by Pastor Susan E. Ostrom (unless otherwise noted)
May 11, 2008
Acts 2:1-21
Like The Rush of a Wind
They were all together in one place, these first followers of Jesus. The Bible says they were in a house. Maybe there was a window or two open. There may have been as few as a dozen people, or as many as a hundred and twenty. People were likely sitting on the floor, maybe a few perched on stools or benches, with a couple up on the window sills. We don’t know for sure. What we do know is that, “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.”
(FANS turned on, pause to let them blow)
It’s a strange story. How could a rush of a violent wind come inside? They did not have electric fans. Maybe a waft of air if the breeze was blowing outside and a window was open. But, a rush of a violent wind? It sounds like a tornado or a hurricane, but there are no reports of roofs blown off or trees falling down. In fact, the Bible doesn’t even say they felt the wind, only that they heard it. How could such a thing happen?
Whatever was going on that day, it was unexpected. Nobody had planned for this to happen. Nobody had predicted it. Furthermore, it could not be analyzed, like a complicated set of data, or parsed like a poem. It couldn’t even be measured with a wind gauge.
Some wind we do make use of. Giant wind turbines are now dotting the landscape around the world, perhaps a partial solution to global warming and the energy crisis. Some countries have used windmills for centuries to grind their grain or pump water. Musicians control the wind they expel from their lungs to sing a song or play a trumpet. Organists carefully control wind through pipes of different sizes and materials. (Organ play, “She comes sailing on the wind,”)
In both Greek and Hebrew, the word for wind can also mean breath or spirit. In the first account of creation, a wind from God sweeps over the face of the waters. It is equally fair to say it is the breath of God – or the Spirit. Church tradition says that fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, his followers had gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of Pentecost. They heard the rush of a violent wind as they gathered in one place. We could fairly translate that verse to say they heard the rush of a powerful spirit. The Holy Spirit had come among them.
Meteorologists can often predict the arrival of a blustery spring day, or even a powerful hurricane. Engineers can tap into that power to make electricity. No one, however, has ever figured out how to divert the wind. Fruit farms can create wind with tall wind machines that help to keep frost from settling on delicate blossoms. If you’ve ever been in orchard country in the spring, you’ve heard the roar of those wind machines fill entire valleys. Artificial wind is minuscule compared to even a blustery day, much less a hurricane. Wind can’t be controlled – just experienced.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit cannot be controlled, manufactured, or analyzed. The Holy Spirit can only be experienced.
As meteorologists can look at conditions when wind is likely, so as people of faith, we can sometimes know under what conditions the Spirit is likely to blow into our lives. “They were all together in one place.” The Holy Spirit often operates in community. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” It’s not to say that individuals can’t experience God, but at its most powerful, faith is a communal experience. The Holy Spirit works as we cooperate and share together. A solo instrument or voice can be hauntingly beautiful, but a symphony or choir, with different instruments or voices all sounding at once, sends chills up our spines. Harmony takes different notes and combines them into one song. The Holy Spirit works through many people joining together to proclaim God’s deeds of power.
(Choir sing Veni Sanctus Spiritus)
The descent of the Holy Spirit on those first followers of Jesus transformed them from a small, uncertain band of people who were pretty much from the same place and background, into a growing, bold, and diverse church. There’s always some debate about whether the real miracle of Pentecost was one of speaking or one of hearing. People from many countries, who spoke different languages, heard and understood. Was it that Peter and the others suddenly could speak those other languages without hours of memorizing vocabulary lists and verb conjugations? Or was it that those gathered understood, regardless of the language being spoken, like a United Nations convention with simultaneous translation? Whichever, the effect was the same: The Holy Spirit both united and expanded community. What had been a small chorus became the Mormon Tabernacle Choir resounding with thousands of voices and deep, rich harmonies.
Furthermore, it was the Holy Spirit who enabled these diverse people to come to faith in Christ. “Jesus is Lord,” they each said, in their own languages. (Several voices around the room say, in different languages, “Jesus is Lord.”)
The Holy Spirit, it still blows into our lives. It sends us out to announce God’s deeds of power to the world around us. The Holy Spirit sends us to young and old, rich and poor, literate and illiterate, black, white, pink, and yellow. The Holy Spirit gives us each different abilities, all to be used for the common good.
The Holy Spirit: it still blows into our lives in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. We still can’t control or analyze the Holy Spirit. All we can do is to watch it, like we watch the leaves flutter in the breeze. All we can do is experience it.
The Holy Spirit . . . it blows into our lives . . . like the rush of a mighty wind. (FANS on)
May 4, 2008
Acts 1:6-14
Looking Up, Living Down
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” asked two men in white robes to Jesus’ disciples. In their sight, Jesus had just been lifted up to heaven. They had stared after him. The Bible doesn’t tell us why, though it seems reasonable to suppose that they stared in wonder and amazement. Then again, maybe it was just that human instinct to watch the motion of something, like looking after a car going down the highway or the person walking past your office. Or maybe it was that one person had looked up and everyone else followed suit to see what was up there.
Jesus had lived with them for three years. He had been crucified and then raised from the dead. “He presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, and appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Resurrection is not resuscitation, however. God didn’t do CPR on Jesus: he conquered death once and for all. Jesus had instructed the disciples that they were to remain in Jerusalem, “until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Whatever that meant.
