Thompson's Blog

Skyfall – The Sermon

Luke 21:25-36

25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 29 Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, 35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Don’t try to make sense of this morning’s scripture reading – just run with some gut feeling about what it is saying. Don’t try to make sense of my sermon title either. It’s just a gut feeling also. I saw the James Bond movie by that title the other day and I liked it, but I’m not sure why it was called Skyfall. The title sounds powerful and dramatic and that’s why they gave it that title. I know that’s why I chose to use it for the title of my sermon. It just sounded good, and I’m going with my feelings this morning.

This passage of scripture wraps up with some reasonable advice. It’s good to live a sober and attentive life, but I don’t think you should engage your reasoning skills to try to decode these rather cryptic words about apocalyptic events. I don’t think we should get specific about what Jesus was talking about when he talked about the wind and the waves, the roaring of the sea, the coming of the son of man in the clouds with great glory, and knowing the kingdom of God is coming near when you see the sprouting of the fig trees. There’s a message here, but it’s a message designed to be heard more by our hearts than by our minds.

This passage doesn’t call for reason – it calls for trust. It calls for us to trust in God, and to keep our heads up regardless of what might be coming down.

Of course this is easy for me to say. I don’t live in lower Manhattan or on the Jersey shore where the clouds swirled so violently that everything that I owned was washed out to sea and nothing has returned to normal. CNN didn’t report that it was the son of man that came with great glory when Sandy hit New England, but it was an end of the world event for many, and I’m guessing it has been a powerfully redeeming event for a number of people. I’m sure that Sandy has served to remind many people of what is truly important in life, and they probably didn’t have such clarity prior to the storm. I would never make light of the tragedy that comes with natural disaster, but I also know that God’s good news is particularly near to people who endure hard times. I can’t help but believe that it wasn’t just wind and snow and water that came from Sandy’s clouds – I’m sure that event generated some new levels of trust in God.

This is easy for me to say from the comfort of my dry and heated world, but I think it’s what Luke was wanting us to understand about the good news that came to us through Jesus. And you can trust Luke on this because he was living in the midst of chaotic tragedy when he recorded these words and deeds of Jesus.

This passage comes to us from a man who was living in hard times. The early Christians weren’t worried about their nation plunging off a metaphorical cliff – as we are currently talking about. They had experienced the actual destruction of their most treasured national monument to God – the temple. And they were suffering through all of the accompanying tyranny of Roman occupation. Luke was living in a world more characterized by bondage than liberation, and yet he was seeing a reason to trust that something good was coming from God.

The world that Luke occupied was not far from what we currently see going on in Syria. They didn’t have bombs dropping out of the sky, but Luke was living in a very insecure environment where cherished institutions were literally crumbling under the tyranny of a foreign occupier, and yet, Luke was calling for people to keep their heads up and to watch for the coming of the Kingdom of God.

It wasn’t reasonable, but it was wise, and it was true. God was near and coming in to the world in a new and powerful way. And Luke is encouraging us to exercise that same form of trust today.

The truth is that it’s not reasonable to trust in God. In fact trusting in God is probably an act of defiance to reason. We know too much about the way weather is generated to believe that God is on hand in the midst of a storm. We understand political struggles too well to believe that God is behind wars and rumors of wars. But this doesn’t mean we can’t yearn to see what God is doing in the midst of any situation, to trust that God is ultimately in charge, and to even see evidence that this is true. It may be unreasonable to have such trust, but it’s not wrong.

Karl Hansen tells a great story about what happened to him when that terrible tornado came through Central Arkansas a few years ago. Karl comes from a line of people who take their bigotry seriously. There are a number of men in his family who are very clear about the pecking order God created in the world. This line of thinking didn’t take with Karl, and he took great pleasure in telling some of his more narrow minded relatives the particular turn of events that spared his life when that tornado came through. Karl was doing some work over at Rev. Betty Scull’s house when the tornado came through town. Rev. Scull was the former Associate Pastor of this church and she is African American. The tornado didn’t touch her house, but it destroyed his home, and he likely would have been killed if he had been there. So it was providentially good for him to have been at Rev. Scull’s house that day.

I don’t think it’s easy to render some of Karl’s relatives speechless, but they didn’t know how to respond when Karl told them how he had been saved from that tornado by a black female preacher.

Living with trust in God comes down to how you choose to interpret reality. And it is a choice. The way God enters our world is not something that you’ll see reported on CNN because it’s a drama that plays out in our hearts.  I do believe that God’s hand touches actual events that can be observed and reported, but you can’t prove that any particular event was designed and carried out by God. I can give God credit for acting in my life and in this world, but I can’t prove it. I don’t always live as if I’m expecting God to be nearby and paying attention, but when I’m most conscious of what is real I can’t help but believe that God is near and coming again to redeem our broken world.

Our scripture invites us to watch for the signs of God’s coming. Being watchful for the coming of Christ is the true spirit of Advent. This idea of keeping our heads up and watching for the son of man coming in the cloud with great glory made me want to create some kind of surprising overhead experience. Of course I immediately thought of my air-swimming clown-fish. Some of you were here last Christmas when I flew my clown-fish through the sanctuary. I don’t know that I had much of a point to doing that, but it was Christmas and I felt like doing something fun.

But I thought it made sense to fly my fish today. Earlier this week I was planning to surprise you with the sight of it swimming out from the balcony about now. It had lost most of it’s helium over the last few months, so I refilled it Wednesday afternoon to get it tuned up and ready for today. But when I came in Thursday morning I found it in a sad crumpled heap on the floor. For some reason it had exploded on Wednesday night.

I immediately went online to see where I might get a new one, but it didn’t feel quite right, and I came to believe that I should take the explosion of my air-swimming fish as a sign. This may or may not have been the right way for me to think of that, but I chose to believe that I shouldn’t depend on my toy fish to convey this idea of being watchful for the coming of Christ in to our world.

And there was this other thing that happened this week that got my attention. I got a call early this week from a man who has done a good amount of work on our facility over the past few years and he asked if I was in the office. I said I was and he said he would be by shortly. He came in and told me that he and his wife decided they wanted to provide some support to what he called our soup kitchen. I told him that our breakfast meal was pretty short on funds and he said that’s what they wanted to help. He wrote out a check and I’m sure I did the old double-take shake of my head when I saw it because it didn’t have two zero’s behind the one – it had three.

I told him what a blessing that was. And as soon as he left I tried to call Drexel (who runs the program) to tell him what I had in my hand. He didn’t answer, so I called his partner, Randy, who is equally involved and I was able to tell him what had happened. Of course he was happy to hear it because money has become quite an issue for that program. He told me he had asked Drexel what they were going to do about their lack of money, and Drexel had responded by saying “pray”. Randy said he didn’t think that was much of an answer at the time, but maybe he knew what he was talking about.

I’m never inclined to get real specific about what God does and doesn’t do in this world, but I do believe that God watches out for us in real and profound ways. It doesn’t mean that we always get what we want or that faith protects us from all harm. But it does mean that regardless of what is going on around us we need to keep watch for what God is doing as well. The spirit of Advent is to trust that God is coming in to our lives and in to our world in new and redeeming ways.

Thanks be to God for this good news and by all means – pay attention!

Struck By Truth
John 18:33-37
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37 Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Christ the King Sunday always comes as a surprise to me. It’s the last Sunday of the liturgical year. This doesn’t mean so much to normal people, but it’s a notable thing for someone like me who preaches for a living and who follows the prescribed texts of the lectionary for preaching. Today is the last Sunday of year B in the 3 year lectionary cycle. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Year C. Most of this last year’s Gospel readings have come from the Book of Mark, and most of the Gospel Readings will come from Luke next year. There are these readings from the Gospel of John that come up occasionally each year, and it always feels like a big deal to me to finish one year and move in to the next.

