Thompson's Blog

Hospitable New Year!
Matthew 10:40-42

10:40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

As most of you know, our annual meeting of the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church concluded last Sunday afternoon in Rogers. We began meeting on the previous Thursday and for about 3 days I had no idea what day it was. Our Annual Conference usually begins meeting on a Sunday afternoon and concludes on a Wednesday afternoon, and this shift was totally disorienting to me. I had a conversation with Sharla on that Saturday morning about taking care of some business that clearly couldn’t have happened on a Saturday – but I was totally oblivious as to what day it was!

And of course Annual Conference isn’t like anything normal. You come together in a room with about 2000 of your United Methodist cousins – most of whom you don’t know, but you know you’ve seen them somewhere before. You follow very specific protocols in regard to speaking and voting, in a room without windows or anything else to remind you of what time it is or where you are. It’s honestly a very disorienting experience.

But the last thing that always happens is the reading of the clergy appointments. It’s become more abbreviated in the last few years. Each District Superintendent only reads the names of the people who are going to new appointments, but this is a very orienting event for me. Because at that moment – after all is said and done, my job becomes very clear to me.

Life as a United Methodist Pastor is far more predictable these days than it was a few decades ago. It used to be that pastors and families often found out where they were going when appointments were read at the end of Annual Conference. I’m sure there was better attendance at the final event of those conferences than there is at our final reading ritual. I’ve never seen anyone burst in to tears or praise when their name and appointment was read, but I’m guessing that was a regular feature of that event in earlier days.

There are no surprises for us, but I try not to miss this concluding event. It reminds me of what I am to be about for the next twelve months. And the truth is that all United Methodist ministers who are under appointment are only provided with annual contracts – which aren’t even that solid. The language in the Book of Discipline is that we are appointed at the pleasure of the Bishop. The Bishop generally leaves pastors alone when the relationship is working, but the pleasure of the Bishop has been known to change mid-year.

I feel that what’s going on here is relatively pleasing to the Bishop. We aren’t knocking the ball out of the park, but we’re getting better. Our stats are improving, and we’re playing well with each other.

Today’s scripture reading speaks to the importance of being nice to each other. There’s a little mystery involved in this short passage in regard to the distinctions between the rewards of prophets as opposed to the rewards of righteous people, but I don’t think many people read these verses and come away wondering what they mean. There may have been some specific protocols for welcoming prophets that we don’t quite understand, and there may have been some people who were labeled as officially righteous people that felt particularly good to have around, but what I hear Jesus saying in this passage is not esoteric theology. What Jesus is talking about here is how valuable it is to be nice to whoever it is that comes our way.

You don’t have to have a degree in theology to understand what this is about. In fact what I hear Jesus saying is that we need to forget about our degrees and our positions in society if we want to be people who make room for God in our lives. This business of following Jesus isn’t rocket science – it’s more like home economics. It’s the practice of hospitality – which in some ways is harder than complex mathematics. It shouldn’t be that hard, but it gets hard when we forget that we are all human beings who deserve to be loved and we begin to think that there are distinctions between us that make some people more valuable than other people.

This isn’t news to any of you, and frankly it pretty intimidating to extract a sermon from a passage that’s so easily understood. These three verses don’t provide me with an easy opportunity to dazzle you with my keen grasp of systematic theology. You probably won’t have to take notes this morning.

In fact it may be that you’re going to have to make an effort to forget what I’m about to say. Because what I want you to know is not so much about how you are to treat the people you come across who need some special attention – I think you all know you need to be nice to people who need special care. It’s not always easy and it’s not easy to know how to help people who are in dire circumstances, but certainly we all need to pay attention to the various voices of need that we encounter in life. We need to take note of the fact that it very well may be Christ himself who comes to us and asks for help with the necessities of life.

I hope you won’t forget this, but what I primarily want you to hear is that this very church is a little one who is in need of a cool drink of water. This church needs your personal and financial support.

And you are hearing this from a person who has always had a problem with preachers who find a way to turn every passage of scripture in to an appeal for money. I don’t recall Jesus ever taking up a collection after making one of his memorable public appearances. Jesus didn’t consider the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth to be dependent upon the strength of his movement’s treasury. Money was not that important to Jesus. If anything, he saw the abundance of money as more of an impediment to spiritual development than as a powerful resource for ministry.

I’m very conscious of Jesus’ suspicion of money, but I don’t think Jesus was just talking about water when he referred to the importance of helping the little ones. He pointed out earlier in his ministry that a person can’t live by bread alone – you certainly can’t live by water alone either. It takes a full compliment of goods to keep a body alive, and it takes a lot of money to keep this particular body of Christ alive.

The truth is that the level of giving to this church is better this year than it was last year. It’s been a lot more fun to be on our Finance Committee this year than it was last year, but we are far from being financially solvent. We aren’t close to paying what we call our apportionments – the amount we are assessed from the Annual Conference. And we have some rising needs in regard to our regular operations. I won’t belabor you with the particulars, but if you want to know more about our financial pressures let me know. I’ll be happy to provide you with details.

I have no shame in letting you know that we need more money because I consider this church to be in the position of one these little ones who Christ lifted up as being particularly rewarding to support. I’m not on the same page as the preachers who propose that your contributions to this church will come back to you with tremendous financial dividends. I never knew Jesus to indicate in any way that our rewards would come in financial means. So don’t expect your financial gifts to this church to pay financial dividends, but it’s not wrong to expect some reward for your giving.

I can tell you that this church is a very special place. I believe this church is one of those little ones that Jesus wanted his followers to watch out for. We’ve created an identify for ourselves that is very unique in our United Methodist church family, and the Arkansas Conference needs us to be strong and viable. We don’t just need more money, but money is one of the things we need more of.

I never make any assumptions about what people are able to give or not give. It may well be that everyone here is already giving everything they are able to give. It’s not for me to be the judge of such things, but it is my job to remind you of how important it is to provide for this corporate child of God who is on the forefront of the struggle for justice for people who are not fully accepted.

In our work to advocate for the removal of the disciplinary restrictions against non-heterosexual people we are providing cool water to those who have been told that they aren’t fully deserving of a place at the United Methodist table. And so it is without any hesitation that I’m asking you to be as financially generous as you can be to this church, and don’t hesitate to tell your affluent friends of our needs. We are in a position of needing to make some difficult decisions and those decisions would be a lot easier if we had some more money.

Anne and I have had our contracts renewed by the Bishop for another year, and I want this to be our most fruitful year ever. I’m hoping this church will become overwhelmed with the kind of fruit God provides as reward for faithfulness. I’m trusting this can happen regardless of how much money we are able to collect, but I’m also trusting that you will hear what I’m saying and do what you can to help this church out.

You may not like hearing me be so blunt about equating Christian discipleship with giving money to this church. But let me remind you that what I often hear Jesus asking for is far more costly than our dollars. The truth is that I’m letting you off easy this week. It’s so much easier to write checks than it is to do what I so often hear him asking us to do. But hey, it’s the first Sunday of our new year together – I thought it would be good to start out with an easy appeal.

And I’m not saying that I can be bought, but if this church would step up it’s giving it will put me in such a good mood it’ll be hard for me to dredge up any of that hell-fire type of preaching. You may not think I can go there, but you probably didn’t think I could spend 10 minutes begging for money either. I’m not threatening – I’m just saying I care a lot about how things go here, and I’ll do whatever I feel I need to do to nourish this sacred body.

Let me remind you – I’m the guy who recently rode his bicycle to the Atlantic Ocean. I can get wacky. I can go to extreme places. In fact I have every intention of becoming even more wacky and extreme in my work with you. I want us all to get so caught up in the loving spirit of Christ that they will do a story on us in the AR United Methodist entitled Local Church Has Lost It’s Mind – But It’s Heart Is Well Intact.

We’ve got a new year before us – let’s live it well. Let’s give it all we’ve got!
Amen

This isn’t what I consider to be a good sermon, it’s a little too wordy or something, but I don’t get to preach when I get it just right. I preach on Sunday morning — ready or not.

