Thompson's Blog

Passing the Peace
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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

One thing that I’ve done since I’ve been here is to eliminate the moment in our service when we officially greet one another. I know this is something some people miss – this was probably the moment some people felt was the best thing that we did in worship and those people probably aren’t here anymore. I didn’t eliminate that section of our service lightly. I actually sort of liked watching the chaos break out in the sanctuary for a moment, but I wasn’t convinced it was a great experience for everyone, and I try to be sensitive to the feelings of shy people.

In a perfect world this passing of the peace would be a moment in which we all just grab each other and remind each other that we are loved by God and everyone else in the room, and it would be a great experience for everyone, but that’s not our world. My sense was that it was not very pleasant for the introverts in the room. I really am sorry if you miss that moment in our worship service. I recognize that eliminating the official opportunity to extend grace to one another seems sort of anti-social on my part, but I hope that what this looks like is not what it is.

I honestly want to promote warmth within our community, and I want to do things that will enhance the connectivity between us. I actually like the visiting that goes on before our service begins and I want to encourage you to get in touch with one another during that time. It doesn’t put me off to have to yell at you to get quiet so we can get the worship service going. What I want is for our interaction with each other to be more than ritualistic. I want us to actually pass the peace of Christ to one another.

That’s what this passage of scripture is about this morning – the way in which the profound sense of peace that Jesus brought is actually shared. And it is something that was meant to be shared. What Jesus says in this passage is that he realized there were all these places he had intended to go in order to share the good news of God’s love for everyone, and he needed help to get this message out. We’re told that he recruited 70 people to go out in pairs to offer his peace.

This number, 70, is a special number. It’s one of those numbers that represents a concept not an exact number. It’s a number that harkens back to the 10th chapter of the book of Genesis. That chapter identifies the descendants of Noah’s sons, and there are 70 names listed, and according to that story that was representative of the entire population of the Earth. Later in the Book of Exodus there is the story of how Moses received the stone tablets and in that story God told Moses to assemble 70 elders to be on hand. God wanted everyone to know how to live together in peace, and this number 70 represents everyone.

Jesus wanted everyone to experience the peace that he came to bring, and that’s why we’re told that he called seventy people together to go out and share his peace. But I also think it’s significant that he didn’t send them out by themselves. He certainly could have covered more territory if he hadn’t sent them in pairs, but I think part of the message of Christ is the importance of living in community. An important aspect of the Kingdom of God that Jesus wanted us to experience is that sense of not being alone. The peace of Christ is something to be shared with others. So he sent them out in pairs.

He sent them out in pairs, but he didn’t send them out well equipped. He sent them out with some intentional vulnerability. They didn’t show up in foreign places with good contacts in mind. And they weren’t automatically welcome. They weren’t to manipulate their way in to the hearts and lives of the people they met on the road – they didn’t have anything to offer other than the peace of Christ, and they were received in a variety of ways. Some people immediately welcomed them and provided for them and this peace of Christ took root in the hearts of new people. Other people didn’t want to have anything to do with them, and while they weren’t to retaliate against anyone for their lack of hospitality, they were to publicly shake the dust from their feet in order to show that the people of that village had squandered the opportunity to experience life in the Kingdom of God.

There are no guaranteed outcomes in this business of seeking to spread the peace of Christ. The only thing that’s for sure is the value of trying. The disciples didn’t have universal success, but they did have some powerfully good experiences, and Jesus said he saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightening because of what they had done. The effort to spread the peace of Christ doesn’t require as much expertise on our part as much as it simply requires us to try. The language of faith is very mysterious. We don’t even know the good we do sometimes, and other times we sort of bungle the job but spread the peace anyway.

I was talking to my friend Lewis Chesser the other day. Lewis was the director of the Wesley Foundation in Fayetteville when I was a student there in the 70s. The Wesley Foundation is the United Methodist campus ministry. Lewis had a powerful impact on me, and one of the best things he did for me was to reveal how well God works with imperfect people. I like to describe Lewis as someone who provided opportunities for God’s grace to abound because he often created situations that were repaired by the grace of God.

After leaving the Wesley Foundation, Lewis spent some time at a church in Ft. Smith. He then went to Waldron for a few years and then he spent the last few years of his ministry in Charleston before retiring and moving to an old Victorian house in Ft. Smith that they’ve been in the process of restoring for several years. People love Lewis and his wife, Mazie, and one day this couple who were members of the church in Charleston dropped by their house in Fort Smith after a doctor’s visit.

Lewis had always had a hard time remembering the husband’s name. The man’s name was Don and Lewis always called him Bob. Lewis had once again called him Bob on this day, and he had been reminded that his friend’s name was Don. And after laughing about that Don went on to share the bad news he had just gotten from the doctor. He had been diagnosed with melanoma, and he was going to have to have 10 weeks of radiation treatments.

Don and his wife were really frightened by the diagnosis, and they talked about it for about an hour. Lewis knew they would want to have prayer, and as they spoke he realized that he had once again forgotten if the man’s name was Don or Bob. Lewis kept hoping the man’s wife would say his name, but she never did, and finally Lewis asked if they wanted to have prayer. They did and Lewis invited them all to get on their knees and they joined hands as he prayed. And Lewis went on to pray a very heartfelt prayer that things would go well for Bob.

As soon as he finished the prayer, Mazie said, “Lewis, his name is Don!” But before Lewis could utter an apology Don said, “That’s ok, God knows me as Bob” – which is an indication of how gracious Don really was and how the peace of Christ is often communicated. The good news is that this passing of the peace of Christ is powered by the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t really depend on how well equipped we are, but it does take some willingness on our part.

Spreading the peace of Christ isn’t effortless. I think it’s something we can practice in our lives and it’s something we can become more effective at doing. This is the wisdom of Methodism. To be a Methodist is to engage in the practice of faith, and the truth is that whenever you practice something you generally get better at it. Maybe it would be good for us to spend a minute trying to be nice to each other in worship, but I think it would be better if we spent a few more minutes each week trying to be nice to someone who isn’t in our worship service.

It takes effort to extend the grace of God, but it’s worth it. I hope I haven’t gotten in the way of practicing God’s hospitality by terminating our ritual of passing the peace of Christ, but what I know is that this is something you really have to practice on your own.

My friend Lewis could have done a better job of paying attention to his friend’s name, but the truth is that Lewis is a genuinely compassionate person, and somehow things like compassion get communicated when we try to share it.

I think this morning’s story of the 70 people going out to share the peace of Christ is the story of what good things happen when people are willing to step up and reach out. In fact one thing that occurs to me is that even on a poorly attended Sunday we have more than 70 people in the room. We’ve got more people here this morning than God told Moses to assemble on the day he went up to get the stone tablets. We’ve got more people here this morning than Jesus needed in order to cause Satan to fall from heaven like lightening.

It’s a beautiful thing that we’ve been called to do. Pass the peace of Christ to someone next week. They’ll be glad to get it, and it will warm your heart as well!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Encore!
Luke 7:11-17

7:11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Honestly, it would be easier for me to preach a sermon on this passage of scripture if I hadn’t had conversations with two different people last week in which they told me of their attraction to their own death. They weren’t suicidal when they spoke to me, and they both are doing the things they need to do to get their lives on track, but they weren’t being flippant when they told me how they longed for the relief of death.

I think there are people who read this story and wonder why Jesus would go and bring someone back in to this world after their suffering had come to an end. In fact there may be a reason we aren’t told what this man started saying when he sat up. Luke says he started speaking, but we are left to imagine what he might have been saying. I think I know what my friend would be saying if Jesus brought him back from the dead, and I can’t repeat it in church. I mean, just think this guy had just begun to enjoy floating with the angels and he got pulled back under the force of gravity.

I’m not wanting to put a damper on this powerfully positive turn of events, but I think we all know how difficult this life can be. Many people find life to be an overwhelming challenge, and it’s hard for some people to see how it’s going to get better. I also understand the attraction of letting go of the burdens of this world.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a lot of good news to be found in this story, and I don’t presume to know how the man who was brought back to life felt about the situation, but I think it’s safe to say that Jesus didn’t make this happen for the son’s benefit. Jesus had compassion for the grieving mother and I’m guessing the son was happy to make his mother feel better, but Jesus didn’t do this on his account. He was a beneficiary in the sense that he was used by Jesus to reveal the life-restoring power of God, but you might say he got called back to work after his shift was over.

