Mañana

Before we get started, this is my last Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas so "Time Loves a Hero" will be taking a short hiatus. Starting in about a month, I will be serving the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas. As soon as I get to Marshall, "Time Loves a Hero" will return with new postings.

This is a bittersweet day for me. May God bless us all.

So with no further ado, this sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 29, 2010, the 22nd 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 mediations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The Society of Friends, Quakers, have a way of helping members seek discernment on how to proceed with keenly felt concerns and dilemmas, the clearness committee. The committee, which is chosen by the caller, is a group of close, wise, and honest friends who come together and spend time waiting in silence and asking questions. They do not give advice or criticize. They do not tell their own stories or judge the caller. The group asks honest, probing, caring, challenging, open, unloaded questions. The questions are not asked for the curiosity of the questioner, but for the sake of the one seeking clarity.

In “Let Your Life Speak,” Parker Palmer tells this story about asking for help discerning a vocational prospect with a clearness committee. He had just received an opportunity to become president of a small educational institution. As Palmer tells the story, he notes that he did not really convene the group for clarity; what he had done is call his friends together to brag about being offered a great job.

“For a while, the questions were easy, at least for a dreamer like me: What is your vision for this institution? What is its mission in the larger society? How would you change the curriculum? How would you handle decision making? What about dealing with conflict?

Halfway into the process, someone asked a question that sounded easier yet turned out to be very hard: ‘What would you like most about being president?’

The simplicity of that question loosed me from my head and lowered me into my heart.”

Palmer then goes on in fits and starts trying to answer the question. But he doesn’t answer the question. He tells them what he would not like about being president of the institution. He is gently guided back to the question by the committee several times. Returning to Palmer’s text…

“Once again the questioner called me back to the original question. But this time I felt compelled to give the only honest answer I possessed an answer that came from the very bottom of my barrel, an answer that appalled even me as I spoke it.

“‘Well,’ said I, in the smallest voice I possess, ‘I guess what I would like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it.’

“Finally [after a long, contemplative silence] my questioner broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up—and cracked me open: ‘Parker,’ he said, ‘can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?’”[1]

Being humbled, well, that’s a focus of our gospel reading today isn’t it? Palmer was laid bare by his clearness committee. They asked the right questions, and finally he came to the right answer, not a flattering one, but the right one all the same.

Parker tried to use the clearness committee to exalt himself; sharing with his friends the great job he had been offered. Instead he was humbled, in his own words he was cracked open by the questions the committee asked.

There is a very important thing about the language being used in our gospel reading today that I want to share; something our it shares with Palmer’s last sentence. These words in this portion of Palmer’s text, cracked open; and these words from verse eleven, exalt, be humbled, humble, and be exalted; are verbs. One more time, these are verbs.

Adjectives like humble and exalted do not carry the same literary weight as the verbal forms, even though they look exactly the same to us in English. Adjectives describe states of being. They describe conditions. The verbs, they perform the actions that cause the conditions. It may not seem like such a big difference, but it comes up in our gospel reading.

Now, the feelings evoked by the adjectives, words that add to the sentence, are important. They are important to help define, help sharpen what is going on in the sentence. They help evoke a passion. They help define the action and the one who is either doing the action or having the action done to them. I don’t want anyone to think that the emotions and the feelings are not important, but the point I’m making is that the emotions and the feelings are caused by the action. In an effective way, the verb always precedes the modifier.

So that’s the reason for the English lesson. In verse eleven, Jesus is not describing how the people who take banquet seats that do not suit them will feel. He describes what will happen to people who take banquet seats that do not suit them.

Jesus gives us some advice. The first is to always select a less honorable seat, that way you will not be humbled by a host that moves you down the table and you may be raised to a better place at the table if the master wishes.

That’s another important element of these particular verbs, to humble and to exalt; they deal with reversal of fortune. By both of these verbs your status will shift, the only question is if you will be lifted up or cast down.