Our Intermodal God
Matthew 28:16-20

28:16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Today is Trinity Sunday on the Liturgical Calendar. I’m sure that’s a day you all have circled on your calendars. Who doesn’t get excited about Trinity Sunday – besides me!

Being the relatively non-academic preacher that I am, I’ve never been an enthusiastic articulator of the theological concept of the Trinity. I’ve never done much wrestling with how we define who God is and how God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are related. Creedal formulas are about as interesting to me as obscure mathematical formulas, but I do have some interest in how things work, and I do have some curiosity about the way in which we interact with the various ways we name God.

And while I’m not equipped to contribute to the academic debate of how we define God, there’s some interesting history surrounding the earliest debate about our Trinitarian language. It was hammered out at the Council of Nicaea in 325CE under the supervision of Emperor Constantine, who called the bishops of the day together to establish a standard understanding of how God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were all related. I don’t think Constantine had an opinion on how the formula should come out – he just wanted a clear policy.

The primary debate was between Arius and Athanasius – two men who each had significant followers and who had different opinions about the nature of Jesus. Arius was an advocate of the thought that there was a time when God was God alone. God later decided to enter the world in the unique form of Jesus, but according to Arius, Jesus wasn’t a coequal partner from the beginning. Arius had an image of God that was more along the lines of a monarch who made decisions about what needed to happen in what we might call a unilateral manner. Arius considered Jesus to be above us regular mortals, but not equal to God.

It’s surprising that Constantine didn’t operate as the decider in this debate and go with that model of reality. It seems like that would have been the preferred choice of an emperor, but he was willing for the theologians to make their arguments and to put it to the will of the body, and it turns out that the position of Athanasius was found to be the most acceptable.

Athanasius argued that Jesus had been coeternal with God – true God from true God, as you will find it stated in the Nicene Creed. Athanasius believed that God was best represented by a relationship and not a monarch. The power of God was not exhibited in acts of force, but through perpetual self-giving to the other. The primary debate between Arius and Athanasius concerned the relationship between Jesus and God, but of course the role and origin of the Holy Spirit was also at play, and it was equally believable to Athanasius that the Holy Spirit had been in the mix from the beginning as well.

Constantine wanted a clear policy on these issues, and the Athanasian formula carried the day. The Trinitarian language that has largely been accepted by the Roman Catholic church as well as most protestant churches came out of this 4th Century church council meeting, and we’ve been trying to figure out what it means ever since. Constantine was relatively kind to the losers of the debate. Arius and his primary followers weren’t executed. They were just exiled to a relatively remote island where they couldn’t rally much of a revolution.

I’m not unhappy that we have this Trinitarian language. I like to think of God as being represented as a relationship as opposed to a monarch, but of course for us to try to define the nature of God is not really within our pay-grade – so to speak. We aren’t equipped to understand what we’re talking about, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.

And with that bottom line established, I shall proceed to declare how I understand our multi-faceted God to interact with us. Other than the male bias that is so present in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit formula of God, I’m comfortable with the concept of a Triune God. As I say, I love to think of God as being represented by a mutually self-giving relationship. That not only makes sense to me, it’s instructive. It gives me a sense of how I am to be as well. I’m not to rule over whatever beings happen to fall under my authority. I am to do as God does – which is to live in a self-giving relationship with others.

Our scripture this morning is pretty instructive, and while it can come across as being a bit authoritarian – that’s far from what it is. I think the methods of going out and “making” disciples has been pretty heavy handed at times. Sometimes we disciples emphasize the wrong words, and there have been some pretty forceful ways of making disciples, but if we would make disciples in the manner that Jesus taught and exhibited there wouldn’t be anything heavy-handed about the way we go out in to the world to do this holy work.

Jesus wasn’t instructing his disciples to go out and impose their limited theological understanding upon the rest of the world, Jesus was trying to provide courage to his fledgling group of followers to do what looked impossible. What we think of as the Great Commission took place on an un-named mountain in a gentile region of the country, and the small group that Jesus addressed weren’t all convinced that the story was going anywhere. Honestly, this scene would be comical if it were to be portrayed in a film.

But Jesus wasn’t being foolish or funny. Jesus spoke of the powerful authority they had to go out and spread the good news of God’s enduring and ever-present love, but his presence was the only evidence of that authority. They were without numbers, conventional resources, or even a likely story. There wasn’t any real reason they were going to be able to convince anyone to believe what had happened and what it meant for the world. But at least some of them proceeded.

And it turns out that this message and this way of relating to one another was uncontainable. It wasn’t because they had all the resources they needed to get this message out that the Christian faith has endured and expanded the way it has. This story would have died if it had been up to this small group of men. They had not shown themselves to be exceptional leaders in any way, but they had been chosen to be the bearers of the good news of Jesus Christ, and God empowered them to deliver the message.

I don’t fully understand the doctrine of the Trinity, but what I do understand and believe is that God comes to us in different ways and God uses us in different ways. It’s sort of a simplistic analogy, but I found myself thinking about the way products are shipped around the world.

If you spend any time on an interstate highway you will notice that a lot of trucks carry containers with the word, intermodal, on them. And those trucks aren’t pulling traditional trailers that are attached to wheels. They are pulling trailers that have these intermodal containers attached to them. Containers that were packed in China or some other country across an ocean and carried by ship to a port where they were put on trains, trucks, or barges and carried to some other inland transportation hub where they would be transferred again until they arrived at their final destination.

Then we throw our obsolete electronics in those same containers and they make the same journey in reverse. These are called intermodal containers because they are designed to be transported by different modes of transportation. These intermodal containers have a uniform size and a standard method of connection to one another, to ship holds, to railroad cars, and to truck trailers. It’s an impressive system of moving items from one part of the world to another. What gets moved and how those products are extracted from workers and the land isn’t necessarily a pretty picture, but the transportation system itself represents some remarkable human ingenuity.

Intermodal transportation is an easy concept, and that’s how I suggest we think of the Trinity. What we have at the heart of our faith is a uniform package that comes to us in a variety of ways. What we call the Trinity is some divine ingenuity – it’s God’s intermodal means of communicating with us.

The uniform message is that we are all of sacred worth, and we can live our lives in a sacred manner. God loves all of us regardless of what we may profess to believe or not believe, but we don’t automatically live our lives in relationship with God. We have the opportunity to become more connected to the Kingdom of God, and that opportunity comes to us in different ways.

Life itself speaks to the creatively powerful nature of God, who willed our world in to existence, but we also need some instruction. We need to hear the teaching of Jesus Christ and to see his example. The church is the bearer of this message, and as Jesus told his original disciples, we all have work to go and to do. God needs people to share the good news about self-giving love. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and it’s the Holy Spirit that provides us with the knowledge and the courage to be Christ’s disciples.

Honestly, it’s hard to talk about the various ways the message of God is communicated without sounding esoteric, preacherly, or boring – which I consider to be the unholy trinity of preaching possibilities, but I love to think that there is this consistent life-giving message that God will find a way to deliver to each of us.

And what I mean when I say that we worship a Triune God is that we have a multi-faceted inter-modal uncontainable eternal and ever-present God. Trinitarian language doesn’t capture all that there is to say about the ways in which God comes to us, but it’s a good start.

And with that in mind, I actually do have hope that you will have an exciting Trinity Sunday!
Amen.

I’ve included in this sermon a story that I didn’t hear from the original teller of that story, but I trust the source from which it came, and I remained true to the way I remember hearing it. That’s all I know to say.

The Holy Spirit Narrative
I Corinthians 12:3b-13

3b No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

We live in a world that is full of information. I would say we are bombarded by information, and what you understand to be the truth depends on who is providing that information. The truth is an illusive entity, but there is not a shortage of voices out there presenting their particular version of the truth.

The most obvious manifestation of the varieties of truth that are offered might be the way the news is presented on various cable networks. You get the right-wing perspective on what’s happening in the world by watching Fox News. You get the left-wing perspective by watching MSNBC. And of course if you think the missing Malaysian airliner is the only thing that’s happened in the world this year you can watch CNN.

