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A sermon preached on Father’s Day, June 20th, 2010.

What do we know about the relationship Jesus had with Joseph, his earthly father?  Not a whole lot.  

In the Christmas story, Matthew tells us that had it not been for an intervention by an angel of the Lord, Jesus might well have grown up with out a dad.  In the early drama of Jesus’ life, Joseph’s role seems to have been primarily that of protector, following the leadings of God given him in dreams to safeguard his son from the threats on his life posed by King Herod. 

We know Joseph was a carpenter, and so presumably as a young child Jesus would have spent time around his Dad at work in his shop.   And this is a wonderful thing for a kid to do, absorbing his or her dad’s energy as he does whatever it is he does.

 For the most part, it’s quite different these days.  Ever since the industrial revolution, more often than not children rarely get to see their dads at work.   When I was a boy, my dad left early in the morning to catch a train to go off to an office in New York City.   He’d carry a briefcase with papers I couldn’t make sense of, and occasionally I’d hear him talk on the phone with guys named “Frank”, but from these obscure clues I could glean little insight into what it was my dad did when he went to “work.”

The only story we have from Jesus’ childhood suggests that his relationship to his parents was not without tension, and as such, it was like the relationship of any other child to their parents.  Luke tells us of how when Jesus was twelve, an apparently feeling the need to separate himself from his parents, he wandered off on a family trip to Jerusalem without bothering to tell them where he was going.  After three days of frantic searchings, Jesus’ mom and dad finally find him in the temple:

When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’

Evidently, his parents didn’t always “get” Jesus; his peculiar ways left them at times scratching their heads and not a little bit annoyed.

(The boy Jesus) said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’  (Luke 2:48 -49)

I hear a sting in these words.  Apparently, on at least this one occasion, Jesus, feeling smothered, rebelled against his parents’ authority, wounding them with his need to be separate.  

Joseph was most likely a good deal older than Mary, and we hear no further mention of him in the Gospels after this rather painful incident that took place when Jesus was 12.   In all likelihood, Joseph died well before Jesus began his ministry, and perhaps even while Jesus was still an adolescent struggling to find his way.   (I wonder if Jesus ever regretted the harshness of the words he had spoken to his father that day back in the temple.)

I’ve been thinking this week about some basic questions about what it means to be a father.  I mean:  What exactly IS a father?  We come in so many different shapes and sizes, styles and demeanors.  

Is there a difference between the love of a father, and the love of a mother? Oftentimes we assume that over and beyond the obvious differences they embody in terms of anatomy there is something inherently different between fathers and mothers.   But when we get to thinking about what those differences are, well, the distinctions get fuzzier under closer examination.  

There is, for instance, a traditional stereotype regarding mothers and fathers in which the domain of mothers is seen to be the home.  Their presence there conveys safety, nurture, and unconditional love. The domain of fathers, in contrast, is seen to be the larger world beyond the home:  they go forth into the world to earn a living and provide for the family.  Fathers serve as the children’s guide as they begin to move beyond the safety of the home.  

The masculine love of a father is viewed as more demanding — challenging the child to take risks, to become independent and strong.  Whereas the mother’s love is seen as unconditional, the father’s love is viewed as having certain conditions to it:  It is a love that to some extent must be earned as the child goes forth to meet the challenges presented by the larger world.  

In past generations these sorts of generalizations made more sense:  The work world was primarily the domain of men and the homes the domain of women, but as we all know, so much in this regard has changed, especially in recent years.

As far as we know, Jesus never had any biological children (though as scholars have pointed out, in the culture in which Jesus lived it would have been extremely unusual for a man of his age NOT to have a wife and children.)

Nonetheless, as we all know fathering isn’t something done only by biological fathers.  Jesus was a father of a sort to his disciples and to the others to whom he mentored and ministered.   And what we see in the example Jesus set nearly two thousand years before gender roles would begin to shift so dramatically, is that Jesus often broke out of the cultural stereotypes of what a father — or for that matter, a man — was about.

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:13 – 16)

So tender towards the little children; so affectionate, so accepting.  The disciples had assumed that children don’t belong in Jesus’ work world.  But clearly he does have a place for them there. 

Jesus conjured up that compelling story about the rebellious son who goes off to the far country to squander his father’s money.  Penniless, the young man heads home assuming he’s lost his father’s love by his reckless behavior — that his only hope is to begin a long, difficult process of earning back his father’s love back.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”   (Luke 15:20 – 24)

A father who loves unconditionally, like a mother, casting aside his concern for what others would consider a lack dignity in order to embrace his long lost son come home. 

And yet there are other stories where we see Jesus playing the part of the father who demands the child put in more of an effort; take greater risks, show some balls, so to speak.  

Immediately (Jesus) made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.

And early in the morning (Jesus) came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’  And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.’Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’    He said,  ‘Come.’

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’  (Matthew 14:22 – 31)

In other words, ‘You have it in you, kid.! You’re not living up to your potential.  I expect more out of you than what you’re giving.’

On occasion Jesus would rebuke the disciples, chastise them.  When he needs to, he’s quite capable of kicking butt.  He drives home the message that in life we need courage, and courage doesn’t mean having no fear, but rather facing our fears as best we can – doing what needs to be done in spite of our fears.

And so Jesus embodied both traditionally feminine and masculine qualities; unconditional love, AND a love that challenges us, disciplines us, pushes to grow in our capacity to take responsibility for that which is ours to take.  

When you think about it, this isn’t surprising.   God is intent to bring forth the innate wholeness with which we were created.  We read in the first chapter of the Bible that

God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.   (Genesis 1:27)

God, according to the creation story, is neither strictly masculine, nor strictly feminine, but both, and if we are to shine forth God’s image we will embrace both our masculine and feminine qualities. 

But we human fathers aren’t perfect; which is to say we’re human. 

My kids showed me this video on youtube that went “viral” as they say in which a family is driving in their car, with mom and dad in the front,  and three kids – two daughters, maybe nine and seven and a two year old brother in a car seat —  in the back seat.  The girls beg their parents to put on the pop song, “All the Single Ladies” by Beyoncé.  The parents oblige, and the girls begin singing along with energetic hand movements.   Happily, the little brother begins mimicking his big sisters until the father says, “You’re not a single Lady, pal,” in response to which the little boy immediately stops, looks crestfallen, and slowly begins to cry.   While one sister tries to console her little brother, the other looks at her dad with total irritation for being such a party pooper.  The dad quickly realizes he’s blown it; tries to tell his son he can be a “single lady” if he wants to, but it’s too late; the damage is done.   The father looks into the camera and says, “I’m a horrible father.”  

He isn’t a horrible father – far from it – but even good fathers blow it on occasion. 

Sometimes we’re absent when our children need us to be present, and sometimes we’re hard when they need us to be soft, and soft when they need us to be hard.

Sometimes we’re clueless, with little understanding of the unique person God has made our child to be and therefore can’t provide much help in their quest to become that person.

Sometimes we can’t resist the temptation to try and make our children over into our image – a walking monument to ourselves.  

Sometimes we have little tolerance for ourselves when we are broken, confused and hurting, and in turn find ourselves intolerable to our children’s failures and pain. 

Sometimes we don’t know how to take responsibility in the ways we need to take responsibility and so what hope do we have to show our kids how to take responsibility for their lives?

Sometimes we grew up without much fathering ourselves and so there are times when we are trying to be a good dad when we feel ourselves to be play acting — making it up as we go.

Which is simply to say that we’re all in this humanity thing together. 

Joseph, although he may well have been a good father, wasn’t a perfect father, and indeed, if he did in fact die early on in Jesus’ life, Joseph was in part an absent father, and so I suspect that Jesus himself carried some “father wounds” into this world, just like the rest of us. 

And one way to understand the Gospel message that Jesus came preaching is to grab hold of the idea that the power behind the universe is trying to father us; that the one who called us into existence loves us more than we know.  Sometimes this love comes to us as unconditional acceptance and sometimes it comes to us as a rebuke that says “You can do better than that.”

Perhaps it was this truth that Jesus saw clearly that day he gathered at the river with so many poor slobs like you and me, submitting himself to the masculine ministry of John the Baptizer, letting himself be dunked to enact death by drowning. 

And just as (Jesus) was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.   And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’  (Mark 1:10 – 11)

And lest Jesus or anybody else get the idea that the love with which God in heaven loved him was nothing more than a warm and fuzzy love, that strong, fathering love proceeded to drive Jesus out into the wilderness for what amounted to Spiritual boot camp: 

 He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.  (Mark 1:12-13)

A sermon preached on June 13^th, 2010 based upon Luke 8:26 – 29

Two distinctly contrasting figures are presented in this powerfully evocative little story;  one full of death, the other  of life.

On the one hand, there is this tortured soul, the “Gerasene demoniac,” who identifies himself by the name “Legion”, because he is pushed and pulled in thousands of different directions, at war with himself by all the demons holding him bondage.   He is torn apart by a violence within that could easily become a violence without, and so he is excluded from the company of others, living alone in the graveyard.

In extreme contrast, the story presents us with a second figure sitting calmly at the feet of Jesus, at peace in his right mind — nowhere he’d rather be — centered, free.    Although he has nothing to his name, he is absolutely content.

It is striking that although the two figures are polar opposites, they come from the life story of one man.    It is possible to think of our lives as being lived out on a continuum between the extremes represented by these two figures; the man at peace — the man at war within himself.  

If we are honest with our selves, we know there have been moments — frightening moments looking back — when our experience was not so different from the Gerasene demoniac, when we were churned up inside by a toxic combination of fear and anger and despair, taking us far from “our right mind” –  not the person we know ourselves to be.  There have been times when we felt terribly alone, unfit for human contact — times when, looking back the concept of “possession” made sense, because we were “possessed” by a desire for vengeance, or a lust, or a fear that at that moment held us in its grip, making us capable of doing things that afterwards we would deeply regret.  

If we remember such times, in all likelihood we will feel some empathy for others in the throes of such possession, thinking to ourselves, “there but for the grace of God, go I.”

 Hopefully though we can also remember other times — perhaps sitting in church provides a setting for such an experience — when we felt content, free, at peace, with an awareness that our contentment had little to do with things such as the state of our bank account.  At such moments we were able to see our life from a whole different angle – one that allowed us to be at peace.  We felt focused, centered; knowing who we were, what values we cherished.  Of such times we might describe ourselves as having been in possession of ourselves, or as Jesus put it elsewhere, having lost ourselves, and yet found ourselves.  

 If we think of life as a continuum between these two states of mind, we further recognize that most of us spend the vast majority of our time somewhere in between.   Not so distraught that we could do serious violence to ourselves or others, but neither truly at peace, in possession of ourselves.  And further, we recognize that there is something in this world that drives people towards the possession-end of the spectrum.
If we belong to Jesus we will seek to embody a peaceful presence rather than an anxious, violent presence in the storms of this world.  If we are following Jesus, our being will witness to serenity and calm to the Gerasene demoniacs of this world.

