Proclaim the Uncontainable!

John 14:15-27; Psalm 51:10-15

Pentecost/Confirmation Sunday
May 19, 2013

 

            In a Family Sunday sermon last September, when this year’s confirmation class process was still getting started, I made mention of a villain from the hit film The Hunger Games by the name of Seneca Crane.  This week, the Holy Spirit inspired me to think faithfully about that sinister schemer’s even more obviously evil boss, President Snow. 

            The setting for The Hunger Games is a truly disturbing distant future vision of American society.   President Snow is the cold-hearted and consistently calculating tyrant of it all.    He’s the perfect antagonist to Katniss Everdeen’s rebellious and really tough protagonist, and is played with truly chilling authority by the great Canadian character actor Donald Sutherland.

            One scene captures this sinful symbol particularly well.   It’s a conversation he is having with his chief lackey.   As they discuss the rising threat to their repressive rule, President Snow says this –

            “Hope.  It is the only thing stronger than fear.   A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous.  A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”    Seneca Crane, not quite catching Snow’s drift, responds by saying, “So …” to which his boss promptly barks, “So, contain it!”

            This scene points to real life in our present world.     It points to how the power of sin alive in individuals and entrenched in human society is threatened by the truly greater power of hope.   It points to how sin summons us to protect and participate in its always oppressive power plays so as to contain us.

            But by the grace of God, and the fortitude of our faith, we know exactly how to guard our hearts and minds against colluding with sin.   By “we” I mean we who have confirmed our belief in Jesus Christ, and who keep confirming and proclaiming our Lord’s prevailing power against sin through our daily thoughts, words and deeds.    I mean we who keep ardently  turning away from sin’s stubborn reach, who keep our focus on living forgiven and freed in the love of Jesus Christ, and who therefore keep going into the world to stand up to any likes of President Snow and Seneca Crane by faithfully shouting “Pah-pah-pow!” (confirmation class inside joke).

            What good news it is that the hope God has given us through Jesus Christ cannot be contained! 

            It’s honestly human to admit, though, that it does get challenged.   It gets challenged when horrifying things happen in the world.  It gets challenged when sorrowful realities settle into our lives and the lives of our loved ones.   It gets challenged when all sorts of reasons cause us to slip into sinful despair and self-destruction.   

            As such challenges come to us all, we will always do well to revisit today’s lesson from the Gospel of John.   This word proclaims the truth promised by Jesus before he was crucified, dead and buried.    This word proclaims the truth fulfilled and fully revealed by our Risen Lord on the very first Pentecost.   This word proclaims the truth that we have been given a divine Advocate, the Holy Spirit. 

             Through this indwelling power, this person of the Holy Trinity, we are constantly being helped to live faithfully and thus to defend against making sinful choices.   The Spirit constantly inspires us to firmly belief our Lord is alive and well and with us.   It never stops interpreting God’s eternal desire for love and harmony across humanity and Creation.   It only takes one spark of the Holy Spirit to get a spiritual fire going and then soon all those around start warming up to its glowing!   As it does, it restores, sustains, cleanses and renews the joy of salvation within everyone who has faith to receive it.   

            The Spirit empowers and equips us with all kinds of spiritual gifts.  These all help reveal God’s loving presence to our family members, friends, neighbors, strangers, and everything on this planet.    Coming to mind this morning are a few particular gifts I’ve read about in these last few weeks of the confirmation class --- intelligence that fuels our study of God and all life; creativity expressed through music and other cultural arts; the ability to be loyal, honorable, gracious and a good friend; the knack for making people laugh and sharing holy stories in a not so serious way; the capability to enjoy and to feel empowered through athletics; the capacity to celebrate and participate in all God’s acts of kindness.

            Yes, what good news it is that the hope God has given us through Jesus Christ cannot be contained!  

