His Name Was Earl

This sermon was heard at The Federated Church on Sunday August 28, 2016, the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

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

This is an odd story, as many stories are. Of course if all stories were "normal" there would be no point to recording or telling them. This is the story of someone I met one day at First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas named Earl. I'll let you decide if this story is worth recording and telling.

Early one Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting with my Spiritual Director. According to the Spiritual Director's International Website, Spiritual Directors are folks "who share a commitment to the art of contemplative spiritual compassionate listening." The closest certified Spiritual Director to Weatherford is the Rev. Carol Waters in Clinton.

Spiritual Directors aren’t counselors. They are fellow travelers who listen and ask good questions like a counselor, but their concern is with spiritual health and development instead of mental health. The image they use to describe their work is called The Three Chairs. This description of The Three Chairs Concept comes from their website:

In one chair a seeker sits, desiring a deeper relationship with God, a Higher Power, or Ultimate Reality. In a second chair, a spiritual director listens, inquires, and holds the space for the seeker to encounter the true Spiritual Director in the third chair.

On that Wednesday afternoon, to help me encounter God, he asked me how I had been blessed lately. I talked about my second anniversary at the church (celebrated about ten days earlier) and about other stuff, but he knew there had been so many stresses in my life that sometimes the tiny diamonds of blessings got buried under tons of dung. One comes sprinkled like pixie dust and the other comes dumped from a bucket truck. Ever feel like that? Can I get an "Amen"?

Not long after my Spiritual Director left, a man rang the church doorbell. He was a black man at the door, maybe in his late 20's but looking much older. He told me his name was Earl and he could not read or write; and he sounded like someone who could not read or write. I hate using what we from Kansas called "discouraging words," but it was true. He was dirty. His clothes were in tatters. He looked, moved and sounded like the walking-talking stereotype of an illiterate black man in deep east Texas. God forgive me for this overgeneralization, this stereotype; but then again, this might have been a part of some sort of test. More on that in a couple.

When I answered the door, he said that he was sent over to us from another church because he was looking for some bibles. While he couldn’t read, that was no problem because his mamma could. While he couldn’t read them for himself, he knew some bible stories but he had no idea what they were called or where to find them.

I said "Sure" and headed toward the chapel where there was a surplus of bibles. Georgia, the church secretary, offered to go and get some from the spares stored in the choir room instead. That was perfect. So he came into my study while she went to the choir room for the bibles. I also gave him a Gideon New Testament-Psalms-Proverbs book. He asked for three of those. No problem, there are plenty more where that came from.

He asked me to mark some things for him. No problem. He asked me to mark "that place where it says 'the Lord is my shepherd.'" No problem, the 23rd Psalm coming right up! By this time Georgia got to my office with the other bibles and she started marking them. Then he asked for that story of the guy who "Satan took everything he had but God returned it seven times. "No problem, Job coming right up!”

This is when Georgia told me she had to leave. She had an appointment. No problem, it had been in the works all week. That left us alone, Earl and me, just the two of us.

This is when Earl made a less precise request. He said that he was watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network the other day and they mentioned a scripture "where God brings two people together who have nothing in common, but it blesses them both."

I thought about it for a moment. By this time, I had begun to believe Earl was a soul God placed in my day so I could be blessed, and be a blessing too. Kind of the on the nose about what my Spiritual Director said not twenty minutes earlier.

I told Earl that I didn't know the verse they used on TBN or what they were talking about, but I wanted to share Hebrews 13:2, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." I told him that as much as we were a blessing to him by giving him the bibles, he was a blessing in my life. He was the man I needed to see that day. So I marked it in the bible he handed me and that's when it got weird.

Suddenly, Earl's demeanor completely changed. He stood taller. His eyes became clear. His voice took on a power and command I did not expect. He blessed me. I mean he blessed me, not in some general “you are a blessing in my life” way, he blessed me. I don't know exactly what he said because I was so taken aback that I didn't hear everything he said. What I did hear was, "We won't see each other again for a long time, but we will see each other again," and that's where it got fuzzy again.

As he started to leave he dropped one of the small Gideon testaments, and when it hit the floor, the moment was over. The electricity in the room was gone. His old voice returned, he smiled and said "Whoops."

It's said that the vast majority of people never have a spiritual experience while in church. Well, I had mine that day. I met a man who seemed to shrug off his human facade like I’ll take off this robe after church. He blessed me and told me that we will meet again one day. He spoke with a voice of peace and authority that I haven't ever heard another human being use. Was Earl an angel? Perhaps, I think so. Biblical Greek translates the word we use for “angel” as “messenger” and I got a message.
Does that make me crazy? Well, if I’m crazy, that’s not the reason.

I was asked if I had been blessed lately and not an hour later, there’s a man who in his own way is giving me the message that “God said ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Don’t get me wrong, at that moment my life didn’t turn around. Life wasn’t a bowl of cherries. Every moment hasn’t been “happily ever after.” There is struggle, but as much as I have ever felt helpless I have never felt hopeless.

If Earl had walked into most offices, he would have been ushered out as quickly as security could get there. That’s the nature of most offices. Not so in the church, thank God. So it was my good fortune to be blessed that day to offer him a seat and because of that he blessed me.

There was nothing tangible, physical on this earth he could offer me. Nothing. He had nothing, he owned nothing. He was waiting on his mamma to bring back the car. They might have been sleeping in it for all I knew. All he wanted was the Word of God and I had plenty of the printed variety. He wanted some instruction too and so I could offer him the Word of God proclaimed. He had nothing, but he had a lot of it.

So in a way, without intending to, purely because I was living in the moment, I was doing as Jesus commanded in Luke 14:12-14. There was a man in my office who could never repay me. He had nothing to give me; and I didn’t know he had anything I wanted. I was able to have him sit at the table and feed him with the bread of life and give him the living water that satisfies hunger and thirst, the Word of God. By this I was blessed. I was blessed by an angel named Earl.

Come to think about it, maybe those were the verses the folks on TBN were talking about. “God brings two people together who have nothing in common, but it blesses them both?”

After he left, about five minutes later our Worship Leader, a man named Al, came in to pick hymns for Sunday’s worship. I asked him if he saw a black man leaving, either getting into a car or walking away on foot, because I wanted to tell him this story. He said he didn’t. I didn’t think there was any way Earl could make a “quick getaway” and was sure Al would have seen him. No, Earl was gone.

Friends, I keep asking if you have had any experiences like this. Last week’s board meeting included this story and three others from three board members. So that you know, the other six aren’t off the hook, there’s another meeting in two months.

There are so many questions of faith, but here’s one for the people of faith: How have you been blessed? How have you been blessed lately? How does your faith make a difference in your life? As Christians in a world that has a warped view of Christian values, we are like Jesus, we are being carefully watched, and when we live our lives like our faith makes a difference, the world sees. That’s when the world begins to understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s time to show the world the Gospel again.

Looking for Jesus

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Sunday February 5, 2012, the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

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 are times reading the scriptures that the simplicity of a phrase becomes more than the sum of its parts. I find this glorious grace in the phrase “Everyone is looking for you.” Jesus has gone to be alone with the Father and when his new companions find him they declare “Everyone is looking for you.” They mean everyone in town, in truth they have no idea how right they are.

