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A sermon preached on August 26, 2007 based upon Luke 13:10 – 17, entitled, “The God of Jesus Christ is Not into Crippling People”

This past Tuesday evening, I went to a meeting of our local youth Soccer Club to plan for the big tournament that Parsippany hosts every October, the club’s big fundraiser, where upwards of 400 different teams from out of town descend upon our town for a weekend of soccer. When I was a coach I was obliged to go to these meeting every year. I’m no longer a coach, but since the coach and the team parent of my son’s team weren’t available, I went in their place to represent his team. Earlier in the day I had noticed the signs of an oncoming cold, but I had promised I would go, so I did.

The two men who ran the meeting are good men, committed to making a contribution to their community. They’ve put in a lot of hard work. They’ve been shouldering this responsibility for a number of years, and you can tell it gives them stress. In what I’m about to say there is criticism of these well intentioned leaders, but my larger purpose is to take note of how organizations in this world routinely function, especially when the system is under stress.

The stated purpose of the meeting was to pass on certain information we needed so that each local team could do their part to carry off the upcoming tournament, and I think that it would be a reasonable estimate to say that that this could have been accomplished in five minutes; ten at tops. But the meeting went on for well over an hour, and that’s because the unstated purpose of the meeting was to motivate us to go out and do our part. To that end, I heard certain tried and true messages that I had heard before at these meetings:
We’re running out of time.
We’re behind schedule; you haven’t done enough yet to get ready for the tournament.
The organizers of this event have done so much more than the rest of us will ever do, and they’ve been doing this for years, and its about time that some new blood stepped forward to do their share.And you’d better do your share or there will be repercussions you’ll be sorry for regarding your team.

In other words, the purpose of the meeting was to get the foot soldiers of this operation moving by inducing within us a sense of guilt and unworthiness, fear and shame. And the reason for this, I guess, is because in terms of short term motivation this works. It is a time-tested technique.

Now I realize I am finger-pointing as I do this, and so by way of personal confession, I admit that when I’m stressed I resort to using these very same motivational techniques routinely with my children and my wife, and so whom am I to point out the speck in my neighbor’s eye? It is assuredly a worse thing to lay this on one’s own children and spouse than to do it to some people you don’t know very well on a committee.

But my point is, this is simply how the world functions, particularly when it’s under stress, and who isn’t stressed these days?

When the meeting was over, I was aware that there was now no doubt that the cold was taking hold of me, and that night I had a fitful, feverish night’s sleep. And whether the fact that coming down with the flu and going to that meeting happened at the same time was just a coincidence, or whether there was some direct correlation, who can say for sure?

Early on in the story we read from the Gospel of Luke, the notion of what we call “the mind-body connection” is stated quite explicitly. Jesus is in a synagogue teaching on the Sabbath, the day of rest,

“And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.”

The woman has a spiritual problem, referred to as a “spirit,” but the most obvious manifestation of this problem is in the physical realm: She is bent over. She can’t stand up straight.

Generally speaking, we underestimate the power of the mind/body connection. There is plenty of laboratory and clinical evidence of the power of this connection: stories of tumors growing or shrinking in people in response to nothing other than their belief that a treatment they were receiving was effective — the so-called “placebo effect.” Stories of people experiencing rashes when substances were applied to their skin, because they had been lead to believe that it would produce the rash.

“Hope,” “love,” “gratitude,” “the will to live“. These are spiritual concepts that have direct bearing upon our bodies.

Bill Hudley is dealing with a serious health condition, and for him getting enough nutrition is of paramount importance. He mentioned to me that he has noticed recently that in any given moment he finds himself with, or without an appetite specifically in relation to whether or not he is having hopeful thoughts or discouraging thoughts. What goes on in Bill goes on in all of us.

Consider the common occurrences of a cold and flu. Why does some one come down with the cold or flu? Well, the simple answer is, they are exposed to germs, and that is certainly true, and so washing hands to avoid exposure to germs is simply common sense. But why do some people get exposed to germs and don’t get sick, and others do? Well, we would say, it has to do with the immune system. But there is certainly a lot of mystery to the immune system, and undeniably the immune system is impacted by the spiritual dimension.

If we feel as though our life is a good gift, and we are at peace with our neighbor. ourselves, and our God, and if we are glad to be alive, well the body is getting “live messages.” If we feel like life is a burden, that we are unworthy — a failure, well, we give our body the message of “don’t live.”

Our Gospel story goes on to say something about the impact of the people around us, and of the systems of which we are a part. Jesus heals the woman, and the people marvel, but consider the reaction of the leader of the synagogue. To use a word they wouldn’t have used in those days, the system in which the leader sits at the top is all very dysfunctional. The leader is threatened by Jesus, who he sees as threatening his power and authority, and in response he obsesses about the rules and regulations. But he doesn’t attack Jesus directly. Instead, he attacks the little people, lecturing them about how bad they are to come to the synagogue for healing on the Sabbath when there are six others days they can come.

There is something almost comical about this. The woman has been afflicted with this burden for 18 long years. The leader makes it sound like she could have come any other day over the past 18 years as long as it wasn’t a Saturday, and the healing could have taken place.

But of course, prior to that day there was no healing to be had in that place, because Jesus wasn’t there. Without Jesus’ liberating presence, the system in place in that synagogue community required people in general, and this woman in particular to feel unworthy, broken, needy, rather than whole. The place has been so full of negativity, that up until now it would have been the last place that woman could have expected to find healing.

Jesus is quick, of course, to point out the hypocrisy of all this, and to break the destructive power of the system.

