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In case you missed these, or would enjoy them again, here are some sermons by, 

Rev. Stuart Wattles

Rev. Bruce Boak

Larry Beasley, Stated Clerk

     

Worship Audio Section


SHIN CRACKING EVERYWHERE

January 13, 2019, by Rev. Bruce Boak

1st Sunday of Epiphany, Baptism of the Lord Sunday

First Presbyterian Church, Oneida, New York

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Sometimes we pastors choose subjects and titles without knowing down what roads God will lead us.  So, a while ago I was browsing through a book by Barbara Brown Taylor who has spoken several times at the Chautauqua Institute.  She is a fine Episcopal preacher.  My eyes came across this passage by Barbara:

Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish -- separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility, that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.[1] 

It was then that I began to ask questions about shin cracking on the altars of God and I realized that she was right in suggesting that God doesn’t recognize the same distinctions we want to make between that which is sacred and that which is secular.  God created the earth and the world and all that is in our universe and so we will forever be cracking our shins on something that is special to God, and we even do that with our passage from Acts today. 

Now the distinction between the sacred and the secular is just a tad sophomorically abstract: What is it to truly know something? Our answers can have significant consequences. ...

And so, I'll start with an oversimplified example. My bicycle. What is it to know that bike? Do I know the bike if I understand the function of gears and gear ratios, the physics of acceleration and friction, the frame's geometry, the properties of aluminum or carbon fiber? Or do I know the bike when I get on it, learn to ride it, to fix a flat tire, and get used to how it handles as I use it for both transportation and fun? ...

The answer to my question, of course, is that both are ways of knowing the bike. Both theoretical and practical knowledge are important. When it comes to bikes, though, we tend to value practical knowledge over theoretical knowledge.

There may be a few people who understand the mechanics and physics of a bike but have never learned to ride one.  I'm guessing there are more people who ride bikes all the time who don't think it's important to learn about the molecular structure of the frame that supports them.[2]   But, learning just a little about the structure of what supports you can be awe inspiring and transforming in your appreciation of what a bike can do.  My concern is that in our world, we tend to manipulate not only things, but people for our own ends and in that process trample on theoretical, practical, relational, and even theological knowledge.

A misleading headline asserted that tennis star Serena Williams has had a "secret weapon," and that the weapon is "Jehovah God." No, Williams' weapons are a crushing serve and a wicked forehand. The headline, however, leads us to consider ways in which we may try to use God to our advantage.

I think that it was back in July of 2015 that tennis great Serena Williams won at Wimbledon and exclaimed, "I want to thank Jehovah God."

It's not uncommon for professional athletes to express gratitude to the Creator for a successful play in their field of competition -- Tim Tebow being a prime example -- but, in Williams' case, whoever wrote the headline about her post-match victory exclamation misunderstood what these expressions of faith are about. 

The headline read, "Wimbledon winner Serena Williams' secret weapon: 'Jehovah God.'"[3] 

As is often the case in journalism, the headline was no doubt written by an editor, not by the reporter who wrote the article. The article itself, while explaining Williams' involvement with the Jehovah's Witnesses and her faith in God, never describes God as "a weapon" in some sort of arsenal to which the tennis star has access. Whoever wrote the headline, however, sacrificed accuracy in favor of a punchy eye-catcher.

But headlines are written to get people to read the articles below them, and, from that perspective, the headline worked. When we saw the headline, we read the column to see if, in fact, this was what Williams claimed. Does Williams really believe that God is her "secret weapon"? 

No. We were misled, and, truth be told, slightly disappointed, because, somehow, it would be pretty cool if there was anecdotal evidence that God can be persuaded to do whatever we wanted, and whenever we wanted it.

A God whom we can control?              

Many of us probably share that wish. "There are many people," says Janet Shaver of Middlebury Church of the Brethren, Middlebury, Indiana, "who still believe God is a genie in a bottle."

Sometimes it appears as though we're trying to make a deal with God. A cartoon a few years ago showed a man playing poker, pushing money into the pot. A bubble above his head showed that he was silently praying, "Lord, if you just let me win this one time, I promise I'll never gamble again."  I suspect that this is a Powerball prayer that has been uttered many times when the potential of a multi-million-dollar winning total is top news and spurs many of the hopeful to go to their closest convenience store to purchase a ticket and a chance.

The lottery is sort of like a surtax on desperation.  One fellow reported that his wife asked him, “Darling, if you won the lottery would you still love me?  His answer was, “Of course I would.  I’d miss you, but I’d still love you.” I’ve wondered why we never read a headline like, “Psychic Wins Lottery!”

Perhaps we’ve never been in that situation, but there are others with which we might identify.  Maybe, while waiting for a diagnosis from a set of troubling physical symptoms.  We've promised God that if God gives us a pass this time, we'll eat better, exercise regularly, stop smoking, and go to church more often or something similar.

Or, perhaps we think of religion itself as a kind of bargain with God. We attend church, pray, go the extra mile, live an upright life and in return, we want God to see that things go reasonably well for us. 

Granted, it's not like we've consciously thought all that out. That would be too crass and tawdry. It's not likely that our practice of faith is that calculating. But it's possible that we've made some unspoken assumptions along those lines.

If nothing else, we occasionally notice it in others. Back in 2015 and early 2016 Ohio Governor John Kasich put himself forward as a presidential candidate who is a Christian conservative.  With his emphasis on "Christian," he acknowledged that a candidate's faith normally factors into politics, but he's also spoke of how he had grown in his faith over what it once was: "Like [for] many, many young people," Kasich said, "the Lord became a rabbit's foot for me: Pull it out on test day, pull it out on Election Day. 'Come on, Lord, I got the rabbit's foot.'"[4] Reportedly he has a bigger view of his faith now, but the "let's make a deal" notion was a stage along the way, as it is for many of us. 

We may also be aware of the "bargain-with-God" mentality when someone stops coming to church, and even stops believing in God after something bad happens to that person or to a loved one. The erstwhile Christian explains the change by saying, "Well, if God was really loving (or really existed, really cared about me or was really powerful, etc.), God would not have let that happen to me (or to the person I love)." 

What they are really saying is, I had a deal with God.  I set out the terms of this agreement and I kept my side of the bargain, but God didn't

When we espouse it directly like this, we can see the problem with it, but it's easy to fall into that kind of expectation. In fact, there's even a Bible verse that seems to lend itself to such an approach. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." In context, that verse is not meant as a guarantee that no matter what you ask for you will get, but it can be read that way.

Not a good idea 

The Bible takes a dim view of this business of trying to manipulate God. "Do not put the LORD your God to the test" (Deuteronomy 6:16). Jesus cites this text when tempted in the wilderness. "Again, it is written," Jesus said to his adversary, "‘do not put the Lord your God to the test'" (Matthew 4:7). 

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules, I'll reward you, and if you don't, I'll do the other thing." 

I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.[5]

Our reading from Acts gives an entrée into another example. We say, "Entrée" because the lectionary has narrowly trimmed the story of the conversions in Samaria so that the pericope contains the account of the converts receiving the Holy Spirit. 

That's by no means insignificant, but the story surrounding it involving the magician Simon is also helpful, and I would suggest broadening the text to 8:9-24.

Until the arrival of Philip, Simon amazed the residents of Samaria with his magic. He persuaded them that he was "someone great" (v. 9). He was so convincing that folks thought Simon was himself "the power of God" (v. 10). 

But then Philip came to town preaching about Jesus. Many in Samaria, including Simon, believed. In Simon's case, however, the Bible suggests that his conversion was, in part, because he was dazzled by the healings that Philip performed. Still, when Philip baptized the new converts, Simon accepted baptism as well. 

Then, Peter and John came to Samaria to reinforce Philip's work and Simon became even more interested! The two apostles prayed for the Holy Spirit to descend, and many of the converts had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, but apparently not Simon.  When Simon saw this demonstration of the real power of God, he pulled out his wallet and offered cold, hard cash to Peter and John if they would but teach him how to bring the Holy Spirit upon people, too. 

For this, Simon got a severe scolding from the apostle Peter. "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God's gift with money!" (v. 20). Peter's words in the original are stronger than the translation. In effect, let me offer you his staring comment.  He said, "To hell with your money!"[6]

And with this, rebuke Peter was only getting started.  He continued saying, "Your heart is not right before God."  The text seems to have him yelling, "Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness" (vv. 21-23).  Now that is a sorry state.  It just sounds bad, doesn’t it . . . the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness.

He saw what Simon was trying to do. Simon wanted to manipulate God. That's a big no-no. You don't try to use God as a secret weapon as if God was your personal wizard. God is not your intimate genie.  Peter told Simon flatly that his heart was not right before God and urged him to repent, which Simon apparently did, if for no other reason than to avoid the negative consequences of his presumption (v. 24).

The book of Acts tells us no more about Simon, although some of the apocryphal texts mention him, as do some of the early church leaders, and none of them in a complimentary way. Some brand him as the "Father of Heresies." But there's little evidence to support that claim.[7]

Whatever the case, this story from Acts suggests that we should let God do what God wants to do, and not consider God a "secret weapon" for dealing with hard times, and certainly not our silent partner in a poker game -- or in the "game" of life. 

Why do we believe? 

Simon's motivation in trying to "buy" the Holy Spirit suggests that we ruminate more carefully on our own motivation in the practice of our faith. If we do good deeds to increase God's blessings or God's care for us, we're attempting to manipulate God. If we make empty promises in the hope that God will bless us with a financial windfall, it is possible that our hearts may not be right toward God. If our lives are lived to please and appease God, we are probably missing the point.

We do not behave a particular way in order to earn God’s favor.  We are to be loving, forgiving, and generous as an expression of gratitude for God’s loving, forgiving and generous nature toward us, especially in spiritual things and in the way we have done offensive things before an almighty, omniscient, omnipresent God.  We don’t act this way in order to manipulate God or pacify God for our own agendas.

Of course, as human beings, we're subject to mixed motives.  I am not suggesting that we should stop doing good things because we are uncertain of our motivation. But I am suggesting that the story of Simon is probably placed in the book of Acts so that God’s favor is not something to be earned.  It is something to be received, with grace and gratitude.  God’s favor is a gift.

Three years ago, some friends and I went to Columbia, SC to stay at a PDA Camp coordinated by the Lake Murray Presbyterian Church.  46,000 homes in the Columbia area had serious flood damage.[8] 

Without getting into detail there were health issues for both Richard and Dottie, and then came the flooding.  Dottie had just received a pacemaker and Richard was diagnosed and being treated for a cancer that had metastasized in his brain.  We were sent by PDA to help them with their home.  The primary living level of their home was destroyed when a dam was intentionally dynamited to spare others other houses.  Living room, kitchen, family room, bedroom, garage, bathrooms were gone.  Utility systems were no longer operable.  Mold and mildew resulted, exacerbating an already difficult problem.  Richard and Dottie were confined to a portion of the attic that became their bedroom and bathroom.

Richard had retreated into a shell, refusing to leave his bed.  His jovial smile had faded. He embraced what he thought was a debilitating decline toward death. Depression engulfed Dottie.  Their son, Steve lived a couple of hours drive away and was employed in a job that demanded most of his time.  Still he left his own family and spent every spare minute trying to repair his mother and father’s house.  We suggested that Steve spend time with his family and after sleeping on the floor of the Murray Lake Presbyterian Church Sunday School floor, we went to their home.  One afternoon Richard came out of his shell and asked us to take him downstairs. The following day he asked us to dress him.  And the day after that, he met us downstairs already dressed and smiling, reading to tackle the job for the day.  (I brought along a picture of Richard and Dottie and some of my friends.  I’ll put it on the bulletin board in the hall outside the sanctuary today. Richard has the coffee cup in his hand.)

The day before we departed Richard and his brother-in-law headed out to Lowes for supplies, the first time in several months that Richard had left the house.  In addition to material for the house he got supplies to build a plane he had ceased constructing years ago.  Dottie thought that our team was a miracle.  She called us, “her angels.”  We were aware that there is shin cracking everywhere you go and with such a perspective we felt that we are all connected in some miraculous way and that God’s intention is that we choose to be a part of a divine, creative plan of hope and restoration and healing.   

Our little team received no pay for working on homes in South Carolina.  Indeed, we paid for the privilege to volunteer.  After the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples understood this.  Simon Magnus thought he could buy magic from the apostles and struggled to grasp that miracles are free gifts of God and not something we can control or manipulate. 

Those of you who have done such mission work know that you will make sacrifices of convenience if nothing else in order to share time, talents and love, but that we all receive much more than we can possibly give.  As we were leaving Richard said, “I have decided that it is a greater joy to live abundantly for six months with the cancer than it is to try and die engulfed by depression for two years.

We can add that there's nothing wrong with asking God for what we'd like to have happen. But, in our lives, we need to seek God's will, and then cooperate with it. God can act through any means God chooses -- even those that seem unlikely to us -- but the decision to act is never ours to command. And, with that understanding, we can offer ourselves to be conduits of God's grace, and even ask to be recipients of it.


Jesus surrendered to the will of God 

Actually, Jesus himself gives us the model. He, too, knew what it is like to surrender to the will of the Father. Remember when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion? He didn't want to die, of course, and he prayed to the Father, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want" (Matthew 26:39). In other words, here’s what I want, but I am here to do my part in what YOU want. 

When we really grasp what the Bible says about God's love for us, we see why bargaining with God or trying to obligate God to what we want is so wrongheaded. God already loves us and cannot love us more. God already sent Jesus to die for us. What more love is there?

Life does not always go as we want it to. But when we allow God to be God in our lives, we put ourselves where we can be channels through which God works.

In a parable from another time a master teacher grew old and infirm and his students begged him not to die. Said the master, "If I did not go, how would you ever see?"  "What is it we fail to see when you are with us?" they asked.  Their master teacher would not say. When the moment of his death was near, they inquired further, "What is it we will see when you are gone?"

With a twinkle in his eye, he said, "All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river . . . it is the source of life – it is from our baptism and our being made clean that purpose comes."[9]

 

Commentary on Acts

Prior to his ascension, Jesus directed his apostles to remain in Jerusalem and to wait for the baptism of the Holy Spirit (1:4-5). His final counsel further specified that when the Holy Spirit fell upon them, they would testify on his behalf "in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (1:8). Seen against this, the events narrated in verses 14-17 reflect a decisive shift in the early days of the church, since the apostles' witness now moves beyond the confines of the capital city and Judea (v. 14).

Besides the above, two other features underscore the significance of this brief pericope. First, the apostles send Peter and John to Samaria. Of all the individuals mentioned in the early chapters of Acts, these two are the central figures, especially Peter. Consider, for example, that it is Peter who prompts the nascent community to find a replacement for Judas (1:15-26). Peter is also the principal speaker on the day of Pentecost (2:14-40). Shortly thereafter, Peter and John heal a crippled beggar while entering the temple, and then proclaim Christ's resurrection as a crowd surrounds them (3:1-26). Their public proclamation of the resurrection of the dead in Jesus infuriates the religious leaders, particularly the Sadducees, since they deny the resurrection of the dead. For that reason, they arrest Peter and John, bring them before the Council, threaten them, and then order them to stop preaching (4:1-22). Still, these attempts to squelch the apostles prove ineffective. Even when the religious authorities arrest and flog all of the apostles, Peter declares that he and his comrades "must obey God rather than any human authority" (5:1-42).

Second, this passage includes a definite emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit at crucial moments in the book of Acts. Recall, for example, the Spirit's descent on the apostles on the day of Pentecost (2:1-13). Later, when Ananias and Sapphira seek to enhance their own notoriety, and to obtain the community's praise, Peter reveals that they are testing and lying to the Spirit (5:1-11). Not long after this, the church appoints seven servants who are "full of the Spirit" to address the Hellenists' complaint regarding their widows (6:1-6). Moreover, Stephen -- the church's first martyr -- is depicted as a disciple who is particularly infused with the Spirit's power and wisdom (6:5, 8-15). In view of the preceding observations, it's reasonable to highlight that Peter and John "went down and prayed for them that they [i.e., the Samaritans] might receive the Holy Spirit" (v. 15).

In order to appreciate the brief vignette in verses 14-17 more fully, it's also helpful to supplement it with some key historical background. Even though Samaria once belonged to the unified nation of Israel during the reign of King David and his son Solomon, this territory located north of Judea had been looked upon with contempt and suspicion for centuries. This was due in part to the idolatrous rituals initiated by King Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:1–14:16). Then, after approximately 200 years of polytheism, the oft-repeated prophetic words of judgment regarding the disobedient 10 northern tribes were finally realized when the king of Assyria conquered and exiled the people of Israel around 721 B.C. (2 Kings 17:1-23). Following this, the king of Assyria repopulated the land with foreigners who not only intermarried with the Israelites who were apparently left behind, but also polluted and corrupted Israel's religion, distancing it from Judaic religious traditions (2 Kings 17:24-41). In sum, due to this fractured religious history, Judean Jews regarded themselves as the preservers of authentic Judaism and looked down on their Samaritan neighbors.

This disdain for their religious cousins’ surfaces in several NT texts. For example, when Jesus heals the 10 lepers, the only one who returns to thank Jesus is a Samaritan who is labeled a "foreigner" (Luke 17:18). According to John, Jesus "had to go through Samaria," which suggests that another option might have been preferred if circumstances would have allowed it (John 4:4). John also notes that "Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans" after Jesus had asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water (John 4:9).

Given the uneasy nature of the long-standing relationship between Samaritans and Judeans, there appears to be a somewhat cautious response by the Jerusalem church when "the apostles ... heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God" (v. 14). To be sure, there is no explicit statement in the narrative regarding any suspicion the Judean believers may have harbored toward their Samaritan brothers and sisters. Still, it's reasonable to think that some members of the church at Jerusalem are asking, "Is the conversion of these Samaritans authentic?" Beyond that, the narrative suggests another query: "Will the Judean church accept the Samaritans, and will they view them as equal partners in the gospel?" In sum, if these tacit questions do, in fact, stand behind the events recorded in verses 14-17, the actions of the Jerusalem church make sense.

Finally, nota bene that Peter and John did not act unilaterally. On the contrary, they are sent by the apostles (v. 14). In addition, given that the Samaritans had not received the Holy Spirit -- "for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" (v. 16) -- the church in Jerusalem needed some confirmation or a sign to reassure all parties that God had indeed sanctioned their inclusion into the community of faith. Simply put, if the Holy Spirit came upon the Samaritans as it had upon other believers, no one could legitimately question their response (cf. 10:47; 11:17-18; 15:7-9). 

This diminutive passage ends with, "Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit" (v. 17). Although this observation may initially seem inconsequential, it holds much promise for the church. Rather than facing perpetual enmity, Judean and Samaritan Christians now are united as the divisions that separate them are overcome in Christ. Therefore, it's fitting that, as Peter and John make their way back to Jerusalem, they proclaim "the good news to many villages of the Samaritans" (v. 25).

Ultimately, the reception of the gospel by the Samaritans initiated a remarkable healing of the fractured religious landscape of ancient Palestine, which the author of Acts subsequently notes. For, after "the Samaritans had accepted the word of God ... and received the Holy Spirit ... the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers" (vv. 14, 17; 9:31).

 

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (Harper Collins, 2009), 15.

[2] Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, "In defense of practical theological knowledge," Bearings (journal of the Collegeville Institute), Spring 2015.

[3] Winston, Kimberly. "Wimbledon winner Serena Williams' secret weapon: 'Jehovah God.'" Religion News Service. religionnews.com.

[4] Bruenig, Elizabeth Stoker. "John Kasich's compassionate Christianity could raise hell in the GOP primary." The New Republic, July 21, 2015. Retrieved from newrepublic.com.

[5] C. S. Lewis

[6] The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon, 1954), 111.

[7] "Simon Magus." New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. newadvent.org, Retrieved July 20, 2015. 

[9] Anthony de Mello, Anthony De Mello: Writings (Orbis, 1999), 82.

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Let’s Keep Herod in Christmas

January 6, 2019, By:  Rev. Bruce Boak

First Presbyterian Church, Oneida, NY

Isaiah 60:1-6

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.

                                                                                                -Matthew 2:13b

It has been said that in Rome, on New Year’s Eve, there is a tradition of literally throwing old things right out the window, to start the New Year free from the past. When I read about this tradition, I considered that it might be good to stay away from multi-level apartment buildings in Rome on New Year’s Eve. 

According to writer Patricia Farris, it is a little different in Mexico.  One New Year’s Eve, she and her husband were in Mexico.  It was late in the evening, not yet midnight, and the central square of the village they were visiting was full of people, lights, music, kids, old people, families . . . At make-shift stands people were selling, in addition to all the usual souvenirs and food an array of inexpensive pottery, mostly simple clay plates. What was interesting was that people were buying the plates and then standing back and throwing them with full force against the side wall the great cathedral that stood in the town square, smashing the plates into smithereens.

It was loud and raucous and exciting, according to Ms. Farris. Only later did she learn that this tradition grew out of a deep human need to throw out the old, to start the New Year free of old resentments, old fears, old prejudices, old sins. “Throw them out!” says Patricia Farris, “Let them smash against the strong fortress of faith and be done with it. God is ready to offer healing and new life.”

But for those in the church we say, “Welcome to worship on this first Sunday of a New Year.”  Maybe someone here has come to receive healing and new life.

Today is the 12th Day of Christmas.  It is Epiphany, a day when much of the Christian World celebrates the arrival of the Magi, a day that some believe is more important than the birth of Jesus, because it symbolizes that Jesus was not just the Messiah for the Jews, but the Savior of the World and that gospel reading from Matthew tells us about the visit of the sages from the East. 

They had first seen the star in the Eastern sky, and they prepared to travel and follow it as it moved. We speculate about their national origin, religious affiliation and professional background. Matthew suggests they were Zoroastrians or priestly astronomers from Persia. Evidently, they were well-heeled financially, highly educated, and important enough to consult with a king. Their gifts in that day were expensive and lavish.

An end of the year edition of Newsweek[1] a few years ago speculated whether the Guiding Light was a star . . . or planets. Almost two dozen years ago David Hughes, in his book The Star of Bethlehem, came to the same conclusions.[2] On Christmas Eve a number of years ago, I offered some boyhood reflections generated by the discovery of Gary Mechler. Gary was a boyhood friend and was the best man at our wedding.  We had lost track of him until Martha discovered his new book at the French Road Elementary School library.  Dr. Mechler became taught physics and astronomy at the University of Arizona and ran their telescope program there.  At our wedding he didn’t quite know where to stand and it was suggested that the custodian be asked to rehang the Christmas Star that had appeared in the chancel so that he could get his bearings.

Dr. Mechler wrote that Stars tend to move, and the Star seen by the wise men in Matthew’s biblical account was probably a collection of planets in the Eastern sky appearing in the constellation Pices, therefore being interpreted by Persian mystics that something unusual was happening in Palestine since Pices was the constellation of Palestine in Persian lore. 

We may not be stargazers with the insight of the Magi, but there is something to be learned from them as we begin our Trek in a new year.  It would be well for us to be star struck, too, and ready to travel in the sense of the Magi, for the wisdom of the Wise Men is as needful in this age as it was then.

They were caught by a vision and we need to discern the one God has for us in 2019. As the Wise Men from the East sought the Messiah, we ought to seek him. As they brought their gifts, we ought to place before him our gifts, too. As they surrendered their worn beliefs for a new faith and opted to return home by another route, forsaking the evil Herod and his devilment, we ought to change our path for one that likewise forsakes evil.  As they wrought a new life out of the old, so let us set our course for a new destiny as well - one that begins with Jesus and ever remains loyal to him. 

CAUGHT - a vision

SOUGHT - a Messiah

BROUGHT - gifts

WROUGHT - a new life from the old and worn

OUGHT - to change our path

Perhaps 2019 will have us coming to the realization that the greater challenges to us today are not economics or ergonomics, but ego-nomics.

It hardly seems possible that all over the country only about two weeks ago now, people were putting on Christmas pageants to tell the story of the nativity. The cast of characters varied.  I always felt sorry for the innkeeper in the pageant whose job it was to slam the door on Mary and Joseph and tell them that there was no vacancy.  But in case you have felt bad about that, I share with you my perspective that is just a little different.  I think that because Bethlehem was overflowing with people from all over Israel for the census, that this innkeeper, probably a man who was operating a caravansary (a temporary inn made of a series of tents, crowded with pilgrims) may have looked at Mary, all of 9 months due and thought, “My goodness, this is no place to have a baby.  I know what I’ll do, I’ll offer them my own home.”  That kind of changes things up a bit, doesn’t it?

The missing person in the pageant 

Yet, there's one figure from the biblical narrative you'll rarely see portrayed in a Christmas pageant: King Herod. He's just too mean and nasty for that holy night.

It's common, from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, to read the story from Matthew about how wise men came to the court of King Herod, asking where they could find the child born King of the Jews. Herod, of course, was the real, live king of the Jews. But he was too crafty a politician to show his hand too soon. There was intelligence to be gathered -- and if these naïve foreigners could be enlisted as spies to lead him to this King of the Jews, so much the better.  Herod wondered if his security protection had been hacked.  This paranoid King had his palace closest advisors consult with religious leadership who scoured through scripture to find any indications about the arrival of a new king or about the appearance of a star.

Fortunately, the visitors from the east were not slackers in the intelligence department. They could see right through Herod's smarmy hospitality. They returned to their own country "by another way." That's where our Christmas Eve reading from Matthew typically ends.

It's only Part 1, though, of a two-part story. Nobody ever wants to read the second part on Christmas Eve, because the details are so horrific. Wise men dropping off baby presents is one thing. What comes next is rated "R" for intense violence. Not the kind of thing we want our children to hear before heading back home to put out a late-night snack for Santa. Visions of sugarplums were about to be replaced by bloody nightmares.