I’m sorry to come at this story in a bit of a twisted way, but I’m feeling particularly conscious of how twisted life can be, and how powerless I generally feel to help desperate people find their way back in to the light of life. And I’m a preacher! People don’t necessarily come to me expecting miracles, but there are these stories of miracles in this book that I promote. And it’s hard not to wonder why Jesus isn’t there to touch the coffins of our loved ones, to restore our sight and to heal our various forms of brokenness. Jesus didn’t bring every lost son back to life, but it’s hard for us not to ask why Jesus doesn’t seem to hear our wailing and be moved with compassion to touch us in a miraculous way.

Of course that’s the trouble with miracles. It’s hard to be content to let them happen for other people. We want our own miracles, and Jesus was aware of that desire. He didn’t want to be seen as some sort of miracle vending machine, and the truth is that he never was one to perform a miracle on demand. This story in particular points to the spontaneous nature of his capacity to work miracles. He was just travelling along when he came upon the situation of this funeral procession, and we are told that he became filled with compassion for the mother of the man who had died.

As far as we know Jesus had never met this woman or her son, and it probably was her anonymity that moved Jesus to do what he did. He was filled with compassion for her because she was a person who was perfectly disenfranchised. In addition to the grievous loss of someone very dear to her, she had also lost her access to any financial security. As a widow who had lost her only son, she was a person without any property rights or anyone to provide for her. She had become profoundly dependent on the benevolence of others, and that was the kind of person to whom Jesus was always the most responsive.

Jesus didn’t respond to her because she was the most deserving, but because she was the most distressed, and I think that’s a lesson to all of us. Jesus wasn’t just out to teach a lesson to his disciples, but certainly they saw who it was that moved him the most, and that’s information you don’t easily forget. And the truth is that a beautiful turn of events can bring hope to everyone who simply hears what has happened.

I heard a beautiful story on Snap Judgement the other day. It’s a radio show I like to listen to. And I heard a woman tell the story of how her son was brought to life by a stray cat. This was a woman who never intended to have a cat because her mother was a nut about cats. She said her mother kept nearly 30 cats in their house when she was a child and she felt like her mother cared more about her cats than her children. So when this woman got out of her mother’s house she never wanted a cat.

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

She spoke to him all of the time, but he never spoke to her until he was 7 years old and an injured cat came in to their yard. She told George that they needed to help the cat, and as she was reaching down to get this bloody cat George said, “Baboo”. And he just kept saying it. “Baboo, baboo”. This woman called her mother and other family members to come over, and they did come over because they couldn’t believe it. Her family members thought maybe she had lost her mind, but they were all amazed at what they saw and heard. George and his mother nursed the cat back to health and that cat became George’s first and constant playmate, who he named Ben. He would speak to the cat and he would tell his mother what the cat wanted. And of course the mother would give them whatever they wanted just to hear her son speak.

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

There is more to this story, and it’s documented in a book called The Cat Who Came Back For Christmas. In the story I heard there was no mention of Jesus, but I feel that this mother treated her son and that cat in a very Christ-like manner, and what transpired was nothing short of a miracle. She would say that this cat brought her son to life, and in a powerful way he did, but none of that would have happened if she had not been so willing to love him in such a sacrificial way.

Sacrificial love doesn’t always produce documentable miracles, but I do believe it always touches people in healing ways. The exercise costly love doesn’t always change things immediately, but I do believe that it profoundly changes everything. I think it’s worth noting that this child was 7 years old before this cat came in to their yard and transformed their lives. Even miracles are slow in coming. I’m reminded of a Karl Hansen saying – He has been know to say that he can take care of hard things quickly, but miracles take a while. Miracles do take a while. Most of us are still waiting for one.

But I frankly am always happy to hear how something has miraculously changed for someone. It helps me believe that things can change for all of us. I don’t count on miracles, but I believe that miraculous transformation can happen for any of us. Miracles will always be rare, but I believe they are more likely to happen when we follow Jesus. I don’t believe we would have these stories of the miracles Jesus performed if some people had not found themselves to be miraculously restored to life by his touch.

Jesus doesn’t provide us with any kind of magic potion. At least he’s never provided me with any of it, but I trust that the more faithful I am to the way he taught us to live the more likely I will be to come alive. It’s easy to get down. And I don’t think it’s unusual for people to feel that their life is over. Certainly the widow who’s son had died had come to think that it was over for her, but Jesus thought otherwise, and he showed us all what he was thinking. She thought it was over, but Jesus provided an encore.

The circumstances of life are always changing for all of us, and sometimes it appears that our lives are getting worse. Certainly our troubles can compound, our hope can wear thin, and we don’t get what we need when we think we have to have it, but the message in today’s story is to trust that we do have a God who hears our cries. This widow’s son had died before she came to understand the power of Jesus to transform life.

George was seven years old before that cat walked in to his life. None of us have any reason to expect that the difficulties of our lives will resolve quickly, but we have a powerful reason to believe that we have a compassionate God who wills for us to find new life, and who somehow finds ways to produce beautiful encore’s out of seemingly terrible conclusions.

Thanks be to God. Amen

Grace From the Other Side
Luke 8:26-39

8:26 Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”– 29 for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) 30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. 31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 32 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. 34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

I’ve never had a productive tomato plant. I haven’t even tried to grow tomatoes very often in my life, but I love good tomatoes and I’m making an effort to grow some this summer. I put together a small raised bed on the side of my house that gets some good sunlight and I purchased six plants from this organic nursery that was selling various seedlings one Saturday back in the spring. I’ve got good soil, I’ve got good sunlight, I’ve fertilized, I’ve kept them watered, and I’ve got a few small tomatoes, but I’ve also got aphids. And I hate these aphids.

Aphids are these tiny bulbous insects that infest tomato leaves and blooms and just sort of suck the life out of the plant. I purchased some kind of organic insecticide to spray on the leaves, but anytime you buy an insecticide that says you can eat the fruit on the same day you apply the product you can bet that it doesn’t bother the aphids that much either. I read online that you can make your own anti-aphid spray with a little liquid soap and some canola oil, but it said to be careful not to use dish washing liquid because most of them are made of detergent and not soap. I never knew there was a difference between detergent and soap, but apparently there is.

I finally took a chance on some hand soap and canola oil, and it seems to have helped a little, but my recent experience with these aphids has put me in touch with the concept of being possessed by a legion of destructive entities. Aphids are much more visible than demons, but I’m reminded of how there are these beings who seem to exist with the sole purpose of sucking the life out of that which we love. I’m tempted to get some real poison and go after those literal suckers, but that feels like a deal with the devil as well. I don’t want to make the bees sick.

So I’m resigned to an ongoing battle with aphids. This also reminds me of my experience with demonic forces. I don’t expect that battle to end in my lifetime. Every once in a while I go out armed with a spraybottle of soap and oil and do battle with aphids. Every day I invite the Holy Spirit to be with me to keep my heart, mind, and body away from the grips of my spiritual enemies. I regularly wash the aphids off my plants with the water hose and pluck a few leaves that are particularly infested. So far my plants are holding up and I’ve got a few tomatoes on the way. I try to keep my inner-self as clean as possible and by the grace of God the most destructive demons have not taken over my heart and mind. So far I have no compulsion to run naked in Mt. Holly Cemetery and I know you are happy about that.

Aphids aren’t really like demons. Aphids are annoying, but they can be controlled. Demons are far more devastating and it takes nothing less than an act of God to get rid of them.

As if I know what demons are. I have no real understanding of what constitutes a demon, but on some level I believe that they are every bit as real as aphids. What I know is that there are these unwelcome forces that seem to take up residence inside of us that can cause us great harm. What I’ve seen is that some people are mysteriously moved to behave in terribly destructive ways, and these things lead me to believe that there are some powerfully dark forces that abide in human hearts.

I don’t understand demons, but I don’t think they are a product of primitive minds and imaginations. I’m conscious of an unwelcome stranger that abides within me that encourages me to live without any regard for God or other people. Gratefully I’m not overwhelmed by this hideous non-being. It doesn’t control my life, but I know it would love to be in charge, and it’s relatives are in charge of some people’s lives.

I don’t think much about demonic possession. I don’t have a theory of the design of the underworld, but it’s pretty clear to me that there are some unseen forces that move people in terrible ways. I don’t have to look beyond my own interior life to know of their existence, and I believe it’s the only way to describe what drives some people to live the way they live. It’s certainly the way the gospel writers understood what was going on in some people’s lives, and Jesus was understood to be a person who was able to miraculously extract demons from some people’s lives.

One of the interesting details of this morning’s story is the fact that Jesus intentionally entered a gentile region. This was a rare moment for Jesus. It’s the only time we know of that Jesus went out of his way to step in to a non-Jewish part of the world. We’re told that it was opposite from Galilee, and I think that was true on many different levels. Jesus stepped in to another world when he stepped out of the boat on to the shore of the Gerasenes, and the fact that there was a herd of pigs nearby indicates that this was not familiar territory for Jesus and his disciples. But there was one familiar situation and it was the way in which the demons inside of the unfortunate man recognized the authority of Jesus.