I’m actually about to finish my 25th year in full-time ministry which is a testament to the graciousness of Arkansas United Methodists. I was first appointed to full-time ministry in January of 1987, so this is the 25th time I’ve celebrated Christ the King Sunday, and I’m still trying to figure out what it all means. I like Christ the King Sunday. It feels like a Sunday we should celebrate with extra enthusiasm. It seems like it should be a culmination type of day – or maybe I should say a coronation type of day – but it doesn’t generally generate that level of enthusiasm. This day doesn’t elicit great fanfare. It doesn’t carry with it the excitement of an election victory. Today we declare Jesus to be our King, but it doesn’t really feel like our world is profoundly changed by this declaration.

I would like to think it’s not that big of a deal because we’ve already been living like Jesus is our king every other week of the year, but I suspect that for most of us, declaring Jesus to be our king just doesn’t have that much bearing on what we will be doing tomorrow. We proclaim Jesus to be our king, but we know very well that what Jesus said to Pilate is very true – that his kingdom is not of this world. And it’s a struggle for us to know what it means to abide in the Kingdom of God while we live in Little Rock.

I claim Jesus to be my king, but I worry about the pressures of this world. I’ve been publicly declaring Jesus Christ to be my king for 25 years now, and while I’m still wrestling to discover what that means, I am, however, noticing a clue in this week’s passage. Jesus tells Pilate that whoever belongs to the truth listens to his voice. I think this means that whoever loves the truth belongs in his kingdom. This doesn’t make it any easier to abide in this other-worldly kingdom that Jesus reigns over, but it does help me understand what gets in my way – it’s those pesky illusions I like to maintain.

Now in some ways I consider myself to be a person who likes to know the truth, and one of the things I do to try to know the truth about myself is to see a psychotherapist on a monthly basis. Some people probably think I should go more often than that, and I probably would if it didn’t cost so much, but trying to take a look at myself on a monthly basis is something that helps me deal with myself and this world. Seeing a therapist may sound torturous to some people, but honestly I would rather spend an hour with my psychotherapist than to get a massage. I consider both of these activities to be 1st world luxuries, but it feels a lot safer for me to talk about what I want to talk about that to have someone else decide where they want to bear down on me.

That’s probably something I need to talk about in therapy, but I probably won’t, and that’s what I like about going to a psychotherapist. I am generally in control of what I want to talk about. And while I do have some interest in trying to figure some things out about myself, I also know that I probably only talk about things that aren’t terribly threatening and I only hear what I want to know.

It’s not easy to see ourselves clearly. I sometimes think my conversations with my therapist help me see useful things about myself, but I also know that I engage in that exercise to make myself feel better. And while I don’t often make profound discoveries about myself I think it’s probably better to rant or vent or whimper or confess or brag in the privacy of an office that is required to be confidential than it is to go screaming through the mall or doing anything else that would land me in front of the Bishop or in a court of law.

I’m inclined to think I want to see the truth about myself before I have a head-on collision with it, but the truth is that we can resist the truth even when it looks us in the eye – if it doesn’t conform to what we want to believe.

Jesus was crucified by people who were so attached to the way they wanted the world to be that they were perfectly blind to the truth. The Jewish officials who orchestrated Jesus’ crucifixion didn’t want to know the truth. They wanted to continue in their role of defining reality for everyone else, and they didn’t see Jesus as anything other than a threat to what they were doing. Pilate didn’t seem to understand why the Jewish officials were so worked up about what Jesus was doing, he went back and forth between the Jewish leaders and Jesus about seven times before he went along with their desire to have him crucified. He didn’t share their particular form of blindness, but he had his own form of resistance to the truth. He had his political standing to think about, and he certainly didn’t want his superiors to think he was soft on crime – particularly on the crime of insurrection.

We are all in touch with masters who have no regard for the truth and who are insistent that we work to promote their agenda. Sometimes these masters are actual people who sit in positions of authority over us and have the capacity to make our lives miserable if we don’t do what they say. Sometimes these masters are in the form of peers or family members who’s approval we seek to obtain at all cost. Sometimes these masters come from organizations and interest groups that define reality in oversimplified ways and offer simple solutions to complex situations. Sometimes these masters are much more subtle – we don’t really know where they come from, but they can occupy our minds and cause us to be blind to what we are doing and who we are serving.

It’s not so easy to belong to the truth. It takes great effort to break out of constraints of those various masters who want allegiance more than they want us to know what’s true and to serve the truth. Often it takes some kind of profound breakdown to open us up to the truth, and even after monumental revelations it’s easy to fall back in to serving small masters and distorted agendas. Belonging to the truth requires perpetual vigilance.

And that’s why it’s important for us to celebrate Christ the King Sunday on a yearly basis, and to remind ourselves of who it is we say we serve on a weekly basis. We need to constantly look at how differently our King navigated life on earth. Jesus had both of his feet on the same earth that we currently stand upon, but because his heart was so perfectly connected to God he didn’t react to the challenges he faced in this world in the way that we are often inclined to react. It’s hard for us to keep our hearts away from those unholy masters that have no regard for the truth.

Where our hearts lie determines where our feet take us and what we do with our hands, our minds, our mouths, and our resources. We can confess Jesus to be our king, but we are only serving him if we love the truth and seek to promote the truth. And of course the other side of this is that regardless of how people may choose to label themselves, they are connected to Christ if they belong to the truth, and want the truth to prevail.

I feel like we have a church that’s very open to the truth. We aren’t confined by many of the conventions of traditional Christianity. We have made good strides toward being a church that seeks to promote harmony between all people who love the truth regardless of their faith tradition. We recognize the legitimacy of different sexual orientations, and we seek to be a resource for our destitute neighbors. I feel that we are on the side of truth in some significant and notable ways, but there’s this other truth we need to acknowledge, and it is that we are being subsidized by other churches in the Arkansas Conference. I won’t share the details, but there are some ways in which other churches are covering some expenses that we are currently unable to pay.

I don’t say this to extract more from those of you who are here and are giving what you can to the church, but I do want us all to be more enthusiastic about who we are and what we have here. We have a good King, and we need to share the good news about who it is that we are trying to serve. We’ve got room for some new people in our church, and I can’t help but believe there are a lot of truth-loving people out there who haven’t found their way in to church.

A lot of people don’t believe that the truth is valued in church, and often it isn’t , but we’re trying to value it here. We don’t do it perfectly, but we’re trying. And I can’t help but believe that by the grace of God and some effort on our part we can become an even stronger voice of truth in this world where people like Pilate are still trying to control. We’ve got a good church, we’ve got a good king, and I invite you to share this good news.
Amen

Precarious Structures
Mark 13:1-8

1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

It’s eerily coincidental that the prescribed scripture reading for today would have this reference to the destruction of an architecturally magnificent place of worship. This prediction Jesus made of the large stones of the Temple being thrown to the ground is followed by a warning to not read too much in to any particular catastrophic event, but I must say that it’s hard not to wonder what’s going on when your place of worship get’s blasted by lightening. I think a number of people have wondered if this strike was somehow connected to something they might have said. I was particularly amused by Kelli Reep’s posting on Facebook saying she was surprised this didn’t happen a year ago when she stepped in to the church, but I don’t think any of us should take this personally.

Jesus gave a clear warning about people who like to take advantage of dramatic events and lay claim to special knowledge of what’s going on, and I don’t intend to step in to that blasphemous tradition, but I have come to see that there’s a message associated with this event. It is very clear to me that you shouldn’t stand on top of our tower during a thunderstorm. We have been provided with a good life lesson. I’ve made a mental note of this and you should too. I had wondered why the architects made it so hard to get to the top of our tower, but now I understand – they were protecting us from lightening.