I was reading recently about the research with adults and children who had experienced Near Death Experiences, and I was struck by an observation the researcher made. Now, I know that not everybody gives the same credence to NDEs as I do, but for me, I take them as the real deal — that in that moment of coming to the border of life and death people and permitted to see things that most of the time human being aren’t given opportunity to see — the spiritual realm, heaven, the everlasting light and love of God.

They are, I believe, seeing the real deal — a face to face encounter with that which the rest of us simply speculate about.

Now here’s the interesting observation the researcher made: She said that children who undergo these experiences show an intense desire to go to Church, or to the synagogue, the temple, or mosque, because they get it implicitly that this is “God’s house,” and having seen God up close and personal, they naturally want to be where God is, and so they often drag their reluctant parents to church, etc. It is like the 12 year old Jesus in that famous story in which he left his family behind in order to hang out in the Temple, saying incredulously to his parents when they finally found him, “Did you no know I must be in my father’s house?”

Adults, on the other hand, oftentimes fall away from organized, institutional religion after having such an experience. The researcher didn’t speculate why this was so, but I think she was being polite. I suspect it is because people who have had this direct experience are often disappointed by what they find in Church, or the temple, or the synagogue.

Having experienced the wonder and love of God up close and personal, they are struck by the small-mindedness that often characterizes “organized religion”, where God is put into a box, where rules and regulations count for more than encountering the mystery of the living God. The adults are invariably more sophisticated than their child counterparts: they understand what happens in institutions — how they become consumed with perpetuating their existence and power, resorting to the world’s motivational techniques, and in doing so they put up barriers to people experiencing real intimacy with God.

There is a place for guilt. When we transgress God’s law of love, there is legitimate guilt which comes to us as a gift from God to call us back on course. For instance, if we have been bludgeoning people around us like the leader of the synagogue, we’ve got something of which to repent.

But God never intended for guilt to be a way of life.

So let us finish by focusing on the Good News. Jesus begins his ministry in the Gospel of Luke by quoting from Isaiah, declaring
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He was sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”Finishing the reading, Jesus immediately announced that everything that he had just read about was coming to pass now in his ministry.

We believe that God is revealed to us in Jesus. And what do we see in Jesus? We see a God who steadfastly desires for people to be set free — healed, blessed, made whole. Throughout his ministry Jesus consistently was about setting people free from the burden of guilt, proclaiming the gift of God’s forgiveness right now — no waiting.

Jesus sees this woman who has been oppressed for 18 long years in spirit and body, and he says to her don’t waste another of the days God has blessed you with by being burdened by a heavy load of guilt — that weight of shame the religious system has been piling upon your shoulders. “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
So let us ask ourselves, who is our God? Are we living with a false God created by some warped religious system that has a perverse need to have people walking around crippled by perpetual shame and guilt? Or is our God the God of Jesus Christ, who came that we might have life, and have it abundantly?

A sermon I preached this morning, based upon Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2, entitled, “The Great Cloud of Witnesses.”

I was a big time baseball fan as a kid.  I remember the very first time I got to go to Yankee stadium:  walking up the stairs, through cement hallways, and then suddenly, there I was, my first, breathtaking glimpse of the radiant green playing field where the players played their game, with all the energy of the tens of thousands of fans watching. 

These days I am a more of soccer fan than a baseball fan.  Yesterday, 66,000 fans filled Giants Stadium for an opportunity to see David Beckham, the international soccer star, play for the LA Galaxy against the local team, the New York Red Bulls.  Typically, the Red Bulls only draw about 11,000 fans to a home game.  I wasn’t there, but watching on TV it was clear that having the stadium packed dramatically intensified the energy of the game down on the field. 

It is surely a great thrill for the players, and especially the home team, to have 66,000 fans looking down on them, watching their every move, cheering passionately, celebrating the plays they made, grieving over their misplays.  (My son Bobby hopes to one day play goalkeeper in such a setting.)

I want to suggest that what takes place in the great arenas of professional sports is just a pale reflection of what takes place unseen in the spiritual realm.

This earth upon which we live can be thought of as the most exquisite of  arenas.  In short order they will build a new, even larger arena to take the place of Giants Stadium, with the construction expected to last a year.  The arena that you and I play on took billions of years to create.   Astronomers who study the universe ponder the question whether there might be life on another planet some where else in the universe.  Nobody knows for sure.  But the more they study, the more scientists marvel at how extraordinarily unique are the attributes that characterize our planet, making it hospitable to life.  Some scientists think it possible that Earth could be the only such “arena” on which conscious, intelligent life could exist.  If professional athletes consider themselves fortunate to have made it to the playing field of Giants Stadium, how much more should we consider ourselves fortunate to find ourselves here on planet Earth.   

The 11th chapter of the letter of Hebrews is devoted to the theme of faith.  It recounts several different heroes from the Hebrew scriptures who lived out faith, and one of the things that becomes immediately clear from this listing is that living by faith meant different things at different times and places.  For some it meant triumph in this world, but for others it meant enduring suffering and defeat without succumbing to despair. 

And then at the beginning of the 12th chapter we come to this verse:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…” (Hebrews 12:1)

Who makes up this “great cloud of witnesses?” Well, it includes the “heroes of the faith” that the author has just mentioned, but countless others as well — people whose names will never show up in the world’s history books but who strove, in their own way, to live by faith in the particular time and place that God planted them — people from throughout human history, all gathered together in eternity, watching those of us who are still going at it down here on the playing field of the great arena planet Earth.

You know some of these saints personally: some are parents, spouses, even children, friends, fellow church members — those who have gone before us.   (It is striking to ponder the fact that since this congregation has been around for nearly 180 years, a majority of its members now live on the other side.)