On the most fundamental level there are no differences between any of us. Jesus had no problem interacting with this gentile man because all of the layers of propriety were of no consequence. Jesus didn’t care that this man wasn’t an observant Jew. This man who lived naked among the tombs didn’t care where Jesus had come from. But they communicated on the most fundamental level. Jesus recognized how oppressed this man was, and the powers that oppressed this man recognized the power Jesus had to send them away. This is not an interaction that I fully understand, but it is something I sort of understand. I’ve never witnessed anything like this, but I don’t doubt that Jesus had such authority.

I don’t know how these things work, but I’m convinced that we don’t generate our own transformations. I’m not saying that there isn’t some wisdom to be found in the self-help section of Barnes and Noble, but I don’t believe we decide how to fix ourselves – at least not in the most profound ways. It seems to me that any significant change that happens in our lives comes to us from what you might call the other side.

This man who was infested by demons didn’t decide to invite Jesus to come over to his side of the lake to repair his broken life. This event wasn’t something he planned, nor was it something that was likely to happen. Jesus went out of his way to help this man, and I think that’s a lesson for us to hear and to celebrate. I don’t think any of us should despair over the fact that we often feel very helpless to repair the brokenness in our lives. This man and his friends had tried everything they knew to do to repair this broken man and it hadn’t worked. Chains couldn’t hold him. He had nothing that resembled life, but he wasn’t forgotten by God.

When the other residents of this part of the world asked Jesus to leave because of what he did to their herd of pigs, and the healed man wanted to go with him, Jesus told him to stay and to tell others what God had done for him. Jesus had gone to this other side of the lake in order to do the work of God.

I believe God often leads people in to the lives of other people in order for God to do the miraculous work of transformation. I believe one of the most valuable things that any of us can do is to encounter people who aren’t like us. Whoever you are, you need to get in touch with someone who isn’t like you. It’s people who come from the other side that can best help us see who we are, and who help us get over ourselves.

If you spend any amount of time around United Methodists you will hear someone talk about how much we value diversity. We United Methodists say that a lot. And to some extent there’s some truth in that. In fact I think it’s the diversity of our particular church that buys us some good will with Headquarters. QQUMC is like the poster-child for diversity in the church, and I’m not unhappy about that, but what I truly believe is that the best hope any of us have for getting over the various demons that reside in our own hearts is through the touch of people who are far different from ourselves.

There’s an unfortunate side of this story. It’s a portrayal of a bad day for some pigs and the people who were counting on taking those pigs to the market who weren’t so thrilled with what had occurred. I guess the truth is that we will always be struggling to deal with aphids and other unfortunate beings in this world. Demons are around and are hard for us to deal with, but God is paying attention and seeks to repair the damage that those evil forces are compelled to create. It’s often messy, pigs were sacrificed, but by the grace of God redemption and transformation happen.

Grace does enter our lives in mysterious ways, and if we are willing to get involved in the lives of other people we can be the bearers of that healing force as well. Pay attention to those opportunities that arise that will enable you to step over to the other side in some way, and don’t be surprised if God uses that opportunity to do some miraculous healing in the life of a desperate person – who may very well be yourself.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Here’s The Thing!
Luke 7:36 – 8:3

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

Before Anne knew she would spend Tuesday crying at the airport as Hannis their exchange student prepared to return to Germany and and all day Thursday at Patrick’s freshman orientation event at UCA (in addition to all of the Annual Conference business) she was scheduled to preach today. But I was moved – either by sleep deprivation or the Holy Spirit to say that I wanted to preach today. And this may sound a little bit more like a testimony than a sermon, but here’s the thing – a remarkable thing happened to me last week! You may think I’ve lost my mind when I tell you this, but I didn’t go to Annual Conference last week – I went to a revival meeting!

It’s such a strange thing that occurred. I thought I was going to go to Annual Conference, and I ended up at a revival. I know I may be scaring some of you, I know I’m sounding a whole lot like a Baptist, but don’t worry about that. I didn’t leave Little Rock and slip off to Houston last week where they’re having the Southern Baptist Convention – but to use the language of John Wesley I can say that I felt my heart strangely warmed at Annual Conference. It’s one of the strangest things that’s ever happened to me.

Now I must say that part of what prepared me for this remarkable experience is the low level of expectation I had for Annual Conference. The fact that it was going to meet in Little Rock meant that I wasn’t going to get to leave town and duck out of a few responsibilities. It meant that I had a few extra responsibilities. I had volunteered to be the greeter coordinator for people who were coming to Annual Conference, and I was anxious about that. I knew there would be people coming to downtown Little Rock from all over the state and I knew there would be some anxious hearts out there. It seemed like a good idea when I volunteered to have some people stationed at various approaches to the Statehouse Convention Center who could tell anxious people how to get to the registration table.

But as the day approached I was feeling pretty anxious about all of that. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out. But it worked out well. Remarkably we had just the right number of people show up to do that work, and it went well. I should have known that was a sign of things to come. But I didn’t. In fact I was just extra anxious when it came time for the Clergy Session to convene. I won’t go in to great detail, but in that session the Board of Ordained Ministry leads us through a multi-page report of the status of every person who is somehow in the process of serving in professional ministry. It’s a remarkably tedious report and we basically rubber stamp everything that the Board of Ordained Ministry recommends, but I was troubled by one situation. I have a friend who is in ministry and he had applied to become ordained as an Elder and they were recommending that he be discontinued in the process – meaning that he would have to start over in the process if he wanted to become ordained.

We were going to vote on that. And in that room of approximately 500 people. I was the guy who raised his hand and asked why. I got recognized and I had to run from the back of the room to the platform, and don’t think I wasn’t anxious about that. I told you a few weeks ago that I am about as intentional as Winnie the Pooh and as anxious as Pigglet. This means something to those of you who raised your kids on Winnie the Pooh videos. I was in full Pigglet mode when I arrived on the platform, and being true to my Winnie the Pooh self I had no idea what to say. I stammered something about how I wanted to know why we were going to discontinue someone that I felt was very gifted in many ways. And in order for the members of the Board of Ordained to discuss the case they had to call an executive session and dismiss everyone who wasn’t a fully ordained elder or deacon. So a bunch of people had to get up and leave the room.

I felt sort of bad about that, but I felt terrible about my friend being discontinued, and we needed to take that vote seriously. It’s a very unfortunate situation. The recommendation of the Board of Ordained Ministry was upheld and I hate what happened, but here’s the thing about that. The Bishop and the Chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry and many other people told me they appreciated me raising the question. I hate the outcome of the situation and we all know it represents some brokenness within our clergy community, but I also have some hope for healing to happen. And I think everyone would have felt worse if we had not paused before we voted on that line in our report.

I don’t like to lift myself up as the person who did the right thing. In fact I don’t have many occasions to lift myself up as the person who did the right thing, but it felt good to have done what I did. Of course I mainly knew I would have felt terrible if I hadn’t raised my hand, but I also feel that I was responding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit to speak up. That’s also a line from John Wesley. He encouraged the early Methodists to not resist the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I was scared, but I did what I felt I should do, and it was gratifying. I’m going to try to remember that – I hope you will too.

But now I’m going to skip from Sunday night, to 5:30 Tuesday afternoon, which is when our Finance Committee was to meet. Now as strange as this may sound, I don’t generally dread those meetings. It’s a good group of people and we generally engage in fruitful and upbeat discussion of how we are going to meet our financial challenges. But Tuesday’s meeting was bad. Only four of us were in the room when it was past time for us to begin and our faithful chairperson, Janie Fenton hadn’t even arrived. I went to the door to see if anyone else was coming and that’s when I discovered that one of our artists had locked the door on their way out and I saw Janie and another committee member driving off.

Now just prior to this failed meeting I had come from a workshop on how to form small groups in a church. The presenter was the pastor of a church in Omaha Nebraska that had grown exponentially over the past few years. I felt like I learned something at the workshop, but I was also struck by the contrast between his church and my church. Our contributions were really down in May, our attendance trend is flat at best, and it left me wondering was what I’m doing wrong.

I was low when I went to the Ordination Service Tuesday night, but I found myself remarkably uplifted by our Bishop’s sermon. He challenged us all to become imagineers. And that spoke to me. I came away reminded that I’m in a church where imagination is valued, and I really liked his challenge to find new ways to be the church in the time and place that we now occupy.