            However, let us honestly confess that there are times when we choose to limit the Holy Spirit’s influence in our lives.   It is always present, always actively advocating for our right relationship with God and neighbor, but we often just aren’t paying attention.    We get so focused on our particular trees that we fail to see the strong wind always blowing through the forest.   We get to feeling so hopelessly awash in the chaotic sea of sin that we fail to see the safe structure God has provided for us and the dove delivering the olive branch of peace.   We get so snowed under by self-focus, we don’t notice the warming, transforming touch of God’s healing, guiding love.   

            So what do we need to do in order to stay more fully focused on the intercessions of our Advocate?  To be spiritually strengthened as the Body of our Risen Lord in this wounded and wounding world?   We discussed this all throughout our confirmation class.   A good concluding summary helpful to all of us is this -- we need to protect our time with God, practice our faith, and pray without ceasing.

            In our final confirmation lesson, we watched a video about how very important it is to make a habit of setting up times and places where we can quiet our hearts and minds and really pay attention to how the Holy Spirit is guiding us.  This is not something life ever stops for, so we need to be sure to stop for it.   We need to protect this precious time of spiritual formation.   There are so many others things we protect the time for throughout our lives – studying, training for sports, caring for our health, protecting our good relationships, paying the bills, running errands, honoring the demands and duties at work and at home.   Even when interruptions and distractions come, we protect the time for all these things and more.    Yet nothing is as life-restoring and empowering as when we protect the time to simply be still and read, listen, and be both challenged and inspired by God’s Word through the power of the Holy Spirit.   

            Protecting this God-time as part of our regular personal routines and disciplines is a foundational part of practicing our faith in Jesus Christ.   And it’s what motivates us to then make community faith practices a priority.  I strongly believe this is particularly important because individualism is such a dominant force in our culture.   As Christians we both respect this and wrestle with it.    We wrestle with it because from the biblical perspective “our thinking and living take place in relation to God and also to one another, to others around the world and across the centuries, and to a vast communion of saints.”[i]  Community faith practices keep us practically connected to human needs so we will have a greater capacity to receive and to share God’s uncontainable hope in Christ.   So let’s keep regularly attending worship, extending hospitality and fellowship to all, growing in faith through Bible study and prayer groups, and selflessly giving ourselves to mission work.

            One final Pentecost and confirmation celebrating thought for today -- our Advocate enables us to pray without ceasing.    This doesn’t mean we have our hands folded in prayer, our heads bowed low, uttering only certain and proper words 24-7, 365.    It does mean the Holy Spirit helps us always remember that God knows our hearts completely, absolutely all the time, and that we can talk to God as naturally, as genuinely, as honestly as talking to our closest friends and family.   And in those moments when we just don’t seem to know what to say, we can trust the Holy Spirit is praying for us with sighs too deep for words (Rom. 8:26)

            After we sing our traditional middle hymn for this special day, we will join together in a most sacred way to celebrate the good news that the hope God has given us through Jesus Christ cannot be contained.  We will be sharing in the Sacrament of our Lord’s Supper.  

             Pentecost, you may or may not know, was originally a Jewish feast of thanksgiving.  We share in this meal together to remember and to express how thankful we are for the saving grace of Jesus Christ that fills us all with uncontainable hope.   By the power of the Holy Spirit, this sacrament unites us with all our faithful brothers and sisters today and throughout the ages and therefore truly honors Pentecost as the promise of the Spirit given to and for community.     

            What a beautiful family day this is!   May it bless us all our days!  And may we always whole-heartedly celebrate the Spirit of our Living Lord who brings about new beginnings, gives us wisdom and guidance from God, works to “create a whole new humanity and a whole new creation,” and that sends all of us who confirm our faith in Jesus Christ out as the “reconciled and reconciling community called the church.”[ii]    Amen!

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[i] http://www.practicingourfaith.org/what-are-christian-practices

[ii] Christian Doctrine, Shirley C. Guthrie, p. 296.

Hearts Branching Out Hope

Psalm 65; Romans 5:1-5

 

            Jean Kerr, author of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (a humorous look about suburban living and raising boys who also happens to be from my wife Stefanie’s hometown of Scranton, PA) once penned these words about hope – “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”[i]

            There are, of course, some truly good feelings we want to hold onto and to trust in as eternal.   But I like this quote because it points to how hope can help us let go of the not so good feelings.    Hope pops up quite naturally to say on any given day that when upsetting and unsettling feelings such as sorrow, anger, and anxiety arrive, they will also come to pass.    This gets me wondering -- when hope does nudge us into letting go of the troublesome stuff, where do we release it all to?  

