Witnesses to Christ's Birth: Shepherds

Luke 2:8-20

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

I want you to stop and reflect for a moment. Take time to think about the places you are most likely to experience God, not including church. Picture places that you’ve experienced God’s presence.

I’d be willing to bet that most of you named somewhere in nature—the mountains, the beach, your back yard, a cemetery, in the woods, along a river, a sunset. There’s definitely something about nature that opens people to the Divine, the Holy, and to God. The places I’ve always been most touched by the spiritual have been in nature. For example, over the course of 35 years our family went to a lake 180 miles north of Toronto. It was there, sitting on a dock at midnight, looking at the stars, that I often sensed God’s presence most tangibly. Something about the stars helped me to feel as though God was there.

Another place that I felt God tangibly was two years ago when Bruce Smith and I led a worship conference at a retreat center in the hill country of Texas. Even though the temperature hovered around 94 degrees, I went for a 4-mile hike through the woods every afternoon. It was beautiful. And twice I came across a small family of armadillos. When I first saw them it scared the giblets out of me. But then I became fascinated with them, especially since they didn’t really care that I was there. They just kept rooting for whatever it is that they eat. Then one little fella put his paws on my toe, then stood up on his hind legs with his front paws against my shin, and sniffed me. He must have thought that I was no good to eat because he (or she) got back down and sniffed the rocks around me. For him (or her) our encounter was nothing, but I was in awe. I never expected to see armadillos. It felt like God had given me such an incredible gift in those woods, and I sensed God smiling.

Why is nature so good at helping us experience the Holy? I believe the answer is fairly simple. Nature inspires awe. It causes us to recognize the greatness of God’s creation while at the same time making us seem small in comparison. We aren’t made to feel small in a bad way. Nature makes us feel small in a way that makes us as though we are part of something great and majestic. I think that this is what those great cathedrals of Europe do. They are awe-inspiring because they make us feel small, but also safe in God’s great sacred space.

Also, nature helps us experience the Holy by reconnecting us with our source—with creation and the Creator. When we are out in nature, we sense God’s presence because we know that God created everything.

Finally, nature helps us experience the Holy by opening us to what is beyond. Nature helps us realize that there is always more than we can possibly take in. For example, when I look at the stars in Canada, I’m reminded that we are on a planet circling one star among 16 billion in our galaxy. And I’m reminded that our galaxy is one galaxy among 16 billion galaxies. Reflecting on that, I realize just how great and beyond anything I can imagine God really is. I am awed by how more there is to the universe, life, and existence there is than I can ever imagine.

We don’t talk much about awe nowadays, but awe is essential to gaining a real sense of God’s presence with us and in us. People who have no awe have no sense of God. The Old Testament talks about awe a lot, although most of our Bibles translate the term as “fear of the Lord,” as in “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I think “fear of the Lord” is a bad translation. It should be translated as “awe,” as in “Awe in the face of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

I think the shepherd’s connection with God through nature has something to do with the angel (probably Gabriel) appearing to the shepherds to announce Jesus birth, rather than to the kings, the magistrates, the temple priests, or the rabbis. It’s not just that the shepherds were out in nature. It’s what nature did to them that prepared them to hear the angel and to find Jesus.

How much do you know about ancient shepherds and their situation? To really get an appreciation for our passage it helps to know something about shepherds. First of all, they were considered nothing in the eyes of Jewish society. They were among the lowest ranks of society. Why? Because they had to tend to the sheep all the time. They were considered to be dirty. Their exposure to the sun often caused them to get skin conditions that others thought of as demonstrating sin. And their commitment to the sheep often left them unable to worship at either the Temple or the synagogues. As a result, they were discounted by the culture. But this had a spiritual benefit. Among the sheep the shepherds learned humility. They never had large egos that got in the way of them being open to God. They considered themselves to be nothing, but the result was that they were much more open to God. They had no power, so they were open to God’s power.

Second, their connection with nature caused them to live a life of awe. They were able to experience God in the hills, the sun, the moon, the stars, streams, valleys, and the sheep. They were awed by nature, and their awe created the conditions in which they could be both terrified in seeing the angel, while simultaneously wanting to hear everything the angel said. And their awe led them to be willing to follow.

Finally, they didn’t over-think their experience, but were open to the Holy. Think about us today. Whenever we have a spiritual experience we tend to try to analyze it from all directions. Perhaps part of that analysis is religious and theological, but we’d also try to do a psychological, pragmatic analysis, wondering if we were losing our minds. We’d test the experience against what everyone else says is reality, meaning that people living in reality don’t see angels. We would question the experience, but the shepherds accepted it.

Have you thought much about what gets in the way of our experiencing God? For a lot of us our problem is that we’re the complete opposite of the shepherds. We are all important in our own eyes, both individually and as a culture. We’re a culture of egos, and it’s hard to be open to God when our collective egos are so large. The result is that we don’t spend much time connecting with the divine in nature anymore. Before the 20th century, much of our culture lived amidst nature, whether that means in farming towns or villages and cities where nature was much closer. Today few live amidst real nature, and we’re poorer for it, although I don’t know what the answer is. I know that for me part of the answer is taking walks around Hereford Manor, a local lake in the area. For some of you it is boating or fishing on Lake Arthur, or walking and biking the trails of Moraine State Park.

The problem for most of our culture is that our lack of connection with nature means that don’t look at life with much of a sense of awe. In fact, we Americans are seldom awed. We’re too busy celebrating our greatness to be awed. Or we’re too busy trying to run the world to be awed. Also, we Americans are so well educated that we over-think God and the Holy. I believe that this is the reason so many young adults forget about God in college. They live in cocoons in which their food, shelter, and entertainment are provided for, and so they are free to think of life in a way that’s disconnected from reality. They can entertain thoughts of a world without God or religion because they are disconnected from any sources of awe. Also, college is a place of thinking, analyzing, and rationalizing, which makes the conditions right for over-thinking. Thus, spiritual and theological thinking is diminished.

The result of all of this is that it can be hard for us modern Americans to truly become open to God. So, here’s my question for you: What would it take for you to become more like a shepherd in your life?

I’m not asking what it would take for you to tend sheep. I’m asking what it would take for you to become a truly humble person, a person shaped by awe, and a person open to God in all things? The answers to these questions will offer you a path to the experience of God.

Amen.

Witnesses to Christ's Birth: Angels

Luke 1:26-38
November 29, 2009

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

So what do you make of the idea of angels? Are they real? Are they a figment of over-religious imaginations? Have you ever seen an angel, or do you know someone who has?

Frankly, I’ve never seen an angel, but I’ve met a number of people who swear that they’ve experienced something, or someone, that can only be called an angel. I’m fairly sure you have, too. So the question is, what are we supposed to do with these experiences?

We Presbyterians are a fairly rational bunch, which is both to our credit and our detriment. Typically in the Presbyterian tradition, and in our larger Reformed tradition (this is a tradition that comes out of Switzerland, and includes Congregationalist, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and the Christian Church denominations), we don’t do much with angels. Our tradition is one born of the Enlightenment, which means that we like our religion to be logical and reasonable, focusing on what is knowable and explainable. So you often don’t hear Presbyterians talking about angels, which is too bad. Unfortunately, we Presbyterians by nature don’t tend to gravitate toward unexplained spiritual phenomena, which means that we shy away from supporting the idea that angels exist and are active in the world today. So, traditionally Presbyterians don’t know what to do with angels.

But there is something about us Presbyterians that should get us talking about angels. We may be a rational bunch, but we’re also supposed to be a scriptural bunch. We’re supposed to be people who try to live our lives according to what the Bible teaches. This means that we should at least be open to the possibility of angels, and especially of angels working in our lives. So, I thought it might be kind of fun this morning to talk about angels, about the tradition of angels, and about people’s experiences of angels. Then I’ll let you decide what you should believe about angels.

Let me start with the tradition of angels. Who or what are they? According to tradition (which means that these beliefs aren’t necessarily found in the Bible) angels are “messengers” of God. The word angel literally means “messenger.” They are the first created beings of God, and their role is to serve God. Their role is to oversee God’s creation, and to be messengers of God to us humans in a way that protects us and leads us to God. They car for humans and do what they can to bring humans to God.