All of that set me up for the worship service on Wednesday morning, which is when Dr. Grace Imathieu was preaching for the second time. She had preached a very powerful sermon on Tuesday afternoon, but her sermon on Wednesday morning touched me deeply. Rev. Imathiu grew up in Kenya and she has a remarkable way of bringing Biblical stories to life, and she preached a sermon on the story of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, going after Jesus with every ounce of his being, and being healed. Her sermon put me in touch with how helpless I feel to fix all of the problems I’m aware of within this church, and how much I need Jesus. In fact her sermon made me feel like I was in the room with Jesus, and I was excited about that.

When the service was over I watched her as she was leaving the platform and I positioned myself between her and the door. I pulled out a business card and I approached her, and I was blubbering as I gave her my card and asked her to pray for me and my church. She was very comforting to me, and I take great comfort in knowing that she is praying for me and for us.

We have in our text this morning the story of a woman who was so moved by Jesus she formed enough tears to wash his feet. She was so lost in love for him she dried his feet with her hair, and I think I know how she felt. Some things happened last week that put me in touch with how much I long to be near to Jesus. And when I say that, what I mean is that I want to be in the business of finding where Jesus is alive in this world. I don’t want to be a like the Pharisee we see in this morning’s story who simply went through the motion of keeping a religious institution up and running – even if that institution is as non-traditional as QQUMC.

For one thing, I don’t even feel very successful at keeping the institution going. Our struggle to stay financially soluble is about the same as it was when I arrived, and the number of people who are involved with this church has been pretty level. I can’t point to any number that shows significant growth since I’ve been here, and I have been pretty discouraged about that. I feel good about keeping us going, and we’ve made some significant improvements to the building, but in my mind I never really get out of what you might call maintenance mode. Maintaining the building, maintaining the worship service, maintaining the programs we have in place.

And what we do isn’t bad, but I’ve been reminded of what our work is really about. It is about finding ways to join with the living Christ in this world, and to build a community that puts people in touch with the living Christ – who puts us in touch with the living God.

I’m sorry I haven’t really touched on our beautiful scripture lesson this morning, it is a rich story that is worthy of extensive examination, but I am primarily struck by the passion of this woman who had such profound trust and love for Jesus. Her desire to be near to him was unstoppable.

I have been put in touch with that same desire. I’m not really sure how to proceed with the work that is laid before me and us, but I have been reminded of what good work it is. It may be that I’ve been feeling a lot more like a Pharisee than a disciple, but I’m not confused today on what I want to be. I want to be the one who blubbers over Jesus – not the one who cares about all the wrong things.

I don’t feel newly equipped, I don’t know what we need to do to get our numbers up, but I do know one thing – I want to be in the business of sharing the love of Jesus Christ. That’s the thing I want to do and I believe he’s the one that has brought us together. You might never have forgotten that that’s what we’re all about, and I hadn’t totally forgotten, but I feel like I have been to that dinner where Jesus was present, and I’m still excited about it.

Here’s the thing: God is with us, we are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen

The Ground Crew
Luke 24:44-53

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

I have come to feel that my life has been saved by a small remote control airplane that I purchased right before Easter. It’s sort of a long story, but bear with me.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a bit of a fixation on flying, and it has manifested itself in a variety of ways over the years. I built many model airplanes when I was a child, I would read reviews of the latest airplanes in Flying Magazine when I was a young teenager, and around that same time I wrote off and obtained a pricing sheet for a hot-air balloon kit. I built 3 different hang-gliders when I was in high school and I’ve actually logged at least a minute of cumulative flying time in the last one, although I was never more than a few feet off the ground.

So a few years ago I tried my hand at building balsa wood and tissue paper airplanes that were supposed to fly well under the power of rubber bands, but I’ve never had any success at getting one to fly. They look pretty good, but I’ve never understood what it takes to actually get one to gain altitude. They always just crashed quickly and very unceremoniously. I recently developed an attachment to one of these amazing little remote control helicopters that you can buy almost anywhere. And I discovered that the trick to flying those things is to have a good size indoor room to fly them in. The large area in our office is perfect. It’s got a high ceiling and no hanging light fixtures. I wore one helicopter out but I’ve got another one that still works. I’ve had to replace a few parts, but it still functions. Fortunately the batteries run down pretty quickly so I am able to get a little work done as the batteries recharge.

But what that helicopter did was to remind me how much I’ve always wanted to build an airplane that would actually fly, so I pulled out my most recent balsa wood plane project that I hadn’t touched in over a year, and I decided I was going to get that thing properly constructed and in the air. I called my friend Lewis Chesser, a retired United Methodist Minister who actually knows how to build and fly such planes, and he suggested I read this book that is the definitive guide on building and flying rubber-band powered airplanes. I got the book and I read a significant amount of it and I wouldn’t have understood much less if it had been written in Korean. I didn’t even understand most of the illustrations. You have no idea how technical a book about building rubber-band powered airplanes can be. I was discouraged.

And the truth is that is largely a lost art. If you go to a hobby shop today and ask them about rubber band technology they’re going to look at you like you came from another planet. But they can tell you about brushless electric motors, lithium polymer batteries, and other things that are involved in the state of the art today. And if you aren’t careful you will walk out of there with a Hobbyzone Champ RTF – which means ready to fly – in that one box is everything you need including batteries. It’s a plane that’s made from Styrofoam and this whole package only costs about $100. That’s no small amount of money, but when a husband only spends $100 on a new toy a wife is generally relieved.

I’m going to talk about Jesus in a minute, he’s not unconnected from my thoughts about all of this, but you’ve just got to endulge me for another minute. I’m not saying that you need to hear all of this, but it’s just hard for me to quit talking about this experience. I love this plane, and as I say, I think it has saved my life.

I took this plane out for the first time on Good Friday to this nice field that’s in the center of St. John’s Seminary up in the heights, and I was actually able to fly it around a little bit. I didn’t land it so well, but the grass was soft and I didn’t tear it up. We had guests coming to our house on Easter afternoon, and I thought my plane would provide some good Easter afternoon entertainment. Sure enough it was a nice day and after we ate I drug everyone over there to watch me fly the plane, and I was so excited. I got it up in the air, and I was trying to figure out how to keep it from gaining too much altitude, and you might say I overcompensated a bit, and within about fifteen seconds of it’s initial take-off I caused it to do a nose dive from about 30 feet and it cracked the wing off. My flying demonstration was over for the day.

Luckily that plane is very repairable, and over the course of the last few weeks I’ve gotten it caught in two different trees where I had to leave it for a couple nights before it blew down. I’ve crashed it in to a car and cracked the wing off on another occasion, and I’ve broken the tail off twice. Luckily I enjoy repairing it about as much as I enjoy flying it.

And it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that this plane has saved my life, because I’ve thought for many years that I would like to acquire one of those motorized ultra-light flying machines that you actually climb-in and fly. They look a lot like riding lawnmowers with wings. But I’m not so sure anymore that I was cut out to be a pilot. I have come to realize how easy it is for those things that go up to come down in unfortunate ways.

I’m thinking that I’m probably best suited to operate on the ground. And I’m thinking that’s where we all can do our best work.

This story of the ascention of Jesus is the story of Jesus telling his disciples that their job was to remain on earth and to trust in the power that would come to them from heaven. Life on earth had been transformed for them, they would go about their lives in a totally different way, but they were to live with their feet on the ground.

I’m not over my desire to fly, but I also know that true freedom is not a matter of overcoming gravity. It’s not about obtaining financial security or developing physical superiority. It’s not about political connectivity, hyper religiosity, or any of the other ways in which we try to rise above the obstacles and challenges of life on earth. What Jesus seems to be saying to his followers is to stay grounded in the things they know to be true. They had been first hand witnesses to the way he had lived his life, and they were to trust that God would empower them to do the same.

They weren’t nor are we to have false expectations of what this trust will provide in this life. Jesus didn’t promise that things will go better for us than it did with him, but he did provide assurance that we will not be without the power we need to sustain us through the trials of this life. Jesus didn’t want us to be ignorant of how God has been involved in human history from the very beginning, and he wants us to continue to gain understanding of how the story of God’s redeeming grace is revealed in scripture, but his instruction was not just to abide in the temple. His instruction was to go out in to the world to live and proclaim the truth about God’s affection for this world and to promote peace and harmony in this world. I think that’s what he meant when he said we are to proclaim the need for repentance and the forgiveness of our sins. This was not an appeal to have more tent revival meetings – this was an appeal to live on earth with genuine trust in message of Christ. It’s not that we are to be delusional about how things are in this world. Jesus was well aware of how broken this world can be, but he didn’t direct our attention away from this world.