Our inner state impacts others around us.   When we are inwardly agitated, regardless of the words we speak or the actions we take, we will be an agitation to others.   In contrast, when our inner being is at peace, our bearing will have a positive impact on others, even if we are at the moment doing nothing. 

 In order to come into our right mind, we first need to acknowledge our inner demons.   Demons are those forces that take possession of our lives, leading us to forget who we are and whose we are.  If we are walking with Jesus, we will be motivated by love rather than by fear.  One way to uncover our demons is to contemplate the question, “What am I afraid of?”  Oftentimes, if we look beneath anger and violence, what we find is fear.   

 Commonly, our fears cluster around certain themes.  We worry about our health, and the possibility that we might get sick and die.  Asking the holy spirit to be present, it is good to remind ourselves that whether we live or if we die, we are in the Lord’s hands.  We are motivated to get healthy because of our love of life rather than our fear of death.  

We fear for the safety of our loved ones.  For those of us who are parents, it is easy to be driven to distraction by our fears of the dangers with which the world threatens our children.   Again, we need to remind ourselves of the truth we proclaimed when our children were baptized:  that whether they live, or if they die, they are in the Lord’s hands.  It isn’t easy to let go of these fears, of course, but it is possible to begin moving from parenting out of fear to parenting out of love, empowering our children to live the abundant lives God intends for them.

Another place where our fears cluster is around money. Am I going to be able to pay my bills?   Will I be able to keep my job, my home?    It is striking in our Gospel story the hold money can have on people.   One commentator I read this week pointed out that on one level the story is a parable of what was taking place in Jesus’ day, with the possessed man representing the nation Israel.   The possessed man gives his name as being “Legion”, referencing a Roman army of six thousand soldiers. Israel has been rendered unclean by the presence of the Roman soldiers.   How do they respond?  They can fight with violence against the domination of the Romans, but this only ends up pulling their chains tighter, and leads to hatred possessing their souls.  They can accommodate the Romans, but in doing so they lose their identity as God’s people.   

A peculiar and troubling aspect of the story is the fate of the herd of two thousand pigs into whom Jesus casts the man’s demons, leading them to jump off a cliff to their destruction.   Most of us find the fact of their death disturbing.  On the symbolic level of the story, one must ask, why is there such a large pig business in the region at all?  The Jews, as we know, did not eat pigs, because the law declared them unclean.  The reason for raising pigs is to make money by selling it to the Romans to provide the protein by which their recruits could enforce the will of Caesar.   The pig farms are profiting off the Romans, in a similar way to how the religious authorities profited off the poor in their conspiracy with the Romans.  

With the death of the pigs the swine herders run to tell the townspeople, who in term hurry out to where Jesus is.  They find the man who had previously suffered such terrible bondage, clothed, and in his right mind, sitting peacefully at the feet of Jesus.  

The blessing of the man’s liberation from his demonic suffering doesn’t seem to matter to the townspeople.  All they care about is the fact that their money is threatened.  The beg Jesus to leave the region, lest he bring about further loss of profits.  

It is remarkable that the man sitting at Jesus’ feet is content, free from fear, despite the fact that he owns nothing in this world except, apparently, the cloak with which Jesus has just clothed him.  In marked contrast, the townspeople with homes and presumably other financial resources are full of fear.  
Money takes possession of our souls.  Jesus pointed to this fact when he said that we can’t love God and money, we will end up loving one and hating the other.  The whole tragedy of what is happening in the gulf coast with the oil spill speaks to the hold money has on us as a society.   Our dependency on oil and the creature comforts we have become accustomed to consumes us in such a way that we overlook the threat to God’s creation posed by the oil rigs and our gas guzzling cars.

In the end, the story expresses hope for demon possessed people everywhere.   When we yield our center to God, we return to our right mind.   Underneath the story is an understanding of the nature of freedom.   We tend to think of freedom as consisting merely in freedom from some sort of bondage.   But we were designed by God to be free for something.   Serenity is found when we are free for God.   Without our spiritual center, something else will take possession of our souls.  

At the end of the story, the newly freed man seems to grasp this issue.   He has experienced freedom from the inner conflict that has been tearing him apart, and he rightfully understands Jesus as the source of this freedom.  A new fear arises; if I don’t have Jesus with me, will I fall back into the same chaos I knew before?    He asks Jesus to let him go with him, but Jesus instead instructs him to stay in his homeland and share with people all that the Lord has done for him.   He realizes he needs to be for Jesus in order to maintain his serenity, but he doesn’t yet realize that he can be for Jesus and his kingdom without being physically in his presence.  This is good news for all of us, since the option of being physically present to Jesus doesn’t exist for us.   We can, however, be for Jesus in the contexts that we already find ourselves.

A sermon preached on May 24th, 2010, Pentecost Sunday, and on the occasion of the baptism of Jacob Theodore Schnetzer, based upon Acts 2:1 – 21.

From very early on in my life there have been moments in which I was struck by the most fundamental of questions:  “Why is there everything and not nothing?”  At such moments, I felt an unfiltered awe about the fact of being alive.  

 Scientists can tell us a great deal about how the universe began back 14 billion plus years ago at that moment in time when all of matter and energy was compressed into a tiny point of space, when suddenly the proverbial big bang took place, causing matter and energy to expand outward ever since.  What they can’t tell us is why this happened. 

The baptismal font in which baby Jacob was baptized this morning contains water, which evokes a variety of symbolic meanings, but one of which is that moment described poetically in the very first verses of the Bible.   At the beginning of time a great wind (the holy spirit) blew over the great dark abyss full of the chaos of boundless water, like a mother hen hovering over her brood, birthing creation, bringing order – light separated from darkness, dry land separated from water.  Why is everything here?  The story in Genesis answers emphatically:  because God called creation into being, declaring it to be good!

The Bible story of creation, of course, is quite different from the scientific description of the beginning of the universe, but in certain significant ways they echo one another:  The creation becomes increasingly complex, culminating in the creation of life, climaxing in the creation of conscious human life. The account in Genesis 1 has human beings, made in the image and likeness of God arriving on the final day of creation; the scientists tell us it took 14 billion years for us to show up.  But the point is the same; we are the pinnacle of an evolving creation, with a special role to play. 

The Biblical perspective declares that which is beyond the perimeters of science to affirm:  we are here because God wanted us here.  We are here for a purpose. We are capable of incredible good as well of atrocious evil, and the intention of our creation involves our exercising our freedom for good rather than evil. 

And with the creation of every human being, indeed, with the creation of Jacob Theodore Schnetzer, we marvel once again at the opportunity God has brought about in the creation in human life. 

 The Biblical account grapples with the mystery of our human freedom; the fact that so often we are possessed by an arrogance that wreaks destruction. It tells of the original human beings coming together to build a great tower in a place called Babel with the ambition of reaching the very heavens and usurping God’s place of supremacy.   It describes their arrogance bringing about a great crashing, with the result being the human race became divided by a multitude of languages and cultures that functioned as barriers, walls of suspicion fostering hostility and violence for millennium to come.  

In the coming of Christ, God enters creation in order to reconcile our deep brokenness.  Jesus, empowered by the holy spirit at his baptism, tells his disciples after his resurrection to wait in Jerusalem to receive  “power from on high.” 

And so on the day of Jewish festival of Pentecost, as pilgrims from all over the known world gathered in Jerusalem to give thanks for the harvest, the apostles were came together in one place.  Suddenly that same wind that blew over the original chaos began to blow once more, and something other wordly, described as “tongues of fire” descended upon each receptive soul, enabling them to speak in the languages of all the pilgrims who had gathered that day in Jerusalem from every corner of the world.  The bystanders, attracted by the loud noises generated from the disciples’ meeting place marveled as they heard the great deeds of God proclaimed in their own language – heard about God’s great YES to our life declared in their own, native dialect.

An undeniable miracle was witnessed by those who were on hand; one that reversed the terrible curse of Babel. It is at this point in the story that a bit of detective work is required.  We are told that some who were on hand could not perceive the miracle.  Their explanation for all the commotion that is taking place is that the apostles are drunk with wine, even though, as Peter soon points out, its only 9 a.m.  If we ask ourselves, how could they have missed the miracle that was so obvious to others, with a bit of thought we come up with the answer:  The doubters were those who expected to hear their own language spoken.  They were the insiders, the residents of Jerusalem, who felt entitled to hear their own language spoken.   As such, they missed the miracle that was so obvious to those who came from far away and did not expect to hear their language spoken. 

This is not surprising if you consider the story of Jesus’ ministry.  He was welcomed by society’s outsiders:  the poor, those considered sinners, the outcastes.   He was rejected by the insiders; those with a stake in the power structure.   The same happens on the day of Pentecost as the holy  spirit births the church – the community of people empowered to be the Body of Christ. 

For the next 300 years the church would flourish even as it continued in the outsider status, persecuted  by those possessing the political power.  And then in 313 AD something turned things upside down:  Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and suddenly the church went from being a community of outsiders to being the insiders, a fact that has over the centuries oftenjeopardized our capacity to hear clearly the good news of Jesus Christ.  Too often the church has been afflicted with the arrogance of those who think they are in the know and therefore are entitled.  

The truth is,  we are all outsiders who have been invited into the circle of God’s love.  There is always room in the circle because through Jesus we have all been invited in realm that we were not on our own entitled to possess. 

Jesus said, “Unless you turn and become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of God.”  Babies like Jacob are our teachers, showing us to let go of what we think we know, so we can experience again the wonder of being alive, to be here when we might well have never been here at all.

Paul Simon has this great line from one of his songs:  “Did you ever have a moment of grace when you brain took a seat behind your face?”  Yesterday I was invited to the home of Benjamin and Sudha Winston to celebrate the first birthday of their son Samuel.  It was an unusual experience for me, because there were about thirty people there and I was the only person who did not have an ancestry that traced back to India.  There was an Indian pastor on hand who passed out song books, with the majority of the songs in their Indian dialect.  We sang a couple of songs that I happily hummed and clapped along to, having the sort of moment of which Paul Simon sang. The meaning of the songs was clear enough, even if I could not understand the words:  we were singing of the great deeds of God, just like on the first Pentecost.  Then, for my benefit, they began to sing songs in English.  It was so thoughtful of the others to sing in such a way that I would feel fully included.  I thought about how often these good folks, newly immigrated to the United States, have likely found themselves in precisely the opposite situation; the outsider looking in.  They were so gracious; the holy spirit was blowing among us as celebrated together the gift of life in baby Samuel, just as it was given to baby Jacob.    

May we so live in this wondrous grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, empowered by the unifying power of the holy spirit.

A sermon preached on May 16th, 2010 based upon Acts 16:16 – 30.

