Category Archives: Sermons

7 Sept. 2014 sermon — Matt. 18:15-20

DISCLAIMER: I believe sermons are meant to be heard. They are the word proclaimed in a live exchange between God and the preacher, and the preacher and God, and the preacher and the people, and the people and the preacher, and the people and God, and God and the people. Typically set in the context of worship and always following the reading of scripture, sermons are about listening and speaking and hearing and heeding. At the risk of stepping outside such boundaries, I share sermons here — where the reader will have to wade through a manuscript that was created to be spoken word. Even if you don’t know the sound of my voice, let yourself hear as you read. Let your mind see as you hear. Let your life be opened to whatever response you begin to hear within you.

May the Spirit Speak to you!
RevJule
______________________

7 September 2014 – 13^th Sunday after Pentecost

Click here to read scripture first: Matthew 18:15-20 (NRS)

I can’t go into all the sorted details, but last week when I was gathered with about a hundred other pastors at a conference in Montreat; I heard a whole lot of stories about churches in the middle of major fights. One of them had to do with disagreements over denominational matters, but most of them came down to people who really couldn’t find a way to get along. Small churches, mid-sized, and large ones too that to one degree or another are tearing each other apart. The worst I heard was ruling elders having shouting matches at each other in the parking lot after session meetings, though I’ve actually attended session meetings where the elders and pastor on their feet around the table were pounding fists and shaking fingers at each other. You should know that I was an outside guest at such meetings and not the pastor doing the pounding. . . . Most all of the church fights I heard about last week were among good, God-fearing Presbyterians. Just like us: well-educated, successful, family folks who could not get along. Some of the stories sounded totally justified to me. I mean, if the church I was a member of, without any input from us, went off and changed not only the time of Sunday worship but also the style of it; I think I might be ready to throw a few punches. If my beloved music director suddenly was fired; I’d go to battle. If the pastor who had held my hand through life’s traumas, whom I had come to love and trust completely, suddenly was being charged with something outlandish like taking two full days off each week; I just might have a few choice words for the accusers. We’re the church. Everyone says it’s not supposed to be like this. But the truth of it is, sometimes – actually far too often these days – it is.

You all know that. Because whether it’s been during your tenure as a member here or somewhere else, conflict happens. Some of you have told me of the difficult days for HPC during the 1980s. I actually learned last week that many congregations of the South experienced very similar difficulties when a particular experience-driven spiritual gifts movement was sweeping the nation. I guess it was something in the water or something but suddenly certain folks were having these ecstatic spiritual experiences – which are not bad in and of themselves. The problem comes when those who have them seek to make them the norm – especially among frozen chosen Presbyterians – and begin judging themselves better than those who haven’t yet been caught by the Spirit in quite the same way. It can be incredibly divisive; as it was in the early church we read about in the epistles, and as I understand it was here for those around at the time. It feels like overnight a major eruption has happened and good church folks are locked in battle with one another. . . . Church fights. Conflict sets in that rages far beyond a simple problem like what to have for dinner tonight.

I also heard again last week about the levels of conflict. We don’t have to look too far into the world to find evidence of these. Someday we’re bound to experience such things if not in life together in the church, then perhaps in our families or neighborhoods or nation. Some of us might be embroiled in it right now. The gospel of Matthew wouldn’t have recorded Jesus’ words about conflict between people if Jesus expected we’d never experience it. We might as well get prepared for when we come across it. So let me tell you about it. . . . Level one conflict is a simple problem – like what to have for dinner tonight. Or what color to paint the sanctuary ceiling. Level two’s a disagreement: one party insists that Thai food far outweighs the merits of Italian. Level three’s a bit more intense: who makes the best Thai. Coalitions begin to form. Personal attacks are had. Everyone assumes they know each other’s motives. Level four’s flight or fight. The objective is to break relationship – hurt, punish, humiliate the other. Folks start questioning motives and attacking the integrity of others. This is when churches so often move to fire the pastor thinking if that pastor is gone, everything again will be all right. Of course, it rarely is that simple. And then we get to level five. The conflict is intractable. We call it out and out war, where the objective is to destroy each other. The conflict now has taken on a life of its own and cannot be stopped. Though at this stage it’s often ambiguous what the fight is all about, the parties typically believe they are defending an eternal cause. They cannot; they will not back down. The sad thing is, this kind of level five conflict has been on the rise in churches. It’s a killer for clergy and members alike. The sooner we can recognize what’s going on among us, the greater chance we have to guard our life together from exploding out of control as it does at such high leveled conflict.

The best thing to do is advice not that far from Jesus’. Get the parties to sit down together. See if they can begin to understand what each other wants and what lies underneath the wants of one another. We’ve got to get each other out of our reactive lizard brains into a more rational state of respect and open listening. If at all possible, the church can surround all the sides and call them to different behavior. If you really want to know more about it so that you could travel to somewhere like Israel or Iraqi just to give it a try, you can read more about it in the book Getting to Yes where I understand this form of Principled Negotiating is outlined.

It sounds a little bit like Jesus, doesn’t it? At least according to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 18 where he seemed to be laying out his rules for life together as the church. Step one: recognize the sin against you. Before you pick up the phone to call person 3 about what person 2 did to you, seek out person 2. And as we know these were the days before email, instant messaging, and texts; go to person 2 in person. It would be great, wouldn’t it, if that could be the end of it. If you could just come to me to say, “Pastor Jule, when you said that crazy thing in class the other day, it really hurt my feelings.” “Or Pastor Jule, when you did or didn’t do what I was hoping for the other week, I was left feeling very under-appreciated.” Wouldn’t that be awesome?! We could sit down together and have a rational conversation about what I did or said and what that meant for you – how it hurt you or made you angry and why, because of what need of yours was going unaddressed. We’d shed a tear or two, have a prayer together, and before we know it be feeling so much more closely connected because we were able to hear the deep needs of one another. Hopefully we’d be laughing by the time we saw each other to the door and appropriately hug it out as we departed. Now, I let all my best friends know that we only can have such a conversation when we’re both ready for it. Not when I’m dog tired at the end of a long day, or when my mind is pre-occupied with a zillion other details. It’s fair to request such a conversation, but I find it helps if both parties are in a state of being able to be truly open to one another. Of course, I statements always are best. And I don’t mean like: “I think that you’re a jerk!” But like: “I am hurt when I’m not listened to because it feels like I’m not important.” Or “I don’t like hearing harsh words because that kind of anger scares me.”

Maybe it won’t always work. Which is exactly why Jesus puts forth step number two. If the first attempt breaks down, take along another church member. Now, we have to be smart in these days of frequent litigation and accusations that could ruin a person’s life. But if the problem isn’t one involving the abuse of power, taking along a few other listeners is a great idea. We don’t want to create a sense of ganging up on someone. The others are there merely to listen. Witnesses who can hear out each others’ side. And if that doesn’t work, it’s time for the fault to go public. Tell it to the whole church so that together we all might be able to bring the other’s behavior back in line – which is always the point of such confrontation. Treating another like a Gentile or tax collector doesn’t mean cutting them off – this was Jesus speaking. The one who went out of his way to show an extra dose of compassion to Gentiles and tax collectors. He expects the same from his church.

I realize this might sound a bit like a very dry lecture inspired by our Book of Order’s “Rules of Discipline,” which is why I think the Apostle Paul’s words to the Christians in Rome come in handy. “Owe no one anything,” he writes, “except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8). When we can do so in a respectful way, it’s most loving to have a direct conversation with each other about the ways we have hurt one another. I’m not talking about bringing along your laundry list of all the ways the pastor has been failing to meet your expectations and getting ready to fire away, but sitting down with each other – in love – to give and receive the truth needed. It’s loving to take responsibility for our own feelings and faults instead of blaming everyone and everything else. It’s loving to work out a way together to live compassionately with each other on our good days and on the days when we sin against one another. Being merciful to one another because, in the wise words of our Home Book Club author Jim Dant: “if everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, I assume that includes me. And if you and I are both sinners, then I can’t stand against you – we’d be fighting. I can’t stand over you – I’m not your judge. I won’t stand below you and be humiliated. I only feel comfortable – Christ-like – standing beside you, walking with you, struggling with you, and gratefully allowing you to do the same for me. Practicing compassion. Trusting God to do what only God can do” (Dant, Finding Your Voice, pp. 160-161). . . . When we live like that, we fulfill the law of love. We show forth the God of mercy to the whole wide world. May this be our way today, tomorrow, and forever!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

31 August 2014 — Hymn Sing

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Praise!