Herod is enraged to learn the magi have given him the slip. And so, he sent his storm troopers out to commit an atrocity worthy of Hitler's SS. They were to break into every Jewish home in the region around Bethlehem, pull every male baby from the arms of their mothers and cut their little throats.

Believe it or not, there's a Christmas carol about this woeful business. It's called the Coventry Carol. Ironically, it has one of the most achingly beautiful melodies of all Christmas music. The words are a melancholy lullaby, sung by grieving mothers to their dead children: 

Herod the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day,
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.
Then woe is me, poor child for thee
And ever mourn and say
For thy parting, nor say nor sing
By, by, lully, lullay.


What part does this dark episode have to play in the bright and joyous tale of Christmas? It's a discordant note, struck in the closing bars of a beautiful melody. Until now, everything has been sweetness and light. But then, the fists of Herod's soldiers are pounding on Bethlehem's doors. The mothers of the City of David weep their bitter tears, and cradle their lifeless babes in their arms:

Lullay, Thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.


Herod -- at this point a bitter old man, in the final year of his 41-year reign -- was fully capable of playing a role in such atrocities.

Herod was king in name only. Everyone knew that. It was the Romans who really called the shots. Herod's job was to do the imperial dirty work, subduing a rebellious colony on behalf of the emperor. That task he performed with relish.

During the course of his reign, Herod had at least nine wives and 14 children. Perhaps more. There were probably more, but daughters' births were not always recorded. He put one of his wives, Mariamne I, on trial for adultery. Chief witness for the prosecution was Mariamne's own mother -- who, it's said, testified against her daughter only because she feared for her own life. Herod executed his wife, which led her mother to declare herself queen, charging that Herod was mentally unfit to rule. Not a wise decision on her part. Herod put her to death without a trial. Talk about a dysfunctional family!

There's more. There were two young sons remaining from Herod's marriage to Mariamne. As they grew older, the king considered them threats to his power. He sought to put them on trial for treason, but Emperor Augustus put a stop to that by ordering the sons and the father to reconcile. A few years later, Herod outmaneuvered the emperor. He sent a huge financial donation to revive the Olympic Games, something Augustus very much wanted. In exchange, the emperor allowed Herod to execute his two sons. Later, though, he was heard to mutter, "I would rather be Herod's dog than Herod's son."

But that's still not all. After murdering his wife and his two sons, Herod named his eldest son, Antipater -- a child of a different mother -- the exclusive heir to the throne. But Herod never could tolerate a rival. He grew jealous of his latest crown prince. He put him on trial for treason like the others and had him executed. The emperor was so appalled that he refused to allow any of Herod's remaining sons to claim the title of king -- although three of them would eventually rule as "tetrarchs," each governing one-third of his father's realm. 

Thirty-three years later, one of them, Herod Antipas, would look upon Jesus at last, as he stood before him in chains, wearing a crown of thorns. 

We don't know when it was, exactly, that the magi stopped by the palace to pay their courtesy call, but it was probably during this last, turbulent year of Herod's life, the year he executed his third son. Can any of us doubt, now, that this man was capable of dispatching soldiers to kill babies?

Jesus, of course, escaped that fate. An angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream, warning him to take his little family and flee to Egypt. There they probably settled in the thriving Jewish quarter of Alexandria, a great center of learning. It's possible Jesus spent his early years there and learned Talmud from the distinguished rabbis of that city.

Surely some of us find it troubling that God sends an angel to rescue Jesus, but permits those other little babies die. It's another facet of the thorny theological problem we face so often in this world: the problem of evil, the question of why a just and all-powerful God allows human suffering to take place. There's no easy answer to that philosophical question, but King Herod does seem well-suited to play the role of evil incarnate. 

So, what's the takeaway? Should we reserve a role for Herod in next year's Sunday school Christmas pageant?

Relax. It's a rhetorical question! Herod doesn't belong in a children's Christmas play. But that doesn't mean we should forget about him entirely.

Herod's important to the Christmas story because he helps us remember the kind of world in which we live and why this world still needs a savior. Even if we all had a fine Christmas, there are plenty of neighbors on this planet whose lives are tainted with suffering -- people for whom the least of their worries is whether or not they managed to get into the Christmas spirit.

Jesus didn't come into the world to bring us a mid-winter festival of peace and contentment. He wasn't born into a placid Christmas-card scene, but rather into the sort of world where families wander homeless and corrupt tyrannical leadership tries to rule by deceit. 

Jesus didn't come to offer respite from the world. He came to save it.

I don’t know how you came to church today . . . using Genesee Street or driving on route 46 or 365A to get to the corner of Broad Street and Stone.  But, if you came with bitterness, resentment, hostility, despair, I hope that in some way you will be able to offer those feelings at the manger as your gift, for even these can be transformed.  Then perhaps you ought to change your plans so that you will be able to return home to God by another way.

   •     If what you are after is first and foremost power, you’d better forget about love.

   •     If you insist on putting yourself at the center, you’d better get ready for a life of loneliness.

   •     If you are a gossip, don’t be expecting confidences.

   •     If you view life as essentially a quantitative proposition, you’d better keep your averages up.

   •     If you think life is a race won by the swift, you dare never slow down.

   •     If you think the fight goes to the strong, you’d better never relax.

   •     If you love life in the fast lane, don’t even think of setting your heart on anything that takes time.

   •     If what you are seeking is security, then you’d better forget about genuine ecstasy because you can’t have both.

   •     If you honestly believe that life is a rat race, don’t be surprised if you don’t find any dignity in it.

   •     If you’re primarily interested in justice and not in mercy, you’d better never make any mistakes.

   •     If you are ruthless on the way up, don’t be looking for tenderness on the way down.

CAUGHT - a vision

SOUGHT - a Messiah

BROUGHT - gifts

WROUGHT - a new life from the old and worn

OUGHT - to change our path and return to Jesus by another road

Jesus didn't come to offer respite from the world. He came to save it.
As for us -- his Christmas-weary disciples -- we have a role in carrying out that mission, using the spiritual gifts he's given us, along with whatever material resources we have at our disposal.

If we keep Herod in Christmas, maybe it will be just a little easier to remember that mission -- don't you think?


Commentary on this passage from Matthew

The stories of the birth of Jesus are so completely merged in the minds of most modern believers that it is rarely noted that the two gospels that speak of his birth, Matthew and Luke, tell widely divergent stories of the birth of Jesus. So, synthesized have these gospel accounts become that it is hard to find a Christmas pageant that does not have shepherds and wise men, stars and angels. While both Matthew and Luke provide their readers with a genealogy of Jesus (1:2-17; Luke 3:23-38) and testify to his being born in Bethlehem prior to moving to Nazareth (2:1; Luke 2:4), each presents a unique sequence of events, which, when viewed separately, reveal some interesting differences. 

Luke's gospel includes the lengthy story of John the Baptist's birth, Gabriel's annunciation to Mary, Mary's meeting with Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-80), the angel's appearance to the shepherds, and Mary and Joseph's presentation of the child Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:8-38). Rather than an angelic visit to Mary, however, Matthew describes an angel's message to Joseph in a dream, followed by the journey of the magi in response to the appearance of the star, the magi's conversation with Herod, their worship of the child, the slaughter of the innocents, and the holy family's flight into Egypt, precipitated by yet another revelation to Joseph in a dream (1:18-2:23). If one consciously tries to combine the time lines of these two stories, however, problems arise.

According to Matthew, Mary and Joseph flee with Jesus to Egypt almost immediately after his birth. Yet according to Luke, they are in Jerusalem at the temple eight days after the birth, presenting Jesus for circumcision, and they journey home to Nazareth as soon as the required rituals are completed (Luke 2:22-40). According to Matthew, however, the family remains in Egypt until the death of Herod, when the third and fourth of Joseph's dreams reveal to him that it is now safe to return with the child to Nazareth (2:19-23). The fact that Herod the Great is believed to have died in 4 B.C. has prompted many to suppose that the current placement of the birth of Christ four years after Herod's death is an error created by ancient revisions in the calendar. 

Although there is no completely satisfying way to reconcile this problem, or to completely harmonize the differences in the gospel accounts of Jesus' birth and early childhood, Matthew and Luke agree on the most important of their common themes: the miraculous birth of Christ, the evident fulfillment of Scripture through the details of his birth, and the careful preservation of the child and his family ensured by God during these vulnerable years. 

One of the most interesting aspects of Matthew's narrative is the prominent role of Joseph as the conduit through whom God's messages of instruction and warning come. Four times he is visited in a dream, no doubt reminding Jewish hearers of the two great northern patriarchs of the OT, Jacob and Joseph, who often communicated with God through dreams (Genesis 28:10-22; 31:10-13; 37:5-11; 40:1-41:36). Of all these references, it is very interesting to note that like the NT Joseph, Jacob once received instructions in a dream to return home after a sojourn in a foreign country (Genesis 31:10-13; Matthew 2:19-23). While this is an interesting similarity, the connections between the OT Joseph and the NT Joseph go beyond the simple presence of dreams in both their narratives. 

It is on the basis of the patriarch Joseph's sojourn in Egypt and the subsequent settlement and captivity of the Israelites there that requires God, in the later generation of Moses, to call his son, Israel, out of Egypt again -- a fact echoed by Hosea 11:1 and quoted by Matthew 2:15 in connection with the holy family's flight. It is also Joseph the patriarch who is understood as the father of the northern kingdom tribes represented by his sons Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48). He is the child of Rachel (Genesis 30:22-24), and so his children, the members of the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, are those same children for whom Rachel weeps when the northern kingdom falls, according to Jeremiah 31:15-16. The image of the weeping matriarch of Israel is applied to the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew 2:16-18, but it still evokes an image of the ruin of the house of Joseph, and juxtaposes this destruction with the escape and survival of the new Messiah, protected this time by his father Joseph, in a way that the first children of Joseph were not protected. 

Perhaps these echoes of the northern patriarchal traditions of the OT Joseph are sounded by Matthew because he is building toward his explanation of why Jesus was raised in the north and not in Bethlehem. According to Matthew, Joseph discovers in his fourth dream that although Herod is dead, his equally oppressive son Archelaus had been placed in charge over Judah, making that southern region too dangerous for the child Jesus. To underscore that his change of residence was preordained by God, however, Matthew invokes a prophecy which only he finds in Isaiah 11:1, declaring that Jesus' eventual residence in the northern city of Nazareth identifies him as the messianic "branch" (Hebrew netzer) of David's royal house. 

There would have been no doubt in the minds of Jesus' contemporaries that he was more a citizen of Galilee -- viewed by many as a pagan territory, Galilee of the Gentiles -- than he was of Jerusalem or Judah, where one would expect to find a messianic descendant of David. Reminding his hearers of the intimate relationship between God and David's northern ancestor Jacob, and the northern patriarch Joseph, would have served Matthew's rhetorical purposes well -- concerned as he was that Jewish hearers come to understand Jesus as the legitimate Jewish Messiah. 

In truth, northern Israelite traditions comprised much of what we now have in the stories of Genesis and Numbers, as well as the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy. Samuel, the great prophet, to whom Luke likens Jesus (Luke 2:40; 1 Samuel 2:26), was from the tribe of Ephraim and a resident of Ramah, the town in which Rachel's weeping can be heard according to Jeremiah. By raising all these references to northern traditions, it is as if Matthew is reminding his Jewish hearers that God initially blessed the northern citizens of Israel with numerous direct revelations from God through great anointed leaders long before the days of David and his royal house. Why, then, should not the Messiah appear in the north?

 

[1]Sharon Begley, “The Christmas Star - or Was It Planets?” Newsweek, December 29, 1991, page. 54.

[2]David Hughes, The Star of Bethlehem (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979).

**********************************************************************************

Enduring The 2nd Notice

December 9, 2018, By:  Rev. Bruce Boak

First Presbyterian Church of Oneida

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 1:68-79

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

Peace

          Text:  But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap;

                                                                                                          Malachi 3:2

Early in December, several years ago, a resident of a New York apartment building opened the door to her apartment and found a greeting card taped to the outside.  “Merry Christmas from the custodial staff,” it said. 

“That’s nice,” she thought.  Then, she promptly forgot about it.

A week later, she came home to find another card with an empty envelope taped to her door.  This one said, “Merry Christmas from the custodial staff.  Second Notice.”

We might call today, ADVENT - SECOND NOTICE.[1]

Today we flip open to the prophet Malachi to hear a second announcement of the coming of Christ.  The writer confronts us with this haunting question: “Who may abide the day of his coming?”

It is fascinating that we will find from the lips of a Hindu insights that can be uncovered more completely in our scriptures.  Stephen R. Covey - one of the world's leading management consultants and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  He has written about principle centered leadership which he believes to be an instrumental foundation to the effectiveness of quality, leadership, service and team building.  In chapter 7 he talks about Seven Deadly Sins and here he quotes Mahatma Gandhi who described seven things will destroy humanity. All of these have to do with social and political conditions and Gandhi recommends an external standard for correction. These are:

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Knowledge without character

Commerce without morality

Science without humanity

Politics without principle – and

Religion without sacrifice

I have often thought about wholeness through a slightly different lens that has seen living the Christian life like a three-legged milking stool.  The three legs are:

Inner Life of Devotion

Intellectual Integrity

Outer Life of Service

Although I think that our Christian life is rooted in our inner life of devotion, I have come also to question whether that by itself is enough.  Our inner life of devotion is our prayer life, our study of God’s word and scripture, our time in communion and meditation.  Even sitting in the pew is a part of our inner life of devotion.  But it is our intellectual integrity that brings the world’s questions to what we believe.  It is where we ask, “What is God trying to say to me, really?”  Our outer life of service is where we put into practice what we say we believe.  There are times when I have become aware that I am only putting two of these legs down.  They can be any two.  It can be intellectual integrity and an outer life of service but with no time in prayer and medication.  It can be an inner life of devotion and intellectual integrity with no outer life of service.  I hope that you get the idea. 

The outer life of service/intellectual integrity pair without an inner life of devotion is where we substitute works for worship.  Not everyone feels a need for Christmas.  There are many good people who feel no need for transcendence in their lives.  They don’t need God.  They have reasoned that if they do enough good works, life will work out.

There are others who are believers but think participation in the Christian fellowship is not important.  Just as long as they are good neighbors, that will be enough.   I would not want to presume about how God regards all of this.  I do know this, if salvation is on the basis of merits and brownie points, somebody better find out where the line is drawn.  How good is good enough?

With gratitude to a fraternity brother I share this bit of caution for those celebrating at party after party in our run-up to Christ and thereby offer this parental sounding advice - "If you can't be good, be careful."  So, it was that this brother Adelphikos wrote, "Yesterday I went to a Christmas party. I had a few beers followed by cocktails, followed by a few shots . . . I still had the good sense to know that I was over the limit. That's when I decided to do what I had never done before: I took a cab home. Sure enough, there was a police road block on the way home, and since it was a cab, they waved it past. I arrived home safely without incident. This was both a great relief and a surprise because I had never driven a cab before. I don't even know where I got it. Now that it is in my garage, I don't know what to do with it."

There was a rather nominal church member who had toted a similar question in his mind.  He believed that if he could just live good enough, his life alone would provide more than enough justification to assure life eternal.  One night he dreamed of the final judgment.  He peeked to see who was in front of him.  To his amazement he discovered he was standing behind Mother Teresa.  The saintly nun was called to stand before the Lord, just before he was.  Imagine his surprise when he overheard God saying to Mother Teresa, “Teresa, I was really expecting a lot more out of you.”[2]

Does God grade on the curve?  Good question. Certainly, those who rely only what they believe to be relatively good behavior are those who may not be able to abide Christ’s coming.  Not only will those who substitute works for worship have a bit of a struggle with this prophecy, but so will those who value religion over relationships or those who come to Church but have never come to a relationship in Christ.

Christian faith is much more than a religion.  It is a relationship with God - and with the world for whom Christ died.  Salvation is not a matter of signing on the dotted line.  It is far more complicated.  It is saying, “Yes” to a love that seeks to flood our lives.  More evil has been done through the ages in the name of religion than can be recounted.  Religion is not worth your time or mine.  But a relationship with God - a relationship in which you give love and you receive love - and a relationship with your neighbor in which you share freely that you might build up your neighbor.  That is a valuable commodity.

George Mason discovered this the hard way.  He didn’t much care for people.  He was a bachelor and spent evenings and weekends alone at home in a comfortable apartment.  He didn’t have a social life.  George Mason had refused invitations to dinners and other affable occasions so often that no one invited him anymore.  That didn’t bother him.  George Mason’s life was completely absorbed by his business at the bank.

Late one Christmas eve, after his employees had left, George Mason went into the office vault to get some extra cash.  Soundlessly, on newly oiled hinges, the great vault door swung shut behind him.  Sudden darkness and the final click of the automatic lock startled him.  He began to panic.  Desperately he pounded on the door.  Then he realized that no one would hear him.  Everyone had gone home, even the cleaning crew.  He consoled himself with the thought that surely, he could last it out until morning.  Then he remembered that the next day was not a working day, it was Christmas!

His heart pounded.  He was afraid and terrorized by the darkness.  He wondered if he would have enough air.  Trying to calm himself, he remembered that when the new vault was installed, they had told him something about a “safety hole.”  Feeling around in the darkness he located it at the top of the back wall - - too small for burglars, but large enough so that he could breathe.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day passed.  But since Christmas was on a Friday the bank wouldn’t be open on Saturday or on Sunday. He was alone, as he usually was. But there was a difference.  He was uncomfortable, hungry and thirsty in the deepest darkness he had ever experienced. 

Finally, Monday morning came, and his chief cashier arrived and unlocked the vault, but didn’t open the door.  Without anyone seeing him, George Mason staggered out of his prison and tottered to the water cooler.  After a long drink of cold water, he took a taxi to his solitary apartment and freshened.

In a short time, he was back at the office.  Nobody asked him how he had spent Christmas.  Nobody even missed him.  Nobody seemed to care.

After that experience, George Mason put a sign on the back wall of the vault.  The sign was to remind him of those desperate hours.  It read, “To be indispensable somewhere, is the secret of happiness.  To love people, is God’s purpose for life.”[3]

Now we don’t know if George discovered his dependence on God, but he certainly discovered his dependence on others.  It simply cannot be over-emphasized, the most important possession we have is our relationship with God and how we experience that in relationship with other people. Who shall abide the day of his coming?  Shall those who substitute work for worship?  Shall those who value religion over relationships?

How about those who celebrate Christmas without Christ?  Not all who place a star atop their tree place Christ at the top of their lives.  I recall receiving a Christmas card that had on its cover, “If Christ Had Not Come.”  According to the card, a pastor fell into a short sleep in his study on Christmas morning and dreamed of a world into which Jesus had never come.  In his dream he found himself looking through his home, but there were no little stockings hanging from the mantle, no Christmas bells or wreaths of holly, and no Christ to comfort, gladden, and save.  He walked out to the street, but there was no church with its spire pointing to Heaven.  He came back and sat down in his library, but every book about the Savior had disappeared.

The doorbell rang, and a young man asked the pastor to visit his dying mother.  The pastor hastened to the dying woman, and as he reached the home he sat down and said, “I have something here that will comfort you.”  He opened his Bible to look for a familiar passage, but it ended with Malachi.  There was no Gospel and no promise of hope and salvation, and he could only bow his head and weep with her in bitter despair. 

Advent could scare the breath out of us! It should scare us witless, turning our legs to pudding and our blood to ice water.  

Although we may associate Advent with emotions of anticipatory cheer, holiday carols and the sounds of children laughing, we get a very different view from this curmudgeonly prophet Malachi, whose thunderings rumble in the Old Testament’s last book.

This traditional prophetic Advent reading suggests that the initial emotion most apropos to Advent is ... terror.

Terrorized by Advent?  Well if not you, you might remember when Advent terrorized your children -- like when you made them sit on Santa's lap at the mall, and they cried and screamed bloody murder.  You may have been terrorized by price tags.

You may feel terrorized by anti-Christian sentiment that surfaces as a cry for inclusionary tolerance. You may feel terrorized by the sheer number of things to do before Christmas Eve arrives in just 15 days.  You suspect that you're losing your mind and your blood pressure rises. 

But this is not the terror Malachi illumines.  He's talking about heart-clutching fear, "I'm-going-to-die" horror, "This-can't-be-happening-to-me" terror.

Let's remind us that, on the church calendar, Advent is, in fact, not just a prelude to the celebration of Jesus' birth in a Bethlehem manger. Rather, it's a time to think more broadly about God's coming ("advent" means "coming") not only in the past, when Jesus was born, but also in the future, when he comes again. And from our perspective, living long after his first coming, it is his return that should concern.

During Advent 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached a sermon in Barcelona in which he spoke about the emotion for this season: "It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly," he said, "whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God. ... We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us ..." (emphasis added).

Bonhoeffer wasn't making that up. Although his sermon didn't specifically mention Malachi, his words reflect the message the prophet brought. 

Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets. His ministry took place about 460 B.C., almost 100 years after the people of Judah had returned from exile in Babylon and more than 50 years after the temple had been rebuilt in Jerusalem. Some of the people had hoped -- even expected -- that the completion of that building would launch a new era where Judah would return to her former glory and independence. 

But that had not happened, and the people had to deal with the truth that they would remain subjects of the Persian Empire, and that their land was essentially a backwater of that kingdom. 

There was not a lot of incentive for vibrant worship of God. According to chapters 1-2, even the priests had become careless and sloppy in their duties in the temple. And the attitude among many in the general population wasn't much better. The lectionary has trimmed the reading a little too tightly. If you add the verse before the assigned reading (2:17) and the verse after it (v. 5), you'll get a clearer picture. 

In 2:17, Malachi tells the people that they have "wearied" the Lord with their words. For examples of those wearisome words, the prophet adds, "By saying, 'all who do evil are good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.'" Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?" These are not so much direct quotations as expressions of typical attitudes among the people. Some acted as though God considered evil to be good, or as though there was no justice in God's world. Biblical commentator Peter C. Craigie says that the people Malachi addresses "have become, by their attitudes and actions, functional atheists, not bothering to deny the existence of God, but destroying any link between God and justice, or between the Almighty and good and evil." 

Fire and soap 

Our text is the scene when Malachi speaks the word of the Lord. Although he himself is a messenger from God, he tells the people of another messenger to come, suddenly and without warning, who will be an advance man for God Almighty. And that messenger's job will be to make the way ready for the Lord. That messenger will function like a refining fire that rids gold and silver of impurities, only his fire will purify the people

He will also be like fullers' soap, which is nothing like today's laundry detergents. What Malachi is talking about is a caustic concoction containing alkali, potash and lye. It will get things clean, but it's very hard on the garments. But, of course, it's not garments this coming messenger intends to wash, but people. 

The smelting and scrubbing this messenger will do is, in effect, God's judgment for all. And for some, that judgment will be the final verdict. Verse 5 speaks of some for whom the messenger's arrival will be only bad news: sorcerers, adulterers, those who swear falsely, those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, those who oppress the widow and the orphan, those who thrust aside the alien and those who do not fear the Lord. They will perish, Malachi says. There wasn’t much comfort in this 2400 years ago and it won’t sit too well in 2015.  If a preacher were to focus on this text, he might get himself stoned to death.  Minimally he might just be ignored. 

But possibly preachers could focus on the text without letting the congregation know that there was some condemnation for pastors hanging around the passage.

(Mal 2:7-8 NRSV) For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. {8}But you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts,

After the prophet takes a swipe at priests who have committed adultery and fooled around with various members of the choir in chapter 2 verses 14 - 16 he begins today’s lesson from Malachi.  Who can endure? 

About the time of my ordination pharmacists beat out clergy in the annual list of most admired professions.  Then came firefighters and letter carriers.  At the beginning of this decade The Christian Century had a recap of the most significant religious news from the past 10 years.  One story was of a few prominent priests, charged with sexual abuse of children.  Another told about a major embezzlement case at a large church in the Midwest.  Sexual escapades of some TV evangelists were also the stuff in the article.  I think that we clergy, because we tell ourselves that we are doing the work of the Lord are particularly susceptible to self-deceit.

I don’t need to air clerical dirty laundry except to point out that as Malachi bears down on the descendants of Levi, he is bearing down on us all.  The Lord comes in judgment to ignite the fierce refiner’s fire, to put the axe to the root, to separate the wheat from the chaff (to use John’s words) and to say that each of us has reason to ask, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”

We will find ourselves musing on this text and perhaps finally concluding, who cannot abide if they are not refined and washed in fuller’s soap?  And so, he would come, and his arrival would be heralded, first by Old Testament prophets and then by John the baptizer. 

In the 7th year of the administration of President Donald T. Trump, when Andrew Cuomo was the governor of New York and Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand were Senators in Washington, Claudia Tenney was in the US Congress, when David Valesky and Joseph Griffo were Senators in Albany and William Magee was the Assemblyman for district 121, when Leo Matzke was Mayor of Oneida, during the time when Larry Beasley was the interim Presbytery Leader and Stated Clerk, of Utica Presbytery and Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri & Cindy Kohmann were co-moderators of the General Assembly the word of the Lord came to. . . . YOU.  And you went out into your neighborhood, appeared before the Common Council of Oneida, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

Suddenly Advent sounds a bit more real than all those names in Malachi, doesn’t it?  It’s more comfortable and cozier to read Luke’s version, to feel the life pulsing through ancient characters, to sit here safely at the end of 2018 and know that this happened, like Star Wars, “long ago and far away.”


Everybody will be judged, but, says the prophet, some will be redeemed. Malachi doesn't speak about repentance, only God's initiative, but the implication is that those whom God will redeem are those who turn to the Lord. They will be saved, but it will be a rough redemption, a caustic washing. For them, the fear is like that of a cancer patient who is facing a treatment regimen that will cure him, but the regimen itself is so ruthless that it fills him with fear. But to be healed, he must go through it.