Now Jesus had ascended to heaven. A few people had ascended before him. Moses had died alone, up on a mountain top, and since no one had ever found his body the people had concluded he had ascended to heaven. Elijah had been taken up to heaven by a chariot while Elisha watched. After Jesus ascended, the power from on high would come ten days later when the Holy Spirit would descend on Jesus’ followers. It’s doubtful they understood all that at the time, nor that they remembered Jesus’ vague predictions of his ascension. So when he was lifted up before them they stared. “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Jesus had just told them the same thing. They’d been asking him, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” And Jesus had told them it wasn’t for them to know but they would receive the Holy Spirit. “Why do you stand around looking up toward heaven?” Still today seekers after God and people who think maybe they’ve found God can get distracted by what appears to be some important faith matter but turns out to miss the point. “When will Jesus return to earth?” “Why do Methodists sprinkle and Baptists immerse?” “If Adam and Eve had only sons, where did they get their wives?” “If God is all powerful, can God make a box so big he can’t lift it?” “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
I am the first to insist that some questions are part of a genuine faith search. Faith itself calls us to on going exploration. Acceptance of Christ as Savior does not mean we emerge full fledged with every question answered and perfect insight into God. Years ago I remember some teacher telling my class, “As long as you don’t already know the answer, there are no stupid questions.” The same thing is true of faith. Honest questions which arise out of a genuine search for God must be honored.
There are, however, questions which are a form of spiritual thumb twiddling. Some questions are excuses for avoiding the search or games played to show off to others. Other questions can paralyze us from encountering God.
Charlie Brown and Linus are pushing a cardboard box up a snowy hill. Charlie Brown says, “Y’know, I think I’ve discovered something about myself.” They get to the top of the hill and climb in the box. Charlie Brown cautions, “By the way, look out for that tree down there, and steer away from those rocks and that fence.” Linus asks, “What is it you’ve discovered about yourself, Charlie Brown?” They start down the hill, the box turns upside down, and they land sprawled in the snow. “I always worry about the wrong things,” Charlie Brown answers.
Sometimes when it comes to faith we worry about the wrong things. “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” “Why do you stand looking up?” Claimed and chosen by Jesus we are called not to idle speculation and endless theological arguments but to be witnesses to the world of the power of God’s love. Before he ascended, Jesus told the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Read the rest of the Book of Acts and you will see that is precisely what happens. Word about Jesus begins in the city of Jerusalem and soon travels into the surrounding countryside. It eventually reaches Rome. In our day and age that doesn’t seem very far but in the first century it was nearly the end of the world.
The General Conference of The United Methodist Church has just ended. General Conference is the only body that can speak for The United Methodist Church. It meets once every four years. It’s true that, like many big meetings, General Conference can be guilty of idle speculation. Bitter debates about homosexuality, endless thumb twiddling about administrative details, and other legislative arguments consume a lot of time. The controversial things like homosexuality end up in the news, as if that were the only thing to happen during those two weeks. Some of those hot button issues are important, but often the real work of the Conference never makes the news. The good news is that the United Methodist Church does act as Christ’s witness to the ends of the earth. While United Methodists in the United States agonize over declining membership, our witness in places like Africa and Korea is growing. Because of the United Methodist Church’s witness new people learn about Christ every day. Did you know the UMC is active in places like Tanzania, The Sudan, Russia, and The Philippines, as well as 120 other countries? First United Methodist Church shares in that witness to Christ in all those places through our payment of our World Service Apportionment. We’ve struggled to meet that obligation in full, but last year we paid 50%, the most in years. We are witnesses to Christ to the ends of the earth.
Today we say farewell, thank you, and God bless to nearly a dozen university students who will be graduating next week. It’s tough to say where you will all end up: Boise, Seattle, Indiana, and maybe other continents. I hope this church has witnessed to you about the love of Jesus Christ. I know the Holy Spirit has touched us through your presence with us. Today we send you out to be Christ’s witnesses wherever life takes you.
As Christians, every one of us is called to be a witness to Christ in our daily life. That may be by teaching a classroom full of children, running a business, plowing a field, or changing diapers. It calls us to look, not up into the heavens, but down at whatever task is at hand. It can be harder to witness to Christ at the family supper table than in a foreign land. And we know that Christ is upon us to empower us in those tasks. We can tell the world that God is love.
April 27, 2008
John 14:15-25
Holy 2 x 4’s
It is both a tremendous joy and a grief that next Sunday we will celebrate the graduation from college of nearly a dozen students. As a congregation we have delighted in your presence with us, some of you for four years, or in a few cases even longer. In some cases we have shared significant life passages together. What an honor it has been to know you in these years. We rejoice with you in your accomplishment. At the same time, I will personally miss you as you move on to new opportunities. You leave behind a hole in this congregation.
My niece, who has lived in the area for the last three years, is also getting her Master’s Degree and moving away. In addition, I have several colleagues who are moving to new churches. Both our Bishop and our District Superintendent are also moving. I’m beginning to feel like the last person on the island. It’s getting lonely.
I’m not the only one. As the US moves into another year of war in Iraq, military families face on going deployments of loved ones. Soldier parents, spouses, and children try to stay connected over thousands of miles. Recently, NPR ran a story about a solider mother of a teenaged girl. Called to the phone to talk to her mother who was in Iraq, the girl said, “Hi Mom, I love you, I’m really proud of you, you’re the best Mom in the world. Gotta go, bye.”
Families, friends, colleagues: when transitions come into our lives we are left to figure out how to relate to each other across the miles. Technology helps. Phone calls, emails, and text messages connect us when we can’t be together. Some of you remember the days when a soldier left for war clutching one photograph, and families waited for months for letters to come, which, when they arrived, were very often long out of date.
In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus is preparing the disciples not only for his crucifixion, but also for his resurrection and exaltation. Talk about a complicated mixture of emotions. First they will know the terrible grief and fear of Jesus’ death. Three days later the pendulum will swing and they’ll know the even greater joy of his resurrection. “Christ is risen!” they will say.
