Thompson's Blog

Divine Connections

Luke 7:1-10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Spiritual Fitness

Romans 5:1-5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God!

Amen

Blown Away – Again

Acts 2:1-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the good news – thanks be to God!

Amen

The Ground Crew

Luke 24:44-53

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God – Amen.

Accommodations for Christ

John 14:23-29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Out There

Revelation 7:9-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen

Dancing With God

Psalm 30

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

This isn’t something I like to make a big deal about, but I’m gifted in an unusual way. It’s not one of the gifts of the spirit that Paul lists, and it’s not something that comes over me very often, but I am a remarkable dancer. I’m not a particularly good dancer, but people often make remarks about my style of dancing. What I lack in grace I make up with enthusiasm, and it makes people feel good to see me dance. At least that’s how I choose to interpret the pointing and laughter.

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

I think my kids were teenagers when I first demonstrated my capacity to bust a move, and I found that it made quite an impression on them.  But that was only the beginning of my rebirth as a dancer. When our daughter Liza, graduated from college they had a dance one evening as part of the festivities, and that was the night I fully embraced the dancing man that I was born to be. I think I made quite an impression on many of Liza’s friends. Over the course of that graduation weekend many of them told me they remembered me from the Friday night dance.

OK – it’s more of a capacity to be ridiculous than an ability to dance, but the truth is that it feels like a gift when I’m in a situation where I feel free to be ridiculous. That is not a state of mind that I can create for myself. It truly is a gift to feel such joy that you don’t even mind looking like you are out of your mind. This is not how I feel most of the time. I may often appear to be out of my mind, but I’m generally all wound up about something that doesn’t feel like joy. Life is hard, and I don’t always feel like dancing. Neither did the author of this prayer that comes to us from so long ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharla and I actually took some dance lessons last year. We were trying to learn the basic steps of swing dancing, but it wasn’t easy for a natural born dancer like myself to learn an actual form of dancing. I made an effort to do as I was taught, and what I really found challenging was the need for me to lead the dance. The key to graceful dancing is for one person to provide the right signals for movement and for the other person need to know how to respond. It’s not a memorized pattern as much as it’s a series of movements that you put together in different ways.

I like to think this is how it works in this dance we are in with God. God knows what’s going on with us. God nudges us in certain ways, and if we are sensitive to those nudges we have an idea of what steps we are to take. Living in such a relationship with God is a form of a dance, but it’s not all fun and games.

You wouldn’t think that it would be dangerous to pray the Psalms, but this was not the case for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I’m guessing many of you are familiar with the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany. Bonhoeffer published a meditation on the Book of Psalms in 1940, and because of what he said in that book he was banned from publishing anything else, and he was forbidden to meet with anyone other than his family in Berlin. Bonhoeffer saw the Book of Psalms as the prayerbook of Jesus, and he considered it to be the truest guide for prayer that is available for those who seek to live and to pray as followers of Jesus Christ. The real danger of the Book of Psalms is the way in which it directs the heart of the reader to the source of true authority in life. And following that authority eventually cost Bonhoeffer his life.

That idea didn’t fit with Nazi ideology, and it can be a challenging concept for all of us. It doesn’t seem like it would be dangerous to pray the Psalms, but it is. There’s no telling what we may find ourselves called to do if we allow God to be the one true authority in our lives.

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

This Psalmist recognized that it’s easy to become too comfortable in life, and during such times there’s a form of insensitivity that we can develop toward God. Our lack of attention to God often feels like a lack of attention from God. The Psalmist speaks of God’s face being hidden, and this is what it feels like when we attain a bit too much comfort in life and when we become insensitive to the trials of others.

But it’s rare for any of us to live in sweet oblivion for long. Trouble comes, and while trouble is never welcome it’s probably when we are having the hardest times that we become the most creative in our efforts to reach God. We can see how this Psalmist engaged in a form of bargaining with God. He boldly asks: What profit is there in my death? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? I don’t know if God was persuaded by the argument, but he came through the crisis, and this moaning man was turned in to a dancing man.

