Kings and Kingdoms

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

Kings and Kingdoms, Princes and Principalities. At the risk of sounding whiney, the last time you shared your pulpit with me I cried over the tragic loss of a friend’s mother. Today we cry over a world continuing to go mad. Violence in Ethiopia, Baghdad, Syria, France; and yesterday Belgium went on high alert against suspected terror attacks. Belgium! Except for NATO Headquarters, fine chocolates, and the Chimay Abbey with their wonderful ales, what in the world is there in Belgium that would warrant Enhanced Terror Alerts? What in the world would elicit an attack?

I guess that goes to show what I know about world affairs.

“What in the world…?” is actually a question asked in our gospel passage today. Or at least that’s how I paraphrase Pilate’s question to Jesus on this day after state elections in Louisiana. I mention our elections because Roman politicians, Pilate included, were sophisticated enough that had they met Hughie Long he would have addressed them as “Suh.”

Jesus, son of Mary, what in the world have you done to make these people so upset that they come to me? What have you done to make the Sanhedrin, the temple elite, think I, the Roman Prelate of Palestine, am less of an enemy than you? What did you do to turn the entire countryside on its ear? What did you do to earn this level of spite from your own people?

Now that’s a question.

I love that their exchange includes repartee straight out of “The Princess Bride.” Remember when leaving the Fire Swamps Prince Humperdink shouts “Surrender!” to Westley and Westley graciously accepts? Listen to this—

Pilate asks “So, you a king?” Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king.” Like I say, right out of “Princess Bride,” but Jesus continues, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." But as Jesus said earlier in the passage, “my kingdom is not from here.”

We have heard the words of the glorious images that make up the answers to Pilate’s question since we began reading Mark’s and John’s Gospels at Advent last year. The images of the Baptism of the Lord, the miracles, the healings, the wisdom; these things begin answering the question, “What did you do.” But more than all of these things, more than these wonderful and glorious things, today we are given an image from John the Revelator about who Jesus is, what Jesus did and who he still is and what he continues to do.

He is the faithful witness. Jesus is the Christ, the select, the anointed. He is the one who was elected to come and bring the Word of life to the world. He is the one who does only what he sees his Father doing. He is the one who is in eternal relationship with the other persons of the Trinity. He participated in the works of God since before the beginning. He is the one who came to earth, fully human and fully divine, teaching us through his words and actions.

He is the firstborn of the dead. He is the one who was born to live to die and rise again. As we testify in the traditional version of the Apostles’ Creed, he descended into hell and rose again from the dead. As the firstborn of the dead, He is the Son who leads his brothers and sisters who have died and will die. He is the one who conquered death so that we will no longer know the full sting of the cold hard hand of mortality.

He has freed us from the power of sin by his own blood. As the Lamb of God, there is no other sacrifice that can be made that will be able to do what God has done now and forever through His Holy Son Jesus. There is no other priest that can make a sacrifice like the one the high priest of God makes of his own body, his own blood, his own life. By the power of his blood, we are free.

He is the ruler over the kings of the earth and has made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve him now and forever. Amen.

The question is not just what did Jesus do, it is what does Jesus continues to do. Pilate’s question is almost rhetorical. The answer he wants isn’t about the charges against Jesus. The politician in him knows all he needs to know to rule from the Pharisees who bring Jesus. As Tetrarch, Pilate knows what he plans to do, he wants more.

The question Pilate wants answered is much deeper than just a recitation of the charges; Pilate wants to know the Truth, “Truth” with a “Capital T,” about Jesus. The Truth Pilate wants to hear is the Truth we claim and testify on this Christ the King Sunday: The Lord is King and for this he was born and his kingdom is not of this earth. Creation is but a part of His kingdom.

From my “easily amused” file, November 6 was a pretty big day at our house. For the first time since September 2010, Olusegun Samuel released his seventh CD of original music titled, quite imaginatively, 7. Yes, he released a second disc of soul covers in 2011, but this is the first original music in over five years. Big deal, right? The name may not sound familiar, but Mr. Samuel is an acclaimed performer. He has won multiple Grammys and been nominated for an Academy Award.

This is where I give you the “Paul Harvey” “Rest of the Story” moment and tell you Olusegun Samuel is better known by the name Seal.

I have loved Seal’s music since his first CD, and being who I am, I prefer some of the unfamiliar songs from the CD’s that most people don’t hear very often. For example this song from his first disc released almost twenty-five years ago:

But if only you could see them
You could tell by their faces
They were kings and queens
Followed by princes and princesses
They were future power people
Throwing love to the loveless
Shining a light ‘cause they wanted it seen.

Well there were cries of why
Followed by cries of why not?
Can I reach out for you
If that feels good to me
And the riders will not stop us
Cause the only love they find is paradise
No the riders will not stop us
Cause the only love they find is paradise.

“Future Love Paradise” from Seal’s first CD is definitely one of my favorites. Funky beat, big hook, mad groove, great lyrics, what’s not to love?

But in a world gone mad, a world gone so very mad that Belgium has gone to “Alert Level ‘Danger Will Robinson’,” we have two choices. The first is to pack up the plantation, fill the moat, and pull up the drawbridge. We can retreat into ourselves so very deeply that we think, hope, we pray nobody can hurt us. We can try to create a cocoon that will protect us from the elements the world throws at us hoping to emerge like a butterfly when spring comes again to the world.

This doesn’t always work for the chrysalis though, does it? Last week’s squall line showed the damage one errant hailstone can inflict; the damage a big gust of wind can bring. Multiplied umpteen times and our shells don’t stand a chance.

Or we can take a better path. In Seal’s words, we can live like princes and princesses. We can shine the light because the King and the Kingdom want it seen and when the world asks why we can answer “why not?” Reaching out is always better than living in fear. Always.

That is future, love, paradise. In the words of our Prayer of Illumination, we act on our prayer that “the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under [God’s] most gracious rule.”

We need to remember the words of the American sonnet called “The New Colossus” which was placed at the foot of a French statue:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give us your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
These American ideals, these Christian ideals, these show the world that we are not afraid of its chaos. We know the author of peace. We know the author of joy. We know the King of Kings.

The King of Kings lives and breathes and remains with us. We are to share this glorious hope not as people in pews, not as a man in the pulpit, not as mere mortal beings, but in the words of the Revelation, “as priests serving his God and father.” In this we rejoice in God’s triumph on behalf of all creation.

Yes, we know that the world is in an uproar and I see no end in sight. To paraphrase one of my favorite passages from Job, we know that Satan, the oppressor, the King of Lies, is in this world, just wandering around in it like an evil Johnny Appleseed sowing discontent. Yeah, we know that’s true.
But what’s more important than Satan’s lies is God’s truth. What’s more important is what Jesus tells Pilate, the Lord’s kingdom is not from this world. That is the truth we are called to share, that is our testimony.

As princes and princesses in the Kingdom of God we are called to shine the light of hope, the hope of God in Christ who came on a colt, not on a tank.
And so now I say again in the words of John the Revelator, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

“To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

The New Deal

This sermon was heard at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Bossier City, Louisiana on Sunday August 9, 2015.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

It’s a cliché that the Presbyterian Church is aging, but unless you are over 80 years old, you don’t personally remember the Great Depression. From 1929 to 1933 the American economy was in a free fall. Manufacturing output fell by one-third. Unemployment went from 4% to 25%. Many who had jobs found themselves going from full to part-time. Prices fell by 20% causing deflation that made it harder to repay debt. Over 800,000 families lost their homes to foreclosure. Nearly half of the nation’s human capital went unused and the GDP fell accordingly.

Bank insurance? It didn’t exist. Banks failed in wholesale fashion and life savings were wiped out. There was no unemployment insurance. There was no Social Security. Our economy hasn’t come out of its doldrums, not for those in the bottom of the ladder, but there’s still a reason why we use the phrase “…not since the great depression.”

This was one reason for the groundswell that brought Franklyn Delano Roosevelt into the Presidency in 1932 and The New Deal in 1933. The New Deal was a series of reforms and programs that provided what historians call “Relief, Reform, and Recovery” to the economy. To provide relief the New Deal gave us the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration which brought electricity to rural areas especially in the South. Along with the FDIC, the New Deal gave us the Securities and Exchange Commission on the reform side. To help with recovery the New Deal gave us Social Security, the Works Project Administration, the National Youth Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It was said that the WPA and the CCC provided “make work” programs for people and that may be true. But what those “make work” projects provided was quick cash and a way to teach skills people could use when the economy picked up again.

Before seminary I worked over ten years in higher education, most of them in rural Southeast Colorado, the home of a WPA work camp which still stands and Colorado WPA Project #1, a stone tower in a city park which marks a spot where Zebulon Pike camped on his march west. This is the sort of history school children and sojourners learn because of the New Deal. To this day I can imagine not only Pike camping, but the men who worked and the families that were fed because of FDR’s New Deal.