This recent story of the POW exchange with the Taliban is a great example of the different ways the truth is presented. There are a variety of narratives about this US soldier named Bowe Bergdahl, who was held captive by the Taliban for 5 years. It doesn’t even seem like the Democrats are on the same page with President Obama, but the Republicans certainly have a different perspective on that event. There are a lot of different people portraying that situation in a wide variety of ways. I’ve heard Sargeant Bergdahl described as everything from a war hero to a traitor. There are a number of narratives that describe the truth about this event. How it is portrayed probably reveals more about the agendas of the people who are telling the story than what actually occurred, and I’m guessing this is usually the case.

The narratives we get in regard to what is going on in the world come from many different directions, and those voices are often better reflections of the values of the people who are providing those narratives than the actual circumstances. Certainly some narratives are more accurate portrayals of the truth than others, but it’s hard to keep our political persuasions out of the way in which we interpret reality.

But it’s not just our political persuasions that inform the way we define the truth. I guess the very nature of a religious community is to pass on it’s particular narrative of reality. I think the essence of a faith community is to declare what it believes to be the truth about the big picture. This is what religious communities do. People are nourished by these big picture narratives – people are destroyed by them as well.

History is filled with stories of the way in which the church has continued to define reality in ways that defy the facts on the ground. Perhaps the most amazing example of that is the way in which the Roman Catholic Church refused to acknowledge the heliocentric or Sun-centered design of the universe for about 300 years after Copernicus revealed his understanding. They made some gestures of acceptance after 200 years, but they didn’t remove all statements of resistance to this model of our solar system until 1835, which was a good 300 years after this truth had been revealed.

Unfortunately, religious institutions are known for not letting the facts interfere with their view of reality, and this often plays out in bad ways. I don’t believe spiritual truth is ever at odds with scientific truths, but I believe there are truths that come to us from beyond the reach of scientific discovery. There are these messages that come to us from God’s Holy Spirit – that powerful messenger that reveals the agenda of God. An agenda that changes the directions of people’s lives and alters the course of human history. In my opinion the Holy Spirit is a force that surpasses all other forces, but it’s undetectable to any scientific instrument or observation.

And while the way the Holy Spirit works is incomprehensible, there are these things that happen that can only be described as the work of the Holy Spirit to transform lives and to redeem the world.

I heard a story not long ago about something that happened in the church where Rev. Frank Shaefer was the pastor. You may remember that Frank Shaefer was the UM pastor in Pennsylvania that was defrocked for conducting the marriage of his son to another man. But before that trial ever took place there was another situation in his church that was equally compelling.

In to this relatively traditional United Methodist church came a couple of women who lived together as a married couple. They were older women, they didn’t hide the nature of their relationship and they were not well received by some of the more conventional members of the church. I don’t know exactly how that manifested itself, but there was one woman in particular who didn’t approve of their relationship, and she didn’t hide her feelings. This traditionalist woman was a person of strong convictions, and she was genuinely troubled by their non-traditional relationship.

Well, one of the women in the same-sex couple had a stroke, and it affected her ability to walk. She was in rehab. for a period of time, and when she got out she was only able to walk by speaking the word, step, each time she wanted to take a step. The first Sunday that this woman returned to church was a communion Sunday, and she was determined to walk down to the communion rail to receive the elements. She had been sitting at the back of the sanctuary, and as she made her way to the front she spoke the word, step, with each step she took.

The traditionalist woman was also in church that day, and as she sat and listened to the woman make her way toward the altar, her heart melted, she started crying, and she was moved to get up and help the woman get to the bread and wine.

It’s as if that word, step, repeated over and over turned in to a type of mantra that opened this woman up to the work of the Holy Spirit. And I think that’s always what the Holy Spirit does. It enables us to take those small steps that move us in entirely new directions.

Today is the day we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit in to our midst. It’s a wonderful gift that God has provided for us. I love the fact that we have this divine voice that seeks to provide us with a whole new perspective on what’s really going on in the world. It’s the source of a redeeming narrative regardless of what seems to be happening on the ground.

The Holy Spirit is not the loudest voice in the room. And too often we stay so tuned in to those more conventional voices that define the world in such familiar ways that we don’t even know that there is this other way. In fact I think it’s a rare moment when we let go of the usual narratives that define who we are and how we see others and allow God to reveal the truth about ourselves and our neighbors.

It’s easy to get stuck. It’s hard to take those unfamiliar steps in new directions, but we aren’t on our own. The Holy Spirit isn’t a bully. It doesn’t force it’s way in to our lives, but it’s a relentless advocate.

It may use the sound of a simple word, step, step, step, … to creep in to our hearts and turn the world upside down, but you can trust that the Holy Spirit is out to exploit every little crack we have in our concrete viewpoints.

When Paul describes the body of Christ as being made up of people who have these different gifts and abilities he is describing what the church would look like if we were able to turn off those shallow narratives that define who we are, and to hear who God is calling us to be. I think we all have an abundance of gifts that remain hidden until we are able to let go of those voices of oppression that limit our understanding of ourselves and our universe, and we are able to hear that still small voice that reveals the truth about who we are and how life can be.

Thank God we aren’t limited to the narratives of the right or the left, the traditionalists or the liberationalists. The good news is that there is a larger narrative than any of us can imagine, and we are invited to be a part of that story. We have this offer to abide in this world as unique members of the body of Christ – informed and empowered by the Holy Spirit to become truly alive.

I believe it was the power of the Holy Spirit that enabled Copernicus to figure out that the sun didn’t revolve around the earth. It took the Holy Spirit another 300 years to convict church of this truth. The church can be a little slow to get it sometimes, but the church can’t contain the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to redefine the narratives of our lives, and to move us toward true life. The church is a little slow, but it has a role as well, and we shouldn’t underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit to transform it as well.

It’s a beautiful thing we are celebrating today. We are not just defined by familiar narratives. We are caught up in a much larger story than we even know. A beautiful story of the way God is seeking to redeem our world, our church, and our very lives. Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Writing my thoughts each evening during my bicycle trip was such a nice experience. I had some good lessons on the road. I hope I learned something that I can carry over in to my standard routine. If nothing else, that trip helped me generate at least one sermon. Here it is:

Our Glorious Destination
John 17:1-11

1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. 6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

I’m really grateful to have been given the opportunity to spend two weeks on a bicycle ride. Although I guess it wasn’t as much of something I was given as it was something I just did. Sharla says I didn’t ask her if I could do it. And I don’t guess I asked for any kind of permission from the church to abandon my post for two weeks. I just sort of announced that I had this half-baked plan to ride my bicycle to the Atlantic Ocean and nobody stopped me. My Uncle Jack tried to veto the plan, but I only gave him voice – not vote on this deal. And honestly, I’m very lucky to have his voice in my life. Whether I follow his advice or not I cherish being in communication with him.

I’ll try not to beat this thing in to the ground, but this bicycle ride really was a profound experience for me. It was a trip that required a lot of physical effort and focus, but in some ways it was an easy undertaking. I spent very little time during my trip trying to figure out what I needed to be doing – I just did what I knew I needed to do. And having such a single-minded agenda was quite a luxury. I generally spend a lot of time and energy either trying to figure out what I need to be doing or second-guessing what I chose to do, and it was wonderful to have this simple agenda. Get-up, get-going, watch for cars, rest, eat, tweet, drink, repeat.

I moved at a relatively slow pace for two weeks and I had some very elemental experiences. I got wet. I got cold. I got hot. I got thirsty. I got hungry. I got tired. I got desperate. I received help. I cherished good water. I enjoyed eating. I was warmed by the sun. I was relieved by shade. I pushed myself. I was propelled by the prayers and encouragement of other people. I reconnected with some friends and family members. I prayed. I sang(nobody was there to listen, so I sang really loudly). I thought. I enjoyed listening to music. I met nice people. I noticed birds and animals – both dead and alive. I came to feel like an animal – a very privileged animal.