Last week we talked about the life of faith, of how, in this world, faith doesn’t exist in a pristine form; it exists in a difficult but creative struggle with doubt.  In this life we are both saints and sinners;  none of us are perfect, and the journey of faith isn’t straight and smooth.  We plod along as best we can — sometimes stumbling, sometimes getting off track — an ongoing process of getting lost, then found, then lost, then found again.

And then at the end of our lives, something absolutely extraordinary happens.   We reach this moment where the final play must be made:  to chose whether to continue clutching to this world, or to let go and embrace the great gift that is being offered to us.  We find ourselves standing before God, and either we stubbornly refuse the gracious invitation, holding tightly to our old tired resentments, fears, and pride, or we let go of what the author of Hebrews refers to as “every weight and the sin that clings so closely” and go towards God to take our place in the great cloud of witnesses, with the fans going wild with delight. 

But if in the course of our lives faith has gotten a foot hold with us, then I think, generally speaking, making the play at that final moment won’t be so hard — not, really.  The love and light of God that lies before us will be so beautiful; the desire to be with God so compelling, that making the play will seem like the most natural thing in the world.    

The moment of saying yes to God involves letting go of everything inside us that isn’t of love.  If we have been on the Jesus path during our lifetimes, this is precisely what we’ve been trying to do all along, only with very mixed results.  But in the moment of death a person becomes perfected in love, as Jesus is perfect. 

And so, to go back to the image of the arena:  You and I, we’re down on the playing field of the great arena, and up in the stands are all the saints, the ones who have been perfected in love — more than we could ever number.  And they are cheering for us.  Unlike the fans at a sporting event, these fans have lost their capacity for being a “jerk”.  Having been perfected in love, they’re no longer petty, or capable of disloyalty.  When we mess up and misplay, they don’t shout,  “You bum!  You stink!“ or “My grandmother could have made that play!”  Having once played the game themselves in the great arena, they know how very hard it can be to make the plays.  They remember their own stumbling, their own dropped balls. 

Here’s another thing about these fans — this great cloud of witnesses.  From the perspective of heaven, they realize all the more clearly that we really are all connected, that this race we’re competing in is more of a relay than a solo race, and that in a certain sense, the race isn’t over until everybody has been brought into the great cloud of witnesses. 

And what are the “plays” that they are watching, and rooting us through?  As we said before, living by faith means different things at different times.  At times it’s big things, but mostly it’s little things — the little moment by moment choices with which life confronts us.

Whether to be kind, or to be cruel. 
To hold on to hope, or to succumb to despair. 
To live with honesty and integrity, or with deceit and hypocrisy. 
To succumb to our fears, or to muster a bit of courage.
To share what we have been given, or to hoard it all for ourselves.
To be a bridge builder, a peacemaker, or to be a gossip and a dissension breeder.
To try and help one another, or to try and beat one another out.
To appreciate the beauty that is around us and within us, or to merely hurry on down the road. 

And some of the most important plays that the great crowd of witnesses up in the stands are rooting for us to make are those that take place AFTER we have stumbled and fallen, because Lord knows, we’ve all blown the play plenty of times.  Whether we’ll give lie there and give up, condemning ourselves and cursing life, or whether we’ll get up and, once more, try again.  

The letter to the Hebrews was written to a community of Christians going through a wilderness time.  Their knees were weak, their legs were drooping.  The temptation to give up was strong.  And so the writer of the letter challenges them to keep on keeping on:  “Run the race with perseverance that is set before us.”  If life is a race, it’s a relay race, but its also a marathon.  

What’s the hardest part of a marathon?  Generally speaking, it’s not the beginning, where the energy and excitement of the starting line drives the runner forward.  Nor is it the end of the race, when, despite the difficulty, the runner is sustained by the sight of the finish line in the distance.  No, the hardest part of a marathon is in the middle, where putting one foot in front of the other can seem oh so hard.  In the marathon of life it is those dog-day-afternoons of August that can present the toughest challenge, when life seems tedious, tiresome, even pointless — those times when it is easy to wonder, “what’s the use?”  We’re out there, seemingly alone, wondering if it really makes any difference how we live our life.   To whom does it really matter?

It is helpful at such a moment to remember that we have more fans rooting for us than David Beckham. 
 

Everyday my blog gets innundated with “comments” that aren’t really comments, but hits from other websites. I recently learned that this is the way that a website gets status on Google is by being referenced to by as many other websites as possible. Daily I go through a process of deleting these hits.

I came across one that touched me:
“Hello, you have a very nice site, but Im hired to leave advertising comments on sites, sorry i hate to do it but i have to . If you dont like advertising comments please send me an email with your site address to I will not write on your site. Sorry for inconvenience.”

A little humanity leaking into the impersonal battle for website supremacy. Bless you, oh annoymous contractor with the uneasy conscience. Bless you.

I came across a simple but profound idea in a little book by Donald Miller, entitled “Blue Like Jazz.” Here it is: “If a person senses that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say.” p. 220.

I’m thinking about global warming. It is my understanding that there is a pretty clear consensus among scientists who study the environment that the earth is indeed heating up, and that this heating up is caused in large part by the activities of human beings, and the consequences of our actions are terrifyingly destructive, so we need to changer our ways, and do so quickly.

Nonetheless, there are many people who persist in saying that this is all overblown; that the doomsayers aren’t speaking the truth.

What is happening here? I think the quote from Donald Miller hit’s the nail on the head, and we all bear some responsibility in helping to create the situation where people find it so very hard to listen to one another.