Feel the fear! 

We can apply this word from Malachi to ourselves. And whether we will be among those who perish or those who will be redeemed, there's reason for terror. But perhaps we should use Advent to let ourselves feel that. In the sermon mentioned previously, Bonhoeffer went on to say, "Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace ..." (emphasis added).

But in which group -- the perishing or the saved -- will we be? Malachi's "words are aimed in such a way as to puncture confidence: 'Who can endure the day of his coming?'" It can be a good thing to have our pride punctured if that confidence keeps us from serious commitment to God or causes us to take our salvation for granted. 

Polls continue to show that most Americans who believe in heaven also believe they are going there. Yet the percentage who think they have a spot reserved in eternity is much larger than the percentage of people actively engaged in following Jesus. Advent calls us to examine our assumptions about our destiny and look at our priorities.

Malachi's good news is that God takes the initiative and does the needed purifying, so we need not live constantly in terror. It doesn't hurt, however, to be reminded that God's grace is not cheap, and that redemption is a strong cure, worth going through because of the outcome, but not something to be thought of lightly or assumed as our prerogative.

I remember the famous painting that David Shelly hung in the parlor of the East Main Presbyterian Church in Grove City.  Every time I went into the room, I’d stare at it.  It showed Jesus standing at a doorway in a garden, patiently knocking on the door? It's usually understood as picturing Christ's asking admission into our hearts. But for many of us, our surrender to Christ came not because he gently asked permission to come into our lives. It was more like he kicked the door in and entered like an intruder, commandeering space and making it clear that he was taking over, at least for a while. Eventually we made a choice about whether to let him remain, but, initially, our defenses were overwhelmed. 

I had forgotten about that picture in my childhood until I went back for the 100th anniversary of the construction of the current church building (1909).  I arrived early and wandered down the hall to the parlor where that picture had been and sure enough it was still there.  I sat down to study it again and it was then that I noticed that there was no doorknob on the outside of the door where Jesus was.  It had to be opened from the inside.

Malachi's words about redemption are a little rough. While a few of us may have found discipleship an easy path to walk, others of us had to be catapulted onto it from our self-centeredness, sin-blindness and self-righteousness. Being thrown onto the path of discipleship this way is not comfortable.

It's clear in the New Testament that the gospel writers understood John the Baptist as the messenger about whom Malachi spoke (see Matthew 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 1:76). And we note that John's call for repentance from sin was not a soft and tender moment either.  But that was the first Advent. Today we get a second notice.  This notice comes to pierce our pride, not to give us pain, but to give us that peace we can’t buy. Advent is the time when we prepare our minds by going back in time to the scriptures and recall how God came to the world in the form of human flesh,  arriving quietly into a Palestinian hamlet from which he would mature into an adult and become an adult who would make the sacrificial claim, “This is my body, broken for you.”

Helpful Sources

  

Cook, Stephen L. "Preaching Malachi 3:1-4." Biblische Ausbildung, December 2, 2006, biblische.blogspot.com. Retrieved November 10, 2018.

Craigie, Peter C. "Malachi 2:17-3:5." Twelve Prophets, Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985, 238-41.

Commentary on the Malachi Text - bgb

Among the books of the Bible, Malachi is one of the lesser known. Only two pericopes from the book are included in the Revised Common Lectionary: today's passage (3:1-4, read on the Second Sunday of Advent in Year C and on the Presentation of the Lord in Years A, B and C) and 4:1-2a (read on the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost). The book is one of the shortest in the canon (only four relatively brief chapters), and it is found at the end of the 12 Minor Prophets in the Hebrew canon and at the very end of the OT in Christian Bibles (which approximately follows the order of the Septuagint and Vulgate). In both traditions, the canonical placement seems to have been influenced by the emphasis the book places on "the great and terrible day of the LORD" (4:5; cf. the same phraseology in Joel 2:31), and the "messenger" sent to prepare the people of Israel for that eschatological event. The latter concern is the subject of today's reading.

The word "malachi" in Hebrew means "my messenger" and may not be a proper name at all. Nothing is known about a prophet with that name, and the date and place of his ministry have been deduced from the book's literary style and the topics that occupy the author. Worship in the temple in Jerusalem, under the direction of the Levitical priesthood, has fallen into disrepute, suggesting that the book dates from the period after the temple was rededicated during the period of Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (516/5 B.C.). The book's grave concern with intermarriage to foreign women (2:10-17), shared by Ezra and Nehemiah, suggests that Malachi was written before Nehemiah's reforms, launched in 445/4 B.C., and this roughly 70-year window is the closest estimate scholars can provide for the background of Malachi's work.

Today's reading is from the fourth of six oracles that make up the bulk of the book (1:2-5; 1:6−2:9; 2:10-16; 2:17−3:5; 3:6-12; 3:13−4:3). Most of those oracles announce judgment against the priests in Jerusalem who have compromised the standards of their office as established in the Lord's "covenant with Levi" (2:4). The tribe of Levi, according to biblical tradition (e.g., Exodus 2:1), was the source of two of the most important institutions in ancient Israel: prophets (Moses was born to "a man from the house of Levi" and "a Levite woman") and priests (Moses's brother, Aaron and his descendants, were the original order of priests, Exodus 4:14; 30:30). The covenant with Levi, therefore, is of paramount importance to the author of the book of Malachi, who seems to be assigning to priests the revelatory role of God's spokesperson, a charismatic office formerly occupied by prophets. Early in the book, the author says of priests, "For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts" (2:7). Given this exalted view of the Jerusalemite priesthood, Malachi's concern for their integrity is understandable. 

Today's passage opens with the assurance that the Lord is sending "my messenger" (malachi) to prepare the way (v. 1). There is an abrupt switch from third-person narrative (2:17) to first-person narrative (v. 1) and then back to third-person narrative (3:10), suggesting that this announcement of the messenger is a later addition to the book. The messenger is never explicitly named, although, in 4:5, God promises to send the prophet Elijah before the day of the Lord. Given the explicit identification of priests (and not prophets) as Yahweh's messengers in 2:7, it's impossible to say that the unnamed messenger of 3:1 is Elijah rather than an unknown priest of the future.

Ordinarily, messengers in the ancient world did not prepare the way for a more important figure; their job was to deliver messages sent by (and in the absence of) important figures. Even the explicit mention of preparing "the way of the LORD" in the wilderness (Isaiah 40:3) does not assign that task to a messenger, but rather, as we would expect, to the people themselves (the verbs in Isaiah are plural). Heralds, of course, announced the arrival (or directive) of a genuine personage (Isaiah 40:9; 41:27; Daniel 3:4), and there is no obvious reason why that function could not also be assumed by messengers, as appears to be the case here. This blurring of what had once been distinct roles is one of the indicators of the book's late date; the prophet is working in a situation where the old rules do not apply as they once did, and a process of rebuilding society as well as the Jerusalem cult is underway.

Careful readers of English translations will note that "the Lord" in the first half of verse 1 is not the same form, graphically, as "the LORD (of hosts)" in the second half of verse 1; they refer to different entities. The phrase "the Lord whom you seek" is peculiar, since it refers not to the deity, but to the deity's messenger, an odd and unique appellation of a title of considerable standing to a figure ordinarily ranked not far above servants. The Hebrew word 'adonmeans "lord, master, overseer, superintendent" and can, in the plural, be applied to Yahweh.

Malachi's use of the word here -- describing the lord-messenger as coming to "his temple" -- is even more bizarre, since the temple was never understood in ancient Israel as belonging to anyone except the deity. The language of this passage describing the messenger would, in classical biblical religion, more naturally fit descriptions of the deity, so the prophet appears to be making such a close identification between the deity and the messenger that they are virtually indistinguishable in function. This trend of exalting the messenger will find expression in the NT's description of John the Baptist (see, for example, Matthew 11:11, "Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist," and the confusion over the identities of John and Jesus, Matthew 16:14). This trend may also be the source (or a stage) of the line of theological thought that will lead to the apotheosis of Jesus.

Classically in the OT, it is the deity who purifies the people (e.g., Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 44:22; Jeremiah 24:7; Ezekiel 20:38; 22:15), not the deity's messenger, whether prophet or priest, as here in Malachi. The image of the messenger as refiner is found only in this passage and in Jeremiah 6:27 (where the word translated "refiner" may be "fortress"); typically it is Yahweh who is described as a refiner, testing human beings for their religious soundness (e.g., Psalm 17:3; 26:2; 66:10; Jeremiah 9:6; Isaiah 48:10; Zechariah 13:9).

The passage combines metaphors, using imagery from both metallurgy and domestic life, comparing the purifying work of the messenger to "fullers' soap" (v. 2), using a pair of rare Hebrew words (and a rare English word, as well, since few people today know what a "fuller" is), the Piel plural active participle of the verb kavas meaning "to tread" (i.e., wash by treading) and the word borît, "lye, alkali, potash, soap," found only here and in Jeremiah 2:22. The image advances the idea of separating the pure from the impure.

In today's passage, "the descendants of Levi" (v. 3), the Levitical priests, are clearly understood to be the primary sacerdotal officials in the Jerusalem temple. Elsewhere in the OT the role of the Levites is far less clear, and in some passages (e.g., Numbers 8:22, 26; and especially Numbers 16:10), the Levites are explicitly identified as the priests' assistants and not as the (Aaronid) priests themselves. The priesthood in ancient Israel was a highly complex and contentious matter, with Levites (Deuteronomy 18:3-5), Aaronids (Exodus 28:41), and Zadokites (Ezekiel 40-48) all vying for control of and the resources from the Yahwistic cult in both its decentralized and centralized form. Malachi sides with the Levites, presumably on the basis of a reconstructed golden age he refers to as "days of old" and "former years" (v. 4), a favorite prophetic trope (see, e.g., Jeremiah 2:2; Hosea 13:5; Amos 5:25). Like so many prophets before and after him, Malachi compares his historical moment to both the past and the future and finds his own era lacking.

[1] Fullers’ Soap from the Bible’s Bah Humbug Department was a December 7, 2014 article by Rev. B. G. Boak

[2] The Executive Speechwriter Newsletter.

[3] Story told by Rev. Dr. Ward Williams, Caracas, Venezuela and printed by King Duncan in Dynamic Preaching, Vol. IX, No. 12 (Knoxville, Tennessee, Seven World’s Publishing, 1994) pp. 5-6.

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Signs and Dissipation

December 2, 2018, by Rev. Bruce Boak

1st Sunday in Advent

First Presbyterian Church, Oneida, New York

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Psalm 25:1-10

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

A

 new airport scanner may soon be scanning your anxiety along with your unmentionables. Jesus tells us how to make it through with flying colors.

If you’ve had to catch a flight recently, you’re no doubt aware of the increasing hassle it’s become to get from the long-term parking lot to the departure gate, let alone the possible flight delays or cancellation once you finally do get into the airport. 

You start the whole process by wedging yourself and your bags, along with a lot of other weary travelers, into a parking shuttle, which takes you to the terminal. Inside, you no longer can talk directly to a person at check-in but have to use an infernal computer kiosk. Frequently it does not recognize you or your flight, causing you to have to flag down an agent anyway. 

Then you get to security, where you’re asked to take out your baggie of embarrassing personal-hygiene items, pull out all your electronics and do a virtual public striptease before going through the metal detector. That goes off because you forgot the 75 cents in your pocket, causing the security guy to put you in a special area where you get to spread eagle while he pats and wands you down like some shoeless criminal on Cops

Sure, it’s all for the sake of safety.  But as if you aren’t stressed out enough by the whole process, now some experts are looking at ways to measure your anxiety as you stand de-belted, disheveled and shoeless in the security line. They’re doing this to determine whether you’re exhibiting the stress of a would-be terrorist or merely the anxiety of a parent who just dragged three screaming kids past some terminal gift shop. 

While we now have to walk through metal detectors and bomb sniffers, the next thing we may have to face is what some people are calling an “anxiety machine.” It uses “FAST” (Future Attribute Screening Technology) that works on the same principle as a polygraph. That is, it looks for sharp changes in body temperature, pulse and breathing. The difference is that in a polygraph, the subject answers questions, while this machine simply tests people as they walk through. In practice, people whom the machine identifies as suspiciously stressed would then be taken to another area and interviewed in front of a camera that measures minute facial movements to determine if the subject is lying.[1] 

 

All of that makes the rest of the shoe-shucking, belt-removing process sound hassle-free by comparison. 

Even though the machine is still years from possibly being fielded, it already has critics. Some people don’t believe the machine will work because it will subject innocent travelers to what amounts to a medical exam, bringing up a whole host of privacy issues. Others doubt the reliability of the technology itself. “What determines your heart rate is a whole bunch of reasons besides hostile intent,” says Timothy Levine, a Michigan State University expert on deceptive behavior. Reasons such as being late for a flight, for example. “This is the whole reason behavioral profiles don’t work.”

Think about it. If this thing were waiting to scan us at the airport today, there’s a pretty good chance most of us would wind up setting it off.  We’ve got terrorist running around in France and Mali and just about anywhere you can imagine.  We’ve got ice storms and heavy rain, every day we hear about the looming disaster of global warming or just for the moment the specter of El Niño.  We get daily email reminding us to get our flu shots and what to do if a stranger is knocking at your door or tries to steal your credit card.  We’ve got plenty of political candidates insulting the public and there our personal lives are stressed let alone about whether or not our toothpaste got packed in that little baggie. 

The chances are pretty high that most of us would set off the bells and whistles on that little machine. 


Jesus told us to expect this.

But we have to remember that Jesus warned us there’d be days like this. When you flip open to that apocalyptic passage in Luke 21, like we did this morning, you will notice that there’s anxiety all over the place — and not just the kind that comes from missing a flight. Jesus is talking about the kind of anxiety that would cause people to miss the signs of his own in-flight arrival. 


Does anyone remember Jeff Hostetler who once played formerly with the New York Giants? At the beginning of his career, Jeff was a back-up quarterback. By the end of his seventh season, he had thrown fewer than two hundred passes, and none of them had any bearing on the outcome of a game.

Then Phil Simms, the starting quarterback of the Giants, went down with an injury, and coach Bill Parcels looked to his back-up quarterback on the bench and said, “Okay, Jeff, it’s your turn.” Jeff Hostetler ran out onto the field and led his team to victory not only in that game but in the remaining two games of the season. 

But if you are a Bills fan, you might recall that one of those two games was an NFC championship against the San Francisco 49ers.  Hostetler was injured in the fourth quarter when Jim Burt tackled him below the knees.  Although his knee was injured on the play, Hostetler was able to walk off the field on his own and after some work with a trainer came back and led the team to two late scoring drives culminating with a Matt Bahr field goal, and a 15-13 victory.  The next week, it was the relatively untried Jeff Hostetler, standing in for Phil Simms who led the Giants past the favored Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV in a 20 to 19 victory.

 

I watched that game in Ohio.  One day I encountered Jeff at a Monday luncheon for football fans.  It was my job to offer the blessing.  I learned that during those seven years when Jeff was in waiting, he threw thousands of passes through a swinging tire. He worked with his wide receivers and running backs in countless practice sessions, sharpening and honing his skills. He lifted tons of weights, did hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups, jogged many miles, and did numerous wind sprints. I learned from another observer that Jeff literally spent hundreds of hours poring over the playbook, studying not only his own offense and defense but the defenses of the opposing teams.”[2]  When Coach Parcells turned to Jeff Hostetler and said, “Okay, Jeff, it’s your turn,” Jeff was ready.

We are beginning that season of the year we call Advent. Advent is a time of preparation. It is a time of getting ready. The Latin derivative of the word Advent means literally “to come.” During these weeks we focus our attention on the coming of Christ into our world. We consider the words of the prophets and their expectations for the coming Messiah. We ponder the meaning also of those texts in the New Testament that speak of Christ’s return to rule, to judge, and to save at the end of time.

Signs

We live in a time when we are surrounded by signs. The song from the sixties said, “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign/ Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?”

Some of you grew up in an era before Interstate highways. Most travel back then was done on two lane roads. Along those roads would often be posted a series of five small red signs with white letters on them containing a humorous poem on four of those signs, with a 5th sign reserved for their sponsor. Does anybody know what I’m talking about? That’s right--Burma-Shave signs. For those too young to remember, here are some examples of those signs:

Drove Too Long/ Driver Snoozing/ What Happened Next/ Is Not Amusing. Burma-Shave.

Around The Curve/ Lickety-Split/ Beautiful Car/ Wasn’t It? Burma-Shave.

I’ve listed a few others in the bulletin this morning and if you know where to look on Strong Road in the Mendon Hills to the south of us, you’ll see an old Burma Shave sign. 

The song says, “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign . . .”   Yes, there are signs, but sometimes it takes some event, like missing one of them before we become aware that something simple may have been a sign for us.  A missed sign can create challenge.

One Christmas, Patricia had planned to attend a family reunion in Florida. It had been years since the members of her family had all seen each other. Many of them were living in different parts of the world and had started families of their own. Some had never met each other. This formerly close knit family decided on a reunion to help the younger ones get to know their relatives better through a weekend of fellowship. Patricia had been looking forward to this event. She had even helped to plan the reunion. Long distance telephone conversations had brought all the plans to a satisfactory place. It was now time for the event.

Instead of flying to Florida, Patricia decided to drive. It would save her on the airfare but also give her a time to explore and discover new things and places along the way. Patricia liked talking on her cell phone while she drove and she listened to music on her iPod. Fortunately, Patricia reached Florida safely, but the distractions of her high tech toys caused her to miss a sign for an important turn.

Before long, she was lost--unaware of what to do next. She began to worry. This was an event she did not want to miss. She had been looking forward to this reunion for quite some time. But because she missed that sign, she missed her turn and therefore she missed most of the reunion, getting there after some of her relatives had already left. While she was happy that she got to see the remaining relatives, she was heartbroken that she missed others and the joy of the reunion itself. But she missed a sign.

Signs are important. Imagine trying to navigate your way in an area unknown to you without signs or a GPS. Signs keep us aware of our surroundings; they help with directions; and they even help us to keep safe by offering warnings to us. To ignore signs is risky. It can sometimes be quite costly. So has it ever been.

Go back with me to the year 1941. Two American soldiers observe something unusual on their radar. They report it to their supervisor, a rather young, inexperienced Lieutenant. It was a peaceful Sunday morning, nobody else around and this young Lieutenant, thinking what they had seen on radar was planes on maneuvers from California said, “Don’t worry about it.” But they should have worried about it. What these two soldiers had seen were the first signs of 353 planes on their way to Pearl Harbor. They reached there approximately two hours later on Dec. 7th, 1941, a day many will recall about a week from today.

“Don’t worry about it!” said their superior officer. A very critical sign was missed. And a tragic, devastating air attack took place. Signs are important.

Our lesson for today begins like this: “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In this passage, Jesus notes that there are signs that will precede the coming of the “Son of Man.” Two weeks ago we looked at a similar passage in which we emphasized that Christ said that no one, not even he himself, knew when that day would be. And yet, he said, there will be signs. These signs will cause people to be terrified. The signs include the sun, moon, and stars being shaken and the sea roaring and being tossed. The world will experience an unprecedented state of chaos. Things will be out of control. It is a disturbing passage. Yet notice what he says about these events.

 “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

He doesn’t say, “Duck! Run for cover! Go crazy with fear!” He says, “Stand up and lift up your heads . . . your redemption is drawing near.”

That wonderful preacher Tony Campolo says that when he was growing up preachers used to scare kids by warning them that Jesus could appear at any time, and woe betide them if Jesus turned up and found them at a movie theater! Tony says he grew up with a constant fear, every time he went to the movies, that Jesus would return during the feature and he’d miss the end of the movie.[3]

There are still those kind of preachers around who use fear as a motivator, but, fortunately not as many as there used to be. I’ve never been very good at mixing faith with fear. Especially during Advent. If you love Jesus, the thought of him coming any time, whether at Christmas or at the end of time ought to be an occasion for rejoicing, not being afraid. “Joy to the world,” wrote Isaac Watts, “the Lord is come.” That’s my kind of religion.

I have an apocryphal story about the end of time and Jesus’ return, especially as it is intimated in the Book of Revelation.  Apocryphal means that I can’t vouch as to its authenticity, except that it was relayed to me by David Crawford.[4]  David was the Director of Student Relations and Director of Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary, an independent graduate school dwarfed and surrounded by Princeton University.  David was an incredible person to know and I got to know him best after graduating and not before.  David was the kind of person who went out on the 4th week of Advent and bought a poinsettia for every international student at the seminary and then decided that international students at the University shouldn’t be forgotten and purchased poinsettias for all of them, too. 

David was a fan of Princeton University Football and Basketball.  He never missed a game and got to know the players personally, often hosting them in his home for supper.  One year, he tried to convince Bill Bradley to come to the seminary.  Bill, you may know has been an executive with Starbucks.  But before that he was a U.S. Senator, and a professional basketball player with the New York Knicks, a gold medal winner on the 1964 US Olympic team and led the Princeton Tigers Basketball Team to being one of the final four in the NCAA tournament.  After graduation from college Bill was trying to decide what to do.  Would it be theological seminary or some other graduate school?  David Crawford wasn’t as convincing as he had hope and Bradley accepted a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford.  But when he was back in the area, he came and played pickup basketball in the rickety old Whitely Gymnasium at the Seminary.  Why?  Well, there were three All American basketball players attending the seminary and although the seminary team never practiced really, they loved to play ball.

According to David, the seminary’s pick-up team scrimmaged the University to help them get ready for Intercollegiate Play and the Seminary team cleaned the clocks of the very surprised university.  In their minds the seminary was a bunch of old men.  Little did they know that All Americans in college can be very big and strong?

Now, Whitely Gymnasium needed a bit of help.  And there was an old custodian who took care of the place, occasionally spraying Pinesol on the floor of the locker room to help it smell better.  No one normally had a key and so playing in the place meant having to know when the custodian was going to be around.  When this pick-up team, Bradley included, came into the place for their one practice before playing the University, they saw this custodian reading the Bible.  This day one of the seminarians, Floyd Brady, an All American from Hope Michigan went up to him and asked, “What are you reading?” and the janitor replied, “The Book of Revelation.”  With a bit of surprise Brady asked, “The Book of Revelation? Do you understand it?”

“Oh yes, “I understand it.”

“You understand the Book of Revelation!  Well then, what does it mean?”

Very quietly that old janitor answered, “You got to read the signs.  It means that Jesus is going to win.  And that’s all that matters to those who love Jesus. Jesus is going to win.”

 Jesus said to his disciples, “Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

More Signs

Then he told them this parable: “look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the Kingdom of God is near.”    

So, when we see the world going crazy, we’ll know that the kingdom of God is a tad nearer. In order that we might recognize it, let me suggest for us some image for what the kingdom of God is.  Theologian Marcus Borg outlines it this way, “The kingdom of God is what life would be like on earth if God were king and the kings and emperors of this world were not . . . It is a world of economic justice and peace, where the nations beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, every family has its own vine and fig tree (that is, its own land), and no one is made to live in fear.”

To me, that sounds like a pretty great place to live. A place where “no one is made to live in fear.” Does that mean no more cancer? No more foreclosures on homes? Nobody unemployed? No more terrorism? No more sickness? No more pain? Sign me up!

Our Dissipation

We are such a fearful people. Last year one man died in this country from Ebola, and you would have thought the whole world was collapsing. We live in a time when there is more hope for people who are sick than there has ever been before, but we are more fearful of disease than any generation before us.

We worry about the economy.  Recessions will cause you to tighten your belts a bit, but the truth is that we live in homes twice the size of those our parents lived in, yet somehow we’ve got the idea that the whole world is going to collapse.

We are worried about events in the Middle East. Compare the threat from Isis, as terrible as Isis is, with that from Hitler and you will see that we have no idea how well we have it.  But as we watch the cable news networks, we begin to surmise that the whole world is about to fly apart.  To paraphrase Jesus: “When we see the world going crazy, we’ll know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Assurance of Jesus’ Words

The call for this first Sunday in Advent is not a call for fear, but a call to faith.  Of course, there will always be bad things happening in this world, but do not despair. It’s ultimately under God’s control. And God has no intention of forsaking his creation.  A few verses later Christ says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”   Now there is a confident preacher if ever I’ve heard one.  What preacher would have the hutzpah to say “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away?”  Lots of Sundays I walk into this pulpit and think to myself, “I can’t remember what I said last Sunday, how in the world is what I’m about to say now going to be helpful?”

English has a lush vocabulary of approximately 600,000 living words and a few thousand more in stages of oblivion, according to a lexicographer’s research reported in Atlantic Monthly.  Although our language has over two million words, the average person has a hard-core vocabulary of 1,000 words.[5]  The surprise of this is: half of everything we say or read may be accounted for by only 43 words and one fourth of all spoken and written English requires only 9 words.  The nine words are: and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, and you.

Words have a greater effect on human life.  Words that heal and warm the psyche are just as lasting and echoing as the hurtful ones.  Words can endure for our good as well as our betterment.  Enduring words like: Mother, thanks, forgive, hope, and the lasting words we string together like: I love you, you did a good job, and you mean more to me than words can express.  These words never pass away when we sense they are sincerely expressed.

You know, at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln was an afterthought.  Edward Everett was the main event.  He had drawing power, for his day, of a modern rock star.  Anyone here know anything that Edward Everett said that day?  He was the former President of Harvard and the event was put off a month so he could be there.  Actually Everett recited from memory a carefully worked text and held the throng’s attention for two hours.  Lincoln was asked to make a few remarks.

Here is what Everett wrote to Lincoln,  I should be glad to flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes. 

