Angels of Faith: Overcoming Doubt
Luke 1:5-20
November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. 7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. 8 Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. 10 Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. 16 He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." 18 Zechariah said to the angel, "How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years." 19 The angel replied, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.
Have you ever been visited by an angel? If you have been, did the angel have a message for you, and did you believe? If an angel were to visit you today with a message, would you believe? I think that most of us think we would believe, but I wonder if that’s true? How many of us would still doubt? I wonder how many of us would be like Zechariah?
Most people don’t appreciate the subtleties of the story about Zechariah in the passage above. When you understand the story more, you understand the depths of Zechariah’s doubt and what it says about our doubts. Zechariah was a priest serving the great temple in Jerusalem. When we think of priests today, we tend to think of Roman Catholic priests or pastors. Zechariah was not that kind of priest. Temple priests in Jesus’ day presided over sacrifices in the temple, or did other various duties surrounding those sacrifices. Everyday, thousands of the Jewish faithful flocked to the temple to offer up their sacrifices. To be a temple priest, a man had to be a direct descendent of Aaron, Moses’ right-hand man. In Jesus’ day, there were so many descendents of Aaron that few priests were permanent. Instead, most priests worked regular jobs and served in the temple twice a year. There were approximately 24,000 priests, with about 1000 serving the temple each week. Thus, each priest served in the temple for two weeks per year, and it was the high point of his or her year.
Zechariah was serving his two weeks in the temple, and he had a special duty on this particular day. He was to light the incense in the inner part of the temple. The incense was believed to have the power to lift the sacrifice to God, so it was a special and powerful duty, and would have served as the highpoint of his life. He entered the inner sanctum to light the incense, his hand shaking in nervous awe as he put the flame to the incense. Suddenly, the angel Gabriel stood before him. Gabriel told Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, was to bear a child (John the Baptist), who would have the spirit of Elijah in him. John would prepare the way for the coming of the messiah. Zechariah doubted. I’m not sure how you would have been in that situation, but Zechariah had a common affliction. He couldn’t get rid of his logical self. Logic said that there was no way his wife could bear a child. She was in menopause. Physically, logic says, it was impossible for Elizabeth to bear a child. So Zechariah asked Gabriel how he could be sure that what Gabriel said was true. Gabriel responded that because Zechariah doubted, he would be struck mute until John was born.
Put yourself in Zechariah’s shoes (or sandals). Would you have believed? Belief, even in the face of a visit by an angel, is harder than you think. I remember years ago talking with a professor at a local university who was an agnostic leaning toward atheism. He told me that back when he was a teenager or a child, while he was going through some very difficult times, he woke up to find Jesus sitting on the end of his bed. I asked him if it was really Jesus or just a dream. He said it was really Jesus, that he could have reached out and touched him. I asked him what Jesus was doing. He said that he was just looking in a caring way. Was there a message? “Not really,” he said. I then asked if, looking back at that experience, he was still an agnostic leaning toward atheism, and he said yes. I asked him in several different forms how he could have been visited by Jesus and not believe. He told me that he didn’t know, but that he just didn’t believe. Doubt, sometimes, is easier to come by than belief.
When angels, the Spirit, Jesus, or some other manifestation of God visits you, what do you do with your natural doubts? There are ways to prepare yourself to have an open heart and soul to them, ways to be open and ready whenever God comes to you. I believe that God speaks all around us all the time, but we aren’t always receptive. How do we become receptive? Well, I’ve asked an expert on receptivity to talk with us about an experience she had. So I’m turning my sermon over to Connie Frierson, our program director, to talk about her experience of being visited by God:
As many of you know I am a widow. I was with my husband Allen for twenty-two years, when he very suddenly died of a heart attack in July of 2006. Allen and I met in the Air Force in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was a hotshot fighter pilot and I was a JAG otherwise known as an Air Force lawyer. And we were really happy. So the time after Allen’s death was one of the darkest times in my life. But God was present with me in my grief and God helped me put my loss in perspective. One of the ways God spoke is through this necklace I am wearing today.
About three months after Allen’s death, my dear sister Beverly was in Lake Mills, Wisconsin visiting with her daughter, Julie and Julie’s husband, Mike. Lake Mills is a charming little town and has a farmers market every Saturday. Bev, Julie and Mike went to the market in the park and were wandering about looking for pumpkins and squash and vegetables. All the things we enjoy in the fall. But the market also includes some crafters. In one end of the park was a woman with two tables full of beads and jewelry. Bev was idly looking over everything when she was struck with one necklace and earring set. She knew that that necklace was for me and she had this idea that the necklace was somehow from Allen. Now Bev and I are bargain hunters to the core and we just don’t buy each other jewelry. So Bev dismissed this notion of the necklace and moved on. But she couldn’t seem to get this idea out of her head. She asked my niece, Julie, to come back and look at these tables of jewelry. Bev asked Julie, “Is there anything here for Connie?” Julie immediately went right to this necklace. So Bev decided to buy the necklace for me. As the woman was wrapping the necklace and earrings up, Bev asked her if she knew anything about the beads in the necklace. Bev was just making conversation. But the woman lit up and she said, “Oh yes, I know all about these beads. The brown bead is a brown agate from Tibet, said to heighten spiritual awareness and the turquoise is a special order from a little family mine somewhere out west, called Pilot Mountain.” At that point both Bev and Julie started to cry because this necklace really was a gift to me from my pilot husband.
