Thompson's Blog

Equipped With Christ

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

10:1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” 17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

There’s an interesting contrast between the nature of this morning’s teaching and the spirit of the national holiday we will be celebrating tomorrow. While our original declaration of independence was an exercise in striking out on our own without all of the resources we needed to make it as a nation, what we have become is arguably the most powerful nation on earth. We certainly aren’t totally independent, we cooperate with many other nations to get what we need to function, and we have the means to get what we need. We have our vulnerabilities, but we aren’t what you would call a vulnerable nation. We don’t rule the world, but we are autonomous, and we like it that way. You might say we exited from Europe a long time ago, and we haven’t looked back.

That was a good thing that we did. Independence has worked out well for us as a nation, but Jesus doesn’t want us to forget the importance of dependence. It seems to me that the instruction Jesus gave to this group of followers we are looking at this morning was that they were to set out in an intentionally dependent manner. So welcome to church, it’s the place where our natural instincts are perpetually challenged by the One we call our Lord and savior.

Jesus told this group of followers to go out with less than they needed for conventional safety or sustenance, but they weren’t going out without anything. In fact, what they had was incredibly valuable and powerful, but not in an obvious way. These original missionaries set out without anything but a message, and they engaged in some life-altering-world-changing work!

Now as a guy who now drives a four-wheel drive truck with a well-stocked tool box in the back, I am clearly someone who understands the value of being well-equipped. I don’t leave the house without a hat to protect my head, and I’m much more inclined to wear boots than sandals – even in the summertime. I like to feel protected and equipped, and while this is somewhat sensible on my part, it isn’t the strategy Jesus was using when he sent the seventy out to share the good news that they had experienced through Christ. He sent his people out with less than they needed.

I’m not apologetic for liking to be well equipped. It can be a useful thing for me and people around me, but I recognize that my affection for feeling prepared can get in the way of something Jesus wanted us to understand. It isn’t that he didn’t want his followers to be useful, or that he wants us to be needy, but he wants us all to understand that God’s power works in unconventional ways. We gain access to the healing power of God when we are the most vulnerable. The power of God was revealed when people accepted each other without the expectation of conventional payment or reward. The power of God is revealed when people treat one another in genuinely hospitable ways.

Jesus didn’t send his followers out with the guarantee that they would be well received. He anticipated that there would be villages who didn’t want to hear what they had to say, but Jesus sent people out with the best opportunity for a powerful relationship to develop. This instruction to go out without the means to support themselves didn’t insure success, but it did assure that there would be interaction and that people would hear what Jesus had to offer.

In those days, Jesus was not a name that impressed everyone, so Jesus prepared the disciples for the fact that his name wouldn’t open every door that they approached, but his name was all that they were to rely upon.  Jesus was a name that had great power, but the power of his name wasn’t obvious to everyone.  The name of Jesus would mean nothing to people who were oriented around the more visible forms of power, but to people who were open to this new message about the living God the name of Jesus was a life-altering gift.

This story is actually pretty intimidating to me. I’ve never returned from a missionary venture with the joy of having healed diseases and cast out demons with nothing but the use of Jesus’ name.  This is beyond the realm of my experience. But I don’t think we are to compare our results with their results.  Jesus didn’t get excited about their accomplishments — Jesus was happy about their willingness to get involved in the sharing of the good news of God’s love and nearness.  We aren’t judged by the result of our work.  The important thing is for us to do what we can to share what we know to be true about Jesus.

This story caused me to think about the people who attracted me to the church, and what it was about them that made me want to be a part of the church.  I’m sure that my attraction to the church began at a very early age, and it came through a number of different relationships I had with people who extended the grace of Christ in significant ways.

But one of the earliest influences on me was the pastor of our church when I was very young. Brother John McCormick died a few years ago, but there are a lot of people who could tell you of vivid experiences they had with Bro. McCormick – and most of them would be positive. As I say, I was very young when he was the pastor in Wynne, so I don’t remember a thing that he ever said in a sermon, but

I do remember how he made me feel when I was around him.  He acted as if it was the greatest thing in the world for me to be in the

church. He would say things to me that made me feel noticed and welcome.  There was a graciousness within him that spoke to my young heart.

I was probably ten years old when he left Wynne, and I didn’t see him much after that, but I spent a memorable evening with him many years later. It happened while I was on my first big bicycle adventure. During the summer after my sophomore year in college I rode from Wynne to Fayetteville and back. I didn’t communicate with anyone in advance of my trip, but I sort of planned my route through places where I thought I knew people. I had decided I would stay in Harrison on the third night as I made my way to Fayetteville, and I had hoped to stay in the home of a friend that I had made at the Wesley Foundation in Fayetteville.

I hadn’t bothered to get her number in advance, and I found no trace of her family’s name in the phone book when I got there. It was late in the day, and I was feeling pretty unsettled about where I was going to stay that night. I really was a lot like one of the guys Jesus sent out without everything they needed, and I can testify that it moves you to reach out to people in ways you wouldn’t normally exercise. As I sat in the Harrison town square with darkness approaching I was racking my brain for people I might know in Harrison I suddenly remembered hearing my parents talk about Bro. McCormick being the pastor of a church in Harrison, and it wasn’t hard to find his number.

Bro. McCormick wasn’t someone I had seen him in a long time, but I called him, and fortunately he acted like he remembered who I was. It certainly wasn’t a call he was expecting to get, and he was pretty surprised by the situation, but the Queen of England wouldn’t have been treated with more hospitality than I was that night.

After I became a pastor I would see him at Annual Conference, and every time I saw him he would recall in great detail how much food I ate that night. That evening wasn’t miraculous in any way, but it served to remind me of how good it is be to be in this community that we call the church.

The church is a community that is founded upon radical dependence and hospitality. Our calling and our instruction is to offer the peace of Christ to anyone that we have the opportunity to get involved with.  Grand miracles don’t happen all the time, but it is always a redeeming thing when people are motivated by the love of Jesus to be gracious and open to each other.  I don’t guess I’ve ever seen Satan falling from the sky like lightening, but it’s something I might see if I spent more time being vulnerable and open to people who are battling with devilish problems in their lives.

What I do know is that there’s hardly anything that feels better than to make connections with other people that’s rooted in this formula of extending and/or receiving the hospitality of Jesus Christ.

I think most of us prefer to be in the role of providing for the needs of others, but in order to fully appreciate the nature of God’s power as it was revealed in Jesus I think it’s important to be the one who is in need every now and then. We Americans love our independence, but as followers of Christ we need to have an equal amount of love for dependence. Jesus doesn’t want us to have an overabundance of trust in our trucks and our tools and our amazing communication devices. Jesus knows what we primarily need to have is deep trust in the power of God. Such trust doesn’t guarantee that we will always be well fed and highly regarded, but it does provide us with the kind of hospitality that extends beyond this time and place.

Jesus has invited us to become citizens of a community that extends beyond the borders of our nation. We are very fortunate to live in a place that enjoys as much independence as we do, but we don’t need to place an overabundant amount of trust in the basic stability of our political situation. Our primary allegiance needs to be with the kingdom that Jesus Christ so beautifully revealed. The church isn’t the perfect embodiment of that eternal kingdom, but sometimes we get it right, and we are always called to keep trying. We are to continue this work of stepping out with nothing but trust in the name of Christ and of extending the hospitality of Christ in new and gracious ways.

Jesus knew he would never change the world with a conventionally equipped army. He sent his troops out with nothing but trust in the power of his name, and the revolution he began continues to change the shape of this world and the state of our hearts.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Our Heavenly Home Companion

Luke 9:51-62

9:51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village. 57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This is not a particularly endearing passage of scripture that we’re looking at this morning. These aren’t the words people generally choose to read at weddings, funerals, or other significant moments in life. These words are sort of low on comfort and assurance, and frankly speaking, they aren’t particularly inspirational – but they aren’t insignificant. These words don’t stir great emotion or remind us of how glorious it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but they express something we need to know. These words reveal what it’s like to be a follower of Jesus Christ on a hot and dusty summer day as you leave a village where you were not well received. It’s not a pretty picture, but it reveals something critical about who Jesus was and who we are to be.

The tone of this passage somehow reminds me of that iconic radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. You may or may not be familiar with the show, but it’s been around for the 42 years. It’s the brainchild of Garrison Keillor. He’s the host of the live show that weaves together comedy and music in a manner that is largely unduplicated. Garrison Keillor incorporates clever banter with the musicians, comedy skits full of exaggerated sound effects, advertisements for their fictional sponsors, and a weekly update on the news from Lake Wobegon – which is the fictional homeplace of Garrison Keillor. A place where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are all well above average.

Like the scene in today’s scripture, Lake Wobegon is not a glamorous place, but it’s a place where people go about the daily business of life. He talks a lot about the local Lutheran Church, where Pastor Liz deals with the ups and downs of her mediocre congregation. You’ve got Darlene the waitress at the Chatterbox Café, who is largely satisfied with her job. You’ve got a number of different individuals and couples who are generally of Scandinavian descent who deal with the various trials of life in both wise and foolish ways.

I’m not a committed listener to the show, but I’ve been listening to it off and on for the last 30 years. It’s a lot like a soap opera in the sense that you don’t have to listen to the show every week to understand what’s going on in Lake Wobegon. You can miss a year or two and still know what’s going on. This show has gotten some attention lately because the last episode with Garrison Keillor as the host will be aired next Saturday night. It’s on a lot of public radion stations, but its not on KASU. I’m sure you can find it on the internet if you are so inclined. I’m not saying it’s something you should do, but I’ve always loved the way Garrison Keillor can create an atmosphere and a situation with his voice. It amazing the way he has generated this fictional location and shared with us the various personalities that populate it and how they’ve navigated the various dilemmas they face. You might say he gets in to the listener’s head in order to let you know what’s in the head of his various characters.

