Audacity

This sermon was heard at The Federated Church in Weatherford, Oklahoma on Sunday July 24, 2016, the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Luke 11:1-13

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

I love that over the past eight weeks we have had an opportunity to get to know one another better. Some of you I have gotten to know better than others. Over the next couple of months, I hope to rectify that further. Today I am going to share another bias with you, I am a fan of the New Revised Standard Version of the bible. There’s nothing wrong with the New International Version, but sometimes it loses some of the nuance the New Standard Revised keeps. Then again, there are times I prefer the NIV over the NRSV, and last week I showed used the New Living Translation, so I do tend to look around and see what’s faithful to the original text and what’s not. The reading from Hosea got a white-washing from the New International Version.

The NIV reads… “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” Yes, I called that white-washed.

In the NRSV that same half of Hosea 1:2 goes like this… “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

No good editor likes to use the same word three times in the same sentence, but who says the Lord needs an editor? I won’t say the NIV sounds appealing, what with promiscuous, adulterous, and unfaithfulness, but each of these words have different shades of “bad” in English as we read them. I mean it’s not good, but it could be worse, right?

The New Revised Standard gives us the “what’s worse,” whoredom, whoredom, and great whoredom. Perhaps the most concentrated use of the word “whoredom” in scripture. It’s a blue ribbon for Holy Writ! We have reached maximum whoredom.

Another translation I find useful is the New American Standard Version because it provides a very good word for word translation. The Hebrew here is translated as harlotry, harlotry, and flagrant harlotry. What’s flagrant harlotry? Is it like basketball where you get two shots from the line and the ball back when your team gets a flagrant harlotry foul? Whatever it is, Israel has done it. Mazel tov Israel, the Lord is done with you.

Gomer bore Hosea three children. The first is named Jezreel, named after a nation of people wiped off of the face of the earth. The second is named Lo-Ruhamah which means “no love” or “no pity.” Their third child is named “Lo-ammi.” The NIV says this means “not my people.” The NRSV doesn’t offer up the translation in parentheses, it goes straight to the explanation, “you are not my people and I am not your God.”

Over the past couple of weeks we have sung, “Seek Ye First.” The second verse goes like this:

Ask and it shall be given unto you,
seek and you shall find;
knock and the door shall be opened unto you -
Allelu, alleluia!

These words come loosely from today’s Luke reading. This is often used to tell people that if you only ask, God will provide. This has given way to something called “The Prosperity Gospel.” Prosperity proponents see faith as a contract, not a covenant between God and God’s own. If we have faith, God will deliver us not only in the heavenly realm but here on earth with security, health, and prosperity. If we act in faith, God will deliver. So if you give, God will give you wellness and wealth. I believe the scriptural term for this is “hogwash,” or at least it is in Arkansas, home of the Razorbacks.

But you know, these words are in scripture, so what do we do with them? First, we keep them with the words that precede them. This a parable about a man whose guest arrives late at night, so late that he didn’t have any bread to serve when he arrives. So he goes to see if his neighbor has three loaves. He knocks. He knocks loud. He knocks hard. He knocks often.

His neighbor is ticked off, and who wouldn’t be. It’s after midnight, and while the man wasn’t up watching Colbert (again, my preference) he had to get up early in the morning to work and work hard. The kids were in bed, with him. That was a cultural thing. Houses didn’t have rooms and beds for everybody. Getting up is a bother. Getting up would wake the kids. Then again, it’s not like the knocking and yelling is helping anybody sleep.

Now here’s an instance where I prefer the New International over the New Revised, the NRSV says the man with the guest will get bread because of his “persistence.” In the NIV the man gets what he needs because of his “shameless audacity.” Everything else being equal, give me the more expressive translation. Yeah, shameless audacity. Jesus tells his disciples to pray like this man asks his neighbor for bread, with shameless audacity.

I have a friend, Dr. Steve, who once preached on prayer and used this children’s sermon. This is the condensed version.

Once upon a time on the Barbary Coast, a bunch of school children and their teacher were going to go to the beach for a picnic. They hoped and prayed for good weather because there was only one day they could picnic and if there was bad weather there would be no picnic that Spring. Well, the big day came and it was pouring rain so the picnic was cancelled and they were all disappointed. They all wailed and cried. BUT what they didn’t know is that because of the weather Pirates couldn’t come ashore, pirates who surely would have taken them and their teacher and made them all slaves. The End.

Notice I didn’t say it was a good children’s sermon. His lesson was that we should just pray “God’s will be done” because what God wants is best for us. As far as it goes, I can’t disagree that what God wants is best for us and we must pray God’s will be done. We’ve just prayed “God’s will be done,” it would be foolish to preach against that. There’s nothing audacious here except for the nightmare ending, but there has to be more.

Did Hosea pray to God, “Golly Lord, thanks for telling me to wed this promiscuous woman, er, whore of whoredom, ah, I mean harlot?” No, I can’t imagine that was a good time at family dinner during the Shabbat either, “Mom, Dad, this is Gomer. Yes, I know her name means “complete” but the Lord is done with us as a nation, so it’s appropriate. Look I brought wine! (Gomer, Strong’s Concordance, 1584)” I can’t imagine that was a nice dinner at all.

This is the life of the prophet Hosea, with his harlot wife and children of harlotry named after the fate of Israel, flagrant harlotry; and how does our reading from this disaster end? Israel will be decimated, but… but the Lord prays, “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

Now that’s a prayer you don’t expect after whoredom, adulterous, and flagrant harlotry. Even the Lord prays with shameless audacity. What can come from shameless audacity? This is a piece of a letter from a Texan living in Chicago named Chris Ladd:

Watching Ronald Reagan as a boy, I recall how bold it was for him to declare ‘morning again’ in America. In a country menaced by Communism and burdened by a struggling economy, the audacity of Reagan’s optimism inspired a generation. (https://goplifer.com/2016/07/22/resignation-letter/)

Say what you will, Reagan had some audacity. Like him or not, Regan had some audacity. Right or wrong, and history will be the judge, Reagan had some audacity.

Like him or not, like his policies or not, Reagan was largely responsible for ending the Cold War. Agree with how he did it or not, Reagan was responsible for making the United States the last standing super-power in a world of tiny little despots and frightened rulers. Like it or not, agree with him or not, say what you will, audacity was not lacking.

Yes, we need to seek God’s will in our lives. We need to come together in prayer. We need to come together. We need to see where God is leading us and his church. As I said last week we need to sit at his feet, we need to be close so when God moves we can move with God. Yes, it begins with prayer, then it goes further.

As Jesus teaches us “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

We are called to pray for the greatest gift of all; not a car, nor a house, nor any other wealth which rots on this earth. We are called to pray to receive the greatest gift God can give us. His spirit. Come Holy Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit, we will be able to seek God’s will for our lives and the life of the Church which is his body. That is audacity at its most valiant.

Something Old, Something New (Pentecost Edition)

While this sermon shares the same name as my last sermon, the spelling, text, and message is different. This sermon was heard at Broadmoor Presbyterian Church on Sunday May 15, 2016, Pentecost Sunday.

Genesis 11:1-9
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27

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

There’s an ancient hymn of the church, “Old Time Religion.” There are almost as many different authors listed of this hymn as there are versions. Depending on the source, we learn that the song is an old Negro Spiritual. Then checking the authorship of the Jim Reeves version and it credits Reeves, Tommy Hill, Leo Jackson, Ken Hill, and Gordon Stoker with no mention of the spiritual. Then there’s the Tennessee Ernie Ford version and the Buck Owens version with their fingerprints in the credit line. The version recorded by The Blind Boys of Alabama is attributed to someone named J. Baird.

You know me by now, of course I wouldn’t mention this song unless I meant to say something about it. And here goes, check out these choruses:

It was good for the Hebrew children.

It was good for dad and mother.