Resurrection was not resuscitation, however. Yes, Jesus rose from the dead, but then he ascended to heaven. He wasn’t around in bodily form. Like the soldier Mom, who survives the explosion but is still in Iraq, unable to attend her daughter’s basketball game or help her son with his homework, Jesus still isn’t there. Or is he? Resurrection and ascension, at the very least, will forever change things. He won’t be present to bless the bread at meals, to heal the sick, or to tell a story. How will the disciples relate to the Post Resurrection Jesus?
It is still a valid question. Jesus is not present in bodily form. We can’t see him smile, hear his voice or feel the warmth of his hand on ours. It would help to get a text message. Sometimes I wish God would hit me with a 2 x 4 so I know what God wants.
Christ is risen! It is good news – I guess, but sometimes it would be nice to have someone with skin on him. How do we relate to the Post Resurrection Jesus?
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” Jesus told the disciples. Better than a text message, a digital photograph to post on your computer as the screen saver, or a 2 x 4, Jesus is with us still through the Holy Spirit. The world can’t see him. WE can’t see him, at least not in the flesh. We can see the Spirit of Jesus at work in us and around us, however, in works of grace and love which are behind the scenes.
June will be Habitat for Humanity month here at First United Methodist Church. One of the ways we’ll be supporting the work of Habitat is through their “Decorate a Stud” program. No, we won’t be putting ties and fancy belt buckles on handsome young men. Instead we’ll invite people to paint 2 x 4’s which will then be used in the construction of a Habitat house. Eventually those boards will be hidden behind layers of insulation and sheet rock. No one will see them. The families who will live in those simple, decent houses will know that behind their walls are messages of love and good will. And those of us who sponsor the studs will know that our love is providing a home.
The Holy Spirit is like those studs: it lies underneath our lives, communicating to us in subtle and yet practical ways that God loves us. “You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” God makes a home within us through the Holy Spirit.
That Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus who is our Advocate. The Greek word is Paraclete, which means someone called to one’s side. Some translations say Comforter or Counselor. In human terms, an advocate may be a defense attorney who argues a case on behalf of someone in trouble, a mentor who listens to every day problems, or a tutor who agonizes over homework problems and explains for the fifth time the formula for the geometry assignment. In the same way, Jesus’ Spirit takes our side when we stand accused and guilty of sin, so that instead of being condemned we are forgiven and freed. Jesus comforts us in our times of grief and despair. The Holy Spirit teaches us yet again about God’s blueprint for life.
How do we relate to the Post Resurrection Jesus, whom we cannot see or hear? Through the Holy Spirit who abides with us, hidden and yet providing structure and form to our very lives. The Post Resurrection Jesus adorns our lives with messages of God’s love. They may not show up on our cell phones as text messages but they hold us up and support us. It is a new relationship with God because that Spirit of Jesus is not limited by time or space.
As we relate to the Post Resurrection Jesus who fills our lives with love, we will find that the Spirit transforms our relationships with everyone else. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments . . . .” said Jesus. “Those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father; and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” Loved from the very core of our beings by God we live out that love in the world. That might mean decorating a stud with hearts and flowers to go in an unknown little girl’s bedroom. It might mean pounding the nails to put the sheetrock over the studs, so that the little girl can tack up her Dora the Explorer posters. It might mean buying the stud for $10 to help build the house for her and her family.
The commandment of love may mean donating blood which will save the life of a stranger; an unknown and largely unseen gift. It might mean praying for situations you hear about on the news – Darfur, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Atlanta – people you’ll never meet and who know nothing about you and your prayers, but through whom God’s love will flow.
How do we relate to the Post Resurrection Jesus? Through Holy 2 x 4’s. By living the commandment of love. Thanks be to God.
April 20, 2008
John 14:1-14
Finding the Way
For six years, I lived in the town of Toppenish, WA in the Yakima Valley. Toppenish, like many towns, is laid out in a grid, with most streets running due north-south, and east-west. The challenge is that a rail road line also runs through town, but it does so at an angle. Only a few streets cross the tracks. Between the grid of the streets and the angle of the rail road, there are many three or five way intersections through town.
Now, I am a directionally challenged person. At the best of times, I have no natural instinct about how to get from Point A to Point B. My first weeks in Toppenish I was more confused than usual. The church was about a mile from the house I lived in. For some reason, I could get from home to the church with no trouble, but getting home from the church was a lost cause – literally. It wasn’t until I walked it that it finally made sense.
As hard as it can be for people like me to find our way in new places, it can be equally hard for most of us to find our way spiritually. Different religions have different answers to questions like, “Where is God? How do I find salvation? What is the meaning of life?” The way is the more confusing because different religions don’t even ask the same questions.
Hinduism looks to the Brahman as the Supreme Deity, but recognizes a multitude of gods, some say as many as 33 million. “Truth is One,” Hindus say, “they call him by different names.” It takes successive rebirths for Hindus to ascend the scale of merit and win liberation from worldly existence and union with Brahman.
Buddhists look for nirvana, or the state of enlightenment, through the teachings of the Buddha, the Enlightened One. Buddha, however, was not God and as a faith, Buddhism is indifferent to traditional understandings of God as a means of salvation.
“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” says Islam. “Allah is most great!” Islam means surrender or peace and Muslims find peace through submission to God.
Judaism, the oldest of the three western or Abrahamic faiths, teaches that God’s people are bound to him in a covenant. “I am who I am,” God declared to Moses, and from then on claimed a particular people as his own, walking with them through history. Sometimes liberating, sometimes chastising, God was always their God and they were always God’s people. In its earliest days, Judaism did not think much about an afterlife but focused on faithfulness to God in every day existence.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except through me.”
Like Toppenish’s five way intersections, the five biggest world religions wend their way around different paths, except they don’t seem to land in the same spot. And that doesn’t include the variants within those faiths, nor the smaller faith traditions like B’hai, Shintoism, Anamism, and others I don’t even know to name. Finding the way is hard.