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

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

And this is our calling as well – to make ourselves available to God for the transformation of the world. I have discovered that it’s not so bad to keep my feet on the ground, and by the grace of God I hope to discover what it really means to soar. I hope this for us all.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Gracious Invasion
Acts 2:1-21

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

I want you to take note of the Pentecostal Holy Spirit pole that we used this morning as if you can fail to take note of the 20’ piece of bamboo with a dove and ribbons hangin from it. (Thank you Anita Cryer for creating our Holy Spirit Dove). The pole itself could have come from my neighbor’s yard about a week ago, but it didn’t. With our neighbor’s permission we hired Mr. Bamboo to come eliminate the thicket of bamboo that existed along the fence row that separates our yards. We had already been cutting out of our yard, but she had a significant patch in her yard – which means it kept coming up in our yard. But it was only after we had had it all removed that Anne and Paul and I thought about needing a long pole to create a good Pentecostal visual. Luckily someone near the church had done some bamboo pruning and I was able to salvage this long piece of bamboo before it went to the landfill. I may well have been led to this pole by the Holy Spirit!

Bamboo is an amazing plant that has it’s place in the world, but it can take over your yard. And it doesn’t understand boundary lines. Our neighbor has her house up for sale. And not knowing how a new neighbor might feel about the bamboo forrest that was growing between us, we asked our current neighbor if we could have it removed and she agreed to our proposal. We’re still battling new shoots, but we understand that with persistence and some well placed rock salt we will someday rid ourselves of this powerful botanical presence.

Honestly I’m not anti-bamboo. There’s not another plant around that can provide such a long and sturdy Pentecostal dove pole. It’s amazing how tall and strong a piece of bamboo can grow. And according to Mr. Bamboo, a local man who probably knows more about the plant than anyone in the state, it is not only strong and straight – it’s full of nutrition and makes good pickles. He says it also generates oxygen and eliminates carbon dioxide more efficiently than most other plants.

Mr. Bamboo actually told me that he considers bamboo to be the source of salvation for our planet. I didn’t ask him to elaborate on that. I’m not saying he had worked bamboo in to any kind of theological belief system, but clearly he is a strong bamboo proponent. He didn’t seem to hold anything against us for wanting to eliminate bamboo from our premesis. He didn’t treat us like we were botanical criminals. He understands the power of bamboo. He knows that it would one day bar us from entering our house if we didn’t do something.

I’m not so sure that it will save our planet, but it could take over the planet. It doesn’t even need good soil to thrive. I don’t know what it lives on, but I see it coming up in places where weeds would never consider sprouting. I think it has a root system that is so extensive it hauls in what it needs from miles away. The bamboo growing in my yard was probably having it’s nourishment pumped in from it’s relatives over in the delta.

I’m thinking about what it means to be invaded this morning, and it was this story of the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost that got me thinking about this concept of invasion – which got me thinking about bamboo. Some days it looks like there’s a small army of creatures under our yard who are trying to jab us with bamboo sprouts. Being invaded isn’t necessarily a pleasant concept, but it isn’t always an unwelcome event. I don’t guess there’s ever been a more fortunate event than the day the Holy Spirit invaded the hearts of the people who had gathered in Jerusalem following the departure of Jesus.

And I don’t think it’s a distortion of the truth to call this event an invasion. The story is that on the Day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem the followers of Jesus had something arrive in their hearts that wasn’t there before. Something happened that changed their way of interacting with other people. They were suddenly able to communicate and associate with people far different from themselves who were from places they had never been. I guess it did look a lot like they had been drinking. Some people do get a lot friendlier and talkative when they’ve had a few drinks, but the people who were invaded by the Holy Spirit weren’t just under the impression that they were able to utter profound truths – they had actually become empowered to communicate good news from God.

The arrival of the Holy Spirit changed everything for that first generation of the followers of Jesus, and while the invasion continues in to our generation it is often overshadowed by other less gracious invaders. We aren’t always as responsive to the presence of the Holy Spirit as we are to the influence of more tangible powers. There are many powerful invaders in our lives, and we often let them take over.

I heard a review on the radio of a magazine ariticle about a small village in Spain that won the Spanish national lottery in December of 2011 and how it affected that village. It was interesting to hear a little bit about the story, so I looked the article up and read it for myself. The article tells the story of what happened in this village called Sodeto in Spain that is home to about 250 people and like many others in Spain, the people of Sodeto were financially strapped. They just barely got by.

Spain has the worlds longest running lottery and the largest jackpot in the world, they call it El Gordo – meaning the fat one. It’s a drawing that takes place once a year right before Christmas and there are only so many numbers available for the lottery, but they break those numbers into smaller increments, so you can buy a portion of a number. The Housewives Association of Sodeto went and bought a large portion of one number and they sold various increments of that number to all of the residents of Sodeto as a fundraiser for their community. And it turns out that their number got picked.

And as you can imagine, it had a powerful impact on that little village. They went from being really poor to really rich, and it made everybody so happy – for a while. There is a side note in the story about the one man who didn’t buy a ticket – which is an interesting story in itself, but the article portrays the way in which everyone in this village went from dancing in the street with one another, to becoming rather suspicious and distrustful of each other. The article ended by portraying how sad this one woman was a year later on the anniversary of the drawing. Their moment in the sun had faded, much of the money was gone, and many relationships had deteriorated.

And I was reminded how empty the powers of this world really are. This little village had an invasion of money. They thought that was the thing that was going to solve all of their problems, but it left them feeling sad, suspicious, and isolated. The man that didn’t buy a ticket was actually better off than many of the residents after a year because he had done a lot of filming of what went on with people, and he was hired by a Danish filmmaker to do a documentary on the impact of El Gordo on this small village.

I think we often wonder what it means to be guided by the Holy Spirit – to have our hearts invaded by that powerful force. I think we often think it’s a mysterious presence that will lead us to pick the right lottery number or find the perfect parking space. I think we often think the Holy Spirit is a guardian angel of sorts that will make our lives easier and fix all of our problems. But that isn’t what it did for those first followers of Jesus who had gathered in Jerusalem. What the Holy Spirit did for them was to enable them to spread the good news of God’s eternal love.

And the good news for them wasn’t that they had won the lottery. The good news for them was that they had a home that could never be forclosed upon. They were in a community that would never break down. They were loved for who they were and not what they had. This is what happens to people who become invaded by the Holy Spirit. And a community that has such an invasion doesn’t become more suspicious of one another – it becomes more compassionate toward other people and more effective in taking care of other people.

I think our challenge is to allow ourselves to become more invaded by that generous spirit of God. And to try to poison the roots of those other forces that seek to invade our lives. If you’ve ever done battle with bamboo you know how persistent those shoots can be, and how fast they can grow. If we aren’t careful we can allow the wrong spirits to take root in our hearts. But thanks be to God we aren’t left to our own defenses. As surely as we are being invaded by those spirits from below, we are also being shot from above by God’s Holy Spirit who constantly seeks to invade our hearts and to turn us in the direction of life. True life! Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Lord Is!
Psalm 23

1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff– they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

I can’t think about Psalm 23 without remembering the meal that followed the funeral of Robert Anderson Jr., who was the man that took care of my grandparents for decades. He went by Jr., and Jr. was shot and killed by the elderly and deranged father of his girlfriend. It was a tragic event that would be followed by my grandfather’s death two weeks later. My grandfather was so dependent upon Jr. he literally couldn’t live without him.

Jr.’s funeral service had been relatively awful because the preacher had pretty much used Jr. as an example of the kind of person you don’t want to be if you don’t want to spend eternity in the wrong place, but I knew that was a very narrow view of Jr. and of God. Jr. wasn’t in church on Sundays because he was usually getting my quadriplegic grandmother out of bed and preparing their Sunday dinner. The church people where the funeral took place didn’t offer a meal following the service, but there was a woman who offered to prepare a meal for Jr.’s family and friends at her diner that also functioned as a nightclub – which was probably more appropriate anyway.

My mother helped put the meal together and just before we sat down to eat she suggested that we recite the 23rd Psalm together. I’m not sure where that idea came from, but it seemed like a good thing to do so we began, and we started off strong, but we didn’t get far beyond the green pastures phrase before we got lost. All of the lines of Psalm 23 are familiar to many of us, but it’s a challenge to up and repeat it without looking at it. Our group recitation of Psalm 23 was filled with awkward pauses followed by various lines spoken out of order that someone would remember, and we never could really get a good flow going. I think someone finally uttered the last line and we all said a hearty Amen.

It was pretty comical and probably pretty appropriate for that gathering. I’m sure Jr. spent more time laughing at the night club than he did studying scripture at church, but I dare say the Lord was his shepherd also.