Makes me love everybody.

It was good for our mothers.

It has saved our fathers.

It will do when I am dyin’. (I love that, It'll do when I'm dyin')

It will take us all to heaven.

Give me that old time religion, it’s good enough for me.

Let me throw a wet blanket here, but the religion of the Hebrew children was not the “old time religion” of my father and mother. It’s a wonderful chorus, but good for the Hebrew Children isn’t in my experience. It was a classic of Twentieth Century Protestant hymnals, but “Old Time Religion” isn’t found in the new Presbyterian Hymnal.

Now here’s the fly in the ointment, as a Negro Spiritual, the faith of the Hebrew children is very important. The stories of the Exodus, the stories of people whose freedom was denied for hundreds of years by the Pharaohs in Egypt until the coming of Moses, were and continue to be very important. These stories are important for the men and women whose freedom was taken and continues to be in peril.

This was important to the slaves who originated this hymn. It was important to the Blind Boys of Alabama. But I can’t imagine Jim Reeves or Tennessee Ernie Ford or even Buck Owens catching the theological subtext because like me, it’s not their experience.

It may not be in our hymnal, but let’s go down Southfield Drive until it becomes Hollywood and see if it’s in the hymnbooks at Hollywood Presbyterian, a historically black congregation just down the road. Something old, something new.

Something old, something new. Pentecost has been a part of the celebration of the Church since before the Church was Christian. Pentecost is a part of the old time religion, but in Christ it became something new. Jews from every nation were living in Jerusalem on that first Christian Pentecost. When it began, it began with a sound like the rush of a violent wind.

Being people of the New Millennium, children of the Information age, we tend to look at scripture like we’ve seen it a hundred times. This is one of those times. We hear “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and tend to think “whoosh” when we should think Hurricane Camille, Andrew, or Katrina. We should think about the tornadoes that blew through town a couple of weekends ago. We should think about a “Mike Bettis from the Weather Channel doing a remote from your front porch” kind of violent wind sound. This isn’t something soft and pretty, this is a “change your life” event.

With this comes fire that licks like tongues and those tongues are speaking in the native languages of a world full of new believers and old skeptics. The world of Judaism was living in Jerusalem and the world was hearing the Gospel in their native languages. Not the angelic tongues we often think of when we hear of Pentecost, but languages with known words and grammar and these were used so people could hear the Word of God and understand it so they can share it.

Of course the old skeptics would say they sounded like a bunch of drunks. Then again the words of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, non-Jewish Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontians (is that what you call a resident of Pontus?), Asians (folks from what we call Turkey), Phrygians, Pamphylians, and Egyptians with Galilean accents might sound drunkish.

Peter stands up for the Apostles declaring, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.”

Then being this close to Mardi Gras “only nine o'clock in the morning” is meaningless when it comes to day drunk, but that’s not the point.

Peter was sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ as fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. The Spirit of God is being poured out upon all flesh. Sons and daughters prophesy. Young men see visions. Old men dream dreams. Slaves, even the male and female slaves, receive his Spirit and they prophesy.
In the name of God, by the work of Christ, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord is saved. Christ does not replace the Law; Christ fulfills the law.

This brings us to an interesting part of our reading from John, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” You will hear a lot of people who quote this invoke all sorts of things out of Leviticus. As for me, if we invoke too much Leviticus we won’t be able to eat the Red Beans and Rice I brought for today’s potluck and that would be a pity. So what does Jesus mean?

Some scholars say that the Ten Commandments serve three purposes. They give instruction on how to relate to God, to creation, and to each other. Christ knew how well we had done with this since the days of Moses so he knew the Advocate was a must to help us carry out these commandments.

As for the Levitical laws, they served all sorts of purposes. Some of them helped the people keep the commandments. Some of them helped keep family relationships in a semblance of order. Some were necessary to keep the people from getting trichinosis. We’ve been through this before, there were 613 mitzvoth, 613 laws; 248 thou shall’s and 365 thou shall not’s. Some became passé like the dietary restrictions. Peter would even argue with God, argue with God about dietary restrictions. He wouldn’t dare touch shrimp, lobster, bacon, or crawfish. But after a vision from the Lord God, the “mudbug,” a critter whose name makes its inclusion on the dietary restriction list self-explanatory, is now good eating.

So what did Jesus mean when he told the people to keep his commandments? The 613 seem to be in a state of flux since Peter saw his first catfish. What did Jesus mean? I believe the answer lies in the end of our reading from John’s gospel:

"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."

What exactly does the Holy Spirit remind us? What has Jesus taught us? Jesus has taught us that even though he did not replace the law, he has fulfilled it. Fulfilling it he has done so in a new and glorious way, a way we could not expect or imagine. The scribes and Pharisees expected one thing and Jesus showed them something else.

They tried to trick him into blasphemy and he could not be tricked by their worldly games. They fawned over him, ingratiated themselves, then tried to spring a trap only to find that their traps had no power over Jesus. They complained he ate with whores and other women. He ate with tax collectors. He ate with zealots. He ate when he should have fasted, but these same temple leaders complained when the Baptist fasted when they would have rather he had a sandwich. Jesus tells his people the world will never be happy with them.

The world will never be happy with them, so why bother?

Jesus gives his people something better, something the world cannot offer, his peace. Peace we extend to each other during this very service! Let’s do it again!

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all!

And also with you!

Jesus says “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let your hearts be afraid."

On this Pentecost Sunday this is the commandment Jesus wants us to remember. If it doesn’t bring his peace, is it really his commandment?

The Civil Wars were Joy Williams and John Paul White, an Alternative-Country musical duo who from 2008 until 2014 recorded two CD’s a couple of EP’s and won four Grammy awards. The second single released from the first disc was the title track “Barton Hollow.”

Ain't going back to Barton Hollow
Devil gonna follow me e'er I go
Won't do me no good washing in the river
Can't no preacher man save my soul

It only took a few minutes of research on line for me to decide that there are more opinions about what this song means than copies sold, I bring up this song for this chorus.

If there is one thing every pastor, minister, and evangelist should want you to know it’s this, “Can’t no preacher man save my soul.” Absolutely not. We are saved by faith though grace in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who was born to live to die and rise again. Today we celebrate the coming of the day he promised until he comes again in victory, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, His Spirit.

Friends, there is a difference between religion and faith. Let me say this again, there is a difference between religion and faith. Straight out of John Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” we receive this definition of faith:

Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

So if this is faith what’s religion? Religion is how we celebrate that faith. If faith is the fabric of our lives, then religion is the hanger we put it on. Religion is a framework. We are the theological heirs of the Reformation; Calvin, Knox, Hus, Zwingli and many others. Our Jewish brothers have their scripture and authoritative writing as do our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. There are many old time religions, many theological hangers on which people hang the fabric of faith.

Ain't going back to Barton Hollow
Devil gonna follow me e'er I go
Won't do me no good washing in the river
Can't no preacher man save my soul

It only took a few minutes to find dozens of interpretations to this song. It doesn’t take as long to find even more meanings to the Pentecost. But on this Pentecost Sunday I want us to remember these things:

That hymn, it may not be ours to sing.

That whooshing sound, if you find it deafening, could be that’s as it should be.

If what you hear makes perfect sense coming from one pastor but another pastor makes no sense at all, that’s alright too. Remember that first Pentecost had one Apostle speaking your language and the others speaking goobledy-gook.

Yes, when we love Jesus we keep his commandments, yes those commandments are found in scripture, and yes, those commands are found in the life of Christ.

Finally, we are saved by grace through faith. It’s not our religion but our Lord who saves.