To engage with God is to enter in to a relationship that’s very much like a dance. Occasionally it may look and feel like a polite waltz. Sometimes we interact with God in a manner that’s as quick and orderly as a square dance, and sometimes we strike out on our own and gyrate in ways that probably leaves God wondering what has gotten in to us, but hopefully there are times when we are moving with God in a way that feels like a passionate salsa dance.

I believe we are all natural born dance partners of God, but we’ve also got a great dance instructor. Jesus Christ is the one who truly understood how to dance with God. There were these people who didn’t like the way Jesus danced, and they tried to shut the dance down, but the dance began again on that first Easter morning, and the dancing hasn’t stopped!

Our relationship with God isn’t perfectly described as a dance, but when we live in relationship with God I don’t believe it’s possible for our souls to sit still. It’s not always pretty when we try to get our bodies to show what’s going on with our souls, but I believe God always appreciates the feeble and fumbling ways we try to express the joy that is in our hearts when we feel the saving grace that comes to us from heaven.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Sacred Space

John 20:19-31

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

I can’t read this passage of scripture without being reminded of my first experience of going before the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry in hope of being found fit for ordination. There were five of us huddled in a small room in the old Madkin Building at Camp Aldersgate, and while we weren’t experiencing fear of the Jews – we were experiencing fear of the Christians. We were being called out one by one to go before the Board of Ordained Ministry – an austere assembly of United Methodist Elders who would do some final questioning of our fitness for ministry and then they would vote on us. It was a terribly intimidating situation.

The first guy they called out never returned. We didn’t know what came of him. The second guy returned while they were voting on him, and he gave us just enough of a report of what they had asked him to raise our already spiking anxiety levels. At this point one guy pulled out his wallet and started showing us pictures of his family. My friend pointed out that this is something you would do if you were waiting to be executed. It was as if he was saying, These are the people who will miss me when I’m gone.

I don’t know how the process of reviewing people for ordination should be done, and I know it doesn’t need to be an easy process, but what I experienced was actually harrowing. When the guy came to call me before the board he actually made the joke of saying that it was time for fresh meat, and it was probably more prophetic than he intended because I actually got chewed up and spit out. They didn’t like the way I had answered some of the questions, and they voted not to ordain me that year.

There may have been other issues that played into their decision not to proceed with my ordination, and they did encourage me to come back the next year, but it was a profound encounter with religious authority. That initial rejection actually made my friends and family feel worse than it felt to me. I was enough of a non-conformist to feel a little proud of being officially rejected by church officials, but I also value the approval of other people, and I knew it was something I would manage to obtain. I came to understand what they needed to hear from me, and two years later I was authorized to be ordained. That’s when I became a frightening church official.

Getting ordained wasn’t an easy process for me, and I’m a little proud of myself for acquiring that credential, but this business of being an official Christian leader is fraught with dangers. It’s not that I feel threatened by hateful people who don’t want the love of God as it was revealed by Jesus Christ to be set loose in the world. There are places in the world where it is actually dangerous to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but that’s not the case with me.

I’m frightened by the thought of becoming the type of religious person that the followers of Jesus were hiding from. John says the disciples were hiding from the Jews, but Judaism wasn’t the problem, the problem was that the Jewish authorities were threatened by the truth that their fellow Jew revealed to the world. And we official Christians can be equally threatened by that truth. Wearing the label of an official follower of Jesus Christ isn’t physically dangerous, but it is an endlessly challenging undertaking that provides daily opportunities for failure.

I proclaim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and if I’m not careful I’ll begin to think that I’m succeeding! Identifying yourself as a Christian is dangerous business. If you aren’t careful you’ll think you are one.

The Gospel of John raises interesting issues for us. It’s a book that clearly offers this invitation to follow Jesus and to be empowered by Jesus to find true and abundant life. But it also identifies the possibility of not getting it – of being like the enemies of Christ who simply couldn’t accept who Jesus was and what he did. And as I say, I don’t think it was a problem that was unique to the Jews – Jesus was a Jew and many of the people who followed him and loved him were Jews. The problem was and is that we can let our own thoughts, aspirations, and agendas get in the way of what Jesus actually offers.