Garrison Keillor functions as the guide to this fictional town set somewhere on the prairie of Minnesotta. As the name of the show indicates, it’s our prairie home companion. And what he does in this show helps me understand what it is that Jesus does for us. Just as Garrison Keillor enables us to understand and to be amused by the things that go on in Lake Wobegon. I believe Jesus did what he did and said what he said to enable us to understand and abide in the Kingdom of God. You might say that Jesus is our heavenly home companion. Jesus wants to get in to our heads and enable us to understand how things operate in the Kingdom of God.

In the news from Lake Wobegon I’m often amused by the difference between what a normal person would do and what one of the residents of that town has chosen to do, and I think there’s a similar gap between what a normal person would do in life and what Jesus would have us do. The residents of Lake Wobegon aren’t normal, and neither are people who are guided by the the ethics of heaven.

A normal person suggests to Jesus that he use his extraordinary power to rain down fire on the residents of the town that treated them in a less than hospitable manner. And Jesus rebuked that kind of normal thinking. Our heavenly home companion wants us to live our lives in a new and more loving way than what is normally expected.

Others came to him with what they considered to be high ideals and big plans, but Jesus didn’t respond to them with open arms, and that’s actually sort of shocking to me. I’m a person who generally likes to both receive and extend what we might call southern hospitality, and that’s not what came from Jesus.

Regardless of what somebody thinks of me and my ideas I like for them to act like they impressed and I that’s how I usually treat other people. But that’s not the way Jesus operated. Jesus didn’t just want people to treat him like he was a nice guy, and he didn’t just want to be thought of as a nice person. Jesus wanted people to understand what the Kingdom of God was all about, and he didn’t want anyone to be mistaken about what it takes to abide in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t just want to be nice. Jesus wanted to get in to our minds and our hearts and to enable us to see what was in his heart and mind, and as I say – it’s different in there! The Kingdom of God doesn’t operate in a normal manner. You don’t just make slight adjustments in order to abide in the Kingdom of God – you approach life in a completely new way.

This passage reveals the stark contrast between the way we normally operate and the way we operate when we understand the heart and mind of Jesus. Jesus had some tough words for all of the people who approached him in this particular passage. He rebuked the disciples for wanting to rain down fire on their cultural and religious rivals. He dampened the enthusiasm of the man who said he would follow him wherever he went by saying that he was more homeless than a fox or a bird, and Jesus was un-accommodating to the men who said they wanted to follow him as soon as they attended to their familial obligations.

These aren’t easy words for me to hear, but I think they are good words for us all to hear. We don’t need to think that it’s as easy as we want it to be. What Jesus had to say is shocking to our systems, and sometimes our systems need to be shocked.

That being said, I really don’t think Jesus has a problem with people who love and care for their families. In this day in which there are way too many children raised in homes without loving and attentive parents I don’t the proper take-away from this text is to think that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the demands of family life. Jesus wasn’t making a blanket statement about the unimportance of family relationships. I think Jesus might well tell aspiring followers today to go home and take care of the people you love who need some attention. I don’t believe Jesus was an advocate of disregard for family ties, but he said what he said to the people who approached him in order to reveal the absolute reorientation we all need in order to abide in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t want people to continue to be defined by the role they played in their very traditional family situations. And he didn’t want people to follow him with the expectation that they were going to gain great positions in the new administration that he was going to establish in Jerusalem. I believe Jesus was short with these people who approached him because he didn’t think they understood who he was and what he was about. He didn’t let people down easy, and he did that because he didn’t want people to think it would be easy to go with him.

Jesus didn’t make it easy to follow him, but that’s not to say he doesn’t want us to follow him. Jesus wants us to get close, but he also wants us to understand that it requires conversion – it requires us to change our normal ways of thinking. It doesn’t mean that we are to quit thinking, but Jesus wants us to think about life in a new way. He wants us to approach all of our relationships in new ways and to allow our hearts and minds to be guided by a heavenly way of thinking.

These aren’t easy words for us to hear, but they are good words. Jesus was challenging to people because he believed that we can change and become more heavenly oriented. Jesus was challenging to the people who came to him with their normal minds and concerns, but he didn’t tell them to go away. Jesus wasn’t necessarily nice to them, but sometimes the loving thing to do is to challenge our normal ways of behaving and thinking.

Jesus is our heavenly home companion, and like any good guide, he isn’t just wanting to give us good instruction – he’s wanting us to internalize his approach to life. He’s not just wanting us to cheer him on – he’s wanting us to be like him. Even on hot dusty days when things aren’t going exactly the way we want them to be.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

The Etiquette of Christ

Luke 7:36 – 8:3

7:36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him–that she is a sinner.” 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” 41 “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 44 Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” 48 Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” 8:1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

I’m reminded of a story that Mark Twain once told about how he was able to recover from lumbago. I didn’t bother to google lumbago to understand what kind of medical condition it is – or if it actually is a medical condition. For my purposes it doesn’t matter. Mark Twain claimed that he once had it and it confined him to bed for days.

The doctor came to see him and said that he couldn’t help him unless he would moderate his consumption of coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. Mark Twain said he couldn’t moderate it, but he said he would cut it out for a few days, and he did. He said he didn’t consume anything other than water for two days and he got better. The lumbago left him, and with a powerful sense of thanksgiving he took to all of his delicacies once again.

Not long after that he encountered a woman who wasn’t feeling very well. She felt run down and no amount of medicine was giving her any relief. Having recently experienced his own remarkable recovery he said he knew how to help her. The woman was greatly encouraged by his words, and she said she would do anything he said if it would enable her to feel better, so he told her if she would stop swearing, drinking, and smoking for four days she would feel like new.

She said she couldn’t do that because she had never done any of those things. Upon hearing that, Mark Twain declared that there was no hope for her. He didn’t know how to help someone that had neglected their habits.

Mark Twain probably wasn’t a Methodist. I wish we could claim him, but 19^th Century Methodists were sort of known for their moderation. But I think he could have been a United Methodist – gratefully the church has become a bit more tolerant of people who don’t neglect their habits.

The practice of religion is funny business. I think it brings out the best and the worst in people. In fact what we see in this dinner party at Simon the Pharisee’s house a perfect example of the best and the worst of religion. You might say that Jesus was the very embodiment of the best of religion. Jesus was religious, and he practiced his religious faith by being loving and forgiving. And because he practiced his religion so beautifully other people experienced forgiveness and transformation.

I’m guessing many of you have heard someone say that they are spiritual but not religious. I used to hear people claim that as a reason for not going to church, but I don’t hear that as much as I used to because most people don’t go to church anymore. You don’t need an excuse to stay away from church – it’s become normal. Now I’ve never challenged anyone who used their spirituality as a reason for not being involved in a church, but it seems to me that the greatest spiritual leaders always come out of religious traditions. Certainly you don’t need to be involved in an organized religious community to be a God-loving and gracious person, but I don’t believe religious practice and spiritual development are hostile to each other. Jesus was a practicing Jew. His involvement in that flawed community didn’t get in the way of his perfect love for God and the world.

Of course religious communities are never perfect, and some people do a good job of embodying those imperfections. I’m thinking that Simon the Pharisee is a perfect example of the unfortunate way in which some people practice their religion. They aren’t motivated by their faith to reach out in loving ways to their neighbors but they are moved to become harsh critics of the failures of others. The practice of religion moves some people to become intolerant and judgmental. Religion can become an avenue to arrogance and it can lead some people to think they are far better than other people.

We’ve certainly got some terrible examples in the world today of the way in which a decent religion can become twisted in to something grotesquely hateful. (I wrote and preached this sermon prior to my knowledge of the hate inspired shooting in Orlando. I’m not exactly sure how I might have adjusted my words, but I didn’t know of the horrible act prior to preaching this sermon. I’m sure I would have had something additional to say about that.) I’m not well versed in the Muslim religion, but I do not believe that the people who are motivated to engage in horrible acts of terrorism in the name of Muhammad are being true to what he taught. I believe the true followers of Muhammad are as offended by those acts of terrorism as the rest of us. In fact they are probably more outraged by the way their faith has been hijacked and distorted by some of their twisted leaders.

I don’t know enough to say much more than that, but my understanding is that the focus of that religion is upon obedience to the one loving God of us all. I’m sure there are some verses in the Koran that some people seize upon to justify their hateful behavior, but Jews and Christians have done the same thing. As I say, religion can bring out the best or the worst in us, and this text that we are looking at today is telling us to take note of this possibility. It’s so easy to go down that ugly road of self-righteous religiosity.

I’m mindful of what transpired one Sunday after church when I sat down to dinner with my parents. I was home from college one weekend and I was at the peak of my understanding of ultimate truth. We had gone to church that morning, and in my opinion we had heard a ridiculous sermon. I knew my mother was no fan of that preacher’s rhetoric, so I was able to get her going on his obvious shortcomings. I’m sure none of you have ever engaged in that kind of conversation, but I have been known to go down that road. It was particularly easy for me to go there when I was younger and knew everything. So my mother and I were having a pretty good time highlighting the emptiness of the morning’s sermon, and I asked my father what he thought of the sermon. My father said, You know, when I go to church I think of it as a time when I can be quiet and not have to answer the phone or do anything. He said, I can sit there and think about whatever it is I want to think about and that’s what I do. If I don’t care to hear what the preacher’s saying I think about something else.