Jesus said “I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” “He who comes to me will never be hungry.” “If anyone eats this bread he will live forever.” Now that’s some bread. That’s the most special bread on Earth. It’s the most important bread on Earth. But if there is one thing that needs to be said, it’s that our relationship with bread is different from those living in the Holy Land. One of the best understandings I have found was this from Bill Hinson in “The Power of Holy Habits.” He writes:

I heard an Armenian describe the bread of life. He said that Westerners do not understand what Jesus was saying when he said, 'I am the Bread of Life.' In the Middle East, bread is not just something extra thrown in at a meal. It is the heart of every meal. They have those thin pieces of pita bread at every meal.

This isn’t so different from traditional Mexican cuisine. Substitute “tortilla” for “pita” and you are on your way. Many Middle Eastern cultures today do this with naan, another kind of flat bread made with yogurt. We don’t have the same relationship with bread, but there are still echoes in our meals today. As for me, I can’t imagine a hamburger without a bun. Continuing Hinson’s words:

Those strict people would not think about taking forks and putting them in their mouths. To put an object in your mouth defiles it. You certainly would not take a fork out and put it in again and go on defiling yourself like that. Instead, you break off a piece of the bread, pick up your food with it and eat it.

So where we often use bread as a side dish, in the time of the Lord bread was instrumental to the meal. In Jesus’ time meat was rare for regular folks. Fruits and vegetables had their seasons. Grain kept so bread was available. Bread was a staple.

So out of something ordinary, out of something people ate at every meal, out of the most basic component of every meal, Jesus made his point about who he is. Again, from Hinson:

Indeed, the only way you can get to the main dish, he said, is with the bread. Jesus was saying that the only way you can come to life is through him. That is why he was saying - I am the Bread of Life; I am the only way to come to life.

When choosing something to compare himself to in John’s gospel, Jesus chooses the most important things in the lives of the people of Israel, bread and water. Jesus chose things the people could not live without. It’s as easy as that. We can’t live without Jesus; he is the way to life eternal. He made that point clear to the people who heard and he tries to make that point just as clear to us.

That does leave us with one very important question though, what does Jesus mean by eternal life?

I feel very, very strongly that salvation is not something that once received we thank God then await the hereafter like waiting on a bus. With salvation, with the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven and the living water comes eternal life, a life we are called to live today and share today. We are called to take the light of Christ into the world.

The Rev. Dr. Michael Jinkins writes of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Jinkins writes, Bonhoeffer “protests against our tendency to let the decisive theological question ‘Who are you?’ dissolve into questions about ‘how’… The how questions are the fragmenting mechanical, manipulating questions, the debilitating questions about mere techniques and technologies.” Bonhoeffer makes a point that is abundantly clear from our reading.

Jesus never once tells the people “how” he did what he does. He never shows us how a miracle happens. He never shows us that, as a friend of mine once told me he suspected, the feeding of the 5,000 happened because everyone stopped being greedy for one moment, opened their lunch pails, and shared their meals with one another leading to a surplus of food. (As if that wouldn’t be a miracle!)

Jinkins goes on to make a very astute observation: Good answers only come from good questions. He tells us that the right questions the church needs to answer have nothing to do with how and everything to do with who. The right questions according to Jinkins are “Who is Christ? and Who does Christ want us to be?” The answer to this first question is what we hear today, Christ is the bread of life that fills us. Christ is the one who satisfies our thirst.

The answer to the second is our vocation.

The Jews (and by the way, John used the phrase “the Jews” to mean “the leadership” not “the people on the street”), these leaders begin to grumble about his claim. “How can he say ‘I came down from heaven’ if we’ve known him since he was a baby born in Jerusalem?” Their grumbling makes Bonhoeffer’s and Jinkins’ point. When the “how” question gains traction the “who” question gets lost.

When we focus on what we know and understand and try to fit everything into our understanding; we grumble, we complain and we try to fit our square pegs into God’s round holes just like the Jewish leaders in our reading did. On that day, they failed to ask “Who is this?” and instead went for “How does he make this claim?” What they don’t realize is that the answer to the first question is the answer to the second.

The answer to “who” is the answer to “how.”

In John 4 Jesus calls himself the living water. In this passage Jesus calls himself the bread of life and the drink that ends thirst. Jesus shows us all that out of something ordinary comes something extraordinary. Many didn’t understand. That’s nothing new. This was true in the day of Jesus. It was true before the day of Jesus. It is still true today. In our over-enlightened “How does it work?” world, we won’t understand as long as our understanding is shrouded in human sin.

It is only when we begin to answer the questions “Who is Christ?” and “Who does Christ want us to be?” that everything else comes into place. As Jinkins says, these questions drive all of our other questions. These are the questions we must ask if we are to have any future as the Church Christ called to be his body.

So who does Christ want us to be? Paul gives the Ephesians an answer to that question. He shows us what it means to be His body.

He reminds us not to be false with one another. He tells us this specifically means speaking the truth, but I believe this not being false means more. It means acting in truth, putting what is best for the community above what is best for the individual at the expense of our neighbor.

Not letting anger, rage, and bitterness swell and fester. It is said that bitterness is like drinking a poison hoping the intended victim falls sick. Forgiveness is the only way we can prevent letting this devil into our souls.

He calls for thieves to give up stealing and instead labor honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Now I ask what these thieves steal? Is it money? Or goods? Or time? Or hope? Regardless! People who thieve need something else to do. Does this sound a little like a “make work” project? Perhaps it does.

As for gossip, Paul commends us only to speak what is good for the community. Honestly this is one of the reasons I am beginning to hate my Facebook feed! So many people, so much rage. If it’s not one thing it’s another! Nobody is building up anything, people are only tearing down and there is so little grace to be found.

Paul finally calls us not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Now here’s the tricky part, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” What makes this tricky is that God gave everything. God gave his life. What can we give? What do we give?

I mentioned my Facebook feed a moment ago. The internet has given us something called memes. Memes are captioned cartoons, generally with a bit of sarcasm or snark. Last week I found this one on my Facebook feed and it does not have any snark. It’s an image of Pope Francis and something he said, “First you pray the hungry are fed then you feed the hungry. That’s how prayer works.”

We call on God, we call on God in Christ to work; and through the power of the Holy Spirit we become the Body of Christ to do that work. Why do this? Paul said it gloriously, “for we are all members of one another.” That’s the new deal in Jesus Christ.

Sloppy

This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday July 5, 2015

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Mark 6:1-13

 
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Most of us have never seen a coronation. The last major coronation was Queen Elizabeth II and that was in 1953, over 60 years ago. Any images from the event were in black and white and they were on film, not video. They might have been on television via satellite, but it is more likely those who saw it saw pieces of her coronation on newsreels in the theater.

Anyone under the age of thirty will need to Google half of the words in those last two sentences. Black and white? Via Satellite? Newsreels? Those three phrases alone show that coronation is positively archaic to Americans where we have no monarchy.

We read in 2Samuel, “So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David,” who was king of Judah at the time, “made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.” Considering we have almost no idea about what is involved in a coronation, do we even have a clue about what it takes to make a covenant? Considering the more proper term is “cutting” a covenant, not “making” a covenant, no.

While the fullness of this expression is unknown, one reason is that in cutting the covenant, the sacrificed beasts were cut in half from head to tail. Then the parties making the covenant would pass between the cut halves of the offering. Doing this, they symbolically take upon themselves the fate of the animals should they violate the covenant. So in this case, the Elders of Israel came to David and said, “Let’s do this and should we fail may this fate befall us.”

Between you and me, I think we could use some of that in DC and Austin. I believe we could all benefit from politicians sharing our fate. Anyhoo…

These days though, the symbolism and the theology of the sacrifice system are beyond us. So unless you grew up on a farm or ranch or are a butcher, the whole process is more than most of us could imagine. It began when the priests took first a heifer, and then a female goat, and then a ram, and split each of them in half. They didn’t have chain mail gloves like many who work in slaughter houses. They didn’t have power tools or refrigeration. There was no high powered water jet to cut the animals. They had iron or bronze knives which they used to slaughter and then prepare the animals for the sacrifice. They cut skin, fat, muscle, tendon, cartilage, and membranes preparing the livestock.

Imagine the blood and muck, not just on the priest’s clothes but in the mud between his toes. Finally, after hours or perhaps even days, when the preparations were made, David and the priests put the finishing touches on the stock; adding a full dove to one stack and a young pigeon to the other. The offering was complete, but until the covenant ceremony was finished, they had to drive the buzzards from the carcasses.

Then came the walk between the halves of the offering, between the carcasses. Carcasses, what a word! It creates the sort of image that might make a steak eater cringe and does make a PETA member scream “that’s what I’m talking about.”