I haven’t used this word to describe my journey, but today’s scripture has brought the word, glory, to my attention, and I think I could use that word to describe my trip. It was a glorious experience. It was a relatively short trip in the grand scheme of things, but it was a very full-filling period of time. It’s not a trip I would recommend, but I’m so glad I took it. I don’t know how it will impact my work or my life, but I feel very blessed by it. It left me feeling grateful to be alive and on this planet, and it left me wanting to more fully understand what it means to go on this journey with Jesus to find the most glorious destination of all – this thing Jesus referred to as eternal life.

I think we often think of eternal life as an experience we will have at the end of this life, but that’s not the way in which Jesus speaks of eternal life in this passage. Jesus prayed that we might find eternal life in this life. Jesus prayed that we might experience eternal life prior to death. I’m not saying that eternal life doesn’t extend beyond our life as we know it on this planet, but eternal life is available to us during this life.

Jesus said we are in touch with eternal life whenever we come to know him and the One who sent him.

Connecting with Jesus is the way we come to experience eternal life, but coming to know Jesus is not so simple. This quest for eternal life is a mysterious undertaking. There are a lot of questions that come to mind when I think about the way we come to know Jesus and the One who sent him. What does this mean? How do we do that? Where does that journey begin? And do we ever really get there?

One of the nice things about my bicycle journey was that I had a really clear destination. There’s nothing particularly significant about riding a bicycle to the Atlantic Ocean – other than the fact that it’s a very well-defined boundary. It was a contrived destination, but it was a clear goal. If you are riding east it’s the end of the road. And as I mentioned earlier – it was nice to have such a clear agenda. It allowed me to be very single-minded in my pursuit. And there is a lot of freedom to be found in that level of single-mindedness. You don’t have to wonder what you need to do next.

And I’m trying to figure out how that translates in to this most glorious of all pursuits – the search for eternal life.

The search for eternal life is not a journey that any of us are just now beginning. I think we begin that journey before we even know that it’s something we want. I believe we are given an appetite for this more abundant form of life before we can even speak the words, and I believe we are nourished early on by the fruits of God’s mysterious presence in ways we don’t even recognize. In fact I believe the arrival of eternal life in to our lives is always a gift that comes to us. It isn’t something we control in any way, but I believe it is possible to become more receptive to this elevated form of living. I also believe we can become desensitized to those opportunities God provides for us to experience this eternal form of life.

Jesus spoke of having given to us the words that God spoke to him. It’s as if Jesus gave us words that provide us with the clues we need to help us become more sensitive to who God is and what God desires. And when I think of key words that Jesus spoke I think the most important word we have been given is this word, love.

If we want to know and experience God we’ve got to practice this thing we call love. And I’m telling you – it is not something we can do without practice. Because the kind of love Jesus talked about wasn’t the easy kind. Jesus didn’t just want us to love people who are like us – he told us to love people who don’t like us. He didn’t just want us to love people who are easy to love. Anybody can love loveable people – that doesn’t take much practice. But the kind of love Jesus wanted us to embrace has no boundaries. He didn’t just want us to love beautiful, kind, and nice people. When Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves he was talking about everyone – including mean and nasty people.

Jesus wants us to love with a form of single-mindedness that we rarely have about anything. He prayed for us to be able to do that because he wants us to experience eternal life. And he knew that if we would learn to keep love as our primary agenda we would find a form of freedom and togetherness that we rarely experience here on earth, and it would enable us to become more receptive to this gift of eternal life.

We don’t exercise this kind of love with single-minded attention, and that’s why another one of his key words comes to mind – forgiveness. If we want to know who Jesus was and to better understand the One who sent him we need to make room for forgiveness in our hearts. I don’t think we can love Jesus if we don’t love the concept of forgiveness. It’s not that Jesus did anything wrong, but he certainly loved people who did wrong things. Jesus didn’t see anyone as being outside of the circle of redemption, and we shouldn’t either. This is not to say that we should simply be accommodating to any kind of behavior. It’s not unloving to resist bad behavior, but such resistance must always be accompanied by forgiveness.

The other key word that comes to mind when I think of what Jesus taught is compassion. If Jesus was anything he was compassionate. I don’t think you can understand why Jesus did the things he did if you don’t understand compassion. Jesus was moved by compassion. He responded to people with compassion. He exercised compassion. If we want to know Jesus and the One who sent him we have to be people of compassion as well.

I had a really great adventure on my bicycle ride to the Atlantic. I had a number of gratifying experiences along the way, and I’m hoping to learn something from the enterprise. I mean I could give you a pretty good list of practical things I learned. At the top of that list would be to study a topography map before you chart your course and determine your destinations. But I don’t just want to know how to plan a bicycle trip more effectively. There was something refreshing about life on the road that I like to think I can incorporate in to life in Little Rock.

I believe a part of what made my trip interesting was knowing that if I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing I wasn’t going to make it. I had to watch the road. I had to watch traffic. I had to pay attention to where I was going. I had to pace myself properly. I had to secure food and water and shelter. I had a type of hyper-vigilance that I don’t normally exercise over how I spent my time and energy.

But what I’m thinking is that Jesus prayed that we would embark on the most glorious adventures of all – the pursuit of eternal life. It is a far more challenging enterprise than riding a bicycle over the hills of northern Alabama and it will take longer than 12 days. It requires us to pay close attention to where we go, what we do, and how we treat people. We have to push ourselves every day if we want to put ourselves in the best position possible to experience eternal life. It is no small thing for any of us to practice love, forgiveness, and compassion. Failure is always a possibility.

But there is no better offer. And we can have no better advocate than the one who prayed for us to be successful in this adventure of faith. We have a great challenge before us. We aren’t ready for it – we have no idea what it will require, but who can resist this invitation to experience eternal life?

A glorious destination awaits – let’s go!

Amen

The Unveiled Treasure
Luke 24:13-35

24:13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19 He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

It may be more taxing than a 7 mile hike, but bear with me as I take you on a journey back to the mid-seventies when I was a teenager with some really odd interests. I won’t mortify you with all of the directions my mind and body were inclined to go, but I had this odd fixation on learning how to live off the land. I wasn’t exactly what you would call a survivalist – I didn’t want to build up an arsenal, but I wanted to develop the skills of a back-to-the-lander.

Back in the 70’s there was this series of books entitled Foxfire, and those books described how to build log cabins, butcher hogs, smoke meat, make soap, and every other thing that people used to do before you could go get it all at the local trading post. It was an odd fascination that I harbored for a few years. I wasn’t totally committed to the cause – I enjoyed living in a house with a television, but I didn’t let the reality of life get in the way of what I intended to do when I became an adult. I imagined the lifestyle of a self-sufficient-hunter-gatherer-shepherd-farmer to be far more compelling than that of someone in sales or preaching.

So I collected all of the Foxfire Books, and I read Mother Earth News at the Cross County Library, but the most significant publication I came across was a book that was made famous by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. It was called Stalking the Wild Asparagus, and it was written by a man named Euell Gibbons. I don’t know how many jokes Johnny Carson was able to extract from what Euell Gibbons said you could eat. He went on about him the way David Letterman goes on about Gov. Chris Christie.

But I loved what Euell Gibbons had to say. His book described all of the wild foods you could find in various habitats and how to prepare them – along with a few anecdotes of when he discovered various wild delicacies. I didn’t find much of what he had to say to be easily accessible, but I actually did stalk some wild asparagus. Other than where it grows, there is no difference between wild asparagus and domesticated asparagus, and one interesting thing he said about wild asparagus is that you can often find it growing along railroad track levees.

There was a railroad track that ran behind my grandparent’s house, and I discovered that there was in fact some asparagus growing in places along that levee. I would have to walk about a quarter of a mile to find a dozen sprouts, but they were there, and finding an asparagus plant was like finding a hidden treasure.

They weren’t easy to find, but I never would have seen these plants if I hadn’t been alerted to watch for them. That was about the most success I ever had as a back-to-the-lander, but it was a good lesson for me to pay attention to what may be at hand.