Jesus empowered his disciples to let go of their fear and to go about the work of spreading the good news of God’s eternal loving presence by breathing on them and filling them with the Holy Spirit.

You know, when people breathe on us we go running for antibiotics. Actually we don’t let people breathe on us – and I’m talking about myself. I don’t like to experience other people’s breath. You don’t have to worry about this with most people, we Americans know how to keep our distance from each other.

At least most people do. I like to have coffee with this group of men who meet on Wednesday mornings at Hardees. It’s an interesting gathering – I’ve told people I should get Continuing Education Credit for that experience. But it’s also a group you have to be careful around. One day I made the mistake of getting up and leaving my cinnamon biscuit unattended. When I came back John Minor was taking a bite of it. They all got a kick out of that, and he gave it back to me when I sat down, but I wouldn’t eat it. I told them I was afraid I would catch whatever it is that he has. He thought I was talking about his throat condition, but I was afraid of catching whatever it is that moves him to do such crazy things!

Actually, I’m totally entertained by John Minor and the interesting way he goes about life. And it wasn’t just because it was John who had touched my biscuit. I really am a bit of a germaphobe. I’m careful to not get exposed to the germs of other people, but I’m thinking we need to try to catch this thing that Jesus had.

Jesus breathed on his disciples and they caught the Holy Spirit.

Thomas said he wouldn’t believe unless he could see the wounds, put his finger in the nail-holes of Jesus’ hands and his hand into the wound on his side, and that doesn’t sound like something many of us would be saying – not without access to disposable gloves and lots of hand-sanitizer. I’m not saying we’re foolish for being germ-conscious, but I think we are probably much more careful than we are anything else.

Following Jesus is a risky community experience, and if it’s done properly we end up getting closer to people than our natural sensibilities generally allow. Jesus didn’t just want his disciples to stay safe, he wanted us to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue his dangerous and messy work. He didn’t give us false hope about what might happen to us, but he did give us the means to experience peace in the midst of frightening circumstances.

I don’t think this means we need to go looking for trouble, but I do believe it is a call to be involved in the lives of other people. It’s a call to be engaged in this world – as opposed to just maintaining some kind of proper set of beliefs from a safe distance.

This story of Thomas having doubt about the risen Christ seems to be an opportunity for the reality of Jesus’ resurrection to be told once again. And the message is that it is more of a blessing to trust in the resurrection of Jesus without physical proof, but it seems to me that Thomas was blessed for wanting such a graphic experience with Jesus. We aren’t to need proof, but it’s not such a terrible thing to want to have a close encounter with the risen Christ. We’re told not to be doubting Thomas’, but the truth is that Thomas benefitted from being honest about his perspective. Jesus isn’t threatened by people who have suspicious minds. I dare say Jesus is more troubled by people who don’t want to get their hands dirty.

We’re gathered here on the first day of the week, but we’re not behind locked doors. We aren’t threatened by our association with Jesus, but we need to be careful so that we don’t become threatening to the message of Christ. We need to be careful to actually maintain our relationship with the living presence of Jesus Christ – we need to stay close enough to him to catch what he’s got. The point of Jesus standing in the midst of his disciples, showing his wounds, breathing on them, and commissioning them to offer forgiveness and judgment is an indication of how important it is for us to be involved in the lives of other people.

This isn’t an invitation to be busy-bodies who try to insert ourselves in to other people’s business, but Christianity is a corporate experience – it’s not just an exercise of the mind. None of us have a perfect understanding of Christ or the single-handed ability to do the work of Christ. We are stronger together than we are alone. We have more access to the truth when we share our thoughts together than when we act on our own.

Our challenge and our opportunity is to find the right way to be in each other’s space. We need to be in touch with other people in helpful ways, and by so doing I think we remain close to Jesus himself. When we are close enough to others to feel their pain and to share their burdens we are in sacred space, and I believe Jesus is there with us.