But the deeper I looked into these beads the more I found. The Pilot Mountain Mine isn’t just somewhere out west. Pilot Mountain is in Tonopah, Nevada. Tonopah Nevada is a very, very small town closest to the Tonopah Test Range. Allen was one of probably less than 100 pilots in the 1980’s that were part of a group flying and training in the then Top Secret stealth fighter, the F-117 on the Tonopah Test Range. This was the group Allen was flying with when we met. This is the group that I became the attorney for in my time in the Air Force. As Allen flew into the Air Field at Tonopah, Pilot Mountain was one of the checkpoints into the field. He flew over it nightly. This necklace was tied to an incredible time in my life and Allen’s life. No kidding, this was a gift from Allen.
But something even more interesting was happening here. The week that I received the necklace, I was in the beginning of a Christian Education Class at Seminary. The book we were reading by Craig Dystrika, Dystrika used a certain phrase over and over again. It was his primary metaphor for Christian Education. The phrase was, “What do these stones mean?” The phrase is taken from the book of Joshua, chapter 4. That phrase was the title of a chapter in Dystrika’s book. He mentions it in his introduction and his dedication of the book. It was the main topic of my professor’s lecture for three classes. In my small group or section, I had to listen to four students reflection papers on that one phrase, “What do these stones mean.” At the end of about two weeks of this I realized that God wanted me to think about WHAT DO THESE STONES MEAN! What do the stones in this necklace mean?
As I looked at the necklace you see that the Pilot Mountain Turquoise is cut into little hearts. The veining of the turquoise are like little cracks and fissures. The hearts look like they are broken. That certainly matched my experience of a great love and a great loss. But the characteristic of Pilot Mountain Turquoise is that the crackling and fissures range from deep, dark black to golden. As I looked at these broken and fractured hearts I realized that God was speaking to me in a very real symbolic way. Grief is black and heart breaking, yet in time and God’s grace our greatest sorrows can be transformed, that darkness can be changed to gold. This necklace was a very real reassurance that my grief would be transformed.
What do these stones mean? I then turned to Joshua Chapters 3 and 4. This is the story of the people of Israel crossing into the Promised Land. After forty years in the wilderness the people are going into the land of milk and honey. God tells Joshua to pick men of each tribe. And when the priests cross the River Jordan carrying the Ark of the Covenant. When the Jordan River is held back so that the priest cross on dry ground. The men are to pick up the stones that the priest’s feet touched. And these stones will remind everyone that God has held back the waters and that God was present in the Ark of the Covenant when the people of Israel crossed into the Promised Land. What does it mean when we say or sing of crossing the River Jordan and entering the Promised Land? Most often it means that we are looking forward to life with God beyond the life on this earth. The Pilot Mountain necklace, the hearts broken and transformed, the assurance of God of a Promised Land, all of these have come together in understanding what these stones mean to me. God has used a language unique to me, to comfort and reassure. If you listen and are open God speaks to you as well.
Connie’s story teaches us a lot about being receptive to God. First, it teaches us that it takes a willingness to believe. Are we willing to believe when what we experience goes against human logic, against our logic? Second, it teaches us that if we are willing to look, listen, and sense beyond our normal human senses, we can hear God. Are we willing to listen with our hearts, spirits, and souls?
God speaks, but are we ready to hear?
Amen.
What Is Our Calling?
Matthew 25:31-46
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
So what’s going to happen to you when the great division comes? What’s going to happen when Jesus separates us from one another, putting some on the right and some on the left? Which side will you be placed on? Will you be with the sheep or the goats?
The truth is that I’d be hard-pressed to find many Christians who would say, “Me? I’ll be among the goats.” Most of us believe we’ll be running with the sheep, but is that true? Looking at Jesus’ criterion for grazing with the sheep, how do you match up?
