small beer hall in the midst of a grove of live oaks became a haven for good music, a celebration of rural life, and a broad stream of open-minded people. Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson were regulars there and the kind of community they created around them may not have been known for its traditional family values, but it had a generous spirit to it and it embraced the rural culture around it.

Everybody loved Willie. He was a great bud of Jimmy Carter. He symbolized American independence because he bucked the Nashville system and went back home to Texas and became a star. He wrote big hits for Patsy Cline ("Crazy") and Faron Young. Began a solo career in the outlandish cowboy suits and buzz haircuts required of Nashville stars at the time. And then left it all, re-emerging in the mid 70s as the mellow voice of an anti-establishment "outlaw" movement that was only threatening to the Nashville oligarchy. Everyone else saw Nelson for what he was...somebody who just wanted to be free to do things his way. Luckenbach became the anti-Nashville and nearby Austin became the Austin of "Austin City Limits"--a place where musical streams converged apart from the restrictions of the music industry. It was musical populism with a note of defiance.

The environs of Austin (though sadly not including Luckenbach) were one of the few patches of blue in otherwise red Texas on Tuesday. The other big patch was in South Texas where the border culture that includes a growing number of hispanics provides an alternative vision of the state. This is also one of the distinctive musical regions of Texas. Freddy Fender ("Before the Last Teardrop Falls"? Surely you remember that 1976 country gem!) and his Texas Tornados have defined a sound that is part country, part Tejano, part German oompah band. All of those make South Texas and nortern Mexico a great place for music.

What's my point here? Well, when I looked at the map today to see where the patches of blue were in the vast red heartland, what struck me was that they were all in regions where truly American music is made. Not only in Texas but in Memphis...a big blue spot. New Orleans. And throughout the Mississippi Delta region where the blues and jazz gave birth to a very original sound. Music speaks to the Southern soul. When progressive people took seriously the stories contained in the blues and jazz and outlaw country and gospel they connected with the very people with whom they have now lost touch.

My point is that the answer for progressives is not to create ghettoes supported by multi-billionaire sugar daddies like George Soros where they can peer over the walls at the masses who somehow do not share their values. The answer is to go back to Luckenbach and rediscover the rural culture that was somehow able to produce truly great people who cared about where they came from and where the country was going. It is not true that all rural folks will necessarily follow Jerry Fallwell into the voting booth to vote straight-ticket Republican. Right now he's the only one asking for their vote.

It's a rough answer at the moment and perhaps I'm just looking for hope in a dismal week, but travelling across the South this summer I felt the hardness and the ugliness, but it also felt like home. I want to believe we can sing off the same sheet of music once again. "Back in Luckenbach, Texas, ain't nobody feeling no pain."

Postcript: A good editorial on the election from former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1344291,00.html.

The Ministry of Availability

2004-10-31T22:40:00.000-05:00

I think I have to credit Sara Porter with this title. She was the first to name that gift that she has in abundance--being really present with others. I am more and more convinced that it is just this sort of ministry that can truly change the world and give us a glimpse of what God intends for all creation.

Yes, this is another sermon post I'm afraid. Thanks to all who are continuing to bear with the transcription that my blog has become!

Making Spaces
Wesley Foundation at UVA
October 31, 2004

Luke 19:1-10
He entered Jericho and was walking across it. Now there was a man named Zaccheus there and he was the chief tax collector and therefore wealthy. He sought to see who Jesus was and could not because of the crowd for he was small of size. So he ran ahead to the front where he climbed a sycamore so that he could see him because he was surely going to pass that way.
When he came to that place, Jesus looked up and said to him, "Zaccheus, come down quickly, because today, in your house, I am bound to stay with you." He came down quickly and played host to him gladly.
Those who saw it grumbled, saying, "He's shacking up for the night with a sinful man?"
Zaccheus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, half of what I own, Lord, I will give to the poor. And to anyone whom I have defrauded I will recompense four times over."
Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Humanity came to seek and save the lost."

The other day…in broad daylight…in front of a whole bunch of eyewitnesses…I embraced a woman who was not my wife…a total stranger…right there in the middle of K-mart. It’s true. And it all happened because I don’t develop photographs except twice a year.

Now let me be clear. I did not go to K-mart looking for someone to embrace. I am not a…what’s the word?…lech. Like most everybody else going into K-mart on this day I was on a mission. I had stuff to do. I had twelve rolls of film that had been collecting on the refrigerator in our house dating back to the summer of 2003. In a fit of productivity that included replacing every dead battery in the house and cleaning the light fixtures, I saw these rolls of film that have been hovering on the periphery of my vision for way too long and I said…out loud…”That’s it film. You’re going in.” So I scooped them up and carried them immediately to the car and drove straight to K-mart and walked in intending to get rid of them once and for all. That was my mission.

But developing film is a nightmarish experience. For each of those twelve rolls of film I had to fill out a separate envelope. Name…Alex Joyner. Address…do they really need this? Maybe I should put down Geoff Van Gelder’s address just for fun…O.K. 77 Georgetown Green…do I really have to write out Charlottesville on each one of these things?…No. I’m not going to do it. I’m writing C’ville. Oh, yeah. I’m a rebel…Phone number?…home or office?…double prints or just a single print with a photo disk?…premium paper or regular?…Republican, Democrat or independent? 12 times I’m writing this out. Now fortunately the drop box at K-mart is right in the entry of the store and there is a bench there so I’ve got a place to sit for the thirty minutes it takes me to fill out these stupid forms. Only the edge of the bench is curved and the envelopes keep falling on the floor, but that’s O.K. I’m getting these things out of the way. They are going to be out of here soon. The mission is about to be accomplished. I can get back home and tackle that recalcitrant light socket by the front door.

But even though I, like so many of the people in that store, am on a mission, there is one person there who is not. Right there in the front of the store is Ann. Ann is paid to be the greeter at the door, like so many other retired folks you see when you’re going into Wal-mart or coming out of a grocery store. But nobody could pay Ann enough to be doing her job the way she is doing it.
Now I realize you have to have some gifts for this job. You have to be unfailingly nice even when you’re going through a horrible day. You have to pretend that you enjoy standing on your feet for hours on a concrete-supported tiled floor under life-sucking fluorescent lights listening to unintelligible garbled messages come across an archaic loudspeaker system and fielding the complaints of a Forest Lakes matron who has come in for the eighteenth time to exchange her latest purse purchase because the shoulder strap doesn’t have enough give. And all of this while scanning the carts of every exiting patron to see if they’re carting off the latest John Madden football video game. What I’m saying is: I don’t think I could do what Ann does, but she was doing it with a grace and a presence that I can only aspire to have at her age.

She respected the fact that I needed space to conduct the mental gymnastics I was doing to fill out the envelopes, but she noticed when I ran out of envelopes and she went and got me some more. And she was available to respond when I looked at my stack of envelopes yet to do and looked at her with mournful eyes. “I hope you’ve got a lot of great pictures there” is what she said. “I hope so, too, for all this work,” I responded.

Yes, it was her ability to be present in the moment for the people who were there in front of her that most impressed me about Ann. When people talked to her, she cocked her head in the way people do when they’re really listening to you. She probably had an aching back, bad feet, a pile of work waiting for her at home and an ungrateful wretch of a son who hadn’t called her in two weeks, but she had space for the people right in front of her. She had room to be with me. And that’s why, after I dropped my last envelope into the box, I turned in celebration to Ann and gave her a hug.

Now Zaccheus was…a wee little man…and a wee little man was he. He climbed up…in a sycamore tree…for the Lord…he wanted to see. You’ve probably heard of Zaccheus before…the chief tax collector in the town of Jericho who was small of stature. All that we know of him before he meets Jesus in the gospel story tonight is that he was a very wealthy man. He was the chief tax collector. Tax collectors worked with the hated Roman authorities. They made a living out of overcharging citizens when they paid their tax bills. “Tax collector” for Israelites meant “sinner” and “wealthy.” Zaccheus was a wee little man, but he was a powerful wee little man.

Jesus was walking through Jericho with his disciples headed towards Jerusalem. He had to get to Jerusalem. It was important that he get to Jerusalem. He was on a mission. Just six chapters earlier he was rushing toward Jerusalem because, he said, “I must be on my way because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” [Lk 13:33] And there were many people who wanted to kill him. He was popular. Crowds thronged to see him. When he passed through town it created a stir. And he was passing through because he had to get to Jerusalem and by the end of this chapter he is there.

But before that he was making a swing through Jericho. It was a battleground state in the upcoming elections and he was trying to sway the undecided NASCAR dads without flu shots in the Jordan River Valley. No, of course that’s not true, but he was headed to Jerusalem and he came through Jericho and it looked as though he was just going to pass through. The first verse of this chapter says he was just walking across it.

He gathered a crowd as he always did and Zaccheus was in it. We don’t know why he wanted to see Jesus, but he did. He was a busy man. He could have been doing other things. Surely he knew he was unpopular with this crowd. He was short. He wasn’t going to be able to see much and nobody was going to say, “Hey, Zack, Ol’ buddy! Why don’t you come up here to the front?” But he wanted to see Jesus so he ran ahead and climbed up a…he climbed up in a…sycamore tree right along the path where Jesus was coming.

Now Jesus had no reason to stop for Zaccheus. He had been going on a bit of a tear recently about the trouble rich people would have in following him. He told a parable about a poor man named Lazarus and a rich man who both die. Guess who ended up in paradise next to Abraham? It was the poor guy. A rich man comes to Jesus and wants to follow him, Jesus sends him away to sell all his possessions and then says it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle that it would be for a rich person to get into God’s kingdom. That was right before he hit Jericho. It doesn’t seem like Jesus has a whole lot of time to be dealing with the rich, but it wasn’t a poor person that he picked out of a tree. It was Zaccheus!

Jesus stops and looks up at that poor little rich man straddling the branch of the sycamore tree and he says…come on…you can say it with me…”Zaccheus, you come down, for I’m going to your house today. For I’m going to your house today.” Only he doesn’t say it exactly like that. What the scripture says is that he says, “Zaccheus, you come down quickly because I am bound to stay with you today.” It is necessary that I come to eat with you. I have to come to your house.

This is the same Jesus who has to hurry to Jerusalem. Jesus has a mission, an obligation, a pressing engagement in the city up the road, but suddenly he drops everything because he now has to go hang his hat at the home of a rich tax collector for the night.

The people along the road are disgusted. They immediately start grumbling and saying, “This guy is shacking up for the night with a sinner? With a rich sinner?” They are just like the Pharisees and scribes a few towns and a few chapters back who grumble and say, “This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them?”

It’s a surprising turn to say the least but it is not so out of character when you remember that this is the same Jesus who told the story of the man with two sons. The younger son wants his share of the inheritance while his old man is still alive. He takes it and goes off to a far country and squanders it with loose living and comes staggering back to beg to live with his father like a slave. And what does that father say to the older brother who cannot believe it when his brother comes back and is welcomed with a fatted calf, fancy new threads and a soiree with his closest friends? He says, “I had to do it! I had to do it…because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found” [Lk. 15:32]. Jesus must be seeing someone rising from the dead here. Someone really lost is getting found. Something really, really important is happening here. Salvation is coming to a house today. The whole universe is being revealed in the branches of a sycamore tree in Jericho and every other mission must stop to make room for this one. “I’m going to your house, Zaccheus, today. I am bound to stay with you.”

I want somebody to be bound to stay with me for awhile. I want to be bound to stay with someone else. I want to have the orderly universe of my days interrupted with late-breaking news that the property managers report form is going to have to be laid aside because Sasha Miller has a story to tell me that is the most important story in the world. I want to hear that Scottish country dancing is not just a diversion from the work of the day…it IS the work of the day and doing the promenade around a set of dancers with Suzanne is practice for a hoedown with the Trinity. I want to believe that the space Ann created in the god-forsaken antechambers of a retail giant was the space where God became incarnate one more time.

Do you want to be bound to stay with someone for just a minute? Do you want some space that isn’t study space or work space or anything other than a space to breathe? Do you want to know that there is someone reserving a spot of their soul so that they can meet you? Do you want to believe that there is space within you that is available for someone else? I want to believe that.

I see people on this campus every day who are so consumed by the things they are doing and by the things that they are not doing that they do not seem to be inhabiting the same plane of existence with me. Elizabeth Foss talked in a sermon a couple of months ago about the danger of cell phones which can take us away from the place that we are so that we ignore what is right in front of us. Our anxieties about our schoolwork or our relationships or our careers or our majors or the election or terrorism can work in us and grind in us and make our eyes seem unfocused and set on some distant shore. I see these people everyday and sometimes I see one in the mirror.

Look. I know that you are important people and that we are living in one of the most important weeks in one of the most important years of our lives. I am astounded to think about all the things you do and all the things you are going to do in your lives. But it is because you are important that I need to tell you this. Stop. You are passing by too quickly. You are unaware that there is a savior walking through the town. You are missing the struggling tax collector in the tree who is desperately seeking salvation. You are on a mission, but you’re on the wrong one.

The truth is that what Jesus asks of you is not to do anything. What Jesus asks is that you be available. There is someone today, perhaps a stranger, perhaps a friend, who needs your embrace. There is someone today who has a space for you. Are you available?

One of my favorite stories is the story of Martin the Cobbler. Martin was a poor cobbler who had a vision that God would come to visit him that very night. So he did everything he could to be ready. He tidied his shop. He made the finest meal he could provide with his meager means. He had a warm fire going in the fireplace. He was ready to meet God.

But when the knock on the door came the first time it was a woman with an infant child looking for a meal. So he invited them in and fed them and made sure they were provided for. Two more times visitors came who were in need and both times Martin helped them and sent them on their way, but he couldn’t help but be impatient because he knew that God was coming. At the end of the night the fire had dwindled to nothing, his food was all gone, and he still had not had the visitor he was expecting.

God appeared in a vision to him again that night and Martin was very upset. He said, “You said that you would come and visit me tonight and I prepared and I was ready and you didn’t come!” But God said, “Martin. I visited you three times tonight and you welcomed me each time.”

You are bound to work on the homework that’s due tomorrow. You are bound to finish that paper and study for that test. But if I have any authority in your life I want to say that you are also bound to be available for someone else this week. And if you are, you are bound to meet God. Just like that wee little man. Thanks be to God.

Getting an Attitude

2004-10-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

Because sometimes ya gotta talk about money...

An Attitude of Gratitude
October 31, 2004
Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, Charlottesville

Genesis 9:8-17 (NRSV)
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."
God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."
God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

There are lots of ways to preach about giving, and none of them are very good. Last year when I preached on Stewardship Sunday with you I brought along, as a prop, a storebought tomato. Those are the lengths I have to go to in order to come up with a good way to talk about giving. And how do you follow a sermon about a tomato?

When we talk about giving folks naturally think that we’re talking about money. And they’re right. That’s part of what we’re talking about when we talk about stewardship and money is such a hard thing for us to talk about in the church. Maybe we like to think we're above all that. I'm just not sure. But money is one of the resources we have to offer to God and to the work of the Church and we shouldn't be afraid to talk about how that resource is used.

Now if I were John Wesley, (and this is a dream that crosses my mind quite frequently), if I were John Wesley, the first Methodist, I would have no fear of talking about money. Wesley’s rule was simple: make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. Of course the sticky point in his societies was the particular meaning of "all you can". But Wesley could probably have helped you to decide that as well. So from time to time we should bravely follow in Wesley's footsteps and talk about the meaning of giving and to remind ourselves why we give financially to the church.

But how to do it? As I say, there are a lot of ways to preach about this, most of them bad and I’ve been trying to think about the best way to do this. So I thought about lots of noble feelings I could call upon—loyalty, fidelity, generosity—and I happened upon…guilt. I don't knock this because guilt is a powerful motivator. If I were going to give a guilt-inducing sermon today I would tell the old story about the paper money sitting around in the bank vault. A fifty-dollar bill says, "Oh, I've been lots of exciting places this month. I went to a Cavalier football game and the circus and the bowling alley."

The twenty dollar bill says, "Well, I got to go to a restaurant and Plan 9 and Putt-Putt."

Finally the one dollar bill pipes up and say, "You guys are lucky. All I ever see is the inside of a church."

Now that would be a story for a guilt sermon, but it’s a really bad joke and that's not what I'm going to preach and that's not the reason we should give. Guilt, powerful though it may be, is not the reason we give to God. Guilt is behind a lot of church building projects and many church-related colleges owe their existence to money given in the service of guilt. More than a few flowers have been bought for spouses out of guilt. But that is not the reason Noah ended his long tenure on the ark by building an altar to God and making an offering. There is no gratitude in guilt and without an attitude of gratitude, (you may notice that this phrase, which has a nice ring to it, will become a theme to this un-sermon), without an attitude of gratitude, giving is not a spiritual exercise.

Another tried and true method for stewardship sermons is the "need-response" method. In that case in this sermon I would lay out what the church needs, we'd look at the budget, and then call for an equivalent response. If I were going to do that kind of sermon I'd tell the story about the little girl who was leaving church one Sunday and she handed the preacher a quarter. The preacher looked a little puzzled and asked the girl why she had given her the money. The little girl said, "Well, my Mom says you're the poorest preacher she knows."

Now that's a case of someone seeing the need and responding and again that's not an altogether bad way to approach things. It's the way most of our community groups work. You determine the need, set the budget and then ask for a response. We like this method. It gives us a concrete connection to the result of our giving and we need that. We all like to see that what we give goes to do good things.

But that's not the kind of sermon I'm going to do and that's not the best reason for us to give. There are great needs in our church. In the charge conference this afternoon and in the weeks to come you will be hearing about the great challenges we face in being in ministry in this place and in these buildings. It’s going to take a financial response to meet those challenges. There are many needs in our community that call for a response - a financial response.

But I look back at the Noah story once more and I realize that Noah didn't build that altar and make that offering to God because he perceived a need outside of himself and responded to it. Noah built the altar because he felt within himself the impulse to give thanks to God for preserving him and his family and all the animals of the ark through all the long days of the flood. Without an attitude of gratitude (there’s that phrase again) giving is not a spiritual exercise.

Then there's the "everybody on the bandwagon" approach to stewardship sermons. This is a good one. It emphasizes that if we all work together, it's really not that hard to meet the budget. You take the budget and divide it among the number of members on the roll and the figure is very manageable. Of course, that's in an ideal and equitable world, but this approach says that we need to give because everybody's got to do their part and if we all do a little it will add up to a lot!

That's an encouraging thing to hear. If I were going to preach that kind of sermon this morning I'd tell the story about the old junk man who used to ride through town with his mule and cart collecting obsolete items for repair and resale. One day he stopped outside the home of a man who was giving him an old washing machine to fix up. As he talked the man with the washing machine noticed that the mule was really very old and didn't look up to any task, much less pulling a cart of heavy junk. Finally the junk man was ready to move on and he turned to the mule and said, "Come on, Jezzie, come on, Old Paint, come on, Steadylegs, come on, Gertrude, come on, Mabel."

The man looked at him and said, "What are you doing?"

The junk man said, "Well, if this mule thought she was the only one pulling that cart she'd never do it."

That's not a bad theme. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a community of members to raise a buudget. That has the virtue of being true. We are in this together as a congregation and a community. But it's not the kind of sermon I'm going to do and it's not the best reason to give.

Remember Noah? When he built that altar he was the only gainfully employed person on earth. Surely he didn't expect others to help carry the load. Without an attitude of gratitude (you can say it with me now)…without an attitude of gratitude, giving is not a spiritual exercise.

So how else can I do this sermon? We could try the tax break incentive approach (church giving is still tax-deductible, you know), the "give 'til it hurts" approach (for those who think anything that's supposed to be good for you has got to be painful), and the time-honored "God'll get you if you don't" method (which is really just a variation on the guilt approach).

But none of that feels right to me. So here's what I’m thinking for the theme of the sermon uld have preached if I were preaching a stewardship sermon today--giving is not something you do because the church wants you to do it or even because God wants you to do it. Giving is something you do because you need to.

I realize that that sounds a little bit like someone we used to call "Mr. Opportunity" - Joe Carson. Rev. Joe Carson was the former district superintendent of the Charlottesville District who became famous for offering people the "opportunity" to do some really major tasks. We sometimes suspected that his "opportunities" were what we call "jobs".

But Joe Carson was right about his approach to the Christian life. What the rest of the world might call an onerous task, Christians call an opportunity to respond to Christ. That's just as true for giving as it is for any other part of the Christian journey. We give, not because it's something we "gotta do", but because we need to respond to God's incredible gifts to us. And when we approach giving with an attitude of gratitude, as Noah did, then it is a spiritual exercise.

Here’s something I really believe. I really believe that it is not a question of whether or not to give, but of to whom or to what we give ourselves. We signal with our money those things that we truly serve and that service can be to drugs, or alcohol, or material possessions or food. The funny thing is that those things cannot touch the deep joy we can feel as we give in response to God's love for us.

I've seen that kind of joy in gifts that have been given by church members and people associated with the church in support of the church. At my old churches on the Orange Circuit we saw it in the giving for the steeple and the pew Bibles. At the Wesley Foundation we see it in the alumni who are so generous in supporting our ministry. It's an awesome responsibility for your church leaders to be recipients of that joy of giving, but it is also awesomely wonderful. An attitude of gratitude is a fruit of the spirit.

And here’s something else that is interesting to consider. Gratitude is good for you. I was just reading yesterday about some recent studies that show that grateful, giving people have some good things going for them. The studies showed that “people who describe themselves as feeling grateful to others and either to God or to creation in general tend to have higher vitality and more optimism, suffer less stress, and experience fewer episodes of clinical depression than the population as a whole.” “Grateful people tend be less materialistic than the population as a whole.” And “in an experiment with college students, those who kept a ‘gratitude journal,’ a weekly record of things they should feel grateful for, achieved better physical health, were more optimistic, exercised more regularly, and described themselves as happier than a control group of students who kept no journals but had the same overall measures of health, optimism, and exercise when the experiment began.” If you’d like to research on this you can go to factcheck.org.

The amazing witness I hear from those who have discovered this deep need and this deep joy in giving is that there is always a sense of something flowing back to them in return. It's not a direct exchange; we don't give to God so that God will give us something in return. I knew an evangelist in Dallas who promised that every $100 gift would return $1000 to the person who gave it. That's not Biblical or Christian - it's a cruel distortion of what giving is all about. But it IS true that giving opens up something within us so that we are then free to receive what God has for us. A window opens in heaven and a blessing from God comes in.

That's not my image, that's Biblical. The prophet Malachi uses it to encourage the people of Israel to make their offering to the Lord. "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse," he says, "so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing." [Mal 3:10]. People who have found the joy of giving never talk about what they've given up; they always seem to talk about what they've received.

So what is it that we should give to God? How much? John Wesley says, "All you can". The Biblical model is the tithe that Malachi speaks of. A tithe is a tenth and in Biblical times it was a tenth of all the produce of the fields. This would be taken to the priests as an offering, or used to feed the more vulnerable members of the community - the widow, the landless and the orphan. Even today in Europe you can see the tithe barns that were built by the church to store the offerings of a tenth of the produce.

Tithing is still our model in the Christian Church. It is just that - a model to which we all strive and not a rule that should inspire guilt or nit-picking. It is useless to try to prescribe whether that tenth should be net or gross, pre-tax or after-tax - those are dead end questions. Jesus warns the Pharisees about this in the gospels because they were very careful to tithe even the herbs of their gardens, but at the same time they neglected more important matters like justice and honesty.