Ever since first visiting in my grandfather’s garage as a boy, I have been somewhat fascinated with automobiles.  Grandfather Boak used to sell Willy’s Knights.  Then he sold Plymouths and DeSotos.  And yes those brands are all gone now.  As a young boy I could imagine words passing away, but not those cars, not that gold and white 1957 DeSoto Adventurer!  But, most all cars rust.

Does that mean we can trust every promise that Christ ever made to us?  Of course it does--including the promise that, no matter what happens, he will give us a peace that passes understanding . . . if we will trust in him. We can trust his every promise . . . including the promise that he will never forget us or forsake us . . . including the promise that he has prepared a mansion for us, that where he is so shall we also be.

Then he does add a word of caution. “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life . . .” Surely he’s not talking about us. I can’t imagine that any of you will be drinking or carousing or worrying during this holiday season. Of course not. I say that in good humor. What Christ is saying to us is that we live in a world of freedom. Some of us will bring heartache on ourselves or those we love by unhealthy behavior. Some of us will clog up our veins with unhealthy foods, or put stress on our hearts by unhealthy anxiety during this holiday season. But that’s not his will for us. It’s simply a realistic appraisal of human nature.

"Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly”

Biblical Faith and Assurance

Biblical faith acknowledges the reality of evil and pain. The Bible is candid. There is no place on this earth that suffering and heartbreak cannot access. Hurricanes, train wrecks, someone shooting outside a restaurant or a medical clinic, and even the unexplained breaking that could cause an NFL player to snap off the field give evidence of the daily challenges we face.  The wolves of terror stalk many an embassy. 

We're never totally prepared, are we?  - Either on a societal level or a personal one we are not prepared.  And so our hearts are weighed down with dissipation. A diagnosis of cancer or Alzheimer's lurks. An automobile accident or a fire can happen most any time.  A company can fail. 

We turn to scripture for help and reassurance. And we come to these words from Luke 21:

"There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Biblical faith acknowledges the reality of evil. Most scholars classify this text with Jesus' apocalyptic teachings about the last days of earth's existence. That is why we find this imagery at the beginning of Advent. Advent is the celebration of Jesus' coming into the world. The Second Advent is when he will return in power and glory. When will that be? No one knows. But one thing is clear: Before it happens there will be many trials and tribulations: "nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world . . ." This can be a very cruel world, and we are never prepared.  As difficult as something catastrophic can be, it is often the small, nagging irritations that loom large.

There is a wonderful story told by James Michener in his book, Chesapeake. He says that the Choptank Indians on Maryland's Eastern Shore believed that God gave them the bay for transportation and for fish.  They believed that God gave them reeds for houses and mats and crabs for delicious food. They also believed that God gave them those mosquitoes to show that God could do whatever God wanted.[6]

That may be as good an explanation as any of the presence of pain.  But still, some of us feel that God has overdone it. This can be a very cruel world. Sometimes we are left sobbing, "No wolf! No wolf!" But the wolf is there.  This is when we are tempted to be weighed down with dissipation. The destruction is enormous, the pain overwhelming.

In this passage, Luke uses words like "anguish," "faint from terror," "apprehensive," and he describes a world shaken to its foundations. But then we read these words: "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." What a powerful message for troubling times. This is the ultimate Advent message: our redemption is near. No matter how heavy the burden, how stark the situation, how discouraging the dilemma, we can make it. We can endure. We can conquer. Why? Because Jesus Christ has come into our world!

Restoration and Hope despite pain

Sometime back there was a TV drama. It was about a nurse, a single mom. Her husband had left her with three children, twin girls about twelve years old, and a boy sixteen. Her Dad was in a nursing home in another city. He had broken his hip and wanted her to come visit him. She didn't have the money, or the time. Still, she felt the guilt.

She had contracted the flu at Thanksgiving, but had not really stopped to get over it. Now she feels lousy, tired and worn out.

Then one evening, she discovers drugs in her son's bedroom and there's a terrible fight. She cries miserably through the night. The next day at work is a total disaster. She has a confrontation with another nurse and loses her composure with an irritable patient. Then one of her favorite patients dies. While she was still processing that sad event, she bumped into an orderly, spilling a meal tray. She walks home with a feeling of despair.

On the way, she passes an old, brownstone church. Inside she can hear carols being sung. Something pulls her inside. She sits in the back. There she sees a typical children's re-enactment of the nativity scene, complete with makeshift robes, a manger, Mary and Joseph, and the baby.

But there's something different about the baby in this manger. It's not a doll. It's a real baby. And it's doing what real babies do--trying to create havoc. She sees the baby Jesus raise its hand and try to pull Mary's nose. Then it starts getting fussy. Finally, it begins to cry. Not a gentle cry, but a full-throated scream. Nobody can hear the boy reading at the lectern. A woman leaves her pew and takes the baby in her arms. It has little effect. The congregation sings "Silent Night" as the baby with the strongest set of lungs in the county is taken noisily from the sanctuary.

The service is over and somehow the weary nurse now feels energized. "It was a real baby," the nurse marvels to herself. "Jesus was a real baby. It was not just a story. He cried and fussed and messed. He caused his mother anguish. He was one of us, just like us." Then she thinks to herself, "God really cares about us. God really cares about real life." She becomes radiant at the thought. She buttons her coat and steps from the church into the cold streets. She smiles at strangers. Something in her has changed.  All that, because suddenly she realized God had come to earth in human form. 

 

Our redemption is at hand. I don't know what you are going through right now. But, whatever it is, Christ can help you through. The Bible is quite realistic: in this world there are trials and tribulations, but be of good cheer. There is one who has overcome the world.

Head lifting is our being on watch

Like a child waiting for Santa Claus, we are to lift our heads and wait with an expectant faith.  Our waiting and watching is not so much rooted in fear as it is to be like a couple awaiting the birth of their first child.  It is more like a family waiting for the return of their soldier after receiving word that he is safe and headed home.

Robby Robins was an Air Force pilot during the first Iraq war. After his 300th mission, he was surprised to be given permission to immediately pull his crew together and fly his plane home. These young military men flew across the ocean to Massachusetts and then had a long drive to western Pennsylvania. They drove all night. When his buddies dropped Robbins off at his driveway just after sun-up, there was a big banner across the garage--”Welcome Home Dad!”

How did they know? No one had called, and the crew themselves hadn’t expected to leave so quickly. Robins relates that when he walked into the house, the kids, half dressed for school, screamed, “Daddy!” His wife Susan came running down the hall--she looked terrific--hair fixed, make-up on, and a crisp yellow dress. “How did you know?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” she answered through tears of joy. “We knew you’d try to surprise us, so we were ready every day.”[7]

That is to be our attitude toward Advent. This is a season for waiting on tiptoe. Our redemption is drawing near. The kingdom is drawing near. Christ’s words will never pass away. You can trust his promises forever. Therefore, “Be always on watch.”

If our anxiety is setting off alarms everywhere we go, it might be time for us to step back, take a deep breath and offer prayer to the Lord who will make “all things new” (Revelation 21:5). There’s no better way to lower your heart rate, your blood pressure and your body temperature, as well as your anxious spirit, than slowing down and communing with Christ. Jesus reminds us that he is ultimately in charge. The journey, though tough, will end well, and everything will be as good in the end as it was in the beginning of creation.  

What can we say about today’s passages?  Don’t let the evil in the world get you down with dissipation.  Preparation is almost always helpful, so we should be prepared.  And, let’s pay a little attention to the signs.

So, the next time you’re at the airport going through the usual dump-and-dance routine, think of it as a great opportunity to demonstrate the opposite of anxiety to all those stressed-out folks around you. A kind word to that TSA agent who’s patting you down, an extra hand to that mom trying to get the stroller on the belt, a smile to the guy who’s checking your face against your passport picture. Make them wonder if you know something that they don’t. 


Commentary on Luke

This passage is part of Luke’s narration of the exchange between Jesus and some of his disciples about the temple’s future. After Jesus announces that “not one stone will be left upon another,” they ask him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all this is about to take place?” (vv. 6-7). Jesus’ initial answer indicates that neither conflicts between nations nor natural disasters would be signs of that calamitous day. Rather than being anxious about such “dreadful portents and great signs from heaven,” Jesus exhorts his disciples to endure (vv. 9-19). But when they “see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,” they will “know that its desolation has come near” (v. 20). At that time, they should flee Jerusalem with dispatch because the city’s imminent demise will have arrived (vv. 21-24).

As Luke describes the events associated with the temple’s catastrophic destruction, he makes use of familiar prophetic imagery to alert his community about that tragic moment in history. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused [
sunoch eqnwn en aporia] by the roaring of the sea and the waves” (v. 25). That that day would be particularly shocking is emphasized by the fact that the prophetic imagery is inverted. For, rather than the Lord coming to rescue Jerusalem from her enemies, the city and the temple would be destroyed (cf. Isaiah 13:9-13; 34:1-17; Joel 2:1-11, 30-32; 3:14-17). Moreover, in contrast to the time period before the temple’s destruction, when Jesus cautioned his disciples not to misread customary disputes among states and natural processes on the earth (i.e., wars, earthquakes, famines), on this occasion the signs will point to an event that would utterly disrupt their world: “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken” (v. 26; cf. Isaiah 24:17-20). In other words, people will find it nearly impossible to believe that they’re actually seeing the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. To those who encounter these dreadful experiences, it will feel as though the world is coming to an end.

To illustrate how distressing Jerusalem’s judgment would be, Luke invokes Daniel’s apocalyptic figure of “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” to portray that day (v. 27; cf. Daniel 7:13-14). Yet this disastrous event isn’t the end of the world. Instead, “when these things begin to take place,” Jesus tells his disciples to “stand up and raise [their] heads, because [their] redemption is drawing near” (v. 28). In sum, rather than being a day of despair, it will be a day of hope for them and will point to the redemption anticipated by the prophetess Anna (Luke 2:38; 1:68; 24:21).

In the next portion of this pericope (vv. 29-33), Luke likely recounts and applies a well-known parable or proverbial saying as he attributes it to Jesus: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near” (vv. 29-30). Translating the figure of speech, the parable states the obvious: No one will miss summer’s approach. When trees put out their leaves, anyone and everyone knows that summer isn’t far away. There is no need to refer to a calendar, hear a weather forecast or look for cryptic and unusual signs that require the interpretive skills of a shaman.

In the same way, “when you see these things taking place [i.e., “Jerusalem surrounded by armies”], you know that the kingdom of God is near” (v. 31; cf. Luke 9:27; 10:9, 11; 11:20; 17:20-21; 19:11). From Jesus’ perspective, when they see these things unfolding before them, they are to remain steadfast, confident in their faith. These events — though disturbing on one level — shouldn’t surprise the disciples because Jesus had already spoken about them ahead of time. In short, Jesus’ words are to reassure his disciples. For, when he says to them, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (vv. 32-33), his words about the destruction of Jerusalem are merely further confirmation that God is sovereign. And just as he had done in the past, God would continue to watch over, anticipate and be involved in the progression of human affairs, especially those things that impact his people.

Given that reality, the more critical issue for Luke centers on the conduct of Jesus’ disciples. They are to “[b]e on guard [
prosecete; imperative present active] so that [their] hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch [them] unexpectedly [aijnidioV; or, ‘suddenly’], like a trap [pagiV; or, ‘snare’]” (vv. 34-35a). Although the terms “dissipation” [kraipal; or, “drunken headache”] and “drunkenness” [meqh] could literally refer to the effects one might experience after imbibing too much alcohol, it seems preferable to view them as metaphors, just as the fig tree was a metaphor for the approach of summer. If so, Luke’s point is that followers of Jesus are not to become discouraged, even when they see and experience disturbing events, that is, “signs” that might otherwise traumatize their “hearts,” leading them to believe that God has abandoned them. Because Jesus taught his disciples about these events before they took place, there would be no justifiable reason to give in to despair. Neither Jesus’ disciples nor even members of Luke’s community are to become disheartened or think that all is lost and life is hopeless. They are not to let “the worries of this life [merimnaiV biwtikaiV]” distract them. Why? It’s because these kinds of things — whether the destruction of Jerusalem or subsequent adversities and misfortunes — “will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth” (v. 35). Rather than acting as if they’re intoxicated or suffering the effects of intoxication, they are to “[b]e alert at all times, praying that [they] may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man” (v. 36).


[1] Frank, Thomas. “Anxiety-detecting machines could spot terrorists.” USA Today, September 18, 2008. usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-18-bioscanner_N.htm.

[2] Over the Top (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994).

[3] http://catchingfiresummaryreview.blogspot.com/.

[4] Information about David can be found in Hope Anderson, “David Crawford: An Ambassador of Good Will,” InSpire, (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton Theological Seminary) Fall/Winter Issue available at https://ptsem.edu/Publications/inspire2/3.4/feature4.htm

[5] Idea from the sermon “Stratos, Cirrus, Nimbus” preached on November 20, 1997 at Christ Presbyterian Church, Canton, Ohio by Rev. B. G. Boak.  The sermon was a communion meditation and focused on Luke 21:27-28 for the 1st Sunday of Advent. Here we have strung together a “word count” for 2012 rather than 1997.

[6] http://www.st-albans-parish.org/sermons_stories/sermons/2003/q4/1116_wade.html.

[7] Rev. Gregory Seltz, http://www.lutheranhour.org/sermon.asp?articleid=18971&mode=print.

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THROWING OFF THE CLOAK
October 28, 2018
By:  Larry Beasley, Stated Clerk


I expect that my wife Carol and I are like many of you that have lived in one place for a long time. We’ve got a lot of “stuff.” Sometimes I walk around the house and ask myself “Where did all of this stuff come from?” Our daughters all deny it, but I know that there are substantial remnants of three college dorm rooms in our basement. I ask them “When are you gonna come get your stuff out of my basement?” “I don’t have any stuff in your basement,” they all say. Then I point to a plastic bin, or a box that’s overflowing . . . if I’m talking with Sarah, she will claim “That’s not mine; that’s Taylor’s. . . or Anna’s . . .” and if I’m talking with Taylor or Anna, the same thing happens . . . I was thinking about some of the old “stuff” we have this week. We have an exercise area in our basement. It has nice mats on the floor, free weights, stability ball, weight bench, Pilates machine. Our grandson Liam likes to say “Let’s go work out, Papa!” and we’ll go downstairs. He just likes to mess around with the stability ball, but it’s a workout to him. There is also an old DVD player and a television for the exercise videos my wife and I use. They sit on an old desk that I had in my bedroom as a teenager; I was looking at a folding table this week, thinking I should replace it, but, hey . . . it works. We have a microwave oven in our kitchen that we brought with us when we moved here from Nashville 25 years ago. We’ve replaced all the other appliances in the kitchen more than once, and the microwave really doesn’t match anything else. Carol and I have thought we should get a new one . . . but hey, it works . . . I have a pair of Asics tennis shoes I bought probably ten years ago. They sit in the bottom of a closet and I forget that I have them. Got them out this week and put them on. One of the soles is loose; I wondered if I could glue them or something. They still look pretty good though, so I wore them this week. I was on my way back from a meeting, driving along the arterial in Utica. Wasn’t really thinking about much of anything, kind of doing that drifting thing we all sometimes do when we’re driving . . . and I realized that a car had stopped in front of me and I needed to brake right away. Moved my foot off the accelerator and went for the brake . . . and the loose sole of the shoe caught the brake pedal, so I couldn’t quite make the brake work. I got my foot loose just in time, hit the brakes and stopped with only inches to spare. And I realized that those shoes that are broken, that I didn’t want to throw out, had almost gotten me in an accident. My determination to hold on to an old, worn out pair of shoes came very close to hurting me, or worse, someone else. That made me think about the microwave. One of our sons-in-law who works in technology has been telling us for a long time that our old oven has quite likely lost its ability to seal properly and we may well be in the path of harmful microwaves if we’re standing close to it when we use it. Our determination not to replace it may well be killing us. And that desk in the basement. Every time I look at it, I remember sitting at it alone in my room as my parents were having a violent argument in another room. And it was also where I was sitting when my mother told me that my dad was leaving us. My determination not to replace it causes me grief and heartache every time I set eyes on it. In a very real way, it is toxic to me. All of these things . . . and more besides . . . are doing harm to me. Why do I persist in keeping them? Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. Then they called the blind man, saying to him, “Be of good cheer. Rise, He is calling you.” And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus.1 Bartimaeus knew that the Christ was in close proximity; and, like the woman with the issue of blood, Bartimaeus knew that if he could get to Him, he would be healed. He cries out . . . and is told to be silent, but he persists, and then is called Jesus’ presence. What is the first thing he does? He throws off the garment he is wearing. How curious. Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this text, says “. . . he cast away everything that might be in danger of throwing him down, or might hinder him in coming to Christ, or retard his motion.”2 None of the other commentaries I have make any mention of Bartimaeus’ action. But I believe it to be most significant. Clearly he didn’t need it when he met Jesus; it was not necessary for him to receive the thing he wanted most--his sight. Indeed, as Matthew Henry observes, it may well have been an impediment to getting there, and Bartimaeus was swift 1 Mark 10:46-50. The Holy Bible: New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982. N. pag. Biblegateway.com. Gospel.com. Web. 27 October 2018. . Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptures are from the New King James version. 2 “Mark 10.” Matthew Henry's Commentary: Matthew to John, by Matthew Henry, vol. 5, Hendrickson Publishers, 1991, p. 424.  to jettison it when he realized it did not serve his purpose; in fact it might hinder him from his encounter with the Christ. And that was unacceptable. Hold on to this thought. Over the past year, I’ve had at least a half-dozen people tell me that I need to read Tod Bolsinger’s book Canoeing the Mountains. And every time I heard it, I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .” I saw a New Yorker cartoon recently; a woman is sitting on a bed, talking on the telephone. There is a large pile of books on the bed next to her. The caption is “Hello, 911? That pile of books he’s been meaning to read finally fell over on him.” The table next to our bed looks something like that. So I was reticent to go out and get a copy of Canoeing the Mountains, just to have it wind up in that pile. But then a friend who is a church consultant and clergy coach posted a link to an interview with Tod Bolsinger on his blog. Because I trust my friend, I took time to read the 3 article, and . . . oh, my goodness . . . I realized I really did need to read the book. So I did. It has been a revelation. I understand clearly why our congregations and our denomination struggle so. And maybe, just maybe . . . what we need to do about it. Central to Bolsinger’s thesis is that “. . . the seventeen-hundred-year-long era with Christianity at the privileged center of Western culture” has ended. When I talk with 4 congregations in transition, it is clear that most are longing for the church of the 1950s and 1960s, when the pews were full . . . and nobody had to do anything to make that happen. But we recognize that those days are gone, and unless something radical and unforeseen and beyond our control happens in our area--like maybe Amazon is really planning to put their new headquarters in the Mohawk Valley--they are not coming back. At the May Presbytery meeting, the theme was “Our Love for our Gospel Communities.” We celebrated the church communities that have been and those that are now . . . and we also took a moment to lament the church communities that will never be again. We have to come to terms with the hard, cold fact that the place of predominance we enjoyed for decades is no longer ours. Further, the seminaries our clergy attended did not take into consideration that such a moment would ever come to pass. Our clergy were trained for a world that is disappearing. I was in a meeting in Chicago a few weeks ago and sat with a group 5 of clergy that are instructors in the schools of interim ministry where we send pastors to train them for interim work . . . and I came away from that meeting questioning whether the instructors themselves are aware of this. It sounded to me like they were teaching a transitional skill set that was still modeled on the old perspectives, that our churches are still the privileged 3 “Tod Bolsinger: What Does It Mean to Stop ‘Canoeing the Mountains’?” Faith and Leadership, Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, 24 July 2018, www.faithandleadership.com/tod-bolsinger-what-does-it-mean-stop-canoeing-mountains. 4 “Seminary Didn't Prepare Me for This.” Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory, by Tod Bolsinger, Intervarsity Press, 2018, p. 12. 5 Ibid, page 18. centers. Bolsinger’s metaphor for where we are today is that of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. The charter that Lewis and Clark received from President Thomas Jefferson was to find the headwaters of the Missouri River. The thinking in that day was that, if those headwaters were to be discovered, a similar waterway that led to the Pacific Ocean would also be found. After months of hard traveling, the Corps did indeed discover those headwaters. But as they stood at the Continental Divide and looked westward, all they saw were mountains, and more mountains . . . and more mountains. There was no waterway beyond where they stood. The territory they had just traversed was nothing like the territory that lay before them. The maps they had to guide them were useless. Not only were their maps useless . . . so were the canoes that had safely and effectively transported them to the place where they stood. In fact, those same canoes upon which they had relied to get them there were suddenly a tremendous liability. To retain them would be costly, would even be a hindrance . . . would even be potentially harmful. Like my old tennis shoes . . . like my old desk . . . like our microwave oven . . . and like Bartimaeus’ cloak. Like our notion that we, in our 21st century churches are still the privileged center of our culture . . . and the way we continue to go about conducting ourselves when everything around us has shifted and changed. Tod Bolsinger says that the maps Lewis and Clark were given were nothing like the territory they now faced . . . and we are in very much the same place. The maps that brought us to this time and to this place are nothing like the territory that is before us. There weren’t any maps for Lewis and Clark, and there aren’t any maps for us. The team that Lewis and Clark led had to learn new skills to take them forward, and in doing so became the Corps of Discovery; Bolsinger says that it now the task before us, to for our congregations to become “learning communities.” It means looking at the things we’re holding on to that no longer serve us, that are hindrances to us . . . indeed, may even be toxic for us . . . and having the courage to discard them, as Lewis and Clark shed their canoes. It’s probably a good idea to make a couple of things clear at this point. Has the truth of the Gospel changed? Not at all. Has the Gospel lost its importance. Not at all. And am I recommending some full scale upheaval of everything we trust and know and love? Not for one moment. We do need to acknowledge that the territory around us has changed; the way forward is not clear. And the knowledge and skills we have, in all likelihood, are not sufficient to carry us on. I once worked for a technology company whose founder was something of a legend in our community. I wanted to come to work for him to find out what he knew--and he knew a great deal. It was a very formative experience in my professional career, and he and I are still good friends. He had a saying: whatever it is that got you here, it’s not enough to keep you here. He understood that we needed to keep learning and adapting to changing circumstances if we wanted the company to survive and continue to provide services and employment for the people that worked there. In light of this, what are we to do? I think we can begin by asking ourselves some good questions. Great leadership, it seems to me, is largely about asking the right questions, doing so in such a way as to get people to face up to and embrace the true reality that is before them. A good starting point is this one: what is it about us that is makes us essentially us? Who are we at our core? What is it about us that makes us who we really are, and “If we stop being about this, we stop being?”6 I submit to you that, as you begin with your new interim pastor, this is probably the most important question for all of you to discuss. Who are we at the very center of our collective being? And what about this is simply not negotiable . . . because if we stop being about this, we simply stop being. What do we consider to be our “code?” I think this is the optimal place to start because management consultant Ron Heifetz--who Tod Bolsinger quotes liberally--says in his one of his books “You know the old adage ‘people resist change.’ It is not really true . . . What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves a real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.”7 So one of the things we need to do is reassure ourselves of the fact that, when it comes down to those things that make us us, we are not going to lose them. When it comes down to the things that we believe at our core, those things that form our foundation as a community, they will remain our core and our foundation. If we start with that premise, and in that confidence, it makes it easier to ask the next question: what and where are our canoes? What are those things that are like Bartimaeus’ cloak . . . things that we can safely and 6 Ibid, page 94 7 “Introduction: Purpose and Possibility.” The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, by Ronald Heifetz et al., Harvard Business Press, 2009, p. 22. confidently throw off because we know that, even if we do, we’re still going to be “us” . . . but we’ll also possibly free up energy and resources for something new and exciting. Finding these things and deciding to cast them off--knowing also that we’re not going to lose what is important at our core, that we’re not going to violate our “code”--puts us in a place where we can give ourselves permission to take other steps, to do things and take actions, innovating “at the edges,” experimenting with ministry, learning new adaptive skills that will help us better communicate the Gospel and fulfill the mission to which God calls us. There is a pastor at a church in a neighboring presbytery who, whether by choice or by chance, is doing this. There was an annual event that the church hosted, and had done so for years. Enthusiasm and energy for that event had waned, and reached a point where there weren’t enough people to make it happen. The committee responsible for the event went to the pastor and told her “You have to find people to help us!” The pastor listened, and asked the committee a question: “What would happen if we simply didn’t do this event this year?” The committee claimed people would miss it, people would complain. The pastor said “Maybe. But let’s just try it this year and see what happens.” So they (nervously) abandoned their plans for the event. And what did happen? No one complained; no one missed it. No one said anything about it. The church had also at one time had a clothing shop. They had obtained hanging racks from a department store that went out of business to use for the clothes. The church had decided some years ago to close the clothing shop, as another church in the community had started one, and had more energy for the task. They were doing a brisk business and approached the first church about using their old clothing racks. By this time, the unused racks were stored in a room of the church, and took up the entire room. At first the session said “NO! You can’t have them. They’re OUR racks.” But the pastor asked the question “What if we just ‘loaned’ the racks to the clothing shop, with the understanding that, if we ever want them back, they have to give them to us?” The session agreed . . . it has been several years, and the church has never seen a need for their cherished racks, never asked for their return. But what did happen is that the room where the racks were stored and taking up space has been made a classroom and now serves a useful purpose. This church is finding new and exciting ways to minister to their community largely because they’re finding their canoes and casting them aside. In many ways they are no longer wrapped up in a cloak that hinders and distracts them from the mission to which they are called. They’re freeing up energy and resources and finding new and unique ways to answer God’s call, and, as Bolsinger puts it, “. . . to participate in Christ’s mission to establish the kingdom of God ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’”8 Bolsinger also quotes Darrell Guder, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, that “. . . the very purpose of the ecclesia, the apostolate . . . is, ‘the formation of the witnessing 8 Bolsinger, op. cit., page 39  communities whose purpose was to continue the witness that brought them into existence.’”9 And now you, as a people, as a “beloved community,” as the church, the apostolate , the ecclesia, as a missionary outpost, a witnessing community in Oneida, New York, mark this 10 11 transition in your history . . . I encourage you to have the conversations with yourself and with your interim. Who are you? What is the witness that brought you into existence? Who are you at the very center of your being? What is your “code?” What are the things about you that are not negotiable, the things that if you stop being those things, you stop being? Discuss them. Mark them. Articulate them . . . and well. Put them somewhere where everyone can see them . . . on your walls, in your newsletter and bulletin, so that everyone knows and remembers who you are and why you exist. And reassure yourselves that, no matter what happens next, you’re not going to lose those things. And with that done, in that confidence and comfort and courage . . . ask yourselves “What and where are our canoes?” What cloak are we wearing that may be hindering us from the next place to which we are called? What are we doing that doesn’t need to be done any more?” It may well be in that casting off that new vision can happen, that new energy and resources can be found, new mission imagined. Tod Bolsinger says “The answer is not to try harder but to start a new adventure.”12 What new adventures await you? To what new places might God be calling you? You don’t have to become a people that you are not in order to answer that call. But now is a good time to remember who you truly are, to identify that “stuff” you’re carrying or storing that no longer serves you, that is a drag and a drain on your energy and your resources. Now is a good time to free yourselves for new vision, to find new excitement about the journey ahead . . . even though none of us is entirely sure where we’re headed or how we’ll get there. I’m not sure that’s the most important thing anyway. I think the most important thing is who we become along the way. While place is important, and the story of the promised land is proof of that, far more important, I believe, is that we are continually molded in the image of God and that we show that forth in our communities. That’s the purpose of the journey. And thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. AMEN. 9 Page 18 10 “The New Apostolic Denomination.” Reclaiming the Great Commission: a Practical Model for Transforming Denominations and Congregations, by Claude E. Payne and Hamilton Beazley, Jossey-Bass, 2001, p. 45. 11 Bolsinger, page 29 12 Ibid, page 33. 