At the beginning of our reading, we’ve reached the end of a long day; this is the day that started with last week’s reading of Jesus teaching in the synagogue. This is the day he teaches with authority in his words. With his words he exorcises a demon from a possessed man. His words carry so much authority his deeds flow from his mouth. That is an authority beyond the scribes.

After synagogue worship, Jesus, with James and John, go to the home of Simon and Andrew. It’s a multigenerational setting with at least two generations and perhaps even more groups of parents and children. Since Simon and Andrew joined Jesus the previous day and since there is no work on the Sabbath, there may well not have been enough to go around. Still, the call to hospitality rings loud, so with the mouths to feed at home; Simon and Andrew bring three more.

There are three more mouths at dinner while Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever. Here’s something interesting about fevers. Deuteronomy 28 brings warnings about what will befall the nation should they be disobedient to the Lord. The blights include curses to the countryside and curses to the city. There are curses to the grain basked and the kneading trough. Neither the family nor the livestock nor the crop will be fruitful. There will be blight and terror in the household.

Verse 22 offers this specific curse, “The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.” Yes, that’s right, fever. The same fever mentioned in Deuteronomy 28:22 is found in verse Mark 1:31. Jesus goes to her and helps her up; he lifts her back to health. The fever leaves. The fever leaves and she begins to wait on them. The Sabbath is not yet over, and she serves him.

Humanity’s sin is figured in the body of a wrecked woman who lies sick to the world, so ill she cannot rise. Jesus comes not only taking her illness, but taking the curse of sin from the world. This little note would not have gotten past the people of Israel. They who knew the law best would have seen this connection.

Just to add fuel to the fire of biblical injunctions and social conventions, touching the ill is a taboo, especially for a person who is not a member of the family. For a strange man to touch a woman who is not a member of the family is also against the mores of the time. Then for him to heal and her to serve; each does work on the Sabbath making a not a trifecta but a superfecta of prohibited behavior.

This is the simple point, Jesus breaks the rules. Jesus does things that no other person can do, not because he is above the law but because he is the law. He is the living law teaching us a new way to live together and take care of one another. He teaches us that even when it is unexpected, even when it is difficult to fathom, we are called upon to serve one another. Jesus shows us what it means to be our brothers’ keeper.

In fact, the word that our bible[1] translates as “to wait upon” is where we get our word deacon. In the Presbyterian Church, deacons are “ministers of compassion” sharing the grace and peace of God in the world through service. It’s not an administrative vocation like the Ruling Elder, it’s a passionate call to serve. It is truly a wonderful ministry and I thank the ladies of the church who have taken this ministry as their own to serve the body of Christ and the world.

But Jesus isn’t quite ready to tell the world who he is yet. So while this gospel begins proclaiming this the “gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” Jesus is not ready for the others in the narrative to know this yet. So as soon as the sun sets and the Sabbath ends he heals many and drives out demons, he silences the demons so they will not share the news they know.

This tells us something special too, this tells us that the demons know the truth of the Son of God; the demons know Jesus is the Christ. Often we hear people who “aren’t sure there even is a God.” We also hear that evil’s greatest trick is to make it so people don’t think the devil exists. Combine the two and there’s a really big trick: The demons who believe in God have convinced people that neither they nor God exist. Now that’s the big lie.

Yet, somewhere deep inside most of us is a place that longs for peace, longs for connection. For many people, the desire to seek God takes them to a solitary place where they seek connection not with something but with nothing. They seek a peace that does not exist in the natural world and they use nature as that focus. Many people would rather believe in creation than in the creator. It give us a choice, do we believe in something or do we believe in nothing. Friends, we believe not in something but someone, we believe in Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Jesus wakes early in the morning and while everyone else sleeps he goes to a solitary place to pray. He doesn’t seek to commune with nature, he seeks nature’s creator. Even Jesus needs some alone time with the Father, and if that’s true for him it is infinitely more true for us.

When the four find him they tell him everyone is looking for him. What does he do? Does he set up a base camp and open a shrine or a temple? No. Jesus tells his friends it is time to go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so he can preach there also. That is why he has come, not so that people can come to him, but so that he can go to the people. We know that we need to seek God, but before that happens, before that can happen; the Lord Jesus, God who walked the earth, sought us first.

According to the Christian Century Magazine:

The GenXer [that is someone from the Post-Baby-Boom Generation, someone born between 1962 and 1980] is suspicious of institutions, especially religious institutions. He focuses on personal experience in the spiritual quest, and on a sense of suffering expressed in a psychological and spiritual crisis of meaning. The GenXer also accepts the ambiguity that may be found in the fusion of sacred and profane, spiritual and sensual, orthodox and blasphemous in popular culture. He does not reject or dismiss faith tradition or religious institutions, but they are not the only sources of spirituality. The implications are clear: If traditional Christianity is to engage the spiritual quest of the GenXer, it must attend to the ways in which these young adults draw on the church and popular culture.[2]

This was written nearly fifteen years ago, but considering the bulk of people who define their heavenly belief system as “spiritual, not religious,” it still rings true. As the article says, they don’t reject everything out of hand, but they connect it with what they know better than Jesus, the world around them. They seek connection, connection to the world and to something bigger.

Our gospel says everyone was looking for Jesus. In our time it may be more accurate to say everyone is looking for their own personal Valhalla or Nirvana or Heaven or whatever. So if everyone is looking for Personal Jesus, what do we do to help them find him?

The answer is as easy as this, share. It is up to us to share God with the world. We are called through the community of God to have a relationship with the Lord that came for us first. We are called to worship a God who seems to break the rules which appeals to many but in truth has broken the mold.

We worship God who came not to be served but to serve. In response we serve one another, the community, and the world. Today we do this not only with our work, words, tithes, and offerings; we do this through the Souper Bowl[3] offering.

We are called to reach out. We are called to share our treasure, sure, but that’s not all. Jesus of Nazareth, a man without earthly treasure, shared his time and his talent. Jesus shared his fully-human fully-divine being with the world and with us.

This too is our call. We are to welcome people with hospitality. We are to share our time. And when the time comes, we are to take time and recharge our batteries through praying. We are to take our talents to the people who come and to the world that doesn’t know what’s coming.

This is what we share. Why do we do this? Why do we share ourselves with the world? Simple, that is why Jesus has come, so that’s why he sends us too. I can’t promise this will always be comfortable. I can’t promise you will always feel ready when the time comes. Just know that God does not call the equipped, but equips the call.

And as always, remember, we are to seek God but God seeks us first, that is why he came.

---

[1] This is from the New International Version. As for me, I prefer the NRSV’s translation which says “she began to serve them.”

[2] Foster, Charles R. "Paying Attention to Youth Culture," Christian Century, December 9, 1998, 1186. Parenthetic definition of GenXer is mine.

[3] See http://souperbowl.org

Talking to the Institution

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Sunday November 14, 2010, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Isaiah 65:17-25
Isaiah 12
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

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

One of the greatest stories of faith in recent times came from of all places a high school football field in Texas. If this story sounds familiar, either you read it on ESPN.com or maybe you read it on my sermon blog. If you were on the Pastor Nominating Committee, you heard this story because this was the major illustration in the sermon I sent. This is how it began:

Rick Reilly is a columnist for ESPN the Magazine. He tells the story of what he calls the “oddest game in high school football history.” Faith High School in Grapevine, Texas played the Gainesville State School on Grapevine’s home turf, but after these facts, everything else was the Texas High School Football equivalent of The Twilight Zone.