My mother and I didn’t think he was very much fun at that point, but that was a great thing for me to hear. My father didn’t let the preacher get in the way of the practice of his religion, and that’s probably the secret to being a good United Methodist.

It’s an amazing thing that we haven’t completely destroyed the truth that has come to us from our ancient spiritual and religious ancestors. This is a testimony to the resilience of the truth because it has been passed through a few hundred generations of faulty vessels. I dare say the truth has been challenged in every religious generation, but every generation has seen the truth revealed as well. Certainly the conflict between the truth of God and the lesser agendas of self-deceived leaders was in full display on the night that Jesus went to dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee.

Our inability to contain the truth was embodied by the man who professed to know the truth, but our ability to carry the truth was revealed by the woman who wasn’t invited to dinner, but who came anyway – bearing an alabaster jar of costly ointment that she was determined to share with Jesus. She wasn’t qualified to be the one who knew the truth, but she understood something that the religious professionals had overlooked. She wasn’t just the bearer of a precious ointment, she was the bearer of the most valuable thing we ever encounter – the redeeming truth of God. She was the bearer of truth and the recipient of grace. She was healed, and through her we are reminded of what God’s love really looks like.

In some ways, our practice of religion is a lot like the rules of etiquette. We don’t really know why many of our rules exist, but you can bet that they are rooted in some kind of practical expression. Rules of etiquette help us get along nicely with each other, but we don’t refuse to let people eat if they don’t know how to hold a fork properly. The practice of religion is at it’s best when it helps us get in touch with the love of the living God. It’s at it’s worst when we use it to justify our rejection of people who don’t meet our expectations of righteousness.

The Pharisees weren’t necessarily evil men, in fact they were usually highly disciplined individuals who were doing their best to abide by all of the religious regulations that had developed over the centuries, but as Mark Twain would say, there was no hope for them. They had neglected their habits – they were blind to their own frailties and failures and it cost them their compassion.

It’s not a bad thing to practice proper etiquette, but we need to take our lessons on etiquette from Christ – the one who understood how to practice his religion in a way that redeemed people and not rejected them.

One of the saddest stories I ever heard was from a man who lived for many years as an alcoholic. He had a terrible pattern of behavior, and he hated the way he lived, but he couldn’t shake it for a long time. He said he often wanted to pray to God for help, but he said he was afraid to pray because he didn’t want God to know where he was. He had grown up in a church that had given him an image of God that was intolerant of any kind of misbehavior, and he thought his only hope was to keep hidden from God.

I’m happy to say it wasn’t a United Methodist Church that had given him such an image, but it isn’t unusual even in a United Methodist Church for people to believe that God loves us more when we look right.  The truth is that God loves us, period.

Jesus Christ didn’t abide by the proper etiquette of his day. If he had, he wouldn’t have let that woman touch him. Jesus wasn’t bound by propriety, he had a clear understanding of the unbounded love of God, and he felt free to share the love of God with people who had been told that they didn’t qualify for a relationship with God.

This passage ends with a description of the band of people who traveled about with Jesus as he shared the Good News. Included in that group were women who had been healed of several diseases, Mary Magdalene who was known for having seven demons driven out, and one was the wife of an officer in Herod’s army. These were not the kind of people that would have been welcome at Simon the Pharisee’s house, but these were the people who Jesus trusted the most to assist him in the divine work of transforming hearts. These were the kind of people with whom there was hope.

The truth is there’s hope for us all – even those who have neglected our habits. Thanks be to God.

Amen!

The Intersection of Life & Death

Luke 7:11-17

11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

It’s important to take note of the movement that’s going on in this passage. We’re told that Jesus and the crowd that was accompanying him was moving toward the city as this funeral procession was coming out of the city. One group was moving toward the place where people lived and the other group was moving away from that place. One group was filled with great expectations – the other group was agonizing over the loss of possibility. Life was moving in one direction. Death was moving in the other. And when they met a miracle occurred and life prevailed.

What took place on that road was a powerful portrayal of the life-giving power of Jesus, but as we all know, you just don’t run in to the miraculous power of Jesus every time you leave the house. Clearly the events of this story were extraordinary, and they raise our expectation level of what Jesus is able to do, but we need to glean the right message from this story. It’s important for us to keep in mind that Jesus didn’t bring back to life every only son of every grieving widow, but there’s something we can learn about Jesus from this story, and there’s some hope for us all to be found in this story.

I wish I could say this passage provides us with a clear formula for the way to experience miraculous healing and restoration of life when we are in the midst of devastating illness and loss. I wish I knew where to tell you to go in order to gain access to the miraculous touch of Jesus, but it’s not so simple. As we all know, inexplicably painful things happen and relief is usually slow in coming. I’m not saying there isn’t such a thing as instantaneous restoration. Life is much more complex and surprising than I know to describe, and miraculous things continue to happen, but unfortunately they don’t happen on demand.

In some ways it’s sort of frustrating to read how someone’s pain was instantaneously removed. It’s hard not to want that kind of relief for ourselves or the people we know who are living with deep pain, but that’s not what generally happens, and that’s not the message we should extract from this story.

I think one of the important messages for us to gain from this story is the importance of not counting on Jesus to fix all of our problems. When you hear what Jesus did for someone it’s hard not to want that for ourselves, but Jesus never was one to perform a miracle on demand. I think this story of what happened as he came near to the city of Nain stands in stark contrast to the story of what happened when he returned to his hometown of Nazareth. We don’t know much about Nain, and that’s probably the most significant thing about the place. It was unknown. Unlike the residents of Nazareth, the people of Nain had no idea who Jesus was or what to expect from him.

Jesus didn’t respond well to people who expected to be granted the favor of God – Jesus was the most responsive to nameless people who had no expectation for relief. This is not to say that those of us who love Jesus and seek his grace are disqualified from receiving his attention, but the healing grace of Jesus is not something we should ever expect to receive – it always comes as a gift.

Jesus was guided by nothing but compassion, and this is a good lesson for us all to remember. Not only was the man who perfectly embodied the love of God motivated by compassion – he revealed how powerful compassion can be, and this is good news for us all. Compassion is always powerful medicine, and sometimes it changes everything!

One of the podcasts that I will occasionally listen to is a show called Snap Judgement. It’s a show that highlights stories that involve life-altering events or decisions. One of the most memorable stories I’ve heard on that show was told by a woman who’s life was altered by the arrival of an injured cat. She shared the story of how her son was brought to life in a significant way by their experience with this stray cat.

This story was told by a woman who never intended to have a cat because her mother was a nut about cats. She said her mother kept nearly 30 cats in their house when she was a child and she felt like her mother cared more about her cats than she did her children. So when this woman got out of her mother’s house she never wanted a cat.

But she had a baby, and this baby was troubled. He was a miserable baby and he couldn’t bear to be touched. He never smiled and he would never even look at her. She said the only time she could caress him was when he was in a deep sleep. He never spoke, and at some point the doctors diagnosed him as having a form of autism. That was good information, but it didn’t help in regard to communicating with him. It was a hard situation, but she came to accept George for who he was and she dealt with it the best she could.

She spoke to him all of the time, but he never spoke to her until he was 7 years old and this injured cat came in to their yard. She told George that they needed to help the cat, and as she was reaching down to get this bloody cat George said, “Baboo”. And he just kept saying it. “Baboo, baboo”. This woman called her mother and other family members to come over, and they did because they couldn’t believe that George was saying anything. They thought maybe she had lost her mind, but they were all amazed at what they saw and heard.

George and his mother nursed the cat back to health, and that cat became George’s first and constant playmate, who he named Ben. He would speak to the cat and he would tell his mother what the cat wanted. And of course the mother would give them whatever they wanted just to hear her son speak.

One day George noticed the cat rubbing up against his mother’s legs and he asked why he did that. She told him that that was how cats showed affection to their mothers, and George began doing the same thing to his mother. That was the first affection George ever gave to his mother. On another day George told his mother that they wanted a trampoline and she said Ben the cat would get on the trampoline along with George, and that was the first time she ever heard her son laugh.

There is more to this story, and it’s documented in a book called The Cat Who Came Back For Christmas. As the mother told her story there was no mention of Jesus, but I think this story is very connected to the healing power of Jesus because this story illustrates the power of compassion. The first obvious act of compassion came from the mother and her son toward the poor bloody cat, but that act was connected to the years of love that the mother had shown toward her troubled son, and it was an act that opened up so many other opportunities for them all to show their love for each other. That simple act of caring for the cat woke something up within George, and the way in which he learned to interact with the cat and his mother was nothing short of a miracle.

Sacrificial love doesn’t always produce documentable miracles, but I do believe acts of compassion always touch people in healing ways. The exercise of self-giving love doesn’t always change things immediately, but I believe that such love always pays off in profoundly good ways. I think it’s worth noting that this child was 7 years old before this cat came in to their yard and transformed their lives. But George’s mother had been deeply caring for her child for years and she had been agonizing over the deathly condition that seemed to hold him hostage. Miracles are rarely quick to arrive.

There was a retired man in my previous church who was the unpaid superintendent of the building. That building was in perpetual need of repair and I was always amazed at what Karl was willing and able to do to keep it operational. He was also known for his sayings, and one of the things I heard him say more than once was that he could take care of hard things quickly, but miracles take a while. Miracles do take a while. Most of us are still waiting for one.

But it helps to know that things can and do change. I don’t believe any of us need to sit around hoping for a miracle to drop in our laps, but I believe there is this possibility of encountering life-restoring experiences in our own lives. It’s rarely automatic – they usually happen while we’ve been on painful paths for longer than we think we can bear, but that’s where we generally encounter the saving grace of God. Sometimes they occur when we are too devastated to take another step, but as long as we can I believe it’s important for us to do what we can to help ourselves and to help others.