To seal the covenant, the parties would pass between the halves of the offering, the pieces of the carcasses. The experience would be absolutely visceral. The ache you would feel from the hard work of preparation. The frustration and the danger from keeping the scavengers from the offering. The smell of the livestock and their entrails. The blood and fat which has saturated your apron and gotten into your clothes. Finally, as you pass between the halves, the feel of blood and bile and refuse between your toes. Covenant promises aren’t made lightly or forgotten quickly.

This worship preparation would take days. It would be difficult. It would be back-breaking. It would require a special set of skills that only the priests and the Levites had. There was no butcher’s union back in the day, the Levites were the butchers. The entire experience would fill every sense to overfilling. It would end in a bar-be-que to make the BBQ Pitmasters finale look like amateur hour. It would be a mess. It would be sloppy. It would be sloppier than we can imagine.

This is not what the Prince of Wales will go through when he becomes King Charles III.

There has been a trend in the gospel readings in the Revised Common Lectionary over the past few weeks which did not escape today’s reading. It begins with Jesus working. In this case he is teaching and doing great works. The people who were there were astounded. The passage reads, “’Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!’” but that’s not where it ends.

In this case, after a brief genealogy lesson, Mark’s gospel says, “And they took offense at him.” They took offense at him. What a switch! In basketball you’d say that was the kind of move that would make a defender break an ankle. The passage goes from power (hooray!) and glory (hooray!) to offense. Talk about sloppy. We go from astounded by the wisdom to offended by him. It doesn’t say offended by his words, or his teachings; it says offended by him. His person. His being. His very existence. There’s a lovely turn of events.

About ten years ago I was at Montreat for the “Hope of the Church” conference. The event moderator shared something with us about the nature of the Church. She said that about every 500 years there’s a tremendous shift. About 2,000 years ago saw the birth of the Jesus. It was not only the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, but the birth of Christianity; and it doesn’t get bigger than that.

About 1,500 years ago came Constantine and because of him the Nicene Creed. The first 500 years of the Church saw a lot of good and a lot of very, very bad theology. The Nicene Creed was humanity’s first real attempt to state what we believe. Its continuing authority is proof that these bishops got something right.

About 1,000 years ago saw the great schism between east and west, the split between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Honestly, we don’t pay too much attention to that because 500 years ago was our split, the Reformation. Luther had no intention of forming a new church. He wanted to reform the Mother Church, hence Reformation, but when they put a bounty on your head schism’s the way to go.

As for today, 500 years after the Reformation, people say the church isn’t the same as it was 50 or 60 years ago and I say this is true. People say things are changing and I say this is true. Some people say we’ll never have the same status we had in our glory days and I say not the same…

People say, quite correctly, that the splits in the modern church are nasty, but at least the PC(USA), the EPC and ECO don’t have death squads. Say what you will about what happened at Highland Park, First Longview, and dozens of other congregations, but nobody put out a hit on anybody and that’s progress.

People say nothing’s like it used to be and it’s not right. I won’t go that far. Things are changing and it’s not easy. It’s sloppy, but the church reformed and always being reformed is sloppy.

The reformation, the real reformation began with the birth of a child, God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us. The in breaking of all that’s holy into a world that is anything but. God came to earth not in power and glory but as the least powerful being known, a human baby born of an unwed mother. Sloppy.

Now look at the crowd in the synagogue from our Gospel reading… They were at the feet of the Lord. They heard his words first hand. They spoke the same language. They saw him doing great deeds of power and were astounded, and in the next breath they were offended. Fully human and fully divine; man and God in one. His presence was offensive to his own people—and we wonder how come people don’t understand the Good News like we do.

I wonder how we understand the gospel the way we do. Praise God the Holy Spirit because it is only by the Spirit that we understand the gospel at all, and in truth, we don’t understand the full breadth of the gospel. We can’t. God is too much for us to understand. Like in Mark’s gospel the people expected one thing and when they got Jesus they were astounded and then offended. Sloppy.

The last couple of weeks have been sloppy on a national level. Supreme Court decisions, the 1001 Worshiping Communities Controversies, symbols and what they mean; sloppy. I’m not here to tell you what to believe about any of these things. I’m your guest, trying that would be ignorant on my part.

What I am here to say is this, take off your sandals. Walk in the sloppy, sloppy faith knowing this—There is no place we can go that Christ has not gone first.

There is no place we can go that Christ does not lead us. Rules come and rules go. This is how we get to eat bacon and shellfish, rules change. Our understanding of the faith changes. Changes came 2,000 years ago, and 1,500, and 1,000, and 500 years ago and changes come today.

To say that God has nothing new to teach us today is the sort of arrogance people of faith cannot afford to have. That sort of arrogance says we cannot be taught. We cannot learn. To be taught God can no longer astound us, that’s a world I don’t want to live in.

Sure, it’ll be sloppy, but it beats the alternative, a world where God is done with us. Because if God is done with us, and this, this world is all that’s left, well, that’s not much of a life. Give me God’s sloppy grace and peace and love over human wisdom and folly any day.

Running on Empty

This sermon was heard at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday June 28, 2015.

2Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

For me, some weeks the gospel takes a hold and insists on being preached in a particular way. Others it opens itself up and wishes me the best of luck. These are wonderful passages, glorious stories of faith, healing, and redemption. Power through weakness is a tremendous lesson that needs to be told. It needs to be learned. It needs to be shared. So often we hear “might is right” and in today’s readings, not so much. So in a week where so much has happened, how to approach these words?

Our reading today from Mark, the story of the hemorrhaging woman, is one of those gospel stories that you can’t hit head on, you have to come at it on a tangent. People who come at this head on do so because they think they know more than they really do. So what do we need to know that we don’t?

First of all, something we do know, doctors in the day were men. Well, up until the last fifty years that wasn’t so unusual, and fifty is probably generous. What this means for the passage is easy. What a male doctor knew about a woman’s bleeding was laughable at best but more likely disastrous.

Here’s what you may not know: Most doctors were slaves, house slaves where they earned their keep.

I almost hate to bring this example from popular culture, but as for its historical accuracy it had its moments. How many of you saw the TV show “Sparticus” on Starz a few years ago? One of the slaves who worked in the bowels of the Ludus, the gladiatorial school, was the Medicus, the doctor. The doctor tended to the free and the slaves, the rich and the poor. Of course the quality of care was directly proportional to your value the Lanista, the head of the Ludus, the master of the house. If you were Sparticus no expense was spared for your care. If you were a valued friend of the Lanista, no problem. If you were a dime-a-dozen slave girl you were cast aside before the Medicus finished the diagnosis. The point, the medical doctor was a slave, a slave without the status of the gladiators he would heal.

Kind of puts a new spin on “Luke, the good doctor,” doesn’t it?

Now let’s consider this woman from Mark’s gospel. She had been suffering hemorrhages for twelve years and had endured much under many physicians. Together, these two statements show us that she was a woman of means. Let me explain. If she didn’t have social status she would not have had entrée into a house with a physician. If she didn’t have the coin, she would not have been able to afford the sundries the physician would have needed or the payment the master would have required. Without money or status she would not have gotten any care; so in one way or another she was well to do, and more than likely she was well to do both socially and financially.

Forgive me for sounding crass, but I’m going to go out on a couple of limbs here. This kind of bleeding is most likely a feminine issue; possibly associated with childbirth, scripture gives us no clue and my knowledge isn’t adequate to provide a proper diagnosis. For the purposes of this narrative I would also guess she is a widow. I don’t believe a woman who is divorced, put out of her house by her husband, would have had the social standing to enter a fine house. Nor would she have had the financial capital to pay for her care. But in the same breath I can’t imagine a man who would stick with a wife who is (if she is Hebrew) ritually unclean. That is why I believe she is widowed.

So here she is, she’s in a socially precarious spot. She is bleeding. If Hebrew, she is unclean. Probably widowed. Children unknown. She has used her all money and her influence to try to find a diagnosis for her ailment. After twelve years she has run out of cash and favors and the doctors have been as effective as a bunch of shade tree mechanics looking under her hood and saying, “Oh, I see your problem.”

I have to add something here, if there’s a man in this sanctuary who thinks “I understand” please don’t say that out loud. We really don’t. We can try, but we really don’t. Look at the woman sitting next to you, see that smile? Yeah, that’s what I mean, we don’t know.

She has nowhere to go, so she comes to Jesus. She comes to Jesus believing if she can even touch the fringes of his robe she will be healed. Praise God! Praise the Lord! This is what happens!

Her faith in the power of Jesus, this is what saves her.

On Friday February 13, 2004 I was in seminary taking Mission and Evangelism. One of the things we had to do was a mission project so we could write a brief report. That semester I was also doing my internship at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin. On this Valentine’s Eve, the weather was nasty. The temperature was below thirty degrees, it was rainy and sleety, and the wind was out of the north and whipping around the downtown buildings. The city mission agencies declared a Freeze Night meaning the emergency shelters would be open. A fellow seminarian, the Reverend Rick Brooks now of Dallas, he and I volunteered to man the shelter at Central.