I actually used those same plant stalking skills when Sharla was taking a class that required her to collect and identify 60 wildflowers over the course of a semester. That was no small task, but it provided a great mission for me. Sharla was my girlfriend at the time instead of my wife, and I’ll never forget how heroic I felt when I came across new wildflower specimens for her to identify. I spent weeks with my head down, but my spirits were high because I had a great task. I was in constant search for new blooms growing in ditches, forests, and fields. It’s actually quite amazing how many different wildflowers you can find when you are keeping an eye out for them.

And it’s equally amazing what we miss when we aren’t paying attention. Actually what those exercises in asparagus stalking and flower hunting identified for me is the way in which we can be oblivious to what is at hand or we can become sensitized to our surroundings. I’m guessing that we all are paying attention to something throughout each day, and it’s a good idea for us to be conscious of that to which we are giving our attention. I think we can give a lot of attention to things that don’t provide much satisfaction and we can miss the presence of the One who gives us true life.

I’m thinking of the way in which these disciples were unable to see who Jesus was as they walked along with him for seven miles. I think I walk at an average pace, and I go about 3 miles/hour. We aren’t told when Jesus joined these two disciples, but it seems they were with him for a good two hours before they realized who they were talking to. This story does highlight the way in which Christ comes to us when we recall the story of his life and death and we share bread and wine together, but I’m also conscious of the opportunity that was squandered prior to the breaking of the bread.

Jesus didn’t depart without revealing himself to these two travelers, but they weren’t exactly quick to pick up on who he was. I don’t want to be overly critical of who they were, but this story makes me want to be a bit more attentive to what’s going on. It may well be that they were somehow prevented from seeing who he was, but they don’t really come across as being quick to pick up on what was going on. He could have just shook his head and gone on when they arrived in Emmaus, and it seems that he started to do that, but they urged him to stay with them, and he did. This is the good news – Jesus doesn’t abandon us even when we don’t quite get it, but I think we are supposed to learn something from these disciples. And the message I’m hearing is that we need to pay attention to our fellow travelers.

I haven’t spent any time in the communities that were recently hit by the tornado. I feel so bad for the people who have lost their homes and their loved ones. I know there is a world of pain going on over there, but I also believe that people are having some vivid encounters with the living Christ. What I trust is that Christ does come to people in dark hours. Just as we see in this story of how Christ came to these two men who were in deep despair over the events that had transpired in Jerusalem, I believe Christ comes to us when our worlds get shredded and our hopes are dashed.

I’m guessing there are a lot of people who are finding more than cherished photographs and belongings in those piles of rubble – I dare say people are discovering the presence of Christ in the midst of that chaos. And if we are wise we will find ways to connect with them as well.

It’s not easy to want to be near to people who are standing in the rubble of life – whether it’s rubble caused by a tornado or those less dramatic but equally insidious forces of destruction that we encounter in life, but I think it’s in those places that we encounter the presence of the most redeeming love.

You don’t find wild asparagus growing along the sidewalk. It grows along the wooliest and most untended stretches of land that you will find running across the country. You can find a handful of wildflowers growing in the yard – at least in a yard like mine that isn’t very well controlled, but you’ve got to go out of your way to find a few dozen.

Jesus is never that far away from us, but I think we can oblivious to his presence if we aren’t paying attention to the places and the people Jesus was always known to be near. He became known to those travelers when he blessed and broke the bread, but he had been with them for hours.

We break and share this bread today trusting that he has risen and is with us. We have been alerted to his presence and our challenge is to step out of here today in search of his holy presence. Our mission is to go out as those who trust that we aren’t alone in this world and to share this good news with others – not just with our words but with all of our attention.

Jesus may very well be sitting in here right now – in fact I think we should assume he is in here right now because if we make that assumption we will be more likely to see his life-giving presence. His is a mysterious presence, but we have good clues as to where we might experience him. He is with us when we share and when we care for one another. This is what is required of us if we wish to see the holy treasure that’s in our midst.

Thanks be to God for the opportunity we have to search and to find.
Amen.

The Biggest Bang Theory
John 20:1-18

20:1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

I’m so glad you’re here today for our Easter celebration! Because what we are talking about and celebrating today is not just a theological concept – it’s a working theory. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is like believing in gravity. You don’t really know how it works, but you know to work with it. Trusting in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead can have as much impact on your daily life as regular hand washing. It will keep you alive and well – regardless of how sick you may become. If you can learn to trust that Jesus was brought back from the dead you are equipped to deal with anything that may come your way on any day. What we are celebrating today is the good news that we are living in a world that is cherished by God. It’s not a world that is unharmed by some evil forces that I don’t quite understand, but God is larger than those powers of darkness, and God has given us a sign of that truth.

Now I realize that the truth we are talking about today doesn’t come with any kind of evidence that would hold up in a court of law. Nobody thought to save any DNA samples from Jesus of Nazareth before he was crucified that we can match up with the man who Mary Magdalene initially mistook for the gardener. I’m sure somebody is working on the Jesus DNA project, but I don’t think they’re going to find anything. There may be some Jesus DNA out there – he freely shared all kinds of tears, saliva, and blood during his earthly ministry. He didn’t keep his DNA to himself, but if you are looking for that kind of proof of his resurrection you’re going to be waiting a long time.

All we really have are these stories of what Mary Magdalene and others encountered when they went to the tomb of Jesus on the first day of the week after his crucifixion – along with what we have experienced in our hearts and accepted in our heads. We don’t have proof of what transpired, but we do have a powerful working theory. And often a theory is good enough.

I want to talk about The Big Bang Theory for a moment – the scientific theory not the television show. I’ve never actually watched the show by that name – I know some people who love that show, and I’m sure there’s probably a sermon illustration to be found there, but I can’t speak to the wisdom of that show. I have, however, seen a few episodes of the new Cosmos series, so I feel equipped to speak with great authority on the origin of the universe. That show has provided me with a profound understanding of the Big Bang Theory.

And here’s the way I understand it. Before there was this universe as we know it that’s occupied with billions of galaxies – I didn’t really know what a galaxy was prior to watching that show, but I now know that a galaxy is a distinct gathering of billions of stars and other stuff that swirls around a nucleus and that there are billions of galaxies with who knows what else swirling around – and before there was all of this there was just this one mass of energy and stuff, and then it exploded. It exploded and it created all kinds of matter and light and gas. And the truth is that we are still moving away from the point of that initial explosion, but it’s been long enough for some stability to take hold. This is the essence of the Big Bang Theory.

Now in order to portray the amount of time that has transpired since that initial explosion of matter, the creators of the Cosmos series proposed imagining that the history of the universe has been packed in to one year. If you think of the big bang happening on the first second of January 1 and now as the stroke of midnight on December 31then each month represents a little over a billion years. Within this time frame our planet didn’t fall in to orbit around the sun until about mid-September of the year. And the first humans, as we know ourselves to be have only been around for about 2.5 million years ago, so we didn’t show up until about an hour and a half ago. And in this cosmic scale of time, Jesus would have been born about 4 seconds ago.

It’s a large picture to get your mind around. Speaking of this big picture in an Easter sermon would not have played out well for a preacher in Italy in the 1600s, and you may very well be wondering why I would speak of such things today, but my thinking is that what we are doing in worship today is to try to get a grip on the big picture of reality.

And I don’t find this big bang theory to be contradictory to my belief in God as the creator of the universe. I don’t consider the Bible to be a scientific manual. The Bible doesn’t answer the question of how the universe was created, it addresses the question of why it was created, and I understand it to say that the world was created in order to reveal the glorious loving nature of our God. It’s entirely believable to me that our God would have set the universe in motion with a big bang – that sounds to me like a good way to get it all going. It may well be that this is the second time God packed everything together before setting it off. It may have been the billionth time. These are questions that will be hard for us to answer.

