Thompson's Blog

Serving Up Jesus
John 6:51-58

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Before I was a preacher I was a cook. I first studied the art of cooking under the instruction of my mother, who was a good cook. We ate well at my house when I was growing up, and I didn’t want to be as helpless in the kitchen as my father was. He could fix a fine fried-egg sandwich, but that was about the only thing I ever knew him to cook. I was really interested in learning about food preparation, and I actually took a cooking class one semester at the Univ. of Arkansas. It was in the Home Economics Department and it was called Foods For Non-Majors. I remember well that I was one of two male students in the class. It wasn’t hard for me to stand out in that class, but it wasn’t always for the right reasons.

And then I got a job working in the kitchen at Hugo’s. If you’ve spent any time in Fayetteville since the mid-seventies it’s likely you’ve eaten there. I bet I could go in that kitchen right now and make a plate of Macho Nachos. It was nice to have some extra money, but mainly I liked the food there, and I wanted the experience of working in a commercial kitchen. I actually enjoyed the work, but I never advanced beyond the status of a prep-cook and dish-washer. I wasn’t trained to work at the grill – I never really aspired to have that level of responsibility there.

I had a hard time honing in on what I wanted to focus upon when I was an undergraduate, and at the prompting of some friends who were going to step out of college for a spring semester and go work in Vail, CO, I decided to join them. I got out there and began looking for work, and I found a job at the Hong Kong Café. It was a great little Chinese Restaurant right at the base of Vail Mountain, and I loved working there. It was owned by a man who had spent time deployed in Viet Nam, and he had grown to love the food while he was over there. When he got back to the United States he lived in San Francisco and he learned how to run a Chinese style of restaurant there.

There wasn’t an Asian person in this kitchen in Vail, but we cooked traditional Chinese food on these large woks, and it was a very popular restaurant. We were only open in the evenings, but the days were filled with prep-work. Some days I worked during the day chopping vegetables and meat and preparing egg rolls and wontons, and other days I worked in the evenings washing dishes, frying egg rolls and wontons, and learning how to prepare the various dishes we made. They wanted everyone in the kitchen to know how to do everything, and I honestly loved working there. By the time the snow melted in the spring and my internal compass said it was time for me to return to Arkansas I had learned everything about that kitchen. The owner actually invited me to help him establish a new restaurant in San Diego, but I had had my western adventure and I was ready to come back to Arkansas.

I returned to Wynne that summer where I worked for a landscape company during one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and that was an experience that motivated me to return to college. As I closed in on my senior year with a very general degree that basically qualified me to go to graduate school or learn a trade, I was honestly torn between the option of going to some kind of cooking school or going to seminary.

You’ll hear more about my young adult angst and vocational confusion than you want to know in sermons to come. I won’t try to fill you in on all of those odd details this morning, but what I want you to understand is how close I came to being a guy who sought to serve fine food on Saturday night instead of tasty morsels of truth on Sunday morning. And while it may appear that I was in close kinship with Jethro Bodine, the idiotic nephew of Jed Clampitt on The Beverly Hillbillies, who couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a fry cook or a brain surgeon – I think there was a significant connection between the two vocational directions I seriously considered.

And this morning’s scripture lesson is making this connection for me. I’ve never really thought about this job of preaching as being so close to the work of a chef until I began to consider what Jesus was saying in this morning’s passage. What I’m thinking is that as a follower of Jesus Christ, and as an advocate for Christian discipleship I am to feed on Jesus and I am to serve him to others.

Now in some ways this passage is a bit more graphic than suits our sensibilities. It doesn’t exactly sound like a fine dining experience to hear Jesus say we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, but Jesus wasn’t appealing to people’s standard appetites when he spoke these words. Jesus was dealing with people who were needing to see things differently. Jesus was being intentionally shocking when he spoke these words. The leaders of Israel were feeding people the wrong ideas, and many of the people had an appetite for the wrong things. Jesus had come to offer the true bread of heaven, and it was not what they were used to consuming.

It’s sort of amazing what people can eat and think is good. I remember one evening at the Hong Kong Café one member of the kitchen crew had a friend come to dinner, and he decided to send out some complimentary egg rolls. But these were going to be special egg rolls. Instead of the usual filling my friend shredded a paper napkin, mixed it with some cabbage, rolled it up, fried it and sent it out. He was expecting his friend to send them back with an appropriate message, but instead they ate them and thanked him for the nice egg rolls.

This was the day I realized that when you deep fry something and provide some good sauce with it – it will pretty much taste ok. It’s sort of remarkable what we are capable of consuming, and what we think is good to eat.

You might say the people of Israel had become spiritually malnourished. What they were feeding upon was not what they needed. The people were being fed the idea that in order to be reconciled with God you had to attend a certain number of religious feasts where you brought religiously certified animals to the religiously certified priests that you purchased at the religiously certified market with religiously certified coins. The religion of Israel was very intertwined with what you ate, and Jesus considered that to be a terrible distortion of the truth. He came to reveal the truth, and he told the people that if they wanted to know the truth they didn’t need to do what the religiously certified people were telling them to do. He said they should eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Jesus was shocking to the people of his day, but he wasn’t just trying to shock them. Jesus wanted people to experience a new dimension of life, and in order to do that they needed to let go of life as they knew it. Jesus wanted people to let go of their false understanding of God and to experience the true nature of God – to stop feeding on the wrong thing and to consume the truth. What Jesus was saying when he told the people they should eat his flesh and drink his blood was not the physical truth, but it was the spiritual truth. Jesus was telling them that they needed to internalize him if they wanted to experience true life.

And he is telling us the same thing that he told them – that we are to step out of life as usual and in to a new dimension of living. We are not to consume the standard fare of our day – we are to be people who feed on the truth.

We don’t live in a world that’s so guided by religiously based dietary rules and rituals and requirements. There are people within our country who have very strong religious convictions about what they do and don’t eat, but most people who embrace dietary restrictions and protocols do so out of health or ethical concerns. What we eat is often connected to what we believe, but Jesus challenges us to consider the way in which what we believe feeds the way we live.

As Christians, you might say we are people who profess Jesus Christ to be the one who guides our lives, but Jesus was very challenging to the people of his day who claimed the faith of Abraham and Moses without really feeding upon the truth of the tradition. I don’t believe that any particular denomination contains the whole truth about Jesus, nor do I think any of us ever have a perfect and complete understanding of who Jesus was and what he taught, but I do believe we can continue to get closer to the truth if we will continue to strive for a more complete understanding.

We aren’t able to consume the whole truth at any one setting, and it’s important for us to remember that. Feeding on the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ is a lifetime quest, and it’s important for us not to reduce him to the kind of food we like to eat. Our challenge is not to do the same thing to Jesus that the officially religious people of his day had done to the faith of Israel.

Jesus is the freshest and the richest food available, and if we will let his truth nourish us we will experience the freshest and richest life that we can possibly have. What Jesus offers to us is the opportunity to rise above the surface of life and to live a life that isn’t defined by the standard fears, expectations, and rewards of this world.

But don’t expect it to be easy to allow Jesus to be your primary source of nourishment. Our world isn’t exactly like it was when John wrote his account of Jesus, but in some ways it’s not that different. As it was in the days when John wrote these words, our world expects us to live with fear of not doing what’s expected of us and it doesn’t reward challenging behavior. People continue to have an appetite for the wrong things, and it’s not easy to find the fresh food that Jesus Christ offers.

I know I’m not being particularly clear about what it means to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, but I don’t guess anyone ever knew exactly what Jesus was saying when he spoke these unusual words. These aren’t easy words to hear, but they are important words, and they are challenging words. Jesus isn’t easy to follow, but he is the source of the best food and drink that our souls can ever experience.

Let’s not be content with the standard fare of life. Let’s have an appetite for a more abundant way of living. I think it’s the only way to truly satisfy the hunger of our hearts.

Thanks be to God for coming in to the world in the life of Jesus Christ – who invites us all to feast at the table of truth and of life. May we have the wisdom and the desire to show up at his table.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Miraculous Extraction
Psalm 130

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

I consider the appearance of the recommended Psalm for this week, Psalm 130, to fall in to the category of a serendipitous harmonic convergence. It might not meet the criteria for an act of divine providence, but there’s a nice coincidence going on here. This may have escaped your attention, but CNN made a pretty big deal of the fact that August 5 was the fifth anniversary of the entrapment of 33 miners inside the San Jose Gold and Copper Mine near Copiapo, Chile – which sparked an international rescue operation that resulted in their rescue 69 days later. Even if you didn’t hear anything about this anniversary, I’m guessing that you remember the event. They say that about a billion people were tuned in to this story when the men started to emerge from the mountain.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

I think I read this Psalm shortly after hearing that this week marked the fifth anniversary of that remarkable event, and I couldn’t shake the sense of appropriateness that this Psalm provides in light of that story. I knew their rescue was an incredible event, but I didn’t really know how miraculous it was until I did a little mining for more information about what happened.

In case you aren’t as much of a news nerd as I am let me share some of the details of what happened. The trapped miners were assembled in a small room that was about a half a mile below the surface of the earth. This little refuge had tunnels connected to it, but they were encapsulated in a pretty small space, and they realized early on that there wasn’t a way out. Nobody knew if the trapped miners were alive, and the miners didn’t know if there was any chance that they could be rescued.