We got there about 4:00 that afternoon to open at 5:30. We got the stuff for dinner ready and got the sleeping mats together for the evening. Rick had some writing to do so I set him up in the church library. Me, I had some reading so I set up downstairs in the youth room closer to the people.

About 7:00 PM, a woman came up to me and asked if I knew where to find a tampon. I had been working at the church for about six months had no idea if there was a mysterious stash of feminine hygiene products hiding in the church. I knew there weren’t any in the men’s rooms (duh!), but of course I had never been in the women’s. Like a dummy (I mean I had to ask but I still felt like slapping myself in the back of the head) I asked if she had checked all of the women’s rooms. She had and there weren’t.

I never felt more impotent in my life than I had in that moment. And as for where to find a tampon in downtown Austin on a Friday night, I was at a complete loss. I couldn’t leave and it wasn’t like she could go across the street to the fancy-schmantzy hotel to drop a quarter in the Ladies’ without being tackled by a valet before making it through the threshold. Such a simple request and I was at a complete loss. A woman hemorrhaging and there was nothing I could offer her except a stupid look, a bad question, and a vain apology.

Well, there is one thing I have done for her. At every church I have served since I made sure there are feminine hygiene products available in the Ladies’. I believe it is literally the least I can do.

These women were held hostage by their bodies and their circumstances. There was nothing they could do. They were going to bleed unless something happened. We know how their stories ended too. One was healed by the touch of Jesus. She touched the Christ, if just his robes, and by her faith in his power she was healed. As for the other woman, she came to the Body of Christ and while we were able to provide a couple of meals and a warm, dry place to spend a cold, wet night; I was unable to stem the tide.

There’s an old expression for this kind of situation, running on empty. Running on empty. Fatigue sets in, frustration amps up, despair rears its ugly head. Extremes of distress, horror, terror; these unwelcome guests make their way into your life.

But our reading from Corinthians show us that Jesus had his own version of running on empty. Could Jesus have opened up a can of all that’s holy on creation and set things straight? In the world of “coulda” the answer is yes. In a world where God is love the answer is no.

Paul tells the church at Corinth, “the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Love never imposes its will. Love that imposes its own will isn’t love at all. Love empties itself of power and glory so it may be offered freely; so that it may be accepted freely.

Out of running on empty comes the brilliance of running on something else. When you’re running on empty, fully and completely running on empty, there is only one place to turn. The hemorrhaging woman in the gospel was running on empty and when she turned to Jesus in faith, her faith in his power healed her. This is the power of faith in the Good News of Jesus the Christ.

Jackson Brown is a singer/songwriter who wrote some wonderful music in the late 70’s and 80’s. One of his best albums is 1978’s “Running on Empty.” A live album of newly released music, it chronicled what it meant to him to be on the road touring in the late 70’s. Through Brown’s eyes, his words and music made one of the best albums of the 1970’s. He sings:

I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on,
Running on, running on empty,
Running on, running blind,
Running on, running into the sun,
But I’m running behind.

But here’s the thing about running on empty, when we’re running on empty, we run. We run on and we run blind. We run for money. We run for power. We run for prestige. We run for what makes us feel good. Sometimes we run for what makes others feel bad to make us feel good. We run into the sun thinking light and warmth are enough when in truth we’re running behind.

For Christians, for us, there is only one place to turn. The hemorrhaging woman in the gospel was running on empty and when she turned to Jesus in faith, her faith in his power healed her.

Jesus ran on empty. He could have picked up the power of God which is his, the power he was tempted with at the beginnings of the gospels of Matthew and Luke. He could have opened up a can of all that’s holy. He could have been the all-powerful God we often want him to be but then he would not have been the all loving God we need him to be.

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels,
I don’t know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels,
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to, to pull me through,
Looking into their eyes I see them running too.

The lesson of the hemorrhaging woman is that, like she did for twelve years, we rely on our riches and we rely on our status and we rely on our friends and these things don’t get us what we need or where we need to be. We rely on our strength. We rely on “might making right.” We run to places that seem right at the time, but in the long run are places we don’t need to be. It is better to run to our weaknesses because in our weakness the glory of Christ is made full.

Paul tells us that even Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah; Jesus emptied himself. Jesus is running on empty and by that the power of God is made full in him. So for us, when we run on empty and stop relying on our own wit and wisdom we let God lead our lives. In our weakness is God’s strength. It’s not about our glory, it’s the glory of God in Christ.

It’s time to stop the bleeding and lean into the outstretched arms of the loving Lord.

The Whrilwind

This sermon was heard at the Broadmoor Presbyterian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday June 21, 2105.

Job 38:1-11
Mark 4:35-41

People talk about the patience of Job. As for me, I don’t know if he was patient or not. I mean he was abused for the amusement of Satan, which is more than just a proper name. Satan means “opponent” in Hebrew. Job was surely opposed. He lost everything but his wife and the servants who told him his kids were dead, his slaves were slain, and the livestock that wasn’t dead was taken.

To add insult to injury, he was then infected with enough boils that he must have looked like a steroid abuser without the muscular development. In an effort to help, his wife advises him to curse God and die. Then three friends show up and after waiting together for a week they ask him what he did wrong.

No wonder Job cries out, “Let the day perish in which I was born.”

So was Job patient? It sounds better than other things he could have been called. It sounds better than what he was called by his so-called friends. His friends blame him for what is happening to him. “You must have done something wrong.” “Your kids must have done something wrong.” “If you hadn’t done something wrong you could stand confident in your innocence in the presence of the Lord.”

They say, “Your sin undermines your worship.” “You must not know God at all” and the kicker, “your piety is the reason for your punishment.”

Job’s had enough of his so called friends. He argues back like a man with nothing to lose—and in an earthly sense he doesn’t. His friends are miserable at consolation. They actually speak falsely. They’re not helping. Job wants to know what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on.

The Lord hears it all.

Last week I told you in passing that I was a business major, but my first major was meteorology. Storms fascinated me, in fact, they scared me to death. I thought if I understood them better they wouldn’t frighten me.

Now, this was in a time when the radar products we have now wasn’t available. The paths of storms might have been known better to the professionals at the National Weather Service, but that sort of information wasn’t making its way to our homes. The first time I saw anything with storm tracking technology on television was in 1998. Then last month when Marie and I were here worshiping with you, while we were having lunch I got an alert on my cell phone about a Tornado Warning in Marion County and I could see the Hook Echo, a radar indication of a tornado, on my phone.

I feel better knowing where the chaos is and where it’s going, especially when it’s not heading for me. Who doesn’t? Working at the Motel 6 in Marshall, people are happy when I can tell them if the storm is bearing down on us and when it has passed.

Chaos, power, death; this is the whirlwind. The Hebrews knew this. The Hebrews knew the whirlwind was powerful. They knew it was mysterious. They knew it was unpredictable.

The voice of the Lord comes out of the whirlwind. Job wants to know what’s happening and why it’s happening to him and the Lord answers. Sort of. The Lord answers by showing Job how little he knows about the mystery of creation. Forget the mystery of God, forget the mystery of life, the Lord begins to tell Job how little he knows about creation.

Mark’s gospel gives us the Lord Jesus and another storm. Jesus and the disciples are on a boat on the sea during a tempest. Let’s remember that several of these disciples are fishermen, these guys know the dangers of the sea. These men knew that every year craft capsize and are lost. They knew people die every year on the water during storms just like this one. So what’s their Lord doing in the midst of this terror? Taking a nap.

Jesus is on the stern, resting on bags of ropes which could not have been comfortable. On that lumpy bag, being tossed on the sea; Jesus is sleeping while all around him is going to thunder. Finally someone asks the question of the hour, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”

I’m going out on a limb here, but that seems to be a universal question. “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” We have times in our lives, times of illness when we ask “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of oppression when we ask “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of anxiety when we ask, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of fear when we ask, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?”

In those times Jesus looks at the chaos and says, “Shalom, peace,” and the storm is stilled.

Amazed and afraid the people ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" A meteorologist can forecast the weather. A meteorologist can run a storm track to show where the storm is going, what way the wind is going to blow. Only God can calm the storm and the sea. Who is this? Who is this indeed. To take a line from C. S. Lewis, the disciples knew Jesus was good, but at this moment they could also tell he probably wasn’t safe.

Where is God? God is in the stern of the boat. God is in the whirlwind. Emmanuel, God is with us. When life has fallen apart around us, God is with us.

In the past several years Marie and I have been overwhelmed. Two churches have closed while I was their pastor. Medical bills reached epic and epidemic levels. We were covered in a mountain of debt. It wasn’t like we spent money on lavish vacations or high living. We even became homeless for a couple of months, with thanks to my boss for allowing us a room at the motel until we moved into a new apartment just yesterday. J. R. Briggs’ book “Fail, Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure,” calls this “non-moral failure.” I didn’t steal money or someone else’s affection, and yet…

Where was God? It was hard to see. It is hard to see, but God is right beside us. What if I hadn’t been working at the motel when we lost our old apartment? Marie was finally approved for full social security disability. It took way too long and that had financial consequences of its own, but she wasn’t denied in the end. As bad as our situation is, it could be far worse.