I have also been reminded of the wisdom of insurance. There are probably more life lessons to be gleaned from this event, but I don’t think there were any special messages attached to that bolt of lightening. It did provide a timely image for our bulletin cover this week, and it has provided a great illustration for the very thing Jesus was talking about in this passage – which is that it’s a fleeting thing to be too impressed and overly attached to the things we create for ourselves. And this includes being too impressed and overly attached to our own wisdom or interpretation of what’s going on in the world. All of these things can serve to distract us from trusting in the One Thing that lasts.

The truth is that we love our buildings. I say this as a person who loves buildings more than most people. I have this desire to understand how buildings are put together. I don’t have as much understanding of these things as I would like to have, but I have a craving to know how people put amazing things together. When Sharla and I went to see Crystal Bridges last spring I glanced at all of the paintings, but I was fascinated with that buildings. They are held together by these giant cables, and I kept trying to figure out how that worked.

I’m not in the least bit happy about this lightening strike, but I’m very interested in seeing how our building will get repaired. This is going to involve some creative restoration work, and I love that kind of stuff. I can identify with the disciple who mentioned to Jesus how amazed he was by the giant stones of the Temple. We don’t know the name of this disciple because what he said was so insignificant, but that could have been me. It would have been just like me to not have taken note of all the ways in which Jesus had disparaged the Temple, and to be amazed by the size of the stones.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the wrong things. It’s easy to fill our lives with insignificant busy-ness – particularly when things are going relatively smoothly. When are aren’t wrestling with the various stresses of family emergenicies or workplace trials it’s easy to want to avoid issues of true significance and pour our time and money and energy in to matters of little consequence. And then during times of tremendous upheaval it’s easy for us to fall prey to persuasive rhetoric from self-serving individuals who are more concerned with creating a following than promoting the truth. So whether is’t summertime and the living is easy or we are sitting in a cold apartment without electricity because of a monster storm it’s not unusual for us to focus on the size of the stones and miss the important lessons. We like easy answers and quick fixes. It’s hard for us to see how precarious our various structures really are, and how invested we can be in futile enterprises.

While the insecurity of something as substantial as the Temple was obvious to Jesus, his prediction of the destruction of the Temple was shocking news to the disciples, but then they didn’t even respond with curiosity about what it all meant. They wanted to know when it would happen. They were more interested in having some secret information than they were in knowing how to be faithful to God in the midst of such upheaval.

But Jesus didn’t offer a timeline – he offered some warning, and he also gave them a reason to have hope regardless of what is going on. Jesus didn’t say that things would be easy. He was very frank about the upheaval that they would experience, but he wanted them to see the trauma of their day as birth-pangs and not the absence of God’s grace and presence.

Following Jesus is an exercise in letting go. It’s hard to hear him say that many of the things we hold most dearly – including their own lives – are going to fall apart. And it’s this letting go that enables us to find our way to the source of true life when things start shaking. It’s not an easy instruction that he offered, the loss of our most cherished institutions and homes and relationships and bodies is terribly distressing, but Jesus didn’t want us to trust in precarious structures. He wanted us to abide in the one place that never falls apart.
Jesus fortold the destruction of the temple and the upheaval that would come to to his followers so they wouldn’t just see the troubles of their day as disaster – he wanted them to know that the Kingdom of God is at hand regardless of what may transpire on earth. And this is what we are invited to know as well.

None of us want our worlds to crumble, and I don’t think wrong for us to make reasonable efforts to keep our world’s secure, but it’s also important for us to hear what Jesus is saying in this passage. He’s telling us to not care too much about things that are not of ultimate significance, and by having such wisdom in our hearts we will be more able to navigate the various crisis that we face with faith and not despair.

Jesus had such a different perspective on life. He wasn’t concerned about the things that are generally the most threatening to us, and he valued things that we often consider to be of little consequence. We think our largest threats come from terrorists, criminals, storms, and the struggling economy, but I think Jesus would tell us that our most pressing need is to live with less attachment to our country, our community, our buildings, our fortunes, and even our lives. Jesus wasn’t distressed about the destruction of the Temple. He was upset about what went on in the Temple.

Now you’re hearing all of this from a guy who spent hours last week navigating the process of getting our ornamental chimney put back together. And I’m not apologetic about that. I don’t care about the bricks and the tiles. I care about the community that’s attached to this building, and I struggle with the rest of you to find that balance between taking care of the business of this world and paying attention to the things that really matter. We all spend a lot of time taking care of precarious structures – including our bodies. I don’t think it’s wrong to pay attention to the details of this world, but we need to pay more attention to the condition of our souls.

And this isn’t easy. Often we don’t know the condition of our soul until we face a trial of some kind, and it’s often when we wrestle with great loss that we make the greatest discoveries. Jesus told his disciples to think of trying times as the beginning of birth pangs, and these are trustworthy words for us as well.

I don’t know what new life will come from our crumbling chimney, but I trust that if we will continue to pay attention to serving people and worshipping God out of this church then this exercise in the restoration of our building will be overshadowed by the restoration of our church. I like to think that it wasn’t just bricks and water that came showering in to our building last Sunday night. I’m going to choose to believe that we’ve been empowered by that lightening strike, and that we will not just replace what we’ve lost but we will gain something new.

We’re housed in a precarious structure, but our church is a living body, and by the grace of God we will come out of this stronger than ever.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Dealing With Jesus
Mark 10:35-45

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

I am really glad that this conversation was recorded by Mark. It’s comforting for me to know that raw self-interest has been present in the Christian movement from the very beginning. We modern Christians have refined it in some amazing ways, but we aren’t the first ones to confuse our devotion to God with the promotion of ourselves. And if anyone thinks lobbying doesn’t go on in the church you need to take a close look at this passage. In fact this may be the first recorded episode of lobbying.

And I don’t have anything against lobbying. That’s just how business get’s done in our socio-polical system, but in order to be an effective lobbyist you need to know what is meaningful to the person you are lobbying, and these guys just didn’t get it.

I’m reminded of that scene from “The Graduate”, when this upper middle-class couple is having a party in honor of the graduation of their son who was played by Dustin Hoffman. It’s largely a gathering of highly materialistic adults and the Dustin Hoffman character doesn’t want to be there, but he is, and he’s spending most of his time underwater at the swimming pool in order to avoid people. But there’s this great moment when he comes up for air in the swimming pool and a neighbor is waiting for him and delivers to him what he considers to be a hot tip on the future and says, plastics.

Now it may be that this was good financial advice. Certainly plastics have played a large role in our economy over the past 40 years, but this character played by Dustin Hoffman had no interest in plastics. And it’s the level of absurdity of that advice that reminds me of the absurdity of this request from James and John. It’s as if they had not heard anything that Jesus had been telling them for days. They just didn’t get who they were dealing with!

Jesus had just finished telling the disciples for the third time that when he got to Jerusalem he would be condemned, made fun of, spat upon, whipped, and killed. He also said he would rise from the dead. And it may be that they were totally understanding of what was going to happen and they were thinking of the kingdom that would emerge after his torturous death, but I don’t really think this was the case.

I think James and John are very representative of many of us who have such a hard time with the deep wisdom Jesus was trying to impart – particularly when we feel scared and insecure. In verse 32 of this same chapter, Mark refers to the alarmed nature of the disciples and the fear that the people had for what was about to happen. It’s particularly easy to react poorly to situations when we are filled with fear and alarm. It’s really natural for people to resort to primal instincts when circumstances are threatening, and one of our instincts is to seek protection from powerful figures.