Palmer offers these words on being humbled as a verb which I find useful:

I had read somewhere that humility is central to the spiritual life, which seemed like a good idea to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble! What I did not know is that for some of us the path to humility goes through humiliation—being brought low, unable to function, stripped of pretenses and defenses, feeling fraudulent, empty, useless—that allows us to regrow our lives from the humus of common ground.

The spiritual journey is full of paradoxes, and one of them is that the humiliation that brings us down -- down to ground on which it is safe to stand and to fall -- eventually takes us to a firmer and fuller sense of self. When people ask me how it felt to emerge from depression, I can give only one answer: I felt at home in my own skin and at home on the face of the earth, for the first time.[2]

Our prayer for illumination offered these words: “Teach us to walk the path he prepared for us so that we might take a place at the table with all who seek the joy of his kingdom.” Our reading from Hebrews offers us words about walking in God’s path:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” So we can say with confidence:

“The Lord is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”

Through [Jesus], then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

These last two sentences, “let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise” and “do not neglect to do good and share” are particularly timely today.

A little more than five years ago, I came to this part of the body of Christ with a newly minted Masters of Divinity degree and little idea of what I was doing or would do next. Of course, I was not the first minister to feel this way, and that’s what I chose to share in my first sermon.[3] It began like this:

Gregory of Nazianzus was a priest and later a scholar in the early church. Initially he became a priest because of his father just happened to be the Bishop of Nazianzus. So Gregory was called to the ministry as well. Unfortunately for Gregory, he held the office of priest and the vows of ordination in such high esteem that immediately after he was ordained, he left. You see, Gregory felt that there was no way that he could hold to the vows of ordination, there was no way he could hold this office. He saw the priesthood as a sort of tyranny; a tyranny over himself and over his parish. He was so afraid of the ramifications of his ordination that he left the parish for five years. The monastic movement was beginning to gain steam at this time and young Gregory found the solitary lifestyle of the monk to be the best way to deal with his vocation.

To say the least, the people were steamed. I don’t blame them and I am sure that you don’t either. Nobody knows better than you what it’s like to have the Pastor Nominating Committee find someone for the church who then runs for the hills. But after five years, he was able to discern that he was called by God and the community to serve the body of Christ as their priest and he returned home. Imagine his homecoming, there is joy, but there must be some anger as well. It is only human. And Gregory preached, oh yes, he preached. And it was historically noted as one of the worst sermons ever heard in that church. Gregory preached a curt little sermon about why he avoided his responsibilities for five years. The congregation was not particularly sensitive toward his plight. Even if his reasons were valid, they did not fall on sympathetic ears.

I have always loved the story of Gregory the Great. He was a hero of the ancient church. His writings on baptism are still read today in church history and in seminaries. But this part of the story has always tickled me the most. This story always reminds me that one of the saints of the church started his illustrious vocation because it was the family business. Then as soon as he was ready, he was so awed and humbled by his vocation that he received the symbols of his ordination and promptly ran for the hills. Any ordained minister who can’t relate to this story should either reconsider their ordination or at least read the story again.

I ended my first sermon with these words:

Gregory of Nazianzus was right to take the prospect of ordination seriously. As in the times of Gregory, Matthew, and Paul, we are living in times which ministry is wrought with peril. But in light of all of this, we are called to tell the truth, sharing the good news of God; news which brings together the broken people who we are. We are called to be a light to a world which does not want to hear the message of the Gospel. And we now, as was done two thousand years ago, we now are called to take these steps together. We are called to rise every day and take these first steps again and again.

I am honored, and humbled, that you have called me and my family to join you in this journey as we take these, our first steps with you, together as the body of Christ. I promise that I will not leave you after the ordination service Saturday and join a monastery. We will take this journey together, and through the love of God we will proclaim the good news of our baptism into the life and death of Jesus Christ. And as the church we call all people to be reconciled to God and to one another.[4]

So on this, our final Sunday with this part of the body of Christ, let me say that it has been our privilege to be your pastor and pastor’s spouse, you have lifted us up. I am humbled that you selected me to join with you, to join with this part of the body of Christ as Minister of Word and Sacrament. I am honored that we took these steps together “to gather and welcome the broken people of the world and through God’s love make us one.”[5] I am overjoyed that you have graciously invited us into your homes and into your lives. It has been our honor and privilege to serve Christ in this time and place.