Now, I need to tell you that I’m not much of a “rapture” guy. What I mean is that I’m not a big believer in the theology of the rapture. You know the belief. It’s an idea based on one small passage of scripture, Matthew 24, in which Jesus says to be watchful for the coming of Christ because “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.” It’s a confusing passage because it’s hard to tell if he is using poetic language typical of the Middle East, or predicting something. Still, for the first 1800 years of Christianity, no one thought that this passage was literal. It was understood to be figurative, telling people to always be aware that Christ can return at any moment. It wasn’t until an Irish evangelical preacher, John Nelson Darby, preached about it in the mid-1800s that anyone believed in the rapture. At any rate, I’m not a big believer in the rapture because I believe it’s a theology that’s built on speculation.
Still, I often wonder what people who believe in the rapture, who read books like the Left Behind series, think of this passage. I wonder because most of them seem to believe that getting to heaven has to do with having the right beliefs. They believe that if we proclaim Christ as Lord and believe in Jesus’ saving power, then they will be taken up in the rapture. But what do they make of this passage, which says that judgment doesn’t have to do with having the right belief? This passage seems to say that it’s not so much a matter of what we believe as it is of how we love. Reading our passage for this morning, what seems to determine our entry into the kingdom of heaven is how we treat the people who struggle in life. What matters seems to be how we treat the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned.
With this in mind, my question for you is simple: to what extent do you care about people who are poor, hungry, lack proper clothing, or are in prison? Do you think about them at all? A little? A lot?
I find that in our culture there are many people who have a very damaging, un-Christian attitude toward the poor and the imprisoned. They tend to split them into two categories: the deserving and undeserving. For instance, there are those who believe that most poor people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough to overcome their poverty. These are the folks whom I’ve heard at cocktail parties and elsewhere say things like, “I’ve worked for everything I have. Those people are lazy. They do nothing, but they still get a handout. If it were up to me, they’d all be forced to do roadwork or something like that. I shouldn’t have to support their laziness. Don’t get me wrong. There are some people who are poor because they have a mental problem, but most of them are just lazy.” These folks believe in helping only those who deserve to be poor, whatever that means. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t distinguish the deserving and undeserving poor. He just tells us to care about the poor.
People also similarly talk about those in prison in the same way. They say things like, “Those people did something wrong. They should be punished. We shouldn’t be having country clubs for prisoners. Prisons should be harsh places that cause people pain for all the pain they’ve caused.” Again, the problem is that Jesus calls us to care for prisoners, to love them, not abuse them. What do we do with teachings like that?
No matter what causes people to be poor, hungry, homeless, sick, thirsty, imprisoned, or strange, Jesus calls us to care for them. This whole passage gets so much to the heart of Christian faith and what we do with it. There are a lot of Christians who are good at playing the role of Christian—at proclaiming themselves good, seeming sinless, proclaiming others as sinful, knowing the Bible, and things like that. But that doesn’t make them truly Christian in the sense of our passage.
Let me give you an example. Several years ago a woman was referred to me because she had some questions about faith. She was disturbed by an experience she had had, and wanted to talk about it with a pastor who wasn’t part of her church. What disturbed her was her experience on a mission trip to Thailand to help victims of the 2004 tsunami.
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, her heart went out to all the people who had lost their homes and were now struggling just to find food, water, and shelter. Her church set up this mission trip to go to Thailand to help the victims. It was her impression that the mission trip would be to help them rebuild, to bring food and supplies, and otherwise help them recover. When she got there, she was a bit dumbfounded to discover that the mission was to stand in front of a large Buddhist temple and hand out Christian tracts (tracts written in English) to the people living there (most of whom could not speak or read English). The tracts essentially said that Jesus was the only way to salvation, and that they had to give up their faith and become Christian if they were to be saved.
She was shocked at this because she saw that what these people needed was food, clothing, housing, medicine, and so much more. Her church’s mission was ignoring those needs in order to talk about salvation in a language the people didn’t understand. She spoke with the leaders of the mission, and she was told that if these people turned their lives over the Christ, they would be helped, and so what they were doing was to help them find help.
Another interesting thing happened. The members of the mission trip were warned to stay out of the Buddhist temple because the devil was there. She was warned that the devil might hurt their faith if they went inside. This piqued her curiosity. She wanted to go inside and see what a Buddhist temple looked like, especially since the people were so devoted to it.
Struggling with what to do, she finally decided that it was just too compelling. She had to see what was inside this temple. And so she walked up the steps. Walking in, she was overcome with the beauty inside. It was transcendent. It was inspiring. And she had a deep spiritual experience. It wasn’t an experience that led her to become Buddhist. It was an experience that actually deepened her Christian faith. She had an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence in that place. Unfortunately, she was left with a problem: “How do I tell others about this? They’ll brand me as a heretic, even though I’ve had an experience of Christ.” And that’s what they did when she told a few of them.