In fact, according to tradition, it is the calling to care about humans that caused Satan to become a fallen angel. The belief is that Satan was among the greatest of all the angels, but he considered humans to be vermin who were unworthy of God’s attention. Satan did not want to serve humans, but instead wanted to drive God away from humans. This is the foundation of the Book of Job. In it, Satan approaches God and says that the only reason humans even care about God is that God blesses humans so much. He challenged God, saying that if God took everything away from humans then humans would ignore God. So Satan is given permission to do whatever he wants to Job, one of God’s most faithful people, without killing him.

According to tradition, there are seven archangels, which means that they are among the most important angels. Among these, only two are mentioned by name in the Bible. The first one is Gabriel. He is the lead angel, and always appears as a messenger, proclaiming God’s will. He (or she—there really isn’t a gender to the angels, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I keep referring to Gabriel as “he.”) is first mentioned when he appears to Daniel to explain a dream that Daniel had just had. Gabriel also appears to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, at John’s conception, as well as to Mary and Joseph. In fact, according to Islamic belief, it is the angel Gabriel who appears to Mohammed and dictated the Koran to him. Gabriel is the main messenger of God.

Gabriel also mentions the angel Michael to Daniel, saying that Michael had been left to bring down the king of Persia and the Persian Empire, thus allowing the Israelites to eventually return to Israel. Michael, as you already know if you saw the film, Michael, is a warrior angel. He is a protector of the faithful, doing battle with evil forces and with Satan.

While there are names to all seven archangels, most come from tradition, not the Bible, although one more is mentioned in scripture,… depending on which scripture you are citing. You may already know this, but Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians have several books of scripture in their Bibles that are not included in Protestant Bibles. We call that scripture the Apocrypha. In one of those books, Tobit, another archangel appears who is named Raphael. Raphael is considered an angel of healing. Other than these, no others are named.

There is also a belief in much of both Jewish and Christian tradition that each person has a guardian angel, an angel assigned to each of us whose mission it is to keep us safe and connected with God and God’s love. These are the angels whom many people swear they’ve experienced. Do they exist? I don’t know, but let me tell you a story about several experiences, and I’ll let you decide.

Arlene Dulski had an experience several years ago that made her wonder about angels. It was Christmas Eve and she was trying to decide whether or not to attend the midnight mass at her church. She was having a very hard time. Her husband was in the hospital with complications from a brain tumor, which left her with her eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son to look after. Also, she was pregnant. She didn’t want to go to the service, but her kids begged her to go. Finally she agreed.

Driving to the church, the only open parking spot was six blocks from the church. The weather was bitter cold, the road icy. They barely made it on time and found three remaining seats in the back. Ten minutes in, both kids fell asleep. Shaking her head, she began to worry. Her son was a deep sleeper. In her condition she couldnʼt carry him and drag her daughter six blocks up the icy street back to her car.

At the end of the service, the parishioners filed by to leave, but she stayed sitting, about to cry. Then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder. It was a tall man, with the kindest eyes sheʼd ever seen. “Are you in trouble?” he asked. She felt so comfortable that she told him her dilemma. In one sweeping gesture, he lifted her son on his shoulder and helped her daughter up with his other arm. They walked in a quiet group to her car.

“I couldnʼt have done this without you,” she said, turning around after she had secured the kids in their seat belts. But her words disappeared in the night air. The snowy street was deserted. No footprints except her daughterʼs and hers (adapted from “The Man at Midnight Mass,” Guideposts Magazine, http://www.guideposts.com/print/30563).

Was the man an angel? What the man actually there? What had happened?

Back in 1961 and 1962, Edward Beckwell had a series of experiences that left him wondering about angels. It began when he bought a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. As he and his wife were setting up the tree up, he noticed that something made of black plastic was tied to the trunk of the tree. Carefully undoing the twine, and then unwrapping the plastic, he found in it a note from a young boy, Egbert McGraw, from either Legere or Lagare, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia (it was hard to tell from the handwriting which said the town and either N.B. or N.S.). The note asked whomever got it to ask Santa to bring him a pair of skates that would fit an 8 year-old boy.

He gave the note to his wife, but she just dismissed it out of hand, saying, “Right! Like we can get skates for every 8 year-old boy in Canada.” But Ed felt differently. He wanted to help the boy. The first step, after Christmas day, was to find out where the boy lived. Ed didn’t even know where to start. He scanned maps of both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but couldn’t find a town of Legere or Lagare. After spending the morning trying to do figure it out, he took a break and went to his local diner for a cup of coffee.

The owner, Sid, looked at Ed as he sat at the counter, and said, “Ed, you look irritated.” Ed said, “I am. I’m trying to figure out where a kid I’m hoping to send skates to in Canada lives, but I’m at a loss.” Sid said, “Why don’t you talk to the guy at the end of the counter. He came in this morning saying that his job is to help people, and he can’t find anyone to help.” Ed approached the man, an impeccably dressed man with a unique lapel pin that was a white feather tipped in gold. The man listened to Ed and said with a smile, “That’s a simple problem to fix. Go to the post office. They’ll help you.” So off Ed went, and within thirty minutes the man at the post office had figured out both the province and the town, and even contacted the local post office and got an address for the McGraw family.

The next day, Ed went looking for skates, but it was obvious that all the stores had sold out of kids skates before Christmas. No matter where he went they were out of kid’s skates. Frustrated again, he went to diner for a cup of coffee. To his surprise he saw the same man with the feather lapel pin. He told the man his problem, and the man said, “Go to the Sears in town, they’ll have them.” Ed explained that he had already tried the Sears, but the man was insistent. Ed went back, talked to the same salesman, who said that he was sure they were still out, but he’d go back and check. Within minutes he returned carrying a box of kid’s skates. He said, “I don’t know how I missed this earlier, but I think these are the size you want. They were sitting on a shelf all by themselves.” So, off Ed went to send the skates to Egbert McGraw.

Several weeks after sending the skates, he received a very nice thank you letter, and thus began a correspondence between Egbert and Ed. That summer, Ed and his wife even managed to visit Egbert in New Brunswick, where he found that Egbert didn’t even speak English, and that it was Egbert’s grandmother who had been translating for Egbert. Ed and his wife spent time with them, and even became the hit of the town as he gave the kids of the town a ride around in his convertible, with Egbert always sitting in the front seat, smiling.

The years passed by, and Ed and Egbert lost touch. One day, Ed was sitting in his house reading, and he heard a knock on the door. Answering it, he saw a very tall young man with two little girls. The man said, in a French accent,” Hi, I’m Egbert McGraw. We used to write back-and-forth when I was a child.” Ed was all smiles, and he was so excited to see the children. He asked Egbert how he had found him. Egbert said, “I was in Windsor, Ontario for another matter, and knew that you lived somewhere here in the Detroit area. I brought my children over to see if we could find you. We were sitting in a park, and I was trying to figure out what to do when a man came up to me and said that I looked troubled. I told him that I was looking for you, and he said, “I know Ed. Here’s how you get there.” With that he gave me directions. And he also gave me this envelope to give you when I saw you. Ed opened it up, and in it was a card with a picture of a feather with a gold tip.

So do angels exist? Were the people in these stories angels or just something else? Personally, I don’t know, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is never to dismiss people’s experiences of the supernatural, especially if they are experiences that make their lives better.

I believe that the world we see and know is just a fraction of all that exists in God’s realm, and so I don’t have to experience angels to believe that others have. I also don’t have to see angels to believe that they have been active in my life, because my life is so blessed I know that something out there looks over me. Ultimately, the thing I’ve learned about angels and the spiritual realm is that if we are open, something special works in our lives to guard us, guide us, and lead us ever God-ward. This is what I believe in.

Amen.

Are You a Scribe or a Widow?

Click Here to Listen to This Sermon

Mark 12:28-44

As Jesus taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’

Connie Frierson, our program director, and I were talking the other day. In the midst of our conversation I blurted out something that kind of shocked me as the words came out of my mouth. I said to her, “You know, I think my problem is that I really like ministry, and I really believe in this church. I’m just not sure that I like religion.” The words surprised me because that’s not the kind of thing that we pastors are supposed to say, but it’s true for me.