Last week I was working at the motel and got a Facebook post from the Rev. Sharon Risher, a seminary classmate and friend who is a hospital chaplain in Dallas. At 9:30pm on Thursday she posted this, “There had [sic] been a shooting in Charleston, SC @ Emanuel AME church. My home church! Please pray for all. Don’t have much info.” Eight hours later she posted this, “My mother was one of the nine victims killed last night in Charleston, SC. I’m at a loss and only know that the God I serve will receive her. Momma loved The Lord and her church. I know where she is, God will see my [sic] and my family thru. Thanks to all for your prayers, calls, and FB post. To God Be the glory. Pray without ceasing!”

I now have to add, it wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered that not only was Rev. Risher’s mother a victim of the shooter, so was her mother’s cousin. One family member is tragic. Two is reaching for a Job-like level of loss.

Where is God? In the midst of the whirlwind, chaos blows. The President calls for gun control. Fox and Friends calls for arming preachers. (Can you imagine me trying to get a “Dirty Harry” hand cannon out of these robes? I have enough trouble shutting off the microphone!) In the midst of the storm a lone gunman longs to ignite a 21st Century race war. In the midst of the danger lives are lost for the most flimsy of reasons and fingers are pointed for worse ones.

Where is God?

In the midst of terror and horror, in blood and death, as people use the tragedy of others to promote political agendas, where is God?

All I know, all I know is God is with us. God is with Job in sackcloth and ashes. God is with the disciples being tossed on the sea. God is with those who mourn in Charleston. God is with my sister Sharon. God is with us.

God is faithful when others are not. God is present when your friends judge you wrongly. God is with you when your closest confidants blame you for what get called “acts of God” which are anything but. God is with you when danger threatens your very being. God is with you when your livelihood is gone.

God is with you when a man who—I don’t have the words to describe—rips your mother and her cousin from this life because they’re black and love Jesus. God is with us when people take holy and personal tragedy to make political hay.

In our pain, in our suffering, when we are in the whirlwind being tossed like a salad, Emanuel, God is with us. God suffers with us. God mourns with us. God whose loving kindness is without bounds takes us and opens us and touches us.

The disciples ask who is this who can take our fear, or suffering, or pain, who is this who can take this away with a word of shalom, a word of peace? He is Jesus Christ.

Does this mean tomorrow I’ll be called to a new church for a wage that will settle my family’s financial woes and make student loan people will happy? No, but after not preaching for months, over the past several weeks I have served as a guest in three different pulpits and will be preaching and celebrating the sacraments over the next two weeks, so yes, we have been blessed.

As for what happened in Charleston, people are coming together in the name of the Lord to serve God’s people. Another seminary classmate has even put together a PayPal account to help Sharon with travel expenses. The President of the Carolina Panthers is paying the funeral expenses. God is with us calling us to be a blessing. We can’t bring back Rev. Risher’s mama or her mama’s cousin, but by the grace of God we can help her be with her family at this tragic time.

As for the mystery of the whirlwind, a friend shared these words from Rabbi Harold Kushner, “The role of God is not to explain and not to justify but to comfort, to find people where they are living in darkness, take them by the hand, and show them how to find their way into the sunlight again.”

We all live in the darkness, may we reach for the giver of light. May we then be the hands that takes others into the light again.

Amen.

How It's Made

This sermon was heard at Broadmoor Presbyterian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday June 14, 2015.

1Samuel 15:31-16:13
Mark 4:26-34

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

I currently find the church today fighting about rules. Some people scour scripture looking for commandments, laws, rules, instructions—mitzvah. Fence posts that border a straight and narrow path to righteousness. Others look toward rules that are less formal. They look at stories and narratives and draw lessons from them. I confess, I love a good rule, but it’s the unwritten rules, ones learned by the examples of faith, that I find fascinating and more important.

Kingship follows a set of rules that have been handed down for generations. And let’s not think that Americans are immune to this. It was only a few weeks ago that American news followed the BBC awaiting the birth of Princess Charlotte, now fourth in line for the British throne. How do we know she’s fourth in line? Since 1689 the Protestant descendants of Sophia the Electress have formed the line of succession to the British throne. The first king in this line was George the First. Sure, there were about 50 closer blood relatives to Queen Anne, but they were all Catholic and the new rules, and blah, blah, blah, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera… How well established is this line today? There are currently over 5,000 members of the royal family ranked in order for succession to the British throne and Charlotte is firmly in fourth place.

But there is also the informal; for those of you who prefer fiction, George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” saga (or as it’s better known by its HBO title “Game of Thrones”) has such wonderful intrigue behind the Iron Throne that many of you are nodding your heads as I speak. (And isn’t the big question “Who is John Snow’s mother? Because if she’s a royal he may have a legitimate claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros and if that’s true… I’ll leave it at that. I’ve made my point.)

In the days of Samuel Kingship was just as formal and filled with intrigue. Saul was king. He wasn’t a good king anymore, but he was king. It saddened Samuel. He mourned the state of the kingdom, but the Lord had other plans, plans of succession that did not include the sons of Saul.

The Lord set Samuel on a mission, a mission to anoint the next king over Israel. The Lord even laid out an alibi in the event that word got back to Saul that the prophet was on the road. Samuel reaches his destination, sees the sons of Jesse, and declares “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” The Lord replies, “Yeah, but slow down and wait for it. Don’t judge a book by the cover.”

Ordinarily, the line of succession would be Saul’s eldest son, Jonathan. The Lord had decided this wasn’t going to be the future of Israel. Seeing the progeny of Jesse, Samuel thinks he sees the next king of Israel in the eldest, but that isn’t what the Lord has in mind. Nor is the next son nor the next. Not even the seventh son, and seventh sons have a special place in the world, not even he is good enough for the Lord. It’s the least likely of all of Jesse’s boys, the youngest, the eighth, he is the Lord’s anointed. David is anointed by Samuel and the journey of the king who knew God’s own heart is begun.

King David knew God’s own heart and we ask what is the kingdom of God like? Jesus gives us so many images, today we are given two agricultural parables. There are many ways to interpret parables, but today I want us to take mystery from these parables.

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow and he does not know how.” Now I’m sure that some of these agricultural mysteries are now known, but hey, I was a business major in college. I’m amazed by the concept that from a single seed a plant will sprout. From that plant, a head of grain will rise. From that head, more seed will be formed. It amazes me, from a single grain many are born. From the poverty of one comes many, I find that glorious! And as Jesus says, it’s a mystery, we don’t know how this happens.

You know my penchant for the texts, so this is my tangent into that rabbit hole. One of the literary devices of Hebrew poetry like the Psalms is that in couplets the second half amplifies the first. Jesus uses that here when he goes from the general mystery of plant life to the specific mystery of the mustard seed. Jesus begins with a general and focuses it sharing how the very smallest of seeds can produce a plant big enough to provide shade; a plant big enough to house a family.

How does this happen? How does the glory of God work? How is the kingdom of heaven made? It’s a mystery.

You have heard me talk about some of my favorite TV shows. Another of my favorites is a Canadian show called “How It’s Made.” First run episodes are found on The Science Channel in the US and reruns can be found on Discovery. As the title suggests, the program shows how things are made. In a six minute segment, a voice over explains a manufacturing process as video takes us through it. I love it because while it demystifies a product, at the same time it opens my up new ways of seeing things. Things that seem simple show their complexity and things that seem complicated become simple. That yen and yang of mystery and demystification fascinates me.

Kingship, we know how it’s supposed to work. We know how a king is supposed to be crowned but that’s not how a king is made. What it takes to rule, well, that’s a mystery. We will come to know that David knows God’s own heart. David will be a great king. David will follow the ways of God. Well, for the most part he will. He will also fail. He will murder Uriah the Hittite. Yet, he is still the man who knows God’s heart, and that’s the mystery. As a piece of the eternal mystery we need to be good custodians of it.

So where do we begin?

We have to begin by knowing, and I mean really knowing that God is a rule breaker. Rules that we have established mean little to the Lord our God. The rules of succession are today’s example. David, the youngest son, the eighth son of Jesse is tapped by God to rule Israel. There is no earthly way that David becomes king, no way on earth! And that’s the rub. The way to David’s kingship is not an earthly way. The way to David’s kingship comes through the grace of God. Our understanding? Our wisdom? These are swept up in the mysteries of God.

Further, rules that come from God that we think we understand are still shrouded in Holy mystery. What we think we know we really do not, not as well as we think we do. Mark 3 provides an example with Jesus explaining the Sabbath to the people, his disciples, and the temple elite. The people who are charged to know, the people who are trained to know do not. Jesus shows them that the mystery is deeper than they have seen. The commandments, laws, rules, instructions, and even the mitzvah are fractured because we think we know more than we do.