I pray that over the past five years we have told the truth, sharing the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ who brings together the broken people we too are. I pray that we have been a light to a world which does not want to hear the message of the Gospel. And as was done two thousand years ago, we have taken these steps together. We are called to rise every day and take these first steps again and again.

A friend once told me that while the traditional translation of the word mañana is “tomorrow,” another way to translate it is “not today.” If we massage it far enough, it could mean “another day.” This is the last time that I will lead worship on the Lord’s Day in this place. This is the last time I will preach from this pulpit. I will never again celebrate the Lord’s Supper from this table or baptize a new member from this font, but, in God’s glorious time, we will worship together again.

So let’s not say “good bye,” instead, let’s just say mañana; and until we meet again, amen.

[1] Palmer, Parker J., Let Your Life Speak, Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2000.
[2] Parker J. Palmer, “All the Way Down,” Weavings, September-October 1998, 40 retrieved from HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=843, retrieved August 28, 2010.
[3] The italicized portion is from my sermon “First Steps” at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas.
[4] Book of Confessions, 9.07
[5] This is the Mission Statement of the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas

Viral Faith

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 22, 2010, the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

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

The internet has given us much. (Sorry, that’s not drool, that’s dripping sarcasm.) One of the many unintended things it has given us is viral video. A viral video is an often humorous or unintentionally humorous scene. Some are several minutes long like a music video. Others are a brief “slice of life” caught on camera. The way viral videos become popular is through internet sharing, typically through video sharing sites like YouTube or social networking sites like facebook. In fact this is why they are called viral; they spread across the internet like a virus. With the abundance of less expensive better quality cameras and camera phones, viral videos are here until the next generation of technology makes them obsolete.

There is a “slice of life” video that has become very popular among my facebook friends. Timing in at 33 seconds, you can watch it a dozen times, get a dozen laughs, and not waste but five minutes, making it possibly the perfect internet video.




Let me set the scene: Someone is shooting video of two buddies skateboarding; trying to do tricks and not doing them very well. Suddenly in the background, you hear the squeal of a car coming to a sudden stop. The videographer turns and sees a little old lady standing in the middle of the street right in front of an expensive convertible. The young man driving the car revs his engine a couple of times and honks the horn six times in quick succession. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. The little old lady takes a couple of steps, turns, and swings her bag into the license plate of the convertible, setting off the air bag right into the young man’s face. The old woman scurries off, the skateboarders laugh, and the rich young man gets out of his expensive car. This is “Watch Out for Granny Airbag.”[1]

You know, the worst thing about this is that it took me longer to describe it than it takes to watch, and you didn’t get to see the guy’s face. Surely, you can see why this has spread across the internet like a virus.

Of course, there is the more detrimental virus that spreads across the internet, a virus that invades a computer via the internet or by sharing files. These are the sort of viruses that make computers sick causing them to miss a couple days of school or work.

One of the more notorious types of computer viruses is the “Trojan Horse.” Built like the Trojan Horse of Virgil’s epic story about the Greek and Trojan War,[2] this kind of virus sneaks its way into your computer by looking like something you want. Then, in the middle of the night, it unleashes its terror against the insides of your computer. Sometimes they vandalize your computer, sometimes they pillage information; often they do both.

Often they come in what computer folk call “malvertisements,” mal- as in “malevolent,” or more simply “bad.” You may have seen them pop-up on your computer with messages like:

“Make your computer faster!” or
“Is your computer at RISK?? Run our free security scan!”

But waiting inside these offers too good to be true are an invading digital army.

Virgil’s epic is the source of the old expression, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” It could just as well be reinvented for the internet generation as “Beware of geeks bearing gifts.”[3]

Today we read that we have to beware the message we share in the light of the Holy Messenger.