I get tired of religion in much the same way I get tired of politics. Over the course of my life I’ve become very tired of the process and partisanship of politics. I’ve grown tired of the anger and self-righteousness that not only our politicians exhibit, but also that our country exhibits. I’m not one to always see politicians as crooks. In fact, I see them as a reflection of us. We’re the ones who put them where they are, and too often we put into place people who are self-interested just like us. But what also tires me about politics is the constant bickering, the constant conflict, the constant bloviating about who’s right and who’s wrong.

In some ways my problem is with democracy. Democracy is messy. Democracy runs on conflict, but conflict that is eventually put aside in order to do what is right. I agree wholeheartedly with what Winston Churchill once said, which is that “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” He also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” The truth is that democracy is messy, democracy is tiring, democracy is irritating, but there is no better system conceived of. Thus, it’s the best and only system. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t grow tired of it.

I have a similar irritation with religion. I grow tired of the constant conflict, anger, and bickering that goes on with the grinding together of different religions and denominations. Everyone in every religion is always right and never wrong, and so we have unending conflict. The real problem is that to be human is to be in conflict. Humans have a hard time getting along because all of us are always right and never wrong. Think of the times that you’ve argued a point about anything—political, religious, about music, sports, or anything else? When have you ever said, “Ya know, I’m pretty much wrong in what I’m saying…”? None of us ever does that, which means that we are always right about whatever we believe.

At the same time, whether we like it or not, religion is still essential to our spiritual growth. Democracy may be irritating, but it is a tremendous form of government that really allows us to grow as a nation to be better than we can possibly believe. The same idea is true of religion. It is irritating, but it also allows people to grow spiritually in ways that they would never grow themselves alone. I suppose the best we can say about religion is to paraphrase the character Flounder from the film Animal House: “Religion! Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.”

I’m not alone in my religion fatigue. Jesus got extremely frustrated with the Jewish religion, and I wonder if he gets equally irritated with Christianity. Why would he get frustrated with Christianity? Because his whole focus was to try to get people to become centered in God rather than rules, and in love rather than law. And despite his teachings that lead us to God and love, so many Christians would rather have their faith be about rules and law. We forget the center of the gospel, which is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and others as ourselves. This center of the gospel is a focus on God first, and letting God’s love flow out of this through us and into the world. But we forget.

No matter how hard people within religions try to focus on God and love, too often they end up focusing on other things. Sometimes that focus is on big, weighty issues that divide us. For example, as I was folding laundry yesterday I was watching a travel show. I love to watch travel shows, probably because we don’t get to travel much since we have young children, and this one way I can travel with the television for at least 30 minutes. At any rate, I was watching a travel show on Northern Ireland. The host was in Belfast, and showed the Catholic section and the Protestant sections of that city. He was talking with a man about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland—the conflicts over a number of decades between those who want to be part of the Republic of Ireland, and those who want to remain loyal to Britain. I found it interesting that both sections of the city were very similar to each other in the signs that were painted on walls. In the Catholic section there were signs with the Irish Republican flag, praising the IRA, and showing arms holding guns in defiance of the Protestant loyalists. In the Protestant sections there were almost identical signs praising England, with the British flag, and arms holding guns.

These “troubles” in Northern Ireland are often depicted as a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. But I would defy anyone to show where it says in either church’s scripture that we should take up arms against each other and kill. This isn’t a conflict between Protestants and Catholics. It’s a conflict between those who would like Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland, and those who would like to be part of the United Kingdom. The people who take up arms, claiming that they represent their faith have forgotten about God and love.

I see the same sort of forgetfulness when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. The issue of homosexuality is dividing many denominations right now, including ours. We are constantly fighting in the Presbyterian Church (USA) over whether or not to ordain homosexuals. What I think we’ve forgotten in this whole fight is the issue of love, and as a result I wonder how well we maintain our focus on God. We’re awfully focused on arguing about our rules and laws.

Where this really struck home to me was an experience I had about fifteen years ago. My wife, Diane, works as a social worker for the Hemophilia Center of Southwestern Pennsylvania. She was originally hired to help the HIV positive hemophiliac patients, all of whom had contracted the AIDS virus through injections of blood products that allow their blood to clot. Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder in which the blood cannot clot, resulting in massive bleedings in even the smallest cuts. As a result of her job, Diane worked on the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force for a number of years.

As part of her work for this organization, she had been involved for many years with something called the “Healing Weekend,” which is a retreat for people who are HIV positive and their families. They bring in speakers, entertainment, educators, health care workers, and more to help these people live with this terrible disease. Every year, as part of the retreat, they have a healing worship service. One year the Episcopal priest who normally does the healing service couldn’t make it because he was sick. He asked me if I would be willing to step in and help, which I did.

As part of the service I asked those with the HIV virus to come to the front and to stand in a circle. I went from person to person, mostly men, and offered prayers of healing for each one, and afterwards anointed each one with oil.

As I passed from man to man, most had tears in his eyes. Afterwards, one of the men came up to me and said, “Do you know why all of those men were crying?” I said, “I suppose it’s because they were touched by the service.” He said, “Sort of, but the real reason is that you are the first straight pastor to pray for us. We are used to gay priests and ministers praying for us because they are one of us. But to have a straight Christian pastor do that is something that none of us ever experiences. We’re used to being hated and judged by Christians.” We’re used to being hated and judged by Christians. What does this say about us? I think it tells us that too often our focus is on rules and laws, not God and love.

Despite the divisions that come through these bigger issues, more often the issues that divide us in religion are much smaller issues. We get divided by things such as worship styles and hymn choices. And the divisions are growing substantially each year. I’m not necessarily talking about divisions in our particular church, but in many churches. What’s happening all over the place is that churches are fighting over music in church, and these fights are splitting churches, or causing people to leave their churches and to start new ones that cater to generations unhappy with the worship styles of other generations. We have churches that are committed to traditional worship, churches that are committed to contemporary worship, and churches that are committed to Emergent worship (churches like the Hot Metal Community Church that led a worship service here a number of years ago). What we are seeing increasingly in so many communities are churches divided by generations. In traditional churches we see few younger people. In contemporary churches we see fewer of the oldest and the youngest generations. In Emergent churches we see few of the older generations. We’re becoming more and more divided as the focus becomes on rules and laws about worship and music, and less on God and love.

It’s not just we religious people who are like this but even those who reject religion are like this. They complain about us Christians being hypocritical for not being about love, but then they are just like us. For example, do you know who Christopher Hitchens is? He wrote a book a couple of years ago titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. His thesis is that religion causes many of the problems in the world, including wars. He says that Religion causes more wars than are caused by any other reason. My question back is twofold: First, since when did we give human nature a pass? Since when have humans been so peaceful by nature, and if humans are so peaceful, what is it about religion that causes them to be so violent? Second, where does it say in anyone’s scripture that we should start wars against each other? The truth is that humans manipulate religion to start wars because part of human nature is to be in conflict. There has never been a started by a religion that wasn’t started first by a human. It’s not the religions that cause wars. It’s humans manipulating religion who cause wars. These are the same people who ignore God and love by creating false rules and laws that justify war.

All of this gets back to our passage. What is the difference between the scribe and the widow? The difference is that the scribe loves everything religious. The widow loves God. The scribe is a person responsible for knowing scripture by heart, and for telling people how to apply it to their lives. The widow is simply trying to love and serve God. The scribe wants to be seen as religious. The widow wants to give to others to love them and love God. True religion, as irritating as it can get, leads us to focus on God and love. The religious who love religion are often those who lead us to focus on rules and laws.

I think that Jesus was trying to overcome division by pointing out that it was the widow, not the scribe, who is the great one. She gave sacrificially to God. The scribe just wanted to be seen as serving God.

In this vein, what I’m proudest of in this church is that we have managed, for the most part, to overcome the divisions of our culture in order to focus on God and love. If you look around at our church, we are not a church divided by ideology or theology. We have people who are very conservative, people who are very liberal, and everything in-between. We’ve managed to hold onto a balance that’s missing in so many churches that teach to be a Christian means believing and behaving as they do. We’ve managed to let our religion focus us on God and love, not rules and laws.