Jesus also gave us a saying that challenges everything we say and do with regard to giving. When asked in a trick question whether or not it was permissible to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor, Jesus responded by asking for a coin. He asked whose image was on the coin and they responded, "The emperor's." Then Jesus said, "Pay to the emperor the things that are the emperor's and to God the things that are God's."

What part of our lives is God's? What part of our lives is NOT God's? The answer is that everything we are is God's for it was God who created us and it is God who made the covenant promise to be with us. Whenever we look at the rainbow in the clouds we are reminded of that covenant that God made with Noah and so we are to render all that we have to God.

It's too easy to give God a tenth and be done with it. We are to offer God all that we are and all that we have and that's a responsibility that requires us to consider all the ways we use our resources, whether in the church or not. But we do so with thankfulness and gratitude or we shouldn't do it all. We do so with a deep joy that comes from knowing that there is part of us that must give in order to truly live. That's not just an opportunity; it's a blessing. When we give from that deep joy, it is a spiritual exercise that opens us up to what God has in store for us. So I guess the Bible is right when it tells us that "with every gift [we should show] a cheerful face, and dedicate [our] tithe with gladness" [Sir 35:11].

Well, that's the sermon I would have preached, if I were preaching such a sermon today. No guilt, no pep talks, no tax breaks, no commands - just joy. Thanks be to God who gave us God's own life in Jesus Christ, so that we could give our lives in thankfulness.

Foolish Promises, Broken Walls

2004-09-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

It was pure joy to be back in my hometown for this occasion behind the Harley dealership. Clarence Robinson, a member of Little Zion Baptist Church, had a vision a few years ago that he should get all of the churches in the county, black and white, together for a service. It is a sign of real hope for my segregated home.

Foolish Promises, Broken Walls
September 26, 2004
Orange County Community Service
Orange, Virginia

Ruth 1:1-18 (NRSV)
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the LORD had considered his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back each of you to your mother's house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband." Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud.

They said to her, "No, we will return with you to your people."

But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has turned against me."

Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So she said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law."

But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die -- there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!"

When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

It is a great honor to be here this afternoon and to have been invited to share a word with you at this service. But I want to start by recognizing that a word from God has already been spoken and it is spoken by the very fact that you are here in this place. I can think of no greater witness to this community that I love than the gathering together of so many different people from so many churches to sing and worship and give thanks for what God is doing in this place. I know some of you probably came only because you heard there was going to be a meal here, but that’s O.K., too, because when Jesus talks about heaven, it usually has something to do with the dinner table and we church people have been practicing that heavenly eating habit ever since.

Clarence says that it was a vision that was given to him that led to this service and I believe that is true. Something powerful, something prophetic, something beautiful, something holy is at work in bringing this together. And after hearing about this service for a couple of years now, I jumped at the chance to be a part of it.

Now I realize that it is not an easy thing to preach in your hometown. I am keenly aware that some of you had six years of my preaching when I was serving Bethlehem and Salem churches out in the eastern part of the county and you probably know everything I have to say before I even say it. To you I say, “Stay awake.” I am also keenly aware that some of you taught me in high school, middle school and elementary school. My third grade teacher, Harriet Moore, who more than anybody else introduced me to the love of writing, still quotes a poem I wrote for her in 1972. A person with a memory like that is a person to be feared. And I also know that some of you watched me go through “that awkward phase,” which for me lasted eighteen years, some of you corrected me when I went wrong, some of you were my friends and classmates, some of you encouraged me, and challenged me, and ignored me when appropriate, and even when you didn’t know you were doing it, you taught me who I was and what I was meant to be. It’s hard to come back before a congregation like this and say you have a word from God.

But I do. And the word is very simple. Be careful what you give yourself to, because you might break something. That’s it. If you lose track during the sermon or your mind wanders during the next two hours, just remember that because it’s what this sermon is all about: Be careful what you give yourself to, because you just might break something.

What does that mean? When I was in my last two years of high school here in Orange I spent my Thursday nights in a most unusual way. I would usually meet up with my best friend, Billy Mack, and we’d head off down the Old Gordonsville Road north of town to a little building near the VMI plant. I think my folks were a little bit suspicious of what went on out there in that building and I know they were a little mystified by my eagerness to go there every single Thursday night. But I went because I was compelled to go there. I went because I had made a commitment to be there. I went because I had a red T-shirt with white letters on it that said, “Thursday Night Fever”, and I had that shirt specially made for this event.

Just before dinner time the vans and cars would start pulling in and people would start unloading. There’d be about 20 of us by the time we all got in and a few of us would head off to the store to buy dinner while the rest of us set up for the night. Billy and I would set up the tables.

It was an interesting collection of people and I always felt a little bit different because I didn’t share a lot of the same things with the others who were there. This was an adult socialization program for mentally challenged adults. The people who were in the program were adults who lived very different lives than I did. These were folks who came because they wanted to learn how to live more independently. So they went shopping and learned to cook and learned to read and learned to interact with other adults so that one day they might be able…perhaps…to get a place of their own, and with some assistance, to become a part of a community that often did not accept them or made them feel invisible.

I was there because I sensed that what was happening at that little building on Thursday nights was important. O.K., that’s not all true. I was also there because the director of the program had a really gorgeous daughter, but mostly because I knew that it was important, though I could never quite find the words to say why. But being with Charles and Graham and Christine changed my life and broke down a wall I hadn’t even known was there. These folks, who in so many ways lived on the outside of Orange, turned those Thursday night dinners into an open space where everybody was welcome…including me. It was an early lesson…be careful what you give yourself to, because you just might break something…like a wall.

Ruth was not supposed to say what she did. Ruth, in the story we just read as our Old Testament lesson, was not supposed to make the promise that she did. What in the world did she have to gain by committing herself to her mother-in-law in such passionate terms? “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die.” What was she thinking?

Did you hear the beginning of this story? This was not a family to be committing your life to. The book of Ruth starts with a man named Elimilech…a good, upright, card-carrying member of God’s people Israel…packing up his good, upright Israelite family and taking them off to Moab to escape a famine. Now that may sound good to you. After all, he was trying to keep his family alive and if there’s no food in Bethlehem, you might as well look for supplies elsewhere. But good, upright Israelites would not have gone to Moab…even to find food!

Do you know what they say about Moabites in the Hebrew scriptures? Moabites are the children of incest. (Go read Genesis 19 and the story of Lot, but be warned. It’s rated R.) It was Moabites who lured the Israelites into temptation and the worship of idols when they traveled in the wilderness…especially the Moabite women. Moabites were banned from the assembly of the people to the tenth generation. Moabites were cursed and reviled by the prophets. To go to Moab when the chips were down in Israel would be like a UVA student seeking wisdom at Virginia Tech. You just don’t do that.

But Elimilech does that. He packs up his wife, Naomi, and their two sons and heads off to Moab. And he dies. Well, what did you expect? His sons, who are named Machlon and Chilion, which in English means something like Weakness and Sickness, (we don’t hold out much hope for these guys, do we?), yeah, old Weakling and Sicky marry Moabite wives themselves and by verse 5 they’re dead, too. This Moabite thing is not turning out too well for our heroes.

So the only ones left are Naomi, the grieving wife of Elimilech and grieving mother of the boys, and two Moabite women who have joined the clan by marriage. One is named Orpah, which means “back of the neck” because that’s what we’re going to see of her in just a minute, and the other is named Ruth. Naomi can’t even see them because her vision is entirely clouded by the losses she has suffered.

Naomi hears that, once again, there is bread in Bethlehem. The famine is over. And with nothing to keep her in the god-forsaken land of Moab, she decides to head home. She decides to leave without her daughters-in-law. Oh, they accompany her a way out of town. It is the polite and expected thing to do. But Naomi dismisses them. “Go back,” she says. “Go back to your family homes may you find security with a new husband.” That’s what this story has become now. It’s all about security and in this society at this time a woman on her own had none. Widows had even less. The only hope that Naomi can imagine is to go back to her people, and certainly these Moabite women should go back to theirs.

They protest. They won’t go back. They insist on going with her back to Judah and Naomi gets a little testier. “Go back. Go back.” She keeps repeating this refrain. “Look, what more can I do for you? Could I get married again and have sons so that you could wait around for them to grow up to be your husbands? No, that’s ridiculous. What could you possibly see in me? Besides, it’s worse for me than for you because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” Ah…now we know what Naomi is really thinking. It’s not just about security. She feels that she has been cursed and maybe she wonders if Moab has something to do with it.

Well, Orpah can take a hint. She is named back of the neck, you know. So off she goes back to a future we never hear anymore about. But Ruth is still there. She won’t go back, though Naomi has repeated that phrase many times. She tries once more. “Look, your sister-in-law has some sense. She’s gone back to her people and her gods. Go back.”

Now this is what I don’t get. Ruth should never have made this promise which she is about to make here. It’s a foolish promise. She is a Moabite. She should know that she’ll never be accepted in Israelite society. She’ll never fit in at the town socials and street festivals. People will never greet her by name when she goes into Hardee’s for coffee and she’ll never get a second look when she sits in the stands at Porterfield Park for the Friday night football games. No man to protect her. No family to claim her. And a Moabite to boot.

“Stop telling me to go back! Don’t tell me not to follow you! Naomi, you may feel cursed and half-dead already, but you are not all-dead and even when you are I’ll be right by your side. Your people…they’re my people. Your God…that’s my God. And may God have mercy on my soul if even death separates me from you.” It’s a foolish thing to say. But Naomi’s slow climb back into life, and Ruth’s, begins with this foolish promise that ignores the barriers that cloud everyone’s judgment and creates a new opening for God’s new day. Be careful what you give yourself to, because you just might break something…like a wall.

I know a God who’s not very careful about this. I know a God who is a little bit reckless in the promises she makes. I know a God who gives God’s own self to a world and to a people that are not in any shape to be the grateful recipients they should be. I know a God who is not content to let sick people go unhealed, to let outsiders go unwelcomed, to let sinful people go unredeemed, to let lost people go unfound, to let dead people go unraised, to let lonely people go unrecognized, to let the poor go uncared-for, to let you and me go unloved.

And it’s a foolish thing to do. Because God knows that we don’t deserve that sort of commitment. God knows we live behind walls, and throw up barriers, and forget who we are, and forget who our brothers and sisters are. God knows us and God comes to be with us. In Jesus Christ, God comes to be with us, to walk among us, to share our flesh, to share our tears, to tame our fears, to look us in the eye and say, “You may not be able to see anything but death, but I see life. You may not be able to claim me yet, but I claim you. You may not be able to see yourself as a child of God, but where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. Your people are my people. And when it comes to the end of it all, when you die, I’ll be there with you.”

And because God makes this promise…this extravagant, uncalled-for, unmerited promise…to you and to me, something breaks. Something shudders. Something quakes. Because this God we serve? This God of Jesus Christ? This God is in the earth-shaking, curtain-splitting, wall-crumbling, rock-rolling-away-from-the-tomb business, and when this God starts to make promises nothing can stand in the way…not even the walls you and I have so carefully constructed.

I have some news for you, brothers and sisters: there are even walls in Orange County that are coming down. They are coming down whether we work to keep them up or not. But if we start telling the truth, we’ll see that the work is not worth it.

I hate to say this because Orange is my birthplace and it is the place where I still come to remember who I am and what the world looks like. Many of the things that I can celebrate about my life and my outlook on the world come from having lived here and from having known you. But as much as I celebrate those things I have to say that I also grew up with a lot of lies. We grew up with a lot of lies. I told a lot of lies.

We told ourselves lies and they are not true. They are not true. We need to hear the truth. It is not true that when we talk about Orange County that we have to say, “Oh, blacks and whites will never get along because the gap between us is just too wide.” It is not true that outsiders just can’t understand, that they just will not be able to fit in because they haven’t known our history. It is not true that the potential of our young people is cut off because they live in a place like Orange. It is not true that the future is bleak…that things were better in the past. It is not true that the story ends with us, that young people aren’t what they used to be.

The truth, brothers and sisters, is not any of those things because the truth is that in Jesus Christ all things are being made new. The truth is that in Christ Jesus all things are being reconciled to God. The truth is that in Jesus Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, Israelite or Moabite, slave nor free, black nor white, male nor female, outsiders nor insiders, because in Jesus Christ there is a new creation. There is one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord and Savior and every wall that denies this fact at the heart of the universe is destined to come down.

Who can tell this story that is the truth? Only the people of God can tell this story. Only the people of God can live out this truth. And whether they be Missionary Baptist or Southern Baptist, whether they be Episcopalian or Presbyterian, or Catholic or Protestant, or Pentecostal or Evangelical or, God help us, United Methodist…they can tell that truth and no one else can.

You don’t believe this is an important day? You don’t believe that a picnic behind a Harley dealership is an echo of the kingdom of heaven? I hope you believe that, because I do. Just like I know that that little building on Old Gordonsville Road was an echo, too. I gave myself to it and something broke…like a wall. You give yourself to the truth that is the story of Jesus Christ and something breaks like a wall. God gives God’s own self to us with a foolish promise and something massive breaks…like the wall that separates earth and heaven….you and God.

I take it back. The point of this sermon is not to be careful about what you give yourself to. Throw caution to the wind. Give yourself to God and this place…this group of people…is where God’s new thing begins. Right now. Thanks be to God. Let’s eat.

Holy Poverty

2004-09-26T13:44:00.000-04:00

The general response I received to this sermon was a uncomprehending, "Huh?" Or a concern that I had not told anyone what to do. In exploring indirect communication once again I think I am running that risk.

But poverty does matter.

For Love or Money
September 26, 2004
Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church

Luke 16:19-31
There was a man who was rich and he would dress himself in expensive clothes and fine linen and feast sumptuously every day. A poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate and he was covered with sores. He desired to feed from the table droppings of the rich man, but even the dogs came and licked his wounds.
In time, the poor man died and was carried off by the angels to the bosom of Abraham.
Then the rich man died and was buried. In Hades he raised up his head, being in torment, and he saw Abraham at a great distance and Lazarus enfolded in his care. He called out to him and said, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flaming fire."
But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'
He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house --for I have five brothers -- that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'
Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'
He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

On my desk in my office next door I have a picture of a Mexican teenager standing in the middle of her family’s small grocery in the front room of their house. The picture is just as I want to remember her. Her face is serious -- I think only Americans feel the need to smile in every picture -- but there is a hint of bemusement there. She is wearing a track suit because she is an athlete at her school, but at the same time there is a sense of calm about her. And the fruits and vegetables that surround her in the store are alive with the strong flavors and exotic textures that I have come to associate with Mexico.

I keep Berenice's picture on my desk partly because she gave me the small picture frame in which I have placed her picture, but also because she once paid me the extreme honor of not making me feel like a guest in her house. Her family is one of modest means. Her father is often away for months at a time, working in Dallas or Chicago or northern Mexico or wherever he knows there is work. Her mother runs the small grocery with the help of Berenice and her older brother. They don’t have much. But they are willing to share what they have.

In the fall of 2001 I went to spend a week with them as a team of us scouted sites for future mission trips. They are part of the Methodist Church in Cortazar and they put us up. In the spring of 2002 a group from the Wesley Foundation went back to spend a week working at the local Methodist school. I got to stay with them again.

But Berenice did not let me be a guest on either occasion. She asked me to help her with her English homework. She called me out of my room to watch the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees in Game 6 and 7 of their World Series. We watched on the fuzzy screen of a small television set in the front room, nestled among the chayote squash and the avocados. There was a lot that made me stick out like a sore thumb in that family, but in the bottom of the ninth of game 7, I sure couldn’t have told you what those things were.

I went to Mexico to do something, to fix something, to make the world better, to salve my consciousness, to convince myself that we really could make a difference, that we really could save the world. On several key occasions, Berenice took the initiative from me and reminded me that being in control is an illusion I can live without. Sometimes I need to be reminded that what God asks from me is a little less.

There is no doubt that there is a problem with the rich man. And try as we might to explain it away, wealth has something to do with it. How many times did you squirm as the gospel lesson was read today? Did you squirm at the notion that something as antiquated as a fiery hell might make its way into the reading from an enlightened congregation’s pulpit? Did you find yourself wondering if there is a literal Abraham with a literal bosom presiding over a realm that is most noteworthy for not being a place of torment? Or is it the money thing? In the United States, we live in an economic system and a values system that is built on the notion that wealth is not an automatic indicator of damnation. In fact, it is more often seen as a sign of blessing. Money is not an obstacle to moral living in our land, it is a resource that can be used wisely and beneficially. So when we hear stories like the parable Jesus tells today…the squirm factor is high. Because whatever our current financial status, even as students, it takes a lot of money to create a university like this, a city like Charlottesville, and a society like ours. We’ve got a lot invested in wealth.

It’s a rich man who has our attention first and last and throughout this story. Jesus tells a story to a group of religious leaders who were, we find out a few verses prior, great lovers of money. So he has their ears when he starts his story this way, “There was a man who rich and he would dress himself each day in purple.” You’ve got to be rich to wear purple. It takes the dye from a thousand rare Mediterranean indigo shellfish, or some such creature, to make purple clothes and that usually means that the purple cloth is reserved for royalty. But no matter. This man can afford it and he wears it, along with fine linen. And he feasts sumptuously every day.

Is this a sin? Is there a reason we should condemn the man for this? Maybe he worked hard for his money. Maybe he used his wealth to set up large philanthropic foundations to support noble causes like public radio and the Palestinian Leprosy Prevention League. If he had a little extra to spend on luxuries, whose to blame him? And Jesus doesn’t at the moment, though he has a tendency to make the rich nervous. He has already said in Luke, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” (Luk 6:24). He tells stories that lift up the outsiders. But he doesn’t say anything against the man here. Not yet.

There is another man, too. He has a name, unlike the rich man. Lazarus. But he is poor and almost all of the verbs that describe Lazarus are passive verbs. He was laid at the rich man’s gate as if he had been tossed there by a violent wind. In fact the verb is the same as the word used by Jesus to describe a farmer casting seed upon the ground. The poor man is not an actor in the story…he’s the object of it. The poor man is cast down at the gate and is covered with sores. The only thing he actively does is to desire to eat the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table like the dogs get to do. Like the prodigal son who finally comes to the end of his money, the end of his resources, and back to his senses, who looks at the pig’s food and would gladly eat it except that no would give him anything, so Lazarus looks at the dog’s food and desires to eat it. But he cannot even do this and the dogs have even neglected the table crumbs so that they can come and lick his sores. He cannot eat and instead he is being fed upon.

The poor man dies. No surprise there. Even in death he makes no moves of his own. Angels carry him to Abraham, a symbol of peace and joy and rest for the Hebrew people. Abraham was the first of a large, large family and now Lazarus has found a place in it…not by anything he did, because he can’t do anything to help himself…but just because he has a place in God’s heart.

The rich man dies, too. No surprise there either, really. It happens to the best of us. But there are no angels to carry him off. He is simply buried. And his place of rest is no rest at all. He drew the Hades card and who knows why? Was it because he neglected the poor man at the gate? Was it because he committed some other evil deed by commission or omission? Was it his lavish lifestyle? Or was it simply the possession of wealth? We’re a little afraid to ask this question because it opens the door to all kinds of anxieties in our lives, but we just have to know--what exactly did the man do?

Jesus will not relieve our anxiety. He just keeps telling the story though he surely must know what agony we are in to know the answer to that very personally relevant question. He just ignores our furrowed brows and pained expressions and gives us a visual that makes it even worse. The rich man is being tortured. In the throes of the torture his back arches, his head is forced up and he sees Abraham as if at a great distance, across a great divide. Now it is the rich man who seems to be an echo of the prodigal son who is seen by his father which he is still a long way off. But there is no reunion here.

The rich man, who interestingly remains rich even in death according to the text, (I guess you can take it with you), looks up and sees Abraham and beside him Lazarus. He knows who Lazarus is. He knows his name. Lazarus is no stranger to him. And if the rich man remains rich even in death, he also assumes that Lazarus must remain subservient, a player in a story that stars him, an agent of his deliverance. So the rich man reverts to previous form. Despite his agony he calls out commands for Abraham to pass along to Lazarus. How silly he must have appeared. The illusion of control is always the last to go. He calls out, “Have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because…it’s like really hot in this fire.”

Abraham could call his name now so that we could know it. He could take his “rich man” label from him and give him his humanity back. But he doesn’t. Abraham just calls him, “Child,” in what must have been a bemused and loving tone. But then who knows? Abraham patiently explains the awful irony of the post-life. “In life you had good things and Lazarus had crap, now he’s got the comfy place by me and you’ve got what you’ve got. Besides, there is this big ditch fixed between you and us. We couldn’t cross it if we wanted to.”

A ditch? A canyon? A chasm? Who put that there? If it was God, surely God could find a loophole or an escape clause to extend mercy when the situation (or those being tortured) cried out for it. But then the text doesn’t say that God put it there. Maybe it’s the same huge divide that existed in life between the rich man’s table and his outer gate…a divide that only the dogs could seem to cross. And who put that divide in place?

The rich man tries one last appeal. Another order to pass along to Lazarus. “Please, send him to my family and let him warn them so they won’t come to this place of torment!” I told you, the illusion of control is the last to go. The rich man is trying to hold on to his ability to direct events even as he suffers the worst indignities, which should tell him that he really has no place.

Besides, what would Lazarus say to his brothers? Don’t be rich? Don’t be selfish? Don’t consume conspicuously? Don’t ignore the poor man at your gate? Don’t build a ditch like your brother built? What lesson does Jesus want us to get? You’ve noticed that this is the question Jesus still won’t answer, even though it’s the question we most want the answer to so that we can act on the knowledge. Even though we don’t believe in the literal meaning of these metaphors of ditches and torture, we’d rather not take our chances.

Abraham refuses to send Lazarus. The brothers have Moses and the prophets. The rich man tries one last ditch attempt. “But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

To this Abraham says...as spoken by Jesus, who will die, and rise, and live again…to this Abraham says, “No. If they can’t listen now, they won’t be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

If they can’t listen now, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. That’s where the story ends. Lazarus has not uttered a word, has not done a thing, has not even dipped his finger in a cup of cool water. The rich man, who was rich at the beginning of the story and whose story is still unresolved at its end…the rich man has not yet begun to divest himself of the riches that have framed his soul and ordered his thinking. Like his brothers, he can’t listen because he’s talking too much…even in death. Who is this torturer who will let him talk so much? Something tells me that, like the ditch, the torture may be self-imposed.

But the important note is that for the rich man, as for us, the important questions about money and what to do with it never get answered. We still don’t know exactly why he’s in the mess he’s in or what we should do to avoid his fate? As always Jesus is being a little bit too elusive.
The only one for whom the story is resolved is Lazarus. But to take a moral lesson from Lazarus is even worse. Should we poor and destitute, victims of what our histories and our environments do to us? Should we not strive to improve our lot? Should we be passive and not act on our desires even when the result of acting will be beneficial for us and the world? Lazarus seems even more disturbing than the rich man when you ask it this way.

But Lazarus is at the heart of the story despite his lack of activity. Like Forrest Gump, the unremarkable man with no hint of greatness appearing in film clips with JFK, Lazarus somehow shows up in heaven beside Abraham--a totally unexpected visitor in a storyline that is not his own. He gets there because the eternal equation is not about money but about something else. If Jesus’ life and death and rising from the dead is the clue about what the universe turns on, then it must turn, not on money, but on love.