This is a different kind of post. Primarily because the service inspiring it was a different kind of service. Every now and again, we do a Hymn Sing. Sometimes it’s an opportunity for a preacher to introduce new music, as I did last summer in a Global Hymn Sing. Sometimes it’s an opportunity to challenge the church organist by having anyone call out whatever song they’d like to sing, as I did a few years ago the Sunday after Christmas when we all couldn’t get enough of our favorite Christmas hymns. Sometimes Hymn Sings have a theme. And sometimes, as was the case for this one, worshippers are asked to submit their favorite hymns in advance. I like those best as it gives me a way to research a little bit about each chosen song and even weave some sort of theme together. Praise of God is my go-to theme. Perhaps because, in the words of The Shorter Catechism, “the chief end of humankind is to glorify God and enjoy God forever!” (The Book of Confessions of the PCUSA, “The Shorter Catechism,” question 1). Enjoy these words. Maybe even find a link to listen or sing along.
Blessings as you live in a way that gives God all the glory while you enjoy our marvelous Giver of Life each day!
RevJule
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Click here to read the scripture first: Psalm 149 (NRS)

Praise the LORD! . . . Did you ever notice that it’s not a suggestion? All over scripture – especially in the Psalms – God’s people are charged to praise. To sing to the LORD. To make a joyful noise! It’s not an option, but a command. God desires and God deserves our praise! . . . Singing is a funny thing. Sometimes we don’t feel like it. Maybe because we’re tired – just didn’t get enough sleep last night with all the end of summer festivities some of us might be up to this weekend. Maybe our weariness goes way beyond a night or two of not enough sleep. Maybe the demands of living have piled up so heavily upon our hearts that we can’t even squeak out a thanksgiving. Maybe we’re grieving or are locked in despair. Maybe we think we’re not good enough at singing – that no one else around us would want to hear our out-of-tune notes. Even though it’s God who is our audience, not anyone else! Or maybe, like I felt a time or two this past week at the conference I attended, I didn’t always like all the songs they had picked. And there were moments when singing one more stanza of one more hymn was the last thing I wanted to do!

I love these last few Psalms of the Psalter. They are all about praise: Praise for God’s help. Praise for God’s care. Praise for God’s universal glory. Praise for God’s goodness to us. Praise for God’s surpassing greatness!

New songs! All the assembled! Making melody with all sorts of instruments, though we’ll pretty much just use organ, piano, and voice today. Dancing is encouraged too as a way of singing praise to God, though many of us Presbyterians aren’t very comfortable with much other than stoic faces and stiff bodies during worship. If you find yourself otherwise this morning, go right ahead! . . . Praise: praise the LORD!

We’re using songs some of you suggested for this day. And some songs our choir director and I really wanted to include either because we know they are favorites or we hope they will become so. . . . My hope is that these songs we sing together will inspire us, and heal us. I hope they will re-connect us with the God we’ve loved our whole lives long – or cause us to fall a little bit more in love with the God who is so incredibly amazing! Loving us each and every day, supporting us in every trial, challenging us when our faithfulness wavers, comforting us in every trouble, and guiding us into everlasting peace. . . . In these songs today, let us celebrate and praise and allow the thankfulness in us to bubble over into joy. Let us sing – whether we really feel like it; whether we think we’re any good at it. Let us sing in grateful praise unto the LORD!

We begin with “Morning Has Broken,” The Presbyterian Hymnal #469, stanzas 1 and 3.

I grew up with this next one. As many of you did too. It was written in 1912 by a Mid-Western Methodist evangelist, George Bennard, and published in 1915. The Old Rugged Cross uses a sentimental popular song-form with a verse-chorus pattern in 3/4 time. It speaks of the writer’s Christian experience, rather than adoration of God. It has been an enormous country gospel favorite ever since it became the title song of Ernest Tubb’s 1952 gospel album; it has been performed by some of the twentieth century’s biggest recording artists like Al Green, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, Willie Nelson, and John Prine. . . . An artist never does know how their offering will be received OR how it will be used throughout time. Bennard certainly would not have approved of his beloved hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross,” becoming one of a number of Christian hymns reportedly co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan and sung at cross burnings. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Rugged_Cross). Such a history may explain why the hymn has not been retained in recent hymnals of the Presbyterian Church. . . . It remains a favorite of many – speaking to us of the one who died in love that we all might be free of such divisions. Let us sing together “The Old Rugged Cross.”

When I looked through the Favorite Hymn Sheets we made available several weeks ago in preparation for today’s Hymn Sing, Melissa listed this next one as one that motivates her best to go into the world to live for God. Our choir director and I met several weeks ago and planned to use it as a sung Psalm even before we knew how the past few weeks would unfold – that Melissa would unexpectedly die on the evening of August 17. . . . So many of us certainly have called upon the words of Psalm 23 as a comfort to us in the storms of life. The LORD is our Shepherd: what do we need to want? . . . We are given rest. Our souls are restored. We are led. Ever-present, we’ve no need to fear. Our whole lives long – here and now and forevermore – we shall dwell with the LORD.
Let us sing together the whole of this hymn: “The LORD’s My Shepherd I’ll Not Want,” #170 in The Presbyterian Hymnal.

Click here to read Psalm 150: Psalm 150 (NRS)

Praise. Praise. Praise. . . . Praise takes humility. In order to give great thanks to something else, we have to humble ourselves enough to know we need that someOne else. . . . “I Danced in the Morning” is a hymn utilizing an American Shaker melody called SIMPLE GIFTS. The tune originally was set to these words: “Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free. Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Gifts). This is the epitome of humility. The ability to be where and how we belong. Aware of the One who deserves all the praise.
Let us sing together a favorite requested that is set to that Shaker tune – a song in our hymnal that reminds us of the story of the One who Danced in the morning for the benefit of us all. Let us sing together stanza 1, 3, & 5 of “I Danced in the Morning,” #302 in The Presbyterian Hymnal.

Another favorite suggested for this day may be fairly new to us all. “Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore.” It’s a reminder of the way God in Christ comes looking for us, the regular old folks of this world, who God enlists for God’s work of love. Stanza three of this hymn summarizes well the call of discipleship: “You need the caring of my hands. Through my tiredness, may others find resting. You need a love that just goes on loving.” And so we leave our metaphorical boats on the shoreline behind us – all that keeps us from putting first the things of God’s kingdom. Then with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we seek the other sea. The organist will play this hymn through entirely one time; then we will join in singing stanza 1 and 2 of “Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore,” #377 in The Presbyterian Hymnal.

There’s no doubt about it: this life can be difficult. We are called to open our hearts to one another – yet the storms of life still blow. Loved ones don’t always remain beloved throughout this life. Loved ones grow older and leave us. Loved ones die.

In 1876 a faithful Presbyterian layperson was notified that four of his daughters died in a tragic shipwreck. He got on a ship himself to go to his wife in Paris who remarkably had survived the wreck. Amid the tears – his aching soul gave birth to these words: Nonetheless, “It is well, it is well, with my soul. . . . Christ lives, O the bliss of that glorious thought!” (Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal, Westminster John Knox Press 2013; #840). . . . In life and in death, the gift of resurrected life is the promise and comfort of our God! Let us sing together “It is Well with My Soul.”

24 August 2014 sermon — Psalm 124

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May the Spirit Speak to you!
RevJule
______________________

“Taking Sides”

24 August 2014 – 11th Sunday after Pentecost

Click here to read the scripture first: Psalm 124 (NRS)

Some of us may not be aware that three times each year the people of ancient Israel would go to Jerusalem. They would pilgrimage to the holy city, right up to the Temple gate in order to celebrate their annual festivals to God. They went to rejoice over Passover (or the remembrance of God’s delivery from slavery in Egypt), Shavuot (or the Festival of Weeks which celebrates the giving of the Law after the Exodus), and Sukkot (or the Festival of Booths which commemorates the 40 years the Israelites lived guided by God in such booths in the wilderness) [en.m.wikipedia.org]. For some, it was a long journey: on foot, no cars or planes or bicycles. For one living in Galilee, say around Nazareth, the trek would be about a five days’ walk – somewhere around 100 miles if you didn’t go through the taboo land of Samaria. These pilgrimages were commanded in the Torah. All good Jews would make the effort to go; though some could not afford to attend all three every year. Much like our liturgical calendar that takes us on an annual journey from the waiting of Advent through the culmination of Christmas, to the death and resurrection of Christ, to the formation of the church at Pentecost through to the glorious celebration of Christ the King; the three pilgrimages of ancient Israel shaped the people. Thanksgiving to God undergirded it all.

Like the “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” song sung in so many cars on lengthy family vacations; the ancient Israelites had songs for their journeys as well. It’s just that pilgrims to Jerusalem had songs that made a bit more sense. They didn’t exist just to annoy the driver or keep the kids occupied. Israel’s pilgrim songs told of joy on the journey: “I was glad when the said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” chimes one (Psalm 122:1). As the pilgrims made their long, sweaty way over the rolling, rocky terrain; another song boasts: “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2). Another song for the pilgrim journey to Jerusalem begins: “Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD” (Psalm 134:1). And yet another: “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side – let Israel now say – if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive” (Psalm 124:1-3a). These are the Songs of Ascent, known to us as Psalm 120 through Psalm 134. As far as we know, these were the melodies on the lips of grateful travelers as they made their way to Jerusalem three times each year in order to give great thanks unto God.

It seems an important detail regarding the Psalm before us today: Psalm 124, one of the pilgrim Songs of Ascent. The context is pilgrimage in order to celebrate freedom from slavery, the gift of the Law which would make them a covenant people, and the provisions of a present God all through the wilderness. The people are celebrating the gracious care of the LORD their God. They are recounting their history – one they believe to have been made possible by a God who would not let them go. Part of the point of pilgrimage was to praise, even as it was to keep the people in perpetual reminder that once they were nothing – worthless slaves in a land not their own. But God heard their cry. God led them out. God made them into something – not because of any great credential of their own. But because of God, the LORD who made heaven and earth. The One who chooses to dwell among us. If it had not been for that One being on their side, they never would have made it out of Egypt. Or they would have gone a few miles only to be swallowed up in the raging waters of the Sea.