Our passage for this morning is a reminder to us that we can get so focused on religion that we forget God. So here’s my question for you: When you reflect on your life, which one are you? Are you like the scribe, or are you like the widow?

Amen.

All Things Are Possible

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John 11:1-16, 32-44

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?...’

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

What do you think? Was it possible for Jesus to raise a dead guy? Many people would say no, but if the answer is no, then what is the line between what is and isn’t possible in life? No one ever defines it, unless they are saying that the only things that are possible are those things that comply to the known laws of physics. But the funny thing about that about the known laws of physics is that they keep changing. So was it possible for Jesus to break the known laws of physics?

What’s possible and not possible? And if we declare events like this one to be impossible, then what are we to make of an experience a friend of mine had years ago? I met Terry when I was working as an associate pastor. She had moved to the Murrysville area from Wisconsin. Like me she had a master in social work and had worked as a therapist. She also was a woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mother. All her life she wanted to raise children, but because of a disease she caught early in her adulthood, she only had one healthy ovary on the right side of her body and one healthy fallopian tube on the other. If you know anything about biology, you know that there is no way that an egg can travel across the body cavity to the other side. Her only option was in vitro fertilization, especially since her husband was against adopting children.

Tracy went through a number of treatments over the years at a cost of thousands of dollars. Every single one of them was a failure. Eventually, the doctors told her that nothing would work and that she had to face the facts that she just wasn’t going to get pregnant and have children. This devastated Tracy. She didn’t know what to do. She struggled through her disappointment. She and I had prayed for her to able to have children, but nothing seemed to work. After the decision to end the treatments, she just didn’t talk much about having children.

Then one day she walked into my office with a big ear-to-ear grin. I asked her what had happened, and she said, “I’m two months pregnant!” I said to her, “But I thought you quit the in vitros.” She said, “I did. This was a natural pregnancy.” I then asked her what had happened. This is the part that continues to inspire me.

She told me that about two-and-a-half months earlier she was going through a funk of depression over the failures of the in vitro treatments, and she was crying. She kept wondering why God wouldn’t let her have children. As she wondered this, she prayed, “Lord, you know how much I want to be a mother. You know how much I’ve wanted this my whole life. It doesn’t look like it is going to happen, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. So, Lord, I give you my life. If it is your will that I become a mother, I will become the best mother I can be. If not, I will serve you the best I can in whatever I do. All I want to do is to be yours, so I will follow you and serve you whatever you do.” Two weeks later she was pregnant.

Terry said that she was convinced that she became pregnant because she had surrendered to God. Her miracle happened because of her surrender. Seven months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Two years later, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy.

So, was her experience possible, because it defied the laws of physics. I suppose the impossible can happen, and perhaps an egg somehow naturally found it’s way across the body cavity to the fallopian tube, but what is the likelihood of this happening, especially when doctors told her that things like this couldn’t happen.

What’s the line between what is and isn’t possible? Would you say that Rita Klaus crossed that line? For many years, Rita, who until recently lived in Cranberry Township, suffered from multiple sclerosis. She first noticed symptoms of the illness when she was a sister in a Roman Catholic order. She started to have strange sensations, such as periodically losing her sight, and numbness in her legs.

After undergoing a series of medical tests, the doctors came back with a frightening diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. Over the years, the symptoms gradually worsened, so much so that it interfered with her ability to remain a nun. She eventually left the convent and moved to Mars, Pennsylvania, becoming a teacher in the local public school system. For a while, her symptoms abated and she managed to live a relatively normal life.

Over the years Rita married and had children. Then her MS came back with a vengeance, eventually confining her to leg braces. As her symptoms increased, so did her bitterness as she sunk deeper into a pit of despair. Her despair crippled her faith to the point that God no longer mattered to her.

In the midst of her darkness, a light shined. A friend of hers, Marianne, who worked at St. Gregory’s School here in Zelienople, called one day and said, “Rita? Listen, there’s going to be a healing service over at St. Ferdinand’s next Wednesday evening—want to come?” Rita scoffed at her. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in healing; that stuff happened 2000 years ago… It’s a bunch of fakes!”

Marianne persisted and finally convinced Rita to come to the service. The service was on a Wednesday evening, and by the time they got there it was packed. The only seat available was in the front, which is exactly where Rita did not want to sit. An usher grabbed her and pulled her down the aisle, and placed her in a pew near the front. During the first hymn, everyone stood up to sing. Rita did too, but the metal of her braces slid on the floor, and she slowly started to slide under the pew in front of her. The people around her grabbed her and held her up. A person next to her held the hymnal in front of her face. She was humiliated and now the center of attention.

As the priests processed by, she heard a loud whisper from a priest behind her, saying “Wait, wait!” The procession stopped, turned around, and laid their hands on her and prayed. Then, something incredible happened. Suddenly she felt as though an ocean of peace was inundating her. This peace lasted for the rest of the evening, and it changed her whole outlook on life. She was a changed and transformed person. All the anger, bitterness, and despair had evaporated, and in its place were gratitude, love, and peace from God.

Rita had experienced a spiritual healing, yet her MS remained. Why would God heal her spiritually, but not physically? Rita didn’t ask this question. In fact, this spiritual healing was infinitely more important to her than any physical healing could have been. She told me, back when she spoke here at Calvin Church in 1997, that given the choice between a physical healing and a spiritual one, she would take the spiritual one every time. It allowed her to plunge back into life with faith, hope, love, and purpose.

Still, over the next few years her body declined even more. On the inside she felt a great sense of peace and harmony, but on the outside her body was slowly deteriorating. Eventually, she was forced into a wheelchair. She prayed to God, but surprisingly not for healing. Instead, she prayed for God’s grace to sustain her. Over the next few years, Rita devoted herself to Christ. She immersed herself in a variety of spiritual disciplines and practices, often in the hope that they would lead to physical healing. She took courses in scripture and theology at a local college. Still no physical healing.

One night, she went to bed and, as was her custom, spent quiet time with God. She had been doing this for the three years since her spiritual healing. She was praying the rosary when she heard a voice: “Why don’t you ask?” She looked around the room but could see no one. The television and radio were off, so the voice did not come from there. She knew in her heart that the voice was real. It was a gentle, almost pleading voice. She wondered what it was that she was supposed to ask for, and suddenly it came to her: she was to ask for healing. This was something she had never asked for. She had prayed about many things in the past, but not specifically for her own healing. The following words formed in her heart and came out of her mouth: “Mary, my mother, Queen of Peace,… please ask your Son to heal me in any way I need to be healed. I know your Son has said that if you have faith, and say to the mountains: move, that they will move. I believe. Please help my unbelief.”

She then fell asleep. The next morning she woke up, forgetting her experience from the night before. She had to hurry because she had overslept and was late for a class she was taking at LaRoche College. She drove herself in her specially equipped van. During the class something strange happened. It felt as though heat was surging from her feet through her legs, and across her whole body. She felt itchy all over, especially in her legs. Her toes were moving inside her shoes, which is something that hadn’t happened in years. She scratched her leg and could feel her fingernails. This was something she hadn’t felt so completely in years.

Driving home afterwards she pulled into her driveway and felt another sensation she hadn’t felt in years. She had to go to the bathroom. She stopped the van and hurriedly dragged her braced body, using her crutches, out of the door and onto the driveway. The braces locked in place, and she scissor-stepped across the driveway to the front door. In the bathroom, she unlocked her brace and looked down at her leg. For years her one leg had grown progressively shorter than the other as the kneecap moved to the inside of her knee. Now it was completely normal. She quickly took off her braces. Remembering the prayer from the night before, she thought to herself that if she was healed she should be able to walk up the stairs. With that, she launched up the stairs with a bound. She reached the top, let out a yelp of joy, and ran down them, out the front door, and into the driveway. She had been healed.

Since that day in 1986, Rita has never had a recurrence of her MS—even of minor symptoms. She travels the world over to tell others her story and also about God’s love. If you are interested in reading about Rita’s experiences, she published them in a book, Rita’s Story, by Paraclete Press.