            As the great hymn of faith goes, we have a friend in Jesus and so we should be releasing all our trials and tribulations to our Lord in prayer.    How exactly we do this is a personal decision.   We can hold our prayer petitions silently in our hearts.   We can ask others to also hold them in their hearts as well as name them among faithful friends.  We can journal them, turn them into original songs or pieces of art.  We can knit with them and produce a prayer shawl.  There are countless ways.   How do you usually make petition to the gracious power of the Lord?

            This past week, one of our church members told me about a daughter whose mom had a really awesome way of doing this.    To honor her late mother’s life, she’s written a gift book about this called “The God Box.”  Listen to the daughter’s description –

            “The God Box was Mom’s secret stash of notes to God.  She’d grab any handy piece of paper – from a ‘While You Were Out’ slip to a receipt or a Post-it note – and scribble, ‘Dear God, Please take care of …’  She would dash off the petition in her natural, heartfelt style, date it and sign it ‘Love, Mary.’  Then she would keep folding the paper until it was really small and place it safely in the box.  The God box,” she further writes, “came with one caveat.  If any of us ever worried about the request, Mom would say, ‘If you think you can handle it better than God, it’s coming out.’”   The author then explains what happened after that comment.  “Just the suggestion that we thought we were more powerful than God put us in our places and made us stop fretting and start believing.  We loved how the God Box gave her such comfort and relief, and were always happy to have our hopes and fears stored inside.”[ii]

            Following her mom’s passing, when Mary Lou Quinlin had full access to  twenty years worth of God box petitions, she noticed that her mom often made the same request multiple times.   Was this a sign of frustration for prayer her mom felt went unanswered?   Not at all.   “I attributed that,” she writes, “to her unflagging ability to hope, not to any doubt she hadn’t been heard.”[iii]    

            It sure seems to me that this is one Christian woman and mom who focused on living the words of today’s New Testament reading.    The prayer deposits she made in the God box reveal how deeply she trusted that hope does not disappoint us.    And not just any kind of hope or vague feeling of hope.   Not the sort that half-heartedly sputters the words, “Well, I hope so.”   This is bold hope born of God’s redeeming love in Jesus Christ.  It’s the hope poured into us through the power of the Holy Spirit.   This is the hope also found in Psalm 65, hope that waters and enriches and blesses and grows our hearts so that we bear witness and branch out the glory of God to our family trees.

            In addition to not being vaguely defined, this hope is also never something saccharin.  It’s not artificially sweet as if free of real and often sour world flavor.   To think it is, quite frankly, is to somehow believe Jesus only experienced love, joy and peace while walking among us.    Every reading of the Gospels dispels this Pollyanna perspective pretty quickly.   The holy hope that is seeded and watered in our hearts by grace and through our faith intimately knows all of our not so good feelings -- all the degrees of sorrow and despair, of anxiety and anguish, of distrust and depression.   By honestly experiencing all this, it leads us closer to Christ and thus to greater strength, profound peace, and ultimate joy for our journeys.

            All those who stood and barked criticism at the Apostle Paul absolutely could not grasp this concept.  They regarded him as unimpressive and as having too many adversities “to be able to claim a victorious life with God.”[iv]    Long after his death, a description of Paul was written down that said he was “bald-headed, bowlegged, a man small in size, with meeting eyebrows, a rather large nose.”[v]  Combine this physical appearance with his radical message against prevailing worldly ways and I think that if Paul had had a God box, his opponents would have regarded it as full of soiled, useless tissues from a sniveling sort of fellow.  