Over the past seven years, people on the left in our country have reveled in a personal sense of distaste for George W. Bush. Progressives simply don’t like the guy. To see anything comparable to this collective dislike, you have to go back to the eight years that preceded Bush’s presidency. Throughout that time conservatives despised Bill Clinton in a very similar way.

In both instances, the despisers focused on the flaws in the personality of the despised, dismissing his strengths. The despisers were predisposed to outright reject anything that the despised said.

All this contempt for the other side breeds an equal and opposite contempt, and we go round and round on the merry go round of miscommunication.

The science behind global warming has most frequently been promoted by voices on the left. Al Gore, in particular, has done more than anyone to call attention to the environmental concerns the human race must address. He has done a lot of good, but unfortunately, since he is seen as a figure so clearly established on the left, the polarizing dynamics of mutual contempt mean that some people will reject the call for a radical reduction in carbon dioxide emissions simply because it came most loudly from the lips of Al Gore. They will point to a couple of places where Gore may have mistated the science, and use these to discount the overall truth of what he had to say.

Though I believe that what Al Gore has to say is largely true, I think he bears some responsibility for creating the polarized situation in which we find ourselves. So does George W. Bush. So do we all. Wherever we are more concerned with being “right” than being persuasive of those who disagree with us, wherever we are more concerned with rallying those who already agree with us than in striving for a common consensus, we have contributed to the problem.

I went to a vigil last year to protest the war in Iraq. A man came by to stage his own counter protest in support of the war. With some glee, certain members of the vigil began mocking and berating the man, which of course, simply lead him to be all the more vitriolic in his rants. What good did this do?

So once more, let’s listen to Miller’s words: “If a person senses that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say.” p. 220.

Maybe Al Gore and George Bush should sit down over tea and crumpets out of sight of everyone, and share with one another the scariest and funniest moments in their lives. Maybe the war protestor and the war supporter should sit down over Chinese food and talk about what it felt like when they had their hearts broken. There’s no telling what might happen when we discover we actually like the person who disagrees with us.

I have this file (the old fashioned kind) in which over the years I have kept articles that caught my attention. I got it out last night after I read about the minister who suddenly found his car descending into a sink hole. I recalled reading a terrifying story about a man somewhere who heard a loud sound out his back door, ran out to see what it was, and promptly fell into an enormous sink hole that had suddenly opened up in his back yard. As I recall, his body was never recovered. It made the story of the minister’s little six foot deep sink hole sound like nothing. This was a sink hole of truly mythic proportions.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate the article, but I did find other articles in which I had found something worth saving. This one, for instance:

BEDTIME STORIES HELP INMATES BE KIDS AGAIN Martinez, Ca. (Reuters) It is bedtime and 38 inmates recline in their beds in the toughest unit at juvenile hall, listening to Judy Garland sing, “When you smile, the whole world smiles with you.”

“The program is like a tranquilizer for the kids,” Hunter said. “It helps calm them down. Some of these kids are in here for battery or assault with a deadly weapon or have witnessed murders.”
She said bedtime stories help the youngsters get “back in touch with being that little child.”

When it comes down to it, maybe the solution to this violent society we live in is something as simple as bedtime stories. Give people the experience early on of consistently feeling truly safe, loved, cared for, and I suspect the likelihood that they will turn to violence later on falls dramatically. And maybe it’s never too late for a little remedial work in helping an oversized kid feel safe and secure.

In this hurried society we live in, time for slow moving but crucial activities like bedtime stories often fall by the wayside, and the detrimental impact on the individuals who make up society is beyond measure.

Last night I had the opportunity to go over to Jean’s house, where six month old Kathryn just arrived last week from Guatemala to begin her new life with Jean as her mother. Baby Kathryn wants to be held pretty much all the time. God bless her. There is nothing more important in this world than making a little child feel safe and loved.

This evening I went to a picnic for the players and parents of Bobby’s soccer team. The picnic took place beside a lovely, little lake, surrounded by woods. As darkness was descending, and everyone was leaving, Bobby wanted to go back to the lakeside to sit quietly on the diving board, for no other purpose than to simply take in the beauty of the stillness. Stars appearing. Woods reflecting off the now still lake. Crickets singing. Gentle breezes. My first reaction was to harangue Bobby about dawdling, but then my better angels pointed out the preciousness of the moment. We sat together in silence for ten minutes or so, the only words we spoke commenting on how lovely it all was. This is not behavior I normally see from my son; I am grateful to God I had the good sense not to squelch this mystical sensibility with the impulse to hurry on down the road.

An interesting headline caught my eye, leading me to read the brief article that followed:   Sinkhole Nearly Swallows Minister’s Car  AP  Posted: 2007-08-15
TYLER, Texas (AP) – Holy sinkhole! A minister says he prayed “Lord don’t take me yet” when his car nosed into a sinkhole on Wednesday. The Reverend Ralph Massey, pulled into a parking lot to turn around when the ground gave way, with no warning.

The car came to rest with most of its front section in the hole, and the back end and both rear wheels elevated.

Massey, who wasn’t injured, was able to scramble out of the hole, which ended up being about 12 feet wide and six feet deep.

Authorities are trying to determine what caused the sinkhole.

Information from Tyler Morning Telegraph: www.tylerpaper.com

If you come from a perspective, as do I, that God speaks to us in the course of our day to day lives, what might one hear God saying in an experience such as this?  It is interesting that the encounter with the sink hole happened to Rev. Massey in the course of turning around in a parking lot.  I wonder if he took the sudden shifting of the earth beneath his car as a sign that, like Jonah, he was headed in the wrong direction. 