Barton Hollow says it won’t do us any good to wash in the river. That’s true as far as it goes. No words of a preacher will save our souls either. The power is that Jesus shared our baptism. There was no need, he didn’t need the cleansing we need. Yet through baptism he identifies with us. That’s the power. No preacher man will save our souls. The words are Christ’s not mine. It is grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to share the word of God with you these past three years. Of course it wouldn’t seem like I preached a sermon if I didn’t play with the Greek would it? Jesus called the Spirit the Advocate. Used this way, Advocate means one who walks beside. What a wonderful image. What a glorious truth. Let us rejoice in his Holy comfort, God in Spirit who walks beside us.

Marie and I thank you for walking beside us too.

Amen.

What Is Truth?

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 30, 2010, Trinity Sunday. Nineteen footnotes is excessive, but some of the notes are comments for readers that I did not make from the pulpit. What is in parentheses was spoken.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

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

Several years ago, the Comedy Central cable channel premiered “The Colbert Report.” No, not Colbert, like Jim the golfer, but Colbert—with a French pronunciation. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly on The Factor, Colbert stated that he is of “Irish descent and only adopted the French pronunciation of his surname to ‘get the cultural elites’ on his side.”[1] Pronounced this way, the name of the show rhymes; it’s “The Colbert Report,” not “The Colbert Report.” What’s funny about that is…[2] never mind, it’s the cornerstone joke of this satiric farce.

In the premier episode, Colbert introduced a feature segment that would define his show called “The Wørd” where the host takes a common, or not so common, word or phrase and defines it in novel and hilarious ways. The first word to enter the lexicon was "truthiness."

Truthiness is defined as “‘truth’ that a person claims to know intuitively ‘from the gut’ without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.[3] Webster's has sanctioned truthiness with two definitions: “truth that comes from the gut, not books” and “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts of facts known to be true.”[4]

In a BBC editorial,[5] Drew Westen cites the first debate of the 2000 Presidential campaign as an example illustrating the perils of trying to persuade voters with truth verses truthiness. In the debate, Vice President Al Gore explained how Governor George W. Bush’s health care plan would be more expensive to persons on Medicare including the worst phrase ever used in a political debate. Vice President Gore said, “Under the governor’s plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he’s modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries.”

Medicare actuaries? Mr. Gore, you had me at (insert snoring sound here).[6] Muddled would be more like it to most debate watchers.

With this response: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math. It’s trying to scare people in the voting booth.” Mr. Bush established himself to be one of us, not one of them; one of those Harvard educated cultural elites.[7]

The Vice President talked numbers and policy. The Governor countered with stories of what would happen “to you.” Westen points out that “stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win.” It’s little wonder the nation elected President Bush instead of President Gore.[8]

Stories over facts, anecdotes over data, gut feelings over measured research; this is the essence of truthiness. But heaven forbid; truthiness and being a follower of our Lord and Messiah do not mix well.

On this day, on this Trinity Sunday, the disciples are told “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide [them] into all the truth.” The disciples are told that the Spirit will hear the truth from the Father; this truth will glorify the Son. The disciples are then told again that the Father has given all truth to the Son; and this truth he will share with the Spirit who will share it with them.

The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit who was at the creation of all that was created, the Spirit who descended upon Jesus like a dove, the Spirit that roared through the house where the disciples were staying on that first Christian Pentecost; the Holy Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth.
So here’s a good question for us: “What is truth?”

It’s a good question, deceptively good. Pilate asked Jesus this question. We read that passage from John’s gospel every year, every Good Friday. And considering that the 117th meeting of the Presbytery of Arkansas is coming up next weekend, the Session meets with the General Presbyter the next day, and the 219th General Assembly meets in July, it’s a darn fine question. These church leaders meet to do the church’s work in the name of the Lord. So again I ask: “What is truth?”

Being the stickler that I am, I start with what truth meant for the people who heard these words from the lips of Jesus. In the Hebraic understanding, truth is firm, solid, valid, and binding. When it is applied to people, and we do say that the Holy Spirit is a person, it characterizes their speech, action, and thought. It describes someone with integrity.[9]

In the Jewish legal sense, it means that the truth rests upon authentic facts. Truth is factual, impressive. It is beyond trivial objections. It is undisputable.[10] I guess that’s the Al Gore sense of truth. Of course in ancient Israel, the Rabbis were the arbiters of God’s truth, and they saw the Torah as its ultimate expression. By this truth, they found evidence of the Living God and that God is the everlasting king.[11]

Of course, legal truth is not the same as religious truth. Truth goes beyond legalistic definitions making it a mark and goal of divine action. Because of this truth, God is worthy of absolute confidence.

To those who wrote Hebraic law, truth has an element of transparency; it carries a meaning of not concealing. Truth declares itself that it really is the truth. (By the way, my English teacher always told me not to use the word while defining the word. Then again, this definition comes from the Greek, not the English. Let’s go on.) Of course, there is an implication that people might try to conceal, falsify, truncate, or suppress; of course that’s the nature of sin. So truth must encompass the full most real state of affairs.

In legal affairs, this is the difference between “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” and “don’t give more answer than the question asks.” The truth demands the whole truth. Lawyers and their ancient counterparts don’t want anymore truth than is necessary.

Truth has certainty of force. It has judicial righteousness. People on whom you can rely are people of truth. It denotes a sincerity and honesty that like any virtue is public, not private. Truth is an authentic teaching of faith, something that I have endeavored over the past five years behind this pulpit. The truth has the ability to show the full difference between the divine and what isn’t divine.[12]

My English language bible dictionary elaborates on truth. It says that biblical people who spoke the truth often used metaphors, expressions to tell the truth of the glory of God. They had to do this because the realities of the truth were too difficult to express and be understood in literal language.[13] Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said the disciples could not bear to hear the truth at that moment. I’m just guessing here.

It also says that truth is defined by a pattern of action. Truth is not established in a one-off sort of experience. It must be continuously told, it must be continuously lived. It is a characteristic of our actions, not our words. By this definition we cannot tell the truth without living the truth. Since actions speak louder than words, “do as I say, not as I do” is not an option.

In teaching, truth is teaching reality, not myth to the listener. It teaches reliability of the message as a guide for life. It recalls the Jewish characteristic of reliable teaching as truth and as another way of expressing what is held dear in the Torah, in the Law.[14]

John’s writings take all this and wonderfully distills it saying that truth is God’s faithful commitment to God’s people. This is where we get into one of the most glorious answers to the question of “What is truth?” John’s gospel teaches that “the incarnate Word makes God’s truth accessible in the sense that Jesus displays the reality of the divine person. Jesus is at once the manifestation of God’s faithful character and the divine reality.”[15]

Now we are getting to where the rubber meets the road. Pardon me for backing up into my opening story, but I am about to introduce a grain of truthiness into worship this morning. I thank you for your rapt attention to my excursion into the dictionary answers to the question “what is truth?” I don’t blame you if your eyes glazed over either, even if just a little bit, as I entered into the hallowed ground of my “inner Al Gore.”

If truthiness has taught me one thing it’s that all of the facts in the world don’t matter when something more powerful is at stake. I can give you all of the facts about truth in the world, but it is the stories resonate more than the data ever will.

R. Buckminster Fuller teaches “Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”[16]

William Sloane Coffin has written “Fear distorts truth, not by exaggerating the ills of the world… but by underestimating our ability to deal with them… while love seeks truth, fear seeks safety.”[17]

Acting in truth is the focus of this expression from Mennonite writer John K. Stoner: “Speaking the truth is the most significant political action available to any of us—not voting, but speaking the truth. This view is based on the familiar biblical notion that the Word is central. The Word is the truth; the expression of the truth by human lips moves culture and history toward the government of God. There is no higher form of political action, nor is there one that can contribute more to the wholeness of the human community.”[18]

In their own way, in their own incomplete way, there is an element of truthiness in all of these examples, but I will admit, they do give us a bit of traction into the question “what is truth?” that straight data lacks. So let us turn from truth that is not quite the truth and move to that most basic source of truth, scripture.

