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A news item in today’s paper caught my eye. According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a cat named Oscar that resides in a dementia unit of a nursing facility in Providence, Rhode Island has a sixth sense as to when residents there are about to die. In 25 cases, the cat has been observed to curl up next to a patient within about four hours of the person’s passing. Curiously, the cat is not especially friendly towards people, with the exception of when people are nearing the transition into the great beyond. His capacity for predicting death is higher than that of the human staff at the facility.

What does this all mean? I have no idea, nor does apparently anyone else, but I find it fascinating. We have a cat in our house named Moses. Moses is also rather antisocial. We adopted him after he was weaned, and apparently a kitten who isn’t held by people from the get go never becomes especially cuddly. He doesn’t purr; and doesn’t willingly allow himself be held, although he will put up with it for a time. Nonetheless, we are fond of Moses, and this is in large part because he likes being around us. He just would prefer we not touch him. He comes and sits next to me on my desk when I am working at my computer. Fortunately, his presence doesn’t seem to be an indicator that I’m about to die. But I think I would find a cat curled up next to me to be a comforting presence when the time comes for me to cross over.

Last week there was a lot of discussion in the news regarding how much the war in Iraq has cost in terms of dollars the US has spent.  (Lives lost and maimed, of course, is a different matter.)  The cost of the war was some gigantic, almost inconceivable amount of money — a trillion dollars or so. 

Only God knows for sure, but there is the very real possibility that the ultimate assessment of the war will be that it caused more harm than good.  Saddam Hussein, evil though he was, seemed to have had the ability to govern Iraq in a manner that kept it from descending into endless civil war.   It is clear that a whole lot more Iraqis have died, been maimed, and been turned into refugees over the past four years than would ever have happened if Saddam Hussein had remained in power.  You can argue, of course, that short term sacrifice is necessary for long term transformation to take place towards the goal of creating a more just society, but it’s not looking real hopeful in that regard either.

From the American point of view, if the purpose of the war was to somehow make us safer, it is hard to see anything other than failure in this regard either.  If anything, there is a greater will abroad to do us harm through terrorism than there was before the war began. 

So the possibility exists that a trillion dollars (just to talk on an economic level) has been spent for something that did more harm than good, which is a terrible thing to consider, especially for the families of American soldiers who died there. 

I am not God, and perhaps in the long run there will be good that will come out of this, but I can’t see it, and I am inclined to believe that God is not a big proponent of war.  Too many little people get killed. 

It astounds me that despite siphoning off a trillion dollars our economy by some measures is booming.  The stock market has been hitting all time highs.  Our country truly is incredibly rich, even though there is a significant portion of our population that don’t share much in the benefits of that wealth. 

So we could have taken that trillion dollars, found something useful for the soldiers who have been fighting this war to do, and still had a ton of money left over for something constructive.  This is what liberal pundits have been doing a lot of lately, taking note of the fact that universal health care could have been underwritten for years and years with the money we’ve spent on this war.   We could have been better stewards of God’s good earth and invested the money into technologies that would have moved us away from our addiction to oil and slowed the pace of global warming.

Or we could have given the money away to other countries to feed their hungry and develop their health care and education systems.  Sure, there would have been enormous potential for corruption with such huge gifts of money, but what we’re comparing this expenditure of money to is a war that may well have done far more harm than good. 

We have an extraordinary capacity for doing good if only we had the will.  Dennis Kucinich suggested there be a Department of Peace, led by a cabinet member. Maybe he has this right.   We could have boosted the Peace Corp so that all the young people who wanted to serve their country and risk their life could have had something really worthwhile to do.  All of this probably sounds crazy and naive, but the point is that the policies and budgets called for by so-called realists have been disasterous. Maybe it is time to chart a new course.

I watched a video last week by Bill Moyers that covered the history of the things that the CIA has done secretly over the past century by way of interfering in the political processes of other countries for the sake of establishing settings that were friendly in the short run towards our overseas business interests.  It was disheartening stuff.  Knowing the history of our involvement in Iran, for instance, helps us to understand that it isn’t simply a matter of people over there hating our freedom and way of life. Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” Our foreign policy has too often involved providing weapons to regimes that seemed friendly to our business interests.

I had a conversation recently with a man who is a retired fire fighter.  During his career he had been in charge of a fire station.  He had loved the life.  In certain ways he had been at his best in the times of crisis, when critical decisions had to be made quickly but calmly regarding the deployment of firefighters into a burning house.  In less stressful times, this same man had a hard time making a decision about what he wanted to have for dinner. 