The President of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, saw to it that huge rescue operation got underway quickly, but there had never been such a rescue, and this mine was cut in to some of the hardest rock that you will find on earth. Early on they established a two phase plan for the rescue. The first phase was to try to drill a small hole as quickly as possible in to the refuge area that would be large enough to provide fresh air and to transport food and supplies to the miners, and the second phase would be to drill a wider hole that a NASA designed rescue capsule could be send down to retrieve the miners one at a time. This mine was about 100 years old, and not well mapped, but even if they knew exactly where that underground refuge was located it was a long shot for a drill to hit it.

This quickly became an international story and an international effort, and three different drill technologies were used to try to get to the spot where the men had presumably gathered. The room that these men assembled in had a footprint of about 530 square feet. They calculated that there was about a1.25% chance of making contact with that space, but after 17 days of drilling the 12th bore hole entered the space where the men were located. The trapped miners were able to attach a note to the end of the drill bit, and when it was extracted the world realized that they were alive.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!

One of the side stories of this event was the way in which faith was manifested – both from the trapped miners and from the people who were seeking to rescue them. There are a lot of horrible situations that you can find yourself in on this earth, but being trapped in a small space about a half a mile inside a giant rock with limited food and water ranks right up there with the worst of them. I’m guessing this situation surpassed the depth criteria from which this Psalmist was considering when he or she first expressed this prayer.

Of course when you are in such a desperate situation how can you express anything other than a plea to God for salvation? I think that’s the kind of situation that would bring a lot of focus in to most people’s prayer life. I’m sure I would have been in prayer whenever I wasn’t uncontrollably blubbering.

Fortunately there were some spiritually mature men within the group who came to think of themselves as The 33, and they did a good job of organizing themselves for survival as well as preparing themselves for their potential death.

They created a plan for distributing their limited food and water sparingly and fairly. They assigned tasks for keeping the space clean and they provided opportunities for physical fitness. They also had regular gatherings for prayer and worship, and the message they embraced was two-fold. They maintained their hope for rescue, but they also sought the courage to die with dignity if that was to be their fate.

It’s interesting that this Psalm begins with this powerful plea for deliverance – for God to hear the voice of their supplications, but then it immediately acknowledges the undeserving nature of the petitioner. I don’t think any of us can make a strong case to God for how much we deserve to be preserved. And this is probably one of the gifts that comes to us when we find ourselves in difficult circumstances. Life threatening situations strip away our most protected illusions of our selves. The loss of all control can help us see ourselves more clearly, and such clarity can enable us to develop more trust in the grace of God, and to become less impressed with our own capabilities.

Fortunately we don’t have to become encapsulated within the earth in order to develop such trust and dependence on God. Unfortunately we can find ourselves crying out from the depths without having to leave the house. Desperate-life-threatening situations can reach up and grab us at any time. And I’m not just talking about criminal trespassing. Life-stealing circumstances come to us in many different forms.

Disease, depression, addiction, estrangement, unemployment, and accidents can turn our lives upside down as quickly as a mine can collapse, and we can find ourselves as far from the goodness of life as those miners were suddenly thrust.

Few people have found themselves as cut off from the world in the way those miners were, but life becomes precarious for all of us at times, and this Psalm provides us with a good reminder of how to best respond to those situations – cry out to God!

Cry out to God and trust that the light of life will return. Trust in God and know that with God there is steadfast love. God doesn’t love us because we deserve it but because that’s what God does.

Cry out to God and trust that life will return even if life doesn’t turn out the way you want it to be. The good news that Jesus both trusted in and proclaimed doesn’t always play out nicely on the surface. The Lord of Life wasn’t well regarded here on earth, but he didn’t fail to change the world. I don’t think Jesus would have us believe that if we pray hard enough we will be delivered from all of our afflictions, but I do believe that our fervent prayers to God can put us in touch with life regardless of what kind of death-dealing circumstances come our way.

Trust in God helped those miners maintain hope that they would be rescued, and they gave credit to God for their miraculous extraction from that hole in the earth, but it was their trust in God that would have enabled them to die with dignity if it had come to that.

It always helps to cry out to God when we find ourselves in difficult territory. I believe God speaks to our souls in mysterious ways, but I also believe it helps us to see ourselves more clearly and our neighbors and loved ones more graciously. None of us are without fault, but none of us are beyond the love of the One who can provide us with the opportunity for redemption.

Thanks be to this One who hears the voice of our supplications, and who provides us with miraculous extractions from the deepest of depths.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Do What?
John 6:24-35

6:24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

One day a Jewish rabbi was walking down the street and as he passed a barber shop he decided to go in and get a haircut. The barber gave him a nice haircut and when the rabbi went to pay the barber said, No, you are a man of God and this is my gift to your good work. The next morning when the barber arrived at his shop he found a nice loaf of bread from a local bakery, and a note from the rabbi saying how grateful he was for the nice haircut.

Later that day an Episcopal priest happened by and decided he needed a haircut, and he went in and got one. When started to pay the barber told him the same thing – that there would be no charge for the haircut because he wanted to contribute to his ministry. The next morning when the barber arrived at his shop there was a bottle of wine with a nice note on it thanking the barber for his generosity.

Later that day a United Methodist minister came by and went in for a haircut, and once again the barber didn’t charge him for the haircut. He said, No, you are a man of God and this is my contribution to your ministry. The next morning, when the barber arrived at his shop there were three other United Methodist ministers waiting for him to arrive.

I wouldn’t single out United Methodist ministers for this kind of abuse if I wasn’t one, but I happen to know that there is a good amount of truth to the story. Of course there would probably some truth to this story if you inserted any denomination or profession in to the punch line. The fact is that human beings in general are inclined to show up for a good deal. Good free stuff always gets out attention.

We like to get what we think we need, and we will go to great lengths to have our perceived needs met. I think it’s important to differentiate between our actual needs and our perceived needs because we can get those things confused. Of course food is more than a perceived need – we actually do need food to survive, but sometimes we are inclined to think that’s all we need. In some ways our lives revolve around getting food, and that’s understandable – we are biological creatures in need of fuel, but we aren’t just biological creatures, and I think this is what Jesus was getting at when he said: Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.

This is a large challenge for us. We do have to work for some of that perishable food if we don’t want to perish, but we can get overly focused on our material needs at the expense of our spiritual lives. Of course getting an adequate amount of that perishable food is a large challenge for a lot of people. I don’t have the statistics in front of me right now, but there is a lot of food insecurity in our state and in our nation these days. There are a lot of hungry people all across this country and this is a terrible thing. It’s awful that that there are so many people who have trouble getting enough food for themselves and for their children. I don’t know how to fix this, but I know it’s important to be sensitive to this, and to do what we can to help people get what they need.

I know that food isn’t all that we need, but I assure you if I was a person who came from a place or from a family where food was scarce, and I heard Jesus was feeding people in a miraculous manner I would have been one of the first people to go looking for him. And he probably would have been talking to me when he differentiated between the people who were following him because they saw God in him and those who followed him because of the good bread he was handing out.

Jesus comes across as being somewhat confrontational in this passage, and I get that also. I know that its possible for us to become overly focused on the wrong things. We can become very twisted in our pursuits, and it’s often hard for us to see how off balance we are. We need to have our ways of thinking and our patterns of behavior challenged every now and then – otherwise we remain focused on feeding our least essential needs and desires.

In my work as a pastor I am often approached by people who have tremendous needs. This is not something I regret. It’s honestly something I try to address in a sensitive manner. I know that this world can be a very hard place for a lot of people. It’s easy to get behind, and it can be hard to catch up, but I also know there are people who get in bad patterns of behavior and they won’t do what they need to do to break the patterns.

There was a man I knew in Little Rock that drove me crazy in that way. I hardly ever saw this man when he wasn’t asking me for something. I don’t know how many times I would be heading to or from my car at the church and I would hear this person yell out at me: Hey Rev.!! And he would not be calling out to say hello. When he said Hey Rev, what I heard was, Hey Rev, I’m going to come tell you some story of why it’s critical that you buy me some phone time or a bus pass or give me a new backpack and something to eat. On more than one occasion I told him how much I dreaded seeing him because I knew it was going to cost me something. He rarely got all that he wanted from me, but I rarely got away from him without having to give him something. I did some fine preaching to him about his unfortunate pattern of behavior, but I think those sermons did more to make me feel better than they did to create any adjustment in his way of living.

Bad patterns of behavior are hard to break – for all of us. I never sensed that this needy man in Little Rock was ever able to find the kind of food that endures, but it could be that his perpetual quest for what struck me as perishable food was just more obvious with him than it is for most of us. In all honesty, it’s not easy for any of us to remain focused on pursuit of the food that doesn’t perish. And this is what Jesus revealed to the people who were chasing after at him in hope of getting something to eat. He told them they were looking for the wrong thing. They responded by asking him what they should do, and I think they were a little baffled by what he told them they needed to do.

He told them that they needed to believe in him. And they responded to that by asking him to do something that would enable them to know he had come from God.

It’s easy for us to think those people were being pretty dense when they asked this man who had recently fed 5000 people with a handful of fish, walked across the sea, and calmed a storm to show them a sign of his connection to God. But what I know is that when we aren’t looking for the right thing there is nothing that will ever satisfy our need for more.