The team from Gainesville hit the field running a 40-yard spirit line before crashing through a banner that said “Go Tornadoes.” This is nothing unusual. It’s like many other high school football games until you learn that the fans who filled the spirit line and made the banner were from Grapevine.

Yes, visiting team’s fans and banner were courtesy of the home team. More than 200 Faith fans sat in the Gainesville stands cheering on the kids from Gainesville. The visitors were cheered by name and there were even cheerleaders from the home team rooting on the visitors.

This sounds so very odd, especially in Texas where high school football is not only its own religion but has temples in every corner of the state. Still, there is one thing I haven’t mentioned about Gainesville that takes this story to a whole new level; Gainesville State School is one of the Texas Youth Commission’s twelve secure institutions. The TYC is the Texas juvenile corrections agency and Gainesville State is a maximum security youth facility.

According to their literature, “The [Texas Youth Commission] provides for the care, custody, rehabilitation, and reestablishment in society of Texas’ most chronically delinquent or serious juvenile offenders. Texas judges commit these youth to TYC for felony-level offenses committed when they were at least age 10 but not yet 17.” Yes, the Texas Youth Commission has maximum security facilities and they play football against Texas high schools.

The thought of providing a cheering section for Gainesville State started when Grapevine Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, “wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team.” I think it’s important to note that Coach Hogan wanted to do something “kind.” He didn’t pity the boys in jail. He didn’t fear them either. He wanted them to receive kindness.

Reilly writes, “Faith had never played Gainesville, but Coach Hogan already knew the score. Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 [touchdowns] all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

“So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the [Faith high school] faithful to do just that. ‘Here's the message I want you to send: You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.’

“Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, ‘Coach, why are we doing this?’

And Hogan said, ‘Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.’”

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray. Everyone was taken aback when Isaiah, Gainesville State’s starting quarterback and middle linebacker, asked to lead the prayer, but this is what happens when the Holy Spirit gets in the way of our expectations. Isaiah prayed: “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”

Reilly wrote, “And it was a good thing everybody’s heads were bowed because they might’ve seen Hogan wiping away tears.”

After the game, “The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, ‘You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.’

“And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.”

I love this story. This is sharing the Gospel; this is sharing the good news with someone who needs to hear it more than anything else in the world. Coach Hogan knew the gospel and responded to it. He did it at risk of his job too. Sure, there was no way that the Grapevine Lions would lose to the Gainesville Tornadoes, but if you want to upset a lot of parents who have the power to make the life of a football coach miserable, ask their friends to root against their kids.

When I was in Fort Worth a couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with some of the pastors at a conference and this story came up. I was asked if I had heard the next chapter in this story and this was news to me, so I excitedly asked what that happened next.

Well, it seems that a woman from New York was so impressed and dumbfounded by Coach Hogan’s act of grace that she called him. She tracked him down from half a country away to ask him why he did what he did. Sure, she had read the article, but she wanted to hear it for herself from the source. She wanted to know why he did what he did.

So when they talked, Coach Hogan shared the plan of salvation with the woman and she was promptly sorry she asked. I don’t know what in her life turned her off to this presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ, but this wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear about why he acted like he did. She wanted to hear about how what they did changed the lives of the boys in prison, the boys from Grapevine, and maybe most of all how it changed him.

It’s like the famous line out of the Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke,” “What we got here is… failure to communicate.” Coach Hogan was answering her question. It just didn’t sound like the answer to her. “What we got here is… failure to communicate.”

Jesus tells us that we will be called before others; kings and governors and other powerful people, and this is our opportunity to testify. And when we testify we aren’t to have defense strategies prepared because the Lord will give us the words none of our opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.

This was what Coach Hogan did; he took his prepared defense and presented it. Sadly, the script he had did not interest the woman, she was hoping for something different.

Jesus promises to give us words, and in all truth, we have been given the words to use when kings and governors ask us to testify. The best source of words when the world’s institutions call; we are to use are right in front of us, we have the words of scripture. These words give us the best defense, more than we could ever imagine. And in these words, we are given the speech to talk about who God is.

The Lord is bold and caring and loving. The Old Testament shows us a multifaceted God, one that creates humanity because God wants a loving relationship with humanity. We are also presented a jealous God who disciplines when we stray and worship other gods.

This is the same Lord who is presented in the New Testament in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ. This is the same Lord who turns over the money changer’s tables in the temple invoking the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah when he tells them they are making the temple a den of thieves. The same God who John tells us not only is the perfect personification of love, but is love.

In scripture we are not only presented with the image of God, but with the narrative of how God stands in relationship with God’s people and all of creation. Theologian George Lindbeck writes “the primary focus of [of the bible] is not on God’s being in itself, for that is not what the text is about, but on how life is to be lived and reality constructed in the light of God’s character as an agent as this is depicted in the stories of Israel and of Jesus.” Scripture gives us a complete picture of the Lord in relationship with creation and humanity.

Scripture also tells the story of Israel, the story of how the Lord says and lives the announcement, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” It is the story of the Lordship of God, the kingship of God in the kingdom of God. It is the story of a disobedient Nazirite who becomes the renowned and notorious Sampson. It’s the intimate story of a prophet who anoints a simple shepherd boy who becomes King David.

It is the story of how Jesus interacts with the disciples, and not just how Jesus interacts with Peter, James and John; the “popular kids” disciples. It is the story of Jesus’ relationship with Simon the Zealot, Peter’s brother Andrew, Matthew the tax collector; and even the story of Jesus’ relationship with Judas, the disciple who would betray him.

Our testimony is both who the Lord our God is, and who the Lord our God is in our lives. And when people ask us about who Jesus is, when people ask you what you believe; they don’t want to hear theological rhetoric. This is a pity because these wonderful words include the plan of salvation Coach Hogan shared with this woman. It’s a grand and glorious story, it is the Good News even if this woman wasn’t ready to hear it.

People want us to tell them about who God is and why God is important in our lives. They want to know why God is important to us. They want to hear stories of power and glory, stories of faith and redemption. People want to know not just who God is, but why God is important in our lives.

Even more important than the testimony of our tongue is the testimony of our hands. Jesus said much, but what he did intensified what he said. He not only tells us to behave with compassion, he was compassionate. He healed when the rest of the world rested. He fed the multitudes when others would send them home hungry. He forgave when others passed the sentence of death. He returned from places others remained, and he remained in places others left. And we are called to follow him in these acts of peace, grace, and mercy.

Seemingly what this woman wanted to hear is why Coach Hogan did what he did. Let’s consider Rick Reilly’s article again for a reminder of what he did.

Coach Hogan, “wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team.” He didn’t pity the boys in jail. He didn’t fear them either. He wanted them to receive kindness. He wanted the boys from Gainesville to get this message, ‘You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.’” He even wanted his players to walk a mile or two in the shoes of their opponents, “Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”

Coach Hogan was living into these words from Matthew’s gospel: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Kris Hogan was blessed and he knew it, and he knew the source of his blessings too. He knew the salvation story and just as importantly he knew that he was called to respond to the gospel. He knew that whatever he did for one of the least of these brothers of Christ, he also did for Christ. I believe Kris Hogan knew that he couldn’t change the world; he couldn’t end poverty or hunger. World peace was out of his grasp, but on one shining evening under the Texas sky he could touch the lives of these boys. He knew that as he did for the least of these brothers of Christ, he also did for Christ.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s what this woman needed to hear and how she needed to hear it. She wanted to know why Coach Hogan did what he did and he did what he did because that’s what his faith called him to do. As he was tending to these young men, he was tending to Christ.

