Seen and Known

(Originally preached Sunday morning, January 15, 2012)

Seen and Known

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

John 1:43-51

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

In the Gospel of John, it is John the baptizer’s disciples who seek out Jesus, after John has testified to who he is.  Here Andrew is originally one of John’s follower.  When he finds Jesus, he goes and gets his brother, Simon, and they follow Jesus.  This morning we read the story just after that, where Jesus goes to Galilee, and there he finds Philip, and Philip goes and calls Nathanael.

It is interesting that in each of these two first stories, one person sees and hears Jesus, and goes and calls a brother or a friend to come and see and hear him for themselves.  Andrew goes and recruits Peter.  Philip recruits Nathanael.  Never doubt the importance of personal invitation.

Reading this story raises an important question:  What’s up with the fig tree?!!?

Jesus sees Nathanael, and calls him one without guile.  Surely it is only one without guile who would say out loud, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  Not a very PC statement.  Not the sort of question good, polite types ask out loud.  Oh, those with guile still ask such questions.  They just don’t say them out loud!

Nathanael, who has never met Jesus before, says, “Do you know me?”

“Before Philip told you to come see me, I saw you under the fig tree.”

And with this Nathanael calls Jesus Rabbi and son of God and King of Israel. 

And so I ask again, what’s up with the fig tree?  Why does Jesus seeing Nathanael there warrant such effusive praise and merit such immediate devotion?

By now, most of you know how I operate.  If there is something we don't understand, go look it up.  Where else does the fig tree appear in the Gospel?  In the New Testament?  In the whole Bible?

Is the fig tree a messianic symbol?  Some dramatic reminder of covenant?  Some element of the exodus that will immediately draw the readers’ and hearers’ thoughts back to prior acts of salvation?

Fig trees were prevalent enough that it gets mentioned about as often as olive trees in the Bible.  But there is no great symbolic meaning to the fig tree.  It is not an allusion to some great sweeping story of faith.

Apparently the fig tree under which Nathanael was sitting was just a fig tree.  The point of the story, it turns out, is not that we know what the fig tree means.   I believe that the importance of this story comes in the fact that Nathanael knows which fig tree Jesus means.

We can imagine that sitting under the fig tree was the lowest point in Nathanael’s life.  Maybe that was where he prayed those deep prayers that only come with tears and wracking sobs.  Maybe under the fig tree is where Nathanael would go to bury his grief.

And he was seen.  Someone saw him in that moment when he was most vulnerable, least guarded, most human in all of its messiness.

We know why we guard ourselves from vulnerability: some would look on us in scorn; some would look on us with judgment; some might use our vulnerability against us.  And yet, when Nathanael was seen, it was different.  Because when Jesus saw Nathanael, he did not judge, he did not scorn, he did not use his vulnerability against him.  He called him.

In this calling is meaning and purpose, but there is also blessing and acceptance.

We distrust such grace, don’t we?  Anyone who has survived junior high school has learned how to guard their heart and not be vulnerable.

And yet, here is one who sees us as we are, warts and all.

Here is one who is well acquainted with our sorrow and our failings, our frustrations and our anger, and who looks at us still with the eyes of compassion.

I often wonder why the committee on the Lectionary chose to match certain texts together, and why to skip certain verses, like in this morning’s psalm.

I think in these skipped verses we find some of what Nathanael was feeling regarding being seen in the fig tree moments of his life.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me,

and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Let only darkness cover me,

and the light about me be night,"
even the darkness is not dark to thee,

the night is bright as the day;

for darkness is as light with thee.

It used to be that I read these lines as a teenager might: "I can't get away with anything!"  My perspective has changed.  I can remember these words in my prayers at guest housing at Children’s Hospital when Mira was recovering from her surgery.  The lowest places I have ever been, God has been there, whether I could see the grace or feel the presence or not.

            

That is why Nathanael is willing to praise and willing to follow.  Because he has been seen and he has been known, more fully than he knows himself, and in this he realizes that he is fully, completely, warts and all, loved.

And so are you.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Shhhhhhhh...