Jesus encountered the grieving woman on the road. She was devastated, but she was doing what she needed to do, and that’s what we all must continue to do as well as we can. It helps to believe that things can change. If you don’t believe that anything can change you aren’t inclined to do anything that will bring about any kind of change.

It also helps to trust in Jesus. Jesus doesn’t provide us with any kind of magic potion. At least he’s never provided me with any of it, but one of the messages I get from this story is that good things happened to people who encountered Jesus. The woman who was on the road toward the grave of her son had no idea who Jesus was – she wasn’t looking for him, but she very fortunately encountered him, and that changed everything for her. We might not have the good fortune of serendipitously running in to Jesus on the road, but we have the good fortune of knowing who he was and what he offered, and this is a great gift for us.

What we know is that we have a God who loves us so much that we are never removed from the possibility of new life on earth or the promise of more abundant life beyond this small planet. What Jesus did by restoring life to the son of the woman who had lost everyone who was most important to her was to reveal the desire of God to provide all of us with hope.

The circumstances of life can become unbearably hard. It’s not unusual for our troubles to multiply and our hope to wane. It’s not unusual for us not to get what we think we need when we think we need to have it, but the message in today’s story is to trust that we do have a God who hears our cries.

It’s a horrible thing to be on the painful road away from the place where life is known to happen, but that’s the very place where we may very well encounter the life-restoring touch of our living God. You can’t expect it to happen when you want it to happen or predict how it will happen, but you can trust that God will provide a way for it to happen. We may never fully understand the extent of God’s love for us as we go about our lives in this world, but one day we will all be at the intersection of death and life, and that is where we will fully encounter and celebrate the power that Jesus Christ has over the empty grip of death.

Thanks be to God! Amen

Divine Connections

Luke 7:1-10

1 After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. 2 A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. 3 When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. 4 When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, 5 for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” 6 And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; 7 therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” 9 When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” 10 When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

As I thought about this story of the centurion seeking the aid of Jesus to heal his valued servant I was prompted to consider some of the circumstances that greatly affected me as I was growing up. I’ll try to draw some lessons from this reflection of my formative years, but I’m inclined to indulge in an extensive portrayal of some critical relationships that I had as I grew up.

As you may know, I grew up in Wynne, AR, and my sister and I were the third generation of Murray’s to be born there. Our father and our grandfather were both born there, and Wynne had been good to our family. My great-grandfather came to Wynne with the railroad, and I think it provided him with a decent living, but my grandfather, Thompson Bernard Murray, known by most people as Tom, was a man with an eye out for opportunities. Born in 1898, he served in WWI, but unlike many of the men who participated in that war, he didn’t have to endure the misery of the trenches. Tom managed to become a motorcycle courier, and while riding around France on a motorcycle wasn’t without it’s risks he was able to avoid the worst of the horrors of that war.

Following the war, he convinced my grandmother to marry him, and I think it was against the will of my grandmother’s family that she married my grandfather, so you might say he “married up”. He wasn’t a man of means when they got married, but he worked hard and got lucky, and in 1926 he obtained the Chevrolet/Oldsmobile franchise for Wynne. My father was born that same year, and things were good for my family. In time, my grandfather was able to buy some farmland on the western (flat) side of Cross County, and he bought some hilly land on the east side of town on Crowley’s Ridge where he built a pond and an apple orchard.

I say that my grandfather did all of this, but of course he was a man who had a lot of help. Tom fully embraced the role of being the boss. In fact, I think he probably shared some characteristics with the centurion that’s described in this morning’s passage. My grandfather was church and community-minded, and he knew how to get along with people, but he was also a person who had a strong sense of authority. He also had a servant. I guess technically, Robert Anderson Jr. was his employee, but I think it’s accurate to say that this man was his servant.

Robert Anderson Jr. was best known as Jr., and Jr. began working for my grandparents before I was born. I’m not sure what all he did prior to the terrible car accident that left my grandmother a quadriplegic around the time of my birth in 1957, but by the time I knew what was going on, Jr. was intimately involved in all of the operations of my grandparent’s household. Jr. did whatever they needed him to do. He cooked, he cleaned, he mowed, he helped get my grandmother in and out of bed, he drove her where she wanted to go, and he did whatever odd job my grandfather needed him to do.

As we all did. My grandfather felt free to utilize any of us for whatever he needed to be done. Once I got old enough to be of use, my grandfather often sent me with Jr. to carry out various tasks. Jr. was a master of loading the back of a pickup with brush or debris. I could never believe how much he could get in the back of a truck, and to this day I take pride in my capacity to pack a truck – a skill I directly attribute to Jr. I also remember very vividly the day Tom sent Jr. & I out to scoop dead catfish out of his pond. Somehow the oxygen level had gotten out of whack in his catfish pond, and I spent a hot summer day with Jr. in a john-boat removing dead bloated catfish.

I don’t know how Jr. was compensated for his work. I’m sure he wasn’t well paid, but it was probably more than my grandfather wanted to pay him. Tom was frequently irritated with something Jr. had done or not done and every once in a while he would fire Jr., but the truth was that he couldn’t live without him, and it was never long before Jr. would be back at work at my grandparent’s house.

My grandparents were totally dependent on Jr., and this became perfectly clear to me one day when I was out with Tom and we stopped by Jr.’s house. Right inside the front door of Jr’s house I was amazed to see a pay phone. I’ve never known of anyone to have a pay-phone in their house, but somehow my grandfather had arranged for Jr. to have one. Jr. didn’t always get his bill paid, and the phone company would occasionally cut off his service, but my grandfather had convinced the phone company that it was essential for him to be able to call Jr. and they had agreed to put a pay phone in his house.

Jr. had a hard life, but he never failed to greet me with a smile and a friendly word. In fact Jr. was probably the most consistently pleasant adult I knew as I was growing up. I always enjoyed hanging out with him in the kitchen of my grandparent’s house because I never encountered any judgement in there about how I looked or what I was up to. I loved my grandfather, but he could be pretty demanding. Jr. was always easy to be around.

Of course time takes it’s toll, and by the time my grandfather got in to his eighties he was having a hard time getting around. He had some mini-strokes that impaired his movement, and his knees were largely worn out. By the time he was in his mid-eighties he couldn’t get in or out of bed without assistance, and Jr. was there for him. Jr. was very literally his link with the living world, and this became painfully clear the day Jr. was shot and killed by the deranged father of his girlfriend. That was a horrible day for everyone that was connected to Jr., but just how connected my grandfather was to Jr. became evident when my grandfather died two weeks later.

Jr. died an untimely death, but the tragedy was compounded by what went on at his funeral. I was home on a break from seminary when all of this happened, and Jr.’s funeral was one of the worst worship services I have ever attended. The pastor in charge of the service had asked me if I wanted to speak during the service, and I had declined, but I grew to regret that as I listened to what he had to say. That pastor basically described Jr. as the kind of person you didn’t want to be. He talked about how Jr. had not made time to be in church and how he had made time to engage in all the things that he considered to be of the devil. He basically declared that Jr. was in hell because of the choices he had made and that he hoped we wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

Jr. wasn’t in church on Sunday mornings because he was usually getting one of my grandparents out of bed and cooking their lunch. I knew he enjoyed some night life, but in my opinion he deserved to have some fun. Jr. wasn’t a churchman. I never knew him to speak of anything religious, but he knew how to serve the needs of other people, and Jesus had a lot to say about the value of that. Jr. taught me what it looks like to be a servant, and it’s not a glamorous occupation, but the work he did was holy.

When we got to the gravesite and I told the pastor I did want to say something, and he let me have the last words. I was too emotional to say much, but I’m happy that I was able to speak these final words over his grave: Robert Anderson Jr. was a good man.

This recollection of the relationship between my grandfather and the man who served him for decades doesn’t exactly parallel the story of the centurion who came to Jesus in hope of having his servant healed, but what I do know is that their lives were tightly intertwined, and I was powerfully influenced by both of them. And as I consider both this Biblical story and my own story I’m mindful of the way in which most of the spiritually enriching experiences we have in life occur within the context of relationships.

The centurion was motivated to seek the aid of Jesus because of his deep connection with his ailing servant. This powerful man had become aware of how powerless he was to address the need of this person that he valued, and it was his state of powerlessness that caused him to turn to Jesus for help. Jesus was amazed at the faith the centurion had in him, and it seems that it was the centurion’s understanding of his own authority that enabled him to understand the authority of Jesus. The centurion understood his own strength and his own weakness, and he recognized that Jesus had something he didn’t have.

Unfortunately, it’s often under the pain and stress of disease or death or estrangement that we come to recognize our powerlessness, and it’s those circumstances that cause us to cry out to God. It’s the brokenness that we experience in life that often moves us to engage with new people and to experience the saving grace of God. I feel very fortunate to have been influenced by the strengths and the limitations of my grandfather and of Jr. My grandfather was able to accomplish many things, but in significant ways he was helpless without Jr.

I wouldn’t say I was led to Jesus by my experience with Tom and Jr., but I would say that my understanding of how we experience Jesus Christ in this world was reinforced by my relationship with both of them. My grandfather was very supportive of my decision to go in to ministry because a number of experiences in his life had provided him with a deep understanding of how powerless financial resources really are. Money couldn’t heal my grandmother. Money couldn’t get him out of bed when his own knees wore out. It took the touch of a number of caring human beings to make life bearable for him.