There is a story about a wise old rabbi, who would walk across the town square each morning on his way to pray at the the synagogue.  One morning, a policeman who had evidently gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, decided to give the rabbi a hard time.  “And where to you think you’re going?!” he asked beligerantly.  The rabbi looked the policeman in the eyes and said, “I have no idea.”  This incensed the policeman. “Every morning you walk through here on the way to the synagogue, and this morning you have the audacity to tell me you have no idea where you are going?!  I’ll show you!”  And he promptly took the rabbi by the arm and dragged him off to jail. 

Sitting in his jail cell, the rabbi said, “See?  I thought I was going to the synagogue, and here I ended up in jail.  You just never know where you are going.”

The sudden appearance of sink holes would seem to confirm the ultimately mysterious nature of life.   Maybe more than anything, God is saying, “Don’t fall asleep in life.  You never know what you might encounter.”  It calls to mind Jesus’ parable where the farmer with the big harvest is making plans to build bigger barns, when suddenly God says, “Fool, this night your soul is demanded of you, and whose will your wealth be?” 

Wake us up, O God, and preferably without placing a sink hole in our path. 
 

A sermon given by Al Booth on July 22, 2007 based upon Luke 10:38 – 42 

Early in the beginning of the 20th century two girls were born and raised in West Orange, New Jersey.  One was Mary and the other was Martha.  Along with their five brothers they lived a pleasant and prosperous life, until 1917 when Mary was 14 and Martha was just 7, when their mother passed away suddenly.  Mary quickly became the family matriarch.  She pushed herself by taking care of her five brothers, widowed father, and younger sister.  As the father and brothers went off to work and careers Mary and Martha became very close. 

They retained a close and loving relationship throughout their lives.  Often as adults they would vacation together and visit each other for long periods of time. 

Mary was attractive and athletic and full of life.  Martha was plain and homespun, somewhat shy and awkward.  Mary was very artistic and loved to paint and sew and do crafts.  Martha learned to cook and was well know as someone who would never turn down a stranger in need of a meal.  They loved to play games together and would spend endless hours playing card games and scrabble. They would take turns getting the best of each other and each one would bend the rules to suite their needs if it meant scoring a few more points. 

Mary and Martha were as close as two sisters could be and were remarkably alike, but were also as different as night and day. 

Each one possessed different gifts that lead them in different directions.  Like all sisters they also had their fare share of fights and arguments and disagreements.  One would want to go in one direction, while the other would want to do the opposite.  This would often lead to confusion about love and loyalty and doing what was expected instead of what was desired.  Mary and Martha were a great part of my growing up.  One I called Aunt, the other I called Mom. 

As a kid I remember spending many evenings listening to the two of them bickering back and forth about all the things that effect the lives of women in the 1950s and early 60s.  As I read the gospel of Luke and the story of Mary and Martha I have a very vivid picture of my own mother and aunt assuming the polls of Mary sitting intently at the feet of Jesus while Martha prepared the evening meal. 

I also have an ever present condition of mental frustration that I believe exists within the psyche of all of us, which I like to call the Mary and Mary syndrome. 

This syndrome keeps us awake at night, aggravates others, and causes us to indulge in many bad habits, such as smoking and drinking and other excesses.  You know when you are suffering from the Mary and Martha syndrome when you no longer have the ability to make simple decisions and everything becomes clouded by thoughts of “How will this effect all t hose around me and this is not what others expect of me.  How can I let loose and be the person I want to be when I have all this responsibility?  What will all the others think of me?  We’re all caught up in this silliness.  Human beings are social creatures and we all have the need to belong and be part of something.  Some commonality that binds us together.  Not only do we as adults have this need but we also encourage it in our children as well.  We arrange play dates for pre-schoolers and sign our kids up for dance lessons and soccer clubs as soon as they can walk so they won’t be disadvantaged later on in kindergarten.  All these things start out with the best of intentions, but all too often eventually become mired in the us against them mentality.  We add fuel to this by encouraging competition and striving to be #1 whatever it takes. 

Martha was caught up in this pattern in her need to do the right thing, and what was expected of her.  She was just doing her job.  She felt a strong sense of responsibility as part of the established order of the day.  What would Jesus think of her Mary was doing the unthinkable.  She had no business listening to the teachings of Jesus.  She belonged in the kitchen with Martha.  That was the protocol of the day.  Women were not part of the political system.  Something drew Mary to be with Jesus that day. 

On of the frustrating aspects of reading the Gospels is there are not follow-ups.  No one knows what happened next.  Was Mary chastised for listening to the word of God?  Mary at that moment was doing what God wanted her to do.  For a few precious moments Mary was being the person God wanted her to be.  Martha was too concerned about details to see what was going on around her and did not recognize that she was in the presence of the Lord. 

How often do we recognize ourselves as being in the presence of the Lord?  How often do we recognize others as being in the presence of the Lord?  This is often harder to do. 

Often in our Mary and Martha syndrome we can rationalize our actions as justifiable:  “What’s best for everyone is best even if it means sacrificing what I know in my own heart is the right thing to do“. 

Last week Pastor Jeff talked about the parable of the Good Samaritan.   The priest and the Levite were just doing the right thing, what was dictated by the Law, what was for the common good.  The Lord would surely be with them.  The Samaritan did not abide by such rules and did what was to him “the right thing to do.”  Surely God would be with him. 

The story of Jonah is a good example of not only not doing the right thing, but doing the exact wrong thing.  Jonah ran away from God!  God spared his life by sending a great fish.  While in the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed and promised to do God’s bidding.