I think this story is designed to remind us of how wrong-headed we can be about what we think we need and what we expect from God. It’s easy for us to have the wrong expectations of God and those wrong expectations can prevent us from seeing who Jesus was and from doing what he said to do. We can be as dense as those first followers when it comes to seeing Jesus for who he was, and if we aren’t careful we can remain devoid of the food that endures even while we claim belief in Jesus.

If you are expecting me to explain how to adjust your way of thinking you have the wrong expectations of me as well because I don’t really know what you need to do to become more focused on the food that endures. All I know is that it’s possible to want the wrong things – even when you say the right words. What I know is that it’s possible to have treasures in heaven when you have nothing on earth or to have a malnourished soul when you are surrounded by wealth. I wish I could give you some fine instructions on how to do what Jesus said to do, but all I feel capable of saying is to watch out for yourselves.

Watch out for your self because it’s not easy to stay on the path to true life. It’s easy to want the wrong things and to work for the wrong kind of food. It’s hard to follow Jesus, but the good news is that God knows this and God provides us with some of that miraculous bread from heaven regardless of what we think we need and work to obtain. God reaches out to us in surprising ways, and the best thing we can do is to try to pay attention to those gracious moments. It’s not easy to see the truth about ourselves or God, but that is what Jesus came to reveal, and by the grace of God this can happen.

We do have access to the kind of food that endures. Do all that you can to find it, and know that God wills for us all to feast upon it. Thanks be to God.
Amen.

The Feeding of the One
John 6:1-21
6:1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. 16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
It’s not often that I find myself in actual need of food. I frequently get hungry, but when I get hungry I start thinking about what kind of food I want and where I’m going to go to get it. Getting hungry is actually sort of recreational for me. I like to get a little hungry so I can fully enjoy the dining experience. Getting hungry isn’t normally a crisis for me – it’s an opportunity for a sensational experience.

But I actually found myself in need of food last Monday night, and that’s a different experience from feeling a little hungry before I grab a handful of potato chips. It was my own fault, but I got stranded last Monday evening without any food at our family lake-house on Greers Ferry Lake. This is a lake-house that my grandparents built when I was about 7 years old and it’s a place my immediate family shares with my sister and a handful of cousins. We divide the summer weeks among us sort of like a time-share thing, but we all know each other so if you leave it in a mess people will talk about you, so we all try to leave it clean for the next family.

Part of leaving it clean is not leaving a bunch of old food in the refrigerator. That had sort of become a problem, so we started cleaning out the refrigerator at the end of each week, and the refrigerator looks a lot better than it used to. There are a few condiments in there, and an occasional bottle of olives, but there’s really nothing to eat in there. And it’s the same way with the cabinets. You can find a variety of seasonings in there, but we just make it a practice not to leave any food up there.
Sharla and I had entertained a good chunk of our extended family last weekend, but everyone left pretty quickly on Sunday, and I was to go up on Monday to do some final cleaning, to put gas in the boat, and to haul the trash away. I drove my 1979 Chevy pickup up there, because I needed to get a few boards for a future dock project and for trash hauling, but on the way up there it engaged in some unsettling engine sputtering a couple of times.

I didn’t want it to die on me in the middle of nowhere as I returned to Newport after dark, so after I took care of some boat issues that needed to be addressed, I engaged in what I thought would be a simple replacement of a fuel filter on my truck. And this is one of those cases where a little knowledge can get you in a lot of trouble.

I’ll spare you the details of my mechanical blundering, but about the time it got perfectly dark I had managed to render my truck immobilized. There wasn’t anything I could do until the auto-parts store opened the next morning at 7:30, and even then it was going to take some luck to get it going.

I felt fortunate to have comfortable accommodations, but I was not where I intended to be, and I was hungry. I had eaten all of the olives I thought I could eat without getting sick, but I wanted something else, and I couldn’t find anything. It was 10pm and the nearest convenience store was 1.3 miles away (I had googled it), and I didn’t want to walk that far, so I decided I would just make some really sweet tea for supper. And it was when I opened the cabinet for about the fourth time to get a tea bag and some sugar that I discovered that there actually was a can of Hormel’s chili without beans hidden amongst the spices.
I don’t know how old that can was. I didn’t check it. And I can tell you that under normal circumstances I would never eat a bowl of canned Hormel’s chili without beans, but I was so happy to find that can of chili, and I wasn’t hungry when I went to bed.

It was a terrible feeling to be hungry and to not have access to food. That just doesn’t happen to me very often. I wasn’t in a real crisis. I know people I could have called if I was in a terrible bind. Sharla offered to drive up from Little Rock and bring me some food, but I didn’t want her to do that. Our elderly neighbor up there would have fed me, but she goes to bed at dark. I could have called Rev. Tommy Toombs, the United Methodist minister in Heber, and asked him to bring me some food, but I never would have heard the end of that. I just didn’t have any good options.

That experience sensitized me to this issue of being in a place without food, and the joy of being surprised by the appearance of sustenance. Whenever I’ve thought about this story of Jesus feeding five thousand people in that miraculous manner, I’m always inclined to think of the largeness of the event. It strikes me as being sort of like a music festival atmosphere – where you have a bunch of people showing up in one spot without adequate provisions. I think the story is designed to impress us hearers with the amazing capacity of Jesus to provide for so many people, but today I’m conscious of what it would have felt like to have been an individual in the midst of that crowd.

I’m not thinking about what it would have felt like to have been on hand for such an amazing spectacle – today I’m thinking about what it feels like to be hungry, and to receive food.

The story is impressive, and it’s intended to be impressive, but I’m not as impressed by the number of people who were fed in a miraculous fashion as I am mindful of how powerful it is for us as individuals to experience saving grace. And when I say saving grace I mean everything from the grand experience of feeling miraculously reconciled with God in an ultimate way – to receiving something to eat when we are hungry. Saving grace takes form in many different ways. But it’s always a powerful thing to go from feeling remarkably vulnerable and in need – to having our needs met in a remarkable way.

And this is what Jesus was able to do. As the story goes, Jesus was able to do this on a grand scale, but the number of people Jesus was able to feed is pretty meaningless if you haven’t somehow found yourself nourished by Jesus in an opportune moment. It doesn’t matter how many thousands or even millions of people Jesus was reportedly able to feed with a few loaves and fish if you haven’t felt touched by him on a personal level.

But please don’t hear me saying that in a manipulative way. I’m really not trying to draw a dividing line between those who have had powerful personal experiences with Jesus and those of us who haven’t. I’m not saying it’s your own fault if you’ve never felt like you’ve sat down on a grassy hill and been fed by the hand of Jesus. Honestly, this day in the life of Jesus and his followers that John describes is pretty far beyond a day in the life of your average United Methodist, but I think this story is designed to whet our appetite for an encounter with Christ. John is telling us more about what we can expect from Jesus than what we may have experienced.

Early on in this passage we are told that the Jews were nearing the time of the Passover festival. The significant thing about that detail is that many of the people who were following Jesus weren’t welcome at the Passover festival. The people who were following Jesus out into the wilderness didn’t meet the qualifications that were required in order to celebrate this highest of Jewish festivals. Most of these people weren’t welcome in the Temple or even in the synagogues.

They weren’t able to meet God in the official place of worship, but by following Jesus out in to the mountainous wilderness they were in fact encountering the living God. I think John wanted us to understand that Jesus had replaced the Temple as the place to go to find God. You don’t have to follow strict religious codes to encounter God – you only have to follow Jesus.
So where do we go to find Jesus? This is a question I often find myself asking, and it’s a question that’s a lot easier to ask than to answer. Jesus was never easy to find. As the story goes, the people who found him had followed him out to a desolate location, but Jesus didn’t try to be elusive – not until they tried to turn him in to a king. But Jesus has never been easy to find and to follow because what he did was challenging to everyone. Jesus defied many of the deeply held convictions of some of the most righteous people of his day, and that undoubtedly remains true for us. Jesus didn’t do what anyone expected the son of God to do.

But one of the things he did do was to show up for people who were facing the most desperate circumstances. He fed the people who were hungry and then he appeared to the disciples as they were battling the storm on the sea. Jesus isn’t easy to follow, but he can show up for us regardless of where we are when we really need him, and it changes everything for us when he does.

There isn’t an easy answer to the question of where we should go to find Jesus, but I think Jesus was giving us a pretty good hint when he fed hungry people. Jesus was sensitive to the needs of the individuals who were near to him, and I think he expects the same from us. Sometimes I forget how devastating it is to be without the essential elements of life, but I had a quick tutorial the other night on the value of food, and it reminded me how powerful it can be to get food when you are hungry and helpless.

Jesus doesn’t necessarily show up when we want him to and feed us upon demand, but I believe he comes to us in ways that we could never foresee or imagine. John didn’t tell these stories so we would be impressed with his supernatural abilities – John told these stories to remind us what we should be doing for one another and to provide us with reassurance during the trials of our lives. And if you’ve ever received a morsel of his grace – you know how powerful his presence can be.

Thanks be to God. Amen

The Economics of Grace
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

You get in to trouble whenever you try to start measuring spiritual matters. We just don’t know how to graph the activity of the Holy Spirit or to determine the exact way God influences the events of our lives. Suffering isn’t a sign of God’s disapproval nor is great success a clear sign of God’s favor. It’s much more mysterious than that. I know too many good hearted people who have experienced terrible circumstances to believe that. I also know that God can feel the most present when we are the most vulnerable. Blessings come to us in the midst of disaster, and we can feel terribly isolated and alone when things appear to be going well for us. Spiritual matters are hard to measure.

