Thompson's Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s It to You?
Mark 6:1-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dependence Day
Mark 6:1-13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And thanks be to God for that! Amen

Fantastic Voyage!
Mark 4:35-41

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seedy Possibilities
Mark 4:26-34

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God’s Wildest Child
Mark 3:20-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God – Amen!

Our Eternal-Life Coach
John 3:1-17

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

I’ll be preaching three more sermons here after today. I spent some time last week trying to think of some way to wrap up my preaching tenure in some kind of coherent package or series of sermons. I tried, but I failed. In fact trying to come up with a comprehensive preaching plan all but put me in a fetal position. I’ve never been able to construct a series of sermons and I’m certainly not equipped to do that when you enter the additional factor of departure emotions — and I’ve got a few of those floating around in my gut.

This is not a particularly calm moment in my life. I expect to become a grandfather sometime within the next few weeks. I’ll be moving from the house I’ve been living in for the last nineteen years in about a month, and my daughter and her husband will be moving to Kansas City in about two months and I understand they will be taking our grandchild with them. And within that profound mix of emotions I’ve got some feelings for this church that I’ve been fully engaged with for the past six years.

In all honesty, I’m a mess right now. I’m not a terrible mess, but I’m emotionally all over the place! I’m feeling a lot of loss and a lot of love these days. But I’m also enjoying the status of a short term pastor – which is to feel the release of some responsibility. I haven’t been able to fix everything, but it’s basically too late – the time has come for me to distribute my current set of problems to other people. I’ll be getting a new set of problems soon, but I’m enjoying the bliss of ignorance for now.

So don’t count on a coherent series of sermons from me over the next few weeks, but I plan to be here. I’ll find something to talk about, and you can count on Jesus being here – Jesus always seems to be on hand during a crisis.

I actually feel some kinship with Nicodemus right now. Nicodemus showed up to speak to Jesus at night, and there are a number of ways in which I feel like I’m in the dark. I can’t really see what’s going on. Some people think this Nicodemus character embodied darkness – someone who chose to remain in the dark, but I have a more sympathetic reading of Nicodemus. I don’t think of him as someone who loved the darkness as much as I see him as someone who found himself in the dark and wasn’t quite sure how to get out of it.

These Jewish authorities are portrayed as pretty horrible people, and they earned that reputation, but like most people who find themselves operating in hellish systems, he didn’t set out to be an enemy of the son of God. He didn’t go in to that line of work because he wanted to be spiritually ignorant. I dare say he was well motivated to become a Pharisee – it’s probably what all the sharp-minded conscientious young people of his day wanted to become.

Nicodemus didn’t find himself within the community of people who rejected Jesus because he had decided to resist the work of God in the world. He was a man who had gotten caught up in something he didn’t fully understand. He was in the dark – he didn’t know what to do, but he didn’t feel very good about what he was doing.

I don’t feel like I’m in as dark of a place as Nicodemus was. I’m happy to say I don’t feel like I’m collaborating with people who are plotting to kill the embodiment of God on earth, but I am in the dark in some significant ways. To use the metaphor that Jesus used – maybe I’m feeling a little bit like I’m in the position of a baby who is yet to be born. It’s dark and I don’t really know what’s going on, but I feel like something is about to happen. And something needs to happen – I’m not in a position that I can remain in for much longer.

My soon to be born granddaughter and I have a lot in common. I’m between worlds. I’m not sure what the new one will look like, but as surely as nature takes it’s course, the institutional wheels are turning, and I’m about to find myself living in a whole new environment. Which isn’t all bad, but there are a lot of unknowns.

I’m feeling it, and many of you are feeling it as well. Whether it’s the transition that the church is undergoing or your own personal transition that’s taking place I don’t think it’s an uncommon feeling to be in the figurative dark. This is a hard world to navigate, and it’s not unusual to not know what is about to happen or what needs to happen. Nicodemus may not have shown up with the right set of expectations for what was needing to happen, but I give him a lot of credit for showing up to engage in a conversation with Jesus. He may have come to him in the dark of night, but he didn’t have to show up at all, and that indicates to me that he was at least trying to find his way.