The danger for us is not to share the skepticism of Thomas, but to live without passion for the calling and commission we’ve been presented. This is a world in need of fully engaged disciples who don’t live in fear of bad breath, wounded bodies, or religious authorities of any kind. Our work is hard, but our calling is high, and if we are infected by the power of the Holy Spirit there really isn’t any other germ that we should be afraid of catching.

It’s not the approval of any religious body that authorizes anyone to engage in the holy work of following Jesus Christ and spreading the good news of his living presence – such work is only authorized by the holy breath of Jesus Christ himself. And thanks be to God Jesus is still breathing on people! Jesus continues to infect and empower us. It is still possible for us to find ourselves in that sacred space where we are able to catch what he had and to share it with others.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Waking Up to Easter

John 20:1-18

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

The thing I love most about the way Easter morning is described in John’s gospel is the role of Mary Magdalene. She isn’t exactly the hero of this story. God is the hero, but Mary is the one who is first to understand what God had done, and in that sense she became the first evangelist. According to John, Mary is instructed by Jesus to go tell the good news of his resurrection. I may not be reading this right, but it looks to me like Mary is not only the first female preacher – she was the first preacher ever.

The way that John tells the story of the resurrection (and he tells it very carefully) is that Mary is the one who got the story straight and told it. Peter and this other disciple, whom Jesus loved, had the same opportunity that she had, but they didn’t stick around long enough to fully understand what had happened. This story fits in a long line of stories where God uses the person who is least regarded to do the most significant work. We’ve got all kinds of good news to celebrate this morning. Not only can God redeem the most tragic of circumstances, but God can use anyone in the process – maybe even well regarded men who work in the professional religion business – I hope that’s a possibility.

I’m always struck by the details that John includes when he tells the stories of Jesus. The stories he tells about Jesus include the kinds of details you would find if you were writing stage notes for a play. John describes how the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first, but then he only looked inside. Peter was the first to go in the tomb, and other disciple followed him. They found the linen cloths neatly set aside, and we’re told that the other disciple believed, but we don’t know what he believed because John then says they didn’t understand, and then we’re told they both went home.

Men are often accused of being unwilling to ask for directions, and I think this is an early case of that tendency. They didn’t know what was going on, but that didn’t stop them from making a decision about where they needed to go. I really don’t know what to make of this, but there’s a clear lesson here. If you’re the first person to enter the empty tomb of the recently crucified messiah — don’t go home before the angel’s appear. They really missed an opportunity. That would be a hard thing to get over.

But Mary did it right. She knew she didn’t know what was going on, and she stuck around until it all became clear. She didn’t stick around because she knew something good had happened. She suspected foul play. She addressed the angels as if they were common laborers, and she mistook Jesus for a gardener. She was feeling like the empty tomb was nothing but insult to injury, and her lack of recognition of what was going on was probably due to her inability to stop crying. Both the angels and Jesus asked her why she was weeping, and nothing penetrated her grief until Jesus said her name.

It’s not surprising that the sound of her name would get her attention. Hearing our name spoken always gets our attention. It can be frightening to hear your name when it’s spoken by someone with the power to do you harm, but it’s always a good thing to hear your name spoken in a loving manner. There’s probably nothing more comforting than to hear our named called by a cherished soul, and in this case it was absolutely transforming. Mary went from trodding through abject sorrow to bounding off in joy to tell others what had happened, and the turnaround came about through the sound of hearing Jesus call her name.

The concept of Jesus rising from the dead is a hard thing for me to get my mind around. John provides us with a lot of details about that first Easter, but it doesn’t answer every question. Some of us modern-minded people would like to know a few more details about how this came about, but I think John provided all the details we need. I think the invitation is to embrace the broad concept of what God did in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Easter morning isn’t about a mysterious biochemical process.  Easter is about the profound way God comes to us in our darkest hours and pulls us back to life from the brink of death. What Mary and Peter and the other disciples experienced was the miracle of having their absolute despair about the death of the one who promised life transformed into the celebration of reunion. I don’t know exactly what they experienced, but I know what they came to understand. They witnessed his crucifixion, and three days later they were back in touch with his living presence. It’s hard to explain, but they were certain of what they had experienced. Their despair had been reversed. The pain of death was replaced by the joy of Christ’s miraculous presence.