If you can derive some message about how to treat the poor or how to live more simply from this parable, I invite you to do that. I tried for two weeks to get a sermon like that from this text. But in the end that makes this a story about us and our anxieties and our desires to control the way our salvation is worked out. The rich man tried that. It doesn’t work.

This story is about love and not the kind we work to embody or display in deeds of compassion. This story is about the love we receive when we finally realize that the illusion of control is really an illusion. (It is the last thing to go.) And the best place to learn that lesson is in the classroom of the poor, where all pretensions to greatness are shown up as high comedy and all the anxieties of the wealthy and revealed as internal tragedy.

I’ve sat in the classroom once or twice in my life. It smells of avocados and cilantro and the chairs are not always comfortable. The picture on the screen is a little fuzzy. But as much as I’m sure the people passing in the street must have done a double take to see me sitting with Berenice and the rest of my Mexican family, for that night it was my Mexican family and I had no way to make that so. I had been accepted for reasons beyond my control.

Do wealth and poverty matter? Yes. Can I tell you what the rules that govern our behavior with regard to wealth and poverty are? No. But when we come face to face with the poor, both outside of us and in us, everything changes. And thanks be to God for that. Amen.

Going Home to Seay's Chapel

2004-09-19T23:21:00.000-04:00

Sunday was a gorgeous day. The hurricane-scrubbed air was clear. The sun dappled the roads between the last lingering leaves of green. I know this because I drove into the heart of Fluvanna County to preach a Homecoming service at Seay's Chapel. Along the way I stopped for coffee at a country store where the sign on the door read, "Jesus is my best friend. No shirts, no shoes, no service."

The church itself is a late-19th century country glory with the requisite graveyard and overhanging oaks. The Faithful Followers sang bluegrass gospel. (Oh, the irony! See my last post for the impossibility of faithfulness!) And just down the hill the James River flowed. It reminded me that as much as I love being in ministry with young people, the church is also one of the few institutions that can touch the past. I talked with an 84-year-old man whose parents started the church. And there it remains. A sign of saints past and a guarantee of future redemption.

There’s No Place Like Home
Seay's Chapel United Methodist Church
Shores, VA

Romans 8:28-39 (NRSV)
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is an interesting time of the year around the Wesley Foundation. The semester is still young. I’m still watching new students wandering around a little bit nervous and a little bit lost. But they’re gaining more confidence, more self-assuredness. They can find their way to the cafeterias, to the gym, to the stadium. When exams start to roll around in late November they’ll find their way to the library. They are becoming familiar with UVA.

But at this point in the semester they are also starting to feel something else--homesick. One night early in the semester at our Thursday night dinner I once asked a young woman who came how she was doing. She said, “Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. Classes are good.” Then she stopped putting up a brave front and said, “But I am starting to miss home.”

Home is such a powerful thing for us. Perhaps you can remember as a child the first time you went away from home for any length of time. Maybe it was a church camp or a Boy Scout hike or even the first time you had a sleepover with a friend. And as brave as you felt when you left, the desire for home set in and there was that feeling. I know exactly where that feeling was. Right here in the pit of my stomach I could feel it. I wanted to go home.

It doesn’t really change when you’re an adult. Even if we’ve moved far from the place we grew up…even if our parents have passed on…even if we didn’t have a great childhood experience and don’t want to go back to situations of pain or grief…all it takes is the whiff of a home-baked pie cooked just like Grandma used to bake it…the sight of a old baseball glove unpacked from a long-forgotten box in the basement…a photograph of an old friend…and suddenly the desire is there. There’s no place like home.

Maybe this congregation and this place hold memories like that for you. After all lots of things happen in churches that are pretty significant. We bring babies to the altar to be baptized. We walk down the aisle to exchange vows at a wedding. We say words of thanksgiving and blessing as we commit a loved one who has died to God. And in between we eat at this table year after year. We kneel at this rail. We sing from these hymnals. We stare out these windows when the sun is bright and when the winter is cold and when the rain is beating on the roof, and though we can’t always remember all that’s said and done each week, somehow we know we are at home.

The Bible passage today reminds us where our home really is. Paul is talking to the Christians at Rome and he has just finished telling them how little they know about prayer and how much they are dependent on the Holy Spirit and the action of God to make the world right. But he closes with a promise. “The Spirit is transforming you,” he says. You are being conformed to the image of Christ who has made you part of God’s family. And all things work together for good for those who love God. It may not always look like it. The world around you may look pretty dismal. Your ‘get up and go’ might have got up and went. You might be looking at your paycheck and saying there’s too much month at the end of the money. You might be sick. You might be weak. You might be strung out. You might be hung up. You might be cast down. You might be hemmed in. You might be grounded. You might feel like a motherless child, but you are not to lose hope. You are not to be forlorn. Because you know what? (This is my loose translation of Paul by the way. The Greek is a little bit different.)

You know what? God is for us. God is not against us. God is not condemning us. God is not forsaking us. God is not discouraged. God is not plotting our annihilation. God is for us. And if God is for us…then who can be against us?

How do we know God is for us? Because God came to be with us. God came in Jesus. And if God gave us God’s own self…what more could we want? And what could oppose God? What can separate us from the love of Christ?

Hardship? I don’t think so.
Distress? No way.
Persecution? Smersecution.
Famine? Nice try.
Nakedness? Bring it on.
Peril? Not a chance.
Sword? We’re better than Zorro.

Death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, anything in all creation? NO. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord! That’s what home is, you see. Home is where God is and can we be separated from God by any of these things? I think Paul would say ‘No.’

But we forget this promise, you know. Are there days when you forget this promise? Are there days when the obstacles before us seem so great that we forget that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Are there days when we forget that who we are is a child of God? Are there days when you’re asking ‘Where am I headed and why am I in this handbasket?’ You bet there are and that’s why I want to talk about home today. Not just because it’s homecoming, but because there is no greater story we can tell than the story of home. And the best story of going home that I know, outside of the Bible, is in the Wizard of Oz.

I hope you’ve seen the Wizard of Oz. It is, without a doubt, the most theologically profound movie ever made in the United States. All that we are and hope to be is captured in this movie. And it is the classic story of going home.

Why do I say that? Well, let’s just look at this story. The main character is…No, the main character is Auntie Em, but Dorothy runs a close second. Auntie Em is the main character because she represents home. When Dorothy is trapped in the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, it’s Auntie Em’s face she sees in the crystal ball. When Dorothy despairs about ever going home she cries, “Auntie Em, Auntie Em.” Everything that home should be is in Auntie Em. But, yes, Dorothy is also important.

The movie begins, you’ll remember, in black-and-white. Dorothy is a happy girl living on a dusty Kansas farm, walking along fence beams and singing about a magic land “somewhere over the rainbow.” She has farm hands that treat her like a princess, an uncle and aunt who love her, and a little dog named…(You have seen this movie!) Yes, Toto.

But a shadow arrives in this world. A heartless woman comes to take Toto away. She accuses the dog of trying to bite her and she produces an order allowing her to confiscate the animal. Dorothy is heartbroken, but there is nothing they can do and they watch the woman cycle away on her bike with Toto in a basket on the back.

But Toto is a crafty little dog. He knows some Harry Houdini tricks. And he escapes from the basket and runs back to Dorothy. Dorothy finds Toto but now realizes that in order for them to escape the wicked woman they must run away from home. They set off down the road and find a roadside fortuneteller who realizes that he must send this girl back home. He convinces her that he sees her family crying for her in his magic crystal ball. Dorothy is distraught. She realizes she must get back home. She thanks the man and runs back toward the farm. Only now there is a tornado coming across the Kansas plains and it is headed right for Dorothy’s house. She tries getting into the storm cellar with the rest of her family, but they’ve already locked themselves in. The tornado is bearing down on the house. Dorothy has to find a safe place to stay. She runs into her bedroom just as doors start flying off all around her.

At this point you might be wondering why I’m telling you this story. It is a good story and it is a very entertaining movie, but somehow, you may be thinking, it is a much better movie than a story. Why is this preacher telling us this tale? What does it have to do with home?

Well, there’s more to this story and I’ll get to it in just a minute, but that’s a very good question. Why am I telling this story? Because it seems to me that Dorothy, at this very moment in the story, is in exactly the same predicament that you and I are in. No, there is no tornado bearing down on us. No, we are not trying to save a little dog from a wicked witch. But we are trying to get home again and we are facing a lot of obstacles in doing it. Dorothy has found her house, but the people who make it a home are not there. With the storm coming, everything Dorothy thought she knew is turned upside down. She’s anxious about her life, her family, and the future. She feels like there’s a moment of impending doom just about to come upon her.

Everything is turned around. That sounds like the condition of most of us a lot of the time. We can call it sin, because that’s what disorients our life most of the time. We have a home, we travel far from it, we lose our way, we forget who God has made us and called us to be, and when we try to get back on our own power we inevitably fail. In the end we are carried off by forces much larger than we are and it seems as if we’ll never find home or God again. Is that not what our lives look like when they are at their worst? Is that not what the world looks like at its worst?

That’s why I’m telling this story. So thanks for the question, but let’s get back to it: The tornado hits! Dorothy’s house is thrown up into the air. She passes out. The house lands with a thud. She wakes up and goes cautiously to the door. She opens it up and suddenly a flood of light enters the room. She has gone to the other side of the rainbow and it is a world of bright color and fascinating creatures.

It turns out that her house has landed right on top of the Wicked Witch of the East who has been oppressing the Munchkin people. Dorothy, as their liberator, is given a mysterious gift—the ruby slippers of the dead witch. She is toasted and sung to by all the Munchkins. But Dorothy knows what she has to do. She hasn’t forgotten. She needs to go home. She needs to find someway back. What she doesn’t know is that she already has the power to go home. Those mysterious ruby slippers. All she has to do is click them 3 times and say…”There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” But she hasn’t been told this. She can’t accept it at this moment. She has to take a journey.

So she sets off down the yellow brick road in search of a wizard who can get her back home. Along the way she gets some companions and all of them are as misguided as she is. First, there is the scarecrow that thinks he doesn’t have a brain, even though in the first minutes she knows him he figures out how to get some nasty trees to throw them some apples and later he hatches the plans that save the day. Then there is the tin man who thinks he doesn’t have a heart, even though he is the most sentimental one in the bunch. And finally there is the lion that thinks he has no courage even though he is finally able to confront the witch of the West and the wizard. Do you see the common theme here? Nobody knows who they are and they all set off to see a wizard who really isn’t a wizard to receive a reward that they already have. And along the way they have to overcome the witch of the West and her band of flying monkeys who threaten them with death and destruction but they’re not the real obstacles. The real obstacle to their journey is their inability to see who they really are.

But the end of their journey is really a discovery that they could have made before they left but couldn’t because their vision was clouded by lies about themselves. The scarecrow believed the story that told him he was a failure because he was foolish. The cowardly lion believed that he was a failure because he had no courage.

Lies, lies, lies! How many of us are blinded by the same things! I see students everyday who are the brightest and most talented people in the world, filled with potential and promise, and unable to achieve it because they’ve been told or have come to believe that they are failing. You know people like this, too. You may be one of these people. People who cannot claim the gift of who they are because they are enslaved to lies. Lies that tell them that the best they can be is consumers labeled by what they own or what they wear. Lies that tell them their histories of abuse make them perpetual victims. Lies that tell them that who they are are addicts. Lies that tell them they are worthless.

But finally, at the end of the journey, it is all made clear. In the movie, it's all made clear. The wizard may not be a wizard but he can tell the scarecrow he is intelligent. He can tell the tin man that he has a heart. He can tell the lion that he has courage. And when he leaves Dorothy behind, it is the good witch who comes to tell her that she can go home.

You see, those slippers are like a word of grace. Those slippers are the words spoken by God at the beginning of all time saying, “This is good. You are mine. And I will never forsake you. And the way back home is never lost.” Those slippers can get her home. All she has to do is tap three times and…

She does. And she does it with some trepidation. She’s not sure she wants to make that jump because she’s afraid of leaving behind the new friends she’s made in Oz. There are tearful good-byes.

But when she wakes up, in black and white, in simple old Kansas, she hasn’t lost anything. Because she is in her house, in her bed, with her uncle and her Auntie Em…(the main character, remember). And the farmhands who bear a striking resemblance to her new companions, and the roadside fortuneteller who looks a lot like the wizard. They are all there. Nothing has been lost. And she is home.

Homecoming is important. Not just as a day to celebrate the history and heritage of this church. Not just because it is a day to remember things long past and to get nostalgic. Not even because it involves a really good lunch, though I’m looking forward to that.

No, homecoming is important because it’s the promise of what God is yet going to do with us. Homecoming here is an echo of the homecoming that heaven is and will be. Homecoming reminds us that no matter the changes and losses we feel and sense in this life, God is making all things new, God is reconciling all creation, all things are working together for good for those who love God.

Many people have worshipped, prayed, sung, eaten, loved, and died in this place. Many things have happened. But every moment has been claimed by the God who rules all time. Every obstacle has been overcome by the God who went through the cross and the empty tomb to bring us salvation. Every barrier that divides us from God and from one another has already been torn down. The Red Sea is parted. The Temple curtain is split. The rock is rolled away. And can anything now separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? No.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. The kingdom of heaven has come to earth. And we are home. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Revive Us Again

2004-09-15T23:08:00.000-04:00

It was at a revival in Madison County in August of 2001 that my preaching changed dramatically. I was asked to come up to a Christian Church in Hood, Virginia (how I got there is a long story) and I decided to use the occasion to try to redeem revivals from their scary, "Fountain Filled With Blood"-singing, flopping on the floor redemptions, reputation. I also hoped to give myself to the experience to be redeemed. What I discovered in the process was the ability to speak directly to the congregation (which is not as easy as it sounds when you're natural voice is storytelling) and the freedom to use emotion and humor in ways that would have seemed over-the-top previously.

At any rate...I had the wonderful experience tonight of travelling to some obscure site on the Fauquier/Stafford County line to preach another revival. I had two of the best travelling companions I could ask for in April Meadows and David Vaughan, and I got to see Bill Walker, who accompanied me on two trips to Mexico in the mid-90s. He was leading the band.

Along the way I got to eat homemade chili, discuss the theology (developing still, I'm afraid) of the deacon, and play with the band. What a wonderful night.

Faithful and True
Grace UMC

Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV)
"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

“The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.

“After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.'

“His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

“And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.'

“His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

“Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.'

“But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.

“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'“

I am pleased to be with you tonight at this revival. It is a great honor to be asked to come and share with you and to share with you on the last night of the revival is an even greater honor. It comes with a lot of expectations attached to it. Will we end with a bang or a whimper? Did we save the best for last or did the Holy Spirit pack up her tents and move along last night? I know these expectations and I feel them as I begin this sermon tonight.

But I have to tell you that the topic I have for this evening is difficult and it may even be beyond my capacity to talk about it. Because, you see, the topic is what it takes to be a faithful disciple and I have to admit to you that I don’t have what it takes. Faithfulness is one of my highest aspirations. I long to be trustworthy and faithful, along with thrifty, clean, brave, and reverent, but I am not the Boy Scout I once was. And I fail. Often.

We have a bird in our house. It was not my choice to have a bird but I came home one day and my children had a bird and it already had a name. The bird had wandered into our neighborhood and since it was a parakeet we assumed it was not a native. The wild Virginia parakeet is long extinct. The kids had taken it in and they named it Star. You can’t get rid of a pet that has a name. We tried to find the owner. We put up flyers. We asked the neighbors. No luck. The bird was ours.

I’ve got nothing against birds. Their cute. They sing pretty. They don’t fetch sticks very well. Or Frisbees. I’ve tried. But I just can’t get too attached to this bird and I don’t think our household is exactly suited for birds because we also have a cat. And Whiskers, unlike me, really likes the bird. She waits outside the door and listens to the bird sing. She pokes her paw under the door to entertain the cat. She’d love to have her over for dinner.

But we won’t allow that because we know that what Whiskers really wants is to eat the bird. So we have to make sure that the door to the bird’s room is always shut. Since I am usually the last person out of the house in the morning it usually falls to me to make sure the door is shut. And, here, brothers and sisters, is where I often fail in being faithful. I will sometimes come home to hear my wife say in “that” tone she can get, “You left the door open again.” And I know what door she means.

When she says this I shriek. “It’s dead, isn’t it?” But it never is. Something is keeping that bird safe and it’s not my faithfulness. It’s either grace or Whiskers’ lack of creativity.

So I know that I need to be more faithful and when I hear passages like the one we read tonight, I get it. I really do. Jesus is in the midst of telling his scary parables. Chapter 25 of the gospel of Matthew is full of these scary parables. Before the one we read there is the cautionary tale about the bridesmaids waiting on the groom. They’re waiting in the dark. Five of the bridesmaids are foolish and don’t bring any oil to light their lamps. Five are prepared. The word comes down the line that the groom is on the way and the five who are prepared go to meet him, but the foolish ones have to head out to find a 7-11 so they can stock up on oil. (This is the Alex Joyner translation, by the way.) When they get back, the door is locked and the foolish ones are left out in the cold despite their desperate knocking on the door. It’s a scary parable because I know that usually I’m not prepared.

The parable that comes after the one we read is the story of the last judgment when Jesus divides those who come before him based on how they treated him in life. To some he says, “You took care of me. You clothed me when I was naked. You fed me when I was hungry. You visited me in prison.”

The ones who are recognized say, “When did that happen?”

Jesus says, “Whenever you did it for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” You see where this is going, don’t you? The next group didn’t do any of these things and they get sent into the outer darkness because they weren’t looking for Jesus in the poor. That’s a scary parable because I know there are many times when I haven’t looked at the people I meet every day as if I were looking at Christ.

Then there’s this parable about a man who goes away on a long trip and gives each of his servants a large amount of money. One gets five talents, one gets two, and one gets only one. He’s gone for a long time and during that time the first slave trades with the money he’s been given, invests in a few mutual funds and some real estate and he doubles his money. The second one buys some shares in the Google IPO and doubles his money. And the third one…well, he goes off and digs a hole and buries the one talent he’s been given.

The master comes back and…well, you know the pattern by now. Some are prepared and some are not. Some see Christ in the poor and some don’t. Some take what they’ve been given and do something with it and others…don’t. Like the foolish bridesmaids and the goats of the other parables, the last servant ends up in the dark, on the outside, in a place where the hottest hits on the soundtrack are wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Yeah, I get this parable. It’s pretty obvious to me. And it’s just as scary as the others. “You must be faithful” and I’m not.

Oh, it’s not just the bird. That’s trivial when you get right down to it. I can be unfaithful in some much bigger ways. I can know what’s good for me and not choose it. I can know whom I love and not show it. I can know how to pray and not practice it. I can see a good and healthy banana in the fruit bowl and eat the five-day old chocolate cake I have to dig out of the back of the refrigerator. I can hear my bed calling my name and stay up to watch the late edition of SportsCenter. I can know what my gifts and not use them. Know who my friends are not call them. Know when my dad’s home and not visit. Know who my God is and not remember who I am. Being faithful is not for wimps and most days, I’m not cut out for it.

Now I’ve been at this for about 7 or 8 minutes now and I have not heard one “Amen.” If this is a revival, I need to know if what I am experiencing is just me…or do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever had trouble being faithful? Have you ever doubted that you have what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Do you hear these parables and get a little nervous? Do you hear the demands of the gospel and feel a little worried? Do you hear the call of God and wonder if God has dialed the wrong number? Do you see the eyes of Jesus looking at you and look over your shoulder because surely he must be looking at somebody else? Do you feel the Spirit moving and hesitate to jump on for the ride? Faithful? Faithful? What silly notion…what sudden impulse…what grand delusion…what arrogant sentiment…what could possess us to think that we could be the faithful disciples that Jesus is calling? Has Jesus not looked at us? Has Jesus not seen what shoddy material he’s working with? Faithful? Brothers and sisters, do we have it in us to be faithful?

Or will we always be the foolish ones, the goats, the servants who dig a whole to store what little dignity we can muster so that at least we won’t lose that? “I may not be all that I’m supposed to be, but at least I’ve got that citizenship certificate I got in the fifth grade. At least I’ve got the job that pays the rent. At least I’ve got the letter from the Social Security Office that tells me I’m a person.”

This is no way to live and it is not the good news that Jesus intends. The master of the story recognizes it to. Faithfulness must be more than a hole in the ground to keep a few small tokens.
If you think that these parables from chapter 25 of Matthew are scary…keep reading. Chapter 26 is worse. The first disciples…the ones who were seated at Jesus’ feet as he told these parables…who saw his eyes as he looked at them…who watched his back as they followed him…these disciples who had every reason to be faithful…begin to fall away. The plot to kill Jesus thickens. A group of powerful leaders plan his arrest and death. A woman comes to him while he sits at the table of a leper and breaks a costly bottle of perfume over his head and no one recognizes that she is anointing him in the same way that one would anoint a dead body.

They gather together in a house for a Passover meal and Jesus says that one of these disciples will betray him and that all of them will desert him. Peter…it had to be Peter…protests. “No, Lord, I would never desert you.”

Jesus says, “Peter, you will deny me three times before the rooster crows at dawn."

“No,“ Peter says. And they all say it together, “Even if we must die with you, we would never deny you.“ But later, when they go up to a lonely garden to pray, Peter can’t even stay awake to watch.

Jesus is arrested. The trial is rigged. The die is cast. It will end in death. The disciples melt away and Peter spends his vigil in the courtyard doing exactly what he swore he would never do…even if I must die with you!…he denies Jesus three times. The rooster crows. The cross awaits. Those who swore to be faithful are nowhere to be seen.

If this is so…If what it takes to be faithful is something that not even the first disciples could seem to muster, then what hope is there for you and me who have trouble even caring for a little bird? The hope is in the water. Faithfulness is not a characteristic we associate with our lives, but it is a characteristic that we associate with God and in the water of baptism God gives us a promise that our lives can be transformed. In the water is the promise that our lives can be remade in the image of Christ. In the water is the promise that all things are being reconciled to God through Christ Jesus. In the water is the promise that our lives are hidden in God with Christ, waiting to be discovered anew. In the water is the promise that all things are made new…in Christ we are a new creation. And the water is the reminder that the things that are least characteristic of us in our normal state--love, joy, gentleness, peace, patience, trustworthiness, faithfulness--the things that are least characteristic of us can become characteristic of us because our lives are being reformed into vessels that can mirror, however imperfectly, the one who created us and would not leave us alone...who does not leave us alone for love and mercy’s sake.

Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer of the sixteenth century, used to begin each day over a bowl of water. He’d dip his finger into the water and place it to his forehead and say, out loud, “I am baptized.” I am baptized. There is no stronger affirmation a Christian can make.

Are we frail and fragile and prone to fail? Absolutely. Do we make mistakes? You know that we do. Are we always falling short of the mark? Yes, we are. Are we less than we would like to be? Yes, siree. Are we unfaithful, untrustworthy, and unprepared? No doubt. There is no more certain thing in the world than that we are broken people with broken lives. We are the servants with the treasure buried in the ground where it does no harm and does no good. But I ask you this…Are we hopeless? Are we in despair? Are we without comfort? Are we without help? Are we without a Savior? Are we at the end of the rope? The end of the line? The edge of disaster?