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June 3, 2018
Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:24-34
Philippians 4:6
-7


God’s Shalom


Introduction

WW I ended at a precise time:  eleven o’clock on the morning of November eleventh, 1918. It was agreed by the combatants that all fighting would stop at that precise moment. The racket of rifles would cease, the boom of cannonades end.

    The cost in lives had been enormous.  Almost the entire generation of young men born at the close of the nineteenth century in Europe were killed or wounded, 3 million in the United Kingdom alone.  The names and faces of those who died have faded from memory but to this day in Britain on the anniversary of the armistice, all schools, businesses and persons stop and maintain 2 minutes of silence at 11 a.m.  Thus, the Great War ended in great silence, which is still observed.  It is a mournful quiet that, for all its reverence, cannot begin to match the rage, noise and horror that preceded it.  No wonder then that when we hear the word “peace” we recognize it as a great blessing, as something to be preserved and cherished.

    Two of you requested a sermon on a sometimes quoted, but frequently misunderstood phrase from the Apostle Paul, “… the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds.”  And one of you added the logical question “If it cannot be understood how can it be a … blessing?!”*  First of all, if the peace that is being spoken about is God’s peace I expect it to be superlative and difficult to describe.  Such peace must be of an unusual quality, something like a great calm.  But what would be the difference between such a feeling and a good night’s sleep?  How would we recognize it as being God’s peace?  There has to be something more than a physical or emotional calm attached to God’s peace.  And indeed there is.

What It Isn’t
    Since I began with an illustration of war, let me quickly say that there are moments of calm which are best described as a false peace.  The silence of guns in 1918 didn’t last long, and the next war was even more cataclysmic than the first.  The peace of 1918 was a false peace.  It was a peace filled with unresolved conflict and simmering bitterness.  It was quiet for a little while but there were many loud voices and preparations for war only 12 years later.

    When Paul the apostle speaks of the “peace of God … guard(ing) your hearts and minds” he is not talking about freedom from conflict.  He is describing an inner state for you the believer.

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*(That!, by the way, is exactly how you should read the Scriptures:  engaging with them, questioning, protesting, pondering.)

We live in a world filled with many conflicts, some of them deadly like the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, and some of them in your own hometown as when two neighbors can’t settle a property dispute and go to court with lawyers in tow.  Conflicts can be obvious and loud, while others are on display in legal debate.  When people shun each other their conflict may be silent, but they are not living in a peaceful state.  The peace of God, Paul knew, isn’t found in churches filled with silent conflicts.  That is a false peace.

    We have to abolish from our thinking that God will award us freedom from troubles, persecutions and conflict.  But we can be given the peace which comes from God to face our difficulties.  Jesus knew about conflict.  He was not some dreamy-eyed idealist.  His parables speak of jealousy between brothers, managers who are cruel to their underlings, farm workers who grumble over being short-changed.  He once famously told his disciples he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Mt. 10:34) because families would quarrel over their allegiance to him.  He also told his disciples plainly of his own end:  rejection by the priests in Jerusalem, arrest, and death at the hands of Gentiles (Lk. 31-33; et. al.).  Yet throughout his life he lived with the calm assurance which comes from having peace with God.  How else could Jesus have stood up to the hostility and opposition that dogged his every step?  

    It is that same equanimity, that calm assurance in the midst of threats and trouble that you can have also.  For that is the peace of God which passes human understanding.  Hard to understand?  Yes!, in the sense that it is not explained.  But impossible to attain?  No.  It comes from faith.  It comes from the Spirit of God, not we ourselves.

What It Is
    Living with the faith of Jesus Christ changes our lives.  We are not perfected in a moment upon our baptism or confirmation, but if we stay faithful we will learn the steps, the way to walk, as he did.  In the gospel of Matthew Jesus calls his disciples and immediately instructs them with the teaching we know as the Sermon on the Mount.  He teaches them about prayer, and charitable giving, and a proper application of the Law.  But near its conclusion we come to his instruction about worry.  We don’t think of worry as a sin, but it comes close.  Perhaps no temptation infects our hearts or minds more than worry.  At some time or another you have worried about:  the weather … your hair … the money in your pocket … the money in somebody else’s pocket! … your health, your children, your friends, your adversaries, the President!!! ... the economy … the Boy Scouts of America, your wife, your friend … (shall I go on)…, what to eat for dinner, a tooth you broke, your eyesight, the paint color for the nursery, your sanity, …. (I can keep this up for as long as you like), … that clunking noise in the car motor, your brother-in-law, BATS!!!!! (just wanted to see if you were paying attention), and, maybe, when this sermon is ever going to end!

    Worry may not be a sin, but it comes close.  It gives us insomnia, stress, irritable bowel syndrome, hypertension, and a host of other maladies.  But its worst consequence is that it pollutes our thinking about the life God has given to us.  This is why I say it borders on sin.  We convince ourselves with our many worries that we are in the struggles of life alone, and God, if there is a God, just doesn’t care.  We know that isn’t true.  But with constant worry we can convince ourselves of that falsehood.   This is why Jesus addressed it.  “… can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”  Most of what we worry about never happens, but that doesn’t stop us, we go right on inventing new troubles.  Jesus never said we shouldn’t plan for our future or prepare for important events.  But he asks you to recognize that every day has its own set of annoyances or unforeseen mishaps.  That does not mean you shouldn’t get out of bed!  It means be realistic about the trouble your worry causes you.  “… tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.”  You are a son, a daughter of God.  Christ has claimed you through the waters of baptism.  Live in that knowledge.

    Take seriously your adoption into God’s family and begin to walk the Way of Christ with confidence, you will banish worry and begin to experience the peace that comes from above.  What really are our troubles?  Sometimes, when I am trying to make an important decision I ask myself this question:  “What is the worst thing that could happen?”  Many times it is not that I will starve, or lose the love of friends and family, but something far less serious.  When I compare the many blessings I have already received in life, I am sometimes shamed by my own worry, not trusting God to care for me in some new situation.

Conclusion
    Charles Mayo was a brilliant surgeon who together with his brother William and several associates established the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1903.  It was the first of its kind, drawing in many talented doctors who together diagnosed and treated thousands of patients with pioneering methods and a wholistic approach.  Mayo died in 1938 but his legacy continues.  Every year more than a million patients come to one of four sites from all over the world to receive excellent care.  In 2017 U.S. News & World Report recognized the Mayo Clinic as the best hospital facility in the nation.  Mayo lived a full life and gave many others their lives back again.  He once said:  
“Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system.  I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.”  

    I said we can banish worry, to experience God’s peace.  That’s not exactly correct.  The peace of God is not ours to control but the gift of God’s Spirit.  Again, it comes from God.  Paul in another letter from the one we looked at today wrote these words:  “ … the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness.” (Galatians 5:22)  As we acknowledge God’s generosity with thankfulness and pray for his help, our needs are supplied.  We recognize that God’s power is greater than the worry we had, all the while building confidence and hope in God, Who sustains us.  When troubles mount up in our lives money or trusted business contacts we have may well fail us.  God won’t.  His is the gift of peace when troubles mount.  His is the assurance we are loved when we have been betrayed.  His is the hope we have in every day, including our last one.



For the glory of God,
Stuart C. Wattles

 

 SERMON REQUESTS 

Ash Wednesday
February 14, 2018


Introduction
     Here we are, the faithful few, on another Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of another Lent.  Have you ever asked yourself, “Where is everybody else?”  I know it’s a busy time.  People have to get home from work and fix dinner, then rush out the door to be here by 7:00 p.m.  And they were just here last Sunday.  And they’ll be here next Sunday.  How can you blame them?  I’m not blaming anybody!  I just am asking what maybe you are asking, “Where is everybody else, on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent?”  If this were December 24th, another busy time, another evening of rushing home from work to be here by 7:00 p.m. … well, let’s just say, there would be many more in the pews, wouldn’t there?  So what is the difference between Christmas Eve and Ash Wednesday?  Both stand at the edge of a church season, but they are different aren’t they?

    What is the positive use of this church season called Lent?  In a while you will have the opportunity to come forward to receive ashes a symbol intended to remind us that “… we are dust and to dust we shall return.”
  
     Yippee.

     Who wants to be reminded that we are perishable, that we are like the bananas that sit on the kitchen counter, sun yellow and firm when they come home from the market, but, two days later having brown spots and blotches that widen each day thereafter, until they are ugly and have to be thrown away.  This is not an uplifting thought, is it.  Or, is it?  Here are some positive uses for this reflective season when we are called to remember that we are perishable.

Let Go the Past
    We live in a throwaway society where old things are constantly being thrown out, and change bombards us all the time.  But oddly we don’t thrown things out that we should.  Sure we put the soup can in the recycle bin, and the old newspapers in a brown paper sack, but what about the garbage in our life.  Do we ever thrown that out?  Do we throw out the resentment, the hurt, the anger we have felt because someone did us wrong?  Do we let go a painful memory of a love who rejected us, or a sin of our own making?  Can we let the things that burden us go into the compost heap with the banana peels and the coffee grounds?  Lent gives you a chance to search your conscience, to see what wounds of the past still plague you, and do something about them.  If you need to make amends then admit you were wrong and let guilt die.  If you owe someone money, start paying it back and let the burden slip off your shoulders.  Don’t know where that old friend you lost lives?  Pay it back to someone else.  Not one person on earth is lily white.  Everyone has something for which they are ashamed.  Let the troubling past turn into ashes and die.

Learn Humility
     Maybe you don’t have trouble with the past.  Maybe you have struggles in the present.  Maybe you have a chronic illness:  Multiple Sclerosis, IBS, diabetes.  Maybe you feel overwhelmed.  Maybe you feel no one understands.  Here’s what Ash Wednesday says:  We are all struggling with our mortality.  Some hide it better than others.  Some don’t know it yet but they are mortal too, they’re 24 now, but someday soon, before they know it.  They’ll be 54, or they’ll have a car accident, or they’ll lose a spouse.  Mortality comes knocking on everyone’s door.  Look to your left and to your right.  Every one of us is perishable.    This is the first step on the road of humility.  We are all alike, all in need of God’s help and God’s strength, and we can help the one beside us.  So begin now.  Pray, Give Alms, Fast, in secret, as Jesus said, and you will begin to see them, if you pray for them, if you give alms for them, if you fast with them.

Live today
    And here is one last thing.  Thomas A Kempis wrote a prayer in the 14th century which includes this phrase:
 “Cause me … Gracious God to live every day as if it were to be my last.  For I know not but that it may be such.  Cause me to live now as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.”  In each day when you wake you have before you opportunity of one sort or another.  Use the time.  Spend yourself.  It is a good thing to prepare for your future and the future well-being of your children.  But it is also good to live knowing that things can change quickly, that we are mortal, and that we have been given each day as a gift.  So take it.  Take the gift and use it well.  

Conclusion
     The words we use to begin Lent are used also in the final words a minister speaks at graveside:  
“We commit our sister/brother to the ground in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  The reason should be plain to everyone.  We are burying in the same confidence we had on Ash Wednesday, so many Ash Wednesdays throughout our lives.  We walk fully knowing we are perishable, but also knowing that God has overcome the grave and has claimed us as his own.  Though we turn to dust, we shall be raised as Christ was raised.  It is no faint hope.  It is the assurance proven in the resurrection of Jesus.  While we walk knowing our mortality, we also know the immortal love of Jesus Christ, and in that we are secure.  In that faith we can dare to take a forward step each day.


February 18, 2018

Mark 1:9-15

Why Suffer?
 

Introduction

           Parkland, Florida, is a beautiful community.  I went on line and dug up some information.  It is situated on Florida’s east coast, not far from Ft. Lauderdale, with a population of 26,000 people.  The average income there is almost twice the national average.  The average age is 43, and almost 85% of the residents are married.  96% of the population there has completed high school, 63% have graduated from a college.  Their high school students have overall test scores 56% higher than the national average.  You and I would find it a pleasant place to live.  But, as you know, last Wednesday they endured a tragedy in which 17 people died.

           I am not going to talk about that violence or what should be done about it.  That is a political question for which you do not need my opinion.  What you do need to hear from me is an answer, as best I can give it to you, for this question.  Why do people suffer?  Does the God we love have a sensible answer for such shocking bloodshed?   And I will tell you first of all, yes, he does.

           Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  Perhaps you saw the picture of a mother, with a grief stricken face, wrapping her arms around a distraught young teen in Parkland, Florida.  On her forehead this woman clearly had a cross, written with grey ashes.  I don’t know how many people around the world saw this image.  Many millions I would guess. It was perhaps the most eloquent statement that could be made about what had happened.  On Ash Wednesday we are reminded of our mortality.  “Remember you are dust,” says the minister, “and to dust you shall return.”  Mark tells us about Jesus’ temptation.  It is contained in a single verse:  He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.  Spare though it is this verse helps us understand some important things about Jesus, not least, what suffering means.

Why Did Jesus Suffer?

           In the wilderness there is not much to eat.  Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, lived out there on wild honey and insects.  Water is hard to find.  The day is like a furnace and the night is like a refrigerator.  Spending 40 lonesome days there would be awful, a terrible trial.  Most people would die if they tried to do it.  Yet the Spirit … drove (Jesus) there, to be tempted, to face Satan.

           Have you ever starved?  Have you ever denied yourself food, fasted for a day, or two, or even three?  Personally I have never lasted more than 48 hours, and didn’t care to try it again.  Your senses get dull, except for the awful feeling in the gut.  You can’t think very well.  In fact the thinking you do tends to be about food and when you can next eat!  If you have ever read a story about people who have been cast adrift in a life boat or lost in a wilderness, survivors frequently report that they spent hours fantasizing about food, what it tastes like, how it smells, how it looks.  They remember the best meal they ever ate, or a banquet they once attended.  Their suffering in other words sharpened their awareness of how good food is, how exquisite the experience of even a well prepared salad is.  The simplest of meals is not only a delight to the senses of smell, sight and taste, it is transformed into a keen awareness of the rich blessing which food for the body is.  Fasting helps us understand the desperation a man or woman feels when there is no food to sustain them.  A man who has starved knows the importance of giving thanks before breaking bread.  A person who has suffered pangs of hunger for 40 days cannot ignore starving people on his doorstep, even if they were 10,000 in number, and all he had was five barley loaves and two small fish.

           Forty days is a long time to endure the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the unrelenting monotony of hunger, and the emptiness of isolation.  But for 40 days Jesus stayed in the wilderness, suffering all these things, wrestling with Satan.  It must have been exhausting in a way that we can barely imagine.

           The first time I felt completely exhausted, completely drained, was the time I ran a marathon, that is, 26 miles.  I was 23 and had never run a race in my life.  My sports in high school had been marching band, chess club, and the debating team.  A friend was organizing a marathon to raise funds for Bread for the World.  Would I find sponsors and run?  Yes, I said, to feed the hungry I’ll run.  So with no training whatsoever, and only an old pair of sneakers, cut off shorts and a tee shirt, I found myself in a pack of 15 other souls who soon ran on ahead of me and disappeared.  It was a lonely, painful seven hours.  By the time I reached the end everything hurt, from the bottom of my feet to the muscles in my neck and shoulders.  I literally did not know how I would be able to climb four flights of stairs in my dormitory to the showers and my bed.  And the next morning was not much better.  What this taught me was simple, you have to realize your limitations, what you can do and what you cannot.

           I believe that Jesus found out about his limitations in the wilderness as well.  Compassion has to be tempered with the knowledge of what you can do and what you cannot.  If Jesus had spent all his moments healing the sick there never would have been a Sermon on the Mount.  And if he had spent all his moments feeding the hungry there never would have been time for quiet and reflection.  Suffering shows us our limitations, and our need to lean on God, the author of our lives.  When the night of his arrest came, Jesus was found in the garden seeking his Father in prayer.

Why Must We Suffer?

           Does this help us understand last Wednesday’s massacre of the children?  Probably not, at least not directly, but consider this.  Jesus suffered and he was the Son of God.  Are we exempt?  And, are there not some ways in which we deepen through suffering and deprivation, as Jesus did?      

           Some of you have heard the dreadful words, “You have cancer.” And have gone through chemo-therapy, radiation and surgery.  You spent hours in a hospital bed, and more hours feeling sweat pour off your face, or being so cold your teeth began to chatter. … And the nausea. …. And the insomnia.   You fought the disease with no assurance you would survive, but when you did you were told it could return in six months or maybe in three.  No one wants cancer.  But the cancer survivor knows what real suffering is, and what a precious gift life is.  Having fought through so much, it is impossible for a survivor to feel bored when the new day begins.  They look out at a snow fall and see its delicate beauty.  They see the night come down and watch the moon rise up.  They join a support group for people who have just heard those horrifying words “You have cancer.”  It is impossible for them to be indifferent about this wicked illness.  They will do anything in their power to support others, to raise money for the cure, to pray for the sick.  Suffering has changed them forever, not to live in torment, but in hope.  Their awareness is razor sharp, and their compassion for those who have that disease leads to action.

           Suffering changes us.  It makes us more aware of the other guy, the one who has no visitors at the hospital, or who has lost his job, or whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver.  And when a close friend has died we realize our limitations.  You cannot bring them back, but you pray more earnestly “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Conclusion

           On Ash Wednesday, hours after a gunman killed 17 persons in Parkland, Florida, we were here putting ashes on the forehead of 25 people, saying “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Is it wrong to remind ourselves that we are perishable?  That we may be gone before the sun sets this day?

           Do children have to die at the hands of a violent man?  No, and God knows the pain of watching a son suffer at the hands of violent men.  Does God want us to suffer?  No, and neither does God abandon us in our suffering.  Strangers come together and angels attend.  No surer sign for this can be given than the cross of Jesus Christ.


February 4, 2018
Mark-1:29-39
Isaiah 40:21-31
  

Running on Empty

Introduction

     Do you ever drive your spouse crazy the way I do?  I wait for the gas tank to get down to its very last teaspoon before filling up.  There’s a good reason for this.  I’m a cheapskate!  I don’t want to spend $46 filling up my tank.  I want to put that painful moment off as long as possible.  I know it is going to hurt when I go to the gas pump, and I delay that event as long as I can.  This is harder in the cars we have today.  They have a little light that comes on showing a gas pump, as if to plead “Please find me one of these.  Quick!”  I keep right on going.  But then ten miles down the road you hear a little bell chime.  If my wife hasn’t caught sight of the gas pump on the instrument panel she can’t help but notice that.

     “Oh, we need gas, dear.”

     “No, we don’t,” I say.  “I can drive twenty more miles at least.  Trust me.”

     (Long Pause.)

     “But this is the Mojave Desert!” she says.

     “But there’s only 18 more miles to go.” I say, confidently.

You can imagine the fun we have.

     I have a 17 gallon capacity tank.  My Personal Record, is the time I filled it up with 17.1 gallons.  (You see they don’t count the long neck through which you fill the tank.  That has to contain at least a pint of fuel.)

     But as much as I have perfected this art I know Jesus would not agree with me.  He was not someone to run on empty.  Quite the contrary, he constantly sought the source of all power, his Father.

     Mark Chapter 1 gives us a sample day in the ministry of Jesus.  He goes to the synagogue to worship and while there casts out a demon.  Then he goes with Peter to his house for dinner.  His mother-in-law is sick in bed but Jesus heals her.  By sundown, once the Sabbath is over, the word has spread and people are flocking to the house to ask him to heal their family members.  Which he does well into the night.

     Now if I had a Sunday like that, I’d say it was time to ask the Session for a raise and a larger office.  I’d be feeling pretty good about myself.  Oh, I’d be tired, but think of the publicity, the opportunities, what I could do the next morning.  But what did Jesus do? In the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  Announcing the kingdom of God with signs and wonders and preaching is not without cost.  It costs you something even if you are the Son of God.

     Truth is, you can’t run on empty.  You can try.  You can go on and on and on.  But as Jesus knew it isn’t the doing it’s the praying, it isn’t the practiced sermon, it’s the communing with God that brings the power down from heaven to earth.  The lesson here is not just for preachers.  It’s for all of us.  Peter and the others came out looking for him.  Mark even says they hunted for him, and it’s no accident that word was used.  They sought him so they could get something from him.  Right on that first day Jesus must have known that people would not understand, they would see the miracles and hear the words and not understand their meaning.  He came to restore the relationship between humankind and God, to overthrow the reign of Satan and point the way home.  But all they wanted was the flash and bang, the potion that would get rid of that back ache, the power that healed.

     Be honest.  We want the power too.  We want to have a church bursting at the seams, to have our fame spread so much that people would surround our house here trying to get in; the way they did on Christmas Eve in 1976 when Dick Weld was the preacher and they had to set up chairs in the back because both the balcony and the pews were full.  But we know those days have passed, and our tank is slipping down toward “E.”  What went wrong anyway?  Why is it we’re shrinking?  Not just the Presbyterians, but the Methodists, and the Episcopalians, the Baptists and the Roman Catholics, and the Lutherans, and just about any church you can name.

Why Are We Empty?

     In short, why do we feel depleted too much of the time, instead of energized by the Spirit of God?  I’ll give you some reasons.  Then you tell me if these fit.

     I think we’re too distracted Everywhere I go now somebody is on the phone:  the grocery store, the barber shop, the doctor’s office, the public rest room at the Carrier Dome, on the Thruway at 75 mph, you name it.  There they are with a cell phone jammed in their ear.  That would be okay I guess if it were really important, but it isn’t the living Word they’re engaging, most of the time it’s drivel.  This teenager is having a crisis with her boyfriend, the 38 year-old guy waiting for his French fries is discussing who’s going to win the Super Bowl, and the idiot who forgot his shopping list is trying to collect the information from his irritated wife.

     But the distraction doesn’t end there.  There’s facebook and e-mail to catch up with.  There’s the score of the latest basketball game to track down on the internet.  There’s a weather report to find on your I-phone.  Nobody waits any more for a morning newspaper to find out about a special election to fill a vacant seat in Congress, you stay up till two in the morning to get the analysis on CNN.  Whether it bothers you or not we’re being bombarded constantly, or we’re chasing after the minutiae of life, all the time:  what the stock market is doing …. A car chase in Houston caught on camera … a blizzard in Minnesota

     I’m not moaning for the “good old days” I’m telling you that someone is always pulling at your sleeve almost every waking minute of your day.  Remember when you had two or three little kids and it was always something?  Always a crisis, or always a question?  Our waking hours are like that, living in a house with a thousand three, four and five year-olds always needing something from you.

     Maybe that’s why when we do get home, or when we do catch a day off, we don’t want to do anything.  Teenagers and parents both say things like:  “I have to get up early every day of the week for school, or work or soccer practice.  Sunday is my one day to sleep late.”  I can understand that.  But treating Sunday as your private day to not shave, or put on clothes, or do anything at all isn’t what God had in mind when he said keep the Sabbath holy.  And it won’t refill your tank.

What Is The Answer?

     The church isn’t a spiritual filling station so this isn’t an advertisement for Sunday morning.  The real answer is finding the center in your life again where the living Word of God can meet you.  You need to do what Jesus did after that long day in Capernaum.  You need to step back from everything to reconnect with God.  When you’re running on empty, you may want to just shut down but what you have to do instead is slow down and make the effort to find God.  You can’t hear God’s voice with a cell phone in your ear.  And, no, he’s not waiting for you at the tenth hole on the golf course either.  You need to step back and start looking around and taking deep breathes again.  Or, if you’ve never had that encounter with God, then you need to disengage from the noise in your life and find him.  He’s not that far away.  You haven’t looked.  You’ve been too busy.