Sides. I gotta admit, it’s kinda disturbing. It seems like too many today are quick to put God on their side over and against their bitter enemy. I know I feel that way. It’s late August. Pre-season’s almost over. The team’s nearly set. Ours pretty much has been for a while. Aaron Rogers again will be our dynamic starting quarterback. All our favorites like Clay Matthews and Sam Shields have had time to heal after last season’s debilitating injuries. And we haven’t had a need for a new head coach in years. It’s looking like it could be a great new season for us! I’m not talking about the Titans, you know, but the Green Bay Packers! The green and gold just might make it to the Super Bowl this year, or at least crush our conference rivals like the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions and the dreaded Minnesota Vikings. So there you have it. My football bias. I’d like to believe that God is on our side – even if you Titans beat us at the pre-season opener when the rains were pouring down and most of our priced starters weren’t even suited up to play – though yours were.

Truth be told, I don’t really believe God is on my Green Bay Packer side any more than I believe God is on the side of the Titans or any other NFL Team. I’m pretty sure God’s got more important things to do than stack up a Fantasy Football Team and spend all weekend cheering for certain ones to win. . . . What is it in us that so often we put God firmly on our own side against our bitter enemy? It sounds a little bit like what the ancient Israelites did in their Song of Ascent. It’s a fine line between rejoicing over God’s ever-present care and claiming God’s with you against your enemies. . . . When it comes down to it; Jesus lets us know God’s only enemy. His conversation with his disciples, which we overhear in the gospel reading for today, makes clear prime suspect number one. The enemy of God and God’s people is death. So much so that even if he’s killed, as he explains to his disciples that day he’s asking them who they believe he is, God will raise him up again. Life shall be the final word! . . . The lectionary puts these texts together for today. Not to have one make sense of the other. The intent is more to compliment themes that might be present in the texts. It stands out even more when the Old Testament text from Exodus is thrown in the mix. There Egypt’s Pharaoh commands the killing of all the Hebrew boys. He’s paranoid that Israel was getting too strong so he tells the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill the male babies as the mothers are giving birth. (Exodus 1:15-22). Shiphrah and Puah find a way to wiggle around the king’s edict. And when the Pharaoh orders the Hebrew mothers to throw their own baby boys into the Nile, one mother honors the request but makes a basket of reeds first to ensure the boy she turns lose into the Nile will not drown. . . . Death is the constant threat. God’s enemy that seeks to attack again and again and again.

It’s been a trying few weeks for us. One of our own, who was with us just last Sunday in the back row, tragically has died. A few other beloved among us are showing the fragility of aging bodies. Anxiety is rising in our nation over race relations in Ferguson, Missouri; Israel and Hamas really have been at it the past few days; and who knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East with the beheading of an American journalist. It all seems a little surreal – a bit of emotional overload. We need words that remind us: if it is not the LORD who is on our side. If it is not the living God who’s first enemy is death. Who despises that which steals the gift of life from us so that God came among us in our own flesh to deal the final blow against it. If it is not God who fights for us for the eternal gift of life and for the gift of abundant life each day . . . well, without such a gracious God on our side, we would come to naught. There would be nothing beyond our physical death. We’d be swallowed up alive in despair here and now, without hope, with little reason to carry on. The flood waters of death would drown us, sweeping us away forever if not for the waters of baptism that keep us throughout all eternity. If it had not been the LORD who, for our benefit, is on the side of Life. . . . Let this be our reminder. The song we sing on our journeys – our own pilgrimages throughout this life. The living God is on our side – has made a way for us to live here and now and forevermore. We’ve no need to fear God’s enemy death; for it already has been conquered. We join our voices in thanksgiving too! Blessing the One who will not give us over eternally as prey for death’s teeth. That snare gets broken and we are allowed to fly free! . . . Let us all say: our help is in the LORD! God forever is on the side of life!

For this we give great thanks to the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.
© Copyright JMN – 2014 (All rights reserved.)

17 August 2014 — Matt. 15:10-28

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May the Spirit Speak to you!
RevJule
______________________

17 August 2014 – 10^th Sunday after Pentecost

Click here to read Scripture first: Matthew 15:10-28 (NRS)

A few years ago I was at a continuing education course on Christian Sabbath keeping. A nun was there; she was a Benedictine sister from Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. I loved her presence in our class because something about her smile and the peace that radiated on her face reminded me of my long-deceased maternal grandmother. In addition to being a sister, the nun was a yoga instructor. Now that was something I never would have expected out of a nun. But she was trained at the monastery to lead daily meditative yoga for the sisters and any of their retreat guests. She was sitting in on the course about Sabbath keeping; but what really could she have had to learn about Sabbath? Benedictines are famous for embodying the daily rhythm of Sabbath. In honor of God, their lives are set around the kind of balance between work and play, study and service, rest and devotion which Sabbath keeping is all about. As it turned out, the sister was there to offer the gift of meditative yoga and free back massages to the stressed out pastors and church leaders who were present for the class. She was there to provide an avenue to practice Sabbath, instead of just read and talk about it all week.

Though I’d never been to a yoga class at that point in my life, I decided I’d give it a try. Especially if it meant a free back massage to follow. It was awesome. She had lugged her back massage chair all the way from the monastery. She started by asking if she could say a silent prayer for me before she dug into the knots of my shoulders. Most her time was spent on the right one, right up there in that spot where I know I’m not the only one carrying all the stress. Finally she moved up my neck until I felt her gently massaging my temples and scalp. I was in a deep state of relaxation when she suddenly took the heel of her hand and started thumping the top of my head. In a jolt, I was fully alert as she took about four or five firm whaps on a place on my head I wasn’t really aware existed. So much for trusting those with that sweet, peaceful smile. As she worked on my scalp, she explained that thinking too hard constricts certain muscles around our brains. The energy flows better when our scalps are loose. Our minds literally can be opened up this way in order to improve relaxation and concentration. With a twinkle in her eye that made me wonder if there was any truth to what she was saying, she claimed she found Presbyterian scalps needed the most loosening – especially if they were pastors. She might just have been playing me; but it’s something you might want to test out once your installed pastor search gets underway.

The nun’s brain massage comes to mind from the story we hear in Matthew’s gospel today. Here a Canaanite mother persistently massages Jesus’ temples until whap, whap, whap. His scalp is finally loosened because, in her words, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Mt. 15:27). Proof that Jesus must have been an unknowing cat person. So don’t forget to take your CAT starting next Sunday! . . . It might be well to be warned that many find this text to be very disturbing. Especially in a week like this one when race relations have turned riotous over a mysterious police shooting of a young man in Ferguson, Missouri. Israel and Palestine brutally have been tearing each other apart – though it seems negotiated ceasefires are becoming more frequent. And again to Iraqi where ISIS (or the extremist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria) reportedly has been beheading those who won’t conform to their “fanatical interpretation of Sunni Islam” (www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/world/iraq-options/). This really is the last week we need to hear a story from our sacred text that portrays Jesus following right along with the racial prejudices of his day by, at best, simply ignoring the heart-felt pleas of a Canaanite women begging for healing for her daughter, and at worst has Jesus implying she is a worthless, outsider dog who doesn’t deserve the children’s food (Mt. 15:23, 26).

I don’t like this story. And I’m not too sure it’s made any better by the interpretations that say it was Jesus kind of tongue-in-cheek, trying to show his disciples what he had been telling them, though they just weren’t getting it. The lectionary makes optional the ten verses prior to Jesus intentionally heading into Gentile territory where the foreign woman hunts him down. According to the gospel of Matthew, right before this occurs; Jesus is calling out the behavior of some Pharisees and scribes who have come to him from Jerusalem to challenge him for not following the traditions of their people. I’m an avid hand-washer from spending years around church preschools where little kids pass along every virus known to humankind. I kinda feel for the group coming from Jerusalem who are upset that the disciples haven’t been washing their hands before they eat. For me it’s about good sanitary health. For them it’s about keeping to the ways of their people. And it appears as if Jesus’ and his followers are not. Jesus goes on with the crude joke that what goes into the mouth just ends up in the toilet. Perhaps they’d do better to focus on what comes out of the mouth, because such words are a true reflection of our heart (Mt. 15:17-18).