But the mechanics of the universe don’t provide us with the answer to the most important question that we need answered. The most important question for us is why God does what God does, and I believe Jesus provided that answer for us. Jesus was the embodiment of God, Jesus was the embodiment of love, Jesus revealed the way in which God intends for this world to be, and Jesus was hated for doing this by those who wanted their own kingdoms to prevail. Jesus was killed by people who didn’t want the truth of God’s design for the world to be known. And that was a dark day for the world.

You would think that the God who is able to pack together all of the matter and energy of the universe into a single point before blasting it out in to every direction and dimension – you would think that this God would have been able to keep the savior of the world from being crucified in such a graphically horrible way. You would think that God would have spared the most righteous man who ever lived from suffering a painful and humiliating death. You would think God could have done this differently. Yes, this is what we would think, but God doesn’t want us to think like that. God knows how we are inclined to think and God wants us to think differently. God doesn’t want us to think the way to solve our problems is to overcome our enemies with overwhelming force, so God didn’t do what we would do, and God wants us to take note of what did happen.

God allowed Jesus to die, but God didn’t allow his death to be the end of the story. What we have is this story of resurrection. The story is that his followers didn’t find Jesus to be in the grave – they found him to be in their midst. And by doing this God didn’t just act in a way that would keep Jesus alive – God acted in a way that would provide us all with the courage and the grace to deal with death and everything else. God provided us with some information that can enable us to deal with whatever happens to come our way.

The big bang theory tells the story of how the world was set in motion, but an even bigger bang happened for us when Jesus came back to us from death. Because what this story reveals is the way God feels about our world. God doesn’t want this world to be ruled by the self-serving and heartless powers that so often take charge of our planet. But God’s kingdom won’t be established on earth through an act of conventional warfare. God’s kingdom is built on the power of self-giving and self-sacrificing love, and that’s what this resurrection story is all about.

To believe in the resurrection of Jesus is not just an act of suspending logic in order to belong to some kind of a religious club. Certainly there is an aspect of supernatural disruption to this story of Jesus being raised from the dead, and those who are able to believe this enjoy the fellowship of a beautiful community, but the really hard thing to accept about this story is what it calls upon us to do. It’s not just a story that challenges our intellectual capacities – it’s a story that challenges our interpersonal relationships. It’s a story that calls upon us to allow our lives to be ruled by love. It’s a story that dares us to believe that God really does rule the universe and to live as if we trust that the power of love will one day prevail.

That’s not an easy thing to believe, but if we will believe it we will find our way to abundant life. It doesn’t mean we won’t encounter suffering and death. It doesn’t mean that we will overcome the evil powers that seem to thrive so well on this planet, but it does mean that we have become citizens of a more cosmic community. To believe in the resurrection of Jesus is to believe that there is a world that is not ruled by the physical and biological and political boundaries of this planet but by nothing less than the mind of God. Our feet are on this planet, but our souls are invited to abide with God.

The Big Bang Theory is really interesting, and it’s very revealing of where we have come from, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ – what I am now calling the Biggest Bang Theory – compels us to think about where we are going. If Jesus was only born 4 seconds ago on the cosmic calendar then we are facing a brand new situation here on earth, and it’s exciting to think of what may happen over the course of the next few seconds. God has provided us with some powerful new information – and it matters what we do with it.

The good news is that we aren’t alone in this new endeavor. Jesus is alive and well, and we can be guided by his presence. In fact we can become his presence. This is our challenge – this is our opportunity! This is some information we are invited to incorporate in to our lives on a daily basis. Doing this will have a powerful impact on the people you encounter here on earth, and it will enable you to abide in the most lasting community that the universe will ever know – the kingdom of God – the one that will continue to abide even beyond the next big bang.

And thanks be to God for this. Amen

What Now?
Matthew 21:1-11

1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5 “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

I want to address our new confirmands this morning. The rest of you are welcome to listen. In fact I encourage all of you to think of yourselves as a fresh new confirmands, and I want you to think about the crazy thing you have just signed up to do. And I hate to say it, but there’s really no turning back on this thing. You certainly can quit showing up for worship at some point in your life. There comes a time in life when nobody can make you get up on Sunday morning and clean yourself up enough to be seen by respectable people. You can quit trying to learn more about Jesus, and you can act like you’ve never met him, but I’m sorry to say that you really won’t be able to get Jesus out of your life.

You’ve already had too much exposure to him to forget you ever met. This is just one more thing you can blame your parents for doing to you – they introduced you to someone that’s going to hound you for the rest of your life. But it’s not all their fault, sometimes Jesus gets attached to people for no apparent reason.

A woman named Anne Lamott wrote a book entitled Travelling Mercies, and in that book she relates her rocky journey in to the Christian faith. Her mother took her to church on rare occasions, but her father thought Christianity was a joke. She was a very educated person, and she was working as a writer. She is very creative, and funny, and she was always a spiritually curious person, but she was sort of a mess of person. She had a serious substance abuse problem, she had family problems, she had job problems, she had relationship problems, and she had a serious medical problem. Occasionally she would seek solace in a small church near the houseboat she lived in in the San Francisco Bay. She was lured inside the church by this powerful gospel choir. She would show up on Sundays to listen to the music, but she always slipped out before the sermon.

She thought that was a safe amount of exposure to the church, but it wasn’t. I don’t really know what to think of this, but she came to feel that Jesus was following her around. She said he seemed to be like a cat. He wasn’t an imposing figure, but he was never far away. As I say, she had a medical problem that she was treating with pain pills and alcohol, and that may have contributed to her feeling that Jesus was following her around like a cat, but as she was laying in her bed one day in a terrible state of mind and body she said Jesus just remained crouched down in the corner of her bedroom. She sensed that he wasn’t going to leave her alone, so she finally gave up and decided to start following him.

The way she describes her journey into Christianity and in to a life of sobriety is much funnier and saltier than I can describe from the pulpit, but I think it’s a powerful testimony to the relentlessness of Jesus.

You just can’t shake him. Jesus can get inside your head and your heart and you just can’t live a normal life anymore. Before you know it you can’t just think about what you want to eat and drink and live and do. You hear Jesus putting all these other ideas in your head. You find yourself wondering if your neighbor has enough to eat and who’s checking on that person you don’t really know but who seems so sad. You can lose focus on your career, and get involved things that won’t earn you a penny. And if you really let Jesus in he’ll take all of your money. Most of us are able to draw the line before he gets that far, but you’ve got to keep watch – he’s powerful – he will take over if let him.

But it’s not so bad. Jesus creates some complications for us, but it’s only because he doesn’t want us to live dull flat lives. I’m sure he would be happy for us to latch on to easy and comfortable lives if we weren’t inhabiting a planet that is being held hostage by powers and principalities that have no regard for human rights or ecological sustainability. But this is the situation we are facing. This world is a mess, and Jesus needs some people like us to get in the way of the dehumanizing systems that are out there.

That’s what Jesus did when he was alive and walking around in ancient Israel. He was engaged in an epic battle with some of the evil powers of his day when he entered Jerusalem for the last time. And the way he decided to attack those powers was to engage in some powerful street theater. It would be his final trip to Jerusalem before the religious and political executives got together and crucified him, and he wanted it to be a memorable occasion.

Jesus didn’t want to slip in to Jerusalem unnoticed – which would have been the safest thing to do. Jesus didn’t just want to be safe – he wanted to create a spectacle – a spectacle for the ages. So he ramped up the enthusiasm of these different groups that had come to Jerusalem for the biggest festival of the year. He tapped in to the enthusiasm of the zealots who were excited about the possibility of armed revolution against the Romans. He encouraged the disciples who were excited about the possibility of God restoring Israel and providing them with high level appointments in the new nation of Israel. Jesus knew the Pharisees and high priests would get excited about his big procession because it would provide them with the opportunity to report him to the police. And of course there were all these other people around who were just looking for a party and he provided them with a great opportunity to drink and dance for a cause.