So, was she really healed by God, or was it just some sort of coincidental event? Perhaps it was just some sort of spontaneous remission, although what do you do with all of the other things that she experienced—the feelings of peace, calm, and of spiritual healing? If you’re not sure what to do with this story, what would you make of Don Piper’s story.

Don Piper is a Baptist pastor who had an experience of healing and more in 1989. Piper had been at a large annual conference for Baptist pastors in Texas, hearing inspiring preachers and teachers. At its end he had two choices about which way to drive home. He could go right out of the Trinity Pines Conference Center, or left. Since he had always taken the left route, which was an eastern route driving down Highway 59, he decided to take a right, heading west down I-45. That decision changed the whole course of his life.

He hadn’t driven more than five miles when disaster hit. Driving along a narrow road with no shoulders, he looked in horror as an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer crossed the center line and headed right for him. The truck ran right over his car, then careened off to hit several other cars. Piper and his care were crushed. Within minutes fire engines, ambulances, and police cars were at the scene. They checked on everyone, and most of the victims suffered only minor injuries. Don Piper, on the other hand, was not okay. He was declared dead by the paramedics on the scene. He had no pulse, no signs of life at all. They checked him numerous times, but each time it was apparent that he was dead.

A massive traffic jam piled up behind the accident, and another pastor from the conference, Dick Onerecker, was in that jam. Wondering what was causing the traffic jam, he walked a half a mile to the scene. Seeing the damage, he went to a police officer and asked if he could help, telling him that he was a pastor. The officer told him that everyone except the man in the crushed car seemed okay. Onerecker, in that moment, felt called to pray for Don Piper, so he asked the trooper if he could. The trooper looked at him and said, “The man’s dead. There’s nothing left to pray for.” Onerecker asked again if he could pray for the dead man. Onerecker wasn’t even sure himself why he felt so compelled to pray for the dead man in the mangled car, but he persisted. The officer said, “Well, you know, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead, but I’ve go to tell you it’s an awful sight. He’s dead, and it’s really a mess under the tarp. Blood and glass are everywhere, and the body’s all mangled.” Dick insisted, so the officer consented.

The car was a mess, and Onerecker had to force his way up through the back of the hatchback. Stretching through the mangled steel as much as possible, he reached out to Don Piper’s body, managing to barely touch his left shoulder, and began to pray for Piper. As he prayed, he sang a number of hymns. This went on for five or ten minutes. As he sang “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” he heard someone else singing with him. Looking around for someone next to the car, he slowly realized that the voice he heard was Don Piper’s. Piper was alive. Scrambling out of the car, he quickly got the paramedics, who rushed to the scene, used the Jaws of Life to get Piper out, and rushed him to the hospital.

So, for those thirty minutes that Don Piper was apparently dead, what did he experience? According to him, he was taken to heaven. He says that he was dead and in heaven. He felt an incredible sense of peace and joy, and all around him were loved ones who had died before him, hugging him, laughing, and praising God. He saw so many people he had loved, and all were radiant with light. He said that there was no sense of time at all. It also felt more real than any experiences he had ever had in life. He felt absorbed in love. He also sensed God’s presence, although he didn’t see God. Everything was glowing with, as he says, “a dazzling intensity.” Human words couldn’t describe his experiences. He also heard the most amazingly beautiful music he had ever heard, and it seemed to be everywhere, and all of it seemed to be praising God. As he reflected later, “I was home; I was where I belonged. I wanted to be there more than I had ever wanted to be anywhere on earth. Tim had slipped away, and I was simply present in heaven. All worries, anxieties, and concerns vanished. I had no needs, and I felt perfect.”

There’s more to this story, but I’ll let you read it in his book, Thirty Minutes in Heaven. As he seemed ready to stay in heaven, something happened. There was a pause, and in that pause he heard another voice, one definitely not the heavenly ones. It was singing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” He became conscious in the car, hearing Onerecker singing, and aware that his hand was being held tightly.

It took more than a year for him to recover from the massive injuries he had sustained. He had one more interesting experience about a year later. He met Onerecker’s wife, and he told her how much it helped him to feel her husband’s hand clutching his while lying in the crumpled car. The wife said, “Dick wasn’t holding your hand. He couldn’t have. Think about it. Your hand was under the dashboard, and Dick could barely stretch to touch your shoulder.” Piper replied, “Then whose hand was it?” She smiled and said, “I think you know…”

So, did Don Piper really have this experience? What do we do with these experiences? I suppose we can dismiss them, but if do so we miss something important. We miss the fact that there’s so much more to this world than we can ever understand, so much more to God than we can ever comprehend. But here’s the reality, very little is possible for those with little faith, but for those with faith, all things are possible.

Amen.

Becoming a Great Servant

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Mark 10:35-45


James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

There’s a television show that I love. I don’t watch it all the time, but it is one of the default shows I turn to if I can’t find a good movie or show on television. I love it not only because of its subject matter, but because of what it has taught me about life. The show is The Dog Whisperer, and it is on the National Geographic channel. I’m not sure what night it’s on, but the channel shows reruns constantly, which is how I catch it.

The gist of the show is this. Do you have a problem dog? Call the Dog Whisperer, and he’ll have the dog straightened out in 24 hours. The Dog Whisperer is a man named Cesar Milan, and he’s from Southern California. He gets called in to help with all sorts of problems: dogs who tinkle of on the floor when a stranger comes in the room; dogs that bark and growl and threaten little children; dogs that attack other dogs when they are taken on walks; and dogs that bite when people try to pet them.

What the Dog Whisperer teaches is that the basic problem with virtually every problem dog is the owner. Often the owner has not shown the dog that she or he is the alpha dog, which then confuses the dog and causes behavior problems. Milan says that healthy, happy dogs know their place and are happy to be part of a pack—human or canine—but the problem dogs tend to act out when they don’t know their place. When that happens they try to take charge in doglike ways, which means becoming violent towards anyone whom they sense is a threat to their dominance. Milan teaches that dogs are obsessed with one basic dynamic—dominance and submission.

His answer is to teach the owners to gently, but assertively, take charge. He teaches the owners how to take charge by showing them how to properly take dogs on a walk, how to show the dogs that they are safe, and that we humans are in charge. Ultimately with dogs, we either take charge, or they will try to take charge. They don’t understand life without dominance.

Watching The Dog Whisperer I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot of dog in us humans. Just like dogs we have a need for dominance. We have an ingrained need to be in control and in charge. We have a need to have others do our bidding, even if our bidding is to let us be in charge of the kitchen, the television remote, or our bedrooms. We’re like dogs. We need to know our place, and we love it if we can be “top dog.”

It shouldn’t surprise you that we’re like dogs, or any other animal for that matter, since we are animals. We have the same instinctual drives and urges that all animals do. But there’s one difference between animals and us. We are also spirit. We can rise above being merely animal. In fact, my definition of sin is not so much that sin is bad behavior as much as it is living life cut off from our spirit and God’s Spirit, resulting in our living like animals. Think about all those behaviors that we normally think of as sinful: lust, greed, gluttony, anger, or any of the other deadly sins. They are sins of our becoming more like animals, becoming consumed with animalistic obsessions—food, possessions, what other animals have and we don’t. The more our lives are lived in animalistic pursuits, the more sinful we become because we become cut off from God’s Spirit, who leads us to transcend our animal natures—to transcend the need for dominance.

This all goes into our passage for today because Jesus is teaching us to not be like dogs looking for dominance, but to be like Spirit looking to serve others. You see, to be truly spiritual means to be servants, not masters.

Paul Bailey discovered how spiritual servants can make all the difference in life because a servant changed his life. He stood on a stage in the hall of St. Ignatius Church in New York City, among 177 people who were graduating from the Ready, Willing, and Able program. Eighteen months earlier he was homeless, sleeping on a grate on 84th street, when George McDonald walked up to him. McDonald asked him if he would like a job and a place to live. Bailey skeptically said, “yes.” McDonald told him that he was part of a program that could help Bailey, if Bailey was serious. All Bailey had to do was to show up and be serious about changing his life.