Jesus warns us though; we are called to testify in very difficult times. We are warned that others will vie for our attention. Some will even claim to be like gods or even gods themselves. Idols will abound in times like these. We will hear that end times are near, whether individually or as a nation or a people. We will hear that end times are near, and we are instructed not to follow them. We are told that terrifying things will happen and terrifying things will be rumored, yet as long as we know who God is and who God is in our lives, we are set upon ground that cannot be shaken even by the earthquakes of our lives.

We live in a world that no longer knows scripture and faith. We may call this a Christian nation, but in truth we live in a nation that is more inclined toward salvation on its own terms than on the creator’s. So we need to share the good news, the same good news Coach Hogan shared with this woman, but we need new words in addition to the words that have been used for generations.

We are also warned that on the basis or our testimony, on the basis of the one we testify about, we will be hated and some will be put to death. History, both ancient and current, show us this is what happens when we speak truth to the institutions. But through our endurance, through the perseverance of the faith and the one in whom we have faith, we will not simply persevere, we will gain life. We will gain our souls. We are saved by grace through faith. It is this faith, this grace we are to share with the world. We are called to share God’s story and we are called to share our stories as the children of God.

To testify brings an outrageous level of terror; with good reason. Jesus warns us that in this time we are called to testify we will be in danger. We will be called to testify when kings will be in a place to take our lives and Pharisees eject us from the temple. Worse, our friends and neighbors may begin calling us names like Jesus freak. But our witness, our testimony is the church’s evangelism. Through testimony in the faith of our Lord and God we are called to be disciples. We are called to be God’s people, because the Lord is our God.

It’s scary; then again the Greek word for witness is martyr. It’s supposed to be scary. But in God, we have nothing to fear. Our life is our testimony and in our testimony is the life of the Lord in our lives. It is up to us to testify, to share the good news of who God is and what God does in our lives.

Text Notes

Now I’ve Seen Everything, http://timelovesahero.blogspot.com/2008/12/now-ive-seen-everything.html, retrieved November 13, 2010.

Reilly, Rick, Life of Reilly, ESPN the Magazine, cited from ESPN.com, http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3789373, retrieved December 24, 2008. Quotes from Reilly’s article are found in quotation marks throughout this sermon. Thanks to Rick Reilly, Glory to God!

Overview of the Juvenile Corrections System in Texas, http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/about/overview.html, retrieved November 14, 2010.

Note: the Texas Juvenile Corrections System does not release last names of inmates.

Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Louisville; Westminster/John Knox Press, 1984, page 121.

Telling Stories

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Sunday October 10, 2010, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-12
2Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

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

When Marie and I started dating, she was living in Grand Rapids, Michigan and I was living in Lamar, Colorado. She asked me what I was planning to do over the Fourth of July and I told her that I was planning on going to Central Missouri to see my parents. She said that she would love to meet my parents.

By the way, Marie says that she did not invite herself like I tell the story. But hey, I’m the one telling the story. So let’s continue…

I was taken aback. I had met Marie’s mom a couple of months earlier when I went to Grand Rapids, and I wanted her to meet the folks, but I was taken aback. There was a difference between “someday” and “today” and the sudden realization that someday was becoming today surprised me. Cool as a cucumber though, I said, “Sure, that would be great.”

So I got to Mexico, MO a few days before Marie’s coming. The folks were excited to meet her. They had never met “a girlfriend” before and since I was in my early 30’s they were just thrilled that I might not die alone.

The closest major airport was in St. Louis and that’s where Marie was flying into. About three hours before her flight was due to arrive, my dad said, “Get up Paul, let’s get ready to go.” I raised an eyebrow and said, “Well, I was planning on leaving in about a half hour.” “Nope, we’re going now.”

Here I am, thinking I’m a fully grown man, and I figured I could drive to Lambert Field and get Marie myself. Nope, we’re going now. “Er, Dad, I know how to get to the airport.” “Nope we’re going now and I’m driving.” There was nothing I could say to him; we were going to the airport and he was driving.

So we get Marie and her bags with no complications and we get in the van and head back to the homestead.

Now, something you need to know about my father is that he had a lot of little rules we had to follow. One of those rules was “Get my attention before talking to me.” So every time we wanted to say anything to him, we would have to begin by saying, “Hey, Dad.” He would then say “what” or something and then conversation could begin. He said it prevented a lot of repeating. The upshot of this, whenever talking with my dad, everything would begin with getting his attention.

Well, Marie is sitting in the back seat of the van, I’m riding shotgun, and Dad is driving. Suddenly Marie says, “Hey!” I turn around, look her in the eye, and ask, “What?” She takes her right hand, points out the window, and says “Hay!” It was time for a cutting and the huge rounds of hay were in the fields. Hay. There it was, big as life, hay, and I had been had. The smile on her face and the glint in her eye was something to be seen.

It could be a couple of hours from St. Louis to Mexico depending on the traffic around the airport and in the county around St. Louis, so we had been on the road a while. Suddenly, Marie cries out from the backseat, “Hey!” I turn around again and ask “What?” You see where this is going don’t you? Well I didn’t.

She points again; this time with her left, and says “There’s hay on this side of the highway too.” Marie is laughing at me, not really hard, but she was loving every minute of it. What I finally noticed was the look on my father’s face. He was trying so hard not to laugh out loud, not because he didn’t want to embarrass his little boy; I imagine he feared losing control of the car doing 70 on I-70.

When my mother heard the story, she was so proud of Marie. The family discovered that I had met my match.

Stories, I absolutely love stories. I love to tell stories. I love to listen to stories. I love to see how people’s faces change when they tell stories. When you hear people tell stories about their families you can see the love and the joy in their eyes and their smiles. Voices pick up in ways you just don’t get when going over the shopping list.

Stories are the narrative of who we are, they are the ways we share what is important to us. There are little nuances that come from stories that come from no communication. For example, in my little story you can tell that Marie is smarter than I am. (I don’t know if this is when I finally realized it, but at least I do realize it and that’s a start.) You can see that I have been well trained by my father. Even three years after his death, more than twenty years since I have lived under his roof, and I still “get your attention” before I begin to chat with you. You might even say that if you train me well enough, I’m obedient. Finally if nothing else, you can tell that, yes, I love stories.

So imagine our gospel story told by the tenth leper. One of ten who were at the side of the road, of course they weren’t too close to the road. They were required to keep their distance; their shouts of “unclean” kept the unsuspecting traveler from being exposed to their ritual impurity. Still they were close enough to recognize Jesus and the circus train that was with him along the border betwwen Samaria and Galilee.

So they cried out to him, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” What happens next? Jesus tells them “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” He doesn’t say “You are healed.” He doesn’t wave his hands. He doesn’t use water or balm of any sort. Nothing! He just tells them “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” An obedient sort, they go to present themselves to the priests. Then somewhere along the way they are cleansed. Then one, just one turns, finds Jesus, and gives thanks.

As our reading ends, Jesus does not remind him to go show himself to the priest, but he doesn’t tell him not to go to the priest. I’ve called him obedient, so let’s say that he is going to follow the first direction Jesus gave him, he’s going to show himself to the priest.