Given what Jesus had just said their requests for positions in his glory come across as absurd, but I think they could only feel his power – they just couldn’t comprehend the way he was going to use his power. And this continues to be a challenge for us. It’s so hard for all of us to comprehend and embrace and trust the wisdom of how Jesus used power. In the face of a threatening situation James and John wanted Jesus to use his power to provide them with protection and security and positions of authority. And I can see myself wanting the same.

I think the way Jesus used his power is one of the most powerfully challenging concepts that any of us face. He was a powerful person, but he used his power so differently from the way we are inclined to think that power should be used.

I don’t know how it would feel to be an incredibly powerful and influential person, but I’ve had a sense of what it feels like to be around an incredibly powerful and influential person, and it’s seductive. You don’t think straight when you are around someone who has significant power.

I’ve never operated within the hub of power, but I’m related to people who’ve been there. Shortly after Bill Clinton was elected, Sharla and I were driving somewhere here in Little Rock, and we heard on National Public Radio that he had been out playing golf somewhere, but that he was headed back to the Governor’s mansion. We weren’t far from there so we drove by the Governor’s Mansion and we saw this motorcade coming toward the mansion. We got out of the car and we heard someone say that he would be coming out to greet everyone. It was a relatively small group of people and we lined up and he came along to shake everyone’s hand.

And when President Elect Clinton came to me I said, my uncle is Maurice Smith, and he immediately responded by saying “I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him”. I’m not sure how many people he said that to, but sure enough when Maurice Smith died a few years later, President Bill Clinton came to his funeral which was held at the Presbyterian Church in Wynne. Maurice Jr., as he was called in Wynne, was married to my father’s sister, and they were members of the Presbyterian Church.

That church didn’t have a minister at the time and my cousin had asked me if I would conduct his service. I remember calling one of my uncle’s close friends to talk to her about Maurice Jr., and I distinctly remember her saying, “Yes we need to talk, you know the president is coming”. I said I didn’t know he was coming, and it shook me.

It was a surreal experience for my family and I. It was a strange thing to have President Clinton join us for the potluck meal prior to the service, and it was a unique experience for me to tell him when I thought it would be good for him to say something during the service. It was a pretty heady deal.

Now all of this happened right after President Clinton had been impeached by the Judiciary Committee and they were about to engage in all of those hearings to decide if he was guilty of high crimes. He wasn’t at what you would call the peak of his power, but he wasn’t an insignificant person, and I liked the way it felt to tell everyone in the church that we would now be hearing a few words from President Clinton.

And one of the things President Clinton shared with us was the way that he had been kept politically alive by Maurice Jr. when he was defeated after his first term as Governor by Frank White. He said after that election he was the youngest ex-governor the State of Arkansas had ever had, and his political career was seemingly over. He said many of his supporters abandoned him, but not Maurice Jr., and it was with his help that he worked his way back in to the good graces of the Democratic Party in the state. He expressed genuine gratitude for the way in which Maurice Jr. had used his power on his behalf.

So you can either blame or give credit to my uncle for keeping Bill Clinton’s political career alive. Certainly he didn’t use his power as well as he could have, but power is a hard thing for us all to manage. As annoyed as I was with President Clinton on the trouble that he had caused for himself and his family and our nation with his relationship with Monica Lewinski, I would have signed up to be the Chaplain of Air Force One if he would have made the offer.

Power is seductive. It’s hard not to want it and to seek it and to use it in really self-serving and self-deceiving ways. And it’s staggering to see how different Jesus was in the way he used his power and told us to use ours. He came to serve – not to be served.

And in doing what he did he really did change the world. Jesus was able to reveal this truth that we gain the most security and the most comfort by using what we have to provide for others. The world really hasn’t recognized and embraced this wisdom, but everyone who has encountered Jesus has been touched by this truth.

James and John didn’t really understand who they were dealing with when they came to Jesus with their request, but he didn’t condemn them. He understood them, and he assured them that they would come to understand and experience the most profound sense of glory that is possible. They didn’t yet understand what he was saying, and we share their slowness to comprehend, but the truth of God will prevail in all of our lives at some point.

The source of true power is not in Washington or on Wall Street. The source of true power resides in Heaven, and is at hand. It is at work in each of us and it serves to challenge each of us. We can resist it, but we can’t overcome it, and sometimes by the grace of God we claim it, and we join with Jesus in giving ourselves to it.

Thanks be to God for the ways God’s power is able to redeem us and lead us on to the path of true peace and reconciliation and joy.

Amen.

Protection Enabled

Ephesians: 6:10-20

 10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

I live in a country where we generally fight our wars on the soil of other nations. I live in a zip-code where there is very little violent crime. I have a job-title that often causes people to be on their best behavior. About the only time I feel threatened is when I’m around a bunch of other United Methodist ministers, but they really aren’t that dangerous – you just don’t want them to be praying for the wrong thing for you.

I feel that I live in a pretty safe world. I don’t generally suit-up for protection from other people, but Paul’s image isn’t lost on me. I don’t go out in the sun without the protection of my hat and sunscreen if necessary. I know how the sun can hurt me if I don’t take good precautions. And I wear a helmet when I ride my scooter or bicycle. I think the most humiliating thing in life would be to be going about 10 mph on a scooter or bicycle and have an accident that leaves me brain-damaged. I understand the value of protective gear.

And I see this little message on the bottom of my computer screen every now and then that says “Protection enabled”. I have no idea how any of that works, but it assures me that I’m current on the premium for my anti-virus software. I like to imagine that I’ve got these digital soldiers on the perimeter of my computer fending off the onslaught of cyber criminals who are trying to break in to steal my identity and scramble my stuff.

Of course I know there are people who actually do need body armor for protection against violent attack. Certainly police officers need that kind of actual protection from men and women who are inclined to behave in violent ways. It’s really distressing to hear how much violent crime happens in Arkansas as well as other places. I’m grateful to have little exposure to it, but violence happens in our community, and I appreciate the men and women who are willing to strap on protection and step in to dangerous situations. There are some ill motivated people out there who need to be stopped.

I guess I’m a little more sensitive to the presence of malicious individuals “out there” because our church was recently the victim of a rogue company that hijacked our phone lines. I inadvertently discovered this last week when I called AT&T to get them to do some rerouting of the way our lines come in to the church and I was told we had recently switched our service to another company. Given the fact that I was looking at a bill that had come to us this month I was somewhat surprised by that, but sure enough we were the victims of some kind of scam that took control of our phone service for a few days.

You would think people who are smart enough to put together that kind of illicit enterprise could figure out a way to make money doing something useful, but there clearly are some people who are out to take advantage of other people in many different ways, and they do a lot of harm.

If you’ve watched the news at all lately you’ve seen or heard about the civil war raging in Syria right now. Putting on the equipment for battle is not a metaphor over there, and it’s terrible to see the ways that people’s lives are literally being torn apart by the hatred that exists between the ruling party and the rebels. It’s horrible to think that things can go so wrong that average citizens become motivated to do as much harm as possible to their adversary. I don’t know how that happens, but we all know that it does.

The presence of evil in this world is mysterious. I don’t know where it comes from, how it is fueled, or why God allows it to remain, but I don’t underestimate it’s ability to wreak havoc in our lives. As I mentioned earlier, I live in an environment that is largely immune from violent forms of evil, but I know that it lurks in my neighborhood as well. I’m sure I’m surrounded by neighbors who are driven by jealousy, prejudice and greed to do cruel and selfish things. In fact I can be one of those people. People like me don’t use violent weapons to get our way, but the work of evil can be done in very subtle ways.

