The Penumbra Passages

One Potent Preview!

2012-02-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Mark 9:2-10

TransfigurationSunday 2012

My family is allabuzz about an upcoming movie. TheHunger Games, based on the trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins, is set to bereleased to theaters on March 23^rd. We feel Rebecca and Crosby are too youngto read the content of these books or see this movie … but Stefanie, Anna, andI happily devoured them and are super eager to see the movie on openingday. So eager, in fact, that for the past fewmonths we’ve been repeatedly gluing our eyes to previews available on thecomputer.

It was especially thrillingwhen the first preview made its debut. Wehad well-hewn visions in our heads for all the book characters, so we were keento know how well a big Hollywood casting director would honor ourimaginations. We also brought vivid visionsfor the settings in the book and just had to know if this all was going to satisfactorilytranslate to the big screen. Anticipation was high about how authenticallythe written word would be adapted to a fuller vision of the author’s work.

I’m glad to say wearen’t disappointed. It looksfantastically well-done and true to the written narrative. It’s going to be epic. Were we surprised that one of the main characters,a stylist named Cinna, is being played by rock star Lenny Kravitz? Sure … but Cinna is a very soulful figure inthe story’s very violent superficial world, and Kravitz certainly carries soul inhis manner, his music and his acting (for anyone who saw the movie Precious, heplayed Nurse John). Generally,everything we’ve seen in preview of this dramatic dystopian tale has served itspurpose extremely well – our excitement has been built up along with ouranticipation and impatience. We cannotwait to experience the full release!

Today isTransfiguration Sunday. For theuniversal Church, this means the Magi-cal season of epiphany is ending and the soul-searching,sin-wrestling season of Lent is quickly settling upon us. We are moving from awe to ash. We are entering is a designated time togive extra prayerful attention to the human misery such as is highlighted byThe Hunger Games story. We do so while waitingfor the big, epic release of Easter. We’ve celebrated the birth of Jesus in theworld, celebrated His presence with gift giving, and now in Lent we are aboutto walk even more intentionally beside Jesus in his ministry to sin-sicksouls. We will do so on through thearduous end of his life and into the glorious Good News that will be releasedon April 8^th.

The transfigurationaccount found in today’s lesson from Mark’s Gospel directly inaugurates ourshift into Lent in a very potent way – by giving us a preview.

As with all goodpreviews, we readers in the audience to this historic event are looking forauthenticity as well as a build-up of excitement for the full big picture. We are not disappointed, nor were the firstdisciples.

What immediately strikesus in this stunning, dramatic preview is Jesus’ appearance. We are told He had climbed a mountaintopwith Peter, James and John. Once there,we are then informed that the entirety of his sweaty, dirty, simple garbsuddenly transformed into a vision of pure and dazzling white. Incase anyone ever asks you if the Bible mentions bleaching, point them to thistext, for we are told that his clothes were brighter than any bleach on earthcould accomplish!

The purpose of thisbizarre, brilliant display was to give Peter, James and John, and by extension,to give us, hope. It’s a holy preview ofthe coming climax of all history … the time beyond all sinful suffering whenall reality will be fully transformed by our Savior’s powerful, purifyinglight. It’s a sneak peak of His ultimatepurpose and eternal glory … a resplendent revelation of resurrection … anangelic adaptation of the Author of Life’s original plan.

Up to thismagnificent mountaintop point in time, God’s original plan for humanity wasprimarily known through the historic, poetic, wise and prophetic writings of theOld Testament. Those first followers of Jesus had been studentsof this Scripture, and so they kept an ear open and kept watch for how Hisstory developed from God’s word as they knew it best. Given that they were under the oppressivethumb of the Roman Empire and the agitating Temple authorities, they needed everyassurance that Jesus was authentically who He projected himself to be, that hewas indeed the long-hoped for Messiah. They had put their entire lives on the line for Him and the hope Herepresented.

Peter, James andJohn received holy authentication on that day of Transfiguration. Itcame not only in the form of the glorious glowing of Jesus, but also by both Mosesand Elijah being present in this miraculous preview. How exactly these two colossally important faithfigures appeared in this vision will always be a holy mystery to us. Butwhat it meant to Peter, James and John on that mountaintop couldn’t be any clearer. The presence of their greatness pointed theway to Jesus indeed being the only One to follow on the path to the fullrelease of God’s plan of salvation. It’slike they held a sign saying, “Pay attention to this preview, trust in its holyauthenticity, let it fill you with hope for the journey, and the glory will come!”

We read that thisall so overwhelmed Peter (terrified him, really) that he momentarily lapsedinto believing he could set up tents for Moses, Elijah and Jesus to camp outatop that mountain. He got so lost inthe moment he forgot it was all vision, all preview. But when frightened, overwhelmed, andconfused, don’t we also try to scramble for some measure of security? Even if we some part of us knows it’sirrational?

Peter had mostlikely found himself clinging to the security of a ritual from of one theJewish Festivals, called the Feast of the Tabernacles. This was when men and their sons spent timein temporary huts as a way of remembering the time Israel spent in the wildernessbefore being delivered to a promised land. Perhaps this was Peter’s way of hoping and coping with the fact that themountaintop experience wasn’t going to last … that it was going to be a wild,perilous journey with Jesus before one day being delivered into glory afterHim.

One of the toughtruths about previews is that they are short. My longed-for time in the futuristic world of The Hunger Games has sofar been limited to two minutes and thirty-six seconds. The preview of Christ’s final full releasealso unfolds swiftly. Mark doesn’t giveus to time to linger in it. It quickly progresses from brilliantbrightness to the frightening yet authenticating presence of Moses andElijah. And then, just when everythingPeter, James and John ever hoped for was in view, it all got swiftly covered upby a great cloud.

Fortunately, thiscloud was likely not at all ominous to them. It was another big and necessary part of the preview, for just as in OldTestament times, it was a reassuring manifestation of the Almighty thatappeared in a time of confusion and fear. Through the cloud, and in faith, they somehow heard holy wordsidentifying Jesus as God’s Son, as the Beloved (the chosen one), whom they mustlisten to. And then, just as suddenly asJesus was transfigured and they were in the company of faithful legends, they weresuddenly alone again with Jesus.

The preview endswith Jesus descending from the mystical mountaintop experience. He knew well it was not yet His time to stayaglow in glory. Vital life-givingteaching, holy healing, and radical faith revolution had to take place duringthe time between preview and full release. So He descended back into the ash-shaded world. Hecame down, as one Bible commentator has nicely stated it, “into the mundanenature of everyday life … into the nitty-gritty details of misunderstanding,squabbling, disbelieving disciples … into the religious and political quarrelsof the day … into the jealousies and rivals both petty and gigantic that colorour relationships … down into the poverty and pain that are part and parcel ofour life in this world.”[i] Jesus came down to finish offering thepreview to the Greatest Story Ever Told.

His disciplesdescended by his side. After all of that overwhelming, mysteriousrevelation, however, they did so with a fresh and powerfully sustaininghope. The unforgettable memory of the transfigurationwould serve to sustain them as they learned from Jesus, obeyed hiscommandments, endured their own suffering in His name, and awaited the fullrelease of resurrected life.

Where are wetoday? We can’t stay atop the mystical mountainwith Jesus either. We who have beenbaptized in His name and who commune together around His supper, have to watchfor and trust in and serve Jesus down here. By grace and through our faith,we’ll one day experience His full glory, be bathed in thatgreater-than-bleached blessed life. Untilthen, may our faith journeys be guided by and find great hope in His potentmountaintop-projected preview. Amen.

[i] David Lose @ www.workingpreacher.org

I Cannot Walk In These

2012-02-12T05:32:00.001-08:00

1 Samuel 17:31-40

The tribal chief of a large unchartered territory incentral Africa did not greet the man standing before him by saying, “Dr.Livingstone, I presume?” He insteadstood there silently and expectantly, waiting for the nineteenth centuryScottish medical missionary, explorer and evangelist to follow the localcustom. There would be no access tothe vast territory until the chief was allowed to survey, choose and keepsomething from Dr. Livingstone’s personal belongings. He would then give something of his own tothe missionary in return.

So clothing, books, a watch, and several other items fromthe doctor’s sparse possessions were spread out before the chief. Healso made available something he truly needed – a goat whose milk helped sooththe doc’s chronic stomach condition. Youcan guess exactly what the chief wanted to keep. Despitehis dismay, and for the sake of the Gospel, Livingstone gave up the goat. He then waited with high expectation thathe’d be given something equally valuable in return.

The chief gave him … a stick. Well, more precisely, a walking stick. The doctor’s bubble of expectationevaporated in bitter disappointment. Hecouldn’t grasp how a walking stick could do anything for him compared to thegoat that kept him well. He felt angry – at the bum exchange and evenat God. But then a local tribesmanoffered a word of explanation. Thechief’s gift was not some wooden crutch whatsoever. It was his very own scepter, the very itemthat made it possible to enter into every village in his vast territory. Dr. Livingstone had presumed wrong. He had not been cheated by the chief or byGod. He and his mission of expandingthe Gospel had instead been very greatly honored and blessed.

When our expectations of others and of certain plans burst,a couple things can typically happen. We can sink into resentful disappointment anddespair over what we do not have. Wecan trap ourselves inside a narrative about being cheated. Andmost perplexing and unhealthy of all, we can fail to acknowledge and appreciatethe significance of good and helpful things that have been provided for ourbenefit.

This all also applies to our faithful expectations. We caneasily get to griping about God failing to provide us something we felt sure wehad need of, something we expected to be blessed with. When caught up in this griping, we can thensadly lose sight of the good things and greater (though perhaps yet unknown) purposesof what God has given us already.

Our scripture lesson today has to do withexpectations. It is from the familiar storyof David, divinely anointed king of Israel in his youth, and the Philistinegiant warrior, Goliath of Gath. TheVeggie Tales animated kids version of this story is the most entertaining … youjust can’t beat the site and sound of Goliath as a giant pickle and David as anasparagus sprout!

This is a heroic story. We love it when our expectations are surprised and reversed as thelittle guy, the underdog, rises up to successfully beat the odds. It gives us hope for the times we feelsmall and up against a wall. And David– who according the Bible’s description was a beautiful-eyed, handsome,lyre-instrument playing shepherd boy – sure was in this jam when he chose to goup against the enormously sized and life-long trained enemy warrior.

What I find most inspiring and heroic, however, isn’t hisremarkable and commonly recalled victory via a very accurate sling-shot of a wadistone. This was the method, but the integrityof the means is what most matters. David glorified God and helped advance God’sgood dominion simply by being true to himself. He was true to who God created him to be andto God’s calling in his life. He didn’tsize up the task and then start some sort of radical, Rocky eating raw eggs and running up and down the Philly Art Museumroutine to transform himself for the epic battle. He didn’t puff himself up with pride andbravado intent on proving himself to his three older brothers. He didn’t present himself as anyone oranything other than the faithful sheep corralling kid from Bethlehem, theyoungest and least likely to fight son of Jesse.

How wonderful to have young David’s faith – to have such confidenceand courage in yourself, in your God-given and blessed abilities, and in yoursteadfast belief that the power of God is your true strength and shield, theprotector of your family and your people.

This inspiring portraitof young David is reinforced by what I find to be one of the most comicalscenes in all of Scripture. Again, hedidn’t suffer the weight of expectations. Until, that is, Israel’s King Saul placed some upon him. Literally. And these expectations did notfit. Ithappened right after David argued before the king that his volunteering to takeon Goliath wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. His shepherding of sheep in Bethlehem fields also meant he had to fightoff wild beasts. He hadn’t just been lazingabout strumming the lyre all night and day. “Whenever a lion or bear came and took a lamb from the flock,” heexplained, “I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb … the Lord,who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will saveme from the hand of this Philistine.” For David, volunteering to do combat with thisenormous enemy threat was really just an extension of his regular shepherdingduties under the care of the Almighty.

His words were enough to convince the king to sendhim. Saul stated his expectation thatthe Lord would be with David and then the king did something else in line withhis expectations. To fight Goliath, heexpected David to wear the right protective gear. So this is what he placed upon the lambdefending lad.

Here’s where it becomes a comical read to me. Just picture a strong but smallish boystanding there outfitted in the adult-sized armor of a king. Picture him with an oversized bronze helmeton his head, with a sword probably at long as he was tall strapped to him, anddraped in chain mail. It’d be a little likeoutfitting me with Brandon Jacobs uniform (you had to know I’d slip in someSuper Bowl winning Giants reference in a story about a Giant). David knew right away how ridiculous it wasto try and be somebody else in this situation. So he cast off the king’sexpectations and bluntly declared, “I cannot walk in these.” He then removed it all and walked ahead inhis own skin and simple shepherding garb. He knew he didn’t need all thatadded protection and garb of expectation … since his faithful expectation ofGod’s protection was more than enough!

Everything that happened after that is what is mostremembered in this historic, heroic story. Sling. Thump. Surprise. Triumph. The radical rite of passage for Israel’s divinely anointed future Kingcomplete. Exciting stuff. But may we never overlook the heart of thematter that prepared his heart and mind to faithfully lead the flock ofIsrael. David’s crucial decision to goforth to the glory of God just by being his blessed self and by faithfullytrusting in the good and helpful things God had provided for him meanseverything to this story.

How much time have you spent time getting to know who Godintends you to be? How intentional haveyou been about making time to assess your God-given giftedness and how this canhelp advance the Gospel even if others don’t expect it of you? Every time you say the Lord’s prayer, do youdeeply trust you will be delivered from evil? Do you, and do we have together, faith enough to see simple things suchas walking sticks and sling shots, shared prayers and modest budgets, kindwords and helpful hands … as more than what we could ever possibly expect themto be in service to our Lord? Amen.

Believe and Be Confident

2012-01-29T05:27:00.000-08:00

Psalm 27

A few years ago, I wasblessed to see the Mary Poppins production that is still on Broadway. The music, of course, was totally infectiousand amazing. The cast was stellar andthe stagecraft exceeded all expectation. What I loved the most were the manytruly magical moments. We need those nowand again in life, don’t we? For me,chief among such moments is when Bert --the chim-chiminey-chim-chiminey-chim-chim-cheree friend of Ms. Poppins -- tapsand sings his way up the side of the stage then straight across the top ofit. At one point, he was tapping andsinging on center stage fully suspended upside-down! This stunt fully supports one of themusical’s central themes – anything can happen.

As my mind replaysthat scene, I am inspired by the strong confidence British actor Gavin Lee hadto have had to perform Bert so perfectly. He had to have had strong confidence in himself, in the stage crewresponsible for his harness, and in the producers for spending money on qualitysafety equipment. I believe a lack of confidence would haveshowed and dimmed the shine of the dazzling production.

Having confidence inyourself and in others is a rather big key to lots of things we do and toliving an overall contented life. Doyou consider yourself a confident person? A person who clings to intimate trust in particular truths about yourself,a special someone, other people and social systems in your life? Even more to the point this morning, let meask you this – are you confident in God’s care for you?

The magnificent Psalmwe just heard, rock solid #27, is a help and reminder for all of us to becompletely confident in the caring, saving grace of our God. Its fourteen verses can be broken out tohelp us more fully understand what this means.

Verses 1 – 6 make upone of the strongest, most remarkable professions of faith in all ofScripture. It is, I’ve discovered, theonly place in the entire Old Testament where God is referred to as “mylight.” There are plenty of othergeneral references to God as a great light. Isaiah 9:2 comes to mind – “The people who walked in darkness have seena great light.” But none is so directand intimate as we find in Psalm 27:1. Instead of an entire nation, the spotlight falls on one single, specialsoul. This soul has made the choice tolive in faith rather than fear, to have complete confidence in the care of God.

In this openingsection, verse 3 has long been a personal favorite of mine. I’ve read it to myself in many a precariousemotional moment and I’ve read it aloud on many pastoral visits. “Though an army encamp against me,” itreads, “I shall not fear; though war rise up against me, I will be confident.” Stated in the lighter, contemporary tone ofbiblical interpreter Eugene Peterson, it reads, “When I am besieged, I’m calmas a baby; when all hell breaks loose, I’m collected and cool.”

Like King David, thelikely author of this Psalm, many folks I’ve known and cared for have been physicallyin a military war zone with real life enemies encamped around them. Great is the power of recalling these holywords during such a time. Other folkshave lived in domestic war zones where emotional and physical violence encampedaround them. Great is the power ofrecalling these holy words during such a time.

As I’ve mentioned fromtime to time as part of my witness to the amazing grace of God, I grew up in anenvironment where every day and night I felt besieged by abusive words. I lived with a good amount of fear. Yet I have this special memory about how Iused to hang sun-catchers on my bedroom windows throughout those growing years. They were splendid, save for when the littlesuction cup thingy let loose, sending the catcher crashing down in the middleof the night.

I also had this very special crystal-like teardrop a close friend gave me in high school. In fact, I just found this while cleaning out closet space a few daysago. I spent many hours staring atthis, the way the sunlight would strike it and disperse itself into tinyfragments of hope all across my room and life. Not having ever attended church, I didn’t have the faithful language thento say the Lord is my light … but I sure experienced divine presence. I felt bathed in bright confidence …confidence in myself to survive and thrive and more importantly in somethinggreater and beyond that would guide and deliver me.

After verse 1-6 thelanguage in the Psalm shifts subtly but significantly. It’s a shift is from a broad profession offaith to a precise plea-filled prayer for help. It shifts from speaking to us, as in “Onething I asked of the Lord” to speaking for us and directly to God, as in “Hear,O Lord, when I cry aloud … do not hide your face from me … teach me your way …lead me on a level path.” This isintense salvation language conveys a message of bold interior confidence thatGod will protect and deliver.

Can you recall a timewhen you cried out a similar sort of prayer? Made a dramatic, faithful appeal to the Almighty? How was it answered? Were you lead from a valley or a rocky ridgeto a level path?

By the time the Psalmmoves into its final verses, everything shifts back to a more general professionof faith. In a good way, it’s downrightpreachy. It is personal witness andfull-on exhortation rolled into one holy nugget – “I believe I shall see thegoodness of the Lord in the land of the living … wait for the Lord, be strong,let your heart take courage!”

That the powerfulprayer song that is Psalm 27 ends with a command to wait on the Lord is notsomething to quickly gloss over when reading and meditating on it. This is an invitation to return to yourconfidence in God time and time again, if not daily. It’s an invitation to closely examine andre-examine where you place your most intimate, faithful trust andconfidence. If you are waiting for the Lord, you are believing in the Lord as your light andsalvation. Not just as a distantreality that happens at the time of death, but shining in the land of theliving. Where do you go to receiveresplendent reassurance that God totally cares for you?

Rev. Bill Davis, ourPastor Emeritus, and I both share a fondness for Celtic spirituality. Evidence of this is found at the Celtic crossright outside the sanctuary door. Ingeneral, this branch of Christian spirituality focuses on our having verypersonal and less formalized faith. Ina word, it’s more “folksy.” It isstrongly centered in the revelations of God’s light and love that areinterwoven throughout nature, while at the same time guarding sacredmysteries.

I mention this in thecontext of Psalm 27 because this tradition has a helpful expression for wherewe go to find and re-find God’s light and life. It speaks of “thin places.”

A “thin” place is bothphysical and metaphysical, earthbound as well as otherworldly. It is a place where people go because theyexperience God as nearer there than in other locations. It is a place where past, present and futureare perceived as being very thinly divided. According to one Presbyterian colleague, as this tradition grew from thefifth and sixth centuries and then out beyond actual locations around the IrishSea, the phrase “thin place” came to encompass any “moments when the holybecame visible to the eyes of human spirit … where a person is somehow able toencounter more ancient and eternal reality within the present time.”[i]

Do you have at leastone “thin place” in your life? Everyinch of nearby Camp Johnsonburg’s 400 acres works this way for me, especiallythe outdoor prayer labyrinth located in the middle of the woods.