I attended a clergy training event about a week ago, and as strange as this may sound I actually got something out of it. I can’t say that about all of the training events I attend, but this was a two-day event that took place at Mt. Eagle Retreat Center – which is a retreat center that sits on a bluff overlooking the headwaters of the Little Red River. I’ve said this before, but the place is misnamed. Instead of calling it Mt. Eagle, they should have named that place after the buzzards that like to soar above the bluffs that are along one border of the property. A buzzard may not be much to look at up close, but they fly beautifully and you are far more likely to see a buzzard than an eagle at Mt. Eagle. I don’t want to make too much of the biologically inappropriate name of that place, but I think it points to a problem that often plagues religious organizations – which is the aspiration to be considered awesome.

Eagles are awesome. Buzzards are common. And while there is something awesome about what Jesus had to teach, the kind of awesomeness that Jesus taught is not the kind of awesomeness that goes viral on the internet. It’s not the kind of awesomeness that the Pharisees could appreciate. They wanted to create the kind of religious organization that would impress the crowds and gain the respect of powerful people, and that’s not what Jesus was up to. Jesus didn’t want to create a new kingdom on earth — Jesus wanted to help people find their way in to the kingdom that already existed.

Jesus was more of a buzzard than an eagle. He didn’t want to impress people with his awesomeness – he wanted to be seen for who he was, and he wanted people to see through the façade of false faith. Jesus undermined the official community of God as it existed in Israel because he wanted people to understand what the kingdom of God actually looked like. And that’s why Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again. Nicodemus had been drawn in to the religious community of the Pharisees because he liked the idea of participating in God’s community, but he couldn’t see how dark that community had become. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus was strained because Nicodemus had been trained by his peers to love and to promote the wrong things.

The training event I attended introduced me to the concept of approaching ministry with the skills of a life coach. And while the language of life-coaching may sound a little first-worldly or high falootin, but the truth is that the skills we were taught are applicable on every level of human interaction. The primary skills of life coaching are the skills of listening and asking questions. The primary objective of a life coach is to elicit from another person the knowledge that they already have. A good life coach is not someone who imparts wisdom but who motivates people to lay claim to what they already know.

It strikes me that this interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus was a profound life-coaching session. Nicodemus didn’t really know what he was wanting to say to Jesus, but Jesus heard him express interest in the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t employ the classic technique of a life coach and ask him questions that might help him understand what he was wanting, but then Jesus wasn’t a certified life-coach – Jesus was a renegade life-coach. Jesus wasn’t out to help people improve their lives on earth – Jesus wasn’t as interested in our temporal life as he was in our eternal life. He didn’t just want to help us function better on earth. Jesus wanted us to find our way in to whole new way of living – a way of living that was unbounded by earthly constraints and worldly expectations.

I love this interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus doesn’t seem to get what Jesus was saying, but it doesn’t end with Nicodemus departing in sadness because he didn’t understand what Jesus was saying. We don’t know what Nicodemus thought about his conversation with Jesus, but we do know that he had been exposed to the truth, and we have been as well.

The truth is that we all have our own forms of blindness that keep us from seeing the path to abundant life. Sometimes we are genuinely blind to the truth, but often we are unwilling to see the true path – sometimes we just don’t want to go to the place of new life. Sometimes we choose comfort and familiarity over challenge and growth.

We’ve all got some challenging days ahead, and while they might not be easy, what Jesus wants us to know is that the path to abundant life is always available. It’s always a challenge to find it and to follow it, but it’s always at hand. None of us are well trained to find it – not even those of us who wear religious credentials, but none of us are excluded. Jesus was happy to talk to Nicodemus, and his message applies to us all. We may be in the dark, but the path to new life continues to be available to us all.

And thanks be to God for that – Amen.