So I resonate to these words of Paul, who spoke of the need to generate protection for our souls. And it was the vulnerability of our souls that concerned Paul. He knew how hard it is to live in this world without reacting to the world in ways that do harm to our souls. Paul was using some imagery that would have been very familiar to the residents of Ephesus to illustrate the importance of living in an unfamiliar way, and to put people on guard against the things that do harm to our souls.

The Roman-ruled world was a place with some very clear rules, and the primary rule was to live in complete obedience to Ceasar. The Roman Empire offered an avenue to a form of peace on earth, but the so-called peace that Rome provided was brought about through the violent domination of anyone who challenged their authority. And it was in stark contrast to that Roman formula for peace that Paul constructed the message that we have read this morning.

Paul was an advocate of personal transformation. He recognized the absolute difference between living under the rule of love as opposed to the rule of the empire. He also knew how hard it was to live in this world without being ruled by the powers of this world. He knew that we are often inclined to suit-up with the belt of deception, the breastplate of intimidation, the shoes of blame, the shield of aggression, the helmet of ignorance, and the sword of oppression. We like to get our way in large and small ways, and the use of such tactics not only hurt other people – they do damage to our souls.

From his vantage point of being in chains in prison, Paul could see very clearly the value of responding to the harshness of this world with the effort to love. He knew what it looked like to be spiritually strong and he knew how hard it was to be strong in that way. Paul was highly conscious of what it meant for Jesus to be Crucified. Paul knew that this world doesn’t value the way that Jesus taught us to live, but he trusted his life completely to wisdom of Christ who revealed the avenue to true peace and personal salvation.

And let me say what I think about this word, salvation. I don’t use the word, salvation, lightly. I always fear people will think I’m just talking about cutting a deal with God that assures nice real-estate in the world beyond this one. I trust that God does provide for us well when we depart this world, but I don’t think we only access the benefits of heaven after we expire from this world.

I think Paul felt saved while he was still in prison in this world. Paul was in touch with the presence of the living God while he was bound by chains and sharing space with rats. Paul’s perspective on life was totally transformed by his encounter with Christ, and he wanted us all to have that same experience.

I know a lot of people have trouble accepting anything that Paul says because Paul is reported to have said some terribly backward things. I have my doubts that everything attributed to Paul is something he actually wrote. Of course we don’t know all the details of how his letters came in to being, and he may well have written some regrettable things. I doubt if you can find a writer who would stand by everything they ever wrote, but in my opinion Paul got it right more than he got it wrong, and he was right about this.

We don’t need as much protection from those who would do us harm as we need to learn to protect our souls from the damage we can do when we seize the sword of selfish promotion and forget the tools of love. We live a long way off from the old man who was writing from that Roman prison, but his words have very current bearing on the words we text, the things we tweet, and in every other way we interact with our neighbors. If we will be as vigilant in protecting our souls as we are in protecting our devices – God will be glorified and our souls will be saved.

The next time you see that little “Protection Enabled” message at the bottom of your computer screen, do a little check to see if your soul is as safe as your hard drive.

Amen.

“The Stuff of Life”
John 6:35, 41-51

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

I don’t know if it happens in the north or not, but upon departure almost all southerners will encourage you to come see them sometime – whether they mean it or not. Well, you should never say this to Sharla and I unless you do mean it – especially if you live in a nice place. We returned from a journey last Monday in which we dropped-in on four different families. We were related to two of those families, so they had to see us, but the other two families were people who made the mistake of telling us to come see them and they happened to have houses near the beach.

We had a great trip. Over the course of about 8 days we drove 2,650 miles in our new car, and in addition to that we spent about 3 hours on two different ferries. We saw some great sights, and we even experienced some nice rain. The entire nation is not as crispy as Arkansas is this summer.

I am capable of feeling guilty about my affection for the pleasures of this world, but it doesn’t generally stop me from seeking them. Prior to our arrival at our first stop I had a text message from my sister-in-law asking me what kind of coffee I liked to drink and what kind of tea Sharla liked. A polite and less particular person would have said whatever they had would be fine, but I answered, “Starbucks French Roast for me, and sweet tea with lots of lemon for Sharla.” You’ll notice I was much more specific about my coffee than I was about Sharla’s tea – which is probably indicative of my sensitivities, but we won’t go there right now. My sister-in-law also knows I have some affection for beer, and she indicated that she had the beer covered, but I was a little disconcerted that she didn’t ask what kind of beer I liked, so I included that information in the text as well.

I’m not proud of the way I am, but I’m not unconscious of my attachments to this world. I enjoy the comforts of this life, and I am guilty of pursuing them. If you gave me the option of being under the shade of an umbrella on the beach with a beer and some pasta salad right now I would be there (it is after noon on the east coast). I enjoy that kind of stuff – but I also know it’s not the bread of life.

And on one level I’m pretty unnerved by this morning’s passage of scripture. I know how capable I am of being lured in to thinking that the object of this world is to accumulate as much of the good stuff in this world as I possibly can, to surround myself with as much pleasure as I can, and to attach myself to the people who I think will help me get what I think I need. I can see why the people of Israel found it so hard to believe that Jesus was the one who knew who God really is because he was not a traditionally powerful and dazzling person. They knew where he grew up and it was not in the governor’s mansion.

I can tell you, this was not an easy passage for me to read this week. This passage exposes some real conflict that arose between the people who experienced the living presence of God in the life of Jesus Christ, and people who saw him as a nobody who was causing trouble in their comfortable and righteous neighborhood. And in the face of this conflict Jesus didn’t play nice. In this particular situation the people who were having the most trouble accepting who he was were the people who were the most attached to the traditional ways of Israel, and in response to that he said that the bread he has to offer was better than the bread that Moses provided.

This isn’t an easy passage for me to read because I understand how easy it is to be powerfully attached to a way of living that we find to be really comfortable, and I can see how threatening Jesus was to the people who were the most comfortable with the way things were. I don’t think Jesus had a problem with people enjoying nice things. The followers of John the Baptist were suspicious of Jesus because he didn’t avoid good food and drink. But Jesus recognized the emptiness of building our lives around the stuff of this world, he identified the problem of clinging to practices that desensitized awareness of God, and he refused to support patterns of existence that disenfranchised those who were the most vulnerable and alienated. Jesus didn’t have a problem with Moses, but he stood against much of what was done in Moses’ name, and in so doing he became vulnerable and alienated. He also became the living bread that came down from heaven.

And our challenge is to partake of this living bread and not to wave it in front of others as if we have received a superior product. I think it’s easy for us Christians to read a passage like this with an air of superiority. It’s easy to get sort of pumped up by this claim of Jesus to be the kind of bread that surpasses the quality of the bread Moses had to offer, and to think that other faith traditions never even had any bread to offer, but this claim of Jesus to be the bread of life has nothing to do with triumphalism. Jesus was triumphant over the demonic forces that propel people to pursue self-serving and death-dealing agendas, but this is no reason for us to feel any superiority in claiming to be followers of Jesus.

It’s just as easy for us to mishandle the bread that Jesus provided as it was for those who died after eating the bread of Moses. Our temptation is to say all the right words that are associated with Jesus without actually allowing God to lead us in to the truth about Jesus.

I’ve enjoyed watching the drama of the Olympics over the past two weeks. I’m totally amazed at the level of performance of the men and women who prepare for the various events, and it’s easy to be drawn in to the various dramas that are associated with the athletes. And of course there is a lot of heartbreak and pain associated with the winners and losers. While there is hardly any difference between what the gold medal winners are able to do and the silver and bronze medal winners do – coming in second or third is an unsatisfying consolation. We revere winners, and we want to be associated with winners. Don’t think I haven’t taken some pleasure in seeing the United States surpass China in the overall number of medals and in gold medals. As I indicated earlier, I often play for the wrong team.