Even the disciples closest to Jesus struggled. Prior to our reading today from the Gospel of John, Simon Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” In today’s reading, in what sounds like a contradiction to what he just said to Peter, Jesus says, “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.” Thomas replied, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Still later Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Clearly, they don’t know the way even though they’ve been with Jesus all along.
Jesus was preparing the disciples for his crucifixion. In an act of surprising humility he had just washed their feet and told them to follow his example. They didn’t get it. At first Peter objected to Jesus washing his feet, but then he wanted a whole bath! If they didn’t understand humility and service they surely weren’t going to get the sacrifice of the cross.
A related challenge is how the disciples would relate to Jesus after his resurrection and exaltation. So Jesus told them, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Though he would not be present with them in bodily form, Jesus would continue to provide and care for them. In next week’s Scripture he explains how: he will be present to them through the Holy Spirit. In a way it is even better than his bodily presence, for the Holy Spirit can be available in many places at the same time to all people. The Holy Spirit will convey Jesus’ inherent love, just as Jesus himself revealed God’s love for the world. To know Jesus is to know God. So Jesus tells Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Classic Christianity teaches then that Jesus is the way to God and that only through a personal relationship with Jesus can humans enter heaven after their bodies die. It is Jesus who has prepared that special place in the heavenly mansion for each of us. We go home to God via Jesus. Just as in Toppenish I eventually learned to start home from the church by turning left on A Street and then right onto East Toppenish Ave, so Christians know that Jesus is the way home to God. The only way.
After I’d been in Toppenish for a while, however, I learned alternate routes home. Both the church and the house were located near public schools. If I happened to be driving and leaving when students were just out of school, I sometimes changed my route by a couple of blocks. There was no way to avoid crossing railroad tracks but if I knew a train was coming I might delay leaving for a few minutes.
Many people today wonder if the same thing might be true of finding our way to God. Can’t there be different paths? Even for those of us who do follow the classic route through Jesus, isn’t there something to be learned from the other paths?
The classic Christian answer has been no, that only through Jesus can we find God. Personally, however, I’m not so sure. I know that God is so much bigger than I am that I think that, at their truest, other faith traditions have wisdom and truth to share. Some would call me a heretic, and I suppose I am, but I won’t rule out the value of those other faith traditions. Like the old story about the blind people and the elephant, I think it takes the insights of us all to get at the fullness of God.
That said, for me, the best way, the most helpful way to God IS through Jesus. Jesus showed us that God’s way is the way of love lived out in service and sacrifice. Jesus showed us that God so desires unity with humankind that God sought us out by living in solidarity with us. In Jesus’ way we don’t have to earn our way to God through a life of good works, access to a secret code, or withdrawal from the world. Instead, in Jesus’ way we have only to accept that God loves us and opens wide the doors of God’s home to us. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” As a directionally challenged person, I take comfort in knowing I can follow Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. And that is enough for me.
April 13, 2008
John 10:1-10
Strangers and Shepherds
Strangers and Shepherds. Our reading today from the Gospel of John draws a clear distinction between the two. Speaking of sheep and shepherds, Jesus notes that sheep, “will not follow a stranger because they do not know the voice of strangers.” This comes just after Jesus has referred to thieves and bandits who climb into the sheepfold over the wall rather than coming through the door. Strangers seem to have a lot in common with bandits.
Shepherds, on the other hand, go in by the gate. Some suggest that in ancient Palestine sheepfolds had openings in the wall but no actual doors. The shepherd lay down at the entrance so that the shepherd was the door. Furthermore, the shepherd knew the sheep intimately and called them by name: “Hey Black Ears!” “Move along, Pokey!” The shepherd knew each sheep’s individual quirks and traits.
Strangers and shepherds. Obviously, as we think about Jesus he is the Good Shepherd, the one who knows the sheep and cares for them. The sheep too know The Good Shepherd. It is a warm, comforting image even for someone like me who has never met a real shepherd.
Strangers and shepherds. Jesus is clearly not the stranger in this reading. As I read it, however, I was struck by our Scripture for last week. In it we heard how after Jesus’ resurrection two of his followers were walking, and talking about his crucifixion and the reports of his resurrection, when a stranger joined them. They told him all that had happened, and listened in amazement as he explained it to them. They invited him to join them for a meal. The Stranger became the Host and blessed the bread. As he broke it, they realized that the Stranger WAS Jesus. Though they had not recognized him, he had traveled with them and warmed their hearts.
Strangers and Shepherds. We admonish children, “Don’t talk to strangers.” We warn youth not to put personal information on their Face Book pages. We caution our elders not to buy things over the telephone from strangers. Sadly, such warnings are necessary. While most people are harmless, once in a while malicious people prey on the vulnerable. Even in church we require that anyone who works with children or youth undergo screening, whether we’ve known them for years or just met them. It is a hassle – and an appropriate step.
Strangers and Shepherds. Could Jesus possibly be both? In today’s reading Jesus is the beloved shepherd. In last week’s reading he was the stranger who appeared out of nowhere. It seems like the Bible is sending mixed messages. To be sure, the two lessons come from two different Gospels. Scholars would tell us that the authors addressed different audiences at different times. But here we are, the same audience, with the two lessons coming to us just a week apart. Strangers and Shepherds. Can Jesus be both for us?
The Shepherd calls the sheep by name. Jesus the Good Shepherd surely knows our individual quirks and traits. Jesus calls, “Sue! John! Betty! Tim!” As Christians we affirm that God comes to us in intimate and personal ways. God is more than a Prime Mover who got things going in the first place and then stepped back to watch it happen. God interacts with us. God isn’t an absentee landlord who doesn’t care that the roof leaks and the paint is peeling. Nor is God an anonymous banker who demands enormous interest payments at the expense of the children’s milk money.