No sooner does that brilliant zing come out of Jesus’ mouth than: SILENCE! Nothing. A desperate mother seeks him out for the sake of her tormented daughter and he says nothing. I guess that’s better than his disciples who once again tell Jesus to send away the one before them who is in need. The next words out of Jesus’ mouth divide. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24) – even if some of them are fuming mad at him now for what he earlier said about their blind ways. Over the past twenty years, I’ve read entire books about what a hero this woman is because she’s not about to back down to this Jesus who just won’t give her the time of day. This is the one who immediately reached out his hand to save Peter when his trust started to waver on the waves of Galilee. But now: in the face of a Canaanite woman – a mother no less, who’s not just asking for herself (as Peter was) but for the sake of her child. According to the story in the gospel of Matthew, she falls to her feet before Jesus, begging: “Lord, help me” (Mt. 15:25). Words come out of his mouth, which he just said reveal the content of one’s heart. It’s not pretty. Perhaps like me, you don’t like it. . . . We get that she’s not an Israelite. Even worse, she’s a woman transgressing the gender rules of their society. And her daughter’s tormented by some sort of mental illness they in their day attributed to a demon. For all these reasons we can love the hutzpah of this Middle Eastern momma. Still, Jesus hauntingly insists. He replies: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mt. 15:26). In other words: “You dear woman, do not belong to the ones I’m here to feed. In fact, you’re lower than low; less than human, a wretched dog begging under the table.” You know they weren’t really as fond of such animals as some of us are crazy over our little pups. These are very hurtful words falling from Jesus’ lips. Words echoing the stereotypical racial slurs of his day. Words that draw the circle shut, not wider and wider and wider as the witness to God’s people had been up to that point.

It’s been explained that this story shows the very human side of Jesus. But I’m not too fond of that interpretation either. Because he’s not just either-or: some moments radiantly divine. Other times mired in the same muck of our souls. He’s both – all the time. A beautiful mix of human and God. It doesn’t sit well that his humanness was showing up so much so that he needed a whole bunch of whaps on the head to open up his mind. It’s disturbing to think this is any reflection of God. I want a Jesus who is beyond our best, don’t you? A Jesus who doesn’t have to be coaxed into having compassion on someone whose human flesh is different from his own.

In a meditation taken from A New Way of Seeing, A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul, Richard Rohr writes: “It is an openness to the other – as other – that frees us . . . It is always an encounter with otherness that changes me. If I am not open to the beyond-me, I’m in trouble. Without the other, we are all trapped in a perpetual hall of mirrors that only validates and deepens our limited and already existing worldviews. When there is the encounter with the other, when there is mutuality, when there is presence, when there is giving and receiving, and both are changed in that encounter; that is the moment when you can begin to move toward transformation . . . – to ‘change forms.’ When you allow other people or events to change you, you look back at life with new and different eyes. That is the only real meaning of human growth.” Rohr goes on by writing: “One could say that the central theme of the biblical revelation is to call people to encounters with otherness: the alien, the sinner, the Samaritan, the Gentile, the hidden and denied self, angels unaware. And all of these are perhaps in preparation and training for hopeful meetings with the Absolute Other (e.g. God). We need practice in moving outside of our comfort zones. It is never a natural or easy response” (Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation: “Intimate with Otherness;” from Center for Action & Contemplation; 14 August 2014).

Perhaps the only redeeming aspect of this gospel text is that it shows us that encounter with one another is not easy. As this meeting with the Canaanite mother implies, even Jesus himself had to be transformed – to change forms from one willing only to feed his own kind, to one recognizing great faith somewhere he didn’t really expect. No matter how much we might not like it, if indeed this story accurately portrays how Jesus was, then we can see that his world view ends up deepened. He might have started out at indifferent silence, and even moved to some nasty name-calling; but he didn’t stop there. He never bailed on the encounter – in fact, according to the story he intentionally went out of his own district – moving beyond his comfort zone, no matter how difficult the trip. He stayed with the other until something in his own heart was freed. At last he could see, saying: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!” (Mt. 15:28). Maybe in this way, we can learn a lesson from our Lord. Let his initial actions hold up a mirror to our own souls to see what we find in us that needs transformation.

May this be our prayer in our own lives, even as it be in the lives of those in Missouri, and Israel and Palestine, and Iraq.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

13 July 2014 sermon — Genesis 25:19-34

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“Brotherhood”

13 July 2014 – 5th Sunday after Pentecost
Click here to read scripture first: Genesis 25:19-34 (NRS)

A few years ago the movie Legends of the Fall was quite popular. Why wouldn’t it be with Anthony Hopkins as the proud old father of three boys – one of whom was played by Brad Pitt back in his early heartthrob days. It was the story of three brothers. The eldest was serious and stern. Focused on the right ways and a little bit reserved because of how others would think of him. The youngest seemed indulged. The apple of all their eyes he was passionate and diligent. His big brothers believed they had to remain in that role of protecting him from his own naiveté. And then there was Brad Pitt’s character: Tristan. If you saw the movie, you know he was the rebellious one. Though no one really cared because of his dashing looks, his easy mannerisms, and his ability to make all the ladies love him. The story starts out blissfully as the boys and their father forge a living on the wide open frontier in the early 1900s in America. Well, everything’s not quite fine as their mother refused to move from her comfortable New England lifestyle to the rugged wild West. Before you know it, a World War breaks out and the boys find themselves embroiled in battle in Europe. It’s almost a metaphor for the days to come in their family, because when the younger one dies in battle, the cracks in their family connection shatter completely. Before you know it, the older two brothers are locked in a bitter divide, which never is fully reconciled. I guess we should have got that from the title: Legends of the Fall. The story of one family’s ugly undoing.

I’ve never had one in my biological family, so I don’t really get it about brothers. What is it about them that such competition can be the norm? And grudges: o, it seems there is nothing worse than one brother who believes himself wronged by the other. I hope none of you know any of this up close and personal. Two or more brothers who no longer talk to each other over who knows what. Maybe one thought mom and dad loved the other more. Or brother number one failed to live up to brother number two’s expectations. Or maybe one of them really did destroy all family harmony. Good reasons may exist for the ice cold chill that has developed between them. It’s just that: they’re brothers! Flesh from the same flesh. With the same parents and home and history.

We could just look to scripture to know it so often turns out this way between brothers. And sisters too, I know, it’s just that the brothers of the bible get a lot more attention than the girl siblings of scripture. Cain and Able are the first two brothers scripture records. We remember what happens to them, right? They are complete opposites, even though they have the same parents. And in a tale that may have grown too familiar to shock us anymore, from the start one of the first brothers kills the other. It’s been said that the first question posed by a human being in scripture is Cain’s guilt-ridden response when God asks where his brother is. “I don’t know,” Cain replies to the God who already is on to the atrocious act committed. Cain goes on to ask: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). The rest of scripture is the story in answer to that question. YES! God pretty much says from the start. You ARE your brother’s keeper!

At least we get a little bit of progress in Jacob and Esau. Of course it all seems worse because they’re not just brothers: they are twins! They don’t just have the same parents, they literally shared the same womb at the very same time. The way scripture describes them, they must have been fraternal twins. You know: the ones that are their own eggs and grow in their own placentas. Still there never is a time when the other one was not. Until death, twins never know a moment of life without their co-multiple. Even if one is born a bit before the other, supposedly birth order issues do not play out the same between twins as they do between singletons. Twins share a unique bond that is constant and oh so very powerful. What a gift to have another human being’s life so intricately woven together with your own. Which may be the reason why twins can be so incredibly complex. Once parents make it through the long nights of double feedings and duplicate diaper changes; if they’ve been able to secure the coveted double stroller; if mom and dad have made it out of their twin’s first years of life with the joys of two sets of first steps and two times of first words; with two successful potty trainings and two burgeoning personalities; twins bring difficult parenting decisions. Do you dress them alike or not? Can you curb the comparisons in hopes of reducing twin competition? And as they first make their way out into the world, should you advocate for your twins to be in the same kindergarten classroom? So it went for Isaac and Rebekah because Esau and Jacob aren’t just brothers; they are twins!

Oh how easily divisions can arise! Before birth they are jostling around in Rebekah’s womb. One kick here. Another punch there. Twins begin the fight with one another in the womb as they struggle to get the nutrients they need, not to mention enough space for themselves in those very tight quarters. Maybe Esau and Jacob are destined for days of division. After all, the LORD tells a bereft Rebekah that “Two nations are in your womb and two peoples born of you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). Still, don’t you think that the prophecy grieved God to speak it as much as it grieved a mother to hear it of her own sons?

The history of two nations really is played out between Jacob, whose name will be changed by a midnight wrestler to Israel, and Esau, whose hairy red appearance is code in scripture for the Edomites that occupied the land southeast of Judah. The outcry of Psalm 137 shows us the bitterness between the nations founded upon these brothers: “Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!’” (Ps. 137:7). In other words, in exile the children of Jacob want the LORD their God to remember that the children of Esau, the Edomites, cheered Babylon on against the Israelites. After Babylon left, the Edomites (in the current territory of Jordan) supposedly raided the ransacked city of Jerusalem, kinda rubbing in exile even more. They come from twins and throughout their history, these two nations never could figure out a way to get along! Which might just leave us wondering if there’s any hope for those so different from one another. One peek at the nightly news shows us how difficult it is to remember that we ARE brothers – keepers of one another!

Maybe that’s why the rest of Jacob and Esau’s story is so important. Eventually, after living far from his homeland for having swindled his brother out of his birthright, Jacob comes back. A grown man, now of wealth and wives and children; fear of brotherly retaliation still lingers. In Genesis 32, Jacob’s all set to give his brother a whole bunch of stuff in hopes he and the four hundred men coming with Esau towards Jacob won’t kill him and his. In fear, he sends on flocks for his brother and hangs in the back for a little bit more protection, just in case it is with the sword that Esau comes out to greet him. After a restless night – cuz you know Jacob knew he’d get what he deserved if Esau still held a grudge – instead, in the light of day Esau runs in joy to meet his long-lost brother. Kinda like that prodigal story Jesus tells of the welcoming father who sprints out to meet his returning son; Esau opens wide his arms to his brother. And even though Jacob is going to fib him one more time, Esau shows nothing but goodwill unto Jacob. It’s such a grace-filled reunion that Jacob declares: “Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God – since you have received me with such favor” (Gen. 33:10).