But I know what’s wrong with wanting to be on top, and I also know that’s what we try to do with Jesus. We try to turn Jesus in to the Gold Medal winner in the salvation games, and that’s not who he was or is. I believe he is the living bread of life that came down from heaven, but he is not in competition with other sources of nourishment for our souls. As Jesus said, we are all taught by God. It’s up to God to teach us and God can use any tool God wants to use to bring us in to divine understanding. I believe anyone who has knowledge of God will be connected to Jesus whether they know Jesus’ name or not because Jesus is perfectly connected to God.

And anyone who wants to be connected to Jesus in order to be superior to anyone else doesn’t know anything about Jesus – regardless of how much adoration they may heap on Jesus. When it came to the ultimate dual, Jesus gave up his flesh for the sake of other people, and that very act serves as an eternal reminder of what Jesus thought about this affection we have for earthly superiority.

And this is actually good news for us. As successful as any of may be in this world for various periods of time or regardless of how much access any of us have to the finer things and the pleasures of this world – there is nothing that can compare to the living bread of life that came down from heaven. If you’ve got Jesus in your heart it really doesn’t matter what comes your way or goes away. I know I can get real particular about the quality of the coffee and everything else, but I also take comfort in seeing that life isn’t about having all the best things. That’s a hard game to win, and nobody wins for long.

Even the best athletes fade after about 3 trips to the Olympics. We aren’t built to last forever in this world, and it’s good to know that we can become attached to something who’s nature is eternal.

I’ve had the pleasure of having some contact recently with a good hearted person who has about finished their run on earth. She is a person who has been sensitive to the kind of knowledge that God imparts, and it’s a beautiful thing to see a graceful person approach death. I’ve been reminded that when you’ve become nourished by the bread of life it’s not a problem when you are unable to eat the bread of this world.

It’s easy to resist the wisdom of Jesus and to try to hold on to the stuff of this world. In many ways our earthly existence is dominated by conflicts that are fueled by our refusal to partake of the bread that came from heaven and to stuff ourselves with the kind of bread that keeps us hungry. Some people only discover the value of the bread of life when death is their only option, but Jesus is trying to serve us now, and by the grace of God we will see and hear and eat and share and experience the abundance that is available to us all now and forevermore.
Amen.

“God’s Un-Natural Laws”
John 6:1-21

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

I have the good fortune of living across the street from the notable journalist and author, Mara Leveritt. Every once in while we are out moving our yard-watering hoses at the same time, and I always enjoy engaging her in conversation. Some of you may know that they are currently making a movie based on her book, Devil’s Knot, which documents the tragic death of the three young boys in West Memphis, and the tragic conviction of the three slightly older boys which became known as the West Memphis Three.

Mara and her partner, Linda, recently returned from a trip to visit family in North Carolina, but they stopped by a small town outside of Atlanta where they are currently shooting the film. It was interesting to hear what it was like to be on the set. She said she didn’t get to visit with Reese Witherspoon, who is in the film, but she did get to visit with Colin Firth, who plays the role of the private investigator, Ron Lax, who played a really large role in the whole story.

I think you can see why I like to strike up conversation with Mara – she does interesting work. But what she does is really hard work. She told me that she was on some kind of board one time that our retired Bishop Kenneth Hicks was on as well. She said he made the comment one time that her work of providing a weekly article for the Arkansas Times newspaper was not unlike the work of a preacher – who has to come up with something to say on a weekly basis. And then he followed up his comment by saying that her work was harder because she had to rely on facts.

I responded by saying that that was very true and that I never let the facts get in the way of what I want to say. And I stand in a long line of other preachers, teachers, and Gospel writers who didn’t let facts get in the way of what needed to be said.

While today’s scripture may well have sounded like a factual account of what happened on a grassy hill and on a turbulent sea to the pre-scientific thinkers of the 2nd century, I’m guessing that John’s account of this miraculous feeding followed by a stroll by Jesus on top of violent waters does not strike the average American as being entirely plausible. I’m not saying I know what did or didn’t happen, but I am sure that this is not an easy story to accept at face value by people who don’t believe anything that isn’t verified by factcheck.org.

But as I said earlier, I’m not inclined to let the facts get in the way of what I believe to be true, and I believe there is a lot of truth to these miraculous stories. I’m inclined to believe that because we are the creation of a gracious God who’s love and design for life is so far beyond anything we can imagine – un-natural things happen to us sometimes that give us a glimpse of eternal truths.

John may or may not be reporting events that could have been captured on an iphone for youtube, but I really don’t care what exactly happened. What I care about is the truth that moved John to tell these stories in this way. What I trust to be true is that God was at work in Jesus in such a way that people were profoundly nourished by his presence, they were saved by his words, and they were delivered by his touch. And I believe that sometimes those powerful experiences came about in some unnatural ways.

I’ve had conversations with three different people this last week who told me of things that have happened to them that were super-natural.
One person told of how religiously distressed he was during his late-teens, and how he went to hear an evangelist one night that was very heavy handed, and how he went home in tears. He said he avoided talking to his parents and went straight to bed because he didn’t want them to know how upset he was by what he had heard. And when he woke up the next morning he said he saw words on his wall that he can quote to this day. He said he really didn’t understand what the words meant, but they gave him a miraculous sense of peace, and they propelled him to continue to seek what it means to live in relationship with a loving God.

Another person told me of sitting outside one day, and experiencing their surroundings becoming very un-naturally illuminated. There were no words connected to this experience, but they had this sense of there being something really nice beyond the veil of this world.

I also heard the story of a woman who said she all but died from drowning in a pool when she was 12 years old. My friend told me she had been forced under water by another girl who wasn’t malicious, but who wasn’t accustomed to the water and didn’t know what she was doing when she held her underwater with her legs. My friend told me that she actually came to see herself rising above the pool and into a brilliantly peaceful light and that from her vantage point she saw the man who dove in to the pool to save her. She said the next thing she knew she was spitting up water on the side of the pool. She said because of this she has never had a fear of dying, but she still can’t stand to be grabbed when she’s in the water.

I don’t tell you these things as any kind of proof that God exists. I didn’t make up these stories, but I wasn’t on hand to verify any of these events. Nor do I have a story of a supernatural event of my own to top any of these stories, but I do have this sense that we live in a world that is not contained by what we think of as natural laws.

I’m not a good student of physics. I not only fail to understand much about quantum physics – I never even had a good grasp of Newtonian physics. When I took physics as an undergraduate student I always considered myself to have a good conceptual understanding of what it was about, but whenever a test would come around I came to realize that there were some gaps in my working knowledge of physics.

So it might be that my understanding of the metaphysical world isn’t hampered by my understanding of the physical world, but as I indicated earlier, I’m not a person who ever lets the facts get in the way of my beliefs. It’s not hard for me to believe that people were nourished in miraculous ways by Jesus. I believe he had such a profound understanding of God that he enabled the lines between heaven and earth to become less visible.

My faith doesn’t depend on Jesus being able to defy gravity and multiply bread and fish, but I do like it when I get a glimpse of something more than surface existence, and sometimes it happens. Unfortunately we live in a world that generally operates by some hard and fast rules that aren’t kind to most people. We human beings are very vulnerable to the way in which everything from the weather to the economy to the random eruption of violence and disease wreak havoc in our lives. We need a shelter from these storms of life, and John told this story to remind us of where to find it.