Here’s the real crux of the situation, though. These folks had a chance to be sheep and help the poor, but instead they handed out tracts. They were more concerned about whether the poor believed the right things than they were that the poor had adequate food and shelter. They were Christian, but they didn’t follow Christ’s message of our passage for today.
What do you do to help the poor everyday? Do you think about this? There’s no judgment from me if you don’t, but we are called to help the poor. That’s one of the reasons we constantly try to offer opportunities here in the church. For instance, we periodically do meals for the Ladle and Hearth ministry in Ambridge. We encourage you to contribute to the local food bank. We are presently doing a coat and sweater drive. We have a special mission fund as part of our church to financially help people in trouble. It’s why we do a backpack drive and other activities for the Pittsburgh Project. There’s a lot we do in the church, which is great. And we hope to do more. Still, do you look for other opportunities on your own? How do you help the poor?
How you vote makes a difference. To me this is a huge aspect of helping the poor, and I’m glad that I now get to talk about it after the election so that it doesn’t sound like I’m endorsing one party or another. Simply put, to be Christian means to vote for people who care about the poor. There are a lot of theories about how to do this. There’s the trickle down theory, which says that we should invest in the investors, and that they will create new wealth and jobs. There’s the bubble up theory, which is that we invest in the poor, giving them more buying power, and thus helping the economy from the ground up. Why is it that we have to have one or the other? Why can’t we have both, which makes more ecological sense? If you understand weather patterns, water both trickles down and evaporates back up. Why is it that we have to vote for the poor against the economy, or for the wealthy against the poor? Either way, whatever economic theory we have, we should be putting the welfare of the poor at the center of our vote because that’s a reflection of what scripture says. Why not vote for politicians and policies who want to bring better housing, food, quality of life, education and opportunity to the poor?
The question is also central to our giving habits. Do we give to charities that help the poor beyond the church? One of the people I really admire in this way is former Steelers player, and present radio analyst, Tunch Ilkin. Ilkin was an all-pro offensive lineman. He now analyzes games, and I love to watch him on Mondays on Savran on Sports, as he uses a telestrater to break down games. He doesn’t just say things like, “The coaches stink,” like most of us do. Instead, he shows in slow motion why critical plays either worked or didn’t, how someone did or didn’t execute well, and how someone either made or missed an assignment. But the thing that I really admire about him is not his football knowledge. I like it, but I don’t admire it. What I admire is his work over the past twenty years for the Light of Life Ministry on the northside of Pittsburgh. This is a ministry that cares for the hungry and the homeless. He isn’t just a football guy. He’s a Matthew 25 guy, and that’s what is really defining about his life.
Getting back to our scripture, the passage is basically asking a simple question: how much do we care about those whom few care about? How we answer is what defines us as Christians
Amen.
So what’s going to happen to you when the great division comes? What’s going to happen when Jesus separates us from one another, putting some on the right and some on the left? Which side will you be placed on? Will you be with the sheep or the goats?
The truth is that I’d be hard-pressed to find many Christians who would say, “Me? I’ll be among the goats.” Most of us believe we’ll be running with the sheep, but is that true? Looking at Jesus’ criterion for grazing with the sheep, how do you match up?
Now, I need to tell you that I’m not much of a “rapture” guy. What I mean is that I’m not a big believer in the theology of the rapture. You know the belief. It’s an idea based on one small passage of scripture, Matthew 24, in which Jesus says to be watchful for the coming of Christ because “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.” It’s a confusing passage because it’s hard to tell if he is using poetic language typical of the Middle East, or predicting something. Still, for the first 1800 years of Christianity, no one thought that this passage was literal. It was understood to be figurative, telling people to always be aware that Christ can return at any moment. It wasn’t until an Irish evangelical preacher, John Nelson Darby, preached about it in the mid-1800s that anyone believed in the rapture. At any rate, I’m not a big believer in the rapture because I believe it’s a theology that’s built on speculation.
Still, I often wonder what people who believe in the rapture, who read books like the Left Behind series, think of this passage. I wonder because most of them seem to believe that getting to heaven has to do with having the right beliefs. They believe that if we proclaim Christ as Lord and believe in Jesus’ saving power, then they will be taken up in the rapture. But what do they make of this passage, which says that judgment doesn’t have to do with having the right belief? This passage seems to say that it’s not so much a matter of what we believe as it is of how we love. Reading our passage for this morning, what seems to determine our entry into the kingdom of heaven is how we treat the people who struggle in life. What matters seems to be how we treat the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned.
With this in mind, my question for you is simple: to what extent do you care about people who are poor, hungry, lack proper clothing, or are in prison? Do you think about them at all? A little? A lot?