Even if the history of Jacob and Esau’s children isn’t going to turn out quite as grace-filled, it’s as if the relationship between these two brothers is hope enough that it can. That somewhere down the road brothers are going to figure out that we are each other’s keepers. In the face of one another it is to be like seeing the face of God. Like knowing the compassionate forgiveness we are to practice among one another. After all, we too are brothers – man and woman alike. Brothers in this one, great big world from whom God hopes for something better.

May we all have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts ready to heed how – with all others – we can be brothers.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

6 July 2014 sermon — Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

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“Who’s Your Mirror?”

6 July – 4th Sunday after Pentecost

Click here to read scripture first: Matthew 11:16-19 (NRS)

I’m so glad Jesus could recognize in his day one of the biggest traps in our own: expectations. “To what shall I compare this generation,” he’s recorded as saying (Mt. 11:16). John the Baptist was an extremist among them, eating no food and taking no drink. And what happened? They rejected him because they expected something else. Here comes Jesus among them eating and drinking and enjoying life with those commonly cut off. And what happened? They reject him because they expected something else. That’s the problem with such social expectations. Even if we tried, no one can live up to them. Not even Jesus himself. He called that from the start.

I’m not trying to say we should throw them out entirely. Some expectations are good and helpful. It’s not a bad thing to expect each other to be kind and honest and forgiving. We Christians expect that of one another because we believe God expects it of us. Imagine life together in the church if we all held grudges against each other, and lied, and were as grouchy as could be stomping around here like we didn’t care one bit about each others’ toes. None of us want to be a part of that. Besides, the body of Christ is supposed to be a little bit more like Christ than that. The problem comes when we start living our lives according to the expectations of others. You know what I mean. It can feel as helpless as being chained to a solid brick wall with a hundred-ton train speeding right in our direction. When we look to fulfill all the expectations of others, aren’t we often left like an out-of-control spinning top? Do it one way, the critics never are happy. Try it the opposite, they don’t like that either. We’re left constantly wasting our energy on what others’ think. How they will react. Will they approve of us or not? Will we get their blessing if we try it their way or not? It’s absolutely exhausting!

Perhaps I should couch these thoughts in the reality of human development. We have to remember that it’s part of the natural journey of life that we look to the expectations of those outside of us. It’s the stage of life called puberty. The time when we start becoming more aware that we are being seen by others. Peers are so very important during our teen years because it is only through mirrors that we can see ourselves. In other words, during this stage of human development, we know ourselves through how others see us. We’re in the middle with all eyes on us and we’re looking back at them to see how they see us. If our goofy sophomoric pranks are accepted by the friends around us, we’ll keep at them. If the group around us isn’t impressed, we’re shamed into letting it go. We all experience this part of life. It’s just that we’re supposed to live through that. A healthy self, thanks to this stage of life, will grow into self-definition. Self-assurance, where what others think of us won’t drive how we live our lives as much as it once did because our true selves have emerged. Our internal authority, known in psychological circles as the executive ego, will become our guide.

About a year or so ago, I discovered fascinating, incredibly freeing research. It is the life work of a social worker named Brené Brown. She tells about it all in the books The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Grately. And just in case you’re too busy to read because you’re stuck doing a thousand things expected by others, you could take a mere twenty minutes to listen to it all in her Ted talks at Ted.com/the power of vulnerability and listening to shame. As a PhD in Social Work, Brown spent ten years of her life interviewing thousands of people. She was at it not just to make some contribution to human well-being, but more so to find a way to live her own life free from the crushing demands of others’ expectations, which left her constantly striving to fit in – always feeling like she never was or did enough. What Brown discovered through her research is that shame runs rampant in our culture. So many are locked in it primarily because we do not believe ourselves worthy of love. It’s kinda like we’re listening to the wrong voice: looking in the wrong mirror. Brown also discovered something else; something called wholehearted living – which just so happens to be the basis for lives of courage, compassion, and connection. . . . I love Brown’s list of what she found in her research that rang true in her own life. And in the light of Jesus’s words in Matthew’s gospel, I’m pretty sure he’d make the same list. That those who believe themselves worthy of love and belonging – in other words, those who turn to God’s mercy instead of being trapped in the world’s expectations. Those folks live lives brimming with rest, play, trust, faith, intuition, hope, authenticity, love, joy, gratitude, and creativity. What a wonderful way to live! . . . Those stuck in shame, who doubt God’s mercy and keep on looking to others for their mirrors, have lives dripping with the drive for perfectionism, always needing to fit in, participating in behavior that numbs themselves, standing aloof in constant certainty, self-sufficiency, and harsh judgment of self and others. Living stuck in that sense of never enough, which we call scarcity (Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, Hazelden, 2010, IBooks). . . . The difference in these two ways of life has to do with which direction we turn for our mirror: towards the world, or towards something else. When we stand securely on the truth that we are God’s – all of us. Precious. Valuable. Made in God’s image for connection and ones in whom God’s Spirit dwells. When we know ourselves and everyone else loved fully by God, things like perfectionism, self-sufficiency, and judgment of ourselves and others fall by the wayside. We stop looking to all the expectations of others to define and direct the living of our lives. When we stand secure that we are precious to God, we are free to live courageously – compassionate with ourselves and others, and truly able to connect with God, self, and everyone else.

I think that’s why Jesus says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28). Don’t listen to this generation that won’t accept whichever way you live. Look to me as your mirror – not everyone else. . . . The translation of scripture entitled The Message, puts Jesus’ words this way: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out . . . ? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (The Message, Eugene Peterson, Mt. 11:28-30). Isn’t that beautiful? Free from that heavy burden of looking to everyone else’s expectations about who we are and how we should live our lives. Come to me, he says, because we know very well he constantly ran up against others’ expectations of him. In fact, failing to meet others’ expectations pretty much was what got him killed. No matter. It’s a light yoke across our backs to allow him to be our mirror. To look into the face of one who looks back at us with such love. Such joy. Such pride. Seeing us as faithful disciples who might falter now and again, but who get back up and keep at it. I want that mirror, don’t you? The mirror of our Lord Jesus Christ showing us how to step out from the load of the world’s expectations into the unforced rhythms of such wonderful grace. Learning from him how to live freely and lightly. . . . That’s the promise he has for us: rest. Rest from the world’s crazy demands.

One of my favorite hymns from the new PCUSA Hymnal is inspired by this part of scripture. It’s set to a quiet, folksong-like tune, though I’m not going to try to sing it to you. The words are a beautiful invitation to new life for us all. They go like this: “’Come to me, O weary traveler; come to me with your distress; come to me, you heavy burdened; come to me and find your rest. Do not fear, my yoke is easy; do not fear, my burden’s light; do not fear the path before you; do not run from me in fright. Take my yoke and leave your troubles; take my yoke and come with me. Take my yoke, I am beside you; take and learn humility. Rest in me, O weary traveler; rest in me and do not fear. Rest me in, my heart is gentle; rest and cast away your care.’” (Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal, “Come to Me, O Weary Traveler,” #183).

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

29 June 2014 Sermon — Matt. 10:40-42

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“Who Do You Represent?”

29 June 2014 – 3^rd Sunday after Pentecost

Click here to read the scripture first: Matthew 10:40-42 (NRS)

Have you ever had to hire a lawyer? I don’t mean because you got yourself in trouble, though that can be a good time to do so as well. I mean more like you couldn’t be present for the sale of your home. So you hired a lawyer to sign closing documents for you. You expected her to represent you well. Maybe you’ve been put in the tough spot of having to make end of life decisions for a parent or beloved spouse. As their medical power of attorney; for them, you sign the orders regarding palliative care. They trusted you to act in their name. Hopefully we’ve all voted for a State Representative we intended to send to Washington DC. I know cynicism runs high around such things; but when we cast our votes, we do so believing that person will make decisions for us which will positively impact life in our communities. We want them to decide for our benefit. Or maybe we’ve just gotten behind the efforts of the US Soccer Team this summer. Off to Brazil we’ve sent them. Even if we can’t kick a ball, they go in our stead to represent the sporting pride of our nation. Win or lose, we hope they give it their all for us all.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus closes his charge of discipleship with an important reminder. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (Mt. 10:40). He might have well just given them a list of summer camp rules. If you’ve ever worked with the youth of the church, then you might know that this frequently is done. We send them off reminding them to be on their best behavior because not only are they representing themselves and their parents and our church; they represent Christ. In essence he says: “It’s me they see when they see you. So, holding your chin high, head out into the world in my name!”

I’m not sure we think about that enough. That it’s Christ we represent in our lives each day. Like the lawyer who signs for us or the team that plays in our name, those who have said yes to the vows of Christian baptism (and confirmation), no longer live for ourselves. Instead, we bear Christ’s name in the world. On days when we feel like it and days when we don’t, we represent Christ. Our words and our actions are speaking for him – every day of the week, every place that we go, not just Sunday mornings here. The question is: what message about Christ do we send?