He went to Ninevah, prophesized its destruction in forty days unless the Ninevites repented.  Jonah hated the Ninevites.  Ninevah was the Capital of Assyria, and the Assyrians were the hated enemy of the Israelites.  Jonah’s heart was hardened by his prejudices and was angered by God’s willingness to have mercy on such an evil people.  This is the Mary and Martha syndrome in extreme. 

In today’s society Jonah would be guilty of treason for aiding and abetting the enemy.  Jonah was willing to die rather than obey the Lord.  Only when he realized God had spared him and given him a second chance did he reluctantly go to prophecy to the Ninevites.  The Ninevites listened and repented.  When the King heard the word he too repented and ordered everyone to fast and dress in sack cloth and seek the Lord’s forgiveness.  When God saw this he was merciful to the Ninevites and did not destroy the city.  This, too angered Jonah; he left and built a shelter overlooking the city to wait and see what would happen next.  While there, the Lord provided him with a vine that grew to provide shade and comfort for him.  This pleased Jonah very much.  But the next morning God provided a worm to chew the vine so that it withered.  God provided a scorching wind that beat down on Jonah’s head and he wanted to die.  God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”

“I am angry enough to die.”  But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this vine thought you did not tend to it or make it grow.  Ninevah has more than a hundred thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, should I not be concerned about that great city?”  Jonah did not understand God’s desire to show mercy on all people and not just those who were like him. 

If I were a gambling man I would put a lot of money on the fact that everyone in this room this morning has had the thought, “Why am I the only who is right and everyone else is wrong?”  Or did you find yourself asking the question, “Why is the whole world against me?”

Back to the Mary and Martha syndrome:  The external struggle of , This is what I want but everyone wants me to do something else.  This can be very painful, so painful in fact that it keeps us from becoming what we want to be and what we want to do because it isn’t what everyone wants of me.  This too can make us want to die. 

A little quick math has made me aware of the fact that give or take a few, I am approaching my 1000th sermon.  I also know that some of you make me feel like the new kid on the block.  Looking back there have been times I felt as thought God was talking directly to me, and at other times I was totally detached and missed the message completely.  Truthfully, I can remember very few specifically. 

Coming to church on Sunday morning is like filling your gas tank before we start on our weekly journey.  We seek fulfillment for our spiritually empty tank. Listening to the word of God each weeks is a vital part of this this fuel.  Though it alone is not enough to get me through the week.  The real additive is those who worship with me who provide the rich mixture necessary to create the spiritual fuel to get me through my weaknesses.  I am humbled and highly flattered to think that in some small way my gifts  may somehow help to fuel someone else’s spiritual needs, but I am greatly indebted to those who fill mine.  My own Mary and Martha syndrome is calmed and soothed by the fact that I have come to a place where everyone is not like me, but is unique and different as God willed them to be. 

You all know the words; don’t be afraid to say them with me:  “In a hostile, hurting world we reach out to share kindness and laughter.  Our spirituality is based on Jesus and his love and compassion.  We provide a community of support and healing where all are welcomed and valued, regardless of raxce, age, sexual orientation, disability, gender or economic status.  In a world where people feel they can love only those who are like themselves, we seek to celebrate the uniqueness of every human being.”

As I confessed before I often do not remember the specifics of every sermon I hear but I do recall the wonderful feeling of spiritual renewal that I get from the knowledge that for a few precious moments each week I can rejoice in God’s holy word as a child of God who is not bound by the wishes of others. 

In my 1000 or so sermons I have come away with one lasting thought.  Pastor Jeff spoke about his a little over a year ago.  He pictured someone who came before God in final judgment and was asked the simple question, “Did you become the person I put you on earth to be, or did you give in to the temptation to become the person others wanted you to be?”

A little under a hundred years ago in a small town not far from here lived two sisters, Mary and Martha, who were as different as night and day.

A sermon preached on August 12, 2007, based upon Luke 12:22 – 34 and Hebrew 11:1 – 3; 8 – 16, entitled, “Faith and Doubt.”

As is often the case, when I reached adolescence I became less and less interested in going to church.  I couldn’t see much of a connection between my life in the world with the whirlwind of emotions I was experiencing as a teenager and that place on Sunday morning where people dressed up and got real somber and stiff, sitting through long, boring services.  If you had asked me if I believed in God and Jesus, well, I probably would have said, “I have my doubts.”

I went off to college and in my sophomore year I took a class called, “Human Existence and the Christian Faith.”  I wasn’t sure what “faith” was, let alone the “Christian faith”, but the atmosphere in the class was captivating to me.  The professors and students were talking about “human existence” –  real human existence with all the anxiety that goes into being a human being, and that much, at least connected with me. 

The first book we read was by a theologian named Paul Tillich, who said that faith and doubt aren’t really opposites of one another; rather, doubt is a component of faith — that faith involves our relationship to the ultimate concern of our life, and if doubt isn’t present, well, we must not be dealing with the “ultimate concern.”  Or as somebody else put it, doubt was the “ants in the pants” of faith, keeping it moving, questioning, going deeper.

Well, that idea opened up the playing field for me, because I knew I had doubts, but Tillich was telling me that I was supposed to have doubts, and that my doubts didn’t take me out of the faith journey.  I wasn’t really the outsider looking in that I had imagined myself to be. 

And when I began to read the Gospels, there was much there that challenged my preconceptions of what faith involved.  For instance, in the words we heard earlier, Jesus challenges his disciples by calling them, “you of little faith.”  What is striking there for me is that he didn’t say, “You who have no faith.”  We tend to think of faith as something either you have or you don’t, but that doesn’t seem to be how Jesus saw it.  Elsewhere he refers to possessing faith “the size of a mustard seed.”  The mustard seed was the smallest known seed at the time, so to talk about that amount of faith was to talk about a small amount indeed, and yet he said that this amount of faith was enough to move mountains. 