Imagine the cleansed man telling this story to the priest. “Hey, I was with those nine other guys you saw earlier. You should have seen us, we were ragged, unclean; we were a plight on our families. Then we see that Jesus guy, you know, the one everyone is talking about. Well we see him and we call out to him. We ask for compassion, we ask for pity, and he tells all ten of us to come and show ourselves to you.

“I mean, there was nothing. He didn’t do anything, he just told us to come see you. We didn’t know quite why, but hey, we would do as we were told. Suddenly, along the way, it happened, we were cleansed. I’m not quite sure when it happened, I really don’t know how it happened, but I know who made it happen, it was Jesus.

“Well, my mother always told me to be grateful, to give thanks, so I went back and found Jesus and fell at his feet and gave praise in a loud voice. I mean I gave THANKS and it was in a LOUD VOICE. Then he wondered where the other nine were. He even made a point to tell everyone who was travelling with him that I was a Samaritan, someone who was not a part of the nation of Judah. Then he told me to rise up and go. He said it was my faith that saved me.”

You might notice that I took a turn away from the text as it’s found in our English bibles. Most English language bibles render this sentence from verse nineteen “your faith has made you well.” Gloriously, this passage could just as easily be translated “your faith has saved you.”

The Samaritan tells the story of what Jesus has done for him. Jesus has made him clean; not for anything the Samaritan did, not for who he was, just for being a child of God and asking; Jesus made him clean. Unmerited favor, this is what we call grace. And through his faith he is saved. Today we still say that we are saved by grace though faith.

So what does this story tell us?

It tells us that Jesus heals and that Jesus saves.

It tells us that being grateful for what we have received is important.

Well, as I just said it tells us that the Samaritan was saved by grace through faith.

It also tells us that even the despised foreigner, which is what the Samaritans were in the eyes of the Jews, even the despised foreigner is a recipient of God’s good grace. We are even told to pray for their enemies, as Jeremiah told the exiles to pray for Babylon.

These last two items can be difficult for us to absorb, but what we would consider “difficult” is occasionally used by God in ways and for reasons we cannot fathom.

Jeremiah makes this point. The nation of Judah is taken to Babylon and the exile will be difficult. There is a prophet who says that the exile will not last long. Jeremiah says no. He says that the Lord of Hosts says build a house. Build a house? Why build a house if it’s going to be only a short time in exile? Exactly, it’s not going to be short, build a house. Sometimes, the word of the Lord is not what we want to hear.

Sometimes the Word of the Lord is “it’s gonna take some time this time.” Sometimes it’s that the despised Samaritan is the one who shows the gratitude all God’s people should show.

How important is the story of the grateful leper? Well, it’s important enough that Luke recorded it in his gospel. It’s important because it shows us how people responded to meeting our Lord. It’s important because even 2,000 years later, it still means something to us. It’s a story that is a benchmark story of the faith, particularly for the outsiders. It helps us define and share our faith.

In the notes from a congregational meeting, one of the things on this congregation’s wish list is that there be more witnessing. It may seem too obvious a question, but what do we witness? Well, the answer is that we witness Christ crucified, this is the story of our faith. We are to tell the world of our savior Jesus the Christ and what God intends for all creation. Well, that can be a mouthful. Some people have difficulty talking about it, I mean where do we start?

Well, if the story of our faith is Christ crucified, then the stories of our faith is where our lives cross this story. As a congregation we have several stories.

One of the stories of this congregation is the story behind “The Church of the Bells.”

It was almost twenty-five years ago that Elder Jesse Walker presented his dream of the Christmas bells to the Session beginning a special ministry that coincides with the city's Wonderland of Lights. When Mr. Walker told the Session what he envisioned, and the dimensions were worked out, and he was told that it would be well over twelve feet tall and nearly fifty feet long, he excitedly said “Yes, that’s just what I have in mind!” The goal was to complete 100 bells by June 30 and members young and old worked joyfully for six months to meet the deadline. Then it was time to work the next task, making the bells move when music is added. Then a third elder made the stereo clarion bells ring out with joyous music proclaiming the birth of the Savior.

What a proclamation to the community! The music and the lights, the setting and the bells; and people come by and see that there is a church in downtown Marshall that believes in the glory of the incarnation of Christ, the living person of God who came as a baby 2,000 years ago to live and show us how to live; and to die and show us how to live.

What a glorious story of this congregation.

I have one more story to share. A few months after meeting my parents, when I was still living in Lamar, Colorado, Marie decided to move to Colorado Springs. She thought (Hoped? Prayed?) I would eventually wise up and propose to her. She gave me a year to come to my senses. (It didn’t take that long, thank God.) So I went out to Michigan to help load the truck and help drive the nearly 1,300 miles in the U-Haul.

Now, something I learned dating Marie is that when she travels on the highway; when she stops, she stops at fast food restaurants. The restaurants are cleaner and there is someplace clean to eat and drink if you want. I tend to go to odd truck stops for the exact same reasons, fast food restaurants may be cleaner, but they are far less interesting.

Along the way, Marie said to me that she was thirsty and could stand to go through a drive-thru. I told her that I didn’t want to drive a U-Haul in a drive-thru, but the biggest truck stop in central Missouri was less than ten miles ahead, it was clean and we could stop there.

Then Marie said to me, “I didn’t say that.” As I was about to say, “Yes you did, you said…” Marie said, “I was thinking it, but I didn’t say it.” The look on my face must have been something else. So what did I learn from this? For me, this was as if God was looking right at me and saying, “All right boy, now that I’ve got your attention, ‘Listen to me, and don’t mess this up.’ ”

When people ask us what being a Christian means to us, we could talk about what God does for humanity, but without a personal connection telling the story may be just so many words that have been learned and spoken by rote again and again. It is where our lives intersect God’s purposes that important things happen, and it is when we share these stories with others that people can connect with us and with God.

So when people ask what it means to be a Christian, we need to learn how to say, “Well let me tell you a story…” God gives us a word to share with one another. Listen to the stories of God in your life, and share the word of the Lord.

The Mysterious Sermon

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday June 14, 2009, the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17
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

[1]Storytelling of any sort, amusing anecdotes or tragic tales, is an unrepeatable art form. The variety of people listening, the inflections in voice, the mood of the day, the color of the sky—they all combine to create a one-time-only atmosphere for the spoken word. A story may bring a tear or a smile at one telling, and yet, the very next listener experiences the same words in a completely different way.

Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus chose to speak in parables. Some people find that very annoying. Why didn’t Jesus come right out and say what he meant? Why did he leave behind all these cryptic sayings, loaded with innuendo, destined to be interpreted and reinterpreted, instead of a crisp code of laws or a stack of essays with titles like “How to Be a Good Disciple,” “A Brief Definition of the Kingdom of God” or “Seven Key Features of the Coming Kingdom and What This Means to You.”

Instead we have this culturally ancient, cross-eyed, cryptic, incomplete, awkward, and at times seemingly absurd yet eternally true collection of sayings known as Jesus’ parables.

A list of rules never changes, never adapts. Written essays are like insects encased in amber—beautiful and precisely formed, but no longer vital and alive. According to pastor and author Barbara Brown Taylor, even sermons, the Word of God proclaimed, have the shelf life of homemade mayonnaise.[2] It takes the fluid format of a story—a tale that can never quite be told the same way twice—to keep breathing mysterious and glorious new life into the Good News.