I find that in our culture there are many people who have a very damaging, un-Christian attitude toward the poor and the imprisoned. They tend to split them into two categories: the deserving and undeserving. For instance, there are those who believe that most poor people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough to overcome their poverty. These are the folks whom I’ve heard at cocktail parties and elsewhere say things like, “I’ve worked for everything I have. Those people are lazy. They do nothing, but they still get a handout. If it were up to me, they’d all be forced to do roadwork or something like that. I shouldn’t have to support their laziness. Don’t get me wrong. There are some people who are poor because they have a mental problem, but most of them are just lazy.” These folks believe in helping only those who deserve to be poor, whatever that means. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t distinguish the deserving and undeserving poor. He just tells us to care about the poor.
People also similarly talk about those in prison in the same way. They say things like, “Those people did something wrong. They should be punished. We shouldn’t be having country clubs for prisoners. Prisons should be harsh places that cause people pain for all the pain they’ve caused.” Again, the problem is that Jesus calls us to care for prisoners, to love them, not abuse them. What do we do with teachings like that?
No matter what causes people to be poor, hungry, homeless, sick, thirsty, imprisoned, or strange, Jesus calls us to care for them. This whole passage gets so much to the heart of Christian faith and what we do with it. There are a lot of Christians who are good at playing the role of Christian—at proclaiming themselves good, seeming sinless, proclaiming others as sinful, knowing the Bible, and things like that. But that doesn’t make them truly Christian in the sense of our passage.
Let me give you an example. Several years ago a woman was referred to me because she had some questions about faith. She was disturbed by an experience she had had, and wanted to talk about it with a pastor who wasn’t part of her church. What disturbed her was her experience on a mission trip to Thailand to help victims of the 2004 tsunami.
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, her heart went out to all the people who had lost their homes and were now struggling just to find food, water, and shelter. Her church set up this mission trip to go to Thailand to help the victims. It was her impression that the mission trip would be to help them rebuild, to bring food and supplies, and otherwise help them recover. When she got there, she was a bit dumbfounded to discover that the mission was to stand in front of a large Buddhist temple and hand out Christian tracts (tracts written in English) to the people living there (most of whom could not speak or read English). The tracts essentially said that Jesus was the only way to salvation, and that they had to give up their faith and become Christian if they were to be saved.
She was shocked at this because she saw that what these people needed was food, clothing, housing, medicine, and so much more. Her church’s mission was ignoring those needs in order to talk about salvation in a language the people didn’t understand. She spoke with the leaders of the mission, and she was told that if these people turned their lives over the Christ, they would be helped, and so what they were doing was to help them find help.
Another interesting thing happened. The members of the mission trip were warned to stay out of the Buddhist temple because the devil was there. She was warned that the devil might hurt their faith if they went inside. This piqued her curiosity. She wanted to go inside and see what a Buddhist temple looked like, especially since the people were so devoted to it.
Struggling with what to do, she finally decided that it was just too compelling. She had to see what was inside this temple. And so she walked up the steps. Walking in, she was overcome with the beauty inside. It was transcendent. It was inspiring. And she had a deep spiritual experience. It wasn’t an experience that led her to become Buddhist. It was an experience that actually deepened her Christian faith. She had an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence in that place. Unfortunately, she was left with a problem: “How do I tell others about this? They’ll brand me as a heretic, even though I’ve had an experience of Christ.” And that’s what they did when she told a few of them.
Here’s the real crux of the situation, though. These folks had a chance to be sheep and help the poor, but instead they handed out tracts. They were more concerned about whether the poor believed the right things than they were that the poor had adequate food and shelter. They were Christian, but they didn’t follow Christ’s message of our passage for today.
What do you do to help the poor everyday? Do you think about this? There’s no judgment from me if you don’t, but we are called to help the poor. That’s one of the reasons we constantly try to offer opportunities here in the church. For instance, we periodically do meals for the Ladle and Hearth ministry in Ambridge. We encourage you to contribute to the local food bank. We are presently doing a coat and sweater drive. We have a special mission fund as part of our church to financially help people in trouble. It’s why we do a backpack drive and other activities for the Pittsburgh Project. There’s a lot we do in the church, which is great. And we hope to do more. Still, do you look for other opportunities on your own? How do you help the poor?
How you vote makes a difference. To me this is a huge aspect of helping the poor, and I’m glad that I now get to talk about it after the election so that it doesn’t sound like I’m endorsing one party or another. Simply put, to be Christian means to vote for people who care about the poor. There are a lot of theories about how to do this. There’s the trickle down theory, which says that we should invest in the investors, and that they will create new wealth and jobs. There’s the bubble up theory, which is that we invest in the poor, giving them more buying power, and thus helping the economy from the ground up. Why is it that we have to have one or the other? Why can’t we have both, which makes more ecological sense? If you understand weather patterns, water both trickles down and evaporates back up. Why is it that we have to vote for the poor against the economy, or for the wealthy against the poor? Either way, whatever economic theory we have, we should be putting the welfare of the poor at the center of our vote because that’s a reflection of what scripture says. Why not vote for politicians and policies who want to bring better housing, food, quality of life, education and opportunity to the poor?