As soon as you start thinking you are deserving of a little something special from God you are probably entering in to dangerous territory, but I don’t believe the course of our lives are disconnected from the way we choose to live our lives or from the efforts of others to influence our lives. In my way of thinking it’s hard to define the way God interacts with our lives, but I do believe that genuine spiritual investments reap good dividends. I feel like I am the beneficiary of the investments of others and every now and then I feel like I get blessed by something I’ve played a part in planting. Of course I also suspect that I’ve had some ill-advised investments of my time and energy come back and bite me, but I don’t want to talk about that this morning.

What I want to talk about is the way God’s grace gets distributed among us. And it seems to me that God generally uses plain old people and everyday situations to deliver this divine gift of redeeming grace.

Of course there are occasions of extraordinary circumstances. We have this story this morning of people coming from everywhere by any means possible to get near enough to Jesus to simply touch the fringe of his cloak in order to be healed, and I can believe there are these situations in which the grace of God is so palpable you can touch it, but that’s not life as we usually know it. It’s not hard for me to believe that Jesus had this incredible presence that was totally transformational and miraculously healing. I don’t think we’d be talking about him today if he didn’t, but most of us don’t have such dramatic encounters with the living presence of God.

This story of people pouring out of the woodwork to get to Jesus is perfectly believable to me, and I have no doubt that their lives were never the same after that. It’s easy for me to imagine that he had this deeply moving presence, but what I also know is that there were a lot of people who showed up a day late, and all they got was the story of what he had done. In fact it’s easy for me to think that I would likely have been with that group of people who got there in time to hear about the amazing things that Jesus had done the day before.

You might say this is where we all find ourselves right now. None of us were on hand for that first-hand encounter with Jesus, and that’s ok. The truly important work that Jesus did was not to provide for the immediate needs of the people who were able to get close enough to touch him – they all ended up getting terminally sick or injured all over again. Their bodies and minds weren’t rendered invincible, but they did gain something that never grows old – which is the good news of God’s eternal love for us all.

Because before Jesus came along, desperate people weren’t just tortured by all the ways in which life can become unbearably painful – their pain was compounded by the message that came with their suffering which was that they were somehow deserving of God’s wrath and punishment.

The faith of Abraham had taken some bad turns along the way. The people Jesus encountered were desperate because they didn’t know the Lord was their shepherd. They were being told that the Lord was their tormentor. The leaders of Israel had distorted God’s message in a terrible way. The message that God had sought to provide through Moses and the prophets was the message that God heard the cry of people who were oppressed, but the scribes and Pharisees portrayed God’s love and providential care as being very conditional. They maintained that it was reserved for those who deserved it according to their narrow understanding of God. And so when Jesus came along he had compassion for all of the people who were considered undeserving of God’s love because of their infirmities and occupations and stations in life. There were all of these people who were living like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus literally touched everyone that he could, but he didn’t get to touch everyone in person, and that’s ok because it was the message that needed to be spread. And the message is that we are all deserving of God’s love and compassion. Jesus taught us the truth about how God sees us and he wanted us to see each other in the same way. Jesus couldn’t touch us all, but his abiding spirit empowers us to touch each other in healing and transforming ways. The healing may not be as instantaneous as it was for the desperate people who were healed when they touched his cloak, but we are to continue to share this powerfully healing message of God’s unbounded love for us all, and we are to treat each other in this lovingly unbounded way.

The message is that no-one is excluded from the love and concern of God, and this reminds me of how odd the household of God is managed. The origins of the word, economy, go back to two Greek words that mean household management. And the household of God is managed in a really unusual way. In the household of God, it’s the people who have the greatest struggles that get the most attention.

This is not to say that any of us are of little concern to God, but Jesus transformed the faith of Israel by being willing to touch the untouchables of his day. Jesus showed us how important it is to live with compassion for one another, and the beautiful thing is that God’s grace continues to flow through this divine network of compassion. It’s not instantly miraculous, but you just never know how a kind word or act will play out in someone else’s life.

I had the good fortune of being exposed to a good number of kind hearted and God loving people when I was growing up. The First United Methodist Church in Wynne wasn’t a perfect example of the kingdom of God, but they got some things right over there, and I also enjoyed fellowship with people beyond our local church. One of the great experiences of my life was when I went on a week-long backpacking trip that was organized by the Forrest City District of the old North Arkansas Conference of the UMC during the summer of 1974. That was the summer after I finished the 9th grade and it was led by Rev. Jim & Mauzel Beal – in whose footsteps I literally am standing today.

I had Shirley look up the dates of when various pastors served this church, and Jim Beal was appointed here the very same summer that he and Mauzel led that trip. And it was a great trip. It was a group of about 20 youth and adults and we spent a week backpacking over near Mt. View along the Sylamore Creek. It was a great experience. It sort of hooked me in to joy of outdoor adventure, but it was also an experience of intentional Christian fellowship. I think my love for Jesus was comingled with some young romance, but as I say, I think God’s grace comes to us through some ordinary avenues.

I’m honestly really honored to be serving in a place where I have direct connections with several of your former pastors. Jim Beal, Sam Teague, Jim Meadors, Herschel McClurkin, and Ben Jordan are all people who have touched me in significant ways. I could say a lot about the way all of them influenced me, and most of it would be good! I feel that these are people who helped shape my life, and I also feel like maybe God is using me to continue the good work that they began.

I know you’ve had other good pastors as well, but I am the old guy compared to Brad and Charlie.

Of course the strangest things God seems to have done in my life is to put me back in the same town with Lam Huynh, who along with his wife, Julie, run LT’s Nails and Tanning here in Newport. And this is a really interesting turn of events for me.

I met Lam in 1975, when he came to live in Wynne by way of Ft. Chaffee in the wake of the fall of Saigon. I know this church sponsored a Vietnamese family during that time, and I know of the tragic events that transpired after they arrived. I’m sure most of you know that sad story. If you don’t you can read about it in the fine book that documents the history of this church, or you can ask someone who has been around here for a while.

But First United Methodist in Wynne also stepped up to the crisis of the day and sponsored these four young men. The good hearted people of our church helped them start a new life in this new world. I was a senior in high school at the time, and I remember feeling pretty bad for them. As a kid with a car and a lot of friends and family and a lot of options for directions I could go, I was struck by how little they had. I got acquainted with them, and provided some transportation for them, and I found them to be fascinating. I was struck by how resourceful and resilient they were in the face of such a difficult situation. There are a lot of things I’ve forgotten about my senior year in high school, but I’ve never forgotten how exotic it felt to eat their homemade fried rice. They would also let me have a Budweiser which was an equally exotic experience for me, but it was such a good experience for me to step out of my world and in to theirs.

After I graduated from high school I didn’t have much contact with Lam, Be, Sang & Sung, but I was so shocked when Barbara Clark told me that my friend Lam was living here in Newport and was wanting to see me. I’ve heard a little bit about how that connection got made, but I think it’s safe to say that if you want to know what’s going on in a small town you can probably hear it first at a nail salon. I think it’s also accurate to say that you could never ask for a better public relations person than the person who does the nails for so many church members. I’ve felt so welcomed to Newport, and I am certain that it has a lot to do with having Lam as a character reference. I’m actually sort of intimidated by the good reputations that he’s created for me.

I don’t know how God manages to move us here and there. I don’t exactly know how the Holy Spirit works within our midst, but I trust that it does. And I know that any effort any of us ever makes to help someone else feel loved and cared for is never a fruitless act. I believe God uses our feeble efforts to touch one another in gracious ways to do miraculous things.

God’s economy is managed in a far different way than it is in any of our homes or nations or corporations. God watches out for us in ways that we could never predict or expect, and I give thanks for this beautiful truth. Desperation can come to any of us at any time – and so can the good news of God’s enduring and eternal love.
Thanks be to God – Amen.

What’s It to You?
Mark 6:1-13

6:14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” 15 But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” 17 For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. 18 For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19 And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. 22 When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” 23 And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” 24 She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” 25 Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” 26 The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29 When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

I’m guessing you’re thinking there are a lot of stories I could have chosen to focus on today – instead of this one. And I sort of agree with you, but I choose to follow the lectionary, which is the commonly suggested scripture reading for each Sunday, and this is the suggested Gospel reading for today. I could have utilized one of the other readings for today from the Old Testament or from one of the Epistles, but frankly this was the most interesting of today’s readings. I know it’s sort of unfortunate that on the day that Vacation Bible School begins we’re pondering a story with an R-rated theme, but I decided to go with it. This very well might get some of the young people more interested in reading the Bible.

We’re looking at an ugly story, but in some ways this story sort of functions as a morality play. It’s a story that shines light on the wrong direction. It’s like watching an episode of the Simpson’s. You may not have ever watched an episode of The Simpsons. I’ve seen entire seasons of The Simpsons and Homer Simpson always chooses to go in the most self-serving and short sighted direction, and he always suffers the consequences of his actions. You can learn a lot about what not to do by watching that show. I give equal credit to Winnie the Poo and Homer Simpson for helping us raise conscientious children.