(Originally preached on Christmas Eve 2011)

Shhhhhhhhh…

Luke 2:1-20

Grace and Peace to you this evening.  Grace and Peace.

Shhhhhhhhh…  How many ways have we heard this?  And how many ways have we used it ourselves? 

We shush people in the theater who are talking, or have a cell phone, or who otherwise disturb our enjoyment.

          We shush people who say things we don't like to hear.

          We shush children who interrupt our adult seriousness.

          This night we celebrate another kind of shushing - we celebrate Mary shushing her baby.  Shhhhhhhh.  There is something in the shushing of a baby by a loving parent that says,

It will be okay. 

You can go to sleep.

I will be here when you wake.

          So Mary is shushing Jesus.  This impossible baby.  This baby born not of the normal means, intentionally or by accident.  This baby born out of the impossible promises of God.  This baby who will have something to say about the way the world tries to shush imagination and shush faithful obedience to anything but the ways of fear and death. 

          This impossible baby will have something to say about how the world shushes the prophets, and the poor, and women, and foreigners, and the faithful, and outcasts, and any who do not fit in, and any who are seen as a commodity and not human.

          This impossible baby will grow in the spirit and speak against such shushing.  He will speak a word of love for all, compassion for all, justice for all, mercy for all, food for all, homes for all, forgiveness for all, hope for all, a place for all.

          He will speak a word of peace to us in those moments when we are too fearful to speak. 

He will speak a word of grace to us in those moments when we are too guilty or ashamed to live. 

He will speak word of rebuke to all of those things that get in the way of living fully, loving deeply, serving joyfully.

          He will shush the wind and waves of the stormy sea.

          He will shush the unclean spirit that would wreck a person’s life.

          He will shush those who try and use religion as a weapon, as a way of denying human dignity or social justice or humane economics.

And the world will take offense.  The world will shush him.

          Religious people with too much at stake in the ways of the world will shush him, because they do not have enough trust in the power of God to bring new life.

          Military leaders will shush him, afraid of losing the tenuous control that fear and force provide.

          Politicos will shush him, fearing the empowerment of all people and the uncontrollable nature of a neighborhood where true compassion is practiced.

          His own family will shush him, fearing for his sanity.

          His right hand man will shush him, fearing for his safety.

Even his followers, then and now, will shush him, because we all have something vested in the world as we know it.  We all fear what we cannot control.  We all fear change.  We don’t want to admit that the world, as we always thought it was going to be, isn’t; and we don’t want to trust the world that is coming to be to anything beyond our own power and our need for control.

          And when the powers of fear and death gather to shush him finally; when his followers run away, shushing their own preaching of the kingdom, locking themselves in silence and fear; when the world tries to speak the final word, and that word is death, even death on a cross; In that silence, God will again speak an impossible word, do an impossible thing, unleash an impossible grace. 

And we will once again know what we receive tonight.

Tonight we receive this impossible child.

And if we listen carefully….

And if we still all those anxious thoughts for a moment….

Shhhhh…

Perhaps we too can hear the songs of angels.  Perhaps we too can hear a mother, shushing her child.  Perhaps we too can know the One who speaks an impossible word, and gives us life, and new life.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Your People

Originally preached on October 9, 2011

Your People

Exodus 32:1-14

Psalm 106:1-6&9-23

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

This morning’s scripture is the story of anxiety, broken covenant, anger, all of which reveal the pathos, the deep feelings of compassion, of God.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, “Up, make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

They have escaped Egypt, and now they are in the middle of the land of “now what?!?”  And Moses, the one who gathered them together and led them forth, the one that God talks to and who talks to God, he went up the mountain and he has been gone too long.

We do not know how long they waited for Moses.  Time passes differently when we are anxious.  However long they waited, when it got to be more than they could handle, they went to Aaron.  

No “good morning.”  No “Have you heard anything?”  They just command him, “Up!  Make us some gods we can follow!”  They want a god they can touch and see, like the peoples of Egypt and of Canaan.  So they make a statue, out of the gold they took with them out of Egypt, and they form a calf.  Now here is a god they can sacrifice offerings to and carry before them and know that this god is present.