The question is also central to our giving habits. Do we give to charities that help the poor beyond the church? One of the people I really admire in this way is former Steelers player, and present radio analyst, Tunch Ilkin. Ilkin was an all-pro offensive lineman. He now analyzes games, and I love to watch him on Mondays on Savran on Sports, as he uses a telestrater to break down games. He doesn’t just say things like, “The coaches stink,” like most of us do. Instead, he shows in slow motion why critical plays either worked or didn’t, how someone did or didn’t execute well, and how someone either made or missed an assignment. But the thing that I really admire about him is not his football knowledge. I like it, but I don’t admire it. What I admire is his work over the past twenty years for the Light of Life Ministry on the northside of Pittsburgh. This is a ministry that cares for the hungry and the homeless. He isn’t just a football guy. He’s a Matthew 25 guy, and that’s what is really defining about his life.
Getting back to our scripture, the passage is basically asking a simple question: how much do we care about those whom few care about? How we answer is what defines us as Christians
Amen.
How Are We Using Our Talents
"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, "Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.' His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, "Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, "Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, "You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'- Matthew 25:14-30
So, what do you do with your talents? Do you invest them? Do you bury them in the ground? If you invest them, how do you invest them? Do you invest your talents in a way that’s supposed to make you money, or in a way that serves God?
The last question is the key question for us, isn’t it? When we think of investing, we pretty much always think of it in financial terms. We don’t think of it in spiritual terms. Why is that? Why don’t we think of our service to God as an investment? I’m pretty sure Dan Barker sees what he does as an investment.
Dan Barker has lived a tough life, but that never stopped him from investing in life. Barker grew up as a troubled child in Sacramento, California. His father left home when he was four, and he never saw him again. His mother remarried soon after, but it was never a happy marriage. What Dan remembers most of his childhood was the overwhelming sense of sadness in his home. It just seemed that everyone was continually melancholy. His half-brother and half-sister manifested the sadness more in their lives than Dan. The brother ended up in prison and died of a drug overdose. His sister struggled her whole life with anorexia. To get out of the home, Dan enlisted in the Marines as a 17 year-old.
It was 1964, and he served in Vietnam as a medic. It was a terrible time for him, and he saw things that have haunted him throughout his whole life. As he says, he doesn’t know if he has ever had a good night sleep since he left Vietnam.
Returning from Vietnam, Dan went to college on the G.I. bill, studying history, English, and philosophy. Upon graduation he really didn’t know what to do with his life. He bounced around from job to job, eventually working for Garland Nursery in Albany, Oregon. It was there that he found his calling. He loved to grow plants. It became a passion. His favorite time of year was when the seed catalogues came out. He would pour over them from cover to cover, delighting in their descriptions of the plants that would grow, such as the “rich flesh” of the cantaloupes. They touched him on a spiritual level.
He continued working in the nursery, but had to get other jobs to supplement his income. It was in one of these other jobs that he made a decision to invest his talents. He was working at the Hoot Owl Grocery, a convenience store, when three men came into the store and robbed it at gunpoint. Pointing the gun at Dan’s head, the leader said, “You can identify me, can’t you?” Dan replied, “No, not really.” The man then turned and fled, taking with him $117. At that moment Dan knew two things: First, he knew that he never wanted to work in a convenience store again. Second, he knew he had to share his passion for growing with those in need. He had already been thinking of an idea of what to do, but now he knew that he needed to pursue it.
Here was his idea. He would build gardens in the inner city for poor people to grow vegetables so that they could improve their health and supplement their income. So in the spring of 1984, supported by a $5000 government grant, as well as 15,000 packets of year-old seeds donated from a local firm, he loaded up a truck full of dirt and wood, and went to the inner city of Portland, Oregon to build a vegetable garden in the back yard of a man named Al Honeyman. Honeyman had muscular dystrophy, and was on disability. Dan built the frame for the garden and filled it with dirt. He then taught Honeyman and his neighbors how to care for the garden. That spring he built 21 gardens in the city. The next spring he built 56. The following spring he built 117. In 1989 he went national, expanding his talent to other cities. To date, over 50,000 of these gardens have been built across the nation, and more are coming. Barker himself has built well over 1400 of them, but because of his arthritis he mostly supervises now (taken from Biography Magazine, 2003). Dan Barker was given a very small talent, and he multiplied it a thousand-fold. The spiritual irony about Dan Barker’s talent is that he actually invested his talents in the ground, and it multiplied them a thousand-fold.