NO! Because the most certain thing in the world would be that we are unfaithful to who we are meant to be except that the most certain thing in the world is that we are redeemed. And when Luther placed that drop of water on his forehead it was to remind him that his baptism was the sign that he was living in another world. He was existing in an alternate reality. And in this reality the power he did not have on his own he received from a God who knew him in all his weakness and all his potential. In this reality all of his broken pieces were restored to make him whole. In this reality all of his wrongs were made right…all of his failures were overturned…all of his best intentions were given new wings. In this reality blind people could see, deaf people could hear, hurting people were healed, dead people could live, and nothing in all creation could separate him from the love of God because the love of God had come to him…and to me…and to you…in Christ Jesus.

The hope is in the water. The faithfulness we need to be the people we are called to be is in the water. The love we need is in the water. Because through that water walked Moses and Miriam. Through that water walked Joshua and the Israelites. Through that water walked Noah and Jonah and thousands upon thousands more flawed and fragile disciples. Through that water walked Jesus, opening a way for us into God’s promise.

Maybe you were baptized when you couldn’t even remember it. As a baby. An infant. And the promises made that day were spoken by your parents and the church and by God. Or maybe you were baptized as a youth or an adult and you spoke the words. What the church promised and what perhaps you promised was faithfulness. Fidelity to God. But all of those promises would fall silent if God had not also promised to take you. Through that water God says, “It’s you that I want. It’s you I accept. I created you and said, ‘This is good. You are good.’ You’ve lost your way and you’ve forgotten that. But I haven’t. You are mine.

Maybe you haven’t been baptized. But the water is here. And the promise is too. You want to be a faithful disciple? The first step is realizing that for us that is impossible. But for God. Now that’s another story. Thanks be to God.

Lost and Found

2004-09-12T23:01:00.000-04:00

Just another sermon blog I'm afraid. More commentary and fun will have to wait. This was the Sunday night offering at the Wesley Foundation where we had the largest band we've ever had and a wonderful congregation as well. Sundays feel so much more normal now that school is back in session!

And go see Napolean Dynamite. You won't regret it!

All Is Not Lost (Including Us)
September 12, 2004
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Luke 15:1-10 (NRSV)

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

The gospel story for today is a pair of parables about being lost. A sheep is lost and a shepherd leaves the flock behind to go find it. A coin is lost and a woman searches the house, burning expensive lamp oil to aid in the hunt, until she finds it. These parables are also about being found because each of them ends with a reunion of shepherd and sheep, coin and woman, that leads to a party.

I want to talk about being lost and found today. I want to celebrate what God is doing in telling us these tales. I want to know how God is still finding and saving lost people like you and like me. I want to preach about this love that seeks us out and I want to do it by talking about a girl named Veronica and a boy named Napoleon.

Napoleon is Napoleon Dynamite and he has been sticking with me ever since I saw the movie that bears his name this summer. Napoleon is a nerd. A geek. A loser by all the standards of his rural Idaho high school. He’s tall and gangly with red hair that is an untamed afro. He wears very uncool clothes to school, including 1980s era moon boots. It’s no surprise that this is the guy who gets stuffed into the locker by the bullies at school.

He lives with his older brother and grandmother in a non-descript house on the edge of town. His brother is a geek, too, who spends most of his time talking to “women” in internet chat rooms. Neither of them is very attractive company. But somehow you grow to root for Napoleon to break out of his dead-end life.

He befriends a new boy in the school, Pedro, who is also isolated and geeky. But they don’t know how isolated and geeky they are and Pedro decides that he is going to run for student president against the most popular girl in school. Napoleon supports his run for higher office by taking on the performance segment which accompanies the candidate speeches. This is the moment for which you need to see this film. Because what Napoleon does is to dance. Before his silent and stunned classmates, who have never seen him as anything but clumsy, stupid, and unremarkable, he performs hip-hop moves he has learned from watching an old video at home. In this moment, the ugly duckling becomes, for a brief moment, a beautiful swan.

Stephen Hunter, a film critic for the Washington Post, says, “It's really the best six minutes of movie I've seen this year: the big ungainly boy seizing the moment, giving himself up to the music and transfiguring before our very eyes into something that, although still damned strange, is utterly compelling and even poignant.”

You never know when those magic moments will happen in life. But there are times when time seems to slow down, when your memory of detail becomes especially sharp, when everything seems to happen in slow motion, when people and events come together to produce a moment you won’t ever forget. For some these moments come at their graduation or their first kiss, when a child is born, when a tragedy happens, when you drop a piece of buttered bread and you just know that it’s going to land butter-side down and it seems to take forever to hit the floor. There are moments like that.

Napoleon’s dance was one of them. Veronica’s dance was another. It was at Thomas Edison Junior High School in West Dallas. It was an ordinary day, just like many other days I had spent in this inner-city area of Dallas. I arrived at the school in the late afternoon to meet my friend and colleague, Juan Prieto, just as we had planned for the rehearsal of the first West Dallas youth talent show. I had no idea what was about to happen.

Juan and I had been working together with youth in this inner-city neighborhood. He was working for the health department and I was the youth program coordinator at a United Methodist community center where I was coaching basketball and boxing, breaking up knife fights and doing hundred of other things for which I had no qualifications whatsoever. Mostly I was learning what it meant to be an Anglo in a non-Anglo environment…to be middle class in a neighborhood of people living on the margins. It was hard. It was scary. But it was also exhilarating because we were trying to save the world and there was no one there to tell us we couldn’t.

Juan and I had many long conversations while I was there. He was from Colombia and he was trying his best to make me hispano-savvy. He took me to hole-in-the-wall Latino restaurants, made me use my broken Spanish, and took me with him on his visits to Hispanic homes. On this particular day I was meeting him at Edison Junior High to encourage one of the youth we both worked with in her dance routine for the talent show.

Veronica was a 15-year-old girl who was working on a routine to the music from Lambada. Juan and I were glad to see that she was coming out of her shell to work with her sister on this routine, not least because it was the only dance act in a talent show of 54 rap artists, and while we tried to encourage the rappers as well, it did get old.

But we were more encouraged because, in a neighborhood that was the land of the lost, Veronica was being found. West Dallas was a community where everything was broken…broken businesses, broken families, broken promises, and broken lives. In West Dallas tragedy ran so deep that the broken pieces could not be mended without recognizing that the greatest struggle was the struggle to survive and the battle to believe that things could ever be different.

Veronica was no exception. Her mother was a good woman, but she was having to make it on her own as a single parent, trying to support her family on whatever income they could find. Veronica’s brother was a member of Los Reyes - a Latino gang which considered our community center to be part of their territory.

And Veronica, at the age of 15, was the mother of three children, the most recent being a set of twins that was born about six months earlier. So, in the midst of learning to be an adult, Veronica was also learning to be a parent.

There were a lot of ways to look at Veronica’s situation from the outside. You might say she was a victim of neglect--condemned to being overlooked and forgotten by a home and social situation that made her feel invisible. You might say she was a victim of confusion--uncertain as to which way she ought to turn in a community of disintegrating communal values. You might say she was a victim of her own bad choices--choosing a path that led to a very difficult situation. But I always saw her as one of our lost youth. Not a victim requiring judgment, but a wanderer needing shelter, an outcast seeking acceptance.

Juan knew her because she was involved in city health and nutrition programs. I knew her because she was often at the community center and she was one of the first members of the center’s teen mother program where girls got together to talk about the challenges of their situation and how to avoid repeating the experience of having children as a child.

So Juan and I stood by the stage as Veronica timidly got up with her sister. She was not used to being the center of attention. I wondered if she would go through with it. But the music began and suddenly the auditorium was transformed. It was no longer a dingy room in a dreary city--it was a gateway to the Kingdom of Heaven. As Veronica danced the crushed spirit I often felt in her was replaced by a spirit of celebration. I thought I saw in her eyes a glimpse of the strength she would need to face the problems ahead, the joy she would need to sustain hope. She danced with grace and beauty. Then the music stopped and she retreated to the back of the stage.

It was a brief moment, but a magic moment. And whenever I hear that music now, I think about Veronica and her sister making that stage her own, finding a moment of light in the darkness, experiencing a transformative power. I wish I could tell you there is a happy ending to her story. But I don’t believe there is. Veronica still faces a lot of challenges as the music faded. But in that moment there was a hint of possibility and an echo of the love that God intends for all of us.

There are three stories in Chapter 15 of Luke. Each of them speaks of the joy in heaven over the finding of those who are lost. They are parables of magic moments which bring about extravagant, uncalled-for celebrations in which friends and neighbors are invited to share in the rejoicing. The lost sheep and the lost coin we read. The third parable is about a lost child, a story we normally call “The Prodigal Son.”

Jesus tells these stories because a group of Pharisees and scribes are grumbling and saying, “This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them!” They could not understand why Jesus spent so much time among tax collectors (who were obviously corrupt by virtue of their profession), and the sinners (who were known as sinners, no so much of their moral choices, but more so because of the situations they lived in, situations which were offensive to the religious establishment). To them they sinners were a corrupting influence (who wants teenaged mothers to hang around the “good” children? They’re a bad influence!) To Jesus, however, these were lost people waiting to be found.

In the stories which Jesus tells we find all sorts of ways that people become lost. In the Prodigal Son story, the son is lost because he demands his share of the inheritance and squanders it on loose living, eventually ending up slopping pigs for a living. Here it was a conscious turning away from a family which loved him which made the son lost.

In the story of the lost sheep, the sheep wanders off from the pack of ninety-nine but there is no sense of willful turning away. Maybe the sheep has become confused and disoriented. But there is no less joy when the sheep is found.

And in the story of the woman’s lost coin, the reason for the loss is neglect. The coin does nothing on its own to become lost, it just is. There are many times in our own experience when we feel a sense of being lost and far from God without having a sense of why that should be so. We look to God and find nothing. These are scary times. I felt them in the depression I experienced while I was serving in West Dallas.

Probably we have all become lost in each of these ways--by being confused and uncertain about which path to take, by choosing to walk our own path away from God, and by feeling a neglect we did not deserve. There were aspects of all of these in Veronica’s experience. But the point of these stories in not to be found in the multiple means of getting lost, but in the joy which is a part of each reunion.

We are all lost at times, but we have never been abandoned. That’s what the original Methodist, John Wesley, meant when he talked about prevenient grace. The good news here is that God is reaching out to us, conducting a search at great risk and great cost to find us and to unite us with God’s love and with the community of God’s people. That search effort is the grace that comes looking for us before we go looking for God.

In fact, this is why God comes to us in Jesus Christ, who walked among those who were lost, who came to save the lost, who offered his very self for those who were lost. And the end of this story is a great celebration to mark Christ’s victory in reuniting us with our true selves. We’re invited to a party!

As the music ended on that afternoon in the Edison Junior High School auditorium, the sensation of being transported also came to an end. The vision gave way to reality once again. Or maybe it was the other way around. In that magic moment, maybe reality was breaking into an unsuspecting world through another teenaged mother, inviting us to see that God continues to work in extraordinary ways…using very ordinary people to do it. Thanks be to God.

Back to Mattaponi

2004-09-05T23:22:00.000-04:00

If my figuring is right it has been two years since I wrote a Mattaponi story. I think the last one I wrote was "Midnight Soccer," on the 1st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But I have been thinking more about storytelling in recent weeks. The spate of beginning-of-the-year events gave me lots of opportunities to speak off-the-cuff and I find I really am not very good at that. I have a tendency to try to say too much with too few words and images and the result is a confusing mass.

What disciplines me is a manuscript or a story. I think storytelling is my native language and I have left it behind in preaching in recent years as I have explored new forms. In August of 2000 I was asked to preach a revival in Hood and I used the opportunity to try to reclaim the revival preaching form from the dark artists who have distorted it by divorcing it from good theology. I don't know how it went for the good folks at the Christian Church in Hood, but my preaching has not been the same since. I discovered energy (aka the Holy Spirit) and I liked it.

Now I think it may be time to explore the story form again. So tonight, with this fantastic congregation that I am blessed with at the Wesley Foundation, I trusted the sermon to story once again. I pray it's not avoidance of the very difficult text that inspired it. What struck me in Jesus' words were the call to claim contingency and risk and the need to confront the cross in the person walking before us to Calvary and beyond.

An Unstable Beginning
September 5, 2004
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Luke 14:25-35 (NRSV)
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
“Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
"Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!"

Vera Allen thought she was heading straight back to Bonnycastle after her last class of the day, but when she got down to the front door she decided to keep walking. She walked down the steps, out past The Castle and down the steep hill to the Dell where she could pace in some privacy. Pacing had been one of her favorite modes of thought when she was back home, but now that she was at UVA she hadn’t found a good substitute and pacing the halls or her dorm room didn’t appeal to her.

She needed to pace because the T.A. in her government affairs discussion section had just managed to ruin a perfectly good hour for her. It was the first week of classes and this was their first meeting and instead of talking about the readings from the course packet, he had played the “What if…?” game that made her crazy. “What if the United States had responded differently to the attacks of 9/11?,” he said. “What if we had treated it as a criminal act requiring a global policing action instead of a declaration of war? What if we hadn’t decided to invade Iraq? What if we had tried to support the work of the weapons inspectors? What if? What if? What if?”

Of course, this provoked the students who saw this line of questioning as an attack on George Bush and they started to throw back questions of their own. “Well, what if there had been weapons of mass destruction? What if we allowed Saddam Hussein to continue torturing his own people? What if? What if? What if?” The whole stupid mess had turned into one more pointless exercise of people talking past each other. Vera was sick of it. What did any of this have to do with the reading…or reality, for that matter? What good was it to ask “What if?”

She was muttering to herself as she paced near the trees lining the Dell. The only other people she could see were six guys playing a shirts and skins game on the basketball courts in the distance. What if? What if? What if I hadn’t come to college at UVA? What if I had done what Justin did and gone to Christopher Newport? What if I had stayed home and worked in Mattaponi Courthouse instead? What if I hadn’t turned my life upside down to come be in this strange place where people dress up to go to football games and refuse to recognize the existence of freshmen? What if I’m not cut out to be away from home? What if I can’t sustain a long-distance relationship with Justin? What if I weren’t a UVA student?

She stopped in her tracks. She felt a sticky invisible cord across her face. She knew she had walked into a spider web. She noticed a faint quivering out of the corner of her right eye. She had only disturbed one of the supporting strands. The low rays of the afternoon sun caught a golden profile on a stunningly large spider who was scrambling for security in the center of the web. Vera stepped back and sliced her hand through the remaining support lines. The web and spider collapsed out of sight into the bushes. “If I’m going to have a build a new home here, you are, too,” she said out loud.

The next day was only worse. At lunch Vera stood in the cafeteria at Newcomb staring at all the choices. The first few times she had loved all the options. At one meal she had put together a make-your-own waffle, a cous cous and eggplant wrap and a bunch of tater tots just because she could. Now she just wanted someone to make the decisions for her. Her dad had never asked what she wanted when he made dinner. Her mom either. They just knew. Now she had all these choices and nothing looked appetizing.

She sat with a new friend from the down the hall - a girl from NOVA named Gabriella. They shared stories about their summers and the friends they left behind, but it seemed to Vera that Gabby was much happier than she was about leaving home. It wasn’t that her home was perfect, but it felt very…familiar. With everything turned upside down in her schedule and living conditions, she began to appreciate lots of things about her house and her folks that she hadn’t thought about before. It was the one stable point of reference now that everything was different.
Gabby seemed to accept that things were going to change…even at home. “Yeah, Mom’s already moved most of my stuff out of the room,” Gabby said. “She says she needs the space for scrap booking.”

“Gabby, don’t you think it’s a little ironic that she’s erasing all the evidence of you just so she can collect stuff to remember you?”

“She can erase stuff all she wants, Vera. I’m still here. And as long as I can still crash there at Thanksgiving, I’m down with that.”

Vera’s cell phone rang as she was coming out of Newcomb headed to class in Wilson. It was her dad. He said that he was just calling to check on her, but she knew from the first note of his voice that something was wrong. She endured the small talk for a few minutes then said, “Dad, what’s up?”

“Well, Vera,” he said, “I don’t want you to worry, but your mom had a little…episode last night.”

“Episode? What do you mean, Dad?”

“Well, some chest pain. But they don’t think it was a heart attack. She’s going in for some tests today.”

“They don’t think it was a heart attack?! Oh, my gosh, Dad. She hasn’t had troubles like this before.”

“No, and it may be nothing. I shouldn’t have told you. But I’ll let you know how everything turns out.”

Vera walked across the Lawn in a daze. Now even her home seemed an unstable place. The worry her dad had tried to conceal now lodged in the pit of her stomach. She felt an involuntary tear forming in her eye and she reached up to wipe it away quickly. And about that time, she got hit just above the right ear by a Frisbee. She stopped and rubbed her head.

“Owww. Gosh.”

“Are you alright?” The thrower had arrived on the scene.

She was perturbed with him but decided not to be too angry because, she had to say, he was awfully hot. “Well, besides this skull fracture I guess I’m alright. What were you doing flinging that thing at me?”

“Oh, I was playing Frisbee golf.”

“And I was the target?”

“No, Homer’s butt was the target, but you walked right in front of it at just the right time. Or just the wrong time, depending on how you look at it. If you’d been half a second earlier, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. By the way, I’m Grayson.”

“I’m late for class,” she responded. “But my name’s Vera. Good to meet you, I guess. See you around.” She walked towards Wilson and resisted the temptation to look back. She was sure he was watching.

At 11 that night she was sitting on the floor of her hallway trying to concentrate on a Psych textbook. Her roommate had gone to bed at 9:30. Who goes to bed at 9:30? So, rather than stay in the room and listen to her rustle in her sheets in that annoyed way that says better than words ever can, “Why don’t you cut out the light, already?”, Vera had decided to sit in the hall.

It wasn’t a very good place to study, but she didn’t feel like trekking over to Clemons or Tuttle. Gabby had stopped by for awhile to talk about her crappy French class. Caitlin, the girl across the hall, was having an angry fight with her boyfriend on the phone. And somewhere down the hall somebody was blasting Britany. It felt like a “Toxic” atmosphere.

But none of that was keeping Vera from her book. She had just finished talking on the phone with Justin, who seemed to be having too much fun without her back in Mattaponi, and her dad, who told her that her mom was staying in the hospital overnight for some more tests. She felt miserable.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw some tennis shoes walking on the walls down the corridor. Some crazy guy from downstairs was straddling the hallway with his arms and legs and walking down the cinderblock walls about 2 feet off the floor. As he got closer he plopped down next to her and said, “How’s your head?” It was Grayson.

Vera shook her head. “You are in-credible.”

“Well, thanks,” Grayson responded.

Vera just kept shaking her head and looked back down at the book. Had she finished even one paragraph?“So what’s up?”

“Well, not only did I become the pin for a round of Frisbee golf today, but my mom’s in the hospital and my boyfriend seems to be doing pretty well without me.”

“Oh, I see. Homesick?”

“I guess. I just don’t know what to hold on to.”

“What’s your house like?”

“My house? I don’t think it’s my house that I’m really attached to.”

“I know. Just tell me what it’s like.”

“Oooo.K. It’s two-stories, beige…I don’t know. It’s a house. My folks bought the model in a subdivision. They walked into the model house, liked it, and told the developer they wanted exactly that house. Even the same furniture. We’ve been there for five years.”

“Wow. Guess they’re not too particular about things, huh?”

“Well, they’re particular about keeping it clean. It still looks like the model. Not even a stray newspaper on a chair.”

“We never got attached to the places we lived.”

“How many places have you lived in?”

“Man, I don’t know. Fifteen? We moved like every year. My dad’s in the military.”

“Oh. Guess that would do it.”

“So if I stay here four years that would be the longest I’ve ever lived in one place. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah.” Vera paused to look at him but then got caught so she had to say something. She blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. “My mom collects thimbles.”

“Thimbles? How many thumbs does she have?”

“My aunt brought some back for her from a trip one time and now she’s got like twenty shelves full.”

“That’s…interesting.”

“Yeah.” She turned back to her book. Somehow remembering her mom’s thimbles had brought back that feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Guess I’d better get back to Psych.”

Grayson didn’t take the hint. At least he ignored it. He moved around right in front of her so that he was blocking the hallway. “You don’t like being away from home, do you?”

Vera turned her eyes toward him, but not her head, which was still pretending to be interested in the book. “No, Grayson, I don’t think I do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it’s the only thing that seems sane or predictable now. We didn’t have stupid arguments about politics where nobody listens. I had a room of my own and a cat and a routine and parents who were there and friends, and a boyfriend and nobody walked on walls like Spiderman. It was…normal. And nothing’s normal now. Now I don’t even know if my boyfriend or my mom will be there when I go back. And I don’t know how to hold on to them.”

Grayson noticed a small golden cross hanging around Vera’s neck. He reached over and flicked it gently. Vera leaned away from him.

“Are you a Christian?”

“Well, yeah…I guess so.”

“What would Jesus do?”

“What?”

“What would Jesus do? What would he tell you?”

“I don’t know…Jesus would probably say, ‘Hold firm to your beliefs. Don’t be tempted by the world around you. Hold on to your values. Hold on to who you are.’”

“That’s a whole lot of holding on,” Grayson said. “Are you sure Jesus wants you to cling to things that tightly?”

“What are you getting at, Grayson? I’m supposed to be a good person. I need to hold on to where I’ve come from.”

“O.K. O.K. I get that. But didn’t Jesus also say a lot about letting go? I mean…at one point he even says to hate your family…to give up your possessions and follow him.”

“Well, yeah, but do you really think I have to hate my family to love Jesus?”

“I think you have to recognize that you can’t cling to them so tightly that you can’t see the new things that are waiting for you. I think this following business is some pretty radical stuff. It takes empty hands and a little bit of uncertainty. There’s nothing certain or stable about Jesus but the cross. And the resurrection.”

“Grayson, you’re not helping me here. I was feeling bad this afternoon, you hit me in the head. I was moping around here with the Psych book and you give me these impossible sayings of Jesus.” Vera looked up at the fluorescent lights in the hallway ceiling. “I’d love to do something new. I’d love to take a risk and do something radical. But how do I follow him? Where is Jesus?”

Grayson reached over and slapped Vera on the cheek. It was not a really violent slap. It was just enough force to get her attention but it shocked her in the same way the Frisbee did. She looked directly at Grayson with a look of wonder and anger. It was the first time she had really seen him…looked at him. The first time she had really looked at anyone since she arrived at UVA. She was about to protest, but she couldn’t find her voice. The few seconds that passed seemed like ten minutes in which she explored his deep green eyes.

Finally he spoke. He held her face with his hands and said, “Vera. Vera. I’m right in front of you.” And she knew, whether Grayson was involved or not that her life was going to change. She had arrived at UVA and with nothing in her hands but an unread book, she had started to find home.

For all my friends who are still looking for home...here's hoping you arrive a little bit more this week!

Return to the Table

2004-08-31T22:27:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid I'm only visiting my poor neglected blog to post another sermon and it's a reworked sermon at that. Move-in week is proceeding at a frenetic pace around here and there is much to do and many people to see. I'm looking forward to the leisurely conversations and passionate outbursts that make me love what I do. But there is that dance of getting to know you that must go on.