I was reminded at Jr.’s funeral of how easily we can get confused about what it looks like to live in relationship with God. Jr. wasn’t a person who showed up at church very often, but he did show up to cook and clean and do whatever else my grandparents needed him to do. I think he often showed up late, but he showed up for them in a powerful way, and by doing what he did I think he revealed a lot about what it looks like to do the work of God. Participating in the life of the church is a beautiful thing, but I think we all know that it’s not the only way to live a Godly life.

It wasn’t the officially religious people that impressed Jesus with their faith. It was a centurion – a person who was officially outside of the faith that touched Jesus with the extent of his faith.

You just never know where you will encounter God’s angels in this world. Sometimes it’s hard to see who they are because they are connected to us in many other complicated ways, but I believe God works through a lot of different people in a lot of different ways to provide us with the kind of saving grace that we are each in need of receiving.

I believe God can use each of us to exhibit some amazing faith at critical moments and to enable the power of Jesus Christ to become manifest in the life of others. God has provided us with the gift of relationships, and we should never underestimate the power that comes through those people who’s lives are intertwined with our own. God touches us through the hands and hearts of other people, and for this beautiful gift I give great thanks.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Spiritual Fitness

Romans 5:1-5

1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

There’s a wonderful line spoken by one of America’s great television personalities:  Daffy Duck. He spoke it in an episode called “The Abominable Snow Rabbit”. The situation is as usual, Daffy Duck has done his best to shake off the threat of the moment by putting Bugs Bunny in harms way, but Daffy Duck has a hint of a conscience. And he has this moment when he says to himself:

Poor Bugs. But anyway you look at it, it’s better he should suffer. After all, it was me or him, and obviously, it couldn’t be me. It’s a simple matter of logic. I’m not like other people. I can’t stand pain. It hurts me.

Daffy Duck and I – we aren’t like other people. We don’t like pain. It hurts us! Maybe it hurts you too. But the Apostle Paul was no Daffy Duck, and he didn’t want us to live with Daffy Duck mentalities either. I don’t believe Paul was encouraging us to find ways to suffer, but he didn’t want us to live in fear of pain. Paul wanted us to understand and embrace the value of suffering.

Paul wanted us to understand that suffering is something that can be redeeming. And while it’s not hard for me to accept Paul’s proposal as a sound theological proposition – it’s still hard for me to put into practice what he’s preaching.

It’s not hard for me to believe that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope that is rooted in the good news that Jesus Christ revealed does not disappoint, but this truth isn’t so easy to put in to practice. I like my comfort, and I don’t like to do things that put my pleasure in jeopardy.

In some ways I feel very fortunate to be living in a country and at a time in which my religious faith and practice is not illegal nor does it carry any kind of social stigma. In fact being a pastor provides me with an elevated level of social standing. I probably don’t have the automatic level of respect that clergy people once enjoyed in this country, but I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that it’s not a disadvantage to be a Christian in this country. In fact you probably need to be one if you want to get elected to high office.

But I also know that there is something skewed about all of this. I really don’t believe that the world has changed so much over the last 2000 years that there is little conflict between the powers and principalities that largely rule our world, and the One who actually presides over the universe. I can’t help but wonder why it is that Paul was so persecuted for his faith, and why I am held in high regard for embracing what he taught.

But I don’t really want to look too closely in to this question because I suspect I would find that I’m fully cooperating with some systems that are totally at odds with the teachings of Jesus Christ. What I’m inclined to believe is that some of the greatest evils of our day are simply more masked than they used to be. I don’t believe this world in which we live has come to be so much more in line with the love of God – I just believe it’s more hidden. I believe evil is such an insidious presence in this world we can find ourselves cooperating with it in ways we don’t fully understand.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not unhappy that I can make a nice living and live in a nice home while working as the pastor of a church. I’m grateful that I don’t experience the kind of physical abuse and material deprivations that Paul experienced, but I’m not at all confident that this is because the world in which I live has become a more hospitable place for the message of Jesus Christ. I suspect that there is more distortion of the truth going on than there is actually harmony between that which is Holy and that which is profane.

And in a profound way I’m grateful for the lack of clarity about this. I know what it looks like when the battle between good and evil becomes all to clear, and I don’t want to be in that place. I thank God I’m not a pastor living in Germany in the 1930’s. I’m so grateful I’m not forced to compromise my faith in order to keep myself and my family safe. Pastors in that place during those days had to make the decision to support the church as it was defined by Adolf Hitler or to support the church as it was formed by the Holy Spirit.

Of course such monumental conflicts aren’t so far away. We’ve certainly had high stake decisions of faith within our own country. It wasn’t that long ago that United Methodist pastors had to decide where to stand on issues of desegregation and women’s equality. And there are pastor’s today that have lost their credentials for conducting same-sex marriages or for revealing their own unauthorized sexual orientation. If you paid any attention to the quadrennial meeting of our General Conference that recently concluded you know that this was an issue, and I think it was handled in the best possible manner – we authorized the Bishops to form a special commission to review the language in our Book of Discipline and come back with recommendations. Some say we’ve just kicked the can down the road, but that’s probably better than kicking each other in the shins. This is certainly a point of conflict within our denomination, and it’s a serious issue for us to resolve, but nobody’s getting firebombed for stating their beliefs about this.

I can testify that you don’t get crucified for expressing your opinion that we need to be more open in this regard. I have done that, and I have not been assaulted by anyone. It may not have been a great career move, but it’s not dangerous.

And I’m sure there are some powerfully costly and dangerous things that we Christians should be doing if we were totally focused on following the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it would be good for our souls if we were so faithful. As surely as it takes some physical strain to keep our bodies fit and functional, I believe it takes some suffering and endurance in order to maintain the kind of sensitivity in our souls that puts us in touch with the kind of hope that Jesus Christ provides.

On the other hand, I don’t believe any of us need to go looking for trouble. I really am unsure of the kind of activism we should be engaged in if we were truly sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and I really don’t want anybody to destroy my blissful ignorance. I also know that we are probably all in touch with a good supply of pain. No, we aren’t living under Roman rule or Nazi occupation, but we all have our troubles.

And those troubles we have can be an excellent source of instruction for our souls. I don’t want to romanticize or make light of the kinds of troubles we have in life. Troubles are painful, and suffering gets delivered to us in many different ways. It came to Paul from men with clubs clubs and from being imprisoned, but it comes to us in the form of disease, through the death of loved ones, from financial ruin, and the breakdown of relationships. There is no end to the ways in which we suffer, and suffering is a chronic condition for many of us. The suffering of some people is obvious while others suffer in silence. None of us know exactly how other people suffer, but our suffering doesn’t have to be in vain.

Paul has a very clear thought about the value of suffering. He believes it can provide us with access to the most enduring form of hope that there is. He believes our suffering can guide us in to a deeper connection with the Holy Spirit, and he believes that this is the source of true relief from the various forms of pain that this world produces.

This is not to say that the Holy Spirit swoops in and carries our pain away. The Holy Spirit doesn’t fix everything that assults us, but our suffering is not a sign of abandonment from God, and through our suffering we can become more aquainted with God. And there’s a kind of hope that can grow out of our suffering that doesn’t diminish regardless of what may transpire.

In a significant way I think I’m talking about something I don’t fully understand. Just as surely as I don’t understand the level of physical fitness that it takes to run 100 miles I don’t understand the level of spiritual fitness that it takes to endure the kind of pain that I know some people encounter in life, but I trust that it’s true. I know a little bit about both physical and spiritual fitness, and I believe there are always significant benefits to the work of becoming more fit.

I believe Paul knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the benefit that we can experience through faithful endurance. Remaining faithful to God through extended periods of suffering can put us in touch with a form of patience that enables the most enduring type of hope that we can ever have. What Paul wants us to understand is that our suffering can open us up to the presence of God in a way that nothing else can.

As I say. I don’t want to romanticize the pain that we encounter in life. Daffy Duck is like other people, because pain hurts us all. But pain can be a tremendous teacher. It can enable us to become people with more highly developed souls. People who are more sensitive to the pain of others and to the love of God.

Don’t go looking for any pain. It will find you soon enough, and when it does remember that it may well be your best opportunity to experience the most profound sense of hope that we can ever know.

Thanks be to God!

Amen

Blown Away – Again

Acts 2:1-21

2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs–in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

It’s been interesting for me to be in touch with the leaders of the youth mission group that will be staying at our church in June. It brought back to mind my own experiences with youth on mission trips. I’ve participated in a number of such camps over the years. In fact, for four summers while I was in campus ministry I coordinated the Camp Aldersgate Mission Experience, which was a program where youth groups came from different places to stay for a week at Camp Aldersgate in order to go out and work on people’s homes. It was an exhausting routine to keep those groups supplied and busy, but not overwhelmed by the work. Of course it was also very gratifying.

I had money to hire three college students each summer, and they were very helpful, but they weren’t particularly skilled at construction or at handling construction materials and tools. And I apparently wasn’t much of a teacher. I’ll never forget the afternoon I was driving back to Camp Aldersgate in the small bus we had that we used to transport work groups and tools. There was a rack on the top of the bus that enabled us to carry ladders, and one of my assistants had secured a ladder on that rack. I was heading west on I-630 around 4:30 in the afternoon near the Baptist Hospital exit when I heard a mighty rumble on the roof of the bus. I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see an air-born extension ladder, and it landed in front of a car that was a short distance behind us.

I won’t tell you what I said, but it’s probably seared in to the memories of the kids that were on the bus with me. It was one of the most frightening situations I had ever encountered, but it resolved in the most remarkable way. The ladder hit the road and immediately slid over on to the shoulder of the road. Unfortunately the driver right behind me had also pulled over on to the shoulder, and he proceeded to run over the ladder, but it was made of fiberglass and it just shattered the ladder. I quickly exited and pulled back around to the scene of the accident, and the car was still there. We looked over everything and remarkably there wasn’t any damage to his car, so we all just went on our way.