I’ve never been in a situation as devastating as that which Mary and the disciples found themselves. I’ve lived a relatively comfortable and sheltered life, and I’ve generally been able to obtain the things I’ve felt like I needed. Consequently, when I don’t get what I want I have a tendency to react badly. It kills me to not get what I want.

Such was the case several years ago when a position came open that I desperately wanted. This was a position I felt well qualified to handle and I was in a situation I was more than willing to leave. I also felt like I had good connections to the place, and I pulled every string within reach. I felt like a strong candidate, but at some point I came to realize I didn’t have a foot in the door. It struck me as a rigged deal on some level, and I was pretty upset about the situation.

As I say, I like to get what I want, and to not get what I felt perfectly suited to have left me feeling really angry and resentful. My wrath was directed toward one person in particular which wasn’t a particularly rational thing because that person probably had very little to do with the decision, but I held him responsible on some level, and I was having a hard time letting it go. It kept me upset for weeks, and I didn’t know what to do to get over it, but one night a remarkable thing happened to me.

And this is probably the kind of thing you should only share with a therapist, but now that I’ve got your attention I’ll tell you about a dream I had that actually enabled me get over that whole situation. I had this dream in which I murdered the person I was so angry with in a remarkably slow and brutal manner. And I know that sounds terrible, but when I woke up I just had to laugh about what I had done in my dream, and I was over it. It was a truly remarkable thing that I experienced. It was an ugly dream. I didn’t behave well in my dream, but it enabled me to let go of my hard feelings. Maybe I was about over it anyway, but on some level it felt like my life had been restored in a somewhat miraculous manner. That strange dream served to wake me up and to help me gain some new perspective.

I actually came to be very grateful that things didn’t work out in the way I had desperately tried to make it happen. As Garth Brooks would say, I thank God for that unanswered prayer. And while I’m not convinced God orchestrates all of the ups and downs of our lives, I do believe that God works at enabling us to discover new life when we feel like life is over. It’s not easy for us to hear this message. We are easily distracted by the trials and troubles that surround us. You might even say we live much of our lives in a state of semi-consciousness – numbed by the harsh realities that make us want to shut down our senses and to remain stuck in the death-fearing view we have of life.

The power of death certainly hasn’t been eliminated from this world. In fact it’s the most obvious form of power we ever see. The terrible power of death has been on full display recently with the recent bombings, and the primary story we hear is of the ever-increasing tensions that are being ramped up in the world. Death is doled out regularly in new and terrifying ways, but the message of Jesus is that the forces of hatred and death will never prevail.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ was real, but it didn’t happen immediately. The disciples were in genuine despair for a period of time, and the truth of God’s ability to restore hope in the midst of despair wasn’t obvious to everyone all at once, but this truth didn’t remain hidden for long. The crucifixion of Jesus was intended to be a painfully real display of ultimate power of death, but it failed to deliver. Death can only do so much damage before the life-restoring power of God becomes miraculously real.

It’s hard for any of us to imagine how God is going to redeem the terrible tragedies that we see happening on every level of life. Whether it’s on the scale of geopolitical conflict or the trials of personal disappointment we are all touched by the cold hand of death-dealing forces. None of us are immune from the sting of deathly power, but none of us are out of reach of the same life-giving message that Mary received and went on to deliver. Mary heard her name spoken by the living Lord of life, and she was told to spread the news.

Mary discovered that Jesus was alive and speaking and on his way to be with his God and our God – the God who has decided that death will not prevail in this world.