SRP (Sermon Ready to Preach)
Ephesians 1:15-23

1:15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

I’m going to do something this morning I’ve never done in my nearly 30 years of ministry. I’m going to preach someone else’s sermon. I saw some Meals Ready to Eat in the Food Pantry and the thought of opening a sermon ready to preach occurred to me. I guess I’m feeling some freedom to experiment in my final few Sunday’s here at QQUMC, but in talking to a peer about this I was reminded that the early Methodist preachers were encouraged to preach Wesley’s sermons – which is a tradition that goes back to the Anglican church which had official homilies that priests were to occasionally deliver. I guess the point is that it’s better to say the right thing than to say something original. But I’m not going to preach one of Wesley’s sermons – honestly, when I read his sermons I’m amazed that he was able to draw the numbers of people that turned out to hear him. He clearly didn’t have to compete with cable television.

The sermon I want to share with you this morning is one that was written by Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor – who in my mind is a rockstar preacher. Rev. Taylor is an Episcopal priest, but she left parish work after about a decade and began teaching religion at a small college in Georgia. But she continues to preach and to write books.

I read one of her sermons almost every week, and back in February I wrote her a thank-you email for her work, and she actually responded to me which made me feel good. At any rate, I read her sermon on this Ephesians passage last Monday, and it’s so good I just decided I would share it with you. So here’s a sermon entitled, “He Who Fills All in All” by my email friend Barbara Brown Taylor:

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a kingdom called Georgia – not the one down by Alabama, but the one tucked in to the Kachkar Mountains east of the Black Sea, between modern-day Turkey and Russia, where wild geraniums carpet alpine meadows and the sound of waterfalls is everywhere. A thousand years ago it was Camelot, rich in everything that mattered, including the love of God.

Under the patronage of benevolent kings and queens, artists were brought to Georgia from Constantinople to build huge churches out of local rock. Some of those artists must have come with that monumental structure, the Hagia Sophia in mind, because there was nothing modest about their work. Their Byzantine churches were monuments, full of exquisite arches, frescoes, and stone work, many of which survive today.

But only as ruins or museums, because the age of Christianity is over in Turkey. The Mongols conquered Georgia in the thirteenth century. Civilization moved west and east. The last baptisms in the Kachkar Mountains took place in the 1800s. Now the area is predominantly Muslim, as is the rest of Turkey. Meanwhile the ancestors of those ancient artists have become farmers, who still pluck old roof tiles and gargoyle parts out of their fields as they plow.

If you go there today, you can find the wrecks of the great churches deep in the countryside, with what is left of their high walls poking up through the canopy of trees like the masts of stranded ships. All the good carvings have been carried away, along with many of the building stones, which local people have quarried for their own houses.

The churches are multipurpose buildings now, serving as soccer fields, sheep pens, garbage dumps. The roofs are gone. So are the doors, the floors, the altars. All that is left are the walls, the graceful arches, and here and there the traces of an old fresco that has somehow survived the years – half a face, with one wide eye looking right at you – one raised arm, the fingers curled in that distinct constellation: it is Christ the still giving his blessing to a ruined church.

This, for me is the image hanging over Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, that triumphant letter in which he crowns Christ as the ruler of all creation and the church as Christ’s body – not two entities but one – God’s chosen instrument for the reconciliation of the world. The church shall be a colony of heaven on earth, Paul says, the divine gene pool from which the world shall be recreated in God’s image. From the heart of Christ’s body shall flow all the transforming love of God – bestowing riches, immeasurable greatness. As God is to Christ, so shall the church be to the world – the means of filling the whole cosmos with the glory of God.