What miraculous stories convey to me is the truth that we aren’t as far removed from God as it often feels, and that what we often sense to be hard and fast rules aren’t as hard and fast as we think. This is not to say that we don’t need boats to get across lakes or to go to Kroger to get our groceries, but Jesus wanted us to see that food and water are not the most essential elements of life. And sometimes things happen that put us in touch with the more essential elements of life. Sometimes these miraculous revelations come through simple connections we make with neighbors, friends, or even our own families.

I would love to witness 5000 people being fed with 5 loaves and a couple of fish or to see Jesus walking out to a storm-tossed boat, but it doesn’t take that much to keep me going. I’m grateful when in the midst of this chaotic and frantic world I can have a conversation with someone who provides me with a sense of belonging and connection to God’s vast design of life. It’s easy to feel lost and alone, and it can feel like a miracle when the veil gets lifted and you recognize that we are not confined by the ordinary rules of mere existence.

Our lives don’t have to be defined by the godless pressures of life as usual. If Jesus tried to teach anything, he tried to teach us to live by the un-natural rule of love above all. It’s a hard rule to live by. I think the crowd wanted to make him king so he would establish love to be the rule of life, and it seems like it would be so much easier to follow this rule if everyone had to do it, but Jesus wanted us to learn to love regardless of what we encounter in life.

Jesus was the embodiment of God’s love, and we are not only called to believe this – we are called to trust this, and to make his way of living our way of living as well. The exercise of love can be as un-natural as walking on water, but it can be as simple as engaging a neighbor in conversation. The exercise of love is what will delivers us from the bounds of surface reality, and it puts us in touch with the One who makes the eternal rules.

Like Phillip, our vision of reality get’s frequently tested, and we are usually unable to see beyond the surface of life as usual. But sometimes the miracle happens and we are invited to see how much more there is, and how much better life can be if we will trust God and love well.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Falling Forward
John 3:1-17
1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

I went to my niece’s high school graduation a couple of weeks ago in Hot Springs. It was an impressive event. It lasted about three hours less than a Central High School graduation, which was my last experience with a high school graduation ceremony. There weren’t many speeches, and they were well done. The high school principal gave what could probably be called the commencement address, and what he said was clever and encouraging and interesting and according to my son, Lucas it was somewhat lifted from a Nike commercial that aired a few years ago.

In the course of his speech, the principal shared some interesting statistics about Michael Jordan. He told the class that over the course of his career, Michael Jordan missed 9000 shots, he lost 300 games, and 26 times he went up for the final shot of the game – and he missed.

The theme of his speech was the importance of falling forward – to keep pushing ahead regardless of their failures, and I liked that idea. So I lifted both the theme from his speech and the statistics from the Nike commercial for my sermon this morning. I like the idea of putting yourself out there in a potentially unfortunate situation in hope of moving in to a better situation. I guess I’m thinking of the value of taking risks – of not being afraid to get involved in situations that may go badly.

And I guess one of the nuances of falling forward instead of backward is that you need to exercise some discretion about the risks you take. I don’t think this high school principal was advocating that these graduates just go out and find something risky to do. He might should have balanced his message with the reminder that the final words of many Arkansans has been, “Hey watch this…!” Wisdom requires us to measure the risks we take, and for there to be some benefit to the effort whether things work out well or not.

I say all of this because I think this exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus represents some risk and some failure, but I also think something good came from it. I think the fact that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night represents the element of risk that it took for him to speak to Jesus in such a candid way. Jesus was a highly suspicious character in the eyes of the Pharisees. The world according to the Pharisees was very clearly defined, and they didn’t have a place in it for someone like Jesus. And the world that the Pharisees had constructed was very fragile. They were having to appease the Romans at the same time they were trying to guide the people who were trying to be faithful to God.

The Pharisees recognized how dangerous to their program a charismatic leader like Jesus could be. The only credibility the Pharisees had with the Romans was that they seemed to be able to keep things under control and they were pretty effective at collecting the required taxes, and their position was very threatened by someone like Jesus. But he was un-ignorable. They had to deal with him, and they were generating plans to deal with him, but Nicodemus wasn’t entirely comfortable with those plans. He had some actual curiosity about Jesus, and he took the risk of trying to find out more about him.

Jesus didn’t make it easy for him. He didn’t praise him for taking this small step out of the world that held him hostage, but he did engage with him in a conversation that we find to be very gratifying. It’s out of this conversation that we have gained the concept of being born-again, and in spite of the fact that this concept has been somewhat hijacked by some modern day Pharisees who like to define what it looks like to be born again, this is a powerfully good image for us.

The possibility of being born again is the best news a person who is living in a deathly way can get. I get the sense that Nicodemus was not happy with the way he was living, and while he didn’t immediately latch on to what Jesus was saying, I think it planted a seed in his heart that continued to grow. We actually hear about Nicodemus two more times in John’s gospel.

Once happens when Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Festival of Booths, which is the third of the large Jewish Festivals that people were required to attend in Jerusalem. Jesus was teaching at the Temple and the Jewish leaders were appalled that he would do that. They sent their guards to seize him, but the guards were sort of taken by what he was saying so they returned to the Chief Priests and Pharisees without him. These authorities were criticizing the guards when Nicodemus steps in and points out that the Law didn’t allow them to judge anyone without a thorough examination of what they were doing – which was not what his peers wanted to hear and they gave him a hard time about it.

The last thing we hear about Nicodemus occurs after Jesus’ crucifixion. Another one of his secret followers, Joseph of Arimathea, provided a tomb for Jesus, and we are told that Nicodemus brought about 75 pounds of aloe and myrrh for the anointing of his body – which sounds like the action of someone who had come to love Jesus – you might even say it sounds like someone who had been born again.

Certainly he was someone who was falling forward. He didn’t become one of the outspoken leaders of the faith, but at the end of the story he wasn’t in the same place where he started, and that’s probably the best thing that can happen to any of us.

I love this concept of being born again, and I know that it happens. I heard another great story on that radio show, Snap Judgement, that I love to listen to and have mentioned before. It was a story about a woman who went out for a short jog one morning prior to the marathon she planned to run the next day, and she got hit by a car that ran a stop sign and she woke up 18 months later – blind, bald, unable to speak, and weighing 68 pounds. She thinks she probably looked more like ET than the 23 year-old Marine that she was before she was hit. She was on her own and the hospital released her to a sr. citizen’s home for lack of a better idea. They had no hope for her recovery.

She moved in to this home with nothing but the scrubs she was wearing and a suitcase full of medical records. Fortunately some of the residents saw her as a person with potential and they worked with her. There were some men who taught her to play scrabble. They had their own version of the game that highlighted four letter words, so it was greatly simplified, fun, and was much more effective than any formal program of speech therapy had been.

And then a woman who was a former teacher took it upon herself to teach her to write, and the fact that this woman had Alzheimer’s disease meant that there was a lot of repetition to the lessons. These sr. citizens turned out to provide her with the best rehabilitation she could have received. She stayed there for a year, and not only did they enable her to communicate effectively, they raised money to send her to a school for blind people. She took off from there, and she eventually became a neuro-scientist. You can google Ramona Pierson, and hear her tell her story on a Ted Talk – which are lectures given by some of the most remarkable people in the world.

She considers her rehabilitation to have been the result of some extreme radical collaboration. And I do too. She isn’t a theologian, and I honestly don’t know if she is connected to any kind of faith tradition, but I’m unable to see what happened to her as anything less than some extreme collaboration that involved some remarkable people, but it also involved the most extremely radical partner of all – the Holy Spirit – which is what truly enables us to be reborn in powerful ways.