Recently I read an interesting reflection by a pastor I know. I think she actually was quoting a tweet she read at our General Assembly in Detroit. The quote was: “If I hang out at your church, will I actually meet people who are like Jesus? Or will I just hear about him?” She went on to write: “Imagine walking into a church building and seeing people who remind you of Jesus. What would that look like?” (achurchforstarvingartisits.wordpress.com/author/jledmiston, 18 June 2014). It’s how it’s supposed to be. For each other and for the world, we represent Jesus. What do they see? Do they see in us the kind of compassion, kindness, peace, and care he exuded? Do they witness the clarity, generosity, and joy he was about? When in our presence, is it for others like being in the presence of one so centered in the Spirit of God that he always was ready and able to attune to the one in need before him. To offer the space for the other to become even better than they were before they met him. That’s how Jesus went about his life on this earth. And to those who have vowed to be his followers, he’s now given us that charge so that we know it’s not us that is welcomed along our journey of service in his name, but him: Christ.

If you’re familiar with Saint Benedict, then you might already know and practice this rule. It’s safe to say that Benedict is a giant in monasticism – at least for those covenanted communities that still live according to the rules he established in the Sixth Century. It’s not all things like poverty and servitude. For Benedict, life was to be a celebration. The balance between prayer and work and play; all of it, ways to encounter the Spirit of God living in, among, and beyond God’s marvelous creation. To this day, Benedictine orders have a porter. One author writes, “Quite simply, the porter is the one who opens the door to the monastery when someone knocks” (Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2014; Martin Copenhaver, p. 22). I’ve experienced the classic warm welcome of Benedictines, but I never knew that such monasteries have a porter with the specific responsibility of sleeping “near the entrance to the monastery so he can hear and respond in a timely way when someone knocks. Then, as soon as anyone knocks . . . the porter is to reply: ‘Thanks be to God!’” (Ibid.). The author explains that: “before he even knows who is on the other side of the door. Before the porter knows who that person is or why he or she is there, he is to praise God for that person’s presence” (Ibid.). You see, it doesn’t really matter who’s on the other side of the door. The porter knows whoever it is, it will be Christ. And the porter knows that whoever it is, he himself represents Christ for them. Thanks be to God! Try muttering that the next time you hear your doorbell! The next time a guest shows up among us for worship, try practicing Thanks be to God – not because we might have a new member to add to our numbers as we suck them dry of their time, talents, and treasures. But thanks to be God! In the guest, we welcome Christ among us! And to the guest we represent Christ.

There’s a story of a little church that fell on hard times. You may have heard this one before. They were down to just four members, who were angry and anxious and not always all that nice. The leader was sent to seek guidance from a wiser one. The wise one told the leader: “I’m not really sure how to turn your little church around. All I know is that Christ is one of you.” The story goes that the message struck a chord in the hearts and minds of those four remaining members. Just in case it was true, they started treating each other better. Welcoming one another with the grace and excitement one might have in welcoming Christ. They went about their worship and their service together with a bit more care; just in case Christ really was one of them. They paid attention to every little detail of their space and their lives together; in the off chance that Christ really was one of them. Because, of course, they wanted to be and do their best for him. Over time, word spread. People stopped in to see if Christ really was there in that little church. They discovered such mutual respect, such genuine affection, such gracious attention that they started to stay. The four became fourteen, then forty, and then four hundred. All of them living with each other as if one of them was Christ.

We do represent Christ. And o for a world full of us! A world of us ready to welcome one another as speedily and as graciously as the Benedictine porter welcomes at the first knock. A world living as patiently and as attentively as four church members who believe one of them is Christ. . . . I know there will be days we do better at it than others. Days when we need a little reminder from one another – like some sort of signal to get us back on track when we slip: “Oops, Pastor Jule! You’re representing Christ to us right now!” Or “Oops, one another: take care for the message we’re sending. For we represent Christ even now to each other!” . . . No longer for ourselves alone, in all we do and say; we represent Christ. May that which is shown be “Thanks be to God” each day!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

22 June 2014 Sermon-Matt. 10:24-39

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“Division”

22 June 2014 – 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 10:24-39

Click here to read the scripture first: Matthew 10:24-39 (NRS)

Anyone having a warm-fuzzy view of Jesus, who thinks he’s all about loving our families and being seekers of peace in this world; probably doesn’t like this part of the gospel of Matthew. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” he’s quoted as saying. “Man against his father, and a daughter against her mother . . . one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” And “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:34, 36, 37). Tough words that don’t necessarily match up with things elsewhere in scripture that he’s recorded as saying, let alone the Jesus so many of us love as our confidant and friend.

I’ve only ever met one person in the world who actually loves this text. I don’t remember his name. But I vividly remember his story. I met him one night in Pakistan. It was the days before most Americans even knew where Pakistan was, let alone what life was like there. It was the summer of 1993 and I had been chosen by a Presbyterian Missionary Conference to be in service for 8 weeks with 4 other college young adults. When I got the acceptance letter with the news of where we were heading, the first thing I did was found a map to look up where in the world Pakistan was. The next thing I did was call my parents to tell them the news. And while it wasn’t the first time they heard me tell them of plans to travel oversees for some sort of mission; they were not at all thrilled. Because: Pakistan?!! That’s like a whole world away! . . . Over the course of the next few weeks, we were sent various articles about Islam and the ways of this Muslim country. I learned that religions other than Islam legally were tolerated. But of course toleration and full acceptance are two very different things. I learned that out in public, I would need to keep my arms and legs covered at all times – and be ready to cover my head too depending upon where we were. I learned that I would need to know the proper greeting for most Islamic countries: “As-salamu alaykum,” I would hear. To which we were to respond: “Wa alaykumu al-salem.” Loosely translated it was: Peace be upon you; and unto you peace.

Based out of the busy city of LaHore, I spent my summer meeting various Christians of the country. My charge was to listen to the work they were doing at such places like the YWCA, the Christian Blind Society, a Christian Broadcasting Network, and a self-development training center for women. At the time, I think the Christian population of Pakistan was somewhere like 1% — in other words, being a disciple of Christ then and there was not a very popular pursuit. Nor were Christians across the country very well connected with each other. My work that summer was to learn how Christians were serving those in need in order to compile a resource that pastors and other church leaders could use in connecting those able to serve with places they could do it, and those needing to be served with ministries that could handle their requests.

Somehow, one Sunday night, our group met a man. I remember him rushing in to the home where we had gathered. In Urdu he said some words to the American mission co-workers who were with us. Then we all took seats in the living room. It was almost like we were having a little house meeting as the earliest Christians would – meeting for prayer and fellowship at the close of the day. Mike, one of the American mission co-workers, stood next to the gentleman who looked kinda tentative but eager to speak. Over the course of the next half-hour, the man told us (with Mike translating for us) that he was a follower of Christ. He told us how he had come to hear of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. He told us how he had learned of this one who spurred on the Christians of Pakistan to treat others with kindness and mercy and the human dignity they deserved no matter their religious affiliation. He told us of how he and his fellow Christians came together to rely upon one another and to serve those forgotten by the rest of society. How they were willing to take risks and even go against the ways of their elders if they must because of the love, forgiveness, and hope they had come to know through Jesus Christ. At long last, Mike broke in to tell us details the man wasn’t sharing. Details of his life that we really needed to understand. This man was the son of a prominent Muslim Imam. His uncle and his father both followed in the footsteps of their father to be important leaders of local mosques. He was to as well. Instead, when this man decided as a young adult to follow the ways of Christ, his biological family disowned him. He was like a stranger to them. In his context, he knew that becoming a disciple of Christ would set him at odds with those he loved most. There was something about these words of the gospel of Matthew that became a great comfort to him.

Now, before we jump to any false conclusions about how terribly divisive Islam is, we can remember that Christians too have experienced this kind of rejection by their own Christian families. It still happens today – you know it. One follower of Christ doesn’t agree with another’s understanding of it all. One disciple seeks to be true to who they’ve come to know in God through the good news of Christ, and the others are of a different ilk. Before you know it, folks are being holier than thou at the family reunion – if they’re still talking at all. It happened quite a bit for the first followers of the way. For many of them, their families were Jewish who kept to the ways of Judaism, even if one called Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the long-awaited Messiah. As the movement spread, it was Greeks and Romans, who had notions of other gods. Before Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century, it took a whole lot of courage to go home to tell your parents that you were going to start living in the manner of Christ. . . . Doing that, you too might find yourself ostracized by your loved ones – or worse. In fact, it was another man in Pakistan who first taught me a great wisdom about such religious exclusionism. He was one of the most peaceful, serene, Christ-like persons I ever have met. He was Muslim and worked alongside me each day at the office of one of the Presbyterian missionaries. Everything about him embodied Christ for me: his gentleness, his generosity, his joy. He went out of his way to tell me more about Islam and the way it grounded him in being a person of peace in this world – a seeker too of justice. Something about him made me begin to wonder if, though we were walking different paths to God, was it all really the same Way, the Way I know as Christ? He’s one of the first persons to tell me that extremists exist in any religion, which can give us all a bad name. He firmly believed that when our religious practices fail to embrace and embody the highest principles of the Love to which they’re supposed to point us; then something has gone awry. Anyway, that’s the wisdom my Muslim co-worker taught me that summer.