Imagine a four-tiered fountain, if you will, in which God’s glory spills over into Christ, and Christ’s glory pours into the church, and the church’s glory drenches the whole universe. That is what Paul can see, as clear as day – the perfection of creation through the agency of the church. I have been using the future tense out of sheer disbelief, but Paul does not. He uses the past and present tense: And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Paul can see it, although as best anyone can tell he wrote this letter from a jail cell, the only light coming from a small square window above his head. His life was coming to a violent end, which he may also have seen, but none of that diminished his sense of God’s providence, or of God’s confidence in the church. Paul’s own experience didn’t count – at least not the hecklings, the beatings, or the arrests. All that counted was the power he felt billowing through his body when he spoke of Christ – the things he said, which surprised even him; the things that happened to those who heard him and believed. In the grip of that power, which turned him into a bolt of God’s own lightening. Paul had no doubt about God’s ultimate success. God would succeed. God had already succeeded. The world was simply slow to catch on.

I’ll say. Like most of you, I belong to a church that falls somewhat short of Paul’s vision. I do not know why Christians act surprised when we read about our declining number in the newspaper. While we argue amongst ourselves about everything from what kind of music we will sing in church to who may marry whom, the next generation walks right past our doors without even looking in. If they are searching at all, they are searching for more than we are offering them. They are looking for a colony of heaven, and they are not finding it with us.

In a recent interview in Common Boundary magazine, novelist Reynolds Price talked about why he, a devoted Christian, doesn’t go to church. Part of it, he says, is disillusionment dating from the civil rights era, when the white southern Christian church, he says, behaved about as badly as possible. But that is not the only reason.

The few times I’ve gone to church in recent years, he says, I’m immediately asked if I’ll coach the Little League team or give a talk on Wednesday night or come to the men’s bell-ringing class on Sunday afternoon. Church has become a full-service entertainment facility. It ought to be the place where God lives.

And yet, according to Saint Paul, it still is. The roof may be gone, and there may be sheep grazing in the nave, but Christ is still there – half a face, with one wide eye looking right at us, one hand raised in endless benediction – still giving his blessing to a ruined church. He cannot, or will not, be separated from his body. What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.

Say what you will about the arrogance of supposing that Christ needs the church as much as the church needs Christ. Paul says that we are his consummation, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Without us, his fullness is not full. Without him, we are as good as dead. He may not need us, but he is bound to us in love. We are his elect, Paul says, the executors of God’s will for the redemption of the cosmos.

How can we live with this paradox, this painful discontinuity between Paul’s vision of our divine nobility and the tawdry truth we know about ourselves? The easiest way, I suppose, would be to decide that Paul was dreaming. It was a glorious dream, but it was still a dream. Or we could decide that he was right – that the church really is Christ’s broker on earth – and the sooner we take over the world, the better.

Only I do not think we can afford either of those options, not without betraying our head, who was stuck with that same paradox. He was the ruler of the universe, born in a barn. He was the great high priest, despised by the priesthood of his day. He was the cosmic Christ, hung out on a cross to dry. On what grounds do we, as his body, expect more clarity than was given him?

The difference, of course, is that we have brought most of our problems on ourselves, while he suffered through no fault of his own. What we share with him – that fullness of his in which we take part – is the strenuous mystery of our mixed parentage. We are God’s own children, through our blood kinship with Christ. We are also the children of Adam and Eve, with a hereditary craving for forbidden fruit salad. Frisk us and you will find two passports on our persons – one says we are citizens of heaven, the other insists we are taxpayers on earth. It is no excuse for all the trouble we get into, but it does help to explain our spotty record.

What Paul asks us to believe is that our two-ness has already been healed in our oneness in Christ – not that it will be healed, but that it already has been healed – even if we cannot feel it yet, even if there is no startling evidence that it is so. We are still clumping around in a heavy plaster cast, knocking things over and stepping on the cat, but when the cast comes off we shall see for ourselves what has been true all along; that we have been made whole in him, that we are being made whole in him, that we shall be made whole in him who is above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

Meanwhile, Paul says, he prays that the eyes of our hearts will be opened so that we can see the great power of God at work all around us. Based on my own experience, this is not the kind of stuff that makes headlines, not the way declining membership numbers do. It is just you’re your basic, raising-the-dead kind of stuff that happens in the church all the time.