Let us return to Jesus’ long teaching during his final meal with his disciples, the lessons he gives the eleven remaining disciples during his last supper. Our reading today comes from this speech, also in this teaching is John 14 where Jesus tells his disciples “I am the truth.” This is our answer, Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the truth.

Still, there is something devilish about thinking that we have fully received the whole truth. It’s not that the truth ever changes; it’s that our understanding of the truth does. This is what it means to be reformed and continually being reformed. “When we claim to have arrived at the Truth, capital T, we cheat ourselves. Finality of understanding, closure of interpretation, shuts us off from further insights, illuminations, inspirations, and so on. When it comes to Truth with a capital T, we spend our lives in waiting rooms on our knees. There are no ‘immaculate perceptions.’ We all walk into the dark.”[19]

Yes Jesus is the truth, and if we think that in our lifetime, with scripture, with 2,000 years of interpretation of the New Testament and 2,000 more of the Old, and even with the gift of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Truth indwelling us since that first Pentecost, we will never know the whole truth. The truth is just too big to be known by us, that is the mystery of the Triune God.

The answer to the question what is truth is often in front of us. It calls us to know the truth that we are saved by grace through faith. It calls us to act with the integrity of Jesus in all situations so that our actions will glorify the Son as the Spirit glorifies the Son; not to earn our salvation, but to respond to it. It calls us to act in truth humbly, because Jesus was humble.

So let the answer to the question of what is truth mean one thing to all of us. Let the answer mean that all spiritual truth in the world is nothing if we do nothing with it. We must remember the ancient Hebrew definition that truth is in action and the teaching of Stoner that the Word spoken is central. Virtue requires public action, there is no such thing as a private virtue.

Seek truth, act in truth. Remember love seeks truth, fear seeks safety. Jesus is the truth, as lavishly bold as a flash of lightening and as sublimely humble as the distant rumble of thunder.

[1] Stephen Colbert (character), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_(character), citing “Stephen Colbert Enters the No Spin Zone”, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,244882,00.html, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[2] Homage to the Reverend James “Skipper” French.
[3] Truthiness, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[4] The Truth of Truthiness, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/12/opinion/meyer/main2250923.shtml, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[5] BBC News, “Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests?” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8474611.stm, retrieved May 28, 2010.
[6] Yes, it’s a “Jerry Maguire” reference.
[7] This is where I mention that George W. Bush went to Yale University and was a member of one of its most famous secret societies, Skull and Bones, but does anybody say that Bush was an Ivy Leaguer just like Gore, nooooooo.
[8] Please, don’t get started on popular vote vs. Electoral College, I get it, I get it. So as a registered Democrat, let me just say for the record that the 43rd President of the United States is George W. Bush, not Al Gore, Jr.
[9] Kittel, Gerhard, “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.” Volume I. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964, pages 232-233.
[10] Ibid. 233.
[11] Ibid. 237.
[12] Ibid. 242-245
[13] Truth, “New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.” Volume 5 Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009, Page 675
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] HomileticsOnline.com, keyword search “Truth”, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=859, retrieved May 28, 2010
[17] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Courage to Love.” New York: Harper and Row, 1982, 60.
[18] Stoner, John K. in “Mennonite Life.” quoted in The Other Side, March-April 1997 and in Context, August 15, 1997, 4.
[19] Ibid.

Unforeseen Hope

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 23, 2010, Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17, 25-27

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 want to read those last two verses again, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

In John’s gospel, the disciples were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised one who would serve as their advocate. As our reading from the Book of Acts begins, the disciples need an advocate.

As Acts begins, Jesus tells the apostles not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This, he said, is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” This wait could not have been comfortable. Given the events of the Passover, they were marked men. The Romans knew this crew as rabble rousers. The temple leadership knew them as the worst kind of heretics. Yes, Jesus had returned to them, but he had ascended to the Father. He was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he gave them no estimated time of arrival.

They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate was still a promise, not a reality; not to them, not yet. They may have had all of the hope in the world, but with the reality of living in Palestine at that very moment, they would have been foolish if they had not felt fear.

It was at this very moment, on the day of Pentecost, that they were assembled together in one place. It was at this very moment that from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

This must have been even more frightening. They knew to be leery of the princes of this world. They knew the Governor and the Tetrarch and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, and now the violent winds rushed down on them. I was watching the Weather Channel on last week, and I saw what was happening in Norman and Oklahoma City. I saw Mike Bettis with the VORTEX2 storm chasers tracking down the big storms; but I can’t imagine what it’s like to see that live from the front porch.

We may be talking about this scripture and praising God for the glory of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but on that day, they were in the midst of a violent wind filling the house where they were sitting. We talk about joy, they experienced terror.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared on them. By this gift, the apostles were able to communicate with the Jews from every nation under heaven who were living in Jerusalem. The crowd gathered and they were bewildered. Nobody needed a translator anymore. Nobody needed to find a common tongue, not anymore. The apostles spoke to the masses in their own tongues, the curse of Babel was broken for a great shining moment. There was joy and glory was given to God.

The people asked what this meant. And they heard the response of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Let’s remember, I grew up in Kansas City where the bars open at 6:00 am six days a week. I’ve seen drunks at nine in the morning. But none of them could quote the prophet Joel.

In the June 8, 2009 issue of the Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jack Haberer writes:

There is a new wind blowing through the sometimes musty halls of American Churches, and it is sweeping away the hypocrisy, lack of social concern, and unnecessary cultural baggage accumulated by the mainstream churches through the years. Thousands of people, young in spirit, are turning away from the anti-intellectuality of separatist fundamentalism and from mainstream ecumenical liberalism…[and to]…a vital, open, and truly revolutionary answer to Christ’s call to “go and teach all the nations.”[1]

The Good News is that these words come to us with a joy and determination to leave unproductive church-ianity in the wake of a spirit led revival. The bad news is that these words don’t come from a new missional group. They don’t come from the writings of the emerging church either. They come from the pen of Richard Quebedeaux and were written 35 years ago.[2] Asking “What happened,” Haberer pines “The young evangelicals [of the 1960’s and 70’s] grew older.”

We know the statistics; the church has lamented them for over fifty years. You’ve heard me quote these numbers from The Mainline Evangelism Project. In 1960, twenty-six million people were members of the seven mainline denominations. That comes to 14.4% of the population.

In 2000, the number of people who were members of the mainline churches fell to 21 million folks and the percentage of people who were members of these churches fell to 7.4% of Americans. The fall in the mainstream ranks is in raw numbers and even more so as a percent of the population. Our only consolation is that there is company in this misery; these numbers pertain to all of the mainline denominations.[3]

Haberer does not see us as hopeless though, he continues in the Outlook, “We all do well to re-read the gospels’ stories. The clarity of Jesus’ vision, the strength of his resolve, the power of his appeal, the cost of his summons to follow … such words and actions have stood the test of time. Let us all catch that vision together and refuse to let it fade.”[4]

To recapture the Spirit of Pentecost, we must again learn to speak so that those who will hear us will understand we have something to say. And what a thing we have to say. We believe that faith makes a difference in our lives.

As the apostles shared with the world on the day of Pentecost, we too are called to share. Our stories tell others about who we are and whose we are. We all have stories, but we only share in the Pentecost when we share the stories of our faith. We are called to know our stories, the stories that show others the difference a relationship with the triune God makes in our lives. And we must be able to communicate this story so that those with ears may hear.

We, we who carry the cross of Christ into the world must learn to speak so that the world may hear. The blessing of the Pentecost is the immediacy of the ability that the Galileans received to speak to the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, and so on. But going back to what I said earlier, about the decrease in members in the mainline Christian churches, we don’t need to speak to just Asians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans belonging to Cyrene; we need to speak to our neighbors.