Most of you are aware of the health challenges facing our brother Al Booth, but for those of you who aren’t, let me give you some background. Al is a much beloved member of our congregation, known for, among other things serving as our head cook, and channelling Santa Claus at Christmas time.   This past March 30^th Al was working at the church, providing hospitality for a bunch of visiting clergy, when he began to feel sick. His wife Gail left work to take him to the hospital, where within a couple of days, Al was given a diagnosis of a complex form of leukemia. Al would undergo a strong dose of chemotherapy to kill the active cancer cells, and then remain in the hospital until his body regained its strength. He would then be discharged to recuperate at home, returning for regular doses of maintenance chemotherapy. Eventually Al would undergo a bone marrow transplant, which would offer the possibility of a cure.

The gravity of the diagnosis wasn’t missed on Al and Gail, but nonetheless, buoyed by the love and prayers of their family and church, and appreciative of the very competent care he received from the oncology department at Morristown Memorial, Al approached his treatment with a positive attitude, maintaining his distinctive sense of humor. The initial treatment went well, and four weeks after entering the hospital Al was discharged, minus his beard and what little hair had been on his head. His recovery was two weeks ahead of schedule, and it allowed Al to make a brief cameo appearance in our Easter service, startling and inspiring those of us present with his portrayal of the risen Jesus appearing on the road to Emmaus.

Otherwise Al was confined to home, recuperating. He managed to plant some peas in his garden. A couple of weeks ago he went back into the hospital to receive the maintenance chemotherapy, which went fine. When I visited Al during that time he wanted to talk about how the plans were going for the upcoming outdoor worship service, fishing trip, and picnic that had been his brainchild. After just a couple of days, Al was back at home.

A couple of days later, however Al spiked a fever in the early evening, and Gail took him up to the emergency room, where Al’s numbers were found to be lower than expected. They managed to get his fever under control, but Al and Gail spent a sleepless night as they waited until the early morning for a room to open up.

Unfortunately, there was no room on the oncology ward where Al had previously spent his time, so he was placed on a regular medical ward. When I visited Al there, I found him exhausted, with no appetite, devoid of his usual sense of humor. His room was cramped with a view that consisted of a brick wall. The often noisy front desk was just outside his door.

Later Gail would describe to me shortcomings in the care he was receiving: nurses who didn’t understand that he was a cancer patient, meals that repeatedly came with foods he had specifically been restricted from eating, blood spills that were left uncleaned.  Al was supposed to be in this room only as long as it took for a room to open up on the oncology ward, but he was left waiting for several days.  An order to move Al was written, but over the weekend no one followed up on the order.

And so this past Monday morning Gail had had enough.   She started making a stink with the staff, and after a couple of hours on the phone she succeeded in getting him moved.

I arrived that afternoon to find Al and Gail in his new room back on the oncology ward. The mood had clearly lifted. Although Al’s numbers still stank, now at least Al and Gail were smiling, their contagious sense of humor restored. The room itself was larger, with a lovely view out the window.

Al’s exact words to describe what he had been experiencing on the previous ward was “failure to thrive,” the expression used to describe babies who waste away because of neglect. Back now with nursing staff who understood Al’s needs and with whom he had developed relationships of trust, his hope was restored.

At Morristown Memorial they’ve created one of the best oncology departments in the country that includes a wide range of alternative therapy treatments to compliment the traditional treatments. Al, and Gail as well, receive massage and Reike treatments, and listen to wandering musicians who play soothing music.

Not surprisingly, Al’s physical being quickly followed the lead of his spirit. His numbers began to climb, his appetite improved, and by the Friday Al was back home, once again looking towards the future.

Watching Al and Gail go through this experience, I was struck by the power of our environments to impact both our spiritual and physical vitality. Quite literally, the first ward was killing Al, and it wasn’t so much the individuals who worked there, as it was a system that wasn’t tuned into his needs. And in contrast, the culture of the oncology ward was for Al truly life-giving.

So this got me thinking about the various contexts in which we live out our lives – the cultures established in these place – in our families, in our work places, in our church. Are they life-giving? Or life-killing? Do they foster hope? Or promote despair?

It was with Al’s story – and the whole theme of the impact of our environments on our bodies and spirits – that I read our story this morning from the book of Acts. Paul and Silas have recently arrived to a new city in which they have been preaching the Gospel.   They’ve made a few converts, established a few friendships.

There’s this slave girl in town who is possessed by a demon which empowers her to tell fortunes, and this ability has been earning her masters some money. They don’t care that the demon oppresses her spirit; they just like the money she brings in. Instinctively, the slave girl is drawn to Paul land Silas as they preach in the power of God.   Eventually Paul turns his attention to her and casts out the demon. This is very good for the girl, but a problem for her owners who no longer can turn a profit on the girl’s affliction. They have power and money in that town, so they pull some strings to try and put Paul and Silas out of business, quicly arranging to have them arrested.

Having challenged the status quo with the power of the Gospel, Paul and Silas are thrown into an environment – jail – specifically designed to break their spirits. They are stripped, beaten, and locked up in chains in the utter darkness of the deepest dungeon. There is nothing subtle about this place;  its whole purpose is to produce “failure to thrive” big time.  Apparently the other prisoners who preceded Paul and Silas in this prison have already succumbed, sitting passively, silently in the darkness, pretty much having given up hope.

So, it is very striking that in this particular case, the environment doesn’t triumph. The jail doesn’t do in Paul and Silas, instead, Paul and Silas transform the culture of the jail.

Why does this happen?

There are a number of ways to answer this. First, something has changed in the way Paul and Silas approach the world as a result of having come to know Christ. Paul in particular now sees that dying is no big deal. In his encounter with the glorified Christ on the road to Damascus, he was lifted up into what he refers to as the “seventh heaven.”  From what he has seen there he knows that Christ awaits him in his life beyond death — that it’s exquisitely beautiful there.  If this is his time to die, so be it. The possibility of his impending death does not cast him down into despair.

Their encounter with Christ has also led Paul and Silas to expect to be surprised by the holy spirit actively at work in this world. The world may often seem to be God-forsaken, but they have come to know that it isn’t. When they come to the limits of what they can do, they know it is time to watch and wait for what God will do, and to be ready to cooperate when the Spirit begins to flow.

It is also the case that having encountered Christ, Paul and Silas now possess a sense of mission and purpose that can’t be taken from them simply because things don’t turn out the way they would prefer. Their mission now, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, is to share the good news of Christ with those who are living without his love and hope. Paul and Silas find themselves in prison, and there are people there who need Christ for sure, so it is a terrific place to carry out their mission.

You can’t underestimate the power of the bonds that make up the body of Christ. It is not insignificant that Paul and Silas have each other. It’s not for nothing that the Mormons and the Jehovah’s witnesses send people out two by two to knock on your door.  (Or that Al and Gail have each other.) They fortify each other.

They are also fortified by the knowledge of the praying community that loves them from beyond the walls of the prison. I am continually struck by how much it means to people in our congregation to know that we are praying for them when they are going through a time of crisis. The prayers lift them up.

It is also important to recognize the component of obedience in faith. Sometimes obedience means doing things that you don’t especially want to do, but you do them because your master has commanded you to do so and you trust that your master has your best interests at heart. Very possibly, Paul and Silas were impacted by the environment they found themselves thrust into. Their bodies naked, bruised, shackled in total darkness — how could they not help but feel their spirits cast down?

But their Lord has commanded them to sing songs of praise, and so that is what they do. And perhaps they begin by just going through the motions, but before long the singing takes over, and their spirits are lifted, and the whole space is transformed.  I’ve experienced this; perhaps you have too.

I suspect that Paul and Silas asked God to deliver them from that dark prison cell, but I don’t think they were rigidly locked into a specific outcome. The bottom line for them was, “Thy will be done.”  Being faithful, praising God, sharing the good news — this was the most important thing.

I think this is similar to the spirit found in people who best respond to a life threatening diagnosis. They want to get better. They are determined to do all in their power to get better. But it isn’t fear of death but rather their love of life that motivates them. They simply want to give it their best shot, come what may. It is a little like athletes who go out onto the playing field determined to give their very best effort.  Having done so, they can accept either victory or defeat.

So as the story progresses, Paul and Silas transform the atmosphere of that dark prison through the power of their songs of praise. The other prisoners are listening, struck by the change these men have wrought.

And then the earthquake happens, breaking open the prison cells. The God of surprises does the unexpected. It is telling that Paul and Silas don’t rush out the open doors as quickly as possible, demonstrating that getting out of jail wasn’t the most important thing. Suddenly there is a soul present who finds himself in utter despair. It’s telling really. The jailor, who moments before appeared solidly established as a part of the power structure, now concludes he has failed to keep his prisoners locked up and that he has no choice but to take his own life.

As such, he is ripe for the good news which drives Paul and Silas, and so instead of fleeing the prison, they go to the jailor and share Christ with him. The jailor puts down his sword and discovers a far firmer foundation to stand in life.

There is a word of caution here for all of us who are tempted to find our identity in our place in the power systems of this world. What is it that allows me to get up each morning and say yes to life? Is it my job, my money, my status, my power in the system? How precarious such a foundation is shown to be in the story of the jailor.

Victor Frankl was a Jewish pyschiatrist who survived a German concentration camp. He experienced first hand how critical a sense of meaning and hope is among prisoners; those who lost it were certain to die soon.  Afterwards he wrote passionately about the one thing your captors can not take away from you, and that is the dignity of choosing how you will respond to a given situation. In the deepest darkness the choice to stand with the light appears more brightly.

It is clear that Paul and Silas have a hold on a kind of freedom that is theirs in Christ that is greater than the veneer of freedom exhibited by the jailor and the others in power.

There is an interesting detail at the end of the story. The authorities realize that things had gotten a little out of hand the night of Paul and Silas’ arrest, an awareness that is heightened in the discovery that they are in fact Roman citizens. The authorities want Paul and Silas to slip quietly out the back door of the jail, as if nothing ever happened. But Paul and Silas refuse. They will walk out the front door in the light of day, their heads held high, witnessing to the travesty of justice that has taken place here.

So here’s what I would hope you would take away with you from this sermon:

Take some time to consider the various contexts in which you live out your life. In what ways do they eoncourage your creativity, promote a sense of freedom and possibility in your life? Or do these settings lead you to feel stifled, helpless, cautious, and compelled to take a passive posture?

Having looked closely at how you and others repond to the cultures you share, ask yourself where it could be possible to make changes to improve life giving quality of environment.   What concrete steps can you take?

The serenity prayer once again provides simple wisdom: Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change, the courage to change that which I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In oppressive contexts the things we cannot change stand out; that which can be changed may require more thought.  In the bleak prison cell that Paul and Silas found themselves in there were some serious restrictions on their movements because of the chains and the darkness and the beatings. Paul and Silas quickly identified something they could do, however: they could sing hymns of praise to God. They could project music into the silent darkness, and in doing so significantly change the atmosphere of the place. Their songs captured the attention of their fellow prisoners, challenging the assumption that despair would have the final word in this place.