Psalm 23 is certainly the most familiar of all of the Psalms, and it may be one of the most well-known passages in the Bible. It’s familiar, but in some ways it’s terribly foreign to us. We don’t come from shepherding people. At least most of us don’t. We come from people who worked in offices or at the house. Some of our predecessors worked outside in some capacity, but we don’t generally come from people who were out tending sheep, and I don’t know of anyone who has ever set out to become a shepherd.

I know there are some people around who keep sheep, but those are people who have the luxury to have an interesting hobby. And there might be a few people in Arkansas who keep sheep on a commercial level, but those people are not sleeping outside and warding off predators with a stick. This is not to say that we don’t come from people who were brave and hearty in their own way or that we don’t know what it feels like to face dangerous foes in trying circumstances, but I am saying we don’t really know what that job was all about that we so fondly refer.

I don’t know anything about sheep, but I’m guessing that like most animals that aren’t gifted with the wisdom that we would like for them to have and they probably wander where they are most likely to get hurt or lost, and they resist whatever care they need to have administered. In other words, to be a shepherd would be to constantly work with an animal that goes where it shouldn’t go and won’t go where it needs to be. And I guess that’s why this metaphor of God being our shepherd has remained current for so many centuries. We have gotten away from the work of chasing after hard-headed and danger-prone animals, but I don’t think God has been able to leave that kind of work behind.

Now I know that some of you have done your best to give God a rest from the work of keeping your hearts and minds at peace, but some of us are keeping God up at night and generating all kinds of consternation. I’m sure God longs to be able to reach down with a staff and steer us in better directions, but our shepherd doesn’t seem to have access to such elemental tools.

God is unable to be as hands-on as a Palestinian shepherd. Too many people do fall in harms way for me to think God’s primary job is to simply keep us safe, but I do believe that we are all as familiar to God as is the flock of a caring shepherd. And even though God is unable to protect us from pain and death, I join the Psalmist in believing that God maintains a vigilant watch over our lives, and no doubt rejoices when we find our way in to the realization that we are in God’s presence and consciousness regardless of what’s going on in our lives.

In response to the terrible turn of events that occurred in Boston last week one of the stories I heard on the radio was an interview with a man who constructs prosthetic limbs for amputees. He got in to that line of work about 25 years ago when one of his legs was crushed in an industrial accident. The man said that he went back to the hospital where he was treated a few months after his accident because he wanted to visit with other amputees and reassure them that they would be ok. The hospital staff actually turned him away because they said he didn’t have any qualifications for such work.

The man said he was on his way out of the hospital when the chaplain of the hospital pulled him aside and asked him what was going on. He explained that he just wanted to provide some reassurance to fellow amputees that they would be ok, so the chaplain invited him to come to the hospital the next Saturday for a short training session for chaplain volunteers, and with that he was authorized to go visit anyone he wanted to go see in the hospital.

He said the most memorable visit he had had was with a young man who had just lost the lower portion of his leg and he when he tried to tell the young man that he would be ok, the guy got really angry and said he was so tired of people coming in and telling him he would be fine. He went on to tell the volunteer chaplain he had no idea what he was facing and he asked him if he would just leave him alone. With that the volunteer chaplain put his prosthetic leg up on the bed and pulled his pants leg up so the young man could see who he was dealing with.

The young man didn’t have much more to say, but he began to cry and he did thank him for coming in. This volunteer chaplain told his interviewer that he believes the purpose God has given each of us in life is to watch out for one another.

I think we’ve seen a lot of people practicing that belief in the wake of the bombing in Boston. Many people have stepped up to watch over others who have suffered terrible assaults on their lives and their loved ones. God is our shepherd in an ultimate sense, but we are called to be shepherds for one another in a very immediate sense. It’s not generally very helpful to slip a shepherd’s crook around the neck of a friend or even a child who is moving in a dangerous direction, but clear compassionate words of concern can be very powerful.

We don’t generally get to physically stand in the way of enemies who are coming after our friends and loved ones and beat them off with a stick, but we can listen to the struggles of those who are living in fear of disease, or divorce, or other forms of personal disaster and do what we can to provide relief.

In a mysterious way I do believe that God reaches out to us in the same way a shepherd watches over the sheep. Devastating disaster does happen to good-hearted people, but even in the midst of calamity I believe we have access to the calming hand of God, and often that profound sense of divine compassion comes to us through the hands of human angels who know their purpose is to watch over their neighbors.

Because God is, we are ok regardless of what may come our way. Because God is, we are empowered to provide divine care to those who are walking through that valley of the shadow of death.
Because God is, we are dwelling in a holy place, and there is nothing a twisted mind can do to destroy our communion with God’s holy spirit.

Devastating death came to Jesus, but that didn’t put an end to his life. In a mysteriously miraculous way this greatest shepherd that God has ever provided continues to provide for us. It’s easy to get anxious and to fret over what may come and what may happen, and at such times it’s wonderful to remember that the Lord is. If you are like me you might not remember every word of this beautiful Psalm, but it’s hard to forget the main points.

The Lord is and we are – loved, guided, protected, nourished, and cherished – always.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dancing With The Star
Psalm 30

1 I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
3 O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”
7 By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.
8 To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication:
9 “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper!”
11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am a remarkable dancer. Those of you who attended this year’s Mardi Gras party already know this, but my capacity to dance in an extraordinary way is not widely known. It’s not often that I become a dancing machine, but it can happen. It’s not pretty when this happens, but what I lack in grace I make up with enthusiasm.

You’ve got to understand that I became a teenager in 1970 which is probably when dancing had become totally disconnected from anything resembling form. It was an exercise in doing whatever seemed vaguely responsive to the rhythm of the music. This is not to say there weren’t some amazing dancers in the day, but I wasn’t one of those people. Darkness was the friend of people like me at the dances I attended throughout my teenage years. So it wasn’t until I became an adult that I discovered what a remarkable dancer I could be.

I think my kids were teenagers when I first demonstrated my capacity to bust a move, and I found that it made quite an impression on them. It wasn’t until my daughter, Liza, graduated from college that I publicly unleashed the dancing man that had lain dormant for so many years. I think I made quite an impression on many of Liza’s friends. Over the course of that graduation weekend many of them told me they remembered me from the Friday night dance.

I don’t regularly practice my dance moves, so I was actually surprised that I was so fully able to hit my dancing stride on the night of the Mardi Gras party. But when Drew Pritt began singing “Sister Marmalade” I just couldn’t contain myself. It came upon me as a gift.

OK – it’s a ridiculous gift, but the truth is that it’s a wonderful thing for me to occasionally feel so free to be ridiculous. That is not a state of mind that I can create for myself. It truly is a gift to feel such joy that you don’t even mind looking like you are out of your mind. This is not how I feel most of the time. I may often appear to be out of my mind, but I’m generally all wound up about something that doesn’t feel like joy. Life is hard, and it always has been.

I love the way the ups and downs of life are expressed in this morning’s Psalm. The person who wrote the prayer we find in Psalm 30 was in touch with the world where we all abide. This Psalm came from a person who knew of the highs and the lows of life and who turned to God at all times. This Psalmist knew what it was to feel so sick that death seemed closer than life. This Psalmist knew people who would gloat over his or her demise. And this Psalmist knew how it felt to be rescued from the depth of despair.

This was a person who knew the bitterness of trouble, the sweetness of deliverance, and the joy of living in relationship with God. This person knew to cry-out to God in times of trouble and to give thanks when times were good. I love the message of this Psalm. I think it contains sentiments to which we can all relate, and it serves as a good reminder for us to seek to be in connection with God regardless of what’s going on in our lives.

The Psalms aren’t easily accessible to all of us. These ancient prayers come from people who had radically different lifestyles and practices than we have, but the emotions and the questions they ask aren’t foreign to us. And the Psalms are expressions of people who were trying to understand the place of God in their lives. They were trying to be faithful to God in good times and in bad situations. Many of the Psalms are attributed to King David and it’s likely that he had a hand in creating some of our Psalms, but I don’t think it’s helpful to think that they all came from him. The more likely situation is that they were generated by different people over different centuries. The Psalms reflect the prayers of people who had lived through a wide range of situations and experiences. The Psalms are the prayers of our spiritual ancestors, and they can help guide our souls through the circumstances of our time and place.

I dare say that the person who penned Psalm 30 was in a good place at the time he or she wrote this Psalm – there is an overriding tone of gratitude for where they were. This person was wearing the clothing of joy, but the memory of despair was fresh. And it may be that we are most likely to experience the lightness of joy when we have been in touch with the heaviness of despair.