And a sermon title probably doesn’t mean much to you, but I’m sort of affected by my sermon titles. I usually come up with a title before I have a sermon to go with it. Sometimes the title helps me gather my thoughts. Sometimes it torments me. I’m not particularly attached to this week’s sermon title, but I at least want you to know how to say the title in your mind. Or maybe I should say I want you to know how I say it in my mind. I’m not saying it in the way you might hear it spoken during an adversarial conversation. I’m not asking in a rhetorically aggressive way, WHAT’S it to ya? I’m genuinely asking, What’s IT to you?

Because the first sentence of this morning’s passage uses this word, it, in a really curious manner. This first verse begins by saying that King Herod had heard of it, but we don’t know what it refers to. You would think you could read the previous verse in order to know what Herod had heard about, but there isn’t an obvious object to which this it refers, so it seems to represent something larger than an immediate circumstance. It refers to something big that was going on.

There was a lot of speculation about what it was. Some people thought it was Elijah, others thought it was the manifestation of some unnamed prophet from old, some speculated that it was John the Baptist who had returned from the dead, and Herod was certain that that’s what it was, and that was not good news for him. In his mind it all went back to the regrettable turn of events that took place at the big birthday party he had thrown for himself.

That had not been a good night for him. That was the night he found himself in a terribly regrettable situation and he had not navigated his way out of it very well. Herod was not an enviable man. The fact that Mark refers to him as King Herod is more of a sarcastic expression than a title of respect. It is reported that Herod had actually asked the Emperor to give him the title of King, but not only had Augustus Ceasar refused to do that, he sent him off to govern a backwater community. Calling Herod King Herod is sort of like my friend who calls me The Pope whenever he sees me wearing my robe.

Herod was not where he wanted to be, but he was trying to impress his peers, and he did throw a memorable party. But it was memorable in a terrible way. It became a gruesome portrayal of what bad judgement he had and how easily manipulated he was by his self-serving wife.

Poor Herod didn’t get anything that he wanted for his birthday. I guess he was reveling for a moment when he and his guests became quite taken with the dancing of his step-daughter, but in his effort to seize the moment and show-off his power and influence he made this grand offer that cost him dearly. He had to produce something that reduced him to a quivering coward. He found himself in the position of having to order the execution of someone he knew to be innocent, and he believed it had come back to haunt him.

John the Baptist wasn’t a manipulative man. He simply told people what was right and wrong and what to expect if they didn’t do what was right. John the Baptist was a good person, but I don’t think he’s what we would call a people person. He spoke the truth to power, it landed him in prison, and while Herod was the one who had ordered him to be imprisoned, it seems that Herod also found him to be compelling. I don’t think Herod dealt with many honest people, and he liked having him on hand. Herod wasn’t without a conscience. It was a weak one, but he had enough of a conscience to know that having John the Baptist executed was a bad thing to do, and he feared the consequences of what he had done.

The speculation of Herod and his peers that it was fueled by the death of John the Baptist came straight out of Greek mythology. There are numerous stories within Greek literature of a powerful person or god getting killed and their power reemerging in someone else in a more powerful way. So it wasn’t hard for Herod to believe that this it was the direct result of him having to serve John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

But that’s not what was going on, and that’s probably why Mark provided us with so much detail about the death of John the Baptist. The Gospel of Mark is a very concise account of the life of Jesus. Mark provides us with sparse details of most events in Jesus’ life, but he goes in to great detail about the way in which John the Baptist lost his life. It may be that Mark told this story in order to refute the notion that the power of Jesus to do the work he did was the consequence of John the Baptist’s death. Mark shows that John the Baptist recognized Jesus’ power while he was still alive, and the powerful work that Jesus was doing preceded the death of John the Baptist. Mark showed John the Baptist to be a remarkably faithful, disciplined and principled man, but the redeeming work of Jesus was not empowered by the death of John the Baptist, and this story sort of serves to reinforce that point.

The point is that the power of Jesus was in no way connected to what Herod had reluctantly done. It wasn’t about Herod. It was something God was doing and it wasn’t going to be started or stopped by anything any minor player in Roman politics chose to do in the midst of a drunken party.

Herod was confused about what it was. He thought it had something to do with what he had done, but what this story shows is how little he knew about what it really was. Herod had no idea what it was. He had been provided an opportunity to learn about it, but he wasn’t as inclined to seek the truth as he was driven to satisfy his immediate desires and the approval of powerful people.

Unfortunately, Herod isn’t the only one who has ever experienced confusion about what it is. Most of us haven’t been so misguided as to execute the person who could best inform us of what God is doing, but in some ways we can be as oblivious to it as Herod was. Only our confusion has more to with our familiarity with it than our ignorance of it.

So far, I’ve used the word, it, about 30 times in this sermon. I haven’t exactly said what it is, but I’m guessing you’ve made some assumptions about what I’m talking about. In a nutshell, what it is is the way in which God was revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. It is no secret to us, but we are capable of failing to be mindful of it.

At least I know I’m capable of forgetting this beautiful truth and living as if the immediate demands of this world are the most pressing concerns of my life. It’s easy to forget what it is, and to think that the most important thing is to live up to the expectations of people and systems who don’t know what it is. It’s easy to get distracted by the false rewards of this world and to serve the wrong masters.

I know I can get pretty anxious about the wrong things, but one of the nice things about being appointed to a new church is the way in which your routine gets disrupted and you get reminded of what it is all about. I’m not saying I’ve become entirely refocused on what’s most important in life, but as I’ve engaged in the process of uprooting from one location and getting oriented to a new place I’ve found myself being reminded of what it is.

I’m here because I have the good fortune of getting to share the good news about this big thing that Herod didn’t understand. I’m here on a mission. You might even say I’m on a mission from God. I’m here to work with you to spread this good news about it – that God is alive, God cares for us, and we can do God’s work in this world.

I heard on the news last week that there was to be a large convention in Florida of pastors who are wanting pastors to become more politically active. It was organized by what you might call the evangelical wing of Christianity, and their stated goal is to promote Biblical values in to the American political arena. And I found myself thinking about what I consider to be the most essential Biblical value.

I don’t know what that is for the group of pastors that gathered in Florida this weekend, but when I consider what it is that the Bible primarily teaches the first word that comes to my mind is compassion.

One of the things that Herod had undoubtedly heard that Jesus had been doing was healing the sick and casting out demons. Jesus touched people where they were hurting, he empowered his first disciples to do the same work, and I think that charge and opportunity remains the same for us.

One thing I’ve discovered about this church is how important you are to this community. In a number of ways ways you are touching people where they are hurting, and as far as I’m concerned that is it. That’s what Christ did and what he calls us to do.

Maybe you would define it in a different way, and I’m not here to say that there’s only one way to say what it is, but I encourage you to consider what it is for you. We have a high calling, and it’s important to keep that calling in mind. I’m feeling a lot of gratitude right now because I’m having this experience of reorientation and recalibration. I like the effect you are having on me, and by the grace of God I will have a similar impact on you.

Thanks be to God for the way in which it continues to abide in our midst and to bring us in to the fullness of life. Amen.

Dependence Day
Mark 6:1-13

6:1 He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Probably the first thing you should know about me is that I’m not normal. I’m not abnormal in a particularly obvious way, and I’m quite normal in what I will soon describe as an unfortunate way, but in some significant ways I’m just not normal. I don’t qualify as an extraordinary person – I don’t really have an area of expertise, but sometimes I like to do things that just aren’t normal.

About a year ago, in May of 2014, I rode my bicycle from Little Rock to Edisto Beach State Park in South Carolina. It was about a 900 mile trip and it took me 12 days to get there. I got there. I ate a big carryout seafood dinner on the beach. I watched the moon rise, I slept a little bit, I watched the sun rise, I packed up my stuff, I bummed a ride to the nearest Enterprise Car Rental Agency where I rented a car, and then I drove home. Why did I do that – I don’t know exactly. I just felt compelled to do it, and my wife didn’t think I would do it until it was too late to stop me. Sometimes I just like to do things that aren’t exactly normal. I apologize in advance for the abnormal things I may choose to while I’m here.

I had a normal upbringing. Many of you know that I grew up over in Wynne. I think Wynne and Newport probably have a lot in common. Wynne came in to being because it was a railroad intersection, and my understanding is that Newport got started in a similar fashion. I guess this is the place where the railroad intersected the White River. I loved growing up in Wynne, and I’m sure I would have enjoyed growing up in Newport, but I didn’t really want to stay in Wynne when I grew up. I think I was afraid I might become normal. But it feels pretty normal for me to be here in Newport, and I hope it will feel that way to you.

I’m going to talk about Jesus in a minute, but another thing you need to know about me is that I’m not a normal preacher. I don’t really know how to describe a normal preacher, but I don’t think I am one. I’m guessing you will frequently find yourself wondering where I’m going with my sermon. I often wonder the same thing during the course of my sermon preparation. I don’t generally begin with a clear plan, but I find that when I sit with a passage of scripture for a while and I start writing things that seem somehow connected to something Jesus was saying or doing I usually discover something I’m glad to know about him, and I’ll do my best to pass that on.

I assure you, my goal is not to leave you wondering what in the world I spent twelve to fifteen minutes talking about, but listening to me preach may well make you feel like you’re on an odd journey. In fact I hope that’s how you will feel when you hear me preach because I think following Jesus is an unusual journey to embark upon.

I’ll try not to be boring, I’ll try to be honest, I’ll try to be true to the message of Christ, and I trust that the Holy Spirit will improve upon whatever I have to offer. I guess you might say that is my formula for preaching, and I hope you will find it acceptable.