Consider the fact that it really isn’t good for human beings to be alone. We need to partner with people we trust – drawing strength from one another – as we intentionally set out to improve the life-giving qualities of the settings in which we live out our lives.  Consciously build your team of the people who can work  with you to promote hope over despair.

Finally, do whatever you need to strengthen your faith. Take time to pray. Go to church. Read the Bible and other books that inspire and challenge your thoughts.   Sing alone and sing with others. Remind yourself that you need not fear death, and that God truly is actively at work  in the world actively seeking to reconcile and make peace and give life. Watch for, and develop your capacity to recognize where God invisibly is nudging things along. Welcome setbacks as new opportunities to carry out your deepest mission – to be a follower of JESUS, calling others to his great love.

A sermon preached on May 9, 2010 Mother’s Day based upon Revelation 21:10,22 -22:5, and on the occasion of the baptism of John Chauhan, son of Bankim and Janet. 

It was a delight for me to be able to hold baby John this past week when I visited with the family in preparation for the baptism.   My baby is now as tall as I am, so I haven’t had much baby time lately.   There surely is a sense in which when you look into the eyes of a baby you see the face of God.

Shortly after my visit to the Chauhans I read an article in the New York Times describing fascinating studies that have been done of little babies ages six months to twelve months.  In an experiment the babies, sitting on their parents’ laps would watch a puppet show. In one, a puppet was trying to make it up a steep hill.  Another puppet comes up behind him and helps push the first puppet up to the top of the hill — success!

A second time, the same puppet tries again to climb the steep hill.  This time, as he struggles a third puppet appears from above, and proceeds to push him down the hill, defeating his attempt to climb the hill. 

After repeating the same puppet show several times, the babies were presented with two puppets — the one that had helped and the one that had hindered the first puppet, and given a choice to choose either one.   By a large margin, the babies preferred the puppet that had been the help. 

In another variation, three puppets appear spread out across the stage.  The center puppet is bouncing a ball which he passes to the puppet on his right who bounces the ball then passes it back to the puppet in the center.  Then the ball is bounced to the puppet on the left, who promptly runs off the stage, absconding with the ball. Again, after several reenactments of this little morality play, the baby is presented with two puppets — the one who had played appropriately, and the one who had been a jerk.  The babies overwhelmingly preferred the puppet that had demonstrated a sense of fair play.  

The are several variations on the scenario witnessed by the babies, but consistently the babies show preference for the one who has done the “right thing”, so to speak.   The findings imply that there is some kind of innate moral sense in babies, primitive to be sure, but there nonetheless.   This is striking because scientists and philosophers had assumed that babies came into the world as a clean sheet, and that whatever sense of morality they come to manifest had to be taught to them by their culture.   But these studies reveal a sense of morality residing in their gut so to speak from the beginning. 

From a faith point of view, what we may be seeing revealed here is something of what we call the image of God knit into the baby’s DNA. 

There is a crucial role for sure to be played by the baby’s environment — by Moms and Dads and the larger community in nurturing this latent seed of moral vision in the developing child, and guiding the child to make the connections regarding what justice means in the larger world.  Shortly after reading this article I stumbled upon a book in the bookstore about “socio-paths” — people who grow up without any empathy for others, without a capacity for feeling guilt or remorse over wrongs committed against others.   It is believed that one in twenty-five people fall under the clinical diagnosis of socio-path.  They can come off as pretty normal at times, even charming and appealing.  Sometimes in fact socio-paths end up highly successful, because unencumbered by a conscience they find it easy to climb to the top of society’s power ladders.  It’s an affliction really.   They are missing their basic humanity.

There isn’t a whole lot of understanding regarding what causes a person to grow up a socio-path.  There is some evidence for a genetic component — the proverbial “bad seed.”  But clearly there is a strong environmental component as well.  70% of sociopaths grow up in homes where fathers are absent, leaving stressed out, overburdened moms to do the job of raising a child all by themselves.  Clearly, without the proper nurture of a loving family, the delicate seed of conscience may not find the soil necessary to take root and sprout. 

So what this means is that mothers (and fathers too, but this isn’t their day) are truly on the front lines in doing battle with the problems that show up on the front pages of our newspapers, afflicting all kinds of misery.   It is likely that it was a socio-path who drove a car packed with explosives to Times Square last week, and it was a socio-path who drove a truck packed with explosives a few years back to the IRS building in Oklahoma City, without any concern for the death and suffering would cause for so many others. Perhaps there were socio-paths sitting in the boardrooms of places like Goldman and Sachs when decisions were made about selling worthless junk bonds to investors that would reap profits for the company while wiping out the savings of their clients who trusted them, causing all kinds of pain. 

Mothers are irreplaceable.  It’s ironic really.  In a society that advances so rapidly, leaving so many of us feeling left behind by our lack of computer savvy, the basic success or failure of our society still comes down to the question of whether mothers like Janet (and fathers like Bankim) are properly valued — whether they get the support they need to be able to fulfill their high and holy calling to provide a loving home in which the image of God can flourish in a child.    

Our scripture lesson this morning comes from the last two chapters of the Bible.   It conjures up a vision of the final destination towards which all of creation has been moving since that original big bang fourteen and a half billions years ago.  John sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem, indeed heaven itself.   The creation story is referenced in this story of the last things:   the city contains the tree of life and the river that flowed through Eden.  It’s full of the light of God, so nothing is hidden.   Everything is revealed. 

The gates of the city are always open, and all the nations of the world bring their glory into this city.  In other words, “there’s always room in the circle” as we like to say here.  All are welcome.   This totally inclusive community is where all of creation has been aiming since the beginning of time. 

There is a paradox about the openness.  Everybody is welcome, but nothing accursed, no abominations are allowed in.   So what is it that must be left out before a person can enter?  Well, I think the little baby puppet shows provide some clarity here.  Cruelty, heartlessness, the qualities that lead a person to act like an unhelpful jerk — all that stuff that the little baby feels an innate repulsion towards –  that’s the sort of stuff that has to be left behind.

There may be some insight as to how exactly this works in the accounts of people who have had Near Death Experiences.*  They often speak in language similar to that used by John in his vision.    Twice John refers to how there is no need for lamps or sun and moon in the holy city because God’s light is always shining bright.  People who have had these close encounters with death almost universally speak of the extraordinary light they see, often identifying it with God or Christ.   Take, for instance, this account described by a woman to Dr. Raymond Moody:

“When the light appeared, the first thing he said to me was, ‘What do you have to show me that you’ve done with your life?’  or something to that effect.  And that’s when these flashbacks started.  I thought, ‘Gee, what is going on?’ because, all of a sudden, I was back in my early childhood.  And from then on, it was like I was walking from the time of my very early life, right up to the present.  

“It was really strange where it started, too, when I was a little girl, playing down by the creek in our neighborhood, and there were other scenes from that time – experiences I had with my sister, and things about neighborhood people, and actual places I had been. And then I was in kindergarten…“Now, I didn’t actually see the light as I was going through the flashbacks.  He disappeared as soon as he asked me what I had done, and the flashbacks started , and yet I knew that he was there with me the whole time, that (he) carried me back through the flashbacks, because I felt his presence, and because he made comments here and there.  He was trying to show me something in each one of these flashbacks…“All through this, he kept stressing the importance of love.”

Another man described the following:

“I first was out of my body, above the building, and I could see my body just lying there.  Then I became aware of the light — just light — being all around me.  Then it seemed there was a display all around me, and everything just went by for review, you might say.  I was really very shamed of a lot of the things that I experienced because it seemed that I had a different knowledge, that the light was showing me what was wrong, what I did wrong.  And it was very real…

“It showed me not only what I had done but even how what I had done had affected other people.  And it wasn’t like I was looking at a movie projector because I could feel these things.”  

 In the end, its the little things in life that matter, the simple interactions in life where we have choices to make between being helpful or being a jerk.  

Consistently in these accounts there is a sense that the light is characterized by an overwhelming sense of unconditional love and compassion.  The light isn’t “judgmental” in the sense that we tend to use the term, but there is nonetheless a very strong sense of accountability.  One’s life is measured by an uncompromising law of right and wrong, based on a central ethic of love.  

The implication of these descriptions is that these failures in living out love have to be acknowledged and left behind before a soul can fully enter city of God. 

 *Some of the most compelling Near Death Experiences come from children.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described hearing the stories of children who had had such experiences from diverse cultures throughout the world.  Typically they would speak of seeing loved one who had preceded them in death, often times, in instances where they didn’t even know the person had died.

A sermon preached on May 2^nd, 2010 based upon John 13:31-36.

Jesus said, “A new commandment I leave you with, that you should love one another, even as I have loved you.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

My first response in reading over this familiar passage was to bemoan the fact that we have only this one word, l-o-v-e love which we use for so many different behaviors and feelings.

Even if we set aside the ways we use this word to speak of certain activities (“I love fishing”) or things (“I love pizza”), we still are left with a broad variety of human “loves”.  For instance, there is the love of a child for a parent, and the love of a parent of a child, which we recognize as two distinctly different things.  There is the love of siblings as well as the love of friends, both of which are distinctly different from the love of lovers.  There is a distinction again between the love of those who have freshly fallen from that of couples who have been life-long companions. And then there is that love into which the great religious traditions encourage us to extend ourselves — the love of strangers, and in the case of Jesus, even the love of enemies. 

So, I found myself wanting more clarity regarding the nature of the love Jesus was referring to when he said we were to love one another. 

There are distinctions we can make as we try to figure out what Jesus had in mind.  For instance, I’ve done children’s sermons in the past where I showed the kids the words l-o-v-e and l-i-k-e and talked about the difference — how it isn’t possible to like everybody but it is, in theory possible to love everybody — act with the other’s best interests in mind.  This is another way of speaking of love as an action rather than as a feeling, with the implication that Jesus meant for us to understand love as an action, not a feeling.

But as I ponder this, I have second thoughts about this tidy distinction.  You can for a time motivate yourself to act lovingly towards someone you don’t really like, but it will be mighty tough to sustain such a relationship over the long haul if you don’t eventually come to hold them in some affection.

I read over CS Lewis’ helpful book, “The Four Loves” in which he makes distinction between what he calls “need love” and “gift love.”  The first is where we truly need something from the person we love; we are dependent on this other person, as in the case of children’s love for their parents.  In contrast, gift love isn’t looking for something in return. A good parent would be seen as an expression of this.  

Once again however, the distinction gets cloudy:  those of us who are parents recognize that even as we pour ourselves out on behalf of our children, there remains a sense in which we need our children, and there are moments when children can truly act for the good of their parents.     