We can gain wisdom on this matter from ancient Celtic Christianity.[5] In 563 AD, about a century after the death of St. Patrick, Columba sought off to an island off of the western Scottish coast. This isle would be his base to reach the Picts of Scotland. Columba took a sizeable corps with him and they learned the culture of the Picts. They chose to pay the price to understand the Picts. Columba’s way of doing mission was the opposite of the model James Michener presented in his novel “Hawaii.” They learned about the people, their language, and their culture. They sent out teams from their island settlement—a little place called Iona—and in 100 years the Picts were significantly Christian.

The lessons we take from this is that there people close to us who do not know the Word of God. We need to learn about how they speak and show them the Gospel in words they understand. Peter and the Apostles did this miraculously; Columba and the Iona community did this diligently. We need to learn how to share the story of faith so that those with ears may be able to hear the word of God.

We talk about speaking in tongues, this gift of the Spirit being the one most accented during Pentecost, but where at Pentecost we talk about speaking in foreign tongues, we have to remember that there is an entire generation of people in America who don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this social networking world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, we need to learn how to take the message of God into the world in a new language, without compromising the cross of Christ.

So today, let us all regain the elemental presence of worship. We come to the font of many blessings overflowing with living water and remember our baptism. We come to the table with the cup and the plate to partake in the food that feeds our bodies and our souls. We hear the Word proclaimed and even more so, we come to know the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, the one who the Lord has set aside since before the creation, Jesus the Christ.

And today, especially today, we need to allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit so that as steel is forged in the furnace, we may be made strong for the Lord’s service. And we do this so that in the words of our Lord, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By this, our hope is anything but unforeseen.

[1] Haberer, Jack, The Presbyterian Outlook. Vol. 191-20, June 8/15, 2009, page 5.
[2] Haberer cites Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Evolution in Orthodoxy. H&R, 1975.
[3] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel, 2nd edition. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, page 25.
[4] Ibid, Haberer
[5] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.

The Least Expected

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 9, 2010, the 6th Sunday in Easter.

Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 21:22-22:5
John 5:1-9

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

My favorite word in Hebrew is ruach. I love to hear it, I love to say it. I love what it means, both its simple definition and all of the wonderful meanings it carries with it. In Genesis 1:2, this is the word our bibles translate as “the Spirit”[1] or “the wind.”[2] Listen to the word again, ruach. It sounds like wind and spirit. There is a breathy, otherworldly quality to this word that mystifies me, ruach.

In Genesis, this breath of God, this spirit is imparted just before the light is created. It is the breath that blows across the chaos, across the darkness, across the void. This is the breath that precedes life. This is the breath that gives life to all creation.

This is the wind that comes off of the water in the morning. It’s the cool breeze that brings the dew that falls on the grass. It’s the summer breeze that rustles the leaves in the trees and tells us that all is right in the world. It is the Spirit that reminds us that God is in charge and regardless of the chaos of the world around us, it is the Spirit that says Emmanuel, God is with us. This is the same wind, Spirit we read about a couple of weeks ago from John’s gospel when the disciples received the breath of Jesus. It’s the same wind that will blow in two weeks on Pentecost.

Our gospel reading this week begins during one of the Jewish festivals and Jesus is walking by the Sheep Gate by a pool called Beth-zatha. In some translations this pool is called Bethesda. The Sheep Gate separated the North Eastern part of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount. The pools at the Sheep Gate were used to wash the sheep prior to their sacrifice in the Temple. This use of the pools gave the water a halo of sanctity.[3]

Many invalids came to the pools to be healed Local legend said that when the pool was stirred, its healing power was activated, and the first person in the waters would be made well. Legends from the third century said the ripples in the pool were caused by angels bathing in the waters. Since the pool was surrounded on all sides by the city walls or the surrounding slope of the hills, breezes in the pool would be infrequent, so the waiting game had to be played with great patience.

The name of this spot means “House of Grace.” The name of this spot would be appropriate for a group of invalids who seek the unmerited favor of healing by the restorative, mystical powers of the waters. Is it any wonder a Presbyterian Church was founded near the sight of a bubbling spring in rural Maryland in 1820 would be called Bethesda? Is it any wonder one-hundred-and-twenty years later a Naval Medical Center built nearby would come to be called Bethesda?[4] A place named for the House of Grace would be the place to receive special treatment, both medical and spiritual.

So Jesus arrives at the pool seeing the sick: the blind, the lame, and the withered. There, Jesus spotted a man he wanted to know more about. He was probably one of the oldest men at the pool. He learned that this man had been lying there for a long time, thirty eight years to be exact. So Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”

Oh what a wonderful question! “Do you want to be made well?” Imagine how you would answer this question. “Oh my Lord, yes, I want to be made well!” I can imagine people being asked this question all over the world and just as easily imagine people crying from the roof tops, “Oh yes Lord, I want to be made well!” But you know, this isn’t the answer Jesus gets.

The man tells Jesus, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

So, is that a yes or a no?

No, really, I want to know.

Is this a yes or a no?

It really isn’t an answer at all. It is an explanation. The man explains to Jesus that he is unable to reach the waters. He tries. He really tries to make it on his own, because there is no one at the pool to help him. Alas, woe is he. He is unable to make it to the waters first.

So Jesus says to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

This man has waited thirty-eight years for the wind to blow across the pool. He has waited so very long for the wind to blow and for the healing power of the water to be activated for him. He waited to be caressed by the ripples in the pool caused by angels bathing.

Instead, he got something different. He got the thing he expected least in this world. He didn’t feel the wind blow causing the pool to ripple. He met the wind.

He met the wind. He met the living God. He met the one who caused the healing wind to blow. He didn’t meet an angel, he met God incarnate. He was waiting to feel the breeze so that he could race to the pool. Instead he met the one who is the wind. In the most real and least expected way, he met God with him; he had a personal encounter with Emmanuel.

For this man, there was no more need for the Pool of Siloam. In a way more real than I can imagine or expect, he was baptized not in water, but in the Spirit of the Lord, by which he took his mat and walked. That day, that Sabbath day, Jesus proved that he was present to reconcile all creation into right relationship with him. As the wind blew across the water in Genesis beginning all creation, Jesus blew across this man who was not able to get himself into the pool and gave him new life.

Our Lord, our Messiah is the one who is able to do more than we could ever hope or imagine. He is able to do what we least expect him to do. We read about this in Acts. We read about Paul’s first missionary journey into Europe. We are so familiar with our modern geography that it may be a surprise that this is the first recorded Christian mission to Europe, but this is not the big surprise.

No, verse 13 tells us that on the Sabbath, Paul and his traveling party went down to the river, down to the place of prayer, and spoke to the women who had gathered there. I am not going to go into the big explanation about why the women are the people we would least expect Paul to speak with on that day, we know about the subordinate roles women played in ancient times. Paul had crossed into Europe to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Roman Empire and chose to share it with women.

This slice of Bethesda, this slice of the “House of Grace” comes again to the water and the wind blows across it bringing the grace and peace of God to the world where it is least expected. By the grace and peace of God, these women are reconciled to all creation and begin their relationship anew with Jesus Christ.

This leads us to again, the thing we least expect. One of the women in the group, a believer in God named Lydia, was listening to Paul at the river. She was a dealer in purple cloth. To decode this phrase, she was rich and powerful. We know that she had very rich and powerful clients because only the richest people could afford to purchase purple and only the most powerful were allowed to wear it.

This woman, rich and powerful in her own right, brought her household to Paul for baptism. In effect, her household is the first toehold of Christianity in Europe. A woman’s home in Thyatira becomes the site of the first European Christian church. This easily qualifies as one of the things we least expect from this world.[5]

Even more unexpected is the vision of New Jerusalem that we saw in our reading from Revelation. The winds of change, the winds of reconciliation, the winds of life blow across the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. If you noticed, there is no temple in the city, simply because there is no need. You see, there is no need for a temple because New Jerusalem, the city where nothing accursed will be found any more becomes the new temple.[6]

This is the wonder and the glory of new life in Christ. The most glorious things we could least expect are just the beginning. The wind of new life blows across Bethesda lifting a man who had not walked in thirty-eight years. The wind blows across the river where the women pray and opens Europe to the gospel. The Gospel Incarnate, the Lamb of God will be seen again on the day of the New Jerusalem when there will be no more night.