     Not so long ago, one of the daughters of our church, a college student, went on a five day retreat.  During that time she was not allowed to speak at all, except once daily to a spiritual director.  This is a healthy, intelligent, young woman, who owns a cell phone and studies, and goes shopping like any of us.  According to her mother, the daughter said the first two days were awful.  But gradually something changed.  She found it possible to read more deeply, to think more deeply, to write down the words that were in her heart in a letter to her mother.  You see it is when we clear out the noise, the constant chatter of the world, even our own voice, that we can really listen for God, can really hear that living Word.

Even Jesus needed time to withdraw and pray.

     But this isn’t really an advertisement for Prayer either.  God is larger than the prayers we speak, or the buildings in which we worship.  Spiritual disciplines can help you.  Prayer can help.  Fasting can help.  Writing in a journal can help.  But if they become just one more thing to cram into an overstuffed day, they probably won’t.  Communing with God in prayer is not like pulling up to the gas pump and then impatiently tapping your toe while you wait for the tank to fill.  Prayer is a habit and discipline. 

Conclusion

     If we want to refresh our souls we must do as Jesus did, admit our need of God and go find Him.  It is not difficult to do, but we have to surrender the notion that we’re really in charge of things.

     William Willimon, whom you’ve heard me quote before, explains this very well.  He writes:  We value predictability, order and control more than surprise, mystery and wonder.  We tend to think of our world as closed, rigidly following certain natural laws so that the line between “natural” and “supernatural” is obvious and unassailable.  The first thing the modern world had to do in order to give us the illusion that we were gods unto ourselves, in control of everything, was to close off the possibility that God might intervene or intrude into the world that we thought we were now (in our enlightened, modern pride) completely controlling for our benefit.

     But here’s the good news:  You’re not in control of your life, …. God is.  If a little bell tone is sounding on the dashboard of your car as you rush to work, pay attention.  It may be time to stop, take the day off and spend the day in prayer.

Ad gloriam Dei

Stuart C. Wattles


January 28, 2018
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28


Waking Up the Devil


Introduction
    Well you know me.  I’m a Scot, not to say a cheapskate.  I wince every time I pay ten dollars for a movie ticket.  And I get the Senior rate now!  So there are a lot of movies I want to see for which I wait until they come out on DVD.  Then I go to the Redbox and pick them up for $1.75.  (I don’t pay the extra 90 cents for the Blu-ray either, but that’s another story, another time.)  So this Friday I finally saw Despicable Me 3.  The minions are disgusted with Gru.  They long for the days when he was the world’s greatest bad guy.  Now he catches criminals, and it’s just so boring they go out on strike.  But Gru’s minions are too good to be really bad.  They come to his rescue in the end.  That word minions had begun to fade in our culture but Despicable Me has revived it.  It’s no compliment.  It goes back to a French word mignon, as in Filet Mignon, and means small, delicate.  Applied to a person it means someone subservient, weak or fawning, the “yes” men who surround the boss and do his bidding, for example.  We used to have a phrase, the “devil and his minions,” meaning “lesser demons.”  Only, if you go back to the sixteenth century and find it, no one was thinking of cuddly yellow guys with big eyes and a fondness for bananas; but bearded dwarves with leathery skin and pointy ears who leered at women and dragged a pointy tail.

    Today’s sermon is about standing up for the Truth as it is found in Scripture.  If you do that, you will “wake up the devil,” the Evil One, and his minions.  The devil can not let Truth and Goodness alone.  If you stand for them, he will send one of his henchmen around to see if you really mean it.

    Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath.  What could be more common than this?!  What could be less threatening? A Jew going to the synagogue on Sabbath day.  There he is teaching from the Scriptures.  But just then there was a commotion.  Someone begins to make a scene:  What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  And this is no controversy about whose turn it is to preach, or if Jesus has standing within that synagogue.  No, the controversy, if you want to call it that, is that this Jesus speaks for God.  The demon himself admits it.  I know who you are, the Holy One of God.  Jesus is there standing up for the Truth of God.

    If the forces of hell are going to try to shout down Jesus, why should we be surprised, when we stand up for the Truth, immediately there is a push back?  When you stand up for the Truth, expect to be challenged.

 Devil(s), you say?
    Now, I know first of all that a lot of you don’t believe in the devil and his minions, or things that go bump in the night.  That’s okay.  I used think that way too.  I used to think that everyone on earth wants the same thing:  peace, food for their children, education, good health.  When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, I was overcome with astonishment and joy.  The bloody 20th century was over, really over.  No more tyrants except in backward little countries, like North Korea, or Cuba, or Iraq.  Freedom had prevailed, without the world turning into a cinder.

    Well here we are, twenty-nine years later, and there’s as much suffering and warfare and poverty as ever.  Syria has been torn apart with violence for more than six years now and Iraq for more than fifteen.  Some people even look back to the “good old days” when everyone knew the bad guys were communists and the USA was the beacon of hope.  Now we have ISIS, and people in Hawaii are thrown into panic with reports of North Korean missiles headed in their direction.  How does this happen?

    It happens because we don’t take evil seriously, even though it is everywhere to be found.  It surrounds us, working its way into people’s hearts daily, planting seeds of wickedness, nurturing grudges and fomenting hatred.

    At the Presbytery meeting last Tuesday a Jewish rabbi was asked a question regarding the holocaust and how his love for God meshed with such great evil.  He frowned for a moment and then said boldly (and this is a paraphrase from memory) that it is the dilemma brought about by human freedom.  If we are going to say that men and women have freedom that means that they are free even to choose cruelty and hatred.  Perhaps you also view the atrocities of our time as the result of humans choosing badly.   Or perhaps you believe in a devil and his minions who draw us into their claws by deceit and temptation.  Either way we know there are those who live in the daylight and those who choose darkness.  And how dangerous it is for those who don’t know they live in a twilight world!  But this much we all ought to know, if you want decency, and health and education and food and freedom, it will come at a cost.  There are those who will actively work against you who do not stand on God’s side.

Our Dilemma
    But the modern world has a further problem.  Do we dare to claim we know the truth, as Jesus did?  It is one of the oldest questions with which the church has struggled.  We are like Jesus, but not Jesus himself.  

    One reason for the problem is that the Bible is increasingly trivialized.  For centuries Christians have called the Bible the Word of God.  This is more than a metaphor.  Particularly for Protestant Christians the Bible is the ultimate authority.  No bishop or pope is above the Bible.  Rightly understood, we have said, the Bible is our connection to the living Christ, the true head of the church.  It is not merely a collection of wise sayings or historical events.  It is God’s self-disclosure.  For the last 150 years Seminaries have taught modern methods of historical and literary criticism.  This is a good thing.  We understand a text better when we understand the culture in which it was written and how the writer thought.  But the unintended consequence of pulling apart a book and going over it with a microscope is to make it a mere collection of words.

    Corrie Ten Bom hid Jews in her native Holland, and paid the price upon discovery by being sent to a death camp.  After her liberation she traveled widely as an evangelist.  On one of her journeys she was invited to speak at a seminary.  But she quickly discovered the faculty did not want to hear her.  They would not attend her presentation in the chapel.  She worried about what their absence met.  So she decided to win them over by giving them some Dutch chocolate.  (This was shortly after the war and many goods, especially luxuries like chocolate, were in short supply.)  The professors gladly took the gifts and sampled the chocolate almost immediately.  Later at a private meeting with them she asked why they had refused her gifts.  In surprise several said that indeed they had not refused the gift of chocolate.  “But, you have,” she insisted.  “You would not hear what I had to say about God’s word.”  “That is different,” replied one of them, “we have studied the Bible all our lives and we know it.”  “You did not refrain from eating my chocolate,” she said.  “You could have studied its contents and learned about its production and distribution, but instead you ate it gladly.  The joy of the chocolate is in the eating.  I did not come to instruct you about the Bible, but to share with you its message.  For to me it is not a thing to study, but a joy to be heard and shared with others.”

    We can concentrate so much upon the pieces that we fail to see the Bible as a whole.  We gradually come to think of it as a book like any other book.  Slowly, subtly, more and more in the church think of the Bible as a grand bit of poetry and inspiration, but less and less as an authoritative source, the living Word of God.

    Who wants to stand up for poetry?  Ancient Christians from the second century onward died for their faith, revealed in the Scriptures.  Thomas C. Oden, in the introduction of his multivolume commentary by Ancient Christian authors writes:  “… by the [fourth century] it had become a long-standing ecumenical tradition (three centuries old) that the Holy Spirit had supervised the accurate transmission of the gospel tradition from the eyewitness apostles to the consenting church through Mark and Luke.”

Does not Jesus still teach the church through the Scriptures?  And should we not recognize that knowledge of God’s Truth and its power is a threat to many persons who do not accept his Truth?

Conclusion
    I am convinced that much of the trouble in the church today, to say nothing about the trouble in our culture, comes from ignorance of the Bible.  It is only if we know the Truth and are refreshed in it that we can stand up to the challenge of evil.  We have been here before.  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century Europe was in chaos.  Barbarians swept in successive waves over what was once a prosperous and civilized continent.  For more than 400 years there were only pockets of tranquility and safety.  Literacy and learning plummeted.  This became known as the Dark Ages.  The bible too retreated into monastic libraries and the church became more secular, political, and corrupt.  Our own dilemma is of a different character.  We have the ability to read and access to all kinds of information.  But there is a curious sort of voluntary illiteracy when it comes to the Bible.  Many choose to ignore it, while others sample popular documentaries and historical fiction without reading the bible for themselves.  This is a prescription for disaster.  It opens the door wide for those who wish to teach with authority but have no hold on the Truth.

    There is a spiritual contest, at work in the heart of every man and woman.  You have chosen Jesus Christ, or you would not be here today.  You need to stand for the Truth.  The devil is certainly awake.  Are we?


January 14, 2018
John 1:43-51


Listening for God


Introduction
    Have you noticed how Sherlock Holmes never seems to go stale?  Arthur Conan Doyle his creator did too.  In fact, Doyle got so tired writing stories about the great detective that he killed him off in a story called “The Final Problem.”  Holmes plunges over a ledge struggling with his arch enemy Moriarty.  But the public grew so loud insisting on more adventures that eventually Doyle had to write a story about his miraculous return from the depths.  One hundred years later we’re still seeing representations of the master detective.  CBS has a series called “Elementary”, and on PBS there is another update called “Sherlock” with two popular actors running around 21st century London.  Meanwhile Hollywood has made two films about the great detective, starring Robert Downey and Jude Law.

    Mysteries are like jigsaw puzzles, we love to fit the pieces together.  We’re confident we can solve them.  A few years ago we had a mystery right here at church.  I call it “The Problem of the Unclaimed Keys.”  Don Miller found a key chain on the sidewalk outside the Stone Street entrance.  But no one claimed them, or even inquired.  On Monday they were still in our office.  Sherlock Holmes wasn’t available so I looked them over.  There were several keys on three interlocking rings, all of them worn from frequent use.  They had to be valuable to someone I concluded, but probably not a church member or we would have heard by now.  Hmmmmmmm, what to do?  Then I noticed a small plastic tag with a bar code on the back, the kind you scan to obtain a discount at Price Chopper, or, in this case Rite Aide!  Now hot on the trail I took them up to the drug store on Route 5.  With a quick swipe of the tag a name appeared on the computer screen.  I’d solved it!  Take that Sherlock, the computer found our man in seconds.  Who needs a detective when you have the internet?

    In this oh-so-knowledgeable world we’re confident.   We know what we know.   And what we don’t know Siri can answer, or Google can find.  We’ve chosen our spouse through Match or eHarmony dot com!  We’ve found the perfect job on Go Daddy!  Give me my tablet or smart phone and I’ll figure anything out, … until … God calls us by name.   And then, we have a problem.  Both the lessons today pose a question:  How do you know when God is calling you?  And, how do you respond?  

Samuel
    Samuel was a special boy.  He didn’t have a neat handle for a Twitter account, like “Samster1001BC”.  He was just Samuel, which means by the way “borrowed.”  His mother had earnestly prayed to God for a child and promised to give him back to the service of God when he was old enough.  All this must have been known by Samuel from an early age.  When he went to live with the priest of God, Eli, to serve the Lord at Shiloh, he knew his name when it came clearly in the night:
 “Samuel, Samuel!” and he said “Here I am!”

    So to answer that first question:  How do you know when God is calling you?  When you know who you are, you can hear the voice of God.  Are you a parent? A grandparent?  Do you talk to your child about the hopes and dreams you and your spouse had when you conceived and then raised your child?  Do you listen to their problems with patience?  Do you tell them about what you see in them that is good or strong or special?  Do you share with them your own faith?  Do you pray with them and for them?  A child who grows up with affirmation knows what he can do.  A child who grows up with rules to follow, and chores to do, understands what it means to serve others.  If you are a parent and you want your child to hear God’s voice you have to listen to her, correct her; forgive him and cherish him.  I know, I know, these things are hard to do day after day.  It takes skill and patience to raise a child who is confident and at the same time humble, who is creative and at the same time isn’t a prima donna.  Samuel needed an older, wiser person, to help him understand what he heard, and he trusted how the old priest told him to respond “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

    When you bring your child to Sunday school, and to worship, you prepare him or her for the day when God speaks to them.

Philip
    Some people are ready for that call and follow the Lord without a second thought.  When Jesus found Philip in Galilee and spoke saying, 
“Follow me”, he responded without hesitation.  This is told so briefly in the Gospel of John that we hardly have time to notice it.  Philip was raised with the Scriptures.  He knew what the prophets had spoken and he recognized in Jesus the fulfillment of Israel’s hope.  We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote.  He says.  John Chrysostom, the most able preacher of the ancient world, observed that “the expression ‘we have found’ belongs always to those who are in some way seeking.”  Have you really sought for Jesus, the one sent from God to save you?  It is one thing to know the name of Jesus.  It is another thing to hold him in your heart.  Philip was ready to respond when his name was called because he had long desired to meet the one about whom the prophets spoke.

    In the baseball movie The Natural, Roy Hobbes, the main character, carries a painful secret from his past.  As a man in his 30’s he finally is given a second chance to play the game he loves.  Another character, Max Mercy, a sports writer is determined to ferret out Hobbes’ secret and publish the lurid details.  He boasts to the aging rookie that he can make him a hero.
    “Give me your story,” he says, “I’ll have everyone eating out of your hand.  Talk to me.  I’m gonna find out, you know. I’m gonna find out one way or another.  I can make you and I can break you.”
    In exasperation Hobbes turns and says:  “Let me ask you something, Max, have you ever played the game?”
    “Why, no,” says the newspaperman.  “I’m a writer, that’s a pretty important job, don’t you think?”
    “So you just write about it,” says Hobbes, “but you’ve never played a day in your life.”

    It is one thing to study religion and be able to describe theological ideas.  It is another thing to know Jesus and give him control of your life.


Nathanael
    But as if to provide a counterpoint, the gospel next tells us of Nathanael, another son of Israel.  He too was raised with the Scriptures and he too, had hope and expectation.  What is the difference between the two?  He is a more skeptical man.  Notice however that Philip does not try to argue Nathanael into believing.  He takes him to Jesus.
 “Come and see.”  Faith in Jesus is not a proposition it is an experience.  John Calvin, ironically enough one of the most cerebral theologians the church has ever had, once said, there are many poor dunces in the present day who though ignorant and unskilled in the use of language, make known Christ more faithfully than all the theologians … with their lofty speculations.  It was only after Nathanael met Jesus personally that he was able to believe.

    Do others know Jesus better because they have met you?  Do you demonstrate to them a life of strength and refreshment even in the face of sorrow and trouble?  Do you answer their questions honestly when sincerely asked?  Do you invite them to come to a bible study, or to sit with your family if they visit the church on a special day like Christmas or Easter?  Evangelism such as this is not shoe-horning people into a constraint they neither want nor understand.

Conclusion
    The call God gives us may come in youth or maturity.  The response may be long in coming, or immediate.  What we may safely say is this.  God has sent the Son to find us.  He is not a mystery to be solved, a puzzle to be put together by hard effort.  He is a shepherd who knows each one of his sheep, calls them by name, and even searches for the single one who has strayed.


Ad gloriam Dei
Stuart C. Wattles


November 19, 2017
Matthew 25:14-30

The Excuse of Fear

Introduction

And, you gulped, and … Jumped!  Maybe when you were 16 and wanted to impress the girls?  Do you ever remember climbing the ladder for the high dive at the pool?            

           Have you ever had Ace/King/Queen/Jack in a friendly game of five card draw poker … all hearts … and you drew just one card?

            Have you ever stood before the minister, and listened to him solemnly intone 
”Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, as long as you both shall live?” … and you said “I do.”

            Then you are ready to hear this sermon and it may surprise you to know God is on your side.  God wanted you to Jump! … to draw for the straight … to marry the oaf.  God is all for you living your life full, to drink the whole cup, to make the most of it.  Even more than that he wants you to live your life so well that others will ask  “What’s your secret?”  “Where’d you get all this grace?”  And you’ll tell them … God gave it to me.  How do I know this?  Because of the parable you heard a moment ago, about the talents.

 Spend or Hoard?

           God himself is a big spender.  It is hard to explain the value of the gifts the owner gave to his slaves because the word we translate as “talent” is a unit of weight measurement.  But conservatively estimated, in monetary terms a single talent was worth 6,000 silver coins.  So, the first slave received $2,500,000.  The second received $1,000,000.  And the third … a measly $500,000. 

            What are we being told then in the parable?  Jesus is trying to describe what it means to live inside the kingdom of God, under his benevolent hand.  God gives to each one of us “according to our ability,” and in the case of the least able of this trio he gives an enormous sum.  No matter who you are, or what your difficulties in life may be, God has given, indeed, wants to give you a small fortune to work with.   And of course I’m not talking about money.  While you may be blessed with a dollar inheritance which is large, they are few in any population.  The lesson is that God is generous.  He gives us great gifts, great abilities as well, and then he doesn’t abandon us, but for a time, he leaves it up to us to use what he has given.

            Have you taken stock?  Do you consider what God has given to you?  Think for a moment about health.  Some people are born with impairments and problems, but most of us come into this life healthy, and even more astonishing with the ability to heal.  I hasten to say the ability to heal and stay healthy is not given to our mechanical devices.  If my car gets dinged or banged up in a parking lot somewhere, its scrapes and bruises won’t gradually get better.  And if the transmission goes bad, there’s no coming back from that unless I part with $2,000 or more for a new one.  With some careful living and refraining from bad habits we can live sixty, seventy, eighty years or more.  Have you thought about the gift of intelligence?  You can think.  You can make choices in every day, where to go, what to wear, what you will do.  Your body, your intelligence is a wonder.  We are blessed from birth with great potential.

 But health and intelligence are only the surface qualities that almost everyone born has.  Think of the particular abilities God has given you.  Some of you can sing.  Some of you can dance (Believe me, I know this is a gift.  I can’t do it.)  Some of you have been given mathematical ability.  Others of you have keen eyesight and coordination.  Others can put words together in beautiful expression.  Some of you are especially energetic and full of ideas.  Some of you are reflective.

 So the question is, whether you received, like the first servant 2 ½ million, or (dare I say it) a skimpy $500,000, what are you going to do with it?  God spent LARGE on you.  What will you do with it? and, no, I’m not just talking to the teens, who are starting to realize their potential.

 Risk or Play Safe?

           Should you spend it?  Or, play it safe?

            It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?  God wants you to do some spending.  Open up those purse strings and start spreading it around.  The worst thing is not losing it, but not spending at all.

            We might have some sympathy for the timid slave who was afraid when he received his one talent, except for his manner.  “I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter seed….”  A careful reading of the parable tells us that it was not failure that brought the one talent slave a rebuke but his resentment and mistrust of the generosity he had received. 

            And, I know some of you are thinking “Wait a minute, aren’t we supposed to fear God? To bow before him?  And, isn’t this a story about judgment?”  Let me add to your supposition.  The master says to the one talent man, “you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and on my return I would have received (my money) with interest.”  But there were no banks in that day, such as we think of them.  Nowadays it’s true, put money in the bank and you will receive some interest (not much, but something).  But in that day let’s say you gave your money to a money-lender.  You might get some interest, but then again you might lose or be swindled out of a whole lot of it!  The one talent man did the safest thing he could think of, something many people in his day did.  He buried the talent in a coffee can four feet down.

 But, God wants spenders.  God wants risk takers.  Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man who ever lived in his generation, for all of his flaws, gave away great heaps of money, more than $350 million to build 1,689 free libraries throughout the rural and small towns of this country.  Because of inflation we can conservatively estimate this to be more than a billion and a half dollars in today’s money.  He said simply:  “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.”

 You’re supposed to spread around whatcha’ got.  Sing.  Dance.  Invest.  Build.  Mend.  Plant.  Do something, not for your own sake, but for your Master’s benefit.  Some of the notes will go flat.  Some of the buildings will fall.  Some of the stocks will slide.  Maybe all of it!  Better that than bury it in the ground.

 Conclusion

           Life is God’s great gift.  Don’t bury it in the ground.  We’ll be there soon enough.  You want to stand before your Master with a clear conscience, knowing that his grace amends every flaw and failure, knowing that you life counted.  That you spent yourself in a way which made a difference.

            Have you ever seen one of the grand cathedrals?  You probably know, especially if you took a guided tour, there isn’t a one of them that was begun and built in a single lifetime.  One architect started and ten followed.  The great medieval cathedrals took centuries to complete.  Many people spent their whole life on them, and never came the day that they could step back and say, “There, that’s done.”  And, the final architect, the final stone mason, the finally glassworker, and cabinet maker who did get to step back and see it complete knew they could never have done it all themselves.

            God has given you everything you need.

  • Use it.

  • Spend it.

  • Risk it.

            Act as if you know a God who smiles on your success and forgives your failure.  That is called kingdom living.  That is called living by grace not guilt.

           Philip Brooks once said:  Pray to be stronger …. Do not pray for tasks equal to your power, pray for powers equal to your task.  Do not pray for an easy life.


For the glory of God

Stuart C. Wattles


October 15, 2017

Living Inside the Kingdom
 

           Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.   Hebrews 13:2
 

Introduction

           There are times in your life when you know something profound has happened and you were part of it.  It happened to me last Friday here, at the First Presbyterian Church of Oneida, New York.  You’ve heard me use that phrase:  the Kingdom of God.  I mean it in its purest sense when I tell you for about two hours I was actually inside the kingdom of God, living under his rule, seeing his purpose fulfilled, knowing I was not in charge but God was!  This is a true story, a happy story, about the kingdom of God and a moment of pure, unexpected grace.  It is a story of three angels, and four saints.  The author of the book of Hebrews wrote, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  I did not know it until it was over but for two hours I was living in the Kingdom of God, in the company of angels, and saints.  It began at 5:15 p.m.
 

The Phone Call

           The First angel used a telephone.
 

           I was sitting at my desk in the study, typing up the lesson for my bible class.  When the phone rang I did not want to be disturbed.  I wanted to finish my work and get home to watch a baseball game.
 

           “Hello,” I said, perhaps a little gruffly.  There was a pause, and the empty sound on the receiver hinted at a call from a far away place.  “Hello!” I said, louder.

           “Hello,” came an accented voice, tentatively. “Is this the church?”

           “Yes, this is First Presbyterian Church, may I help you.” I said. 

(I really didn’t mean it.  I already had the feeling this was one of those sales pitches we all get just when dinner is being put on the table.  That happens at the church too, but not usually at this time in the afternoon.  Who was this?  “I’ll give her just ten more seconds,” I thought.)

           “You have a food pantry?  You give food to hungry people,” she said, in a wispy voice.

           “You’ll have to speak up.”  I said, but I really didn’t mean it.  My heart was sinking as I thought, oh, not now.  Someone is calling for food when I want to get home to see the Yankees play.  Maybe she’s calling from Utica and I can give her the name of another pastor.

           “You have a food pantry there at the church?”

           “Yes,” I said.  You see I have an emergency food basket in my office of soups and crackers and canned tuna, and other things the deacons put together for those occasions when someone needs help and all the other food pantries in the city that we support have closed shop and gone home … to watch the Yankees play! … Why did I answer the phone!

           Well I was in for it now.  But I was wrong.  Through the static and her faint voice I heard her telling me that someone wanted to give us food for our food pantry.  I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying because of her accent and the connection and so I finally said, yes, I would stay another fifteen minutes for the truck to arrive and, yes, we would get the donated food into our food pantry. 

           “But I have to leave by 5:30.” I said.  She told me that wouldn’t be possible, couldn’t I stay a little longer?  The GPS says he’ll be there in 12 minutes.  “Oh all right,” I said.  “But not more than fifteen minutes.  I have to leave by 5:45.”  I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t all some kind of a mistake or a joke being played on me by a disappointed Red Sox fan.  “5:45, I said again.  I have to leave at 5:45!”  At 5:44 I picked up my bag, and headed to my car in the parking lot, thinking I’ll wait outside for this truck to show, and then if no one comes at 5:45 I’ll turn on the motor, and----

The phone rang.

I turned around and picked it up. 

“He’s there.  I just talked to him.” said the voice. 

“Are you on Broad Street?” 

“Yes,” I said with a sigh, and I turned around and headed out the Stone Street door.

The Drive

           The Second angel drove a truck.

           You would not believe the size of that truck.  It wasn’t a Toyota Tundra.  It wasn’t a Ford F15, no it was a 16-wheel monster.  It was so tall you couldn’t see over it.  It was so big that you couldn’t hide it in the Grand Canyon.    This was no joke by the Bonvilles to keep me from the Yankee game.  It was a truck the size of a blue whale.  Filled with food.  For our Food Pantry.  I hiked around to the driver’s side and out stepped one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen.  He was tall, maybe six, six-two, and well proportioned; no fat on him.  His face was the color of aged bronze, and his salt and pepper hair was braided into a long tail that disappeared down his back.  Everything about him seemed strong.  He hopped out of the cab and smiled broadly, showing perfect white teeth.