When we hear Jesus say that we should love one another, it is easy to assume that he’s referring specifically to what we might think of as the more noble expressions of love – gift love — the love that gives without expecting anything in return.

There is some truth to that.  After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Love one another as I have loved you”? 

But what I’ve been thinking this week is that Jesus probably had in mind the whole ball of wax that is love.

Even Jesus was not without need in his love. Like any human being, Jesus grew attached to his friends, weeping when Lazarus died. He needed their companionship in his loneliness, expressed most clearly when in the Garden of Gethsemene he suffered over his impending death on the cross, only to find his friends have withdrawn from him into sleep.   Jesus wept over the people of Jerusalem when he realized they would not receive what he had to give them. 

And so the distinction between gift love and need love, though useful, proves inadequate to describe the reality of our lives.  To be a human being is to be needy, dependent, in ways we are often loath to admit.

It is important to note the context in which Jesus said to his disciples, “A new commandment I give you, that you should love one another.”  He says this right after calling them “little children,” acknowledging their fundamental neediness, and speaking specifically of the fact that he is about to leave them by death.  

The context is not unlike one that most of us have found ourselves in at some point in our lives.  We sit at the bedside of a loved one, knowing they are about to die – knowing how badly we will miss them. To love one another in the manner we human beings love is to set our hearts up to be broken, and there is nothing quite so painful in life.  

If we are determined to avoid such pain, the only thing to do is to stay clear of the love that attaches our hearts to others.  There are basically two ways to go about this. The first is to pursue the path that this world often promotes, where we love things and use people, devoting our days to accumulating stuff and the kind of pleasures that don’t involve exposing our hearts to others.  We all know that Jesus isn’t big on this way of living.

The second way is to pursue detachment in the name of being super spiritual. It involves avoiding attachments of the heart so that we can “give” without being concerned about receiving anything in return. It is to set our minds on sainthood through bypassing earth.

It may be surprising to realize that Jesus doesn’t care for this way either.  Like it or not, earth is where we live, inhabiting mortal flesh that is inherently needy. So, as Jesus is about to leave them in death, he tells them not to love less but to love more.   Give your heart away.  Trust that though you will be setting yourself up to have your heart broken, the holy spirit will be with you to see you through the pain.  

These days the tendency is for human beings to be very careful where we invest our love.  Our spouse, our family – that’s often about as far as we go. 

No, says Jesus.  Love with abandon.  Love many, many people in a variety of ways, but always with an aspect of generous gift love mixed in.  Love the people in your church in such a way that you will weep copiously if they die before you do.    

There is a transformation that takes place over time as we invite God into all our relationships.   They deepen, becoming a thing of extraordinary beauty.  

One of the distinctive qualities of the love of Jesus was his capacity to love people whom others, as well as perhaps themselves, found unlovable.   He loved the lepers, the tax-collectors and sinners, the demon possessed. 

In the hearts of each of us there are places where, when we go there, we feel distinctly unlovable.  When we find ourselves in these places that perhaps we manage to keep hidden most of the time, there is this thought that “if people could see me as I am now, they would never love me.”  Such a place resides in all of us. 

Jesus comes to us in that place and says, “My child, your sins are forgiven, arise and go in peace.”  

“Love one another as I have loved you.”  These unlovable spaces are the barriers to the deepening of our loves, and it is through the abiding presence of the Lord that we find the healing to move deeper into these connections of the heart that are love.   

And in the end, this, and only this,  is how people will know that we are followers of Jesus.

The bishops of the United Methodist Church have composed a pastoral letter entitled, “God’s Renewed Creation:  Call to Hope and Action”, with an accompanying foundation document.   They have asked that the pastoral letter be presented to local congregations. On Sunday, April 25, 2010, marking the Festival of Creation (Earth Sunday), selections from these documents were read in worship by seventeen readers, with accompanying music by piano, the choir and bells.   You can find the complete documents at the website for the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference  http://www.gnjumc.org/651/

(Single bell.)

Jeff:  “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” 

(Single bell.)

Kelsey:  Genesis 1 verse 31.

(Single bell.)

(Choir hums a verse of “Be Still, My Soul.”) 

Jeff:   God’s creation is in crisis. 

Michael:  As the bishops of the United Methodist Church have declared, we cannot remain silent while God’s people and God’s planet suffer. 

Kelsey: This beautiful natural world is a loving gift from God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.

Michael:  God has entrusted its care to all of us, but we have turned our backs on God and on our responsibilities. 

Jeff: Our neglect, selfishness, and pride have fostered:

(Single bell is rung.)

Kelsey: pandemic poverty and disease,

(Single bell is rung.)

Michael:  environmental degradation and climate change, and

(Single bell is rung.)

Jeff:  a world awash with weapons and violence.   

Kelsey:  We must see and respond to the ways in which these particular threats interact with one another.  

Michael:  For example, we cannot address global poverty without addressing water shortage made worse every day by global warming. 

Kelsey:  We cannot stem the proliferation of weapons without examining dwindling natural resources or minerals as causes of violent conflict. 

Michael:  We cannot talk bout the need for health care, schools, roads, and wells without re-evaluating the amount of money we spend on weapons. 

(Michael and Kelsey sit down.  Bob Keller and Anna take their places. Bells begin.  )

(Bells: “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”  Two times through.)

Jeff:  We must prepare our hearts and minds by turning to God, placing all anxiety, loss, and grief before the One who is our every present help in time of trouble. 

Anna:  And, with God’s grace, we remember the story that guides and sustains us, holds us accountable, and gives us hope. 

Bob:  It is the story that begins with God’s loving gift of creation and culminates in God’s promise of renewal for all. 

Anna:  It is the story of the Word made flesh, the Incarnation, God’s presence with us. 

Bob:  It is the story of Jesus’ ministry to the most vulnerable, his denunciation of violence, greed, and oppression, and his call to discipleship. 

Anna:  It is the story of resurrection, of the triumph of life over death, and of the promise of new life in Christ. 

Jeff:  And it is the story of transformation, from old to new, from woundedness to wholeness, and from injustice and violence to the embrace of righteousness and peace. 

Bob:  We have a role to play in this story, but we have not faithfully performed it. 

God entrusted us with creation. 

Anna: But, instead of faithfully caring for our peaceful planet and its people, we have neglected the poor, polluted our air and water, and filled our communities with instruments of war. 

Jeff:  We have turned our backs on God and one another. 

Bob:  By obstructing God’s will, we have contributed to pandemic poverty and disease, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons and violence. 

Anna:  Around the world, we feel the effects of this interconnected trio in different ways and to varying degrees,

Bob:  but there is no doubt that we all are experiencing elements of the same storm. 

(Bob and Anna sit down.   Andee and David take their places.  Anita begins playing her meditative piano piece.)

Jeff:  The storm builds as powerful forces swirl together… to impact poverty:

(Single bell is rung.)

David:  The global economic crisis,  as systems built upon self-interest and fraud devastate the global economy; the resource crisis, as food, water and energy become scarce; the justice/poverty crisis, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen; the global health crisis, as millions die of the preventable diseases of poverty like malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis; and the refugee crisis, as millions of people are displaced by violence, natural disaster, and loss of jobs. 

Jeff:  To impact the environment:

(Single bell is rung.) 

Andee:  The energy crisis, as oil reserves run out within two or three decades; the climate crisis,  as increasing greenhouse gases threaten to scorch the earth and desertification erodes productive land, polar ice melts, fire seasons lengthen, and coastal floods and severe storms increase in number; the bio-diversity crisis, as at least one-fifth of all plant and animal species face extinction by 2050.

Jeff:  To impact weapons and violence:

(Single bell is rung.) 

David:  The weapons crisis, as the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical attack looms and precious resources are poured into the sink-hole of futile arms races; the small arms crisis, as roughly 639 million arms and light weapons circulate the world and the illegal small arms trade is estimated at close to $1 billion; the “security” crisis,  as global military spending surpasses 1.2 trillion dollars in 2007, with the United States spending 45% of this amount.

Andee:  Despite these interconnected threats to life and hope, God’s creative work continues. 

David:  Despite the ways we all contribute to these problems, God still invites each one of us to participate in the work of renewal. 

Jeff:  We must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own hearts and minds. 

(Piano stops.)

Jeff:  We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it. 

(Jeff initiates  “Spirit of the living God” sung acapello.  David and Andee sit down.  Hwa and Bob take their place.  At conclusion of singing one verse, Hwa reads.)

Hwa:  Today, the human family is awakening to alarming news: 

Bob Adams:  after several thousand years of a stable climate that enabled us to thrive, the earth is heating up at an accelerating rate. 

Hwa:  Climate change poses a particular threat to the world’s poor because it increases

the spread of diseases like malaria and causes conflicts over dwindling natural

resources. 

Bob Adams:  Easy access to small arms ensures that such conflicts turn deadly, and the specter of a nuclear war that would destroy the earth continues to loom over us. 

Hwa:  Clearly, we have arrived at “a hinge of history,” a revolutionary time of great

challenge. 

Bob Adams:  We turn again to the ancient wisdom of our scriptures and remember the

ringing challenge of God: 

Hwa:  “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” 

Bob Adams:  Isaiah chapter 43, verse 19.  (Bell rings once.)

Hwa:  Do we not see signs that God is at work in this crisis?

(Anita begins playing again.  Hwa and Bob sit down. Jack and David Kinsley take their places.)

Jeff:  As the earth is transformed, God has blessed human beings with the capacity to read the signs of the times and to respond with intelligence and faith. 

Jack:  Learned scientists and experts monitor the change that impact our very survival.  They are clarifying the measures we must take immediately to save our forests, oceans, air, human and animal ecosystems. 

David:  More than that:  God has inspired human beings to envision new futures and to invent the tools necessary to make them a reality: 

Jack:  Technologies to replace fossil fuels with energy from the wind and sun; new forms of transportation, “green jobs,” and guides for cutting “carbon footprints.” 

David:  Thousands and thousands of person in faith-based and community-based coalitions, congregations, businesses and farms are already acting for change in quiet, persistent and profound ways. 

Jack:  Even further:  God is bringing people together to plan and to act upon emerging

realities:  

David:  Villages, towns and local governments urge and guide neighbors to share common cause; cities, states and nations identify the special needs of their citizens and

implement solutions; the United Nations and international agencies research global

problems, identify solutions, and shape the organizations to address them. 

Jack:  Public leaders are working at a feverish pace to reshape the rules of engagement between humans and the earth. 

David:  Empowering all of this is an amazing network of globe-circling monetary, industrial, transportation and communications systems such as the human family has never before known.

Jack:  Finally:  Christian and interreligious communities are speaking out boldly on the

interrelated nature of the present crisis. 

David:  When we see all of creation as one body, we know that our collective health cannot be realized as long as some still suffer.