There is little doubt in the Hebrew scriptures that this is a Bad Idea.  But anxious peoples like bad ideas, as long as they can be done quickly in an attempt to alleviate the anxiety.

Did any of you catch the PBS documentary on Prohibition?  It was very well done.  It is the story of anxiety and another Bad Idea.

It traces the roots of the Temperance movement to our Congregationalist forebears trying to deal with the real problems of a saloon culture, rampant alcoholism, and its side effects of domestic violence and poverty.  Estimates put the rate of alcohol consumption back then at three times the level of today.  It sparked non-violent civil disobedience.  Women would gather outside the saloon and kneel in prayer.

But soon enough, groups gathered in support of Prohibition out of their anxiety.  Quickly, rather than being about moderation, it became all or nothing.  For some, it was about being “Real Americans,” unlike the Irish, the German, the Italian immigrants coming to our shores.  For others it was about being “Real Christians,” unlike the Catholics and the Episcopalians and the Lutherans.   

For the labor movement, it was getting rid of the chains of alcohol, which they saw as a tool of management.  Even the Ku Klux Klan got involved, out of fear of African-Americans.  The political left and right both voted for this, not out of bipartisanship, but out of their many and various anxieties.  Everyone’s anxiety got hitched to the same wagon, as it were, and the first constitutional amendment limiting freedoms was passed.

Unintended consequences abounded.  Crime soared.  Alcohol became more popular and even easier to get.  Hypocrisy abounded.  People in charge of law enforcement and civil service discovered that a lot more money could be made through illegal alcohol than could ever be made legitimately.

Out of their anxiety, the people voted in a law that did not alleviate their anxiety.  It did not settle issues of racism, or labor versus management, or a culture of abuse that had led people to vote it in.  Nor did it do anything about the sources of anxiety that led people to drink in the first place.

Out of their anxiety, the people of Israel forgot who brought them out of Egypt.  “Up!  Make us gods to follow!” they said to Aaron.

Aaron makes the calf of gold, and declares that tomorrow will be a feast day.  And the people party.

             

Meanwhile, up on the mountain, we discover the pathos of God.  

And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out  of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves;”

Who speaks like this?  “Do you know what YOUR child did today?!??!”  This is a parent.  Suddenly these are not God’s people.  These are Moses’ people.  “YOUR people, whom YOU brought up out of the land of Egypt."

And in this moment, there is this anger of God towards the people who have rejected God.  “And after all I have done for them….” we might imagine God saying.

Moses stands as the mediator.  Moses reminds God of the love God has.  Moses does not appeal to God on the basis of the people, for they are indeed a stiff-necked  and forgetful people.  Moses does not appeal to God on the basis of Moses’ own worth.  He prays, “Remember your covenant.  Remember your promises.  Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom you swore by your own self.”

And God remembers the covenant.  In this we find this most paradoxical (perhaps scandalous) line:  “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.”

Out of our anxiety, we often make bad decisions.  Out of our anxiety, we often put our faith in something other than God.  Out of our anxiety, we look for the quick fix, the magic bullet, the instant gratification, the illusion of control.

But God remembers the covenant.  God who, like a parent, gets angry at our stiff-necked nature, and our forgetfulness.

And when we pray for God to remember God’s promises, we are reminded as well.  When, like Moses, we call God to fulfill God’s promises, we have turned away from the calf of gold (or whatever it is we have been putting our faith in) and once again put it where it belongs.

For God is faithful.  And we are God’s people.  And God has brought us out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Let us remember, and say,

“Thanks be to God."
Amen.

Go With Us

originally preached on Sunday, October 16, 2011

Go with Us
Exodus 33:12-23
Matthew 22:15-22

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

In the Gospel this morning, there is a trap set for Jesus.  The Herodians and the Pharisees have gotten together to trick him with their questions.  Herodians, aptly named after the family of Herod, are pro-Roman Empire and pro-tax, because they benefit from collaboration with the empire.  The Pharisees are anti-tax, because the money used to pay it has the likeness of Caesar on it, which is idolatry.  These two groups would not agree except that this Jesus guy is a problem and must be dealt with.  So they make an uneasy alliance to trap him.  Politics truly does make for strange bedfellows.