McDonald had made it his life commitment to help people like Paul Bailey change their lives. Perhaps he was sensitive to the plight of the homeless because of his own home life. His parents divorced before he was one-year-old. He never really knew his father. Then his mother died when he was thirteen, meaning that he was left mostly under the care of a local Roman Catholic school and orphanage. It was there that he learned values that would guide his life, such as caring about the poor and the homeless.

Despite the influence of the church, he graduated from high school with a desire to mainly look after himself. After one year of college, he dropped out to work for McGregor Sportswear. He quickly rose up the ranks and became wealthy, eating out most nights in very expensive restaurants, partying at Club 21, and counting Joe Namath as one of his friends. Then something happened to spark a change in his thinking. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and his whole perspective changed. McDonald kept thinking about how the world’s priorities were skewed. The change wasn’t immediately apparent, but he increasingly thought more about the poor and the disadvantaged. He noticed the disparity when he would go out to dinner and spend $200, only to have to step around a homeless man lying on the sidewalk as he left the restaurant. It gnawed at him.

Trying to do something about the problem, he ran for Congress three times and lost all three times. Still, he had made valuable connections that would come in handy as he looked for ways to help the poor. Wanting to make a difference, he spent 700 straight nights handing out sandwiches to the poor, but still realized he needed to do more. Eventually he developed a vision. He would create a program to train the homeless to work, and to give them lives off the street. That’s how he came up with the idea for the Ready, Willing, and Able program. It’s also how he decided to start a charitable fund, the Doe Fund, that would reach out to the homeless. It got its name from a homeless woman, Mama Doe, who was locked out of Grand Central Station by police one night, a place she regularly slept in, and thus froze to death. McDonald. He recognized her from her picture in the paper, wearing a scarf he had given her three weeks before, while realizing that he had regularly given sandwiches to her.

Sparked by her death he found the drive to do something or the homeless. Since then he has committed his life to getting people off the streets and back into a responsible life. He found his life work as a servant, serving the poor, the hungry, and the homeless. He lived out our passage for today, not seeking greatness, but seeking to be a servant.

Unfortunately, too man people thing that to be a servant means being weak. What they don’t realize is that to become a servant like George McDonald requires tremendous courage. Becoming a servant doesn’t mean that you can’t be in charge. McDonald was in charge of his charity. The difference is that to be a servant means to be a master who cares about the welfare of those around her or him. It’s the CEO, president, vice president, office manager, sales manager, or store owner who cares as much about co-workers as she or he does about customers. It’s the coach, teacher, or scoutmaster who cares as much about the struggling kid as he or she does about the star kid. It’s the Christian who cares as much about the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the hurting, as she or he does about her or himself. It’s the Christian who listens to God and is willing to look for opportunities to serve at any moment in life. And you never know when the opportunity to serve will strike.

Joey learned about servanthood one day in class. He was in the third grade, and as he sat in class he realized that he had to go to the bathroom. But he was shy. He didn’t want to raise his hand and ask. So he held it. Then catastrophe hit. He couldn’t hold it any longer. Looking down he noticed wet pants and a puddle. He prayed: “God, please don’t let anyone see me. Please don’t let anyone see me.”

The teacher started walking toward him. If she noticed, she’d make a big deal about it, and the other kids would never let him forget. She moved closer. She was about to look at him. Then Suzie stood up, grabbed the fishbowl, and said to the teacher, “Can I feed the fish? Can I feed the fish?” As she moved the bowl toward the teacher, she tripped, and spilled the whole bowl onto Joey’s lap. He was drenched.

Everyone rushed to help Joey, and laughed at Suzie’s clumsiness. As the kids cleaned up the mess, the teacher took Joey to the gym to get him dry clothes. Later that day Joey saw Suzie on the bus, and timidly asked, “Did you do that on purpose?” Suzie smiled and said, “I peed in my pants once, too. I knew you needed me to help you.”

There are a lot of ways we can serve in life. We can do serve in big ways, and we can serve in small ways. I want you to reflect on your own life. Are you a servant in your life? In what ways? And in what ways may God be calling you to serve even more?

Amen.

Modern Marriage

Mark 10:1-12

Jesus left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.
Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

A number of years ago, perhaps six or seven, I paid a heartbreaking visit to a women’s shelter in the North Hills. I had been asked by a counselor at the shelter to come and talk with the women about the role of spirituality in overcoming abuse. I felt extremely privileged to be there because, frankly, men only rarely get to go to a women’s shelter. They are hidden and kept secret in order to protect the women from their abusive husbands and boyfriends.

My talk really focused on the idea that God was on their side, and that despite what they may think, God wants them to be whole and healthy, and not to be subject to chronic abuse. In discussions after our talk, they focused on something that had never occurred to me before. A number of them said that they had a hard time with their faith because one of the tactics that their husbands used to keep them in the relationship was the Bible, and specifically our passage for today. They said that because of passages like this one, they still felt incredibly guilty for leaving their relationships. They worried that God was angry with them and that if they didn’t go back they would be consigned to Hell. One woman said that she struggled with the idea that perhaps the abuse she received was God’s disciplining hand teaching her to be better, and that she was hit so often because she wasn’t trying hard enough to be good. I had a hard time convincing her and them that God wanted good for them, not bad. Some were hard to convince because they kept coming back to this passage.

Passages like the one for today are really difficult to deal with because they seem so hard and fast, so black and white. The rule is that you get married and you stay in the marriage no matter what, right? No excuses. No exceptions. What is hard about these passages is that they go against how the rest of the gospels portray Jesus. In the rest of the gospels we find Jesus leading with love and understanding first. He says things such as that the law was made for humans, not humans for the law.

He always seems to be on the side of people who were hurting, struggling, or who had been outcast because of the law. He loved and healed lepers and blind men who were told that their skin rash or blindness was a sign of God’s judgment. He loved and healed outcasts such as the Syro-Phoenician woman, the woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage, the Roman centurion, and more. How, then, could he be so judgmental and harsh to those who were divorced, especially those who were divorced through no fault of their own because their husbands had kicked them out? Are there really no valid reasons for divorce? What about people who are stuck in abusive marriages? What about people who are married to someone with an addiction who refuses to get help and is tearing apart the family? What about those who are married to chronically irresponsible spouses who waste away all the money, ignore the children, and carry with serial affairs?

Do you know what the problem with this passage is? The problem is that it was spoken to address a particular problem that existed in Jesus’ day, but not so much in our day. On the surface this passage seems fairly straightforward, but the conditions Jesus was speaking to really don’t exist in our day-and-age. Let me take you back a few thousand years and I think you’ll see what I mean.

The fact was that Jesus wasn’t trying to outlaw divorce as much as he was trying to protect families. To understand what I mean you have to appreciate the dynamics of marriage in Jesus’ day. To begin with, women weren’t free like they are today. Back then women were considered to be pretty much like chattel—as property of their fathers’ until they became property of their husbands. Husbands had all the rights, women almost none. Women were considered to be a step above slaves.

If a man were to divorce his wife, there was little to stop him. In fact, the understanding of divorce in Jewish culture was based on Deuteronomy 24:1, which said, “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house.” The Sadducees limited the number of “objectionable” reasons for divorcing, but not the Pharisees (and it was the Pharisees who asked Jesus about divorce in our passage). The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus by getting him to give an answer that would get him in hot water with the Sadducees, the Pharisees, or both. For the Pharisees, divorce was a fairly simple matter. They gave wide latitude in determining what was objectionable. A man could divorce his wife for a variety of reasons ranging from adultery, to her quarrelling too much, to her speaking in too loud a voice in the marketplace, to her getting old and a bit ugly. Now, what could a woman divorce her husband for? Adultery, and she had to prove it. He didn’t have to prove it of her, but she did of him.

So, let’s go back to why Jesus said what he did. He was trying to protect women from being cast out. When these women were divorced, there was nothing for them. Often their families would not take them back because of the stigma of divorce, so what was left was a life of prostitution or one of being a virtual slave. Jesus was saying to these Pharisees, “Look, I’m not going to give you a way out. Live according to your commitments. You’ve promised to give a good life to your wife. Honor that. Don’t be looking for someone prettier or better, love what you have.” I don’t think he was even thinking about abused women or about people who are stuck in destructive marriages. He was thinking about the condition the Pharisees presented him, which was the rampant disregard for marriage that many Pharisee men had. He also knew that Jewish culture was being influenced by Roman culture, where it was not uncommon for a person to be married and divorced up to eight times in a life.