Jesus is teaching on the Sabbath, nothing new there, when suddenly appears a woman who has been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. Now that’s new. She was bent over, unable to stand upright. Jesus saw her, called her over, and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Then he laid hands upon her and she stood upright praising God.

Everyone would have lived happily ever after until the leader of the synagogue became indignant because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Well, he may have been indignant with Jesus healing the woman, but his words were directed at the crowd, not the Lord. “There are six days on which work ought be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” Sure, he was ticked, but he couldn’t be ticked at the Rabbi so he took it out on the crowd.

Jesus exclaims “You hypocrites!” This word has a wonderful history. In ancient Greek, this was the word used for actors, people who portrayed characters. The familiar “comedy” and “tragedy” masks were used to hide the faces of the actors and help display proper emotion. Add the fact that roles for women were portrayed by men, and we get a sense of what this word meant to the ancients.

Ever since the time of Jesus though, this word was used in a negative way. It was meant more as faker than actor. He was calling them posers instead of performers. He was calling the leader of the synagogue a pretender. You hypocrite, you pretend to know God’s will but you do not.

Jesus reminds these fine upstanding keepers of the faith that they too work on the Sabbath; feeding and watering their livestock. So Jesus asks if they will care for their flocks on the Sabbath, isn’t it better to bring a daughter of Abraham back into the flock of the great shepherd anytime, including on the Sabbath? Jesus reminds them that a spirit had bound this woman for eighteen long years, so this woman ought to be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day.

If this were a melodrama, we would be cheering the Lord and hissing the synagogue leader, but let’s not condemn the synagogue leader so quickly, he’s following the law. He is doing what he is supposed to do, maintaining the sanctity of the meeting place. He’s interpreting Levitical law and making a judgment. He’s telling the assembly what is supposed to happen, what pleases God in the words Moses brought to the people. But it is not the words that Jesus has an issue with, it’s the one interpreting them. This too is nothing new and the more things change the more they stay the same.

The church is infamous for harboring hypocrites, or at least that’s what many believe. We need to ask ourselves “Why do people believe that?” What experiences have people had with Christians that would lead them to say, “You’re nothing but a bunch of pretenders”?

“UnChristian,” a book based on the findings of a Barna research study, sought answers to those questions. The authors, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, polled young adults outside of Christianity, those who may or may not ever engage our faith communities, about their perception of the church and Christians today. The title of the book comes from the sobering survey results, unChristians find us unchristian!

Eighty-five percent of young outsiders say that Christianity is hypocritical — saying one thing but doing another. Instead of being a voice against the image-is-everything mentality, the outsiders believed Christians worked just as hard as they did to preserve an image of strength and put-togetherness.

Asked another way, 84 percent of those polled had a personal relationship with a Christian. Only 15 percent thought the lifestyles of those Christians were significantly different from the norm.

Another Barna study from 2007 showed that lifestyles of “born-again Christians” were statistically equivalent to those of nonbelievers. When reporting activities from their previous 30 days, both groups were equally likely to gamble, view pornography, take something that didn’t belong to them, physically fight or abuse someone, get drunk, use an illegal drug, intentionally lie, seek revenge or gossip.[4]

The point is clear: Hypocrisy is a valid critique of the church. What we say we believe does not equal how we behave. The roles we portray and the ways we act differ. Eugene Peterson, author of the bible paraphrase “The Message,” once said: “There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church, because there’s sin in the church. But there’s no other place to be a Christian except the church.”[5]

Peterson’s quote goes on to mention other institutions that are loaded with hypocrisy; but in this case Jesus’ words were not for other institutions, they were for Christians and for the Church. So let’s not worry about the pretense and hypocrisy of others, let’s stay with the church. What is the lesson for Christ’s people? What is the lesson for Christ’s church?[6]

Let’s begin with the small things; small things can make a huge impact. We can never underestimate the huge impact our small choices can make on those who are linking their perception of Christianity with our lives. That means our mind-set needs to be radically missional. Every moment is potential evangelism, even that moment yesterday as I was heading back to town from Eureka Springs and got cut off not once but twice on the four lane section of Highway 62, my hand finding the horn like a young man facing a little old lady.