Is it lawful to pay the tax to Caesar?  This is not a question about Roman law.  We know the answer to that!  This is a question about the Torah.  Is it lawful according to the laws of Moses to pay the tax to Caesar?

Jesus gives a two-fold answer.  On the one hand, he asks for a coin, and asks whose likeness is on it.  This defies the Pharisees who want to trap him, but cannot abide idolatry.

Then he says, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”

Over the centuries, this answer has tied the church in knots.  Is it a pat answer that says we pay our taxes to the state and pay our hearts to God?  Some have tried to force it into a formula like that.

But this is the Gospel of Matthew we are talking about.  It begins with the strange story of pagan kings coming to offer tribute to the baby Jesus, born king.  This is the Gospel of Herod feeling his power and authority threatened by the birth of a baby who is called king and Christ.

And in this chapter alone, where there are so many tests of his role, his authority, what he stands for, he answers unequivocally, “It is all about God.”

So when Jesus says, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,” it should be clear to a Gospel people that it all belongs to God.

It all belongs to God.

I recently saw one of those little sayings that travels around the Internet.  I found this one to be better than most:

God gave us people to love,
and things to use,
not the other way around.

You can tell how far from the Gospel we are by how much we love things, and how much we use people.  This is not always easy to remember.  As a child, about this time of year, the catalogs started showing up.  Christmas catalogs.  With pages and pages and pages of toys in the back.  As a child, I would gladly use my parents, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, whomever it took, to get some new toy that I never knew existed before that catalog came out, and now I cannot live without it.

Such a willingness to use people to get stuff is childish.  This was age appropriate behavior back then.  And I am learning it starts early.  Mary told me that our daughter and her best friend were downstairs in the nursery.  And there are these two identical little piano toys.  Each one of them was playing with one, and each one of them wanted the one the other had.

Sharing is a learned behavior.  Caring for our neighbor is a learned behavior.  Loving one another as Christ loves us is learned behavior.

And learning experiences are not always easy!

Moses did not go to school to be a prophet.  He did not take “Commanding Pharaoh to Let My People Go 101” or “Senior Seminar in Sea Parting” or “Theories of Manna Management.”  It was all on the job training.  He may have felt what I often feel about chaplaincy: usually I learn what I need to know right after I needed to know it.

So here we have Moses, who is trying to follow God, trying to lead his people, talking with God about what is needed.  God says, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  And Moses replies, “If you don’t go with me, don’t send me!”

Moses knows what he faces is overwhelming.  And he needs God to go with him.

We face some overwhelming stuff don’t we?  Maybe it is a child’s surgery, or maybe it is a loved one in hospice.  Maybe it is running out of money before we run out of month, or maybe it is running out of day before we run out of list.  Maybe it is trying to budget for the ministry of this church, or maybe it is trying to learn how not to get in a battle of wills over our child doing his or her homework.

And we might yell at God, “If you aren’t going to go with me, don’t you dare send me!”  Or we might not be ready to yell at God.  Maybe we just think it quietly.

What we learn from Moses is that when God sends us, God goes with us.  When we face that which is overwhelming, that is when God is closest to us.  And sometimes when we are at the end of our resources, our strength, our will, that is when God’s presence is finally allowed in.

And when we remember that, we might also remember what Jesus said: It all belongs to God.  And so do we.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Ten Years Later

Originally Preached on September 11, 2011

Ten Years Later

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

Growing up, I can remember occasions when people would say, “Do you remember where you were when you heard?”

For my parents and their friends, the question was about the news from Dallas, November 22, 1963, that President Kennedy had been assassinated. 

For my generation, it was when President Reagan had been shot.  And again in 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster took place.

          September 11, 2001.  Where were you when you heard?

I was at home, listening to the radio, working on the computer.  I went downstairs and turned on the TV, and saw the reporters and anchors trying to piece together what had happened.  We didn’t know much right away.  No one did.  But we saw the images, replayed over and over again.