Jesus shows us that what goes on behind the scenes, or in the case of the seeds and the plants what happens underground, is beyond not only our understanding but our control. Jesus shows us that we see a reflection on the surface of the water and tells us that these waters run deep. It’s what is below the surface that matters. It’s what we can’t see, it is in that mystery where God lives and works.

What this ultimately means is that as Christians we need to be a little softer with one another because we don’t always know what we think we do. We need to lean into the mystery of God in Christ. We need to open ourselves to grace because we don’t fully know the laws we think we think we know so well.

The brouhaha de jour in the PC(USA) concerns the 1001 Worshiping Communities initiative. If you want more details I commend you to the Presbyterian Outlook website with a cup of good coffee and the better part of an afternoon. In a thumbnail, four of the 1001 leaders took $100,000 from the initiative and created a corporation to set up New Church Initiatives in California. When the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the parent of 1001, discovered this they were not happy. The four men who organized the corporation met with PMA and the $100,000 was returned. From there, well, it gets a little hairy.

The way I understand it, when this began in October 2014 the four men were reprimanded and told to “go and sin no more.” Then on November 15, 2014 the four were placed on administrative leave and an investigation was launched. On June 1 the four were dismissed for ethics violations, which they evidently found out through the media after PMA sent out a press release. I grieve that I probably found out about their dismissal the same time they did through Facebook.

Since then there has been a storm in the Presbyterian Mission Agency. The agency spent $850,000 on their investigation and there’s still one more lawyer left to be paid. They spent a million dollars on $100,000 that had been returned! The four were dismissed the way you would fire a banking executive from ING (well, actually not, ING execs got bonuses, but that’s another story). They were not disciplined like Teaching Elders using the PC(USA) Book of Discipline. And the report, a report paid for by generations of Presbyterians who intended their donations to be used to spread the gospel, is under lock and key in Louisville, unseen even by the men who were dismissed because of its words.

Please understand, I don’t know what the report says. I don’t know what the investigation turned up. Were there ethical lapses as claimed? I don’t know. I do know that nobody ever claimed that what happened was criminal, nobody ever. That would be different.

What we do know is that in the ruckus in the church the PMA spent a million dollars on legal matters when it might have been better served to use church discipline instead. It spent a million dollars to find guilt. This is what happens when you treat pastors like employees, ministers like executives; and it’s not pretty.

If we as the church had the faith to lean into the mystery rather than rush into commandments, laws, rules, instruction, and yes, mitzvah, we may not be in this boat; and maybe that’s one of the harsh lessons we take from this. When we lean on formal laws instead of the example of Christ we leave no room for grace. When we seek commandments we bind ourselves to legalistic actions.

When we ignore grace, we only remember David’s crimes and neglect his kingship. With David and with these men we must remember they are servants of the Lord and they have erred. The question is “where do we go from here?” The question may even be “have we gone too far?” All I know is that it could have been different.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax-
Of cabbages-and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.”

Human beings are naturally curious. We want to understand. We want answers. We want to know how it’s made. We want to know how kings are made. We want to know what the kingdom of God is like. Today I invite you to relax in the mystery of shoes and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Know that there are holy things we will not understand and because of this we need to cut one another some slack. When we rely on rules we will only find rule breakers. When we seek the Lord we can say there are mysteries we do not understand and we don’t have to understand them. When we seek the Lord we find forgiveness, we find grace.

Love God, love the mystery of the mustard seed and rest under its shade. Know the only truly worthy king is Christ our Lord. Know that when we rely on rules we miss opportunities for grace and spend a million dollars when it may be enough to say “I love you, I forgive you, now go and sin no more.” Through forgiveness, through grace, this is how peace is made.

Amen.

Enough Rope

This sermon was heard at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday June 7, 2015.

1Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20
Mark 3:20-35

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

On my next birthday I am going to be 53 years old. To some of you I am old enough to be your grandfather. To others I am old enough to be your grandson. To my parents I am old enough to be me. Funny how that works out, isn’t it? What that age makes me is of an age that I love old cartoons, the ones I grew up watching in the 1960’s. In all honesty though, give me the ones that are just a little older than those. Give me the old Tex Avery MGM “Tom and Jerry” cartoons any day.

One gag that never got old in my seven year old head was any one of the half dozen Tom and Jerry cartoons that featured a bulldog named Spike. Spike was often tied up to his dog house and would chase Tom the Cat until he got snapped back when he reached the end of his rope. It was probably too violent and I probably laughed a bit too loud when Spike got snapped back.

On the other hand I was never comfortable with Tom teasing and taunting Spike and I would always be relieved when Tom got his. Spike would always find a way to trick Tom so the overconfident cat would get too close and Spike would be able to get Tom. Again it was probably too violent and I really did laugh too loud when Tom got what was coming to him. From a reformed theological point of view I was getting way too much amusement out of violent cartoon justice or instant cartoon karma and not looking nearly enough toward grace.

Our reading from Samuel comes at one of the hinges of history for the Hebrews, the moment when the people of Israel went from being ruled by Judges to being ruled by Kings. Two reasons were given for this change. The first is found in our reading and it’s every parent’s nightmare, Israel wanted a king because every other nation had one. The other reason is that the days of the Judges didn’t end well. The last verse of Judges reads, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Let’s face it, when people, sin stained people do what is right in our own eyes, it doesn’t end well, the end of the book of Judges is just one fine example.

Unfortunately Kings are no less human than Judges and this isn’t starting on a good note either. Sure, Samuel’s kids aren’t the best, the elders of Israel say as much, but Samuel knows the people have a King. Samuel knows the people have the King of Kings and need no human king. Samuel knows this, and of course the Lord knows it too. And the Lord is gracious to Samuel telling him, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

Obedient to the Lord, I can see Samuel shrugging his shoulders. He goes to the people and tells them what the king they want will do for them. He warns the people, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

The people had taken just enough rope and were warned that they will be snapped back like Spike at the end of his leash. So do the people head toward renewal? No. Do they seek the prophets? Sorry, not tonight. They want a king. They want somebody human to lead them, or as Tex Avery would put it, to put the rope around their neck, draw the line in the sand, and whatever else happens before they get snapped back like Spike.

The people tell Samuel what they want. The Lord tells Samuel it’s not his fault. The world rejects the Lord, not the man. Samuel warns the people and the books of the Kings and Chronicles show that what is warned comes to pass. When the people cry out in the days of the kings the Lord does not answer, not on that day. The Lord gives the people enough rope and the people run to the end of it.

Since this isn’t a cartoon my seven year old self has quit laughing.

Our reading from Mark’s gospel shows us the beginning of the day when the Lord answers the cries of the people. As usual, it features more people trying to do the work of the Lord. Just three chapters into Mark and Jesus has been accused of blasphemy and of other less heinous acts against the powers of the church. He has forgiven sin. He has healed on the Sabbath. He has taken fishermen, zealots, a Roman collaborator, and a pair of guys so loud they are known as the “Sons of Thunder.” He has taken a guy who will question him at every turn, and a doubter. It seems the only person flying under the radar is Judas. So maybe it’s no wonder that the people who have “known him all his life” would be a little concerned.

Seen as a man, seen as a carpenter named Jesus from a backwater in Nazareth, he looks like a guy thwarting conventional wisdom, the faith of a thousand years. He’s a man turning the faith on its very ear, seemingly without the authority to do so. From all reports his family might have thought he was nuttier than a fruitcake.

The family tries to bring him home. Maybe they think he’s tired, it’s time for a break. Exhaustion is a very real possibility. They try to get him to come home. Scripture isn’t quite as subtle. “He has gone out of his mind!” “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons!” Well, at least they give him credit for good work, eh?

But Jesus tells them, no. Satan can’t cast himself out. The kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, a house divided against itself cannot stand; and Jesus is talking about the kingdom of evil, the house of Satan. You can’t plunder the house of Satan without tying up the big man first. And then, boy, oh boy.

Jesus is doing the work of the Lord. The Lord has come, Emmanuel, God with us; he has come to set us free. Jesus is doing something new and all the people can do is try to tie the old ropes of the judges, the kings, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the temple elite into a lovely bow to snap this new prophet back into place. Snap him just like Spike.

If there is one thing though that we can see it’s this; first, the ropes that we use to tie up our lives will never be used to confine the Lord. The restrictions, the constrictions that we use to keep ourselves in line will never tie up the Lord. Not even our understanding of holy things like Sabbath will keep the Lord from doing what is needed even on the Sabbath. Earlier in chapter three this is shown as Jesus heals on the Sabbath and gets an earful for his trouble.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t understand Sabbath, it’s more likely we don’t understand it. What Jesus knows as the Son of God is deeper than we can see in this mirror darkly. Regardless of the day, we tie ourselves to our kings and their rules when the King of Kings shows us the better way.