Jesus perfectly orchestrated some high street drama on the day he entered Jerusalem. Jesus tapped in to the high expectations of many different interest groups and individuals – of course none of them got what they wanted. This march didn’t turn in to the revolution the zealots expected. God didn’t step in and establish the new administration the disciples were counting on, and the spring break revelers were disappointed in how quickly this party came to an end. It did turn in to the crucifixion the religious authorities were counting on, but that didn’t play out the way they had hoped. Just when they thought they had put Jesus to rest he reemerged in a new and even more powerful way.

As I say, you just can’t shake him. Jesus didn’t do what anyone expected him to do, and he never will. And this is who you confirmands have said you wish to follow – which is such a good thing. Because even though you can’t predict where he will take you – the place he wishes to lead us all is nothing less than the kingdom of God. He doesn’t want us to just abide on the surface of the earth – Jesus wants us to soar with spirit.

You might not remember anything else I’ve said today, but I’m going to show you something that you probably won’t forget. Because in honor of your confirmation I bought myself a new toy!

(At this point I pulled out my new ultra-light remote controlled airplane and I proceeded to do a little flying in the sanctuary and I concluded my sermon with the following line:)

Because the truth of the matter is that none of us have any idea where this business of discipleship is going to take us!

Amen.

Fleshing Out the Dry Bones
Ezekiel 37:1-14

1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. 5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.” 7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.

I don’t want to create any unease this morning, but I don’t really know how to preach from the Old Testament. It’s not anything I ever do. It may be something I’ve done at some previous moment in my preaching career, but I don’t remember doing it. Chances are, nobody’s going to get hurt as a result of this situation, but I don’t really know how to do what I’m doing this morning.

It may not seem like a big thing. And you would think a seminary trained pastor would be certified for preaching from both testaments, but I’m not. It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the older Hebrew texts that are in our Bible. I actually like the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings that make up what we generally call the Old Testament, but I’ve never made a practice of preaching from these older texts. You wouldn’t think it would make that much difference, but I feel like Jesus internalized these more ancient scriptures and then went on to embody them for us.

So while I know there’s value in looking at the same texts that Jesus read and studied. You might say I prefer to learn from him as opposed to doing my own research. It’s not that Jesus gave lectures on specific texts, but I do feel that when we look at Jesus we are looking at a person who was able to put flesh on the essential bones of the Hebrew scripture. And of course I’m tainted by what I believe about Jesus when I look at this passage from Ezekiel, but I’m also trying to understand what Ezekiel was saying to the people of Israel when he shared his remarkable vision.

So I’ve done a little homework. I know that Ezekiel was living in or around Jerusalem about 600 BC when King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon took over the Southern Kingdom of Israel, which was known as Judah, and exiled many of the leaders of Judah to Babylon. That was a terrible thing, because the people of Israel believed God lived at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Babylonians knew this, so carting the Israelites off to Babylon was a great way to make them suffer. But things continued to deteriorate between the Israelites and the Babylonians, so the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 587 BC.

Ezekiel was one of the Prophets who saw all of this destruction coming. And even before the exile occurred he had tried to warn his people that they needed to repent of their unfaithfulness to God in order to avoid the pending disaster, but they didn’t heed his words, and they found themselves in this horrible situation of living in Babylon and knowing that their revered temple had been destroyed.

This is the background for today’s reading. And I sort of get the context of the situation, but honestly, I don’t even have the illusion that I understand what they were feeling. I did live in Mammoth Spring, AR for a couple of years, so I do have a sense of what it feels like to live in a foreign land, but I knew that God was still accessible up there. And its just not easy for me to enter in to the mind of these people who felt so utterly cut off from God.

Until I hear myself say that.

Because I am a disciple of Jesus, who was very clear about God not abiding in one particular place, I’ve never believed that we should connect God with any piece of real estate, but I don’t think it’s unusual for any of us to find ourselves living in a situation where we feel cut-off from God.

I know there are degrees of alienation from God, and I don’t want to engage in any kind of comparison in regard to the various ways people feel removed from God. Certainly there is always someone who has experienced an even greater degree of alienation from God than what someone else has experienced. But it’s accurate to say that the Israelites who were living in Babylon in the early part of the 6th Century BC, were experiencing a dark night of the soul. They couldn’t help but believe that God had abandoned them – and for good reason. They were conscious of their unfaithfulness, and they couldn’t see how their relationship with God was going to be restored.

But Ezekiel could. Ezekiel had always been able to see unusual things. In fact people are still trying to figure out what he was talking about with some of the things he described seeing. I think it’s safe to say that he’s the favorite prophet for many UFO enthusiasts because of his visions of the multi-wheeled vehicles in the sky, but he’s probably best known for this vision he had of the valley of dry bones that were mysteriously and profoundly brought to life by the word of God.

The surviving people of Israel couldn’t see how they were going to make it. They were cut off from the land and the traditions that they considered to be their link with God – until Ezekiel shared with them the vision that God had placed within his heart.

And when we read of what Ezekiel saw we don’t have to wonder what it’s about – because we know what those exiled Israelites came to understand – which is that true life is a mysterious gift that isn’t controlled by the powers of this world. King Nebuchadnezzar had been able to wreak havoc for the people of Israel. Their loved ones had been killed, their families had been torn apart, their glorious temple had been turned to rubble, but the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel. God provided Ezekiel with a vision of life being restored to those who’s lives had been turned in to dusty bones.

In many ways, the world we are living in is so far removed from the world the people of Judah occupied it’s hard to believe that there is anything in this story that is vital for us to hear. We aren’t people who share a common history. Unlike the people of Israel, who had such a sense of common ancestry and national experience – we come from so many different directions. Some of us come from families who came to this land looking for opportunity – and found it. Some of us come from people who were unwillingly brought to this land in order to enhance the financial opportunities of others. Some of us may have ancestors who were living on this land before the arrival of the immigrants who reduced their villages to bones and built homes and churches and roads upon them.

We aren’t people who share a common sense of crisis, but I don’t think any of us are unfamiliar with the experience of crisis. And I may be wrong about this, but I’m guessing most of us have been drawn in to the church because of some kind of crisis. I’m not saying we are all spiritual mercenaries who showed up in church when we got a foreclosure notice in the mail or some other form of bad news. I don’t believe any of us are here today in hope of persuading God to bring us some good luck in the marketplace. Nor am I saying it’s a bad thing to come to church for any reason. In fact coming to church may in some odd way open some career doors for you or enable you to somehow keep a roof over your head.

But I believe most of us are drawn to church because we have had the experience of recognizing that having flesh on our bones and breath in our lungs isn’t enough. We are people who know that our lives can be reduced to dusty rubble while our bodies are still fit and we are living in the homes of our choice.

I’m guessing most of us have seen something like this valley of dry bones. It’s the first thing some of you may see as soon as you wake up in the morning and it may be the last thing you see as you go to bed at night. Some of us don’t see the dusty rubble of life until we wake up in the middle of night and wonder how in the world we will ever find a way to navigate the deathly obstacles that loom so clearly before us. Valleys of dry bones describe the landscape that many of us know too much about, and we long to believe that this isn’t the final scene.

I know I can find myself in that dry dusty place. It’s a place I found myself living for a period of time as a young adult. For too long I had trouble seeing anything that provided me with hope. Luckily I found a place where they talked a lot about Jesus. The talk of Jesus didn’t immediately resolve my deep sense of despair, but in a gradual way I came to trust that things were going to be ok. Jesus didn’t avoid death or any other form of suffering that we know can occur in this world, but that didn’t seem to be an overwhelming problem for him. Jesus could see that the valley of dry bones is only a small part of a much larger picture.

I still can’t see that whole picture. And as I say, sometimes all I can see is the path to that place that is filled with dry dusty bones, but I never stay there long before I’m struck by that holy breeze that comes from the mouth of God. I feel very fortunate in that sense. No, I don’t just feel fortunate – I feel saved by the grace of God.

I don’t have a perfect sense of trust in the grace of God. If I did I wouldn’t panic every time things don’t go as I expect God to arrange them, but I do sense that I’ve been touched by God’s life-restoring spirit. In fact I feel like I know exactly what Ezekiel was talking about so long ago when he described his remarkable vision in the valley of the dead dry bones. I have been nothing but a pile of dry dusty bones and I’ve had new life breathed in to me – on more than one occasion. I have experienced that divine sense of forgiveness and reconciliation.