Faith and doubt live in all of us.  Those who say they have absolute faith are deceiving themselves, and would probably do well to own up to those doubts that haunt them.  And those who say they are thorough going atheists, well, they may find it embarrassing to acknowledge the mustard-seed-sized child-like faith that lives on within them. 

I’ve managed to talk about “faith” now for a couple of minutes without actually defining what I mean by it, so maybe I should attempt a definition of faith, or specifically, what I think Jesus meant by faith. 

Faith is trusting that the creator of the universe is for you, or against you, or even indifferent to you, and acting out of this trust in your life.  It means that you (and everybody else, for that matter) is not just here by mere chance, but that God created each one of us intentionally, that God loves us, that God wants good for us. 

Jesus felt this so strongly that he referred to this Creator God as “Abba”, Daddy.  He seems to have believed that the best analogy we have for the relationship of God to human beings is that of a parent to a child, though even this is an imperfect analogy, since we human parents are imperfect in our love of our children. 

When you read the Gospels it becomes clear that for Jesus faith wasn’t believing in certain doctrines or reciting particular creeds.  The people whom he points to as examples of faith aren’t so much professing belief systems as they are simply acting out of a basic trust that God desires their best interests. 

Before long in the journey of faith we realize that trusting God doesn’t mean that everything will necessarily work out for the best in this world.  The world is, in many ways, a terrible mess, full of pain and suffering.  It is in reflecting on this rather obvious fact where our doubts tend to get expressed.  Faith doesn’t mean believing that every thing turns out happily ever after in this world.  And for those for whom this is what faith means, well, their doubts are doing them the service of pushing them to a deeper understanding of what faith is. 

Examining what faith meant to Jesus is helpful here, because Jesus clearly understood the evil and brokenness that is so routinely experienced in this world.  Even as Jesus counseled his disciples to trust God, he wasn’t naïve.  He didn’t think that when he finally got to Jerusalem to confront the entrenched powers, that the people in power would listen to him and say, “You know what Jesus?  We never thought of it that way.  You’re right.  From now on, we’re going to share everything God has given us.   From now on, we’re putting you in charge.”  No, he knew that when he got to Jerusalem he would end getting nailed to a cross. 

And so in the passage we just heard, the author of the letter to the Hebrews points to the incompleteness of our lives in this world of which we are all so painfully aware.  Although the heroes of faith, like Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament got reassuring signs along the way that filled them with awe and provided great comfort — for instance, the child given to them in their old age — they died still living in tents, never having seen the completion of what God had promised to them. They were, as the author says, “strangers and foreigners on the earth.”  They were seeking their homeland, but on some level they realized that their homeland wasn’t  ultimately on this earth, it was in heaven. 

An essential part of faith, therefore is the conviction that there is a world beyond this one, an eternal world where God’s promises find their ultimate fulfillment.  The resurrection is the sign that Jesus’ trust in Abba wasn’t misplaced. 

So, how do we go about growing our faith?

First off, I don’t think we can manufacture faith.  In a certain sense faith is a gift of the holy spirit, and the spirit of God moves on its own, invisible, on its own time table. A farmer doesn’t make the harvest, but the farmer can do his or her part to help create a setting where crops could grow.  

There is a sense in which faith rubs off on us from other people.  People with more faith inspire faith within us.  So, hanging out with people who are on the same faith quest is essential.  Some will have more faith, some may have less, than us.  Those with less faith are important for us as long as they are consciously on the faith journey, because in encouraging the faith of others, our faith in turn is strengthened. 

I think the people in AA maybe get this more clearly than we do in the church.  What the folks in AA are trying to do is nothing less than grow faith, particularly in relation to the anxieties that would drive them to drink.  They know they need others — not just those with more faith, but also those with, at a given moment, less faith, because helping a stumbling sister or brother helps keep them on the path as well. 

It is also important to respect the place of our intellect in growing faith.  God created us all differently.  Some of us have a more intellectual bent, while others are more intuitive — more in tune with their emotional life.  No way is “right” — they’re all good.  But for those of us, such as myself, who lead with our intellect, it is important to have our intellect involved in the process, which is to say, that we come to a place where faith makes a certain sense.  This doesn’t mean that we succeed in “proving” the existence of God.  Since God is invisible, you can neither prove or disprove God’s existence.  But it is possible to come to a place where it doesn’t seem unreasonable — that having faith doesn’t require a mental lobotomy.

For me, for instance, it was important to distinguish between faith in God and faith in the Bible.  A lot of Christians, it seems to me, confuse the two.  The Bible is an important tool that we are called to wrestle with, but for me, to believe that the Bible is “the inerrant word of God” would require a lobotomy. 

I was talking to Darren Yacenko last week and he was describing what for him the experience of growing up Catholic was like.   He remembers the nuns teaching the story of Adam and Eve and being told that the meaning of the story was that it was wrong for them to want to know stuff — that asking questions came from the evil serpent; therefore just shut up and believe what you’re told without questioning it.  (Note:  not all Catholics take the mental lobotomy approach, and there are many Protestants who do.)  And so for anybody who is raised in such an environment, a refusal to undergo a lobotomy generally means leaving the Church. 