Where do you invest your talents? Everyday, God gives everyone some sort of gift and calls us to use it to make the world better. And every day millions of people ignore that call. They don’t mean to ignore it. They just don’t listen for God much, and when they do, they don’t think creatively about what they hear. They don’t connect what small skills they have with the possibility of sharing them beyond themselves in a way that makes the world just a little better. They bury their talents in the ground by doing nothing. I’m not saying that we have to do everything with every talent God gives us. That would leave us with no balance in life. I’m simply saying that too often we hear God’s calling to invest our talents, and we do nothing.
For example, we are in our annual stewardship period when we receive pledges for the next year. Do you consider your pledge to be just what you give to support the church, or do you think beyond that by recognizing it as an investment in what God is doing? Too few Christians recognize their giving to the church and to charity as an investment, mostly because when they think of investments they think only in terms of investments that come back to them. They worry about whether they will make or lose money, whether their investment will be good for them or a waste of time. When God calls us to invest our talents, God doesn’t think the way we do. God calls us to make investments that come back to God, so that through God they can make the world better for everyone, including us.
Do you look at your giving that way? Do you consider your giving be an investment in God in which you are investing back into God part of what God has given you? I want you to consider it this way. Everything you have is from God. Everything. What are you willing to give back to God to invest in life? 1%? 2%? 5%? 10%? I know that for myself, I am very committed to giving back to God at least 10%, which is why each year I give back to Calvin Church almost ¼ of my salary. I don’t do it to be seen as good or to get into heaven. I do it to thank God and to invest what God has given me back into God.
Our Forward in Faith campaign, the one responsible for our renovation and new building, is exactly that kind of investment. We invested money into this church to create a facility that would multiply our talents for God. This building was never about the building. It has always been about investing in God. Nobody thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if we had a bigger, nicer church?” The whole focus was on the fact that the small, cramped, falling apart building that we had was causing us to start burying our investments in the ground. The building was impeding our ministry. Our classrooms were too small. Only a few on our staff had offices or workspaces. Our downstairs was chronically moldy, musty, and unsafe. What we did was to invest in God by creating a place where God could do more through us. And this is why we will be embarking on a new campaign in the spring. We will be embarking on a campaign to invest more in God so that we can retire our debt and be able to grow our ministry into the future. In the end, the question is always, “Are you investing your talents in God, or burying them in the ground?”
Throughout our lives God is constantly calling, saying, “Do something with what I’ve given you.” We don’t have to change the world. We only have to invest in a way that changes the small part of the world we live in. The question is, where are you investing your talents?
Amen.
To Pray Without Ceasing
Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
- 1 Thessalonians 5:12-21
You know, one of the problems of being Protestants in American is that often we act like Christianity started in America, and that the only true Christian faith is an American Protestant faith. The tragedy of thinking this way is that we often miss amazing movements of faith that take place in other Christian sects, movements that can draw us closer to God if we’re willing to pay attention and to follow.
One such movement took place in Russia around 1888. Out of nowhere a book was published by an anonymous author, and this little book revolutionized the way people thought about prayer. The book was titled The Way of a Pilgrim. It is the autobiography of an Eastern Orthodox pilgrim on a circuitous route to the Holy Lands. No one knows who wrote it, or even if it was a true autobiography or simply a profound work of fiction. What was powerful about the book was that its made our little passage for this morning come alive for millions of Christians by teaching them a way to pray without ceasing.
After the book was published it spread throughout Russia, and then throughout Europe, eventually making it’s way to America. Along the way it has influenced millions of Christians.
The book begins with the pilgrim telling of how he once had a wife and child who died during a smallpox outbreak, or something like that. In despair he wandered, not knowing where to turn. So he sought out a staret, which, in the Orthodox tradition, is the title given to a great spiritual master and guide. The staret teaches the pilgrim the secret of praying without ceasing. He teaches him to practice a form of prayer called hesychastic prayer, which is a Greek word meaning “Jesus Christ.” The prayer is based on breathing. As the person breathes in, he prays in his mind, “Lord Jesus Christ.” As he breathes out he prays, “Have mercy on me.” It’s a constant cycle of prayer, breathing in, “Lord Jesus Christ;” breathing out, “have mercy on me.” Breathing in, “Lord Jesus Christ;” breathing out, “have mercy on me.