          What I really remember of that morning was the shock, and then a feeling of profound dread.  Not dread that there would be more attacks, although that fear came occasionally.  But dread for how human beings react to trauma.  It is part of the human condition, part of the human tragedy.  We revert.  We regress.  Something within us goes back to junior high school and when we get hit, we hit back; when we get hurt, we hurt others, whether we can reach the one who hit us or simply the one who is closest.

          Later that morning of September 11, I was at church.  We rented the education building to a private school, and the third grade class was in the library, watching coverage on TV.  They asked me to step in and say something to the children.  I have no clue what I said.  I just can’t remember.  But I do remember having no clue what to say.

          One of the boys in that class asked if we could pray.  He prayed for all of those who were there to get out safely.  And he prayed for whoever would do something like this, because there must be something wrong in their life for them to want to do something like this.

          A decade later I am coming to realize that the horror of that day, and the hope that came from it, were both present that morning.  The dread for how people would use these attacks to escalate violence, to foster fear, to build upon all of those things that led up to such attacks.  And the moment, in that boy’s prayer, when suddenly we realized our common humanity, and we realized once again that if we are going to make, we are going to have to figure out that we are all in this thing together.

Following September 11, we witnessed miracles.  People in New York were nice to one another!  We read stories of the heroism of ordinary people.  We learned about those who carried coworkers down flights of stairs out of the towers, and about those who were running up the stairs, firefighters running in to rescue people while everyone else was running out.

We heard stories of the Canadian airports landing over 200 American planes to help clear the airspace, and people taking stranded passengers into their homes.

We saw the walls of photos, people trying to find news of loved ones.  When time had passed, and it was clear that it was no longer a rescue operation, but a recovery operation, we saw the work done at Ground Zero, how everything would stop when a body was found, and carried out with respect.

          Since 9/11, we have seen other tragedies.  Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  Tsunamis in the South Pacific.  Earthquakes in China and Japan.  The phrase “compassion fatigue” was coined, because burnout just didn’t seem to cover it.

          Since 9/11 have been engaged in the longest wars in US history.  These wars are being fought with a volunteer military, meaning we have a much smaller segment of the population carrying a much larger burden than ever before.  In Iraq, more US service men and women have been killed than the number of victims on 9/11.  In Afghanistan, the numbers are just over half that of 9/11.  That does not count the many more who have been injured.  We have learned the phrases IED, insurgency, up-armored, and closed head trauma.  We have witnessed a great improvement in the way service men and women are welcomed home by society from the days of Vietnam.  But we have yet to come to grips with the toll that war takes on them and their families.

          On the home front, we have gotten used to living at security level orange.  We take off our shoes at the airport, and get frisked before boarding a flight.  We remember duct tape and plastic sheeting becoming the modern equivalent of the bomb shelter in the back yard.  When an attack happens anywhere in the world, we immediately think Al-Qaeda.  Even if it turns out to be a militant Christian in Norway.  Eventually, we found Saddam Hussein and we found Osama Bin Laden.  Whether things have changed continues to be debated.

Today, on television and radio, in blogs and on-line chats, we will hear it debated whether we are safer today than before.  We will continue to debate security versus freedom.  We continue to hear each side of the political aisle continue to paint the other side with the radical fear we learned on 9/11.  We continue to hear caricatures of Islam, rather than seeking to know who these people, our neighbors, are.

          And yet…on this, the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, I find myself hopeful.  Not optimistic, but hopeful.

          My hope comes in the prayer of a third grader, who prayed for the attackers as well as the victims.  Maybe only a third grader would think to do so.  It was naïve.  It was socially and politically frowned upon.  It was…what Jesus would have done.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  Pray for your enemies; love your enemies.  In our pain, it is easy to forget the Gospel.

          I find hope in the stories, all too easily washed away in the media frenzy and the political rhetoric, of people who used the memories of their loved ones who died on 9/11 as a source of courage and compassion. 

          Jay Winuk lost his brother, Glenn, that morning.  Glenn was a lawyer working one block from Ground Zero.  When the planes hit, he helped get his co-workers out of the building.  Glenn was also a volunteer firefighter and EMT in his home town of Jericho, New York.  He did what firefighters do.  He ran into the towers to see if he could save people.  He was found in the rubble of the south tower, his medic bag at his side.