I pray this sanctuaryand all the ministry spaces of FPC fall into the “thin place” category foryou. When our building spaces and thetime we spend in them giving time and talent are perceived in this way, theybecome centers of holy light and of growing spiritual confidence that the Lordcares for us all. This same faithful perceptioncan be oriented to your home and workplace as well. “Thin places” help sustain our deepest mostintimate confidence in the nearness of the Lord. As Ibelieve the Psalmist knew well, they transform all sorts of spaces andsituations from being dark dens of despair into bright beacon-lit harbors ofhope and salvation.

I wonder if hangingupside down, center stage, while singing and tapping is a thin place for GavinLee. It sure would be for me! I’d have the utmost confidence in God to keepme safely suspended by working through the good gifts of everyone involved inthe entire production. Say, come tothink of it, this is quite a good illustration of how our church life should bein the divine production of our Lord’s light and salvation in the world. So may the Lord first and foremost be thetrue confidence of all our lives, and of our life together as FairmountPresbyterian Church, as Faithful People in Christ! Amen.

[i]Rev. Dr. Agnes Norfleet, www.day1.net

Which Way Are We Dragging Divine Nets?

2012-01-22T05:43:00.000-08:00

Mark 1:14-20

When’s thelast time you felt like a day or an experience was just dragging along? Wereyou at work? Stuck in a traffic jam orsome other long line? I sure hope it wasn’t a recent time here inworship!

We speak of feeling like days andexperiences are dragging because weknow what it means to literally drag an object. I very recently dragged this year’sbeautiful six foot Christmas tree out of our home and down into the backyardwoods. Fortunately, I remembered itneeded to be undecorated first.

Dragging – whether feeling it ordoing it -- is part of life. Though itcan seem boring and burdensome to experience, it can also benefit our lives andour being part of community. So whentime seems to be moving slowly, it can also bring about the blessing of someextra rest or extra productivity. That needle-droppingtree sure needed to be liberated from our living room and returned to itswooded home. And long lines just might be the result ofgood safety measures.

I mention all this because I find itquite fascinating that Jesus’ very first disciples were professionals of thedragging process. The one primaryskillset they all had in common was one that Jesus knew would be most helpfulto this divine purpose. They were allskilled at dragging fishing nets.

According to the Gospels, Jesus’sthree year ministry happened all around the great freshwater lake in Galilee. He was from this region. He knew the vital importance of life on theshoreline and how the community had to intricately work together to supportitself. Fish was the staple diet of thepeople. Catching fish was thereforevery big business, business needed to feed and employ families as well as makea profit for the Roman Empire that ruled the land. Itreally isn’t at all surprising that He first found fishermen to be hisfollowers. There were plenty of them!

From what I’ve come to understand,one of the nets fisherman used in that day was a kind of trawl net. It was let out from the end of boat and wasweighted in a way that it sort of stood in the water. When the boat moved forward, the nets fourcorners were drawn together. In thisway, it became like a big bag moving through water and enclosing fish.[i] This process required of the fisherman awillingness to work long, hard hours on the water. It required skill and patience and hope thatthe haul would be worth all the effort. I suspect there were times when long days of dragging felt as if theywere, well, dragging.

As we read in this morning’s lessonfrom the first chapter of Mark, Jesus first approached two sets of siblingfisherman – Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew, as well as James andJohn. He did so to offer them a radicalinvitation. He invited them to leavetheir livelihood behind and start a new vocation. He asked in a way that exhorted them to doso immediately. No two week notice. No checking with their families first. Immediately. There is more to this historical experiencethan Mark is telling us, but the point is they indeed dropped their nets andgot immediately caught up in what Jesus asked of them. We have to wonder what was so verycompelling that they would make such a big, life-altering decision.

Mark’s Gospel indicates they did sobecause they faithfully believed Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of Godwas at hand. To fully understand whatthe biblical meaning of the “Kingdom of God” is we’d honestly all have to sitand have a lengthy class of study together. It’s really good seminary lecture stuff. For our limited time together here thismorning in worship, I find it most helpful to point out that this does notrefer to a place but a way of living. It’snot a cloudbank up above with gold-bricked streets and a gorgeous castle with adazzling-crowned King Jesus just sitting around waiting to be served.

Jesus’ bold invitation was to followHis radically active and different kind of reign. Instead of dragging fishing nets, He askedhis first disciples to drag a divine net. Not to entrap people as we might immediately come to think. Not to force people into being the oppressedsubjects of a self-serving empire such as was true for so many of God’schildren living under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Jesus words and actions, His Lordship,focused instead on liberation from the sin that creates institutionalinjustice.

The divine net He asked his disciplesto take up was for the purpose of catching more and more children of God up inlong-promised holy plans for love, peace, hope, justice and redemption.

Jesus asked because He was the fleshand bone fulfillment of this promised peaceable dominion. With their hard work ethic and their faithfulhopes of a better life for their families and all the kin of their historicfaith, those first fisherman needed no second prompting from Jesus. They did not drag themselves into this newway of life.

How are we modern day disciplesdoing with our dragging of the divine net? What are we doing to stay caught up in the holy kingdom living of ourLord? How much are we doing to catchothers up in the loving, just, hope-filled, redeeming way of life? Are we dragging with joyful immediacy inevery moment, believing Christ is truly present among us and indeed reigns overall the sin and evil of our world? Orare we dragging our feet, passively and unproductively waiting on the reign ofChrist to just happen sometime in a distant future?

Earlier this week, I read acompelling article on discipleship and church life today by Professor DavidLose of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Church is, as I’ve always understood it,where we gather together to be in the boat and learn how to cast the divine netof peace, hope, love and justice in Christ. The professor lifts up the sobering reality that church participationcontinues its past 40 years of being in decline. Of the many studies on this topic – and I dotry hard to keep up with the reading – he points to one particular reason whythe immediacy of discipleship, of casting out kingdom living in this world, isdragging. He writes,

“We’ve moved from an age of duty –where you do things because you know you’re supposed to – to the age ofdiscretion – where, nearly overwhelmed with choices about how to spend yourtime, you exercise discretion based on how it helps you make sense of and getthe most out of your life.”

He then boils his point down furtherto say, “Attending church isn’t a cultural given anymore and there are a wholelot more options on how you might profitably spend your Sunday morning.” [ii]

Since I agree with this based on mypast fourteen years of ordained ministry, let me immediately say how grateful Iam that all of you have gathered here this morning! Especially on a day when two beautiful newdisciples in this family boat that is FPC have been welcomed by the waters ofbaptism. As to how we all might be aneven more positive, productive holy fishing crew together to help offset thedecline in dragging the divine net of peace and justice, here are three thingswe can focus on. These are based on abook I’m currently reading and discussing with colleagues in Newton Presbyterycalled From the Outside In, Connecting to the Community Around You.

First, we need to become even morefully immersed in mission. This meansthat we keep our focus foremost on what the reign of Jesus we are taught byMark’s Gospel is all about. Namely, “bringinghealing, liberation, and renewal”[iii]to more and more people’s lives. Thisinvolves our remaining active with and adding to our social justice ministriessuch as IHN, ASP and Open Cupboard, and it also means seeing our everydayordinary actions and interactions in kingdom context.

Second, we should take even moreseriously our role as witnesses to the Way of Jesus within our culture. This should be a holistic endeavor, not a narrowand programmatic one. How are we saltand light for one another in this congregation? In our neighborhoods? In ourplaces of work and recreation? Weshould be willing to “add the flavor of the Gospel to daily dialogue …therefore enhancing the human experience of God.”[iv]

Third and finally, for this morninganyway, we need to keep focused on ministry being the calling of every personin the church. We are all in the boatworking to cast forth Christ vision and action -- ordained Ministers of Wordand Sacrament, ordained Elders and Deacons, faithful laypersons, worship andprayer chain participants, folks who donate time and talent in a myriad ofsmall ways. All of us need to energeticallyand resourcefully pool together to expand the focus of ministry to “every issuewithin the human experience” and for the purpose of “reflecting the concern ofJesus that all person may have life in abundance.”[v]

The dragging process of being disciplesof Jesus is a necessary, beautiful, positive, productive gift to theworld. It may well feel burdensome attimes, but I find is a healthy indicator of passionate, dedicated work beingdone. It may well lead to feeling boredand stuck at other times, but I find this is always a spiritual summons to promptlypick-up and cast the good divine net further. Jesus keeps urgently commanding we follow, for the Kingdom of God is inthe holy of right now. May we do sowith fresh energy, faithful imagination, strong ropes of hope, and above all,abundant and immediate demonstrations of divine love. Amen.

[i]William Barclay, commentary on the Gospel of Mark from the Daily BibleSeries

[ii]http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=546

[iii]http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MkEpiphany3.htm

[iv]From the Outside In, by Ronald W. Johnson, p.22.

[v]ibid.

Faith In Motion

2012-01-15T05:34:00.000-08:00

John 1:43-51

I’veonly played a proper game of Dominoes a couple times in my life. It’s enjoyable, especially if thedimple-numbered pieces being used are a nicely weighted kind. But still, for most of my forty-two years dominoeshave been used for another form of play. You know … for diligently and oh so delicately setting them up one infront of the other in a pattern constructed to create a delightful chain reaction.

Thegoal is always to make a long line that will work. The fun tension is in knowing full well thatone slightly out of place piece might bring the movement to a dead stop. My,what frustration and a sudden sense of failure can happen when it’s all beenset in place, the first piece tipped into motion, and then it glitches a fewseconds later! When all that forwardmotion plays out perfectly, though, it’s such a joyful sense ofaccomplishment. Hmmm … I wonder how manydominoes we could successfully set up in here in our sanctuary?

Today’s Bible passage is what hascaused me to be thinking about dominoes, chain reactions and … church life. The Fourth Gospel begins so beautifullyand poetically. The mystical sounding languagepaints a broad picture about Jesus as the Word in the world. All of John is full of this sort of symboliclanguage. Yet as we reach verse 19 of the first chapter italso starts to get very direct and practical as well …

This is where we read about religiousauthorities from Jerusalem grilling John the Baptist about his identity and authorityto baptize with water. It’s where weread of his confession that he is but a vocal mile marker pointing the way to theMessiah, the Lamb of God. His purposewas to help set the Messianic movement on earth further in motion … to humblyfall forward and help start the chain reaction of responses to Jesus’ministry.

After telling the religiousauthorities what they demanded to know, John was standing with two of his owndisciples. We read that as they stoodthere together, Jesus passed right by them. This set up the scene up nicely for John to put faith in motion. So he did so by telling the two about whoJesus is. They reacted by moving onfrom John and starting to follow the Lord. Jesus noticed the two toppling forward in the Messianic movement. He asked them what they were lookingfor. They responded by saying that theywanted to know where he was going to be staying. Jesus respondedto them simply by saying, “Come and See.”

This was not an invitation to oneparticular time and place. He would bestaying in on place. He would be stayingthe course of his divinely constructed destiny. This was an invitation to move forward with him in His mission.

This inspired one of the two, Andrew,to soon after continue the active chain of invitation by proclaiming theidentity of Jesus to his brother Simon, who was later renamed Peter byJesus. Around that time Jesus found another man,named Philip, who was from Andrew and Simon’s hometown, inviting him to also followthe new movement. Philip did so by going right out and finding afriend named Nathaniel to tell him the Good News.

Noticing the motion patternhere? The pattern of being found thengoing out to find? Of seeing and then invitingothers to see? Are you catching on tohow we can consider all this faith in motion, this movement, this Jesus chain, tobe like line of dominoes? We can callit Domine Dominoes, after the Latinword for Lord!

As we know, though, one piece even ever soslightly out of place can bring the chain to halt. In this case, the out of place piece couldwell have turned out to be Nathaniel. And so early in the line! Specifically, what was out of place was Nathaniel’s response to theinvitation. He didn’t move his faithimmediately forward. He instead asked, in what sure seems to havebeen with a straight-up skeptical, plainly prejudicial attitude, “Can anythinggood come out of Nazareth?”

Now, to Nathaniel’s point, a fellowpastor has written this – “Nazareth was a dump. It didn’t feature in any OldTestament prophecies. No great personage had come from there. It wasn’t theseat of any power and no great families hailed from Nazareth. It was a simplebackwater town. No great schools, colleges, universities. There was nothing.Nazareth was nowhere.”[i]

What was Philip to do with this response? Condemn and dismiss his friend for havingthis prejudicial attitude? Re-set the movement someplace else? What would you have done?

The Gospel only tells us that he repliedwith understanding and further invitation to move forward in faith. Philipdid so by repeating Jesus’ invitation to come and see.

We can tell from the text that Jesushad been observing and listening to this exchange. How did He, our pure example of righteousliving, respond to Nathaniel’s prejudicial comment about people fromNazareth? He responded to the human prejudice with holy positivity. Jesus justtoppled it with grace by praising Nathaniel for being a truly open and honestIsraelite. There was no harsh judgment here, just lovinga person right where they were at in their thinking and believing. Having been accepted in this manner,Nathaniel’s faith moved forward. He thusfell into the growing line of disciples on the move. The first chapter of John ends with Jesuspromising Nathanial that he’d be seeing even more awesome things as theMessianic movement progressed.

What a beautiful lesson this teachesus about how the kinetic movement of the Messiah and His disciples does not cometo a dead stop when skepticism and prejudice are presented. It instead stands with such fruits of sin andhelps the person move ahead along the path of peace and hope in Christ.

The positive and peaceful chainreaction to the Good News of Jesus Christ is still going strong today. It is a most impressive and endless displayof faith in forward motion. And praisebe to God, as it moves through modern day disciples, it continues to overpowerskepticism and prejudice in our human race.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve surehad a few Nathaniel moments in my life. The environments I was raised in had lots of different prejudicial seedsbeing planted and watered and pulled and used. And I believe I have absolutely had ourLord meet me in many great moments of deep honesty with myself, always with theinvitation to “come and see” greater, more holy realities where equality andjustice are in motion and have been in motion through history.

Speaking of God and history, of theJesus chain, my children have the day off from school tomorrow. We will all not receive our mail. It’s a federal holiday, signed into creationby President Ronald Reagan in 1983. This gets me wondering if a few decades ago anyone ever skeptically,prejudicially asked, “Can anything good come out of Atlanta?” I’msure lots of good has come out of Atlanta throughout American history. We mustto be especially mindful, though, how eighty-three years ago today, On January15^th, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born there on Auburn Avenue,the heart of the African-American business district. He was steeped in the freedom-forwardingmovement of Christ and His disciples from the start. As he grew and aligned further in Gospel faith,he both personally experienced and learned about the hard history of racial segregationand slavery in America. As a Baptistminister and bold, leading civil rights leader he preached the positive,peaceful, forward motion of non-violence as the only faithful reply to deep,nation-dividing racial bigotry.

One inspiring example of this iswhat he had to say following a fire-bombing of his home by terrorizing whitesupremacists on January 30^th, 1956.[ii] Aware that the situation could quickly toppleforward into mob violence between blacks and white police, God gave Rev. Dr.King the grace stand on his porch and proclaim the following –

“We must love our white brothers …we must make them know that we love them … Jesus still cries out in words thatecho across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you’ …this is what we must live by …remember,” concluded King, “if I am stopped, thismovement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with thisglowing faith and this radiant assurance."

What a powerful and proactive witnessto faith in forward motion, to movement with Jesus Christ that does not ceaseto invite any member or group in the human race to come and see greater thingslike reconciliation and justice for all. Though this prophet of holy peace died in tragic violence, the positiveand peaceful chain reactions of his work have helped me and my children to livein a much more harmonious America than before I was born. Even more racial and economic reconciliation isneeded and Dr. King’s legacy pushes me to keep faithfully falling forward inthe cause of Christ alongside all God’s children.

Through the Holy Spirit and until a finalday of divine peace for this world, Jesus will keep finding and calling people rightwhere they are at. It does not matter where they are from orwhether they are at first skeptical and prejudicial. Andour Lord will keep inspiring us to find each other, to accept each other, topositively push each other toward actively sharing in the Good Newsmovement.

Hmmm … I wonder how many more Domine domino chains I – and we -- canhelp God set up across our country and the world? Amen.

[i]http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/leaving-the-shadows-epiphany3/

[ii]Read his book Stride Toward Freedom (1958)

Joyfully and Humbly Give Your Gifts to Jesus

2012-01-08T04:25:00.000-08:00

Epiphany 2012, Matthew 2:1-12

For the Church all across the world,the sacred season of Christmas has officially come to a close. Thisseems to be the case for the secular celebration of late December as well,evidenced by the fact that I’m now seeing Valentine’s Day items flooding thestores I most often frequent. I believe I’ve even seen a wee bit of leprechaunpeeking at me with a reminder that St. Patrick’s Day is coming soon enough afterthat. So, yeah, we are moving on from buying,then giving and receiving gifts with our loved ones in celebration of Jesus’birth.

Now it is time to faithfully focuson bringing ourselves everyday asloving gifts in worshipful service to Him.

We’ve shifted into the church seasonof epiphany. What does this mean? A common understanding of epiphany is thatit is a flash of fresh insight – most especially of the spiritual sort. Perhaps you’ve found yourself at one timeor another lost in a revelatory moment and saying, “Ah, I’ve just had anepiphany.”

A couple evenings ago, for example,I had a rather sudden, wonderfully overwhelming, and completely re-energizingrealization about how very full my heart is with hope for my family life rightnow. This wasn’t at all a brand newinsight. Yet the way it dawned on mewhile resting on my living room couch late Thursday evening in an otherwiseempty manse felt like God had directly and lovingly whispered in my ear. My heart all of a sudden felt as big andbright as the moon was that evening.

The broader, biblical meaning of theseason of Epiphany, for us as individual Christians, as a congregation, and aspart of the universal church in the world, is discovered in this morning’s familiarScripture passage. While it talks ofgiving Jesus presents, it even more so proclaims how his presence is a gift toall humankind and how we gift Him every time we openly, actively bear witnessto this.

At the heart of our passage are themystery men who visited Christ’s meager manger. Most common Bible translations – such asthe NRSV in our pews and the traditional King James Version – identify them as“wise men from the east.” Other more modern translations have calledthem “scholars” (The Message) or “magi” (Common English Bible).

I most like “magi” because it is closestto the ancient Greek word magos (pronouncedmahghas). Thisword has influenced our having the word “magic” in our vocabulary and refers tothe people who were considered in ancient Middle Eastern times to be mysticalseers. As we know from today’s text,they were people who expertly studied the stars for spiritual guidance and whocould also interpret dreams as messages from God.

No proper interpretation of Matthew2:1, it’s worth quickly noting, labels these intriguing travelers askings. This tradition and the belovedChristmas carol that comes to mind is most likely the result of reading Matthew2 with Isaiah 60, verse 3 in mind, which, prophesying about the Messiah reads,“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” By the way, there is also no biblical indicationof how many Magi there were … three gifts were presented and that’s about allwe know about the numbers!

I believe the most helpful thingthat can be said about these mystical gift-bearers to the newborn King of Kingsand Lord of Lords is what New Testament professor Mark Allen Powell haswritten. In an online commentary, hestates “The Magi of Matthew 2 are depicted as persons who do as they areinstructed, seek no honor for themselves, and who gladly humble themselves.”[i] Thesewere not people of Jewish faith, yet they interpreted that a rising star – somescholars speculate it was a comet – was instructing them and leading them toworshipfully bow down before and greatly gift Israel’s true, divine King. That was an epiphany. Then they followed it until they were rightunder it and right before the newborn Jesus. There, the epiphany erupted further and overwhelmed them with joy! What a beautiful moment!