            But Paul embodied nothing but great hope, always seeing it beyond any and all suffering.    Following the example of his Lord, he celebrated that “life is hard on the path of discipleship” and so he was able to turn discrediting words into his greatest qualifications. [vi]  

            The poignantly descriptive Presbyterian author Fred Beuchner says this is what got Paul through “the ups and downs. The fights with his enemies and fights with his friends.  The endless trips with a fever.  Keeping one jump ahead of the sheriff.   Giving his spiel on windy street corners with nobody much to hear him most of the time excepts some underfed kids and a few old women and some yokels who didn’t even know the language.”[vii]     To absolutely all of this, Paul kept going, empowered by the holy hope both rooted in and branching up out from his heart, bearing witness to it with the words “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”   

            How amazing for us to believe and to experience and to share this in so many ways.    What gratitude we have for having been shown the way of truly holy hope by Jesus, by Paul, by countless witnesses on through so many mothers and others.     Glory be to God, Amen!   

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[i] Finishing Touches, 3, 1974

 

[iii] The God Box, Mary Lou Quinlan, various excepts

[iv] www.staff.murdoch.edu.au/loader/aeplent3

 [v] apocryphal, Acts of Paul and Thecla

[vi] ibid, Loader

[vii] http://www.frederickbuechner.com/content/weekly-sermon-illustrations-paul

The Miracle of Being See, Known, Spoken to ...

John 5:1-9

                It’s been a few weeks since the bombing at the Boston Marathon.   There has been constant media attention given to detailing the lives of the brother bombers as well as ongoing speculations about their motives.     I don’t allow myself to get too engaged by all these reports.   I prefer to focus my mind and heart on finding the stories of hope and healing that have come about in the aftermath of yet another horrendous happening.     Living a faithful life with a constant Easter perspective invites us all to do this.   What have you seen?  Come to know about?  Spoken of?   

            I was inspired by one particular story presented by NPR news.     What starts as the harrowing account of what happened to forty-seven year old Celeste Corcoran last April 15th finds its way into being what I consider strong witness to what is miraculous in this world. 

            She had been standing near the finish line eagerly anticipating the sight of her sister running across.    Then the first bomb exploded.    She never lost consciousness and so was able hear her husband, Kevin, speaking assurances as he applied belt tourniquets to her mangled legs.   In great pain, she initially admitted to herself that she wanted to die.  The shock of this admission, however, had the positive result of sparking her will to live -- for herself, her husband, her children (which included her also seriously wounded 18 year old daughter Sydney.)   

            In the week that followed, Celeste endured double-amputation below the knees plus three additional surgeries.   Her typically resilient spirit struggled to acknowledge how very much her life had been instantly, utterly changed.    She was very grateful to be alive, yet feared about what the quality of her life was going to be.   For someone who “was always the one to organize things, do things, exert her independence in a million little ways,” [i]  she began to hate depending on others to do everything for her.  

            In her hospital room, she felt very low and like a desperate invalid.   Then one day a stranger named Gabe Martinez paid her a visit.   This U.S. Marine had lost both legs in a similar way while serving in Afghanistan.   Seeing her tears, knowing her fear and her pain, he spoke to her saying, “You know, I was just like you.  I was just like this.  I felt helpless.  I felt I couldn’t do anything for myself.”[ii]    Celeste noticed how he was standing steady as a rock on his prosthetic legs, and how much power there was in his reassuring presence.    Then she heard him say, “Right now, I'm telling you -- you know, with all my heart -- you are going to be more independent than you ever were.”    Several other visits followed, including one from another good natured member of the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund.  Sweeping his arms above her heavily bandaged legs, he declared, “This is just a change of scenary.”[iii]     This turning point experience of being seen, of being known, of being spoken to with words of liberating hope, soon had Celeste laughing and gesturing and telling stories again at the pace she was used to in her life as a hairdresser on Newbury Street.