I have found that I am most likely to be diligent in the exercise of prayer when I am most conscious of a troubling situation. I’m not pleased with myself about that, but I think it’s true, and I’m probably not alone in that way. I’ve also found that when I feel a sense of trouble I am most comforted by the exercise of prayer. When things are not going well it’s not a chore to pray – it’s a source of relief. When trouble is near the most comforting thing I know to do is to make an effort to be with God. It’s a way of taking a break from trying to fix whatever it is that has gone wrong.

I don’t think it’s bad to think of prayer as being a type of dance move with God. And I think this Psalm invites us to think of God as being our primary dance partner as we move through life. While praying requires us to make an effort to be quiet and to listen, I don’t think we should think of prayer as being non-active. I think prayer is an exercise. It’s the exercise of making ourselves totally available to God and it needs to be done with willingness to be whirled in whatever direction God wants to send us. Prayer is an exercise in allowing God to take the lead in our lives. And it’s an exercise in trying to be sensitive to the way God would have us move.

Because I am such an untrained dancer I don’t really know how to lead someone in a dance or to be lead, but I know that this interaction of leading and following is the key to graceful dancing. One person needs to provide the right signals for movement and the other person need to know how to respond. I’m guessing that’s how it works with people who are really good dancers, and I know that’s how it works in this dance we are in with God.

You wouldn’t think that it would be dangerous to pray the Psalms, but when Dietrich Bonhoeffer published a meditation on the Book of Psalms in Germany in 1940 he was banned from publishing anything else and he was forbidden to meet with anyone other than his family in Berlin. Bonhoeffer saw the Book of Psalms as the prayerbook of Jesus, and he considered it to be the truest guide for prayer that is available for those who seek to live and to pray as followers of Jesus Christ. The real danger of the Book of Psalms is the way in which it directs the heart of the reader to the source of true authority in life, and that didn’t fit with Nazi ideology.

It doesn’t seem like it would be dangerous to pray the Psalms, but it is. There’s no telling what we may find ourselves called to do if we allow God to be the one true authority in our lives.

To pray this morning’s Psalm is to seek to live in relationship with God regardless of what’s going on in our life. It is an acknowledgement that there are times in our lives that we are in need of being corrected by God, and how terrible it is to feel chastened by God, but as the Psalmist says, “God’s anger only lasts for a moment while God’s favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

This Psalmist recognized that it’s easy to become too comfortable in life and that there is a form of insensitivity that we can develop toward God that results in a lack of attention from God. The Psalmist speaks of God’s face being hidden, and the sense of dismay that can come to us when we have become too well established in life.

But material comfort is as fleeting as everything else. Trouble comes, and when we are having hard times we are probably more creative in our efforts to reach God, and this Psalmist engaged in a form of bargaining with God that God couldn’t resist. The Psalmist boldly asks: “What profit is there in my death? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?”

To dance with God is not to engage in a polite waltz. It’s not as orderly as a square dance. It’s more like a hot salsa dance where the partners swing and gyrate in ways that are hard to follow but un-ignorably passionate.

God invites us all to engage in this holy relationship that can best be described as a dance. We are invited to get so caught up in this relationship that we forget who’s watching. We are invited to pay total attention to the One who can truly lift us up when we’re down and who pulls us back when we’re heading in the wrong direction. Of course Jesus was the one who danced perfectly with God, and on Easter morning they busted the most unforgettable dance move of all time!

The resurrection was the move that changed everything, and that’s the move that has brought us together today. We are invited to keep that dance alive, and if we will be diligent in this exercise of listening and responding to the instruction provided by the Holy Spirit we will all become remarkable dancers in the ballroom of God.

So move it like you don’t want to lose it!
Thanks be to God. Amen.

He Has Returned!
John 20:19-31

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

I’ve chosen to combine the children’s sermon and the adult sermon this morning because I’ve got a story to tell. I’m thinking the children probably quit listening (and possibly adults as well) when I stand behind the pulpit, so I’m going to speak from the floor this morning. My mind has holes in it, and I don’t want to leave any essential details out of the story, so I’m bringing my notes, but the truth is that I know the details of this story pretty well.

I’ve got a friend named Bill who I met when we worked together at Camp Aldersgate. One of the things that was interesting about Bill was that he had a pet tortoise named Tom that he had found when he was about 6 years old. Now I don’t like to call undue attention to people’s ages, so to maintain a little mystery about my friend’s age let’s just say that Tom became Bill’s pet in the early 60’s. I was working with Bill in the late 90’s, and it was amazing to me that he had had the same pet for nearly 30 years. He was always quick to point out that it was one of the longest relationships he had in his life.

So about a year ago I ran in to Bill at an event and in the course of our conversation and our catching up I asked him how his turtle was doing. Bill always had to correct me that Tom was a tortoise and not a turtle, and only now have I come to understand the difference between tortoises and turtles and the difference is that tortoises don’t swim. Turtles swim – tortoises drown if you put them in water. I think I finally have that straight, and that’s your biology lesson as well this morning.

But I digress – Bill told me this terribly sad story about how Tom had disappeared in the early fall of 2011. Bill lives on a corner lot in Sherwood and Tom lived in his back yard that was very well secured with a fence, but a car had run through his fence one day, and in the course of repairing the fence they didn’t secure one spot very well and Tom had gotten out.

Bill posted signs in the neighborhood and called veterinary clinics and animal shelters and every other animal control agency he could think of but there was no sign of Tom. As I say, this was in the fall, and Tom the California Desert Tortoise had been hibernating every winter in a box in the garage for the past few decades, so Bill was terribly distraught about where Tom could be. Tom had been missing about 6 months when Bill was telling me the story and he was still very sad about it. Bill could imagine many things that could have happened to Tom and none of them were good.

I’m reminded of how the disciples were feeling in the immediate aftermath following Jesus’ death. They had gathered in a locked room because they knew what had happened to Jesus, and they could only imagine what might happen to them. They hadn’t been perfect followers of Jesus, but they were closely associated with him, and they knew that the same people who put Jesus to death might want to do the same to them. So they were hiding – and I think it’s safe to say they were hopeless.

Hopelessness filled this locked room until Jesus suddenly appeared and filled the room with his breath – his spirit filled breath that changed everything. They were touched in a miraculous way that enabled them to understand that the crucifixion was not the end of the story of Jesus of Nazareth. They experienced Jesus Christ in a new way and they were not only redeemed by the experience – they were empowered to pass on this redeeming story.

But the disciple named Thomas didn’t want to hear it. Thomas was out of the room on that first day of the week when Jesus first appeared. Thomas had firm convictions about things and he simply wasn’t going to accept their account of what had happened.

I think this speaks to the fact that we can never talk someone in to believing something they aren’t willing to accept. Jesus empowered his disciples with his breath, but I think we all know that it often takes more than words to convey the truth of the living Christ. The news of Christ’s resurrection often sound hollow without some kind of experience, and I think that’s why it’s important to back up our words with actions that reflect our effort to actually follow Jesus.

Thomas knew what it felt like to be in the room with Jesus – he had spent many days and nights with Jesus, and he wanted more than the testimony of his friends. They had felt his breath – he wanted to feel his wounds. God knew what Thomas needed and God provided.

I think John included this story to remind us that we aren’t all alike. We don’t all see things the same way, we don’t keep the same schedules, and we aren’t touched by the same information. Thomas is called the Twin, but because we aren’t told anything about his twin John may have inserted this detail in order for us to think of him as our own twin. There are few of us who don’t see a bit of ourselves in Thomas. It’s not easy for us to accept this story without some evidence. Thomas was just being honest about who he was and what he needed – which is not bad information any of us should have about ourselves. God knows what we need – we should try to know ourselves as well.

Fortunately God does understand the various ways we are put together and what it is that we each find to be compelling evidence of God’s resurrecting power. And this may not mean anything to you, but when I was visiting with Bill last fall when we were planning our QQUMC birthday picnic out at Camp Aldersgate I asked him if Tom was still missing and he said no – Tom is back!

Tom had been gone almost a year when Bill got a call from someone in the Sherwood Animal Control office who asked if he was missing a California Desert Tortoise.

And here’s what happened. A woman living in the Park Hill area of North Little Rock was putting her small children in the car one morning and noticed a large creature under her car. She was afraid of what it might be, so she called her vet, and he contacted a wildlife rescue person in Cabot and they came and got Tom. This person put Tom with an animal rescue foster family, and this was not an animal they were used to caring for, so they were calling around trying to learn what they were dealing with.

In the course of trying to figure out what to do the foster person called the Sherwood Animal control office to see if they knew anything about a missing tortoise. Bill’s neighbor happened to overhear one end of that conversation and said he knew exactly where that tortoise came from.

Bill actually had to get a recent photograph from a friend to prove his connection with Tom, but they verified that it was the same animal, and that brought about the reunion of Bill and Tom, and what I’m really happy to say is that we actually have both of them with us this morning.