I found myself identifying with the man.  There is a strange rhythm to my life, which reaches its climax each week with Sunday morning.  Generally speaking my pastoral work is fairly sedate during the rest of the week.  It involves sitting quietly with people in conversation, or sitting quietly by myself writing and planning.  Sunday morning, however, brings on an adrenalin rush.  I rise early, and after a cup of coffee my mind takes on a sharpness of focus that tends to be missing the rest of the week.  I’ve been working on the sermon of and on all week, but inevitably Sunday morning sharpens and deepens what I have to say.   I begin to feel “up”, glad to be alive and looking forward to the worship service.   (Also, and forgive me if this more information than you wanted, my bowels always move on Sunday morning.  Always.  Guaranteed.)  When I get to church, I am transformed into an extrovert, making contact with person after person.  My name recollection faculty is in high gear, amazing everyone, including myself.  In the course of the service I often sweat profusely, but I don’t notice this until afterwards when I realize my shirt is soaked. 

Following worship my sharpness of mind quickly wanes.  If people tell me information I should remember, I need to make a point of writing it down, because otherwise I most likely won’t remember.  My mind feels fried.  When I finally get home, I am in the post adrenalin state, and I need a nap.  When I wake up from the nap I feel somewhat hung over.  It is a good time to clean and organize, having inevitably created some messes in my adrenalin motivated, get-ready-to preach mode.  My mind in this state has very little capacity to go to any real depth.  I will need a full night’s sleep and the quiet of the morning before I’ll have any hope of entering the deep space again.

Throughout my work life, the coming Sunday and the sermon I will have to get ready has tended to hang over me the previous week.  Over time, generally speaking, I have become a good deal more relaxed about the whole process, trusting that inspiration will come.  I used to really worry about it, with the worry mounting if the week passed without any inspiration appearing.  Saturdays could be the worse.  Without the adrenalin flowing, decision making was tough. It’s much better now.  I think I trust more.

Another way in which my life resembles that of the fireman’s is that my work also involves responding to emergencies that require I suddenly turn on a certain focus and clarity that is impossible to sustain in the mundane times of life. When, for instance, someone dies the pyschic life of the grieving family is suddenly a bit like a burning house.

Following worship on Sunday Hwa raised a good point as a followup to my sermon on compassion.  What about good acts that are done when you don’t especially “feel” like performing the act, but you do so because you know that it is your duty?

It is said that every sermon taken alone commits heresy, in so far as the nature of religious truth is that it is always paradoxical, and sermons focus on one side of a paradox, neglecting the other.   (Another reason to church consistently, not just once in a while.)

The world would be a sorry place if we only did good deeds when we were conscious of an empathetic connection motivating our actions.   The whole concept of “civility” is based in large part on the notion of learning a prescribed set of behaviors that we perform for the sake of the larger community. 

It is also the case that our motivations are rarely, if ever, what we might call “pure”.    Why do I stop for the person at the side of the road?  Perhaps partly because I genuinely can empathize with the person’s plight, but perhaps I also want to pat myself on the shoulder for being the sort of person who will stop to help.  If I wait around until I am certain that my act is truly compassionate, I might well never stop to lend a hand, and there would be a lot of people who go unattended to in their distress.   Every Sunday in worship people come forward to place dollar bills in a box that goes to Heifer International in their work to help the poor.  Each year we raise $2000 or more this way which I am certain is saving peoples’ lives in distant countries.  On a certain level, does it matter why we do it, as long as we do do it? 

This is the other side of the paradox which I did not address in my sermon.   If, however, I were to focus only on this side, which can be summed up in the words “doing my duty”, I would eventually lose my soul. 

 A sermon preached on July 15, 2007 based upon Luke 10:25 – 37, entitled “Compassion.”

If you’ve been listening to me preach for a while you may know that this Bible story is one of my favorites.  Anybody who reads the Bible and calls themselves a Christian has certain passages with which they interpret the rest of the Scriptures.  This story is my key passage. It tells me that for Jesus, compassion was the key. 

Now I must admit that one of the reasons this story has such appeal to me is that I realized a number of years ago that I could use it to defend myself against assaults from certain sorts of Christians who would, from time, challenge me as to whether I was in fact a “real Christian.”   Coming at me with their own key passage as a club with which to hammer me into submission — “Ye must be born again” — they would want to know exactly when it was I had been “born again,” accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, trusting that he had indeed died to save me from my sins.  I was aware that how I answered would place me in the eyes of my interrogator either in the ranks of the saved or the damned.

It was an uncomfortable place to be, and so it was helpful to discover that this story was one I could for the purpose of defending myself.  “Hey,” I would say, “right here in Luke’s Gospel the lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus’ answer says nothing about being ‘born again’ or believing that he would die for my sins.  Instead Jesus says quite clearly here that compassion is all that matters.”  It was hard to resist a dig of my own:  “It says it right here in the Bible.  You do, believe in the Bible, don’t you?!” 

Over the years I’ve come to realize that this passage can also easily be turned into a club with which to beat people into submission. 

Several years back a couple of sociologists at Princeton came up with an ingenious, and somewhat devious experiment, with seminary students used as the guinea pigs.  About fifty would-be-preachers were gathered in a building on campus on the pretext that they were going to participate in an exercise in extemporary preaching.   They were told that one by one they would be given a Bible passage, at which point they were to go across campus to another building where they would give an impromptu sermon on their assigned passage to a group of people waiting there. 