If you still think Jesus would have gotten his points across better with hard and fast rules, I ask you to try remembering the last time you sat down and really enjoyed reading Leviticus or the first few chapters of Numbers.

Consider this; if the hard and fast rules and customs of family status and inheritance were followed in our reading from the Old Testament, the Call of David would never have happened. If Samuel had just anointed the eldest son as tradition dictated, Jesse’s eldest, the boy whose name means “God is Father,” Eliab[3], would have become king. Instead, the Lord is in charge and Samuel follows. He anoints the eighth and youngest son of Jesse. The rules were broken, but it worked out pretty well in this case.

Despite these shortcomings, people still try to develop rules based on scripture. Only now we call them creeds, catechisms, and confessions. The earliest forms of the earliest of the confession, The Apostles’ Creed, were spawned about 150 years after the death and resurrection of Christ while the most recent of the particularly Presbyterian Creeds, A Brief Statement of Faith, isn’t even thirty years old.[4] From the first to the twenty-first century, we never really change how we try to replace mystery and glory with interpretation and legalism.

Without the easy ability Jesus’ parables have to engage us and entice us into their world, even God’s Word becomes a hard read. How these stories which are foreign to our lives become the fabric of our earthly life and heavenly salvation is wonderful and glorious.

But the process of how these stories are still vital 2,000 years after they were first told, with their many interpretations, is far more illusive and mysterious than hard and fast rules.

We come to know that by preaching to his followers in parables, Jesus lets us make the Good News become our own story, our own experience. As we are swept up in the story, we ourselves become part of a new parable—the parable of our lives. Taken all together, our individual experiences of the kingdom, our personal stories of God’s work and witness in our lives, end up creating a new gospel.

We are mistaken if we think our tradition stems from only the four gospels of the scriptural canon. As well as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the church has two millennia of other gospels to celebrate; the books of Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, Bonhoeffer and Barth. These “gospels” have become vital parts of our tradition because of their eternal reliance on the power of God and the reconciling work of Christ.

There are still other gospels that may not be quite so well-known, but have tremendous influence in our lives in this part of the body of Christ. We must remember that the personal parable stories that make up “The Gospel According to Grandma;” or “The Gospel of Pastor Mark, the Reverend Doctor Hal, and Pastor Pam;” or “The Gospel According to That Kid at Camp Whose Name I Can’t Even Remember;” have affected our lives dramatically.

All of us are in the process of writing our own gospels—our own accounts of experiencing the Good News of the coming kingdom in our midst. Writing a gospel through the very act of living is part of being a disciple of Christ. Sharing our gospel through the very act of living is also part of being a disciple of Christ. It is why Jesus gave the power of the parable to all those listening to his words. Storytelling is one of the most basic practices common to all human communities.

Stories connect us to one another, to our ancestors, to our world and to our Lord. In this week’s gospel text, Mark notes that when Jesus spoke to the crowds around him, he “spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables.” Jesus knew that only parables had the ability to make the Good News of the kingdom a potent reality for every listening ear.

The mystery of how this works is glorious. People want proofs, rules, and standards; and Jesus gives us parables. William Sloane Coffin, creating a godly monologue, shared these words in a 1980 Advent sermon:

These creatures of mine are very clever. They are always looking for evidence to make intelligently selfish decisions. That’s why their evangelists, instead of the freedom they need, give them all the proofs they want. I have told these evangelists there are no proofs for my existence, only witnesses. Nevertheless they go on proving one ineffable mystery after another with all the ardor of orthodoxy stamping out heresy. But I am the Lord God, and will not seek to overcome selfishness by appealing to selfish motives. So, as the prophet promised, I will send my people a son. I will seek to captivate their hearts, not conquer them. I will seek to open their minds, not crack their skulls. They, of course, will continue to fight me as they always have, but the contest between us will not be one of power—only of endurance. I will show them that true conquerors are not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most. I will show them that love never ends.[5]

Demonstrating this power of witness, Andrew Young, former American ambassador to the United Nations, tells this story,[6] this parable of power, grace, and reconciliation; about an experience he had in South Africa when he was visiting at the invitation of Nelson Mandela. For years Mandela was a leading opponent of apartheid, South Africa’s official policy of racial segregation. In 1964, the white establishment locked him up for life. But as his legend grew, so did the worldwide campaign to set him free. He was released in 1990. When apartheid was abolished, and South Africa held its first democratic elections in the spring of 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Thirteen months later, Mandela invited Andy Young to be his guest when South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup Tournament. Now rugby is a white man’s game. The South African team, like most rugby teams, is entirely white. And South Africa is about 80 percent black. So, even though the world championship was being played right there in Johannesburg, there was a deliberate absence of support for the team.

As the tournament approached, a heated debate broke out about the South African team symbol -- a leaping gazelle called a “springbok.” Most of the white Afrikaners said, “The springbok has been the symbol of every rugby team we’ve ever had.” Most black South Africans said, “Exactly! It reminds us of South Africa’s racist history, and we want it changed.” It was an explosive situation.

Now, Nelson Mandela has impeccable political sensibilities. More importantly, he understands the saving power of grace. A few days before the opening game, Mandela visited the South African team. After the visit, he called a press conference. Mandela showed up wearing a rugby jersey and an athletic cap with the team mascot, a springbok, on it. The newspaper and TV reporters were there and recorded it all. Mandela said that until the elections, he and most other black people in South Africa had always supported whoever was playing against the Springboks. “But regardless of the past,” he said, “these are our boys now. They may all be white, but they’re our boys, and we must get behind them and support them in this tournament.”

The next day, the Springboks’ coach sent word for his players not to show up in their practice gear. He told them to wear their suits and ties. He took them out to Robben Island, to the prison where Nelson Mandela had spent nearly three decades of his life behind bars. The coach and every player on the team walked into Mandela’s cell.

As they stood there, the coach said, “This is the cell where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. He was kept here for 27 years by the racist policies of our government. We Afrikaners tolerated his imprisonment for all those years, and yet he has backed us publicly. We can’t let him down.”

The tournament opened, and the Springboks played above their heads. To everyone’s surprise, they won their first game. In fact, they made it into the final game against New Zealand, a perennial power in rugby. It was like Arkansas State playing USC. And yet, at the end of regulation, the game was tied.

President Mandela was in the stands, wearing a Springbok jersey. During the timeout, he brought a South African children’s choir out of the stands. They sang an old African miners’ song which to them is sort of like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was to the slaves in this country. Within minutes, 65,000 people in the stadium were standing and singing this black African miners’ song. Andy said, “I don’t know anything about rugby, and I don’t understand the words of the song, but I was in tears.”

When the Springboks took the field, they were unstoppable. They won the World Rugby Championship. And for the next 24 hours, whites danced with blacks in the streets of South Africa. One of the most divided nations on the planet was united by something some people consider insignificant—a rugby match. But God used it to help heal a nation.

What was in the minds of black South Africans when they saw Nelson Mandela take the podium in a Springbok jersey and cap? What was in the minds of the Springboks when they were standing in Mandela’s cell? We may never know. That is the mystery of this story is how these two earthly symbols of division became symbols of racial reconciliation.