We don’t need to worry about sharing Christ with others by engaging in heavy theological discussions. Remember, life is evangelism. Even the smallest acts of our public life can have a positive or negative impact on other’s perceptions of the church and of Christ.

And if words are necessary, remember the words of the call of Jeremiah, God will put the right words in our mouths too.

Next we must choose authenticity. Genuineness. Integrity. Transparency. They’re buzzwords in younger churches today, but for a reason. People are tired of Sunday-only Christianity. If Christianity isn’t true and wholly transformative, then there are plenty of other things to do with our time.

In the place of hypocrisy, many churches are going with honesty, publicly saying who we are and who Christ welcomes into the church. One such church is Grace Presbyterian in Little Rock. At the beginning of Sunday worship they say and on the front of their web page they write:

Welcome to Grace Presbyterian Church!
Welcome to all who have no church home or are seeking a new home.
Welcome to young and old and to all ages and ethnicities.
Welcome to singles, to couples and to families of all shapes and sizes.
Welcome to those who are joyful and to those who are sad.
Welcome to those who are grateful and to those who are angry.
Welcome to those who are broken and to those who are whole.
Welcome to believers and to doubters and a special welcome to doubting believers.
Welcome to all who come seeking God and to all who come seeking merely to appease someone in their household.
Grace Presbyterian Church is a house of God.
Come just as you are.
Everyone is welcome.[7]

Whatever it takes, we need to reject hypocrisy and lead with honesty; imperfect, in-process, in-grace honesty.

Next we must not fight with Jesus or anybody else who agrees with him. We must also be careful when the Lord uses the unbeliever as a prophetic voice. Does it strike anyone as a bit ironic that nonbelievers and Jesus share the same harsh opinions toward the church’s hypocrisy? That is a great evangelism piece. So whenever we hear the hypocrisy argument from nonbelievers, we should tell them they sound like Jesus and we should mean it. We should tell them about Luke 13. We need to implore them not to let something small like agreeing with Jesus keep them from exploring faith.

Finally we must apologize often. Bumper-sticker theology is almost always wrong. Really wrong. But some well-intentioned souls get close when their cars tote the message “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” After exposing Christianity’s hypocritical street reputation for the better part of a chapter, the authors of “UnChristian” offer a new perspective for us, Christians must be transparent about their flaws and act first, talk second.

What better way to prove and spread this message than by apologizing to nonbelievers? Regularly. Not just cheap excuses or phony apologies such as “I’m sorry you felt that way” but real, relationship growing contrition like, “I need to ask for your forgiveness.” We need to say aloud “I really made a mistake on this one and I’m deeply sorry for how it affected you.”

We must take the steps to radically live and believe the exact same things. Jesus was concerned enough about such integrity that he put his own into question by bucking religious conventions and breaking rules. That must have been a fun way for him to live perfectly, and it’s a great model for us as we live imperfectly.[8]

As for what this means to us, this morning, if we take nothing else, let us take these words from our reading of Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.” So let us not share God like a virus that injures, but worship with a viral faith that spreads everywhere.

[1] “Watch Out for Granny Airbag” YouTube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8TNdub8esU, retrieved August 21, 2010.
[2] Virgil’s “The Aeneid”
[3] “Mal-Ads Damage the Church” HomileticsOnline.com, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040548, retrieved August 19, 2010.
[4] Barna information Ibid from HomileticsOnline.com.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Unless otherwise noted, the four lessons for the church are a paraphrase from “Mal-Ads Damage the Church”
[7] Grace Presbyterian Church (Little Rock) Homepage, http://www.littlerockgrace.org/, retrieved August 21, 2010.
[8] The four suggestions are taken from “Mal-Ads Damage the Church.”