In actuality they were all given the same passage, which was, in fact, the one I am preaching on this morning, which involved a man beaten up at the side of the road.  The experimenters had hired a drama student to fake distress near the path the preachers would travel.   With the words of this compassion parable fresh in their minds, would they, or wouldn’t they, stop to help the student in distress?   Well, only 40% stopped.  The other  60% “flunked” the test, too concerned about getting to their preaching assignment to stop to help.

Now I think that the reaction of most of us in hearing about this study is to wonder, somewhat anxiously perhaps, whether we would have “passed” or “failed” the test. 

Quick!  Tell me the name of this parable that Jesus told.   Right:  “The Good Samaritan.”  The only problem is, no where in the story does Jesus call the Samaritan “good.”  In fact, in another passage, when a man comes up to Jesus and addresses him as “Good Teacher,” Jesus immediately cuts him off, saying, “Why do you call me ‘good?’  No one is good but God alone,” the point being that all goodness belongs to God, and if we manage to express some of that goodness, it is because we manage to get ourselves out of the way. 

We hear this parable, however, and we quickly fit the characters into the categories into which we divide the human race.  The Samaritan is “good,” the priest and Levite who pass by without helping are “bad.”  We imagine the Samaritan as this great guy who was kind to wife and children and honest in his business dealings.  We conjure up the priest and Levite as hard-hearted hypocrites who secretly kick their dogs when no one is watching. 

But Jesus’ parable doesn’t say that.  All we know is that on a given day a priest and a Levite passed by a man in need, while a Samaritan stopped to help.   As far as we know the Samaritan could have been a liar and a thief, and the priest and the Levite the sort of people you’d love to have as your next door neighbor. 

I am a pretty self-absorbed person.  I don’t know whether I am more or less self-absorbed than other people.  Only God knows.  I suspect that everybody is fairly self-absorbed, that this is simply the human condition, but I don’t know for sure.  As far as I know some of you could be walking pretty much free from yourselves. 

By self-absorption I mean that most of the time I am the center of my thoughts.  The “me” I am referring here to includes all the various obligations I had taken on as a part of the life I have chosen to live:  to my congregation, to my wife and children. 

Here’s what my self-absorbed life often feels like.  I owe time and energy to my congregation because I want to be a good pastor, and to my children because I want to be a good father, and to my wife because I want to be a good husband, and to my parents, because I want to be a good son.  And there is also that obligation I have to that “me” that is separate from all those relationships, to which I owe attention in terms of time spent in prayer, recreation, renewal, self-development, etc.  And all this is important stuff, but often I feel like I’m not giving any of this stuff the time and energy it deserves — that I’m shortchanging everybody.  If I give more time and energy to the church, well, my family may get shortchanged, and if I give more time to my ailing mother, well the family and the church get shortchanged, and on, and on, and on. 

And in the midst of all this some guy shows up at the side of the road half dead (whether literally or metaphorically), and I know if I give him my attention, well someone else is going to get shortchanged as a result, and so my response is, “No, no, no!  Sorry, buddy, I just don’t have the time for you!”  At which point I cast my lot with the priest and the Levite. 

And if I throw the “Good Samaritan” parable into this self-absorbed  mix, it easily becomes a “club” with which to hammer myself, piling on my sense of failure and guilt.  And so maybe in order to lessen the guilt load I give the poor bugger at the side of the road ten bucks, or I give him three minutes of my time, pretending to listen to his woes, when what I’m really doing is biding my time till I feel like I’ve given the bugger enough of my time to allow me to safely deposit myself back in the “good guy” category rather than the “bad guy” category.

I think you know what I’m talking about. 

I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when he told this story.  He wasn’t looking to create yet another law — one more club by which to pound people into submission.  “Do this and you will live,” he said.  Maybe Jesus was simply pointing out that we are truly alive only when our capacity for compassion isn’t blocked.  That we really are — all of us — in this thing called life together. 

How does this story become for us the good news I believe Jesus intended it to be?  Maybe it begins with getting a hold of the notion that the object here is to have compassion upon all people (indeed, all living things, but that’s another sermon.)  And that includes compassion for the priest and the Levite.  Can I imagine what it feels like to be so consumed by their duties that they can’t allow themselves to feel for the man at the side of the road?  Can I imagine this kind of walking death?  (Probably it isn’t so hard, since I suspect we all walk that walk at least some of the time.) 

If the object is to have compassion on all people, then I myself an included in those for whom I am to have compassion.  When the “Good Samaritan” parable becomes a club with which to hammer ourselves, it can be our own soul moaning from the side of the road, to whom we say,  “Sorry, buddy, I’ve got important business to attend to.  No time for you.” 