The staret tells him to practice this prayer several hundred times a day. Then he increases the number of times he prays it. The pilgrim begins to journey around Russia, hoping to eventually reach Jerusalem, increasing his prayer as he walks: 1000 times a day, 3000 times a day, 6000 times a day, 12,000 times a day. As he increases his prayer, he finds that he is slowly becoming transformed. He becomes more patient, wiser, more understanding of life, and more courageous in simply following wherever God leads. The prayer centers him, allowing him to overcome anything in life. As his prayer moves from his mind to his heart, his focus becomes more and more simply on pleasing God. Toward the end he says that the prayer moves from his conscious mind to his heart as his heart prays it no matter what he is doing—talking, working, or eating. The book is remarkable in its simplicity, but also in teaching a form of prayer that is so simple, and so powerful.
As a way of introducing you to this prayer, I want to give you an opportunity to practice it. I want you to stop right now and try it. We’re going to change the prayer a bit. As you breathe in, pray in your mind, “Bless the Lord,” and as you breathe out, “O, my soul.” Try it for two minutes of silence. Your mind will wander a bit, but don’t worry about that. Just stay with your breathing, and see what effect it has on you.
Bless the Lord,
O my soul.
What did you experience? This way of praying is very much centered in the guidance of Psalm 46, where we hear, “Be still and know that I am God.” It’s meant to center and still us.
A hundred years before The Way of a Pilgrim was published, another little known book was published that also revolutionized Christian faith. The book was a compilation of writings about an unknown French monk named Brother Lawrence. After he died, his eulogy was shared with others, and copies spread around Europe among Roman Catholics and even Protestants. Then reflections on the life of Brother Lawrence were shared. Finally, letters that he had written to others were spread about Europe. Eventually all were compiled in a book that has influenced generations of Christians for centuries. The book is titled, The Practice of the Presence of God. The book describes another approach to praying without ceasing.
Brother Lawrence was a latecomer to monastic life. He joined the monastery at age 41 or so. He was not considered a great man of prayer. In fact, he often wrote about how poor he was at staying awake during worship, and at keeping regular times for prayer. So he created a different way of praying. He kept a conversation with God going on throughout his day. His job in the monastery was to keep the kitchen clean. So as he swept he talked with God, both sharing his heart and listening to God’s soft, still voice. As he washed dishes he talked with God. When doing errands for the monastery, he spoke with and listened to God. He worked at becoming fully aware of God throughout his day, looking for God’s presence everywhere. He also prayed without ceasing
So, how do you pray? Do you pray? I don’t know about you, but I find prayer to be both the most important, and the most difficult, part of the Christian life. It’s hard to find the time to pray. It’s hard to know what the right way to pray is. It’s hard to tell if God is listening because silence always accompanies prayer. We pray, but we don’t always get tangible evidence that God has listened or is responding.
Another problem with prayer is that if we’re actually going to become people of prayer, we have to begin to care about what God wants, but that’s not always our focus in prayer. Think about how most of us pray. When are we most likely to go to God in prayer? Isn’t it when we need something? Usually our prayers are filled with requests for God to do this or that. We aren’t usually focused on what God wants. Really, what happens is that we treat prayer much like Aladdin’s lamp, hoping that we can find the secret to rub God just the right way. We focus on holding our hands just the right way, trying to use just the right words, sitting in the right position, praying in the right place. We have a hard time just praying and trusting that God’s listened.
To really pray in the depths of our souls we have to care about what God wants. How much do we really want to know what God wants? When I came to Calvin Church that was my central question: How much do we care about what God wants? I learned to care about that question when I was an associate pastor prior to coming to Calvin. Specifically, I learned it while helping to lead a retreat for our session. I did an exercise in which we looked at Moses’ life and how he desperately did not want to lead the Israelites. He asked God to send another. He asked God why he was chosen. God told Moses to serve anyway. The question I asked the elders was what Moses’ life tells us about what we are to seek as elders. We talked about how we were to make decisions based on what God wants, not on what we want.
During the discussions one of the elders said, “I don’t like this at all. I don’t like asking what God wants. I know what I want, and I like voting based on what I want.” I was taken by surprise a bit, but then I asked, “Are you saying that we shouldn’t seek what God wants?” He said, “Oh no! We should always seek what God wants. I’m just telling you that I don’t like it.” That stuck with me. Coming here I was determined that we would be a church that prays as a session, as leaders, and as a congregation, seeking what God wanted rather than what we wanted. That needed to be our focus: “God, what do you want? God, how do you want me to be?”
Seeking what God wants is the calling of our passage. It’s not only to pray, but to pray without ceasing. We’re called to talk with God constantly. We’re called to listen for God constantly, and to let God lead us constantly, even to where we don’t want to follow.
Do you have any idea why God wants us to pray without ceasing? It’s simple: God wants a union of mind, heart, and soul with you and me. God wants a relationship with us, but God wants more. God wants to penetrate our hearts, minds, and souls. God wants to be part of everything we are. God wants to share a life with us. The question, in the end, is whether we are willing to share our lives with God?
Amen.
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