I returned to a sermon from July 4 to start the new year. Jesus sending out the seventy offers a great image of seeking out hospitality as well as offering it. A liberal dose of the HBO series Six Feet Under (2nd season now out on DVD and sucking me in) has me pondering the poignancy of relationships. Life is too brief not to invite myself into people's lives and to invite them into mine. So it was back to the table in the opening Sunday night worship of the new year!

Breaking Bread and Speaking Peace
Wesley Foundation at UVA
August 29, 2004

Luke 10:1-20
After this the Lord commissioned seventy others and sent them out two by two ahead of him into all the cities and places where he intended to go. He said to them:
"While the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few--so seek from the Lord of the Harvest workers to go out into his harvest.
“Go ahead. Look, I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves. Don't carry a money bag, nor a pouch, nor sandals and don't even greet anyone on the way.
“Whenever you enter a house, first say, 'Peace be on this house!' And if there is any child of peace there, your peace will remain with that one, but if not, it will return to you.
“Remain in the same house, sharing bread and drinking whatever they provide, for the worker deserves pay. Do not move from house to house.
“Whenever you enter a city and someone welcomes you, eat what is given to you. Heal the sick who are there and say to them, 'The reign of God has come near to you.'
“Whenever you enter a city and they don't welcome you, go out into its broad ways and say, 'We shake off the dust we collected on our feet in your city as a witness against you, only know that this day the reign of God has come near.'
“For I tell you Sodom will be more tolerable in that day than that city. Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago and sat in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you at the judgment. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven but reduced to hell. Whoever hears you hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."
The seventy returned with joy saying:
"Lord, even the demons obeyed us in your name!"
He said to them:
"I saw Satan fall from the heavens like lightning. Look, I have given you authority for treading upon snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, don't rejoice about this that the spirits obey you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

I have a word of wisdom for you today. It has taken me 40 years to get to this realization and I think, as college students, you should learn it more quickly than I have. As I have gotten older I have come to believe that it is a great gift to invite yourself to stay at someone’s house. I’m not talking about a nice, friendly drop-in visit where you stay for a hour, have a glass of iced tea, and then go on. I’m talking about an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, show-me-where-I-can-put-my-bags and hey-can-I-help-make-dinner, multiple day kind of visit.

You need to learn to do this. Why? Well, not only is this a cheap way to travel, but I have come to believe that the people I stay with need me to visit with them. They need to show hospitality because there are so few people who will ask that from them.

Now I know it feels a little awkward. We have a thing about dropping in on other folks. We don’t want to “impose.” We think we might be a “burden.” We don’t know if we’ll be welcome. Especially if we stay for a few days. And we don’t want to make our friends “uncomfortable” by having first-hand knowledge of their housekeeping skills. That’s how many of us are these days.
But I’m getting over it.

Two of my favorite people in the world are Millie and Buddy. Millie was one of my professors in seminary and she teaches at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia now. Buddy is her jazz drummer husband. They have a 9-year-old daughter named Kate who is just about the age of our children.

A few years ago I attended a conference in Philadelphia and I needed a place to stay so I called Millie and asked if I could crash at their place. “No problem,” she said. So I came. I enjoyed it so much that I went back the next year for another conference. Then I took my family and we stayed for three days during spring break. The next year we went back and stayed four days. It’s getting to be a tradition. I keep trying to get Millie and Buddy to come visit us but so far it’s been one way hospitality.

The point is, not only have the visits been great opportunities for us to be with them and to see Philadelphia, but I think they’ve been good for Millie and Buddy, too. Offering hospitality is an important way that we open up our lives to new things and new relationships. It may also be one of the most important ways we experience God.

Jesus knew something about this. As a wandering religious teacher he was always inviting himself to dinner with someone. Do you remember what he said to Zaccheus when he saw him up in the tree? “Zaccheus, get down out of that tree. I’m coming to your house for dinner!” And what was Zaccheus’ reaction? Was he angry, resentful or embarrassed about this? Absolutely not! He was overjoyed. If you’re still wondering about my little method here, ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” He’d invite himself over, of course!

It’s that same kind of reverse hospitality that we see in the strange little gospel passage we have
for today. Jesus is sending out seventy disciples to go before him into the towns where he wants to travel and before he sends them off he gives them a set of instructions that is really pretty unusual. I don’t know what I would have thought if Jesus had given me these instructions.
What he says is that there is a lot of work to do. The harvest is plentiful and God needs lots of workers to go out into the harvest. The harvest is a fairly consistent image in the New Testament for the end times, the final coming of God’s reign, the fulfillment of all things. So what Jesus seems to be saying is that this is an important time. What the seventy are going to be doing is pretty crucial and in fact, they should be praying for a few more to help them.

So just imagine with me. If you’re one of these seventy, you’re probably saying, “Alright. Important work. I’m with you, Jesus. Just tell me what you’re going to do.”

Well, Jesus tells them. “O.K. this is how I want you to carry out this really important work. I’m going to send you out like lambs in the midst of wolves.”

“Oooooo.K., Lord. That sounds a little scary.”

It sounds even scarier when Jesus describes what that means. It’s not only that he’s sending them out into a dangerous situation, but he is intentionally stripping them of everything they could use to maintain the illusion of power and self-sufficiency. He tells them, “You can’t take any money, you can’t take any bag to put stuff in, no sandals for your feet…you’ve pretty much got to go with nothing and depend entirely on the mercy of strangers who might be hostile.”

“O.K.,” you might be thinking if you’re one of the seventy. “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure now. But bring it on. It’s going to be like a wilderness survival course, right? We’re going to have to survive on our wits. We’ll be wild prophets like John the Baptist and eat locusts and wild honey and stuff like that and live in the desert, right?”

But Jesus says, “No, you’re not going to do the wilderness thing. You’re going into the cities. And not only that you’re going to invite yourself into peoples’ houses. And when you enter the house you’re not going to give a long sermon, you’re not going to challenge them. You’re just going to say, ‘Peace! Peace! Peace be on this house!’ and see what happens.”

Now, if you’re one of the seventy, you’d have to be wondering about this mission. The mission is to invite yourself in to somebody’s home and say, “Peace!” What kind of a mission is this?

But Jesus isn’t finished. “You have more to do with these families. When you find someone who will be hospitable I want you to…are you ready for this?…I want you to eat with them.”

Woo. This is getting really radical here! The kingdom is coming and our mission is to go eat with people! Freedom is coming. Salvation is coming. Jesus is coming. And we’re supposed to be having dinner parties with strangers? What is this mission all about?

Well, that’s about it really. Jesus does tell the seventy to heal the sick and to tell the villages that the reign of God has come near. He also says that if they are not welcomed that they should shake the dust off their feet as a witness against them, but even then they’re supposed to say that the reign of God has come near. But it seems like the really important part is the eating thing. The most important thing the seventy can do is to go out and invite themselves to dinner.

Now what in the world is going on here? I mean, did Jesus really think that he could change the world just by eating with people? You know, when you think about it, Jesus spent a lot of time at dinners. He ate with the Pharisees and other religious leaders. He ate with tax collectors like Zaccheus. He ate with sinners. He ate with women, which was a no-no for men in that day. He told stories about banquets and wedding feasts. He fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. He gathered with his disciples in an upper room, took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them saying, “Take, eat.” Yes, it does seem like eating with other people was a pretty essential thing for Jesus. He’s doing it all the time in the gospels. And it seems that he really believes that eating with strangers and friends can change the world.

What if we did that? What if we really believed that eating together and hospitality could change the world? Now here at Wesley we have got a head start on a lot of other folks because we can’t seem to get together without eating. Thursday night…we have dinner. Wednesdays…we have Lunch at the Pav. After this service…some folks will be going to dinner. We even have a local foods small group! Sometimes when we sing that old blessing song I think we need to change the words to “God Be With Us ‘Till We Eat Again.” We know a thing or two about the importance of meals.

But what if we started inviting ourselves to the tables of others and inviting others to our tables? What if we spent more time across the table from people we didn’t know? What if we spent more time across the table from people we do know and love? What if we made O-Hill and Newcomb and Runk places that were not known for the questionable color of their food but for the content of their community? I have a dream today!

But back to the seventy. When Jesus sends them out they don’t question the instructions. They head out ready to be like lambs among wolves. And when they come back they say an amazing thing. They don’t talk about how strange and awkward it was to go into the homes of strangers and speak peace and break bread. They don’t complain that they were hungry and tired. They don’t gripe about how their feet hurt. Because they didn’t experience being weak and vulnerable and scared. What they experienced was power!

What they say, and it’s a little surprising since it was not part of the instructions, is “Lord, even the demons obeyed us in your name!” They’ve been confronting evil and it is fleeing. They’ve been looking into the deepest darkest problems of the human condition and seeing hope. They’ve experienced power!

Jesus says, “Well, what do you know? I think you’ve got it. You know I gave you authority to face down snakes and scorpions and all manner of evil, but now you’ve got it. You’ve really got it. But don’t let the power go to your head.”

Of course the disciples will forget they have this power. They will get lost and confused. In the end they will abandon Jesus. They will deny him. They will watch as he is crucified and they will be numb and confused when he rises from the dead. But then…do you remember this?, Luke tells us this story, too…when they need to remember that they have been given this power, Jesus will come into the house where they are staying…he’ll just invite himself in as he always does…he’ll say, “Peace! Peace! Peace be with you!”…he’ll show them his hands and feet and side to prove that he is who he was and will be…and then…I love this…he’ll say, “Have you got anything to eat?” And they’ll find a broiled fish and he’ll sit down and eat with them one more time until they get it.

Do you see how strange this is? Do you understand why the meal we share at the communion table or at the Pav or at the soup kitchen or at the dinner table is capable of changing the world? It is when we sit down to table with others that we meet Jesus and understand again what a powerful thing it is to open our lives to others.

Jesus knew that the disciples would find power by leaving all its trappings behind. Jesus knew that they didn’t need money or a bag or even shoes for their feet to have demons obey them. What they needed was to go find a table and to accept the hospitality of people they didn’t know and to say, “Peace be on you. The kingdom of God is close at hand. Jesus is coming.” When they could do that, no power on earth could stop heaven coming down.

You need to invite yourself over to someone’s house, you know. There’s important work to do. God is changing the world. God needs workers for the harvest. And what do you have to do? Speak peace and break bread. It’s what Jesus would do. Thanks be to God.

Riding Off Into The Sunrise

2004-08-06T23:13:00.000-04:00

Two weeks is just long enough to remember why I fell in love with Texas and to get enough of it to know that I need to go home. I admit that I am a nostalgic fool who wanders around the Perkins quad in the late evening hours when the green lights are on in the trees (it's effective--trust me) and recalls times gone by: Now there's the back of the chapel where Suzanne and I taught Jouette Bassler, one of the great New Testament scholars of our time, how to clog. There are the steps where I used to take my little radio and listen to Rangers baseball games. There is the spot where I sat in the midst of my greatest personal crisis, a time of depression, grief and anxiety, and talked to Ricardo, the groundskeeper, in Spanish.

I also get captivated by the energy of Dallas and the warm family life of my friends in Agape Church. I'm usually there for Noa's birthday party (he's the child of some of our best friends), a real reunion. Then there are the after-church lunches with Sam and Jeannie Moreno, my surrogate parents. Wednesday enchilada special night at El Fenix with the young adult group that began while I was an intern at the church. For some reason I can never quite fathom, my family and I are accepted wholeheartedly and the fact that I have not seen these friends in a year doesn't seem to matter a bit. I'm home.

As I leave Texas this time I have experienced all this again and have loved cultivating my Mexican heritage, but I'm also more aware of the ugly side of Texas. Red state/Blue state dynamics don't come close to being adequate to describe the divides I'm sensing in this strange and wonderful place. What is amazing to me is how insulated I was from the ugliness as a student. I knew it existed and I railed against it in my writing and my ministry, but I guess I always believed that we inner-city progressives were the majority and that the people we now call blue were with us.

But the blue people, the North Dallas young professionals who manage to keep a few decent coffee shops going, are just as distanced from the world I know as are the Highland Park reds (think former HP resident George W.). Sitting between the Spanish COSS faculty and one of my favorite Anglo professors of seminary at a fiesta last Friday, I was painfully aware that she did not know any language with which to communicate with the Spanish faculty. And it wasn't just because she didn't know any Spanish. They spoke English. It was the fact that she didn't know the culture despite having lived in Texas most of her adult life.

A rabid sort of reactionary Republicanism has become the political norm in Austin. Think Tom DeLay and the wars over redistricting last year that sent Democrats to Oklahoma and New Mexico to try and bring some decency to the place. It failed. Texas is redistricted and is likely to lose at least five good congressmen this fall simply because they are Democrats. Progressive strongholds like Austin and the Rio Grande Valley have been carved up into three or four different districts to dilute voting strength. There is not one Democrat in the 27 elected statewide offices.

Two years ago the progressives thought they could win the governor's office by getting the silent majority to the polls. Texas has a large Hispanic population and it is pretty solidly Democratic. A strong Hispanic candidate and a massive get-out-the-vote effort resulted in a Republican landslide. It's not that they were wrong. There is a silent majority out there, but they don't trust the blue folks any more than the red. As Susan Pace Hamill said when she came to speak at UVA this spring, she knew the Alabama tax reform plan that would help the poor was going to fail when the poor told her they didn't trust anything that came from academics. Can it be that we have forgotten the most important lesson of liberation theology? Technocrats have no salvation to offer the poor. The poor must be agents of their own history. And we are pushing a technocratic agenda that pits the "O, so wise" blues against the reds while assuming that the blacks and browns will see that they really want to be blue.

Texas will once more live up to its promise, but there is more pain to come. The people I love in Dallas will continue to inspire me with their love and acceptance. I will always wonder whether it was right for me to leave this place. But I head back into the sunrise knowing that it is not enough to know what is right. It is more important to live in solidarity with the people Jesus loves. And to let them speak.

Still Pentecostal After All These Days

2004-08-03T23:55:00.000-04:00

It is always a thrilling thing for me to deliver a sermon in Perkins Chapel. I've only had the opportunity to do it about three times. Something about the spirits of Albert Outler, Jim White, and Zan Holmes, plus all of the fantastic preaching colleagues who were my fellow-students.

Today was my latest opportunity as I preached for a Pentecost service (yes, in August! we're going through the whole liturgical year during Course of Study School). Given the theme, it seemed only right to continue exploring "Holy Ghost power." Afterwards we had a time of witness when three people offered very potent stories of how they are experiencing transformation. Many people commented on the optimism of my sermon. Suddenly I felt the "John Edwards effect"and the illogical worry that because it was upbeat it wasn't real. Yes, it was sunny but it can be deep, too!

You may decide for yourself. The sermon is below:

Alex’s Dream
August 3, 2004
Perkins Course of Study School
Acts 2:1-21

I had a dream the other night. I can do that, you see. I’m faculty. We don’t have to pull all-nighters until tonight when all the final papers come in. You’ll dream again soon enough.
I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that the bishop had called and told me that I would no longer be serving as the campus minister at the University of Virginia. Instead I was going to go back to the local church. Did I mention that this was a nightmare? No, it wasn’t, it was a dream, a vision like those poured out on the sons and daughters of Israel, the old men and the slaves.

In this vision I was sent back to Trinity United Methodist Church in Orange, Virginia, which is the church I grew up in. Now Orange, Virginia is nothing like Orange, Texas. It’s a very small, nondescript town in the Virginia Piedmont. In times gone by it was home to James Madison and Zachary Taylor. It was the place where Confederate troops wintered in 1863 and 1864. But today it is a struggling town that has seen its textile industries close one by one, along with the sheet metal plant and the telephone company service center. Unemployment is rising and young people are leaving as fast as they can for better opportunities elsewhere. As they say, Orange is a good place to be from.

But in my dream this is where I was sent. I stood before the congregation in the pulpit on my first Sunday. I looked out at a smattering of glassy-eyed faces dull with fatigue and not daring to hope that they would find something here worth listening to, much less worth living for. Do you ever have congregations like that? No, of course not, it was just a dream I tell you. But what a dream.

I cried out to the Lord. I said, “Lord,” I said. “Can these dry bones live?” And God said, “Ezekiel, that’s my line. I know that they can. Now deliver the word.”

So I turned back to this congregation and I recognized faces. There’s Billy Jones who just lost his wife to cancer. There’s Helen Jenson who lost a child to a debilitating illness and who has MS herself. There’s Marlin James who lost his eyesight and then his job because of it. There’s my fifth-grade teacher. There’s my Mom. There’s my Dad. Deliver the word. Yes, Lord. Deliver the word to Orange. You know, Lord, that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown. “Deliver the word,” came the reply.

So I spoke: People of Orange, I said, I don’t know why I have been sent to you but I know what I have to say to you. I know that you have struggled. I know that you have despaired. I know that your children and youth look up and down the deserted shops along Main Street and dream of the day they can leave. I know that the workers down at the lumber yard are looking over their shoulders wondering if they will be the next to see their jobs sent to another town or another country. I know that you have to travel many miles to see a doctor now. I know that you feel tired and despondent, sick and worried, and worried sick. I know that you feel you have no power.

And because you feel you have no power to change this place which has made us who we are, we seek power in whatever small ways it can be known. It’s a lot easier to stoke the fire for an argument over the color of the carpet than it is to reach out to the children we know are out there in need. When you feel you have no power you try to lock down whatever you can--your position on the Administrative Council, your pastor’s visitation schedule, your choir’s choice of anthems--somewhere we need to feel that powerlessness does not define our lives.
I know all this about you, people of Orange. And I am here to say that you have the power. I am sent here as a United Methodist pastor and if I do not say this to you each and every time that I deliver the word (how am I doing, God?), then it is time for me to move on. John Wesley told his preachers not to stay in any one place any longer than was strictly necessary and if I am not fulfilling my call, it is time for me to on my way, because the call that I have is to proclaim the good news that in Jesus Christ, you have the power.

Now I know that you have begun to doubt this power. I know that you do not expect this power. Life has worn you down. Trials have torn you down. Others have put you down. Troubles have shut you down. Abuse has pulled you down. Addiction has dragged you down. The economy has sucked you down. And it’s hard to look up when you’re always looking down.

So I see you coming in to worship and not daring to hope that today could be different. Not daring to believe that tomorrow will be different. Not daring to trust that what the risen Christ says is true that “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

You know we’ve been in this situation before. The church--it has been in this situation before. The disciples, even after spending so much time with Jesus, after listening to his teaching, after watching him heal and welcome and challenge and speak to the deepest needs of those he met, after witnessing his death and disbelieving his resurrection and then sharing in awe and wonder for forty days with the risen Jesus…after all of this, they were in our situation. Jesus ascended into the skies and they stand there, looking up after him, and you can just hear the wheels in their heads spinning, “Oh, man. What do we do now?” They stare so long that two angels have to come along and nudge them along saying, “O.K. folks, why are you still looking up in the sky? Jesus will come back in the same way but in the meantime, focus, people.”

So they come to their senses, just a little bit, and they wander back into Jerusalem, and they do what any good Methodists would do considering the circumstances, they pray and have a nominations committee meeting to elect a replacement for Judas. It’s not bad, what they do, but it’s not the power they were expecting. Maybe because they weren’t expecting power.

But then the power does come and you know what happens next. It’s Pentecost. They’re sitting there in Jerusalem, which is filled with Jews from all over the known world. And then there’s wind and there are tongues as of flames resting on their heads and they are speaking in tongues that they have never spoken before and the visitors to the city hear them and they can understand. They hear them praising God. They hear them in their own languages praising God. And they are amazed and astonished…well, all of them except those who think they’re just drunk. But no, Peter says, no, they aren’t drunk. In fact what they are is possessed. They are possessed by the Spirit of God who is proclaiming a new day like the day the prophet Joel proclaimed when he said that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh and people with no earthly wisdom…sons and daughters would prophesy….people on the margins of society, old people would dream dreams…people with no status and no freedom, slaves would proclaim the good news. Here’s the good news, brothers and sisters, people who are powerless will know that in Jesus Christ, they have the power.

People of Orange, do you hear the good news? Power is not to be wasted on the wealthy and the socially prominent. Power is not to be postponed until some glorious time in some undetermined future. Power is not to be rationed out as if it is in limited supply. What you may not realize is that when Jesus Christ said, “Repent, for the reign of God is at hand,” he meant, “The reign of God is at hand. The power is here.” Jesus did not say to the transformed tax collector Zaccheus that salvation would come or might come…when he took that little man out of the tree and set him back on his feet Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house. The power is here.” When Jesus stretched out his arms and died on the cross he did not say, “It will be finished” or “It may be finished.” Jesus said, “It is finished. It is completed. The power is here, even on this ultimate symbol of powerlessness.”

The question for you people of Orange is do you believe that you have been given the power to live in a new day? Can you once again expect something to happen when you walk in those doors so that you can expect something to happen when you walk back out of them? Or will you be like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz, refusing to believe that you have courage until the humbug behind the curtain verifies it for you? What the lion could not believe, though he had it all along, was that he had the power! Even Dorothy, the small and meek, couldn’t believe that she had the power to go home all along.

People of Orange…you don’t have to wait for permission to be God’s people. You don’t have to apply for a grant from the conference office to claim the promise. You don’t have to wait on an authorizing body to start loving the community around you. You don’t have to look beyond Orange to know that you have every resource you need to transform the world. What you have is the Holy Spirit!

And who says that we can’t once again be vessels of that Spirit? Who says these open hearts, open minds, and open doors that we proclaim can’t be the vehicles for others to experience the power the world misunderstands? Who says the days of wind and fire and healing and proclamation are captive to history? Unfortunately, the answer is…we say that. I think it would be well and good if we were to experience the tongues of fire once again but settled beneath our posteriors instead of on our heads because we need to be launched from our seats to cry, “Love, Peace, Hope, Joy, Life, Power” to a world that is thirsting…that is dying to hear those words.

Well, that’s what I dreamed when I had my vision. I don’t know what the congregation in Orange did when they heard these words. I don’t know if that was my last Sunday in the pulpit or not. But I know that the next time I step into the pulpit, I want to expect the skies to part and the wind to blow and the fire to fall and the voices to proclaim that God is here…to stay. And my goodness…that would be today. Thanks be to God.

Communion in its Many Forms

2004-08-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Teaching local pastors here at Perkins Course of Study School is a real joy. The folks I'm working with are hard-working, ill-paid servants in the vineyard who generally love what they're doing. They can also open my eyes in amazement on occasion, however...like today.

I'm teaching two courses...one a Reformation History course...(think ultimate dead white guys class with lots of discussions of justification, transubstantiation, and arcane annulment strategies that would make even Britney think twice)...the other Contemporary Theology...(think Barth, Hauerwas, Fewell, and Gutierrez...this is where my heart is). You would think that most of the communion questions have been settled in the contemporary age, but a quick survey of eucharistic practice today told me that, no, there is still work to be done.

There seems to be a general concern that communion is too predictable, too repititious, too...you know...blah. So today I heard about two new methods for livening it up. Method #1 involved placing a baby Jesus doll on the altar with the elements. As you open the Great Thanksgiving only his porcelain head is showing from the bundle of swaddling clothes. Later however, you incline the babe slightly so that all can see as you unwrap him to reveal that his body is really a loaf of bread. Then at the words of institution ("On the night in which he was betrayed...") you take a container of grape juice and pour it over the loaf. I think you get the picture. Never mind the theology here...I was worried about the poor janitor who had to clean up after this soggy mess.