I haven’t said much about today being Trinity Sunday, and I doubt if anyone showed up today in hope of hearing a good sermon on the doctrine of the Trinity, but this concept of radical collaboration gives me a grip on the Trinity. I like to think of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as being a type of divine collaboration that has not only created everything that is, but continues to work with all of creation and each of us to bring us in to harmony with each other and with God.

Like Nicodemus, we can be slow to realize how God is present in our lives, and we can stay stuck in old lives for too long, but I also believe that none of us are too far removed from the reach of God to be pulled in to new life. Whether we are hesitant to extract ourselves from the lure of false securities or we are too helpless to do anything for ourselves and are totally dependent upon the initiative of others to carry us in to new lives – rebirth can happen. At some point we all have decisions to make and actions to take to fully participate in the new life God provides, but this new world is out there for all of us.

It’s always by the grace of God that we find our way into new life in collaboration with God, but it does require us to take some risks and to fall. Failure is not just an option, it is a given, but so is the presence of God. And God can use our failures to do glorious things. This divinely radical collaboration thing is something to behold. It’s something in our midst, and it’s something to be trusted. Regardless of how we fall, God is there to lift us up and move us forward. We don’t always get it, or get on board with it, but it doesn’t go away.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are here to stay. Thanks be to God for the creative avenue to life that this holy presence provides for us today and forever. Amen

Launched!
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.’

You may not have had any interest in the latest space news, but a private company has recently launched a spacecraft that has successfully docked with the International Space Station. I don’t pay a lot of attention to space exploration news, but I find this to be a pretty compelling story. It’s some interesting technology, and I think it’s opened a door to a new world of sorts. I’m guessing it will be possible to buy a ticket for a ride in to the heavens above before long. They’re going to have to get their capsule back to earth with a relatively soft landing before they will be able to sell many tickets, but I sense that this is on it’s way. It will be interesting to see how much one of those tickets will cost, but I’m guessing there’s a market out there for such a ride.

I mention this because I’m sort of struck by both the parallels and the contrasts between the launch of this spacecraft and the Day of Pentecost as reported in the Book of Acts. Both events were accompanied by lots of wind noise and fire, and each represent a form of interaction between heaven and earth, but there are some significant differences as well. The exclusiveness involved in space-travel is in pure contrast to the profoundly unifying and equalizing action of the Holy Spirit, and while there is a game-changing aspect of this new space endeavor, it doesn’t touch the extent of change that came with this other noisy firey thing we call the Day of Pentecost. It’s not our ability to penetrate the heavens that that gives me hope – it’s the Spirit that came from Heaven to penetrate our world that gives me hope.

I’m impressed by the ingenuity of human beings to navigate a capsule in outer space, but I take comfort in the wisdom of God, who continues to find ways to help us learn to live together here on earth.

There’s some history behind this event we call Pentecost that’s interesting to me. The word, Pentecost, has nothing to do with wind, or fire, or spirit. It comes from a Latin word that means fifty, and it refers to a Jewish festival that took place 50 days after Passover. But this Jewish festival of Pentecost was probably some kind of harvest festival that predated the formation of the Jewish community in Israel. In other words, what was once a pagan harvest festival became known as the Festival of Pentecost in the Jewish community, and while it still had some harvest festival connotations it was also given a religious identity and it became one of the three major Jewish religious festivals. This was one of the events that all good Jews were expected to show up for at the Temple in Jerusalem.

As I said, the Festival of Pentecost takes place 50 days after Passover, which is 7 weeks after Passover, and the date of Passover always coincided with the beginning of the barley harvest. The Festival of Pentecost is sometimes called the Festival of Weeks because it took seven weeks to harvest their different grains, so it still functioned as a harvest celebration, but it also took on religious significance. The Feast of Pentecost commemorated the giving of the law to Moses at Sinai.

You won’t be tested on all of this at the end of today’s service, but I think it is sort of interesting to think of the ways in which an ancient harvest festival evolved into a Jewish religious festival that marks the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai. And while all of these devout Jews were in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost this remarkable thing happens that gives birth to the church and a whole new connotation to this word Pentecost.

So this event that began as a harvest festival took on a name that made reference to fifty and now that name is given to a day that we think of as being full of rushing wind and firey tongues. We United Methodists along with many other denominations associate the Day of Pentecost with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, and it happens 50 days after Easter, so there is still some connection with fifty, but it’s sort of an amazing progression. It would have been hard to predict that this word that means fifty and was originally connected to the seven weeks of harvest would end up playing such a large role in the church. It’s sort of amazing that this word that means 50 in Latin is on giant houses of worship where people speak in unusual tongues, but that’s where we are today.

And while I have no idea why this Latin word meaning fifty has come to represent everything from the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses to a hair style and a way of worshiping it’s easy for me to trust that God continually works with who we are, where we are, and what we are doing to move us toward holy communion with each other and with God.

I believe that God was behind the arrival of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments weren’t heavy-handed rules that came from a power-hungry God who wanted to tell people what to do. The Ten Commandments came to the Israelites as a gift from God to help them live together in harmony. These Ten Commandments were what enabled the Israelites to hold themselves together. The Israelites were liberated at Passover, but they would have dispersed if they hadn’t had good instruction on how to live together.

Over time, the rules took on a life of their own, and the Jewish community came to be oppressed by these regulations. The Jewish leaders had come to replace obedience to God with adherence to religious details, and one of the most significant things Jesus did was to identify this distortion of the faith. And this was the most dangerous thing Jesus did. The religious leaders of Israel had tremendous power. They had the power to say who was in proper observance of the laws and consequently who was in or out of God’s favor. They determined people’s access to God, and that’s not what God intended. This good gift of basic guidelines on how to live in relationship with God and with one another had turned in to a barrier to God and community, and Jesus found it necessary to break this deathly pattern.

Of course this resulted in his own death, but it was a death that brought new life. Jesus didn’t die in vain, Jesus revealed that access to God is not rooted in following religious protocols but through the exercise of profound trust in God and love for other people. The truth of this way of living was profoundly revealed on Easter morning, but just as the Israelites needed some instruction after they were delivered from slavery in Egypt, the followers of Jesus needed some instruction after they were delivered from the tyranny of religious legalism.

And that’s what happened on the Day of Pentecost. God didn’t leave it up to Peter and the other disciples to try to map out this new community on their own. They experienced the arrival of a powerful spirit in their midst. It was a spirit that helped people from many different cultures become unified behind the essential message of Christ.

It’s a beautiful vision. People of different languages and customs coming together around the unifying message of God’s love for all people. It was a game changing moment for the followers of Jesus – they found themselves caught up in something that was so much larger than themselves.

I’ve never been in a tornado, but my impression is that when a tornado comes in to your neighborhood you no longer wonder what’s in charge. The power of a tornado is unmistakable, and so was the power of this Spirit that invaded the lives of the early disciples. They were swept up in something that was out of their control and under the control of God. It was a profound shift, and one that we can all hope to have happen to us.

I think it’s fine that there are people who are trying to figure out how to launch large things and people out in to the universe, but my hope rests in trying to get launched by God into a new way of relating to other people here on earth. A way of living that’s based on profound trust in God and love for all others.

It may well have been on the fiftieth day after Easter that the Holy Spirit made a grand entrance into the lives of the disciples, but my hope is that it will show up again today and tomorrow and the next day – whenever we find ourselves facing situations we don’t want to be in or people treating us in ways we don’t want to be treated. And I hope that Pentecostal spirit will get me out of my self-serving-self-righteous antagonistic attitude and launch me into the kingdom of heaven where I will see and understand my neighbor in a new and loving way. That’s the kind of Pentecostal person I want to be, and that’s the kind of tongue I think God wants me to have.

That’s the kind of miracle I want to see in me and in you, and by the grace of God it can happen.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.