I think there is good news as well when we think of our own lives as stories that haven’t been finished writing yet.  Jesus tells a story begins all too familiarly.  A man, beaten up, lies half dead at the side of the road.  People pass by without helping.  The world is full of violence and heartlessness.  If this is where the story ends, there is certainly reason to despair. 

But wait, someone else is coming down the road.   Oh no, it’s a  Samaritan, the last person you would expect to help this man suffering at the side of the road, and yet that’s exactly what he does.  The story is redeemed with surprising mercy. 

Our stories hold that possibility as well.  At any given moment, the story line may look pretty bleak.  But the story isn’t finished being written.  In partnership with God we write our stories.  At any given moment an opportunity may present itself for us to participate in a moment of pure grace — to be a sign that God still does walks this way with us.

A story.

Joe was having a bad day.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say a bad week, or month, or year, or life.  This morning, just before leaving for work he had yelled at his daughter for the endless mess she created.  He’d said things he probably shouldn’t have said, but hey, she had it coming to her.  And Joe was having one of those frozen fights with his wife that they often seemed to get stuck inside, unsure exactly how it began, or what they needed to do to get out of it.

And work wasn’t going so good either.  Joe was a salesman, and that morning he had made a couple of calls on clients, and he had heard himself making promises that he knew he had no intention of following through on, but hey, sometimes you got to do that to have a chance to make a sale in this cutthroat world. 

Joe was supposed to be on diet, but at lunch, feeling tired and irritable, he had stuffed himself on all the wrong kinds of food.  And now, in the middle of the afternoon, feeling fairly disgusted with himself, he found himself feeling irresistibly drowsy.  He pulled off the highway onto the side of the road and took out the pillow he kept in the car for times like this.  Glancing in the mirror, the eyes that stared back at him struck him as distinctly pathetic.   He fell asleep quickly. 

He was awoken by the sound of a soft tapping on the window.  Startled, Joe couldn’t remember at first where he was, and then remembering, his first thought was that the tapping must be a policeman come to see what he was up to. 

When he looked up, he was surprised to find a young Hispanic man standing there looking at him, his eyes, watering.  Joe rolled down the window.  “Yes?”  Pointing behind Joe’s car, it was clear the man was asking for some kind of help.  Turning around, Joe saw an old junker of a car parked behind him.  Inside the car was a young woman Joe took to be the man’s wife.  She held a crying baby.  “Help, senor?”

Getting out of the car, it soon became clear that the man’s car had run out of gas.  Joe offered to take the man to a gas station so he could buy some gas.  He figured he would just take the man, but the woman seemed so clearly distressed at the prospect of being left alone there at the side of the road with the baby, that Joe invited her to get into his car as well.  The vibrations of the car soothed the baby; soon she had stopped her crying.   

It took some time to locate a gas station, and when they did, it became clear that the man had no money to pay for the gas, so Joe paid the bill.  Through the man’s broken English, Joe picked up that the man had the possibility of a job he was trying to get to, and a relative who was willing to give them space on the floor to sleep. 

When they got back to the man’s car, Joe helped the man empty the gas can in his car.  Joe took out his wallet and gave the man all his remaining cash.   On an impulse, Joe took out a scrap of paper and wrote down his name and address and phone number and told the man to feel free to give him a call if he needed help.   The man smiled, the woman smiled; everybody’s eyes watered.  The baby was sleeping quietly as Joe drove off. 

Joe decided to call it a day.  As he drove home, he felt like something had slowed down inside him; like he was alive again for the first time in a long time.  Coming into the kitchen he gave his wife a kiss and a hug, which surprised and pleased her.   Taking off his tie, he went into his daughter’s room where Joe found her drawing.  She looked up cautiously.  “Hey, sweetie,” he said, kissing her forehead.  There was a book his daughter loved to have read to her over and over and over.  Recently Joe hadn’t been able to bear another reading.   But now there seemed nothing he’d rather do.   “Sweetie, how’d you like me to read to you?”
 

Before the week passes, I want to write about my children’s sermon last Sunday. The lectionary included a reading from the sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. My attention was captured by the verse that includes, “bear one another’s burdens.” The image came to mind of big bags of stuff to represent “burdens”, with the idea that this would be a nice, concrete image for little children. I got five large, black plastic garbage bags, went down into our basement and filled them with old sleeping bags, blankets, winter coats, etc. I decided that I would label them, “David’s burdens”, my old friend and pastoral associate who is always willing to play along with me in my children’s sermons.

Now there is another verse in the Galatians passage that also caught my attention because it seemed, to some extent, to contradiict the sharing burdens verse, and that was one that declared, “Everyone should carry their own weight.” And so without a clear notion of where exactly we were headed (which is how I often do children’s sermons) I wanted to explore with the children (and the adults) the tension between carrying our own weight and bearing one another’s burdens.