The Good Shepherd leads the sheep to green pastures lush with nourishing grass and free of toxic weeds. The Good Shepherd takes the sheep to still waters where they can drink deeply instead of being spooked by rapids and strong currents. The Good Shepherd guards and protects the sheep with every tool available, including his own life. Jesus came to bring us abundant life. As the familiar verse from earlier in John says, God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn it but to bring eternal life.
Strangers and Shepherds. As the story of the Emmaus Road tells it, the Stranger on the road also understood the travelers’ needs. They were confused and frightened, so the Stranger explained to them the disturbing things that had happened. By connecting them back to the old prophecies he not only made sense of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection he calmed the disciples fears.
It is true that Jesus comes to us as the Good Shepherd to lead us to eternal life. And it is also true that Jesus sometimes joins us as we journey through life, seeming to be a Stranger. The Bible often pictures God as a shepherd. It chastises rulers who mistreat their people. And throughout the Bible, God pops up as a stranger bringing unexpected blessings.
Abraham looked up from his tent to see three strangers. In accordance with the laws of desert hospitality, Abraham welcomed them and fed them. They told him that he and his wife Sarah, despite advanced old age and years of infertility, would have a child. The strangers were angels in disguise.
The prophet Isaiah assured King Ahaz that in the middle of national insecurity God would be with him. The sign of that promise would be in a baby named Emmanuel, which means, “God is with us.”
Centuries later, Jesus walked the hills of Galilee and sat by the Sea of Capernaum. He died a convicted criminal. After he rose from the dead, Mary Magdalene mistook him for the gardener.
Strangers and Shepherds. When Jesus comes to us as a stranger, he comes as one who knocks on the door waiting to be invited in, not a thief crawling in through the window. “Listen! I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me,” says the Book of Revelation. A famous painting shows Jesus knocking at a door which has no outside knob: it can only be opened from the inside. We are the ones who have to invite Jesus in. When Jesus comes to us as a stranger, he is the unexpected guest, bringing unexpected blessings.
Strangers and Shepherds. However Jesus comes to us, he does so that we may know abundant life, filled with laughter and love, with the bread of life and an overflowing cup. Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the day of our lives and we shall dwell in God’s house forever.
Strangers and Shepherds. Sometimes Jesus is both.
April 6, 2008
Luke 24:13-35
Be Our Guest
A four year old girl got restless in one of the front pews. She fiddled. She colored furiously on her children’s bulletin. She whispered. She turned on her knees and made faces at the people behind her. She dropped a hymnal. The pastor was finally so distracted that he stopped his sermon to ask what the problem was. It turned out there wasn’t a problem at all: young Jane simply wanted an answer to a perfectly logical four year old question. “Where is Jesus?”
Jane’s question is perfectly logical for more than four year olds. Those of us who are older are not usually quite as forthright, but really isn’t that our question too? Oh, we talk a good line. We say we’re coming to God’s house when we come to worship. We “take it to the Lord in prayer” when concerns rest on our hearts. But very often it is hard to find God in our midst.
Where is Jesus? we ask, when the flood waters rise and homes are demolished. Where is Jesus? we wonder when the doctor says, “you have advanced cancer.” Where is Jesus when women are raped in Darfur and children in Uganda hide at night for fear of being abducted as child soldiers and forced to kill their own parents?
Last winter I read the new book about Mother Teresa’s long spiritual darkness. This woman, whom most of the world saw as a beacon of compassion and a model of faith, spent most of her life unable to hear or feel God. Despite her fervent prayers and her impressive ministry, she could not hear God’s voice. She lived in constant darkness. “Where is Jesus?” she wondered.
After Jesus’ crucifixion two disciples were walking from Jerusalem to a village named Emmaus, a seven mile trip. They apparently were not among the twelve primary disciples of Jesus, but they had clearly been followers. They knew he had been mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. They knew he had been crucified. They even knew that some women had reported that Jesus was alive. They knew all the details. They did not, however, know where Jesus was. The women’s report of Jesus’ resurrection apparently seemed to them to be an idle tale, perhaps the fanciful imaginings of deluded and grief stricken women.
As they walked and talked, a stranger joined them. Whereas the disciples seemed to know all the details of what had happened to Jesus and even who he was, at first the stranger seemed naïve. They didn’t know where Jesus was, but he didn’t know about Jesus. He hadn’t even heard the rumors which had been flying fast and furious. Gradually, however, that stranger’s seeming naiveté gaves way to insight and wisdom and the disciples appeared as the fools. The stranger connected the rumors and stories about Jesus to the words of the prophets. The disciples felt their hearts burning within them. It turned out, of course, that the stranger WAS Jesus. They had not known where Jesus was even when Jesus was walking on the road with them.
Where is Jesus? The Hebrew Bible has a confusing mixture of opinions about strangers. On the one hand, it prescribes rituals to clearly separate God’s chosen people from everyone else: circumcision and dietary regulations draw a clear line between Jews and Gentiles. The Temple was built with concentric circles which kept Gentiles on the outside. On the other hand, King Solomon had prayed at the Temple’s dedication that God would hear the prayers of foreigners. The Fourth Commandment prohibited work on the Sabbath Day for aliens as well as for Jews. Strangers were both granted the same rights as family and yet also clearly kept on the outside. So when the Risen Jesus appears to these two disciples in the form of a stranger he at once challenges the old rules and fulfills them.
“Where is Jesus?” we ask and still it turns out that Jesus has been walking next to us for miles and miles.