Preparing a sermon isn’t an easy thing to do, but I know it can be even harder to listen to a sermon, and I am mindful of the effort it takes to show up for worship. So I’ll always try to have something to say that you will be glad to hear, but don’t expect it to be normal. All I can say is that I’ll do my best to find the words to express the truth that Jesus Christ is alive and is calling for us to follow him. Maybe that’s what it means to be a normal preacher. I’m no longer opposed to being normal – at least not in the way I used to fear it. In fact I’m sure that I’m very normal in the unfortunate way that I mentioned earlier. I think I’m very much like one of those normal citizens of the village of Nazareth.

This trip to Nazareth was the most futile trip Jesus ever took. It started out good. There was a lot of buzz about Jesus, and there was a lot of enthusiasm about his return. The Chamber of Commerce was pretty excited about the new opportunities he might bring to town, but Jesus returned looking a whole lot like the way he did when he left. He didn’t arrive back home in the style they expected. He didn’t come in exuding the kind of greatness that they were expecting to see. He looked way too normal, and consequently he wasn’t able to touch them in a meaningful way.

It failed because he didn’t live up to their expectations, but the problem wasn’t with what he had to offer. The problem was with what they wanted. And what I’m thinking is that we always get in trouble when we behave like those Nazareans and expect Jesus to provide us with what we think we need. That’s what I actually consider to be normal behavior, and it’s not easy for any of us to overcome that way of living.

In all honesty, I’m a very normal person. I like comfort, security, entertainment, status, health, privilege, and religious affirmation of it all. I like to go off on an odd adventure every now and then, but I am a normal American. I love having hot and cold running water, electricity, air-conditioning, health-care, cable television, high-speed internet connectivity, and transportation upon demand. I’m not on the top rung of the economic ladder, but in a significant way I’m living the American dream – and I’m sure I’m not alone in that way.

I could give you a list of things I could use some help on, but I’ve got access to what you might call the good life, and I like it. I’m pretty normal in that way.

But I’m also sure that these things I enjoy and depend upon get in the way of my relationship with Jesus Christ – they cloud my understanding of the Kingdom of God.

This dismal story of the kind of reception Jesus received when he returned to Nazareth is followed by this glowing account of the disciples going out with nothing but bare essentials and a powerful message –the good news of the new way in which God had chosen to enter our world.

They didn’t have universal success in their mission, but it was much more successful than the trip to Nazareth because they weren’t distracted by false expectations. The disciples weren’t offering anything but a relationship with the living Christ, and that was a transforming gift.

What we think we need can get in the way of what Christ has to offer. Our stuff can get in the way of our relationship with the living Christ.

On this Independence Day Weekend we truly do have a lot to celebrate. We live in a nation that is better than most nations in the way we get along with each other and how well we provide for one another. We are far from perfect, and I could say a lot more about that, but we keep trying, and I think we keep improving the way we operate as a nation.

But we Christians are called to be more than normal Americans. It’s a fine thing to pursue the American dream, but it’s a far different thing to seek the kingdom of God. And the hard thing to hear is that we are most available to God when we are most dependent upon one another.

Jesus didn’t send his disciples out with limited equipment because they didn’t have access to adequate supplies. He sent them out in that vulnerable manner because he wanted them to be dependent upon other people. He wanted them to need other people because he also knew that other people needed what they had to offer. Miraculous things were able to occur because they were truly open to one another.

There was no guarantee that such serendipitous relationships would occur. Clearly there were times when the disciples were not well received and Jesus gave them clear instructions on how they were to deal with hard hearted people, but the way they went out with built-in vulnerability created a ripe opportunity for God’s grace to abound.
My wife’s grandmother, Linnie, was living over in the Delta town of Dermott when the epic flood of 1927 took place. I remember her telling us about how they had to evacuate their home, and that the most elevated place in the community was the railroad levee, so they and many other people took up residence in boxcars on the railroad levee for several weeks. When she told us what they had been forced to do I responded by saying how terrible that must have been, and after a short pause she said, No, I think that was about the best time we ever had.
And I think we all know what she was talking about. There is nothing better than living in genuine community with other people. When we live with both dependence on the grace of others and concern for the wellbeing of others we experience the most elemental form of freedom and security that there is. It’s a form of freedom and security that we lose when we become dependent on access to surplus and when we trust our wellbeing to the reliability of our devices. It’s the form of freedom and security that comes to us when we let go of our usual way of living and abide in the Kingdom of God.
It’s hard not to seek freedom and security in the normal ways that we do, but the good news is that we aren’t left to our own devices, and our lives often get disrupted in ways that allow us to experience the nearness of God’s kingdom and the true comfort of Christ’s living presence.

God doesn’t generally come to us in the way that we would choose, but God does provide us with what we need. God isn’t normal – God is gracious!

And thanks be to God for that! Amen

Fantastic Voyage!
Mark 4:35-41

4:35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

I’m guessing that I’ve preached here about 275 times over the past six years. I’m not going to declare that this is the last time I’ll ever preach here, but this is the final one for now. Having become a grandfather last Wednesday evening, my first inclination was to just stand up here and smile for 15 minutes – which is something I could do. My second plan was just to ask if anyone had any questions, but I was afraid you might come up with some, so I abandoned that idea. My 3rd plan was to fly a little drone I recently acquired and to take pictures of you from the air, but I have come to understand that I am not a qualified drone pilot – somebody would have gotten hurt. So I decided to stay with the usual format and develop a monologue.

My sermon title Fantastic Voyage was sort of connected to the gospel lesson for the morning, but my original intention was to focus on where we’ve been over the past few years. I feel like we’ve covered some interesting territory together, and one thing I do want to do is to express my gratitude for the support you’ve provided me. I don’t feel like I’ve been given a literal or a figurative blank check to do whatever I want to do, but I’ve enjoyed a very positive working relationship with this church.

There were some people who felt compelled to bail when they realized who I was and what I was like, but that wasn’t all bad. What I primarily feel is gratitude for the tremendous support I’ve experienced. I always wish we had more people to show up on Sunday mornings, but I’m also happy that so many of you go to the trouble to get here.

Many of you have heard me say how much I desired to be appointed to this church, and how I had tried to get appointed here on three different occasions before I finally did get sent here in 2009. I don’t think I’ve ever shared this, but during the Spring of 2009 when I was trying to get the Bishop to appoint me here is that I had a very unsettling dream. I don’t remember many of my dreams, but I remember this one. It was in the midst of the appointment making season, and I dreamed that they had appointed to this church a person I knew as a teenager and it was a person who had no association with the United Methodist Church or any church as far as I knew. It was this totally random and inappropriate appointment, and I woke myself up trying to scream the word, Noooo! , but I couldn’t get a sound out of my mouth.

As I say, it was a very unsettling dream, and while I was glad to wake up and realize it was a dream, I half-way wondered if it was some kind of an omen of things to come. But that’s not what happened. Clearly, I did get appointed here, and that’s when I truly became unsettled!

Actually, that’s not true. I’ve never regretted being appointed here, but as is always the case, you rarely know what you’re getting yourself in to. This has been a very rich experience, and one of the best things that has happened to me is that you’ve enabled me to find my voice to some extent. I remember the frustration of not being able to formulate that word in my dream, but my experience here has been the opposite of that. I have felt heard here, and I’ve been encouraged to find the right words to speak.

You’ve pushed me in some good ways to say what I believe to be true and to speak those words in ways that can be heard. In my opinion, you have helped me to become a better preacher. You may not have noticed any improvement, but I know I like my sermons more than I used to, and I give you credit for helping in this regard. You listen, and that raises the bar. I’ve always known I couldn’t say ridiculous things and then enjoy Sunday lunch with Sharla, but when there are at least a dozen other people listening to what you say it really puts you on notice to stay out of the preaching ditches. In my mind you’ve got the boring ditch on one side and the ridiculous ditch on the other, and it’s not easy to stay out of them, but I’ve been motivated by you to keep my words fresh and relevant.

So I do have a lot of gratitude for what you’ve done for me and what we’ve been able to do together. I consider us to have been on a fantastic voyage together, but I don’t just want to wallow in the past. What I’m hearing in these words from the gospel this morning is the need to keep moving forward. The instruction Jesus gives to his disciples sort of jump out at me. He says, Let’s go across to the other side. Discipleship is never an exercise in looking backward and patting yourself on the back for the fine work you’ve done.

Christianity is an exercise in perpetual movement toward the other side. Jesus stayed on the move and he didn’t to go to easy places. As these words indicate, going to the other side involves departing from familiar territory and going to a new place. And it turns out that these unfamiliar crossings can actually be dangerous.

The disciples weren’t just overreacting to a threatening storm when they woke Jesus up and told him they were sinking. They actually were sinking. And Jesus didn’t tell them they didn’t have anything to be afraid of – they were in an actual frightening situation, but he did question their faith – which seems a little unfair to me. It didn’t seem like an unfaithful act to wake Jesus up before the boat went under, but I think Jesus wanted them to understand that when they have absolute faith in God it doesn’t even matter if the ship is going under. When your heart is in the hands of God it just doesn’t even matter what happens to your body.

I don’t doubt that that is true, but I don’t think it’s easy for any of us to fully disconnect our spiritual wellbeing from our physical wellbeing. I believe this becomes possible when circumstances require it, but it isn’t easy to fully abide in that place. The moment will come for all of us when we are called upon to let go of our bodies and fully reside in our souls, but for most of us there is this ongoing struggle to balance the needs of our bodies with the needs of our souls.