The other thing that is more important is that the Lord doesn’t use our ropes to let us hang ourselves. Now it’s true, the Lord allows the people of Israel to pick up enough rope to hang themselves and watches as they put themselves on the leash of a human king. The Lord has Samuel warn the people of what will happen if they stay the course and of course it does. The future of the Kings even comes to pass without the Lord jumping in the way. God doesn’t take a bullet for us to stop the kings. Crying for help in the days of the Kings the Lord does not answer, not on that day.

What the Lord doesn’t do is act vengefully. The Lord never says to the people, and allow me to quote a fine Catholic theologian, “If that’s the way that you want it, then that’s the way I want it more.”

The Lord loves the people enough to allow them to fail. The all-powerful Lord could whip the people into shape, but the all loving Lord suffers with the people as they seek their way until they find their way back. Yes, the Lord allows us enough rope, the Lord even allowed the Kings to enslave his own subjects with that rope, but the Lord will never hang us with it.

God is love. God loves us enough to let us be who we are. God loves us so much that the Lord never forgets that we belong to Christ even as we call him “possessed by the Lord of the Flies.” When people act like petulant seven year olds, a feat that is far worse at thirty-seven, forty-seven, and fifty-seven than it is at just-seven, God still loves. God even shows us that it is the human rulers who snap us back by the leashes we fashion, that is what causes the Spirit to mourn.

Sure it was funny then, and if I see those cartoons now I still might laugh. Tex Avery had a way of putting together cartoons—animators, artists, writers, and musicians—in ways that appeal to the funny bones of multiple generations. But Avery’s goal was always to amuse, to entertain. Thanks be to God our Lord doesn’t leave us to our own devices. Our hope is in the Lord who comes and is not offended by our foolish insult. Our hope is that the love of God never changes. Our hope is that we see that only God’s perfect love, not the ties that bind, are our salvation.

Amen.

Ought

This sermon was heard at St Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday May 3, 2015, the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Acts 8:24-40
Psalm 22:25-31
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Who isn’t familiar with this passage from John’s gospel? Who over the age of 50 doesn’t remember Bruce Wilkinson’s “The Secrets of the Vine?” It was his first book after the mega-hit “The Prayer of Jabez.” “The Secrets of the Vine” was about this very passage and had a lot of very good information about grapes and vine dressing and what it means with this passage. Believe it or not, this and a segment of “Ask This Old House” where Roger Cook shows a man how to prune and you will have a basic knowledge of what it means to grow vines to bear fruit.

I’m not going to go into deep detail about how to prune for several reasons; one is that someone from the extension office or that “Ask This Old House” video would do a better job teaching you about it than I can. The better reason is that we have better fruit to harvest today. It begins with the rather disturbing image that “Whoever does not abide in me,” abide in Christ, “is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”

This is a disturbing image because we hear Jesus talking about fire and really unsettling images come to mind, and not without good reason. The thought of being burned alive with all of the requisite screaming and crying is seared into our imaginations. We think of the whole hell-fire-weeping-and-gnashing-of-teeth thing with its obligatory unpleasantness. But what if this isn’t quite right? What if we’ve taken a step too far getting to this image?

Let’s begin with the fact that pruning involves cutting out what is unproductive and leaving what’s fruitful. Jesus is talking about cutting the fingernails of the vine, not the fingers. We also need to know that pruning for productivity means cutting out things that may be pretty, but add nothing to the harvest.

The pieces that sport only vegetative, leafing, buds have to go so the flowering fruit buds will get more nourishment. God’s pruning cuts out things that we have become accustomed to, things we might like, things that are pretty. That’s the hard part. That sort of pruning smarts, don’t let anyone tell you that it doesn’t.

Still, what about the branches that don’t remain in the vine? Branches that don’t remain, branches that aren’t a part of the vine, the true vine; they wither and die. Dead branches don’t feel the pain of the burning. Dead is dead and the dead branches have already felt the searing disconnect of death. The burning fire causes no pain. After the pain of death, the rest is cremation.

We have this image that pruning is going to cut into what is important, important to our life in Christ and this is not so. The first thing pruning does is take what’s dead and takes it away. It then takes what doesn’t produce fruit and cuts that away. Then it cuts away what binds the plant. Pruning doesn’t take what’s important. Burning just disposes of what’s cut away. Now living branches burning, we’d feel that, but that’s not what our scripture says.

Now here’s what’s even better. In Christ we have already been pruned. Our gospel passage tells us that we have been cleansed by the word spoken by Christ. We are cleansed by the Word of God in Christ. We have been pruned and it’s not up to us to prune. It’s not up to us to do that.

We also need to remember our reading from 1John teaches us that the pruning the Father does is done in love. Fear has to do with punishment, but God’s pruning is not punishment, it is shaping us to bear much good fruit. Godly pruning is done in love.

The first thing that means for us is that we need to abide in the vine. As the branches in the tree of life in Jesus, we come off what vintners call the central leader. We are the branches off of the central leader of Christ. Christ is the central leader. When the Church gets into trouble is when the Church leaves the central leader.

We are called to abide in Christ, abide. Rest is another word for abide. The branch doesn’t physically suckle from the vine, it rests, it abides, it remains attached and it is fed by the vine. This is how we are fed, this is how we bear fruit, by resting, abiding in Christ. This is how we are fed. We remain attached. We rest. We abide.

We remain and we are fed by the vine. As we are fed we bear fruit. As for the fruit, well, that’s a wildcard isn’t it. John’s gospel leaves that one alone, not saying what the fruit is. Let’s just say that whatever the fruit is, it’s valuable and desirable.

1John gives us a way into what that valuable and desirable fruit is, love. I believe the Church, the “capital C Church,” the Universal Church, tries too hard and overshoots the easy, obvious answer. Paul teaches one of the fruits of the Spirit is love, John teaches God is love. When we shoot past love to make more complex, more complicated theologies we may be going further than God intends. We may end up jumping right off the vine. At times by our own best intentions the “Capital C” Church quits abiding and resting when we go off on crusades, regardless of the century.
We must remember, it’s not up to us to do the pruning. The pruning is done in Christ, by Christ, and through Christ. It’s up to us to abide. In abiding we ought to love one another—because God loved us first.

About a million years ago Spike Lee made a movie called “School Daze” (Daze spelled D-A-Z-E). It’s about Homecoming Weekend at mythical Mission College, but it’s said to be based at least in part on Lee’s experiences at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, Spellman College, and Clark Atlanta University. Its overriding theme is variations of black-against-black racism. At the end of the movie, at the dawn of a new day, Vaughn “Dap” Dunlap, played by Laurence Fishburne, comes to the main quad of the Mission campus to ring the college bell. As he does, he yells “Wake up!”

As he rings the bell, characters from around campus begin to awaken. He continues, “Wake up!” Characters begin to leave their dorm rooms, fraternity and sorority houses, and homes. Dap runs to the camera and yells “Wake up!” This is when people begin to congregate around Dap and around the bell. Then the two main character’s Fishburne’s Dap and Giancarlo Esposito’s Julian “Dean Big Brother Almighty” Eaves meet at the bell, and it looks like a showdown.

Then Julian appears to have an epiphany. Dap and Julian look into the camera, breaking the illusion that the message is for them, Dap calmly says, “wake up.” The frame freezes and an alarm clock rings.

Friends, the “Capital C” needs to wake up. In this case it’s not so much that we need to wake up and do something as much as it is that we need to wake up and be what it is called to be, the body of Christ; abiding in the vine, taking nourishment in Christ, as we will today celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

Still, over the past ten years I have become distressed reading opinions from people from both sides of the theological aisle arguing and complaining about the state of the church. I say this knowing every time I point my finger, three point back. Or as our scripture warns, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

This is why when I read our passages for today, 1John 4:11 stuck in my head, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

I read letters to the editor, I read minutes from sessions and presbytery meetings, I tuned into General Assembly on-line and wonder if we have forgotten to love one another, or even perhaps how to love one another; and let’s keep in mind that “ought” is a pretty low threshold. We have vocations. We have a call on our lives. We take vows at baptisms and ordinations. John tells us we ought to love one another; what a low threshold for such a mighty love.

I say we need to get back to the Gospel of Luckenbach; it’s time we get back to the basics of love.

As Presbyterians we have a long tradition of seeking guidance from our three sources of governance, in order: Holy Scripture, the Book of Confessions, and the Book of Order. Unfortunately too often we tend to move from Grace to Law, from the Living Torah to the Book of Order. Jesus demonstrated love and taught us to love God and neighbor. When others tried to force Jesus into constructs like government and taxes, he shows that the Lord God is not bound that way. As people try to force God to be one way, the Triune God-Father, Son, and Spirit-shows The Way.

The issue of our time is that we must abide, individually and corporately, in the vine of Christ. The Father God, the vine dresser, never acts out of loving character when cutting away what is dead or unproductive. In God’s love, Jesus ministered to everyone, including Zealots and Roman collaborators; lepers and harlots. As the Body of Christ the church ought to abide and feed from the vine of Christ-especially when this direction takes us from our comfortable places. The church must start again. God is love, and it's time we get back to the basics of love. Our hope is in abiding in Christ and love one another, that’s it.