The story begins with the work of reconciliation between God and all creation begun by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is extended by a man who was a prisoner of national sin for twenty-seven years; and a prisoner of Afrikaner culture long before his incarceration. It is received by a grateful nation. It is celebrated by dancing in the streets.

What is it about games that can make us the best people we can be, physically and spiritually? How is it that the stories of a Jewish carpenter recorded so long ago resonate so clearly now? How is it that God walked the earth as we do still today? If I knew, that would be the end of the mystery, wouldn’t it?

[1] This is an edited version of this sermon idea from HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2711, retrieved June 8, 2009.
[2] Reported by Sallie Watson in the Presbytery of Arkansas newsletter, June 2009, link found at http://presbyteryofarkansas.org/frmNewsletter.aspx, retrieved June 9, 2009.
[3] Brown, F.. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, The. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001, page 45.
[4] PC (USA) Office of the General Assembly, “The Book of Confessions, Study Edition.” Louisville: Geneva Press, 1996.
[5] Coffin, William Sloane, The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years, Vol. 1, Louisville, Westminster-John Knox Press, 2008, page 387.
[6] As told by Bishop Bevel Jones in a sermon before the 1996 United Methodist General Conference in Denver, HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustrations_for_installment.asp?installment_id=2711, retrieved June 8, 2009.

Endings as Beginnings

This sermon was heard during the 11:00 service at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday April 12, 2009, Easter/Resurrection of the Lord Sunday.

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
Mark 16:1-8

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

Sesame Street has a skit that helps teach children differences between items in groups. We can probably all sing it together, “One of these things is not like the other.” If you put the resurrection stories from the gospels together in a room, you would be able to see that one of these things is not like the other. Mark’s gospel is decidedly different. It is far more abrupt than the other three accounts.

Matthew’s version includes the bribing of the guard by the chief priests and Jesus giving the apostles the Great Commission. The Lukan story includes the wonderful account of Jesus breaking bread with two of the Jerusalem pilgrims as they return home to Emmaus. Luke’s version then extends into the book of Acts with the story of the ascension. John’s is far more extensive with the Doubting Thomas discourse, the command to “feed my sheep,” and the account of the great catch of fish.

These are wonderful and glorious stories of the things Jesus has done after his resurrection. These stories show how our Lord continues to share life with his disciples, and by this we are promised a continuing relationship with the Lord; a relationship that continues today.

Mark’s version has no such wonderful tales of what happens next. Mark’s gospel gives us just three women who are a fine combination of terrified, amazed, and afraid. Instead of rejoicing and dancing in the streets, instead of a common meal being shared, instead of the physical presence of the Lord in his resurrected body with its earthly wounds still present; Mark’s gospel ends with three women fleeing in shocked silence from the open tomb.

Mark’s gospel jerks to a stop like a dog tied to a stake. This is not the ending we expect to the greatest story ever told. Between you and me, I love Mark’s gospel and I even love this ending, but if I am looking for a happy ending, a glorious resolution, the ending I expect on Easter morning; this one leaves me wanting.

Now you can tell me I don’t have to worry; depending on the translation, there is either one more or a dozen more verses that follow where our lectionary reading ended. These endings give us more of the “feel good” ending we have come to expect. But these additions to Mark’s gospel, the single verse “Shorter Ending to Mark” or the twelve verses known as “The Longer Ending to Mark,” were added between 100 and 150 years after the original text was compiled.[1]

In a very human way, this should give us comfort. More than 1,800 years ago, someone else was so unsatisfied with the ending to Mark’s gospel that they tacked on a whole new finale.

These additional endings are like a Hollywood movie that didn’t do well with test audiences so a new ending was written, shot, and tacked on at the end. It brought closure to a work that people didn’t think ended well the way it was first presented.

But the original ending, the one we hear today, as unsatisfying as it may be, leaves us with truth; the truth of someone who was once dead and buried is now neither; and that’s a bit of truth to wrap our heads around. Indeed, people don’t expect the dead to be up walking around and fear is not an unreasonable reaction.

Marie and I are big fans of ABC’s “stranded on a mysterious tropical island” show “LOST.” Last Wednesday’s episode dealt with the consequences of a recently dead character named John coming back to life after returning to the island; and this isn’t the first time this character’s life was revived by the mysterious healing properties of the island.

As Ben, the shows major antagonist, awakens after being injured, he sees John standing over him. The last time Ben saw John, John was dead and in a casket. Ben himself knows the island’s healing abilities. When he sees John, he cries out in shock that he knew John would return to life. Noting the quiver in Ben’s voice, John asks “Then why are you so surprised to see me?”

With an amazed look on his face Ben answers, “Because it’s one thing to believe it, John; it’s another thing to see it.”[2]

As with any good antagonist, you can never be sure if Ben is telling the truth, and this storytelling truism is on display later in the episode when another character asks Ben if he knew John would be revived if he returned to the island. Ben answers “I had no idea it would happen.” Ben says he has seen the island do miraculous things, but he continues “never once has it done anything like this. Dead is dead, you don’t get to come back from that, not even here. So the fact that John Locke is walking around this island scares the living hell out of me.”

Just to put the cherry on this whacked out sundae of a TV show, John, the character who comes back to life says “It’s weird for me too.”

Let me make this perfectly clear, I am not comparing John’s return to life with the Resurrection of our Lord. I said that John came back to life and was revived, but I do save the word resurrected for our Lord. What I am doing is comparing the character’s reaction to John returning to life and the women’s reaction to the revelation about Jesus and the empty tomb. Ben says it scares the living hell out of him. Even John, the man who was revived, was surprised he returned to the living.

Now imagine this happening at a tomb in Jerusalem and not on a Hawaiian soundstage. The three women were terrified.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the terror the three women felt that first Easter. They came to the tomb planning to finish the burial preparations. Jesus had died so near the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath — sundown on Friday — that there had not been enough time to anoint his body. So now, on Sunday morning, with the Sabbath finished, the three women head to the tomb to finish the sad task hardly begun on Good Friday. Their first concern was how to get the stone moved away from the tomb entrance. The last thing they expected was that Jesus would have left the tomb, especially under his own power.

They were heartsick with grief, but they were at least functioning. Death wasn’t welcome, but it wasn’t some new thing. They knew what they were supposed to do, and they were beginning to adjust to the fact that Jesus was gone. Resurrection, however, was something entirely out of their realm of experience. It was an entirely new thing, and it scared the wits out of them. They were not prepared for such news.[3]

And we are not unlike them.

We hear the Easter story every year; we hear the story of the Last Supper, the betrayal of Christ, the trial, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. And yes, we hear the story and we believe. This makes us Christians, we hear and by faith we believe.

Armed with this truth, knowing how Mark’s version of the story ends without ending puts the pen in our hand. This is the ultimate truth of the abrupt ending of Mark’s gospel. The truth of the resurrection is in the continuing life of Jesus Christ lived with his disciples after Mark’s recording ended. The ultimate truth is that He continues living with his disciples in the church today and He lives with us still.

As literature, Mark’s gospel has an ending, one that is not satisfying to readers who want stories to end with closure. But as Gospel this is a good thing; it is a very good thing. The good news of Jesus Christ is still being written. To coin a phrase, our reading from Mark’s gospel represents the end of the beginning.