Abundant life calls for faith in Jesus, but you also need to show up for work, pay your bills, and brush your teeth. It’s important to secure food and housing and healthcare, but it’s critical that we seek to connect our lives and our institutions with the values that Jesus exhibited and spoke. And in a significant way this requires us to be on this perpetual journey to the other side. To follow Jesus is to continually move toward a more just and loving world, and that’s a frightening journey because this journey to the other side frequently puts us in vulnerable positions. There is great resistance to such movement, and disaster is a possibility.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people in this world who don’t want to travel to the other side. They like the world as they know it, and they don’t want to travel to the other side. They don’t want to change the world and they don’t want you to change it either. People like this don’t want to understand reality – they want to define reality, and many of these people associate their strongly held opinions with their faith in God.

It’s amazing, but it’s true. People have connected some of the most hateful attitudes with faithfulness to God, and therefore they don’t think they can change their minds without rejecting God. I think this is largely what keeps our church and our society from becoming more hospitable to all people. For whatever reason, they don’t connect their affection for Jesus with the need to keep moving in new directions. People like this can’t develop more hospitable policies toward people of different sexual orientations because they think God wants them to continue standing in the same spot their ancestors stood. It’s true that it’s much safer to not go to the other side, but it’s also not very Christian.

This fear of crossing to the other side is what keeps our economy from becoming a more just marketplace. It’s what keeps our criminal justice system so broken, and it’s what keeps us from dealing with the roots of racism in our country. People associate faithfulness with God with clinging to entrenched ideas, and that is so contrary to what Jesus did and taught.

What in the world was going on in the mind of the young man who showed up at that church in Charleston and started killing people last Wednesday night. His actions were about as evil as anything I’ve ever heard, and he was about as misguided as I can imagine a person being. That happened the same night my granddaughter was born. I’ve been struck by the contrast of those experiences. While I was basking in one of the happiest moments of my life there were these nine families in Charleston who were experiencing the worst nightmare of their life.

I don’t really know how to reconcile the majesty and miracle of this world with the tragedy and heartache that goes on here as well, but I will say that this event in Charleston has grabbed the attention of our nation in a way that few other events have been able to do. If nothing else, the murderous action of this young man has brought attention to the issue of racism, and it’s not going to be easy for this situation to go unaddressed. Racism is a blight in our land, and it’s my hope that this event will cause some new people to start moving to the other side.

In that sense it almost seems providential that a young African American woman has been appointed to this predominately Anglo-American congregation. This church is poised to do some groundbreaking work in regard to breaking down some racial barriers, and I’m excited to see what may come out of this. This isn’t going to be an easy transition for the church, but it wouldn’t be easy if they appointed another white man to the job. You’ve got that now, and we aren’t exactly knocking it out of the park!

It’s not going to be easy for anyone, but there is this beautiful possibility that this church can become a model of interracial cooperation and a threat to racist politics. It’s so interesting to me that there was a time when there were people who worshipped God in this place who were unwilling for students from Philander Smith College to be seated in the sanctuary. I’ve seen a few letters that were written in the 1960s to this effect. And now the person who will be occupying the pulpit is a graduate of Philander Smith College. What a new day this is!

I feel like this church is on an important journey, and I trust you will make it to the other side. I’ll be pulling for you, but even better than that – Jesus is available and pulling for us all. Jesus is with those families in Charleston, Jesus is here with you, Jesus will be with me in Newport, and Jesus is with everyone who is on a treacherous journey to the other side – the side where Jesus is calling us to be. This is a fantastic voyage we’ve been invited to embark upon, and the good news is that Jesus is with us! Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Seedy Possibilities
Mark 4:26-34

4:26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” 30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Today’s scripture lesson provides us with two curious images of God’s kingdom. And one thing that occurs to me is that these images aren’t very helpful if you expect to extract a lesson from them. They don’t really provide any kind of instruction on what we are to do if we want to gain access to the kingdom of God. If you are looking for some clear guidance on what you need to do in order to abide in God’s Kingdom I think the message is to not get in the way.

And I suppose that’s somewhat informative – don’t get in the way of how the kingdom of God is taking root and shooting upward. I’m reminded of the wise advice my friend, Rev. Lewis Chesser, was known to provide to people who weren’t sure what they needed to do. He would say, Don’t just do something – stand there!

Clearly part of the message of this first parable is for us to not take our role in the establishment of God’s kingdom too seriously. The farmer’s job was to scatter the seed and then do nothing until it was time for the grain to be harvested. He did have a role to play, but according to Jesus the ground did all of the work of producing the crop.

I think Jesus was pointing to the fact that we are pretty helpless when it comes to guiding the spiritual world. Parables are funny things. They point to profound truths, but the truths they identify aren’t always easy to see. The easy thing to see in this parable is how little the farmer did, and that’s not very good advice for a farmer. I think most farmers would tell you what kind of crop you will get if you don’t engage in the endless work of preparing the soil, applying fertilizer, warding off pests, and irrigating the plants. The truth is you won’t have much of a crop to harvest if you don’t do anything but scatter the seed and wait.

I can testify to this. I planted some snow peas in my one little raised bed this year. I half-heartedly constructed a trellis for them to grow on that was about half as tall as it needed to be, and I basically ignored them for several weeks. Consequently I harvested about a dozen small pods last week. They were good, and they are a testimony to the resilience of plants to produce fruit under unfavorable conditions, but my plants were pretty pitiful looking. Clearly Jesus wasn’t offering advice on how to be an effective farmer, but I’m sure there’s something in this story that can help us be more present to the Kingdom of God.

I think the lesson has something to do with how we view the Kingdom of God – which is not just different from the powerful institutions we encounter on earth, it’s also different from the way we often imagine God’s kingdom to be. In fact I think what Jesus is wanting us to understand is that God’s kingdom isn’t anything like the kingdoms of earth – which often do give shape to our understanding of the kingdom of God.

And I think the problem Jesus was addressing with this parable is our tendency to want to give some familiar shape to God’s kingdom. As much as we might think we would enjoy the life of this farmer who simply throws out the seed and waits to see what happens – that’s not how we generally operate. I think we are more inclined to want to make sure our endeavors turn in to something we can be proud of. We aren’t as good at letting God’s kingdom flourish as we are at trying to turn God’s kingdom in to something that will get the attention of our peers.

I’m thinking Jesus is providing some unsettling advice in this parable. He’s really not telling us how we can be more effective in our work as good United Methodists who will get more people to show up on Sunday mornings and give more money. God’s special agent in this parable throws out the seed, goes home and goes to bed. This may be somebody’s idea of excellence in ministry, but this is not what I’m hearing from headquarters that they want us to be doing.

I really don’t sense that this parable provides us with very good advice on how to improve our vital statistics. You will not find in this passage the seed of a powerful program on effective evangelism – unless you are willing to let go of how you measure such things. And I actually think that’s what Jesus wants us to do. Jesus wants us to see that the fruits of God’s kingdom grow without our help and in ways that are beyond our control.

We can’t make them grow – nor can we keep them from growing. We may not see how richly bountiful the heads of the grain really are, but just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Jesus didn’t tell this parable to provide us with instruction on how we might work more effectively – he told it in order to help us see things differently. There is a bountiful harvest to be experienced, but it’s not the kind of fruit we generate by our own toil.

Jesus followed this first seedy parable with another one. This mustard seed parable is one that we can more readily embrace in some ways. It at least doesn’t have a main character who models slovenly behavior, and it does provide this image of a really small thing growing in to a huge thing. That is an encouraging image for any struggling organization – we may be small now, but one day we may become huge! And who doesn’t like the idea of becoming huge!

On some level you might say that the Methodist Church is an example of the way in which something small can grow in to something huge. And I’ve intentionally referred to the Methodist Church as opposed to the United Methodist Church, because the UMC has never experienced the kind of growth that the Methodist Church did. Certainly there are some pockets of growth, but our denomination hasn’t been in the growth mode for the last few decades.

In some ways our religious tradition reflects this story of the tiny mustard seed that grew in to the largest of all plants. The story of Methodism is the story of how a handful of reform minded students started something that grew in to an institution that dwarfed it’s Protestant peers. When the various arms of the Methodist Church united in 1968 we became the largest of all Protestant denominations.

It’s worth noting that this very building was home to the largest Methodist Church in Arkansas in the 1940s. I’m not sure what year it peaked in membership, but Winfield Methodist Church had around 3500 members in the mid-1940s. QQUMC now has about 350 members and on a good Sunday we’ll have a little over 100 people in worship.

It’s not easy to fully embrace the glorious possibilities that this parable of the mustard seed evokes when you meet in a building that once held ten times as many people as we now have on an average Sunday. This mustard seed parable sort of make me wonder if we haven’t gone to seed so to speak.

But I’m reminded that these stories Jesus told aren’t allegories – they weren’t told in order for us to relate the political or religious events of the day with the images provided by these stories. We aren’t to relate the growth of our institution with the growth of the plant. That’s an easy place for us to go in our minds, but I don’t think that’s the right place to go. It’s natural to think Jesus was wanting us to believe in the possibility of stupendous growth of our good church when he told this parable of the mustard seed, but I don’t think that’s what he was wanting us to understand.