The message of Easter is that there is no situation that cannot be redeemed. Just as Mary was overwhelmed by the tragedy of her day until she heard the voice of Christ call her name, we can all spend a lot of time in the nightmarish world of hatred, pain, and death, but that isn’t where God wants us to remain. We may not hear Jesus call our names as quickly as we would like, but I trust he is trying to wake us all up to the reality of life. Jesus is calling for us to wake up and see that we are loved, we are forgiven, and we have the opportunity to find new life in the midst of this old world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

What the Stones Would Say

Luke 19:28-40

28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.'” 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They said, “The Lord needs it.” 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Palm Sunday is one of the most complex celebrations of the Christian year. On one hand it’s the Sunday we remember and commemorate the huge outpouring of love and support that Jesus received when he entered Jerusalem for the annual Passover feast. That was the holiest and most well attended of all the Jewish feasts, and Jesus was truly welcomed in to town as their king who came in the name of the Lord. It was a glorious welcome with people laying their garments on the ground for his donkey to walk on.

But the royal welcome didn’t last very long. The crowd that welcomed Jesus in to Jerusalem turned out to be very fickle. Within a few days, some of the same people who were filled with passionate support for Jesus turned in to infuriated accusers – others just went away silently. Things got ugly quickly, and that’s what makes the memory of this day so complex. The glorious welcome that Jesus received turns out to have been pretty hollow. The procession in to Jerusalem was great, but true faith was lacking. The grand entry serves as more of an indictment of the people than a testament to their love for Jesus.

But Jesus didn’t let the lack of understanding on the part of the people who were welcoming him in to town dampen his willingness to be so well received. While the Pharisees were largely unnerved by the show of support for him, Jesus had no desire to try to quieten the crowd. He was clearly conscious of how such a procession was going to be viewed by the Roman Governor, but he wasn’t guided by the concerns of the governor or the expectations of the people. Jesus had come to Jerusalem to carry out the work of God, and as Jesus told the Pharisees, if the people were silent, the stones would shout out.

I would never describe anyone as being, dumb as a rock, but I’ve known of others to utilize that ungenerous phrase to describe someone. Jesus might well have been familiar with such a phrase, and he might well have foreseen the behavior of the people to be so dull-minded, but he indicated the people were being as sharp as the stones by welcoming him in to Jerusalem in the way he did. Even though they didn’t really know what they were doing they were following divine protocol. God didn’t have to raise up the stones to cry out in response to his entry – the people came through for a moment. The occasion called for an enthusiastic welcome and the people provided it!

Crowds are funny things. Sometimes they serve to express the truth in profound ways. It’s moving to see a mass of people show up for a righteous cause. A mass of people can make a profound statement in a way that an individual voice simply can’t convey. Sometimes people do show up in powerful numbers for the right reasons. There are those occasions where the stones would know to cry out if the people didn’t, and it’s a beautiful thing when the people come through.

But sometimes crowds can become ugly things. Crowds can serve to hide the cowardice of individuals, and they can empower people to do things that individuals would never do on their own. As surely as there’s nothing more inspiring than a crowd that’s moved to do the right thing, there’s nothing more frightening than a crowd on an evil mission, and there was an element of both of these realities during the final week of Jesus’ life. One crowd stood up for Jesus in a bold way, and the other crowd was totally willing to give him up for what seemed like a better deal.

I can’t help but to take note of the crowd mentalities we are witnessing these days, and I think we are seeing both the best and the worst of mass movements. The current presidential primaries have generated more interest than anything I’ve witnessed in my forty-years of voting, and the heightened political passions of the day have moved people to do both good and bad things. Some people have gotten interested in political discourse for the first time in their lives, and other people have been moved to behave really badly. There is a lot of interest in the fate of our nation, and as I said last week, I believe we have this in common with the people of Israel during the time that Jesus entered Jerusalem.

Jesus didn’t ride in to Jerusalem wearing a hat that said, Making Israel Great Again, but you can bet that this is what many of the people who were cheering him on were expecting him to do. I heard a political commentator raise an interesting rhetorical question the other day. He wondered what will happen if Donald Trump gets elected and the nation doesn’t grow weary of winning – which is what he has suggested might happen if he becomes the president.

Because we people do like to win, and it doesn’t matter who your candidate is. We all want our chosen candidate to win because we think they have the best ideas for how we can succeed as a nation. We voters want a leader who is going to make us secure and prosperous. There are a lot of different strategies about how that will happen, but I’m thinking we are all pretty similar in what we want – we want to win.