This is the wind that blows. This is the ruach.

Pope John Paul II took the opportunity to “put Bob Dylan right” when the two megastars headlined a gig together in Bologna.[7] Dylan met His Holiness on stage during a Catholic youth event before playing three of his best-known songs. After the two men had shaken hands and exchanged a few words, the Pope stepped up to the microphone and took the singer to the theological cleaners.

“You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend,” he observed. “So it is. But it is not the wind that blows things away, it is the wind that is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!’”

Clearly enjoying the thunderous applause that greeted these words, the Pope continued in a style that would not have disgraced a television evangelist: “You ask me, how many roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man? I answer: One! There is only one road for man, and it is the road of Jesus Christ, who said I am the Way and the Life.”

As the wind blows, let us be blown by it.

[1] Jerusalem Publication Society, New American Standard Bible, New International Version, New Living translations
[2] New Revised Standard Version
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Bethesda, accessed May 12, 2007
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda%2C_Maryland and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Naval_Medical_Center accessed on May 12, 2007
[5] Cousar, Charles B, Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D. “Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, Year C.” Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, pages 314-316.
[6] Ibid, pages 318-320.
[7] Ship of Fools Magazine Online, September 29, 1997 as found at HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=1887, May 7, 2010.

Unforeseen Hope

This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday May 31, 2009, Pentecost Sunday.

Acts 2:1-21
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

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

There’s an old expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We’ve heard it before, it means that it is better to take something certain than it is to risk more where you may lose everything. But when Jesus told the disciples “it is to your advantage that I go away,” we can well imagine the ancient equivalent of this old saw crossed their minds. Then again, the ancient equivalent came from Ecclesiastes 9 where the teacher says, “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

A living dog, a dead lion? If the teacher was trying to tell the pupils that life is preferable to death the Apostles were in perfect agreement. They were with the Lion of Judah! Life didn’t get better than that. So the thoughts of Jesus going away, regardless of whomever would follow him would fill their hearts with sorrow. Of course their hearts were filled with sorrow. Jesus knew it and so do we. Oh yes, imagine the Advocate, but a bird in the hand…

Jesus had given them hope. Hope for new life. Hope for life eternal. They had seen and heard much. They had learned much too, but there was still much more to learn. For that, they need the Spirit of truth. What Jesus was giving them here was hope, hope that they could not imagine with his absence. He offers them unforeseen hope, the hope which was yet to come.

In John’s gospel, the apostles were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised the Paraclete, one who would serve as their advocate. Outside of scripture, the word Paraclete often referred to a lawyer or attorney. The Paraclete is one who advocates on our behalf not before God but in God’s good creation. At this moment, they needed an advocate.

As the book of Acts begins, Jesus tells the apostles “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” This wait could not have been comfortable. Given the events of the Passover, the apostles were marked men. The Romans knew this crew as rabble rousers. The temple leadership knew them as the worst kind of heretics. Yes, Jesus had returned to them, we have just read John’s report on that, but he was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he provided no estimated time of arrival.

They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate, the Paraclete was still a promise, not a reality, not to them. They may have had all of the hope in the world, but with the reality of living in Palestine at that very moment, they would have been foolish if they had not felt fear.

It was at this very moment, on the day of Pentecost, that they were assembled together in one place. It was at this very moment that from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

This must have been even more frightening. They knew to be leery of the princes of this world. They knew the Governor and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, but now the violent winds rushed down on them. I watched the Weather Channel on Tuesday night, I saw what was happening north of here. I saw Mike Bettis and the Vortex2 storm chasers in North Dallas talking about how difficult it is to chase storms in an urban area. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see that live from the front porch.

We may be talking about this scripture and praising God for the glory of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but on that day, they were in the midst of a violent wind filling the house where they were sitting. We talk about joy, they experienced terror.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared on them. By this gift, the apostles were able to communicate with the Jews from every nation under heaven who were living in Jerusalem. The crowd gathered and they were bewildered. Nobody needed a translator anymore. Nobody needed to find a common tongue, not anymore. The apostles spoke to the masses in their own tongues, the curse of Babel was broken for a great shining moment. There was joy and glory was given to God.

The people asked what this meant. And they heard the answer of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Honestly, I grew up in Kansas City, the bars opened at 6:00 am six days a week. I’ve seen drunks at nine in the morning. But none of them could quote the prophet Joel.

In the latest issue of the Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jack Haberer writes:

There is a new wind blowing through the sometimes musty halls of American Churches, and it is sweeping away the hypocrisy, lack of social concern, and unnecessary cultural baggage accumulated by the mainstream churches through the years. Thousands of people, young in spirit, are turning away from the anti-intellectuality of separatist fundamentalism and from mainstream ecumenical liberalism…[and to]…a vital, open, and truly revolutionary answer to Christ’s call to “go and teach all the nations.”[1]

The Good News is that these words come to us with a joy and determination to leave unproductive church-ianity in the wake of a spirit led revival. The bad news is that these words don’t come from a new missional group. They don’t come from the writings of the emerging church either. They come from the pen of Richard Quebedeaux and were written 35 years ago.[2] Asking “What happened,” Haberer pines “The young evangelicals [of the 1960’s and 70’s] grew older.”

We know the statistics; the church has lamented them for over fifty years. But here’s a slightly different spin on them from The Mainline Evangelism Project. In 1960, twenty-six million people were members of the seven mainline denominations. That comes to 14.4% of the population. In 2000, the number of people who were members of the mainline churches fell to 21 million folks and the percentage of people who were members of these churches fell to 7.4% of Americans. The fall in the mainstream ranks is in raw numbers and even more so as a percent of the population. Our only consolation is that there is the company in this misery; these numbers pertain to all of the mainline denominations.[3]

Haberer does not see us as hopeless though, he continues in the Outlook, “we all do well to re-read the gospels’ stories. The clarity of Jesus’ vision, the strength of his resolve, the power of his appeal, the cost of his summons to follow … such words and actions have stood the test of time. Let us all catch that vision together and refuse to let it fade.”[4]

To recapture the Spirit of Pentecost, we must again learn to speak so that those who will hear us will understand we have something to say. And what a thing we have to say. We believe that faith makes a difference in our lives; and there are as many reasons as there are people. Some of the typical reasons include:[5]

· A relationship with Christ makes sense, it’s true
· I love God so much I want other people to know this joy themselves
· The church community provides a great way to serve others
· Life in the Spirit is exciting
· I used to be consumed with guilt and through the grace of Christ there is forgiveness
· I have seen miracles and I want others to know it’s possible
· Christ has changed my life

As the apostles shared with the world on the day of Pentecost, we too are called to share. Our stories tell others about who we are and whose we are. We all have stories, but we only share in the Pentecost when we share these stories. We are called to know our stories, the stories of our faith that shows others the difference a relationship with the triune God makes in our lives. And we must be able to communicate this story so that those with ears may hear.

We, we who carry the cross of Christ into the world must learn to speak so that the world may hear. The blessing of the Pentecost is the immediacy of the ability that the Galileans received to speak to the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, and so on. But going back to what I said earlier, about the decrease in members in the mainline Christian churches, we don’t need to speak to just Asians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans belonging to Cyrene; we need to speak to our neighbors.