  “Is this the church?” 

“Yep.” I said.  “You found us.”

  “Good,” he said.  “I’ve got Jello.  Can you use some Jello?”

 “Jello?” I said stupidly.

 “Yes, Jello, a whole lot of it.  They told me it was damaged and I should throw it in the dumpster.  But I can’t do that.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  I can’t find anything wrong with it and it’s all wrapped on the pallet.  Can you use it?”

 “Jello? … Yes, yes we can.” I said.

 “Great!” he said, “where do we unload?”

           I looked at the size of the truck again.  There had to be enough Jello in there to fill an Olympic swimming pool and I had to find a place for it.

           The first problem was how to get the truck close to the door, it was getting toward dusk and there was a faint smell of rain in the air.  I didn’t want to have to carry two tons of Jello fifty feet down Stone Street, through the parking lot and in the back door of the church, in the rain.  But to get it even close to the parking area I had to help Tony (that was the angel’s name) back-up down Broad Street, and turn left onto Stone so he could get closer to the back door.  Tony thought he could just squeeze into Stone Street if I would hold up the traffic while he maneuvered.  Or, we could call the Sheriff and get him to direct traffic.  I shook my head at this, it would take at least ten minutes to get someone to the intersection and already people were swerving and rubber-necking around the truck.  So, I drew a deep breath, puffed out my chest and stepped into the intersection.  “Never done this before,” I said to myself.  (If a police car comes by to arrest me, I thought, I’ll tell them I know Paul Thompson, the chief of Police.)  Three minutes later we were down Stone Street parked next to the “No Parking” sign and had reduced it into a one way thoroughfare.

           When Tony came around the truck to open the trailer I braced myself.  He swung the doors open and there inside the gaping cavern was a single pallet 4 feet long, 4 feet wide, 4 feet tall, wrapped in plastic.  I nearly fainted with relief.  Only one pallet, “Piece of cake!” I sighed.  “No, Jello!” said the angel.

The Jello

           The Third angel pushed a wheel barrow.

           Tony peeled the plastic wrap off the pallet and began picking up cartons containing 24 individual boxes of Jello pudding mix.  They were about eight pounds each.  He’d stack four of them and bring them to the lip of the trailer where I took them from him and quickly began piling them in stacks in the parking lot.  Tony had to empty his truck and get on to another job, picking up a load to haul to Pennsylvania.  It was about a 30-pound hoist each time I picked up four cartons. 

About five minutes in, Tina appeared.

           “What are you doing?” she asked cautiously.

           “Unloading Jello,” I said stupidly.

           “Why?” she asked.

           “For the Food Pantry,” I said. “for people who are hungry and don’t have any food.”

           “Do they like Jello?” she asked.

           “I hope so.”  I said.

           “I’ll be right back,” she said.

           Tina disappeared for a few minutes while I continued to schlep cartons into the parking lot.  I had quite a pile by now. … You have no idea how many Jello packets make up a cube 4 by 4 by 4.  When she returned she had a wheel barrow and began to fill it, while I started to move the initial lot into the church.  It wasn’t long before the piles of Jello grew behind me, wheel-barrowful after wheel-barrowful.  There are eight steps up from the parking lot to the kitchen.  Four cartons of Jello, weighing in at about 30 pounds, up eight stairs … then back down … then up again … then down for four more … then … … I could be up half the night doing this!  It was time to ask for help.

The Move

           The First saint misunderstood what was happening but came to the church anyway.  The Second saint and the Third saint immediately said yes.

           I made two phone calls to families near the church.  Nobody home.  But on the third try Sandy Glynn picked up.

           “Sandy,” I said, by now out of breath, “are you eating supper?”

           “No,” she said, cautiously.

           “Can you come over to the church and help me move some Jello?”

           “What did you say?”

           “A truck has arrived full of Jello and I have no one to help me move it.  Can you come over for even fifteen minutes?”

           “A truck full of …”  her voice trailed off…

            “Jello” I said.

            “I’ll be right over,” she said.  “Now don’t you overdo.  Maybe you should sit down.”

           “Hurry!” I said.

           “Just slow down, now, I’ll be right over.”

           I never thought I’d ever thank God for cell phones, but the next call I made was to Nancy Rhinehard, who was walking her dog.  Becky Ewen had joined her and before I even finished explaining they said they’d be right there, they were only two blocks away.

           Sandy arrived first, looking puzzled and concerned.  She came right up to me. 

           “How are you,” she said earnestly, and then, “what are all these boxes and where’s this truck with the Cellos, and why are you unloading musical instruments into the church?!”

            It took a moment, but soon Sandy was in the kitchen hunting for a place to stack the cartons.  When Nancy and Becky arrived we began an assembly line.   Twenty minutes later it was done.

           But, before that, I said good-bye to Tony, who had a schedule to keep. I held his hand for a moment after shaking it and said.

            “You’ve done a good thing here Tony.  You are feeding the hungry, people who don’t have enough to eat.  I thank you for them.  God bless you as you travel on your way.” 

     He smiled in pure enjoyment of the moment and climbed up into the cab.  The motor grumbled and he lumbered on to his next job.  That left Tina, who had wheeled 70 pound loads through the parking lot to our assembly line.  She joined us in the kitchen and we laughed at the improbability of it all.  She had been home in her house across Stone Street only a short while when she heard the noise of the truck and came to find out what was going on.  Of course she wanted to help.  It was for the Food Pantry wasn’t it? 

Conclusion

           What does it mean to live Inside the Kingdom of God?  It means being aware that in every moment God is with you.  In every moment there is possibility for good or ill.  And no matter what happens God will use that opportunity to bless and sustain those who seek him.  The most unlikely and unexpected thing can happen at any time, and God will use it, if we respond.  A single pallet of Jello doesn’t sound like much does it, but what if it had just been tipped into the dumpster?  What if the dispatcher hadn’t found our website, carefully managed by another saint in the church, with information about food pantries we support?  And what if the minister had just hung up on the strange dispatch lady?  What if Sandy had called an ambulance for her pastor instead of coming to see what was going on?  What if Nancy didn’t have her cell phone?

           But none of those “what if’s” happened.  God was in charge.  Each one of them knew they had a part in that little comedy.  There are times when we see it.  We see that God really is directing our lives, sending us helpers, calling us to look up.  Imagine living like that not just for two hours but all the time.  You’d find angels and saints everywhere.



Hello again.  It’s your pastor.   I have explained that stewardship isn’t just about money.  (It’s not money, it’s MANAGEMENT!)

October 1, 2017
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Gifts Given In Love


Introduction

Everyone knows First Corinthians 13.  You have heard it read at every wedding you ever attended.  It is a beautiful passage and offers good instruction for those embarking on marriage.  But it was born out of a passionate desire on the part of the apostle Paul to straighten out trouble in his new church in Corinth.  There was plenty there for him to straighten out:

  • quarrels about Jewish dietary scruples,

  • lawsuits between church members,

  • a case of incest, 

  • sexual immorality,

  • party spirit,

  • drunkenness.

After spending most of his time on these difficult questions he draws toward the close of his letter, and as if to catch his breathe he tells them the only thing that truly matters.  Love.  Love for God.  Love for one another.  This is the glue for everything he says.  It mends broken relationships and holds others together.

    As Paul might have told his Corinthians, he could easily say to us, “Being a Christian isn’t easy.”  You have to set limits on your behavior and you have to accept the quirky people you meet.  You’re asked to do things, to take responsibility for things.  We Presbyterians even have a Budget, Finance and Stewardship committee who say to you directly.  “How much will you give for the work of God in our Church?”   In fact it’s that time of the year again when we ask it!  So, let me narrow the focus of this sermon down to this question, If Love is the only thing that truly matters “What does Christian Love tell us about the gifts we give?”


The first thing to say is:  Gifts Given Without Love Yield Nothing.

A careful reading of the first three verses in this chapter reveals that Paul starts his reflection by telling us what love ISN’T.  If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels …. If I have prophetic powers …. If I have all faith ….  but do not have love … I gain nothing.  When you give a gift without love, you gain nothing by doing it!  Let’s be very specific.  When you pledge to this church, it must not be compulsory.  Your elders put the question to you “How much will you give?”  They do not say, “You must give or you can no longer be a part of us.”  Neither do you hear them say to you “If you do not give us money you are wicked cheapskates.”  We do not manipulate you by means of guilt, or any other negative motivation because we know such gifts lack any spiritual value and can only lead to resentment.  

You and I are called by God to be generous.  One way we show that is by giving money to keep the church operating.  But we should never look at our giving as a way of buying favor with God.  God can’t be bribed.  You may be a very wealthy person or a poor one but if you put in one dime or eight hundred dollars a week means nothing unless it’s freely given in love for God and this church.


The second observation is:  Gifts Given In Love Require Patience.

If we have learned the first lesson about freely giving, gaining patience is the second hurdle.  This is hard for us because we live in a “market economy.”  That means we are accustomed to exchanges of money.  You give me your money and I give you an automobile, or maybe a rutabaga.  But when the rule of love permeates our lives, we stop thinking of gaining something through an exchange of money and instead look for the kingdom of God.

The word translated “patient” in v. 8, is more accurately rendered “long suffering.”  In other words this quality of patient love is not waiting patiently for your spouse during a year long tour in Afghanistan.  Instead patient love is the kind which endures some wrong done to you by a friend or a parent.  It is a love which expects a positive outcome, even though it is not immediately gained.  How does that love relate to the gifts we give?

It helps us stop thinking that our offering in worship is a purchase.  We are not buying Christian Education for our children when we make a pledge.  Neither are we buying a marriage service for our daughter, nor buying sheet music for the choir.  If that is all a pledge means then we could just as easily figure out our budget, divide it by the number of members and send you a bill for your household to pay next year.  But we don’t, do we?  Love which is long suffering knows that educating a child is a lifetime job for Mom and Dad.  (And it isn’t easy.)  The church will help but how it will be accomplished will be a long and winding road.  Gifts given in love are like seeds.  They have the potential to produce wonderful blessings, but their eventual outcome is a mystery and dependent on many other gifts given along the way.


Last, we should understand:  Gifts Given In Love Yield An Eternal Reward.

There are many things about our Eternal Life that we simply do not know.  Our inability comes from the fact that we are, says Paul, like children who can not grasp what adult life is really like.  At our best here and now we are still youngsters.  We know only in part, but then we will know fully, and the perfection of eternity will have a beauty our current vocabulary can not describe.  However, even as adults we recognize the connection to our childhood days.  What we once learned and practiced as children takes on greater significance when we reach adulthood.  And, Paul affirms the same principal applies to our future life.

If we practice giving gifts in love now we will be able to give and receive even more in the world to come.  When we exercise generosity, not expecting payback, nor thinking of our gifts as an investment account, we imitate the nature of God.  The more we participate in giving the more naturally we will give.  Jesus spoke of laying up treasure in heaven (Mt. 6:20). For Paul that treasure was receiving the continuing reality of Love, the source of all giving.


Conclusion
I once lost $20 on a cold February day.  This is not a great deal of money.  However, this occurred more than 30 years ago and at that time my family and I lived on a fairly strict budget.  $20 was not something easily dismissed.  I realized the loss when I went to pay for some bread and milk about 5:30 that afternoon.

I returned home, without the bread and milk, and did what you would do.  I tried in my mind to retrace my steps.  Where had I gone, what had I done?  There are so many errands and chance events in a day that it isn’t easy to remember all your activities.  I had been to my office, the post office, two or three different homes and one hospital.  At each stop I spoke with two or three different people and with others over the telephone.  I remembered putting my hand into my pocket during the day, to fish out a handkerchief, or to reach for a pen, but nothing brought to mind the location of the missing 20.

It was while I was going through my suit coat pocket for a third time that I felt a small object.  My fingers knew immediately the feel of worn paper, and the size was about right for a folded bill.  I yanked it out.  But the color was wrong.  It was an oblong lump of red construction paper which I did not recognize.  I opened it and inside a small white heart was pasted.  Upon this was carefully written, “I love you Daddy.”

I probably wasted two hours looking for that $20 bill, yet no millionaire’s fortune, no decade in the sun, could have equaled what that homemade valentine said to me.  I had been worrying about money when under my roof was the greatest treasure a man can have, the pure love of his seven year old child.

Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

August 27, 2017

Matthew 16:13-20
 

Getting It

Introduction

Have you ever had one of those embarrassing moments when someone tells a joke and at the punch line everyone breaks into laughter …  and you don’t?  You stand there and smile and pretend you’re marvelously entertained and all the while you are running over the details of the story, trying to find out what was so darned funny?

        

“Har, har, har!” says the guy next to you, tears streaming down his face, “He used the camel to ride into town, that’s rich!”

       

“Oh, yeah,” you say, manufacturing some warbles of delight, “It’s a killer, all right.” not having any idea what the joke meant.  You just don’t get it.  It doesn’t make any sense, you don’t see the connections, humorous or otherwise.  It’s a lonesome feeling.

 Believe it or not some people feel that way about Jesus.  They just don’t get it, or better said, get him.  They can’t figure him out.  They know people who insist they’re on a first name basis with Jesus.  Yet the one who isn’t getting it can’t make any sense of who Jesus really is and why people call him the Son of God.  Before we condemn them for being dense let’s remember a couple things about “getting it.”

 

More Than Knowing Facts

Getting Jesus is a lot more than knowing about Jesus.  Peter knew the world of the first century better than you, me, or almost any professor of biblical history you might pick.  This is for one simple reason.  He lived in it.  He grew up speaking the same language as Jesus.  He lived in a town very similar to Jesus.  He plied a common trade, fishing, while Jesus worked in a similar kind of occupation, carpentry.  They both were Jews from birth.  They both had seen Roman soldiers and stuffed-shirt Pharisees.  But just because they had these things in common and a thousand things more, that doesn’t mean Peter understood the most essential thing about Jesus until that day when he answered Jesus’ question, “But who do you say that I am?”  In fact, if you study your Bible you will see most of the time while following Jesus he didn’t have a clue.  He and the other disciples behave like dodoes a good deal of the time.

 

You and I can be the same way, we can accumulate facts.  We can study our Bible (and you should).  We can attend church, listen to sermons and pray.  And still not “get it.”  We can admire Jesus, recognize his compassion, and try to imitate him.  And still not “get it.”  This doesn’t mean you are bad, or stupid.  It just means there is something wonderful and profound you still have not discovered.   If you feel that way, don’t despair.  I have something to tell you at the end of the sermon.  For now, let’s just admit, that knowing about Jesus isn’t the same as knowing Jesus.

 

Believers as Bad Advertisements

Here’s another problem about “getting it.”  Some of the people who hang around Jesus are not very good advertisements.  This has always been true.  You will remember that a frequent criticism reported in Matthew and elsewhere was that Jesus was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”  The good people of his time just did not understand this.  He accepted invitations to dinner with rich snobs.  He spoke to women who were prostitutes.  One of his disciples, Matthew, was in fact a tax collector who had collaborated with the Romans.

 

In our day we are shocked and disappointed when religious leaders are revealed as hypocrites.  Perhaps the disappointment is greater because we want so badly to believe they are better than us.  Then there are self-righteous busy-bodies who tell non-believers they are going straight to hell.  And of course we find Protestants who hate Catholics, Catholics who hate Protestants and even people inside the same church who would be happy to see those people two pews over leave and never come back.

 

Let’s face it the bad behavior we demonstrate at times causes some people not to take Jesus seriously.  When we lie, or steal, or cheat, we discredit the church and cause others to conclude there’s nothing special about Christianity or her Lord.  Groucho Marx once said he never wanted to belong to a club that would accept him as a member.  Jesus however welcomes everyone in who wants to join.  That lays a special obligation on us insiders to behave ourselves and live in such a way that those who still don’t get Jesus have the opportunity to find him.

 

It Takes Time

There’s another reason some people don’t “get” Jesus.  Simply put, it takes time.  The best evidence for this is that the 12 closest to Jesus spent about three years following him, and yet when put to the test eleven of them ducked the question or just plain didn’t know.  Only Peter got it, and may I point out to you that shortly thereafter in the great crisis of Good Friday, Peter denied he even knew the man, three times.

 

What should we conclude from this?  We may get flashes of insight.  We may have special moments where everything is clear.  But throughout our lives we will be tempted and tested.  Following Jesus is just that, a dogged determination to keep him in front of us, always asking ourselves “is this what I should do to prove my loyalty to the Son of God?”  The repetition, the practice of living for others, putting aside a significant offering, seeking Jesus in prayer, does have an effect.  We should expect there will be disappointments and puzzlement.  But by the constant investment of ourselves in the life of Christ, we are changed.  William Willimon states the case very nicely when he says:  “Jesus never said at the end of one of his sermons …. ‘Do you agree?’  Rather, what he said was, ‘Follow me.’”

 

Conclusion

There are many stories of lives which were changed in an instant by the sudden revelation, the sudden in-rushing knowledge of Jesus.  The Bible tells such stories particularly in the book of Acts.  Great figures of the faith like Augustine or Blaise Pascal have left us autobiographies in which they describe the sudden moment when they knew the reality of Jesus’ life and love for them.  But it is not always the case that someone can point to one specific moment such as Peter’s, nor should we be surprised by that.

 

For many, “getting Jesus” is like learning a foreign language.  At first they understand nothing about him.  But then they study his words and learn about his life.  This is like memorizing vocabulary and learning grammar.  It takes effort and doesn’t come easily.  Gradually with a foreign language you learn to read it, to hear it and recognize it.  But that is still not “getting it.”  The break through comes when you go to that foreign land and live among its people.  You stumble over unfamiliar words, and struggle to keep up.  There comes a time when after days of struggling, you one day wake up understanding.  You don’t translate phrases in your head, you form sentences and speak.  The joy of that morning is great indeed.  But it doesn’t end there.  When we say, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.our life is changed forever … and ever after, we follow.

 



Ad gloriam Dei,

         Stuart C. Wattles


July 15, 2017
Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23
Agronomy 101
Introduction
     In the Broadway musical “The Fantasticks,” there is a comic duet, sung by the fathers of two young people who have fallen in love.  It is called, “Plant a Radish,” and goes like this:
Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt
That’s why I love vegetables.  You know what you’re about!
They’re dependable!  They’re befriendable
They’re the best pal a parent’s ever known.
While with children, it’s bewilderin’
You don’t know until the seed is nearly grown,
just what you’ve sown.
Every turnip green!  Every kidney bean!
Every plant grows according to the plot!
While with progeny, it’s hodge-podge-nee,
For as soon as you think you know what you’ve got,
it’s what they’re not.
So plant a cabbage, get a cabbage, not a sauerkraut!
That’s why I love vegetables.  You know what you’re about!
     Those two fathers would have understood today’s parable.  They would have had sympathy for the farmer sowing his seed.  They would have had even greater sympathy for the Father who made that seed.
Jesus is talking about you and me and how we receive the Good News of the kingdom.  Like all his parables, it is simple, down to earth, and true to our experience.  Some people respond to Good News, some do not.  Some continue once they’ve heard it.  Some do not.
Listen Up!
     George Buttrick, a preacher of an earlier time says that our first requirement when we hear a parable by Jesus is to listen up!  Don’t believe me?  Look at v. 3:  “Listen!” says Jesus.  And again in v. 9, he concludes by saying, “Let anyone with ears listen!”  When you don’t listen to Jesus’ proclamation, you’re like seed thrown onto a well-used, beaten path.  The seed just sits there exposed and soon birds come down and gobble it up.
     Some people have hearts that are beaten down and hardened.  They have become jaded, worldly wise, cynical.  They are only concerned about themselves.  The parables of Jesus are just so much foolishness, gibberish, believed by the simple-minded.  The Word of God has no entry into their heart or mind.  They are beaten down like tracks in a dirt road.  They are in a rut of their own making.
     Before we move on, and just say, “I’m glad I’m not like that!” Don’t you find you have to resist becoming numb, from having a heart hardened by trouble and vulgarity?   It seems that our media these days consists of just three things in various degrees of mixture:  violence, scandal, or sex.  And I’m not talking just about our entertainments!  The news is all about violence, scandal, or sex!  Comedy programs are laced with sexual innuendo, or tales about someone’s sexual habits.  Political talk shows are all about scandals by politicians on the right and on the left.  Police dramas on TV are all about violence and death.  Even advertisements are about how to boost sexual performance or about therapeutic drugs that, as the voice over quickly tells you in the last 15 seconds, will flat out kill you if you take them.  The songs on the radio are about drugs or gangs, or sex.  Our media:  the internet, television, radio, movies, plays, books, newspapers, and magazines, are like rivers and highways.  They carry necessary information, and products into our lives.  They shape the way we think.  But these days they are like the rivers of 100 years ago, carrying valuable cargo and life giving water while at the same time filled with untreated sewage, industrial pollutants, and toxic chemicals.  As a culture we are steadily becoming more numb, less compassionate, more callous, and less tolerant.
     Do you know what Jesus has to say about marriage, or forgiveness or violence?  If you have trouble calling that to mind, what about your children and grand children who are far more impressionable than you?  Does God have the chance to get into your heart or theirs?  Or, are you, are they, gradually becoming insensitive, selfish, and hard?
Taking the Heat
     Jesus also warned about seed which falls on rocky ground, ground which has cracks and niches harboring small patches of soil.  When the rain falls a little water collects as well, and a seed which falls into the crevice germinates, sending up a green shoot.  But then, the sun comes out and three days go by with no rain.  It blazes down hot and hard and the plant withers, turns brown and dies.  He’s talking about persecution.  When things are going well, with a day of sunshine followed by a day of rain, the plant that has no deep root can survive.  There’s little trouble if you’re fed each day in just the right amount, and you never have to fear for more.  When you never have to stretch or reach or strain, you become shallow rooted and even though you look healthy, when trouble comes you won’t stand up to it.
     A man found a preacher to his liking.  He would listen to him and no other.  He did not pray, or learn to rely on God.  After all, the preacher prayed for him.  He never read the bible or spent time meditating on it.  After all, the preacher did that for him.  He never gave any thought to volunteering or giving money to a worthwhile cause.  After all, the preacher said God was in charge of everything.  He liked what he heard.  He was enthusiastic when things were successful, and his church was growing.  But when trouble came to him, at home or at work, or at church, he had no depth with which to face it.  Jesus said:  “such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.”
     The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t about you, it’s about humankind.  Jesus isn’t a personal umbrella we carry on a rainy day.  Jesus is the one who warns us to be ready for the torrent and the flood.  In Syria and Iraq, ISIS gunmen have lined up captives, demanding to know if they are Yazidi, Sunni, or Christian.  Those who will not swear allegiance to them are pulled out and executed on the spot.  These and worse atrocities are reported constantly by reliable sources.
     The message in the parable is that we must deepen and strengthen in our faith or we will not be able to stand the scorch of persecution when it comes.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is not ease and comfort.  It is the promise of final victory.
Don’t Choke
      And then some people receive the gospel with sincerity and joy, … but … around them are other seeds.  We’ll call them the seeds of wealth and worry.  Perhaps this part of the parable fits us best.  Our greatest danger is being choked by the good life.
     We are incredibly wealthy.  I know, you don’t think you have enough, or are just barely scraping by.  I do too, often enough to be ashamed of myself.  So, I’ll say it again:  We are incredibly wealthy.  Here’s what we worry about:  What to eat.  We go to the refrigerator and open the door and sigh, “What shall we eat tonight?  There’s leftover pot roast from Friday. … Pasta cooks up fast, or, maybe I’ll fry some pork chops, that doesn’t take long … or, I could make it real simple and open a can of soup and make grilled cheese sandwiches. … I don’t know … nothing sounds good….”  You see our problem is what to eat, not will there be any food to put on the table.  Our pantry shelves are full of rice, and pasta, and flour.  Our freezer has meat and fish and poultry.  Our refrigerator has milk and cheese and eggs.  We could feed ourselves for five days easily with what’s already on hand.  And upstairs in the bedroom are the dresser and the closet.  There have to be twenty pairs of sox in my top drawer (none of them matching), and shirt after shirt in the next two drawers down, both short sleeve and long, all neatly folded.  The bottom drawer has jeans and shorts and sweaters.  The closet has suits and an odd assortment of heavy shirts, gifts never used but hung up and preserved, and clothes that belonged to Dad and can’t be thrown away; and shoes, shoes, shoes.  There are shoes for dressing up and shoes for mowing the lawn, shoes for casual wear and shoes for going to work, sneakers and sandals and flip-flops.  My feet don’t go cold in winter slush, I have thick leather boots.  I don’t get wet when it rains, I have a slicker, a hat and an umbrella.
     And meanwhile, as we worry about color combinations for our wardrobe and try not to exceed 2,000 calories each day, we’re choking to death on things, gadgets we don’t need, machines which own us, not we who own them.  Who here doesn’t feel uncomfortable when their cell phone starts to play the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” ring tone in your pocket when you’re in a conference with the boss?  And does anybody here have a smart TV?  Do you know how to use?  Have you ever hit a button on the remote by mistake and it starts asking you questions you can’t understand?… and you’re afraid to just turn it off?  Do you own a computer?  Of course you do!  Do you ever think about that day when you’ll see the blue screen of death and you never backed anything up so you’ve lost all your tax returns for the last 5 years and every photograph you ever took of the kids?  Or, if you did back everything up (I don’t think so!) have you ever heard about ransomware?  It’s a little note which pops up on your monitor saying “Hello, my name is Boris.  We have inserted a Trojan Horse on your hard drive and you are now not able to access anything on it.  Send us $50,000 electronically to this address and we’ll remove the lock for you.  Have a nice day!”
     So, what exactly are you worrying about?  What has you by the throat?  What do you need to get rid of so God’s message of hope and forgiveness can reach you?  Is it the mortgage?  … your never-ending job? … your boat?  If you’re spending more time worrying about your stocks and bonds than about your 16 year old daughter’s education then listen:  “The cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.”
Conclusion
     But let us not end on this dismal note.  For those who do listen eagerly to the Word of God,
  • Who bury it in their hearts,
  • Who ponder its meaning,
  • Who practice its counsel and share it with others,
  • Who clear out the brambles of day-to-day care,
  • Who love the message and worship the One who brought it,
     
  • They bring forth great blessings in the lives of others,
  • They have courage in the heat of conflict or trouble,
  • They have confidence that not a hair shall fall from their head without the notice of God.
To the glory of God,
Stuart C. Wattles

June 11, 2017
Genesis 1:1-2:4   Matthew 28:16-30


Global Autopsy


Introduction
    How many of you would willingly go to an autopsy?  I don’t see a lot of hands out there.  When I was in my second year at Seminary I also was a chaplain in a hospital and my supervisor arranged for me and another holy-man-in-training to go to an autopsy … if we wanted to.  We were learning how to talk with people who were about to have an important surgery, or with families whose child was having an emergency appendectomy.  There are all sorts of medical conditions that you run into in a hospital.  Knowledge of human anatomy can make you a little more saavy.  You won’t be a qualified surgeon, but at least you won’t be completely baffled by the vocabulary that is thrown around.  So I was asked, “How about it? “Want to see an autopsy?”  I confess to you, I passed.  The pictures in the encyclopedia will educate me just as well I thought.  It wasn’t that I was afraid of the sight of blood.  I’d already seen a few quarts of that in the emergency room on Saturday nights.  It was seeing a once living person reduced to his or her parts that scared me.  The idea of having a kidney weighed on a scale before my eyes gave me the heebie-jeebies.