It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever had. I had all of these conflicting emotions. I felt both lucky and unlucky all at the same time. I felt like a victim of something because I wasn’t the one who had tied the ladder to the roof, but I was the person driving the van, and in fact I was in charge of the situation. Ultimately, I was incredibly grateful that nobody had gotten hurt, and it sure felt like that could have happened. It was one of those situations that sort of blew me away. It was traumatic, but I also felt saved. It felt like a powerful encounter with the grace of God.

Barely escaping from a horrible disaster isn’t my favorite kind of surprise, but it’s never a bad thing to have an experience that generates absolute gratitude.

And I’m thinking this is sort of how the disciples felt when they realized that the violent wind that swept through their house was not a natural or man-made disaster of some sort. We think of the Pentecost experience of those first disciples as being a beautiful thing, but I’m guessing it began with some fear. God didn’t slip quietly in to the room. God erupted in to the room. It was a beautiful experience, but it was foreign – they didn’t know what it was at first. God swept into their lives and brought them into connection with people they had no idea they would ever love or understand.

And the Pentecost experience didn’t seem like a good thing to everyone even as it was going on. Some people considered all of the commotion to have been the result of people drinking. I think we always assume close encounters with God to be something that everyone would want to have, but this isn’t the case.

And sometimes we create situations where the Holy Spirit doesn’t have a chance to burst in to the room. That’s what seems to be the case with the United Methodist General Conference that’s currently happening in Portland, Oregon. There are 845 voting delegates from around the world at that meeting, and it almost seems like the antithesis Pentecost. We aren’t of one mind about anything. They spent 2 days debating the rules for procedures. I guess I’m grateful that there are people willing to give themselves to this endeavor of trying to guide our denomination in to the future, but it seems like an incredibly spirit-quenching experience.

I don’t know what needs to happen to breathe some life back in to our denomination. I don’t know how to read the times or to how to position ourselves to remain relevant for the future. I want our denomination and our particular church to experience new growth, but I’m more interested in being faithful than I am in being large.

I told you last week of my aspirations to fly. I think what I actually have is a fixation on the power of wind because I’m also a person who likes to sail. I learned to sail on an antique sail-board that a friend loaned me. I didn’t learn how to operate it quickly, but I kept messing with it for short periods of time over the course of a few years, and I eventually figured it out. I grew to love the feeling of being carried back and forth across the lake by the wind.

That sail-board finally deteriorated, but I now have my very own sailboat, and I love this boat. I wish I could invite you to join me sometime on my sailboat, but what I have is an 8 foot plastic rowboat with a sail. It’s only big enough for one person, and you have to sit on the bottom of it. It’s not easy to maneuver from one side to the other as you go from one direction to the other, but it’s such an exciting ride when the wind is blowing and you catch it just right!

In some ways I think I’m the same kind of pastor that I am as a sailor. I don’t really know how to operate a large vessel, but what I want to do is to encourage each of you to figure out how to sail your own individual boat. Now this isn’t a perfect portrayal of how I see my role as the pastor. I don’t think we are all isolated on our own little boats, but I do believe we each have our own set of opportunities that will enable us to catch a powerful blast of energy from God’s Holy Spirit. And I think we each have to pay attention to the direction of that powerful spiritual blast.

This is not to say that we aren’t all in the same boat in a significant way. Newport First United Methodist Church is a unique and beautiful vessel, and we each have a role to play in keeping this boat afloat and moving. I recognize that on some level I am the captain of this ship, but what I’m trying to say is that we’re not going to make it if you are waiting on me to tell you what to do. That’s not the kind of captain I am. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I really am more like a guy who has figured out how to sail an 8-foot plastic rowboat, and I’m here to encourage you to do the same because it’s so exhilarating.

I believe the greatest opportunity we have in life is to live in response to the Holy Spirit. I believe God’s spirit is in our midst, and I believe we each have the capacity to catch the drift of that spirit, and to go in those unique directions that God wills for us to go. I want to encourage you to think about how it feels to be in your own little boat because it’s so much more maneuverable than the large vessel we call the church. It’s hard for large vessels to change direction. They’re not nearly as responsive to the subtle shifts of the Spirit that can move us as individuals in powerful new ways.

I believe God’s spirit often blows us off our intended courses and in to places we would never have chosen or expected to be, and it’s in those unusual places that we often experience powerful blessings that are often very contagious to others.

It’s easy for us to keep our minds shut off from new possibilities, but God isn’t content to leave us alone, so God sent this wild and world-changing entity that we call the Holy Spirit to stir things up and move us to see ourselves, our neighbors, and our God in a whole new way. The Holy Spirit is not a calm breeze that makes things a little nicer for us. It comes blowing in like a violent wind to blow us out of the spiritual ruts we find ourselves occupying.

We can’t re-conjure up the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in our private and corporate lives, but I think we can do a better job of letting go of the things that keep us distracted from God’s living presence in our midst. And while I believe there have been these really large moments when the spirit of God was powerfully disruptive to large groups of people, I think the best way for us to work together as the people of God is to pay close attention to the way in which God’s spirit is moving us as individuals.

I don’t think it’s likely that the Holy Spirit is going to get through to the 845 delegates at General Conference to move the church in a new and powerful way. I may be surprised, but I’m not counting on it. What we can count on is the power of the Holy Spirit to open our own eyes to see our own neighbors in a new way. I believe God wants us all to live spiritually exhilarating lives, but that can only happen if we are willing to enter in to some new territory with love in our hearts and trust in our God.

We can’t program powerful encounters with God in to our lives, but we can each try to be more sensitive to those often subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit that move us to care for one another in new ways and to be less insistent on our own ways. I also think this is the avenue for actual church renewal. I believe spiritual endeavors are always contagious. It’s not my job or your job to figure out what other people need to be doing. We are each challenged to be as sensitive and responsive to the Holy Spirit as we can be, and I think we will all be surprised by the impact this can have on each of us. Our job is not to fix our church or our denomination, but to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe new life in to our own lives, and to share what we experience with others.

It’s a beautiful thing to get blown away by the spirit of God, and God invites us all to set our sails to be as responsive as possible to those mighty winds that come from heaven and move us to live on earth in new and graceful ways. Salvation experiences continue to happen. Those hot and startling winds of Pentecost continue to blow, and we are invited to catch them!

This is the good news – thanks be to God!

Amen

The Ground Crew

Luke 24:44-53

44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you–that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

I think my life may have been saved by a small remote control airplane. With the left wing detatched from the plane it’s currently unfliable, but fortunately it’s very fixable. I’ve fixed it on several occasions, and I believe it’s the abuse it’s endured that has extended the length of my life.

Let me explain. At an early age I developed a fixation on flying. My interest in flying manifested itself in a variety of ways over the years. I built many model airplanes when I was a child, I purchased Flying Magazine and read reviews of the latest airplanes as a young teenager, and around that same time I wrote off and obtained a pricing sheet for a hot-air balloon kit. That involved a lot more money and sewing than I could imagine, but then the best thing happened – I came across an article in National Geographic about Hang Gliding. That was the ticket for me! I went on to build 3 different hang-gliders when I was in high school. Two of them were do it yourself projects from mail-order plans, but the third one was a manufactured kit. I actually logged about a minute of cumulative flying time in the last one, although I was never more than a few feet off the ground.

I’m not sure why I never pursued actual flying lessons. That would have been the logical thing, but I didn’t go that route. I was always more inclined to want to build something that would fly.

A few years ago I tried my hand at building balsa wood and tissue-paper airplanes that were supposed to fly under the power of rubber bands, but I never had any success at getting one to fly. They looked pretty good, but I never understood what it took to actually get one to gain altitude. They always just crashed quickly and very unceremoniously.

One Christmas a few years ago, I got a remote controlled helicopter, and that little machine amazed me. The office area in my previous appointment had a really high ceiling, and that was a great room for flying a helicopter. I destroyed a couple of them over the course of a couple of weeks, but it put me back in touch with my ongoing desire to operate a flying machine.

I pulled out my most recent unfinished balsa wood plane project, and I decided I was going to get that thing properly constructed and in the air. I called my friend Lewis Chesser, a retired United Methodist minister who actually knew how to build and fly such planes, and he suggested I read this book that is the definitive guide on building and flying rubber-band powered airplanes. I got the book and I read a significant amount of it, but it was one of the most technical books I’ve ever read. I wouldn’t have understood much less of that book if it had been written in Korean. You have no idea how technical a book about building rubber-band powered airplanes can be. I was discouraged.

And the truth is building rubber-band powered balsa-wood airplanes is largely a lost art. If you go to a hobby shop today and ask them about rubber band technology they’re going to look at you like you came from another planet. But they can tell you about brushless electric motors, lithium polymer batteries, and other things that are involved in the state of the art today. I walked in to Mark’s Hobby Shop one day hoping to get some advice about how to build my balsa-wood plane, and I walked out with a Hobbyzone Champ RTF – which means ready to fly. In that one box was everything I needed to fly a remote controlled airplane.

I’m going to talk about Jesus in a minute – he’s not unconnected from my thoughts about all of this, but I’ve got to tell you about my experience with this plane. I took this plane out for the first time to this nice open field that’s in the center of St. John’s Seminary up in the heights in Little Rock, and I was actually able to fly it around a little bit. I didn’t land it so well, but the grass was soft and I didn’t tear it up. We had guests with children coming to our house soon, and I thought it would be fun to fly it for them, so I quit before I tore it up.