Like the brain-damaged young man who shows up one Sunday and asks to become a member of the church. As carefully as he tries to hide it, it is clear that he is out of everything – out of food, out of money, out of family to take him in. No one makes a big fuss. Very quietly, someone takes him grocery shopping while someone else finds him a room. Someone else finds out what happened to his disability check while someone else makes an appointment to get his teeth fixed. And do you know what? Years later he is still there, in the front pew on the right, surrounded by his family, the church.

Or like the woman with a recurrent cancer who is told she has six months to live. The church gathers around her and her husband – laying hands on them, bringing them casseroles, cleaning their house. Someone comes up with the idea of giving the woman a foot massage and painting her toenails red, which does more for her spirits than any visit from the pastor. She gives her jewelry away, she lets her driver’s license expire, she starts writing poetry again. She prepares to die, but instead, she gets better.

On Christmas Eve she is back in church for the first time in months, with her oxygen tank slung over her shoulder and a clear plastic tube running under her nose. After the first hymn, she makes her way to the lectern to read the lesson from Isaiah. Her tank hisses every five seconds. Every candle in the place glitters in her eyes. Strengthen the weak hands, she reads, bending her body toward the words, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God’ When she sits down, the congregation knows they have not just heard the word of the Lord. They have seen it in action.

I could keep you here all morning, but you get the idea. No matter how hard we try in the church, we will always mess some things up. And no matter how badly we mess some things up in the church, other things will keep turning out right, because we are not, thank God, in charge. With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you can usually spot the one who is. Just search for any scrap of the church that is still standing – any place where God is still worshiped, any bunch of faces that are still turned toward the light – and you will see him there bending over them, his hand raised in endless blessing. It is he who fills all in all, whose fullness has spilled over into us. It is Christ the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Heavenly Family Dynamics
John 15:9-17

15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Because today is Mother’s Day, I’m going to reread this morning’s text, and I’m going to shift the reference to God as our father to God as our mother. It’s not what Jesus is reported to have said, but it’s just as likely to have been what he meant. Jesus wasn’t wanting us to think of God as male. Jesus wanted us to think of God as being like a loving parent. Some people are a little put off by the talk of God as father, and this may put-off the rest of you, but in honor of Mother’s Day, I want us to hear how God’s love compares to a mother’s love.

15:9 As the Mother has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Mother’s commandments and abide in her love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Mother. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Mother will give you whatever you ask her in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Comparing the love of God to the love of a mother doesn’t work for everyone. Neither the love of a father or a mother is an adequate description of the love of God, but the love of a parent is probably what best provides for us an inclination of how we are loved by God. I’m pretty convinced that it’s how we are treated by our parents that gives us our elemental understandings of God. Certainly mothers and fathers are god-like characters to children, and how we are treated by our parents can go either way in regard to formulating our images of God.

I think we all have to engage in some recovery from the way we were raised. It turns out that mothers and fathers are a lot like human beings who get some things right and other things wrong, but some people do a better job of childrearing than other people. It’s not essential to have a good mother or a good father to have a good life, but it’s terribly sad when a person grows up without much love from anyone.

Some children are blessed with two mothers, some with two fathers, and some with just one or the other. That essential element of parental love can come to us in a lot of different ways, and that’s the first thing I want everyone to hear me say loud and clear this morning. There’s nothing inherently essential about having an actual mother. Some people would be better off if they had not been exposed to the mother that raised them, but that’s the exception and not the rule. Generally speaking, a mother’s love is a beautiful thing, and that’s the second thing I want to talk about.

I was visiting with someone at a wedding reception the other night who said that she lives in Grafton, West Virginia, which is the hometown of Anna Jarvis, a good Methodist woman who was the founder of Mother’s Day. Anna Jarvis was moved by the way in which her own mother not only cared for her, but by the way she took care of wounded soldiers from both sides of the Civil War. Anna Jarvis considered motherhood to be a sacred calling, and she thought it should be properly honored. She created a recognition day in her own town of Grafton, and she embarked on having it become a nationally recognized day. It became established as a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, but it soon became her worst nightmare.