Reminds me of a clown service that was done here last year when a poor loaf of bread was cradled like a baby, waltzed around the chancel, ripped cruelly from a loving Mary-figure clown, nailed to a cross and ended its tenure as communion prop with a crown of thorns placed upon its...head? We broke another loaf for the actual communion.

Method #2 involved a service built around Jesus' breakfast on the beach with his disciples following his resurrection. In that story from John 21 Jesus has fish grilling in the sand to share with his bewildered disciples. If you're doing communion on a Sunday when this comes up, you can do what one of my students, in all sincerity and good intention, did: add a third element...fish sticks! Nothing says communion quite like freshly-baked Gorton's fish sticks. "This is my body(?) caught, cleaned, gutted, shredded, pressed and deep-fried for you. Do this in remembrance of the little sailor man in the yellow oilskins."

Somewhere in here is a sermon on liturgical innovation and how we feel the need to add things to symbols that speak most fully in their simplicity. Reducing the story of the Eucharist to a blood-soaked memorial of Christ's passion is a tragic foreshortening of the mystery. There is far more to communion than just remembrance. Fish sticks may seem like a good tactile Christian education technique but they actually replaced the story in this instance. I'm a sucker for good liturgical creativity, but there's a reason that baptism and communion have resisted change...they strip it all down to the mystery that is at the heart of faith.

And sometime I'll have to pursue the Wal-martization of worship. It seems we feel better about our services if they somehow include more stuff...especially more packaged, processed, and mass-produced stuff. The theology of things is threatening to overwhelm us. "I'm sure the elements are up there in the chancel somewhere if I could just find them behind the mike chords, American flags, multiple crosses, huge flower sprays, and what's this? Fish sticks?!!"

Big D, little a, double l, a-s

2004-07-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

Opelousas turned out to be in the heart of Cajun country. I thought I was going to be north of that, but, no, I was in Acadiana and the accents were thick and sometimes indecipherable. I had been having trouble with deep Mississippi accents the day before. In a store I head a little Anglo girl say to her mother, "Buenos dias." I thought that was unusual, but then I realized that what she had really said was, "What is this?"

Breakfast at The Palace--a diner across from the courthouse in opelousas. After breakfast, as I headed for my car, a very big and tall African-American man of about my age asked me if I could give him a ride to the park. I didn't know where the park was but I said, "Sure, hop in." It was about twenty blocks so we talked on the way. It turns out that Tracy (his name) lives in the park. 41 years old, I believe he's a bit mentally challenged. It was like talking with a very sweet child. He was very grateful for the ride and I was, too.

Flat swamps, plains and rice fields all the way across Louisiana. I listened to the bilingual radio station (English & French) that was playing zydeco and fiddle music. Can't say I missed Bill.

The atmosphere changed dramatically when I crossed the Sabine into Texas. I stopped for lunch at Gunther's Log Cabin BBQ in Newton. Wood decor. Lots of meat. Big people. Texas flags. I knew I'd made it.

Spent a good while in Jasper grading papers on the courthouse lawn and looking for the grave of James Byrd, the black man murdered here a few years ago when two white men put a chain around his neck and dragged him behind their pickup. Down at the town park a large black family was gathered for a family reunion. Children played on the playground and in the deserted streets. I wondered how black parents could explain to their children what had happened here. How could they ever make them feel safe again? How could they learn to trust?

Just beyond Jasper I saw a car stopped in the median of the highway with a blowout. I stopped to see if I could help the folks. Another man stopped, too. We got the car off the highway and they insisted on walking back up the hill to their houses.

Finally, Dallas on the horizon. 1700 miles after leaving home. Driving in felt much more natural than flying. I usually have an exhilirating sense of being in a special place when I fly--like I have been magically transported to Disney World. But driving in it felt just like Dallas, a place like any other along the line--special in its own way, but home to people who are fascinating and flawed. I'm glad I left the interstate to find them.

There are pictures to share. And more stories to tell. But for the next two weeks its Reformation History and Contemporary Theology as I teach at the Course of Study School for local pastors at Perkins School of Theology.

The Cat In The Window

2004-07-23T23:15:00.000-04:00

Somewhere between Tupelo and Meridian Bill Clinton's eight-year term as president ended (see previous post). It seemed like 25. As much as I admired the man's political skills, I was glad to see him go. Our final hours together were still contentious.

Bill: So the right-wing conspiracy finally brought me up on a charge that i lied in a deposition for a case that never got to trial. Can you believe that?
Alex: Bubba, you're such a dork! You pull out the legal-ese and you just annoy people. Besides it was a stupid thing that you did.
Bill: (chuckling) Yes, I know. I slept on the couch for a couple of months after that. And I sure missed hearing Hillary's laugh. You want me to quote the witty thing I said to her?
Alex: NO! Half of you rbook is quotes from speeches and witty retorts you want to make sure I catch. I get it. I do. But you have got to get over yourself!
Bill: Well, that's the end of my story.
Alex: Thank goodness.
Bill: I'll be baaaaack.
Alex: I know you will, but not on this trip. Bye, Bubba.

Gospel music filled the rest of the trip. The old-time religion collection has given me lots of ideas for Sunday night worship.

Breakfast at Tin Lizzie's in West Point, Mississippi. Lunch with Max Blalock in Hattiesburg. Southern Miss has a great new Wesley Foundation and Max makes a great director. We plotted the revival of Southeastern Jurisdictional campus ministry events.

Stopped in Gloster, MS to weather a thunderstorm and grade a paper under the awning in front of an abandoned soap store. As I was sitting there a kitten came up to the glass on the other side and began to mew. I tried to find a way in but couldn't so we just sat there--separated but together. She was good company.

Woodville, MS, home of Jefferson Davis, made a good stop for a long walk. Then it was down to Louisiana for a sunset ferry ride across the mighty Mississippi. The sky was a riot of colors from a muted red-orange in the clouds to an electric blue behind. I drove off the ferry, down by the levee, and into the gathering night. Finally found a bed in Opelousas.

Me and Bill in Tupelo

2004-07-22T23:32:00.000-04:00

Here I am at the All-American Coliseum Motel in Tupelo, Mississippi. It's the scuzziest motel I've stayed in since...Jackson, Mississippi in 1990. (involuntary shudder) But it's only $33 for this lovely slice of tawdry. Since I arrived too late to beg a campsite it will have to do.

For the record, Bill Clinton isan awful traveling companion. I brought along his autobiography on CD (read by the author) for on-the-road entertainment. I forgot who I was inviting. It was not quite as bad as travelling with George W. must be ("Hey, Alex, did I tell you I found another synonym for resolve today?"), but it's close. I know the book is called My Life but I kept wanting to say, "Bill, get over yourself!"

A typical conversation:
Bill: Ken Starr was a partisan hack.
Alex: You've said that already.
Bill: Yes, but I want to make sure you hear me. The American people never hear about the good stuff I did.
Alex: Never heard about it?! You're the most shameless self-promoter of all time! How could we not hear?
Bill: I just could never figure the media out. Why wouldn't they talk about my acheivements?
Alex: Bill, why did you keep reading the papaers? Just quit whining and govern. I liked what you did, but this side of you...
Bill: And then there was Paula Jones.
Alex: Here we go again...
Bill: She kept pushing her case against me even when the Washington Post noted that she had no evidence to pursue her case.
Alex: O.K., but Bill, did you do it?
Bill: I have never lied about matters of public policy.
Alex: That is such legal wiggling! You're parsing 'is' again aren't you?
Bill: Starr's lawyers forced me into that.
Alex: Bill, just keep on with the story. Stop being so defensive.
Bill: It's rooted in my childhood. Did I tell you I had a difficult childhood?
Alex: Only for about 400 pages. Enough with the psychologizing. Geez!

Despite Bill, it was a great drive today. Rain this morning through Kentucky. Ate a "meaty" breakfast at Lenna's Restaurant and talked with the locals about delay switches in windshield wipers. The meal was meaty because that's all they had. Only six items on the menu and any combination had to include meat: steak, tenderloin, sausage, eggs, hash browns, biscuits and sausage gravy. A toothless truck driver lamented the demise of California. "They're just not normal out there." I know this is horribly stereotypical and unfair, but the tooth count for West Virginia and Kentucky? 2.

Got to Albany, Kentucky for lunch at Karen's Kitchen. The catfish platter was much more fried than I expected so I skipped dinner later. Talked with a waitress about travelling. Her boyfriend is trying to get her into trucking. She's ready to leave the diner but not ready to leave Kentucky. Made me think of a poignant moment with Toothless #1 last night. Told him I was headed to Texas. He said, in all sincerity, "Oh, take me with you." Must have been 55 years old but he sounded like a toddler.

Beautiful drive through Southern Tennessee. Florence, Alabama, however, is a hole. Were it not for the river it would have managed to turn its entire surroundings into faceless fast food sprawl. I hurried through.

I hit the Natchez trace Parkway at nightfall. It's a dark and lonely road at night. I pulled into an overlook, got out my guitar, and sang at top voice for an hour beneath the brilliant stars and orange crescent moon. A gray fox joined me for a moment. Limped into Tupelo about 11 and here I am amidst the scuzz.

The Rediscovering the South Tour Begins

2004-07-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

A Fowler's Toad yelps down the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River as I set up camp beside the flood wall at Matewan, West Virginia. I caught a toothless man coming out of Wednesday evening services at the Missionary Baptist Church and asked if he knew of a campground where I could pitch my tent. He pointed to the grassy area next to the police station and said, "If I were you, I'd just set up right there." I checked with the lone officer on duty and he waved me on over. A group of station-house regulars eyed me with suspicion as a I pitched my tent and graded Reformation History papers on a warped picnic table.

I'm a bit wary of law enforcement now. One of them got me in Gilbert, West Virginia for going 34 in a 25 MPH zone. I don't think my Virginia plates helped. And this is Matewan. Not 200 yards from my campsite are the tracks were the local sherrif, a Hatfield, and a bunch of aggreived miners took on the detectives of the Baldwin-Felts agency who were in town to break up a strike. Ten men died in what some call a battle and others a massacre.

Then there are the McCoys. This is prime feud country, though the presence of the Hatfield & McCoy Florist Shop makes me think some old wounds have healed.

It was slow going today and I had to force myself to relax. There's plenty of time to get to Dallas. But I've been building this trip up so much in my mind that I have a hundred things I want to do: leisurely walks in courthouse squares, grading papers by the river, revivals in pentecostal churches, camping under the stars.

Well, I got to some of them today and tomorrow is another one.

Our Woman in Virginia

2004-07-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

The suspense is over. Just a few minutes ago the assignments for new bishops were announced and what was rumored for months turned out to be so...Charlene Kammerer is coming to the Virginia Annual Conference as our new bishop. Funny how these things work. If people were whispering this in February it does make you wonder how much was predetermined.

But no matter. This is a good thing. Bishop Kammerer is a former campus minister (Duke) and a strong supporter of higher education ministries. That bodes well for revisioning our conference higher education program, something that is sorely needed. She also has been a vocal advocate for the Bishop's Initiative on Children and Poverty. That's another huge plus.

September 1 is the transition date. We'll look forward to welcoming Bishop Kammerer and beginning another chapter in ministry together.

Another note of celebration. Our woman out west is Minerva Carcano who was elected just past midnight local time in San Jose as the final bishop in the Western Jurisdiction elections. A good colleague, she will be a great bishop. Just sorry she's lost to Texas. And did I mention she's another Perkins person?

Daring to Hope

2004-07-15T22:48:00.000-04:00

A dizzying day. Trying to carry out a hectic day's schedule while checking in on the balloting every so often. I have to say it came as a shock that Clarence was not elected. I had been assuming all along that, of course the SEJ would see in him a new bishop. But having him return only adds to the sense that these huge conferences are unreal things. As with Pittsburgh I am waiting for people to return so that I can ask real people, "What was that all about?"

For the record, and with no bias implied...merely an observation...Perkins grads are doing well. One of the five SEJ bishops who have now been elected (Al Gwinn of Kentucky and Dick Wills of Florida were added today) has a D.Min. from Perkins (Swanson). The others are scattered among Duke, Candler, Asbury and ITC. Both of the South Central Jurisdiction bishops who have been elected are Perkins grads including Robert Schnase, pastor of First UMC in McAllen and director of some of the border ministries we were involved in when we took our mission trip to McAllen in 2001. Hovering on the verge of election tonight is Scott Jones, another Perkins grad and current Perkins professor. O.K. I recognize the fact that that is over the top. I'll desist.

Out west, where only 88 delegates are deciding things, Minerva Carcano has been hovering around the 12 vote level with 59 needed to elect. But it's a wide open field with no clear favorites for the two positions they are electing. Interesting tidbit--Karen Dammann was on the first ballot, she of the homosexuality trial in Washington state. She received 2 votes.

Since this really is sounding like Election Night with Jeff Greenfield and Bill Schneider on CNN, I'm going to stop and dare to hope that in the midst of this wild and wacky process, God truly is at work. Tomorrow: perhaps some word on who will be assigned as bishop for the Virginia Annual Conference.

Welcoming Clarence Home

2004-07-15T11:21:00.000-04:00

We have just received word here in Bishop Watch Central that Clarence has withdrawn his name from the slate of nominees after the sixth ballot. He received 59 votes on the last ballot and had been receiving a declining number on each ballot.

While I am very disappointed for Clarence and the Church, I am very happy to be welcoming him back to Charlottesville. The team is intact!

Waiting on Clarence: A Jurisdictional Conference Update

2004-07-14T23:51:00.000-04:00

It seems only right, since this blog began as a report on the activities of the General Conference, that I continue with posts about the Jurisdictional Conferences now taking place around the country. A primer if you're new to this: There are five jurisdictions for United Methodism in the United States. Each contains a number of annual conferences. Compared to the general church and annual conference structure, the jurisdictions are comparatively weaker in terms of their day-to-day impact on the life of the church, but they do have one important responsibility--they elect bishops.

In May I was salving my despair over the General Conference with the knowledge that folks I know and love, folks like Clarence Brown, would be returning and perhaps life could return to normal. Now we are awaiting word on whether Clarence will indeed return. He is a candidate for the episcopacy in the Southeastern Jurisdiction (think Old South east of the Mississippi) and if he is elected he will be leaving Virginia as of September 1.

So what's happening? Six bishops are being elected in the Southeast and after four ballots, three of them have been elected. Hope Morgan Ward, a District Superintendent in the Raleigh, NC area, was the first to be elected. On the last ballot the prolific Will Willimon of Duke Chapel and James Swanson of South Georgia were also elected. If you'd like to check the results yourself, just click on over to the SEJ2004 website

Where's Clarence? On the last ballot he was 10th among the runners up with 81 votes (332 needed for election that time). He's been in roughly the same position throughout the balloting, coming down from a high of 131 on the first ballot.

Now I'm no Larry Sabato, and it seems somehow wrong to be analyzing the work of the Holy Spirit through the lens of American political punditry, but I think the 5th ballot will be crucial for our man Brown. Some of those who left him after the first ballot may return now that Swanson has been elected. He may even pick up some Willimon voters. And some of those ahead of them have peaked and will now fade. The question of the night here in Bishop Watch Central is will we see a big bump in the morning and a resurgence in the Brown campaign? Tune in tomorrow.

However it turns out, I'm praying for my friend and colleague. I can't imagine what this roller coaster ride has been like for him, but he has handled it with grace and good humor.

I'm also praying for another friend and colleague on the West Coast. Minerva Carcano, who was one of my teaching colleagues in the Perkins Course of Study School and one of my ministerial colleagues during my internship in the Rio Grande Conference, is up for election in the Western Jurisdiction. Four years ago many of us were very disappointed when the South Central Jurisdiction failed to elect her. One of the reasons she is now in Oregon is because many in the West embraced her after that disappointment and recognized her leadership in the Hispanic community. She has been away from home in Texas for some time now, but her family is still there and we are watching to see if this time she will become the bishop we believe she is meant to be.

Exciting times. Won Un, one of the Virginia delegates, is doing the official blog for the Conference. He says it's hotter than blue blazes in Lake Junaluska, NC--site of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference. That's how I remember it from 1984 when I was a lay delegate there.

North Alabama bishop Robert Fannin gave the opening episcopal address. From the text I read it seemed folksy, wistful, and retrospective in urging delegates to find the center in Christ. He mixed calls for social engagement with calls for rediscovering the evangelical fire. A safe mix of emphases for this crowd. (You'd think he was running for bishop again instead of retiring!). His final vision? "That this great United Methodist Church will continue to be a mighty force in the world." Hmmm.

"Say good night, Alex." "Good night, Alex."

Thinking Out Loud About Campus Ministry

2004-07-06T01:14:00.000-04:00

What are the things that bring me the most joy in campus ministry? Being a part of the lives of incredibly bright and gifted young people and engaging them around some of life’s most basic questions. Listening them to vocation and faith and social involvement. Offering my quirky self and finding that something there resonates and speaks for God. Watching graduates discover new things after they leave and marveling at how seeds planted in college blossom years down the road. These are the things I love about what I do.

I don’t think many church people see that when they look at campus ministry. A great divorce happened in the 1960s as campus ministry followed young people out of the church and listened to their disillusionment with great institutions, including the church. Local churches didn’t know what to do with their wayward children and wayward campus ministries. For a time church-related colleges continued to live in the 1950s and produce ever-dwindling crops of ministerial leaders. But by the late 1970s even they began to look like alien environments to the aging local church population. If there were great and powerful things happening on college campuses, (and there were), the church couldn’t see it. But they could see the price tag and it was big.

I have come to believe that the disconnect we in campus ministry feel with the local church and with the conference structure is not just a matter of us failing to tell the story. We have failed to do that in a sustained and effective way, but we have also done monumental things to get the word out. Local church outreach days, choirs, music and drama programs, worship teams, inviting youth groups to attend--we’ve done these things. Our Project Transformation program is a huge investment in connecting to the local church and it doesn’t happen without telling the story and getting the support of dozens of local churches. A few lights are going on, but we’re not changing the culture whose ethos was set in 1968.

It’s tempting to blame the new Annual Conference vision statement for our woes. Yes, it annoyed me that the statement starts out by “envisioning local churches…” Yes, it is very worrying that the new Common Table plan is so oriented around this vision statement that it marginalizes campus ministry even more (to the point that we are left without a staff person and a clear place at the table until some clean-up work is done.) I want the Annual Conference to envision campus ministries as well as local churches and to present a clear vision for what they hope will happen in our ministries.

But the Annual Conference, at this stage of its life, is not able to do that without help. And rather than moan about this pitiful lack of vision, I am thinking out loud about what it would be like if we adopted another vision statement that is also central to our denomination. The mission of The United Methodist Church, according to the Book of Discipline, is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. By golly, it’s time we did that.

Now, I know…all of the things I described in the first paragraph are critical ways of making disciples for Jesus Christ. And I know that that discipling language is uncomfortable for us because it sounds too much like the bad old days of the church when making disciples meant making 1950s social conformist Christians. I know that right-wing elements of the evangelical movement have hijacked this language for their own purposes. I know that we are active in religiously pluralistic environments were we may be tempted to mute the Christocentric language in order to be more open to dialogue. And I know that we want to open and listening and respectful of the many places and stages where we find students, faculty, and staff. Being on the margins is not a bad thing and this language seems to take us right to the center which is where we often leave local churches.

But the language is there and it’s not going away. If making disciples is central to what we do as a church, then even in extension ministries it has to be crucial. And since some of the best of the church seems to happen in our ministries, we can take a lead role in defining what making disciples for Jesus Christ looks like.

If local churches are not going to come and meet us on our turf, let’s go meet them on theirs. Let’s challenge local churches to do what we do. How many of them undergo a radical transformation once a year as they welcome new people? How many of them add even ten young adult new members in a year? How many of those new members move into key leadership roles within one year? How many local church councils completely change their rosters in the space of four years? How many churches send an average of one person a year into seminary or full-time church leadership? How many churches do all of this with low levels of giving from the core membership and with a single staff person? (I know, I'm blessed to be in a place where we have 2 1/2 at the moment but I recognize how unusual that is.) We are often challenged over the relatively small numbers who are active in campus ministry units. These questions should challenge local churches to see what’s really going on.

But it’s not that we want to be confrontational. What we want to be is invitational. We want to invite students to discover their calling as disciples of Jesus Christ and we want to invite churches to learn from the very folks we are sent to serve what it means to be church.

What does this mean for the structure of the Board of Higher Education Ministries? I’m thinking out loud here in advance of our retreat July 28-29. Here are some possibilities:

Adopt a mission statement that spells out this invitation in more detail. Make it simple and short and useful in interpretation with local churches and student leadership teams. Incorporate the language of the denominational mission statement that urges us to make disciples for Jesus Christ.

Challenge the church-related colleges to affirm this vision. If they feel we are on the same page in doing this, let’s find a way to make the chaplains an integral part of our structure. If the vision of what we are doing in campus ministry is too divergent, reconstruct the board recognizing that what campus ministry units and colleges are doing is very different. Going back to two divisions may not be a bad thing.

Make the United Methodist Student Movement a visible presence on the Board. One of the reasons it has not been active is that we have expected too little of it. Students have to be a part of this vision and they will be the most effective spokespersons for it. We need a minimum of two students on the Board, even if it is in the voice-but-no-vote capacity that many of the campus ministers are in. And we need to support them, especially through enabling college student presence at Annual Conference.

Expect Conference Board member presence on local unit boards. It may not be possible for the Conference staff person to attend meetings of the local boards, but conference board members should consider it part of their responsibility to get to know the campus ministry units in their region. Attendance at one meeting a year ought to be a bare minimum, and at that meeting they should share the conference’s vision and lift it up as the standard by which evaluation will take place.

Use the Common Table structure to develop cooperative relationships that enable other boards and agencies and local churches to feel an investment in higher education and campus ministries. One of the reasons BHEM is in a ghetto of invisibility is that it has assumed all responsibility for the church’s higher education ministries. In our local campus ministry I have discovered that we have been able to do far more by partnering with other areas of the church. The Board of Ordained Ministry and the Board of Global Ministries are two natural partners for creative partnerships. If we can enlist other areas of the church in developing new programs that lift up the importance of higher education ministries and that benefit the populations we serve, we will increase our visibility and gain new visions for what we can do.

In the short-term, BHEM must advocate for a strong staff position on the conference level. We will suffer if the staff support position is unclear or if it is allowed to be rolled in with staff support for the youth program. While the colleges are content with the part-time position for AEI outlined in the current plan, Jim Davis made it clear to me that AEI would be willing to advocate for adequate support for campus ministry staffing. We should take them up on the offer. We should camp out on Susan Garrett’s doorstep. And we should define exactly what it is that we want. I think some additional income and release time for one of the campus ministers to fulfill the role would be preferable to having campus ministry be one more part of an omnibus profile for an overworked youth staff person.

Just thinking out loud.
Alex Joyner 7/6/04

Preaching on the Fourth of July

2004-07-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

Spent the morning today with the good folks at Scottsville UMC, just a stones throw across the levee from the mighty James River. It was a small but hearty crowd. I was filling in for Dale Gillis, one of the few Perkins alums active here in the Virginia Conference. Dale was away with the youth on a mission trip to Kentucky.

It was the first time in a while that I have preached on the Fourth of July. It's not a church holiday, though you'd never guess it from the way most Protestant churches observe the day. Most Protestants long ago made peace with the American flag and it is prominently displayed in the front of most churches, including Scottsville. I have even been in attendance at churches where the creed was replaced with the Pledge of Allegiance to said flag.