The faith journey is not unlike the process that a scientist pursues — that there is an experimental quality to it.  A scientist comes up with a theory, then runs experiments to test the theory.  If the data gained from the experiment increases the plausibility of the theory, the theory becomes stronger.  If the data requires that the theory be adjusted, so be it.  Good scientists realize that as useful as a particular theory may be in terms of predicting how things will operate in the world, it may, over time, prove to be flawed.  Newton’s theories, for instance, were extremely helpful for centuries, but in the past century, new data arose through experiments that suggested more was going on than Newton’s theories could explain.  And so Newton’s theories gave way to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which in turn will eventually give way to other, more accurate theories.

And so we are all a mixture of faith and doubt, which are both, in a sense, theories that have not yet been fully proven.  And so in a desire to grow our faith we undertake experiments designed to strengthen the faith hypothesis.   

Kids, don’t try this at home:   We could say to ourselves, “My trust in God is that God will watch over me in all situations, and to prove this, I will go wander about on a busy interstate highway.”  If, following our experiment, we are fortunate enough to survive our injuries and be discharged from the hospital, our assessment of data gathered from our experience would make clear that some adjustments to the theory are required:   Evidently God’s faithfulness doesn’t give me license to do something dumb and self-destructive. 

We venture back into the laboratory of faith.  We consider the fact that this God we know in Jesus seems to be very into creating loving community.   And so we decide to act on our trust of this God and undergo the risks involved in reaching out to people who are in some sense strangers to us in an attempt to build community.  When afterwards we assess how it went, perhaps there was some rejection to bear, but it wasn’t as awful as we had imagined, and along with the rejection there were instances of receptivity to our outreach, with some loving community born by virtue of our having stepped out in faith, and in this realization our faith is strengthened. 

Or maybe we realize that this God Jesus reveals to us is into forgiveness big time, and so we try to suspend our doubts and let go of some resentment and bitterness we’ve carried around with us, and lo and behold, we discover we, and the world, are better off for having acted on our faith. 

Or maybe we consider the fact that this God is concerned about feeding the hungry, but our doubts tell us we need all our money for ourselves to assure we don‘t starve tomorrow, but we attempt to act out of our trust that God will indeed provide for us the way God cares for the birds of the air, and we give away some of our money to those in greater need, and we discover that not only do we survive, but that our lives are blessed by the experience as well. 

Over the course of our lives, if we have been willing to make the little leaps of faith that test and deepen our faith and our understanding of how it is that God is there with us in our need, then we will be better prepared when, at the end of our lives, it comes time to make the greatest leap of faith of all.   Standing before the mystery that is death, we let go our tight grip upon this life, trusting that the Abba God who created us will be there once more to catch us with an eternal, loving embrace.  “Fear not, little flock, it is the Father’s great pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
 

Here is a link to an amazing 8 minute video taken by people on safari in Kenya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM 
A half a dozen water buffalo, including one baby, are shown walking along a body of water, and unaware of crouching lions nearby.  Suddenly the lions attack, and the baby is driven into the water by about five lions, who proceed to maul it.  A crocodile comes along and they get into a tug of war over the baby water buffalo, which the lions win.  At this point the water buffalo return, accompanied by their entire herd, and they mean business.  They surround the lions, and begin driving them off one by one.  At one point a water buffalo gores a lion, tossing her up into the air.  After all of this, the baby water buffalo is still alive, and manages to escape the clutches of the lions, returning to the safety of the herd.  But the buffalo continue to drive off the lions. 

Rachel from our church is presently in Kenya, and my daughter Kate is leaving in a week to spend the next four months in Tanzania with a program from her college.    There are amazing sights to be seen that can only be seen going half way around the world. 

The fierce loyalty of the pack, which humans share.  When will the prophecy of Isaiah come true, when the lion will lie down with the lamb?

I watched some video from the “Pro-America Rally” that was held in Morristown a couple of weeks back. The rally was organized by people who want stricter enforcement of laws that would keep illegal aliens out of our country. There was a counter protest being held simultaneously across the street. Afterwards there was an unfortunate violent confrontation between opposing demonstrators. Apparently the counter-demonstrators were particularly nasty.

The organizer of the event opened the rally by saying, “My friends, no where on this earth will you find a more generous, compassionate, hospitable, and tolerant people” than are found in “this great nation.” It was an impressive rhetorical flourish, and the crowd cheered, but it struck me as lacking humility, and I wondered how it was the speaker could claim to know this to be true. Frankly, I don’t know whether it is true or not. I do know that we are the richest and most powerful nation on earth, and often people with money and power like to think of themselves as morally superior to others, when in fact often people with little money and power display more compassion in their lives than do the rich.

You’d have to have spent a great deal of time abroad getting to know the people of other countries to even begin to speak with any authority on the question. I suspect if you did that you would find both compassion and cruelty throughout the world, just like you find in the United States. There is a certain arrogance, however, in declaring ourselves to be the most generous, compassionate, hospitable, and tolerant people, for it implies that everybody else is inferior to us in these qualities.

In a picture I saw from a rally for tougher enforcement of emigration laws I saw someone holding a placard that read, “Romans 13:1 – 7”, referring to a passage in which St. Paul instructs the Christians of Rome to obey the governing authorities. I suppose that by quoting the Bible the demonstrator wanted to suggest that God was on their side. I know that there are a lot of complexities involved in this issue that I don‘t understand, but I do know a little something about the Bible. If we are going to make the Bible the guide on this issue, there is a tidal wave of verses declaring that God desires for us to be compassionate to the aliens in our midst. If you were to ask, “what would Jesus do?” it’s hard to imagine him in anything other than solidarity with the so-called “illegal alien.” Of course, they nailed Jesus to a cross, and I don’t expect us to begin making national policy based upon his rather radical perspective. I can’t even claim to have successfully based my individual life on Jesus.

So humility is a nice place to start.