Anna Jarvis took issue with the way in which the day got hijacked by people who wanted to sell things in the name of motherhood. Because of the way in which the greeting card, floral, and confection industries began making huge profits off the sentiments of the day, she worked hard to have the holiday repealed within ten years of its establishment – which as you know has not happened.

But I’m not going to rail about the crass commercialization of Mother’s Day. In fact I’m going to take advantage of the day in my own way. I’m banking on the sentiment of motherhood to produce a sermon.

I had the good fortune of having a good mother, and I want to talk about my mother for a moment. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say she was the most powerful person in my childhood home. She wasn’t a loud or a large person, but it was her will that ruled our house. She was a very gracious person, but she had her limits, and she communicated those limits very clearly — sometimes she even used words.

I think the primary gift my mother provided me was this powerful sense of belonging. I think my sister and I both were made to feel like we were very wanted children. We weren’t led to feel like we were at the center of the universe, but my mother made me feel like I was very welcome in the world. I think she also led me to believe that this world was a good place. I may be giving her more credit than she deserves for making me feel like I had a place in a benevolent universe, but I give her a lot of credit for making me feel at home in the world.

Of course this deep sense of security that she provided me played out in some ways that scared her to death. The bicycle trip I embarked upon last spring wasn’t the first odd adventure I ever struck out upon, and I think she was a little terrorized by some of the things I did when I was young.

My mother wasn’t a perfect person. There are pages of notes in a therapists office that document my efforts to get over some of the less beneficial messages she somehow communicated to me, but the primary message I got from her was how much she loved me. And I like to think she understood how much I loved her as well.

One of the nicest gifts the universe provided me was the opportunity to make eye contact with her just prior to her death. After a wonderful day of seeing family and friends here in Little Rock, my mother had a stroke in the parking lot of the Kroger store in the Heights. She and my father had gotten in to their car after shopping, she started it, and she put it in drive, but then she became immobilized. The car drifted to the edge of the parking lot and was stopped by the curb. My father called me and I was there within a few minutes. My mother was sitting in the driver’s seat and her eyes were open, but she couldn’t speak or move. Instead of calling an ambulance my father and I decided to just drive her to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s.

I picked her up like a child to put her in the back seat of the car, and when I did she looked at me. She didn’t have a look of panic or pain. It was more of a look of curiosity – it was as if her eyes were saying, Well isn’t this an interesting situation.

She closed her eyes on the way to St. Vincent’s and she never opened them again. She had had a massive stroke and she died the next night. It was a terrible loss for us, but after the initial devastation of her loss, I came to feel more gratitude than anything else. I was grateful to have had her as a mother, and I was grateful that she died in such a peaceful way after having such a wonderful day.

I may be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure my belief in the benevolence of God is rooted in my experience with a loving mother. That’s not the only reason I believe that we live in a world that was created and is sustained by a loving God, but I am convinced that my good mother put me in touch with the concept of a loving God. There are other avenues to such a conclusion, but that’s the one I got to travel, and I’m grateful for the nice journey.

God reaches out to us children in many different ways. Jesus seems to have had a nice mother, but he travelled a rough road. The benevolence of the universe wasn’t the most obvious message that the world provided to Jesus, but he could see beyond the violent surface of this world in to the heart of God, and he shared what he could see in an enduring manner. He knew that this world was established by the One whose love would never fail.

There are no perfect parents in this world, but the perfect love of God continues to be revealed to us through the imperfect efforts of our parents, our friends, our enemies, and ourselves. The message is larger than any of us, but its small enough for any of us to carry and to hand-off to a friend or a child. God can and does use us all in ways we don’t fully comprehend, but it is within our means to be willing messengers of this good news of God’s eternal love.