So, with all this under consideration, what is the Christian view regarding marriage? Is all divorce wrong? Should people stay together no matter what? Actually, I think that’s the wrong question. Certainly God doesn’t want us to stay in marriages that are unhealthy and that kill life rather than give life. I don’t think that marriage is so important that God would rather have us be abused, neglected, and harmed, all for the sake of keeping a marriage intact. The fact is that sometimes lives are made healthier by divorce, especially when there is abuse, neglect, chronic addiction, and the like. Sometimes the only way to protect life is to get divorced. And the truth is that God will work with what we have. I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about divorce. I’m clear that some people divorce out of convenience or lack of commitment, and that’s a tragedy because their immaturity often leads them to become serial divorcers.

I think the better question to ask is what God wants in our marriages. Divorces will happen, and I don’t believe that if you have been divorced that God will abandon you, nor do I believe that God wants you to be lonely and alone for the rest of your life. But I think there’s a larger point here. What God ultimately wants is healthy families, and healthy families generally come from healthy marriages. For me the modern Christian question isn’t whether divorced allowed. It’s how to keep divorce from happening.

The issue for us today is that we face so many stresses on marriages today that didn’t exist in Jesus’ day. For the past twenty years the statistics are that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. That means that whenever I do a wedding, half of them will end in divorce. That also means that 50% of all children are growing up in single parent or stepparent homes. The result of all these divorces is that we have a generation reaching, or in, young adulthood who are scared of making a commitment to marriage because they are afraid of failure. They’ve witnessed the pain that comes with divorce, and have a hard time following through with commitments as a result. I resonate with them because I grew up in a divorced household, and I know that I have to try extra hard to stay committed.

Do you know what’s even more tragic? The answer most people have to their fear of commitment is to simply not get married. They move in together and therefore believe they are protecting themselves from the pain of divorce. Unfortunately, the break up rate is actually higher than the divorce rate after ten years (57% to 30%, according to a Columbia University study). And those who get married after having lived together have an astonishing 80% divorce rate. The question for us is not so much about how do we avoid divorce, but how do we keep our marriages intact? So, with this in mind, what I want to give three tips to those of you who are married, and those of you who want to be married.

1. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about us: The fact is that we live in a very narcissistic culture in which most people are constantly thinking of themselves first and only. Today far too many people enter marriages asking, “What can this person give and do for me?” That’s simple immaturity. It’s normal for people to have that attitude when they are dating. No one dates another at first, asking, “Gee, how can I be all about her or him?” We ask, “What does that person do for me?” We like how the other person makes me feel. We become infatuated with her or him because of what she or he brings to me.

Over time, though, we need to give up our focus on ourselves. And we need to give up our focus on just what the other wants. The question we need to ask is, “What is right for us.” Good marriages are based on us, not you or me. That doesn’t mean that good relationships are perfect. We all slip into a me- or you-focus. But the best marriages are sacrificial in the sense that I am willing to give up what I want, you are willing to give up what you want, in order for us to do whatever makes us healthy.

I’ve noticed over the years that unhealthy marriages have one or both spouses who keep the focus only on themselves. In fact, when I put on my marital therapist hat, I notice something about my ability as a counselor. When I work with couples where both really want to make the marriage work, I am the greatest counselor in the world. When I work with couples were just one really doesn’t care about the marriage anymore and is only meeting with me to put down one more mark on the checklist of things to do in order to get divorced, I’m the worst counselor in the world. The point is that marriages in which the couple takes us seriously usually turn out to be healthy marriages. Marriages in which one or both merely take me or you seriously end up in divorce.

2. We’re # 1: If jobs, kids, house, money, sports, friends, or anything else becomes more important than the marriage, the marriage is lost. This happens all the time. At first our marriages are the most important part of our lives. Then work starts to get in the way. Then we have kids, and they begin to come first. Perhaps our friends also become more important than the marriage, as do sports, hunting, shopping, or anything else.

The fact is that families are only as healthy as the marriages at their center. Do you want to have healthy kids? Start with working on your marriage. If the bond between husband and wife is strong, then the children will be more likely to be healthy physically, mentally, relationally, and spiritually. What does it mean to make your marriage #1? It means making your relationship with your spouse more important than your work, your friends, sports, activities, and even your kids. I’m not saying that you should neglect your kids. Only that by making your relationship #1, you actually help your children.

So what does that mean on a practical level? Well, one thing I often tell spouses when they come for counseling is that they should make going out on dates a priority. And by going out on dates I don’t mean getting together with friends, or going to a movie where you sit next to each other but watch a screen for two hours. A date is where you go and do something fun together and talk—not about kids or work, but about life and your relationship. You’d be surprised at how many couples struggle to go out and just talk. The point, though, is that if your relationship is #1, your family will be healthy.

3. God is Love: This is an aspect of marriage that far too many people neglect. When you got married, did you notice that you not only made a promise to each other, but you also made a covenant with God? What that means is that you made a promise to God to put God at the center, which also means that you recognized that you can’t love without God.

I don’t know what you make of that last comment, but I’m speaking out of the first letter of John, who says in 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In other words, if you want to find more love in your life, find more God. The more open we are to God, the more open we are to love. Conversely, the more closed off we are to God, the more closed off we are to love. So, whether you sense this or not, just by going to church each week you make your marriage better. Each time you pray, you make your marriage better. How? By becoming more tied into God, who not only is the source of all love, but who is love, we enhance our marriages.

Amen.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Do Beliefs Matter?

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Mark 9:33-50
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
‘For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’

Back in the middle of the 19th century, there was a well-known bishop who was traveling through the South Pacific on his way to visit Christian missionaries in Austrailia. One the way, his ship stopped at a small island to take on supplies. Walking around the island, he began to ask the villagers if they believed in Jesus Christ.

Three native men responded “yes.” They said in broken English, “Years ago, a man come to island. Teach us about Jesus. We followers now. Jesus very great.” The bishop, interested in their faith, asked them, “So, when you pray, what do you say?” They responded, “We say to God, ‘You are Three. We are three. Have mercy on us.’”

The bishop was indignant. What ignorance. What blasphemy! This was no way for Christians to pray. He said to the natives, “This way of praying is against God. Let me teach you how to pray properly.” So, he spent the next few days teaching them the words to the Lord’s Prayer. It was difficult work, but slowly they memorized the prayer. His last act on the island was proudly standing on the gangplank, hearing them recite the prayer.

Six months later, the bishop was sailing home, and as his ship sailed by that beautiful South Pacific island at night, he thought back with pride to his work with the three natives. He wondered how they were doing, and if they truly appreciated his work with them. As he looked across the water to the island, he noticed a small point of light coming toward the ship. As he continued to look, the light got closer and closer, and it was moving fairly quickly. Soon he noticed that it wasn’t just one light, but three. As it drew even closer, he noticed that the lights were three lamps being held by aloft the three natives as they ran at incredible speeds across the top of the water. Soon the three natives were standing on the surface of the water along side of the ship. Everyone was stunned.

They shouted up and said, “Bishop, Bishop! We see your boat sail by. We so ashamed. We forget beautiful prayer you teach us. We know we bad Christians. Please teach us again how to pray.” The bishop looked down at them and said with a smile, “When you pray, say ‘You are Three, we are three. Have mercy on us.’”

I love this story because it gets right to the heart of real Christian faith. Basically what it tells us is that to be a Christian is really very simple. It’s a matter of being the right way in our heart, mind, and soul. Let me explain this a bit more.

I think that the heart of Christianity isn’t so much a question of what you believe, or what you do, but who you are. I’m not saying that what you do doesn’t matter, nor that what you believe doesn’t matter. They do. But they matter only to the extent that what you believe and do shapes who you are. God isn’t so much taking note of what we do and believe. What God takes note of is our core. Are we people of love, compassion, grace, peace, and light at our cores, and how are these reflected in our acts and beliefs.