The kids came forward, and I brought the five bags out from their hiding place, and promptly labeled them “David’s burdens.” I told David that I was glad that he felt comfortable bringing his burdens to church, but they couldn’t just sit there clogging up the altar space, so please come and get them out of here. In wonderful slapstick fashion, David attempted to lift the huge bags, failing miserably. “David can’t carry his burdens,” I said.  ”What’s the solution?”  Spontaneously two adults came forward to help (this is how it goes in our church), as did some of the children, and they all began pitching in to carry David’s burdens out of church, as David stood aside in great relief and watched. “Wait,” I said, “There’s a problem here. What’s the problem?” Six year old Cassie was quick to discern the problem. “These are David’s burdens, and he’s not carrying any!!!” Yes, I agreed, this is a problem.

I began opening the bags, pulling out mulitple winter coats, tarps and sleeping bags. “Do you really need this stuff?” I asked. Grabbing a tarp, I asked, when was the last time you used this thing?” “1983,” David responded with feigned embarrassment. “You expect to use it again?” I asked. “You never know,” he answered.
I convinced him that he didn’t need all this stuff, and that he really could get rid of most of it, which reduced his load considerably. “But you just sprained you ankle,” I said. David appropriately began to limp. “You need help, right?” At which point the children jumped him and helped him carry all his stuff out of the sanctuary.
None to soon, might I add. All hell was breaking lose at this point as the children had begun to jump at exploiting the fun potential that big, soft blankets and such provide.

Afterwards the feedback I got indicated that burdens exploration had struck a nerve. How do we tell which burdens are real, and which have somehow been self-imposed because we are attached to our burdens and can’t let go? When is it appropriate to ask for help with our burdens, and when is it our own responsibility to deal with our own stuff?
Somebody told me the story of a brother whose family was having troubles. The marriage was pretty hollow, and the kids weren’t get the kind of attention they needed. And “stuff” was a big part of the problem. The wife was living off  in Florida because she had a good paying job there that she couldn’t get locally.  She felt guilty for not being on hand for her children, so one of the ways she made it up to them was to pretty much buy them anything they wanted. So she needed the good paying job in Florida to help pay off the family debt that had accumulated because pretty much anything anybody wanted materially in the family, the family figured they had to have. They owned a big house and it was filled with stuff, but there was more stuff than the house could hold, so the brother had been renting a storage unit to contain the extra stuff.   He had concluded he couldn’t afford the monthly rent of the storage unit, so he had moved the extra stuff into my friend’s basement.

My friend was wondering how it had come to be that he was storing his brother’s stuff. 

Last night I watched three short documentaries on Google.  One was about Jehovah Witnesses witnessing to people in Times Square, another was on skin heads, and the third told the life story of the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens who converted to Islam.   The common thread for me in the three stories was the power of belief systems. 

The Jehovah Witnesses were impressive in regard to their persistence in going up to strangers in order to offer their belief system.  They were relentless, even though in the fifteen or so approaches shown, it didn’t really seem like anybody was particularly interested in seriously taking them up on their offer.  They seemed to be sincere in their desire to offer some hope in the despair of the world.  Their belief system strikes me as a bunch of hooey, but it seemed to get them going. 

The skin heads were scary, as you would expect.  The documentary showed a bunch of white teenage boys who were alienated from their parents and just about everything else being taken under the wing of an older man who indoctrinated them with an adoration of the worldview of the Nazis.  The man, in his own way, seemed to care for these boys.  There was a palpable sense of belonging amongs the dozen or so young men gathered in this man’s house.  It was, of course, based on hatred towards the rest of the world.  Why is it so tough for people to feel a sense of belonging without focusing on those who are excluded from the belonging?

The most appealing figure of the three videos was the former Cat Stevens.  It described the spiritual quest he found himself on after he had become a superstar.  Once he became so sick he nearly died, and another time he nearly drowned, and both experiences seemed to push him to deeply the ask the question, what is life really all about?  He was raised Roman Catholic, and apparently explored a variety of spiritual paths, before stumbling upon Islam, which just seemed to click for him.  He turned his back on the life of a pop star with all its accolades, gave most of his money to help the poor, and devoted himself to good works — not something you see many (any?) pop stars doing.  When Solomon Rusdie was threatened with a death sentence by an ayatollah, he came back into the public eye when he was misquoted in a way that made him come across as though he supported the death sentence.  He spent a great deal of energy to the peace and relief effort in the follow up of the Bosnian conflict.   The documentary left me wanting to know more about him, for instance, how does he understand Islam’s teaching regarding women?  But he was articulate and appealing.  I do not understand his belief system, and can’t imagine myself ever “buying into it” the way he did, but the little I saw of him gave me the impression that Islam has provided the context in which he could express a holy desire within himself to devote his life to good purposes. 

There is a great void in life that leaves we human beings lost at sea if we don’t have something in which to believe.  There are so many paths, often downright contradictory, and sometimes downright sinister.

In all three videos, the beliefs the people had embraced had set them on a path that was in clear contrast to the way of the world. 