    Caitlin Doughty in 2014 wrote about her experiences working in a crematory entitled (brace up now!) Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.  Now this sounds wrong doesn’t it, just wrong, who would write a book about the subject of disposing of human remains by fire?  But listen to what she says about why she wanted to write this:

… cremation with no services of any kind … doesn’t allow for something I believe we need, which is to care for and interact with our dead bodies. To have the body just disappear can hurt the grieving process. ... Death affects everything we do as humans, and we’re much healthier when we understand this. Other than television and film, we never see death anymore, it’s not a part of our daily lives. We view this as “progress” but I don’t believe it is. We need the reality of death to remind us that we are not immortal, and our actions have real consequences.
    
    I agree with much of that.  Those who don’t accept that someone they love has died are permanently wounded by a death.  Those who grieve can heal.  But here is something Caitlin Doughty denies.  We are not just a collection of tissue parts, which in an autopsy is all that matters.  We are human beings created by the hand of God with a spirit, a consciousness, which will not die.  How that spirit is united to flesh and blood is the great mystery at the core of every religion.  

Modern Chop Shop
    Do you want to know why the modern world is in such a mess?  Why people seem hopeless or angry so much of the time?  We live in a global chop shop.  We live at a time very different than previous human history in one important regard:  We have removed the mystery of our Creation!  Scientific inquiry has lead us to a place where we think we can break everything down into its little bits, weigh them on a scale, poke them, heat them or freeze them, magnify them or chop them into tiny nibs.  Science has much to offer but it will not sit comfortably with mystery.  It must reduce things into a mathematical, mechanical or chemical explanation.  Any honest researcher or physicist will tell you that this can’t be done.  But, no matter, the world we live in is infected with the notion that eventually we will know everything; that there is nothing which is permanently hidden from our eyes, we just have to have the right tools to probe a little deeper.  Physiology and indeed human consciousness has become merely Protoplasmic Robotics.  Humankind is reduced to a fragile chemical reaction on two legs.

    Say goodbye to poetry!  So long romance.  Courage and self-sacrifice take a hike  We don’t need you any longer.  We can fix things just fine without you.  We’ll manipulate the genes, and zap the bugs with lasers, and if that doesn’t work (the expectation now is) soon we’ll download your memory onto a silicon chip and convert you into a cyborg. 

    Now you don’t believe me I’m sure.  This isn’t the problem with the world!  I mean the Dark Ages were the Dark Ages, you wouldn’t want to go back to the 14th century would you?  When people thought that God was punishing the world as the black death scythed through the population?  If they had known about viruses and how disease travels the misery of those years would never have happened, right?  Oh but it would.  Life is fragile.  The bubonic plague is something we can now cure, but not Mersa, not Ebola.  In the spring of 2014 an Ebola epidemic broke out in West Africa and by August of that year it crossed the ocean to touch our shore.  Ebola is highly contagious and almost 90% of persons contracting the illness die.  It can only be controlled through isolation.  In a world with 7 billion people the rate at which an unchecked infectious disease could reduce modern civilization to its knees is probably less than six months.

    For now however, we are cocooned in a world without Mystery.  Look at the hallmarks of culture:  our music, our art, our plays, our literature.  How many of them transport us, uplift us, or inspire?  How many of them instead dwell on ugliness, or violence?  How many of them are discordant or cynical?  Modern man has chopped the world to pieces trying to solve the riddle of how things work.  And much as we try to move the bits around we don’t seem any closer to Utopia than the people who lived in Asia when Tamerlane slashed through.

Our Place and God’s
    By now you’re probably wondering, “What has that to do with God?”

    Much of the modern world has been seduced by the idea that we are in charge, that if we only ate better, fixed things like cancer, and stopped burning so much coal we would be happy.   Wars would cease.  No one would ever be poor.  We have put ourselves above the creation in the place only God can occupy.

    The book of Genesis ends the story of Creation in this way:  God saw everything he had made, and indeed it was very good. … Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.  And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it….  Everything we need is already here.  All that is necessary for our lives is at hand, the peace we long for, the beauty we crave, the substance for our lives available.  But God is displaced from our thoughts and imagination.  We have attempted to put ourselves above him, and all the while frenetically trying to reduce and manipulate his creation.

Conclusion
    It’s Trinity Sunday, the Sunday in the year when we yield to another mystery we cannot explain, God in Three Persons.  We’re moderns are uncomfortable with that of course.  Anything we cannot explain either frightens us or provokes us into rejection.  And then we ask, “Where has sublime wonder gone?  Where is the awe of the heavens, or the thunder and might of the sea?  Where is God?”

    People have always wanted to gain control of the world through politics, invention, or mind expanding drugs.  It just happens that in our time we actually think we have.   By purging the mystery and explaining things to our own satisfaction we have deluded ourselves into thinking that all is well.  And the soul shrinks.

    A mystery according to our dictionary is simply something which is hidden, unexplained or unknown.  Matthew tells us that when the eleven remaining disciples returned to Galilee after the resurrection they met Jesus on a mountaintop.  When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.  They who doubted were caught in the same dilemma as we.  They wanted to believe like the others, but how could it be?  How could the invisible God become flesh and walk among us?  How could Jesus, a man, die and rise again?  How could plunging a man into water three times in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit change anything, much less the world?  It was a mystery beyond human answer.  It could only be answered through the mystery of the unseen God.

    And in that faith their souls grew large.


May 28, 2017
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:6-19

Do You Hear the Lion’s Roar?

Introduction

          We live in a world which too often doesn’t make sense to us.  Earlier this week there was a bombing in Manchester, England.  I’m sure you heard the report and saw the pictures of people fleeing in panic from the music concert by a popular young singer.  Many of the people killed were young people, teenagers.  Later this week, two days ago, a group of Coptic Christians boarded a bus to visit the monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor in lower Egypt.  Coptic Christians make up about 10% of the population in Egypt.  It is one of the oldest Christian groups in the world, established by the author of the Gospel of Mark, during the reign of Nero, within 25 years after the resurrection of Jesus.  As they headed south from Cairo their bus was overtaken by three SUV’s.  10 men wearing fatigues and carrying weapons entered the bus and demanded that the passengers recite the Muslim profession of faith.  Then they opened fire on the pilgrims.  32 persons died, among them children, and 13 others are in critical condition in the hospital.  ISIS has claimed responsibility for the atrocity.  It is the fourth attack on Christians in the last six months in Egypt, including the Palm Sunday raid on two churches, and a December suicide bombing in a Cairo church which killed 75 persons.*

          While Manchester is important, and what happened there is part of the struggle between the West and a medieval culture, the other stories of Christians being singled out and killed, receive little attention and fade quickly from the headlines.  This, even though they demonstrate a persistent pattern of deadly persecution occurring not just in Syria and Iraq, but also in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Pakistan.  In the last ten years 900,000 Christians have been killed for their faith. Amnesty International, a group which monitors terror attacks and government violations of human rights, reports that “(Coptic Christians) have increasingly been under attack in Egypt. (Their) churches and homes have been set on fire, members of the Coptic minority have been physically attacked, and their property has been looted.”

          The apostle Peter wrote in the latter part of the first century to churches that were under fire, that were being persecuted by officials in the Roman Empire:  Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.  My friends, he’s roaring now.

The World of Peter and John

          At the time when the apostles Peter and John lived and evangelized, the world was ruled by Rome.  On the whole the Emperor and the Roman Senate didn’t care what you believed as long as you paid your taxes.  But the Romans were extremely superstitious and had the practice of respecting, even worshipping, the gods of other lands and people they conquered.  This served the purpose of pacifying subject states but also increasing a hold on the strange, invisible forces controlling the destiny of every person.

          Christians posed a problem, a threat to this ideology.  By the end of the first century they were spreading into every corner of the empire and all classes of society.  But they did not recognize the many gods Rome had collected.  They insisted that they only had one God, and that all others were false.  This meant that Christians would not participate in various civic rituals if they involved homage to a local deity.  They would not swear an oath in the name of any of the gods Rome honored.  And, they would not swear loyalty to an Emperor who claimed he was a god, as Caligula, Nero, and various other Caesars did from the first century onward.  There were sporadic and sometimes brutal persecutions in the empire, but the church held on.  The trouble came from the fact that Christians defined themselves as being loyal to only one God, the one revealed by Jesus Christ.

          Why do Christians in 2017 die for their belief?  For the same reason they did in ancient Rome.  They place loyalty to Jesus Christ above everything else.  In the historic Christian lands of the West, we strive to live by Jesus’ command that we live  side by side with people of different faiths, loving them as we love our own family and friends.  The presence of Hindu or Moslem or Jewish people in our neighborhoods does not lead to violence and persecution, except in isolated cases of racism or some other kind of local prejudice.  But in other lands obedience to the God revealed by Jesus Christ is not tolerated.  In North Korea to admit you are a Christian will put you in a labor camp where you will be worked to death.  In Iran, if a Moslem person converts to Christianity he is subject to the death penalty.

The Ones Jesus Claims

          John reports that on the last night Jesus spent with his disciples he prayed saying:  Holy Father, protect them in your name … the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world … but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.  This is not a prayer that they, or we, be taken out of the world, but that we be protected from the evil one who tramples across the world.  You will remember that Jesus himself was tempted by the devil, and that the final temptation was to receive all the power and authority in the world, and deny God, by worshipping Satan.  For Christians in lands of present day persecution the choice is sharp and clear.  They must not convert at the point of a gun barrel.  They must risk death itself to hold on to Christ.

          For us the attack on our loyalty is more disguised.  We are sometimes asked to put our career ahead of God by looking the other way when we discover fraudulent or illegal business practices.  Or, young people are lured to their doom by addictive drugs, which become the center of their lives, everything to them, instead of Christ.  A nursing home aide is tempted by the despair of elderly patients to take the place of God and give a lethal injection to some of his charges.  (You may remember that there was a story about an individual who did this, three months ago in the news.)  Like a hungry lion evil stalks us, and seeks to terrify us, because we Christians refuse to place anything ahead of our loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Sanctified

          Jesus asked his Father for one other special blessing for you and me.  He said:  Sanctify them in the truth.

          To sanctify something is to make it holy, to set it apart from common usage and instead make it special.  That which makes you special is the uncommon knowledge of God, who God is, what his purposes are.  Now you say “Who me?  That’s for a preacher, that’s for theologians, that’s for others who maintain the church in the world.”   Not acceptable.  We are not allowed that excuse, any of us.  It does not matter what our occupation may be, what station we have in life.  It certainly does not matter to ISIS whether you are young or old, male or female, humble peasant or college professor.  If you wear the name of Christian you are their enemy.  Jesus himself revealed God in his life and what he asks of you is no less than complete loyalty to the truth of Jesus Christ.  Will you demonstrate to the world courage when the lion roars?  Will you lift up someone who has fallen?  Will you feed the hungry, care for the sick, and visit those who are in prison?  You are called to live the way Jesus did, trusting in God for all things, showing compassion and standing up for what is right, and just.  To be made special in the truth means you have the knowledge the world longs for and must have.

Conclusion

  • Not out of the world, but protected in the world.

  • Not escaping from the world, but living courageously in it.

  • Not cursing and reviling injustice, but forgiving those who do not know what they are doing.

If brother and sister Christians in Egypt have the courage to do this, can we do anything less?

For the glory of God

Stuart C. Wattles

*[Sources: CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, www.opendoorsusa.org]


March 12, 2017
John 3:1-17

Swimming Lessons

Introduction

            In 2012 the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta did an analysis of death statistics in the United States.  They found that in an average year 3900 people drown and another 5700 have to be rushed to an Emergency Room due to a swimming or boating accident.  That means that more than 10 people die every day because of drowning, and another 15 people have a close call.  Here’s something else, more than two thirds of the people who died were 14 or younger.  Just to put these figures into perspective the number of persons who die in an average year because of an accidental gunshot is … 780, … and those 14 or younger, 86.  There is no question that gun safety is important.  Those who own firearms need to use and store them safely so that children and teens don’t die in an accident.  But, even more important, your son or daughter needs to know how to swim.

            I know there are many good programs, such as those at the YMCA, where parents take their children to the pool and teach them the basics of swimming very early.  Many of us didn’t learn that way.  We may have played in a wading pool, or had fun with a garden hose or water balloons as kids, but swimming was postponed until we were “old enough.”  Somewhere around five Dad or Mom took us out to the shallow end of a pool or the beach, told us to hold our breath and put our face in the water.  Was that easy?  Not by a long shot!  We were terrified.  Let’s face it, you can learn to swim, but it doesn’t come easily for most people.

            Nicodemus came to Jesus by night says the gospel of John.  He wanted to understand what Jesus was doing, just who he was.  You can’t fault his intention, or his good will.  He was a Pharisee, and many of his colleagues had turned their backs on Jesus.  Nicodemus went past his curiosity, he asked Jesus how it was that he did what he did.  The answer didn’t reassure:  “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  It must have felt like being thrown into the deep end of the pool without a swimming lesson.
 

The Plunge

          For many, especially for those who weren’t introduced to it as youngsters, faith in Jesus Christ is like jumping out of a boat into high seas out of sight of the land.  They just can’t imagine it.  Nicodemus couldn’t.  “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  Being born once is tough enough, for mother, yes, but for baby no picnic at all.  We come into this world screaming.

            God doesn’t say that faith is easy, he says he wants you to have it.  To be born from above, to take the plunge of faith, is not easy and doesn’t happen overnight.  First of all, what does Jesus mean by saying we must be born of water and the Spirit?  It is a clear reference to what we call Baptism.  Now, some are baptized as infants, and some as adults.  My point is not to go into the question of, are Reformed Presbyterians right and the Baptists wrong?  Whether a person is baptized at eight weeks or eighteen, or eighty, there has to be water and the Spirit.  In baptism you get wet.  In baptism you get the Spirit.  So, let’s take a look at two different people and how they were “born from above.”

            Frank was taken by his parents to their small rural church outside Oshkosh, Wisconsin, when he was six months old.  There in the company of 47 other people, water was poured upon his head and earnest prayers were said.  He was baptized.  Frank didn’t remember it.  But, he spent the next 17 years in his hometown, all the while going to Sunday School and Christmas eve services, and Vacation Bible School.  You know what I’m referring to, a fairly typical experience for a lot of our own young people in this church.  When Frank left his small town and went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was an exciting time.  He studied Socrates, and read Henry David Thoreau.  He took a course in astronomy and visited the campus observatory 48 miles north in the desolate regions of his state.  There he looked through the eyepiece of the telescope and saw the Great Andromeda Galaxy, billions of stars at unimaginable distance from our own.  He took a course in logic, and read Nietzsche.  He took two courses in European history and one on China and its ancient civilization.  Within three yeas he stopped going to church and left it all behind.  How could the simple story of the birth of God in human flesh, and the arrival of wise men following a star link up with all he had learned?  No, Christianity was for children, thought Frank.

            You might say, Frank had had rudimentary instruction in how to swim in a clean pool, with lifeguards Mom and Dad close by, to rescue him if he was in real trouble.  Water didn’t scare him.  So, Frank graduated and got started on a career.  He began by working for a big company that made widgets of all kinds.  For five years he learned all about widgets, and sold them.  He was married and had a daughter.  He changed jobs and went to a new company started only two years earlier by some bright people in the field of computer robotics.  He looked at what they were doing and offered to boost their sales and marketing if they’d let him buy a piece of the company and work on commission.  Frank was too busy to go to a church.  The last time he’d ever been was when he was married four years earlier.  His daughter was now 3 and she never was baptized.  Who has time for church when you’re trying to be a good provider, pay a mortgage, advance your company and be a good Daddy?

            Two years later the company went bust; and not because the product was bad, or undesirable.  Frank had done his job well, and so had their workers.  The problem was that one of the original owners had embezzled all the profits and fled.  This was a bad time, heavy seas you might say.  He and his wife argued about money.  Frank was liable for a portion of the company’s debts.  Then, a year later the bottom fell out.  His five year old daughter was diagnosed with cancer.  Where do you go when you’re desperate?  Where do you go when you feel you’ve been betrayed?  What do you do when the person you love more than yourself, your daughter, is in danger?  Frank began to pray, at first angrily, later pleading.  But this time of deep waters was the turning point.  It was the time that Frank realized he could not manage his life without faith in Someone wiser and more powerful than himself.  ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  It was at this time that Frank could surrender his pride, and confidence, and look up, instead of down.

            Now Peggy had a much different childhood.  She grew up in a moderately wealthy family in a suburb of Boston.  She was the apple of her parent’s eyes and she always went her own way.  She knew from junior high school she wanted to be a doctor and after graduating top of the class she went to Cornell and then Johns Hopkins Medical.  Oh, and church?  That wasn’t an issue.  Her parents had never bothered with it and neither did she.  Most of her friends were the same.  They listened to the same music, they ate the same foods, they skied the same slopes and vacationed in the same Caribbean islands.  The only thing she knew about Jesus was that he lived a long time ago, died horribly, and priests have been riding his coat tails for centuries.  The only Christians she knew weren’t much better as far as she could tell.  They seemed like hopeless saps.

            After graduation she interned in St. Louis.  It was not much of a city as far as Peggy was concerned, but she wanted to do something important with her life and so she’d found a city hospital which sat on the edge of the worst part of town.  The people who flooded the emergency rooms had everything from gunshot wounds to sky high blood pressure.  They spoke Spanish, Korean, and even Bulgarian, along with broken English.  In the hospital she met Nick, one of the chaplains.  He was 27, had a ridiculous, thin beard that made him look like an adolescent, and wore a black shirt and collar.  Fortunately she didn’t have to rub elbows with Nick very often.  He sometimes was in the emergency room talking or praying with patients and families.  And once he taught a class to the interns on the role of pastoral care in the lives of patients and their families.  Attendance had been required.  Peggy squirmed and rolled her eyes through the hour.  What bothered her most was she couldn’t understand why he was doing this hocus-pocus.  She’d learned enough to know that he was intelligent, used a cell phone, and sometimes partied with her fellow interns.  The shock was when her room mate went out on a date with him, and then another one, and, … well, there’s no accounting for who people find attractive.

            The tragedy that befell Peggy was not really her own.  Nick showed up in the emergency room one Saturday, not as the chaplain, but as a stretcher case.  He and the roommate had been out on a date when a drunk driver had slammed into them.  She was dead, Nick nearly so.  It was a hideous night.  Peggy had to attend to Nick and park all her feelings off to the side.  When he was conscious, and she saw him two days later, she had to tell him about the roommate’s death.  She felt within her an overwhelming sense of loss and anger.  What was the point of all this suffering?  Why did her friend die and not this waste of a man?  She knew that was unfair but she could not deny it.  It was the first time she’d ever had anything truly terrible happen to her, and no one could explain it to her.  She’d never swum a stroke in her life, and she was in over her head.  Four days later as Nick began his recovery she went back to him, to apologize for how cold she had been.  Over several days they began to talk, and as they did Peggy, floundering, began to cry, something she rarely did.  Life was not fair.  Nick said to her one day, “Peggy, surely you know people die every day for all kinds of reasons, none of them fair.  God didn’t do this, but He will fix it.”

            Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  For Peggy, the thought that anyone could uproot the injustice of death was new.  She began to think that life was a mystery, that to relieve suffering was good, but to defeat death required something else, or even Someone else.  It was not a baptism, but it was the beginning which led there. 
 

Conclusion

            When you learn to swim you have to move a different way.  Sometimes you’re floating and catching your breath.  Other times you’re reaching and kicking to move.  Sometimes the water is cold and chills you, other times it’s too warm and relaxes you too much.  To have faith, to be born from above, to live with the Spirit, you have to have lots of different strokes.  You have to be prepared to strain, and other times, rest.  You have to watch out for the undertow, or the current in the stream, it’s like the wind, you can’t predict it.  But if you have faith, you’ll get through it.  You’ll know that God is in charge.  He won’t abandon you.  His purpose is not to torment but to teach.

            For many, faith in Jesus Christ is like jumping out of boat into high seas out of sight of the land.  They just can’t imagine it.  To take the plunge of faith isn’t easy.  But Jesus didn’t say that faith is easy, he says he wants you to have it.

          Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

February 26, 2017
Exodus 24:12-18
Matthew 17:1-9


Brilliant Mystery


Introduction
    The British have a one word expression to describe something perfect.  “Brilliant!” they say.

  • A pretty girl walks past some teenagers:  “Brilliant!” say the boys.
  • A man picks winning numbers on his lottery ticket:  “Brilliant!” he hoots.
  • A manual worker quaffs his 5:30 pint of Guinness Stout with his pals:  “Ahhh, Brilliant!” he says.

    
    I don’t know how it became popular but there it is.  If you want to describe something that is first rate, perfect, you just say “Brilliant!”  You don’t have to explain it to your friends.  You certainly don’t have to tell the boys what makes the young lady so attractive.  You don’t have to explain to the lottery winner the mathematical improbability of coming up with the right sequence of numbers.  The thirsty workman doesn’t have to elaborate on how that thick black ale tastes. It’s as unnecessary as explaining the punch line on a joke.  When something is right, when it fits the situation, “Brilliant!” covers it.

Brilliant
    In a curious way “Brilliant!” covers the Transfiguration of Jesus too.  Not only was it an experience bathed in light, the light revealed the meaning of the event.  Matthew reports
“his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” (v. 2) He says it as a plain fact, making no attempt to explain it.  It is, as far as Matthew is concerned, self-evident that Jesus is not like you and me who, no matter how bright the day, do not radiate like the sun.  No.  The only explanation possible is that Jesus is no mere mortal.  They had seen this before.  In the boat on the Sea of Galilee he calmed the storm.  He had given sight to the blind.  He had even in their presence raised Jairus’ daughter from death.  And just six days before this brilliant midnight Peter had declared “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Mt. 16:16) At the transfiguration every doubt dropped away.  Jesus was at that moment for Peter, James, and John the sole player on the stage of life and a spotlight was put on him.  He was robed in Divine light.

    Have you ever had such a moment of clarity?  Such brilliance needs no explanation.  You simply know what you are beholding.  On Easter Peter heard the report of the women that the tomb in which Jesus had been laid was empty.  He and another of the disciples ran as fast as their legs would carry them.  John reports that when the second disciple entered the tomb and looked at the discarded linen which had wrapped Jesus’ corpse “he saw and believed” (Jn. 20:8)   Easter required no explanation.  The empty tomb shouted resurrection.  It was simply “Brilliant!”

Mystery
    For a few seconds, like a photographer’s flash in the night all was revealed.  In the instant at least doubt had been removed.  But then the moment passed, and that too is the meaning of the Transfiguration.  We have startling moments of noon day clarity, and just as quickly the vision changes into something mysterious and incomprehensible.  
Suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them …(v. 5).  They thought they knew him.  He was the carpenter from Nazareth.  He was a man who worked with his hands the same as they did.  But no, something much greater was there, something deeper than midnight and brighter than a thousand stars.   “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.”

    I have always disliked the glib stories some people tell about how God talked to them, or the casual way they mention Jesus, as if he were a poker playing buddy.  In early Christian art, mosaics and murals from the third to the tenth century, Jesus always wears a stern, some might say severe, expression.  In the 20th century Christian story-teller C.S. Lewis made Aslan, his Jesus character, a lion, a lion who was definitely not tame.  These artists make the same point that the Transfiguration story tells:  Jesus as the Son of God is different from you and me.  When we glimpse this Jesus we know there is more to him than a chum, or a pal.  Peter, James, and John were overcome by fear.

Conclusion
    If that were all the story told us then we would be left with nothing but the fog of confusion.  Instead we hear that
Jesus came and touched them saying “Get up and do not be afraid.” (v. 7)  He comes not as a shining ghost in the night, nor as a grim faced warrior.  Jesus stoops to us.  In so simple a phrase we have the history of God and humankind.  It is he who stoops down to raise us up out of our superstition and fear.  Perhaps part of the reason people stay away from church is that simple, they don’t want to get that close to God.  Who knows where it would lead?  We worship here an awesome God, a God of power and might who can calm the sea, resurrect the dead, and make a fisherman a Pope.

    It’s a brilliant mystery.

 
First Presbyterian Church
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