          Jay wanted to honor his brother, to mourn his loss, to find a way to make meaning out of it.  He writes:

How best to honor those lost and, for that matter, those who rose in service to get our nation back on its feet in the aftermath of the attacks?  What could we do, many of us wondered then, to ensure they would not be forgotten by future generations?

He and some of his friends put together a group, called My Good Deed.  They work with communities to make September 11^th each year a day of service, a day of kindness, a day of helping out their neighbors.

Following the tragedy of 9/11; in the wake of the natural disasters, political upheavals, economic collapses, unemployment and war, I say to you there is hope.  That hope is found in the ability of people to do the best that they can to love one another; to honor the memory of those who have died by offering ourselves to the possibility of making the world a better place, one life, one community at a time.

Maybe it is naïve to think that love can win in a world so full of hate, so wounded, so fearful.  But it is for just such a hurting and wounded world that Jesus came.  It is for just such anxious and fearful world that he gave his own life.  It is for just such as us and our world of neighbors that he was raised.

There is hope.  And it is found when we love one another.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

They Know His Voice

(preached on May 15, 2011)

Psalm 23

John 10:1-10

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and peace

…he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

This past week the choir had the opportunity to join our voices together in the concert.  Singing doesn’t begin with the mouth.  It begins with the ears, with listening.  Listening to the piano.  Listening to the director’s instructions.  Listening to the other singers and to how our voices are blending.  (Or not…)  Good singing is a product of good listening.

Listening takes practice.  Sitting with someone in a hospital waiting room, listening to their concerns about what is going on in surgery; sitting down over coffee and listening to the joys and pains that someone is experiencing; listening to families tell stories of their beloved who has died so that we can plan a funeral service: it takes practice to listen for what is said and for what is not.  It also takes a certain amount of getting out of the way.

           

There are other kinds of listening.  The first few times the fire pager went off, I would listen to the call, and the address, and head out to the call, and then have to play it back a dozen or so times until I finally was able to remember both the number and the street that I was headed to.  I took a while to get all the lingo down.  And it took a while before the adrenaline didn’t shut off my ability to listen clearly.  Listening requires a certain level of calmness.

           

I have been told that when I walk into the room and my daughter hears my voice she turns her head to see where I am.  The Mrs. said that Wednesday night during the concert, when I sang my solo, her head whipped around.  As if to say, “you can’t fool me, I know that voice!”  She has heard me talking to her since before she was born.  She heard me singing to her the night she was born.  I was crazy enough to try and sing “I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry.”  Yeah, I got about a half measure in before I was blubbering.  But she knows my voice.

           

And I know hers.  If I am outside a roomful of children and one is crying, I can tell if it is her or another child.  And most of the time I can tell if she is hungry or sleepy or just plain fussy by her cry.

           

This is not some mystical super-daddy power.  It is practice.  It is attention. 

           

This morning’s Gospel is about Jesus calling his own, and their following.  They will know his voice.  We who seek to follow Jesus, we need to know his voice.

           

Like all listening, this requires attention.  It requires a certain amount of calmness, and a certain amount of getting out of the way.  It requires practice. 

           

Where then is the shepherd speaking?  In scripture, in worship, in nature, in prayer.  In the still, small voice that speaks amidst the shoutings and rantings of the world.  In the gut feeling that tells us something is so true, or that something else is wrong.

           

But even in scripture, we can cut off the voice of the shepherd.  “Yeah, I’ve read the 23^rd Psalm before; sure, I know what it means.”  (We’ve all heard it a little too often lately, haven’t we?)  But what if, instead of skimming it yet again and moving on, we sit with it and listen to each phrase.

            The Lord is my shepherd.

            The LORD is my shepherd.

            The Lord IS my shepherd.

            The Lord is my SHEPHERD.

            The Lord is MY shepherd.

            …

            I shall not want.

            I have all that I need.

            With God, there is nothing that I lack.

            …

           

John Robinson told the Pilgrims as they left Plymouth England:

I Charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ.  If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.     