The thing is that following in the footsteps of one who heals the sick, befriends the outcast, and casts out that which leads from life; following in the footsteps of that Teacher very well can lead to some very strong reactions. One commentator helpfully reminds that “if Jesus were really the . . . nice guy we often insist on imagining, should he not have been able to stay out of trouble? . . . Kingdom work, it turns out, is more controversial and subversive than conventional kindness. If the teacher gives offense (as Jesus did to those of his day), how much more the student?” (Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 3, Lance Pape, p. 167).

It’s the reality with which we have to wrestle. I’m not saying we have to get out there to intentionally bring division. Rather, the message of Jesus in this part of Matthew’s gospel is that we very well may. In the words of that same commentator, “true discipleship is the art of seeking the kingdom with single-minded determination and letting the chips fall where they may.” According to that commentator, “The church that always manages to glide through life without ever rubbing anyone the wrong way may have reason to question whether it is truly this Jesus it honors as master and Lord” (Ibid.).

This Jesus, of Matthew’s gospel, is summoning twelve of his followers and giving them authority to go out doing the same things he is: proclaiming good news to those of their own nation who are being preyed upon by a religious system that had become entrenched with those seeking gain for themselves on the backs of others; those perverting God’s good news in fear of the oppressor; those turning their heads from the suffering of their brothers and sisters. This Jesus is coming as a balm to those who have lost hope in the confines of illness and death and social exclusion and forces beyond themselves. This Jesus is telling his followers to be learners and doers of his way – knowing that some are going to scoff. Some are going to say no way. Some are going to cut you off because they won’t accept such a God. That’s literally what was going on for the community to which Matthew first wrote, so that they needed to hear the good news that “even the hairs of your head are counted by our loving God. Do not be afraid; for you are valued as precious by God. We will be held through it all” (paraphrase of Matthew 10:29-31). This Jesus is telling those who would follow after him that the way will not always be easy. We might find ourselves locked out of one family – though thanks be to God another family is ready to welcome us in. It’s the road we must walk, come what may, if we want to be called worthy by our Lord. If we want to know the joy of full-acceptance by our God. In the end, it’s the way of losing ourselves, as the Jesus of Matthew’s gospel here says, in order to find true Life. . . . Despite the cost, no matter our fear; may our days be blessed as we follow in the footsteps of our Savior and Lord!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

Trinity Sunday Sermon — Matt. 28:16-20

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15 June 2014 – Trinity Sunday

Matthew 28:16-20

Click here to read the scripture first: Matthew 28:16-20 (NRS)

Seventeen hundred years ago, the church was fighting about the Trinity. It can be a confusing concept which we have great difficulty wrapping our minds around. It is, after all, a mystery. Though this gospel reading of Matthew makes reference to baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; it doesn’t explain the relationship between these three. Nor does it seem to worry about delicately holding the tension of the three-yet-Oneness of God. To make matters worse, the Trinity’s not clearly explained anywhere in scripture. In fact, the word Trinity never is used. The gospel of John’s farewell discourse of Jesus (chapters 14-17) might be the closest attempt to talk about this God that is in us even as we’re in God, and Jesus is in God, and Jesus is in us, and another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will be among us forever. But that whole section can be more trouble than help. We do have the second letter to the Christians in Corinth which closes with the message: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Cor. 13:13); though the benediction isn’t really explaining Trinity as much as it is naming for the first followers of Christ’s Way the experience of the grace, love, and companionship of God – the various aspects of God that can be real in our lives. And just as Christianity began to gain some ground in the Roman Empire of the early Fourth Century, the church started fighting about the Trinity.

It’s called the Arian controversy. A man named Arius and a man named Athanasius led the way. They stood at polar opposites about the nature and power of God. Arius (wrongly) was convinced that the Son and the Father were not co-eternal. “’There was when he was not,’” Arius said – referring to an independent God (the Father) creating Jesus (the Son) right alongside everything else in creation – something we Christians do not believe. For Arius, “God was an utterly unique, self-contained, and self-sufficient reality” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol 3; Stephen B. Boyd, p. 46). . . . Fathers’ Day seems a good time to remember that the church did not accept this notion of God. For how long has our culture, especially tried to tell the males of it, that they too are individual? Self- contained. Sufficient all on their own. Arius was terrified of any sense of vulnerability in God. For him an eternal partnership with the Son, not to mention the Holy Spirit; implied weakness in the deity. You know, one that could be affected by another; changed by another; to Arius that was weak. Unacceptable in any sense of God – which tells us that Arius may not have been reading the scriptures very much because it’s all over the stories. This amazing Deity who chooses to come to us in such a vulnerable way. This God who feels and weeps, and deeply is affected by the faithfulness and waywardness of God’s creation. . . . I know a mindset still lingers in our society: that to be a man is to be like this invincible, independent, hover-a-little-bit-above-it-all kind of god.

Fortunately, scripture gives witness to something else, so the church decided to follow Athanasius. As one commentator explains: “Athanasius believed that the incarnation of God in Christ revealed a different kind of God and a different kind of divine power. Rather than an isolated monad, God from eternity is relational; between the Father and the Son, for example, there was, is, and always will be mutual self-giving. . . . a ‘unity of love, a unity in which the identity of each party is not swallowed up and annihilated, but established” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol 3; Stephen B. Boyd, p. 46, 48). It’s a mutuality. A shared being. An inter-dependence where three co-exist in beautiful harmony with one another – like a perfect musical chord. One’s not more important than the other; they’re all necessary. Distinct, yet equal. One never without the others. It’s often called the peri-choresis of God: the dancing around in great delight. A circular image of God where the God beyond, among, and in us exists in this joyous right-relationship. Almost like a synergy or living sphere of powerful energy. A God who is plural, yet one. . . . It’s a much better message for the men and women of our culture – a helpful, healthy way to be reflected in our own relationships at home, in our congregation, and beyond in all the world! . . . I love how one preacher put it by saying that: “God does not exist in solitary individualism but in a community of love and sharing. God is not a loner. This means that a Christian in search of godliness (Matthew 5:48) must shun every tendency to isolationism. The ideal Christian spirituality is not that of flight from the world like that of certain . . . traditions where the quest for holiness means permanent withdrawal . . . away from contact and involvement with people and society” (http://www.munachi.com/z/trinity.htm). It means getting in there. Living rightly alongside one another, even as we tenderly tread upon this earth.

In officer training this week, one of our officers-elect explained it beautifully. A person can be daughter and a sister and a wife and a mother and a grandmother. And in all those ways how she is in each of those roles is influenced by the other; but she’s still one woman – and so much more even than just those roles. Boys too: sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and grandfathers – all impacting how you are in each one of those, but more than each one too. I like that. Especially because it gets at the heart of why the Trinity matters: because in the image of God we are made. Not a power unto ourselves to do whatever we want with one another and the rest of creation. But a relationship – a mutuality. In other words, though we may have been reared in the great Western independent philosophy of “I think therefore I am;” the African inter-dependent notion of Ubuntu would have been a more Christian way to have been reared: that I am because we are. As South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu so often proclaims: our human-ness is bound up together. In many ways, Trinity captures not just the truth of God, but also the truth of us. We never are one all on our own. Each one of us always is in relationship with God and the rest of creation, even as we are with our own self. In other words, three: a self, God, the rest of the world. We too are thoroughly relational no matter how much some of us might try to fight it. We may not be able to explain it all; but we certainly experience it.

I’ve been reading about something called the Law of Three. I admit I don’t fully understand yet all of what this contemporary Christian mystic is trying to say, other than that there is a metaphysical Law of Three. Our world isn’t just binary opposites like yin and yang, male and female, dark and light. Rather it takes three to make anything happen: like a seed in the fertile soil. Without the third element of the sunlight, that seed never will sprout to grow. (Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, p. 40). About the Trinity, this mystic writes: “A solitary God could not be ‘love without limits.’ . . . The Three-in-One denotes the perfection of Unity . . . fulfilling itself in communion and becoming the source and foundation of all communion” (Ibid., pp. 43-44).

Returning to the gospel of Matthew, that might be why the Risen Christ commands his disciples to go baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because first of all, it’s going to take something outside of us to get us out there. A force; a power; a Spirit beyond us to motivate us to go forth into all the world with the good news. Second, thanks be to God, we have a most beautiful example of how to do this: Jesus himself, God-with-us, or the God among us, divine yet seeking to live a flawless human life. He held in perfect harmony those right relationships between God, self, and all creation. And third, thanks be to God, we have something within us: the Spirit of God burning like a fire within to give witness to the love, and hope, and forgiving grace of God. In our baptisms, we’re marked with the sign of the Triune God – the God beyond, among, and within us – we’re marked by them all in baptismal waters that we might live in God’s likeness as we delight in such beautiful balance with God, self, and the rest of creation.

As we go forth into the world, that’s the good news our lives are to reflect! That we do not go it alone. Trinity matters because our God is beyond, but among, and in us too! And like God, we work best in threes: me, you, God with us. As the wisdom writer wrote: “a three-fold chord is not quickly broken” (Eccles. 4:12b). Together we can fulfill the Risen Christ’s command – or at least begin to try. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we go forth to give witness to our mysterious, Three-in-One God.