For me, Jesus shows the way.  Does my life stand in clear contrast to the way of the world?

A sermon preached yesterday, July 8, 2007 based upon Luke10:1 – 10.

The story is told about a young man who, every since he was a little boy, had wanted to be a fireman. When he was old enough to go to firefighters school, he was overjoyed. He spent all his free hours studying the manual, so he knew the procedures inside and out. When he graduated from firefighters school he had done so well that his teachers invited him to stay on and do post graduate research into firefighting, which once again he did so well that at the completion of his research they offered him a position on the faculty of the firefighters school. In this position he wrote many books on firefighting, and became generally acknowledged to be the world’s greatest authority on fire fighting. He retired as a professor emeritus.

On his death bed, he felt a single nagging regret. He had never actually put out a fire.

I learned this story in seminary. It was told as a dig regarding seminary professors who spent their lives teaching people who were going to be pastors without ever having been pastors themselves. The same joke could be told in reference to people like myself: preachers who stand up here telling you what Christianity is, without having to actually live it “in the world” the way you do, and without getting paid to be a Christian.

When Jesus called people to be his disciples, he didn’t grill them first on their beliefs. He said simply, “Follow me.” And they jumped in and did exactly that, trying as best they could to do what they saw Jesus doing.

Christianity is first of all an experience and a way of living. It is only secondarily a set of beliefs. We tend to reverse the order. We ask, What is it that Christians believe? What about United Methodists? How is what they believe different from Roman Catholics? Or what about Moslems? What do they believe? A better question would be, how do they live?

You go into a hospital and it is not uncommon to see a nursing student following around a nurse, learning how to do the work by watching the master. Eventually, though, the nursing student has to go out on their own. There are simply too many sick patients for them to continue to shadow the full fledged nurses. In this morning’s Gospel story, the time has come for the disciples to get off on their own and try and put into practice what they’ve been watching Jesus do up close. “The harvest is plentiful,” he says, “but the laborers are few.” There are a whole lot of people out there who need to have their souls touched by God’s peace.  So Jesus sends the disciples out on their own into the world. He gives them no last minute instructions about belief. Rather, he gives them very practical instructions regarding how they are to live. Very concrete stuff, like go out two by two. Don’t take anything with you: no extra clothes, no money, no weapons. When you come to a village knock on the door of the first house you come to. Say, “Peace be on this house.” If they welcome you, be a good guest. Heal the sick. Say, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Don’t keep looking around for ways to upgrade your accommodations. And if they don’t welcome you, just shake off the dust from your feet and move on. Don’t get caught up in angry retribution.

If you were to ask me what I thought the essence of Jesus’ teachings were — I would say things like, it is “trusting God.” It is love, forgiveness, the making of peace. I’ve given more sermons than I could ever remember about such things. But it is one thing to preach about them, and quite another to actually live such things out in the world.

Five years ago my son Andrew, 15 at the time, and I decided to take a little adventure together. We were dropped off with our bicycles in northwest New Jersey next to the Delaware River with the intention of bicycling over the course of three days to the southern most tip of New Jersey, Cape May. We intentionally traveled light; propelling yourself will do that, since the more you carry the harder the ride. Amazingly, I hadn’t given thought to the possibility of getting a flat tire, and had brought no provisions along for such a setback. Sure enough, towards the end of the first day as we were biking through a fairly deserted park, Andrew got a flat. Naturally, the sort of feelings began to rise up inside of me that you might expect in such a moment: Anxiety, fear, self-recrimination — “Idiot!!! How could you have not thought about what to do if we got a flat?!!” Somehow I managed to catch myself in this inner free fall. I told myself that maybe this was one of those instances where I might want to try and put into practice all those things I had told people in my sermons about trust; that this might be in fact an opportunity of some sort, and that what was necessary here was to try and stay loose — resist the tightening up that was going on inside of me, and wait and see what God might provide. (Part of what helped me in this regard was the fact that I was with Andrew; that whole two by two thing Jesus insisted on really helps in times like this.)

We walked our bikes some distance through the park and came upon a woman who had come to the park in her truck to let her dog run. We approached her, trying to do my best to have a spirit of openhearted peace.  I told her simply that we had a flat. Did she happen to know where there was a gas station we might be able to get help some help? It turned out she personally knew the owner of a wonderful bike shop five miles down the road. Before we knew it, I was sitting up front with the woman in her truck with Andrew, his bike and the dog licking his face in the back. The bike shop was still open and in a matter of minutes they had repaired the flat. Meanwhile, the woman drove me all the way back to the park to pick up my bike, driving me once more to the bike shop. She even had a good recommendation of a local restaurant to go for dinner. We all came away feeling good about the interchange. Andrew got his tired fixed, the woman had got an opportunity to put kindness into practice with two grateful strangers in need, and I came away feeling like I had succeeded in putting one of my sermons on trust into practice.