Here was a leader telling people to keep listening, even beyond his own teaching, because it is God we are all listening to.  This became a famous phrase within the Congregationalist churches:  “the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.”  It was chiseled into the stone by the entrance of Chicago Theological Seminary.  It underlies the United Church of Christ’s “God is Still Speaking Campaign.”

And it reminds us that whatever good we may do, whether it is singing, or giving, or helping, or shouldering a burden or lightening a load, or feeding, or teaching, or anything else, it begins with listening.

May we, like the prophets of old, begin with the words, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

And then let us listen, that we would know the Shepherd’s voice.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Greater Works Than These

(preached May 22, 2011)
Acts 7:55-60
John 14:1-14

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and peace.

I thought about not preparing a sermon for today.  After all, wasn’t
the world going to end in the rapture last night at six PM.  It would
be the ultimate, “My dog ate my homework!” excuse for ministers.
There is something tempting about end-of-the-world prophecies.  It is
a great escapist idea.  (Did we not check the clock a few extra times
around six o’clock last night?  I admit, I did.)

This world is tough.  Economics are a mess, politics are a mess,
science and religion keep picking fights with each other, our families
are overwhelmed, our institutions are losing credibility.  Wouldn’t it
be nice if God just came in with that heavenly helicopter and lifted
us out of all this?

This latest end-of-the-world hysteria (and it is the latest, as this
gentleman had predicted that 1994 was going to be the time.  Two or
three more of these and people might stop listening to him…) seems to
focus on all the difficulties of the world, and on a few carefully
selected passages of scripture, interpreted with some fascinating
mental gymnastics.  It completely forgoes the Gospel admonition that
no one knows the hour or the day, but we are to be ready at all times
to meet Jesus and to account for our faith.

I am reminded of another gentleman whose small church put Islam on
trial, found it guilty, and burned the Koran.  Everyone from people of
other churches to the upper leadership of the Pentagon explained that
this was a Bad Idea.  This little church put a video of all this up on
YouTube, and it caused riots, as most people expected it would.

Legally, he and his church have the right to do this.  I am not
talking about legal rights.  I am talking about, Christian to
Christian, why did he use the difficulties of our times to abridge the
Gospel?  It is popular to strike back at those who strike at us.  It
feels good to get revenge, to do unto others as you feel justified to
do based on what they have done unto you.  I have had people ask me,
“well isn’t it about time we Christians started to fight back?!?”

"But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who
hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from
him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your
goods do not ask them again.
And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even
sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to
you? For even sinners do the same.
And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is
that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in
return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the
Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
(Luke 6:27-36)

Suspending the Gospel when times are tough is not faith.  It is, in
fact, the opposite of faith.  Being of the world, but praying not to
be in it, is not what Jesus told us to do.

Did Jesus have some escapist thoughts?  Sure.  In the garden, before
his arrest: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me;
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”  Having the escapist
thought is not sin.  It is what we do with it that matters.

Which brings us to this morning’s reading from John.  In talking with
some of you, you share my hesitancy at this passage:

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the
works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go
to the Father.

Greater works than Jesus?  I’m not sure my mind can handle that thought.

But then we read of Stephen, in the book of Acts.  Not one of the
original Apostles, Stephen was chosen to help distribute bread to the
widows.  But even the soup kitchen attendant was filled with the Holy
Spirit and preached and prophesied.  And it got him into trouble.  And
when they came to shut him up, he did not strike back, but held to his
faith.  And when they came to kill him, his words sound familiar.

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit….Lord, do not hold this sin against
them.”  They sound like another who was sent to his death, praying
even for those who killed him.

I don’t know that I am ready to contemplate raising Lazarus.  I don’t
know that I am ready to contemplate doing the works of Jesus, much
less greater works.  But I can contemplate praying for the faith and
the faithfulness to meet the difficulties of our days faithfully.  I
can pray for those who persecute me, and ask God to help me love those
who hate me.

And I can prayer that we would be faithful.  Especially in difficult
times.  Because that is when it matters the most.  That is when it
makes the biggest difference.  That is when it does the most good.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.