We can gain wisdom on this matter from ancient Celtic Christianity.[6] In 563 AD, about a century after the death of St. Patrick, Columba sought off to an island off of the western Scottish coast. This isle would be his base to reach the Picts of Scotland. Columba took a sizeable corps with him and they learned the culture of the Picts. They chose to pay the price to understand the Picts. Columba’s way of doing mission was the opposite of the model James Michener presented in his novel “Hawaii.” They learned about the people, their language, and their culture. They sent out teams from their island settlement—a little place called Iona—and in 100 years the Picts were significantly Christian.

The lessons we take from this is that there people close to us who do not know the Word of God. We need to learn about how they speak and show them the Gospel in words they understand. Peter and the Apostles did this miraculously; Columba and the Iona community did this diligently. We need to learn how to share the story of faith so that those with ears may be able to hear the word of God.

We talk about speaking in tongues, this gift of the Spirit being the one most accented during Pentecost, but where at Pentecost we talk about speaking in foreign tongues, we have to remember that there is an entire generation of people in America don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this world of Twitter and Facebook, we need to learn how to take the message of God into the world in a new language, without compromising the cross of Christ.

So today, let us all regain the elemental presence of worship. We come to the font of many blessings overflowing with living water and remember our baptism. We come to the table with the cup and the plate to partake in the food that feeds our bodies and our souls. We hear the Word proclaimed and even more so, we come to know the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, the one who the Lord has set aside since before the creation, Jesus the Christ.

And today, especially today, we need to allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit so that as steel is forged in the furnace, we may be made strong in the Lord for the Lord’s service. And we do this so that in the words of our Lord, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By this, our hope is anything but unforeseen.

[1] Haberer, Jack, The Presbyterian Outlook. Vol. 191-20, June 8/15, 2009, page 5.
[2] Haberer cites Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Evolution in Orthodoxy. H&R, 1975.
[3] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel, 2nd edition. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, page 25.
[4] Ibid, Haberer
[5] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, pages 19-20.
[6] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.

First Words

This sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on January 13, 2008, the 1st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Baptism of the Lord Sunday.

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

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

Between 1984 and 2004, Kelsey Grammar played psychiatrist and radio personality Frasier Crane on the TV shows “Cheers” and “Frasier.” The only person to play a character as long on television was James Arness playing Marshall Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke.”[1] One episode of “Cheers” showed what happened when Frasier and his wife Lilith had to “[cope] with the fact that their son Frederick needs more care from them.”[2] Among the things that happened was an argument between Frasier and Lilith because Lilith objected to Frasier bringing baby Frederick to the bar with him.

During this argument, the resident barfly Norm came into the bar, and as with every time he came on scene, everyone in the bar erupted with the greeting, “Norm!” And as suddenly as Norm came into the bar, and immediately after the bar erupted with Norm’s customary greeting, Frederick says his first word, Norm.

Generally a baby’s first words are “mama” or “dada” or something else familiar, so if little Freddy had spent much time in the bar, it may not have been so unusual that his first word was “Norm.” First words mean so much to parents, even fictional parents that this utterance caused the fight to end and a celebration to erupt.

Fights and celebrations seem to be the norm for first words today, because the first words that Jesus speaks in Matthew’s gospel also leave us with a small fight and a joyous celebration.

Jesus’ first words weren’t some great proclamation. He did not come announcing to everyone at the Jordan his presence or his reason for being there. In fact, according to Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ first words were an answer to a question.

John says “I need to be baptized by you,” then he asks Jesus, “do you come to me?” John knows his role. Matthew 3:11 makes this clear as John says to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” So John knows well that he is not the one, he is the one who makes his path straight. John knows Jesus doesn’t need his baptism, he needs Jesus’.

But in a word, Jesus let John know he needed John’s baptism and everything was right in creation. John knew Jesus’ first words were the answer to his question, the words that overcome his objection. “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” This is when John acquiesced to let the drama unfold this way, the way it had been ordained.

“It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness, in a word, in a moment, John knew what this meant, so what does it mean to us?

Our reading from Isaiah reminds us that the Lord has called the prophet in righteousness. The Lord has given him to the people as a light to the nations so that he might open the eyes that are blind, bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and release from prison those who sit in darkness. The Lord gave Isaiah to the world to show us that the former things have come to pass, and the new things the Lord now declares will be shared with the prophet before he shares them with the rest of the world.

The Lord tells Isaiah the former things have come to pass, and Isaiah will be told of the new things now declared before they spring forth. These are not the sort of things that one would tell a causal acquaintance, someone on the street. There was a relationship, [3] a relationship between the Lord and the prophet, an intimacy I can scarcely imagine. But I do imagine that John was experiencing this same intimacy with the Lord Jesus in the waters of the Jordan. John knew that righteousness exists in relationship.

And there is more to this righteousness.

The obvious question that comes from this reading from Matthew is why in the world Jesus would need a baptism for repentance of sin? He is without sin, so of course he didn’t. But in presenting himself for baptism, Jesus emphasizes doing what is right. The action which he fulfills in this moment and will continue to fulfill throughout his life on earth is what he was supposed to do, what he had to do.[4] It is in his actions, emptying himself of all Godly status and privilege; accepting life on earth as a human being; human life to the point of facing its ultimate death, even death upon the cross.

He wasn’t forced to do these things. But being Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, integrity demanded he could do nothing else.

Jesus could have come to the river to establish righteousness, but that is not what he had come to do, not in this moment in time. When John consented to Jesus’ coming to the river, Jesus was immersed into the waters of the Jordan. When he arose from the waters, Jesus saw the heavens open. He saw the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove and lighting upon him. And then a voice was heard from heaven.

Hear the words of the psalmist who wrote:

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD, is upon the mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is a powerful voice;
the voice of the LORD is a voice of splendor.[5]

As our gospel reading comes to an end, the voice of the Lord is heard over the waters, a voice of power and full of splendor. The voice which thunders over the mighty waters tells all who are assembled,[6] “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

In due time, Jesus would give the world a new righteousness, a new relationship with the Lord open to all of us, not just the prophets of the Old Testament. But this was not the reason he came to the river. Jesus had come to the river to do the right thing. He came to accept the baptism of John. And in his obedience to righteousness he did what was pleasing to God, receiving the anointing of the Holy Spirit, hearing the glorious voice of the Lord.

First words mean so much to parents. The Sunday Teen Study just finished “The Gospel According to the Simpsons.”[7] One episode of “The Simpsons” is the story of the first words of the Simpson children.[8] Bart’s first words are “aye carumba” because of something he sees. Lisa’s first word is “Bart” because she adores her older brother. And Maggie’s first word, and to date the only word she has spoken in the series, is “daddy.”

Jesus’ first words weren’t some great proclamation. He did not come announcing to everyone at the Jordan his presence or his reason for being there. His proclamation would come soon enough, a proclamation so wonderful that in two millennia people have not tired of telling the same glorious story. But what he does is a glorious proclamation. Today he comes to the river to fulfill all righteousness. In the fulfilling of righteousness, Jesus identifies with us, with our struggles, and with our plight. He shows the world that he has emptied himself of his Godly continence and exchanged it for a human face.

And in this moment of identification, the Spirit which is his to begin with alights upon him. The Spirit comes to show that his Godly continence has never left him. He has been, is, and will always be fully human and fully divine.

Then all of creation hears the words from on high “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In this way, Matthew’s gospel shows us that righteousness is a gift which God gives to those who ask for it.[9]

From this pulpit I have spoken of remembering our baptism. I have said that as others are baptized, like Asher and Maddie, we are called to remember our baptism. In our reading today, through the Baptism of the Lord, we are again called to remember our own baptism. Our baptism is a bath, a tomb, a womb. Our baptism is a gift which identifies us with the community Jesus calls into existence every day. A community he founded and a community he joined in the waters of his baptism, done through a righteousness which is a gift freely offered which we freely ask.

Ask, seek, and remember. Then taste and see that the Lord is good.