Now, as remarkable as it seems in retrospect, I left that bike shop without it occurring to me that maybe I should purchase some provisions for fixing a flat should this happen again. And sure enough, late the next day, as we were biking through some deserted corn fields, Andrew’s other tire got a flat. Again, the anxieties and self-recriminations arose within me, but with the lesson of the previous day fresh in my mind, I tried to stay loose and keep an attitude of, “Let’s see what God will bring out of this!” We pushed our bikes for a mile or so until we came to a busier road and a diner. To the first man who came out of the diner, I gave my little speech:  We’d had a flat; did he know a gas station nearby where we might get some help?  Well, before we knew it, the man had invited us to pile both our bikes into his very large trunk, and we were driving down the road about ten miles to the hotel where we had planned to stay that night. Along the way the man shared some of his life story. His wife was sick. We touched each others’ souls.

There was a Kmart near the hotel that I biked over to and bought two new inner tubes. I managed to fix the tire myself; this time I would have a spare tube should we get yet another flat the next day. We didn’t.

Reflecting on this whole experience in the light of the words Jesus sent his disciples into the world with, a couple of things strike me. First, Jesus instructed his disciples to travel in such a manner that they would be obliged to rely upon the kindness of strangers. One of God’s primary means of providing for us is through the kindness of other people. If we put a lot of energy into being fully self-reliant, safeguarding against every possible mishap, well, we won’t leave any room for God to show us how God provides.

Second, we all have souls, and the harvest Jesus spoke involved the harvest of souls. In so many of our interactions we keep our guards up and our souls hidden away. Approaching people in this vulnerable, open hearted manner provides the opportunity for souls to touch, and for the blessing of the Kingdom to occur.

And third, it really does make a difference the spirit in which you approach people. People can sense what is in your heart. If you approach another human being openheartedly, conscious of God’s gift of peace, then nine times out of ten you will be well received.

Now Jesus wasn’t naïve, and he didn’t promise his disciples that they would always be well received. He told them that they would in fact receive rejections from time to time. He told them that they were going out as lambs in the midst of wolves, who, given a chance, will try to eat you up.

Lois Kelshaw is the person in our church who most effectively practices this open hearted, peaceful approach to people. Countless people have testified to the fact that when they first wandered into this church, it was Lois who welcomed them, charming them with her simple offer of peace. About six weeks ago a woman came to church for the first time. Lois, spotting a visitor, approached the woman, offering her customary warm hearted welcome. “I’m just church shopping!!” the woman said abruptly, making it quite clear Lois was to back off and leave her alone. The woman became famous in our congregation as the woman who had rebuffed Lois. We couldn’t believe it! We had thought she was pretty much irresistible. But Jesus said rejection would happen. Don’t get hung up on it.

There’s another great story about Lois that I’ve told elsewhere in which Lois was in the Pathmark parking lot when an older woman, attracted by Lois’ kind face, approached her. They engaged in a friendly conversation for a while, when suddenly another, younger woman approached them, carrying what appeared to be a bag of cash she had found abandoned. To make a long story short, the two women were scam artists. (This two by two thing can work for evil purposes as well as good.) They tried to entice Lois into a get rich quick scheme that involved her giving them access to her bank account. Now Lois isn’t rich by any means, but she had other priorities: She had an appointment to pick up her church friend Hwa from the doctor’s office, and that took priority over the enticements of easy money. The scam artists gave up and presumably went elsewhere for another lamb to devour.

Yes there are wolves out there who are looking to take advantage of you, and every so often we will meet up with one. The temptation after such an encounter is to close up our heart so we won’t be so vulnerable. The thing is, however, that in closing up our heart we also shut down the possibility of having a soul encounter with another person. And that is truly unfortunate. So Jesus says, don’t get hung up on the fact that there are people who will reject you, or use you. Just move on to the next person.

Finally, I want to talk about the whole peace-making thing that is implied in Jesus’ instructions. The offer of peace is made to all people. The instructions are to go house to house, without any sort of picking and choosing which doors we will knock on. Jesus knocked on the doors of Samaritans, who were the despised people in those days for Jews. In one case, the Samaritans at home told him to get lost. His disciples, James and John, wanted to call down fire from heaven to incinerate the Samaritans for their rudeness. Jesus rebuked the James and John. Just go to the next house. Apparently further down the road they did find some Samaritans who were willing to welcome them.

Those who would follow Jesus are called to reach out across the walls that divide us. Two stories: Tim Tyler called my attention to a gathering of evangelical Christians in Morristown known as “The Liquid Church.” These evangelicals seem to have gotten it that living by grace is pretty central to following Jesus. They do things like go out on the village green and simply give away stuff people might need. A few weeks ago about thirty of these folks went to the Gay Pride Parade in Asbury Park. It was a hot day and they were there to give out cold bottles of water. Naturally, the marchers were suspicious. The only time Christians had shown up to such events in the past was to hold banners telling them they were going to hell. Cautiously, thirsty people took the cold bottles of water, saying, “So, now are you going to tell me I’m a sinner?” “Nope,” they answered. “Enjoy the water.” Some folks sat for a while and they got to know each other. Souls were touched in both directions. Imagine, Christians who had come simply to offer peace.