I really don’t think Jesus cared about establishing a new religious institution that would overshadow the sick one that dominated Israel at the time. Jesus did care about spiritual transformation, and that’s what these parables are about. Jesus wanted us to be able to see the nearness of God’s kingdom regardless of how far from the kingdom of God our institutions may wander.

I realize that I might be presenting our institutional health and life in some negative light, but I actually find these parables to be powerfully positive. What I hear Jesus saying is that the kingdom of God can grow under any circumstances. I hear him saying that you can’t keep it from growing and you can’t imagine how large it can get – regardless of the numbers that can be statistically reported.

It may well be that we have more God-loving, kingdom-dwelling Christians in this sanctuary on a below average Sunday morning than Winfield Methodist Church had on Easter Day in 1946 when this place was bursting with people. It’s hard to measure such things, but I don’t think we will ever be successful at measuring the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth. It’s not something that we will ever be able to control or coordinate, and I thank God for that.

I don’t discount the value of measuring certain things. You need people and money to operate a church, and it’s good to keep track of how you are spending the money that people give out of devotion to God. But the truth is that people can find their way in to God’s kingdom on either side of the doors of any church – large or small.

I love this beautiful building, and I love the church that abides within this place. I believe that growth is a possibility for this church, and I hope it happens. I genuinely want this church to succeed, but on another level I don’t even think it matters. And that’s another reason it’s a good thing that I’m about to relocate – because when it comes down to it I really don’t care about the numbers. This church needs some better numbers, and unfortunately I’m not very driven to succeed in that way.

It’s not just that I’m lazy or inept. It’s also that I’m inclined to believe that God doesn’t need a giant church to spread the good news in unfathomable ways. One person who has become infected by the love of God can infect an immeasurable number of other people, and that’s why the kingdom of God continues to thrive in this world.

Churches come and churches go, preachers come and preachers go, but God has chosen to be with us in an eternally unfailing way.

The Kingdom of God is like a seed, and its growth is out of our hands. Thanks be to God! Amen.

God’s Wildest Child
Mark 3:20-35

3:20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. 28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”– 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” 31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

This morning’s scripture lesson is an interesting circumstance to ponder. It’s particularly interesting to me in light of a book I’ve recently listened to as I’ve gone about my mindless outdoor labors. And my sense of what was going on between Jesus and the crowd and his family and the authorities is largely colored by what I’ve learned about Jerry Lee Lewis. For some odd reason I chose to listen to a new biography of Jerry Lee Lewis written by a man named Rick Bragg, and it was a fascinating story. Being the relative youngster that I am, I wasn’t very aware of the craziness that Jerry Lee Lewis instigated, but I have come to understand what a wild child he was. He’s not God’s wildest child, but he’s a contender.

Before Jerry Lee Lewis came along I don’t think anyone understood how much ruckus you could cause with a piano. Who would have thought that you could get thrown out of Bible College for the way you played the piano, but he did. And Jerry Lee Lewis’ first hit, A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, got banned from most radio stations in the south soon after it came out because it offended the sensibilities of the preachers and politicians.

I had no idea how much raw emotion Jerry Lee Lewis generated when he came along. His friends, his fans and his family have faithfully adored him, but he’s always been the object of a whole lot of scorn, and he deserved all of it – the praise and the criticism. Different people saw Jerry Lee Lewis in different ways – which is understandable because Jerry Lee Lewis sees himself in different ways. He has a strong belief in God, and he believes God gave him the gift of playing music the way he did, but he doesn’t know what to think about it all. He loved getting people all worked up, but it wasn’t always in such a good way. He has this sense that he was doing the work of the Lord and the devil all at the same time. He is truly one of God’s wild children.

And there is a sense in which I appreciate wildness in a person. This is not to say I condone licentious self-indulgence, but that’s not the only way to be a wild child. While we often associate being wild with being sexually promiscuous and chemically experimental, what I’m thinking is that those are the stereotypical ways of being wild. It takes a lot more creativity and personal initiative to be authentically wild than to be stereotypically wild. I consider an authentically wild person to be untamed by the conventions of society, and that’s not such a bad thing. The expectations of society don’t necessarily bring out the best in us – such expectations stifle creativity and can discourage us from being our most authentic selves.

In my way of thinking Jerry Lee Lewis was both stereotypically and authentically wild, but his stereotypical wildness detracted from his authentic wildness. He was inspirational and he was destructive. He moved people in good ways, and he caused tremendous heartbreak. He pushed the limits of music, and he wrecked his own body. As I listened to the story of this remarkable man I found myself wanting to have some of his fearlessness, but I’m grateful that I haven’t created the kinds of problems he generated for himself and others.

Hearing the story of Jerry Lee Lewis has helped me understand the dynamics that were swirling around Jesus. I’ve watched a couple of old videos of live performances of Jerry Lee Lewis, and he caused people to lose their minds – and it wasn’t just the women. I saw this one video where his piano was surrounded by these young men who were carried away by his music. They would reach out to touch him like they were touching a god. He was doing something so different from anything they had ever experienced before they were carried away by the situation.

Because I’ve seen what a man can do by playing a piano in a new and unbounded way it’s easy for me to imagine what happened when Jesus came along and was able to heal people’s damaged souls in such a new and powerful way. It’s not easy to imagine how it was that he was able to generate the groundswell of emotion that he did without the use of a piano or guitar or microphone, but he was the rockstar of his day. People were released from their demons and their troubles by his presence, and it cause a powerful commotion. Jesus disrupted the way that people understood the reality of God, and that caused even more chaos than a Jerry Lee Lewis performance. Talk about a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on – that’s exactly what happened when Jesus showed up and started talking and touching people!

And it’s easy to see why it got the attention of the religious authorities. Their job was to maintain the established understanding of God and the proper protocols of faith. They weren’t interested in this new way that God’s spirit was being manifested in their midst – they were advocates of the old way that God was understood.

I guess it’s to be expected, but it’s sort of sad to me that we’ve so thoroughly domesticated Jesus. The Jesus that Christianity has defined him to be is welcome at all of the nicest places, and it’s a scandal for anyone who is officially associated with Jesus to show up at any controversial venue.

A pastor who works on the staff of the Arkansas United Methodist Conference told me that her supervisor got some phone calls when she was seen on the news participating in the Prayer Vigil that was held at the Governor’s Mansion that was appealing for the governor to veto the bill that would have allowed discrimination against the LGBT community. One of the comments that was made about her was that they wondered why she was there when she should have been at work. And that’s a remarkable thing. What is the work of a pastor if it’s not to join with others in prayer for our laws to be less discriminatory?

I feel so bad about what we’ve done to Jesus. We’ve made him so safe, and so compatible with what we already believe.

They made a movie about Jerry Lee Lewis back in 1989 that I haven’t seen, but according to my book he was terribly offended by the way he was portrayed. In his mind they cleaned him up too much. They turned him in to sort of a friendly and clueless bumpkin, and that’s not who he was. He was determined, unsettling, and dangerous. He had an edge and you didn’t want to get in his way.

I fear that we’ve done the same thing to Jesus. We’ve made him much more commercially appealing than he really was. It’s true that he was loved by great crowds of people, but most of those people were terribly desperate for access to food and health and work and to God. The people who flocked to him were largely disenfranchised from the essentials of life and the community of faith.

Jesus speaks of this possibility of committing an unforgivable sin – which is about as harsh of an accusation that he ever made. If you’ve ever worried that you may have committed such a sin you can rest assured that you haven’t, because I think the sin Jesus was addressing is the sin of being so self-assured of your rightness about God and everything else that you aren’t even willing for God to change your mind. That is the unforgivable sin – being unwilling for your view of God to be adjusted by the very presence of God.

The officially unrighteous people had no problem hearing what Jesus had to say and being touched by his words. It was the righteous and upstanding people who were unsettled by what Jesus was doing and who he was touching.

The fact that this church is a place where desperate people find some sustenance is one of the things that makes this place so beautiful, but in all honesty it’s also one of the things that has begun to get to me. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve grown to be sort of weary of the number of people who come to our door in need of help. And they really do need help. Yes, many of them are victims of their own bad decisions – they’ve fed their own demons in many ways, but many others are victims of uninvited demons – things like disease, or crime, or social stigma, or our dehumanizing economy. There are so many people who come here in need of some kind of help, and it’s so good that people see this church as a source of life in a death-dealing world, but I’ve grown tired in some significant ways.

This is one of the reasons it’s time for me to relocate, and I’m so happy that you are getting a pastor who is so full of fresh grace that she will have what she needs to deal with the circumstances. I’m not feeling as authentically wild as this church needs for the pastor to be, and I the timing is right for me to go. I don’t think it’s going to be so hard for me to be a wild child in Newport, and if I will allow Jesus to be my guide I’m thinking that’s how I’ll learn to be and to help others be that way as well.

I only met Carissa last Monday, and I don’t really know how wild her soul really is, but I trust that she’s reasonably out from under the control of those forces that try to keep our minds narrow, our behavior predictable, and our hearts contained. Because such spiritual freedom is what it takes to do God’s work in this place – as it does in every place. God needs an authentically wild child in this pulpit and God needs authentically wild children in the pews. God needs us all to be hungry to hear the audacious call of God to be the boldly loving community that God’s wildest child ever – Jesus Christ – has called for us to be!

Thanks be to God – Amen!