Bill if you will come up and retrieve Tom from his hiding place I’d like for everyone to get a glimpse of this remarkable animal. I’ll actually invite the children to come up and get a close look at Tom if you would like. I’m sure Bill and Tom will stick around for a few minutes after the service for you adults who would like to get a better look at our special guest this morning.

I’ve honestly been sitting on this story since I learned of Tom’s return because it struck me as such a good Easter illustration. I don’t think we should trust that we will always be able to become reunited in this lifetime with the people and other animals that we lose through death or other unfortunate circumstances, but a remarkable story like this puts me in touch with the joy of reunion, and I think that is a least a foretaste of what God’s design truly is.

I think we can trust that God recognizes the way in which we become attached to one another and I can only believe that ultimately God provides in some way for our need to be reunited with those that we love. I think the resurrection of Jesus is a story of God providing for us in an ultimate way, and that we should live our lives without fear of being separated from those that we love. We can trust God, and if we will trust God I think we will be a lot more likely to treat other people as well as our whole planet with more kindness and compassion than with contempt and inconsideration.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a dramatic event, but it wasn’t just a show of power. It is a truth that we are invited to trust and to live as if we believe that the power of love will always overcome the forces of death. Love can tie us together in a way that will never be severed. Painful separation can occur, but reunion will happen. Trust and live with courage. This was Jesus’ message to the disciples, to Thomas and to us.

Thanks be to God. Amen

God Help Us

Isaiah 12:2-6

2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. 3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. 4 And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. 5 Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. 6 Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

I had another sermon ready for today, but I just didn’t feel like it was what I wanted to say after watching the tragic story of the gunman in Connecticut unfold. I actually feel more dumbstruck than anything else. Words can hardly touch the depth of this tragedy. And what I had to say about John the Baptist sparring with various groups as he sought to proclaim the coming of Christ just didn’t seem to fit the circumstance we find ourselves in today. But I found some comfort in these words from Isaiah, and I thought it would be good for us to be reminded how salvation does come from God, and it comes to people who are in the midst of great suffering.

The fact that this horrible shooting took place in the season of Advent heightens the tragedy of the situation. We are in the mode of preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ in the world, and here we are faced with an explosion of death – the death of innocents. I think I heard the Governor of Connecticut say they had been visited by evil, and I think that’s an accurate portrayal of what happened. Evil has arrived, but Christ is here as well. We talk about the coming of Christ, and our hope is always to receive Him in new ways in our hearts and lives, but the truth is that Christ is already here. We aren’t having to face this without his redeeming love.

Few of us have stood anywhere near the place where the family members of those who have lost their children and loved ones are now standing. I do know people who have experienced comparable loss, and I stand in awe of the courage and fortitude that it takes to go on. I also believe that God has a hand in helping people find their way out of devastating situations. And it is to that God that I want to turn today – the God who offers deliverance and salvation to people who have had their lives torn to shreds.

I’ve actually had the good fortune of getting to be around such a person this very week. I heard from a friend last Wednesday night that Jason Baldwin was in town.

As I’m sure you know, Jason is one of the so-called West Memphis 3. He is what you might call a secondary victim of another unfathomably horrible case where children were murdered. Jason got caught up in a community’s need for someone to pay for that horrible crime and at the age of 16 he was convicted and sent to prison for 18 years. Through tremendous effort, diligence, luck, patience, and the grace of God – Jason, Damien, and Jessie were released from prison in August of 2011. Their release didn’t include exoneration, which is what he is currently working to obtain, but they are getting to work on the case from the outside – which is wonderful.

You may or may not know much about that whole case, but I want you to trust me when I say that these men are innocent of that crime. You may not think I know what I’m talking about, but I can tell you I have done my homework on this case, and I have no doubt about their innocence – none.

So I was in the check-out line at Target last Thursday afternoon when I saw someone talking to a guy who I knew to be an advocate for the West Memphis 3, and as I looked at them I suddenly realized I was looking at Jason Baldwin, and I was like a kid who had just spotted the real Santa Claus.

As soon as I got checked out I went in pursuit of Jason – who was with his girlfriend Holly and his friend Michael, and I’m sure I startled them as I came up behind them and asked if I could interrupt their conversation. I introduced myself, and I can tell you – I’ve never been more excited to meet anyone in my whole life. Jason is one of the spiritual giants of our time. I mean at the age of 16 he was labeled a child murderer, he was sent to prison where he had bones broken by actual criminals, but his heart and spirit survived – perhaps even thrived!

I heard Jason speak at the Clinton Library the other night. He and Mara Leveritt were talking about the value of having cameras in court, and Lindsay Miller, the Editor of the Arkansas Times and moderator of the event asked Jason a good question. The question was in response to Jason talking about how happy he was to give blood and hair and saliva samples when he was arrested because he thought they would provide evidence of his innocence, and how he believed throughout the trial that he would be found innocent. And what Lindsay asked him was when he became jaded about the legal system, and Jason replied by saying that really he had never become jaded about it.

He said he prayed to God every day that he would be released, and he always believed that the truth was going to prevail. He said he was always able to believe that the next round of appeals or whatever was going to work. Jason isn’t a jaded person, and that is about all the evidence I need to believe that God can heal any wound.

These words from Isaiah written for people who’s lives were in shreds. Isaiah had told them that because they had fallen away from God, they were about to lose the good land they had been given by God. Their country was in the midst of an invasion and they were about to be carried off in to exile. They were about to find themselves living in a foreign land and cut-off from home and family. There are Psalms of lament that come from this period of their history and they are heartfelt words of loss and sadness. But Isaiah could see a day when they would experience salvation, and he provided this word of hope for them. They were devastated, but they would one day drink again from the well of salvation.

Bad things happen in this world. We lose the things and the people who are most precious to us. People find themselves in situations where going on seems unimaginable – and yet deliverance, salvation, and restoration happens.

I didn’t just get to meet and gawk at Jason in Target and hear him speak at the Clinton Library. Sharla and I got to have dinner with he and Holly and a bunch of other wonderful people and I heard Jason make a reference to the Biblical figure, Joseph – the favorite son of Jacob. That really struck a chord with me and I came to have this feeling that I was having dinner with Joseph. In fact I was calling him Joseph Baldwin before the night was over. Because if you remember the story, Joseph spent time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but he made good use of that time, and he came out of prison and in to the favor of Pharoah. Jason hasn’t been recognized by any Pharoah’s yet, but he has come out of this terrible ordeal in a beautiful way, and he serves as a testimony to the redeeming grace of God.

The families of the victims of the terrible situation in Connecticut are a long way from any kind of deliverance from the pain of their loss. I don’t think any of us can even imagine how that is going to happen. The intentionally violent nature of that act has stunned the nation. It’s hard to believe that one of our neighbors could act in such a way toward children and teachers. This is a devastating moment for our country. There’s not any good news to that situation.

But there are good ways to respond to bad stories. And one good thing to do is to turn our hearts to God. We do live in a world that is frequently visited by evil, and we need to stay near to God so that we will not repay evil with evil. We need to be near to God so that we can see the light of grace when darkness sets in. Hatred, violence, and horror are never far from any of us and we need for God to protect our hearts regardless of what happens to ourselves and our loved ones.

We also need to be as kind as we can to one another. We know what happened in Connecticut last Friday, but we don’t know the various ways in which our neighbors have been injured by cruel blows. We are surrounded by painful stories, and we need to make sure we treat each other with more compassion than judgment. It may be that your job supervisor or whoever actually is wanting to make your life miserable, but even that is probably not really about you. People don’t deal with the pain of life very well, and people who have a lot of pain can behave very badly, but Jesus was clear about the way we should respond to each other and it is with love. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to exercise good sense in how we respond to the misbehavior of others, but kindness goes a long way toward relieving the pain of others.

The Season of Advent continues and we need to become even more diligent in our effort to prepare for the coming of Christ. This world can be a very dark place, and we are in terrible need for the light of Christ to shine brightly in new ways. Our beloved retired Bishop Kenneth Hicks, who is probably seeing his 90^th Christmas this year, likes to remind people that the church is called to be the incarnation of Christ. We each carry the light of Christ in our hearts, and we need to let that light shine. This world is in need of Christ to be born again in each of us, and for that light to shine in new ways.

We have an abundance of terrible stories of how evil visits our world, but there are even more beautiful stories of the ways in which the love of God prevails in people’s lives regardless of the darkness that is foisted upon them. And this is the good news.

Prepare for Christ to be born in you.

Watch for how Christ is alive in your neighbor.

And trust that God can restore any broken heart in this injured world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.