            There was no miraculous saving or restoration of this innocent by-stander’s limbs.   But there was a miracle and a restoration in the aftermath of the horrific attack.    Meeting the Marines inspired her to bear witness to this miracle with these words – “After I met them, it was like this ... this little spark.  You know, it's really going to be OK. Before then, I knew I was going to live. I knew my loved ones were going to be around me. But the independent me ... after that point, it was like I got it that the sky's the limit. Nothing was taken from me that I can't get back. I can even be better than I was before."[iv]   

            After his encounter with Jesus, I imagine similar words witnessing miraculous restoration were proclaimed by the man we meet in the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel.    He had suffered 38 years of being physically invalid, as well as being socially invalidated.    For someone living in his time and place, his physical symptoms were not regarded as the result of some biological disease or development.   Such medical knowledge didn’t exist.  They were instead viewed as symptomatic of “some disruption, disordering, dislocation of proper relationships – that is, of sin.”[v]    

            This Bible story is therefore less about the invalid’s miraculous physical healing and much more about the miraculous restoration of his social well-being.    This happened only after Jesus saw him and visited him, truly knowing what suffering the man most needed to be released from.  He knew the man was desperate to get beyond the despondency and dependency of spending all his life feeling stuck in his tragic circumstances.    He knew the man needed to move beyond waiting to be dipped into a pool that pagans regarded as having miraculous power.   Not only was this understanding of the pool a false god, but nobody who believed in it, it seems, had bothered to ever help this ill man into the pool, into having any hope.   “Do you want to be made well?” inquired Jesus.   In other words, “Do you want a change of scenery? To be restored in your relationship with family, friends, society?   To better than you ever have been before? ”

            Notice that there isn’t any indication from John’s Gospel that this man recognized exactly who was asking this amazing question.   He didn’t reply, “Yes, Lord, make me well!”   Nor did Jesus say, “I’m God, let me make you well!”     The holy and relevant miracle of this moment in history started when Jesus intentionally stepped into the gap of personal and social isolation.   It started with his deciding not to ignore this suffering soul and thus reinforce a cultural norm of blame and gross neglect.    He didn’t offer to put him into a pool of false hope.    Jesus instead decided to see this neighbor’s needs, make the time to be with him, listen to his tragic circumstances, and then invite him to a new and more whole way of life.

            I fully believe Jesus is still providing this life restoring work to the world today.    And I believe witness to this often times doesn’t even mention His holy name.   I choose to believe, and we can all choose to believe, He is present when his restorative power is most needed.   Our Lord was there at Celeste Corcoran’s side.   Through the power of His Holy Spirit, he was present when a belt was offered as tourniquet, when words of love and comfort were expressed in the midst of chaos, when she felt an inner spark to live that was much more powerful than the evil explosion that did it’s best to kill her spirit, when a vision of hope and wholeness was offered by someone who’d been in her shoes.

            There are many people in our lives, our neighborhoods, our nation, and our world who feel they have no choice but to suffer day after day.    The causes and degrees of physical, emotional and spiritual suffering vary greatly.   Jesus cares about and is attending to them all.    Living our lives with constant Easter perspective is all about fully trusting this.   When we do, we glorify our Lord above all false hopes and gods.   When we do, we are then able to respond faithfully by being agents of His always miraculous grace.    

            Lots of things can get in the way of our taking the time to see, know and speak on behalf of Jesus.   There are lots of reasons why we can all grow complacent about calling for greater awareness of Christ’s strengthening presence.     One way I find inspires and empowers us to stay focused on where Jesus is standing and what He is saying is to keep recalling the moments in our lives when we can most relate to the man stuck to his mat for so long.    Those times, such as come to us all, of feeling in-valid and unable to rise up to be the hopeful, whole people God wants us to be. 

            I invite us to review these moments today and in the week ahead.   And as we do, let us wonder where Jesus was and is.   By wondering, may we come to realize again or perhaps for the first time that our Lord truly sees us, knows us, and invites us to live whole and holy lives.  Amen.   

             

             

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[i] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/01/180110959/mother-and-daughter-injured-in-boston-bombing-face-new-future

[ii] ibid.

[iii] https://semperfifund.org/features/boston-globe-marines-visit-brings-hope-and-laughter/

[iv][iv] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/01/180110959/mother-and-daughter-injured-in-boston-bombing-face-new-future

[v] http://www.holytextures.com/2010/03/john-5-1-9-year-c-easter-6-sermon.html