Jack:  We are no more secure than the most vulnerable among us; no more prosperous than the poorest; and no more assured of justice and dignity than those who live in the shadows of power, void of fairness and equity. 

David:  As disciples of Christ, who showed special concern for the most vulnerable members of society, we must open our eyes to the ways in which environmental degradation and violence particularly hurt the poor and marginalized. 

(Jack and David return to their seats.  Piano stops.  Ese and Garrett take their places.)

Jeff:  Why is all of this happening?  Because the peoples of the world are reading the signs carefully — we see clearly that God is doing a new thing, and that God is inviting the human family to participate in transformation.  

(Bell rings once.)

Ese:  “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

(Bell rings once.)

Garrett:  Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11.

Ese:  It is understandable to look out on this broken and suffering world and feel despair. 

Garrett:  But the brokenness and suffering are not the complete story. 

Ese:  They are part of our experience, but not the sum total of it. 

Jeff:  Amidst corruption,

Garrett:  there is honesty;

Jeff:  amidst greed,

Ese:  there is generosity;

Jeff:  amidst killing,

Garrett:  there is compassion;

Jeff:  amidst destruction,

Ese:  there is creation;

Jeff:  amidst devastation;

Garrett:  there is preservation;
Jeff:  amidst apathy,

Ese:  there is righteous indignation,

Garrett:  holy dissatisfaction,

Ese:  and a passion for the possible.  If we look carefully, we see seeds of hope that can be cultivated by God’s Spirit. 

(Ese and Garrett sit down.  Denise and Kate take their places.  Choir starts humming #528 “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, two times until ending below.)
Jeff:  In East Africa, dock workers refuse to off-load a foreign vessel carrying smuggled small arms.  Doing what they can to stop the killing in their continent, they also send word to other dock-workers who refuse the shipment when it arrives farther south. 

Denise:  United Methodists from Lage, Germany forge a partnership with a people in Cambine, Mozambique to install solar panels on the local maternity hospital and a theological seminary. 

Kate:  In a number of United States cities, people of faith are joining together in a dynamic program called “Heeding God’s Call” to reduce gun violence.

Denise:  John Welsey insisted,

Jeff:  “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social.  No holiness but social holiness.” 

Kate:  Ours is not solely a private faith, but one that also orients us toward God and the needs of our neighbor and world. 

Denise:  We feel the energy in thousands every day in our United Methodist connection. 

We are strengthened and inspired by the Toberman Neighborhood House in San Pedro, California, which provides services for gang prevention and gang intervention, family counseling and mental health, child care, and community organizing. 

Kate:  The Toberman House is one of 100 national mission institutions founded by the women of the Methodist tradition in 1903 and still supported by UMW Mission giving. 

Denise:  Since 14 were killed during a workers’ strike in 2004 in the Philippines, members of The United Methodist Church have organized weekly to visit workers, hear their stories, witness, struggles, visit the Congress, circulate petitions and renew their resolve to work for justice and peace. 

Kate:  These life-changing experiences of sharing strengths, fears, and vulnerabilities, as well as faith and love, empower young people to choose hope amid discouragement.

(Choir’s humming comes to an end.  Denise and Kate sit down.  Bert and Fred take their places. 

Jeff:  Stories about our disregard and destruction of one another and the earth more frequently grab the headlines.  But acts of perseverance, compassion, care, positive innovation take place every day in every corner of our world. 

(Anita begins playing meditative music again.)

Bert:  Right now, there is someone writing a letter to oppose a discriminatory practice or to advocate on behalf of workers treated unjustly or to support the ratification of a weapons ban. 

Fred:  The United Methodist Committee on Relief is setting up disaster response centers and training to “prevent a bad thing from becoming worse.” 

Bert:  Someone is sitting by a bedside to provide comfort in a community center, a trainer prepares a doctor to use methods of nonviolent resistance in order to make a change without violence. 

Fred:  Somewhere, there is a new school opening and a new well functioning. 

Bert:  People are unpacking boxes of medical supplies and mosquito nets. 

Fred:  Children are educating their parents about global warming, and organizations are examining their carbon footprint. 

Bert:  New forms of transportation are coming on the market:  hybrid cars and plug-in cars and hydrogen cars and cleaner burning diesels that do not give children respiratory diseases as they roar through neighborhoods. 

Fred:  With the tools of ecumenical organizations congregations are doing energy audits, recycling materials, replacing energy-guzzling appliances and installing solar panels and wind turbines. 

Bert:  No matter how discouraging things seem, no matter how overwhelmed and anxious we feel; no matter how apathetic or cynical we become, God is already at work in the world.  (Piano ends.)

Jeff:  We must only open our eyes to see God’s vision, open our hearts to receive God’s grace, and open our hands to do the work God calls us to do. 

Please pray with us.

Bert:  (Slowly.)  Powerful God of grace and mercy, (bell rings)

Fred:  Make us wise as to how fragile and dependent and connected we are, (bell rings)

Jeff:  That in the indulgence in the destruction of others, (bell rings)

Bert:  We inevitably destroy ourselves. (bell rings.)

Fred:  Give us the grace to be thankful for what we have, (bell rings)

Jeff:  And the willingness to share.  (bell rings)

Bert:  As your church labours in the world,  (bell rings)

Fred:  Cause it to be more interested in your reign of righteousness  (bell rings)

Jeff:  Than in its own survival, (bell rings)

 Bert:  So that the world may grow into a kinder, gentler, safer place in which to live.  (bell rings)

 Fred:  In Jesus’ name, Amen.  (bell rings.)

A sermon preached on April 18th, 2010 based upon John 21:1 – 17.

In the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel we hear the wonderous stories of Jesus’ appearances to his disciples that took place in Jerusalem shortly after his crucifixion. In the story we heard today from the 21st chapter, time has passed. The disciples have left Jerusalem and are back in Galilee where they originally had came from. Life has become “routine” again. Things are getting back to “normal”, whatever that means.

For the disciples, the question arises, “Now what do we do?” They’re not sure. Not knowing what else to do, Peter declares, “I’m going fishing.” The community needs to eat, after all, needs to pay its bills, and fishing, at least, is something Peter knows how to do, having started out as a fisherman. Lacking any other ideas regarding what to do now, the others decide to go with him.

But the fishing doesn’t go very well. Through the course of a night, they lower their net time and time again off the side of their boat, only to bring it back up each time empty.

Jesus’ resurrection seems fading into the past. It has meaning for the future in so far as eventually they hope to be with Jesus again, presumably when they die and go to heaven. But his resurrection has lost its meaning for the present.

And so what we have described here is the disciples falling into a “rut.” They are just putting in time — killing time, doing the same thing over and over again, because at least they know how to do it.

So this is our theme today: ruts. Where in our lives have we fallen into ruts? We can get stuck in our work life, so that we’re just biding time, not really looking foward to work, with the purpose for being there merely earning a paycheck.

Our family life and most intimate relationships can get stuck in ruts, where we wear one another out, having the same old arguments, frustrations, conversations repeated over and over again.

We can get stuck in our frienships and our community involvments, so that they come to evoke little enthusiasm from us.

We can get stuck in a rut in the church.

Where in your life are you falling into a rut?

At the end of this long, tedious night of fishing, Jesus appears on the seashore, unrecognized by the disciples who are a hundred yards out in their boat. “Children,” he asks, “Do you have any fish?”

I am struck by the fact that he calls them “children.” I doubt very much they felt like children at that moment. They were weary adults, joylessly shouldering the responsibilities of life, doing their job.

Children don’t fall into ruts the way adults do. Children know how to play. Is Jesus reminding them that they are, in fact, children of God, and that unless they turn and embrace their identity, they will be doomed to stay stuck in their rut? Is Jesus implying that they need to sop working so hard and begin playing to find a way out of their rut?

I take his question to be pretty straight forward: Do you have any fish? How’s that fishing thing working out for you? Are you finding satisfaction, gratification in your work? Do you have anything to show for all your labor?

The same question comes to us, inviting reflection upon our lives. In our labors, whether at home, or in church, or at our job, are we finding satisfaction?

Following the question, comes a direction: “Cast your nets on the right side of the boat.” Apparently they’ve been casting their nets repeatedly on the left side — why not try the right side instead?

Again, I take this direction to be pretty straight forward. If you’ve been doing something over and over without success, why not try doing something different? What have you got to lose?

The definition of a neurosis is said to be doing the same thing over and over again, each time hoping to get the satisfaction that every other time you failed to receive. Eventually you despair, realizing you’re stuck. You conclude it has to be this way: dull, tedious, lifeless. You start putting in your time waiting for retirement, waiting for death and the promised happiness of heaven, because life itself has become a rut.

But as you plod along unsuccessfully in your fishing bot, Jesus appears on the shore to tell you it really doesn’t have to be this way. You think it does, but it doesn’t.

One of the striking things about the various resurrection accounts in the New Testament is how down-to-earth they are. They involve breakfast, supper, fishing. The resurrection of Jesus is meant to transform these very down-to-earth lives we live in the here and now. There is an abundance hiding here that we’re missing, Jesus is telling us.  To discover it we’ve got come at life from a different angle — try something new.

The experience of being stuck in a rut is a denial of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

Peter was a fisherman. I’m a preacher. It is pretty much all I’ve ever done. I wish I knew how to do other things, but this is what I know best. Over the nearly 30 years I’ve been doing this work, there were often times I’ve fallen into ruts. Preaching became a tedious, burdensome thing. There is a sermon that has to get written by Sunday, so I’ve got to force myself to sit down in my study and get busy reading over the commentaries and such until eventually I get a bite on my line, and pull something together for Sunday.

Jesus shows up in my study and tells me, “It really doesn’t have to be this way. Your whole demeanor as you go about this work is denying the fact that I am, in fact, alive. You could be catching a whole oddle of fish instead of waiting around for little nibble. Writing a sermon can be fun — a kind of play — an adventure, full of surprises. Stop approaching it the same old stuck way, and you will discover insights and inspirations showing up in all kinds of surprising places.”

And I have found it to be so.

And so I move now from the experience of writing a sermon to the business of building cars. A surpising leap, I’m  sure but with Jesus encouraging me to look in new places for the fish, that’s the leap I’m making.

On the radio program “This American Life” I heard the story of a General Motors auto manufacturing plant in California that had such a poor record in producing cars that in 1982 the plant was shut down. A couple of thousand workers were laid off.

In an unusal partnership, however, the plant was reopenned a few months later, jointly run by Toyota and General Motors. This time the plant would operate under the principles of a Toyoto plant, which for some time now had been producing higher quality cars that General Motors had managed to build.

For the most part, it was the same old workers who were re-employed in the new plant, but in preparation to the re-opening the workers were flown to Japan in small groups for two weeks at a time where they worked side by side with workers in a Toyoto plant, learning a new philosophy of car production.