I was reminded of how much I like to win as I was watching that game between UALR and Purdue the other day. I’m not an avid UALR fan, but I spent 13 years on that campus, and I was so happy they made it in to the NCAA tournament. I was amazed when they were able to catch up and send the game in to over-time, and by the end of the second overtime I was screaming at the television. It’s easy to get excited about winning.

It was easy for the people of Israel to think that Jesus was going to win this struggle with the Romans. The things Jesus had been doing on his journey to Jerusalem had become widely known, and people were ready to start winning again. There was a lot of enthusiasm for Jesus, but there wasn’t so much understanding of him.

I’ll never forget something that happened at an anti-nuclear power rally I attended in Fayetteville in the late 1970s. Now that we see what fossil fuels are doing to our environment my opposition to nuclear power has softened, but in the wake of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant scare I jumped on the bandwagon of opposition to nuclear power.

So there was a somewhat enthusiastic crowd assembled one day to question the wisdom of using nuclear power to generate electricity, and one of the speakers at that gathering was a popular physics professor named Dr. Art Hobson. He was a critic of nuclear power plants, and he gave a well-reasoned and well-received speech on what was wrong with the technology. I was enjoying the feeling of standing among what felt like the most enlightened and forward thinking people of the day until someone from the crowd shouted Why don’t we just use electric power instead of nuclear power!!?

Sometimes people’s enthusiasm extends beyond their understanding. And this certainly seems to have been the case when Jesus entered Jerusalem.

Jesus knew what was going on but he went along with it anyway. He knew that many of the people who were whooping it up and laying their clothes on the ground before him had no idea what he was up to. The hoopla that surrounded his entry into Jerusalem may very well have been very humiliating to Jesus because he knew how fickle enthusiasm can be — but he didn’t spoil the party. He didn’t even try to make sure everyone had the perfect understanding of what was going on. He played along – knowing that the widespread support he was receiving was about as deep as the layer of clothing that his donkey was walking upon.

He wasn’t dealing with people who held deep spiritual understanding of what he was about. He was dealing with people who had deep animosity toward the Romans, deep needs for economic opportunity, deep desire for Jewish autonomy, and deep needs for personal healing and transformation. Many of them had deep passion for Jesus, but it wasn’t very clear to any of them how he intended to redeem the world and save our souls.

They had deep desire for Jesus to address their deep needs, but they didn’t like the way he chose to go. It’s hard for any of us to believe that we can experience victory without the use of conventional and overwhelming power. We’re inclined to think the only way to win is to destroy our enemies and establish ourselves in positions of power, but Jesus knew otherwise.

And according to Jesus the stones knew what he was doing. Stones have never been known to actually rise up and speak the truth, but I think Jesus was pointing to the stones as the representatives of deep truth. Stones aren’t fickle. They aren’t hard and unmovable one day and powdery soft the next. Stones are stable and dependable. As are the ways of God and the words of truth.

The kingdom of God is far more substantial than any nation that has ever existed or will ever exist, but it isn’t as easily identified or accessed. The people of Israel thought they could establish a nation that would fully represent God’s presence on earth and they expected Jesus to be the king of that nation, but Jesus knew that could never be done. Jesus was a king, and he showed us the path to life in God’s kingdom, but it’s not a path that’s easy to follow. It doesn’t look like the path to victory, but what he showed us is that the way to win life in the kingdom of God is to allow love to be our only guide.

Palm Sunday is a day full of contradiction. I wonder whether we should use this day to mourn or to celebrate, but I know what Jesus would have us do. Jesus has brought us a beautiful gift, and we need to acknowledge it. Jesus came that we might live, and that’s about all we need to know. We need to embrace the wisdom of the stones and get happy about the substantial gift that we have been given. Jesus came that we might live, and by the grace of God we’ll learn to put the proper amount of trust in the voices of fickle politicians, and our whole trust in the life of the one who knew the path to true life.

We are invited to join with the stones, and to praise God for the great gift that came to us in the life of Jesus Christ. The one who perfectly showed us how to win true life.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.