The other story involves a man named Will Campbell who graduated from my seminary many years before me. He was a Baptist minister who as far as I know never actually pastored a church; rather, he was sort of a wandering chaplain supporting in the civil rights movement throughout the south. As the years past, his ministry began to focus more on poor, redneck white folk, who, in their own way, are an oppressed people. During one period of time, Will was present throughout a heart wrenching murder trial. A Klansman was on trial for the brutal, racist murder of a black man, and Campbell was splitting his time between caring for the grieving family members of the man who had been slain, and ministering to the accused Klansman himself. Noting the close, personal terms Will appeared to be on with both parties in the dispute, a reporter confronted him, asking how this was possible. In the reporter’s mind Will’s ministry was inconsistent, illogical, perhaps even hypocritical. The reporter continued to press him until finally Will lost his temper. Evidently he had been able to offer God’s peace to the grieving family and to the accused murderer, but the reporter was a different matter. “Why, you ask?!!! Because I’m a &%#$^# Christian!!!” (expletives deleted.) Yes, that’s what Christians do.

That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what he told us to do. And that’s what we’re trying to do here.

I am aware that the culture is rushing ahead of me. I looked at a friend’s “I Phone” last night and realized how technologically behind the times I am. I know how to check my emails and surf the web and put posts on this blog. That’s about it. I can only imagine how far behind I will be if I am still around in 20 years. Twenty years ago having a photocopier instead of a memeograph machine was a big deal.

The Gospel lesson for tomorrow gives me comfort in this context where I am tempted to feel inadequate and left behind. Jesus sends his disciples out into the world because “the harvest is plentiful.” He tells them to go without money, sandals, extra clothes, etc. Go as a lamb among wolves. Offer God’s peace. If it is received, well and good. If it isn’t, just move on to the next house.

In the midst of the complexities of this world, Jesus sends the disciples out into the world with something extraodinarily simple: a message and a presence of God’s peace. Bringing in the harvest depends upon people willing to simply embody this message without a lot of fanfare.

In a world of greater and greater technological marvels, people still have souls, and when all is said and done, the care of those souls remains the most important thing.

At the end of the passage the disciples come back to Jesus after their first mission trip into the world. The surprising thing for them is the success they have experienced. They’ve cast out demons and wowed the crowds.

Think of the possibilities for “”furthering God’s kingdom” if I were truly savy in the ways of the world with all the mind boggling leaps and bounds of computer technology, as well as the insights of modern marketing techniques (all the stuff that Leonard Sweet seems to be up on.)

Jesus’ response to the disciples success enchantment is striking: Don’t worry about whether you have success — whether the demons obey your command. Be concerned simply with whether or not your names are written in heaven. You can take that a lot of diifferent ways, but my interpretation would be that having your name written in heaven simply means you are the real deal: that you are connected to God and embody God’s peace. Everything else is secondary, including success and failure. As Jesus said when he sent his disciples out, sometimes your peaceful presence will get a welcome, sometimes it won’t. Don’t worry aboout it. Don’t call fire down from heaven (as James and John wanted to do after the Samaritan village wouldn’t welcome them.) Just keep on being faithful, and in good time, as Paul says in Galatians 6, you will reap a good harvest.

Today is the fourth of July.  The traditional theme of this day is freedom, in so far as it was the day our ancestors in this country declared themselves free from the domination of Great Britain. 

There are two components to freedom.  There is freedom “from” something, and there is freedom “for” something.  The second component is often overlooked in our conversation about freedom.  We tend to be preoccupied with the “freedom from” aspect:  we want to be free from… having anyone tell us how we are to think, act, live… from health and financial insecurities.  

But freedom can’t be fully addressed until we deal with what are we free for?  Self-indulgence?  Endless consumption?  Getting what we want? 

If these are the objects of our freedom, than we have simply fallen under another form, more devious form of tyranny. 

Faith keeps before us what we are free for:  to live creatively and lovingly.   To live not only for ourselves but for all people, indeed all life.  To offer ourselves as instruments of healing, reconciliation and peacemaking. 

We have too readily identified the strength of our nation with our military and economic power — the things we use to assure we will be “free from” external tyranny.   Freedom in this sense is nothing more than the freedom to do whatever we choose.  We would be better served to attempt to identify our strength in moral integrity — clarity of focus in regards to what our nation stands for.  Things like basic human rights, care for the poor and the sick, as well as care for the earth;  tolerance, humility and respect for others, and creating a truly inclusive and cooperative community.  

The so-called “war on terror” will not be won primarily through military and economic strength.  It will be won overtime by the consistency of our nation’s witness to higher ideals.