So a few days later after our guests arrived I made everyone follow me over to that field, and I was so excited. I got it up in the air, and I was trying to figure out how to keep it from gaining too much altitude, and you might say I overcompensated a bit, and within about fifteen seconds of it’s initial take-off I caused it to do a nose dive from about 30 feet and it cracked the wing off. My flying demonstration was over for the day.

Luckily this plane is very repairable, and over the next few weeks I had the pleasure of getting to do quite a few repairs on on. I knocked a wing off on one of the few light poles that surround the field. I got it caught in two different trees where I had to leave it for a couple nights before it blew down. I crashed it in to one of the few cars that was parked nearby, and I broke the tail off on several occasions due to rough landings.

And that’s what leads me to say that my life was saved by that little plane. Before I had that plane I thought I wanted to acquire one of those motorized ultra-light flying machines that you actually climb-in and fly – the ones that look a lot like riding lawnmowers with wings. I used to think it would be fun to put one of those together, but I have come to believe that I was not cut out to be a pilot. I have come to realize how easy it is for those things that go up to come down in unfortunate ways.

I’m thinking that I’m probably best suited to operate on the ground. In fact I’m thinking that’s where we all can do our best work. This is not to say that there isn’t a place in this world for good pilots – I know we’ve got some in the room, but in terms of the really big picture, we are called to keep our feet on the ground.

This story of the ascention of Jesus is the story of Jesus telling those of us who aspire to follow him that our job is to remain on earth and to trust in this power that descended after he ascended. Life on earth was transformed by him, and he has invited us to go about our lives in a totally different way. Just as my little plane saved my life in a very practical way, Jesus has saved all of our lives in a really powerful way. Jesus showed us that our avenue to the greatest life is not through advancing ourselves in to the highest positions of power and influence. Jesus revealed us that we don’t gain the most by rising above others. We gain the most by keeping our feet on the ground and loving our neighbors as well as we can.

Jesus wanted us to obtain the highest form of life, and he wanted us to understand how we can best achieve this beautiful gift of abiding in the kingdom of God. He wanted us rise into heaven by walking on earth in a kind and loving way.

I’m not totally over my desire to fly, but I also know that true freedom is not a matter of overcoming gravity. It’s not about obtaining financial security or developing physical superiority. It’s not about political connectivity, hyper religiosity, or any of the other ways in which we try to rise above the obstacles and challenges of life on earth. What Jesus seemed to be saying to those of us who want to be with him is to stay grounded in the things we know to be true.

Jesus didn’t promise that things will go better for us than it did with him, but he did provide assurance that we will not be without the power we need to sustain us through the trials of this life. Jesus didn’t want us to be ignorant of how God has been involved in human history from the very beginning, and he wants us to continue to gain understanding of how the story of God’s redeeming grace is revealed in scripture, but our job is not to just become more religious.

His instruction was for us to go out in to the world and to live our lives in such a way that the truth about God’s affection for this world would be revealed through our lives. He said we are to proclaim the need for repentance and the forgiveness of our sins, but I don’t think we can best do this by having more tent revival meetings where we try to scare people in to grand pronounciations of change. I just don’t see that as a form of evangelization that works anymore – if it ever worked very well. I belive Jesus wants us to reveal the avenue to life by fully embracing the love and life of Jesus Christ. We are called to live our lives with genuine trust in message of Christ.

It’s not that we are to be delusional about how things are in this world. Jesus was well aware of how broken this world can be, but he didn’t direct our attention away from this world.

Honestly, it’s a hard balance to strike. It’s hard to fully live in this world without abiding by the rules of this world, but that is what we have been commissioned to do. Our challenge is not to try to escape from the constraints of this world, or buy in to the seductions of this world, but to live in this world in a new way.

The disciples didn’t stand around wishing Jesus had taken them with him – they may have had some of those feelings, but we’re told they returned to Jerusalem with joy in their hearts. They were still on earth, but in a powerful way they had already been released from the bounds of this world. Their lives had been transformed and they had made themselves available to God.

And this is our calling as well – to make ourselves available to God for the transformation of the world. I know we all are tempted to want to rise above the messiness of this world, but Jesus asked us to be the ground crew for this heavenly endeavor. We are to remain in place and to work with whatever circumstances present themselves to us. It’s not easy, but the truth is that God will provide a way for each of us to soar in to heaven even as we abide on earth. This place will never be perfect paradise, but we can taste the fruit of full communion with God while we continue to abide on earth.

This is the message Jesus left with us as he departed from our midst in a physical sense. He promised to be with us in a new way, and it is in this that we are to trust, and to share, and to celebrate.

Thanks be to God – Amen.

Accommodations for Christ

John 14:23-29

23 Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. 25 “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

I think this probably goes without saying, but you don’t really know a person until you’ve lived with them for a little while. It’s probably not unusual for good friendships to become strained by the decision to become roommates. And I don’t have any statistics on this, but I’m guessing a number of marriages have actually been thwarted by the decision to move in together. Of course people who love each other always figure out how to live with each other, but it’s no small thing to make your home with another person. In both good and bad ways we are powerfully affected by the people we reside with. And you always come to know new things about the people with whom you share housing.

Sharla and I once went on a week-long mission trip to Biloxi, MS with a group of people that we hadn’t previously traveled with. We were doing home-repair work after Hurricane Katrina, and we were staying at the historic Seaside Assembly, which is a property of the United Methodist Church. There weren’t many parts of that camp that weren’t damaged, so we were staying in some cramped space, and the things we learned about each other were really interesting. I was staying in a room with a friend and his son, and this guy was always a very neatly groomed man. I would have guessed that he was a person who paid close attention to his accommodations, but this was hardly the case.

I, on the other hand, can look like I haven’t seen a mirror for a couple of days, but I’m actually very particular about my accommodations and sleeping conditions. I just have to have a shower before I go to bed at night, I want all my things to be in the right place, and I go to great lengths to make my bed as comfortable as possible. Not the case with my friend. He would take a shower before supper, put on whatever clothes he planned to wear the next day and he would got to sleep in them on a relatively bare mattress with whatever he could find to cover himself up with. I think he took his shoes off, but that was about all he did to get ready for bed. He would be asleep for hours before I would be getting in to bed.

I had often thought of he and I as being a little bit like the odd couple, but it was interesting for me to discover that I was the Felix and he was the Oscar. We had a few laughs about that.

You only think you know people until you spend time with them around the clock. There’s a great old movie called “The Defiant Ones”, that starred Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitier as two convicts who were chained together. The warden had spitefully shackled these two men together because he knew there was a good amount of racial contempt between them. As they were being transported the truck they were in had a wreck, and they were able to escape from the guards, but they were stuck together.

So these two men who hated each other were forced to work together to try to gain their freedom. It was a trial on many levels, and it could have played out in a number of ways. I’ll tell you how it ends in a moment, but for now I want us to think about the impact that those to whom we are bound have upon us.

What we have in our scripture lesson this morning is a message from Jesus about how powerful it is to love him and to keep his word. He said that when we do this the rest of his divine family will move in with us. And when you have Jesus and God and Holy Spirit as your housemates it just changes everything.

Today’s passage is in response to the question of how it is that Jesus reveals himself to believers and not to others. This is sort of a paraphrase of the question, but I think this is the question Jesus was answering when he said what he said about the great thing that happens when we love him and keep his word. Jesus didn’t want to talk about what divides us. Jesus wanted to talk about the great gift that comes to whoever is open to loving him and hearing his word. There is some judgment in these words that Jesus spoke, but Jesus wasn’t differentiating between the people who understood him and those who didn’t. Jesus was drawing the line between those who loved him and those who didn’t.

You can sort of go crazy trying to parse out what this passage is saying about the relationship between Jesus and God and the Advocate – as John describes the Holy Spirit, but that isn’t the question that Jesus is answering in this passage. What Jesus seems to want us to understand is how much more we can learn about who God is by hearing what he’s saying and doing what he said to do. The issue at hand is not the need to have the proper understanding of ultimate matters but of learning how to live in an ultimately transformed way.

I think this idea of living with a totally new and different perspective on life would have been particularly meaningful for the early Christians who were literally living under new circumstances. The community of believers that John knew and loved were probably of Jewish heritage, but their love for Jesus had alienated them from the Jewish community. They were trying to navigate their way during a time when they weren’t welcome in the synagogue – their traditional house of worship. You might say they had lost the house that was familiar to them, and they hadn’t found their new place. I think it must have been particularly comforting for these religious refugees to hear Jesus speak of God making a home in their lives. I think the truth is that it’s often easier for people who are displaced to be open to the new accomodations that come to us when we love Jesus more than anything else.

The established religious community wasn’t as open to Jesus as were those who had become touched by his love and moved by his word. Loving Jesus became a disruptive thing to that community, but it was such a redeeming thing for those who loved Jesus they found their new accommodations to be better than their old ones. It was different, but it was better. They didn’t have the kind of comfort and peace that the world has to offer – they had a far superior form of peace.

Just as we get to know people better when we live with them, I believe we come to know God better when we enter in to this homemaking relationship with Jesus, and God, and the Holy Spirit. We think we know something about Jesus when we first encounter him in our lives, but the truth is that we have no idea who he really is until we make some room for him. Like every other relationship that we have that extends over years I believe our relationship with Christ grows throughout our lives.