Act one is finished. God walked upon the earth; was crucified, dead and buried; and now, now the tomb is empty. The big question is “what next?” and the big answer can only come by participating in the work God has begun, accepting the relationship our Lord and his disciples modeled, and doing what we are called to do.

The writing of Mark’s gospel has ended, but for us this ending is just the beginning. This is our vocation; we are the next writers of the story. The pen is in our hands and it is up to us as the Church of the Risen Lord and as individual members of the Church to continue writing this story. Today let us begin our version of the ending as the new beginning using the words of the ancient liturgy “He is risen. He is risen, indeed.” Alleluia. Amen.

[1] “Extended Ending” HomileticsOnline.com. http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040450, retrieved April 2, 2009
[2] ABC Pictures and Bad Robot Studio, “LOST” Original broadcast April 8, 2009.
[3] Ibid, HomileticsOnline.com, Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer, and Senior Minister of the Park City United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah.

True Stories

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday March 29, 2009, the 5th Sunday in Lent.

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

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

Next week we celebrate Palm Sunday. So this is the time of year when we break out the DVD’s of “The Passion of the Christ,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and “Godspell.” Marie agrees with this statement so strongly that she is singing “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” to herself right now. That’s fine with me; any of you who wish to sing along with her are welcome to go right ahead. Of the three, “Godspell” is my favorite film of the Passion genre. In their own way, each of these movies is a recreation of the final day of life of Jesus on earth. Well, let’s just say it’s the first-last day. We’ll get to that in a couple of weeks.

The scene in our gospel reading comes immediately after the events we will celebrate next week, Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Jesus came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. This isn’t the first celebration of the Passover in John’s gospel. John 2 contains the earliest account of Jesus at the Passover festival. John 5 has Jesus coming to Jerusalem for a festival, but it could have been First Fruits or Tabernacles or Passover. Jesus made other trips for other festivals during his life too.

The point here is that Jesus knew his way around the temple and since he would teach while he was there, the temple knew him too. But this time, something different is going on, there is a charge in the air like before a storm. There is a feeling that something new is about to happen, and it begins with the arrival of some Greeks. The Greeks who had come to see the festival were also there to see Jesus. So they sought Philip and Andrew, the Apostles with Greek names, to make the introduction.

What’s so important about the arrival of the Greeks? The Greeks were travelers, not just tourists. The cosmopolitan Greeks would come, learn, and take the cultures they encounter with them. This is how the most important transcripts of the New Testament came to be written in Greek. According to a reference on Greece, “Not only is the New Testament a Greek book, but all Christian literature down to the early third century, even in Rome and the West, and to this day in the East, is in Greek.”[1]

Greek was the language of art and culture. This is how so many of the works of Ancient Greece have survived when so many works of other cultures have been lost to antiquity. The Greeks were the travelers and philosophers of the day, constantly moving from place to place drinking in the culture of the world.

So when Jesus gets the news that the Greeks had arrived from Philip and Andrew, Jesus knew that his time, his hour, had come. Where in every prior instance in the gospel Jesus had kept the “messianic secret,” now there was no need. His time had come; he is to be lifted up.

Jesus told everyone who was around him “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He used a story with an agricultural base to show them explosive growth. He told them when a single seed dies in the proper way and time it produces much fruit. He lets them know this death is necessary.

He tells them that people who love their life will lose it and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Such a twisted statement would be confusing but it is ultimately comforting. It is joyful when we realize what is gained by eternal life; a life of plenty to be lived today, life where those who serve the Lord will be honored by the Father.

Then Jesus tells us a story that doesn’t seem quite right coming from the mouth of the Son of Man, his soul is troubled. Yes, the Lord our Savior is disturbed by what he knows is to come. God Incarnate is in personal turmoil over what will follow oh so soon. But he knows that it is for this reason that he has come to this very hour.

Jesus knows his own story. Jesus knows what is to come and what is to follow. He knows of the pain and the mocking and the torture and the death. He knows what is to come, what is to follow. He knows he will be betrayed by one of his followers, his Apostle Judas Iscariot.

It is this scene the betrayal that I find the most touching in “Godspell.” Jesus has just finished teaching his disciples the final lessons. There is a sense of hurry. Jesus is rushed, but not panicked. Then Judas arrives with the garrison. Judas comes to give the kiss that will separate Jesus from everyone else.

When Judas stands before the messiah, he cannot do it. He cannot betray Jesus with a holy kiss. Jesus stands before Judas and says, “Do what you have come to do.” Judas balks. Maybe Judas is even reconsidering the whole plan; maybe he can’t betray Jesus after all. Jesus says “Do what you have come to do.” Judas is frozen. So Jesus suddenly and quickly leans in and kisses Judas… and smiles. Then the chaos of the arrest begins.

Jesus knows his story. He knows what has to happen. He knows his destiny and he both dreads and embraces it. To me, this is the glory of the scene from “Godspell.” Jesus knows what has to happen and when the scene’s other principal cannot bring himself to do it, Jesus does. Jesus knows his own story so well that when others don’t follow the script, Jesus takes over and ensures that what must happen happens.

There are very few movie scenes that make me cry, but that one does it every time.

Jesus came to glorify the Father and the Father glorifies the Son. This is affirmed by the voice of God who says for all with ears to hear “I have glorified my name and I will glorify it again.” Jesus tells the people what they heard was for their sake, not his own. Jesus doesn’t need to hear the story, he knows it well enough. We need to know the story. We need the affirmation of the Word of God, so we hear it for our sake. We hear it to affirm the story of faith in the world.

We have our stories too. Take a moment out of this busy day and ask God to remind you of an important story in your life with God. Let me share this example from the beginning of my life in this part of the body of Christ.

Four years ago in Conway, Arkansas, I was examined by the Committee on Preparation for Ministry at a meeting of the Presbytery. I had preached a sermon. I was questioned by the committee. When it was finished, as is the tradition in this Presbytery, I left the sanctuary as the Presbytery discussed the issue. When it was over, Marie and I reentered the assembly to applause and rejoicing. The moderator then asked members of the Berryville congregation to stand and be recognized. Wayne and Janet were there standing, so was Shelly. Carolyn was with her.

I smiled with the love of God coursing in my very being. It was a glorious moment. I went over to the corner of the sanctuary where Shelly and Carolyn were. Carolyn was beginning to tire, it had been a long day, and she and Shelly were getting ready to return home.

I leaned over and hugged Carolyn. She said, “I love you.” And I said “I love you too.” By the grace and love of God, at that moment, I became her pastor. At that moment I began to love her as a pastor loves every member of the church, with the love God calls all of us to share with one another. In that moment, I went from being a candidate for ministry to being a minister, her minister. It was a wonderful moment, and it came only by the love and grace of God.

Jesus had a story to tell and an audience to take it with them. And when they left Palestine, after the Passover, after the crucifixion, after the resurrection; the Greeks would take word of Jesus with them.

We too have stories to tell, stories of how the Lord has lifted our lives. Take a moment here and now, and consider the question. Ask God to remind you of an important story in your life with God. Our lives in God are filled with wonderful stories, stories of peace, mercy, and joy; stories of power and might, stories of sorrow and redemption. Be reminded of these stories and do yourself a favor, share them at lunch today. Share the stories of God as you break bread. Then you will taste and see that the Lord is good.

Take a couple of minutes to contemplate your story.

Amen

[1] The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, “Greece,” part 9, Age of Hellenism.