I haven't made my peace with that flag yet. As we sang "America" for the opening hymn I looked at it and felt out of place, singing fealty to the nation when dressed in the alb of the church. I felt an even greater twinge of discomfort when I heard the choir tuning up for an arrangement of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA."

It's wrong. I know it's wrong to make an idol of the nation in this way. But it would also be wrong not to acknowledge the country on this day of all days, too. We may be "resident aliens" as Christians, but we have an interest in this land and its welfare. We share in its joys and its woes. And if we can't wish it well, then we're being self-defeating in the end. It's just the way we do that that concerns me.

I let the gospel text lead me as I preached today. The sending of the seventy is a radical message on hospitality and vulnerability. And in the end I got around to wishing my land well.

Suzanne, Joel and Rachel were with me. (Rachel helped me serve communion, which was the greatest blessing of the day!) After services we walked down the street to Cafe Bocce, a great little place, for lunch. The streets were lined with flags and people. Small local stores that are disappearing from so many places were opening their doors to afternoon traffic. The river flowed swiftly by.

Yes, I love places like Scottsville and the people who habit its churches and stores. They are my family. And though I can't bring myself to celebrate the gory excess of our national leadership, I can affirm that if I have any redeeming features, it is partly due to the fact that I grew up here with people who love me. We just must love one another enough to change this land.

Speaking Peace and Breaking Bread
Scottsville UMC
July 4, 2004

Luke 10:1-20
After this the Lord commissioned seventy others and sent them out two by two ahead of him into all the cities and places where he intended to go. He said to them:
"While the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few--so seek from the Lord of the Harvest workers to go out into his harvest.
“Go ahead. Look, I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves. Don't carry a money bag, nor a pouch, nor sandals and don't even greet anyone on the way.
“Whenever you enter a house, first say, 'Peace be on this house!' And if there is any child of peace there, your peace will remain with that one, but if not, it will return to you.
“Remain in the same house, sharing bread and drinking whatever they provide, for the worker deserves pay. Do not move from house to house.
“Whenever you enter a city and someone welcomes you, eat what is given to you. Heal the sick who are there and say to them, 'The reign of God has come near to you.'
“Whenever you enter a city and they don't welcome you, go out into its broad ways and say, 'We shake off the dust we collected on our feet in your city as a witness against you, only know that this day the reign of God has come near.'
“For I tell you Sodom will be more tolerable in that day than that city. Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago and sat in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you at the judgment. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven but reduced to hell. Whoever hears you hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."
The seventy returned with joy saying:
"Lord, even the demons obeyed us in your name!"
He said to them:
"I saw Satan fall from the heavens like lightning. Look, I have given you authority for treading upon snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, don't rejoice about this that the spirits obey you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

As I have gotten older I have come to believe that it is a great gift to invite yourself to stay at someone’s house. I’m not talking about a nice, friendly drop-in visit where you stay for a hour, have a glass of iced tea, and then go on. I’m talking about an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, show-me-where-I-can-put-my-bags and hey-can-I-help-make-dinner, multiple day kind of visit.

You don’t do this? Well, let me try to convince you that you should because not only is this a cheap way to travel, but I have come to believe that the people I stay with need me to visit with them. They need to show hospitality because there are so few people who will ask that from them.

Now I know it feels a little awkward. We 21st century Americans have a thing about dropping in on other folks. We don’t want to “impose.” We think we might be a “burden.” We don’t know if we’ll be welcome. Especially if we stay for a few days. And we don’t want to make our friends “uncomfortable” by having first-hand knowledge of their housekeeping skills. That’s how many of us are these days.

But I’m getting over it. Two of my favorite people in the world are Millie and Buddy. Millie was one of my professors in seminary and she teaches at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia now. Buddy is her jazz drummer husband. They have a 9-year-old daughter named Kate who is just about the age of our children.

A few years ago I attended a conference in Philadelphia and I needed a place to stay so I called Millie and asked if I could crash at their place. “No problem,” she said. So I came. I enjoyed it so much that I went back the next year for a another conference. Then I took my family and we stayed for three days during spring break. The next year we went back and stayed four days. It’s getting to be a tradition. I keep trying to get Millie and Buddy to come visit us but so far it’s been one way hospitality.

The point is, not only have the visits been great opportunities for us to be with them and to see Philadelphia, but I think they’ve been good for Millie and Buddy, too. Offering hospitality is an important way that we open up our lives to new things and new relationships. It may also be one of the most important ways we experience God.

Jesus knew something about this. As a wandering religious teacher he was always inviting himself to dinner with someone. Do you remember what he said to Zaccheus when he saw him up in the tree? “Zaccheus, get down out of that tree. I’m coming to your house for dinner!” And what was Zaccheus’ reaction? Was he angry, resentful or embarrassed about this? Absolutely not! He was overjoyed. If you’re still wondering about my little method here, ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” He’d invite himself over, of course!

It’s that same kind of reverse hospitality that we see in the strange little gospel passage we have for today. Jesus is sending out seventy disciples to go before him into the towns where he wants to travel and before he sends them off he gives them a set of instructions that is really pretty unusual. I don’t know what I would have thought if Jesus had given me these instructions.

What he says is that there is a lot of work to do. The harvest is plentiful and God needs lots of workers to go out into the harvest. The harvest is a fairly consistent image in the New Testament for the end times, the final coming of God’s reign, the fulfillment of all things. So what Jesus seems to be saying is that this is an important time. What the seventy are going to be doing is pretty crucial and in fact, they should be praying for a few more to help them.

So just imagine with me. If you’re one of these seventy, you’re probably saying, “Alright. Important work. I’m with you, Jesus. Just tell me what you’re going to do.”

Well, Jesus tells them. “O.K. this is how I want you to carry out this really important work. I’m going to send you out like lambs in the midst of wolves.”

“Oooooo.K., Lord. That sounds a little scary.”

It sounds even scarier when Jesus describes what that means. It’s not only that he’s sending them out into a dangerous situation, but he is intentionally stripping them of everything they could use to maintain the illusion of power and self-sufficiency. He tells them, “You can’t take any money, you can’t take any bag to put stuff in, no sandals for your feet…you’ve pretty much got to go with nothing and depend entirely on the mercy of strangers who might be hostile.”

“O.K.,” you might be thinking if you’re one of the seventy. “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure now. But bring it on. It’s going to be like a wilderness survival course, right? We’re going to have to survive on our wits. We’ll be wild prophets like John the Baptist and eat locusts and wild honey and stuff like that and live in the desert, right?”

But Jesus says, “No, you’re not going to do the wilderness thing. You’re going into the cities. And not only that you’re going to invite yourself into peoples’ houses. And when you enter the house you’re not going to give a long sermon, you’re not going to challenge them. You’re just going to say, ‘Peace! Peace! Peace be on this house!’ and see what happens.”

Now, if you’re one of the seventy, you’d have to be wondering about this mission. The mission is to invite yourself in to somebody’s home and say, “Peace!” What kind of a mission is this?

But Jesus isn’t finished. “You have more to do with these families. When you find someone who will be hospitable I want you to…are you ready for this?…I want you to eat with them.”

Woo. This is getting really radical here! The kingdom is coming and our mission is to go eat with people! Freedom is coming. Salvation is coming. Jesus is coming. And we’re supposed to be having dinner parties with strangers? What is this mission all about?

Well, that’s about it really. Jesus does tell the seventy to heal the sick and to tell them that the reign of God has come near. He also says that if they are not welcomed that they should shake the dust off their feet as a witness against them, but even then they’re supposed to say that the reign of God has come near. But it seems like the really important part is the eating thing. The most important thing the seventy can do is to go out and invite themselves to dinner.

Now what in the world is going on here? I mean, did Jesus really think that he could change the world just by eating with people? You know, when you think about it, Jesus spent a lot of time at dinners. He ate with the Pharisees and other religious leaders. He ate with tax collectors like Zaccheus. He ate with sinners. He ate with women. He told stories about banquets and wedding feasts. He fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. He gathered with his disciples in an upper room, took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them saying, “Take, eat.” Yes, it does seem like eating with other people was a pretty essential thing for Jesus. He’s doing it all the time in the gospels. And it seems that he really believes that eating with strangers and friends can change the world.

What if we did that? What if we really believed that eating together and hospitality could change the world? Now Methodists have got a head start on a lot of other folks because we have almost perfected the art of the potluck dinner. Sometimes when we sing that old blessing song I think we need to change the words to “God Be With Us ‘Till We Eat Again.” We know a thing or two about the importance of meals.

But what if we started inviting ourselves to the tables of others and inviting others to our tables? What if we spent more time across the table from people we didn’t know? What if we spent more time across the table from people we do know and love? Many families are in danger of losing common meals altogether. If we ate more with others could we really see them as unlovable? What if our United Methodist advertising campaign was “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Tables”? Just a thought. And an open question.

But back to the seventy. When Jesus sends them out they don’t question the instructions. They head out ready to be like lambs among wolves. And when they come back they say an amazing thing. They don’t talk about how strange and awkward it was to go into the homes of strangers and speak peace and break bread. They don’t complain that they were hungry and tired. They don’t gripe about how their feet hurt. Because they didn’t experience being weak and vulnerable and scared. What they experienced was power!

What they say, and it’s a little surprising since it was not part of the instructions, is “Lord, even the demons obeyed us in your name!” They’ve been confronting evil and it is fleeing. They’ve been looking into the deepest darkest problems of the human condition and seeing hope. They’ve experienced power!

Jesus says, “Well, what do you know? I think you’ve got it. You know I gave you authority to face down snakes and scorpions and all manner of evil, but now you’ve got it. You’ve really got it. But don’t let the power go to your head.”

Of course the disciples will forget they have this power. They will get lost and confused. In the end they will abandon Jesus. They will deny him. They will watch as he is crucified and they will be numb and confused when he rises from the dead. But then…do you remember this?, Luke tells us this story, too…when they need to remember that they have been given this power, Jesus will come into the house where they are staying…he’ll just invite himself in as he always does…he’ll say, “Peace! Peace! Peace be with you!”…he’ll show them his hands and feet and side to prove that he is who he was and will be…and then…I love this…he’ll say, “Have you got anything to eat?” And they’ll find a broiled fish and he’ll sit down and eat with them one more time until they get it.

Do you see how strange this is? Do you understand why the meal we share at the communion table or at the church potluck or at the soup kitchen or at the dinner table is capable of changing the world? It is when we sit down to table with others that we meet Jesus and understand again what a powerful thing it is to open our lives to others.

Though the Fourth of July is not a Christian holiday, I know that we are thinking of our nation today as well as we worship today. These are difficult times for our country. We are, without a doubt, the most powerful nation on earth by every conventional measure. Our military, our economy, our cultural influence affect every other nation on the globe.

But for all our power, we are still unsure how to use it to bring about a better world. The great debates in our country right now are exactly over how to use the resources we have to build a safer, more hopeful, more equitable, more just future for ourselves and for other peoples. Not to use our power and influence to better the world would be irresponsible. The only question is how?

When we talk about projecting American influence and power we talk about it in terms of goods and services and military equipment and free trade. But perhaps there is a lesson for us in Jesus’ instructions to the seventy. Maybe true power doesn’t rest in any thing. Maybe that’s why we have run into such frustrating experiences overseas as our involvement in Iraq. If we just send things and weapons and military personnel overseas without our ideals and our humanity, we won’t be able to see a more hopeful future. Maybe true power is in the exchanges that happen around the table as people meet face to face.

In the fall of 2001 we experienced some horrible tragedies. We will soon be recognizing the third anniversary of 9/11 but I’m sure for you, as for me, it seems like yesterday. The scars are deep. But as painful as that time was, I was not able to begin to feel the pain until two months later.

I was on a scouting trip with a team from United Methodist Volunteers In Mission to central Mexico. On the third day that we were there we were in a worship service in Cortazar. It’s a small church. Maybe thirty-five members. But a vibrant, lively church. When we went in the pastor instructed the members that they were not to let the gringos sit together. We were to sit with the regular church members.

In the middle of the service the pastor again had instructions for his members. He told them to form prayer circles of ten to twelve people and to pray for their concerns of the day, but also to pray for the Americans and for their country, because the United States had undergone a great tragedy and they had a need for healing. It was need these church members could meet. They could help to heal the wounds with their prayers.

That circle was one of the most powerful I have ever been in. Here we were, Americans who had invited ourselves into their homes and their lives to see if we could help, but they knew that we were the ones in need. And for the first time since 9/11, with those impoverished Mexican Methodists, I wept because they had seen my need, our need, our country’s need.

Jesus knew that the disciples would find power by leaving all its trappings behind. Jesus knew that they didn’t need money or a bag or even shoes for their feet to have demons obey them. What they needed was to go find a table and to accept the hospitality of people they didn’t know and to say, “Peace be on you. The kingdom of God is close at hand. Jesus is coming.” When they could do that, no power on earth could stop heaven coming down.

That’s what happened to me in Mexico. My country became my country again while I was there. I felt its pains and I celebrated the gifts it had given me. I loved my country because my Christian brothers and sisters loved it and saw the best in it and hoped the best for it. But more that that, I loved the way Christ gave me a bigger life that day by being present in a place I didn’t expect.

You need to invite yourself over to someone’s house, you know. There’s important work to do. God is changing the world. God needs workers for the harvest. And what do you have to do? Speak peace and break bread. It’s what Jesus would do. Thanks be to God.

Why Joel Winstead May Be the Most Important Prophet I Know

2004-06-24T21:46:00.000-04:00

How to explain my reactions to watching the new documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's 30 days of self-inflicted terror brought on by his decision to only eat food from McDonald's? It was the funniest horror movie I've ever seen. I particularly liked his picture quiz with first-graders asking them to identify the person portrayed. ["George W Bush?" "No, actually that's Jesus." But when he flipped over the Ronald McDonald card the success rate went from 0 to 100 %.]

But more than that, watching the film felt like other life-changing moments for me, like when I took that chopping class last summer, or when I took up clogging...it felt like a time after which nothing could be the same. Coming to Jesus was something more lifelong and dynamic, something that puts these other moments in perspective, but moments like these movies are real conversion experiences.

Now there is nothing new in Super Size Me. You know that fast food is bad for you. You know that a typical fast food diet includes incredibly unhealthy amounts of fat and sugar. You know obesity is a national health crisis. You know that a McDonald's grilled chicken salad with ranch dressing has more grams of fat than a Big Mac. Well, maybe you didn't know that last one. That was a tasty tidbit.

What is shocking about Spurlock's flick is that he dares to say aloud and in his flesh what dry news media stories and nagging nutrionists cannot convey. It's a life-and-death situation. And it's not just about food. It's about our culture and our way of life. While he seldom goes beyond the bounds of this particular crisis, Spurlock stunned me with the way he raised questions about things as American as a McDonald's fried apple pie. Ron English, credited as an artistic genius, speaks in front of one of his works--a Starry, Starry Night-esque montage of fast food symbols--and says, "I don't paint mountains and trees because I don't see that out my window. I see fast food restaurants and commercial icons."

I hesitate to write about this because I know this blog could seem to be a collection of oddball lifestyle choices. Despite the fact that all of this is very theologically grounded, foreswearing interstates and seeking out Pentecostal tabernacles may seem a tad...eccentric. Taking on the culture that produces fast food may seem like tilting at one more windmill. So, though I am some months removed from my last fast food experience and feel like I am ready for another quixotic challenge (no processed foods for 30 days?), I don't feel like I can talk about me.

So let me talk about Joel Winstead. Joel Winstead may very well be the most important prophet I know. While I have a tendency to lurch from cause to cause, in his quiet steady way Joel does what Spurlock does in this film...he takes ideas and puts them in the flesh. Joel's response to his sense of disconnection from the graduating class at Wesley this year didn't lead him to start a blog to talk about the loss of community in American culture...he made lunch dates with the grads and kept them. When we walked through the lettuce fields of Yuma and were stunned by the wonder and worry of it all, especially after reading Eric Schlosser's chaotic book Fast Food Nation last fall, Joel didn't start a nationwide campaign, he started a local foods small group, doing the quiet work of social transformation one well-prepared meal at a time.

I can talk a good game, but Joel Winstead is showing me what can be. I may yet do a crazy experiment to respond to Spurlock's scary movie, but when I want to really do something prophetic and incarnational, I'm going to talk to Joel.

An Element of Risk

2004-06-21T11:24:00.000-04:00

The breeze in the trees was gentle and sweet. The commotion in the parking lot not too distracting. And Deborah was the celebrant at our camp meeting celebration last night at the Wesley Foundation. It was one of those nights when all seemed right. Even Chris Gibson came out for the wonder of it all.

Below is my attempt at trying to find words for the occasion. Special thanks are due to Danna Nolan Fewell and David Gunn for their exegetical work that has formed my thinking on Ruth. See their Compromising Redemption for more.

And BTW...Jessie Smith, who preached at Ivy Creek yesterday, is one heck of a preacher. Where's your blog, Jessie?

An Element of Risk
June 20, 2004
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Ruth 1:1-18 [NRSV]
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the LORD had considered his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah.

But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back each of you to your mother's house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband." Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud.

They said to her, "No, we will return with you to your people."

But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has turned against me."

Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So she said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law."

But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die -- there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!"

When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

When you and I hear the opening verses of the little book of Ruth we miss the most shocking things. Because believe it or not, Ruth is a shocking book with an amazing story to tell about a hard-luck Israelite family who finds hope through a foreign woman who takes a risk. Somehow there is a message for us in that, but first let’s take a look at the story.

The first line is really very simple. All it says is, “In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. “ O.K., you might say, that’s a pretty unremarkable beginning to a story. There’s a famine, a family finds there’s nothing to eat, so they go to live in a place where there might be some food.

But wait, something is screwy about this story. Things are turned upside down. The people in these stories are Israelites. They had come across the wilderness with Moses because of the promise that God was going to give them a land flowing with milk and honey. Israel was supposed to be buffet-time at the Golden Corral every day. The waitress will just keep bringing new plates. But that’s not how it turned out. It’s one of a string of struggles the people were going through. The land they were supposed to occupy was already occupied and so there were continual fights with other nations. The people who were supposed to live together in harmony had started fighting among themselves. And the food was now disappearing. Even in Bethlehem, a town whose name means “House of Bread.” There was no bread in the House of Bread. This, in the very first verse of Ruth, is a sign that something is wrong.

Where this family goes is also a sign of something wrong. They are going to Moab. Good Israelites don’t go to Moab. Good Israelites remember the stories of Moab and how the people of Israel were led astray as they went through the wilderness by the people of Moab…especially the women of Moab. There are dark stories throughout the Old Testament of Moabite incest, Moabite treachery, Moabite blasphemy, and just general Moabite up-to-no-goodness. How desperate must this family have been to leave the Promised Land for the Evil Empire?!

But they left and in verse 2 we get to meet this man and his family who leave Bethlehem for Moab. The man is Elimelech, a noble name which means something like “God is My King.” His wife is Naomi, a name that means “Sweetness.” Their sons are named Machlon and Chilion, names that mean something like “Sickness” and “Wasting Away.” Hello! Can you tell there’s going to be trouble here? It seems to me that if you name your children Sickness and Weakness your expectations are pretty low. And sure enough, trouble comes.

Before you know it, in verse 3, Elimilech dies. Machlon and Chilion hang on long enough to marry Moabite women (think dark clouds and bad omens) but they don’t hang on long enough to have children and eventually they die too. By verse 5 Naomi has left her home, gone to a place she shouldn’t have gone, lost her husband and her two sons and the security they represented in that society, and picked up two Moabite women for daughters-in-law. If you’re an Israelite hearing this story you are devastated now. What will she do?

Well, word comes to Naomi from her homeland that the Lord has visited God’s people again and has given them food again. Naomi decides to head home…to risk the stares of friends in the village when she walks back in empty-handed after years away…to suffer the shame that would surely come because she had abandoned her people and her land and gone to the land of Moab…to seek some sort of existence on the edge of society.

And so she sets off. Her two daughters-in-law follow her along the road to see her off. She stops to give them a formal farewell…to let them know that this is the point where they can leave her. It’s a wonderful speech. Naomi says, “Go on back to your family homes. May God be kind to you because you’ve been very faithful to the dead ones and to me.” She can’t see beyond the dead. The ones who are dead come first, even before her. They were the ones who provided security. They were the ones who ensured descendents. In that culture at that time, male-dominated as it was, that was the way things were. And that’s all Naomi can see. Her last words in this initial speech point to it again, “May God give you both security in the home of a new husband.”

The three women cry and weep aloud and then the Moabites do something unexpected. They won’t go home. They say, “No, we’ll go with you to your people.”

Naomi won’t have it. She can’t conceive of why they would want to go with her. And she’s not too sure she wants them along. So she has to get a little more forceful. She says, “Go on back, daughters. Don’t be ridiculous! What could you possibly have to gain from staying with me? Do I have any more children for you to marry stowed up in my womb? Even if I could find a husband and could marry him tonight and somehow have sons would you really wait around until they were grown to marry them?” Given how Naomi thought about these things, it did seem kind of ridiculous. And then she throws in the kicker. The real story is that Naomi feels like she is cursed by God. “Turn back,” she says, “because it is more bitter for me than for you because God has turned against me.”

The first daughter-in-law, whose name is Orpah, decides to turn back now. You might have expected that. Orpah is a name that means “back of the neck” and that’s just what we see of her as she heads on out of this story. But the other daughter-in-law is a headstrong woman who will not be dissuaded. This is Ruth.

“Look, you see what your sister-in-law has done. Go back with her,” Naomi urges her. But Ruth doesn’t move. And it is at this moment that we realize that this is not the story of a dead Israelite man or his two dead sons or the story of a depressed and grieving Israelite widow. This story is about a Moabite woman who takes a bigger risk than any of those every took.

Ruth has no place in the Israelite order of things. Though Moabites are distant kin of Israelites, they have not shared the same history. The promises of God didn’t come to Moab, they came to Israel. The exodus, the Ten Commandments, the crossing of the Jordan River into the land of Canaan…these are all things that happened to Israel…not to Moab. And the children of Moabite women were not considered members of the Israelite family even if the father was an Israelite. The most crazy and irrational thing that Ruth could do would be to leave her family and land behind, to attach herself to a vulnerable, grieving widow who would be on the margins of society herself, and to go to Bethlehem as a single young woman with no protection or security. That would just be foolish. And that’s just what Ruth does. She does it with an oath that is one of the most passionate and beautiful in the whole Bible.

“Stop telling me to go back!”, she says to Naomi. “I’m not going back. Where you are going, that’s where I’m going. Where you live, that’s where I’m going to live. Your people will be my people. You God will be my God. Where you die I will die and that’s where I will be buried. God help me if even death can separate me from you!” Death which has been Naomi’s excuse for breaking all her ties with Moab cannot be an excuse any longer. And the God which Naomi feels has turned against her is the very same God that Ruth now clings to.

When Naomi hears Ruth’s covenant here, she doesn’t know what to say. So she says nothing and they trudge off in silence towards Bethlehem. The rest of the story is just as good, but we don’t have time to get into it tonight…particularly chapter 3, which is kind of racy.