Alleluia and Amen!

Pentecost Sunday Sermon – Acts 2:1-21

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8 June 2014 – Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-21
Click here to read the scripture first: Acts 2:1-21 (NRS)

Exciting things are going on in the church of Jesus Christ. And I’m not just talking about the excitement I see in you men who are rolling up your sleeves to take care of our building; and those of you helping the people in need who come to us each week; and those of you who are eager to experience some other forms of worship in a few upcoming Field Trips we’re working on organizing during this transitional time in the life of this church; or those of you asking for a book study in people’s homes that we hope to launch in a few weeks! All of which are really exciting things among us! . . . I realize we can get so caught up in worry about declining numbers and church dogma fights and budget crunches. But lots of evidence points to a vibrant future for the Christian faith. While it’s true, as one author has said, that in the USA, the first decade of the 21^st Century has been the “Great Religious Recession.” It’s equally true, according to that same author, that we’re living in the era of an emergence of “a spiritual awakening, a period of sustained religious and political transformation during which our ways of seeing the world, understanding ourselves, and expressing faith are being ‘born again’” (Cheryl Jones quoting Diana Butler Bass in Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2013, p. 3). It’s exciting! It’s a great, even if challenging, time to be alive! . . . Supposedly we’re in the midst of “moving from being a religion about God, to being an experience of God” (Cheryl Jones, Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2013, p. 4). From the what of faith to the how of faith. From what’s been called an Age of Belief to an Age of the Spirit.

It’s very good news for the church of Jesus Christ because more than ever in the history of this nation, spiritual experience is what people want. The research all points to a rise in those not affiliated with any church; yet craving connection with God. Unlike Americans of the past who weren’t a part of any religious body; when those of the past turned away from the church, they turned away from God all together. Atheists and agnostics used to abound. The what of belief was their crisis – and, in response, the what of belief was the church’s key witness. . . . But today we’re told those who won’t be a part of a church still seek some sort of experience of the Divine. They want wonder. They want awe. They want a glimpse into the mysterious. They want the rituals and practices that will bring them into deep connection with that which is beyond themselves. In other words, they want the how of faith. They just don’t think they can find that among us, the church. We, who religious non-affiliates of today seem to believe, spend more time propping up and preserving an institution than seeking to live the how of faith – than being in true connection with the living God.

And more than any other day of the liturgical calendar, today is a great day to celebrate the craving for the spiritual over empty religion. Today is Pentecost – the feast of God connecting with God’s people. Pentecost: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. That uncontrollable force like the rush of a mighty wind. Something, we’re not sure what, but as best as it’s been able to be described, something like flashes of fire. Little flickering flames alighting around each believer present. As far as we know, 120 gathered together in Jerusalem on that day. Jesus had instructed them to wait together for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They were being given such a lofty commission: to go – be witnesses of the good news of God’s unmerited, redeeming love, shown fully to us in Christ Jesus. They were being sent to speak in the ancient halls of religious power in Jerusalem. To the first ring of those living a bit further out than that, and all the way beyond to lands they had no idea even existed. To places like Hermitage, Tennessee – which surely had to be the ends of the earth according to their world view. Those first followers of the Risen Christ were going to need more than their own abilities for such a commission. They were going to need POWER: the power of the Holy Spirit – God’s very self living in and among them. To keep them courageous and open and going when all the evidence in front of their eyes said: stop.

They, and most of the rest of the Jewish world, had gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, “the third of the three great festivals of Judaism. . . . Shavuot was a joyful festival, in which the first fruits of the harvest would have been given to God” (Margaret P. Aymer, Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3, p. 15). It was the celebration of God’s giving of the Law to Moses and their ancestors. It was a significant commemoration of God’s covenant with them – the giving of the Torah, which would make Hebrew slaves into a covenant community for God. . . . And at that moment – as those excited about the Risen Christ were together for Shavuot – like an avalanche that cannot be stopped, the Holy Spirit came! . . .

It’s curious that images like wind and fire are recorded about that day. . . . A few months ago I saw a map of the United States that had Home of the Hurricane written across the Southeast, Tornado Alley written across the Midwest; and Wildfire Way written across the West. It was a spoof about the current state of our weather; but it makes a point: wind and fire are powerful forces. Two of the main elements of our earth that no matter what we do really cannot be controlled. In fact, they can be the source of such immense destruction. . . . Which leaves me wondering how many of us don’t have something within us individually – and collectively as a congregation – that needs some blowing out; some burning off in order to make us what is needed for God? Some of us harbor old understandings of ourselves and others that need to be cleared away. Some of us cling to hang-ups about our personal abilities – or maybe our collective abilities too. Some of us let life-long fears or worries steal our chance at living fully alive here and now. We need something like wind and fire to blow all that away; burn all that out of us kinda like John the Baptist said long ago. In the gospel of Matthew he was recorded as speaking of the fire that will be used to burn out of us everything that is not life-giving: the chaff. The part of the wheat that is inedible by humans. Wind separates the grain and the chaff in winnowing when it’s tossed up so that the chaff is blown aside and the grain falls to the threshing floor (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff). Remember those words often lifted up in Advent: “His winnowing fork is in hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary” – that’s the good stuff in us that does feed others. “But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” – the parts in us that are no good for God’s life-giving mission in the world, it’s like they are burned out of us with fire. Might that be part of the work of the Holy Spirit? To destroy in us what keeps us from the mission of God. Of course we know that wind and fire aren’t just destructive. They also can be powerful, uncontrollable sources that make amazing things happen. Think of full sails that can carry a ship far across the ocean. Think of the flames that can fire up an engine to move a massive train from one end of our country to the next. Wind and fire are powerful forces in this world that can put into motion magnificent things! That, we’re told, is what the Holy Spirit of God is like.

A few years back, I started getting really serious about the Holy Spirit – I realize not many Presbyterian preachers may make such a statement. But I just had finished teaching a year-long confirmation class with senior highs who said at the close of the year that they had no idea what the Holy Spirit was about. It was a wake-up call to me as their pastor and to that congregation as a church that whatever it was: our own lack of understanding, or emphasis, or fear, or something was hindering the spiritual life of our young people. I started doing some reading – the natural thing we Presbyterians do when we are confused about God. As an object, we study it. Soon my spiritual director was encouraging me to put down the books and just listen. Be quiet. Wait. Because God is not an object to be poked and prodded; God is a living subject in, among, and beyond us. I asked church members to join me as we did some contemplative prayer together; we practiced a few other kinds of prayer too that would attune us better to God. We even started singing songs about the Spirit from the hymnal. Somehow or another, the next time confirmation class rolled around, I was astounded to hear that class of confirmands heartily include the Holy Spirit in their personal statements of faith – they articulated not just what they believed about the Holy Spirit but how they experienced it. I kept the words they wrote about the Holy Spirit because I was moved so deeply by them. That group of young persons spoke about the Holy Spirit as: “The breath of God . . . everywhere . . . powerful . . . always with us.” One of them wrote: “You can’t see it, but it’s with us everywhere we go. . . . The Holy Spirit is like the air we breathe, because you need it to survive, and it keeps us going.” Another wrote: “I believe the Holy Spirit is kind of like the wind. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. That’s how (God’s) always with us – through hardships, (and through the) happy moments in our lives.” The quietest boy in the class wrote: “I believe in the Holy Spirit that is always with me, even though I can’t see it; I can feel it. I believe the Holy Spirit is the glue that keeps us believing and doing good deeds. (The Holy Spirit keeps) my faith in God when there is chaos around me.” And finally one professed that the Holy Spirit “is everywhere we go. It lives inside of us. It comes from God” (Quotes from 2012-13 COTC Confirmands).

Everywhere. Mysterious, in that we can’t really see it – but we can experience it. We can use metaphors like breath of God, air, wind, the glue of our lives that keeps us believing. The ever-present God that lives inside of us. A gift that comes from God. It’s still the power that sends us out into the world – bound together to one another to carry out the very same charge given so long ago to the first followers of the Risen Christ. The Holy Spirit is the church’s experience of God living in us every day to be the church – the presence of Christ’s very body wherever we go on this earth.

And the Holy Spirit is how we know an exciting future lies ahead for Christ’s church – if we’re willing to remain open to God’s living presence among us. For the Holy Spirit is God’s power in and among us to refresh and revive and re-create. The Guide that sends us out to live our faith – not just keep certain beliefs in our brain each day, but to enact the kind of behavior that shows God alive in us. . . . The Holy Spirit – the fire of God burning in us; the breath of God living in us – is our hope. . . .

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

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Bread on Our Journey

Substantive insights for the living of our days!

Category Archives: Sermons

7 Sept. 2014 sermon — Matt. 18:15-20

31 August 2014 — Hymn Sing

24 August 2014 sermon — Psalm 124

17 August 2014 — Matt. 15:10-28

13 July 2014 sermon — Genesis 25:19-34

6 July 2014 sermon — Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

29 June 2014 Sermon — Matt. 10:40-42

22 June 2014 Sermon-Matt. 10:24-39

Trinity Sunday Sermon — Matt. 28:16-20

Pentecost Sunday Sermon – Acts 2:1-21

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