[1] Wikipedia.com, “Frasier Crane” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frasier_Crane, retrieved on January 10, 2008.
[2] TV.com, “Cheers” episode summary, http://www.tv.com/cheers/breaking-in-is-hard-to-do/episode/14273/summary.html, retrieved on January 10, 2008.
[3] Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, volume II, page 195.
[4] Ibid, page 198.
[5] This version of the Psalm is found in the Presbyterian Church Book of Worship.
[6] Not all scholars agree that the assembly heard the words of the Lord. But because Matthew’s gospel says, “This is my Son” instead of “You are my Son,” I am inclined to side with the scholars that say everyone heard the words. On the other side, I believe only Jesus saw the Spirit come based on the pronouns used in Matthew’s gospel, “…the heavens open to him and he saw the Spirit…”
[7] Pinsky, Mark, “The Gospel According to the Simpsons.” 2nd Edition. Louisville, Westminster—John Knox Press, 2007. Study guide for the first edition is also available.
[8] The Simpsons, Lisa’s First Word, Season 4, Episode 10
[9] Kittel, page 198

Love Rains-Love Reigns

This sermon was presented at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on a rainy Sunday December 9, 2007, the second Sunday in Advent.

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
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 love the rain. I love to sit and watch it as it falls from the skies; listen to it as it hits the rooftops. As a little boy, our neighborhood didn’t have storm drains, it had ditches between the road and the sidewalk, and in the heavy thunderstorms I would watch them flood.[1] The ditches would begin by having some water in them and all of a sudden, a wall of water would roll and they would be filled to overflowing. There was a sense of awe as the majestic torrent of water rolled down the slope of the hill from our house toward the neighbor’s and beyond.

Our Call to Worship carries this image of majestic rain:

He shall live as long as the sun and moon endure,
from one generation to another
He shall come down like rain upon the mown field,
like showers that water the earth.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous deeds!
And blessed be God’s glorious name forever![2]

The Lord God comes like the rain upon the mown field, draping it with the moisture and nourishment it needs for life.

In the water there is birth, and in the water there is rebirth. In the water there is life and in the water there is death. In the water there is the warmth of being washed and in the water there is the peril of being washed away.

Our Call to Worship reminds us that the Lord God shall come down like rain upon the mown field, like showers that water the earth. Last week’s gospel reading reminds us that in the time of Noah the Lord God lifted the waters which wiped away nearly all of creation. And in these waters we find John the Baptist.

In the gospel, we find John coming from the wilderness to the Jordan crying his mission, his vocation, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.”

John comes as a modern day Elijah. Nearly 900 years after the sudden departure of the prophet in the wilderness, John comes from the wilderness proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

As Elijah before him, John comes with a new way of looking at the world, a world that he comes to like no one has seen in an eon. John comes in a shirt woven of coarse camel’s hair, tied with a leather belt, and eating the foods of the poorest of the desert people, locusts and wild honey. There is nothing refined about him. He comes undeniably like thunder from a lightning bolt that strikes across the street. His message, his mission, his vocation is a radical turning from the ways of old and will not be denied, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

A crowd comes to him, some of whom have come because of this radical message, some of whom have come because of his outrageous spectacle. He welcomes all who come, but some he welcomes with joy, others he greets with a rebuke; “You brood of vipers. Who warned you?”

His warning gets even more dire as he instructs, he warns his listeners to bear fruit worthy of repentance, or suffer the consequences. “Beware,” he says, “the ax is lying at the root of trees so every tree that does not bear good fruit and cast into the fire.”

John warns us as we enter his sanctuary in the wild to take the bath he is offering to beware. The Lord, the one who initiates this washing, will clear the threshing floor. The good grain, the fruit of the land nourished by the water and the soil will be separated from what remains. The grain will be sent to the barns, the chaff burned in the unquenchable fire.

Our identity as Christians depends on the story of the Gospel. The Gospel is the best, most authoritative way that we have of knowing who the Lord is in the history of the Christian community then and now. The Gospel gives us the story of who Christ is and who we are in Christ. And the word of God gives us a common story of the vision, the rituals, and the symbols of our life together.[3] In this, the story of Matthew’s story of John shows how we are introduced to the community and how Jesus welcomes us to the community.

The most important ritual we practice for welcoming a new member to the community of Christ is baptism. The most important ritual we who have been baptized can practice is remembering our baptism. In this, we remember who we are as the assembled body of Christ in the church. Through this remembrance, the church shapes us.

Peter Bower says, “Throughout history, the place of baptism has been regarded as a bath by which we are cleansed of sin, a womb from which we are reborn, a tomb in which we are buried with Christ and from which we are raised with him.”[4]

The images of water and the font are awesome, mystical, and varied. We reaffirm our baptismal vows because baptism “is the symbol of initiation into the household of faith, a sign of cleansing from sin, and a dramatic proclamation of dying and rising with Christ. Baptism is a Christian’s ‘ordination’ to the ‘royal priesthood’ and the mark of belonging to a community of saints that extends beyond time and space. Baptism signifies the presence of the Holy Spirit working among us to comfort, strengthen, and empower us in God’s service.”[5]

In Christ, we are baptized in water, sealed by the Spirit. We are cleansed in the water and blood of Christ our King for salvation. Baptized in water we are together with Christ in the tomb and together with Christ in his rising. Baptized in water we are God’s children born of the Spirit.[6]

Baptism as practiced by Christians is a radical response to the salvation given us by grace through faith. It is a means of identifying with the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ. It is a radical sign of identifying with the community of God as the Body of Christ. In this sign we come to identify ourselves as the people of God. It is the first sign of coming to Christ, a motion begun by Christ long before our birth.

As the Lord God comes like the rain upon the mown field, covering it with the moisture and nourishment it needs for life, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper cover us with the moisture and nourishment we need for our lives. And today, as we remember our baptism, we as the people of God come to share the meal Jesus shared with his disciples.

This is the meal he gave the apostles and the disciples. It is the meal we celebrate when

Through the words of the prophets
the Lord promised the people the Redeemer,
and gave hope for the day
when justice shall roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[7]

As the waters introduce us to the community of the body of Christ, the supper nourishes us to do the work of the body of Christ.

The old song says,

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky.
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high.[8]

Tears fall from on high; these tears are the waters of our baptism. These are the waters John bathes us in while we are confessing our sins. These are the waters of our birth as we leave the womb, just like the fully human fully divine Jesus left the womb of his mother Mary. These are the waters of the tomb, the death and new life we come to in the water, at the cross and in the resurrection.

The love of God rains over us like the water of John’s baptism. The love of God rains over us with the glory and awe of the baptism of fire, the Holy Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. And the sovereignty of God reigns over us all as it has since the beginning. Jesus comes with the peace and love of God coming to earth to be human as we are and to be with us in community. Through this movement of the Triune God’s sovereign love; we are called to be the body of Christ in the church universal, through the love of God in the waters of our baptism, and by the power of the Holy Spirit in the baptism of fire.

Prepare the way of the Lord. Love reign o'er me.

[1] Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes do still freak me out, but a regular heavy t-storm, that can be pretty cool stuff.
[2] Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), The Book of Common Worship. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, pages 693, 694.
[3] Westerhoff, III, John, A Pilgrim People. Seabury Press: Minneapolis, 1984 in A Baptism Sourcebook. Archdiocese of Chicago, Baker, Robert J. Editor. Liturgy Training Publications: Chicago, 1993, page 156.
[4] Office of Theology and Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), The Companion to the Book of Common Worship, Bower, Peter C., Editor. Geneva Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2003, page 161.
[5] Ibid, page 155.
[6] Saward, Michael A., “Baptized in Water.” Hope Publishing: Carol Stream, Illinois, 1982.
[7] Ibid, The Book of Common Worship, page 130.
[8] Townshend, Pete, “Love Reign O’er Me,” from Quadrophenia by The Who, MCA Records, 1973.