So often in Christianity we get everything reversed. We emphasize aspects of faith that are secondary, making them primary. Let me show you what I mean. Do you recognize the term “works righteousness?” Works righteousness is something that Jesus struggled against, and it was at the heart of the Reformation—the time when the Protestant churches broke away from the Catholic church during the 16th century. The idea behind works righteousness is that in order to get into heaven we have to do enough good deeds to merit inclusion. It’s as though God keeps a big tally sheet of good and bad deeds that we’ve done, and the good deeds have to outweigh the bad ones in order for us to be saved. The Catholic Church, at the time of the Reformation, was fully ensconced in a works righteousness approach to faith. In fact, they used it to pay for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica Rome.

The church declared that giving money to the building of St. Peter’s (what they called “indulgences”) would have the power to release individuals early from Purgatory, getting them to Heaven sooner. So periodically a bishop from the Vatican would travel to a European city in a cart loaded with small, rolled-up documents bound by a red ribbon and embossed with the papal seal. When you gave money to the building of St. Peter’s, you would be given the document certifying your early release from Purgatory. This is works righteousness, and belief in it still exists today when people say that what matters most is how often we go to church, how often we give to charity, and how often we do acts of charity.

So what’s wrong with the idea of works righteousness? Aren’t good deeds good? What’s wrong is that works righteousness goes against what scripture says. Paul, in the third chapter of Romans, tells us that it’s not our deeds that get us into Heaven, it’s God’s grace. In other words, God saves us as a gift out of love. We don’t get in because we merit getting in. We get in because God wants us there. God wants to save us. When we have faith in God, we accept the gift of grace and Heaven. It’s not the goodness of our works that get us in. In fact, Paul points out that our deeds really can’t be considered good, since even the best deeds have some measure of self-interest in them—especially if we are only doing them to get into heaven. That’s the most selfish reason of all. Salvation isn’t a gift that’s merited. It’s just received.

There’s another form of “righteousness” that goes right along with works righteousness, and it’s the one that afflicts Protestants. Works righteousness is still an issue for the Catholic Church, despite the fact that the Catholic Church’s beliefs are much more like Protestant beliefs on this issue. The Protestant version of works righteousness is something I call “beliefs righteousness.” Beliefs righteousness is the idea that we are saved by virtue of having the right beliefs about God, Jesus, Scripture, and the like. You see people caught in the grips of beliefs righteousness who believe that things such as memorizing the Bible, being expert at Christian theology, and knowing what needs to be known to be saved have the power to save us. Many Protestants ignore the idea that grace and salvation are gifts, and act as though it is the purity of our beliefs that save us. They make the same mistake that those caught in works righteousness do: thinking that it’s up to us, when really it’s all up to God.

The bishop in our story was both a beliefs and works righteousness slave. The three men may have been ignorant of Christian works and beliefs, but they had the right hearts—hearts that allowed them to accept the gift of grace from God in a way that transformed them. You see, what makes us righteous is where our heart and soul are.

Okay, so if it doesn’t matter so much what we do and what we believe, then why is it so important for Christians to believe what we believe, and to do what we do? The answer is that Christian teachings shape our minds, hearts, and souls. Acts of love shape our hearts, minds, and souls, as well as those of others. Christian teachings and acts have the power to deepen our relationship with God and others. Ultimately the goal of Christianity is our relationship with God, and what better way to build that relationship than to be like children with God? This is what God wants of us. God wants us to be God’s adult, mature, loving, and compassionate children.

This gets right to the heart of my vision of Christianity. I believe that we are called to be a community that shapes people to become more open to and responsive to God in all areas of life. We are called to be Christ-bearers and love sharers, not gatekeepers who determine who deserves to be in God’s kingdom and who doesn’t.

What does it means to be a Christian? I believe that it means to be exactly like what Jesus described in our passage. Jesus says, “’Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’’ What he is saying here he says even more clearly Matthew’s gospel: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

We are called to be like children in our faith, in our works, and in our beliefs. Think about the way children are. They don’t spend hours debating weighty matters as we do. They play. They don’t sit around wondering how they can get to heaven. They play. To be like a child as a Christian means to live a life of play, laughter, and joy. That doesn’t mean going out and getting drunk all the time, spending all our time gambling, or engaging in what can often be called “adult fun.” I’m talking about real play where we can enjoy life with others. You hear this sense of play in the deepest Christian words, ones such as love, grace, joy, hope, faith, and peace. We can learn a lot from watching children.

My daughter, Erin, taught me about being a Christian child the other day. Erin and her sister, Shea, both run cross-country. And last Monday they had a meet with two other schools, although Erin didn’t run because she and I had been sick on Monday and Tuesday. So we sat and watched.

I don’t know how many of you have ever been to a cross-country meet, but it’s a bit of a strange event for parents. You rush to get your children to the meet, and once you get there, everyone hangs out waiting for the time when everyone’s there and the coaches can take the kids on a walk-through, which takes about forty minutes as they walk the two-mile course. Then the varsity team lines up, boys first, girls second, and they run. That takes about another 35 minutes. Then the junior varsity lines up—boys first, girls second. So, by the time my daughters are ready to run, I’ve been sitting there for about an hour-and-a-half. Usually I take work and work on something while I’m waiting. Then the girls line up, and I, as a parent, walk over there and shout out, “Go Erin, go Shea!” I also shout out for some of their friends like Abbie and Bailey. In twenty seconds they disappear into the woods. And then all us parents go back to sitting and waiting.

About eighteen minutes later the first kids show up, and so we start looking for our kids. At about twenty minutes I see my kids running to the finish line. So I shout out “Go Shea, you can do it! Go Erin, you’re almost there!” Then they cross the finish line. By this point, I’ve been there for two hours or more, and I’ve spent a total of thirty seconds cheering my kids and other kids. It’s not like a soccer game where you cheer for an hour.

What’s also hard is that I don’t really know any of the other parents. Being the Protestant parent of children in a Catholic school, I don’t know the parents through church and other activities. So I sort of stand around a bit, feeling like the odd man out. It’s not their fault. I’m not necessarily going out of my way to meet them. So I do work and read while I’m waiting.

Erin taught me something the other day, though, about my attitude, and perhaps the attitude of all us adults. I told her that watching the meets is kind of boring for us parents, so I said to bring books and games, which she did. That only amused her for thirty minutes. Then she told me, “I’m bored!” For the next fifteen minutes I heard, “I’m bored. I’m bored. I’m bored.” I told her that there’s not much I could do. She noticed some younger children, children that she didn’t know very well, and she asked me if she could hang out with them. I said, “Sure, but remember that you are getting over being sick. I don’t want you running around.” So, for the next hour-and-a-half, Erin hung out with those kids, playing games, chatting, and sharing snacks. I sat by myself and did work. Erin played, I worked. Erin laughed, I worked. Erin got along, I worked. Now the truth is that I had a lot to do (believe it or not, we pastors do a lot in-between sermons), but I also realized that Erin had something I didn’t: an ability to overcome differences through prayer. She had that childlike faith that Jesus talked about. She had the ability to get along with others, and not to get hung up on whether or not the other believed what she believed, had the same values she had, or even had the same faith she had.

This ability to live a life of faith-filled love, laughter, and play is so essential to the Christian life, and I think it’s something we miss so much in modern life. I will give credit, though, to this church. Do you remember back in 2005, when Diana Butler-Bass and her assistant, Joseph Stewart-Sicking, spent time with us to research us and other like churches for what eventually became her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us? They were studying churches like ours that were growing, not because we were doing all contemporary worship, but because they were emphasizing spirituality, prayer, and listening to God. They said that they noticed something very unique about our church, which stood out in comparison to other churches. She noticed how easily we laugh in this church. They said that they saw it in worship whenever something didn’t work and we laughed about it. They saw it in our session meetings. Joe said that when he sat in on our session meeting, he heard us have a very intensive discussion about something, and he thought, “Okay, here’s where we’ll see them start to fight.” At the most intense moment, someone on the session said something funny. Then someone else joined in. Pretty soon, all of us were cracking jokes for five minutes. Then we jumped back into the discussion and had it resolved in fifteen minutes. What I love about this church is that we play.

I think that this is what God calls us to. Our beliefs matter. Our works matter. But not to the extent that our love and laughter matter.

Amen.