Why is this story an important story for us to hear tonight? Because this is a time of new beginnings. It’s a time when many of the people who are part of us tonight are taking on new things. Interns are preparing for children. Deborah has become a probationer elder in the Annual Conference. Some of you are beginning a new post-college life. It just doesn’t seem right that we would let this night pass without recognizing that something holy is happening.

What’s surprising is not that God is opening new doors and challenging us to go new places today. God has a habit of doing that. Abraham and Sarah leave friends and family behind to follow a vague promise about descendents, land and blessings. The Israelites leave slavery in Egypt to become a pilgrim people. Disciples drop their fishing nets. Old persecutors become new evangelists. It’s pretty well-established that God doesn’t leave well enough alone.

What is surprising, to me at least, is that God puts so much at risk. In fact, it seems like that is the only way to follow God…by accepting that risk is the natural state of the Christian life. God calls ordinary people to put their lives in places they would not be…to leave behind the things they cling to…to join with people they would never have chosen to be in community with…to open themselves up to the pains of the world…to risk being loving in places that know no love…to risk speaking life in situations that seem to know only death. God calls ordinary people like you and me to do these things. And amazingly, some still answer like Ruth…with passion and conviction and outrageous promises to be faithful unto death.

But God doesn’t ask us to do anything that God has not already done. The incarnation shows us that God was willing to put God’s own self in our hands. And in Jesus we knew a God who loved and served and healed and transformed lives…but who was misunderstood, despised and killed. The risk that God takes in giving God’s self to us is what we live for.

This is going to be an exciting week and an exciting summer. It feels a little risky. We’re not sure we’re ready to be as passionate as Ruth in giving ourselves to the next unknown step. We’re not sure we’re ready. But God knows, we are. We are the people we’ve been waiting for. And God is ready to go with us. Thanks be to God.

The Beat Goes On

2004-06-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

Coming back from a very good Annual Conference session in which Deborah Lewis was commissioned as a probationatory elder (about time!) and my sense of belonging and deep joy about the people with whom I am in ministry was restored, I found a group of interns ready for the adventure that is Project Transformation.

Somehow word of my Nov. 2002 beat poetry sermon had leaked out so we did an impromptu Norah Jones vespers on Thursday night. Harvey Cox in his study on Pentecostalism, Fire From Heaven , talks about a church in San Francisco that has John Coltrane as its patron saint. Harvey gets a litte overwrought in trying to make the connection between jazz and Pentecostalism, but he's right that there is something profoundly spiritual about the music. Drew Willson, Andrew Marshall and a host of others around the Wesley Foundation have convinced me of the same thing. [For more see Andrew's blog: ] Norah, and her musical collague and songwriter, Jesse Harris, sometimes open up that sense of the holy for me. That happened on November 24, 2002 at one of the more avant-garde Thansgiving services we've ever done at the Wesley Foundation.

So reproduced below is a little bit of Psalm 65, a little bit of Alan Ginsburg, and the laconic wisdom of Norah and Jesse. You will need to listen to "One Flight Down" off of Norah's first album to make it all come together. Black turtlenecks and some bongo drums might help, too. Oh, and don't forget to snap!

One Flight Down
November 24, 2002
Wesley Foundation at UVA

Psalm 65
For you praise waits in still repose, Elohim, in Zion;
and for you votive offerings will be performed.
O you who hears prayer! All flesh shall come to you.
When deeds of iniquity are greater than us,
you make atonement for our sins.
Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts;
we will be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.
With awesome justice you answer us, O God of our salvation;
you are the hope of all the ends of the land and of the farthest seas.
You established the mountains by your power;
you are girded with might.
You still the roar of the sea,
the roar of the waves, the tumult of the peoples.
Those who dwell in the farthest parts of the earth are awed by your signs;
the springs of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges,
softening it with showers, and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
and your paths drop fatness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
silence, starving hysterical music-less
wandering about arhythmically in total blissful ignorance of
the beat, the beat, the beat
one flight down
do you hear it?
the beat, the beat
there’s a song on low
and your mind—your everloving mind—just picked up on the sound
now you know
there is a beat, beat, beat
there is a purpose
there is a movement
at the heart, heart, heart of it all.

For you praise waits in still repose, O God Elohim blasting rock of our salvation
for you praise waits—like a beast whose calling I do not yet hear
like smoke rising from an unacknowledged sacrifice
for you praise waits, waits, waits
impatiently
in moving, still repose
for you praise waits ready to leap forth like a big cat stalking its prey
hungry, yearning, caged by silence, silence, silence
yet all that is within me wants to sing
all that is within me wants to praise you, Lord.

To you vows shall be performed
to you all flesh shall come
for you praise waits, waits, waits
to the impatient beat of desire implanted in me since before my mother knew me
since before the dawn of my dawns
since before before
one flight down praise waits
in ranting, urgent, edgy unsung tones
growling, purring, tensed and ready to pounce back to its Maker
like fire in my bones
a thanks to be given
a cry to be released
a bell to be rung
and your mind just picked up on the sound
now you know you’re wrong
because it drifts like smoke
and its been playing all along
Blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near
satisfied we shall be to sing in your presence
the springs of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

At the core of my being
at the center of my self
at the heart of every nucleus there is a tone, a sound, a beat, an energy
a unique marker unduplicated in all the passing of every bygone age
like a GPS signal to the great unknown
like an echo of some half-remembered phrase in a like voice
like you, like me, there is a tone, a sound,
a beat, a beat, a beat
there’s within my heart a melody
and let those who have ears to hear listen to what the Spirit is saying
one flight down there’s a song on low
one flight down there is music playing
one flight down…now you know

For you praise waits in still repose, O God Elohim ever-loving river that is God
for you praise waits, waits, waits,
and yet all around me creation speaks, whispers, breathes, sighs, groans, howls, cries out, shouts, celebrates
how can I keep from singing?
the pastures of the wilderness overflow
the hills gird themselves with joy
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks
the valleys deck themselves with grain
they shout and sing together for joy
and shall I sit caged in silence, starving, hysterical music-less?
shall stones cry out on my behalf?
shall grazing, mute, grass-muzzled sheep speak your name more gloriously than I?
shall gurgling streams and foul tempests of the seas take my place in the chorus?
shall I not speak and cry and howl?
shall I not shout and sing for joy?
shall I let grain-filled valleys interrupt my praise?
shall I let hills be more alive with the sound of music than the depths of my ever-loving soul?

One flight down
there’s a song on low
and its been there playing all along
the beat, the beat, the beat
the reeds and brass have been weaving, weaving, weaving
leading into a single note
I did not know this song
I only came to hum a few bars
I only poked my head in because the music sounded sweet
I only sang the melody because it had a catchy hook
I did not know it was my song
I did not know praise waits, waits, waits
I did not know this God Elohim
I do not know this God right now
but somehow God knows me
somehow the reeds and brass are playing the same tune, the same note,
in some messed up, straightened out, mind-blowing, heartbreaking harmony
creation is singing my note
and my note sings with sheep and hills and stones and grain
my note is my own and yet it is God’s
and the still repose is mightier than the roaring of the seas
the roaring of the waves
the tumult of the peoples
one flight down
inbred in the depths of the downest, dirtiest, most depressing dregs of the earth
there is a song playing low
reeds and brass and drums and voice and bass and height
and nothing else in all creation can keep us from the love of God
because everything else in all creation sings that song
that single note
the cadence rolls in broken
plays it over and then goes
now you know

There was one who came from God Elohim, ever-loving rock-river savior
there was one who sang the song, who knew the notes
who knew my note
who let me sing
There was one whose name was Jesus
who came to angel songs and left to quaking rocks
who was born in the choir stall of a manger
and refused the silence of a tomb
There was one who knew the song, knew the licks,
knew the beat, beat, beat
who interrupted the starving, hysterical music-less desperation
and said to those who sang along
listen, listen, listen—
praise waits, waits, waits
in the deepest depths of your ever-loving soul
and it growls and it purrs and it tenses and demands to be released
One flight down, Jesus says,
there’s a song on low
there’s a melody only you can sing
there’s a cadence the world needs to hear
there’s a note that will complete the mystical harmony
there’s a rhythm that will put you in step with stupid sheep and rolling rivers
there’s within your heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low
thanks is there to be given
praise is there to be shouted out
you are waiting to be released like a great frolicking beast sprung from a cage of silence
in this place where your arms unfold
here at last you see your ancient face
one flight down
there’s a song on low
and its been there playing all along
now you know
now you know

Going Pentecostal

2004-06-07T20:11:00.000-04:00

The more I preach the more I'm convinced that if there is to be a true Wesleyan revival in the United Methodist Church we've got to reclaim our Pentecostal roots. O.K., so Pentecostalism was a branch of the Wesleyan movement in its origins that the main line didn't follow, but there is something very right about a movement that recognizes the whole person, mind, soul and body, that produces congregations that are more ethnically diverse than any mainline churches, that believes that the things happening right now really matter in the grand scheme of things, and that doesn't consign "Holy Ghost power" to the dustbins of history.

Just finished reading two biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson. The one I recommend is Daniel Mark Epstein's "Sister Aimee." McPherson was a Pentecostal preacher who began the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles which is the founding church of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. She is probably the most influential woman religious leader of the 20th century, though you'd never know it from the mainline church histories. Just as William Seymour, the black Pentecostal preacher who presided over the Azusa Street Revival in the same city is the most influential male figure you've never heard of.

I was looking for some of that power as I preached at Crozet UMC yesterday. The result was a sermon that combines a fairy tale with some Sister Aimee reflections. It was fun to preach and fun to be with the folks in Crozet. The text follows...

Has-Beens Who Will Be
Crozet United Methodist Church
June 6, 2004

Romans 5:1-11
Therefore, having been made right through faith, we have peace with God by the agency of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith to this grace in which we stand and we boast in our hope of God's glory. But not only this, we also boast in oppressions, seeing that suffering brings about endurance, and endurance, experience, and experience, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still powerless, in our time died for the ungodly. For rarely would anyone die for a righteous person, though possibly someone would dare to die for a good person, but God demonstrated God's love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, how much more now, having been made righteous in his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath. For if while enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of God's Son, how much more shall we, the reconciled, find salvation in his life. More than that, we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received reconciliation.

It is a pleasure for me to be here today filling in for David Rash. I welcome every opportunity to get back to Crozet and to share with you. As I said when I was here last fall, I think of this as my home church since I was attending here when I felt the call to go into ministry. So thank you for having me here today.

This is an interesting day on the Church calendar. It is Trinity Sunday and throughout the Church there are pastors trying to spin interesting sermons on the meaning of that peculiar Christian doctrine--the Trinity. We are monotheists, you know, we believe in one God, but we also believe in a God known in three persons. And I’ve done my share of Trinity Sunday sermons trying to make sense of that doctrine, and I do believe it is one of the most important things we can say about God, but I’m not doing a doctrinal exposition today. Some of you will be disappointed to hear that. Most of you will be ecstatic.

What I want to say today is very simple. It’s really the only thing I’m going to say today and if you tune out on me or your mind starts to wander over the next two hours or so…just remember this, because this is what I have to say today: Even the ugly duckling should remember that God is making swans everyday. Even the ugly duckling should remember that God is making swans everyday. That’s it. And to help make sense of that I’m going to tell two stories. One of the stories is an English verb lesson with the Apostle Paul as we read him in his letter to the Romans. The other story, as you might guess from that thesis statement, is the story of the ugly duckling.

I want to talk about the ugly duckling because a horrible thing has been done with this story. The ugly duckling story, in which a bird, who thinks he is a duck and who is despised as ugly by other ducks around, eventually discovers that he is really a beautiful swan, has been used to name a new reality TV show called “The Swan.” How many people have seen this show? O.K., I won’t make you admit to that. How many people have heard of this show?

This is how it is described by the folks at the Fox Network who put it on: “THE SWAN offers women the incredible opportunity to undergo physical, mental and emotional transformations with the help of a team of experts. Contestants must go through an intensive “boot camp” of exercise, diet, therapy and inspiration to achieve their goals. Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become “The Ultimate Swan.”…Each contestant has been assigned a panel of specialists -- a coach, therapist, trainer, cosmetic surgeons and a dentist -- who together have designed the perfect individually tailored program for her.” In other words, you submit to plastic surgery and other indignities because you don’t feel you meet society’s standards for beauty, and then we’ll put you in a beauty contest to bring out all of your insecurities and send most of you home as losers.

There’s a whole lot to be said about reality T.V. It’s incredibly addictive. We like seeing people get voted off the island or discovering their fear factor. But there isn’t much good to be said for it and if “The Swan” is a reflection of who we are as a society, we’ve got some major problems to address.

The original children’s story was much different. Hans Christian Anderson was a fairly gloomy Danish author and most of his stories have a dark side to them. I remember as a child being horrified at what the Steadfast Tin Soldier has to endure, being flushed down the sewer and melted in the flames, all for the love of the ballerina. The original version of the Little Mermaid is not nearly as bright as Disney’s movie would have you believe. And the Ugly Duckling has a dark edge, too.

It’s a very brief story. A mother duck sits on her nest by the side of a canal waiting for her nine eggs to hatch. Eight of her eggs hatch and out pop those cute, fuzzy yellow ducklings you know from the county fair. They open their eyes wide and they say, “How big the world is!” They’re amazed at all they see.

But the mother duck knows that things are not all as they appear. There’s always more to discover and the first thing she tells those eight little ducks is, “This isn’t the whole world by any means. There’s so much more to see. Maybe one day you can go the far side of the garden and see.” That’s an important line. It is something we need to hear. “This isn’t the whole world by any means. There’s so much more.”

But I digress. There’s still that ninth egg. And it’s big and out of place. The mother duck is tired of sitting on the eggs and doesn’t even know if this one is hers. It certainly doesn’t look like the others. But she sits on it and eventually the shell cracks and out pops…the ugliest little bird she’d ever seen. It wasn’t cute and yellow, it was white and fuzzy with a gangly long neck. The mother wonders where he came from.

The other little ducks don’t like the new-comer. “I bet he can’t swim,” they say. “We don’t want to play with him. He’s too ugly.” But when they go down to the water, the new little bird follows. And when he gets into the water he outshines them all. He’s an excellent graceful swimmer. The mother duck watches him and says, “You know, he’s not so ugly after all if you look at him just right.”

But no one else seems to see in the awkward little bird what the mother sees. He’s abused by everyone for being ugly. The other ducks push him, the chicken tease him, the turkeys bite him and even the little girl who feeds them kicks the bird for being ugly. It’s only the mother who keeps saying, “He’ll look better when he grows up.”

Finally the ugly duckling flies away from home because he’s so miserable. He comes to some wild ducks who are willing to let him stay with them, but they are attacked by hunters and dogs and two of them die, so the ugly duckling goes on to a farm house. There he finds a cat and a hen who is called Chickabiddy-Shortshanks because of her little legs. This is an ugly hen, in other words. But even so she has no sympathy for the ugly duckling and the cat and the hen chase him off.

Finally he is in despair and he goes to the side of a lake where some handsome swans are swimming. He is sure they will not accept him either because they are so beautiful and he goes down to let them see him so that he can encourage them to kill him. He’s suicidal. He bends his neck down to the water near them and he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the water. And what do you know? He’s a swan. He wasn’t a duckling at all. He admired the beauty of the swans and loved them because he was a swan himself. And when he could finally accept who he was all along, he was free to live happily and generously with others. The ugly duckling was a swan, not because of plastic surgery and therapy, but because that who God made him to be.

Why am I telling you fairy tales on Trinity Sunday? Because Hans Christian Anderson is right to notice that the promises of those who love us often go unheard. Hans Christian Anderson is right that we live in despair when we don’t recognize who we really are. Hans Christian Anderson and even Fox-TV are right when they say that the world can be a cruel and unrelentingly harsh place. The fairy tale is right because it says, “There is more to the whole wide world than you can ever know. And hold on, because seen in the right way, you are not ugly at all. You are potential waiting to be unfolded.”

Anybody feeling like an Ugly Duckling today? Anybody feeling like a “has-been”? Feeling like your best days are behind you? Like your worst days are in front of you? Like your days are going nowhere? Did your “get-up-and-go” get up and go? Is there too much month at the end of the money? Do you know the heartbreak of psoriasis or the heartache of loneliness? Is your boyfriend bitter? Your girlfriend gone? Your relationships in turmoil? Your financial portfolio a pale shadow of its former self? Is your cat sick? Your dog not housebroken? Your fish floating upside down in the tank? Does God feel very distant? Do you long for a more fervent faith, a more present hope, a more vibrant life in Christ? Is anybody feeling like an Ugly Duckling today?

Because I have felt that way. I have forgotten the stories my parents told me about who I was. I have forgotten the promises God made about who I can be. I have listened too frequently to the doubts and fears that swirl around in my head sometimes and say, “Alex, you don’t have what it takes.” “Alex, you don’t know what you’re doing.” Alex, you don’t have the skills required. You don’t have the know-how or the gumption. You don’t have the strength or the ability. You don’t look right. You don’t dress right. You’re getting too old. You’re still too young. Alex, you don’t have the power to be what you think you can be.

That’s the real rub, isn’t it? We feel powerless. With so much going on out of our control, we don’t feel like we have the power that we need to change the story. Where is God in the midst of our powerlessness?

I told you there was a second story. It’s really a lesson on verb tense. You can find it in your Bible in Romans chapter 5. If you’ve got a Bible, you might want to turn to it with me because you are not going to believe what Paul has to say. He says that we have power.

Now let me set this up. Paul is writing to a Church that needs to know where to look for power and for hope. Paul is writing to Christians who are often divided, sometimes persecuted, and at times even doubting the good news that Paul had been preaching. If that sounds familiar, maybe it’s because that’s how we look in the Church a lot of the time.

So Paul goes on a sixteen-chapter rampage relating everything he can think of to inspire the Roman church to faith and hope. If you’ve ever noticed, Paul is an exuberant writer. He can’t just tell you one thing because that one thing will lead to another thing and that will remind him of something else and pretty soon he’s so far from his original point that he has to stop and ask a question to get back on track like “So, what does this mean?” He’s kind of like your Great Uncle Louie or your Aunt Zute or whoever it is in your family who will start to tell you about his or her latest doctor’s visit and end up telling you about Cousin Leonard’s hamster. It’s all connected and that’s just how it is with Paul. It’s all connected and he wants to tell you everything.

So for the first four chapters of Paul we get almost one long run-on sentence in which Paul talks about how we are made right with God through faith and how we can try to pretend that we can be made right on our own, but how inevitably everyone fails, and that at the end it’s God’s grace alone that can save and we can claim that grace through faith and this reminds him of the story of Abraham and by the time he gets to the beginning of chapter five he has to stop for a breath and say, “O.K, so we are made right with God by faith, so what does that mean?”

Verse one of chapter five gives you the first part of his answer…“being made righteous by faith…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We get right with God, not by anything we do apart from faith. We get right with God, we have peace with God through Jesus. Now that’s pretty mind-blowing, but if you hang around the church at all for any length of time you can probably get the picture that Jesus is pretty important. At Christmas we talk about Jesus’ birth. Good Friday we talk about Jesus’ death. Easter we talk about Jesus’ resurrection. Every time we have communion we talk about Jesus. Every time we say the Apostle’s Creed, we talk about Jesus. Every time we get together on a Sunday, we talk about Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the noontime, Jesus when the sun goes down. If you don’t get the idea that Jesus is important by coming to the church then we haven’t been doing our job.

But this is not the most mind-blowing thing. The story of Jesus is central, it’s essential, it’s what breaks open God’s intentions for us and the world…but it’s the verb here that’s important. It does not say that we will have peace with God. It does not say we should have peace with God. That we may have peace with God. That we had peace with God in the past. It does not even say that we might have peace with God. It says, in verse 1 of chapter five in the midst of Paul’s very important diatribe to the Christians of Rome that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Hello, brothers and sisters. Do you hear what I hear?

But, wait, wait. We’re not done yet. Slip on down to verse 5 of the same chapter. Paul talks about the troubles they’re going through and he says, “Yes, we’re having troubles, but we don’t despair because troubles bring endurance and endurance brings experience and experience being hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Watch that verb tense again. The troubles are in the present tense. We are suffering. But the hope is not in future tense. We are not waiting on pie in the sky by and by. We are not looking to a savior who will come someday in some uncertain future. We are not waiting on streets of gold and ethereal treasure. We are not putting all of our eggs into a basket of wishful thinking about what things may be like in some undetermined future. When Paul talks about the power that the Holy Spirit brings…

And this is very important. The Holy Spirit is very easy to misunderstand. We may think of it as that thing that shows up when the choir has a good Sunday, but it is much more than that. Christ promises the Holy Spirit as the continuing sign of his presence among us. The Holy Spirit makes Christ present again. When we invoke Christ’s presence in Communion in a few minutes we will do it by calling on the Holy Spirit to be present in this bread and wine and on us gathered here. The Holy Spirit is a here and now kind of thing.

So when Paul talks about the power that the Holy Spirit brings it is very important that he does not talk about it in the future tense. He doesn’t talk about the love of God being poured into our hearts one fine day. The Holy Spirit is not even beginning her work in us in the present tense. It’s not that all of a sudden God is doing this. What Paul says is that the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us!

What better news could there be for a group of has-beens than that the power that God grants to us has been there all along! God’s love is not in emergency reserve waiting to be doled out, it has been! The Holy Spirit is not an elusive presence that will be poured out on God’s people one day, God knows that since the Day of Pentecost, it has been! Love and acceptance and grace and forgiveness are not gifts to be bestowed at some date and place to be determined, God knows that in Jesus Christ they have been! I don’t have to be an ugly duckling, because I am NOT an ugly duckling and I never have been! I don’t have to learn to swim like a swan because Christ has shown me how to swim and in his life, I have been swimming! As a Christian, I don’t just believe in life after death, I also believe in life before death!

Yes, the world may be a mess. Yes, the forces of evil sometimes seem overwhelming. Yes, we will have troubles in this world and in the days to come. Yes, I may feel powerless. Yes, I may feel like a motherless child. Yes, I may be downtrodden. Yes I may be fed up and cast down. Yes, I may be stretched too thin and loaded too high. Yes, the wicked seem to prosper and the good seem to suffer. But no, this is not what God intends for this old world. No, this is not what God intends for you and for me. No, this is not the way it will be in the end. But the power that can change the world is not on the way…in Jesus Christ it is here. The power that can reconcile us to God is not out there…it’s in here. The power to heal and forgive and change and transform and to save is not in the future tense…it’s in the present tense.

Do you remember what the mother duck said? I said it was important. Do you remember? The ducks looked around and said, “How big the world is!” And the mother said, “This isn’t the whole world by any means. There’s so much more to see.”

We look at our lives. We look at the failures and regrets that we have used to mark our way. We look at the impediments and the obstacles. And we say, “How big, how overwhelming the world is!” And the mother duck who is our God says, “This isn’t the whole world by any means. There’s so much more to see. There’s a cross that shows how deeply the wounds of the world touch me. There’s a table where I want to invite you to eat with me. There’s water to show how I want to claim you. There’s a community that’s meant to show how much I love you. That world that oppresses you and so many others…that isn’t the whole world by any means. There is so much more.”

Brothers and sisters, you’ve got the power. You’ve got the Holy Spirit. You have peace with God in Jesus. You don’t have to be a wanderer any more. You can be who you have been meant to be…God’s own child. You’ve got the power. Thanks be to God.