You don’t have to have a mother to have been cradled by the hand of a loving soul, nor do you have to be a mother to bring new life in to this world. The living Christ empowers us to become the children of God, and he enables us to be the bearers of this divine love for others.

Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ it becomes possible for others to look in to our frail eyes and see the goodness of God.

Thanks be to God for this heavenly gift! Amen

Abiding On The Vine
John 15:1-8

15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

I don’t think we have any idea how scandalous it was for Jesus to say he was the true vine. It sounds like a nice metaphor for us, and there’s certainly an aspect of this passage that is as helpful and benevolent as the Janet Carson gardening advice column in the Democrat Gazette, but there’s a revolutionary aspect to what he’s saying as well. What we hear is nice advice, but this isn’t how it would have sounded to 1st Century Jewish/Christian ears. These words point to the rift that had developed between the house of Israel and the followers of Jesus who had been thrown out of that house.

The nation of Israel had been thinking of itself as God’s vineyard for many centuries.

Isaiah 5:7 states: The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting;

Psalm 80:8 says: You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

You can find the image of the grape vine or vineyard throughout the Bible. I read that there are more than 200 references to grape-vines or vineyards in the Bible. But when Jesus says that he is the true vine he is not speaking for the nation of Israel. Jesus was officially and brutally rejected by the leaders of Israel, and I think it’s helpful to pay attention to the jagged-edginess of what Jesus was saying.

This knowledge doesn’t really change the meaning for us, but maybe it is a reminder of how challenging Jesus was to the religious sensibilities of his day. Sometimes I think we forget how unnatural it is to follow Jesus. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not normal behavior. In fact I’m pretty sure it requires us to defy our natural inclinations to be self-protecting and self-serving. I don’t think we are naturally bad, but I think it takes some effort for us to overcome conventional wisdom about how we can gain access to the best things in life.

We are conditioned by our surroundings to think we can have it all, and that in order to obtain what we think we need to provide us with abundant life we’ve got to make more connections with more important people, get more stuff, go more places, produce more products, look better and live longer. Of course we also need to make these endless efforts appear to be effortless and we also are to present ourselves as being completely generous. It’s not easy to obtain the good life according to the rules of the first world, but it’s even harder not to measure ourselves by these first world standards. It’s not easy for us to hear what Jesus said about finding abundant life – and it’s even harder to do what he said. Abiding on this vine is not the same thing as hanging out at Starbucks – and I hate that!

I’ve never had a productive grape-vine, so I don’t think I fully appreciate this morning’s vineyard metaphor. Perhaps what I’m most conscious of is how particular grape-vines can be and how easy it is for grapevines to be unproductive. I’ve planted a few grapevines, but none of them have ever survived and produced. What I also know is that it takes a lot of grapes to produce a box of my favorite wine, and there isn’t a shortage of wine in any store that I know of, so I know there are people out there who understand how to nurture those vines to produce good fruit.

Good wine wasn’t as easily accessible to the people of Jesus’ day, but they valued it, and they had appreciation for a good grapevine. The people of Jesus’ day weren’t just familiar with the biblical image of the vineyard, they were also familiar with the process of grape production. They understood what it took to create fruit-laden vines, and apparently this act of pruning is essential to the process.

Jesus speaks of God as the vine-dresser who understands what to prune. And I find it helpful to remember that we aren’t in charge of the vineyard, but I don’t think we are to think of ourselves as passive objects in the vineyard of life. If our primary objective is to be productive branches that are connected to the true vine I don’t think our role is to wait for God to do something. Because it seems to me that the way God acts is often in the form of revealing the emptiness of misguided agendas. Much of what Jesus did was to expose how dead the faith of Israel had become. If we wait for God to show us exactly what to do we will probably find the message from God to be pretty disturbing.

In order for us to abide on the true vine of abundant life I think we’ve got to do some pruning of our own. We’ve got to learn to recognize what those things are that we cling to that do not put us in touch with the source of true life. In what ways are we abiding in the wrong places.