I’m guessing some of you share my understanding of this miraculous experience and my gratitude for God’s saving grace. If you’ve never felt so far from life I’m happy for you and I’m grateful that you show up to join in on the celebration of this big beautiful picture of life that has been designed by God.

Some of you may currently continue to abide in that desolate valley. I know it’s a terrible place to be, but I trust that God won’t leave you there forever. Any amount of time in that valley is too long, but it’s good to remember that Ezekiels vision was for people who had been in Babylon for so long they couldn’t even imagine the possibility of restoration. But he brought it to them, and they were nourished by it.

Thanks be to God for the many miraculous ways we come to experience this life restoring message of Ezekiel and Jesus. Amen

The Problem With Seeing
John 9:1-41

1 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.” 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” 18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Today’s story is a variation of the light vs. darkness theme that was illustrated by the stories of the two previous weeks. We’ve gone from the story of Nicodemus, who went to Jesus under the cover of darkness, to the story of the Samaritan woman who spoke with Jesus in the light of high noon, to this story today that explores the concept of blindness. Darkness and light – blindness and sight – these are large issues for people who seek to find the path to true life.

It doesn’t matter if you think Jesus was actually able to heal physical blindness with spit and dirt or not, what we have here today is a true story. It’s a story that reveals so much about what it takes to see the truth. This story so clearly portrays the difference between a person who was enabled to see because had no illusion of his own righteousness and those who were blinded by their own self-righteousness. It was the man who knew himself to be blind and who wore the label of sinner who found his way to the kingdom of God, while those who were so confident of their own ability to judge the works of others and who were so sure of their own righteousness that were shown to be blind and unable to find their way to God.

We also see in this story some people who could see the truth, but were afraid to embrace it. The neighbors and the parents of the man born blind could see the problems that would arise if they gave Jesus credit for what had happened, so they weren’t guided by truth but by caution. They maintained their status in the synagogue, but their fear cost them the opportunity to be included in the community of Christ. It’s hard to deny the truth of this story – it reveals the true barriers we must overcome if we wish to abide in the kingdom of God.

What this story primarily reveals to me is how well Jesus was able to redefine what it means to abide in God’s favor. The events of this story were initiated by the disciple’s question to Jesus of who was responsible for the unfortunate condition of the man who was born blind. The disciples saw this man’s condition as the consequence of somebody’s sin, and they wanted to know if it was his own sin or the sin of his parents that caused him to be born blind and Jesus revealed that question to be a false dichotomy. That’s the $100 phrase I added to my vocabulary just last week. I learned in my Tuesday morning study group that a false dichotomy is what you have when you are presented with an either/or answer to a question that has at least three answers.

False dichotomies are often presented by religious fundamentalists. Such people would say you can either believe in the Bible or you believe in science. These are not mutually exclusive endeavors, but some people like to define them as such. But it’s not just religious fundamentalism that presents such untruths. Dominant culture always feeds people false dichotomies. From a very early age we are all filled with assumptions about what is right and normal and godly and these messages can be very blinding to us. This was the case with the disciples who had no doubt about the cause of the man who was born blind – but they were the ones who were blind to the truth.

The disciples probably thought they were going to impress Jesus with their seemingly sophisticated theological question about who’s sin had caused the unfortunate situation, but instead of revealing their high level of spiritual curiosity they exposed their lack of understanding of how God operates. And what Jesus revealed to them is that the world is not so rigidly managed. God doesn’t punish people’s sins with physical infirmities – instead of thinking of God in such a punitive manner, Jesus said the man was born blind in order for the glory of God to be revealed. The reality of the situation is that it’s often our physical limitations that often provide us with the greatest opportunities to see the glory of God.

This story is filled with great irony. I love the comedy of this story. It’s not laugh out loud funny, but I always think it’s sort of funny when bad pompous behavior is halted by the truth. This story is funny in the same way that it’s funny how the Arizona State legislature quit passing terrible anti-immigration laws a couple of years ago when the 60 largest corporations in that state sent a letter to that body saying stop it – it’s hurting our economy. I shouldn’t just pick on the Arizona State Legislature – our own state legislators provide plenty of material for comedy, but I was amused when I heard that particular story last week.

It’s not so funny when you are the one being told to stop, and I recognize that there is always this possibility that I will be the one who gets a letter or an email or a text or a phone call or a knock on my door that exposes my own boneheaded-truth-denying thinking, but I also know that if I truly love the truth, in time, even I will be able to laugh at whatever it is I may have been thinking.

I’m not sure that the Pharisees were ever able to see the comedy of this situation, but they are like clowns in this story. They were intent upon turning Jesus in to a heretic, and they only succeeded in revealing their own spiritual lostness.

I suppose Jesus had violated the Sabbath in a very technical sense, but only in a technical sense. Moses didn’t elaborate on the way in which the Sabbath was to be observed. It was to be a day of rest, but I think the spirit of the commandment to keep the Sabbath was to turn away from the distraction of a daily occupation in order to give attention to God. It seems to me that Jesus was operating very much within the parameters of keeping the Sabbath holy when he used his God-given power to release this man from his burden, but the Pharisees could only see that he had violated a rule.

What this so clearly reveals is that blindness is not just a problem for people who are unable to see. Blindness is a condition that can be a problem for any of us. Some people wrestle with the actual condition of not being able to see what’s in front of them, but we all have to deal with the world that we perceive it to be as opposed to the way that it really is.

Gratefully, most of us gathered here today don’t suffer from the extremely blind condition of the Pharisees. Pharisees are not attracted to Quapaw Quarter United Methodist church. People who want to maintain cherished religiously rigid conditions don’t come here – at least not twice. I’m sure there have been some Pharisees that have unknowingly stepped in here, but they don’t come back – at least not to join in on the way worship.

I’m not saying there isn’t any blindness to be found here, but religiously rigid blindness isn’t the particular form of blindness most of us harbor. I think most of us just suffer with that routine form of blindness that comes with being human. It’s a narrow path that leads to the kingdom of God, and it’s not easy for any of us to stay on it.

I was grateful for a visit from a friend last week. He had come in to the neighborhood looking for someone else, but luckily she wasn’t there, so he came by the church. My friend is a student of Buddhism, and when I shared with him my struggle to generate a sermon on blindness he told me of a glimpse of some truth he had recently experienced.

He told me that one of the Buddhist vows that he repeats regularly and struggles with perpetually goes something like this: The teachings are infinite – I vow to learn them all.

Of course vowing to learn an infinite number of anything is a staggering undertaking, and he said he had often imagined that vow to be something like pledging to memorize the Library of Congress – which is not particularly appealing or motivating. But then he heard that vow to be described as an admonition to pay attention to the lessons of each day. The infinite number of lessons is not like working through a stack of homework – it’s more like a daily challenge to navigate life gracefully.

I’m thinking this is a good lesson for those of us who are trying to follow Jesus. If we can imagine each day as being an opportunity to see what’s true as opposed to what we’ve been led to believe by actual misguided authorities or the ones we create for ourselves – then the challenge of discipleship becomes much more of an adventure than an overwhelming task. I don’t know, but I think my Buddhist friend helped me see what Jesus was talking about.

The truth of the matter is that we are all born blind (that’s a thought another wise person pointed out to me). Certainly none of us remember what we were looking at on day one. But we’ve been storing information in our brains every day since, and some of that information is true, but we’ve accumulated a lot of false information as well. False information about ourselves, about our neighbors, and about our God.

It’s not easy to find that narrow path that leads to the kingdom of God, and it’s particularly hard to find if you think you know where it is. There is an infinite number of lessons to learn about the nature of God, and we have to learn every one of them.

Thanks be to God for the sight-restoring lessons of yesterday, of today, and of tomorrow. With God’s help we will learn every one of them.
Amen.