And another think Jesus wanted us to understand is that in order for our relationship with him to grow he needed to go away. Jesus didn’t want us to think of his death as a tragedy. Jesus wanted us to have the same relationship with God that he had, and he knew that this would only happen if he wasn’t around in the flesh. If Jesus was here in the flesh we wouldn’t allow the Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us in to the work that God is calling for us to do – we would just be wanting Jesus to come see us. We would have turned him in to some kind of celebrity, and we’d be fighting over who could get the closest to him at the rally.

Making room for Jesus to live in our hearts is a far different thing than wanting him to come stay at our house. To keep his word is to obtain the greatest privilege that is available to any of us, but it doesn’t give us access to the kind of privileges that we are tempted to seek in this world. The followers of Christ that John was speaking to didn’t obtain access to a new synagogue in a physical sense – their status in the community remained marginal, but their access to the truth of God expanded. They remained vulnerable, but their love for each other grew and their spirits soared.

I hate to be the spoiler for the end of a movie, but “The Defiant Ones” has been out since 1958, so you’ve had plenty of time to see it. If you don’t want to know how it ends you can stick your fingers in your ears, but it has a really beautiful ending. Sydney Poitier has the opportunity to jump on a train and get away, but Tony Curtis wasn’t able to make it because of a wound that he had acquired at an earlier moment when he acted to save Sydney Poitier, and Sydney Poitier reciprocates the act. They had been transformed by the experience of being bound together. The movie ends with the bloodhounds closing in as Sydney Poitier was carrying Tony Curtis and singing a spiritual. They were bound together by something far more powerful than chains.

The love of Jesus changes us in powerful ways. It provides us with the most amazing sense of security that there is, but it’s not the kind of security that you can acquire in the marketplace. The love of Jesus doesn’t provide us with protection from the world – it provides us with the assurance that our homes and our lives are the most secure when we are guided by the loving word of God. It’s not the kind of peace and protection that we get from guns and locks – it’s the kind of reassurance we have when we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I’m not saying we don’t need to exercise reasonable security precautions, but I am saying that the most powerful thing we can do is to embrace what Jesus says and to open our homes to the living God. Of course, he may turn the house upside down. In fact you can trust that God is out to disrupt the way we are used to living, but God wants us to understand what true peace and comfort really are.

It’s not easy to make accommodations for Christ in our lives. It’s not just the furniture that gets rearranged when God moves in, but the kind of transformation that can happen when we allow ourselves to be instructed by the Holy Spirit is a deeply beautiful thing. And this is what we are offered. We don’t get to have Jesus in the flesh living in the spare bedroom, but we can have his love in our hearts, and that gives us a place at the table of the Lord.

Thanks be to God for this gracious invitation to experience eternal peace and joy while we abide in temporary housing on this fleeting planet. May we fully appreciate the grace and guidance of the one who has chosen to abide with us! Amen

It’s Out There

Revelation 7:9-17

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” 13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. 16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; 17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

The Book of Revelation is probably the most misunderstood book in the Bible. It might also be described as the most unusual book in the Bible, and it’s unusual nature sort of lends itself to a wide range of interpretations, but I really don’t think it’s as mysterious as many people make it out to be. This is not to say that I have a clear understanding of what all the fantastic imagery is all about, but I do believe I know how we are to approach the study of this book.

The Book of Revelation is not a document that contained secret codes about future events. It does have a message that is pertinent for us to hear today, but it doesn’t contain predictions of specific events that would transpire at certain moments in history. The imagery of this book lends itself to a lot of speculation about what exactly will happen when, but I believe this book was written to help believers of any age navigate the difficulties of life in every age. The writer of this book seems to have had some veiled references to specific events and individuals of his day, but you don’t have to know exactly what or who he may have been referring to to understand the message.

I believe this book addresses the very real struggle that goes on between people of faith and the agendas of powerful governments and tyrannical leaders, but those experiences are timeless. John’s Revelation was that there is always more going on than what appears to be the case. John was aware of what was going on in the world, but he was also able to see what God was doing, and that enabled him to speak a word of hope to the people who were victimized by the godless governing authorities of his day. The really clever thing is that he did this in a way that left those authorities clueless that he was talking about them, and that’s a wise thing to do when you are dealing with bloodthirsty tyrants.

I’ll say a bit more about this in a moment, but I just don’t want to scare anyone with this text from Revelation. It’s easy for people to feel put off by these supernatural images that we find in this book, we’re sort of conditioned by bad Biblical scholarship to try to crack the secret codes that are contained in this book, but I’ve been exposed to some people who see this book in a much simpler and straight-forward way. I may be totally wrong about the way I’m inclined to see it, but I think the main thing this text is asking us to do is to try to see beyond the surface of the way things appear.

And that’s not easy for us adults. We think we know what’s going on.

We’re in touch with reality. Which means we’ve largely lost the one real skill children have over adults – which is their ability to see beyond the facts of a situation.

The mind of a child is a wondrous thing. By the time we become adults we have routine ways of processing information, and we have clearly defined boundaries of reality.  This is not so with children.  What they perceive with their imagination is not overwhelmed by what they see with their eyes.  Children are able to see things that adults don’t see, and in this sense, children have an advantage over adults.

I mean I can sit on a wooden platform in a playground and play along with a three year-old who announces that we are on a boat in a river with sharks in it, but I won’t feel nearly as threatened by those sharks as that three year-old will.  Nor will I be as proud when we safely set foot back on shore.

Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t find the facts to be as easy to overcome as they were when I was a child.  I can’t look at a toy dinosaur and be transported into the reality of a dinosaur’s life in the way that a child can, and that seems to be one of the unfortunate consequences of growing up.  I don’t think that childhood pretending is the key to abiding in God’s kingdom, but I do think it is essential for people who aspire to be Christian to look beyond the surface of this world.  I think this is an obvious truth, but it’s not an easy barrier to overcome.

The problem with being an adult is that we have this tendency to believe that there is nothing more real than the pressures we feel to keep up, pay up, and look right.  It’s hard to believe that there is anything more important than to function within society in a prescribed manner, and in my opinion our society has not been highly infuenced by spiritual truths.  It is fear and greed and prejudice and selfishness that have primarily shaped the surface of this world, and to be an adult is to have to deal with these formidable realities.

Our society is not without beauty and love and joy and peace, but those aren’t the dominant characteristics of life on earth.  It’s impossible to define the universal experience of all humans on earth, but it is a rare person who escapes the hostility of this world.  It’s a struggle to adapt to the harsh realities of human existence, but we do.  In fact we sometimes adjust so well to life on earth that we don’t like to think that there is anything beyond this life.  Sometimes we get so caught up in demands of life on earth it’s hard for us to believe that there is anything more substantial than the troubles that we face, and it is at the expense of our souls that we become so well adapted to the comfort or distress of our immediate circumstances – for these are both forms of denial of the presence of the Kingdom of God.

It was during a time of great distress that the Book of Revelation came into being.  The Roman Emperor Domitian wasn’t tolerant of anyone who refused to recognize the supremacy of Roman gods and traditions.  The early Christians in the region that was under Domitian’s reign were subject to exile, torture, or death if they refused to renounce the Lordship of Jesus and to worship the emperor and his ways.  These Christians faced some unimaginably harsh circumstances, and I’m certain that it was hard for them to see beyond the terrors that they faced.

The author of the Book of Revelation was a man named John who had been sent into exile on the Island of Patmos.  It wasn’t a horrible spot to be, but it was hard for him to be separated from the people that he loved.  John was a victim of Domitian’s cruelty, but it became clear to John that there was a reality beyond their immediate circumstances. And what we have in the Book of Revelation is John’s understanding of what we might call ultimate reality.

Just as a child can look at a doll and see that doll come to life, John was looking at the trials of the church and seeing the glorious reign of Jesus Christ – but it wasn’t just an exercise in pretending. It’s hard to define the difference between pretending and embracing a more ultimate reality than surface details, but it has something to do with being set free from the demands of the immediate situation. In John’s world, Christians were being persecuted, but God was also being glorified.

The Book of Revelation is an unusual book, but it portrays very clearly the ultimate reign of God and the joyful nature of the people who are faithful to God in this world. This book is a resource for people who are struggling to be faithful to God in the midst of an unholy time and place – which includes our own time and place.

The Revelation of John is an affirmation that the Kingdom of God is truly at hand.  It is a powerful portrayal of the truth that the grace and peace of Jesus Christ is going to prevail over the ways and means of evil.  John could see the evil of his day, but that wasn’t all he could see.  John was able to see that day in which people of all nations and races would come together to worship the Lamb of God.  John’s understanding of reality was unbounded by the immediate concerns of the day, and ours is to be as well.

It’s not easy for us to believe that there is anything more real than the pressures we feel imposed upon us by our godless society; it’s not easy for us to be transported from one reality to the next, but that is what happens when we turn our hearts to God’s Kingdom.  There are many ways in which people seek to escape from the harsh realities of life, but the ways in which people seek relief often generate new forms of misery.  Jesus didn’t offer a way to escape from the troubles that this world has to offer, but he did reveal the way in which the power of love can overcome the cruelty of evil. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ was anything it was God’s affirmation of the power of love.

God doesn’t offer us an easy escape route from the troubles of this world, but we are provided an avenue for abundant life in the midst of whatever circumstance presents itself.

It’s not easy for us grown-ups to believe that there is anything more real than land, more immediate than meetings, or more essential than payments, but that is not what John believed. And that is not what we must believe if we want to take advantage of the opportunity God has provided for us to be a part of the most real thing that there is — God’s glorious community of faith.  There is a child within each of us that is capable of seeing beyond the surface of life. And thanks be to God, we have been invited to become those children of God who can see how life is meant to be lived. It’s not easy to find, but it’s out there — for real.

Thanks be to God. Amen