I was abiding in the wrong place the other day. Sharla and I made a weekend trip to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to see where our daughter and son-in-law will be taking our soon-to-be-born granddaughter in August, so we made a practice run to Kansas City. We enjoyed our time there, but as we were driving home we were in the middle of some sketchy weather. This was that Sunday when some places in Arkansas were hit with some remarkable hail stones. We were pretty fortunate to be traveling sort of between the fronts that were passing through the state, but I got hungry, and we pulled off at Clarksville for some Taco Bell food.

We went inside to eat because I have tried to eat a crunchy taco supreme in the car and it just doesn’t work. As we were waiting for our food Sharla noticed these large dark clouds moving in, and she said it would be a sad ending to get blown away by a tornado inside a Taco Bell. I said it would be really sad if you hadn’t gotten your food yet. I was really hungry.

We got our food and as we started eating Sharla noticed that some really ugly clouds were moving in quickly and she thought we needed to go. I begged her to let me finish my tacos and nachos. She said, Do you not think those clouds are threatening? And I said, Yes, I do, but I’m also really hungry. I very honestly felt these two competing urgent needs and my need to finish eating was the dominant urge.

So I ate them really fast, and we got in the car right before the rain came. We had a few anxious minutes, but nothing bad happened. I was so happy about that. I would have felt horrible if my desire to finish my tacos without making a mess in the car had resulted in some sort of disaster.

It was sort of funny and scary at the same time, but I very honestly felt these conflicting needs. This isn’t exactly representative of the kinds of conflicts that we generally have to navigate in this world. This would have been a no-brainer for most people – take the tacos and go. But we often face difficult choices between our perceived needs, and it’s important that we learn to incorporate the wisdom of Christ in to our thinking – otherwise we are just going to do what we have been conditioned to do by the mass-marketed messages of the first world.

I have a peer in ministry who is very intentional about incorporating his commitment to Christ in his life and work. You may think it’s a given that a pastor would live in such a way, but United Methodist ministers are a lot like regular human beings in many ways, and we find it as hard to follow Christ as the rest of you. My friend had an opportunity this year to go to an appointment that would have put him in a more affluent place with a much higher salary than he currently makes, but he chose not to take the position because he didn’t feel that it was the right thing for him to do. I can tell you, he felt the wisdom of the first world bearing down on him, but he had this overriding sense that he needed to stay where he was.

Now this was an unusual circumstance in a number of ways. Generally speaking we get told where we are going as opposed to getting asked, but the really unusual thing was that my friend and his wife didn’t just allow the things that usually guide our decisions to make their decision. They both have a strong sense of commitment to living as disciples of Jesus Christ, and they want to serve him more than they want to obtain these rewards that the first world has to offer. I’m not saying they are perfect disciples of Jesus Christ, and they had many things to consider in regard to their work and their family, but I believe the largest factor that guided their decision was their desire to abide with Jesus.

Of course it’s not always obvious to us what we need to hold on to or what we need to let go of in order to be most connected to the source of true life, but I think it’s helpful to stay mindful of how Jesus lived and what Jesus taught. I believe we can grow in our knowledge of who he was, and there are things we can do to become more sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

As our United Methodist name indicates, we come from people who believed that we can be methodical in our pursuit of spiritual awakening, and it is our responsibility to engage in activities that nourish our souls and train our minds to recognize opportunities to grow in our relationship with God. God has chosen to be with us, but we also have choose to get to know God. The first world is doing a good job of training us to do what we need to do to compete with our peers in the marketplace of life, but it’s not instructing us on how to find true life in the kingdom of God.

It’s not natural to abide with this person we call the true vine. In some ways it’s downright scandalous to stand with him in this world, but that is where we need to be if we wish to find the best life and bear the best fruit.

The good news is that the true vine is still alive and we can be it’s branches!
Thanks be to God.
Amen.