As a nation of immigrants we continue to debate the appropriate treatment of immigrants. We depend on them to harvest our crops, clean our hotel rooms, and perform any number of low income jobs that many citizens don’t want to do. We welcome international students who come temporarily and grant asylum to those fleeing repressive regimes. We do not, however, grant that same refuge to economic refugees.
I will confess my own mixed feelings. On the one hand, people who enter the country illegally have not gone through the appropriate channels. They have, to put it bluntly, broken the law. To ignore that seems wrong, and perhaps even dangerous in this era of terrorist threats. On the other hand, I think the Bible calls us to care for the most vulnerable in our world. Surely economic refugees are among them. I honestly don’t know what to do about immigration reform.
In the midst of my dilemma, however, I also remember the Emmaus story. Where is Jesus? It may well be that Jesus is in the Mexican orchard worker, the Asian factory worker, or the Salvadoran maid. Jesus may also be in the unkempt guy sitting in Friendship Square with a sign that says, “homeless vet, please help,” in the driver who goes the wrong way up a one way street because she is new to town and doesn’t realize you can’t turn right onto Jackson Street going west on Third.
When the Emmaus disciples reached the village and stopped for the night, they invited the strangers to stay with them and to join them in the evening meal. The Stranger became a Guest. Then the Guest took on the role of the Host, for he took the bread and blessed it. Jewish custom began a meal by breaking and blessing bread. It was the Host’s job.
Perhaps there was something familiar in the way the Stranger broke the bread. Maybe these disciples remembered Jesus multiplying the loaves and the fishes, or just the day to day meals they had shared with him. Or maybe it was something else, some intangible, holy thing. Whatever it was, in the breaking of the bread they knew now where Jesus was – at table with them.
Today we gather to break bread, to share in table fellowship, in the sacrament of Holy Communion. After Emmaus the church learned that Jesus is our Host at this meal, to the point that we sometimes even call the bread itself the host. Where is Jesus? In the breaking of the bread. In the stranger who becomes our guest, in the Guest who becomes the Host.
Where is Jesus? In a family dinner which includes a new neighbor, at lunch in the school cafeteria with the school nerd, in line at the soup kitchen, at a church potluck. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, may this food for us be blessed.
March 30, 2008
John 20:19-29
The Stepping Stone of Doubt
Doubting Thomas, we’ve called him, the disciple who missed the Risen Jesus’ appearance to the other disciples. Thomas just couldn’t quite bring himself to accept their report, “We’ve sent the Lord!”
Doubting Thomas. He said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He wanted proof.
Doubting Thomas, as if doubt summed up the totality of who he was. With that label we forget that Thomas was the one who said to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him,” when the other disciples tried to prevent Jesus from going to Judea because his life had been threatened. We forget he is always listed as one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, usually next to Matthew. There’s even a Gospel which bears his name, though it didn’t make it as one of the books of the Bible. Admittedly it has some strange stories in it.
No, what we remember about Thomas is this story about his struggle to believe that Jesus had really risen from the dead when he hadn’t seen Jesus himself. We can speculate as to why he had trouble. Why was it, for example, that Thomas was not with the others that day? One suggestion has been that he went off by himself to grieve after Jesus was killed. As I often say at funerals, each of us grieves in our own way. Some folks need to be with other people, while some need to be alone. Those of us who are introverts often want quiet time by ourselves. So it may be that the depth of Thomas’ grief for Jesus made it hard to accept the news of Jesus’ resurrection.
Then again, maybe Thomas was just off running an errand. Life can pull us in different directions. Sometimes you miss big events because life has to go on.
Thomas kind of sounds like a practical, down to earth guy, who needed to experience things for himself. Some folks are tactile learners who have to see and hear, feel and smell and taste something before it makes sense to them. Theoretical mumbo jumbo isn’t real to them. Doubting Thomas might have been like that.
I sympathize with Doubting Thomas because in some ways I am a Doubting Sue. I like having hard evidence before me. I want a list of names of people who have agreed to bring food for the dinner rather than just trusting it will be ok. I didn’t grow up in the church and I came to faith kicking and screaming. God seemed like a fairy tale to me and I didn’t see the point of belief.
As Doubting Sue I’ve generally subscribed to the philosophy that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t true. Had I been in Thomas’ shoes, grief stricken and afraid after Jesus’ death, I probably wouldn’t have believed either.
We live in a Doubting World. Oh, most people in this country say they believe in God or some form of a supreme being. Furthermore, they say they believe in an afterlife. But not very many people can explain what that means. Church attendance records don’t match with those who report they’ve gone to church in the previous seven days. Only half as many people actually go to church on a given Sunday as say they do.
We tend to be skeptical of do-gooders. Surely they have an ulterior motive for their good works. It’s a lot easier to trust in our bank accounts than in assurances of God’s provision and in our own hard work than in promises of God’s grace.
Throughout its history, the Church has condemned doubt. For centuries the church has taught, “Just believe in God,” without explaining what that means. People who thought outside the box, from Galileo to Martin Luther to women who healed others were branded as heretics and witches. They were excluded from the church, and in extreme cases, killed.
Along the way we have deprived ourselves of the chance to see God at work in our world and in our lives. I think we have missed the full story of Thomas’ spiritual journey. It was precisely in his questioning that he moved toward belief. Jesus honored Thomas’ needs. He appeared again to the disciples, this time when Thomas was present, and said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” “My Lord and my God,” Thomas affirmed. Believing Thomas.
Contrary to our assumptions, doubting can be a step along the path to belief. When we reject those who doubt, then of course they never move on into belief, for we do not honor their needs, or them. Doubting is one way of delving deeper into something. Just like a student needs to ask the meaning of a new word in order to expand his vocabulary, and a scientist has to probe the boundaries of her knowledge in order to develop a new medicine, so doubting God, or at least traditional teachings about God, can ultimately lead to a more profound experience of God.