In the old GM plant there had been a highly adversarial relationship between workers and management, with neither side trusting the other. On the assembly lines workers were pigeon-holed into one specific job that they did over and over endlessly. (Sound familiar?) The workers were never allowed to stop the assembly line, which meant that when something went wrong, the defect was simply passed along, costing the company in terms of both poorly made cars as well as the added expense of having to correct the mistakes after the fact.

Management assumed that if you let the workers stop the assembly line they would just do so endlessly because workers didn’t really want to work and would take advantage of the situation to avoid working. Absenteeism was rampant in the old model, but because of the power of the auto worker unions, there was little management could do about it.

From the point of view of the workers, the whole purpose of working was merely to accumulate seniority by putting in year after year at tedious, unsatisfying jobs, eventually reaching a level of earning that their education and skills could never find elsewhere.

The Japanese model, in contrast, emphasized teamwork. Workers were placed in teams; in the course of a day the workers within a team would take turns doing a variety of jobs, thereby lessening the monotony of the assemply line. Workers were given economic incentives for making suggestions for how to make the system work better — unheard of in the old model. And workers were empowered, even encouraged to stop the assembly line whenever something wasn’t progressing right, at which point managers would come to assist in rectifying the problem.

In this new model, absenteeism dropped dramatically. Workers described looking forward to coming to work for the first time, and taking pride in being a part of a team that was constantly engaged in a process of building a better car.

In this one particular plant the successful implentation of this entirely new work culture led to dramatic improvements in the plant’s productivity and efficiency.

Whereas once upon a time GM had been far and away the most successful automotive company in the world, as years passed the company saw its market share dwindle in face of other world-wide companies that were produciung better cars more efficiently.

Now here’s the unfortunate part of the story: Many people within GM recognized that the success experienced at this particular plant pointed the way the entire company needed to move in order to succeed in an increasingly competitive market. Attempts at implementing such changes, however were met with tremendous resistence from the institutional status quo. “This isn’t how we do things. There is nothing wrong with the way we do thing. We don’t need to change.” Over time, more and more workers ended up being laid off. And last year GM filed for bankrupcy.

I thought about the instituational church when I heard this story. For the past fifty years the mailine church has been gradually losing members. That status quo however resisted any fundamental change in the way we go about being the church. But that’s another story.

Unfortunately, there is something about we human beings that prefers being stuck in a rut. The rut is familiar. We’re doing the thing we already know how to do, and even though our sense of satisfaction in our work diminishes, we prefer to keep doing the same thing over and over.

So take a look at your life. If there is a place where you are stuck in a rut, take it as a given that God doesn’t want you to be in that rut. Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly, and ruts are the opposite of abudant life.

Make a point this week of trying to do something differently from the way you usually do things. Cast your net down in new places. Trust that Jesus is there with you; what have you got to lose?

In our story, the disciples do as Jesus says, and suddenly there is this enormous catch of fish in their net. They realize that the stranger on shore is Jesus, at which point Peter jumps in the water and swims to shore. They others drag the catch of fish to shore.

Jesus has breakfast waiting for them. (When was the last time you had breakfast on the beach?)

When breakfast is over, Jesus comes and sits down beside Peter. Back at the Last Supper, Peter had told Jesus that even if the other disciples abandon him, he wouldn’t. But that night Jesus denied Jesus three times.

Looking now into his eyes, Jesus asks three times, “Simon Peter, do you love me?’ eter doesn’t want to have this conversation. He doesn’t want to go back there to his failure on the night Jesus was arrested.

This is a story about dealing with unfinished business. One of the reasons we get stuck in our ruts is we have unfininished business that is holding us back from living open to the abundance of God’s grace.

Jesus knows that Peter won’t be able to provide the kind of leadership needed in the new community until he deals with the guilt he is carrying around inside him. He’ll play it safe, doing the same old things over and over because he’s afraid that otherwise he may screw up again.

So Jesus gives Peter an opportunity to deal with his unfinished business. His three public affirmations of his love for Jesus makes amends, so to speak, for his three public denials. He can move on now.

So try something new this week. Be playful; a little bit crazy. Trust that its better to look foolish than to be stuck in your rut. And know that Jesus is with you.

A sermon preached by Bob Keller on April 11th, 2010 based upon John 20: 19 – 31.

We all have our favorite Bible stories and the one that was just read for us from John’s Gospel is one of mine.  It’s also one of the very few scriptures that always appears in the same place in the lectionary year-after-year.  But its familiarity is not why it’s one of my favorites.

For me, it embodies the very nature of my walk with Christ.  In the next few minutes I hope to tell you why.

Let’s go back 2,000 years.  Imagine yourself to be one of Jesus’ disciples.  You followed this man for the past three years.  You witness the wonders, the miracles, and the signs.  You had hoped that he would establish God’s kingdom on earth.  But it ended.  It ended horribly.  Something went terribly, terribly wrong.  Your faith was shattered.  Even Jesus’ faith may have been shattered as you remember him crying out as he hung on the cross – “Father, why have you forsaken me?”  The blood drained from his body and, in the disciples minds, so did the hope for God’s kingdom.  It is finished.

They were afraid, very afraid.  People had seen them with this man.  Would they become victims, too?  Now imagine yourself in this position.  Go ahead and close your eyes if you have to – it’s early enough in my message that you won’t fall asleep.  You run.  You have to hide.  You gather with your co-conspirators as you were likely being called, and you hide.  You find a room and you seal the door.  You cover the windows, if there are any, and you tremble.  “What if they find us?  Will they crucify us, too?”  One of the 10 urges the others to “shhh”, we might be heard.

Then in the quiet they hear “Shalom,”  “Peace be with you.” 

If you had your eyes closed, open them now, just as the disciples would have to see Jesus standing before them.  None of them heard the door open, yet here was Jesus standing before them.  They knew it was Jesus because he showed them his hands and his side.

Then he said again, “Shalom.” 

Thomas wasn’t there for any of this.  We don’t know where he was or why he wasn’t there, but we know he joined the disciples sometime after Jesus appeared to them.  They were excited to tell Thomas what they had seen. 

A little background on Thomas:  Contrary to popular belief, Thomas’ first name was not ‘doubting.’  Though his skepticism is what he seems to be remembered for.  Remember it was Thomas, ever-faithful Thomas, who, when Jesus heard of Lazarus’ death, said let’s go and die with him.  The other disciples didn’t want to go back to Bethany.  They feared the crowds that wanted to stone Jesus.

Remember it was Thomas who asked Jesus one of the most famous questions. “Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

But Thomas is remembered for saying “Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it.”

We’re told that a week goes by.  I can’t imagine what that week was like, so maybe some of you can help me out with this.

 Imagine being cooped up with 10 people for a week – all of them telling you that they saw Elvis, no, really, it was Elvis!  He was at Dunkin’ Donuts.  We saw him – right there with the cream-filled donuts!”  Would you have doubts about the sanity of your friends?  Would you go mad?   The disciples, meanwhile, were likely just as crazed as Thomas for they had seen the risen Christ.  HE IS RISEN! 

Notice how Thomas deals with his doubt. He shares it. He tells them that their tale is unbelievable – unless I see for myself.   He also stays with the group. He is willing to stay to see how things work out. 

Let’s play a little game. I’ll say a word, and you tell me its opposite. Don’t be shy, just say the answer.

Black
Boy

Left

Up
Faith

The response took a little longer on that one, didn’t it?

What exactly is the opposite of faith? Faith – a confidence, belief or trust in someone or something without proof.  I’m not sure what the best answer is. Maybe the opposite of faith is unbelief. Often it seems that the opposite of faith is fear – You of little faith, why are you afraid?

One thing that I am sure about is that doubt is not the opposite of faith. Many people of faith, I’d venture to say all people of faith, have times of doubt or areas of doubt in their lives. We hush that up tough, don’t we?   We prefer to say that we are confused or that we don’t understand, but, in our hearts and minds, we have doubts.

Thomas’ doubts had a purpose.  Thomas hung in there because he wanted to know the truth.  Thomas is consistent in his character.  He struggled in his faith despite what he may have felt.  He didn’t hesitate to follow Jesus to Bethany with full knowledge, and belief, that Jesus and all of them might be killed.

Have you ever struggled with doubt?  I mean REALLY struggled?  I know I have.  We doubt ourselves.  Am I making the right decision?  We doubt others.  We likely doubt our faith. 

But doubt has a purpose for us, just as it did for Thomas.

The heroes of the faith all had doubts. Abraham laughed in disbelief when God promised to make him the father of nations. David, the man after God’s own heart, was guilty of adultery and murder. Doubt that much would come of him!  And there is that famous story in Mark that tells us of the father of a troubled child who cries out, “Lord I believe, help me overcome my unbelief.”

Doubt encourages re-thinking.  It sharpens the mind rather than changing it.  Doubt asks the questions, gets the answers and pushes for a decision.  Doubt is like lifting your foot.  You’re poised to either move forward or backward.  But there is no motion until you put your foot down. 

Let’s play another game. Guess what I’m holding in my hand. Do you have any idea? What if I told you that I am holding a coin? Do you believe me? Do you have faith in what I say?   Now I have opened my hand and you can see that I was holding a coin. Now you have sure knowledge that I was holding a coin. Does that mean that your faith in me has diminished? No, in fact you may see me as a tiny bit more trustworthy than before.

The Rev. Tim Zukas summarized that little exercise by saying:  Many of us treat faith and knowledge as mutually exclusive. We think like this. In the universe of everything that might be, some of it we know for sure and we accept the rest by faith. Therefore, as knowledge increases, the need for faith declines. Because we have heard scientific accounts of the beginning of the universe, we feel that we no longer need God as an explanation of the event. As we unravel the chemistry of life, we assume that we have diminished the divine mystery of life. We think that faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive and we replace one with the other.

That is a profound misunderstanding of faith. Faith has more to do with relationship than with ideas. Faith is more concerned with the purposes, the why’s of life, than it is with the mechanisms, the how’s of life. Learning about ourselves or our world should increase our awe and bring us closer to our creator. It should not push us apart.

There are other common misunderstandings of faith.

Faith is not a feeling. Those who are in search of religious experiences can become nothing more that religious junkies looking for the next high.

Faith is not performance. It is true that as we develop in our relationship with God we will evidence the fruits of the spirit. However, the fact that we sometimes fail is not an indication that our faith is not real.

Faith does not mean that we get everything right. We can have a genuine relationship with God and still have serious errors in our understanding. Discovering that we have an error someplace in our understanding does not invalidate the relationship we have had with God.

So what if you find yourself with serious doubts. What should you do?