Or at least we ought to since God loves us so much.

Being a Witness

This was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday April 19, 2015, the Third Sunday after Easter.

As always, praise be to God and thanks to the saints and witnesses at St. Mark and my good friend the Rev. Rick Brooks and his wonderful wife Teri. God bless you all.



Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

As most of you know, Pastor Rick and I are friends from Seminary. I rejoice calling him friend. It was an honor to be with him and work with him; not only on classes, papers, and exams; but navigating the waters of the Seminary life and life in Austin. We didn’t take our preaching classes together, but I imagine he heard some of the same preaching chestnuts I did. One that came from a wonderful pastor and professor was to never begin a sermon with a joke.

Today I violate that rule.

The least popular Spiritual Gift is martyrdom; because you only get to use it once.

See, one of the reasons to never violate that rule is because so few sermon jokes are actually funny. Martyrdom as a general principle isn’t funny. Martyrdom as the church understands it even less so. But here’s some good news, there is more to martyrdom and being a martyr than we understand.

You’ve invited me to share your pulpit enough to know that I love scripture and I love scripture in its original language. I always dip into the original languages because it makes the interpretation of scripture much richer. And while I was studying our gospel reading from John in the Greek, I discovered a gem.

I’m not sure if you caught it in our reading though, it’s well hidden in English. In the end of our gospel passage Jesus told everyone in his presence, a group of believers, disciples, and apostles, that they are martyrs. Not that they will be, but that they are. They are.

He didn’t say that they were going to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of the Lord; though some will. He’s not saying these wonderful saints of God will be imprisoned, or stoned, or scourged, or hung on a tree, though we know some of them did meet those very fates. He’s not telling everyone within earshot that they will die terrible and horrible deaths at the hands of Rome, Isis, some African warlord, or some death cult; though some of them did and others in the future will.

But there it is, right there in verse 48, “You are martyrs of these things.” Then again, that’s not the way our translations read. None of the major English translations read that way. Every major translation says “You are witnesses of these things.” What I read this morning was “You are witnesses of these things.”

That’s as far as I got when I started writing this, then things started happening to Christians all over the world. Over the past several weeks, things changed, I changed. Being a witness? Being a martyr? What’s the difference? Is there a difference? Is it real or is it just semantics? Now there is a very real difference between being someone who sees something and someone who witnesses something. Anybody can see something, but to be a witness there is more.

Seeing something is like being a tourist. It’s like going to the Grand Canyon or to the Hill Country. It’s like going to the Empire State Building or Central Park in New York City. It’s like taking in a Rangers game or going to the JerryDome. Anybody can go see something. To be a witness means something more.

We can be a witness a legal sense. To be called as a witness can be to testify to what you have seen, to what you know, in a court of law. Back in the day when this scripture was written the state was an arm of the church. So to testify to what we know meant something different then than what it means today. We talk about what it means to give a testimony in court or in church; in biblical time it was largely the same thing.

Outside of a legal setting, between two people, it can mean this and more. It can be a testimony of what you have seen, what you know, and what it means. It can even go further; it can be a testimony of all of this and how it has changed you. Being a witness can mean sharing with the world how life has changed because of what you have seen, because of what you know, because of who you have met. It’s about sharing with the world how it’s different because of what and who you now know.

In our reading from John’s gospel there’s now a different twist to being a witness. To be a witness is to see the scarred body of Christ. To be a witness is to hear the words of hunger from the mouth of Christ. To be a witness is to respond to the needs of the body of Christ. It’s about feeding Jesus, feeding the body of Christ when asked. To be a witness is to receive the peace of Christ… and to be startled and terrified.

To be a witness is to respond to Christ’s word when he said to them, “everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” To be a witness is to have your mind opened to understand the scriptures, as he says, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

So to these apostles, these disciples, these believers, the assembly gathered at this post-Emmaus gathering, to be a “witness to these things.” These saints of the church came together as witnesses, martyrs to stand up and live life in Christ as Christ calls us to live.
That’s not such a bad start for the sermon, right? But a funny thing happened on the way to the pulpit. Life got in the way. Terrors and horrors of life and simply living in this world have gotten in the way of life.

Here’s what we know: We are witnesses to our Messiah, the Christ suffered. Jesus of Nazareth died. He died like those African Christian students. He suffered like the Egyptian Coptic Christians. He suffered like those who died on Patriot’s Day in Boston at the Marathon Finish line. He died like Cassie Bernall at Columbine.

He suffered, and he died, and on the third day he rose from the dead, and we are changed. We are called to; we get to proclaim repentance and forgiveness, forgiveness received in Christ’s name, to all nations, an action begun in Jerusalem and taken around the world these 2,000 years since.

But how, isn’t that the big question.

Until recently I was selling insurance. I mention this to say I had been on the road a lot over the last six months. Being on the road put me in a place where I was hearing a lot of the radio and a lot of radio commercials. On ESPN Marshall, this means ads for churches, one church I won’t name and one I will.

The church I won’t name ended their ad with the pastor saying “follow me as I follow Christ.” “Follow me as I follow Christ,” if you feel a little uneasy hearing this it’s because you should. From our reformed point of view, we follow Christ alone. So if I told you all to follow me as I follow Christ you are entitled to ask “Who died and made you bishop?”

The other ad comes from Trinity Episcopal Church in Marshall. It begins with Fr. John Himes asking “Do you know that you are the beloved of God?” Now yes, I know this, but let’s just say the reason I had been selling insurance and am not selling it now is that I wasn’t very good at it. There were days when I wondered if I would ever get a decent appointment much less a sale.

I know my worthiness before God has nothing to do with my ability to sell a Medicare Supplement, but as a guy (not a man, a guy—and that’s a distinction for another time but I think you know what I’m getting at) on those days I would feel worthless. I had heard this commercial a thousand times, but all of a sudden, this time it really stuck.

You see, I finally connected with the truth that even after a horrible day I am the beloved of God. When I don’t feel that way it’s because I’m not connecting with God. God is connecting with me, with all of us, with all of creation; but when I don’t feel it it’s not because God has withheld himself from me.

How’s that for a witness, all in ten words, “Do you know that you are the beloved of God?” It reminds me of the beginning of 1John 3, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Now as much as I love the original texts, it’s just as interesting to see what other English translations do with these texts and I love how other bible translators interpret this passage. The New International Version doesn’t say that the Father has given us love. It says the Father lavished his love on us. Quite a difference, both are giving, but to lavish is the difference between a cone at DQ and a French Silk Blizzard. Both are wonderful but one is, well, plain vanilla and the other is so rich it’s almost beyond our ability to enjoy it. It’s just that good.

The New American Standard Bible, a translation known as a very good word-to-word translation uses bestowed instead of given. To me, bestowing is more formal, more ceremonious. There is great intention upon bestowing a gift on someone. Giving can be haphazard; bestowing is intentional, maybe even liturgical.

Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation takes another track, extending rather than giving. Using a Star Trek motif, when a ship Captain extends the shields both vessels are protected. There is a source and there is a recipient. The greater covers the lesser. Together both are protected. God extends a bountiful love to us. We are blessed by the blessed nature of God, the Lord who loves first.

As witnesses we do need to see that even on the worst of days, even in the worst of circumstances, God’s love has been given, bestowed upon us and what will come of us has yet to be revealed. What will come of that has yet to be revealed.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but after years of trial and tribulation—and in a time when our sailing is anything but smooth—I am now a witness to God’s love and what will come to pass has not been finished yet; not in my life. That is my testimony. Right now we’re living by a thread, but by the grace of God, through the people of God, we are blessed.

So now the last big question; what’s the difference between being a witness and being a martyr? In English bible translations it seems the only difference is Stephen is the only person called a martyr because he died. Jesus isn’t a martyr because he conquered death. We’re witnesses because well… Not much of an ending is it? But what if there’s more?

As in the original texts, as Jesus says, we are martyrs, in a very real sense we are. We are called to die every day. To use my example I need to die to that vanity, that vanity that kept me from seeing what it means to be the beloved of God. We are called to die to this world to be a part of the world 1John 3 calls us to join, showing the world who God is and what God is doing. John tells us we are the children of God. The world doesn’t know what we’re up to because the world doesn’t know God. Father Himes in Marshall reminds us all that we are the beloved of God and this is true as well.

Even in the darkest of days, the days of death and suffering, we cannot go anywhere God in Christ did not go first, and in that we have a Lord who knows us, knows our situation better than we can hope. God’s perfect love, a love that’s been to hell and back, is lavished upon us. God’s perfect love is for us so we may share it with others. That is how we are changed. That is what it means to be a witness. By this, we are all called to be martyrs, a gift we are called to exercise not just once, but daily.