I’d like to think that in our Sunday School classes and youth group discussions these days, we are more accepting of questions and doubts. Students or teachers, I encourage all of us to honor people’s doubts. “I don’t know, what do you think?” is a perfectly acceptable response.
It is fitting that today is Camp Sunday, for church camp is one of the best ways for people of all ages to experience God. Some of that experience comes by living for a few days in the wonders of God’s creation. Sitting under a pine tree, paddling a boat on the lake, listening to the birds sing are all special ways to meet the Risen Christ. One of my favorite memories of Camp Twinlow was at Morning Watch when a robin landed on a boy’s shoulder. He sat frozen as we all watched in wonder and delight. It was as if Jesus had come to him to say, “Put your finger here.”
Church camp also invites campers to live in Christian community for a time. Whether they are eating lunch, taking a hike, or sitting around the campfire, they are in the middle of a community of faith. That doesn’t mean everyone is perfect. I was dean once at a camp, where in the middle of a cold, rainy week someone spread toothpaste all over the inside of another camper’s sleeping bag. It was just as well I never knew who the guilty party was, because I was ready to do violence myself. But in the middle of pranks gone awry, rainy days, and questions about God, campers and counselors experience God together.
Camp allows campers to push the limits of faith in deeper ways. One week at camp equals several months of Sunday School. It is no coincidence that many people first commit their lives to Christ at church camp. Lots of pastors heard their call to ministry at camp. Around a campfire, splashing in the lake, singing at Morning Watch, campers realize that the Risen Christ has appeared among them, despite closed doors and sealed minds. “My Lord and my God,” they confess. And Believing Thomas goes home with a sunburn.
March 23, 2008 - Easter
Colossians 3:1-4
The Season of Our Joy
On this earliest Easter Sunday in years, just days after the official start of spring, I have to confess: I like snow. I love to watch big fluffy flakes piling up. I love the strange shapes that emerge as the snow weighs down branches and buries bushes. I like the way snow covers over dead leaves and brown grass and blankets the world with white. I enjoyed our extra snowy winter. The problem is that when it snows I get very little work done because I spend my time gazing outside.
I agree, it was time for the snow to go away, though. Now, however, is one of my least favorite seasons. The snow is gone, but my back yard is a swamp and my vegetable garden, where I have dreams of beans and peas, is just a sodden mess. The hills are brown and the streets in town are covered with piles of gravel. Walking can be painful as the wind blows dust and grit in my face. To adapt a phrase from William Shakespeare, now is the early spring of my discontent.
Seasons of discontent can come at any time of year. Our nation is experiencing a season of discontent as news about the economy gets worse and worse: the mortgage crisis, inflation, growing unemployment, an investment bank gone belly up. Last summer, Doug and I visited the town of Connersville, IN where I served as a student pastor back in the early ‘80’s. Connersville was hardly thriving twenty five years ago. Now it is worse: vacant store fronts, houses for sale, litter in the streets. It was depressing.
Our season of discontent haunts us as yet again another politician has resigned in disgrace after a revelation of sexual misconduct. Each time this happens, I wonder, how can otherwise smart people be so stupid? Don’t they know that eventually their misdeeds will come to light? What discontent within them leads to such immoral – and foolish – actions? Don’t they care that our nation suffers discontent as a result of their behavior.
The discontent of grief can come at any time of year. Death comes too soon for some people. The unfairness of those losses smarts. Other times life lasts too long and that brings its own discontent as loved ones gradually lose their quality of life.
My discontent rumbles within me when I find myself turning away from a hurting person because I don’t want to deal with it. It haunts me when I withdraw in silence when I’m unhappy with my husband rather than openly working to resolve the problem. Like my bare and lifeless garden, sometimes my life is just a sodden mess.
In these various seasons of discontent come then these astounding words from the Bible: “So if you have been raised with Christ.” Whether Easter comes early, like this year, or not until mid April, it’s all well and good to read about Jesus being raised from the dead. “Christ the Lord is risen today!” we sing with trumpets and hand bells lifting our hearts. “Alleluia!” But these words from Colossians don’t tell about the women going to a tomb early in the morning. They don’t talk about angels and earthquakes and stones being rolled away from a tomb. They are not the story of Jesus’ resurrection at all. Instead they are about OUR resurrection: “if YOU have been raised with Christ!” The New Testament assumes, here and elsewhere, that not only did Jesus rise from the dead, but that because of his resurrection we too experience resurrection. Resurrection is not just a dramatic story about some guy who lived, and died, and lived again thousands of years ago. It is a reality to be lived here and now. The power of God which rolled away the stone from Jesus’ tomb also operates in our lives.
“If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.” That doesn’t mean gazing at the stars or studying cloud formations. It means lifting our hearts and minds away from the seasons of our discontent to Christ who brings us not just contentedness, but joy.
The season of our joy is more than the power of positive thinking. On my own, I cannot solve the world’s economic woes, any more than I can turn a gray March day into a sunny summer one. On my own, I do not have the power to transform my impatient sniping into gentle listening, or my judgmental dismissal of someone into compassion. Left to my own devices I might possibly love the loveable but I surely cannot love the unattractive, obnoxious, or irresponsible.
But in my seasons of discontent, God in Jesus Christ has raised me. And so I can set my mind on the things that are above, that is, on the things of God. God came among us in the person of Jesus to show us the depth of God’s love. By sharing our human condition, God lived in solidarity with us, even to the point of a gruesome and painful death. The world, whom God came to love, rejected that love. As the hymn says,
In the grave they laid him,
Love who had been slain.
Thinking that he never would awake again.