Think about this. It is often said that human beings have deep psychological needs for assurance and acceptance. It is argued that a common response to those needs is to imagine the existence of God who satisfies them. But isn’t the opposite more rational. Couldn’t it be that we have this need for God because God does exist and created us to live in a relationship with him? Imagine a three-year old child lost and alone in a store crying for his mommy. Now a store clerk comes and tries to calm the child. “I know that you have insecurities and a desire for a nurturing presence in your life. Those feelings, while real, have caused your psyche to create this imaginary mommy figure. It is time that you realized that there is no such thing as mommy and that you learn to address those needs in other ways.” That is nonsense, of course. Just because mothers meet real psychological and emotional needs does not mean that mothers don’t exist. In fact the opposite is true. We are wired to seek a nurturing relationship with our mothers, and mothers have a maternal instinct, precisely because the mother-child relationship is real. The needs wouldn’t make any sense if no such relationship existed.

Thomas had needs.  He needed proof positive that it was the risen Jesus that the disciples saw.  Jesus knew this.  He didn’t say, “Too bad, Thomas.  You’ll just have to go on faith that I rose from the dead.”

Instead, Jesus appeared again.  The doors to the room were again locked, yet Jesus stood among them.  He said, “Shalom – Peace be with you.”  Jesus offered his hands and his pierced side for Thomas to see and touch and he told him “Stop doubting and believe.”

And Thomas’ eyes were opened, his doubt dispelled.  He said, “My Lord and my God.”  The first time those words were spoken, the words that recognized the deity of Jesus, the ‘oneness’ with God, they came from Thomas’ lips.

Be encouraged by Thomas.  Doubt is OK.  But don’t stay in your doubt.  Thomas allowed Jesus, he required Jesus, to bring him to belief. 

Be encouraged by the countless others who have struggled with their doubts.  The answers that God gave them may help you.  Remember, Thomas had doubts because he was alone.  He wasn’t there to see originally.  Move on to decision and belief through faith.

We’re all kind of scarred and lumpy in places.  And Jesus, though in His resurrection body, kept the scars that Thomas might see them and believe.  He keeps them today

These scars became part of the fabric of evidence that the Resurrection was not a rumor or a figment of imagination brought about by grief and denial. The Resurrection was real.

What do these scars mean to us?

For us, they serves as a reminder of the humanity of Christ.

There is something about our scars that makes us real, believable, trustworthy. Maybe it is because we know that life hands out its damaging blows to all of us.
It is sometimes easy for us to accept the divinity of Christ, and to forget the humanity of Christ. But Christ was both divine and human.

In Philippians, Paul said (2:6-7), “Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

Those scars remind us that Jesus remains human, just as he remains divine.
Those scars remind us that Jesus felt pain, just as we feel pain.
Those scars remind us that Jesus suffered, just as we suffer.
To Thomas, the scars meant evidence of the Resurrection.

Here is Jesus, the man, appearing to his friends and showing them the scars that his life, his suffering, and his death, inflicted on him. Isn’t it amazing that, in whatever occurred at the time of the resurrection, the scars were NOT obliterated? They remained.
We have a permanently scarred God. And he comes, scarred, to be with us with whatever scars we bear, with whatever wounds we carry, and with whatever doubts we harbor.

That’s an amazing demonstration of God’s love for us! That he would continue to carry the scars, the reminders of the pain and humiliation he went through.

Thomas needed those scars and maybe we do, too.

God breathed the breath of life into Adam.  Jesus breathed the spirit of God on the disciples and charged them with delivering God’s word to the world.  And we are God’s disciples.  God’s chosen.  All of us.  Doubts and all.  God loves us.

Please sing with me:

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me,

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me,

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me,

Let us pray:

Heavenly God, we thank you for breathing life into us and we thank you for the gift of your son that that life might be eternal.  Help us with our doubts when they arise that we may move closer to you and proclaim you as My Lord and my God.  AMEN

A sermon preached on April 4th, 2010, Easter Sunday, based upon Luke 24:13-35.

(Al Booth playing the part of the Jesus breaking bread and opening eyes.)

If you had asked the two disciples on the road to Emmaus at the beginning of the day what they would have wanted if they could ask for anything, I am sure they would have asked to be given Jesus back just as before — to have him there with the same familiar body, to guide them, comfort them, heal them. Jesus to touch, to lean on — that’s what they wanted.

It is important to note that this is NOT what they got.

What they got was a stranger who joined them as they walked down the road to a place called Emmaus. Initially, all this stranger did was to ask them what was making them look so sad, and then to listen as they went on and on about their grief over the death of Jesus and their crushed hopes.

Having spent considerable time listening, the stranger proceeded to challenge them, going so far as to call them “foolish.” Leading them back into their scriptures, he points out to them the larger context of the suffering of their master and of themselves in the redemption of the world. The suffering they have endured is not meaningless; it is part of the birth pangs of the new creation.

Later the disciples will refer back to the experience of hearing the stranger speak as being one in which their hearts burned within them.

Then, for one brief moment, they got what they wanted. They are reclined at table and the stranger breaks the bread and suddenly their eyes are openned and they finally recognize him — he is Jesus!  But just as soon as they have what theyhad longed for — just as soon as they assuredly leaned forward to clutch his body — he vanished.

The disciples do not get the same old life back. What they get is a new life — one in which they have the assurance that they have not been abandoned, that their lives with all the suffering they are called to bear has a purpose greater than they could have imagined. They have a mission — to reach out to others who have been stricken by grief and despair by this world.

Reynolds Price is a great southern author who teaches at Duke University. One day he woke up to find himself paralyzed from the waist down and suffering from tremendous pain. Tests determined a malignant tumor in his spinal column. He was taken into the operating table to undergo surgery for several hours. The next day his surgeon came to see him. He told Reynolds that the spinal tumor was ten inches long — the longest ever recorded in the annals of the Duke University Hospital. Reynolds wondered whether he was supposed to take pride in such a remarkable tumor. He asked the surgeon, “How much of it did you get?” About an inch, he was told.  He would receive radiation therapy, and that the best that he could hope for was that the tumor would not grow any larger. The doctor made no promises about the pain; they would do what they could.

Devastated to say the least, Reynolds was released from the hospital. Very early on his first morning home, he awoke, lying in his bed, when out of the blue he experienced himself as transported to an altogether different place. Here I quote Reynolds:

I was suddenly not propped in my brass bed or even contained in my familiar house. By the dim new, thoroughly credible light that rose around me, it was barely dawn; and I was lying fully dressed in modern street clothes on a slope by a lake I knew at once. It was the big lake of Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee, in the north of Israel, green Galilee, the scene of Jesus’ first teaching and healing. I’d paid the lake a second visit the previous October, a twelve-mile-long body of fish-stocked water in beautiful hills of grass, trees and small family farms.

Still sleeping around me on the misty ground were a number of men in the tunics and cloaks of first century Palestine. I soon understood with no sense of surprise that the men were Jesus’ twelve disciples and that he was nearby asleep among them. So I lay on a while in the early chill, looking west across the lake to Tiberias, a small low town, and north to the fishing villages of Capernaum and Bethsaida. I saw them as they were in the first century–stone huts with thatch-and-mud roofs, occasional low towers, the rising smoke of breakfast fires. The early light was fine mix of tan and rose. It would be a fair day.

Then one of the sleeping men woke and stood.

I saw it was Jesus, bound toward me. He looked much like the lean Jesus of Flemish paintings — tall with dar hair, unblemished skin and a self-possession both natural and imposing.

Again I felt no shock or fear. All this was normal human event; it was utterly clear to my normal eyes and was happening as surely as any event of my previous life. I lay and watched him walk on nearer.

Jesus bent and silently beckoned me to follow.

I knew to shuck off my trousers and jacket, then my shirt and shorts. Bare, I followed him.

He was wearing a twisted white cloth round his loins; otherwise he was bare and the color of ivory. We waded out into cool lake water twenty feet from shore till we stood waist-deep.

I was in my body but was also watching my body from slightly upward and behind. I could see teh purple dye on my back, the long rectangle that boxed my thriving tumor.

Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and back till water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke once– “Your sins are forgiven” — and turned to shore again, done with me.

I came on behind him, thinking in standard greedy fashion, ‘It’s not my sins I’m worried about.’ So to Jesus’ receding back, I had the gall to say “Am I also cured?”

He turned to face me, no sign of a smaile, and finally said two words — “That too.” Then he climbed from the water, not looking around, really done with me.

I followed him out and them, with no palpable seam in the texture of time or place, I was home again in my wide bed.

Was it a dream I gave myself in the midst of a catnap, thinking I was awake? Was it a vision of the sort accorded from a maybe external source to mystics of differing degrees of sanity through human history? From the moment my mind was back in my own room, no more than seconds after I’d left it, I’ve believed that the even was an external gift, hwoever brief, of an alternate time and space in which to live through a crucial act.” (Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing, pp. 42-44)

Having received such a dramatic vision of Jesus in which his healing was claimed, you might think that Reynolds would subsequently have a story of being restored to his original health, but it was not so. Reynolds continues to live and work today, 26 years later, but he remains a paraplegic. He struggled with pain in the years to come, finding his greatest help in dealing with the pain through counseling that taught how to redirect his concentraton away from the pain.

In the memoir in which he describes his experience with the tumor, Reynolds talks about how friends in the early years were constantly encouraging him in various ways to hold onto his old life. He came to realize that was a great mistake. His old life was dead, gone. What he needed now was to reach out to the new life that was being offered him.

Here’s a quote from the end of his book:

“Your chance of rescue from any despair lies, if it lies anywhere, in your eventual decision to abandon the deathwatch by the corpse of your old self and to search out a new inhabitable body. The old Theological Germanica* knew that “nothing burns in Hell burn the self” — above all, the old self broiling in the fat of its endless self-pity.” (p. 188)

To have our sins forgiven is to be set free from the past.   We don’t need to clutch in the hopes of finally getting it right.  

There is a fascinating detail in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. For several hours the risen Jesus is in the company of the two disciples without them recognizing who he really is. As they reach the village of Emmaus as night is falling, the stranger appears to be heading on down the road. Apparently he would have continued on down the road, unrecognized by the two had they not insisted that the stranger come in and stay as their guest over night. Only then, as the stranger blesses and breaks the bread of their shared meal, are their eyes openned to recognize Jesus.

It is in the act of extending hospitality to a stranger that Jesus reveals himself. We live in a world of strangers — more so than any other time in human history. It is so easy to live our lives cut off from others.  It is in hospitality to strangers, whether it be the stranger who bags our groceries at the Shop Rite, or the stranger who sits across from us at our dinner table night after night, that glimpses of Christ are given.   It is in creating a safe and welcoming space for the other to be known that the presence of Christ is discovered. Watch for him, in all your human encounters.

Jesus is revealed in the breaking of bread — a communal act, a shared meal laced with forgiveness – not a meal consumed alone. It is in such as this that the new life found.

*14th century treatise from annonymous German Christian mystic.