The original Greek word Matthew usedto describe their behavior in the presence of the Christ child (that is oftentranslated as “homage”) refers to the ancient spiritual practice of fallingupon their knees and touching the ground with their foreheads as an expressionof resounding reverence. I find this faithfulgesture is worth a whole lot more than the gold, frankincense and myrrh theybrought combined. Especially since,again, they were outsiders to Israel who accepted that the precious, holy giftof Emmanuel was as much for them as it was for Abraham, Sarah, Ruth, KingDavid, and all the forbearers of Hebrew tradition. Their gesture was one of receiving at thesame time it was of giving. Theirutterly devout actions enrich the epiphany by bearing witness to the amazingtruth that Jesus is the gift salvation to absolutely all of humankind.

So the Magi are role models of howto respond to a holy epiphany. It meansletting such a holy moment lead you closer to the very heart and livingpresence of the Lord. It means being there with overwhelming,worshipful joy. It means reverently presentingyourself as a precious gift to God’s glory in Christ.

Keep the image of the Magi in mindand heart every single day of this freshly unfolding new year. Maybe put today’s bulletin cover on yourfridge. Just don’t forget aboutthem. They are more than figurines putaway with the Christmas crèche. They are spiritual guides silhouetted in ChristLight. And they exhort us by example tonot only have a deeply individual piety, but to get back up off our knees andjourney with others back into the world – fraught as it is withevil-intentioned Herods – in order to expand the message about God’s all-redeeminglove in our Lord.

It’swonderfully appropriate that on this celebration of Epiphany we are ordainingand installing church officers. Agreeing to serve as a church leader is about so much more than havingtime and talent to serve the practical needs of this historic faithcommunity. It is about a commitment tohumbly, actively answer ongoing epiphanies. As it was for the Magi, it is about joyfully being silhouetted in Christlight. It is about words and deeds thatreverently identify, celebrate and build up the all-inclusive, ever-expandingkingdom of our God. It is not justabout what tasks you’ll do as you fulfill a term, it’s more deeply about beingon a journey of faithful interpretation, vision and holy action as God inspiresand guides members and visitors alike through our bright congregational presencein this community and beyond.

In the spirit of epiphany, of beingopen to ongoing holy revelations, I read an article in this month’s PresbyteriansToday magazine about what healthy congregations focus on. It exhorts us to pinpoint the guiding,gathering and redeeming Light of Christ on “caring for and working to transformthe community around [us] by offering service, advocacy, spiritual guidance andworship.”

Did you hear the word“transform?” That’s epiphany talk. It’s talk about not allowing theChrist-light that is shining through FPC to become dim and spiritually static. After all, the Magi didn’t stay by the sideof our Lord’s meager manger. They had avery reverent visit and then moved on to follow the Light wherever it neededthem to go. To hammer home the pointabout needing to be a lively, enlightened presence not only within the doors ofour buildings but even more so beyond them, the article offered this compellingquote by author Leonard Sweet – “The church is measured, not by its seatingcapacity, but by its sending capacity.”

Faithful friends, our God summons usall to observe illuminating signals in this world. As we do so with humble, joyful, trulyreverent faith, we are also sent out to serve the Light of the World in everylocation it is present. It is presentin the pews next to you. It is present inour nursery and Sunday School rooms. Itis present throughout the Community House as we gather there for tablefellowship and committee meetings and as we open those doors to homeless inHunterdon, to Seeing Eye training, to Haytown Nursery, to quilters, and towhomever else has need. It is presentwith people in our neighborhoods and workplaces and various social circles whomay not share our faith, but, like the Magi, may well have the starlight of ourSavior rising to direct their lives. It is present everywhere we present the greatgift of ourselves to Jesus. Christmasmay have come to a close, but sacred calling has always just begun. Amen.

[i]http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=1/6/2008&tab=4

Silent Night, Unsilent Life

2011-12-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve 2011

On this quiet,country Christmas Eve, I invite us to imaginatively travel back in time. Yet not too far back, not all the way back toa birthing barn scene in ancient Bethlehem. Let’s first briefly visit a battlefield of human history where several incrediblypowerful, peaceful moments of sacred silence and serenity were once born.

The date was ChristmasEve 1914 and the deeply meaningful moments happened at various locations alongthe Western front during WWI. Thismonth’s issue of Presbyterians Today magazine recounts that a good many Germansoldiers lit candles and raised them up on small poles and bayonettes. They did so while singing “Silent Night” intheir native tongue, ninety-six years to that night after this belovedChristmas hymn was written in Austria. Bothof these actions quite clearly revealed their strategic positions and made themvulnerable to attack. Amazingly, and beautifully, however, the British not onlyheld their fire … they also joined in the singing. Then they scrawled the words “MerryChristmas” on boards and lifted them up. The gesture was returned. Next,a great many soldiers from both sides voluntarily set aside their weapons andone by one climbed out of bunkers and met together at a small central patch ofbombed out earth. There, enemies otherwiseengaged in the heart and heat of combat shared a campfire and exchanged smallgifts of chocolate bars, badges, and tins of beef.

Although the calmcandle fire was soon enough replaced with deadly fire power once again, Iimagine those brief moments of comforting, holy peace were an incredible giftto the frightened, exhausted soldiers. What a wondrous in-breaking of our Emmanuel,the Prince of Peace, this historic moment was! What a shining of the sacred, radiant beams of His holy face upon thiswounded world seemingly always at war with itself.

This story, thisword of witness, reminds us of the deep, true meaning of this silent, holy nightwe have gathered to experience.

Here,nestled in the pews cradling us, we remember and cherish Christ’s uniquearrival to the course of all history.

Here, we have hope reborn and are exhorted to be positively changed by thegreat gift of God in the flesh.

In themidst of all of the holiday hubbub and the often complicated emotions at this timeof year, we pause in sacred silence and serenity to honor the One born to bringabout peaceful reconciliation between heaven and earth and all of humanity withitself.   Tonight, you and I share an open invitation tofreshly realize how very much we need the holy calm and radiant Good News ofJesus’ all powerful, forever reconciling love.    We need it to settle conflicts withinourselves, with loved ones, and wherever there is enmity between children ofGod across the globe.

Rejoicing in thegreatest holy gift of all time, we have gathered in this absolutelyheart-warming sanctuary space; this space so resplendent with symbolicreminders and rituals of all that is central to our faith and full of nostalgicnods to our congregational traditions.

We gaze upon themanger scene nestled in the heart of our communion table, now complete with theChrist child after our Advent waiting.

We take in colors ofevergreen, white and red to festively, faithfully dress our hearts andminds.

We sing our praisesalongside the alleluias of the heavenly host.

We speakaffirmations of our faithful convictions and offer up prayers of thanksgivingand intercession.

We look with loving,all-encompassing welcome upon one another.

And we light ourcandles to sing Silent Night, Holy Night in blessed solidarity with the Princeof

Peace whose livingpresence seeks the heart of all humanity.

However, we will notbe able to stay in this comforting, cradling space of silence andserenity. We will return to our homes andsoon enough, to our regularly scheduled daily living. When we do, what will become of all thisfaithful centering, holy calling, and harmonious feeling?

I pray we all abidein it every day of our lives. Like aprayer shawl, let us wear the silence and serenity and sacredness of this nightas we move back into the various frays of our days. Pastor and artist Jan Richardson, whoseinspirations have guided me through this year’s Advent season, reminds us that“Christmas offers a microcosm of what we are called to in the Christianlife.” She then asks of herself, andby extension, asks us, “In the days, weeks, months to come, how will I bearwitness to, point toward, open myself to, embody the God who came as life andas light?”[i] Letus do so by not only holding fast to the memory of tonight, but even moreimportantly by turning our attention to what the child we are here celebratinghad to say in word and deed when he fully grew into his holy purpose. His was not a silent life. His was a life that repeatedly exhorted –“Let anyone with ears to hear, listen!” (Mark 4:9)

Now I don’t know ifyou’ve spend much time thinking about it, but Jesus started out like any humanbabe –crying and gurgling, sometimes with contentment and other times out ofconsternation. Language to further express Himself had to belearned. This language took form to definitivelyteach us all about the sacred life our Creator calls us to live. At the very core of it all is the message ofeternal peace – peace upon the mind, peace upon the heart, peace upon theearth.

True enough … hiswords did often stir-up controversy. Butthis was not to create conflict for conflict’s sake … it was for the purpose ofclarity. Again and again, throughstraight talking interpretations of the Old Testament as well as throughcuriously relevant parables, Jesus delivered a potent message about all thatwas happening to fulfill long-held holy promises. He practiced what He preached without eventhe slightest hint of hypocrisy. Byword and deed, He repeatedly heralded the economy of mercy, where justice isthe radical common currency. In doingso, true joy and deep peace and sacred security were reborn in very many sinfullybroken minds, bodies and spirits.

So as we celebrate the birthing scene of our Savior in a barn inancient Bethlehem through this beautifully silent and serene night, let us alsorecommit ourselves to listening to and living out the words he later ratherloudly said.

Recognize and rejoice in Him as the Word of God, in the flesh.

Be inspired to become more vulnerable as you seek heavenly peace andloves pure light in your heart.

Rejoice in this dawn of redeeming grace.

Go share it with all humanity.

This child, Jesus, so tender and mild, who grew to speak of and embodytrue sacrificial love, calls us to the constant common ground of faith and hope.

No wonder, and what great joy there is knowing, that people sing SilentNight, Holy Night on every continent and in countless native languages. By candle light and in the Light of Christ,we shall sing it again this quiet, country eve to the glory of our graciousGod. Amen.

[i]Through the Advent Door by Jan L. Richardson

The Scope of God's Promised Peace

2011-12-18T04:22:00.000-08:00

Luke 1:46-55

The FourthSunday in Advent: Peace

A week or so ago, myten year old daughter Rebecca -- who I’m delighted to declare is developingwell as a pianist and likes to sing -- informed me that she’d like to write asong. Then she confessed her concernabout not knowing what to write about. I replied by telling her – and not for the first time -- about the firstsong I ever wrote.

I was ten. The instrument was my first guitar, which I’dreceived for Christmas. The song wascalled “Life In a Fishbowl.” Iremember it had a basic D-G-A7 chord progression and steady downward strumpattern. The opening lyrics were asfollows – “Life in a fishbowl, swimming around, in my aqua town.” My words took a more dramatic, adventurous turnnext, as I penned lines about “little plastic men trying to capture me again.”

Obviously, the thingthat inspired me to write my first song was a simple fishbowl. It wasa little liquid estate. It had colorful rocks, some plastic seaweed, afake rock arch, and at least one little plastic scuba diver who – despite mylyrics -- really didn’t pose a threat to the fish. It washome to the oh-so-originally named Goldy and Rusty, both of whom I’d won at anelementary school fair game table.

As I explained toRebecca, the inspiration was right in front of me … just part of my home life. I don’t recall there being any serious momentof contemplating that fishbowl, of suddenly feeling overwhelmingly inspired towrite and sing about it. Yet it’s clearto me now that this song wasn’t just about identifying myself with a particularobject and wet pets. Having been raisedon Hank Williams songs like “Lonesome Whippoorwill,” I was schooled from thestart on expressing emotions with figurative language. So Ibelieve even at that early age I had envisioned the fishbowl as a metaphor formy life. Looking at it from the outside in, it magnifiedmore than the rocks on the bottom … it magnified tough truth about my homelife.

I could relate tothose fish, confined as they were to a space where there wasn’t much real freedomand where the waters were filthy most all of the time. I could relate to feeling unsafe, as thougheveryday was a cycle of being captured, released, captured again. Icould relate to feeling as though I lived in a transparent glass house. In metaphor, I believe I was singing on somelevel about growing up in the pollution of the alcoholism that flowed through myhome life.

To me, then, this wasan early song about feeling marginalized … about not feeling like my life was evergoing to be lived in the mainstream; a song about struggle, about not feelingany deep security and peace.

Someday, I’ll explainall this more to Rebecca. That dad wassinging about fish and little plastic men is rather enough for her to ponderand chuckle about for now. But perhapseventually it will help her know where to start and to recognize how even seeminglysimple things might have greater broader symbolic meaning. My hope for today in sharing this personalanecdote is that it will alert us to recognize the same with our Bible passagefor this fourth, and final, Sunday in Advent.

Luke 1:46-55 is oftencalled “Mary’s Song.” As we read it,and as we hear it read, it is at first listen a simple, sweet song of gratitudeand praise. She boldly sings of herspirit rejoicing in the Lord, of feeling and being regarded as blessed. This is perfectly understandableconsidering what had happened to her just prior to her heart-song. She’d been visited by the angel Gabriel andtold she had been chosen to conceive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the verySon of God. She then visited herrelative Elizabeth, whose own rather miraculous pregnancy confirmed this holycalling. Mary’s response to all thiswas to believe with all her heart, mind and soul that nothing is impossible forGod and so she joyfully accepted her appointment as an instrument of divinemercy. And so she sang her song ofpraise to the Mighty One who had done great things for her and for herancestors in the faith.

But this is not just asimple song of awe, gratitude and praise to God. It’s not just a fishbowl glimpse into onelife and one moment in time.

This passage is alsoand perhaps more widely known as The Magnificat. This is the Latin word meaning to magnify and directly points to Luke 1,verse 46. What is being magnified inMary’s words flows much deeper … it floods straight over into God’s past,present and future merciful action in this world. It streams into God’s great promises ofpeace and reconciliation for all people, and more specifically, as one Bible scholarhas written, “for those who lurk on the fringes of the world’s hierarchy ofvalue.”

Mary was mostcertainly a lurker. We should never overlook that this is a songsung by a teenage, unwed mom-to-be, who, if not for her fiancée’s intercession,most likely in her day would have been stoned to death. Her song magnifies her harsh marginalizationand thus also gives voice to every child of God who experiences devaluing byworldly measures. To further quote thesame Bible scholar I just mentioned, Mary’s message about the Mighty One doinggreat things can be applied to “anyone who has been marginalized by society, byculture, even by the church … it may be a message that offers newness in themidst of racial or economic discrimination … it may mean a message of newnessfrom a wheelchair or a nursing home … or in the midst of grief and loss orbarrenness of body or soul.”

The newness beingmagnified is the broad-scoped reversal of fortunes from the merciful heart ofGod. It magnifies the faithful fact thatGod’s good and holy standards will always trump the worldly standards thatcreate injustices of every stripe. Itis the grand, eternal reversal of sin centered in the advent, birth, life,death and resurrection of Jesus, Mary’s child, God’s Son, our Emmanuel, theChrist.

The amazing scope of this reversal is promptlypointed to by Luke in his use of the Greek word megas ((pronouncedmegas). The root of this word, which is the biblical basis of magnificat, refers to measurement of spaceand its dimensions. It is meant to getus thinking about God’s great mass and weight, God’s spacious breadth, God’slong measure and height, and God’s eternal stature. It doesn’t magnify God’s mercy by zoomingin, but by zooming out! So Mary singsof her soul glorifying the vast greatness of God in her life and in the life ofthe whole world – a greatness that holds in highest regard every lowly, hungryservant and steadfastly honors the merciful promises made to Hebrewforbearers.

Quitea lot of deep meaning for such a small and sacred ditty, don’t you think?
Really hammers home the point that Mary’s pregnancy and her joyful, gratefulwillingness to be an instrument of God’s merciful peace symbolizes much morethan just what was happening in one poor but deeply blessed girls life. We thank God for Luke’s recording of this song!

Howare you hearing it? Like so many songsthat have intimate yet timeless meaning for our lives, and for the world, whatdoes it mean to you? How are you being,and how have you been, marginalized in your life? What mercy comes to you at the margins?

Myten year old boy written song about marginalization was blessed with God’s amazinggrace and reversal of fortune. The swamp of all kinds of family abuses was cleansed;replaced in my life by a steady stream of prayerful reflection and spiritual direction. He has led me beside still waters. Every song, poem, sermon, newsletterarticle and just everything I write I try to magnify the scope of God’spromised peace for all. And, as Maryknew well, the beautiful thing about faithful witness is that it gets sharedthrough the ages, generation to generation, to the glory of our truly greatGod. Amen.

Desert Delights

2011-12-11T06:14:00.001-08:00

John 1:6-28

“Desert Delights”

John 1:6-28

Advent 3: JOY

Rev. Rich Gelson, Fairmount Presbyterian Church

What joy is there tobe found in a desert wilderness? How does this joy strengthen us as we seek tosee and to proclaim the Savior of the world, the one who comes again and againto be present in our lives? These arethe big questions John the Baptist beckons us to answer for ourselves on thisthird Sunday in Advent.

Throughout the Bible,the word “wilderness” has two primary purposes. First, it refers to physical locations. Second, it works as a figure of speech, as ametaphor.

As a physicallocation, the wilderness can simply refer to travel routes and locations whereholy historic happenings took place. Thetrouble is, we are told that many of these routes and locations are sites wheredangers, rebellions, temptations, and deadly battles took place. Deuteronomy 8:15, for example, tells us thatthe people of Israel left Egypt only to find themselves in “the great andterrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpians.” And itwas in this scary place that Jesus spent forty days at the very beginning ofhis ministry, confronted by wild beasts and intense evil temptation.

However, thewilderness is at other times also described in the Bible as a place of safesanctuary, of refuge, a location for worship and remembering God’s covenantpromises. That scary wilderness in thetime of the great exodus was, after all, also where the bitterly complainingIsraelites experienced miraculous reminders that God was guiding them andproviding for them every step of the way. And Jesus was survived and thrived during his dramatic wilderness days byprayerfully relying on divine power.

The tangible historyof the Israelites and of Jesus thus also frames the wilderness as a figure ofspeech. So when we read of “wilderness,”we are inspired to consider not only a physical terrain, but also our inner, spiritualterrain – the place within our hearts and minds where we experience great fearfor our lives and have our faith tested; the place where the temptation to turnagainst God most sinfully summons as well where we can respond by boldlycalling upon God’s gracious power to deliver us.

Why are we having thisbrief Bible study? Well, where did Johnthe Baptist live and minister? In thewilderness! A hostile setting is whereGod spoke to John about his true purpose in life, his holy calling. Thissame divine word had inspired John’s mother, Elizabeth, to say to her pregnantrelative Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of yourwomb.” (Luke 1:28). This same divine word had motivated John’s father, Zechariah,to declare that his newborn son would be “called the prophet of the Most High,”a child born to grow-up to “give knowledge of salvation” by going before theLord to “prepare his ways.” (Luke 1:76).

We know from ourlesson this morning that this is exactly how John’s life unfolded. He was first strongly steeped in desert solitude. Once brewed to the proper intensity, to thebold flavor of his calling, John then stepped out to the edge of the wild lifeand directly to people’s mainstream living. There, he called for repentance – for people to turn away from sin andturn back toward God. He did so topoint a firm finger in the direction of his Jesus, the light of the world, fromwhose fullness all receive grace upon grace. When confronted about this by the religious authorities of his day, thePharisees, unabashedly announced that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’sprophecy (Isa. 40:3) – the voice crying out in the wilderness to declare thearrival of the “greater one” standingamong them, the Christ they had been waiting for.

Can you imagine whathis tone of voice probably sounded like? Chances are a bold, fierce, frightening voiceof warning first comes to mind … a voice that matches a desert dwelling prophetdecked out in prickly camel-hair clothing and with breath saturated in thescent of wild honey and desert locust meat.

I do believe, though, there was something elseresonating through John’s voice. Something unmistakable for someone so powerfully aware of God’s abidingpresence, of the Good News of God’s plan of salvation unfolding not just insome cosmic spiritual realm but directly in the flesh. There just had to be joy in that voice, joy in declaring the fullness of grace upongrace for all humankind through the person of Jesus.

This joy was forged inhis heart through the Holy Spirit. Andagain, to my main point this morning, it was forged directly through hiswilderness experiences.

Case in point, I just mentioned his desert dietof wild honey and locusts. Soundsrather gross to us, but to John, focused on surviving in a hostile environment,these were desert delights. With all ofthe threats he had to guard against in that way of life – from hungry beasts toisolating depression – he did not lose sight of the fact that in the wildernessexperience, there is plentiful, holy provision to be found that brings joy tothe heart and soul.

In the case of thedesert locust, there was an additional plus. Recall that at the announcement of John’s birth it was declared that he wasto grow up as a person of ritual purity. Whatever food he found find in the desert might have not been an option. Keeping his spirit clean just might wellhave trumped keeping his belly full. Fromlearning his scriptures, however, we assume he knew Leviticus 11:22, which indicatedGod regarded the desert locust as a clean creature. He therefore knew eatingthese green-brown winged critters would not defile him. Plus, I understand they nourished him well,for fifty percent of a dried locust is composed of valuable protein![i] Joy!

There is somethingelse joyful about the imagery of eating locusts in the desert that is worthmentioning. After they hatch and arefed, they leave their solitary life behind. They join up together, forming masses to cover the ground. Now … John fed on the wild life until itwas time to leave that behind, his time to be the voice crying out from thewilderness. That’s when he joined upwith other people, recruiting disciples for his ministry. That meant more mass covering the ground ofdeclaring the Good News of the Messiah. So in addition to the joy of having locusts to feed on, perhaps he also hadthe joyful inspiration of how to prepare the world for Emmanuel – through greatgatherings of witnesses!

You and I don’t livein a wilderness. True enough, comparedto the urban and suburban environments I was accustomed to before moving here,my first year or so living in this area kind of felt like it. And some of you may well have had someactual wilderness living at some point in your lives. Today, though, we don’t live in a desertwilderness the likes of which we hear about in the Bible. Yet we do have our own kinds of wildernessexperiences. The good kind thatreenergizes and reconnects us to the life that is in all of creation, as whenwe go spend time in the woods or go on some great outdoor adventure. And we have the tougher kind too – the wildernessfound in our innermost terrain of heart and mind. We have wildernesses of loneliness, ofgrief, of fear, of economic hardship, of social exclusion … to name a few. Inboth places of wilderness, we come to realize and recognize anew that God isalways providing for us, always strengthening us for meeting and proclaimingthe Christ who is ever present.

I recently read andrelated to one man’s particular wilderness … and it’s one we all live in aswell. The difference is, this guy’s abit like John the Baptist in terms of what he calls us to do. I’m speaking of a Texas Christian University professornamed Jeff Ferrell.

On the one hand, he isa respected academic who lectures on sociology and criminology and has writtennine books. He looks like he’d fit inperfectly fine on the cast of the television show C.S.I.

On the other hand, hehas a reputation as an urban scrounger, as a profoundly committed dumpsterdiver. He does so to find all sortsof stuff that should have been donated or recycled. He then diligently donates or recyclesthem. But … he also lives off of otherpeople’s discards … his clothing, his home furnishings, and he has no aversionto nourishing himself with prepackaged food he finds. This authentic, high energy, spiky-hairedPhD’s lifestyle of reclaiming waste is paired with his passionate teachingabout the ill effects of consumerism. “I think it’s appalling on the level of just sheer waste and fulllandfills … it’s also profoundly disturbing given the level of need in oursociety,” he said during a recent interview. His main point of emphasis is on how the constant rush, rush, rush ofAmerican culture cultivates the habit of just throwing things away. He knows that much of the stuff found at thewilderness edge of society has great value. He clothes and nourishes himself with it. Inthe wastelands, he finds provisions and uses these to strengthen his call torepent of behavior that casually tosses poverty of body and spirit aside,behavior that inhibits joy in the community of all God’s children.

What wildernesses haveyou experienced in the past, might you be experiencing right now? Figuratively speaking, what sort of wildhoney and desert locust sustained and strengthened your faith?

ChristmasEve truly is coming right up. Blink andit will be here. Our Sunday morningAdvent journey has led us through hope by way of Isaiah 64, through love by wayof Psalm 85, and today, joy by way of John the Baptist. None of these sacred texts are gentlegreeting card interpretations of hope, love and joy. Each calls us to seriously examine the waywe abide by our faith as we prepare to revisit the silent night our Saviorbecame fully present to the world. Practically speaking, just think about what it means to prepare forchild’s birth. There is a lot ofmaterial planning that happens … but there’s also an emotional and spiritualinventory taking place. This Advent and Christmas season we should bedoing no less as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the Son of God. May you experience the deep blessing of joyfulreminders in the wilderness, and may your faith be refreshed the remainder ofyour personal Advent journey and our Advent adventure together as faithfulpeople in Christ. Amen.

[i]Zondervan Dictionary of Biblical Imagery “LOCUST”

Listening, Loving Hearts

2011-12-04T05:29:00.001-08:00

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

There sure are lots ofacronyms enmeshed in American culture, in the USA. At least once a week I ask my daughters if theywould like a PBJ, a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. In lots of conversations I’ll either say orhear a reference to being or not being PC, Politically Correct. There always seems to be good reason to sayFYI, For Your Information. Whenwondering what exact time someone is going to show up at my office or home,I’ll ask them about their ETA, Estimated Time of Arrival. As a pastor of the PC(USA), thePresbyterian Church in the United States of America, I will on occasion need toconsult the BOO, the Book of Order as well as the BOP, the Board ofPensions.

I could definitely offer a very long list ofthe many words formed from the initial letters of set phrases. But this morning, it’s an acronym that originatedin my mind one day while parenting that I hope will be helpful for us to knowas we reflect on today’s Psalm and what love means in the context of thisAdvent season

How many of you havechildren and grandchildren who, when asked to do something, always listen thevery first time the request is made? Now,and on the other hand, how many of you have to make repeated requests? In home life with my dear daughters, I admitI’m often on repeat. Then, with impatientfrustration, I very often exclaim, Listenthe First Time! So often, in fact, this phrase gave birth to anew household acronym – LIFT. How well the acronym is responded to may notbe much better than if I use the full phrase, but I enjoy saying it anyway! “Children, FYI, our ETA is 7:30, so LIFT andlet’s get those PBJ’s made!”

When I read Psalm 84,I’m inspired to wonder how many times throughout history God might have shoutedLIFT in our direction. Godis always speaking. God speaks throughevery page of Scripture, straight to our hearts and minds through the power ofthe Holy Spirit. God speaks as wellthrough hymns, sermons, Bible studies and through every day conversations andinteractions. How well do we listen thefirst time? How often is God on repeat?

I find the human frustrationchildren not listening the first time rises out of a desire to be heard,respected, and ultimately trusted for having the family’s best interests atheart. It is not arbitrary -- it is firmlyrooted in deep abiding love. Direct,loving communication is needed as a constant in family life.

Since each of us was knittogether at our birth by the abiding love of our Creator, it seems true enough fromreading the Scriptures that God gets frustrated when we fail to listen. This, in turn, can become frustration for ourfaithful family life. While God’sgrace covers all failures, we aren’t excused from diligently working toward ahealthy, mutually loving relationship with God and with one another. We need to listen with love, to declare, alongwith the Psalmist, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak …”

How well do you welcomethis divine, community of love building communication? What blocks you from intentionally makingtime to lovingly listen to God?

Asking questions likethese is what I do when I meet people one on one for spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is a set-apart time fromother pastoral duties where I prayerfully discern with someone where God mightbe most actively engaging that person’s daily life. It’s a special, intentional time for listeningto sacred love. Just a quick reminder–I am available as a Spiritual Director (which, come to think of it, is more likebeing a Spiritual Connector!) to you, your loved ones, your friends, prettymuch whomever wants to be intentional about the time.

I mention it herebecause when I was training for certification in this field of ministry, myfavorite required reading was a book called The Awakened Heart. It was written by Gerald May, an M.D. whopracticed medicine and psychiatry for twenty-five years before becoming a trulyinspiring teacher of contemplative spiritual practices.

In May’s chapter“Loving the Source of Love,” he writes how having a more child-like faith canhelp us be more directly attentive to God’s presence in our lives. In a beautiful turn of phrase, he invites usto consider the “unadmitted sparkle of the child” we each have within us. In this sparkle, he encourages us to recognizethat we have, to quote him directly, “a sometime longing to climb into God’sfather lap, to nestle against God’s motherly breast, to rest for a moment inthe shadow of God’s wings … held in God’s strong and tender arms.” Following this affirmation, he continues withthis question – “If you could allow yourself to feel it, are there not timeswhen you would love to cry on God’s shoulder, to let God tell you areworthwhile and beautiful?”

I sure find this to bea rhetorical question … especially since I believe we are spirituallyhard-wired to crave this attention and nurture from our Creator. Dr. Mayfollows next with some blunt bit of advice. “Dispense with your maturity for a moment and indulge yourself … directrelationship with God is the one place where you can be absolutely trusting ofyour desire and give it full reign. Youwill never know how safe the place is until you risk being in it fully.”

All relationshipsrequire this risk … this deepening of trust of between our most basic desires andanother person. It’s so much more sowith our first love, the love that never lets us go … the love we experiencewith God.

I surely hear this spiritually-centering riskin the Psalmist’s voice. It’s not avoice making academic sounding statements about the reality of God. It’s a voice confessing the basic need toturn the human heart toward heavenly hope. It’s the voice of a child of God waiting on a holy, loving, parentalkiss. Evidence of this kiss takesform, sings the Psalmist, wherever God’s steadfast love and our faithfulnessmeet, wherever signs of God’s deep peace and our right living shareintimacy.

In this Advent season,we are preparing ourselves to be reminded on Christmas Eve when and where andwhy this holy kiss most fully happened in the course of human history. We are preparing our imaginations to enterinto ancient history and hear God directly speaking to us of love, beginningwith the gleeful gurgles of a newborn infant so tender and mild.

Yet so much of ourpreparation time for this intimate audience with the Almighty gets audiblyblasted by commercial begging and the sounds of stress within and aroundus. The space we should be creating tolisten in love for what God has to say to us gets so easily crowded out byextra demands on our time and drains on our energy. We get culturally forced to focus more onmommy kissing Santa Claus than on Christ come to kiss our sin away. Thelife presented to us by Psalm 84 – a life “portrayed as full, complete, andhealthy … lived to the fullest in relationship with God as part of a communityof faith”[i]– gets squeezed into commercialized spaces. We get repeatedly tempted to replace thoughts about right living withGod with obsessions about getting the right gifts and having the rightdécor.

All the while, Ihonestly believe God cries out, LIFT! Listen to the First Time I spoke saying “Let there be light” anddeclared all of Creation good. Listen tothe First Time I spoke to humankind saying “Be fruitful and multiply” alongwith invitation to be faithful companions and stewards of all. Listen to the First Time I warned of thedire consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good andevil. Listen to the First Time I madecovenant promises and cried out through prophets. Listen to the First Time I directly took ahuman breath and cried out for love.

A fellow preacher’s blog, which can be found atwww.theharestquestion.com, has this insightful conclusion about the meaning ofPsalm 84 – “God does not deny the inherent tensions in the nature of humanity,the capacity for great love and great deceit,” for “love and faithlessness” but“God does not consider these tensions reason to alter God’s plan for ourcreation.”

So very true. God’s plan for wholeness in relationship withus and all of Creation does not ever cease. We live with and through these tensions, these times of listening andloving and times of turning deaf ear and of denying, because we do believe God’smost precious, most intimate, most communicative plan for creation was birthedin Bethlehem of long ago. And thisgood news is one hundred plus percent uplifting! So may we each turn our hearts and declare our willingness tolisten to what the Lord is speaking in love this very moment, in this special hour,on this Advent day. Amen.

[i]www.workingpreacher.org, January 28, 2011

Yet, O Lord

2011-11-27T04:45:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 64:1-9

Ah, another Adventseason has arrived. It has arrived onour church calendars and it has arrived yet again in our hearts and minds. Withour bodies full of thanksgiving and the Black Friday brouhaha behind us, we nowfocus on this special, sacred time set apart for us as faithful individuals andas a believing community to prepare for Christmas. It’s time to really ready ourselves for thesacred reason of this season! When weare intentional about taking this time to spiritually prepare for the “celebrationof Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem,” we can come to realize that “Christ isreborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives.”[i]

Specifically andbiblically, we intentionally prepare by spending four weeks reflecting on what thecoming – the advent -- of ourEmmanuel, of God with us, of Jesus, meansfor our lives and for this whole world. In our worship services, we areguided in this consideration by specific biblical topics – today, the topic of hope; on the 4^th, the topicof love; on the 11^th thetopic of joy; and peace will be our focus on the 18^th. Come the beautiful moment of Silent Night, Holy Night, may we lightthe candle with a fresh fire of holy hope, love, joy and peace ablaze withinus. We start faithfully striking flinttoday by turning to Isaiah 64 and focusing in on hope.

Let’s begin by building a bridge between hope as a broad ideal and hopeas an intimate, heartfelt reality. Steppingon this bridge, consider this question for self-reflection -- What was the mostrecent request you made? Further, whatexactly was it you needed to be given or have done? Who did you make this request for favor orcourtesy of? Did you so with a sense ofurgency or complacency? When you stopto think about it, we do make a lot of requests every day. We do so because we have many needs andbecause we inherently live with hope that one way or another these needs aregoing to be attended to. Hopefuels our need fulfillment.

I invited us to thinkabout this because Isaiah 64 begins and ends with request. Theauthor of the words had a finger on the pulse of his people’s needs and spokewith hope that those needs would be met. The people are the ancient Israelites and God is squarely the one whosefavor is being requested.

The request is made invery dramatic, very poetic fashion – “O that You, God, would tear open theheavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake in Your presence.” This is not a poetically framed request forGod to stretch open the sky in order to come down, strike fear anddestroy. It is instead a request forGod to come and be directly present in order to fire things up the way firekindles brushwood and boils water.

The request for God’spresence reflects a historic time of conflict within the Jewish community. A great many people had returned toJerusalem after having been forced to live in exile some sixty years in theneighboring Babylonian Empire (present day Iraq). Upon their return, there was a commonlyfelt great hope amongst the Jewish people for Jerusalem to be restored to itsformer glory. “All hopes were pinned tothat return,” writes one Bible scholar, for “coming home to Jerusalem was goingto mean the end of all Israel’s shame and discontent.”[ii] Can you relate, as I sure can, to having agreat hope that God’s children can somehow come home together to a common holyplace and be liberated from sin and discord?

Alas, instead of thegreat community abiding by a unifying faithful fire, power struggles blazed amongstthe people. Conflict crackled. Divisiveness simmered. “Problems multiplied rather thandisappeared; ugliness and evil continued to exist.”[iii] The need and hope of holy restoration was thuspulled down by lamentable sinful behavior.

Isaiah’s propheticword to this community was even more metaphorically dramatic than his requestto the Almighty. He compared the people tofilthy, faded cloth – the kind of filth that clearly marked them as rituallyunclean and impure before the Lord. Agross rag sure is a hopeless image. Hefurther gave voice to the fear that God had been so angry about the peoplesinfully soiling themselves into this condition that God had decided to turn awayfrom receiving requests and realizing hopes.

But great prophetscall out people’s sin in order to inspire them to return to a vigorous hope inthe greatness of God. So we read inIsaiah 64 the reminder that God had done some unexpected, totally awesome deedsthroughout Hebrew history. Implied hereare such moments as the miraculous delivery from enslavement in Egypt, themercy of manna given to griping people in exodus, and the mighty military handshown through a shepherd boy with his iddy-biddy slingshot. Isaiah not only reminded the people, but alsoGod. We hear this in Isaiah’s plea -- “Donot be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever …consider, we are all Your people.” (64:9)

Inspired by thisScripture, we can conclude that there are two essential aspects of living withholy hope. First, we are reminded that despite laments, hopecomes alive each time God’s past unexpected acts of deliverance arerecalled. And second, we are reminded hopealso comes alive when we acknowledge our sin and make humble requests for God toyet again mercifully, miraculously deliver us.

What do these tworeminders about hope have to do with Advent? Doesn’t it sound more like they belong more to the repentant season of Lent?

Last week, I mentionedthat our Christ the King celebration marked the end of the year on the churchcalendar. Today, the first Sunday inAdvent, then, is like New Year’s Day. It marks not only the beginning of our preparation for Christmas, forthe birth of Jesus, but also our preparation for Jesus as the Christ who isfully revealed to us at Easter and whose reign we live in as Easter people. It’s not coincidental that the color purplemarks our sanctuary during both Advent and Lent. So this is indeed a time for repentantself-reflection, of realizing and turning away from behavior that burns downinstead of builds up faith as we live alongside our loved ones and neighborsnear and far. Along with Isaiah, we doso not to feel guilty and live only in lament that God has justifiable reasonto hide from us forever. We do so toname it while also saying “Yet, O Lord …” in order to turn our full attentionto hoping in the Holy One who acts to deliver us from sin in awesome,unexpected ways.

When God spoke throughIsaiah, we can trust the divine plan was already in full-swing for God to “tearopen the heavens and come down” in the most completely astonishing,earth-shaking way ever. Not by angrythunderbolt and lightening, but by gentle, darkness illumining starlight; thestarlight that shone on field-filthy, socially outcast shepherds and on wealthy,worldly respected wise men alike. Notby a massive physical display of military and political might, but by way of afragile-fleshed human child born to an impoverished family. We must faithfully contemplate that theultimate coming down and our ultimate hope began with simple, starkreality. It began by entering thephysical cells of sinfully soiled humanity. It began by eternal revelation made in the midst of lowly mangermud.

Perhaps you have made arecent request of your loved ones expressing your hope for a certain gift youfeel you want or need to receive this Christmas? If so, also intentionally taketime this Advent season to lament sin, to consider all of humanity’s truestneed and to make a humble request of God to please come down to hearts andminds and give us all afresh the greatest gift of all – the gift of Emmanuel,God with us, Jesus. Amen.

[i]Edward Hays, http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=109

[ii]Diane Jacobson, “Isaiah in Advent: The Transforming Word” page 384

[iii]ibid

Thy Kingdom Care

2011-11-20T05:03:00.001-08:00

Matthew 25:31-46

Despite my having theutmost reverence for the King Jesus described in this morning’s Gospel passage,I really can’t say I’m eager to meet Him. Frankly, I find this King Jesus more than a bit frightening. I read the fiery words of condemnationabout those seated at His left hand -- those He judges as cursed -- and I feelintimidated down to the most cluttered basement corner of my soul. The word our pew Bibles translate as“cursed” can also be translated even more bluntly as “doomed.” On the eternity sized bench of divinejudgment, I do not want to be seated even one millimeter to the left of thisKing Jesus.

The condemningdeclaration against those who do not follow the ways of this King not only intimidatesme, it kind of irritates me too. I’m generallyone who favors preaching about Christ’s all-inclusive, loving grace. I guess you could say the harsh tone gets my goat. Plus, earlier this week, when I firstre-read this widely recommended passage for Christ the King Sunday, I felt likeI’m far too docile a person to preach about people being segregated into the“eternal fire prepared for the devil.” It’s safe to say I felt – what’s the right word? – well, I felt sheepish about speaking to thispassage.

However, it’s a goodand faithful discipline not to ignore Bible passages just because they irritateor intimate you. Comfortable or not,it’s all the Word of the Lord. It’s allthere for the sheep and the goats and the great purpose of being the definitiveguide for righteous living. We do have achoice, though, for how we choose to primarily interpret it.

We can choose to firstand foremost focus on and proclaim this as a scary Scripture lesson. Among other reasons for this not being myfirst choice is the fact that I grew up in an abusive situation and wasconsistently scared by frightening language. So I can say that strongcondemning language doesn’t exactly inspire me to feel loved and to love othersfor who they are and where they are at. It triggers angry, resentful and generally combative feelings. And that is not good news in any way shape orform. Can you relate?

I do acknowledge andrespect our Lord’s authority as eternal judge, especially since any negativejudgment is the result of the sin humankind sows. But this lesson has an even more potentpoint. It is a very clear invitation tofollow Jesus rightly by faithfully and blessedly loving ourselves and our neighbors as Heloves. I don’t find this passage is meant to scarethe hell out of us so much as it intends to inspire heavenly life into us!

Teaching about whatheavenly life here on earth under the reign of Christ is like truly is the mostpotent point of Matthew 25. Yes, it’sa parable that shocks us to attention. But it does so to then settle us into the teaching of how we disciplesof the Son of Man are to love Him and love like Him. Matthewwas intentional in using “Son of Man” instead of “Son of God” as his title for Jesusin this text -- it’s the title that always points to his selfless, sacrificialsuffering on earth. It’s a cue to let usreaders know Jesus’ judgment is based on His incarnate example.

So whenyou and I pray and declare “Thy Kingdom Come” do we do so primarily to remindourselves and others that eternal judgment will be upon our souls one day? Or do we do so to reassure ourselves andothers that as wounded as this world is, God’s reign of love, justice and peacein Jesus is and will forever prevail? I pray we pray to foremost feel reassured and inspired to faithful action. I pray that as we speak the words to Jesus, “ThyKingdom come,” we simultaneously say to ourselves, “Thy Kingdom Care.”

Our eternal king is not a power-hungry, people abusing, self-serving autocraticPharoah. The Gospels bear consistentwitness that our eternal king is a selflessly caring and universally compassionatesovereign whose reign is all about God redeeming the injustices of sin. To be His subjects, his ambassadors, his --in keeping with our parable this morning—the sheep of His fold, is to make serving this divine government ourdaily priority. Our king led byflawless, bold example while physically on earth. Our king now continues to govern our heartsand minds in this way through the power of His Holy Spirit, power that is givenby grace and received and lived through faith.

How, then, are we tolive into Christ’s kingdom and in doing so inherit it and build it on earth asit is in heaven? Matthew’s message fortoday is crystal clear -- be the sheep and not the goats. Faithfully follow the Good Shepherd in doingthe caring, sin rectifying things Jesus was born to do instead of obstinately,sinfully ignoring them. Some of theseare very plainly named for us in Matthew 25.

Where there is hunger and thirst, offer food and drink. We are summoned by our King to offernourishment to anybody lacking the basic human necessities needed to bealive. As we share in the sacrament ofthe Lord’s Supper today, spiritually feast being mindful of these neighbors andask God how you can go forth in this season of thanksgiving as a holyambassador.

Where there is estrangement, offer welcome. Those we may consider strangers are notstrangers to Jesus. They are belovedfriends. Absolutely every one ofthem. And so our King summons us toaddress all shunning prejudices, non-inclusive practices and gross injusticesagainst our neighbors near and far. By doingso, we help rebuild our communities and this hurting world in His holy image.

Where there is nakedness and sickness, offer clothing and healing. Nakedness takes many forms. You know the most obvious and what this meansin terms of body warmth and social acceptance. In the Scriptures, it’s worth noting that it also functions as a way ofnaming shame. The nakedness of Adamand Eve before God was less about their physical condition and more about theirmortified spiritual condition once the sickness of sin factored into theirlives. As our king summons us toclothe and heal, then, we should be mindful that this is about our soul-care aswell as body-care.

On a similar note,where there is imprisonment, offer visitation. While I miss going to the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution atGraterford during the Advent season, which I did with the men’s group at myprevious church, I also know there are other times of imprisonments needing tobe visited. People are imprisoned byloneliness, by a myriad of physical and mental diseases, by paralyzing grief, byeconomic despair, by lack of feeling loved and accepted for who they are asprecious children of God and so forth. Ourking summons us to visit these realities and these neighbors in prayer and inperson.

We consider all ofthese on this Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the year on the churchcalendar before we start anew with the season of Advent next week. For trulyI tell you, our caring King has said for our repeated hearing, whatever you have or have not done for “oneof the least of these followers of mine” you did or did not do it for me. (Matthew 25:40, Good News translation).

And friends, we arenot just subjects of our caring king Christ Jesus … even more beautifully weare all His royal family. Like allfamilies, there can be great drama mixed in with great love. We have to thank Jesus for dramaticallypointing out what I would find to be the most painful part such sacredsovereign duty, the part about judging and segregating unrepentant sinners andunresponsive ambassadors. We have tothank him for this shock to our system the way we are thankful for pool waterbeing shocked with cleaning agent. Weare further thankful that in His Kingdom all the street signs direct us to keepright. And that at every entrance way,there is a sign that reads “Come, you that are blessed … inherit the kingdomprepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

Yes, yes, Lord, good sovereign of all, Thykingdom care. Amen.

Holding Up the Holy Staff

2011-11-13T05:18:00.001-08:00

Exodus 17:8-16

Veteran's Day Recognition

The great spiritual leader trudgedto the top of the hill and stood above his Hebrew people as they defendedthemselves in battle. At the time of the conflict, the Hebrewpeople were in exodus from Egypt and were worn down and weary from woefulwandering in the desert wilderness (Deut. 25:18). As such, they had appeared to be an easytarget for an attacking nomadic people, named for us in this morning’s lessonas the Amalekites.

Amalek, chief of the Amalekites, wasthe grandson of Esau. Recall that Esauis known to us by way of the Book of Genesis as the hairy-skinned hunter andslightly older twin of Jacob whose parents are Isaac and Rebekah. Further recall that Jacob had a supplantinggrip on his Esau’s heal at their birth and that Jacob also eventually completelycheated Esau out of his birthright. Therewas fierce enmity between the two; so strong that at one point Esau had been determinedto kill Jacob (Gen. 27:41). Though theyeventually had a measure of reconciliation, the bloodlines of Esau (known inthe Bible as the Edomites) were historically in conflict with Jacob’sbloodlines (known in the Bible as the Israelites). Given this bad blood, it makes additionalsense why Esau’s grandson, Amalek, an Edomite chief, saw an opportunity topounce on the Israelites as they were escaping to a holy promised land.

The exodus of the Israelites,however, was sacredly safeguarded. Moseswas the central representative spiritual leader of God’s holy bond with hisHebrew people. Every step of theexodus, including every lament and every attack upon them, was thus taken inthe merciful, delivering power of the Almighty.

Today’s passage from Exodus is thefirst time we meet Joshua in the Bible. Moses had instructed him to lead the fight against the Amalekites. Itmay seem like Joshua, as the military leader, would have the greatest influenceon the outcome of the conflict. This is true enough in terms of how the bloodybattle was fought on the ground. Butagain, this battle was also one being fought from the heavens. There can be absolutely no underestimatinghow powerful and inspiring that sight of Moses was to the faithful engaged indefending their people. The act of raising his holy shepherding staff highup was the great hope and empowermentof the Israelites. It’s how they werereminded of God’s powerful presence and divine promise of deliverance duringthat battle in the wilderness of Sin.

When I read of times and places andpeople in the Bible, I find it helpful to use my imagination tohelp me really relate to it all. So asI reflected on this morning’s scene over the past few days, I found myselfpicturing Moses (and try as I may and might, I just couldn’t quite shake theimage of Charlton Heston) standing atop the rock lookout point in the park nearthe top of Schooley’s Mountain. I envisioned him standing there with his holystaff uplifted triumphantly high as myself and many people act in defense of anenemy attack down below in Long Valley. In my mind’s eye, the power of the great spiritual leader’s presencestirred my faithful passions and energized me for the mission.

Stepping away from this sidebar ofimagination, let’s get back to the text. Adding depth to this historic account is something else we aretold. We are told that for all hisfaithful stamina, Moses was unable to stand tall for the whole battle. He was unable to continuously hold up the holystaff, that emblem of holy hope. Hewas only human, after all, and who knows how long that defensive fight wenton. Yet the powerful symbol of thestaff needed to continue to be on display for the benefit of the bedraggledIsraelites in battle.

The good news is we are also told Moseswas not alone in this important mission. He had his older brother Aaron and a loyal friend named Hur by hisside. Seeing that their spiritualleader physically needed support, Aaron and Hur found a rock for Moses to sitand rest upon. As you heard theScripture read, did you catch what they did next? They didn’t take turns holding the staff …that was truly for Moses alone to do. Instead, they each took and lifted up an arm of the seated spiritual leader. Thisfaithful act of support enabled the holy staff, the reminder of God’s abidingand strengthening presence, to remain above the fray.

What a beautiful image this is of aleaders working together as a spiritual team at a time it was desperatelyneeded. And, I may be the only one, butI also interpret this three-part blessing over those in battle as symbolic of theHoly Trinity. God’s blessed presence has always been andcontinues to be as community.

How does this written account of anancient event come to bear on our more recent human history? Why might this witness be important for us toembrace and emulate as spiritual heirs of God’s promises to the Israelites? Especially at a time when our country remainsengaged in freedom-defending, democracy-building wars?

This past Friday was 11-11-11, a fundate to say but much more importantly to remember. It was the 93rd anniversary of eleventhhour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 when an armistice forthe cessation of hostilities was signed between the Allied Western Front ofWorld War I and Germany. The New YorkTimes reported that day how the US State Department had made the armisticeannouncement at 2:50 A.M.., and that the end of the war was declared at 6 A.M.Washington time. A year later, President Woodrow Wilsonofficially birthed a new American federal holiday, Armistice Day, to honorthose who had died in the world-shocking war and to help further encouragepeace.

As we all lamentably know, lasting world peacewas not realized and so World War II and the Korean War soon after grasped theheal of the first great conflict. More dutifulwar dead and surviving veterans needed to be remembered and honored. In 1954, Armistice Day was thereforedeclared by President Eisenhower to be henceforth known as Veterans Day. And so it remains … now incorporating honoredmemorials and celebrations for all those serving our country through othermajor conflicts including the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, OperationIraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom.

As I faithfullyreflect on the heart-wrenching reality of ongoing warfare in our world, I findthis morning’s Bible passage reminds us of a central duty for all people whoprofess trust and hope in our promise-giving, spiritually delivering God. We are to be spiritual leaders. We are to hold up the holy staff. We do so by uplifting prayer and faithfulwitness for all of our veterans and all of our active men and woman of thearmed forces, that they may know God’s constant, safeguarding and powerfulpresence is alive within their hearts and minds. As Father David Sivret, who served as achaplain and was severely wounded during Operation Iraqi Freedom tells it, “Inall the sermons, I tried to focus on God’s saving acts and how He iscompassionate in love, there for us at all times, no matter where we findourselves.”[i]

“The Lord is mybanner,” declared Moses following the military victory of Joshua and the Israelitesover the Amalekites. The Hebrew wordfor “banner” that is used in Exodus 17:15, is not a reference to some colorfulfabric. It translates to simply mean asymbolic rallying point. The rallyingpoint is belief in God’s power to deliver all humanity from evil, to lead us allinto holy promises for peace and justice, freedom and equality. We hold high and together this rallyingpoint like a holy staff belonging to the Good Shepherd, the Savior of theWorld, Jesus Christ. Amen.

[i] WhatWas Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It(2006)

Power Vines

2011-11-06T05:56:00.000-08:00

John 15:1-11

This past week ofwidespread power outages inspires me to ask a question of us this morning --where are the power lines for our church?

There are power lines threadedthroughout all of the communities where we live and work. We generally do not take notice of theirpower-full current carrying presence … until they get damaged and we lose ourlight, our heat, our hot water, our sense of security and our air of normalcy. These past several days we’ve certainly beenforced to take notice. Untold numbersof autumn-leafed tree branches were suddenly adorned with several inches ofheavy wet snow from a hundred-year Saturday storm. As very, very many broke off they broughtthick black electric vines down with them. Cautiously driving around in the aftermath revealed these snapped snakesand provided a narrative as to why the electric grid was devastatingly shutdown most all the week. I know I’ll notsoon forget the image and experience of driving on Parker Road and barely passingunder an arc of low-bent power line from a long, broken branch.

With interrupted powercame interrupted life. Roads andschools and stores and work places were closed. Regular routes and routines were anxiouslyaltered. Finding an open gas stationwas meandering guesswork. We worriedabout ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors. And we waited with a tremendouslyuncomfortable feeling of being at the mercy of the power company as they rolledout the massive restoration process.

Keep everything youjust experienced this difficult week in mind as we go back to the inspiredquestion -- where are the power lines for our church? Our sanctuary, Community House, and mansesat dark and cold for about five days. But does this mean our powerlines as a church were down?

Let’s turn to ourBibles for an answer. Specifically, let’srevisit the Good News of Jesus Christ. Aswe do, we are unquestionably reminded that our power as a church did not go offeven for a millisecond this past week. Norcan any storm at any time ever damage and interrupt it. Ourbuildings may be powered by JCP&L, but as a church we are a much morepowerful company. We are a differentJCP&L … we are Jesus Christ’s People and Light! At all times -- and especially when the wayis dark, anxious and uncertain – Jesus shines through us. His Light is constantly on, His power gridforever flowing, and He is always illuminating a path to peace of mind, hope, andstrength. Nothing on earth and in the universe can shut-down the people that Godempowers through the Light of Christ.

In this morning’s Gospellesson from John 15, this faithful truth is relayed by using the community imageryof a vineyard. You may immediatelypicture in your minds a vineyard where the rows of vines are all neatlymanicured and picturesque. This was not the case in biblical times. Thevineyards of ancient Israel were huge, heavy, ancient and “trailed along theground covering large areas.”[i] Sounds a bit like the downed tree limbs all aroundus this week. In order for the vinebranches to be able to bear good fruit, vineyard workers had to constantly checkthem. Most importantly, they needed tokeep them propped up on small supports. If no support was offered, the vine branches broke away from the parentvine, withered and died. A broken vinecould not simply be replanted to bloom again the following season; it tookyears for roots to go deep enough to bear good fruit.^{^[ii]}

Jesus grew upsurrounded by vineyards. He knew their historic and contemporary significance for the well-beingof the community. He knew about the greatneed for deep roots, for endless supports, for constant cultivating. He understood the utter importance of bearinghealthy fruit for the good of the community at large. He especially understood the vital significanceof the parent vine, the life-flow of all the vine off-shoots. Drawing from this real world example, Johnrecords Jesus as identifying Himself with it. He quotes Jesus as declaring, “I am the true vine.” He also has Jesus declaring His followers tobe the vine branches.

The True Vine and Hisvine branches cover the ground of God’s massive vineyard, the Church. We exist to be an interwoven community whoselife-flow comes from Christ. Our purposeis to constantly work together in order to provide the crucial supports neededto bear good fruits (that is, faithful works) everywhere wild, sour grapes are chokingthe life and light of God’s good Creation. As the church, we faithfullyaffirm in word and deed that when worldly power lines go down, Christ’s powervines stay up!

I saw so many healthypower vines throughout these recent difficult days. Each caused a surge of gratitude to flowthrough me. A few examples …

Last Saturday evening in the heart of theheavy snow, one power vine called my mobile phone to let me know we had an FPCfamily on the way to the Community House to seek emergency shelter for thenight. We wove power vines togethersoon after to make this happen.

In need of shelter formyself and the girls once the lights and heat went out, another power vine inthe congregation offered us – and quite a few others – a generator powered warmplace to stay when we were in town.

There were also the powervines that worked to clear the church yard before going on to clean out the sadstate of the main Community House refrigerator.

Still other powervines found ways to communicate and collectively make a decision not to cancelor postpone yesterday’s festive Mistletoe Market; a decision that then usheredlots more power vines into play for the good of our whole community.

As offshoots of theTrue Vine, we prayed for the exhausted utility workers and emergency personnel laboringthrough very long days and nights. Further,we turned to the True Vine to sustain our hearts and minds during hours of deepfrustration and slips into despair. The unfailinglife-flow reached us in several forms … such as through a prayerful, Biblicallygrounded sense of security and through small supports put in place by family,friends, neighbors, and strangers.

As God’s power grid,as God’s vineyard, we strive to abideat all times in the True Vine, in Jesus. Abide is a very powerful word. It signifies that we do not work forJesus, but in and with Jesus.[iii] In theoriginal Greek language, “abide” can be further translated to mean “not todepart,” “not to perish,” and “to remain as one.” As we abide in Jesus, we therefore also abidein one another. We do not abandon one another,let one another perish, or let one another remain in isolation. A contemporary translation of John 15:6 hasJesus saying it this way – “When you’re joined with me and I with you, therelationship is intimate and organic.”[iv]

The good fruit of thisintimate, organic relationship is love-- real, deep, divine love; the amazing, selfless love that only comes from thelife-flow of our Lord. In the midst ofmany other feelings this week, I trust you also had a strong sense of beinglovingly cared for. And I trust you feltcompelled to love others, especially those enduring the same inconveniences andhardships.

All week long, I keptin mind that today is our scheduled Stewardship dedication. And my goodness, when we embarked on ourStewardship campaign several weeks ago, we had no way of knowing how poignantour theme of “Keeping the Light On” would be considering the events of thisweek! So here we are today bearing fresh witness to thelight and love of Christ shining strongly come what may. Your financial pledge for the coming year ofvineyard life is one very vital expression of your gratitude for this amazinggift that never goes out and continues to be cast forth from FairmountPresbyterian Church. It is not first and foremost a commitment toa human organization; it is above all an offshoot abiding in the TrueVine. It is a measurable, vital portionof good and faithful fruit that will help maintain and further grow thebeautiful deep roots we have in this community.

So the inspired questionisn’t really “Where are the power linesfor the church?” It’s “Where are thepower vines?” Praise God, these are faithfully in vieweverywhere around us. Check yourmirror. Scan the face of the personnext to you. Be grateful for the unbreakable, unifying,abiding connections we have as JCP&L – Jesus Christ’s People andLight! Amen.

[i]“Weavings” magazine, September/October 2001, p.11

[ii]ibid

[iii]ibid, p. 14

[iv]THE MESSAGE

Light Duty

2011-10-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

2 Corinthians 4:1-7

History tells us of ancientcultures that considered the sun to be a god. It’s not hard to understand this perspective if we imagine not having ourscientific knowledge about what that blindingly brilliant, sometimes scorchingcircle in the sky is. I imagine I would have felt negatively judgedby this “god” whenever it went into hiding or whenever it singed my skin. I imagine I would have felt blessed by itwhen ray to ray reached me and made me feel alive and I realized it helped growthings I needed to survive. Prayingto this “god” and asking its mercy would have totally made sense.

From the verybeginning of our Bible, however, we are clearly taught that the sun is not a supernaturalbeing. It is a splendidly designedcreation of the one God of our biblical faith. Therefore, we do not worship the largest object in our solar system; weworship the eternal power that brought this super star into being. We don’t thank the sunshine for brighteningour days and growing our lives … we praise God for giving our world this vital,illumining gift. One Bible commentarysums this up nicely by saying “the writers of the Bible consistently separatelight from its Creator, making it anindex to the divine.”[i]

As an indicator of theAlmighty, the sun rightly has a symbolic purpose on our spiritual journeys. It reminds us that there is at all times a higherpower – God -- reaching out to us, always providing for the basic necessities oflife and conquering darkness. Havingcreated the sun, we are reminded that our God is a steadfast steward constantlycaring for Creation. So reminded, we areinspired to respond to this original, purest light in our lives with gratitudethat energizes us to be in worship, to be in fellowship, and to be in faithfulservice.

We absorb this everpresent, life-sustaining holy light each time we profess our belief. Believe – as surely as the physical sun rosethis morning -- with your whole mind, heart and soul that the light of God’sdivine goodness and love envelops you and is cast through you wherever you are andwhatever you are doing.

I felt reminded ofthis while away on a brief retreat at the shore last week. I took lots of photos that reflect God’sradiant presence. My favorite by farwas the one snapped right after supper one day. I had gone out to a pavilion overlooking the ocean. It was dusk – that emotive time of descendinginto darkness, of beginning the wait for the next day’s sunshine. As I scanned the horizon, I, with tremendousdelight, noticed a rainbow. I had neverseen a rainbow on the ocean. Not onlydid I capture the image, I meditated on how that prism of light seemed to reachright from the heavens and from other parts of the world to touch the waters thatwere rolling to the shoreline where I was standing. I may not have been able to see the sunilluminating it, but I knew the sun was powering its presence. And it was not lost on me that about one weekearlier I had seen and taken a photo of another rainbow – one that appearedacross the street from the manse and seemed to be bridging eternal restingplaces with eternity itself. The lightof God’s goodness and love envelops us each day!

Believing in theunfailing, far reaching yet intimate and loving light of God, our voices jointhe chorus of Scripture. Along withPsalm 18:28, we sing “My God turns my darkness into light.” Along with Psalm 43:3 we gratefully ask forfurther guidance, singing, “Send forth Your light and Your truth, let themguide me; let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to the place where Youdwell.” And with Isaiah 60:19, weidentify where our very deepest trust in this world resides by affirming “The sun will nomore be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.”

I believe we should faithfullyinterpret Isaiah’s prophecies about everlasting light as symbolically pointingto our Lord Jesus Christ. To profess Jesusas God incarnate, that is, as God in the flesh, is to also understand Jesus as completelyone with the Light that has been shining upon darkness since the beginning ofall.

According to Matthew, Jesus’sministry began only after He faithfully defended against the Adversary’sGod-dimming temptations in the wilderness. Jesus marked this world-changing event by fulfilling what Isaiah hadprophesied in Isaiah 9:2, indicating that through Him, divine light shines onall people dwelling in deep darkness. Created,enveloped and redeemed in the light of eternal love, we live as Jesus’ friendsand faithful disciples. We confess Himand Him alone to be the Light of the World. We marvel at how the place of his birth was presided over by a brightstar, and how his death was overcome by a triumphal burst of Easter morningradiance at his tomb.

Our duty as the enlightened in theLord is clearly pronounced in this morning’s Scripture by the ApostlePaul. To whomever lives blinded by thedarkness of sin, we are to proclaim “the light of the Gospel of the Glory ofChrist.” We are to be as diligent incarrying out this duty as, to use the metaphor found in today’s lesson, aslave. Stated another way, we are todevotedly give up ourselves to the will of another, to our God. We are called to stand with armsoutstretched, ready to continuously catch and to spread the Light of Christabove our own interests and agendas. ReflectingChrist to the world may sound heavy duty, but the power above and within us isalways on, forever shining on us individually and collectively, and so ours istruly light duty!

Last week, I talked a bit aboutPaul’s firmly grounded spirituality. A further example of this is found in another metaphor he offers us in 2Corinthians. We honor and go about our lightduty as “clay jars.” We are earth-ware,Son-baked vessels. Thisway of imaging discipleship is especially inspiring because it reminds us that Godloves us and needs us and uses the Son to strengthen us even though we areindeed fallible and fragile. This isanother way we are light duty -- our individual design is not heavy duty theway certain containers are meant to carry all the weight. We are designed to each carry only aportion of the weight of God’s awesome glory in Christ.

Our being light bearing vessels inChrist is what our current stewardship theme is all about. I’m very grateful that father and son,Rick and Nick Frost, two very faithful members of FPC, have prepared to leadand inspire our stewardship this season. You’ve have hopefully received theirletter and we will be hearing from them here momentarily. Before I step away from the pulpit, though, Ihave this question -- when you read or hear the stewardship theme of “Keepingthe Light On” what first comes to mind?

I know I get the old Tom BodettMotel 6 T.V. commercial running through my head – “We’ll leave the light on foryou.” I also think about keeping thelights on … as in making sure we have money to pay the bills. Alsoin this mix I hear a sweet song from the musical Godspell reminding me that inJesus I am the light of the world.

Yet another thing thatcomes to my mind is Thomas Edison’s invention, the electrolier. This was afirst of its kind overhead light fixture hung in the First Presbyterian Churchof Roselle, NJ, making this church, in 1883, the very first in the world to belit by electricity. I’ve seen the electrolier because it still hung when Iwas the student pastor there in 1995. Ipreached my first sermon right next to that historical light. While we have powerful single bulbs thatcast greater light today, in order for the electrolierto really shine it was made up of 30 bulbs. It was a cluster of light, or toput it even better way, a congregation of light. Symbolically, then, it worked very well to remindChristians back then that they needed to stick together to keep the light ofChrist shining!

We are light-carryingfixtures, Son-baked earthen vessels, prisms refracting Christ’s Light. Our light duty is to point to thelife-giving, life-sustaining, life-resurrecting power of God that envelops theworld by grace and through faith. We worship, fellowship and lovingly serve ourneighbors in this sacred shine. In the infinite wisdom of God, stewardship ofCreation was tasked to humankind under the energy of the physical sun and inthe illuminating truth of the Son, Christ Jesus. I pray for us all to act as energizedstewards who fully embrace and faithfully execute our light duty – not justduring a stewardship campaign, but every single time the sun rise and sets. I pray we deeply accept and are inspired bythe truth proclaimed in Colossians 1:13, for glory be to God, we have been“rescued from the power of darkness and transferred … into the kingdom of theSon.” Amen.

[i]“Light” in the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p. 509

Your God-Guarded Heart

2011-10-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Philippians 4:1-9

For the first half ofthis week, I was blessed with some time away while on Newton Presbytery’sannual clergy retreat. It was held onceagain at the Stella Maris Retreat Center in Long Branch. This was my second such retreat and amongthe many benefits of being there is the hospitality offered by the RomanCatholic Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Having felt some spiritual renewal thanks in part to the ministry of thisorder, I returned home and wasn’t at all surprised to find myself reading aninspirational news report about a nun in another location.

Her name is SisterMargaret Geary and she faithfully resides in Baltimore. One day earlier this year, while all of hersisters were away for a convention, this 85 year entered an elevator at theconvent. Once the doors shut on thecramped space, and before it moved even a millimeter in the shaft, the elevatorpromptly broke down. There wasn’t anyway for her to pry the doors open. Fortunately,she had a cell phone with her. Unfortunately, she could not get a signal. Predictable, right? Althoughthe phone proved to be of no help, she also had with her some water, somecelery sticks, and some cough drops. Equipped with these simple provisions, shesettled in for what turned out to be four trapped nights.

How would you, dearbrothers and sisters in Christ, handle being in this situation? And would your faith have helped you endureit?

The water, celerysticks and cough drops were not Sister Margaret’s only provisions. She possessed another essential provisionthat helped her survive – prayer. Prayer not only helped her endure this ordeal … it also transformedit. Through prayer, she began toconsider the crisis a “gift” she found herself rejoicing in. In an interview with CNN, this is what shehad to say – “It was either panic or pray. I believe that God’s presence was my strength and my joy. I felt God’s presence immediately.”

So rather thanstruggle against circumstances beyond her control, she reoriented herself inthe Lord. She experienced God guardingher heart and mind. She considered thecrisis an opportunity for spiritual growth. She experienced a deliverance from despair long before she wasphysically rescued. She rejoiced!

“Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice … theLord is near … do not worry … in everything bring your requests to God … andthe peace of God, which surpasses all understandingwill guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”

Sister Margaret’sfaith-filled experience beautifully highlights these magnificent words of theApostle Paul, words found in verses 4-7 of our lesson this morning. Paul penned them to his cherished friendsin the Philippian church. What was his overallpurpose for writing this emotional letter? He wanted to strongly encourage the Philippian church to be a community exhibitingjoyful trust in the Lord at all times, through all circumstances.

This exhortation torejoice, to fully trust that God is good and on guard for us, is not somesaccharin spiritual sentiment. The substance of these words is not at allartificially manufactured and overly sweet. They were not proclaimed to falsely flavor any unpleasant, painful,bitter experiences. That wasn’t Paul’sstyle. He was not one to write fromthe perspective of some sideline consultant.

You may recall fromstudy of this Bible book and from sermons in recent weeks, Paul wrote thisletter from a Roman prison cell in the midst of a grave time of trial and topeople whom he very much knew and loved. He wrote hope-filled words as a potent witness to the power and peace ofChrist. He was practicing what hepreached. And his example followed theexample of our Lord’s centering prayer in the Garden of Gethsamene.

Paul’s spirituality isfar from false and flimsy. It is firmly groundedin concrete relationships, complex realities, and above all in Christ Jesus.

When we fully believein the power and peace of Christ, in that which guides and guards our liveswithout fail, our hearts and minds are opened to joy. The rejoicing Paul preached about does notexist in isolation. As part of agrounded spirituality, this joy is steadily companioned by such realities aspain and fear.

Reflecting on this, onPaul’s truly faithful view of joy, a colleague in Australia has written this question,“Why do we leave joy to those who compose songs which make happiness sound likepastry and conjure a false image of a ‘victorious’ life of constant highs?”[i]

Happiness like pastrymakes me chuckle, but it also makes the point, again, that Christian rejoicingis not just a light, fluffy sweet kind of glee. It’s the glee firmly, radically groundedin the trust that Jesus has experienced the depths of all human despair, thatJesus is present with us through every moment of our lives, and that in Jesus,God guards our hearts and minds. The presenceof Christ is our constant cause for deep, resolute joy. As William Barclay wonderfully affirms, “TheChristian can never lose joy because [the Christian] can never lose Christ.”[ii]

“Rejoice in the Lord, always; again I will say, Rejoice … the Lord is near … do not worry… in everything bring your requests to God … and the peace of God, whichsurpasses all understanding willguard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”

Can you recall a timein your life when you felt trapped? Mentally or physically? A timewhen you felt locked in, locked up, looking for hope? Did you pray to the God of yourprotection? Did you rejoice in what ourLord has done for you and experience release? There are all sorts ofcircumstances that can drive us to experience a tension between panic andprayer, between resigning and rejoicing. When experienced without a groundedspirituality, panic triggers feelings and behaviors of despair, isolation, andvarious degrees of self-destruction. But panic balanced with the kind ofgrounded spirituality modeled by Christ and by the Apostle Paul, the kindrooted in deep prayer that trusts in the constant presence of our good andguarding God, can indeed lead to a tremendous sense of calm in any time of anxiousuncertainty.

This groundedspirituality is nurtured through Christian community. Personal discipline is never quite enoughto sustain it, for each of us is not called be just one part of Christ but tobe part of the whole body of Christ put together in God’s grace. In our lesson this morning, we should notoverlook the fact that Paul gives a concrete example of God guarding hearts andminds through community.

While in prison, Paul hadreceived a report about a conflict between two women leaders of the church inPhilippi (and how wonderful that Paul names and credits them with beingco-workers of the Gospel). We aren’ttold what the tension was between Euodia and Syntyche. We are only told that they were not “of thesame mind” in the Lord. In this deeply loving letter, Paul does notreprimand these two friends for acting unfaithfully. He does not discredit their leadershipbecause they were experiencing a disagreement. Instead, he urges them to reconcile withthe help of their church family. Thisurging is not a demand, which, given Paul’s apostolic authority he well couldhave made. His urging is instead gentleconsolation and encouragement for this interpersonal and therefore communalcrisis. It pairs up beautifully with thecall for gentleness Paul gives during his exhortation for everyone to alwaysrejoice in the Lord. God guards our hearts and minds throughgentle, loving, firmly grounded and fully joyful community. I so rejoice every time FPC exhibits thisgood news!

[i]http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/AEpPentecost17.htm

[ii]The Daily Study Bible Series, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians,and Thessalonians, p.75

Giving Voice to God

2011-10-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

Psalm 19

World Communion Sunday

October 2, 2011

Inspired by our contemporaryculture at large and by the Holy Spirit persistently tapping me on the shoulder… I recently created a blog. A blog isa way of self-publishing on the computer internet. On the down side, there isn’t a print copyof what is published. On the up side, little to no money is neededto create a blog and there is potential for a local, national and global groupof readers.

All sorts of blogsexist. Some simply work like personaldiaries for anyone interested in following the blogger’s life. Some are a public forum for promotingideologies, organizational agendas, and academic discourse. For example, as I study the Bible, I do sousing print commentaries as well online blogs by professors and pastors. Other blogs are a perfect tool for creativetypes to share their arts with any and all whom they’ve managed to attract to theirblog. According to one study published inFebruary of this year, over 156 million public blogs exist.[i]

The blog I created,titled “Word Windows,” (http://wordwindows.blog.com/) is a new, faithful, and creative onlinehomestead for me. Many of you may knowthat I enjoy taking digital photos of nature. Many of you may also know that I dabble in writing poetry. Both of these, along with sermon and songwriting, are ways I feel God connects with me and personally calls on me toshare the Good News. I express myselfto share how blessed I feel with gifts that have saved, sustained and strengthenedmy faith journey as well as companioned other people on their walks with ourLord.

On the “Word Windows”blog, I post a photo I’ve taken that I feel glorifies our Creator and then Iwrite some form of prayer poem about it. This fusion of image and word is intended to point to the beautiful, abundant,peaceful life with God we have in our Lord Jesus.

When I created this blog a couple weeks ago, Ididn’t know I’d be preaching about Psalm 19 on this World CommunionSunday. When preparing for the sermoneach week, I always check the common lectionary – a church calendar oriented,ecumenical, world-wide list of suggested Scriptures for preaching and teaching. Psalm 19 was on the list for today. And the moment I read it, I really understoodit! What it teaches is pretty much howthe Word Windows blog works in my life and what I hope it conveys to those whovisit it.

Psalm 19 brings a full,faithful witness to two primary ways God connects with us. Itpoints to how our Creator’s inspiring, instructive, authoritative “voice” comesto us through the awesomeness of the natural world and through the written word of Scripture.

Unfortunately, churchhistory is pockmarked with problems regarding modes of divine revelation.

For Christians, thereis strong, central consensus about God being most fully revealed in the personof Jesus Christ. We come to know thisrevelation by reading the Gospels and by welcoming the Holy Spirit to interpretHis holy truth for us in the context of our lives and our faith communities.

Global debates rise up,however, about how God may or may not be additionally revealed. Weaccept that Jesus, as witnessed to in the written New Testament, is God’sfullest revelation. But folks get intodisagreements about how much authority to give to other means of divinerevelation, such as, and specifically, whether God’s nature is additionallyrevealed through the natural world. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of thick theological grass to treadupon in trying to create consensus.

Walking on the edge ofthat thicket, I suggest we take a good stroll with none other than C.S.Lewis. He had this to say – “Naturenever taught me that there exists a God of glory and infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory meaning for me. Istill do not know where I could have found one.”

I understand C.S. Lewisto be saying that he learned and accepted the historic story of God’s glorythrough reading and being taught God’s Word in the Scriptures. The special, written revelation that led toour Bible was primary. But no writtenwords could capture the magnificent scope of God’s glory. This was impressed on his mind and soulmuch more so through the inspiration and revelation found when experiencing theincredibly expansive, exquisitely detailed, life-thriving creation God hasgiven us in the natural world.

Throughout the earliestyears of my life, I did not read nor was I taught the Bible. God was intuitively grasped and not in printfor me. I didn’t begin studying theholy written word in earnest until I was hired to work at nearby Camp Johnsonburgwhile in college. I recall how those400 acres of splendid nature “spoke to me” of diversity and of cycles of lifeexisting in, for, and to God’s glory. I’d always found nature fascinating andbeautiful, but not until I read the Bible did I understand it all as testimonyto our Creator. So I take the insightof C.S. Lewis, and encourage you to do so, because I really get it. And it helps us to get and appreciate thestrong duel witness to God’s revelation that is at the heart of Psalm 19. Anotherscholar sums it up by saying “creation and law, nature and word, complementeach other, together bearing fuller witness to God than either alone.” Additionally, this same scholar makes theexcellent point that by “hearing the voice of God in creation, hearing thevoice of God’s Law, we can join the voice of the Psalmist in the Psalms finalsection … praying that our words, our voice, be acceptable to God.”[ii]

This Psalm is awonderful, holy word to lift up on this World Communion Sunday. All kinds of people in all sorts of placesacross our world receive God’s written and natural revelation. This is common ground for allChristians. And this truth sets thetable for how we are about to celebrate God’s fullest revelation through Jesus,the Word made flesh.

As God’s mostauthoritative voice, the same voice that was present and breathing upon theformless void at the beginning of all creation, Jesus spoke instructions at theLast Supper. He instructed every single one of his friendsto remember him and commune with him through the repeating of his words duringa meal of wine and bread. He continuesto reveal the loving, reconciling reality of God to every brother and sister inthe faith through this ritual, this sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is celebratedbecause we follow the written word in the Bible to do so. And as we do, we have a tangible experienceof holy presence. This happens by way oftwo elements drawn from nature – the fruit of the grapevine (remember, we arethe branches, Jesus is the vine!) and the grains that make life-sustainingbread.

I’m pleased to say thatWorld Communion Sunday was originated with the Presbyterian Church. The intention from the start, back in 1936,was for it to be a special Sunday of global, ecumenical togetherness around God’sWord. It is a time to celebrate our onenessin Christ, the Prince of Peace, in the midst of the world we are all called tofaithfully serve.[iii] And sowe are here to do so today.

As we share in theresponsive litany found in your bulletin, may the written words inspire you toregularly reflect upon God’s glory throughout the natural world and centrallyin the Scriptural witness to Jesus. Ihave a feeling I’ll have at least one new Word Windows blog post to create injoyful reflection upon today’s worship! Let us now prepare our hearts for this revelatory feast! Amen.

[i]"BlogPulse". The NielsenCompany. February 16, 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-17.

[ii]Fred Gaiser, Prof. of Old Testament, Luther Seminary @ www.workingpreacher.org

[iii]http://www.ncccusa.org/unity/worldcommunionsunday.html

My Beloved

2011-09-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

Philippians 2:1-13

Open your heart as I share this brief, beautiful story involving two people, a park bench, some Twinkies, and some soda.

It’s a story about the day a young boy living in a big city decided he wanted to meet God. He figured it would be a long trip to get to where he could meet the Almighty. So he grabbed a suitcase and packed it with sustenance for the anticipated long journey -- a few Twinkies and a six-pack of root beer. It turns out he paused at a neighborhood park only about three blocks from his home. There he saw an elderly woman seated on a bench, staring at some pigeons. Since it was early afternoon, he figured it was about time for a snack. So he sat next to her. Then he sensed she might be hungry. So he opened his suitcase and offered her a Twinkie. She accepted and gave him back a warm, radiant smile. The smile was so beautiful, he wanted to see it again. So he offered her a root beer. Again, she paid him with her kind appearance. They didn’t really talk. They just spet time being together. Before long, it began growing dark. The boy decided he’d journeyed enough for the day and that it was time to return home. Before he did, he offered the woman a big hug. She gladly accepted and reciprocated the loving, unifying gesture.

As he passed through the front door of his home, the boy’s mother was surprised by the look elation on his face. So she asked what he’d been up to. He replied, “I had lunch with God, and you know what? She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

Meanwhile, the elderly woman had returned home as well. Her husband noted her joyful aura and questioned what she’d been doing. Her reply? “I ate Twinkies in the park with God, and you know, he’s much younger than I expected!”

This lovely story trumpets a spiritual truth … we believe we’ve met God when we believe we’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying presence. God may or may not look like what we’ve imagined. Yet we trust we’ve been in God’s presence because we’ve been encountered by something dressed in joyful acceptance and caring companionship. In this story, trust in this truth manifest itself in the simple, humble acts of sharing in a makeshift communion during an intergenerational pause to life’s hustle and bustle.

There was a time when the Apostle Paul thought he knew exactly what it meant to share an encounter with God. Back when he was known as Saul the Pharisee, he taught that there were strict rules and regulations for such moments. It was, if you’ll recall our Old Testament teachings, rather legalistic. Failure to conform was why he targeted and persecuted a radical sect claiming to directly know the true Messiah of Israel. It wasn’t until that very Messiah personally met up with him one day, in a life-transforming experience of unifying love, that Saul became Paul. His understanding of encounters with God forever changed that day. Paul’s faith journey continued, but he was a changed child of God. He had emptied himself of hatred towards those he was persecuting, emptied himself of self-righteous swagger and of self-promoting ambition. His journey forward was in faithful imitation of the tremendous humility and radical obedience and other-focused selflessness of Christ.

We know how very much Paul went on to do in and for our Lord. Our New Testament bears witness to it all. Beyond the Book of Acts, it does so in the form of letters he wrote to congregations he had varying degrees of influence in founding. What we have in this morning’s lesson is a letter to the Christian church in ancient Philippi. It is widely considered to be his most personal letter, based on biblical evidence that he and congregation had a very precious relationship (Acts 16:12-40).

He wrote this letter during what to us might seem to have been a very “empty” and anxious time in his life. He was in prison. He was without a doubt well aware the risk of execution for his advocating the loving, unifying Gospel of Christ against the carnivorous world powers of his time. We might think being in that situation would have been a time of emptiness in the form of wallowing in self-pity, fearing the possible horror of his impending death, and such.

Yet for Paul, that was a time to reinforce the immeasurable joy of serving and trusting in salvation through Christ alone. It was another occasion for him to remind his good friends in Philippi to trust in and indeed rejoice in the Lord despite suffering. He exhorted them to work out all church conflicts with the same humility and self-emptying Jesus exhibited during his time of trial. Arrogant in-fighting and unity endangering unloving attitudes were not to come about as a result of his crisis, or any crisis they had stirring amongst themselves. And so he wrote a very tender appeal, speaking from his holy transformed heart, saying “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

He reinforced this message with one particular word. It’s a small but wonderfully weighty word that I find anchors this passage. The word is right there in Philippians 2, verse 12. It appears right after the words I just read and after quoting an ancient hymn about the example and final glory of the Lord. Paul addressed the entire church family as his “beloved.”

The word “beloved” that Paul used is similar to and I believe rooted in a Greek word that commonly describes Christ’s love – agape. Agape means love, but it means more than being warm and neighborly. Specifically, it means love that is radically unconditional, always reciprocating, and voluntarily self-sacrificing. It’s the kind of unifying, sacrificial love that can well up in the trenches of warfare. Being in beloved community is how we honor the truth that the “story of Christ moves from separation to solidarity, and from difference to likeness, as Christ moves into the most despairing depths of human existence.”

How are you being beloved before God? In the great hustle and bustle of this world, where loneliness and endless, anxious searching for God are ever present, how do you remain mindful of the joyful, unifying love and ultimate glory of our Lord? How are you heralding it? Exhibiting it?

Your answer to this is personally your own. However, know that when Paul exhorted the Philippian Christians to work out their own salvation, he was not teaching that this is a private matter. In Christ, matters of salvation are always and forever about community, about being Christ’s Body. He was not advocating individual self-promotion in preparation for life beyond this world. He was heralding the power of church unity for the glory of the Lord in the here and now and for forever.

How are we, then, as a congregation, being Christ’s beloved? How are we helping one another to be of the same mind and the same love that was in Jesus? How do we help one another to be humble and obedient before God in this world that promotes sinful personal conquests in so many ways? Please, as you see one another in the days and weeks and months to come, share your responses together … keeping in mind the mind of Christ.

When it comes to Bible translations, I mostly reply on the New Revised Standard Version that is in your pews. But it’s also quite good a good practice to read other interpretations. I find reading this morning’s lesson from Eugene Peterson’s THE MESSAGE is wonderfully inspirational. The teaching is the same as we’ve been discussing, but the language is just a bit more frank. So open your hearts to hear it as I conclude my privileged time in the pulpit this morning.

“If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.”

Go find a spot in the middle of it all. Pop open some soda pop and break bread with a Twinkie. Selflessly make smiles happen. Believe you’ve met God because you’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying welcome. Amen.

What's YOUR Praising Voice?

2011-09-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

Psalm 100

“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphedgloriously!” So declared Moses (Ex.15:1) “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness; come into hispresence with singing!” (Ps. 100:1-2). So declares the Psalmist. “Letthe word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in allwisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritualsongs to God.” So declares the apostlePaul (Col. 3:16).

“Yabba-dabbe-do-lu-yah! Hi-ho-lee-lu-yah!” So declares contemporary Christian songwriterChris Rice, channeling Fred Flintstone and Kermit the Frog.

In case you can’t tell, before his music career tookoff, Chris Rice was in youth and college campus ministry. He quotes those cartoon great s in rather silly song called “Cartoons”that showed up on his 1998 album. Inthis tune about toons, he asks what would happen if these animated characterswe suddenly saved in Christ. He statesthey’d sing praise in a whole new way and then proceeds to impersonate them. In the final verse, he confess that thereisn’t a real point to his doing so, except to say that there is a lot ofpraising to do and cartoons aren’t made for that. It’s our job! We have to find our own praising voice!

Formalized singings of praises to God are an ancientpractice. It was particularlyformalized back in the time of King David. Upon entering Solomon’s Temple, praises were sung. So too during sacrificial offerings. You have written record of these praisesright in your pews – right there in the Book of Psalms. If you thought the Psalms were justpoetry, here’s an important fact. OurEnglish word “psalm” comes from a Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrewword mizmor, means “Melody ofPraise.”[i] Our Scripture lesson this morning, then, isMelody of Praise #100!

The earliest Christians continued the practice ofsinging praises. Historical recordtells us that during the time of Jesus, it was faithful practice to singMelodies of Praise #’s 145-150 during the week. Melodies of Praise #’s 95-100 were sung onthe Sabbath day. Newer praise songssoon followed as well – such as the songs of Mary, Zechariah and Simeon.

Unfortunately, the vocal praise within people’s heartsgot muted by church orthodoxy around the time of the Middle Ages. Itbecame that only monks were allowed to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songsto God. This said, this period is wellcredited with bringing choral and instrumental music into worship. I’m so pleased this practice of only allowingmonks to sing came to pass. Among otherthings, just imagine if the choir last week had to wear earth-brown hoodiesinstead of those colorfully patriotic scarves and ties!

The change from particular people to all peoplepraising took place, not surprisingly, during the 16^th centuryProtestant Reformation. Silencing themasses has some purpose back in medieval days, but the exclusivity of thisorthodox practice was way out of step with a world freshly awash in therich-expressionism of the European Renaissance. Martin Luther -- the flute-playing, hymnwriting German sparkplug of ecclesiastical upheaval – is reported to have saidthat a person who isn’t moved by the marvel of polyphonic music “must be acourse clod” who would rather “listen to the donkey braying Gregorian chorale.” And John Calvin, furthering the earlier wordsof St. Augustine, and in support of singing praises to the Lord, wrote in 1543 that though a “nightingale or aparrot sing ever so well, it will be without understanding. It is [humankind’s] gift to be able to singand to know what [we] are singing.”[ii]

Song, of course, isn’t the only way to use yourpraising voice. That may be a primaryway you use it, but there are many other wonderful ways to express your praiseas well! My prayer for you is to keepaware of, of find, your particular praising “voice” and add it to the harmonyof the great cloud of witnesses past and present.

Praising is sometimes easy and spontaneous. Other times, however, it needs to rise upfrom a very deliberate, boldly faithful place in our hearts and minds.

Aninspirational reminder of this comes from the word of Joni (pronounced‘Johnny’) Earekson Tada. She is astrong vocal advocate for differently abled people and a very devoutChristian. Named after her father, butspelled Joni, she was an adventurous,life-loving teenager who enjoyed riding horses, hiking, playing tennis andswimming. At seventeen, however, adiving accident led to her being in a quadriplegic state with minimal use ofher hands. During the two years ofrehabilitation that followed, her adventurous side spilled out in the form ofpainting with a brush between her teeth. Her fine art later inspired people across the world and she went on tofound an evangelical international disability center.

For her, as it sure should be for us as well, in ourown unique ways, making a sacrifice of praise is a biblical mandate. To this end she has written the followingabout praise – “it will always cost you something. It will be a difficult thing to do. It requires trading in our pride, our anger,and most value of all, our human logic. We will be compelled to voice our words of praise firmly and precisely,even as our logic screams that God has no idea what he’s doing.” She then adds what I find a most helpfulinsight, saying, “Most of the verses written about praise in God’s Word werepenned by men and women who faced crushing heartaches, injustice, treachery,slander and scores of other intolerable situations.”

Such a faithful statement about making a sacrifice ofpraise could well have come from the mouth of an ancient Israelite enduring thehardship of exiled life in Babylonia. It could well have come from the mouths of the earliest Christiansfacing certain persecution and crucifixion. It could well have come from the founders of the Protestant Reformationenduring the consequences of challenging papal authority in their time.

All of these voices make it clear that praising God isless about round-the-clock giddiness and more about having an all-out godlydisposition. It is about holding fastin faith, having deep conviction in your belief that God is good, loving, andbrings redemption out of brokenness. As the praising voice of 17^th century British mystic andwriter William Law has put it, it’s about receiving “every day as resurrectionfrom death, as a new enjoyment of life” and letting “your joyful heart praiseand magnify so good and glorious a Creator.”

How do we, as members and friends of FairmountPresbyterian, as followers of Jesus in this time and place, help one anotherfind our praising voices? How do we,as a whole, go about letting loose our praise in every season of our familylife together?

If you read this month’s Focus church newsletter, youwon’t be surprised that I’m going to answer this by reiterating our need to bein weekly worship together. How beautiful and reassuring to make asacrifice of praise last week with a candle-light communion. How wonderful to be silent as we faithfullyabsorb the gifted, praising voices of our choir every week. How bolstering to our daily walk with theLord to completely give this one hour out of the 168 in a week. And beyond this weekly hour, our worshipand praise are manifest in our service to the Lord in the greater community, inour vocations, and in our families.

Let me share a short cute story to send us homesmiling and remembering to make all of our sacrifices of praise. It’s has to do with a time a three year-oldtried to say something she had heard in church. She had heard words of praise that said,“We exalt Thee!” That’s not how itflowed from her mouth, though. Instead,she said, “We exhaust Thee!”

You know, she may be on to something. Imagine if we praised so much that Godsomehow got tired of trying to keep up with it all! That’s a good way to focus on using ourpraising voices and praising presence in all circumstances of life, don’t youthink? “For the Lord if good; hissteadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Ps.100:5) Amen.

[i] http://hebrew4christians.com/Glossary/Word_of_the_Week/Archived/Tehillim/tehillim.html

[ii] http://www.cprf.co.uk/quotes/johncalvinpsalms.htm

"Going Forward In the Lord" 9-11-11

2011-09-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

September 11, 2011

Exodus 14:10-15

Onthis tenth anniversary of the horrendous, evil attacks that threaded throughthe common heart and shared security blanket of America, and with all of the freshlyscratched grief and restoked fear it brings, I invite us to revisit apowerfully compelling, blessedly reassuring biblical story.

Inlast week’s sermon, we focused on the first part of this story. We focused on the mysterious way God got Moses’attention and how Moses had to then choose to examine this more closely so he could decide whether or not to faithfully assist God’s good will.

This morning’s lesson from the Book ofExodus picks up this epic story right after he indeed chose to help God andGod’s people.   It tells what happenedafter he, along with his older brother Aaron, confronted the evil, enslavingPharaoh of Egypt and demanded liberation of the Hebrew people.    Italso tells what happened after Pharaohgave consent to this demand (after his being plagued by good reasons to do so),as well as about God leading the Hebrews in a roundabout way to the Red Sea, orto be more accurate, the Sea of Reeds.

Atthat shoreline, at that point in the great deliverance from evil oppression,the Hebrews fell into a tremendous fit of panic.      Exodus10 tells us they looked back from where they had come and realized the evilthey had left behind had not been eradicated. It was very much alive and very much advancing in on them.    The reality of this triggered a full,faith-blinding panic.   They could notsee an escape, a way ahead to safety.   Feeling trapped, they bitterly complained toMoses that being enslaved was a better fate than being caught, captured orkilled by their enemy while standing in the wilderness, at the edge ofuncertainty.      So enormous was their fear, so pounding thepulse of their collective panic, it seems they had quickly forgotten the good,loving, saving, ever-present and almighty power of their God that had beenhelping them to move forward with hope and strength.

Inreply to the widespread panic, Moses cried out, “Do not be afraid … stand firm… the Lord will fight for you and you have only to keep still.”    Calling out for faithful trust in theAlmighty seems a good enough leadership decision.   YetMoses missed the mark. His was not thebest faithful response to this crisis.   Goddid not want the faithful people to stand firm and keep still.   God did not want them to just wait forsomething miraculous to save them.   SoGod corrected Moses. God demanded thathe tell the people to go forward.

Yes, they all were to holdfast to faithful trust in their Lord. But God demanded it be an active, whole-hearted and full-bodied trustinstead of anything weaker and more passive.  This was God’s decree for how tomove beyond full, faith-blinding panic. This was the decree for how to be with, to be in the Lord as the divine plan of salvation from sin and evilcontinued to unfold.

As werecall and relive the national tragedy of the terrorist attacks that happenedten years ago to this day, I wonder how many of us felt then as though we weresuddenly standing in a wilderness, at the edge of uncertainty.   Like our faithful brothers and sisters ofMoses’ time, did the evil that had advanced upon us, evil we knew existed but weperhaps otherwise felt was at some distance, cause us to experience a full,faith-blinding panic?   If so, in what ways, did God tell us to move forwardin faith and trust and togetherness despite feeling so vulnerable to attack?

I wasin my fourth year of ordained ministry at the time and serving as an associatepastor of one thousand member suburban church outside of Philadelphia.   Anna was approaching three years old, andRebecca had been born just that July.    As it turned out, the senior pastor was on theother side of the country that week with no designs on coming directlyback.   Care of the congregation and itsleadership, the church’s response in the community, and the worship service andsermon on the 16^th fell to me to faithfully carry out.

Initially,like most everyone I’ve talked to about that day, I was very much gripped byshock and horror and down to the bone fear.   I had a fine looking Master’s degree in Theology on my office wall, but inthose moments it didn’t feel like any sort of protection or much like a manualfor how to lead in such a previously unimagined crisis.    Did I feel a good deal trapped by evil andon the edge of doom? Did I flat outquestion God how on earth to move myself and my church family faithfullyforward?    Absolutely.

But by the grace of God, we did move forwardin faith.   You all moved forward. During such difficult times, moving forwardis less like taking leaps of faith across the Grand Canyon.   It’s more like taking leaps of the faith thespan of our footsteps.   Like Moses,Aaron and all the ancient Hebrews that day by the Sea of Reeds, we stepped forwardtrusting in the care of God’s redeeming plan and gracious power. We did so by being together for mutualcomfort and strengthening, by meeting for prayer, by meditating on theScriptures, and by assisting the needs of neighbors near and far.

Unlikein Old Testament times, these footstep-sized leaps of faith were also done withgreater knowledge of God’s great plan to deliver this world from evil.   God’s will for goodness and reconciliation,for healing and peace, was known more powerfully and more personally.    We knew the way forward, the way of beingdelivered from shock and fear that was even more dramatic than what Moses andthe Hebrews experienced.    I’m speakingof the way of Jesus Christ, the way we today continue to follow as we keepfaithfully moving forward in the complex, still very painful aftermath ofSeptember 11, 2001 and in this world so full of present and future edges ofuncertainty.

Whatdoes it mean to move forward in our Lord Jesus Christ?   There is a special issue of PresbyteriansToday magazine available to you all for free in our Community House.    In this issue, in a section titled “TheProblem of Evil,” we are reminded that the “Spirit of Jesus enables us topersevere in our grappling with the sinful and sorrowful conditions of humanexistence, in ways that we never could by our mortal strength alone.”   It reminds us, quoting one of ourdenomination’s historic confessions, of how “God provides for the world bybringing good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that Goddoes not bend finally to the good.” (Study Catechism, question 22).     And this helpful article reminds us thatJesus’ lordship is “not manifest in supernatural protection” so much as in “thedivine strength we are given to persevere in the midst of a fallen world … thesame strength that enabled Jesus to endure (not escape) the crucifixion” andthus undermine evil’s intention to “obstruct God’s reign.”   Oneof my seminary professors, Dennis Olsen, once wrote about this enduringstrength by saying “that the relatively small and mundane acts of ministry doneby God’s people in particular times and locations participate in a largercosmic drama involving God’s defeat of evil and the redemption of the world.”[i]

Whenwe faithfully listen to people’s stories from 9-11 and from all other worldlytragedies and atrocities, we hear about how relatively small and mundane actsdone by God’s people gave strength and hope where and when it was needed most.    Of course, we also hear of and giverespectful gratitude to big heroic acts.  For many people, though, the faithful responses of ten years ago wereless heralded but no less important.

I recall the women in a prayer group that laidhands on me that fateful Tuesday, asking God to fill me with courage andstrength to lead.

Werecall co-workers in the Twin Towers who didn’t just escape while they could,but stopped to help whoever else they could down narrow flights of stairs.

Wereflect on thousands upon thousands of hugs and warm conversations ofsolidarity.

Werejoice in many desperately needed drops of donated blood, as freely given asJesus shed blood for us.

Theseways of moving forward, and more, continue today.

Soldiers confront evil this very hour withnot just their training, but also their pocket Bibles, their faith in God’slove for them, and the prayers of their loved ones soldiering with them in theSpirit.

Intelligence and securitypersonnel keeping vigilant watch over God’s flocks.

Pocketsof people gather this weekend for 9-11 memorial services, honoring life with theirlove and the lighting of candles.

Andhere we are, this day, this hour … praising and petitioning the good, loving,saving, ever-present and almighty power of our God.

Letus continue moving forward in faith by joining our voices in song, and then ina memorial litany as we prepare to share in the sacred, strengthening, communingmeal of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

[i]www.workingpreacher.org

Holy, In Sight

2011-09-04T04:22:00.001-07:00

Exodus 3:1-6

A great historical record of all thethings Moses looked upon during his lifetime does not exist. It would be a pretty incredible thing if itdid, though, right? The eyes thatsurveyed and registered such an epic life surely could tell the storywell. Though this complete accountdoesn’t exist, we do have enough biblical and historical evidence to give usinsight into what this heroic ancestor’s windows of the soul absorbed.

When his eyes first took in thelight of this complex world, Moses looked upon the face of his mother,Jochebed, his father, Amram, his sister, Miriam, and his brother Aaron. The family was living in Egypt, a generationor so following the time when their faithful kin, Joseph, along with hisamazing multicolored coat, settled there.

Newborn Moses also first looked uponthe faces of two courageous, compassionate, God fearing Hebrew midwives,Shiphrah and Puah. They were under theauthority of the Pharaoah’s dreadful dark decree to drown all brand spankin’new Hebrew boys. This autocrat had noaffinity for the privileges provided to Joseph by his predecessors. The Hebrews had become too vigorous innumber, too resilient, and were perceived as too much of a threat – especiallygiven that the Pharaoh’s plan to slow them down by making them a human brickfactory had not quite worked out. Shiprahand Puah, however, revered their God more than the mighty but nonethelessmortal Pharaoh. So they disobeyed. In a bold cohort with the whole family, Moseswas soon after looking at the inside of a bulrush basket as it bobbed along theNile.

After grievingly watching thisprecious infant sail off downstream, I don’t believe the they could ever haveimagined that when the lid popped open and little Moses had full light onceagain fill his eyes, he would be looking upon the regal-lined face of thePharaoh’s daughter. Or thatcircumstances would covertly unfold such that he could look upon the face ofhis own mother again for his nursing. Or that he would be raised gazing upon all of the glorious treasures andthe powerfully privileged lifestyle of an Egyptian prince.

We know, however, that after he’dgrown up, his life once again curiously twisted on the day Moses looked upon anEgyptian severely beating up a Hebrew. Some innate chord of injustice struck crisply, clearly and ragefully inhis heart. According to Exodus 2:12,Moses had glanced “this way and that” and saw no one, then killed the brute andburied him in the sand. His act ofdefense was not welcomed by his blood-kin Hebrews, however. The very next day he looked upon two of themfighting and when he verbally questioned this unjust behavior, Moses quicklylearned word was out about his murderous deed.

It was immediately clear to him thatit was time to look beyond his adopted life as a Prince of Egypt. He fled the Pharaoah and soon after cameface to face with the nomadic, shepherding Midian people. It’s worth noting that these people were thevery same human tribe that had once upon a time purchased Joseph. This isthe event that had eventually led the Hebrews people to Egypt in the firstplace. So Moses escaped Egypt only tolive in exile with the peoples who had historically led his people to live inEgypt! While in this long exile, Mosesspent his days looking upon his wife Zipporah, their son Gershom, hisfather-in-law, Jethro, and lots of sheep (whatever their names were!).

The windows of Moses’ soul, however,were destined to see way more than exiled Midian life. He hadbeen delivered from death time and again so he could be called by God to lookPharoah straight in the eyes and demand holy justice.

This summons happened while Moseswas keeping the safety of a flock as was the task of shepherds. Ithappened as he looked upon the most magnificent, mysterious thing he’d everviewed in his wondrously storied life. He had led the flock to the far side of the desert and settled them atMt. Horeb (later more famously identified as Mt. Sinai.) This is where he suddenly looked upon licksof fire lingering within a bush.

Right at this point, at Exodus 3verse 2 and 3, I feel compelled to pause our perspective on all the thingsMoses looked upon. It’s such a famousand frequently interpreted biblical scene that we may not see one little and Ibelieve poignant detail. Had anotherbiblical interpreter, a neighbor in ministry in nearby Basking Ridge, notcalled my attention to it I would have overlooked it as well.[i] It’s adetail that I believe will help us in our looking about for God in our livesand in our seeing more clearly one way God calls us to the cause of justice.

After observing the oddly unconsumedburning bush, we read that Moses reacted by thinking, “I will go over and see this strangesight.” The divinely luminous shrubwas not, it seems, located directly at Moses’ feet. He had to look upon it and then decide to goover to it. To quote my insightfulcolleague, “God didn’t choose the bush that Moses was about to stumbleupon. It was within sight, but at enoughdistance that Moses would have had to go out of his way to explore it.”[ii]

I have no doubt Moses was at firstquite curious about this strange site just a ways off from the path he’d beentraveling on an ordinary day in exile. Beingcurious about something is one way we all gain new knowledge. Now, he could have been curious and thendismissed any concern about the burning bush. He could have thought it wouldput itself out eventually. He couldhave blamed the whole vision on the heat, on his exhaustion, on having eatensome wrong kind of desert berries. Yes, Moses could have never turned aside for a closer look, could have shirkedhis care, could have sidestepped his holy calling. Praise God, he didn’t. Praise God, he looked upon the sign and wentover to it for that closer look, that summons to liberation.

I believe, as it was for Moses, Godmeets us where we are. And I believeGod continuously calls our attention in many mysterious ways, ways that we caneither ignore or faithfully decide to examine. Maybeyou haven’t seen a burning bush, but I trust you have had your holy curiosity piquedin other ways. For example, a coupleweeks ago I mentioned the famine in Somalia and how my looking at vivid photosreally moved me. It moved not just mysorrow and compassion, it even more so moved me to wonder where God was in themidst of it and what God might be calling me to do in order help remedy theinjustice of it. My holy curiosity wascaptured and I had to decide whether or not to turn away and ignore it or lookupon it with more of my faithful time and energy and above all love.

In a sermon about this passage fromExodus 3, Rev. Barbara Lundblad, a preaching professor at Union Seminary inNYC, offered up this bold comment – “It is one of God’s great inefficiencies,this waiting for human beings to turn aside.” She says this because despite our beingcompelled by our curiosities, we human beings also have an “almost endlesscapacity to keep walking.” The professor points out that this walking on,this not turning aside and moving closer to examine, happens because of ourschedules, our terrible busyness, our professions that we’ll come back tosomething later.

Moses is heroic to our faith formany reasons. May we not miss that oneof these reasons is his teaching us – by example -- to honor God’s efficiencyin summoning us to the biblical cause of social justice. One seemingly small decision to turn asideand examine that curious event engulfed his heart and soul with his life’s truepurpose. Upon understanding what Godwanted him to do he was frightened, he was hesitant … and yet also deeplyreassured that he was not going to answer his calling alone. His abiding by God’s call for holy justicewas accompanied by God’s abiding in him.

Throughout your life, what sorts ofsites and scenarios have led you to feel God calling you to a particular purpose? Did you sense this calling because it wasright at your feet as if something you were searching for? Or because something – a happening, aconversation – just a little ways off of your daily routine caught yourattention, compelled you to look closer, and burned a holy calling into yourheart and soul? I ask as one calledtime and again to look closer and to keep glorifying the name and liberatingmission of Christ Jesus. Amen.

[i] http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/766?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gods-curiosity-and-ours-exodus-31-15.

[ii]ibid

Soul Strengthening Celebrations!

2011-08-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Psalm 138

As I continue to move toward the age of forty-two, and as I look beyond that, I find myself taking inventory of certain things that I am very content to say will not happen before my last breath. Most of the things I’m quite glad to keep off of my “bucket list” involve great risks. So I can tell you with considerable peace of mind this morning that I’m not ever going to be a rock face climber. I do hope to go to one of those indoor rock wall gyms a couple more times. That’ll be enough. I have no intention of ever learning how to scale George Washington’s Mt. Rushmore face so I can place a rock-pick up his great nose!

I have rock climbing on the brain this morning because of a passage I read in Eugene Peterson’s rather intriguingly titled book, The Unnecessary Pastor. This well-known Presbyterian pastor and scholar has two sons who are both rock climbers. He writes about listening to them meticulously plan their ascents and about how this planning takes up as much time as the actual climbing. I can trust that this faithful father is greatly reassured in knowing all the tiniest safety details involved with such a potentially perilous sport.

One such key detail has to do with equipment called “pitons.” These are the small metal spikes with an eye for threading rope through that get hammered into small crevices of the rock face. They are the climber’s protection from rapid descent to death. As the reverend bluntly puts it, “Rock climbers who fail to put in protection have short climbing careers.”

Metaphorically speaking, what can we say these life-saving spikes have to do with our living faithfully? With appreciating what Psalm 138 has to sing to us?

Pastor Peterson writes, “Our pitons or ‘protection’ come as we remember and hold on to those times when we have experienced God's faithfulness in our lives. Every answered prayer, every victory, every storm that has been calmed by his presence is a piton which keeps us from falling, losing hope, or worse yet, losing our faith.”[i]

I fuse this devout insight with language from Psalm 138. As we carry on through life’s great adventure -- with its great, joyous peaks and its tough, often tragic, valleys – we do so placing our trust in God alone to faithfully “strengthen our soul.” Life is full of both celebrations and desolations. Ascents and descents. Is trust in God honestly your truest security measure through it all? Security as absolutely essential to your life adventure as those metal spikes rock climbers depend upon in order to complete their mission safely and celebrate life?

The Psalmist acknowledges that there are many false “gods” people place their trust in over and against the one God of biblical faith. In the Psalmist’s day, these were the deities of foreign cultures. To dance with them meant peril and impurity. The names and cultural identities of these are different today, but that they are unreliable when it comes to being fully present and trustworthy for us throughout our life adventure remains steadfastly true.

Having acknowledged the existence of other “gods,” the Psalmist then operatically sings praise to our God that is splendidly resilient. This faithful person had been through some very troubling life experience. We aren’t told what it was. I imagine it could have been anything a grave illness on through surviving an assassination plot. All we have in print is the honest report of this brother or sister having been divinely delivered through the midst of that trouble.

I think it’s good that the trouble is vague. When we read the Psalm, this lack of detail allows us to relate to being in the “midst of trouble” in our own personally relevant ways. Our troubles are at once universal and intimately unique. So too God’s soul strengthening is global yet also particular for each and every one of us. What we all have in common is the grateful, joyful proclamation that follows our faithfully concluding that God was very much present with us through all the fearful desperation.

To really sing along confidently with the Psalmist – and remember, the Psalms were originally like a hymnal -- we need to have a good understanding of what the ancient Israelite’s understood the “soul” to be.

Bible scholars teach us that the Hebrew word for “soul,” nephesh is not a body part but a full part of our body. It can be translated as referring to God’s breath within our complete body. So when the Psalmist sings of his or her soul being strengthened, we hear praise for God being totally and immediately present. Indeed, alive in every breath taken. It’s not strengthening just for one part of us that will one day return to our Creator. It is God very directly being part of and strengthening our daily living. The soul is not some part of us whose function we may not understand – like the appendix. It’s integrated into our whole self and thus more like God breathing air into our lungs.

Do we trust bodily breathing is what we most need to sustain our lives? Yes! So should we trust in God. We do not have a soul so much as we are a soul. We don’t have God as some part of us so much as we are in God.

Trusting in God’s faithfulness to you in the dramatic way that climbers trust their pitons to preserve them from death, in the way resiliently proclaimed by the Psalmist, means you trust God’s loving grace is circulating with your blood and breath through every moment of your life -- a faithful trust most especially grasped through perilous times.

One of my twelve year old daughter Anna’s favorite songs that I’ve written is called, “All Will Grow.” I asked her just a week or so ago what songs I should consider putting on a new CD. She immediately blurted out the title of this one. I was not expecting this, given that it is not as fun and funky as some others I write. This song, this contemporary Psalm, was written at the perilous feeling time when our family was at the onset of divorce. As it goes with my musical expression, it was prayer. The lyrics, melody, chords … all were my breathing with God, God breathing with me. Though she has never said so directly, I can tell it has helped and helps Anna breath as well … to be reminded that God has been present and will continue to present, that God’s love is steadfast and resilient.

Each stanza functions like one of those life-sustaining spikes I’ve been talking about. I’d like to share these words with you as a very personal example of how holding fast to God’s good, gracious presence has helped me not to lose hope, or as Eugene Peterson has said, “worse yet, faith.”

The song is metaphorically about fruit – specifically apples. At the time, I was deliberating within myself about God’s intention for marriage and where a failed marriage fits in with the narrative beginning of the Garden of Eden. I say deliberating with myself, but, as I’ve mentioned, also with God since God is present in every breath and thought. In the song’s three brief stanzas I sing the following words –

“So the apple has fallen, from the firm rooted tree. It has split apart, upon new ground / Four solid pieces, each precious in its own right, each holding seeds, for the future / New orchards will rise up, from healthy hearted parts. Many will be nourished, from this fallen fruit.”

The apple represents our family and the tree our firmly-rooted faith. The apple fell and split apart … but on new ground where each piece was still precious and part of new, nourishing future growth. The chorus to the song is but one line, “All will grow in love.” And there is but one line to a refrain at the end, “Nothing can break redeeming grace.”

Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my time of trouble … the time of feeling perilously down low. Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my trust in God as I recalled my Creator’s past loving faithfulness toward me. Now, it’s been over two years since I wrote “All Will Grow.” I am joyfully well into appreciating God’s healing grace and God’s birthing of new beginnings for us “apples.” As such, the song is like a new piton I’ll rely on for the rest of my life adventures. Like Psalm 138, it is a soul strengthening celebration song!

I encourage you to go home from our time of worship together today celebrating times when you believe God strengthened your soul, your whole self. Do so as witness to God’s steadfast presence and unflappable faithfulness. Speak it, write it, sing it. Just be sure to share it! It may well be a word of security some other soul greatly needs to hear and grasp for their life adventure. Amen.

[i] http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2005/april/15808.html

A Tale of Dogged Faith

2011-08-14T06:21:00.001-07:00

Matthew 15:21-28

Have you ever been called an offensive name? Unfortunately, it seems this is part of life for most everyone. From grade school taunts, to slander in the heat of debate, to dysfunctional family chides and labeling … name-calling happens. When it happens, angry defensiveness and underlying shame usually do the tango. Even when we forgivingly dismiss whatever word we were verbally slapped with, it never fails to leave some mark on the relationship it spawned from.

Given this hurtful aspect of human nature, were you shocked by our Scripture passage this morning? If you read and listened to it carefully, then you didn’t miss the name calling. It’s a particularly ugly bit of it too because it is not directed at someone acting offensively or arrogantly. It is directed instead at an anxious, grieving mom making a desperate appeal on behalf of her spiritually tormented daughter. It’s quite offensive to slander someone in crisis who is only reaching out for help!

And what makes this incident from our holy pages downright shocking is that the name caller is … Jesus. What was His reply to this woman begging him to heal her daughter? Our Lord calls her a “dog.”

That His disciples want to ignore and quickly dismiss her isn’t as disturbing – there are other instances when they come across as missing the heart and soul of their commission and when we read it, we know Jesus is going to correct them. But Jesus? Sure He once name called the Pharisees a “brood of vipors.” But that was the voice of prophet holding tradition bearer’s accountable. And sure He once labeled Peter “Satan,” but again, that also was about threat to faithful fidelity. What on earth did this mom do to warrant being called a “dog” – a demeaning, dismissive slang term -- by our Lord?

It seems she didn’t do anything except live her life in the region of Tyre and Sidon. These cities were in foreign territory, territory tied to Caananite tribes. A quick review of the Old Testament – of how Noah cursed his grandson, named Caanan, and on through various military conquests beginning with Joshua – reveals that Israelites regarded the beliefs and overall culture of the Caananites as abominable. This Caananite woman was thus generally regarded as impure, as an enemy even, in the culture of Jesus and his disciples.

How very curious, then, that Jesus, who was at that point in his flesh and bone ministry very near to the crisis of His crucifixion, chose to retreat from the demanding crowds all around Galilee by entering into Caananite turf. Most scholars I’ve read suggest this was because He was exhausted and figured to catch a breather from a population who would not hope in Him as their Messiah. If this was indeed the case, Jesus totally underestimated how far his fame as a healer had spread. It had grown great … so very great … that it had fallen off the master table of ministry in Jerusalem and was found by this foreign mother so hungry for a morsel of miracle.

Whatever had convinced her to place great faith in Jesus, she did so completely undeterred by the name calling. She was not for a moment concerned about historic bad blood between peoples, or even being labeled as unworthy of being listened to. Parents fighting for the lives of their children are typically immune to such unproductive talk. She focused firmly on just one thing – her family’s need for the mercy of the God whom Jesus represented. So she pleaded, and she did so with great worshipful shouts using the traditional language of Israelite culture – “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David!”

Perhaps Jesus’ uncaring response was indeed because of his exhaustion. That’s a fine enough way to justify it – haven’t we all spoken the wrong words at times when we were emotionally and physically fried? I know my daughters are well aware that after 8:45 p.m. on any given night, their tired dad can be a lot less lovingly hinged together.

My study and prayer about this passage over this past week, however, leads me more to believe that Jesus was instead once again making the most of an opportunity to teach about the full saving grace he had been born to give to the entire world.

Keep in mind, our tale of her dogged faith took place well within earshot of His disciples. We can imagine him calling her a “dog” with a little knowing glint in His compassionate eyes as he labeled her the narrow way they saw her. And keep in mind, or become newly aware of, that scholars believe the original hearers of Matthew’s account of the life and times of Jesus were overwhelmingly Jewish and thus Jesus is primarily presented in this Gospel as a profound interpreter of the old Mosaic Law.[i]

So I believe this teaching moment was a two-fold test -- one that challenged his closest followers to hold in check their cultural prejudices while at the same time giving the mom an opportunity to express the fervent faith Jesus greatly wanted from His followers.

Her sincere, praise-full pleading did not disappoint Him. After respectfully, faithfully referring to Him as “Lord” three times she turned the derogatory comment on directly on its head. She did so by declaring that even the “dogs” need the spilled crumbs from the Master’s table. What a profound, humble and wise observation this was. And it delighted Jesus to such a great degree that he performed the miracle without delay!

What this unnamed woman teaches all of is how to follow Jesus with dogged faith. If you haven’t caught on, I’m enjoying a little word play with this terminology, and further with the full sermon title. I do so to reinforce that there are times in people’s lives when simple, implicit trust in the mercy of God to cast away dark realities may not be quite enough. There are times, complete crises, when faithful expression needs to be full-on worshipfully petitioned, cried for with culture-rattling determination to be heard, to be radically synched up with verbal professions of belief.

Having dogged faith means having an unflappable trust in the all-inclusive, ever-present mercy of our Lord.

It is faith that does not take any given situation at face value, but instead considers it at full faith value.

It is faith always at the ready to be challenged and taught bold and holy truth by Jesus, through His Spirit that is very actively present in each of our hearts and all across this world.

Where, today, are there voices crying out for holy mercy? Voices we modern day disciples can faithfully hear as an appeal to our Lord for help? Where, especially, are the voices of those we may be sinfully tempted to dismiss as offensive outsiders best left on their own to deal with their own troubles?

If you have been following world news, you know well that many merciful, miraculous morsels from the Master’s table are needed in Southern Somalia, on the horn of Africa. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are suffering from famine due to a drought. No relief of these life-killing conditions, of death by excruciatingly slow starvation, is expected until we are enjoying our next Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. The famine has created a huge number of people fleeing from pastoral areas into the war-torn capital city of Mogadishu. It has also caused a massive number of refugees – with more than 55,000 fleeing across the borders of Ethiopia and Kenya this past June alone. Just this morning, shortly after I woke up and turned on CNN, I found myself sadly surveying a refugee camp with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Are we disciples of Jesus hearing the voices of these, our mostly Muslim neighbors? Are we giving faithful attention to all of that crying out for crumbs? The loudest cries hit my ears through the silence of photos showing starving, dying children. Seeing them in hi-resolution on my computer laptop screen – even more than on television -- is a particularly loud plea for help. As always, there are political and other ideological entanglements that go with such disasters. As usual, I’m not one to get into those from the pulpit. I prefer, as ever, to first and foremost enter into prayer … prayer that many people’s dogged faith will respond to this crisis.

Our denomination’s Presbyterian Disaster Assistance response so far has been to provide $100,000 of One Great Hour of Sharing funds to meet immediate, basic humanitarian needs and offer life-saving measures. We take up collection for One Great Hour of Sharing during Lent and Easter, so FPC has already offered some measures of help. The PDA team is responding as part of the ACT Alliance, an organization of 111 churches and church-based groups founded in 2010 and currently working in 130 countries.[ii] I’ve included in your bulletin one way for you to give more financial assistance if you feel moved to do so. In addition to the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance there are also a good number of other humanitarian agencies actively serving this disaster. On the PDA website there is a reminder about what needs to come first that is worth quoting – “Our best response is prayer. 1 Thessalonians implores us to pray without ceasing, so your prayers are requested above all else. Please pray for families who are hungry, thirsty, displaced, or need medical care because of this crisis. Also pray for the people responding to the disaster, and for those whose lives are closely linked to both the disaster survivors and the workers who minister to them.”

Greatly inspired by this morning’s tale of dogged faith, today turns out to be a time for name calling after all. I’m going to name-call myself and name-call all of you. I’m going to do so now using powerfully evocative names like “disciple,” “servant,” “missionary,” “steward,” “neighbor,” “friend,” “child of God.” I do so for the sake and to the glory of Jesus, the Good Shepherd of all. Amen.

[i] Life With God Bible introduction to Matthew

[ii] http://www.actalliance.org/about