Laid in the earth,
Like grain that sleeps unseen.”
And then comes the astonishing truth
of Jesus’ resurrection:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
Rejected, Jesus returned from death to love us some more. Wow!
And that is the thing that is above on which we who have been raised with Christ set our minds: love.
In October of 2006, the world gasped in horror when a gunman burst into an Amish schoolhouse and killed five young girls and then himself. That night members of the Amish community sent representatives to pray with the gunman’s family. Later that week they sent representatives to his funeral. As terrible as their grief must have been, they knew they were already raised with Christ. They set their minds on forgiveness and compassion. It would have been easy to understand if they had responded with vengeance and anger. It would have made sense if they had locked themselves away from a world that had caused them so much pain. But instead they set their minds on the things that are above because they knew they had been raised with Christ.
Just last weekend a jury in Spokane acquitted Clifford Helm of vehicular homicide. Mr. Helm was the driver of the pickup that crossed the center line and crashed into another pickup, killing five children and injuring their father. The parents had never wanted charges pressed against Mr. Helm. They had forgiven him long before the jury acted. Whatever the full truth behind the accident, in the middle of hearts full of pain, they had set their minds on the things that are above.
It took our breath away, but then I remember we did something similar. Last May our own community gathered together to pray after tragedy struck us when another gunman took innocent lives. And I saw us set our minds on the things that are above. In the prayer vigils held here in the days after the shootings I heard people express sympathy for Jason Hamilton’s family and even for the agony which tormented him. Spring was in full bloom outside, but within us we knew a season of discontent because our hearts were grieving and in pain. And like the wheat that was springing green on the hills outside town last May, and is starting to right now, love came again. We set our minds on compassion and forgiveness. And the glory of God shone among us.
March 20, 2008 - Maundy Thursday
I Corinthians 11:23-26
Table Rules
I grew up in a household which had clear rules for most things, including behavior at the dinner table. One of our table rules was that nobody picked up a fork until the last person was seated – that usually meant Mom. For anyone else to begin eating before she got to the table was so unthinkable I cannot remember it ever happening.
Mom’s rules were really not so very different from Paul’s table rules as he set them out before the Corinthians Church, except that some in the Corinthians Church had broken them. Paul’s rules start before the passage we read tonight, but it is apparent that when the Corinthians came together some people began to eat before others got there. They ate so much that there wasn’t always food left over for the latecomers. The gaffe was more offensive because the people who ate were the wealthy, who could afford plenty of food, whereas the latecomers were very often slaves who couldn’t get there until they got off work – and they couldn’t bring as much to the potluck as the wealthy. Paul is aghast. This is more than gluttony or rudeness. It violates the very nature of the meal, for this wasn’t just any church potluck. The meal they gathered to celebrate was what we now call the Sacrament of Holy Communion. An essential component of communion is the gathering together of the community in which all members are honored irrespective of wealth, age, or status.
So I think it is fitting that tonight we gather from three different churches to share in this meal together. It is good for me to remember that Christian community is more than Methodists. It is good to remember that whether one brings soup or fruit, cheese or bread, each of us is equally necessary to the sacred nature of this meal. I confess I’m not above snitching a chunk of cheese or a grape before the formal start of this meal (don’t tell Mom!). It’s no excuse, though my history with this meal assures me that no one should leave hungry tonight. In our eating together, and our talking and laughing and yes, in our praying and singing, we truly do celebrate communion both with each other and with Jesus.
My family wasn’t unique in our table rule not to eat until everyone was seated. We weren’t a church going family, so Mom’s sitting down was our signal to eat. For other families, the sign to begin comes with saying grace, or as some put it, “returning thanks.” You may or may not know that this meal we share tonight goes by a variety of names. We Methodists typically call it communion – maybe Baptists, Presbyterians, and Disciples too. But another name is Eucharist and that gets us to Paul’s table rule about starting the meal, for Eucharist means thanksgiving. Looking back at the origins of the meal with Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.’” Paul’s table rules came from his family too – his Jewish family. In that family a meal always began with breaking bread. Depending on the wealth of the family, there might or might not be other food, but the prayer of thanks for the bread was intended as thanks for the whole meal. Paul goes on to say, “In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” In Jewish tradition, the thanks over the cup came at the end of the meal, but it tied everything together. Grace wasn’t just a few mumbled words at the start of the meal while everyone waited impatiently for the pray-er to say “Amen,” so they could dig in, but rather an attitude which instead imbued the meal from start to finish.
Our custom at this community Maundy Thursday service is to begin with a call to worship and a hymn and then we eat. We save some of the bread at each table for communion at the end of the meal. But I hope our thanksgiving imbues the entire meal so that this truly is a Eucharist.
Paul’s other table rule is to do it all in remembrance of Jesus. Tonight in particular we give thanks for the broken body of Jesus as we remember that on this night Jesus was arrested and sentenced to death. Our thanks for the broken body of Christ is linked to the cup of sacrifice.
That takes us to yet another name for the sacred meal. Sometimes we call it The Lord’s Supper. Tonight we remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples but communion or Eucharist incorporates not just that final dinner but every meal at which Jesus was present, from the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to Jesus’ fixing breakfast on the beach after his resurrection, and his blessing of the bread at Emmaus, on to the banquet which awaits us all in the new heaven in the last days. This is The Lord’s Supper because Jesus is our Host who welcomes us to the table and feeds us with grace and abundance.
Paul offers us one more table rule: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The critical piece of that rule is the part about, “until he comes,” for it instructs us that in this meal we anticipate Christ’s final return to the earth. We are bound to Christ in a new covenant both here and now and for all eternity. It is a new covenant of communion with Christ, and with each other. Paul’s table rules honor the sacred sense of this meal, whether we call it communion, Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper.